Mind you, there were a lot more countdowns a month or so ago. They’re vanishing fast.

Today we posted the wedding banns (well, Kirsty did, through insane traffic, on her way to work), which is basically giving the official confirmation to the registrars of the date, time, witnesses, etc. Cutting it a bit fine, to be honest, as tomorrow’s the last day we could legally have done so if we wanted to keep the 17th as the date, but that is how we roll, in da lingo of da yoof. We’re also sorting out the final guest list, as the final yeas and nays come in. Some inevitable disappointments, though all with good reason. I’ll miss my brother and his mob the most, I think, but such is life. Plenty of fine people are still attending though, and I’m starting to really look forward to it.

That said, last night I woke every couple of hours, all night. I think it was anxiety. That almost never happens to me. Natural enough, I suppose. I keep being told that moving house, getting married, and changing your job are the three most stressful things you can put yourself through, and Kirsty and I have timed it all for the same week. Hey ho.

All the more important that I pick up some exercise again, now that Kirsty’s back and our routine is getting back to nearly normal. A four mile run tonight, so that should see me sleep some. Hopefully.

I leave you with the shocking news headline UK teenage girls “worst drunks”, which strikes me as entirely incorrect. Surely, on the available evidence, they’re actually the best drunks?

I’ve spent lots of the last two days very sore. Walking hurts. Sitting hurts. Lying at slightly the wrong angle hurts, as I discovered last night, taking an hour and a bloody half to get to sleep.

Right now, I can’t feel a thing from my left glute. I suspect that if I spent twenty minutes rubbing it hard against a cheese grater, I still wouldn’t feel anything, but that’s not the point. Right now, there is comfort.

And codeine. And ibuprofen. And vino.

I suspect that tonight, there will be sleep.

Hi Richard,
I’m the writer/director of The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon. I’m happy to see you enjoyed it so much! The video on You Tube was an unauthorized upload, I had to remove it as the film is still playing exclusively in film festivals. I will be doing an Official online release of the film in a few months, and would love it if you could link to the spoonkiller again at that time! In the meantime, info about my film can be found at www.richard-gale.com
Thanks!
Richard Gale

And I intend to do so, because it’s relentlessly funny, you’ll love it, and Richard deserves all the credit and attention it will bring.

Pirates are arseholes.

If you’re in the vicinity of the following festivals in the next few weeks, I promise you, this movie is worth going along for alone.

Fantasia Film Festival, Montreal, July 10th – August 3rd

Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Toronto, August 14th – 21st

Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival, Sao Paulo, August 20th – 28th

In other news, I have now established that what makes me a reasonably effective runner is not stamina, or speed, or good running form, but the ability not to stop for anything, even when it’s a really, really good idea to do so. At the end of last week, while stretching after circuit training, something strained in my left glute (or “arse” if you prefer the correct medical terminology). It was only for a second, and vanished instantly. It’s been fine since then, and I forgot about it.

Until about a hundred feet into tonight’s five mile run, where it reintroduced itself enthusiastically. Did I stop running? No, I did not. I ran up a steep hill instead, thinking if it isn’t better by the top, I’ll go home. And at the top, it was slighty better. Did it occur to me that this might be because I’d stopped running up a steep hill? I did not.

It stayed with me the whole way round, a sharp pain, uncomfortable, but not such that I couldn’t run at all. I shortened my stride, resigned myself to a slow night, and made the course.

Then I stopped running, and oh my, I could barely stand. It seems that the glute (or “arse”) is only willing to support me while my stride is that particular length, at that particular speed, which is bloody picky of it if you ask me. Painkillers are kicking in now, so I’m no longer hobbling like I’m recovering from a hip op, but I’ve a feeling there’s going to have to be recovery time.

Which is annoying, frankly.

First, there was the deer, about four hundred metres from my front door, still within my estate, bloody terrified and heading right for me. About a mile over the hill, it came down there are woods, and fields, and open land. Deer too, friends have told me, though this is the first time I’ve seen one. This lady was lost, and panicking about it. She bounded (first time I’ve seen a deer at speed) over a ridge, looking over her shoulder, heading straight at me. I had exactly enough time to imagine how much being trampled by a frenzied deer might feel, and how preposterous it was going to be that it happened in a suburban side street, then the mad-eyed Bambi looked up with her crazy cow eyes, and sort of twitched around me. It was close, so much so that I now know how a petrified deer smells. It takes the sheen off its beauty.

At that point, it realised there was nowhere to go but road, and zigzagged about for a bit, before heading, with strange deer logic, for the busiest road of the lot. I’ve no idea if it survived.

I kept running, up the hill, past the last houses, to the hill’s crest. Despite being in the middle of Glasgow, the far side of that hill is about a mile of track through woods, along the bank of a river on the left, with a vast overgrown field on the right. Occasionally, you weave around an oncoming horse and rider, or nod at other runners. Very rarely do you almost get knocked down from behind by a Volkswagon Polo doing forty miles an hour, driven by two burberry-clad teenagers with wide, scared eyes (a bit like the deer, to be honest). They had every reason to be afraid, as getting a car to stay on that path clearly required a skill and dexterity that they did not possess. I dived right, the car missed, and nobody died. How it got behind me, I don’t know. I didn’t run past it, and there are concrete bollards at the top of the hill I’d just run down which really should have stopped it following me. Strangeness.

I kept running, along the path, relieved to find the teenagers had neither swerved into the river, nor front-ended a tree. I ducked under a roadbridge, swinging round and back up to the road, turning left, towards the bus stop.

