So that's it then for another year.
I can't tell a lie, I had a great Christmas.
Lots of nice nosh and good pop and pressies. The kids were well behaved and happy with their stash from Santa's sack so it's a quick pat on the back and then let's get ready for the New Year.

I'm actually working on New Year's eve and the first of January, which doesn't make for a wild Hogmanay, I know. However, I'm on lates so I'll knock off on the 31st at about ten and be able to see the new year in with the family and neighbours, and then I don't start again until about half past one the next day.
So it's extra lolly for working when the whole world is quaffing and I'll still be able to celebrate the annus nuevo.
Good, eh?

Right, I'll hopefully finish the Hot Gates in the next couple of days, which is around 8000 words now. I might pad it out and send it off as a novella to Roastbooks. Check them out at :

http://www.roastbooks.co.uk/index.php?roast=books

They specialise in novellas and the like. Who knows, they might like it?
Stranger things have happened.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Not sure what that means but it always looks good to quote Shakes... Unless the passage doesn't fit the rest of the text. Then it looks silly.
I'm rambling now, aren't I?

Reg :-)
PS. I do know what it means so don't bother trying to explain it, ok?
Bye.

It's about a quarter to seven on Christmas morning.
I was on nights last night and have now knocked off for four whole luxuriously lazy days.
So Merry Christmas dear people.

Oh, BTW, I took my laptop in last night and wrote loads. I'm nearly at the end of The Hot Gates, no really, I am.
Great innit?
Well I think so, lol.
Tara, merry Chrimbo.

Reg :-)

A whole week and nothing down.
Shameful.
Well I'm afraid I have nothing to report, as sluggish and lackadaisical as that may sound.
I had a go at The Hot Gates but I was tired after early shift and fatigue and literal creativity have never been great friends. So after whipping down a quick page of inane tripe I scrubbed it and went for a kip.

Anyway, to anybody who reads this Blog, I would like to wish them a very Merry Christmas. Drink loads, eat loads and spoil yer kids loads, without having a bad conscience about it. It'll be the great Chrimbo's of life that help portray their childhood when they look back; and nobody wants to be accused of being an Ebenezer Scrooge by their offspring's psychiatrist …

Have a good one and I'll see you between the 25th and New Year, with a hangover, two angry kids and a belly that slightly resembles a wrongly placed Quasimodo's hunch.

Reg :-)

So, it's Wednesday and here starteth the weekend, well until Friday anyway,
Friday is early shift and that starts the whole block off again until Chrimbo.
Nightshift on the 24th and then four days off, hurrah and huzzah!

There's nothing going on at the steelworks, and consequently there's nothing for us to do. So, theoretically, I could take my laptop to work with me and finish off "The Hot Gates".
I'll try the waters on Friday, see what Peter, the shift supervisor say's, and then I just might do it.
What the hell, you only live once, right kids?
Right Reg.

Right, anyway, I'm off to dig a hole in the garden now. MP3 player on, heavy boots, spade and away we go.
It's definitely a manly pastime, digging holes that is. You never see a lady, shovel in hand, sweating like a malarial-fevered mountain gorilla, mining a chasm that could swallow the number eleven bus from Llandulas to Llandudno. Well not in my neighbourhood you don't.
So I'm off out now to get all testosteroned up and dirty.
Tara
Reg :-)

I managed to get diddly squat done on Ephialtes and his secret passage, (ooer!).
There was simply too much action at Casa Jones this weekend.
My daughter hurt her foot, I picked up the Chrimbo Triffid, late shift at the Steelworks, shopping with the woman, the tension of Liverpool only drawing at home to Hull and the general hubbub, (great word) of family life at the weekend.

Well there's the excuses, take yer pick.

What's really a bummer is that we might have to go on short time at work.
Less hours, less money, less happiness, more misery, pollution, famine, pestilence and then finally apocalypse.
Not good.

If I don't sell the book I might lose the house... or even worse, my wife might have to go to work full time and I'll be left with the kids all day... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH !!!
Stoopid banks, messing up my free time. I didn't have kids to be a father! (When in doubt, get the Homerisms out say I.)

Strangley though, despite the Damoclean sword of short time and extended babysitting swaying in the wind above my head, I'm in a very good mood.

I know, it's only ten to one, shall we write something?

Yes, let's.
Tata children.
Reg :-)
PS. No, I'm not drunk. However, I do believe I'm mutating into one of those manic depressive types. I'll be crying into my keyboards in ten minutes, you wait.