Small talk

Home made birthday cards

From FB:

Dear Mum,
I love you so mutch and miss you when your in onther room.
Have a lovely day.

Even I'm not mean enough to suggest he should have proof read it ...

From LG:

Dear Tity,
I wish you a lovely and fantastic birthday.

The boys have recently taken to calling me Mumitty, which they sometimes shorten to Titty ...
... much to my blushes when they call me in public.

Blag this

Skint's come up with (yet another) clever idea.

A Blag - not quite a blog nor a mag - but a sort of online hybrid.

Check here for details.

Have you asked an adult if you can be here?

Apparently my blog is rated as above ...

... on the basis that I've used the word bitch and pussy!

I suspect the 'bitch' reference is about this fellow blogger ...

... and pussy???

I once described G as being a pussy cat.
Ooooh - better protect the kiddies from that kind of language, eh?

I'd thought it might have been connected to my cats who look like Hitler post, but apparently not.

Click here to rate your blog.
Thanks to Rachel for the link.

Now it's your turn ...

I've finished reading Take Off Your Party Dress by Dina Rabinovitch.

In a no-holds-barred narrative, Dina focuses her unflinching journalist's eye onto her life over the last couple of years since she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

This is Dina's story, but it's also much much more.

Her criticisms of some of the medical staff (what joy when she comes across one who can get a needle into a vein in one go) will be familiar to anyone who's had so much as a blood test or who has felt they are seen as a symptom rather than a person.

Analysing the cynical way drug companies sink their resources into the search for a cure as opposed to prevention (less lucrative) she expresses the anger and frustration of us all.

And she does all this with wit, wisdom, humour and insight.

In some ways it may appear that Dina's position is very different from that of many other women - private treatment, access to the top consultants, phone conversations with Madonna, a session with a Vogue stylist to choose post-mastectomy clothes ...

But in every important way, Dina articulates the voice of any women with breast cancer.
Denial, fear, trying to 'fit cancer in' round the demands of a large extended family ...
Her feelings about the loss of her breast, her hair ...
How she feels as a women dealing with male doctors ...

These are issues every women can relate to.

This is what Dina has to say about losing a pound a week and realising the cancer is back:

'This is the real indictment of the times I have grown up in, more even than the fact that cancer is on the increase all around us. Cancer is running at one in three in the UK, one in four dying of it but, bad as that is, it seems to me worse that what really marks me as early twenty-first century woman is this: I'm welcoming the weight loss.'

I said it before and I'll say it again: This is an Important Book.
Now it's over to you.
My copy of the book is inscribed:

For Kate, Towards a cure! and with love, Dina (May 2007)

It came to me via Minx and Cailleach, whose blog URLs are listed in the cover, now joined by mine.

I will send the book to the first person leaving a comment requesting it.
(You'll need to email me at info at debialper dot co dot uk to give me an address to send it to.)
You then read, blog, pass it on.

See? Easy.

There's another version of this blog chain currently in the US here.

Of course you can also buy the book and help raise money.

As Dina says,
Towards a cure!

Norm's competition

Norman Geras is running a short story competition some of you might be interested in.

Not for me, I'm afraid.
Life's so packed that if breathing took time, I'd be in trouble ...

Assistance required for techy twit

Heeeeelllllpppp meeeee .....

I want to put Shimshon on my sidebar, but he refuses to go.

I have some weird version of Blogger.
When I updated a while back, it changed/improved the posting, but the template etc stayed the same ie using html.

I didn't even know this wasn't the case for everyone 'til I helped Meloney set up her blog and saw how easy it was for her to add links etc.

So does anyone know how I can coax Shimshon onto the sidebar so I can show my allegiance to the Shameless Lions?

Apart from leaving half a slain antelope there?

Wye we're going ...

The latest re the Wye Fayre.
6 & 7 July 2007

Withersdane Hall, Wye, nr Ashford, Kent TN25 5DA

The fab new festival with the ‘old school’ feel that’s just an hour on the train from London:

- folk, rock, blues, roots, Americana, indie, electronica, psychedelia and raw grooves

- 100 acts, 4 stages + alternative entertainment, great food & drink, ices on trikes, an al fresco record shop, children’s play tent, alternative therapies tent, free camping & parking - all in a great and green country environment.

