Chris Dolley's Journal

Living in a Waterproof World

2008-06-16T09:07:38Z

Kai had his last stitches out last week so he's at last bandage and funnel-collar free. But he is still very much incontinent. Thankfully the diarrhoea has cleared up but, boy, can he produce urine! So much and so frequently that we now live in a partially waterproofed house.

We hoped he might adapt to being an outside cat but Kai loves his comforts. The home is where laps live and the fridge and cat tins and milk and beds and nice warm places to curl up in. And, since he caught his tail in the jaws of death, he's been wary about going outside. He never strays far and runs back at the first sign of a killer tractor or passing stranger.

We tried shutting him out but he broke through the locked cat door. So out came Plan B - towels and plastic. We covered his usual haunts with towels or plastic. We even slept under a tarpaulin bedspread. Vigilance was the watch word and the washing machine a constant friend. That's when we discovered just how much urine a cat could produce. He soaked everything. And he got everywhere. Kitchen tables, sinks, the warm back grill of a television. We were forever having to grab him or chase him off.

And I was struck down with gastro-enteritis and spent four days fastened to the toilet - luckily I'm housetrained so I fought the urge to curl up on the back of television:)

Enter Plan C - the cat nappy (or diaper). We found a pattern for a cat nappy on the internet and Shelagh knocked up a practice pair. Several scratched hands later we fitted it to Kai and ... it needed adjustment to allow his legs a little more freedom. Back to the sewing machine. The next pair worked brilliantly and Shelagh made four but ... back to the problem of volume - Kai produced so much urine that the nappy pad filled in a few hours. We had to get up in the middle of the night to change him or risk a code yellow bedroom alert. And Kai had a problem being seen in public wearing pink knickers:)

Enter Plan D - the cat crate. Fed up with sleeping under tarpaulin or getting up in the middle of night, we borrowed a dog crate from a friend. A dog crate is a large cage with a plastic tray at the bottom. It's large enough to take a litter tray and a bed and it gives us a safe, waterproof place we can put Kai in overnight. It seems to work. He complained the first night but now accepts it. We still have to be vigilant during the day. We still have towels and plastic bags protecting electrical equipment and chairs during the day. We have the cat nappy for evenings. And we try to persuade Kai to spend as much time outside as he can. It's a strain but it's working.

The hope is that he might regain some continence. He's still swollen at the base of the tail so there's hope that he might improve when the swelling goes down. But it's unlikely that he'll recover fully. The stats show that cats who don't recover urinary control within a month of injury rarely improve after that. But one can hope.

Kai Update: no longer the seventh fluffy wonder of the feline world

2008-05-28T13:20:15Z

First the good news. Kai's well and improving. But last weekend...

After the improvements of early last week Kai started to go backwards on Thursday and Friday. He lost his bounce, his appetite and the diarrhoea wouldn't stop. We tried yoghurt. We tried a paste the vet gave us but nothing worked. And to make matters worse he managed to remove a stitch in one of his tail wounds which then opened up. The wound, being high up on the underneath of his tail, couldn't have been in a worse place for a cat with diarrhoea and a dead tail that just hung limp behind him. We covered the wound. We washed him. Several times a day. But both the tail and the wound got worse. On Saturday morning we took him back to the vet and he was operated on immediately.

Kai now has a two inch stump of a tail but he's back to his old bouncy self. He eats everything put in front of him. He's almost diarrhoea free and he's happy. But ... he's still incontinent. Hopefully this might change when he has his stitches out. In the meantime we keep a pair of old towels handy ready to slip underneath him whenever he jumps onto anyone's lap.

Kai's next visit to the vet is tomorrow.

Kai Update: The Spy in, the wash and the wardrobe

2008-05-21T14:05:14Z

Again, thanks for all the healing vibes and promises of tuna. They're all working. Kai's continuing to progress well. He's not eating enough on his own yet - so we're supplementing his intake - but he's a lot livelier and he's started purring again.

But just when we thought our Kai washing days were over...

We heard a large thump on the lounge ceiling. Thinking Kai must have knocked something heavy over, we ran upstairs, opened the bedroom door and ... found nothing. Kai was wandering along the floor doing the kitten equivalent of an innocent whistle. Nothing to do with me, guv.

I scanned the room. No furniture overturned. No sign of a disturbance. And then I saw what is best described as a 'code brown' situation at the base of our wardrobe. Our five foot high wardrobe. Little grey cells cranked over. That thump - could it have been Kai jumping down from the top of the wardrobe? Surely not? Three days ago he couldn't walk without dragging his right leg. How could he jump five feet?

I walked over to take a closer look. And found a large sticky pile of what can only be described as conclusive evidence of Kai's presence on top of the wardrobe. And, forgetting his training as an international kitten of mystery, he'd walked it all over the top of the wardrobe too.

As I told Kai on the way to the bathroom, not only does James Bond have to wear a plastic cone around his neck when he gets shot but he also has to have a bath when he soils himself. Those bits just get edited out of the film.

Kai Update: Tuesday

2008-05-20T10:44:47Z

First the good news: He's stopped bleeding. He's a lot perkier - he no longer lies around all day with his eyes half-lidded looking as though he's about expire any second. And he doesn't need to see the vet until next Wednesday when he'll have his stitches taken out. So the prognosis is good.

Now the not so good news: He's still not eating so the two hourly gloop feed continues. And he's incontinent. Which, when all your wounds are around the tail and inside of the back legs, is not good. Which means he has to be washed. And cat washing is not fun at the best of times - throw in a bad leg, a broken tail and antibiotics that loosen the bowls ... and you take 'not fun' to an undreamt of level.

The vet has switched his antibiotics so hopefully the situation will improve.

*Postscript News Flash*

Kai has at last started eating by himself - tempted by tuna:)

Kai Update

2008-05-17T13:27:28Z

Thank you for all the healing vibes and virtual hugs.

Kai managed a full body stretch this morning but is still not interested in food. We tried to tempt him with various meats and scrambled eggs but he turned his nose away. So it's back to feeding him by syringe every two hours - that's a syringe sans needle which we use to squirt creamy gloop onto his tongue. A long fraught process which isn't popular with cat or human. His next appointment with the vet is on Tuesday morning.

