Feeling A Little French

For reasons unbeknown to me I’ve been feeling somewhat French lately. This isn’t a bad thing of course, I’ve wanted to re-learn the French I forgot since school, so this phase of contintentalism is steering me in that general direction.

Back at school I studied French and German but dropped French as I was more interested in pursuing a career in the car industry, and when it comes to cars no one does it better than the Brits, Germans and Italians - I’ve wanted to learn Italian as well but that can wait - so German was the logical choice.

For some reason, I’ve always liked the French language. I enjoyed learning it at school and I still know a tiny bit here and there but I’ve wanted to become almost fluent in both French and German (strangely, I know about the same in both languages).

Last night, while watching the tennis with Dan from Lusso, I found myself being sympathetic and sporting towards Gasquet and increasingly cross with the Wimbledon crowd. I still wanted Murray to win but was rooting for Gasquet too. The banter we had while watching was as exciting as the match itself, only much funnier!

To top it all off I’ve been listening to Superbus since a friend of mine - who lives in France - sent me a video of them on YouTube. As it happens, I’m currently listening to their album. I have no idea what she’s singing about 98% of the time but enjoy it nonetheless.

I think I need to start taking French lessons…

My Concerns About Macs

You may remember I posted this entry exactly one month ago today about my PC breaking. It was subsequently fixed and worked for almost a month until Friday, when it broke…again. I thought it was the power supply as the computer just turned off and refused to turn back on again but those motherboards are crafty and had made me believe it was the PSU.

I took it down to my tech guy (who is a fantastic chap) to whom I’ve very loyal and he’s giving me a call back today to sort out prices for what I want to do.

Whilst I dislike my PC breaking in the first place, I do know that I have a chap I can go to who will fix it quickly and won’t charge me the earth for doing so. It’s reassuring.

However, I have my Mac Mini as a spare for when my PC does give up the ghost and it also means I can split work and ‘play’. That being said, having two screens is giving me an RSI in my neck I think, constantly switching between them. Ideally I would like to combine my computers and run just the one.

I would probably donate my PC to my mother and get myself an iMac which I can use as the PC replacement. I’d go for the 3-year protection plan because technology seems to dislike working for me but the thing I’m worried about is what happens after 3 years if/when the iMac goes wrong? My tech guy won’t touch Apples, he just works on PCs.

I don’t know whether I’ll be able to afford to replace it in its entirity (if I can it’s not an issue) but I’ve had my PC for about 10-15 years. It’s been upgraded completely (in stages) but I’ve had it for that long.

Am I worrying justifiably or does anyone have any suggestions which will put my mind at ease and sway me more to the iMac?

Oh I See…

Well, this is quite novel I must admit. It has been some time since I woke to see the morning side of 12pm. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it just yet because I think the Nytols are still wearing off but all things considered, I should get to see more sunshine today - never a bad thing. Although, saying that, it’s cloudy. Bah!

I’ve been meaning to blog on many occasions since my last update but haven’t got around to it or have found/had something else to do. I’ve been working on three projects lately and trying to juggle them at the same time - which has been fine - but at the moment I am in zero gravity; that is to say I’ve thrown all the balls up and they’ve stayed…up. I’m hoping gravity is kind and brings them down one at a time…although, we all know from the comedic version (I still find it a little too good to be true) of Newton and the apple that they’ll probably all come down at once. Had he known the apple was going to fall, I’m sure he’d have chosen/hoped for his lap to be the receiving party, rather than his bonce!

Whilst I’ve been AFB (Away From Blogging - oh the things I do with acronyms!) Top Gear has returned. How fab! The first episode of the new series went well I thought. It was funny, informative and good entertainment. I’m not entirely sure about the whole stuntman thing though. I didn’t find it particularly funny and it came across as being a bit of a ‘time filler’. Andy Wilman (Top Gear’s producer) says we should give him a chance as he does get funnier…we’ll see, but Andy, you may need to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Episode two tonight, which I’m looking forward to. Namely because the RS6 and CLK Black films look brilliant but also because I’ve been thinking about trying to cast Rupert Penry-Jones in my film when it comes to fruition and I’d like to see what he’s like. I did have a couple of ideas for ‘A Star In A Reasonably Priced Car’ but I can’t remember them. I know one was Kate Beckinsale (of course) and the other was…umm…nope, can’t remember. It was a good one though!

