Life can be deliberately perverse sometimes. I used to use the local library a lot when I was much, much younger. Much much much much. Then I lived in Cambridge for a bit with access to one of the most comprehensive libraries in the world and never used it at all. After that, using the local library came in fits and starts for a bit and then for close to a decade I’ve hardly used it at all. Marriage, children, writing books and working a full time job will do horrendous things to a man’s precious reading time. Still, as a research tool, you can’t beat libraries. Want a book about Georgian history? Why not have six or seven and see which one gives you what you want. I’ve never once come away empty-handed, no matter what I’ve gone looking for.

And then someone flicksed a switch in number one son and out of nowhere he starts reading a whole book every few days. At his current rate of progress, he will have devoured all of Cressida Cowell in the space of a month and he’s going to go through about a hundred books over the course of the year – now, I realise there are some of you bloggers out there who will scoff at a mere hundred books, but dudes, without a library that’s a lot of trips of Waterstones and quite a lot of money. Not everyone can afford that, no matter how much they want to. Yes, there are second hand shops and charity shops and Bookstart (no, wait, maybe not for much longer), but libraries are for everyone and libraries are for free. Perhaps some children will never discover the joy of books because they simply don’t want to, because that’s not the way they’ve been raised, for whatever reason. No amount of saving libraries will change that, but I’m watching number one son wade through a new book every few days, I’m seeing how much he gets out of it, I’m seeing number two son’s interest in reading rocket as well (sibling rivalry – one of the world’s greatest motivators). Reading is surely the cornerstone of an open mind and probably many other things, and for some people, libraries are probably the only way to feed a habit like the one I’m seeing here.

Cuts to libraries seem inevitable, and no amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth is likely to change that – cuts to almost everything seem inevitable. Campaign and protest if you want – other people will give you better guidance than I will on how best to go about that (try the Bookseller’s campaign). But please, if you can, do something more direct. Find out how the library you use is likely to be affected and then see if there’s anything you can do to help. Facilities that are closed are far less likely to be recovered than those that are forced to run a reduced service. You’re all book-literate, mostly IT-literate, so we have the abilities needed to pitch in and keep at least a few things running. I’d like to hear your stories – where can we share our successes (if we have any)?

I’m looking for ideas and I’m looking for a way to share them. When I get anywhere I’ll let you know. In the mean time, how many authors out there would like their PLR income re-directed towards keeping libraries open for a while?

A few years ago, I had an idea for a story. The hero of this particular story was (will be?) a boy of about ten or eleven.

Stuff happened. A Memory of Flames, for example, and the story never got written. Around the middle of last year, though, it started to make its way back into my mind. I didn’t have enough time to write the story as I’d originally seen it, but maybe I could write something much shorter. Maybe I could write a version for children. It would have been much shorter and without the main theme, but it would have been something I could have written for number one sithling and that would be cool, right? A story written for you by your dad.

I wrote about a quarter of this in November. It still seemed like a good idea. December was the dread month of dealines. This month I’d planned to finish, but now that we’re here, I’m not going to. It’s not that anything about the story has changed, but over the course of one month, number one sithling’s reading skills have changed so much that the story I started writing in November has become too simple. And when it comes down to it, the simplified story has had its heart taken out in order to be that simple and it just doesn’t interest me that much. Maybe later this year I’ll write the full version.

There’s a lesson here. Write what you want to write. Don’t go writing for a specific and fickle audience. They might not be who you thought they were by the time you finish.

A while back, a good fifty years after it started being obvious to most people, the UK Government came to the conclusion that maybe money wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life and declared its intention to start measuring how happy the people it was supposed to be representing actually are as well[1]. The significance of this remains to be seen. Is this the start of the inexorable decline of capitalism and the consequent rise  of the Dalai Lama to absolute authority? Should committed socialists around the world be singing the praises of the Cleggeron (you know you want to, really)? As far as I can tell, though, most of what followed had little to do with ideology and a lot to do with head-scratching and statistics. Along the lines of ‘yes, but how? How the hell do you measure happiness?’

