I Do Love An Apple

 To be a writer, you only need a pencil and paper. There are certainly writers out there still using them.

I have a few notebooks and journals that I carry around with me, and I have a lovely roller pen, which my beautiful wife bought for my birthday a couple of years ago.

As we are all aware, technology has advanced dramatically. I am writing this on a computer. You will also be reading this on one.

Let's face it, pencils and paper still cost under £5, even in this current financial crisis. The MacBook Air I'm using is…well, let's say it costs a bit more than £5.

I resisted moving away from Microsoft for many years, but with some inheritance and an NHS discount, I bit the bullet and purchased this MacBook Air with the superb M1 chipset. It certainly opened up a whole new world of technology. It has enabled me to reach out to fellow writers that use Macs, iPads and iPhones and to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of others. 

I'm a regular consumer of a YouTube channel, 58keys, which regularly drops on a Wednesday and then on a Friday, I earnestly wait for the latest post on his Self Distract Blog.

59keys is 'for writers like you and me, who use and of course write on Macs, on iPads and iPhones'. That is the tagline of the creator and presenter of 58keys, William Gallagher. I had an exciting and productive month on one of William's Zoom workshops, and I am often in contact with him. He's my writing guru.

I now have a few apps that William has reviewed on his channel and that he uses. They are all based on increased productive writing. Unfortunately, one of the most useful that I would use to write this blog doesn't link to my platform. I have already set myself the task of migrating my blog over to another site by April, which will make writing these posts simpler and quicker. 

The app that I use the most is Scrivener. It is a word processor for writers. It is very clever in organising novel files, enabling the writer to quickly move blocks of writing around. Your first chapter can become your fourth if needed! Scrivener also has a template for several forms of writing, including scripts. It is much more advanced than a rival product on another operating system, although if you need to, you can compile it in that format. 

Another of this year's aims for me is to have a go at screenwriting. It is something that I have yet to try, and it looks complicated. William gave me a nugget of information about screenwriting when I wrote to him about any courses that might be available. His suggestion was to just read a load of scripts. I had never thought of doing that, and having found a site for TV scripts, I set about reading some of them. They are excellent relaxing reads that take little time. I started with one of my favourite BBC series from a few years ago, Spooks. I can visualise the characters I saw on the TV and compare how they are in the script and how they appear on the screen. There is a difference.

I will be, of course, pitching to magazines and will be using another app, Readly, to research potential markets. The short story market is still out there, and I will gather experience by entering short story and flash fiction competitions regularly.

Can you tell me that I love my MacBook? I used to look askance at any suggestion of buying an AppleMac in the past. This was mainly from my experiences with the very early ones in the 1980s. The promotion of IBM, its clones, and the DOS system bought about that well know the operating system and its many iterations that still dominate the market today.

That's it for this week's post. I hope you have ended it in one piece and that I haven't bored you to sleep. I shall be perusing my notebook for something different to write about next. 

Welcome to 2023 and some Flash Fiction News

 Most probably due to the Royal Mail Postal Strikes, my monthly writing magazines arrived on the same day. I was eager to see the results of the Flash Fiction short story competition in the Writers Forum I entered last month. I wasn't expecting to see that I had won as they would have been in touch beforehand.

Sadly, I wasn't placed or highly commended this time, not to worry. However, it was interesting to read the editor's comment. It was a 500-word story with a twist ending. The editor wrote on the results page,

'I was surprised to receive so many entries where the main character turns out to be an animal or dead. Such old chestnuts will always struggle to turn a judge's head. A few entries did manage to bring new life to the 'dead ending, but they didn't make it past the shortlist.'

I didn't realise that this is how the judges were thinking about these subjects. I want to feel that my story brought life to the 'dead ending'. It was one that I had used for the Ottery Literary Festival, where it was awarded highly commended. After further editing and a few changes, I entered it for this competition. I received favourable results when I took it to work for a couple of colleagues to read through, and it got the reactions I wanted when they got to the end and the 'twist'.

I will not be using it again for competition other than to submit it for the Ottery Writers anthology or save it for an anthology of my own. I'm now getting a collection of these short stories.

