Does your writing need an ego boost? Then read your SPAM!

I love reading my spam comments. I’m not exactly full of confidence when it comes to my own writing ability but I always know that when I open up the WordPress spam folder I’ll get a plethora of positive reviews.

For example, today I received the lovely message:

I don’t even know how I finished up here, but I believed this submit was great. I don’t recognize who you might be however definitely you are going to a well-known blogger if you happen to are not already Cheers!

Granted, it’s vaguer than a bad clairvoyant and the syntax is worse than Yoda’s but if a Jedi Master wants to pay me a complement about my writing I’ll take it, thank you very much.

Yoda, are you writing spam and sending it to me? (http://www.starwarsdotcom.com/star_wars/wallpaper/yoda1_1024_768.jpg)

The trouble is, after a few moments the warm glow and ego boost fades as I realise that Yoda didn’t leave the comment and whoever wrote it doesn’t really mean it.

Even worse, the comment is completely useless to me because it tells me nothing beyond a few sweet complements. Like everything else in life, you learn to be good by correcting your mistakes. If nobody is around to gleefully point out your moments of utter rubbish then how are you supposed to know that you’re not just churning out crap? I used to work in a newsroom and while it isn’t a pleasant experience having an editor barking over your shoulder, your writing improves in a very short space of time.

I’ve written about the importance of dropping your writing pants and lovingly embracing criticism before but I also want to add that it has to be CRITICISM. Of course, it needs to be constructive and it’s just as important to know about the bits you’re getting right but a writer should cherish friends, family, colleagues and fellow bloggers who aren’t afraid to say, “I like it but…”

Otherwise their comments are no better than spam – good for the ego but not much else.

DPChallenge – The door to freedom

Oh my, didn’t want to miss doing another DP Challenge (it’s a good one!) and had to bang this out in an hour before work this morning. Been tight for time for the past two weeks so forgive me if there are some typos and general rubbish. It certainly needs at least an edit and my tenses are all over the place – but no time!

As always I implore you to have a go at the DP Challenge – there’s still a bit of time. Click the link to read… and do it!

The door to freedom

I looked like I was going to need a little more convincing, so I hit me in the balls with our cricket bat. In a barely audible cry of absolute agony I watch myself quietly slip to the floor and curl up like a dying animal. Technology is a wonderful thing but sometimes it helps to have a hammer to hit it with.

“Sorry,” I said to myself. “But you’re dumber than I remember being.”

Obviously, I didn’t believe them when they told me what was possible; a chance to get some sort of atonement and to spend my final few years in the mountains. As preparations were made they did explain the science behind it but I just nodded sagely in veiled incomprehension. The supervisor said that I would be the first because of my impeccable behaviour, but I knew I was a guinea pig who wouldn’t be missed. They also told me of the dangers – something about screaming atoms of split matter splattered across time and space – but I signed the waver anyway. The enormity of what those men can do only hit me when I stepped through my old front door, walked blankly into my tiny kitchen and watched the toast drop from my younger self’s mouth.

I stooped over my young body, still rocking and holding his crotch, to fish out the car keys I knew would be in the side pocket of my favourite black coat.

“What did you do that for,” he forced out through gritted teeth.

“I can’t let you leave the house and spoil my last few years of happiness.”

“My friends are counting on me.”

I sighed and told him again that we’d been through all this and they weren’t very good friends. His breathing was returning to normal and he sat up slowly to look at his watch. I made myself comfortable on my old stained red throw that conceal my old stained blue couch. We sat in silence.

My plan was to wait this out then leave the way I came but I should have known better than anyone that things don’t go to plan.

I was old and slow when younger limbs sprang from the floor, pushed me deeper into the couch and slammed an elbow into my face. From the chair I desperately reached a hand to the stupid young fool who slipped out through the lounge door. I could only shout through the blood, “Just don’t shoot the silly cow in the mouth.”

