Or, the three stages of life.

Well, the three stages of this blog, anyway.  Firstly, it’s hot.  Bloody hot.  Oven hot.  India, let me tell you a final and definitive time, is currently hot.  Today was around 42 degrees of hot.  Tomorrow and Saturday promise (yes, PROMISE) to be around 44.  It is not chilly in New Delhi, my friends.  Because it’s hot.

This is a curiously difficult thing to photograph, but I give you the above in evidence.  That green pool in a bucket is a candle left out for a couple of hours this morning.  Hot, I tell you.

On disease, I can happily tell you that I am easing away from one, or at least, easing away from the symptoms.  On Saturday I was brung low by what I thought to be simple Belly of Delhi, with all the usual vomiting, cramps, and other excretions.  I endured it through a child’s party, mostly so that my wife wouldn’t have to face that parental horror alone (yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m that heroic), watching infant tug-of-war while my internal organs tried to re-enact the very same, then pretty much collapsed for the weekend.  Not pleasant.  On Monday I staggered, possibly slopped, to the doctor, and found out that I may have had a parasitic infection since my first weeks in India.  This explains why I get (usually less extreme) variants of this every three or four weeks like clockwork.  The parasite has a life cycle, apparently, very much along those lines.  All very lovely.  Though I feel better, three days of antibiotics haven’t entirely cured me (apparently, a day of them is usually enough), which supports the parasite theory.  We’ll see.

I have to provide samples.  Nothing about this is pleasant.

As for Last Rites, I really mean Last Rites.  Here’s Stephen Gilbert’s beautiful cover for the chapbook.

Only 500 copies of this chapbook book exist, and you can’t buy one (at least, until it turns up on eBay for ridiculous sums).

You can, however, buy a copy of the forthcoming anthology Dark Faith (which has my story ‘Sandboys’ in it).  If you do so, directly from the publisher Apex Books, they’ll send you one, while stocks last.  New stories to complement those in Dark Faith, original, beautiful, and free.

You know what you must do.

Last year, I embarked on both getting fit, and getting very unfit.  The fitness bit lasted until around about June, and was going quite well.  Alas, it hit the brick wall of packing up, getting married, and emigrating to India, followed by prolonged stress while we worked out whether Eva’s schooling was going to let us stay here.  During this period, I embarked on becoming very unfit indeed.

It was, I’m delighted to tell you, a resounding success.  My grandad is fitter than me, and, not to be too crass about it, he’s been dead longer than I’ve been a grown-up.

However, with Eva in school since Monday, and settling in pretty well all things considered, all that stress has vanished.  Suddenly, I feel quite comfortable here, and ready to get on with the new normality.  This involves getting back on the fitness train.

Having had a couple of practise work-outs this week, running about a bit and doing some light upper body stuff, I can confirm that I’m right back to where I started last year.  Possibly further back, if that’s possible.  Truthfully, I may not even be on the train.  I may in fact be on the fitness donkey, and it’s slow, bumpy, and bloody painful.

I feel like a walking* bruise.

Still, at least I remember from last time that this is a good thing, and means things have started.  It’s even a satisfying sort of pain, while also being incredibly inconvenient in almost all circumstances.  Roll on next month, when I should be working out how far I can ‘push it’, rather than worrying whether I’m going to incapacitate myself even ‘leaning against it’.

* Or possibly a hobbling one.

Good news this morning – I found out that my short story ‘Sandboys’ has been picked up for the Dark Faith anthology, forthcoming from Apex Books in May next year.  The book is being published in conjunction with the Mo*Con V writers convention in the States, an annual gathering, and per the themes of the event is as interested in spirituality, social issues, and the human condition as much as simple scares. It makes the anthology a perfect home for ‘Sandboys’, which is easily the most personal thing I’ve ever written, and a story I almost decided should never see print.  More on the book and the tale within it as the publication date edges closer…

The bad news is that I remain a human juicer.  Delhi belly, round two.  I confess to an extraordinarily selfish thought this morning, perched on the latrine in some pain.  I thought It’s Kirsty’s turn!

I’m not proud.  I’m hoping that confession will reduce the karmic fallout of wishing my illness on my wife.  Think I’ll get away with it?

The less good news is that Kirsty remains as attractive as ever to the mosquito population. It’s impressive. She only needs to bare flesh for a second, and they’re straight in there. Yet, despite the certainty of the attack, you never see them at work, only the terrible, swollen aftermath. They’re like tiny insect ninjas, silent and deadly, and somebody’s taken a contract out on my wife.

Still, she bears it with world weary good humour, as though becoming snack food was always going to form part of her India experience. Perhaps it was.

Still, biting season only lasts for, oh, another month or so…

Right. Off now to see if my guts will hold together long enough to get through the day job. Wish me luck.

A productive weekend, if I do say so. First, a meeting at One Devonshire Gardens, where I’ll be getting married in a month and a half. They really are making things about as easy as it’s possible for a wedding to be, helped enormously by the fact that we’re not inviting many people. I’m really starting to look forward to it, especially having now chosen the menu, which I’m expecting to be a highlight of the day (marriage itself aside!). Screw the small talk and bring on the main course. We grabbed a dress for Eva to wear too, and Kirsty already has her wedding dress. I’m hiring a kilt ensemble, having decided that never having worn a skirt for formal occasions, the best time to start will be an already massively stressful day, but I’m booked in for measurements in a couple of weeks. All smooth, so far.

Just as well, as it occurs to me that two months from right now, we’ll be married, and on a plane to India. Our worldly goods will either be packed up in UK storage, or following us by slow coach (we could be without it for three months or so, apparently), depending what it is. We’ll be gone, baby. I still can’t quite believe it. Not too long ago, time was crawling by. Now it seems determined to bolt like a frightened horse.