I have another flash fiction short story, this time only 300 words, ready for the Bath Flash Fiction Award to be submitted any day now.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, I will now post the story here. As a note, the details at the end are not accurate. They are close to being correct but far enough away so as not to be recognisable to anyone.

THE Sun shone brightly on Lion-sur-Mer. The late spring sunshine on the Normandy coast starkly contrasted with the dark and dank weather 78 years ago, on the morning of 6th June 1944. Today, on the beach once code-named Sword, a crowd gathered for a service to honour those who had bravely stormed ashore on that momentous morning. Several re-enactment volunteers joined returning heroes and their families. Dressed in the uniforms of the times, they conveyed the scenes and feelings of the battles past.

There is a brilliant blue sky, and it's already a hot day. Thankfully the service didn't last too long in deference to the ageing heroes and the heat. 

The assembled crowd enjoyed a cooling, refreshing drink before boarding an air-conditioned coach for the journey to the cemetery at Ranville. I decided to yomp towards Ranville just as the allied troops had in 1944.

The coach passed me. The boys didn't have the luxury of transport on that fateful day. The purring engine of the passing coach differed vastly from the loud explosions, gunshots and the rattle of tanks rumbling along this road 75 years ago.

In 1944 Brigadier Lord Lovat marched his 1st Special Service Brigade down this road with his Bag Piper to the fore. The bagpipes caused much mirth amongst the passing tankers who waved their support to the lines of troops marching, whose task it was to relieve the paratroopers dropped overnight at Pegasus Bridge.

I was close to the bridge, yomping ahead in the day's rising heat. There I could mingle with the re-enactment volunteers to pay my respects. After a break, I picked up my kit and continued towards the cemetery at Ranville.

 A loud bang had me diving into the roadside ditch to take cover, but I quickly realised it was the jeep belonging to the re-enactors backfiring. The roar of engine noise as a couple of Douglas DC3 Dakotas flew overhead, dropping their parachute passengers off over Pegasus Bridge. Although today was a hot sunlit day, you could almost smell the fear and death that permeated the area on 6th June 1944.

I neared Ranville; the coaches were offloading the families. I was puffing a bit when I finally arrived at the cemetery.

I went straight to the row where the lads we had lost that day laid to rest. A family joined me alongside the resting place of my colleagues.

"Here's Grandpa's grave. Hasn't it gone cold suddenly?" one of the women remarked.

I turned and tried to answer but knew I couldn't. I looked down at the headstone as the woman placed a small wreath.

I realised it was my headstone; it was me who they were remembering. They are my family.

Ford, Frederick Henry

PLY/X204848

No. 48 Commando

Royal Marines

Died Tuesday, 6th June 1944.

I'm in limbo; I've been here every year since 6th June 1944. I'm not at rest. I'm trapped.

It's Christmas Eve!

 It’s Christmas Eve, and in this country, everyone is getting excited and looking forward to family gatherings. After all, Christmas is all about family apart from the religious meanings.

We have been planning for next year already in this house. 2023 is going to be a busy year for us both. February, we're going to see Frankie Boyle in Exeter, followed by the Royal Albert Hall in March for the Mountbatten Festival of Music. Early Spring will be a shake-out of our new camping equipment before a week away in July on the beautiful Roseland Peninsular.

In September and October, we are lucky enough to have tickets for two of England's group matches and another at the Rugby World Cup in France. All arrangements and bookings are in place.

Over the last few days, I have considered where my writing activities to be in 2023.

I already have a piece of Flash Fiction ready for a competition. Entries have to be in by early February. I would also like to target some other short story competitions. The story writing bug has bitten me!

All being well, I have a few 'Novel in a Year" writing workshops to look forward to, throughout 2023 and into 2024. I hope the opportunity to join at least another one will become available as well as that one.

Ottery Writers are going to be publishing a short story anthology. I will aim to get at least one story into that publication.

We have just been up to East Hill here in Honiton for a Christmas Eve walk with

Murphy our little fur baby and now we are tracking Santa on the IPad!

There we are then, everything is prepared for the big day tomorrow. The only thing left to do now is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a big thanks to you all for taking the time read my blog posts this year. The year ahead promises to be exciting.

