Nano-time
For those about to write... we salute you.

This may seem a little early, to those of you who know about what I am talking. What I am talking about is

Nanowrimo

an annual month of madness where lots of people (one of which is me) try to write a 50000 word novel in a month.

In fact, I have invoked the Zokutou clause twice, which states that if you have a novel which has already been started, it is acceptable to expend your energy finishing that one to the tune of 50000 words or more.

The reason I am slapping a nice early notice on here is so that anyone who hasn't done it before, Ms Progenitation, Mum etc. can get a nice early start planning it. Because if you plan it well in advance, with chapter plans etc, then not only will you have it all sorted by the time you begin, but you will be so keen to get started, that come the beginning of November (and you must hold off until then) you will be so enthused that you will churn out 15000 words on the first weekend free, which then gives you a nice safety cushion for the next couple of weeks.

If you work it out it only comes to 1666 words a day, which is peanuts really, and if you make sure you slap out a nice safety cushion at the beginning and then make 8k each weekend then it really doesn't matter if you can't be arsed much during the week, just make notes and use those to create huge word counts during the times you can be arsed. In fact, if you can make 15k on the first weekend and 8k on the ones after that, you will only have to write 500 words a day. I've written more than five hundred words here.

I'm sure I will get my annual snotty comment from Sianodel, pointing out that he is convinced that my writing must suffer for being done fast. Well actually, it doesn't really, provided I have a plan ready, I'm not having to write any faster than I usually do, I am just making sure that I keep a sustained effort up. And to be honest, despite his earnest protestations that he doesn't need Nano, he is still only part way through either two or three novels, I have lost count.

This year, like every year in fact, I suggest he tries it.

I am looking forward to it, even just cruising the forums is fun, although I prefer the satisfied feeling of being able to do that once I have done my words for the day. Otherwise the guilt gets to me. This year I think I am going to try and write something stupid. I'm even considering not planning it, just to see if I can do it. But I want to start now, so really, I will have to start planning it, otherwise I will start to sneak out prose, and then I will be cheating.



The Brunette started to do it with plays, as she doesn't want to be a novelist, she writes plays instead, something I can't do, but it is more difficult then, because word count is less of a factor as to the length of the play. She might try again this year.

I should go to work, I want to stop off at Waterstones and get a Go book. I'm learning Go, but I have a feeling that I am getting something wrong. I keep beating the computer, but my boards look nothing like the ones in books do - I think I might be taking too direct an approach.
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/25/2006 11:21:00 am

 
I'm back.
By that I mean the normal offensive slightly drunk me, rather than the upset slightly maudlin me that has been occupying me for the past few days.

I was looking up social networking sites yesterday, after watching the second of the new series of Spooks. Bastards. Frankly. Colin was great. That was spoiler text for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Social networking is something I don't quite get. It doesn't help that I don't like other people, but things like myspace seem great for bands, where musicians can post some of their own music for others to listen to, and flickr is great for photographers, and youtube is great for budding filmmakers, but surely a blog is good enough for everyone else? Or not. It networks me with anyone who wants to network with me, and frankly, anyone who doesn't can fuck right off. Myspace seems to network me with fifteen thousand teenage girls all posting little videos about how upset they are about their emo friends said something upsetting the other day. I don't know them, and I don't want to.

Googles version, which is called something like Otuko has a clause in the t&cs which states that anything you post becomes their intellectual property.

WHAT?


Read my fingers. They can fuck right off too.

And librarything seemed wicked. I even set up an account, which was foolishly easy, but then the fuckers cut me off after only 200 books, and that hadn't even got through the list of books I had left at home. You have to pay for more, and I'm not that bothered.

I even went to some site that lists all of them, and the only one I was even mildly attempted to join was the one specifically for smoker singles and smoker friendly non smokers. Not because I'm smoker friendly any more, they should all be taken out and drenched in chutney IMO, but just because I couldn't belive someone had created a social networking site for smokers.

***five minutes later***

It's ok. I have another gin and tonic.

Hendricks Gin. Yum. Trust me on this. It's more expensive, but your hangovers taste of cucumber.