Where there was a small group of people, not waiting patiently for transport, but milling uncertainly. I slowed, saw there was somebody on the ground, resigned myself to it, and picked up speed. My neighbours S and C were already there, having seen what we at first through was a man collapse, and others had either pulled over, or wandered across to help (or, this being real life, to stand about, not knowing what to do with themselves). When I got there, the guy on the ground was already more or less in a recovery position, C was on the phone, and somebody was putting a towel under the victim’s head.

The guy on the ground was twitching badly along the arm and leg of one side, obviously having a fit. He stopped, tried to get up, and hit the deck again, still twitching. There were scratches along his neck and wrists. There were a lot of possible assumptions you could make about somebody in that condition.

The 999 people were asking a lot of questions of C, just as the guy on the ground got up again, and I realised it was actually a woman. She was very disorientated, bleeding down her back, but despite barely being able to stand, was determined to continue up the road. We tried to convince her to stay for the ambulance, but she was having none of it. I doubt she was really aware of what was happening, but short of physically restraining her there wasn’t much we could do, and she was away. The advice the 999 people gave to C was along the lines of “If she doesn’t want help, there isn’t much we can do, so we’re cancelling the ambulance.”

On the other hand, they couldn’t see the state she was in, and I could, so I ran after her, if only to make sure she didn’t collapse into traffic. S came too, and we tried to talk her into taking help, but she bolted round a corner. S went to get his car, to follow her along and see she was okay. I ran after her again (at least I was wearing the right gear), but she’d staggered down a side path and I overshot. I realised my mistake, went back, but she’d vanished. Could have been into the fields, I don’t know. In her condition, there was no way she was outrunning me, especially not in my current shape. I wasted a fair bit of time checking the river, making sure she hadn’t either collapsed into it or just decided to take a plunge. When S and I had talked to her previously, and I offered her some water from my running bottle, she accused us of trying to poison her. That sort of thing raises concerns.

Neither S nor I saw her again. No idea what happened to her. It’s a disconcerting outcome to the sort of situation where you’d hope to be more convincing or effective, and I’m out of sorts having failed either way. I hope she’s okay.

Anyway, at that point, I decided not to run any further. Where she collapsed is a mile and a bit into the five mile route. I’m not sure I could have coped with another three miles of incident.

I walked home. Wine happened. I feel better now.

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.

Ironically, I didn’t actually injure the leg while running. Twice a week I do a core workout, for those muscles which aren’t really improved by running itself, but which conversely improve the running if you look after them. On this occasion, it’s had quite the opposite effect.

Still that’s a couple of more hours for writing over the next few days. This evening, I have the house to myself, a bottle of wine, a pizza, and a word processor open on the current novel. As such, I’m not really spending the evening alone in a Glasgow suburb. No, I’m in a freezing cottage in Wales, which may or may not be haunted, enjoying the good company of Tanith, Matthew, Maxwell, Nicholas, and Cynthia. Goat may turn up soon, and I’ll try my hardest to keep a straight face if he does.

To do otherwise would be impolite, after all.

***

Tony Hart has died in his sleep, aged 83. If you grew up in the United Kingdom between the sixties and the nineties, then you grew up watch Hart scribbling and painting on the BBC like a childish, kindly uncle, sometimes talking to plasticine men, sometimes whitewashing live elephants, all in the name of inspiring kids to pick up a pen and draw. He was so convincing, even I tried it.

I was rubbish, and gave up immediately.

It’s a testament to Hart’s persona as a presenter that this didn’t stop me watching his art shows, because I still wanted to find out what he was going to do next.

***

A couple of new reviews which the Internet has alerted me to. The first, at Horror Drive in, is a lukewarm review of The Flesh Remembers, a PDF of which you can download for free on this site. I felt a little sad at the start, and wondered where I’ve been, but you can;t win them all. At least Mr Monge ultimately had a good time with the book. Funnily enough, my Dad also likes the short story ‘The Loch’ more than the novella The Flesh Remembers. It makes me glad I threw it in there.

The second review is of Short Trips: Transmissions, by blogger Louise Dennis, who gives a thorough overview of the book, and liked ‘Lonely’ a lot. Both reviewers reach sort of the same conclusion, in different ways. These are books you might enjoy. Give them a shot, why don’t you?

***

I’m getting a bit obsessed by running. On Saturday I was out in driving wind and rain, and bloody loved it. It’s easy to love running after the fact, when the achievement is achieved, and your legs don’t hurt anymore. Saturday, I think, is the first time I’ve been consciously aware of having a really good time while actually doing it.

Which is nice.

In the last month, I’ve had 9487, probably slightly confused, visitors.

I hope some of them bought a book.

In other news, after the last post I promised Tash (hi Tash) I’d cough to what happened with the half-marathon I was supposed to be doing.  Alas, it’s not a terribly exciting tale.  You may remember that around May, just before I went to Majorca, I sprained my groin (far less amusing an injury than I always thought it would be).  It took about nine weeks before I was able to run properly again, and when I did, I was very tentative indeed.  Mid-August saw me getting back into it properly, but that left four week until D-day, and I had a long way to go fitness wise to get to half-marathon stage. Still not there, in fact.  That was when I threw in the towel.

On the marathon, but not the running, which I’ve genuinely started to enjoy, and am feeling increasingly smug about as my fitness improves.  As the half marathon was a goal to keep me running, it’s more or less done it’s job, despite my non-attendance.

That said, the idea of running a race or two still appeals, so watch this space.