Writing and Black Friday - What's that all about?

Having started this week's blog as a review of the year, which I quickly shelved, I started again.

 My writing hero William Gallagher had written something similar for his weekly Self Distract blog. William has his channel on YouTube and has his own web and blog pages http://williamgallagher.com/. If you are interested in everything Apple and writing, both YouTube and the web/blog pages are worth a look.

William is an extremely busy writer and has an impressive run of starting work at 0500 each morning for several hundred days. I spent four Monday evenings with William and other writers, writing together over a Zoom Link at the back end of the summer. I wrote several thousand words in those sessions, and I know there were some fantastic word counts from the other writers. I hope we can do it again in 2023.

It has been very pleasing to see that last week's post provoked interest, and as predicted, several other ways to clean brasses came up. Sadly, all the brass work has is now stay-bright, it seems!

These last two weekends, I have been working and having my non-working days (days off) in the week. It is different from my usual working routine; however, I had double booked myself in December.

Black Friday, how has it been for you? For the record, I did take advantage of 20% off on an order of coffee beans.

It has been very pleasing to see that last week's post provoked interest, and as predicted, several other ways to clean brasses came up. Sadly, all the brass work has is now stay-bright, it seems!

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the USA. Thanksgiving is something that we do not celebrate over here, and I suspect that Black Friday started with the advent of online shopping from American websites. I don't see what all the fuss is about it. As usual, it brings out a load of scam alerts. Unfortunately, these scammers prey on the venerable in society. These scams with the state of our economy have tempted more people this year.

To keep you updated on my writing, I have two short stories/flash fiction ready for competitions at the end of the year and into 2023. A couple colleagues at work had a read of them for me and they went down well. One story got the perfect reaction to the ending that I had been working for, which was very pleasing. I intend to ‘crack on with another couple of stories this week and all being well a Christmas Story for this blog over the Christmas holidays.

VERDIGRIS , Drum Major, LOOK THERE VERDIGRIS!

Something unusual this week. But first this...

I have bought myself a couple of reference books for my writing exercises. One of them is a book of 5000 writing prompts. I have already used one for a flash fiction piece. I'm not 100% how long and which competition it will be in just yet. I have a competition for 500-word flash fiction that is closing on 31st December. I want to get a couple of entries written to take advantage of the entry price and because it is New Year's Eve. Not that I will be drinking, though. I'm working that weekend.

Ok, let's get on to the unusual part of this blog. Well, I say unusual. Many of my former and still serving Royal Marine Band Service colleagues will recognise and have experienced 'challenging' outcomes of this word.

Verdigris - A noun meaning the green patina that forms on copper, bronze, and brass. It can also refer to the shade of green ( which is blueish).

The Royal Marines No.1 Ceremonials consist of a tunic and trousers, a White Pith Helmet (Helmet WP), a Cross Strap and Music Pouch and a White Belt. All consist of Brass elements.

Those who haven’t experienced an inspection in Full No.1 Ceremonials will probably not have experienced the wrath of the inspecting officer and Drum Major when verdigris is detected on your brasses. Extra parades…urgh!

There were and most likely still are many different ways to clean said brasses. My preferred routine was to use Brasso first, then, using an old toothbrush, scrub off the Brasso with Goddard's Silver Foam. Any copyrights and trademarks are fully acknowledged. All was finished off by drying with a towel and a quick buff-up with one of the famous yellow cloths ( also used as a spit and polish cloth for boots) from the NAAFI shop.

The benefit I found with cleaning brasses was that if we had multiple gigs in a short time, it was easy enough to buff them back up to standard, even if it had rained. 

I tell you this on the big proviso that no Drum Major is ever informed!

Successes, no failures and getting busy once more

 

This week, a former Royal Marine colleague and fellow Blogger inspired me. I received an email from James Pilates with his latest blog, apologising that he hadn't blogged for nearly three years! He has been a very busy chap during that time, and at least my blog is only three months adrift!

These last three months have been a less productive time for my writing, but the tiny bit I have done has been at least successful. My Flash Fiction story 'Trapped' received Highly Commended in the Ottery Literary Festival, which was very pleasing.