As to the cause of his injury we're not sure. At first we thought it must be another cat but cat fights tend to be very loud, yowly affairs and we heard nothing that night. And we're people who sleep with the window open and who are trained to leap out of bed at the first yowl of a cat fight. Click here for one of our more memorable cat fight adventures.

The vet thinks it might be a mink or polecat as the attack was so vicious and the teeth so sharp.

As a precaution we decided it would be wiser to keep our other cat - Xena - in at night. But cat's called Xena don't take to being grounded too well and Tuesday night she broke out by unlocking the cat door. Then she didn't come home for breakfast the next day. So you can imagine the state we were in on Wednesday morning. We had a listless Kai still bleeding from his operation the previous day and no Xena.

She waited until the evening and then strolled in as though nothing had happened. We locked the cat door again that night and placed a heavy box in front of it. She broke out - galloping away on horseback and ululating wildly. Cats!

Of course, now we've relented and leave the cat door unlocked, she stays in all night. Cats are contrary beings:)

Now I'm off to watch Pompey win the cup.

Terrible News: Kai badly hurt

2008-05-16T14:28:16Z

On Tuesday morning we came downstairs to a sight that all cat owners dread - large quantities of blood smeared all over the kitchen floor and our cat - Kai - lying very still in the middle of it all. This time the blood didn't belong to a mouse or a rabbit. It belonged to Kai.

We took him to the vet first thing and watched as the vet shaved and cleaned the mass of matted fur and puncture wounds around the underside of Kai's back legs and tail. He'd been bitten severely and cut in several places and had lost a lot of blood. His tail - which was one of the seven fluffy wonders of the feline world - was broken and paralyzed. And worse it looked like one of the cuts had damaged his urinary tract. He was operated on for almost an hour.

We took him home and explained that even James Bond has to wear a plastic cone around his head when he gets shot. Kai was not amused. He slept all of Tuesday, not eating or drinking. We got him to take some water by forcing a syringe into his mouth. But he was still bleeding and it was fifty fifty whether he was going to make it through the night.

The next day we took him back to the vet where he was put on anti-haemorrhagics and prescribed a liquid food concentrate. He's still on both. We've been feeding him by syringe every two hours since Wednesday. He's stopped bleeding but is still listless and most unKai-like. He can just about walk - when absolutely necessary - but spends most of the time led out asleep.

He may lose his tail but at the moment all we want is for him to recover.

Free Cornish Army Picture

2008-04-29T10:21:22Z

Now I have a scanner that works I can at last post some non-digital photos. Here's an old black and white photo from 1974.

The picture shows the victorious Free Cornish Army taking control of Launceston police station. For those unfamiliar with the Great Cornish Uprising of 1974, the story's here. Launceston was the first town to fall to the FCA. Truro followed an hour later.

I'm the one on the left and, as you can see, my uniform owed as much to Batman as it did to Che Guevara. Ah, the seventies when even the freedom fighters wore capes.

Colds, Lambs, a Donkey and the Green Bearded Horse Stampede

2008-04-21T14:38:50Z

Living in the middle of nowhere has one great advantage - we hardly ever get colds. But the downside is that whenever I go abroad in the winter months... the cold germs set upon me the moment I reach the first big town. This time I thought I'd try Echinacea but the combination of train germs, Parisian metro germs, Dublin germs and aeroplane germs were too strong and I've been coughing and blowing my nose for three weeks.

On the plus side, the lambs are all doing well. We've had to feed one of the triplets who wasn't getting as much milk as her sisters. But she's now caught them up in size and speed. It's amazing to see nine day old lambs leaping off the top of four feet high boulders.

Then there was the donkey... We thought we'd do a good deed and arrange for our blacksmith to trim the feet of a donkey that's being kept on one of our neighbour's fields. The donkey's feet were terrible - so overgrown he couldn't walk right. So, on Saturday we set off to collect him, walk him back the half mile to our stable where he could have his feet trimmed without dragging the blacksmith all over the field.

As usual it started off fine. Shelagh caught him, slipped a headcollar over his head and led him out the field. The rest should have been easy as previously he'd been easy to lead. Then he saw our horses and everyone got excited. Our two horses whinnied and galloped and the donkey bounced and brayed. And turned, suddenly, setting off towards a track on the side of the road. A muddy track. Shelagh tried to pull him back, failed and fell over. And ... refused to let go of the lead rein.

There was some dragging - of the horizontal, stomach surfing kind. Mud was involved and at least one puddle.

Ten minutes later we managed to get the donkey into the stable. Not so good news about Shelagh's coat - which was drenched and slightly ripped. But cue happy ending. The donkey can now walk properly and Shelagh gets to buy a new coat.

Finally - and just to show what an action packed week it was last week - there was the stampede. Another of our neighbours was moving his young cattle from one field to another and, to do so, he had to use the road that adjoins our fields. This is not usually a problem. The road has little traffic and the farmer has his family at the front and back of the herd to keep order.

And what order - never had there been such a well-behaved herd of cows. They formed an orderly line, two abreast, ambling slowly past.

Until Saffron - our almost 17 hands French Trotter - saw them. She's fascinated by cattle and gets excited. And when a giant excitable horse gets excited, they get Excited with a capital E. She stopped what she was doing - eating large amounts of grass - and charged out of the woods.

This had an adverse effect on the young cattle. One, they hadn't seen Saffron before as she'd been hidden amongst the trees. Two, she was galloping towards them at great speed. And, three, she had a large green beard - a clump of grass that she'd torn off ready to chew before the cattle fever struck.

Stampede! The road was turned into Pamplona with fewer people and more cattle. Humans jumped into ditches, called out, squashed themselves against hedges. Cattle ran and bucked and bellowed. Saffron galloped, bucked and farted.

Luckily the stampede didn't last for long as the herd turned into a track away from the road and once out of sight of the terrifying green bearded monster they calmed down. Equally luckily was Saffron's clever green-bearded disguise. Because of it she's unlikely to be picked out of a police line-up:)

Triple Triplets!

