Words of the Day: is there really something better than this? Hell yes, there is.
As I sit in my Ikea-styled office, tapping away on the keys of my Intel powered PC, my mind wanders to other places and times. It's because I listen to the music I listen to. Greenday, Blink 182. Makes me want to be somewhere else. These songs are inspired by a place I never go. There's no way to get there from where I am, no roads, no planes, no tracks. It's grey outside, cold and drizzling. Instead of riding my mountain bike along twisting singletrack, lifted in mind and body, I sit here staring at the steel grey sky, being added to by the grey steel slowly blocking my only view. Bastards. I want to surf waves, not internet pages. I want to be uncomfortable, to be cold when it's not warm, hot when I have to be, wet when the Ocean (capital 'o') demands it. I feel like sometimes I'm the only one who feels this way. It's only fun if it's sanitised, controlled fun, it seems. Not if you end up dirty, cold, wet and fucking miserable. It's that particular misery you'll look back and realise was the peak of euphoria. Nothing comes close. You can be at the very end of your exertion, no energy left, nothing left to give, no more offerings for Poseidon, but I guarantee you'll find one more when you see that wave coming. One more time, one more paddle out, one more turn and wait, one more moment of unsurpassed pleasure as the swell lifts you, pitches you forward, carries you down the face of the wave and threatens to crush you from above, all in the same breath. One more swift transition, one more moment of instability as you assert your control over the unruly lump of styrene beneath you, one way forward, and that's down, into the heart of it, water curling over you, threatening. Then that jolt as you hit it just right, that swift transition from slug to bullet, from wave-bait to whitewater taunter. You can't outrun the thing, can't get away from it, because you're stuck to the face of the it. But you know you have it tamed, if not beaten. Can't be complacent, but there's still a moment of celebration, still the feeling that for that briefest of moments you're king, or queen, whatever. Then it dumps you, and you feel fucking stupid, but you go back for more, because no matter how many times you get hit, no matter how many times you come up with water in your lungs, no matter how many times your eyes scream in pain at the intrusion of the gallons of water, no matter how cold you are, no matter how many people have lost bits of themselves doing this this year, no matter that there's a storm coming and it's going to fry anything sticking up above the surface, no matter that your suit is ripped, no matter that you're bleeding, you damn well want to be out there again and again. That's why this office will never be satisfactory. No matter how much Ikea there is.

Just so you know...
The other CDs turned up. As did my gram of poly (dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate). Yay...

Words of the Day: what the f***?
I ordered some stuff online. Some CDs. Everyone who's spent more than a few quid online will know that estimated and real delivery dates are rarely in agreement, so I wasn't exactly expecting miracles. But miracles I got - some CDs ordered after last post on Saturday arrived this morning, Monday morning. Now, in countries where business operates 7 days a week, that might not seem too surprising. But, as everyone who's lived in England will tell you, there's no post on Sundays. They shut the whole bloody thing down. Well, not quite, but you don't count Sunday as a day when working out how long it'll take a package to arrive. This is indeed a wondrous thingy. And even more so when you consider that the other CDs I ordered from the same company two days previously have shown no sign of arriving...
Back to more normal things, I really need to sit down and sh*t out another book sometime soon. Main problem is finding time and brilliance, neither of which I am overly endowed with. Damn. I do have a very strong idea about its direction. It's definitely still rooted in traditional fantasy, but I want to make it a story about environmental issues. Scary? Hell yes. But might work. Thing is, I think it's going to be one of those things where the issue is well buried in the plot, and the decision is the reader's. I hate being told what to think, especially when reading books, and I'm guessing that other people feel the same way. So it's there, waiting to be written, waiting to be born into a cruel world, etc. Maybe one day I'll finish the other few hundred...