Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Nick Kiddle's LiveJournal:

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Monday, December 14th, 2009
10:39 pm	Reading 1 Scunthorpe 1 The cheapest train fare meant leaving Grantham at 0911 and arriving in Reading just before midday. We met Lindsay, who looked after Andrea while I wandered round the shops, eventually stumbling across Lakeland and buying some much-needed market supplies. Then we caught a shuttle bus to the station in time to be among the first Scunthorpe fans inside the ground. To my deep and abiding disgust, the refreshment points had no Fanta: I had to settle for Capri-Sun, which contained neither carrot nor pumpkin, and worse, came in a squeezable container that fountained juice when Andrea took hold of it. The game didn't look too bad at first. Scunthorpe had one shot that the Reading keeper had to be alert to save, but we were once again giving away far too much possession in all the wrong parts of the ground. We rode our luck for a while, but eventually it ran out: the ball came right through our defence, flew across the penalty area, and someone stuck it past Lillis from about two feet out. So how would the game go from here - would we crumble as we did at Watford, or stay in touch as we did against Leicester? The latter, as it turned out: I braced myself countless times for the second goal, but defending that was inspired and desperate by turns kept it out every time. Lillis had a couple of saves that backed up everything Adkins has said about his ability to stand in for Murphy, but the ball kept coming back down our throats again and again. Half time came as a relief. We hung around the concourse with Karen, trying to talk ourselves into the idea that the second half was bound to be an improvement over the first. I refused to get my hopes up, insisting that it was likely to be every bit as bad. Andrea began the second half with the surprised observation that "our goalkeeper's at the other end". He was indeed, still performing heroics from attacks that looked, as always, even more frightening for being a pitch away. As the second half progressed, Reading's continued failure to put the match beyond us gave us hope; we managed a bit of pressure, and I treated Andrea to a few of the words she's decided are "only for the football ground" as glorious-looking moves came to nothing. Some tactical genius behind me shouted, "Do something, Adkins." I rolled my eyes: doing something for the sake of doing something wasn't going to help matters. Or maybe he was simply giving vent to his frustrations, much as I do with my football-ground vocabulary. Another promising move. Hayes was almost through, but his sight of goal was blocked. He flicked the ball gently out to Hooper, who took a couple of steps and struck the equaliser. I lifted Andrea up to celebrate: she declared with more joy than accuracy that "Scunthorpe are winning." "No," I explained, "but we're not losing," and touched the badge on my shirt to ward of the tempting of fate. For this is the big problem with equalising before stoppage time: plenty of time to let in another. Jonathan Forte came on for Hooper, and almost made the perfect impact. He was through on goal - he was going to give us an improbable and completely undeserved lead - the ball trickled the wrong side of the post. Ah well. Four minutes of stoppage time saw both teams trying to hang onto what we had, and we left with another rescued point. At least, that's how I saw it. To Lindsay, bearing in mind Forte's chance, it was two points lost. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 7th, 2009
10:53 am	Isn't it always this way with "improvements"? Round the back of the flats, there are some little sheds. They're supposed to be for storing rubbish until collection day, but since I never produced much rubbish, I put a new brass padlock on the door of mine and used it for general storage instead. We even talked about keeping a bike there, once we got round to fitting Andrea's seat to it. But the council have decreed that the sheds must be blocked off, "to prevent fly tipping and improve the area". I can only assume that "fly tipping" means "residents leaving their rubbish anywhere they please", which isn't going to be stopped by blocking off one area of the flats, but it's useless to argue with the council. The only thing in my shed at the moment is a rug, so I asked my dad to help me carry it upstairs. The key didn't seem to want to go into the padlock. At first, we assumed we were getting it the wrong way round in the darkness, or the lock was just stiff. But a careful examination with a torch showed that the key was not, in fact, the key to the padlock. In fact, the padlock was no longer the padlock I put on the door. Someone had removed it since the last time I used the cupboard, and replaced it with a completely different one. My dad assumed that one of my fellow residents had stolen it, and asked when I'm going to transfer to a village. But who would bother to steal a padlock - and who would bother to replace it afterwards? My theory is this. The council wanted access to the shed. Rather than ask me for the key - perhaps I was out and they were in a fearsome hurry - they cropped the padlock. Then, to prevent any unauthorised people getting into the shed, they found a replacement padlock. That sort of hangs together, except for the fact that a padlock is pretty useless if authorised people don't have a key. So, am I not authorised to remove my own property from a storage area that's supposed to belong with my flat, or did they just forget to let me know? And, more importantly, how am I going to get this carpet out of the shed before they start work? (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
10:04 pm	Scunthorpe 1 Coventry 0 I wasn't about to risk turning my back on a goal for a second week, especially for a game we really needed to win. In order to get the required words of Geese, I stayed up through the night, rested for fifteen minutes, and began the morning routines. Sunday bus services left us needing to walk to the bus station, and as we set off, the heavens opened. We arrived at my dad's in a condition I described as "damp" (on the grounds that, unlike in Blackpool, I couldn't actually wring water out of my clothes), but with plenty of time to steam our clothes in front of a real wood fire. On the way to Scunthorpe, we deviated twice from the usual routine. The first time, having forgotten about the Lincoln Christmas Market, we invented a hasty detour to avoid the worst afflicted areas. On arriving in Scunthorpe, I tried to direct my dad to Aldi, who have an offer this week that he wants - only to discover that the place I'd found was Lidl. We arrived at the ground, and stewards directed us to the overspill car park, better known as the field next to the ground. After the rain, it was muddy enough to cause problems for several cars, with standing water in places. If the pitch was anything like that, the match wasn't going to be a classic. It was nowhere near as bad, but still quite heavy enough to inhibit our best footballing instincts. This made for a scrappy game, but both sides needed the points badly enough that it didn't lack entertainment value. Disaster struck a quarter of an hour in. From our second defensive cock-up in as many minutes, Murphy ended up stranded, and only the well-placed knee of Rob Jones prevented Coventry taking the lead. The ball fell to a Coventry player, and Murphy hurled himself back across goal to keep his follow-up out. He succeeded, and for a moment I yelled at Scunthorpe in general not to take so many chances. But the corner didn't come in, and someone mentioned Sam Slocombe. I realised that Murphy was lying in the back of the net, surrounded by bodies and apparently motionless. The physio bent over him for what seemed like an age, and the referee called for a stretcher. Positioning Murphy on the stretcher took another couple of years, but at least that gave Lillis time to warm up thoroughly. The corner finally came in, and Lillis hit it into the ground instead of catching it cleanly: my heart was in my mouth, but we got it clear. He settled in, and the game continued much as before. A scramble in midfield on our side of the pitch. It looked as if we'd given the ball away, but we got it back somehow; a couple of quick passes, and Hooper was charging towards the Coventry goal, looking like the Hooper of old. He ran, and ran, and shot - was it in? Was it? Alriiiiiiight! For a few minutes after that, it looked as if we were going to score a few more. Certainly, we created plenty of chances, but everything squeaked just wide. One header just the wrong side of the post from Rob Jones provided yet another example of the brilliant analysis that goes on in our little corner of the terrace. "Fuck off back to grimsby," yelled a genius behind me. Then, in case anyone hadn't picked up the essence of his message, he added, "codhead." Such helpful suggestions whiled away the rest of the half. Stoppage time amounted to six minutes, which barely covered the time it took to get Murphy onto the stretcher, and Andrea and I headed up to the Grove Wharf corner for the customary chat with Karen. As the second half got underway, I found myself thinking about our fishy friends, who took the lead in their game this weekend but conceded an equaliser around the hour mark. For some reason, I convinced myself that the hour was a dangerous time, and that if we could pass it without letting a goal in, we would be OK. A moment's logical thought, combined with recollection of last week, shattered this complacency: every moment up to the final whistle is dangerous. But for a gratifying chunk of the second half, the ball was down our end of the pitch. It was surely only a matter of time until our lead was much greater - but somehow it never quite happened. At one point, as we rattled the ball around the penalty area without making any impression, I muttered, "Wilful waste brings woeful want, and you may live to say, 'Oh how I wish I had that chance that once I threw away.'" For Coventry never gave up, and they had plenty of chances to make us regret our misses. Twice, we were only saved by some hilarious finishing, and I screamed at the Iron to sort it out before our luck ran out. As the final minutes ran down, Coventry piled on the pressure, and I became more convinced than ever that they were about to do to us what we had done to Leicester. I thought about where a point would put us in the league, but decided it wasn't even safe to think of that. Two attacks in stoppage time only underlined the parallel, but we thumped the ball clear. The referee blew his whistle, and I realised I was shaking with relief. OK, maybe also with cold, but there was relief in there somewhere. We'd safely held on to the three precious points, and I can no longer say that I've written a novel since Scunthorpe last won. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
9:45 pm	It makes me feel so old... I was at the market today, just standing, waiting for someone to decide they had desperate cravings for seed cake or tomato chutney or both, and I noticed someone at the craft stall who looked slightly familiar. I looked at her for a minute, and decided she looked very much like Daniel Terry's mother. Back when I had my tragic crush on Daniel, I was absolutely petrified of his mum. I only had to see her on the horizon and I would start shaking like a leaf and forget how to form coherent sentences. But time has done its work, and I wasn't even sure whether this woman was her or just someone who looked like her. She called something across the room, and I began to lean towards thinking it was her. Lacking the nerve to go up to her and ask, "Are you Mrs Terry?" I stood and watched for a little while. Our newest producer was apparently her daughter: Daniel's baby sister, if I was right. Surreptitiously, I turned over one of the labels on her products and spotted the name Terry. Once I was sure, it was much easier to go up to the sister and ask, "Are you related to Daniel Terry?" Naturally, she wanted to know why I wanted to know, and I explained that I had sort-of dated Daniel, seventeen years ago. Just saying it made me feel horribly old, but she very kindly said, "Oh, you must have been teenagers." Yes, we weren't much more than children really, in so many ways. Daniel's mum was now looking my way. "Do I know you?" she asked. "Er, if you remember me, yes. I used to be terrified of you because I had a crush on your son." There was no need to say any more: she did remember me. (This is one of the few times when I'm glad I don't pass: not only would I have been so much harder to place, but I would have been some unknown man claiming to have fancied her son. Rather like the first time she saw me, when I passed so well that she asked, "Daniel, who is this boy?") She asked after my family, and I confessed with some trepidation that I am currently the unemployed parent of a toddler. She gave me a hug, and it seems that in spite of my stupid behaviour, she remembers me with great fondness. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