Well, Mr & Mr Cleggeron, I have taken the opportunity of the Christmas break to conduct some field research into the subject. I have conducted an intensive study of a small number of  individuals (or a number of small individuals), and I would like, now, to present my findings. I would like to point out, that this was pro bono work at no expense to the UK taxpayer and has been carried out for its own scientific merit. In particular, great care and attention have been given to the scoring system to provide an accurately representative  final Happiness Quotient (HQ). The scheme is simple: Answer each question in turn. For each question to which the answer is yes, adjust your HQ by the stated amount. Begin at zero (content).

Basic Needs

• Are you hungry or thirsty? (-2)
• If so, did you get given food or drink? (+2)
• Was it cake or ice-cream? (+10)
• Are you too cold? (-2)
• Is that because it’s so three degrees above absolute zero outside but despite this you still insist on wearing shorts out there no matter desperately those around you suggest that you should wear a jumper to keep warm? (+20)

Health

• Are you engaged in a vigorous physical activity of your own choosing? (+5)
• Does it involve furniture abuse? (+2)
• Have you just fallen off the sofa and banged your head? (-5)
• Has someone stopped by to point out that it was entirely your own fault? (-60)

Social Circumstances

• Are you playing with someone? (+10)
• No, not the Xbox/Playstation/iPhone/Internet, are you playing with an actual real person? (+5)
• Does it involve a moderate level of physical violence? (+10)
• Are you winning? (+10)
• Are they winning? (-40)
• If you’re playing Munchkin, are you being allowed to use your +10 Sword of Longness that you drew yourself in crayon and then slipped into your hand when no one was looking? (+500)
• If you’re playing Dread Pirate, is someone else the Dread Pirate? (-1000)

Materialism

• Have you had a present today? (+5)
• Has someone you know had a present today? (-20)
• Was your present better than theirs? (+20)
• If so, have you made absolutely sure they know this? (+10)
• Was their present better than yours? (-200)
• If so, were they a sibling? (-1000000000000000000000000000)

In summary: the secret of a happy five-year-old turns out to be plenty of love and social play, occasional sugary treats, a +10 Sword of Longness and a systematic regime of carefully engineered ignorance.

The secret of a happy adult, from casual observation, is often much the same.

[1] Roughly speaking. What they actually said used much longer words and tried to sound like it was some great new idea thing.

7am. Snow. Global warming is a lie.

8am. Snow. Wishing I’m not going to work today.

10am. Snow. Apparently I’m NOT going to work today.

11am. Snow. Sticking needles into Al Gore dolls and wishing I hadn’t invested in UK Tropical Orchards Ltd.

12am. Snow. Realising that, tomorrow, we’ll be *prepared* for snow. Which means the local school will be closed, even though the roads have been cleared.

1pm. Snow stops. So that means everything will melt and freze again and be ice. Yay.

2pm. Realise that ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change’ for a reason. Stop sticking needles into Al Gore dolls.

3pm. Snow now making up for lost time. Blizzard. Just in time for walk to school. Yay.

4pm. Snow. Stagger home from massive snowball fight. Playground full of children and a good few parents too. Freezing. Sodden. Happy.

Yay for snow.

I shall be wearing a red one on Thursday. I wrote a long post into the whys and the wherefores, and then I read it and realised it was, by and large, bollocks. Really, it comes down to a pretty simple thing. Killing other people sucks. There’s no such thing as a good reason for setting out to do it. To anyone. There might be understandable reasons or rational reasons but there aren’t any good ones. None.

Normal service will be resumed next week. This may well involve a rant at my editor

End.

Berren: ‘Ere, look. No one’s using this site right now. We could squat here for a bit.

Syannis: Oh, for pity’s sake. Can’t we just go home?

Berren: But there’s snuffers!

Syannis: Right. So I kill them. Sorted.

Berren: But I like doing sneaky stuff.

Syannis: Get that hood off. You look like an idiot.

Berren: Everyone else is wearing hoods these days. It’s a fashion statement.

Syannis: No it’s not. It’s ooo-ooo, look at me, I’m all dark and sinister. I have, like issues and stuff.

