Cryptic Friday #7

Last week's clue was: Saddle will take the horse around midnight. 5 Letters.

The answer was: Ridge (think about it!)

This week's clue is a bit dodgy to my mind but here goes:

Compelled to turn a nag wild on the prairie. 7 letters.

A more important matter than tea

Writing colleague Charles Whipple has put together a slim volume of short stories set in Japan. It's available on Smashwords for just 99 cents and all profits will go to help the victims of the recent quake. I've read the title story, which was the deserved winner of an international literature competition. In writing style and content it reminded me of something Guy Gavriel Kay could have written and I can't think of any higher praise. I urge you to check out the collection. Below is a few words from the author.


I have put together a slim volume of my stories set in Japan. One, A Matter of Tea, won the 2010 Oaxaca International Literature Competition. Naturally, it headlines the book. This book is available on Smashwords and costs only US 99 cents. All the income from this book will go to help victims of the 3/11 quake. They lost homes, belongings, and even family members. This is my best shot at helping them. And I'll make sure your contributions go to help real people, not the bureaucracy of a charitable organization. Please help. Order here.

I've got shelf buddies

As the two western lines I write for sell most of their books to the library trade along with selling through on-line retailers I'd largely given up on that dream all authors have of walking into a bookstore and seeing one of their books on the shelf - that being one that just happens to be there and didn't require a sneak raid in the middle of the night or holding the store manager hostage. That still hasn't happened, but as reported in Dark Bits and in Joanne Walpole the British bookstore Waterstone's have started their Yee haw! promotion in which they are selling Black Horse Westerns. And below is the picture to prove it.


Mine is the book on the bottom row, second to the left. Oh, the joy, oh the happiness. What makes it so special is that the store is in Nottingham where I was born, bred and left and unless the store has moved I used to go in there a lot. Actually, if I'm being truthful I went in there a lot and then always went down the road to this beardy, new-age, leftie bookshop to actually buy books, but still I was there and now I'm in there. Hopefully not for long as it'd be nice if someone bought the book!

Interview at Booklife

To celebrate the publication of The Miracle of Santa Maria, which is sort of todayish, I have an interview at the excellent Booklifenow.com site.

There's many informative articles about writing and the writing life at Booklife and I'm sure you'll find plenty to interest you there.

The end of hair shirt month

I'm happily taking off my hair shirt today and locking it away for another couple of years. The shirt's not had much use recently as the last time I wore it, it only got used for an hour, although on the other hand I did once wear it for several years... perhaps I should explain. Radiohead have a new album out.


I don't follow modern music much any more, although a combination of Radiohead, REM and Elbow all issuing new material presents a rare opportunity for me to listen to something new. But of all the bands I listen to, the gloomy ones have always provided me with the most hair shirt moments ever since their second album came out and it failed to deliver the melodic, indie rock I'd expected from their first album. This led to me locking myself away to listen to the Bends for several dozen times trying to work out if I liked the new sound, which I did eventually. And this is a ritual I've enjoyed doing every few years since. The shortest hair shirt period was for In Rainbows which I liked on the first listen (still worries me that) and the longest was for Kid A, which took several years of navel gazing before I became depressed enough to enjoy it, and which is now my official favourite album.

As for the latest King of Limbs, I was going to review the songs, all of which I'm pleased to say left me non-plussed on the first few dozen listens. But then I made the mistake of reading a review to get a feeling of how it'd been received. The review used the words dichotomy and juxtaposition in the first sentence and, frankly, I can’t compete with that, so I'll stick to saying I like it now. It features good chilled-out music to play in the background while doing other things like thumbing through the dictionary for the definition of dichotomy and juxtaposition, while being gloomy of course.

Cryptic Friday #6

Last week's question was: Took a ride round the Wild West show. 5 letters.

The answer is... Rodeo.

This week is a slightly harder one:

Saddle will take the horse around midnight. 5 Letters.

Dressing for Breakfast

I recently discovered the delights of Channel 4's on-line service 4OD in which they offer many of their past programs for free although you do have to suffer the same flaming adverts again and again and again. So for the first time in 15 years I've just watched the largely forgotten 90s sitcom Dressing for Breakfast. I've deemed it to be largely forgotten as google failed to show me anyone who had been moved to write about it and so I thought I'd redress the balance.


Dressing for Breakfast ran for 21 episodes over 3 series in the mid 90s and I'm guessing it was pitched to the station as being Women Behaving Badly, being a female take on the popular BBC sitcom Men Behaving Badly. The result was a series that featured strong female characters and a format that I reckon inadvertently provided a template for many of the sitcoms that have come since, although none of them captured this show's easy charm.


The main character is Louise (Beatie Edney) who at 30 finds herself single and not happy with that status. For help in getting her life sorted out she has two guides: her best friend Carla (Holly Aird) who is in a stable but boring relationship and who is always on hand to provide jaundiced support. And her mother (Charlotte Cornwell) who can always be relied upon to bolster her confidence in that peculiar mother / daughter way that only goes to destroy it. The stories are always slight, but they feature witty dialogue and enthusiastic performances from the cast. Unlike many shows of this kind the, shall we say, adult nature of the conversations and subject matters always manage to be witty and relevant to the plot rather than smutty and designed to be shocking.


The show is also one of those shows that is a connections nexus. There's that game Six Steps to Kevin Bacon and I can’t help but think that Six Steps to Dressing for Breakfast would work just as well. Just about every bit part actor in the show is someone who has appeared elsewhere in things I've watched. So, for instance, a young Philip Glenister appears as Louise's boyfriend playing essentially a young Gene Hunt from Ashes to Ashes. This comes over as odd because Louise's annoying friend Rose is played by the actress who was Alex Drake's mother-in-law in Ashes while the creepy bloke in the flat next door was the creepy clown in Ashes. Stuff like this can drive you nuts.

As for the show itself, unusually for the time (and since) there is some continuity between episodes with on-going stories and plots that develop over the years such as her mother's failed relationships and a doomed love triangle. This means the show has the time to cover some not particularly funny issues such as bereavement and infidelity. Of the three series the first is perhaps the best. It's rough and awkward but it has charm whereas the second series is slicker, but spends too much time on new and annoying characters. I'm undecided on the merits of series three where clearly the success of Friends led to a rebranding with the mother disappearing (bad move) and the emphasis changing to being a wacky flat sharing comedy.

Despite numerous faults, this show stands up well today, and so now I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can find on 4OD. I'm guessing not much.