During the festival, I attended a workshop, Introduction to Short Story Writing. Our lead was author Jenny Kane. Jenny passed on her knowledge wonderfully and was a true inspiration to us all. I've joined her mailing list for future online courses. In the meantime, I have been searching for more short story competitions.

Having found a few competitions, I have been fervently writing and editing a few more stories. I started one at the workshop, which has since turned into a rather good story with a twist. Having edited it over the last couple of evenings, I had a colleague at work have a read, and it went down quite well. I will leave it again for a few weeks before a final edit.

Another story that I am working on comes from the opening of my novel. When I first came up with this opening many years ago, I did wonder if it was a short story. I am doubtful at the moment. 

The question being is, it is a story or a scene from a bigger story. I want to get it to work in 300 words. Other than that, I might look at it working it up into a longer story of 1000 to 2000 words.

With all these stories potentially written, It got me thinking about what to do with them. If one were to win a competition, it would appear in a competition anthology; however, I have thought about compiling a collection of my own. It's a thought.

Writing work does come in fits and starts for me, and at the moment, I've again got a few things that will keep me busy for the rest of this month. I will keep updating this blog, and there is another project that I must briefly mention.

You may realise that this blog is on the Microsofts Blogger platform. With the greatest respect, Blogger has been an excellent platform for many years, but now it's time to move on to a newer platform. Blogger is proving to be rather difficult with formatting. I should be able to do much more on a unique platform. I've got my eye on one, so it is up to me to find the time to set it up.

There we are, then, the latest update. I have thought about posting my 'Trapped' short story. I must be careful as I might use it in another competition sometimes, and I would like it to be protected.

I'll blog again in a couple of weeks. I won't let it be three months this time!

Changing Times

With these twenty-six simple words, this small country changed forever and yet stayed the same.

'The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and return to London tomorrow.'

Those simple words imply such meaning. Our long-serving Queen of 70 years has died, and we have a new monarch, King Charles III.

I had been wondering what to write for the blog this week. Now, as I sit at the keyboard on a wet Thursday evening, the subject has chosen itself.

I feel immense sadness, as do Great Britain, The Realms and the Commonwealth. Normality in our world has stopped. For how long, we don't know; however, our nation's monarchy will carry on in the name of our new monarch, King Charles III.

Epitaphs have been showering into the TV studios as the rain has done for most of this sad day. The TV is full of sad news but also favoured memories.

I, like many, have fond memories of Her Majesty. As many of you know, I served twenty-five years in Her Majesties Royal Marines Band Service, and for a short time, I also served on Her Majesties Yacht Britannia. It was the culmination of a long-held dream to be a Musician in the Royal Marines and serve Her Majesty on HMY Britannia. I didn't get off to the most auspicious of starts, succumbing to the choppy waters of the channel, which also involved a black sack of brand new white tunics! I have many lovely memories, formal and personal, some that I have told people and some that only my closest family will have heard. I travelled the world in service of the Queen, and they are times that I will always treasure and hopefully never forget.

This evening, a simple announcement from the Royal Household signified the end of the 'Great Elizabethan' era with the death of Her Majesty and the immediate commencement of a new one in King Charles III. The institution of the monarchy will continue. Some would like to see the back of it, but many more wish it to continue. I have no doubt the transition to the new era will be seamless, and equally, I do not doubt that this new era will be very different.

In the cold light of Friday morning, people seem to be walking around, stunned as to what has happened. At midday, church bells tolled. In Honiton, it was somewhat weird. The church in the town and the church at the top of the hill tolled almost in time with each other. Later, our new King returned to Buckingham Palace, where he and The Queen Consort were greeted with much respect and love. It was wonderful to see him pass through the crowds shaking hands and welcoming kisses from others.

As the weekend continues, technology allows us to witness ceremonies previously never seen by the general public. These will seem strange and archaic pageants. They have, though, been part of our constitutional protocols for centuries. I'm sure witnessing these events will engender much healthy discussion over the coming days.

It has been a big week for this country, a new Prime Minister, a new government, the death of The Queen and the proclamation of a new King. Strange and fascinating times indeed.