• When I first went on Skype, I used to marvel that there were half a million or so people online at anyone time. Then I kind of stopped using it because everyone else that I convinced should try it out, didn’t use it either. Most of them didn’t have a microphone, when it came down to it. Some didn’t have speakers!

    I knew a tipping pint had been reached, when my 83 year old father in law emailed me to check he’d installed Skype properly. He had and we had a chat.

    I then went and set my wife’s machine up with Skype and plugged in my son’s old toy Lego camera for a webcam. She thought I was being stupid. Why would she want video conferencing?

    I then called up my father in law and they had a chat. She was amazed and told her old friend Sue who is already on Skype. Yesterday they were chatting away quite happily, having forgotten that that she ever pooh-poohed the idea. I now have Skype on so I can call her up from my studio at the bottom of the garden. Yes, we use Skype as an intercom!

    I now see that 14 million people are online. That’s a lot! With built in webcams and microphones, more and more people have the necessary to begin Skyping. In fact I can now Skype from my iPhone. I never thought Apple would allow that. Maybe my wife and father in law’s acceptance of the concept and the well-developed ease of the software have come together and we have reached the tipping point for Skype. How fast will those numbers rise in the coming year? Should I have shares in Skype?

  • A noise woke me in the night. I thought it was one of our cats, who frequently scratches the airing cupboard door, in the hope that someone will let him in. Fuzzy-headed, I crept out of bed too sort him out. But he was not there. In fact the house was totally silent. Had I imagined it?

    I waited – maybe it was an intruder? Maybe they were waiting for me to make the first move?

    My head began to clear. In the gloom I saw that my son’s bedroom door was closed. Quietly, I opened it and the said cat danced out on the landing as if to say, ‘You took your time!”

    Did I get back to sleep? Not immediately, but that fuzzy dozing state is quite a good time to review creative ideas. I’m planning my new series, called Axel Storm, at the moment. I’m trying to find the way in. A series really needs to tell you the back story, make you familiar with the set up and get going with the story in as short a time as possible. So getting that comfortable, simple introductory sequence is very important. Once that is right the rest follows.

    Well, and I don’t know where the idea came from as I nodded off to sleep again, the image of my hero stuffed inside a huge advertising sausage on top of a hot dog van came to mind. This morning it seems like a really good idea and I’m going to run with it.

    Lying awake at night meant that I woke up an hour later, but hey, when you’ve been working through the night, it’s okay. And anyway, the only reason I ever started this job was so that I could get up when ever I liked in the morning. I wonder whatever happened to all those lovely, lazy lie-ins?

  • lockyerI came across the tomb of Lionel Lockyer in Southwark Cathedral last weekend.

    He invented a cure-all pill, which, it appears was basically antimony. I’m indebted to an article, by Dr David Haycroft, for letting me know that the pills were called Pilula, Radiis solis extracta — pills extracted from the rays of the Sun! Lokyer printed 200,000 pamphlets proclaiming the wonders of his PILLS, and made himself a tidy fortune. In 1665 William Johnson, chemist to the College of Physicians, took Lockyer to task, pointing out the pills were a 64 times markup on the basic ingredients.

    Death did not slow him down. Wanting to carry on the family business, his memorial reads as an adverting billboard. I’m sure his children were pleased that the old boy was thinking of them as they carried on the very lucrative Family business. Living proof of the power of advertising – even in the afterlife.

    Anyway, here is the verse:

    Here Lockyer lies interred enough; his name
    Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:
    A Name soe Great soe Generally may scorne
    Inscriptions which doe vulgar tombs adorne:
    A diminutioon tis to write in verse
    His eulogies, which most men’s mouths rehearse.
    His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known,
    That envy can’t confine them under stone.
    But they’ll survive his dust and not expire
    Till all things else at th’universal fire.
    This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
    To future times without an Epitaph: