Author Archives: Mark

Sir Terry Leahy

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Last year Tesco – lead by Sir Terry Leahy – made over £3,000,000,000 profit. 3 billion quid. They have a store at Beaumont Leys in Leicester. If you go upstairs in that store and you are in a wheelchair you cannot browse the DVD section. Building supports and their deliberate placement of the aisles mean you can look down the aisle but not move along it. Tesco do not believe that people in wheelchairs watch films.
We went there earlier to buy some food. Because Jacq uses a wheelchair we have to use a trolley that clips on the front. And because of that we have to wait until one of the people on their front tills happens to notice us and decides to help. The person doing nothing in the Exchange booth will just stare at us while I usually then have to queue with those wanting to buy their cigarettes. More often than not it’s a security guy who helps. We have to ask for these trolleys because they keep them locked up for some reason. So we can’t just “go shopping” we have to wait and be treated third class first. Today we asked and were told that all their wheelchair trolleys were being used. That we would have to wait. And then she said “but all 4 are out”. Four.
It’s a big store that caters to a huge area and yet as far as Tesco are concerned 5 people in wheelchairs would be 1 too many. They make 3 billion profit a year and yet they will happily discriminate by not providing trolleys. Maybe there is some fire regulation? Maybe those trolleys cost thousands of pounds? Maybe they’ll say “But they always get stolen” to which the reply is “Keep buying more then” Or maybe Tesco just don’t give a crap. And by Tesco we have to mean the person who takes all the plaudits and that is the disability hater himself, Sir Terry Leahy.

NaNoWriMo completed

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I think mine is probably a bit of a con because it’s about me. It starts with a memory of a swing hanging from beams in a garage back in 1964 and it ends today. There is fiction only where memory has distorted naturally. I wrote it to understand more about me. I wrote to see where and why I self-injured, drank, became depressed and more. I wrote to work out what I thought not just about then but also something about going forward. And I wrote because writing works for me. So while everyone else probably struggled with plots and characters I just had to remember stuff. I was surprised how sad I was for nearly all of it, how angry and irritable a section made me and how deeply happy somewhere else did. I had no idea the first two emotions would surface as they did, especially the anger.
Is it complete? No, doubt it ever will be. Not because it will continue but that there is still so much left to write from before now. Will I complete it? No idea. Despite the negative emotion I have enjoyed the process (or I would not have completed it).
Do I feel better for it? I feel worse actually. It has uncovered thoughts and wants which I knew I had but were never allowed to see the sunlight. But they will go back to the darkness. It did clarify though and that was an aim.
Can you read it? No. There are maybe 2 people but even then it needs putting into some sort of shape.

Edit: Someone has pointed out it is not a novel because it is about me, it’s a bio of sorts. That’s true so no it does not count which is why I called it a con. It started out as a fictional work based on me and in the first few thousand words there was fictional content. Increasingly though the style of writing changed and in some sections it was written as the fictional part and others as it turned out. It was hard to read and make sense of because of that and the small fictional details I was dropping in. So I had to make a choice what to do and I chose what suited me. I chopped out the fictional parts which dropped by word count by a few thousand. It would have been easier to stay where I was, pass the 50k then edit it back down. But if writing is an expression of you then that is what mine is. I have the fictional save and it would take a couple of hours at most to edit it all back in and turn it into a novel. It would still be about me, it would still not be published and it would still serve the same purpose – better in fact if is not a novel.
Con or not I still sat down and wrote. The official word count is 50,376.

What now? I’ll keep wearing this big “I did it” grin for the rest of the day :)

Xbox and passwords

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This is a password: qwO8agRHfC8fqeikkPLM and so is this m}8C@uS<{MNUL0tArE(c
I like good passwords and have been saying so for a few years now. Just about all my passwords are like the above. On the computer I have a program to remember them so I don’t care how complex they are. Earlier I tried signing in to Twitter on the Xbox. It hides the characters and because I don’t want to find a keyboard, unplug. plug, type and remove it I have to use a nasty onscreen keyboard. I got that fed up with errors I changed the password. Could Microsoft have let me login from the computer? Yes. Does it help password security when the Xbox screen says that if you cannot input the right characters to go to Twitter and change the password there? No. Should a billion dollar company be able to make it easier for users? Yes. But do they care? No.
Why do companies bang on about users and passwords when some of the biggest actually behave in a way that almost ensures a user will just go for the ‘easy to remember’ rather than ‘I value my identity’?