Talking of my film, I’ve been writing little bits to my novel occasionally and have been finding it tricky to avoid humour. I want the novel/film to be slightly darker than the likes of Bond etc. Obviously, it won’t be completely devoid of humour as that would be a shame but it won’t be ’silly’ humour. The section I’m writing at the moment is a dialogue and the situation is inherantly funny. However, it’s one of those things where it can be deadly serious but funny at the same time, depending on how you read it. Still, it’s a first draft, I can refine it later.

As it’s a sunday, I think I’ll take advantage of the patchy sunshine and go and sit out in the garden on my hammock.

Actually…do you sit (or lay, even) IN or ON a hammock?

Image Copyright Top Gear/BBC

Lord Of Destruction

It seems lately everything is breaking. My Land Rover has been off the road since before Christmas, mainly because I don’t have the funds to have it fixed at the moment. Last night, the shower broke and came away from the wall in my hand - it wasn’t me, honest! My phone is slowly dying and taking ages to load anything up; this resulted in me sending a text message to Soraya earlier which read, in part, “Busty at work?”

To top it all off, my PC died last night. Not in a big way I’m hoping but there was no keyboard detected. This is something friends and I have joked about on numerous occasions, the old idiotic PC messages you get…

“Keyboard error or keyboard not present.

Press F1 for help or DEL for SETUP”

What is the point in pressing either of those keys on the keyboard when you, the computer, cannot find the keyboard?

So the PC is currently at my tech guy who is hopefully going to fix it. It turns out the casing for the CPU is split a bit so may need a new one of those. We’ll see.

The last of the broken things I’ve encountered is Twitter, which has been a bit up and down lately. Thankfully, I’m happy to report this isn’t my fault. In fact, I don’t think any of the broken things are my fault…just coincidental.

The editing job I’m currently working on has inspired me to write more on my novel, which is coming along very nicely actually. I’m currently working on getting down the main content for each of the major plot points. I think I’ll then start on working out how to link everything together.

I’m still contemplating which images to have framed and put up on my wall; whether there should be a theme or not and which photo of Kate Beckinsale I should have up there. Some people have mentioned that I should perhaps change my blogging yardstick female, namely the lovely Kate, to someone else. Whilst I’m quite partial to the likes of Katherine Jenkins and Myleene Klass, I can’t keep chopping my yardstick around because then a yard won’t be a yard, will it? Some people noticed the Kate Beckinsale reference a lot and concluded that I was obsessed with her. This is not true; you can find the explanation for the regular mentions of Kate Beckinsale in my blog entry entitled Crumble: GBY Style.

Chapter One/Prologue

There are a few valid reasons for my lack of updates on here. Chief among which is the editing job I am doing at the moment on a 20,000 word book, another is the fact I have properly started to write my novel/film.

I say novel/film…it will start life as a novel but I see everything in my head as a film, so if there is sufficient interest I will start work on chopping it up into a screenplay.

The ‘project’ has been in the planning stages for about a year, where I refined details, worked on plot points and characters etc. but it never really went anywhere. I then had a completely random idea which I loved and changed what the book was about. It was still roughly the same, with the same main character, but with a slightly different twist to the point of the book. I’ve also been wondering how to write Kate Beckinsale into the film but with a character for her in the book. It’s harder than I thought.

Work then began on refining this, new concept. I had all these ideas in my head for parts of the content but I had no way of linking them all together. At that stage it was a lot of random ideas jotted in word documents and scrawled on notepads.

But the other day it came to me; the epiphany of my project, and I knew exactly how to tie these events together. I have subsequently written about 13 pages - roughly, it’s just for content at the moment - but I’m rather pleased with how it’s coming on and have had good feedback from those who have read it thus far.

So I apologise for the lack of updates, I am rather engrossed in literature at the moment. It’ll all be worth it…

…I hope.