Freedom From The Mundane - A Writer's Blog

Monday, May 08, 2006

Birthday Boy

As you can guess, I slept very poorly last night. Constantly tossing and turning, waking, drinking water, dreaming bits of nothing here and there. Just awful. Yet when I woke I felt totally refreshed and ready to go. Add a little bit of early-morning ska into the equation courtesy of Too Hot, and I went to work feeling like a brand new man.

From the beginning of my time in the office though, the heat was too much. It was sticky, manky, sweaty, drowsy, humid, rather-close-my-eyes, lazy kind of hot. Why can't these people control the temperature of the building? It's roasting outside so they keep the heat on! When it's cold you can't move for all the stiff nipples! Talk about being unable to find decent staff these days. Monkeys on a raft could do a better job of regulating the heat in here.

I really can't wait until the summer kicks in fully. It will become so stagnant in here, as you come in out of the searing summer heat, into a room hot with the sweat and grime of a hundred dying office workers. You can actually smell last week's B.O. hovering like a - well, like a bad smell!

After work I had a quick dinner then it was off down to see my nephew, Kyle. Today is his third birthday and we popped in to see him and his folks. He's now the proud owner of some snazzy Lego sets and an early laptop learner. I also gave him a print out of my latest E-book, Silly Poems for Wee People Vol.1, which as the more observant of you who have obtained a copy already know, the book is dedicated to him. He gets read poems and stories at bedtime so hopefully he'll like these ones too.

His Dad (Gail's bro), gave me a new mother board, graphics and sound card and bits and bobs for my PC. Hopefully the processor is a higher spec in which case, if I can figure out how to build it all together, I'll have a much higher rating PC. I should be able to upgrade the RAM also, since there are more ports for the cards. There was almost enough to build an entire PC from scratch, but the money saved by picking up his spares is a huge favour. He wouldn't take cash, so I'll get him a bottle of his favourite Jack Daniels in stead.

I got through three chapters of the final (for now) sweep of Hunting Jack edits. Chunks of superfluous text are being stripped out as I work my way through the text chapter by chapter. There is a whole new chapter I want to write, about him visiting a library to try and expand on the clues of his family's background. There he will discover the horrible truth of the not so obvious gangster connections and the notorious Glasgow Ice-cream Wars of 1984.

By adding this chapter, I will reinforce what doesn't seem to come across very strong at the moment about the history, which is after all, what the story is meant to be set against.

I've been asked already, but the Ice-Cream Wars is a true story - it did all happen and much of what is in Hunting Jack as far as background goes, did actually occur. People are still serving for crimes committed in what was a dark time for Glasgow and the repercussions are still felt to this day.

Click here for some fascinating information on what happened back in the early 80's.


click here to download the Evening Times supplement which has some amazing images and descriptives from one of the darkest times in Glasgow history.

Colin 8:38 am


That new chapter sounds like a great idea. I'd definitely like to see his story play more strongly against the backdrop.

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