9:55 pm	Can we send our only begotten son? Yes we can! Andrea has been learning quite a bit of Christian stuff for the Nativity play. I'm not too worried, though, as she doesn't seem to be taking it all in. We sang Away in a Manger at Jellybeans, and she turned to me in great surprise and said, "There's Jesus in the Nativity play too!" One of the songs apparently goes, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, let's give God the praise." That is, unless Andrea's singing it, in which case it goes, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, let's give Bob the praise." I suggested that it might refer to God, who definitely pops up later in the song, but she is adamant that it refers to Bob. In a final attempt to persuade her, I asked which Bob the song was about. "Is it Bob the Builder?" Yes, yes, Bob the Builder." So while the rest of the class give their praises to God the Father, Andrea's reserving hers for Bob the Builder. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
11:16 pm	Armer Severus The last couple of weeks, I've been rereading Harry Potter all the way through, to pave the way for welcoming Deathly Hallows onto my shelves. From Order of the Phoenix, this bit keeps sticking in my mind. "[If you cannot empty yourself of emotion] you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!" said Snape savagely. "Fools who wear their hearts on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked so easily - weak people, in other words - they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!" This is completely in character for someone who would rather be thought of as a Death Eater than have it be generally known that he used to love a girl, but it makes my heart ache. Emotions can be singularly unhelpful things - I think I may have said this before - but the idea that they can be controlled is a short cut to frustration. Admitting to having emotions doesn't make a person weak. Repressing and denying emotions, crushing legitimate grief and anger down until it finds a way out as spite directed at a third party, and dismissing other possibilities out of hand - at the very least, that makes life more difficult than it needs to be. Poor Snape. It almost makes me want to write fic about him... (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
9:21 pm	Scunthorpe 1 Leicester 1 Despairing on two fronts, I put Geese aside with only 200 of the goal-demanded 2k done. It must be the first time in three years that I've abandoned a goal of my own volition, but since a full eight goals no longer prevents us from losing, I decided my sleep needed priority for once. My dad was entertaining his Foxes-supporting friend Peter, so we varied the usual routine with a meal at Frankie&Benny's. I went for the claretblack and blue burger, just as I did for the franchise play-off game: even if it made us draw as it did that night, it would be more than we'd seen in the last four games. We stopped on our way into the ground to talk to Suz and Kerry; Andrea decided she wanted to stay there for the duration, despite my patient explanation that she would see nothing of the game from there. My final compromise was that she could stay there, but we would move at the first goal Scunthorpe conceded. A minute later, with the terrace filling fast, she agreed that she couldn't see anything, and we moved to our new usual spot. Virtually from the kick-off, a shortage of correctly-inflated balls made the game faintly ridiculous. "It's a time-wasting ploy," I suggested. "They're holding out for a 0-0 draw." If this was, in fact, the plan, it failed after just three minutes. A Leicester forward broke through our defence and found himself with only Murphy to beat. Murphy blocked his way rather smartly; unfortunately, he didn't do the same for the ball, which trickled gently into the net. This was the signal for the floodgates to open. Leicester could have put the game completely beyond us in the next few minutes, but somehow we managed to hold them at bay. Murphy showed why he is occasionally invited to sit on the bench for his country with one magnificent save, pushing the ball away with the palm of his hand, at full stretch, when a second goal seemed inevitable. We managed a few attacks of our own, which never looked likely to come to anything. At one point, someone headed cleanly into the Leicester net after the ball had bounced around the penalty area, but I saw the flag go up and didn't even bother cheering. The latest scores from elsewhere started to come through: all eyes were on Plymouth, who could condemn us to the bottom three with a win. When the scoreboard told us they'd scored one, we groaned; when it added that they'd conceded two, we sighed with relief. Andrea demanded a toilet trip just before half time, so I didn't see the players leave the field. While we were waiting for Karen in the Grove Wharf corner, further good news arrived from Plymouth: the home side were now 4-1 down. We were safe, at least for the moment, from the bottom three. The second half was no more cheering than the first. It wasn't that we were poor, just that we were completely failing to put the ball into the net. I remembered gloomily how many opposing managers praised us as "too good to go down" the last time we went down; more of that is not a prospect I relish. Remembering superstitions that have fallen out of favour lately, I tucked my shirt over my nose. Adkins put Martyn Woolford on, and once again he sparked a distinct improvement in our play. We were still failing to create anything that looked much like a shot, but the ball was at least spending time at the right end of the pitch. The last time I saw us play Leicester, we fell a goal behind and spent the rest of the match heroically restricting them to the one. I held out hope, right up until the final whistle, that we would somehow sneak an equaliser, but there was little realistic chance of that. This time, at least we were attacking. It looked as if it wasn't going to be our day. Someone had the ball, and was preparing to shoot, but the referee stopped play and awarded Leicester a free kick for some offence I didn't see. The fans around me were furious, but I was too depressed to care. What difference did it make, when we would most likely have squandered the chance anyway? Joe Murphy took both MotM awards, for some brilliant saves that kept hope just alive. Three minutes of stoppage time - "Time for at least one more good attack," I whispered, but the attack was far from good. We won a corner: Murphy gambled on coming up for it, but it fell to a blue shirt. I was afraid for a second that they would try to break while Murphy was getting back, but they weren't about to risk giving possession back to us. By the time the keeper decided to kick the ball out, Murphy was easily back in position. One more chance. The ball bobbled around the edge of the penalty area. Leicester fans whistled, and I thought of all the times we'd been on the receiving end of a cruel late goal. There was no particular reason why we couldn't dish it out ourselves. The ball went in, was half cleared, but fell to Woolford on the edge of the box. He took a couple of steps and shot - and once again, I relied on the fans behind the goal to tell me where it went. The referee was signalling a goal. I danced on the spot, whooping and screaming, not quite believing we'd done it but determined to celebrate anyway. The ball returned to the centre circle, Leicester kicked off and lumped the ball desperately towards our goal, and the referee blew for full time. In the Iron Bar, it took several attempts to convince Andrea that we hadn't actually won the game. As far as she was concerned, the ecstatic nature of the celebrations couldn't possibly mean anything less than three points. We've stopped the rot, and even improved our league position; spirits were low enough going into the game that this does indeed feel like a victory. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
7:19 pm	NaNo: It's over I managed to do what I threatened last year, and finished the novel just before validation started. I think I may have miscalculated slightly, because it feels strangely flat without the last-minute panic. I was hoping that, whether by some sort of blood doping effect or because the time away inspired me, the weekly 2k of Geese would be much simpler than usual. However, having staggered across the finish line, I don't seem to have the motivation to do anything other than catch up on sleep. Ah well. I can say (for the second time in my life, no less) that I have written a novel since Scunthorpe United last won a game of football. Some people seem to think this is worthy of congratulation; I can only assume they don't realise to what extent I take on the Iron's successes and failures as my own. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
11:33 pm	The Cicada Files II From February to November is nine months. This means that if you get pregnant in February, your child's birthday will fall during NaNo, every year of their life. They will ask for parties, cakes and presents, and you will need to find time to provide these, whether by doing it yourself or by organising someone else to do it. Getting family members to make the cake is a very smart move; offering to make an Iggle Piggle hand puppet rather less so. It means a ridiculous amount of stress, although the look on their face when they open their present might just be worth it. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
12:00 am	NaNo: Horrible things I've been doing horrible things to Caroline. First of all, she was raped by a friend of her father's. Then she was sent to an institution that was supposed to cure her. Then she had all her happy, hopeful memories removed, leaving her with nothing but the memory of the rape - oh yes, and she also lost the ability to understand consent, so she couldn't even work out why it was distressing her so badly. Now she's being threatened with truth drugs if she doesn't voluntarily explain what's upsetting her. She decides, rather than risk blurting out all the other things she's trying to keep quiet about, that she needs to break her self-imposed silence... I'm a bit worried that I've gone too far. Character torture is an honourable tradition, but character rape is a pretty rotten trope. I want to say that Caroline is a rape survivor whose courage and tenacity make the happy ending possible, but I don't know if that's how it will actually come across. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
11:04 pm	NaNo: Modern technology One thing I like about this novel is how obviously the characters are living in today's world. They look things up on Wikipedia - and discover that everything says [citation needed]. They punch addresses into their satnav. They keep a blog, and post about their personal life when they can no longer keep quiet. They hear a mysterious name, and their first instinct is to google it - from their mobile. I especially like the fact that the internet isn't all-powerful. Tim tries to search for information about City of Gold, and at first finds only the official website and testimonials from satisfied parents. He has to try several combinations of search terms before he finds Sonia's blog. I've read plenty of novels set in the age of the all-powerful internet, where the characters just have to send their sentient software to find everything that exists; I think it's neat that my characters only have Google. Their reliance on mobile phones, however, has offered me my latest snag. Tim needs to give his number to someone who's going into City of Gold, so that she can keep in touch from the inside. Writing it down in normal form would arouse too much suspicion, so he's going to encrypt it so it looks like random nonsense, or almost like poetry. Another character has to decrypt it later, and I really can't see a way to write that without providing the encoded number. I know television companies have a special bank of telephone numbers for such purposes, but I don't; the only possibility that springs to mind is to use my own mobile number. This is spectacularly bad for the code I'd like to use, having as it does no fewer than three zeroes, but I can't really see a way round it. Finally, I'd like to share this line with the world. Tim is explaining why he looks unnervingly like a teenager: "The reason I look so young is I had low testosterone levels. I didn't go through puberty properly until I went on hormone replacements." (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
1:33 pm	Blackpool 4 Scunthorpe 1 Blackpool is rarely a fun place to visit - in fact, many of our visits have been horrible in one epic way or another. But my mum offered me a free hotel room, and I just couldn't help myself. The day started reasonably enough: rising ridiculously early after another November all-nighter, an easy run up to Leeds with the bonus of free on-board wi-fi, and a long haul across country to Lancashire. In Leeds, the sun shone brightly; in Burnley, a rainbow sparkled on dark clouds; in Blackpool, it was tipping it down. We managed to avoid a repeat of the Mancunian navigational fail, but the walk to the hotel, with the rain soaking through our clothes, was long enough to be unpleasant. Having checked in, we caught a tram down to the opposite end of Blackpool. On arriving at the football ground, we realised what a thoroughly rotten day this was going to be. Bloomfield Road is still partway to being a very nice ground, but the shiniest and newest stand still lacked its safety certificate. This meant that, for twenty-four pounds fifty a ticket, we would be sitting in the same