Show still proceedin smoothly. I am writing a spoof version, which may end up here. Cast members are still discovering my twisted sense of humour as they read Digby's Story. Only one of you lot have read it, so you probably don't know what I'm talking about.

I walked home tonight, suppressing the need to laugh at passers by in case I was beaten up.

I wrote something the other night. It's a bit wanky. I thought I'd post it anyway, just because I can. hah.

I whirl around, my head pumping, my hair matted and stuck to me. I can smell myself moving in the stink of the crowd. Arms in, eyes down, the lights overhead passing like searchlights across the crowd. Pulsing, in time with the beats, muscles spasmodically moving in rhythm to the waves of sound energy crashing into me.

Inside my eyelids I can sense the dancers nearest to me, their movements, girl to the left sinuously moving her pelvis in and out of the crotch of the boy behind her, the guy to my left, as lost as me, drifting, his eyes turned upwards, reflecting the colours of the rig, drug confused pupils dancing erratically to the strobe. The girl behind me, focussed, mineral water her only beverage, elbows in, neat small steps, anxious not to offend by bodily contact. Not possible in this arena.

I can feel the muscles in my neck which throw my head about in the ecstasy of dance protesting against the rhythm. The drugs mix with the alcohol to produce a barrier between myself and myself. The one that wants to forget, and the one that can. They allow me to keep clear of the people around me, other than the occasional bump and grind. The heat is tangible, wrapping me in its embrace and stroking the fear from my bones, the tiredness from my joints, and eliciting the sweat of the desperate.

I must forget. I will forget. I have taken what I need to forget, and now I dance to ensure whichever deity governs Lethe will grant me enough to let me rest. To take away the ghost that haunts me.

I feel the bass in my pelvis as a woman reaches round my waist and puts her hand on me through my trousers. She pulls back, and I follow readily, pushing my weight into her warmth and reaching round myself to take her butt, grinding myself into her as we sway to the same beats, following the same rhythm. Pick a strand of the music and make it your own. I can feel her breath on my neck, quick and hot. Her tongue touches to the nape of my neck, coming away with a droplet of sweat which she runs round her lips, tasting me already.

I open my eyes, but the lights are too much for me and sweep me away into a rainbow dance along my optic nerve. I am blinking to try and bring myself back to the woman, but by the time I am aware of my surroundings again, she is gone, and the strings in the music lift me, turning me as I seek her, but I did not see her face, and I cannot know where she is now. Her place has been taken by another girl, who looks at me strangely.

The velocity of the dance has brought me further down the tunnel I am seeking. The lights are darker now, and the movements more frantic. The drugs do work, they will show me the way, which turnings to take when I am in doubt, the patterns I must move within to be granted access. I can feel my feet are becoming worn, tired, in the sodden shoes I wear as penance, but I can keep them moving, sustain the equilibrium, keep the beat, keep the beat, keep the beat.

Synth chords assault the crowd, a guardian bars my way. I see people leaving, others, wary of the challenge slow, their footsteps falter, they lose track, regain it, but have lost the chance to pass, they must remain here, dancing fruitlessly, sweating their life out, drink by drink, with no redemption. I feel the true path, my feet move slyly, jiving backwards and forwards of their own volition, their rhythm known only by myself and those I make obeisance to. Hidden by my shoes my toes beat a tattoo which complements the movement of my heel. Each foot moving separately, their patterns crawling up my legs, knees flexing, hips swaying, muscles clenching and unclenching. I will have to rest tonight, but I will not rest until the music has gone away, bearing with it those fragments I want no longer.

I close my eyes again, internalising my movements. I do not like the music, I do not care, I feel only the rhythm. Provide me with that, and I will dance, deprive me of such, and I will fall apart. The DJ obliges. I move, visions I am preparing to part with running in front of my eyes, my face contorted, I feel, into a visage of pain.

The music smoothes, a break to allow respite, brief and beautiful. This guardian will take some of the load. He knows it will become harder before I reach my destination, before I stand before Her. He takes one, two, three, then the beat bounces back in, lightly, reminding me of where I am, what I am here for. It slides under my feet, lifting me up, taking me forward. The pathway is darker now, but lighter at the same time. My feet stomp, carrying me forward. I can see fewer footsteps now. Only those who need to pass this point. I can feel my self drifting, the drugs are pushing it to one side, they are taking control.

I can feel myself, squashed to one side, removed from the equation, no longer needed to keep my body moving, eyes now open, unfocussed, staring at nothing, my gaze hanging loosely in the air within grasping distance. The music opens up. Even in this cramped and claustrophobic pit of sweating people there is suddenly space. It is epic. We all raise our hands, and our faces to the lights, staring blankly as we move in time, and yet each individually, thanking something for this chance, for this space, this feeling, this beat, the possibility of rebirth. Another guardian.

The space goes, people step down, their arms flail as they fall. Others hold their arms for longer than they should. They fall by the wayside. They will not be allowed to pass further than this. Whatever is in control moves my arms in perfect harmony downwards, hiding them from view beneath the surging dancers surrounding me, always with grace, always with rhythm. I close my eyes briefly and see this guardian bow its head and stand aside. I am further than I have come before.

I have shed memories I wished to shed, but there are more to come, and the dance keeps those most dangerous till last. I move on, feeling the muscles and articulations of my body come back into my control, this last section is up to me, I cannot rely on anything else to do the job for me. They have become heavier, animated, crawling over me, shifting their weight at awkward times, trying to throw me, but I keep my strength, my balance, my beat. The music slows, making it more difficult to hold concentration.

I sweat, I keep moving. My clothes stick to me, down my back and under my arms. I focus and pull myself around. I must come through, these few I still carry are those I must rid myself of. She must go, I must be rid of what I carry now. Visions flash again, smells, memories I have not felt for years begin to stir and I realise with horror, that what I plan to rid myself of is only the very surface of what I must in fact leave behind. The weight grows. I make it through the next track on instinct and sheer bloody mindedness. I must have a rhythm, and the path has become hard, the rhythms grow insipid, weaker, lighter. I drag my focus inside and bite down on my tongue, driving out the drugs clouding my system, and using pain to drive me forward.

I am nearly there now, I can sense Her. I will have made it as far as I need when I may gaze upon Her face and plead with Her to take what I cannot live with. She will be waiting at the end of the pathway that I dance. I can feel the night growing weaker, my companions no longer surround me as closely. I have more space, and I cannot feel them as accurately when I have my eyes closed. A chill seeps up my spine. I cannot afford to have taken a wrong turn, to be abandoned here, alone where there should be many, dark and empty, would be too much to take, too far travelled. I am committed to my journey now, and if it does not end in satisfaction, or at least release, then it must end in disaster.

Fade, and back, beats rhythm, pulsing over me, moving, arms out, arms in, head nodding, pulsing, oscillating, turning, allowing my brain direct access to the rhythms I am being fed. I look up at the strobe as it bursts into magnesium white. As I see bursts of nothingness, suddenly I see everything. My optic nerve drains and refills, drains and refills, emptying itself further each time. I can see Her, I can see Her. The path is at an end. I contain my excitement and simply move more completely, feet in sync with my upper body now, my entire being pulsing with the rips and grooves She throws at me. I can hear voices, brass and drums, tearing at each other, weaving themselves into beautiful fabric that clothes Her as I dance to Her.

One by one I unburden myself, laying my memories out for Her to peruse. As I drop each one I feel it flicker through me. Tears begin to come, but I am not finished yet. More portions of my history are laid at Her feet. I let the drugs back in and feel them sweep into me, almost knocking me from my rhythm, my worship, my dance.

Finally I am empty, filled only by drugs, alcohol, and a already a void where my memories have needs been taken from. It will ache when the drugs are gone, but it will be better than remembering that other her. I make my obeisance and move away, fleeing before She recalls me, changing her mind and leaving me distraught again.

As the beats fade, the lights slow. I am alone on the floor. Other dancers have given up. I have beaten the DJ, he could not lay a dangerous enough path for me not to tread. My need was direr.

There is one other dancer. I must control my exit. I let the rhythm fade, the beats leave me and I am again limp, a puppet with no master. The other dancer stops and we stand quiet, exhausted, spent, triumphant.

She raises her eyes to mine and I feel my insides drop away. It is her, my her. The her I left behind.

She turns and walks away.

- posted by Buntifer @ 9/19/2006 11:41:00 pm

 
Lucy’s dead. Another person I will never get the chance to speak to again. I hadn’t seen her for seven years. The last time I did see her, I was in the front seat of a car driving to a friend’s house behind a coach. She was on the back seat of a coach looking out of the back window. I blew her a kiss.

I never found out whether she saw me, or what her reaction was if she did. I had fancied her for two years at school, seeing her only in Italian lessons, and never speaking to her. It didn’t help that coupled to myself being reduced to silence by the presence of almost all girls at that point, she was also very quiet and never in my experience initiated a conversation herself.

She walked around for the first two terms of sixth-form with her right hand hovering near the side of her face, as if she were holding a mobile phone to her cheek. Apparently one of the Russians had told her she would be pretty if it weren’t for her nose. It took that long for her to regain her confidence.

I had no conversations with her that I can remember, certainly none that did not take place in the Italian classroom before the lesson. She wore trousers that breached school regulations, but she was too pleasant ever to be pulled up about it.

She was beautiful in an ethereal sort of way, her smile cast shadows in her eyes that made her look as if she were smiling at something nobody else could see. On the rare occasions I made her smile, usually by acting up in class as a twelve year old might, to impress a girl, it made my heart beat a little faster.

I heard her once described by another girl as “the beautiful one, the one with the ski-jump nose.” A description as apt as it was catty.

I don’t know what she was interested in, or where she went to uni, or even if she did. In two years of sixth form, eight periods a week with her I had singularly failed even to make a casual enough acquaintance to be able to sit down and eat lunch with her. I forgot about her, and she only occasionally passed through my mind as I wondered what everyone at school was doing now, or when I wondered who might be at the school reunion.

She was someone to whom I don’t think I was ever likely to speak again, not realistically. But I had unfinished business with her. Even if it was just to say “Hi, how’s life?” on an even basis, without feeling like my insides were dropping out, in a way that no longer meant, “I really like the way you look but know nothing else about you.” There was no expectation of being able to do this, but the fact that the possibility was there, that one day I might bump into her on the street and be able just to say, “Hello” was enough.

It can’t happen now, and that’s a strange feeling. She was a part of my sixth form. Just a crush.
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/17/2006 01:32:00 am

 
I'm incredibly popular
Although I actually mistyped "I'm incredibly poo..."

I had 78 visitors yesterday! A new record, and no comments at all. Rubbish - all of you. I'm also now well over the five figure visitor site, which makes me feel warm and slightly runny inside.

Hang about...

[five minutes later]

Actually, that was just the tabasco soaked nightmare I had for breakfast making me both of those things.


I'm on my long day off today, and running low on things to do, so I thought I would say hello. I have Mr Moments still staying with me, and we are still drinking too much and staying up later than we should, although he's just started filming something, so I think he'll be going to bed earlier these days, cos he has to leave at some god forsaken time of the morning where the time only has single digits. I thought that was just a legend, but it appears, like imaginary numbers, that it does exist.

I'm sure when I sat down at the keyboard I had more to say. I have a new linker, but I those of you who haven't met him already can meet him later, when I get around to editing my template properly and introducing him.

I found a charity shop selling sci fi books for 10p each the other day on the way to work, and I bought 20. The Brunette's not going to be happy when she gets back and finds that I have spent all the bill money on books and filled the flat up with the little critters. (Our bill money is more than £2, sad to say, but I have also spent over £100 at Amazon since she left. Oops)

I bought:

Nine Tail Fox - Jon Courtenay Grimwood - fantastic so far
End of the World Blues by the same chap - haven't started it yet.
Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau
Science on Stage by Kirsten Shephard Barr
How to Eat - Nigella Lawson - don't hit me, please! I peered through it at Sianodel's mother's house, and it looked really good
Lost Girls - Alan Moore - buy it before they ban it, looks great
and
Empires of Belief: Why We Need More Scepticism and Doubt in the Twenty-first Century by Stuart Sim - long title, I know, but it looks interesting, I'm a sceptic, and I believe that much more dangerous than Islam is modern neo-conservative Christianity, partly because there are an awful lot more Christians than Muslims, and they are all tied together somehow.

