Semolina

Fifty years ago today, Paul McCartney and Pete Best were deported from Hamburg having been accused of arson. Apparently they were lighting condoms on fire to provide illumination for the bands van. One would hope that as a Knight of the realm, Sir Paul has put his prophylactic pyromania behind him.

As an opening paragraph to one of my blogs, I think that is probably one of the more interesting ones that I have done. Unfortunately it is completely apropos of nothing. I just needed to write something. And I don’t mean that as in ’I was stuck for a beginning. I mean it in the way a junkie ’needs’ to score some of that sweet sweet H. (That’s how drug addicts talk, right?)

I have basically spent the last thirty days writing as part of NaNoWriMo. If I wasn’t sitting in front of my laptop, I was in a pub or coffee shop, with pen and paper scratching my ideas down while trying not get so drunk or wired to make no sense. And if I wasn’t actually writing, I was thinking or dreaming or planning. And having not written anything now for thirty six hours, I miss it

Was it worth it? Well the quality of the work has yet to be determined. As a novel it is in its infancy, but I think some of the ideas in it are pretty good. If you enjoy reading my blogs then you’ll be happy to hear the humour and style have translated. It touches on some of the issues that we are all facing in the current climate, sociologically speaking. There is no snow.

Did I hit the target? I did. Over fifty thousand words in thirty days, actually twenty nine because I finished a day early. That’s despite, flu’s, hangovers, jobs, familys and other distractions. Having never had to write a thesis or anything of any considerable length I did wonder if I would have the discipline to follow through. Now that I know I do, I’m pretty proud of myself and I believe it really is the start of something for me.

So you’ll have to forgive me for writing another entry about me and my novel. I just really needed to write something. I was feeling guilty and restless not doing anything. I may have created a very interesting problem for myself.

Luckily I have a few projects to work on between now and when I look at doing the second draft of the novel (probably in January.) But until they get going I’ll just have to continue my self indulgence here. It is my blog after all. Its either that or I’m going to have to start burning contraceptives.


In fairness, if Paul McCartney wants to go around setting fire to johnnies, well then I hardly think it’s the place of the German constabulary to say he can’t. The man was in The Beatles for crying out loud. I was listening to Let It Be and The White Album earlier. They basically own music. Between them and George Martin they seem to have been responsible for every possible musical notion or concept. Don’t believe me? Go listen to their albums and remember, they did it first.

And yet there are people out there who would have you believe that the Beatles are aren‘t as good as their hype. I may have actually said something to that effect at one stage. When I was twelve.

If you were to type ‘The Beatles are overated’ into Google you will return over eleven hundred matches. In fairness, if you search ‘Lady GaGa is a talent less twat’ you get nine thousand so I guess the internet isn’t all wrong.

The thing about The Beatles, even on their most basic level they were brilliant. They took a song, started it with the best national anthem in the world (even when we were hating France in the World Cup we sang along at the start) and then they stuck on a the most simple human philosophy, ‘All You Need is Love.’

And even after crafting some to the most engaging, touching and down right catchy songs, Ringo went on to voice Thomas the Tank Engine. Over rated? I bet the Fat Controller doesn’t think so.