DPchallenge – Little Big Dad

Can’t believe the DP Challenge is a mixture of poetry and formatting but I’ve actually written something for it. I don’t think I’ve ever written poetry in my adult life and to be fair I don’t think that this is a poem in the ‘good’ sense of the word but it was a cracking prompt that just had to be attempted…

Have a go yourself! Find out more here….

Little BIG Dad

Dad started off BIG.
 Hands split at nail and knuckle,
 Telling us to let the saw do the work,
 Fixing our bike chains still in his tie,
 And lifting us drowsy from the car.

He started to get smaller.
 Mum in hospital with nothing to worry about,
 He gives us honey sandwiches for school,
 Sandy dog muck squeezes between his toes,
 And he says it's 'sound' to be a scout.

He's smaller now.
 Alone in the garden with the grass and the cold,
 Eyes closed and mouth open in company,
 Dreary clothes gather at his waist,
 He's a lost Fedora in the arena crowd.

Dad's getting so small we're all worried,
 Soon he won't be here at all.

DPchallenge – Iconic

Back for the DPchallenge again and this time the subject is Iconic! If there is still time please take part – it’s a blast! Hit the link to find out more here…

The Soft Toy General

Northern Hemisphere Archive – Rescued Data

Div: Battlefield H.I.S Records Store

Fil: 122GH/GHG/2330909000 – (corrupted II)

Sev: 7-A (partial plasma damage)

Loc: 59°17′53″N 10°25′25″E

Dat: 13_06_3013

Tim: 20.23

Aur: Unknown

For: Voice recorded coding / typographical interpretation

I don’t have much time to post this. We’ve been pushed south into the Viken district but have bought some time with the last of our plasma warheads and a hefty skyward EMP. At the last count we number just over 200 and have found cover in the ruined Tønsberg Fortress.

They’ve levelled the city of Tønsberg trying to hunt us down. Now we have our backs to the harbour and a heavily mechanised battalion in our faces. They’ll be expecting us to cross the estuary south into the darkness and fight our way to the Teieskogen forest where the LO Sat Particle Cannons can’t pick us off.

The general has other plans. When the sun sneaks behind the ice we’ll bolt north firing a cluster of thermo-nuclear surprises down their throats. If we can get to safety and find a power source for the decontamination units then there is an atom sized chance we might make it.

He’s got us out of worse than this. For God’s sake, he practically won the war for us all. It was supposed to be over. It was supposed to end three years ago with an imploding dwarf but the High Board sent us in again 72 hours ago under the pretence of clearing micro-resistance. It has since become horribly apparent that the peacekeepers have double-crossed their most decorated General and sacrificed his head for treaties and natural resources.

They knew he would come back with us into theatre. Ever since his first distinguished battle honours on the Ice Planes of Venezuela commanding the White Wolves he has never left the side of the ground forces.

After half a dozen Battle Crosses they finally gave him the badge and he proved himself a premier strategist disposing of the Northern Allies across the Eurasian and Pacific Plates. He then turned the course of the war from his front line position with the Paws.

It was the General who insisted that the Atlantic was cleared for sub-manouvers before any invasion of the Juan de Fuca Plate took place. It was the General who demanded that the British be wiped out of the war before the Eurasian offensive. And finally it was the General who led our vanguard White Wolves II Division north under the ice sheets into the heart of Arctic Command and jumped the flagship Stella Battle Liner – with its payload of Planet Destroyers – into the heart of the great red dwarf, Proxima Centauri.

Surrender and peace negotiations followed as the politicians started to manoeuvre to fill the governing vacuum. It was apparent from the start that the General had humiliated our defeated adversary too much for him to be permanently honoured on the Boulevard. His status – and now his life – has been a chip on the negotiation table. I think he knows that his colossal achievements, against all our strategist’s predictions, are now a barrier to lasting peace. He will not be remembered.

This is why I leave this message now. This is why I commit this digital fingerprint to all servers in the hope that the General is not written out of history. His leadership, strength, brilliance, courage and humanity are the reasons why we are still here. He is our soul and our saviour. A legend. An icon.

