Give Peace (Another) Chance.

Maybe I’m just getting old and cynical, but whilst it is wonderful that young people do things like this and actually think about the world in which we live, a perverse part of me can’t help but hope that during the organisation of the human peace sign a fight broke out about who should stand where.

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Discrimination!

Ah, what a crazy world we live in.

It never ceases to amaze me just how stupid some people can be. There really is no other word for it. Stupid and another example of just how far down the road we have gone towards enforced inclusion, enforced acceptance, the removal of our right to not like someone and show it.

What am I referring to? Well, this story from the BBC regarding an eight-year-old Swedish boy whose failure to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party has sparked an outcry.

Briefly, the child was handing out invitations during class-time and the teacher noticed that he had left out two of his fellow pupils. The teacher, obviously a bit of an anally-retentive, politically correct, by-the-book kind of guy immediately confiscated the invitations. Apparently, the justification for this was that anything that occurred on school premises must be ensured not to discriminate.

My advice to the boy in question? Invite all your teachers to your party, mate… except for the jerk who confiscated your invitations.

Courtesy of Jean.

Further to my last post, these jokes — forwarded to me by my friend, Jean (thanks Jean!) — really hit the mark.

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly Neologism Contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavoured mouthwash.

9. Flatulance (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question in an exam.

12. Rectitude (n..), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Show Me Heaven.

On a bit of an energy dip and feeling pretty uninspired (post-novel fatigue, anyone?), I today decided to find something with which to liven myself up a bit — and found this:

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

It didn’t help much!

Two Little Words.

1. The.
2. End.

This afternoon finds me grinning stupidly in spite of being just a little bit knackered. As expected, Children of the Resolution is now complete. I’m extremely happy with the end result and now looking forward to getting the edits out of the way and submitting. How it will be received, I don’t know — but if my other novels came close, I find it hard to believe that Children of the Resolution will not find a home. I’m confident, as dangerous as I know that that can be. It deserves to be published, not because I wrote it, not even because I invented it (for the most part, it being semiautobiographical, I didn’t), but, rather, because it is a unique and telling story. If they can’t see that… well, they will.

And so, now, some tennis (watching, that is, not playing!)

A job well done. A bloody good feeling, that.

Take Me Back To Robben Island!

Okay, picture the scene. You’re possibly the world’s most famous former political prisoner. You have lousy taste in shirts. You really can’t dance, though you are quite willing to give it a shot. You’re the former president of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections — and your 90th birthday is only a couple of weeks away. Life is pretty good. Everything is looking far more positive than it once did.

And then this happens.

Wouldn’t you want them to take you back to that island, lock you up and throw away the key?

I know I would.

The Final Curtain.

And, so, Children of the Resolution is slowly coming to a close. The final chapter is almost complete and the epilogue should only take a day or two. The end of next week, at the very latest, should see me proofing and editing.

I’m not sure how I’ll feel once its complete. I do know that I’m happier with it than anything I’ve ever written before. It does everything I want it to do. It tells the story — a fairly unique coming-of-age story — but also succeeds in making the points I wanted to make concerning the first attempts at integrating disabled kids into mainstream education back in the 1970s and 1980s. It says something important but I think I’ve managed to do this without being overbearing, unnecessarily political or heavy-handed. It’s there if you want to look for it, but the story and the characters (largely based on real people and real events) dominate.

That isn’t what concerns me. Leaving those places and times… a part of me wants to remain, to tell all the other stories that I couldn’t tell in this novel, but I know that I can’t. Not yet. Six months spent in one’s past is long enough, I think, and however nice it may have been to stir up some of the happier memories, I wouldn’t want to do it again for a while.

But I’m going to miss the old gang. I’m fairly sure of that. Over the years, for example, I’ve tried to find a way to write the “Johnny”-character (who is based on a childhood friend of mine who died when I was just sixteen) many times, with varying degrees of success. This time, he’s there. I’ve captured him exactly how he deserved to be captured and whilst this is incredibly satisfying, it’s also just a little bit sad, because I very much doubt that I’ll ever write about him again. If I do, I’ll need a good reason — something important that I’d forgotten about… but I can’t really see that happening, and I certainly wouldn’t want to risk doing anything that would cheapen what I’ve already achieved. It wouldn’t be fair to me as a writer, and it wouldn’t be fair to the memory of Johnny.

The second point being the most important, of course.

The manuscript — hopefully, the book — will always be there, though. That in itself is a consolation. I will probably never write him again because I won’t need to. If I want to say  “hi” to an old mate all I’ll have to do is turn the page.

It isn’t a bad life, being a writer.