Ooh, and in other news Mr Moments has introduced me to Tescos cooking bacon, a kilo or so of bacon for under a quid! And it is nice chunky lean bacon too, awesome for sandwiches and salads, and broccoli etc on bads of couscous.

I realised why Islam can't be the one true religion - No god who bans bacon can be taken seriously, it's good stuff, and the only reason he did it was to keep it all for himself. Christian God tried to do that with paedophilia, but the church got wind of it and institutionalised it, while making it a sin for people that weren't priests.

heh

[if you could see the grin on my face now...heh...imagining the comments, although with you lot I'll be lucky to get a "meh"]





And I had another thought - does anyone know the webpage where you can input lots of photos of the same item from different angles and then make a spinning view of the object? I found it once, but now I have the photos and I can't find the damn thing.

I'm selling more greaves

So if any of you want more fetish gear, you know where to look.

Show still going well, nobody dead yet, although many of the audience nearly there ;)
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/15/2006 12:18:00 pm

 
fshjgfshtm
I get back from work at around 11.15 at the mo. And then I stayed up a a while. At 1.30 I went to bed. I couldn't get to sleep for hours.

So why, in Satan's smelly shit filled underpants, have I irretrievably woken up at six thirty?

I'm going to pay for this later. (Pay for getting no sleep, not for suggesting Satan is incontinent.)
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/13/2006 06:37:00 am

 
Digby's Story
I haven't mentioned it before, but the theatre in which I work has a ghost, a young girl. I was trapped in the theatre the other night, and met her. She's upset, and this is her story .

Digby’s Story

This is Digby’s story. Please forgive its faults and its discrepancies, for Digby was only young, and English never was her strongest subject. I, as transcriber, have tried to keep this text as faithful to what I remember I was told upon that night.

Let me begin by introducing Digby. She is a girl of nine, devoted to her mother, and scared of her forbidding papa, of whom she saw very little. He worked at the mill down upon the Thames, near Teddington, as a foreman, and was determined that his daughter grow up to be as proper and delightful as the daughters of the mill owners, it was this thinking which led him to suggest to Histania, her mother, that Digby be sent to Ms Faversham Lloyds’ school for girls, a modern-thinking school that had been set up not many miles from where they lived. He pulled in enough money to afford it, if they saved a little at home, and Histania was more than happy to scrape the household budget a little further to ensure her daughter Digby “an education.”

So Walter Samuels applied to Ms Lloyds, and went up to Richmond to meet her on three occasions, each time returning home more gravely faced than he had the time before. Then one cold afternoon in September, as Digby was helping her mother clean the pews in St John’s Church, Walter strode in, his long coat flapping in the curl of wind the doors had released into the frigid nave, and beckoned her. Never one for tergiversation, her father kept his words brief.

“Come, Digby. Histania, I must show Ms Lloyds our daughter.”

They journeyed up to Richmond in a small horse trap Digby’s father had hired for the afternoon, and soon she found herself deposited outside a rambling building at one end of Richmond High Street.

Her father pushed her forward with one hand, striking forward with the other above her head to burst the doors open. Digby was forced to scuttle in order not to be trampled beneath his feet, and barely had time to glance at the barren walls and cold bricks of the building into which she was being deposited.

It was not until they reached the door of Ms Lloyd’s room that her father paused.

“You must continue on your own.”

Digby looked up at the dark oaken door before her. Passing beyond it was a step into a new life.

She was accepted to the school, and soon began her classes there. It was the custom for new pupils, especially those such as Digby, who had joined the class in the middle of the term, to stand up on their first day and introduce themselves to their future tormentors. Digby started with an obvious disadvantage.

“My name is Digby Samuels.”

She expected laughter, gales of it usually followed the pronouncement of her name. Nothing came, no laughter, no repressed giggles, nothing. She searched the faces of the girls in front of her. Not one smiled, not one even blinked. Finally she saw an expression pass across the face of one, it was a micro flash of disgust, quickly blanked over by the conditioning the school imposed.

Her classmates did not talk to her that day, nor the next, nor the one after that. It was three weeks before any of Digby’s peers said a word to her. That word, when it came set the tone for her career as the school scapegoat.

“Commoner!”

Whispered with such venom, such hatred, that Digby involuntarily lost control of her bladder, and had to be sent down to the school nurse for a change of stockings.

The school was peopled with the children of mill owners, small landowners and businessmen, who had, perhaps due to their own slight social ambiguity, developed a hatred for those commoner than themselves, as if afraid they might contract a social disease from her.

It was not simply her name they hated, although once she began to be spoken to it was the subject of many vicious jibes, but also her hair (‘ginger’), the cut of her clothes (‘cheap’), her accent (‘irretrievably common’), her face (‘pug ugly’) and her voice (‘piercing, like a weasel being raped’.) Digby had the joint disadvantages of gullibility and openness, so she was assured of offending, as well as being easy to take advantage of, and throughout the months she attended Ms Faversham’s she rarely went a day without having something of hers taken from her and broken or eaten or destroyed in some form or other. She was mercilessly tormented, and yet she never spoke out, for she was a good girl, and her parents were suffering for the privilege of having her schooled here.

Let us however, skip forward here, some months, for while I had the long uninterrupted stretches of the night with nobody but Digby to keep me company, I understand that modern people are often in a hurry, and thus I will keep this brief, trying only to put down those details salient to poor Digby’s story.

Amongst everything else Ms Samuels was hated for was one insurmountable flaw. She was good at almost anything. More than anything else she was hated for this. The girls surrounded her rarely allowed Digby the chance to show the teachers her talent, such was theirs for sabotage and misdirection. Digby was renowned as a student whose work was never in on time, and was done hurriedly, generally because another girl had stolen hers and handed it in as her own, or torn it up and thrown it in the Thames. They had many ways of making her life a misery, and I have time only to detail a few in this brief account.

Digby shone in many areas, but one in which she both excelled and took great delight was that of the girls’ theatre classes. Theatre was quite plainly not a subject worth expending lesson time upon, but In Ms Faversham Lloyds’ Modern Mannered Method, there was made time for subjects which might merely increase a girl’s suitability for marriage and conversation. These classes included gardening, bedroom conversation, cookery, elementary hand to hand combat, and theatre.

The school hall was converted into a rough theatre space, and each term the girls would rehearse a new play before performing it in front of parents and various parishioners and residents of Richmond. Ms Lloyd was very keen on theatre in which the audience surrounded the action, or ‘theatre in the altogether’ as she called it. The girls would play both male and female parts in the plays, and there was great competition as to the lead parts.

Digby, having both the stature, the voice (apparently), and according to the other girls, the name for it, had been cast in her first years production as one of the leading men in “The Slave of Duty”, a two act comic opera, that had been recently written and performed to great acclaim in Paignton and New York.

This made her less popular than ever with her contemporaries, and throughout the rehearsal period she was bullied horribly, the violence beginning to take on physical form, as girls began leaping out on her and beating her on the head with rulers as ‘practice’ for her part.

The trouble, and her story came to a head as the production began to roll into its final few days. Ms Lloyd sent out slips to all parents of the girls in the production requesting permission for them to stay in the theatre for a full night the day before the first performance. The set had to be erected, and the technical rehearsal was expected to take them late into the night. Ms Lloyd was hopeful that the girls would sleep better as a group and rise invigorated and with the necessary group spirit to bind them into a solid cast.

The set was a single ship, built from wood donated by a wealthy parent, clad in sails, again donated by another wealthy parent, and the play would open as the girls ran on, brandishing swords and releasing the main sail, which would unroll with an impressive ‘whooomp’ ing sound, and begin the show.

That night Ms Lloyd worked the girls hard, making sure they knew their lines and their melodies, before shepherding them upstairs and into the communal dining room, which had been cleared to make a sleeping area for them for the night.