UPDATE & FULL LINE-UP (at 17 June 2007)

With just three weeks to go until the gates open at midday 6 July, plenty of the exciting new bands and artists playing at this perfectly-formed 5,000-capacity festival in Kent are causing a stir on radio and in the music press with debut releases.

The full line-up is on the website which now includes links so you can sample the music.

In addition to the music, there’s the excellent Penned In The Margins poets and some of the best up-and-coming comedians and street performers in Cafe Muso; the Healing & Alternative Therapies Tent; bars for beers, wines, cocktails and champagne; great food and ice cream; and acres of space for camping and parking. There's even the ingenious Play Tent, where the very young children can play while DJs entertain their parents.

The site is just an hour by train from London and Lille, and on the direct Eurostar route from Paris, Brussels and Avignon.

Music kicks off at 6pm on the Friday. Camping is available to everyone with a day or weekend ticket and there's a separate field for parking. Wye train station is 20 minutes walk from the festival site and there’s a shuttle bus from Ashford International.

SOME OF THE ACTS CURRENTLY IN THE NEWS:

* Huw Stephens' Radio 1 playlist for Thurs 14 June included Middleman and Eugene McGuinness.

* 2 July release date for Middleman single, Eugene McGuinness single and Ruarri Joseph album.

* Luke Toms: one of four featured new artists in Mitchell & Webb’s current film ‘Magicians’.

* Middleman: nominated for 'unsigned act of the year' on Channel Four's Freshly Squeezed; ‘unsigned band of the week’ on Steve Lamacq show, R1; ‘Blah Blah Blah’ featured as Tom Robinson’s ‘Record of the Week’ 10-17 June on BBC R6; ‘hottest tip for 2007’ and invited for a Maida Vale session by Huw Stephens (R1/R Cymru).

* Eugene McGuinness: live session on Gideon Coe's Radio 6 show following Glastonbury appearances.

* Tom McKean & The Emperors: "Plaintive, bleak and beautiful" – Stephen Merchant, BBC 6 Music; "Tom McKean is in possession of a deep, rich voice and dark, moody songs. Fantastic" - TimeOut, London; Nizlopi’s double-bass playing John Parker now in the line-up and featured on www.ilikemusic.com in a Wye Fayre promotion.

TICKETS:

Weekend tickets £45 / Day tickets £25 / see website for concessions

Tickets include camping and parking on Friday and/or Saturday nights - site is open noon Friday to afternoon Sunday.

* via www.ticketweb.co.uk (£5 booking fee):

* via www.wegotickets.com (£3.15 booking fee):

* or email tickets@wyefayre.co.uk for details of how to save up to £10 on a weekend ticket.
* if you leave it too late to book, just turn up on the day!

For further info check the website or the MySpace ...er ... space.

Lit for all

Heard about London Lit +?
A literary festival with a difference ... open access and packed full of enthusiasm and invention.

Here's what they say about themselves:

London Lit Plus (LL+) is an open festival, which means anyone can participate, and anyone can hold an event. All you have to do to be included is to submit your event, and we’ll add it to the list on this website. We want to showcase all the wonderful literary goings-on in London that we can in a two-week period.

The only conditions for entry are that it must be literary, it must be within the M25, and it must be taking place between the 29th of June and the 13th of July 2007.

We’d particularly like independent publishers and booksellers and schools to get involved, but everyone is invited.

Click here to see the events already scheduled.

They've even got t-shirts ...

Thanks to Sarah for the link.

A Day in the Life of ....

Want a snapshot of my life?
This was yesterday ...

8.50am Take LG to school.
9.10am Back home, check urgent emails and gulp caffeine.
9.30am Leave to go to dad by bus and tube across London.
Work on ms I'm editing while on tube.