But it is infinitely more extraordinary that he achieved all this despite being a 20-centimetre tall, pink towelling rabbit.

ENDS

Aur: Unknown

Fil: 122GH/GHG/2330909000 – (cleaned and saved)

DPchallenge – 2am photo

Here we are again after a break last week: The DP Challenge! It’s a cracker this week and if you have time please have a go!

The 2am photo

The phone announced the arrival of the terrifying photograph with a cheerful tweet. It wasn’t until the floating image had dimmed and faded into the darkness that Arthur managed to comprehend what he had been looking at, and its potential consequences.

His scalp prickled with wet heat and he could feel his T-shirt soaking up the sweat from his back. He was hot with terror but still pulled his head and toes deeper into his duvet. He needed to pee too but there was no way he was going to get out of bed.

Not in the dark.

Not after seeing the photograph.

Who even knew he had come up to the house? He had finished work and fought the Friday traffic north for most of the way, arriving hungry and tired. He ate in front of a spreadsheet on his laptop, locked up and collapsed into bed just after midnight. The blank text with the photograph attached arrived two hours later.

Now that the thought of emptying his bladder had entered his mind he knew the need to go would soon be overwhelming. He lowered his head slowly under the duvet and checked the time on his mobile. Spectral numbers told him 02:08.

The sun would probably make a lazy winter attempt to get over the horizon at about eight o’clock. That was just under six hours to sweat it out and hold his bladder. Or just under six hours for someone to do something horrific to him.

He tried to control his breathing and listen for sounds in the blackness. All the noises were familiar to him. The gentle tick of the cooling radiator, the irregular drip from the shower head and the wind in the chimney. There were no unwelcome creaks and groans from the floorboards.

The house was giving nothing away and from his position buried deep in the duvet he looked to the shadows in his bedroom for answers. The weak light that slipped through the gap in the curtains meant there was only shades of darkness to see until his straining eyes came upon the black vertical line of a door slightly ajar.

He dared another look at the photograph under his duvet. The screen was wet with condensation from his hot hands. He wiped it on the covers and opened the file.

Oh, shit.

At sometime between midnight and 2am a photograph had been taken, from his wardrobe, of him asleep in his bed.

Lying to myself (DP Challenge)

I enjoyed myself last week, banging out a response to the DP Challenge, so I’m back for more. Thoroughly recommend you have a go yourself – click here to read the challenge!

Lying to myself

‘You didn’t used to play rugby!’

‘I did.’

My daughter looks at me like I’ve just said the stupidest thing anyone has ever said in the history of everything. Her facial expressions can be disarmingly cruel. She points at the television.

‘Dad, rugby players are massive and you’re tiny.’

We’re both watching 30 zero-body-fat, muscle clustered, mountains of power knock seven bells out of each other in the name of international rugby.

‘Yes, I’m tiny but back then, I’ll have you know, I was lightening quick. The big boys could never catch me.’

She still looks unconvinced. I stop myself from saying something about being young once and having a life before the patter of her tiny feet. I’ve practically copied word-for-word my father’s parenting skills but I’m gallantly trying to resist adopting them completely.

‘Prove it,’ she says.

I give her a nod and wrestle my mobile phone from my jeans. I haven’t been to the rugby club for years but some of the lads still post the odd photograph online. It’s taking me a while to find the one I saw the other day. I flick through the images as quickly as I can because I sense she’s losing interest already. I don’t quite know why but I really want her to see the photograph. May be it’s because she rarely sits and watches the telly with me anymore.

‘He’s fit,’ she says. I glance up at the television and the camera is focused on the number 10 crouching ready to kick a penalty. He’s looking calmly from the ball to the posts, from the ball to the posts…

‘I hope you mean that in the cardiovascular sense.’