Berren: You mean like you.

Syannis: Stupid boy. I don’t have issues. I have a deep simmering rage that burns for revenge on those who stole my kingdom and butchered my family. That’s not issues. Issues is having a big sister who humiliates you with cutting sarcasm. Or parents who’ll only buy you a cheap second-hand car when you’re old enough to drive instead of a brand-new 4×4 like all the rich kids have. I don’t have issues – you’re the one with issues.

Berren: Me?

Syannis: You’re the one who wants to skulk about wearing a cloak and a hood all the time, loudly proclaiming to the world how sinister and dangerous you think you are, even though you’re not.

Berren: And you won’t let me!

Syannis. Exactly. That’s what I mean. You have issues.

Berren: You kill people for a living. That’s not having issues?

Syannis: No. That’s a job.

Berren: Er… Threehands? You remember Threehands?

Syannis: (pausing) That might have been a little over the top.

Berren (smugly): See. Issues.

Syannis: Look, just because I’m a bottomless lake of acid anger and resentment with a dark undertow of bitter vengeance, that’s different. And even if it isn’t, just because I’m a bit crotchety…

Berren (spluttering): A bit crotchety?

Syannis: … doesn’t mean I want everyone to know about it. You hood-and-cloak youngsters, it’s a fashion statement, that’s all it is. OOOooh… I don’t care about social values and conformity and fitting in and tedious crap like that, no, I have to be different and I have to make sure the world knows that I’m different and scary and filled with troubles. Ooooh, I’m so dangerous.

Berren (under his breath): Goes down well with the ladies though.

Syannis: What?

Berren: A bit of danger. A bit of edginess. Has an allure, doesn’t it? And attraction, eh? (under his breath again) not that you’d know about any of that.

Syannis: You mean, you set yourself up as a loose cannon who’s on the edge, who might turn into a psycho nut-job at any moment, who’s driven by dark desires he can’t entirely control, who’s probably an obsessive borderline stalker, just might turn out to be a rapist or an axe-murderer but more likely will end up dead in a ditch with a knife in him like the sad loser he actually is under all that facade, and women like that?

Berren: (points silently to the urban fantasy and paranormal romance section)

Syannis: Oh for pity’s sake… This site sucks. I don’t know why we even came here. I’m going home.

Berren: Don’t forget your hood!

Syannis (leaving): Boy!

Berren (running after him): I’m just saying you might get laid more…

This week’s post isn’t about books. It’s not about the state of the world. Today I need to talk about something much more personal, more intimate. I need to talk about the break-up of a relationship that’s been with me for a very long time, for a decade and then some. A relationship that was once filled with love, but which, if I am honest, has become tired and drab and has lived off  its memories for years. Something I need to get out of my system.

So.

Dear Ben and Jerry

We’ve been together such a long time. that it’s hard to believe there was a time before we met. I remember it, though. I was a single guy who liked to sit down on an evening from time to time and watch some TV, or maybe a movie with a little company. I wasn’t picky about that. A bag of cheesy nachos one week, maybe some salted cashew nuts the next, or maybe a small trifle. I guess I wasn’t the sort for a long-term commitment, or at least that’s what I thought. I played the field. And then I met you. I’ll never forget the flavour your wore for our first evening together. ‘Chocolate Fudge Brownie’, I think it was, but that was mere foreplay. With ‘Pulp Addiction’, you seduced me deep into your creamy folds. With ‘From Russia With Buzz’, we should have been together forever.

But then you changed. For a while, I thought you’d left me, but then you came back, dazzling and renewed. With ‘Dublin Mudslide’, and my tongue yearned for nothing else. I thought we were the perfect couple. All those evenings we sat together on the sofa. And yes, there were children, and they took their toll, but they would have loved you too, in time. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure they would have loved you too. Let’s face it, they’re not exactly picky.

You haven’t had those flavours for me for a long time now. Sure, you came up with some others. ‘One Sweet Whirled’, ‘Bohemian Raspberry’, but they weren’t the same. It hasn’t been the same for a long time. Who are we kidding? We’ve moved apart, so far apart that you’re not even the first thing I look for in the freezer aisle any more.