2008-04-02T11:12:23Z

Lambing officially finished at eleven this morning with ... yet another set of triplets. That's three out of four giving a grand total of eleven lambs this year - enough for a football team (or soccer, if you're from the left side of the pond)

Here's one of the latest arrivals - barely two hours old - learning the joys of a good nuzzle.

Here's one of the older triplets demonstrating how useful mother's are - especially when the hay net is just out of reach.

It doesn't take lambs long to realise that the warmest, most comfortable bed is their mother's fleece. In a month's time most of our ewes are going to have lamb hair:)

And finally we have a lamb demonstrating what the best dressed lambs are wearing this year - thigh high brown boots with matching eye and nose markings.

For the interested, the lambs are Suffolk crosses - a Suffolk ram crossed with a 'sheep of the region'.

Twin Triplets!

2008-04-01T10:11:43Z

Lambing continues apace. And what a pace. Last year was the first year we ever had triplets. This year we've had two. And in between the triplets came twins so the maternity stables are somewhat full at the moment and we've had to take both stables from the horses.

Rhiannon is not amused at having to give up her warm stable but Saffron is the bigger problem. She likes sheep, she's curious and she has big ears - which block the LambCam when she pokes her head over the stable door to watch the lambs. And she's taken to nibbling the wooden box that houses the LambCam.

Anyway, here's the first of the pictures. These are the twins resting after a hard day being stared at by a giant horse's head.

Here are the second triplets when they were four hours old. We've got them pencilled in for the Olympic Synchronised Lamb event this summer. Two are naturals, the third needs some work.

Here are the twins trying out their new overflow accommodation - a summer house on the lawn.

And here's one of last week's triplets wondering where his summer house was.

Triplets!

2008-03-27T09:43:03Z

The lambing season is officially underway. Nice Ewe, who was due yesterday and had been on the point of exploding since Monday, gave birth to triplets at eleven last night. For the interested, she had two girls and a boy weighing in at three tons each (according to the mother - who should know:)

Here they are at age nine hours and a quarter. Nice Ewe's eye says it all.

Even at nine and a quarter they're fast and inquisitive. Point a camera at them and one's off exploring and headless by the time the shutter opens. Here's one of the few non-headless snaps.

They're pretty much the same at ten and a quarter. Here they are outside on our lawn. We give them a couple of hours outside each day if the weather's good then release them back into the field when they're big enough.

And finally a close up. Note the patented newborn woolly jumper - several sizes too big to allow plenty of room for expansion. And in two months time they'll need it - they'll all be the size of large woolly beach balls.

Now I'm off to pack for my trip to Dublin. There'll be more lamb pictures on Tuesday.

Lambing 2008

2008-03-24T15:23:58Z

Lambing is officially underway. It's due to start Wednesday but as usual no one told the ewes who all look enormous. Yesterday we caught up Nice Ewe - who's due on Wednesday - and moved her into the deluxe maternity stable ward. Today we set up the LambCam so we can monitor her remotely from the house (and, as the camera has a microphone, listen to her as well. So for the next ten days* I'm going to have the 24 hour Sheep Channel live by my bed - and you would not believe how noisy a sheep grinding her teeth can be:)

Rest assured there will be lamb pictures.

*I do get a respite Friday thru Monday as I'm off to the Phoenix convention in Dublin where I'm a guest.

Hedge Slog

2008-03-20T11:12:29Z

Our Spring hedging offensive has just finished - five days of hard toil and another 50 metres of hedge coppiced and replanted. With the emphasis on replanted. Most of our roadside hedge had been overrun with brambles and fern so we had to dig out the roots and replant with trees from our nursery*. Then we had to untangle the old barbed wire fence, uproot the old rotten fence posts and replace with new chestnut posts and sheep fencing.

I am now knackered.

*We have a tree nursery where we put any tree seedlings we find during the year. Beech from the fields which get trodden on or eaten by our big-footed animals otherwise; hazel, ash and hawthorn which birds insist on planting in our vegetable garden; and chestnut and holly which we grow from seed.

Holly is especially difficult to grow from seed. You have to simulate the passage of the seed through a bird's digestive tract. Not wanting to volunteer my digestive tract, we soaked the berries in water for a fortnight instead, changing the water every other day until the seed coat disintegrated. Then we scarified the seeds between two granite stones, planted them in a seed tray and waited two winters. The result: 200+ holly seedlings this spring. Next year's spring hedge offensive is going to see a large swathe of holly hedge planted.

CSI: Felix - The Night of the Long Claws

2008-03-12T10:53:26Z

As cat slaves we know the joys of waking up to body parts strewn all over the house. But this morning...

Three rabbits and a startled toad. And to judge by the size of our cats stomachs - think cartoon cats with bunny sized bulges - that was just the leftovers. For the first time ever neither cat required breakfast.

Both cats are now sleeping and the startled toad - Toadus Inedibilis - is in therapy.

We may join him.

Spellspam Interview: a Cat's Perspective

2008-03-11T09:12:28Z

This week the International Kittens of Mystery invite Laptop and Boboko, without whom (as all cats know) Alma Alexander would not have been able to write the latest Worldweaver's book - Spellspam - which is out today.

Because of the premature end to last week's interview (following the tuna incident) Xena has decided to assist Kai this week.

Kai: How do you most help your human with her writing? Do you warm her keyboard? Help her with the typing? Or do you translate her text into Polish with some clever paw strokes?

Xena: You asked that last week.

Kai: So? It's my best question. (flicks tail pointedly and turns to Laptop)

Laptop: I find that pathetic meows from the middle of the office where I am just too far to reach REALLY help her concentration. it helps her focus in the right place - which is, of course, me.

Boboko: Well, there are times I want lovings. Like, NOW. And there are times I want her to clean the litter box. Like, NOW. And there are times that I want her to... oh, wait... you mean she was doing something else?

Kai: Humans ALWAYS think they're doing something else. (climbs onto back of chair, tries to turn, teeters precariously, overbalances, digs in claws and swings precariously from front paws whilst trying to pass off entire incident as pre-planned) Thea's a double seventh - seventh child of two seventh child parents. Those are pretty big litters for humans. So, I'm guessing Thea's really a kitten, isn't she? It's one of those allegorical stories where the heroine has to be a human for marketing purposes but we all know she's really a kitten.

