New Post, Old Post, Last Post?

By the time you have updated all your social media half of Monday morning is gone. Bang goes the plan to get ahead with work this week by writing from 6 til 8am before the kids get up. They could hear a mouse fart. In seconds I have jammy hands on me saying 'I've made you breakfast!' She's right. I feel like I AM breakfast.

Meanwhile I am trying to take the advice of one of the agents I approached last month who recommends that I re-title the book, and who felt that she wasn't 'caught up' in the writing. Godammit she will be after THIS re-write. I feel my gut bursting at the seams of my Hawaiian skirt as I metaphysically compress into a coiled spring of sheer writer-y dynamism. Kinda.

And now I must face facts that 27 minutes have expired and I have neither completed this weeks 100 landing pages, nor re-written the penultimate chapter, nor imparted a nugget of motherly wisdom to the 3 kids currently lolling on the sofa in the playroom. Still in their pjs. Or as T calls em 'My Ja-mamas'. Sigh.

The EU: Missing the point?

Why is it exactly that we are not prioritising language tuition among the countries of the EU? If we have the right to live, work and study across the EU, there must surely be an interchange across cultures and without language skills this opportunity will fail to promote harmony and achievement.

For example, every day in the Spanish village where I live, local Spanish people are faced with a multitude of foreigners, in many cases outnumbering those who were born here. In an horrendous display of ignorance and arrogance, most of the English that live on the Costa Blanca do not speak Spanish. They rely on Spanish services, whether that is Town Hall officials, doctors, teachers, lawyers, plumbers, waiters or builders, and expect them to understand English. Many Brits start up businesses here, own shops or carry out services aimed at their fellow expats, and do so without a clue of the national or regional language. Their businesses have English names, promote English imported foods and goods, and do so shamelessly without any attempt to integrate.

These same people complain that England is no longer their home because it is full of foreigners who do not speak their language or understand their customs. They object to refugees and immigrants taking lowly paid jobs in the UK or living on the dole. However, they expect to be allowed to work here without a smattering of Spanish, fail to understand local customs, working hours, fiesta traditions, systems of banking, schooling or medicine, and loudly disrespect the Spanish as if the locals cannot understand what they are saying.

If we want to stop civil unrest, and nip racist intolerance in the bud, I think that all the countries of the EU should offer basic language tuition along with the residency card. Your right to work here legally should be balanced with a promise to learn the language and integrate with local customs. This should be the case in ALL the countries of the EU, so that its many languages and cultures can flourish.

The need to dominate an Empire of English-speaking countries is a distasteful echo of the past, and it should be put to rest. Except in England, of course, where the ability to speak our native tongue and teach it to immigrant families should be high on the list of any politically savvy government.

I am Sci-Fi

The resurgence in all thing sci-fi comes as a huge wave of relief to most of us, and none more so than those of us who have been loving it in secret for years. In fact, it struck me the other day that the reason for this is that it appeals to the underdog in all of us. For instance, when I compare my search for a publisher to the struggle to acquit sci-fi of its geeky origins, I can draw a number of parallels.

I am a maverick – randomly educated, underemployed for years and still to hit my peak. I’ve been a music journalist, youth arts worker, cartoonist, landscape gardener, T-shirt designer, worked for charities, schools, NGO’s and small businesses, and throughout I’ve written and published comments which for the most part have fallen on deaf ears. I was either too radical, or too young, or too qualified for everything I tried. So I began to accept being side-lined and even took an obscure delight in the anonymity and freedom this gave me. Hey, I can write for anyone! Subsequently, I published articles in magazines in Canada, Spain and the UK, I began blogging, took a job working for the first English language national newspaper in Spain, wrote a film script and a novel , and started to enjoy the act of writing in a way that I never had before.

During this period we’ve seen sci-fi become viral across literature, TV and movies. Margaret Atwood can say she writes sci-fi now. JJ Abrams is laughing all the way to the bank. Blockbuster movies last year were almost unanimously tinged with spaceships, time travel and fantasy elements of inner or outer space. It’s time I stepped out of the closet and declared “I am SCI-FI”! (“No, I am Sci-fi!”)

Like the best trends, SF has come about now because we need it. We need to examine global issues, because our world has shrunk down to a tiny planet which can be traversed in a day. We’ll be out among the stars before you know it. We need to explore issues of identity and tolerance and boundaries. It is symptomatic of this genre that it tackles many issues and defies easy characterisation. Even the Bible of our times Wikipedia struggles to encapsulate it.

“Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a wide range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty by stating that "science fiction is what we point to when we say it", a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you don't know what it is, but you know it when you see it. Vladimir Nabokov argued that if we were rigorous with our definitions, Shakespeare's play The Tempest would have to be termed science fiction.”

So we need this geeky grown-up child called Sci-fi to raise its head now. When Robbie the robot was a fiction, it was easy for the mainstream to laugh at SF fans, but now that robots, technological machines and global politics are in our daily lives, the issues explored weekly by Adama, Apollo and Starbuck are relevant and topical. And sci-fi is no longer just for the lads who want to be Superman. Heroes, Lost, Alias, Dollhouse, Firefly, Farscape, Fringe, and True Blood are series with diverse themes but all have had pivotal roles for female actors, and avoid being pegged as science-fiction. Instead they inhabit a reality that encompasses far-out plots, gritty action and tangible characters whose lives mirror our own. Sci-fi has got its mojo back, and all the major players in film, TV, books and graphic novels are banking on this trend to continue into 2010.

So who’s to say that I can’t write a column on the comings and goings of the characters who populate these brave new worlds? Or that I can’t find a backer for my ethical sci-fi movie script? Or that being a forty-something female should deter me from applying for a job at Blackfish? Come on guys, if you believe Laura Roslin had the balls to make a good President, give a girl a chance.

"I want an Obama!"

Fantastic debate on Camerons blueprint for reforming government in the Guardian today. Read the article, but more importantly check out some of the comments from voters trying to poke through the mire with an enlightened stick. One comment made me chortle - "I want an Obama!" Yes, and I want him now!

The sad fact is that British politics is stagnating; for want of a good idea. Every new hire is told the same old drivel - "Come up with a great and inspiring new idea, only make sure the public will like it or you won't get elected." However, most people don't like being told that economic recovery will be torturously slow, that jobs are poorly paid and fleeting, that there are no easy solutions. But we have to talk to voters as adults - and as any parent, teacher or nurse will tell you, patience and hard work are the only options that pay off.

The reason some of us are so impressed with Obama is because he talks to us as adults. He inspires confidence, not by making grandiose promises, but rather by spelling out what we all know to be true - we have to find common ground and work together, and WORK HARD to make the world a better place.

I'm game, if you are. Let's stick around and see if any UK or EU politicians take a leaf out of his book and tell us what a hard slog we have ahead of us. And if new politicians rear their heads without a tuck box of Parliamentary expenses being offered as bait, will we see some progress on the political scene?

Whaaaa?

Stress evolves us.

So I am sure we're taking an evolutionary leap right now!

Think of that next time the bank refuses your loan, ups your mortgage payments without asking you, and then charges you for the privilege of owing them money.

Do you think we become immortal in the memories of others?

I hope so.

I'm planning on major immortality and I can tell you this. I won't be banking with Cam, Natwest, Barclays and Abbey National/Santander when I am.