We’re just about keeping up, I reckon. On Friday, we had the first set of vaccinations, meaning my blood is currently a lethal soup of diptheria, polio, tetanus, typhoid, meningitis, japanese encephalitis, and hepatitis A. It was, as ever with jabs, hardly the horror I had built up in my head. As Kirsty says, the good thing about going to a private travel clinic where the nurse does nothing but give injections all day, is that they’re reallygood at it. Quick and easy, though we couldn’t really raise our arms above our heads for the next twenty-four hours or so. Thankfully, as I mentioned elsewhere, I almost never need to do that. Eva was particularly brave, no histrionics at all (in fact, she was looking forward to it), which makes me suspect she may have been possessed by the wraith of a much older person. She’s only five. She’s supposed to be terrified of needles, not hurrying us along the street to be injected.

Anyway, we have another two visits to finish off the courses, then we’re functionally immortal.

Or something like that.

Finally, you may recall that later this year I have a story called ‘Hermanesha’ in Withersin magazine. To help you figure out whether the magazine might be for you, they’ve released their out of print debut issue Birth as a free PDF download. You can check it out here.

Speaking of India, things are slowly getting organised, at least in terms of the mechanics of getting there. Most reassuring so far, is my daughter getting a place at one of the private international schools there. A week or so ago she had to sit an online assessment, and to be honest, it was a bit of a struggle. Their curriculum is quite a bit ahead of the Scottish one, and as she was being tested to their standard, she was facing quite a few things that she’s never encountered in class before. I suspect the school encounters this quite a bit though, and an offer came through a couple of days later, along with a checklist of things they’d like us to cover with her over the summer to bring her up to speed. None of it is rocket science. She’s a bright kid, and should pick it up fine. I have to confess to feeling a bit let down by the national curriculum here though. I presume it all balances out in later years, but that’s not much help right now.

Of course, with the wedding and the emigration, my to do list remains longer than my arm. Possibly even longer than yours. This week, I have to stop procrastinating, and arrange vaccinations. So many needles, all pointing at me. Part of my brain, the needlephobe bit, shirks away from arranging a series of appointments during which I will be professionally and repeatedly stabbed. On the other hand, a quick flick through what I need to be vaccinated against includes Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Japanese Encephalitis, Polio, Rabies, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever (on top of the routine tetanus, diptheria, and flu), none of which sound reassuring, so I suppose I should suck it up.

Fun for all the family.

Hmmm… what else has been going on? I went to see Star Trek, and had a terrific time with it. Not as thematically challenging as the best of the classic series, but a fine summer adventure, with some well played character relationships. As you’ve read everywhere, Zachary Quinto is a particularly fine Spock, but all of the actors nail enough of the essence of who they are supposed to be that they can move on and make it their own thing. I look forward to more, if the same team keep hold of it.

Oh, you might also remember that I was trying to improve my fitness (erm, from a baseline of ‘none’) using the British Army training programme. While I don’t know how well it’s going, I’m certainly sticking to it. I’ve had to make a couple of modifications, for scheduling purposes. The programme would like me to do a strength workout and a short run on Monday and Friday, with another run on Wednesday, and rest days in between. That doesn’t work for me, as it leaves me too little time to get on with other things on the Monday and Friday evenings. Instead, I do a longer run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (each of which is more than the programme asks for), and the strength workouts (so far a mixture of press-ups, sit-ups, dips, and dorsal raises) on Tuesday and Thursday.

On that schedule, I’ve so far covered everything I’m supposed to. It’s been four weeks, and the next-day feeling of having been beaten up after the strength workouts is becoming way too familiar. This Sunday I redo the fitness test I started with, to map my progress, if any. Should either be motivating, or the nail in the coffin of the enterprise. I will let you know.

Right, off to write letters, make phone calls, and entertain daughter (who is unexpectedly off today – I can never keep up with school holidays). I’ll leave you with a reminder that the soon to be out of print Short Trips: Transmissions and the currently Stoker Award shortlisted Beneath the Surface, are both on sale at the moment. Check them out, while it lasts.

Nothing whatsoever to do with the bottle of champagne I had shared with my birthday lady in advance of the next day’s flight to Krakow, nor indeed the decision that a jaunty walk would be the very thing to clear my head. No sirree bob.

Anyway, at the moment I barely notice the damage most of the time, and normal walking barely causes a twinge. However, if I try to use the leg to stand, or put weight on it in any other direction than straight door, there’s a little screaming moment of white pain. The same applies when there’s any impact. Unfortunately, this so far seems to include running.

Which is what I really wanted to be doing this week, and the lack of which is making me somewhat glum. Yes, I know it’s my own fault. No, that doesn’t make feel any better about the whole thing.

I read that story on BBC news, and my first thought was ‘lightweight’.

Then I started thinking about it. I drink a lot of coffee during the day, right through the evening. A lot. Most of it is from an enormous mug, half again the size of a regular one. I do not use a teaspoon to measure granules of coffee into said mug. I tip the jar, until a mound of of coffee that would daunt many hobbit hill walkers awaits the boiling water. And water is all. To add milk or sugar is to pervert the pure coffee experience.

On top of which, I have a hideous love for energy drinks, particularly Red Bull. When I buy a four pack, it’s rare for there to be any left the next day.

To lift a line from Frankie Boyle, all this adds up to me having the resting heartache of a serial killer in a hardware store during a closing down sale.

On the plus side, there are strong indicators that caffeine helps the body to actively defend against, and even destroy, cancer. In which case, I must be pretty much immune.

Yay me.