Boboko: Yes but how long are her whiskers?

Laptop: Pah. Humans just get carried away sometimes. Doesn't mean they can aspire to be cats.

Xena: (watching the tempting target of Kai's fluffy tail swing in front of her nose for one too many times) thwap!

Kai: Ow! Are ... are there any magical kittens in this book?

Laptop: There are no such things as NON-magical kittens. In this book or anywhere else. Yes, there's a cat - I'm told that SHE has committed the atrocity of amalgamating me and my silly brother into one creature for her character's cat, but we can both forgive her that. She probably didn't want to hurt our feelings by choosing one over the other. And I fully realise that she couldn't have a cat called Laptop in a book which has to do with cyber magic - humans are easily confused - hence the name she gave the cat in the book.

Boboko: There's a cat in the book?

Kai: (trying to read the autocue while hanging upside down) Yawny raft ot kooq...

Xena (rolls eyes) How would you suggest a cat sells this book to their human? What would your pitch be?

Laptop: We cats, we have known for a long time there is more to the world that you know than just what you can smell or paw or hear, that there are other creatures out there (some of them ARE food, arguably) and that you need to open your mind to the possibilities. And that once you become aware of yourself and what you are and what your place is in all the worlds that you can walk in, anything is possible, really.

Boboko: You DO know that neither of us can read...? But this book was written by She Who Doles Out Treats and Kibble. We like treats and kibble, Lap and I. So buy the book, and help her keep the kibble coming...

Kai: (falls down, shocked) Kibble can be stopped? What about the Kibble Fairy?

Xena: Thwap! (turns to Laptop) Any plans to talk your human into writing some cat-centric mythology. I'm thinking Bast the Egyptian cat goddess.

Laptop: ALL HAIL TO BAST - and don't think we haven't been trying. With the help of the Cat Headed One, we will prevail. And if she doesn't there's always the option of wandering across her keyboard on our own and doing it ourselves. In Polish.

Boboko: Well how was I supposed to know that the pile of treats you wouldn't eat was an offering to Bast and not just something I could finish off?... Sorry, folks. I messed up the sacrifice. I guess the Cat Headed One will have to wait just a little longer for her story... ooooh... SQUIRRELS...

Kai: Squirrels? Where?

Xena: Come back! We haven't finished...

Well, if it's not tuna it's squirrels.

Here's Laptop and Boboko behaving themselves:

And here's Kai and Xena having an animated discussion about third person narrative:

If you'd like to know more about Laptop and Boboko click here

Storm Stops Play

2008-03-10T12:06:19Z

Due to the storm, the promised interview will be up tomorrow not today.

So far the damage hasn't been too bad. We've lost part of our stable roof ridge and a number of slates, our Kiwi supports are leaning over at a jaunty angle and corrugated iron is covering parts of the garden it shouldn't be.

I'm patching what I can while the eye of the storm passes over. It looks like we've got another couple of inches of rain to come and more severe gales. Fingers crossed for the stable roof.

Four Cats and a Goblin (plus some Tuna)

2008-03-04T10:23:20Z

As heralded last week, our international kitten of mystery (the kitten formerly know as Kai) is conducting a series of feline interviews to prove the old adage - 'Behind every successful author there's a cat - and there's another one over there and one's got the manuscript and one's on the keyboard and Noooo!'

Today, Kai welcomes Flop, Pod and Flit who's pet human, Jim Hines, has a book coming out today. The book is called Goblin War and makes an ideal gift for pet humans of all ages.

Kai: (balancing precariously on arm of chair while trying to read autocue) How do you most help your human with his writing? Do you warm his keyboard? Help him with the typing? Or do you translate his text into Polish with some clever paw strokes?

Flop: Some humans need more help than others. Jim requires a three-cat team. Flit over there helps keep him on schedule, making sure he doesn't sleep in too late. Pod provides financial incentive for Jim's work by shredding the occasional curtain. As for me, I keep the other two in line.

Pod: What's that supposed to mean? You think just because I'm missing a leg, you can--

Flop: *thwapthwapthwap*

Pod: Hey, I was just asking.

Flit: Huh? What was the question?

Kai: (falls off chair, almost lands on feet, swishes tail and blames last week's earthquake in Market Rasen) Are there any magical kittens in his book?

Flop: No magical kittens, but there are tunnel-cats, the fiercest beasts in the whole trilogy. Jig the goblin might be able to fight humans and wizards and even a dragon, but he never messes with the tunnel-cats.

Pod: What about that short story where the tunnel-cat gets--

Flop: I don't want to talk about that. I'm pretty sure the dogs wrote that scene when we weren't looking. They'll pay for that one of these days.

Flit: Wait, what's going on? Who are we talking to now?

Kai: (sharpening claws on chair legs) With your human writing all these books about goblins, when's he going to produce a cookery book? There must be some good goblin recipes - maybe with a little tuna...

Flit: Tuna! (bounds away)

Flop: You had to say the T-word, didn't you.

Pod: Most goblin recipes sound pretty good to me, actually. But humans don't seem to appreciate them. Don't ask me why. The barbequed elf with rock serpent gravy is especially tempting.

Kai: (mouth open, head back, glazed look while doing a passing imitation of Snowball imitating Homer Simpson) Rock serpent gravy... (gurgle, wretch - unexpected hairball) How would you suggest a cat sells this book to their monkey? What would your pitch be?

Flit: He lied. There wasn't any tuna. Go sneeze on him, Pod!

Flop: Jig the goblin takes a very feline approach to adventures and quests: he wants nothing to do with them. He'd rather curl up and nap, or at least hide somewhere that the warrior goblins don't pick on him. Instead, he gets dragged off on some silly human adventure, and has to survive with his wits and his fangs. Also with his pet spider who sets things on fire a lot.

Pod: I had a pet spider, but I eated him.

Flop: Anyway, it's an entertaining book, particularly for anyone who's familiar with the tropes of the genre. Jig's a very loveable character, for a biped.

Flit: What's a trope?

Kai: (acting knowledgeable)It's French for mole. Not as nice as mouse but better than spider. Do you think any of the characters in your human's books are based upon you?

