• Dump it on the sofa
    650 points of snow
    Cleared Drive
    Make a simple snow shovel

    How can I lose two 18″ rulers in my studio? All I could find was my old typographer’s ruler, which I haven’t used for years. I can tell you that this morning, having cleared a path to the studio from last nights download of snow, the snow is 650 point deep in the garden.

    It was 650 points deep on the drive too. Our drive is quite steep, so it needs clearing quickly before the snow gets wet and too heavy or to trodden and compacted to clear.

    This year I was prepared. I’d made up a snow shovel with thin ply and a stick. I will redesign this. It needs a longer handle to get more leverage on wet, heavy snow.

    I discovered the best way was to work in chevrons across the drive. There is hardly anywhere left to put the snow! In snowy countries, they put snow tyres on for the winter. Here we poison the place with salt and grit so that the drains will block up for summer flooding.

    Cars spray snow all over the pavements, so there is nowhere for pedestrians and no where left to shovel the snow. In the grand tradition of a quick tidy up, (i.e. bunging everything on the sofa) I found the garden bench a very useful place to dump some of it!

  • A tenet is a basic principle of belief.

    It is a tenet of mine that that David Tennant was the worst Dr Who ever.

    He will be exter-r-r-r-r-minated!!!!!

    Learn a new word every day.
    Repeat it and remind yourself what it means at least three times in a day.
    Try to use the word in conversation or writing today.
    Get a dictionary and look words up.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmc5xiff9_M

    Here’s something to scare the pants off my author friends! I was wondering last night about the Nuss (see previous word of the day – my daughter says it should be nEss) of being an author.
    How much of the desire to be an author is bound up in the physical property of a book? If books were replaced by downloads, intangible bits of data that you can’t find on a shelf in a library or bookshop, would so many people spend so much time and effort getting their first story published?

    I think there is a difference between authors and writers. Writers can’t help themselves. Authors are people who have their names on books.

    The author status is not the same in film or tv or computer games or the state as it is in the physical ness of being a proper book author.

    The same goes for artwork. However beautiful a digital image it’s status will never compare with a real thing that you can hold or walk around. Or am I just of an older generation holding on to the old ways, while the new generation grasp new images and means of delivery without the burden of history?

    If so, why, when we see something amazing on the internet, do we immediately click through to easyjet and book a flight to see the real thing?