Breaking News...

I don't want to jinx anything, but...there's been a turn up for the books.

More info as and when I receive it.

A Chill in the Air

It really is autumn now, isn't it?

The last few days or so, I've been extremely chilly when in bed. Part of this is probably down to my duvet. It's something like a 7.5 tog. My feet have been like ice blocks when I've woken up, I may actually have to start sleeping with my slippers on.

I still haven't found a new home yet. Went to view a gorgeous flat in Yorkhill about three hours ago, but it ended up being a no-goer. Which sucks, I'd have loved to live there.

Deja Vu

Summer 2008 - a whole two years ago now, would you believe! - was the last summer I spent back home in Shetland for the full three months. I remember very little of it because I was mostly bored shitless. I do remember, though, that to combat fuck out of this boredom, I read a hell of a lot of books.

See what I mean about deja vu?

Anyway...

In the first couple of weeks home, I was getting through a book every two days or so. Again, they were books I'd acquired as far back as 2005 but never quite got round to reading for various reasons, so I took it upon myself to finish as many of them as possible during that summer before 3rd year loomed. In the first two weeks of this regime I finished seven or eight books, but got no writing done.

The same has happened this year. On lunchbreaks at work I've been consuming the many, many books I've been forking out for from Fopp, but little writing has been done. Today, though, I left 'Les Mis' sitting in my handbag (the oh-so-spacious Radley my Auntie Iz bought me for my 21st) and instead took out a notebook containing a plan I'd conjured up earlier this year. Just lately I'd been thinking over more scenes from this particular story and was itching to try and get them down on paper so I didn't completely forget them. As always with me, it didn't work out entirely the way I planned, but rough ideas are better than nothing...

New Title

My new blog URL is now 'operationhedgehog' instead of 'bluedresspress'. Decided it was time for another change.

But typing 'bluedresspress' should still take you to me

Book List Again

I don't usually blog twice in the same night, but I felt this matter deserved an update.

Currently reading:

'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo (an abridged edition)

Next few books lined up:

'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury
'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens
'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote (might actually get it read this time...)
'Emma' by Jane Austen

The rest of the list, currently at the foot of my bed:

'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell
'The Canterbury Tales' by Geoffrey Chaucer
'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest' by Stieg Larsson
'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
'Kafka on the Shore' by Haruki Murakami
'Grimm's Fairy Tales' by the Brothers Grimm
'Death of a Ladies' Man' by Alan Bissett
'Oliver Twist' by Charles Dickens
'Memoirs of a Geisha' by Arthur Golden
'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald
'England, England' by Julian Barnes
'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde
'Transition' by Iain Banks
'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen
'The Incredible Adam Spark' by Alan Bissett
'The Mill on the Floss' by George Eliot
'A Scanner Darkly' by Philip K Dick
'Treasure Island' by Robert Louis Stevenson (another one I started at uni and never finished)
'After Dark' by Haruki Murakami
'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' by Anne Bronte (after all, I've read both her sisters)
'The Death of Bunny Munro' by Nick Cave
'The Jungle Book' by Rudyard Kipling
'The Handmaids' Tale' by Margaret Atwood
'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen
'Post Office' - Charles Bukowski
'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe
'Hope for Newborns' by Rodge Glass
'Kidnapped' by Robert Louis Stevenson
'Wetlands' by Charlotte Roche (tee hee)
'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' by Mark Twain
'Running With Scissors' by Augusten Burroughs
'The Wind in the Willows' by Kenneth Grahame
'The Bullet Trick' by Louise Welsh
'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens (probably a little early in the year for it, but I've seen so many adaptations of it)
'Sputnik Sweetheart' by Haruki Murakami
'Kim' by Rudyard Kipling
'Old Men in Love' by Alasdair Gray
'Persuasion' by Jane Austen
'The Men Who Stare At Goats' by Jon Ronson
'Selected Poems' by Robert Burns
'A Partisan's Daughter' by Louis de Bernieres
'Anna Karenina' by Leo Tolstoy
'Pulp' by Charles Bukowski
'Dangerous Liaisons' by Laclos

Phew...but then again, you can never have too many books.

Fuck, it's 0223 according to my laptop clock :/ Better go to bed and perhaps make some headway on this list on my way. G'night!

The Pope Was In Glasgow? Honest, I'd Never Have Guessed.