Flop: Well, the elves who appear in the first and third books are highly graceful, like myself.

Pod: Didn't you fall off the DVD player again last night?

Flop: *thwap* Some of the goblins are a little dense in the head. I'll leave it to you to decide which of us inspired them.

Flit: Wait, maybe there's tuna now! (Bounds off again)

Kai (bounding in pursuit) Tuna? Wait for me!

And there - a little sooner than planned but we are talking tuna - the interview ended.

Here's Flop, Pod and Flit in the Green Room interviewing the tuna.

And here's Kai resting after a heavy meal.

Author Interviews - The Feline Perspective

2008-02-27T09:29:44Z

One of the problems of being an International Kitten of Mystery is maintaining a successful cover. Dogs have learnt how to Google and tax humans get suspicious when unemployed kittens claim helicopter expenses.

So, for international security and tax purposes, Kai has decided to become an interviewer.

On March 4th he'll be posting an interview with Flop, Pod and Flit - three cats who ghost write under the human name of Jim Hines.

And on March 10th he'll be interviewing Laptop and Boboko who write under the human name of Alma Alexander.

Annalise interview

2008-01-28T07:27:29Z

Jackie Kessler, author of Hell's Belles, has been running a series of interviews on her blog where one of her characters (Jezebel, a former succubus demon) interviews characters from other author's books.

Naturally, Annalise volunteered.

Here's the result.

SF Signal Post

2008-01-11T14:23:45Z

I'm still on a limited dial-up internet access (c 40 mins/day) until we get our broadband back (hopefully by the end of the month - flying pigs willing:) so posting will be short.

A few days back SF Signal asked a number of SF authors - including me - for their definition of 'What is SF?' The result can be viewed here. I thought about this for a while and decided - as is my wont - to come up with something a little different.

So, here's my definition:

Thinking musically, science fiction is what you get when fiction goes electric. You plug ideas into an effects box and play with all the settings - adding distortion, harmonics, sustain, feedback and maybe a little echo. Then you turn all the amplifiers up to eleven.

Aaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!

2008-01-02T07:03:19Z

If anyone has been trying to contact me this month and wondered why I've been so silent - the terrible truth can now be revealed.

On Monday December 3rd our broadband connection died. No internet, no email, no telephone for four weeks - everything was routed through our Alice Box ADSL modem which, no doubt in sympathy with the French train drivers, decided to go on indefinite strike.

Out came the manuals and instruction leaflets. I located the problem - no ADSL signal was being received. I followed the recommended instructions - switching the box off, checking all the connections, moving the box through to the lounge and trying the phone socket there. Nothing worked. I tried again after lunch - same result - then phoned the Alice service line on our mobile. And hit automated switchboard hell.

Maybe it was because I'd just finished writing a story in which an automated switchboard played a prominent part. Or maybe it's my magnetic attraction to disaster but I'd just entered the telephone twilight zone.

First I had to get a signal - which living behind a rock in the in the middle of nowhere is not easy. I tried inside the house. Nothing. Then walked outside and stood on said large rock. A signal. I phoned 1033 and entered round one. Which of the many exciting Alice packages did I want? I waited for the automated advert to get to the option where I could report a fault and pressed option 2. And was then asked to input my 10 digit telephone number. I typed in all ten numbers and waited. And waited. It began to rain. Silence from the phone. And no signal.

We drove to the public telephone in the village. 1033 calls were free from a fixed line so at least I didn't have to pay for the call. But that was the only good news. I entered option two, I entered all ten digits of my telephone number, I reached level three - another set of options - I pressed 2, another set of options, I pressed three. Then it went silent. Had I scored so high I'd won a replay? No, I received a message that for security reasons this telephone call might be recorded.

Fat chance. First came the obligatory music then minutes later ... an actual human voice! I rushed into my prepared script, "Nous avons une probleme avec notre Alice Box."

"Allo?" said the voice on the other end of the line.

I repeated my opening sentence. Another 'Allo?' I spoke louder. I said 'allo' back. Again and again. Nothing worked. They couldn't hear me.

I put the phone down and redialled. Another ten minutes and another spate of puzzled 'Allo's. By now everyone in the village knew I had a problem with my Alice Box - I was shouting loud enough - but not the person hiding behind the automated switchboard.

We gave up, drove home and ... found one of our horses rolling on the ground in distress. The onset of colic. Which meant a phone call to the vet. Shelagh did the honours, setting up a base camp on the lawn before ascending the rock to make the phone call. The vet answered immediately, wisely eschewing the buffer of an automated switchboard with several levels of - press one for a biped, press two if your pet's called Polly...

And drove out to see us. Several injections later our horse began to recover. Which was more than could be said for us. Disasters come in threes and we'd only had two so far.

The next day we tried phoning Alice again. No signal. And it was raining so I couldn't stand on the rock. So, I roamed the house in search of a signal. And found one - if I stood on a chair with my head out of the loft window. I braved the wind, rain and the automated switchboard and found someone who understood me. I told him what was wrong and he said a technician would call back.

No one did. The next afternoon I tried again. It wasn't raining so I climbed onto the rock. And spent five minutes pressing buttons to navigate my way to talk to a human who then picked up his script and asked me a further set of questions to identify who I was. I could have told him I was the man standing on a rock in the freezing cold but at that stage I was polite and desperate. I gave him the same telephone number I'd already typed into their system, my name, address and ... now he wanted my mobile number. Which I didn't have. We only use it for emergencies and I've never had the need to call it. So I had to leave my rock to fetch the number and with it went the signal.

Start again. Another ten minutes to get back to the stage I'd left fifteen minutes ago, then I told him what the problem was and struggled to understand his answer. The line was breaking up and he was having difficulty hearing me. After another ten minutes I gave up. We'd try a fixed line from a neighbour's.

Shelagh volunteered and returned a half hour later. She'd been told by Alice technical support that she had to ring back from the same room that our computer was in. She'd explained that we couldn't get a signal there but he'd been adamant. This was to be a recurring theme. The call centre people had a script to follow and any attempt to move them off that script or to miss out steps we'd already covered in previous phone calls was met by a restatement of the party line. We have a script and you are going to follow it.