temporary stand we occupied three years ago. The one without a roof. In the rain. We made the best of it, huddling under umbrellas and singing about how we were getting wet watching Scunny, but I was thoroughly fed up before the match was fifteen minutes old. True, Scunthorpe had improved several hundred percent over their miserable performance last week, but we weren't putting the ball in the back of the net. In any case, I was so wet and cold that nothing short of double figures would have warmed me up. Andrea, without my ties of loyalty to the team, began the pleas to go back to the hotel after about half an hour. We bought her a waterproof poncho to stop the damage getting any worse, and Karen fed her steadily with Starbursts to keep the crisis at bay. Half time came with the score 0-0; we talked longingly of matchmaker's tea, hot mulled wine, and five Scunthorpe goals in the second half. As the second half got underway, Andrea demanded a trip to the toilet - quite an undertaking, in a poncho made for an adult. As we returned to our seats, I asked Karen whether we'd missed a goal. "No," she said, "but Hayes should have scored. He was just one-on-one with the keeper." Almost as soon as she'd said that, Hayes was through again, racing clear of the defence to lift the ball gently over the Blackpool keeper. I watched it roll into the net, but I was still too cold to celebrate. For a few glorious minutes, it looked as if our insane devotion was going to be rewarded. We had a couple of other chances, notably when Sparrow got through down the wing but mistimed his pass to Hayes, and Blackpool had offered very little thus far. I tried not to tempt fate, but I could almost feel the warming effect of three points. Then we started to let them attack us. The ball was spending too much time at the far end of the field, which I couldn't see because the people in front were standing up. I didn't see the move that let to the goal, but I heard the roar from the hitherto silent Blackpool fans. That was not the best way to ensure three points, but I didn't give up hope. We had let in an equaliser against Derby and gone on to win. And so we might have done here except for what happened next. Another Blackpool attack, and the ball was fairly harmlessly out of play. But there was a knot of players surrounding the referee, and a flash of red. The news came down the stand to us that Murphy had carried the ball slightly outside the penalty area; according to the most ridiculous law in football, this is a sending-off offence. Murphy trooped off, and Sam Slocombe hastily prepared to come on. After a long delay, Blackpool had a free kick on the very edge of the penalty area. It went through everyone, and Slocombe had his first opportunity to pick the ball out of the net for the Scunthorpe first team. His second came soon after. I don't remember much about it, but we were suffering from lack of ideas as well as lack of personnel, and it showed. At one point, Karen suggested that Blackpool had four or five extra men, rather than just one. The steady rain had given way to a vertical downpour, and the only reason I didn't get up and leave was a sense that we'd suffered enough that we might as well see the whole thing through. The scoreline was now identical to my last visit, the glorious day when we won the league despite defeat. The contrast between that day and this struggle was almost too much to bear, so Blackpool helpfully added a fourth goal to erase the parallel. The Scunthorpe fans who were marginally less stubborn than me departed; Andrea had fallen asleep in her seat to give me an excuse not to follow. The announcement of four minutes of stoppage time was met with a groan: the match was long gone, and every minute was another sixty seconds of soaking. As if to prove us wrong, loan signing George Friend worked his way down the wing and put in a ball to Forte. The ball rattled around the penalty area, and someone stabbed it into the net for a much-needed consolation. But no, the flag was up over on the far side, and we were denied even that. It seemed to sum up our afternoon. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
11:51 pm	NaNo: Mothers, America, and lofty goals You may remember how, last December, I jokingly suggested NaNo would be easier at 4k a day. This was quite possibly a tactical error, because my brain went ahead and interpreted it as something to aim for. According to this week's goal list, I need to have 24k by Friday. I have a good set of plot cards, and a fair idea of where I'm going. With self-discipline and careful avoidance of distractions, I can write a thousand words in approximately an hour. The obvious conclusion is that I'm screwed. Football is a powerful motivator - I promised myself the last few minutes of the Champion's League if I could write 2k this evening - but sleep isn't quite tempting enough. There are three parallel stories happening, and all of them involve mothers sending their children to the same vaguely sinister place. There are no fathers present - I think we have two single mothers and one mother delegated to do the dirty work of a joint decision. Caroline's parents probably have the best excuse, since she's obviously suffering and CoG are offering an apparent miracle cure. Maria, Micky's mother, wants her son to be a bit less annoying, and she is somewhat defensive about what she's doing. Tim and Hannah's mother is just a thoroughly nasty control freak. Since CoG is an international organisation, and the resistance similarly worldwide, I decided at least one strand had to take place in the US. Unfortunately, my only experience of America is through books, films and the internets, so I'm bound to be making a botch of it. Witness the fact that I don't even know enough to pick a city for my American characters to live in, which suggests a way of killing two birds with one stone. Would any of my American readers like their home town to feature? All you have to do is read the American bits and point out where I'm going horribly wrong... (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