(Had phone call last night saying dad had been rushed to hospital with severe SOB - shortness of breath - and was 'extremely ill'. But when I phoned again at 10.45pm they said they were discharging him!)

11.15am Arrive at dad's. He's not there! Rush round to his GP - he's not there either.
Just about to start scouring streets when I have a brainwave.
Phone hospital - they kept him in after all.
12 noon Having packed a bag for dad, leave to get bus to hospital.
1.00pm Arrive at hospital. He's not too bad, though very frail.
Staff nurse and I try to discuss care options with him but he's having none of it.
2.30pm Leave hospital. Bus, tube, bus back home.
4.00pm Arrive home. L is already here for pre-arranged meeting.
4.15pm G drives me and L to FB's school for meeting to finalise parents' newsletter which L and I have been working on.
5.40pm Leave school and walk home.
6.15pm Arrive home and gulp down some food.
6.45pm Leave again to go to park for Dulwich run.
7.15pm LG runs 1500m.
7.45pm G runs 5km.
8.15pm Back home. Clean up. Make tomorrow's lunches. Get kids to bed. Start editing.
1.00am Bed.

PS. This is not an elaborate excuse to get out of doing memes!

Will 5 do?

Oh yikes. I've been tagged ...
And I know Cailleach isn't the first to nab me for this.
And (guilt, guilt) I now can't remember who else it was ...
Sorry!

8 things about me ... gasp.

Thing is I'm so rushed - 2 manuscripts to edit plus my dad was rushed into hospital on Wed.
(I know - it's emotional blackmail.)

Am I allowed to cheat by linking back to 5 things and asking that you let me off the other 3?

A choice of celebrations

Ain't it always the way?

You wait ages for a decent literary event close to home, then two come along on the same date.

On 29th June, Natalie will be at the Apple Mac store in Regent Street doing a presentation (scroll down to post on 6th June) on how she turned this into a book.
I've read the book and it is full of wit,wisdom and beauty. (Bit like Natalie then ...)

And on the same day ...

Martin Millar will be launching Lonely Werewolf Girl at my fave indie bookshop, the Bookseller Crow on the Hill ...

who are using the occasion to celebrate their 10th birthday.

And that date also happens to be ...

... my birthday.

So - do I go there?
Or there?

Or somewhere else all together?

A Yorkshire Davida meets a global Goliath ...

Milly at the Yorkshire Pudding Club is immersed in a case claiming constructive dismissal against her former employers.

If, like me, you instinctively support the Davidas when they take on the global greed-merchants, pop along to her blog to give her a shout and let her know she's not alone.

Authors and their blogs

The Penguin has a post about what makes a good author blog.

Funny that ... I never sat down and wondered about how or what I would blog ...
The way I do it just seemed like the only possibility.

I've realised recently that my blog voice, Real Life voice and fiction voice are all one and the same.
That could be a symptom of a lack of imagination on my part or it could be that I've managed to achieve consistency in at least one area of my life.

What about you?
Do you have a range of different voices that you can call on depending on the arena and circumstances?

Big thanks as ever to Maxine for commenting on the Penguin blog and giving a shout to myself and Clare as examples of good author blogs.

Duck! We're under attack - again (yawn)

Don't bother getting in a flap about this - we're used to this kind of attack and see it for what it is.

Here's an excerpt for your info anyway:

...book bloggers have also brought another, less salutary influence to bear on literary culture: a powerful resentment. Often isolated and inexperienced, usually longing to break into print themselves, bloggers — even the influential bloggers who are courted by publishers — tend to consider themselves disenfranchised. As a result, they are naturally ready to see ethical violations and conspiracies everywhere in the literary world. As anyone who reads literary blogs can attest, hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. And the scorn is reciprocated: Professional writers usually assume that those who can, do, while those who can't, blog.

In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs — or at least, it shouldn't. The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers. For one thing, literature is not news the way politics is news — it doesn't offer multiple events every day for the blogger to comment on. For another, bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve. The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals.

Of course, now that I've linked to the article, this will no doubt been seen as evidence of that last line.
I have only one response to that: 'Am I bovvered?'