‘No,’ she says and tucks her legs under her like she’s folding away a set of ladders. She’s only 13 and already taller than me. I regularly watch her storm the athletics track like a gazelle. Her elegant running style and serene face hiding her fierce competitiveness. I always leap to my feet yelling shamelessly when she wins, which is all the time. Most of me is immensely proud but there is a little guilty part that thinks, if I was her age again she’d be eating my dust if I raced her.

I’ve found the photograph and it makes me smile. There were a lot of great moments on that day. Promotion had been a long time coming and it was all the more sweeter for it.

I hold my phone out for her to see. It takes a minute for her to notice and take it from me. She holds it for a while and continues to watch the number 10 strike the ball high between the posts. Finally, she looks at the photograph.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m there – just to the left – pouring a can of beer over Macca’s head.’

‘No way!’ she says smiling. ‘You look even smaller next to that lot.’

I make a show of snatching the phone back from her.

‘Why did you stop playing?’

I half climb over the arm of the sofa to pick up my beer from the floor and say, ‘You were more fun.’

I take a swig from the bottle and look at the photograph again. The first memory is of my shirt being far too big. If I didn’t tuck it into my shorts it looked like a knee-high dress. Then I remember that you had to leave your dignity and pride at the dressing room door to have any chance of surviving the banter.

The changing rooms always had a clinical, hospital kind of smell because of all the heat gels, cold sprays and vapour rubs used by the players to hold the body together during a game. I’d sit in the corner with the shakes even before I pulled on my kit as the adrenaline started to surge.

I remember the walk onto the pitch, the musky smell of the cold mud and damp grass. Our club was directly under the flightpath of Liverpool Airport. If you got tackled you could lie on your back for a moment and watch the vapour trails while the pain ebbed away. I remember our stoic supporters, the slow-motion leaps in the line out and the sweaty mist that rose from the scrums when it was cold.

Training was two nights a week. I’d run until my hair stuck to my face and my chest stung. I rested by looking up at the frosty stars, my hands on my head to open up my lungs, and my throat raking in breathes. I remember the sting of the scratches and stud marks that you only discovered in the shower afterwards, and the satisfying throb in my legs and shoulders the next day.

It was a weekly release of pressure. A rage against the working week, the household bills and a modern, complicated life. Everything was forgotten. There was nothing but the simple worry of missing a tackle, dropping the ball and letting the team down. And my last memory is always of my team mates, the hits they took for me, the laughs we had, the beers we drank and the days like the one captured in this photograph.

‘Do you miss it?’

I give my daughter my best client-facing smile and say, ‘Not really.’

Pantone 806 (DPchallenge)

Decided to do my first DPchallenge on the suitably depressing subject of Dystopia!

If there is still time click on the link and write something yourself. Saying that I’m probably too late myself as it’s Friday 00:10 in the UK right now (deadline is today).

Anyway, he’s my effort. WARNING: there will be typos, bad grammar, mixed tenses and some bad language…

Pantone 806

Pink paint covers my slippers and bare legs. I can feel it pinching the hairs on my calves as it dries and cracks. I should really get cleaned up.

The sun is peeping over the roofs of the house across the street. It makes my square windows glow with a peach hue that clashes wonderfully with my pink walls. It is going to be another perfect day. Sun is supplied from the south with a cool breeze from the north to give us a comfortable ambient temperature. I can’t remember the last time I saw a cloud.

I have to wipe pink paint from my watch with my elbow to see the time. It’s just past six in the morning. I wanted to see what was under my astro turf lawn, and possibly plant some real grass if I discovered some earth, but I’ve run out of time. The neighbours will rise soon and I couldn’t find any grass seed in the hypermarket anyway.

I have an idea. I pick up all the leftover paint in the random pots and slosh it onto my front lawn. Fetching an old broom from the garage I brush the colour into the coarse blades of artificial grass. It look nice, in a different kind of way.

‘Oh, my dear lord!’

It sounds like Arthur is up and about.

‘Hi, Arthur! What do you think of my pink house?’