The girls undressed and slipped under their blankets in the cold, giggling and in turn being hushed by the supervising members of staff. Digby did the same, crawling underneath a corner blanket and hiding her telltale mop of ginger hair.

She heard behind her the staff leave, and felt the eyes of her contemporaries alight upon her.

“Commoner and commoner.”

Giggles.

“Ginger minger…”

Giggles.

“Little swat…teachers pet…”

Whispers. Giggles.

“Come on…Answer back then.”

Digby kept her head down. She could hear giggles and whispers, and then footsteps. A hand seized her blanket and tore it down her, leaving her shivering and pale in her nightgown. An older girl, one she knew had missed out on Digby’s part, Frederic, stood over her.

“Get up you little freak.”

A foot landed in her ribs.

“Get up, commoner!”

Digby pulled herself upright, clasping her hands round her for warmth.

“What gives you the right, you little bitch?”

The girl threw a punch, but her hand, hampered by the fact that she was till holding the blanket, flew wide. Digby turned and ran, knowing as she did so that it was a worse idea. If she could just get to the door she could shout for a member of staff.

Hands flew up, feet out, trying to grab or trip her. Digby jumped and ducked, but eventually one found her, and brought her crashing down to the ground. She felt the floorboards shudder and hopped the noise might be enough to call a teacher.

The large girl who had taken her blanket thudded down on her shoulders.

“Get her feet, one of them’ll be up in a mo.”

Anxious hands grabbed for her feet and hustled them under blankets, bodies lying on them, grinding them into the coarse floorboards. Melissa, the girl lying on her shoulders bent down and whispered at her through gritted teeth.

“Make a sound and I’ll break your fingers.” And Digby felt Melissa’s hands snake round her little fingers and twist them back painfully. The weight of the girl came down on her head as she heard the door open.

Rumbling of a teacher’s voice, mutters of denial from the collected girls, the door once more, then footsteps.

“Good girl,” Digby felt Melissa mutter into her ear, and one of the larger girl’s arms released her left finger and slid around her mouth, muffling her. The other arm jerked back and Digby could not prevent screaming into Melissa’s elbow as the older girl snapped her finger backwards, splintering the bone.

Tears were in full flow down Digby’s face as she heard Melissa order.

“Get a gag.”

Blankets were torn, and Digby’s mouth was bound up. She began to vomit as bits of filthy blanket were pushed into her mouth, but managed to stop herself, knowing she would drown if she allowed it.

A circle of girls had gathered around Melissa and Digby, and others were guarding the stairs or doorway. Digby could see bundles on the floor, girls who had their blankets drawn up so that they would not have to witness what was about to come.

Bethany joined the group. A large girl, whose facial hair had necessitated her casting as a particularly evil pirate, she smiled at Digby.

“Let’s play pirates.”

Digby could see the smiles spread across the faces of her peers as they remembered the game. Bethany pulled a wooden ruler from under her blanket and held it up. She had bound a scrap of wood across the bottom to form a crude hilt.

“I got a cutlass. You’re unarmed. Hehe.”

Digby knew from experience that unarmed was the way Bethany liked her victims.

Bethany genteelly handed the makeshift blade to Melissa. “Your captive, your go first.” She explained.

The girls behind Digby took hold of her nightgown and stripped it to her waist.

“Disarm her. Go on.” Someone muttered, and giggled.

Melissa snorted and struck her. The blade passed to Bethany. She swung, again the wood made contact with Digby’s shoulder, this time breaking the skin. Pass and hit, pass and hit. Soon the right side of Digby’s face was spattered with her own blood, and she was keening continually into the rags that secured her silence. The girls around her continued to aim for the same spot, a slice into Digby’s shoulder that was not far from totally severing her arm. As the strength of the group dissipated and the night wore on, Bethany began to saw at the arm, Melissa and two other girls holding Digby upright, for she had by this time fainted from the pain.

It took four hours for the girls to sever the arm completely, but they persevered, as Ms Lloyd taught, and eventually they succeeded.

Digby passed in and out of consciousness several times during this period, fading from pain filled wakefulness to blood and nightmare filled twisted dreams. She awoke the last time to find her tormentors beating her with her own arm, smashing it into her face as they hurled their bodies around as if they were pre pubescent hammer throwers, trying to impart the greatest momentum to her arm as they smashed it into her face. Giggles surrounded her as her eyes swam with blood.

