Back to work

This being back in full time work lark is a bit intrusive. Early starts, crowded commutes, missing the school drop off and pick up, drinking curtailed, less time to write breathless prose like this.

But it’s structure – which is important, so I’m told. And they’ll pay me. Sometime soon. And if it ever feels a little like this…

At least it’ll never anywhere near as bad as this…

First, I wrap my arm in a skin for protection

Then I crawl in the pit.

Let’s light the place up a bit.

There she is

Those are her eggs.

I let her take my protected arm, sort of like noodling for fish.

Then my buddy pulls me out with snake attached.

Ain’t she a beaut?

Whoa,  that’s a biggie.

(Thanks to Colt Monday and yougottobekidding, from where I nicked these – though goodness knows the original source.)

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When does welcome really mean goodbye?

Feline loving fool - What not to name your cat.

When does welcome mean goodbye? When it’s the title of the seminar designed to ease you out of your job. Nineteen of us were in attendance at the Welcome Seminar, each clutching our “welcome pack”. We felt like extras out of Up In The Air. Which is where our futures are at present.

To be fair, the session was useful, and the women running it friendly and professional. And one was from Carlingford. What more could you ask for? Perhaps I should check out the film to see how George Clooney would have handled us.

So – a few more weeks and welcomes to the world outside, and that’ll be that. I’d better get a move on finishing writing this book, Blackwatertown. (Opening lines here.) The good news is, it’s nearly complete. I was hoping to be done by the end of this month, but realistically it’ll be February now.

Which means that, book written, current employment behind me, I’ll be available for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, freelancing, wild book launch parties and promotional tours. Happy days.

But enough about me. In other news: Is it significant that the fool in the newspaper cutting above is a cat owner? Would a dog owner be as stupid? Or worse?

Kolmanskop, Namibia. An abandoned city.

And this post caught my eye – a set of eerie Abandoned Cities from Daily Cognition. No. 3 on the list is Kolmanskop, a small town a few miles inland from the port of Lüderitz in Namibia. According to Daily Cog’: “Windswept sand has made its way into nearly every building in the town, which was once a diamond mining town and abandoned in 1956 as diamond demand declined and richer sources of diamonds were discovered in other areas. Its only residents are now birds, hyenas and other animals.”

Next time: The book is not even published, but already I’m receiving warnings that it could annoy people. The type of readers who express their annoyance in a more physically direct way than writing a bad review. Ain’t life rosy.