We rang from our house. We were cut off. We tried again. They told us to do all the things the manual suggested - all the things I'd tried on Monday - checking the connections, trying other sockets etc. We told them again and again that we'd already done that. The problem's with the line. Can't you check it?

Now, I've seen life on the other side. I've worked in tech support and, yes, I know that users often say they've done things when they haven't. But this was way beyond that. And every time we called we got a different person and had to start again from scratch.

But eventually I was put through to someone who appeared to know what they were doing and he agreed to test the line.

Another day dawned. We'd reached Thursday - three days without emails or the internet. I was suffering withdrawal symptoms. And Shelagh was worried about our phone bill. We must have spent two hours calling Alice from our mobile at half a euro per minute. Which is when we hit upon a cunning plan. The mega supermarket chain, Leclerc, had just started their own mobile phone service. Cheap phones, cheap calls and there was a special offer if we took out a subscription this week. We drove into town, bought a new mobile phone, typed in 1033 to call Alice and ... nous sommes desolé, said a recorded voice. We cannot connect your call as it's coming from an unauthorised source. Our new phone could not call special numbers.

Surprise, shock and minor hair-tearing. Why? How? A quick consult of the small print on our Leclerc contract confirmed the news. You can phone anywhere in the world - except those pesky emergency numbers.

Looking on the bright side - a lifelong pursuit of mine - I realised that this made disaster number three. I could now rest easy.

Until I tried to call Alice. All I wanted to know was had they tested our line. All they wanted to know was my name, address, the numbers of all my phones, how many phone sockets I had and then take me through the same prepared script I'd railed at for the previous two days.

Even my declaration that 'Je suis tres proche to a breakdown nerveuse' didn't deflect their curiosity. Have you confirmed that your Alice Box is plugged in? I was about to tell them exactly where I intended to plug the Alice Box next when the signal died.

Shelagh tried next and failed. Could we ring back from a better line, they asked? We went back to our neighbours and played the same switchboard roulette until we were told to return to our house because we needed to be close to our computer. That's where we've just come from! The phone keeps cutting out! Please return to your house.

We asked if they had someone who could come out to our house and sort the problem out but ... they changed the subject. It wasn't in their script. It began to look that, although Alice were responsible for our phone connection, they didn't actually maintain the phone lines. France Telecom did that. But, naturally, FT were more interested in their own customers and would get around to other provider's requests when it suited. All Alice had was a call centre and a script.

We rang FT to find out if they'd received a request to work on our line. They wouldn't say. Ring Alice, they said.

More calls , more frustration. Can you find someone who speaks French? Can you find someone who can fix a phone line? Impasse. We returned to our neighbour and she had a go. Put the phone down and return to your house, you need to be near your computer. No, we don't! Yes, you do!

We fetched a French speaking friend and ferried her to our house. Twenty-five minutes later and without any need to access our computer she was told that our line would be tested. When? Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. If you haven't heard in seven days time, ring back.

Time ticked on. I thought that being weaned off the internet might give me more writing time but, no, I was too busy working out scenarios as to what to do or say next. Were they actually testing our line or just saying anything to get us off the phone?

And then I embraced the dark side - conspiracy theories. Our bank statement arrived the following Monday and there was no monthly payment to Alice. We'd switched to them from France Telecom on April 3rd and every month since then a direct debit had been paid to them on the 24th of each month. Except last month. There was no payment at all. And we'd lost our phone line on December 3rd the eight month anniversary of the contract. Dots began to join and form the words - they cancelled our account by mistake! It would explain everything and maybe make it easier to get everything working again. There was no line to fix just a clerical error.

I prepared a new script and climbed onto my rock. Je suis Sherlock Dolley and I think I've solved the problem. Twenty minutes later I was put on hold and ... the signal went dead. I redialled, I restated, I waited and ... no, your account has never been cancelled.

Or so they said. I was wondering how far the conspiracy stretched. Should I ring Mohammed Al Fayed and swap notes on Prince Phillip's whereabouts last Monday morning?

I decided to wait. MI5 are always thorough and Prince Phillip never leaves loose ends.

On the Thursday - having heard nothing from Alice for the obligatory week - Shelagh rang them from our bemused neighbours (who, by then, had built a small grandstand by their phone so crowds could gather to watch and buy popcorn)

Alice said they'd found the fault. It was in the line at their end and it would take three days to fix. So everything will be back and usable on Monday? Yes, they replied. Shelagh asked them to repeat it three times. And let them know she had a gun.

Monday arrived and still no line so I wrestled the gun away from Shelagh and drove into town, found a phone that worked and called Alice. The fault hadn't been fixed because ... there was no fault. Could I go back to the house so that the modem could be verified? I remonstrated, explaining that we'd been doing little else for two weeks. Someone needed to come out. No, you need to go home and call us again.

I went home, called them again, tried to explain and ... was ignored. Out came the same script - switch the modem off, unplug the line, switch it all back on again. I jumped through all the hoops until they said they were going to get a technician to test the line. Ring back in a day or so. I exploded and was told to be patient. Patient? Moi? I was a man standing on a rock in the freezing cold, snow falling all around him. I'd been nothing but patient for two weeks!

I cut the call. And vowed I'd never speak to Alice again except through a solicitor.

The next day we got up early and drove, cap in hand, to France Telecom who had a shop where you could talk to real live human beings and employed engineers who could actually fix telephone lines. 'Take us back!' we begged. 'We didn't mean to leave!'

They took us back but ... we'd have to change our telephone number as Alice insisted on keeping the old one. And wait four days for the new number to be switched on. By then we'd have agreed to anything. The old phone line was useless - no one could even leave a message for us - anyone trying was met by an automated voice telling them we couldn't take their call.

Four days passed and - you guessed it - nothing. I rang 1013 (the France Telecom fault line) and was told that the line should have been connected but it hadn't. Try ringing 1014 (their office line) to find out why. I rang 1014 and was told there was a problem but it should be fixed soon.

Two days passed. On the three week anniversary of The Day the Telephone Died and with Christmas only a day away I rang 1014 again and was asked if I could go to their shop in Flers. I drove to Flers, braved the Christmas Eve shoppers who were queuing out the door of the France Telecom store and waited. But at least I got to speak to a person and watch as they phoned the engineers and confirmed that there was a problem and it was being worked on.

