Two Thousand and Great – As I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Dear all

A little something to end the week, today I died… Not a strange day challenge that went wrong, but, I was sent a few pages of the new book by Stuart MacBride called Blind Eye

A few months ago I was set a challenge to die – a friend of mine who works in publishing mentioned that one of her authors wrote lots of gritty crime fiction with plenty of deaths in it and could ask him to write me in as a character.

Stuart was told all about the challenges, what i’ve been up to, why I raise money for MacMillan a bit about Richard and asked for a photo, he said he would try to help out and then it went quiet.

Today Stuart submitted his first draft to the publisher and included a special copy with a few underlined sections.Below this post is a couple of pages from the forthcoming book. I was sent a slightly longer section of the book where I get named in full – this excerpt is deliberately short to avoid any spoilers appearing on the internet. 

My character is called Dirty Bob, I’ll let you judge how well he knows me.What i’ve read is great, if you are stuck for presents to buy someone dad, uncle, brother, cousin etc.. please buy one of his books, they make gripping reads.

Blind Eye will be released in May with advanced copies being available in April. I guess a few people will be getting copies from me for gifts and stuff next year but please order a copy of the book.

Cheers

Rob / Devani / Dirty Bob

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Blind Eye Excerpt

Logan peered out at a dishevelled man: swollen nose, red eyes, bushy black beard; monk-tonsure bald patch; blue parker jacket with half the fur trim missing; trousers that had seen better days and some sort of curry, going by the stains; filthy grey trainers. Robert Danavell, AKA: Dirty Bob.

‘What do you want, Bob?’

Karim’s favourite tramp gave Logan a gap-toothed smile. ‘Them fags…’ He pointed at the fallen cigarettes with a grimy finger. ‘You no’ needin’ them oany mair?’
‘Knock yourself out.’

‘Ah, cheers min, yer a fine loon.’ Dirty Bob creaked his way down to his knees. ‘No’ like that fat bugger yesterday. Tellin’ me I’m stinkin’ up his reception. Me! Wie ma best pal lyin’ deid in the morgue…’

Logan watched him picking through the gutter. It wasn’t much of a life, but at least Dirty Bob knew what mattered to him: drink, fags and the occasional half-eaten fish supper, or discarded kebab – whatever he could forage from the bins.

No life-or-death decisions. No moral or ethical dilemmas.

It probably said something about your life when you started envying people like Dirty Bob.

Bob was sitting on the pavement now, one of the windfall cigarettes clamped between his lips, patting round his pockets until he found a little book of matches. Lighting up with a sad little smile on his face. He looked up at Logan. ‘Kin yeh spare oany money fer an aul mannie tae have a wee drink tae his best mate’s memory?’

‘Aul mannie? You’re forty-two Bob, not seventy.’

Dirty Bob shrugged. ‘Aye, but forty-two’s a lot older in tramp years. Lookit poor Richard.’ He sniffed and wiped a sleeve across his nose, leaving a clean-ish streak. ‘Deid afore his time…’

Half past ten. Some of the pubs down on Regent Quay would have been open for hours, catering for the nightshift crowd and early morning drinkers. Tempting. Logan produced his wallet and dug out a fiver. Then changed his mind and made it a twenty instead. ‘Here.’
Dirty Bob eyed it suspiciously. Then grinned and grabbed the note. ‘Aye, that’ll dae Richard proud.’ He grunted his way upright, threw Logan a salute, then turned and hobbled away in his filthy trainers.

Twenty quid wouldn’t make a dent in a seasoned alcoholic like Dirty Bob, not in a pub anyway. But it would probably buy a whole load of white spirit.

Two Thousand and Great – Weeks 50 and 51

 

Dear all

Sorry about the lack of updates last week, but December is one of those strange months where there seems to be a hundred different things happening, whether parties, gigs or things.

I’ve had an odd morning, on the way to work I tried my hand at animal wrangling, (I think that’s the right term) it’s National Cat Herders Day and every moggie I saw I tried very deliberately to drive in a certain direction – mainly towards roads with traffic but it was harder than I imagined. Having seen the film Babe I imagined it couldn’t be too hard all you have to do is gently guide them. I even have the big beard like James Cromwell does in the movie. I will cal a friend with some cats on my way home to see if I can borrow them to try and make them do an assault course or something… I could have just re-read a lovely little book called Herding Cats by John McCabe but that’s not in the spirit of the strange days. (ps. If a girl ever needs to understand a blokes mind and how it works they should read the first few chapters of another McCabe book called Stickleback, trust me it will all make a bit more sense after that.)

I’ll combine my last two bell ringing lessons into one for the next bit, I’ve worked out why it’s so diffiicult – You sinply can’t practice it to get better as a novice. I have considered speaking to the young family upstairs to ask if I can instal a ring upstairs in their lounge but it’s unlikely they’ll accept. I asked how long the others have been ringing and it ranges from about 6 years to 40, so it’s little wonder I am awful in comparison.

Anyway with the cold wet weather on one night the group was down to 8 members, this meant that between rings I had a little more time to practice and ask questions to the group. As I was ringing quite well I was invited to join in with larger groups – and by the end I was ringing as part of the full ring, with all 8 bells ringing in order. It’s only at this point that my lack of experience really shows, I am so intent on keeping in time and following the person that I start to pull too hard and then end up doing twice the work I should – my technique also starts to fall apart with my hands getting too far apart and coming away from the rope. In my head I have to continue tell myself to keep my hands together but then I get so caught up in trying to keep time and place that I get lack again.

Anyway despite my flaws I have been getting slightly better, last week saw me try and incorporate a new skill ‘called changes’ where the tower captain changes the order by shouting out a new series of numbers eg, 5 to 3 and the bells mentioned have to change their order with one then coming in front of another. I found this quite confusing but I seemed to stay in time and place most of the time, I need to read my little guide book a few more times as i still struggle to retain the information about what rings where and when in a tune. Sometimes I feel that Tony is just making things – watching the group last week a new call of “Go Antelope” was shouted and the ringers all responded going from rounds 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 into a new pattern  which I am assured is 3 blows in 5ths, dodge, 2 blows in 4ths as you can imagine I have no idea at all what this means.

This though might make it clearer to anyone who is interested - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing

A week last Wednesday I went to see a very talented group called Kitty, Daisy & Lewis where I bumped into one of the hairdressers who refused to dye my hair, that said she took one look at my sorry attempts which have turned me ginger and has agreed to finally turn my hair white, this should be happening on the 21st December.

The next day was also my works xmas party – this clashed with another of my strange days, National Dice Day, there’s no easy way to say this but I don’t remember much if anything that went on. The idea for the day was to try and live my life by the throws of a dice like the lead character in The Dice Man, it’s a fantastic book and for those who haven’t read it the premise is simple,  you assign each side of the die a value or task eg. roll 1 quit your job roll 2 jump the receptionist 3 commit arson etc… and then do what the dice says… After a couple of safe early rolls which chose my outfits for the day I set off to work (only after consulting the dice…) Whilst in the office I kind of forgot all about the dice. i had lots to do and they remained in my pocket, I got asked to do things and the dice said I had to say yes to everyone and be as helpful as possible (trust me it’s not that often I’m like this) and all was going well.

As I got changed to go to the restaurant my works party was at I remembered to put the dice in my pocket and set off down the road. As we got to a pub next to the place a colleague asked if I wanted a drink a quick roll said yeah but not one drink in the 20 odd minutes before we were due to arrive but 3 – this then became a set practice, 3 pints became something like three bottles of wine, which lead to three ports and then I can’t really remember much. The pics on the work camera show me in full makeup wearing my strawberry hat with a platted beard – people tell me we went dancing afterwards in a Northern Soul joint (might have been the dices idea) but the magical beer scooter got me home. Waking the next morning though was something of a shock – the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a pair of ladies tights on my wash bin, this then lead to that strange thing that many of us have had to do which is extend and arm out backwards praying you don’t make contact with anything. Thankfully I was alone and all things considered in good shape, everything I needed to get home got home, presents cameras me etc….  Walking into the office the next day wasn’t fun though as my memory of the night from around 10pm was completely gone – people kept telling me stories about what we /they /mainly I had got up to and I simply have to believe them as I know no better.

As it is getting close to christmas I thought I would put this picture into the email. With the person who set the challenge being a big fan I hope this is enough to pass her challenge. I was tasked with turning on some christmas lights with a celebrity. A client of ours had asked for Jordan to turn on Croydon’s lights but that went quite so I tried to think of other ways to do this. Great Portland Street and Riding House Street do not have official lights so in my head if I managed to get a celebrity to do this with me it could kind of count. I managed to get a few to agree but the pictures weren’t great – this however looked quite good:

Xmas Lights

Rob & Alex James turning on the JLA xmas lights.

I can take no credit in Blur reforming, but if you are stuck for an idea of what to get someone for christmas, Alex James makes a great cheese called Blue Monday which everyone in the office thoroughly enjoyed.

This last week was another dominated by things that meant i couldn’t do much to complete a few outstanding challenges, little things kept popping up like dinners to attend or people to go and see, I know I have a few to tick off like the lovely turkish girl who has bought all the waxing stuff to rip the hair from my body and many others.

that said I was happy to take this weekend out as one of my best friends was over for his birthday and I had a great weekend, Friday kicked it off with a Poker night for 6 blokes, I cooked the lamb and olive dish from my cookbook but with a little change that improved the recipe a little further, to help add a little more flavour in the early stages of the dish I fried some cubed pancetta with the onions right at the start – as a guest said, there’s not much that can’t be improved with the addition of another meat.

Saturday we went to a lovely restaurant called Chez Bruce where I thought I’d at least have a stab at one of the challenges that was set to me back in January but I hadn’t taken all that seriously. My mums challenge to me this year was to get married – I’ve met and kissed lots of lovely ladies this year but the waitress on Saturday kept bringing me great food and topping up my glass with divine wine, to me this seemed like a good template to base the rest of my life on so I  proposed to her… unfortunately she was already taken and I will have to go back to my normal life.

There was another thing that came up over dinner which made me really think about this year. I know when I set out I stated my goal is / was to raise £10,000 this year for charities and it looks like I might fall a little short, but every penny ihave raised will help people so I can’t be disappointed. At the table someone asked people to define their highlight of 2008, people said things like getting engaged, etc, etc… but I really struggled, I have had so many different experiences this year that it was difficult to focus it down to a moment.

I decided in the end on one little thing which was sending a text message to a bunch of friends, family and supporters which simply stated, There’s no more road left. Land’s End to John O’Groats was a great experience for me and will set a bar for what I do in the future, I have thoughts which haven’t fully germinated for things like cycling North to South Coast Australia or East to West Coast America – but there’s other things to think about.

I’m not sure how I will get an email out to everyone in the next couple of weeks so I should say it now, thanks to everyone who has set challenges, helped me complete them or generally come along for the laugh with me. It’s been lots of fun but not quite over yet.

Still much to fit in, and somehow got to buy some presents this week.

Happy Christmas and all that

Rob / Devani

Two Thousand and Great – Week 49

Dear all

Something went terribly wrong, I sat down yesterday and read the instructions once, read them again and then after a third check I set out to dye my hair and beard white for the month of December to pass one of my challenges.

This didn’t quite work out as expected – my hair isn’t a lovely shimmering white, it’s orange! I’ve become a ginger… I could blame the kissing red heads challenge where some latent redness has come through the newly white hair, but I think it’s more likely that my hair is too dark for conventional bleaches.

