You are allowed to enjoy this…

This is a new feature on the blog: LEMON WATCH.
Some background – we have a minature lemon tree in our kitchen and it blooms three or four times a year (hard to believe, but it is true) and the blooms produce the most wonderful lemony scent. Unfortunately, in the years that we’ve owned the tree it has only borne fruit once. Well I recently noticed that a new fruit is budding. Most of the buds fall off, but this looks promising. Never fear, loyal reader, I will keep you updated and post more exciting pictures of the devlopment of this little lemon. 😉

…that I met The Missus for our first date. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We arranged to meet at the bus terminal at Stratford Station (no longer there – demolished and replaced with a 21st Century terminus) and have a day out in London town. It was my chance to impress, so I took her on the Docklands Light Railways, which had just been finished, around Canary Wharf, which was still being built and onto Tower Hill. The rest of the day was taken up exploring London and we’ve been exploring ever since.
So I arranged for some roses to be delivered and we had a day out shopping. Many goodies were bought (expensive perfume for her, a replacement wedding ring for him) and we had a great time. It was just like any other day together, really: wonderful.

Me – roughly around the time we started “courting”

Me – after 17 years with The Missus, spirit crushed by the wheels of industry

The Missus with presents
And it was good…

Rise up this mornin’,
Smiled with the risin’ sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin’ sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Singin’: don’t worry ’bout a thing,
’cause every little thing gonna be all right.

OK – so it wasn’t three little birds. It was two. And by the time I got my camera, one of them had flown off. The little blue tits around here are extremely brave and they’ve taken to flying onto our open window frames. A couple of weeks back, I was in the little boy’s room (doing what big boys do) when I reached around for the toilet paper only to see a little blue tit sitting on the window frame staring right at me. Obviously, I didn’t have my camera but it was quite a sight. We both startled each other; he flew off and I left the toilet seat by a couple of inches. Anyway, yesterday, I managed to capture that shot.
In creative news, some recent events have caused me to “get to it”. I sat at the keyboard and began banging out the first 1,500 words of the adventures of Vince Pearl, the protagonist of my latest literary work. It took a little while to get the creative juices flowing again and I might have to re-nose the first chapter, but it is a start. I remember telling someone who asked that I was a writer and explaining that too many writers who say they are writers aren’t actually writing. One of the symptoms of writing is page dodging, where you’ll do anything other than engage with the keyboard. Lately, I have been one of these: a non-writer. Now by a sheer act of willpower, there’s to be no more page dodging for me. I remembered why I wanted to be a writer at 11 years old: because I wanted to tell stories and entertain people. The work I get paid for isn’t entertainment and so I will have to make my own way and fulfill that final ambition (my god, he has ambition).
The novel is called “Dead Rock Star” and is not what you would expect it to be if you take it on face value. Yes, it is about a rock star, yes he dies in second the chapter and yes, there is a murder-mystery element to it (which isn’t revealed until the very last chapter) but it is also meant to be fun and a flight of fantasy. I want it to be serious, daft, funny, sad and pretty fucked-up all at once. The whole thing is in my head and it is just about sitting down and getting it on paper. The great thing is that I am making up a fictional band history, discography, lyrics and everything to go with it, so I am planning to have some fun and get some nods to other rock stars in it. I’m probably barking up the wrong tree, but I am aiming this at young lads, because while we have plenty of “Harry Potter” stuff out there, a good old fashioned yarn with “rawk” in it doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.
I’m hoping I won’t run out of steam, but I told The Missus the entire story over a couple of pints of cider at the pub a few weeks back and she thought the story was “do-able”.

I realised that Movable Type – the content management system I use for this blog thing – had been updated, so being a good drone I installed the update. Hurrah, I got new features and stuff. I also began messing around with the standard templates that came with MT and settled on this little number. OK – it’s not that visually exciting but it means I can do diddley squat and let the system update itself. No more HTML, hurrah!
For my regular visitor, you will be interested to know that you can now leave comments on this weblog. I never had it activated before (the dummy) but now you can use it, so feel free to hurl your abuse.
Yesterday, I managed to blow-up (not literally) The Missus’ computer. I think the heat got to it and it just stopped working. So today, I took it apart, cleared the CMOS and voila it works again. I was worried something had blown before because it wouldn’t boot at all. A night cooling down and clearing the system memory worked wonders. Gee, I am a real PC expert – shame I’m finding it harder to get magazines to commission me some more. The pond is getting smaller while the fish have nowhere to go. It’s a bit like one of those watering holes in the Serengheti – when the dry season comes the fish die because the water evaporates. That’s a bit like being a freelancer at the moment. Of course, it’s probably because I am a bad writer and no-one likes my work. It’s so hard to tell because you get zero feedback. What I do know is that getting work isn’t about what you know, but who you know…and this sucks big time because the people I know aren’t in a position to commission me. Oh well – mustn’t fucking grumble. 🙂
In the garden, Alex returned from under a bush with a little green gritter on his back. Yes – it was a baby grasshopper/cricket. Look –

In the post: Archer McClean’s Mercury – a puzzle game for my Sony PSP, which involves negotiating a blob of mercury around a course. Clever and addictive stuff.

The cottage industry that is Darren Lock Incorporated has been busy producing copies of “Sow’s Ears & Silk Purses” for CDBABY. As the title is soooo popular (well, more popular than the rest of my CDs) I’ve pulled out all the stops and sending off 20 copies. That should keep me in stock for six months or so. 😉
Look…loads of Darren boxsets:

Last week, when we were on a mission to buy door handles, a friendly grasshopper hitched a lift all the way from the Homebase in Harlow to our doorstep in Loughton. He remained on the windscreen for the entire journey and was quite a distraction. I grabbed a container and took this picture of him before letting him go. He was such an attractive specimen I had to get a picture of him. I’m going to add him to my amazing rotating random banners at the top of the screen!

It’s funny because I keep hearing cricket/grasshopper sounds when I stand in the front/back garden. Maybe it is my little green chum???
Yesterday, I received an email from the PR lady who is working for Leo Abrahams thanking me for the nice things I have been saying about his album “Honeytrap”. That was nice. I don’t usually get any thanks, nor acknowledgement. It was nothing really. I’ve been planning to write a proper review of the album because it is really something special and people need to hear about it. Then we’ll give them something to thank me for!