Not over Christmas though. More silent days passed and on the Friday I drove into the village for my obligatory call to a service desk and was told that the work had been completed. But my phone doesn't work! Doesn't it? It looks fine from this end. He then told us to return to our home - not to be close to our computer (they pine for human company, you know) - but so he could test the line for us. We gave him our mobile number, rushed home and waited. He rang us on the mobile and took us through a couple of tests - testing our errant line first with a phone connected then without. Two minutes later he pronounced our line as dead. An engineer would come out on Monday to fix it.

Bliss. A real person was coming to our house. Something we'd asked for right at the beginning. And it had only taken France Telecom a couple of minutes to test our line. Our sojourn in the mind numbing alternative world of automated call centre hell was coming to an end.

New Year's Eve arrived on time and so did the engineers. They found the fault in ten minutes - the line between our house and the road was dead - and then re-cabled us.

We no longer have broadband but at least we have something.

Say It Ain't So, PO

2007-11-20T10:16:58Z

It would appear that the International Reply Coupon, after one hundred years of service to overseas authors everywhere, is no more. It has pined for the fjords and posted itself - without an enclosed SASE - into the great PO Box in the sky.

And no one told me!

I only found our last month when I went to our local post office in Normandy to send a short story to F&SF. I asked for a coupon international de reponse and was met with a glazed expression. And, for once, it was not because of my pronunciation.

"Je suis baffled," she said - I translate approximately. She knew what an IRC was. She'd sold them. In the past. But ... it had been such a long time ago and Mr. Verne hadn't been in for a while...

So, off she went and searched the shelves, the back room, her coat pockets. Then checked her computer and asked a colleague. Gallic shrugs all round. "Nous sommes tres baffled."

Perhaps Alencon might have one? Or Paris?

I drove home and toured the net, checking the web sites of the French Post Office, the Royal Mail, USPS. No mention of IRCs anywhere. And then I found someone's blog. Apparently IRCs were discontinued a year or so back as they were costly to administer and only used by authors submitting work overseas.

And yet they're still mentioned in magazine submission guidelines. I know, I looked.

Never one to give up until a hospital is involved, I tried option two: buying US stamps online. This looked a winner. For a while. There were several companies offering 'print your own US stamps' services at reasonable prices. But half an hour of screens and fine print later I found the only way I could subscribe was by pretending I lived in the US. Which is undoubtedly illegal. Of course, being extradited to the US for mail fraud would be a good opportunity to buy US stamps but...

Option three also looked a winner for a while. I could buy stamps online from USPS. If I bought at least 20. All I wanted was one 90 cent stamp! And the postage and packing for twenty 90 cent stamps was $6. So one SASE was going to cost me $24.

Now, if I intended to make a habit of sending stories to the US, fine. But I'm not. So, I plumped for option four. I emailed my nephew at Yale and explained the situation. Extradition on mail fraud imminent - send 90 cent stamp immediately.

It worked.

Update

2007-11-09T09:43:27Z

I'm at one of those authorial crossroads, not quite sure which direction to take and wondering if I can get planning permission to create my own road - a far more entertaining path with lots of twists, good views and connecting all the places a good road should.

So here's my quandary. I'm still waiting for Baen to make a decision on my time travelling novel - they've had it for 14 months. In the past I would have completed the novel sans contract but, today, I find it difficult to motivate myself to spend nine months writing a book that may never see the light of day when I have a queue of other book ideas shouting 'Me! Me!' in my ear.

I'm six chapters into a police procedural with magic. I'm five chapters into a sequel to my mystery novel, An Unsafe Pair of Hands (the manuscript of which has just been requested by a New York agent). I'd like to bring out a Kitten's Guide book. I've been looking again at Nous Sommes Anglais. And, to cap it all, I've decided to try my hand at Urban Fantasy - combining my three loves, magic, mystery and humour.

Which is what I've been doing the last month. I thought I'd trial the experiment by constructing the first three chapters as a standalone short story - which I've done - and then send it out to the big mags and see what they thought. Chapter four would then be a 'setting up' chapter before going into another episode - which I'm now writing - which I'd send out as another short story.

I like the idea. Whether editors and publishers will is another matter.

Now I'm off to complete our ram shelter. We laid the concrete base yesterday, now comes the lifting of the shelter onto its base and the roofing. Unfortunately magic is not an option - so brute strength and craftsmanship is required:)

It Never Used To Be Like This In My Day...

2007-09-26T10:16:42Z

"I tried to get rid of them, but they were having a party, eating all my bread, bananas and avocados and swigging bottles of wine they had taken out of the refrigerator,” said Carol White, manager of the Camel Rock restaurant in the quiet village of Scarborough near Cape Point, South Africa.

And to make things worse they ran off without paying.

Not only that but they're above the law - immune from prosecution as they're under age ... and a protected species. Yes, the wine-swigging louts in question were in fact a group of baboons who, having been fed by tourists, had learned two things. One, humans are an inferior species put on this earth to feed baboons and, two, it's easier to steal food from a fridge than it is to find it in the wild. Put the two together and you get Scarborough, South Africa. A frontier town where no banana is safe.

The baboons have burgled houses, raided stores and intimidated inhabitants. Security bars can't stop them. The ingenious baboons push their babies through the bars and get them to open the window latches. They've even taken on the local dogs - the previous top species in Scarborough - in a gang fight. The dogs, with studded collars and mouthfuls of teeth, entered the town from one end while the baboons, in leather jackets they'd stolen from the local store, clicking their fingers and whistling extracts from West Side Story, sashayed in from the other side. Mayhem ensued.

And the animal crime spree is not confined to baboons.

Elephants from the Ang Lue Nai wildlife sanctuary in eastern Thailand turned to crime in 2003. Large numbers blocked roads and used their trunks to steal sugar cane from lorries.

Colin Jones, a builder, hired a bodyguard this year after being attacked by seagulls in Brighton. Steve Jackow followed him wearing a fluorescent bib and a referee’s whistle.

