Apparently, today is the 75th Anniversary of Hitler and the Nazi party coming to power.
It's hard to believe that an event that happened so long ago can still interest the world today, and yet the crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis have still yet to be eclipsed in their clinical cruellty and state-sanctioned barbarity.

Yes, I hear you say, Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin and the whole host of monsters throughout the ages have their place alongside Hitler.
However it was Hitler, and the Nazi state, that introduced the concept of transporting their victims to different countries to be murdered in camps built especially for the purpose of killing.
It was the Nazi state that built a whole industry around the business of racial extermination. They used human hair to make socks for U-Boot crews, banked the gold teeth extracted from their victims, worked people to death in factories, quarries and camps and all legitimised in their twisted idealology by the dubious heading of racial war.

Genocide is a crime that crops up time and time again throughout our bloody history but the Nationalist Socialists, and all their plagiarist counterparts, took the act of murder to a new level of depravity.
So really it's no wonder that the terrible events that happened between 1933 and 1945 are so enduringly plastered on our collective subconscience.
The Thousand Year Reich didn't quite last that long but the memory and condemnation of its crimes and brutality, I hope, will.

100 pages down, only another 247 to go...
I'm back at work now and was on nights last night. It was ok... what am I saying, it was crap!!!
Whatever, work is a means to an end, right?
It just seems the means have taken over my end, make of that what you will...
You go to work to have money to have a nice life but the shift system I work has taken over any nice life I might have. Ah well, it pays the bills, keeps my wife in Ebay and my kids in... whatever you keep kids in.

The new synopsis is coming on. I don't know why I didn't try and do this before.
Well, I do but I don't care to discuss my chronic lack of imagination and flare, especially not on a blog that a prospective publisher might read... DOH !!!

Have a good one.

Bought a new keyboard today. Nothing swanky mind, just a 12.99€ board and a 5.99€ mouse.
That'll do for me.
Lidl took that old piece of plop straight back, no mucking about. Aldi give you fifty questions when you take something back to them but Lidl gave me my dosh without even warming up the cashier's bottom.
"That the receipt, right, here you go. All the best sir and next time let me offer you my wife for a dirty weekend in Brighton by way of an apology..." Bloody nice chap, I can tell you.
So it's good news there then.

Had a look at my synopsis as well today.
Not the one page, every syllable tested for content and weighed for space synopsis. I looked at the older, longer version.
I'm taking a new tack with it this time around. I've decided to use it to sell the story as well.
What the hell, eh? It can't damage the package that much can it?
Can it?
No, I don't think so either.
So instead of having two pages of lifeless mono-splurge I'll have a three page jaunt around the wild last days of the Third Reich, with vampires and Templars to boot, HURRAH !!!
Oh dear, time for medicine...

Reg :-)

Still there?
I'm actually a little ill at the moment.
Some virus is sweeping through Germany like a whirling dervish and I, not being one to miss on anything for free, went out and got me some.
The first couple of days were hell but I'm a bit better now. I've got to go back on nightshift on Thursday so I'm laying low for a while.

My new, all singing, all dancing, shoecleaning, tea making keyboard was packed away yesterday. It would start off well but gradually lose coherence until, after about ten minutes of typing, I'd end up with a screen that looked like the residue of a bowl of alphabet soup.
Most annoying, I can assure you.

Ah well, whatever, I'll just take it back tomorrow and cause a scene until I get my money back.
They can't deny an ill man his money back can they?

Yes Reg, they can; it's called the free market. Shopkeepers LIKE denying sick people their just dues.
Oh well....


Reg :-/

Nothing went wrong, everything went swimmingly.
We had a great night spoilt only by a hangover from hell the next day.
However, the last residue of my alcoholic programme is now burnt out of my system and I'm hot to trot.

Bring on the manuscript and let's get busy !!!!
I'm back on track, I feel it, so I'll get back to you when I've finished the task in hand.

So, it's the weekend and I'm off for a Birthday drink with some friends.
A couple of chaps are coming down from Paderborn. We'll do some rehearsing, (we're covering some Tenacious D songs at a mate's wedding) and then it's off down town to meet up with some peeps.
I love it when it's my birthday.

Right, gotta clean the house out for their arrival.
The kids are all packed away with friends, (respectable friends, not drinking friends. There is a difference.) and my woman is in a good mood; what could possibly go wrong?
(famous last words...)

Tara, catch yer when I'm over the hangover.
Reg :-)

Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday blah blah Fishcakes.
Happy Birthday to me.
41 today and I don't look a day over 12... ok whatever.
Well, I'm not up to much today. Going out for a meal with my wife and kids and then early to bed; I'm on earlies tomorrow, see?

Last night I had a story read out on BFBS1, the British Forces radio station. It was more of an elongated joke actually but my Mam liked it. In fact she liked it so much she phoned me up straight after it had finished to tell me laughingly how sad I am. I'm not sure if that was a compliment or not. Ah well, at least she got the joke.


Am I going to start on the manuscript today?
No.
Why not?
Because it's my Birthday, because I want to spend time with my wife and kids, because I want to watch my new X Files dvd that was given to me for my special day, because because because... Back off, ok?
I'l start it tomorrow, I promise.
In fact I have already started it so technically I'm not the lazy loser you're insinuating that I am. I just haven't continued with it, that's all.

Oh look, the postman. I wonder if he's got anything for me?

Tara
Reg :-)

ps. Happy Birthday tooooooo meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

You know what?
I had the whole day to myself yesterday and what did I do?
Sleep and read my book.

I'm not happy with myself about that because it really is a step in the wrong direction.
I wonder if I colonically ejected all my fire and passion for writing over the New Year period?
It certainly feels like it.

However, to be honest, the rejection did take the wind out of my sails a tad, (even though I was secretly expecting it.).
Perhaps it really is just not good enough?

Humph.

Reg.

Happy New Year.
My New Year wasn't too happy I'm afraid. I was ill with a case of the trots that morphed me into the human water cannon and on top of that I had early shift on the 31st and the 1st.
Bah.
I hope 2008 goes better than how it started or else I'll be right in the doodoo, literally.

I'm afraid to say that my sickness, (and the obligatory, accompanying selfpity) robbed me of any creative get up and go and I managed absolutely squat since my last entry. Call me lazy, call me a sinner; but damn it I was poorly and even superhuman Welshmen have their weak moments.
Anyway, I promise to stop dallying around and get down to it.
OK?
Right, get off my back then.

Reg