Thanks to Working Words for the link.

Techy triumph and a sticky end

A couple of the (many) things that have happened this weekend:

• techy mate came round yesterday. As a result my browsing has transformed from snail on barbiturates to greyhound on amphetamines. Whoosh ....

• G and First Born had a big row. I just managed to prevent FB from cutting up the Father's Day card he had spent hours making. Instead, he took his revenge by applying a thick layer of glue to G's chair!
  

A post re the post

I've just received This Very Important Book in the post today.



I'm grateful for the opportunity to have become the latest link in a chain that should take it on a wide-ranging journey through the blogosphere.

Lee told Minx here.
Minx blogged about it here.
She sent it to Cailleach who blogged about it here.
And then sent it to me.

I'm going to read it now, blog about it when I've finished and then pass it on to the first person who emails me requesting it.
(info at debialper dot co dot uk)
They will then blog about it, put their name and url in the front cover, and pass it on to the next person.

Oh and by the way, Dina blogs here.
And any money raised from sales of the book goes here.

Debi the Vid Kid

I have Google alerts set up to let me know whenever my books are mentioned anywhere online.

It sometimes seems a bit random ...
For example, I know of mentions that the alerts don't pick up ...

And sometimes it tells me about ancient history, with no indication why a particular site should crop up now ...

Anyway, today I got this link to an online Chatshow interview I did a couple of years ago, when Trading Tatiana was published, and thought it might amuse if you haven't already seen it.

One of the few bits that don't make my toes curl in embarassment is when I'm asked for my favourite diva dressing room demand (!) and I say, 'An ashtray.'

An addition to our family

I've cracked.

I've adopted one of the Shameless lions.

I resisted for ages.

I'm too busy, I told myself.
I have to focus.
I need discipline.
I'm blogging too much and writing too little.

But then I popped into Shameless's blog in an unguarded moment.

And saw that 44 out of 48 lions had been adopted.
And there were over 100 comments on the original post!

Just about all my long-term blogmates had their own lion ...

I couldn't stand it.
The fact is, I just didn't want to be left out ...

So I'm now the proud adopter of Shimshon!

His name is the Hebrew version of Samson ...
... strong, with rippling muscles and a tumbling mane of hair.

First Born, having just turned 12, will be celebrating his barmitzvah next year.
He will read the portion in the synagogue that corresponds with his Hebrew birthday (according to the lunar calendar).

His portion is ... Shimshon!

FB is half an inch shorter than me, weighs a stone more and has a shoe size 3 times larger.
He also has a tumbling mane of hair that cascades down his back.

So when we came to name our lion, there was only one real possibility ...
We don't believe in coincidence.

Meet Shimshon.

Here's my 48 word contribution to the Shameless Lions Writing Circle:

A LION CALLED SHIMSHON

- A lion? You've adopted a lion?
- Well, you always said you wanted a pet ...
- Yes, but I was thinking of goldfish ... maybe a hamster ...
- B-o-o-o-ring ...
- You said you'd never even have a dog!
- Too true, squire. They hump table legs and stick their noses in pooh.
Whereas lions ...

Phew, that was close ...

I came this close (holding tips of forefinger and thumb a millimetre apart) to having to change my name, have plastic surgery and move abroad today.

I was going out to collect Little Guy from school.

I got as far as the front door when I realised something didn't feel quite right.

I looked down.

And saw ...

... attached to the sole of my shoe ...

... a pristine white ...

... pant liner.

Blogger blast

Many of you will already have virtually met Caroline Smailes, whose book, In Search of Adam, was picked up by The Friday Project, through her blog.

I haven't read it myself yet, but there have been some rave reviews from the blogosphere.
(Click on the right hand bar of Caroline's blog to find the links.)

Let's hope this is an example for the future ...

... a book picked up as the result of a blog ...
... by a publisher who specialises in finding new authors via the web ...
... publicised by blogs before anyone else even gets hold of it ...
... so that the pre-publication buzz is in place ...
... hopefully resulting in huge success.

If you're in the Manchester area, click here for details of launch events.