Chippy, a male chimpanzee, was exposed in 2001 as the perpetrator of heavy-breathing phone calls after staff at Blair Drummond Safari Park, in Stirlingshire, recognised his shriek. He had stolen a keeper’s phone and learnt to operate the redial button.

Lewis, a pet cat, was placed under house arrest in Connecticut last year after attacking an Avon lady. He was ordered to stay indoors for the rest of his life.

It's a dangerous world out there, humans.

Emergency Hospital Dash

2007-09-24T14:17:42Z

Another exciting weekend on the smallholding and another trip to the ER. This time the result of an accident with ... an axe.

Not the usual type of accident with an axe - we're not those kind of people. No, we found an entirely new way to maim ourselves. The story began on Thursday when, during a prodigious session of log splitting, I split the handle of the axe. So, off we drove the next day to our local DIY store and purchased a new handle. That's when the problems began. Extracting the old handle from the axe head was not easy - not only had we wedged it tight on the handle, we'd then hammered a small metal wedge into the end of the shaft to expand the wood and ensure the axe head never flew off. Even when we wanted it to.

I tried chiseling the wood out. I tried drilling it. And succeeded in bending one drill bit. Whatever wood the handle had been made of when we'd first attached it, it had now seasoned into something with magical properties.

When I suggested that perhaps a trip to the chemist for a bottle of hydrochloric acid to burn the wood off might be a good idea, Shelagh intervened. Why not try and hammer it out with a cold chisel? The remaining plug of wood was honeycombed with drill holes, surely it couldn't take much more to hammer it out.

I hammered. Nothing moved. And then Shelagh, after watching her husband struggle unsuccessfully for two hours, made a huge mistake. She grabbed the chisel. "Let me have a go," she said. A phrase that precedes 60% of all trips to the ER.

Holding the metal chisel with her left hand she smacked hell out of it with the right. Next minute, blood was everywhere. Not dripping blood but a fountain of blood. To say we were shocked would be an understatement. There'd been no cry of pain. Shelagh didn't even know she'd been cut. Neither of us knew where the blood was coming from. You'd expect a hammer and chisel injury to be finger or thumb related. But this one wasn't. Our patio was looking like a CSI crime scene. Blood spatter was everywhere. Then we saw where the blood was coming from. It was spraying from Shelagh's forearm. Pumping even. Like when an artery is severed.

Panic. Absolute unbridled panic. Shelagh clamped an hand over her forearm and I headless-chickened back and forth between the house and the car - grabbing wallet, health card, car keys, extra clothes, locking up - then screeching out the gate en route for the hospital, ten minutes away.

Or possibly twenty minutes. I rounded a bend and nearly hit a tractor. They were fauchaging the hedges. It was 6:45pm on a Friday and they were still at work, blocking the road as the side mounted arm with the flail cutter slashed at the hedge on our right. I couldn't believe it.

"Hit the horn! Let them know we're here!"

I was torn. I can't remember the last time, or even if, I've used the car horn. I'm not even sure I know where it is. I'm not the kind of driver who flashes his lights or honks his horn whenever anyone get in his way. I hate that kind of driver. You see them all the time. I'm an important person and you're in my way. Move over! But this was an emergency. I had to do something!

But what? This was a small country road with deep ditches on either side. Two small cars had trouble passing each other. No amount of horn honking could make the road wider or the tractor smaller.

Time drifted into slow motion hell. Shelagh got angrier - which was probably a good sign - you can't be angry and death's door anemic at the same time.

Can you?

I saw a gap - the kind of gap only an imminent widower could see - and went for it. Luckily it was on the side that didn't have the flailing chains. But it did have the ditch.

We squeezed and slid through, defying gravity and a magnetic ditch. I gunned the car, slued around the next hairpin bend and...

Found the next tractor. They always fauchage in pairs! And this one was coming towards me, chains flailing and no doubt ready to extract revenge against the pushy motorist.

But this was a pushy motorist with his wife's blood all over his T-shirt - not to mention his face and hands. A fact that must have registered with the tractor driver. Strange blood spattered man with screaming wife approaching at speed. Reverse!

He reversed and I shot past - again avoiding the flailing chains. At the junction at the top of the hill I braked hard and managed a breath - my first official one since leaving the house - and grabbed a quick glance left and right. Then Shelagh took a trembling hand off the gaping wound and said," Oh, it's stopped bleeding."

"What?"

"It's stopped bleeding."

Naturally I couldn't believe it. And I'm a person who spends half his life in a state of bemused incredulity. How can it have stopped bleeding? A minute earlier blood was pumping from her arm in one metre high jets. Had she run out of blood?

No. A debate ensued. Do we go back to the house or carry on to the hospital? The sound of flailing hedge shearers made up our mind. And surely the cut had got to be looked at? It might only be stopped temporarily.

So off we shot to the hospital and queued at the Urgences. By then we'd surmised that a shard of metal must have flown off the chisel when the hammer had struck it and shot sideways into Shelagh's left arm. Having active imaginations, we then postulated that the shard of metal was now either sealing the cut artery - and therefore preventing further blood spurts - or was inside her artery and whizzing around Shelagh's blood stream - probably piloted by a group of killer bacteria.

Luckily our French was not up to sharing all our theories with the doctor. But we tried. And after he stopped laughing he assured us that no boat-shaped shards of metal were circulating in Shelagh's bloodstream. An X-ray was ordered and a half hour later back came a picture of a small piece of metal lodged in Shelagh's arm. The magnification wasn't large enough to see if it was being piloted but the suspicion must have been there as a course of antibiotic depth charges was prescribed.

The metal though would have to stay. It was not easy to spot and it wasn't anywhere vital. An observation that didn't sit very well with Shelagh who regarded the entirety of her arm as eminently vital. And don't you have any magnets? Shelagh has long been a believer in the Lex Luther school of surgical practice and assumed all hospitals would have super magnet 'metal shard suckers.' But, sad to relate, in the real world our tax euros are put to more mundane purchases.

Life is now sliding back towards normal. I removed the last remains of the old wooden handle from the axe - by immersing it in my Lex Luther death watch beetle and woodworm preparation - and Shelagh is alive, well and setting off metal detectors at all good airport security stations.