At the ripe old age of eighty-three Arthur is a toned and tall, square jawed, dark haired hunk. He is still technically a pensioner and thus tends to speak his mind.

‘You’ve turned into a fucking freak, Mr Williams!’ he shouts across the street. ‘I’m calling the police. People like you should be castrated.’

‘Castrated? I didn’t paint my house with my penis, Arthur.’

He has disappeared into his back garden before I can give him any kind of meaningful explanation. I can hear him as he rants at his wife about my decorating skills. Sometimes I think Cheryl, his eighty-five-year-old button nosed wife, wishes that a woman’s average life expectancy was still eighty-four.

Arthur’s shouting has brought out more of the neighbours. Some stand in their driveways holding their hands up to their mouths. Others gawp out from behind authority approved curtains. All of them are taking photographs on their phones. Give it ten minutes and my house will go viral. Give it another five minutes and my house’s very existence will be wiped from digital memory.

‘Jesus, I didn’t know things were this bad for you.’

‘Hello, Morris, didn’t see you sneak up there.’

Morris is my next door neighbour. Like everyone else he is ridiculously handsome and has a ‘keep off the grass’ sign on his astro turf lawn.

‘You know, you should have said something. We could have got you some help,’ he says to my pink house because he can’t take his eyes off it.

‘Morris, I’ve only painted my house pink.’

‘You know they’re going to put you in prison. You’ll be on the register as one of those social deviant anarchist type people. They may even try correcting you.’ He turns to me, his tired eyes betraying his age, and says, ‘I know Jade left you but this.’

‘She didn’t leave me! I asked her to go.’

I miss the Jade I met a century ago at a tech fair. She was sweet, fiercely brilliant – and different. We were happily married but inevitably the cell regeneration procedure was not enough – some things you can’t hide – and a snip turned into a nip that turned into a tuck, which spiralled into a lift and ended with a full body and face re-imaging.

One night, after a romantic meal for two during which she asked if I wouldn’t mind changing to a smaller nose and a bigger penis, I lay in bed staring at a woman I didn’t recognise. She was utterly beautiful but then so is everyone else. When the alarm finally announced the arrival of another perfect day I gentle asked her to leave.

I can hear sirens. Two good-looking police officers arrive in an unmarked black car. It turns out that neither of them are particularly fans of pink.

‘Is this your house sir?’

‘Yes, officer! Do you like what I’ve done with the place?’

‘No.’

‘Come on, officer,’ I say and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t you think it’s exciting and just a little bit different?’ But he isn’t listening. He’s looking with shock at my palm on the shoulder of his midnight blue uniform. I immediately remove the hand and immediately regret it. I’ve left a perky pink handprint on the shoulder of his dark jacket.

The pain is excruciating. Every single muscle in my body contracts simultaneously in a cataclysmic seizure as 150,000 volts jumps through my nervous system. I collapse to the ground shaking uncontrollably. Someone is moaning loudly. No. That’s me. I’m trying to apologise and explain why they really don’t need to taser me. I just want to tell them why others should paint their houses pink or yellow or blue or green but my jaw is locked and my bitten tongue is swelling in my mouth.

From my place on the ground I have a wonderful but blurred view of my road leisurely curving away down into the distance. Both sides of the street are lined with row upon row of detached houses stretching away like it’s a trick with two mirrors.

Every house is painted in a trendy legislative grey Pantone 621; every front door is a carefully chosen Pantone 577 green; every garage door a dark grey gloss Pantone 426; every window frame a natural grey-green Pantone 5555; every drive a brushed black Pantone 433; every GM boxed hedge the same shape, height and modified vibrant Pantone 356 green; every single cherry tree lining the pavement with perpetual blossom is gently dropping blue Pantone 290 petals into the light breeze like magical summer snowflakes.

It’s all just so achingly perfect that last night it made me want to stab my eyes out with the handle of Jade’s toothbrush. Instead I decided to paint my house a sexy pink Pantone 806.