Everything

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Crap seen on Facebook:

Allowing My Favourite Easter Egg access will let it access your Profile information, photos, your friends’ info and other content that it requires to work.

So that should really say:

Allowing My Favourite Easter Egg access will let it access all your information.

So why don’t they just say that?

Two fifths

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End of day 12 and I’m just over 20,000 words into my NaNoWriMo inspired project. I blogged on the 2nd whether I could would hit 20k and said “pretty sure I can”. Well I’m only just getting to the interesting parts and I still have words I need to add back before that date. So, will I hit the 50k? I think I will actually – and that’s a nice thought.

Part of an email

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This arrived in my – and thousands of others – inbox on Nov 5. I liked the whole email when it arrived but I really liked this part. Just read it again and I still do. (I’m at 12097 of the 50000)

2) You deserve some fun. We get so focused on doing the things that pay the bills that we sometimes neglect to do the things that make us feel truly alive. You have a world of people depending on you—family, friends, co-workers, bosses, teachers. Taking care of everyone’s needs while still finding time to buy groceries and bathe every couple days can be a feat. Unfortunately, this means that activities like writing and art and music tend to disappear into the margins of our lives.

Think of November as an all-expenses-paid, 30-day vacation to novel-land. It’s a place where you can whoop and holler and dance the crazy dance. A place where you can conjure new worlds, dream oversized dreams, and explore the wilds of your imagination. For one month, you get to orient your life around your creative spark, rather than vice versa.

Which brings us back to November 1. Today, over 100,000 people are heading out to find that spark. It’s going to be a great, unforgettable month. The cloud wishes you well! And all of us here on staff wish you well, too.

The world needs your new novel, author.

It’s time to go get it written.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Pics back then

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When the girls were small we bought a video camera. Recently found several tapes so they went off for transfer to DVD. Got them back this morning.
First is 1995 and in the back garden of the house so the girls are a really cute 5 and 2. The rest of the 5 dvd’s cover only a few years including a christmas play at playschool, a christmas play at primary school, on holiday in Tenerife (the holiday where I saved youngest from drowning), a trip to Disneyland Paris, a school sports day, walking around Twycross Zoo and a birthday party held at a family pub. All really boring if you aren’t one of us (or a future boyfriend who will probably find them hilarious.). But it’s the cameras. There are cameras held by everyone, video cameras at the plays and on holiday. For the plays people are almost jostling for position to get the best shot of their kid. So I’m lucky I have this video and other pics of the girls. There must be so many parents who can’t do that today and so many kids who will grow up with no informal evidence they were ever an angel in a school play and similar. Shame.

mods

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Ipod touch now jailbroken. Each time I do this I wonder why then reverse it then see something cool I could use/try. So this time I’ll stick with it. Takes longer to restore it anyway. PSP also modded to the latest custom firmware so time to get a couple of large mem sticks and get some game backups going. Not that I have the time to play much.

2 targets

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1. Weight. I’m back on the diet. I started eating crap again and this is not good. I’m around 75kg still, target is 73 for now, it will lower.

2. NaNoWriMo. Will I write 50,000 words? No idea. Can I hit 20,000? Pretty sure I can. It’s not a story, it’s more bio based. I wrote something before similar but I lost or more likely deleted it. Did that in a couple of days and it was over 10K. I’ve opened the box though so I’ll keep on writing until I’ve finished – and I know where it will finish – or it becomes too uncomfortable. I doubt the last will stop me but it’ll slow me certainly at times. Goal for the end of today is 3500 according to NaNo and that’s not going to be a problem. No idea what I’ll do with the end result. Probably let Jacq read it. Need to finish it first though – that bit can wait. If I don’t hit 50K? Does not matter. What matters is writing it all out.