I’ll have another go tonight see if I can get it lighter, the goal is to get to white… Pictures can be seen here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86577&id=660945790

–

Bell ringing is going well and I seem to be getting a bit better – I seem more comfortable in stopping the bell when required.

I arrived a little early again and in the church hall their was a dress rehearsal for a play that is being performed this week.  As someone who isn’t in anyway a regular church goer, is it strange to see people dressed as the characters from Wind in the Willows running around church buildings? As with much of this year I come to expect oddness.

As Sunday was Advent I asked whether there were special songs that would be rung to mark the event. For some reason I kind of assumed that there would be specific rings for Easter, Advent etc… but found out that the only time there is a difference is for Rememberance Sunday with the mufflers.

Tuesday saw my first efforts of ringing as part of a group, with a bell either side of me I had to follow the lead of another ringer, this seemed to go ok at first – but for some reason I started to slow down, it seems intuitive that to speed up again you need to pull harder and faster but to catch up you actually have to do the opposite. three bells should sound like three blind mice and in stages it did, but for the most part it didn’t and it was all my fault.

For my next effort I had to join a four bell ring – my efforts went from bad to worse and at one point I completely lost control of the bell, I had been concentrating so much on the person next to me I wasn’t completing the full pulls on the bell and it began to swing too low. this meant that it swang far too fast and was beginning to drop, I had to try and raise it again otherwise the rope would start flailing about wildly. i eventually got it under control again but it was a stark reminder I have only been doing this for a couple of weeks and have so much to learn.

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On Wednesday my office had a visit from a well known face and he has helped me a little further in the turn on the xmas lights with a celebrity challenge. I hope my efforts are enough to pass the challenge – I hope the person who sets the challenge agrees I have done enough to pass – all will be revealed soon.

–

On Friday I set out to Make My Own Head for my final strange day of November – The intention was to make a papier mache model of my head and then paint it on Sunday. Something I have obviously forgotten over the years is quite how long papier mache takes to dry.

I bought some PVA glue and using newspapers I had collected over the week I sat down to cover a balloon. What I didn’t realise is that it was Sunday by the time it had dried. According to how it ended on Friday – my head is a damp gloopy papery oval.

On Saturday morning I watched Art Attack, and on the show it featured a papier mache tissue box holder, but some of the ideas used I realised I could transfer to my balloon head. Using strips of paper I began to build features, like a nose, brow and beard before sitting down to add another layer of papier mache. It’s still drying, and sometime in 2009 it might even be dry – when it is I’ll paint it up and show you all.

this is as far as I have got - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86575&id=660945790

I did look for some fimo clay to try and make a small sculpture for this update but nowhere seems to sell it by me, Playdoh was the closest I could find and that really didn’t work.

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Away from challenges, I went to Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park Corner, which is fantastic. There is a German christmas market and a fun fair and tons of stalls selling German foods and lager. There were lovely trinkets and lots of great stuff to buy

I now own a hat that only works on bearded people, it looks like a strawberry – I like it, let me know your thoughts - http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2174984&l=e6822&id=660945790

I’m not sure how to describe WW, the day was lovely. The ice rink looked amazing, standing outside the fun house I was laughing so hard, there’s a maze  section with clear perspex walls, you could watch people walking around and then crash straight into the walls falling over. I’ll never forget as a kid saw his dad and just ran straight towards him before rebounding back off the plastic wall about 3 feet – genius!

One note of warning don’t bother with the ghost train it’s not all that. More photos of the day can be seen here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86571&id=660945790

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It’s getting so close to the end now, but if you have any challenges for me I’ll try and complete them before the end of the year.

Proposed Strange days for December

Dec 4th – National Dice Day

Dec 15th – National Cat Herders Day

Dec 20th – National Games Day

Keep on challenging me, I’ll keep accepting.

Rob / Devani