11:34 pm	Fuck. Right. Off I was going to write something cheerful about NaNo (2.7k so far!). Then I read this. It is not necessary to have undergone hormone treatment or surgery. In other words, a pre-operative man could apply for a job in a women — only rape counselling service and, if refused on grounds of his sex, could take the employer to court on the grounds that "he" is legally a "she". The whole article is full of the usual bullshit, but after yesterday I find this part particularly difficult to stomach. It's a perfect example of why I will now be terrified every time I have to use the toilet at Glanford Park. Trans people are all lying liars, dirty deceptive perverts who just want to sneak in where they're not meant to be. It doesn't matter what our paperwork says - our gender will only ever be worthy of scare quotes. Yes, Julie Bigot, you have now made your point clear. We are not human. We do not deserve an actual life. You were once generous enough to condemn active violence against us, but you're a positive advocate of denying us anything that might help us live and waiting for us to do violence to ourselves. Now that you've said it, repeatedly, is there any chance you could shut the fuck up and stop rubbing it in? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
9:47 pm	Scunthorpe 0 Swansea 2 As usual, the best laid plans went astray: today's major hold-up was my body's insistence on catching up on the sleep I'd gone without while mustering omens. We got to Caythorpe just after midday, ate what should have been a lucky pre-match meal of egg and chips, and set off at about one. This meant arriving at Glanford Park at twenty to three, by which time the ticket office was packed. But we fitted everything in somehow, and settled down in our new usual spot beside a young lad who had dressed as a skeleton in honour of the day. The early stages were uninspiring, to say the least. Scunthorpe tried to play the game at the slowest imaginable tempo, as though the City game, far from inspiring us, had sapped every ounce of energy. Worse, we kept letting Swansea run around with the goal; they twice created shooting chances that skimmed just the right side of the post with Murphy diving helplessly. Finally, the inevitable happened. Swansea won a free kick about ten yards from the edge of the penalty area, after what looked like a perfectly innocuous challenge. It went straight through everyone and into the back of the net. We managed to keep hold of the ball, after a fashion, and went in search of an equaliser. But Swansea knew what they were about, and we didn't have enough ideas to break them down. The players seemed unconnected to each other, with individuals making what would have been lovely moves, if only their teammates had been in tune with them. Since no-one was ever where they needed to be, it was all worthless. Andrea and her new friend amused themselves by roaring at each other, pretending to be monsters. "You want to see something really scary?" I asked. "Just watch the way Scunthorpe are defending." Half time was in sight, with the hope that, somehow, we could turn it around. We did look slightly less dreadful in the second half. Sparrow and Woolford came on, and we began creating moves that actually looked as if they might work. But somehow, there was never a decent shot at the end of it. Andrea's friend demanded a toilet trip, and I slid into the spot at the front of the terrace that his dad had just vacated. From there, I could see the goal, so in the improbably event of the ball going into the net, I wouldn't need to rely on crowd noise. In fact, the ball did go into the net - the one at the opposite end of the pitch. A forward move, a cross flashing across the face of goal, turned in by someone I couldn't see. At one goal down, we had the hope that a moment of genius could bring us back level; at two goals down, there was no hope. A few minutes later, the day got even worse. I took Andrea for her only toilet visit of the afternoon. As I left, a steward fell into line beside me and said, "This is the Gents; you're not allowed in here." I asked why not, and a random person stopped to point out where the Ladies is. "But I'm not a lady." The steward said "Sorry," but I couldn't work out whether that meant "Sorry for thinking you were a girl" or "Sorry, I don't care how you identify, you count as a girl." It was the third blow to my masculinity within a week, not counting the testosterone depletion of three defeats. I sat down on the terrace and wept. For the first time ever, I really wanted to leave early: not as an angry protest against the Iron's ineptitude, but because I didn't feel like I belonged. Was the steward watching? Had the tears convinced him I was a girl? All I wanted was for the match to end so I could flee to the relative safety of the Iron Bar. The final ten minutes seemed to take forever, but the final whistle came at last, greeted with boos by most of the terrace. I went straight to the Iron Bar, slumped in front of the big screen, and tried to pretend my misery was as simple as everyone else's disgust at our performance. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
10:01 pm	Manchester City 5 Scunthorpe 1 I considered giving myself a day off omen-chasing, on the grounds that nothing I did could save us; after some thought, I decided that there was always a chance, and carried out all the usual superstitions. We got into Manchester shortly before five, then wasted an hour in epic navigational fail. I stopped to look at a map - and promptly walked for twenty more minutes in the wrong direction. Finally, with a few helpful words from a local, we found the hotel, checked in, deposited a few things it didn't seem wise to take to the ground - like railway tickets and my swiss army knife - and returned to Piccadilly Gardens by a much more direct route to catch a bus. That took us to Eastlands before the turnstiles were open, so I bought a programme and settled down to read it while Andrea ran round in circles and convinced a young lad's parents that she was his new girlfriend. The programme made interesting reading, advertising a friendly in Abu Dhabi on one page, and talking about Scunthorpe on the next just as if we were part of that world. The turnstiles opened, and we made our way inside. I foolishly admitted that I hadn't been searched, and was sent to be patted down by a female steward. One of these days, I will either develop enough guts to say, "Can you not search me like you're searching all the other men?" or start passing well enough that it isn't an issue. I soothed my irritation with the usual refreshments: the balti pie had the almost unheard-of luxury of a pastry crust, and Andrea contrived to annoint the stand with most of her Fanta. I kept my eyes out for Karen, but it was hard to pick anyone out in the huge away following. Andrea ran down to the front of the stand to shake hands with the Scunny Bunny, then shook hands with a strange blue object, despite my warning that she would catch Manchester City from it. Then, just as the players were finally lining up for kick-off, she decided she needed the toilet. By some unseemly haste, we managed to get back to our seats before a ball was kicked. We made one run in the first couple of minutes that looked almost exciting, and resulted in Shay Given