You don’t excite me any more. Maybe it’s me that’s changed, but I’m fairly sure it’s you. The list of ingredients pretty much gives you away there. I don’t suppose you even care now, but it’s over between us. I have to move on. I have a new sofa-desert in my life now.

Goodbye.

Abercrombie, Charlton, Sanderson, Newton, you think you and your swanky new covers look so goddamn pretty, but pretty is a relative thing…

I don’t know who the artist is, but I’d like to shake him by the hand.

I was at a children’s party over the weekend. The Sithlings get invited to enough that I have a pretty shrewd idea what to expect, but for those of you who don’t know, it goes roughly like this:

Most of the children will know each other. They are all ‘friends,’ although being children, they will occasionally have fallings out over nothing much and acts of random meanness may occur. Little alliances are routinely formed and then broken. However, to start with, none of this matters. Energy levels are high. Excitement fills the air. The odd little setback or contretemps is quickly resolved and forgotten.This lasts for about fifteen minutes, the exploration-of-the-new-environment stage. There may be a few minor upsets, trips, falls, random acts of perceived injustice and so forth during this time, but they are isolated and quickly repaired.

This is what we parents (behaviour regulators in the normal course of things) think of as Golden Time: They’re all off playing together, doing whatever they do that generally seems to involve lots of running and climbing and shouting, but that’s all fine because they’re doing it without any supervision, and there are few words more glorious to the parent of a small child than ‘without supervision.’

Play continues, increasingly more frantic and manic games develop as they bolt on more and more ideas to whatever basic aliens-vs-predators or plants-vs-zombies game they started out with. Restraint falls away; everyone’s playing flat-out, all striving to be the loudest, the best, the leader, the strongest, getting more and more excited and more and more hyper on less and less energy.

Eventually the inevitable happens, somewhere around the hour-and-a-quarter mark. Someone trips someone else up.  Someone’s invisible friend says something to someone else’s invisible friend. Someone gets thumped. Someone pushes someone. The shouting turns to tears and the next thing you know there’s a whole gang of children shown up all crying and pointing and telling you who did what to whom and how no one is their friend any more and how they want to go home and mope in their room all day listening to My Chemical Romance, only emerging during the hours of darkness.

No, wait, that last bit comes later.

So their little worlds go from utopia to horror-filled nightmare-of-social-injustice in the space of a minute. But fortunately, we are prepared, because we know this is going to happen. So we sit them down around a table. Ten minutes of calming down, a slice of cake and a big glass of orange juice and they’re ready to again.

Anyway, we were having our peace and quiet before the inevitable crash. I was sat with a friend I haven’t seen for a little while who does stuff to do with money, so I asked him what I’ve been asking everyone who can spell ‘bank’ of late: Where did the money go?[1]

We reckon it went roughly like this:

Most of the bankers will know each other. They are all ‘friends,’ although being bankers, they will occasionally have fallings out over nothing much and acts of random meanness may occur. Little alliances are routinely formed and then broken. However, to start with, none of this matters. Energy levels are high. There’s lots of shouting and waving bits of paper. Excitement fills the air. The odd little setback or contretemps is quickly resolved and forgotten.

Eventually the inevitable happens. Someone trips over a string of bad debts. Someone pushes someone. Everyone’s invisible moneyfriend falls out with everyone else’s invisible moneyfriend. The shouting turns to tears and the next thing you know there’s a whole gang of bankers shown up all crying and pointing and telling you who did what to whom and how no one is their friend any more and how they want to go home and mope in their room all day listening to My Chemical Romance, only emerging during the hours of darkness.

Seven trillion pounds. Most expensive cake-and-orange-juice ever.

[1] I once had this silly naïve little thought that banks ran short of money when they lent it to people and didn’t get it back. But no. We’re talking about stuff that’s not actually real, but serves a useful purpose as a psychological prop. That sort of money. So, in essence, they run short of money when their invisible friend falls out with someone else’s invisible friend. And that, I’m afraid, is as good an explanation as most of us are ever likely to get.