That's bullshit, of course. Needless to say, I did not take part in the Popefest. I didn't even go to work that day - much as they were anticipating an Epic Onslaught as they do on such occasions - although I did have two other excuses that conveniently helped. The first was an optician's appointment I had that morning in the ongoing saga of my contact lenses (I'm due new ones made of a lovely fresher material - thank fuck, cause I think I must have got soap in my current set since they keep burning my eyes). The other excuse, though, was a book launch - no, not another Cargo affair. This launch - held in the Sauchiehall St branch of Waterstone's in Glasgow - was that of Dougie's War, a graphic novel written by Rodge Glass and illustrated by Dave Turbitt. I may have mentioned this previously, but Rodge edited 'The Year of Open Doors', Cargo's recent short story anthology. As well as this, some of us at Cargo - myself included - studied under him at Strathclyde University, where he currently lectures in creative writing (and before that was writer-in-residence). So I'm trying not to be completely and utterly biased when I write this.

The story concerns Dougie, a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan who returns home to the southside of Glasgow. We find out about his experiences and his struggle to adapt to civilian life, made more difficult by the symptoms of post-traumatic stress he exhibits. Making it a graphic novel was a wise move - it's definitely more effective for this. The story itself is compelling (the author did his homework - kudos, Dr G), but the illustrations bring it to life massively, making it altogether more harrowing, and a lot easier to sympathise with Dougie and what he goes through. Overall, I would definitely recommend it.

I ain't ever satisfied

That's the title for this entry because I am still miffed about missing Steve Earle in Shetland on Thursday. I really, really need a trip home.

Anywomb...

Worked my first Saturday evening at the busiest station on the subway network. It was pandemonium. First of all, that station has four ticket machines. Of these four, three were completely kaput and the fourth was in action intermittently. This meant there were several points during the evening when I had large queues. One guy complained that we should have a second window. Then there were the drunken idiots. We shouldn't let passengers who are drunk travel, but if we turned away all the drunk people we ever had we'd lose so much money. (Yeah, I'm in corporate whore mode.) Of course, the trouble with drunk folk is serving them. They drop their money, or when they don't, it's the wrong amount. When you tell them this, they tut loudly, thinking they got away with it (junkies tend to be much the same). Last night, though, I had three guys try and get singles back into town. One tried to say "Aw, c'mon, three fir two an ah'll gie ye a kiss." Needless to say, he was turned down. Didn't stop him, though - he simply tried to get me to leave him a mark on the glass panel between us. He was ignored. At that stage he decided to get my attention by leaping the barriers, at which stage I got the manager involved. They did still get to travel but we probably shouldn't have let them.

(I'd like to point out here - although I'm well aware his attitude was probably the drink talking, I actually can't stand being openly flirted with anyway. I prefer a guy to get into my head before he tries to get into my pants. I am, after all, human.)

Earlier in the shift, we'd had a passenger with an unlimited pass for all the city's public transport trying to get through the barrier. He needed his pass validated and wasn't keen to wait in the queue to do this, and got stroppy when we told him to. After swearing at the manager he was ejected. Later we got a pished guy with a season ticket for the train (not the subway; you wouldn't believe how many folk are bad for that) and got arsey when we told him it wasn't valid. He also insulted the station manager - right in front of the security guys. So he also got ejected.

That shift was enough for me to get my finger out with this application for the library job. I was, however, cheered up by today's event at Platform with Cargo again, which was a great day in all. We've still got more to go. Meanwhile our editor of the Year of Open Doors is having a launch for his new graphic novel, Dougie's War on Thursday, so we're all looking forward to that.

Merlin is back on telly - I'd missed it. Along with Doctor Who and Sherlock, it's one of the Beeb's best. I'm also watching Dead Set over 4OD, about two years later. It's pretty creepy. Thank fuck for Youtube having Mr Men episodes to cheer me up...

I'd give you everything I've got for a little piece of mind

This ended up turning into one of those evenings when I ended up simply trying to catch up on sleep following an early shift, and slept till about 2:30am. I hate such nights.

I've found a job to apply for in one of the libraries in Glasgow. I think it'll suit me better than my current paid job - assuming I'm considered to have enough experience for it.

I now own a printer at last :)

I'm still involved with the publisher and loving it a lot.

I still haven't found a new home yet. There's nothing within my price range in the west end. Having been to the south side the other night for an open mic night with a friend I'm starting to think it might be just as good, plus not as pricey. Besides, all the writer types seem to be living there. Funny how all the parts of the city that aren't the west end have thus far contained a major pull factor for me. I discovered the advantage of Dennistoun in the latter two years of uni because about 70% of my friends from the union (at least, the ones who didn't live at home) lived either there or in the Merchant City. I could only name you two of them who lived somewhere in the south side (one lives in Dennistoun now) and three in the west end, and one in north Glasgow (who, to my knowledge anyway, no longer lives there). Now I've graduated and gotten properly into the writing scene, still hardly anyone seems to be in the west end.

It's not that I think the west end is a bad place - it's not at all. It's full of lovely things. It deserves its good reputation for the most part. But after a while, when you've lived there too long, you start to take it for granted.

I wish I could think of something exciting to put in here. I promise it'll be exciting next time.