having to make a save. But any hopes that we would make a game of it took a battering a minute later. It looked for a second as if we were going to build something from the back, but the ball fell to a blue shirt. Two passes and one "shit, they're going to score" later, Murphy was picking the ball out of the net. This was not the start we needed, and Scunthorpe fans responded in time-honoured fashion by getting on the players' backs. Chief object of their frustration was Jonathan Forte, who did have some difficulty holding onto the ball for long enough to get past the City defence, but didn't look bad enough to merit the calls for an immediate punitive substitution. We played a few passes around in areas that were never going to threaten City, and the situation looked hopeless. Then Marcus Williams was racing through on the left-hand side, playing the ball into the middle, and someone stabbed in in a generally goalwards direction. It took me a moment to believe it had actually gone in the net, and a minute more to realise Forte had made at least some answer to his detractors. We enjoyed our ten or so minutes back on level terms, but when our defence failed for a second time, we dropped into sullen silence. "You only sing when you're drawing," jeered the City wits, but we produced a little more support as we saw out the remainder of the first half without things getting any worse. At half time, we wandered the concourse, hoping we would somehow find Karen. Andrea did her best to improve our chances by muttering "Karen, Karen, Karen," and sure enough, Karen crossed our path a moment later. To Andrea's exaggerated devastation, she didn't have any chocolate to offer; she forestalled the tears by finding a packet of chewits, which I think Andrea would happily have guzzled during half time had it been physically possible. We returned to our seats for the second half, not really expecting anything but not despairing either. The Iron managed to just about hold out - never really more than that - until the ball ended up in Murphy's net from a corner. Andrea took time out from demanding a sweet to ask me whether I was sad. I pointed at the scoreboard and invited her to guess. A few minutes later, another corner and another goal. Carlos Tevez, Jolean Lescott - City's highest-profile summer signings were queueing up to put the ball past Joe Murphy. In 2006, when Andrea was a babe in arms, we lost at Eastland by three goals to one, having been in the lead at half time. I told myself that City have come a long way since then, but that was no comfort. They've only gone from mid-table Premiership to the fringes of the top four. In the same time, we've gone from trying to stay in League 1 to trying to stay in the Championship. There was no explanation that didn't depress me. At some point, they added a fifth goal, a long-range shot that Murphy couldn't quite get his hand to. The City fans proceeded to demonstrate that, whatever else money buys, it doesn't buy class, taunting us about the fact that we only have what we've honestly earned rather than several squillion pounds of someone else's money. Andrea suggested that we should go back to the hotel, but I insisted on waiting for the final whistle. Unlike at Peterborough, I was willing to applaud, since it wasn't as if we'd played badly. We just weren't in City's league. I tried to tell myself the experience would somehow make us better able to pick up points in the Championship, but it didn't help my mood. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
10:50 pm	Insults and interdiagnoses In a blog about some despicable piece of behaviour, someone leaves a comment saying, "Wow, what a sociopath." Someone else suggests that it's not such a great idea to use mental health labels as insults. But no - it wasn't an insult. It was an attempted diagnosis. The trouble is, that doesn't make it a lot better. Diagnosing people with mental illnesses through the internet - I call it "interdiagnosis" - is pretty insulting in itself. To begin with, implying that you can judge someone's mental health from a sample of a couple of hundred words is pretty trivialising of actual mental illness. It maybe wouldn't matter so much if there weren't a million and one people who think they know everything there is to know about depression because they were a bit sad once, but since there are, we can probably do without any more self-appointed experts. The thing is, unless you actually have some relevant experience, you're working off the very stereotypes that need to die as soon as possible. Deciding someone must be depressed because they have a cynical view of human nature isn't any more helpful to the people who are genuinely struggling with depression than it is to the cynic you keep telling to get some prozac. If you want to help, you need a more nuanced view. (I'd also like to mention at this point that fucking someone with any given mental illness does not count as relevant experience. Caring for a loved one can give you valuable insights, but it still doesn't qualify you to tell me what's wrong with my brain. This goes double if you think it's amusing to say that an individual schizophrenic is two separate people.) Another problem with the interdiagnosis is the walls it throws up between people. She is a sociopath - so I can never be as cruel as her. He is a depressive - so any complaints he makes are simply artefacts of his broken brain. Diagnose the mental illness of your choice - then close yourself to anything that might make you uncomfortable. I'm mostly coming at this from the point of view of someone who's been interdiagnosed with random crap, from conditions I almost certainly don't have (schizophrenia, because I allegedly took something too literally) to conditions I might have, but not for the reasons offered (Asperger's, because I get upset about books being destroyed and so did this autistic woman on the internets). I don't know what it's like for people who actually have the conditions people get interdiagnosed with, but I don't imagine they enjoy being used as a distorted illustration. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
9:27 pm	Swimming in the sewer II.i Jan Moir returns. Not to apologise for the turd she shat out last week, oh no. She's back to tell us all how we're interrogating her text from the wrong perspective and complain about political correctness gone mad. ( It's long again, but hopefully not quite as vile ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
9:36 pm	Peterborough 3 Scunthorpe 0 After beating Sheffield United and Newcastle, it would be just like Scunthorpe to come unstuck at struggling Peterborough. I even said as much before the game, more by way of keeping the footballing gods sweet than because I really believed it would happen. I had a full goal list and a stack of claret and blue squares and, Peterborough being so close, managed to sleep until quarter past ten without any risk of missing my train. In fact, we caught an earlier train than we'd planned, and spent a few minutes hanging around the station waiting for Lindsay's train to get in. Then we headed off together to Nene Valley, where a steam train was due in just in time for us to watch it. This brought back memories of Kidderminster, where I once said we'd have been better off watching trains all afternoon than going to the match. Once the train had disappeared into the distance, we headed for London Road, at a substantially more leisurely speed than I managed last season. At the away turnstiles, I missed the chance to save seven pounds when the turnstile operator asked whether I wanted a child ticket or an adult - I was so surprised at having my age cut in half that I blurted out the truth without thinking. Karen arrived, bringing the news that Gary Hooper was unfit to play, and that Vladimir Mirfin was ruled out by some unspecified illness. We shifted around the terrace a couple of times, in search of somewhere that was close enough to the pitch to offer a decent view and far enough away to offer shelter from the persistent drizzle; eventually, we gave up and resigned ourselves to a soaking. Last season, League One pace-setters Scunthorpe and Peterborough had given a glorious exhibition of free-flowing football. This season, two teams in fear for their Championship status shoved the ball in random directions and looked pretty pathetic. I blamed the drizzle, and hoped things would improve once we got used to it. We didn't. The highlight of the first half - indeed, of the match - from a Scunthorpe point of view came when Jonathan Forte got himself in a shooting position just inside the penalty area and lashed the ball in the general direction of the goal. The shot was always going wide, so I was surprised to see the net bobbling; a couple of deflating seconds later, we realised he'd somehow knocked the net loose from its moorings. "Shit ground, shit nets," called one wit at the back of the terrace. A minute or so later, Andrea announced that she needed a poo. We were in the toilets when I heard the roar of the crowd, but you can always tell the difference between your fans cheering and the opposition. I clung to the hope that I might have been mistaken, but we returned to the terrace to discover that we had indeed fallen a goal behind. For all the Scunthorpe goals Andrea's made me miss, that was a very unwelcome first. We looked briefly as if we would get back into the game, having a shot twice cleared on the goal line, and a couple of other promising-looking attacks. Then, from one attack, Peterborough broke, Jordan Spence slipped, and I said, "They're going to score now. Number two." Unbelievably, for the third game running, it failed me. The rain eased up at half time, and the second half began in blinding sunshine. Any hopes that the change of conditions would help us turn the game around were crushed, as we demonstrated that we didn't have anything like enough up front to get past the Peterborough defence. I kept hoping, but the best we could manage was another shot cleared off the line. The highlight of the second half came when someone finally produced a Liverpool beach ball and threw it onto the pitch, in honour of referee Mike Jones. He didn't make any howlers like the one he made last week - just a handful of run-of-the-mill baffling decisions. Towards the end of the game, he conferred with his assistant after a Peterborough player went down in the box; as far as I could see, it was such a stupid challenge that I don't know why he didn't point straight to the spot. Eventually, he gave the penalty - the eighth we've given away this season - and the Boro striker put it past Murphy. From the kick-off, we went down the other end and produced a chance of such stunning ineptitude that I picked up my bag, grabbed Andrea's hand and said, "Come on, we're leaving." She took me at my word, but I couldn't quite bring myself to step out of the gate before the match finished; instead, I hung around for a minute before heading back onto the terrace to wait for the bitter end. It finally came, greeted with cheers of relief that the horror was over. Some of the Scunthorpe fans applauded the players; I stuck my hands in my pockets to make it clear I had no intention of applauding. My one meagre consolation was that I didn't have far to travel back. I was home before seven. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
10:03 pm	Five years If you'd told me five years ago that Scunthorpe would be playing Newcastle in the league and winning, I'd have said, "I can't talk now; my house is on fire." I've been wondering today just how much I've changed since that night. There have been plenty of superficial changes - I had no children then, and my name was Nicola, to name the two most obvious - but on a deeper level, I'm not so sure. I think I've become more accepting, if only because time blunts the edges of every pain. Then again, last year proved that a lot of the frustration behind the pain is simply lying dormant, ready to break out when next the circumstances permit. I understand the dimensions of the problem a bit better than I did back then. That's not entirely a blessing: it lets me stop beating myself up quite so much, but it stokes the frustration to the point where I have to bury it to survive. The anger is still as strong as ever. It finds new targets every day, and metamorphoses every so often into bitter snark, but it won't go away. Certain people about whom I once entertained graphic revenge fantasies are out of my mind: can you call it forgiveness when you realise it you no longer care whether they live or die? I've resurrected many of the things I used to care about. Some of them are a shadow of what they once were, but some have returned to life as easily as plants in spring. Scunthorpe United are at once more and less than they were. It seems strange to claim that I'm more obsessive now than I was when I went to every match, but I never threatened suicide after a defeat in 2004. At the same time, I trust them less, even though they've delivered more than I ever dreamed of in the last five years. I wait for the flag to go up now, where once I cheered wholeheartedly. But for all that I've become, I'm not convinced I've changed in the ways that matter. If the temptations of five years ago fell into my path, I'd probably still fall for them. I know exactly where it leads to, but I don't know how to resist. (Comment on this)