“She’s hitting herself.” Giggles.

“Beating herself up.” Snorts.

“Fingering herself.” Hysterical muffled laughter.

Digby remembers this in detail. She does not remember what happened after the girls tired even of this hilarious game, as she had lost more blood than a young girl should have to on the evening before her acting debut, and passed out. She remembers wishing she could have sung for her parents.

I must relate the rest of the tale from facts I have been able to gather from the other older and not so old occupants of this building.

The next day, the performance went ahead. Nobody missed Digby until beginners, the teachers all knew her to be reliable, and assumed she was off learning her part. Mr Walter and Histania Samuels had purchased front row tickets they could ill afford, to see the effect their daughter’s education was having upon her, and were waiting with bated breath for her appearance.

The show opened, the chorus entered, the sail unfurled, and with it, a small body fell, still bound at the mouth, but also now at the neck, smudging red against the canvas, swinging and bouncing against the set and eliciting screams and horror from her public. A small girls body, dis-armed and beaten ruthlessly to death, before being bound by the neck and swathed in canvas, and preset as some sort of horrid joke or warning.

The verdict was suicide. The other girls had richer parents than Digby did.

Digby Samuels still prowls the building, her mouth bound with rags, eyes full of pleading, nightgown hanging tattered and bloody from her waist. She seeks her arm, for it was never returned to her, and she seeks something more, although whether that thing is revenge, understanding, or simply the chance to sing for her parents, I do not know.

The building now is a theatre, and I do not know if this soothes poor Digby’s soul, or whether the eternal desire and inability to perform for those for whom she endured so much is more torture than she has already suffered. She does not tell her secrets easily, and the cost of them is more than many would endure - still, I thought her story should be told, and here it is. The cost for you is negligible.

- posted by Buntifer @ 9/09/2006 11:49:00 am

 
Greetings, people of Earth
Take me to your leader...

on second thoughts, take me to someone intelligent.

Well, still not smoking, show goes up tonight, the butterflies in my stomach have been firmly DDT'ed by three dress rehearsals, and I'm sitting here eating broccoli and bacon on a bad of cous cous.

Since the Brunette has gone away I have decided to try and make myself a little more fashionable.



Skirts for guys! What could be more useful in this sweltering hot weather, except perhaps AC.

Cityskirt has a whole range. Perhaps my favourite is this:



Which shows just a naughty bit of leg, and is probably dark enough for me to do scene changes in. I would have to find a nice black blouse though.

I'm still missing the Brunette though, which sucks, cos she's back on Thursday before leaving for the really long stint after her sister's Hen Night

Often, Hen Night's are not the most tasteful of nights out, but apparently they'll be playing scrabble. Bear in mind that I have only been on the observing end of women in T-Shirts embroidered with witty sayings like, "Suck me off Sarra" or "Blow Job Beth", generally vomiting in the gutter after what must have been a great night.

I may be assumed to be being slightly tongue in cheek here, but I am wary of offending anyone who genuinely does like fucking random guys while so hammered that all they can remember the next day is the feeling that they did something very very wrong while dressed in clothes that make them look like whores with no dress sense but a keen head for advertising.

Must go to work.
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/06/2006 10:36:00 am

 
Shalakazammmmmmmm! That's quite tasty!
As Minx points out. If you put 225 grams of macaroni and 478 grammes of mature tesco cheddar into a frying pan and slap it on the oven, forty five minutes later you have macaroni cheese. It's kind of crunchy, and I had to use my Dewalt jigsaw to get it out of the frying pan, but it was caramelised crunchy goodness. We are ninety three percent carbon anyway.

Obviously, the secret ingredient is burning yourself on the frying pan and shouting "Shalakazammmmmmmm!" in the kitchen. At which point the magical macaroni fairy appears and asks you to make one macaroni related wish. I wished that I had a small child formed entirely of macaroni, whose spaghetti nose would grow longer whenever they told the truth. At that point she smacked me with her wand and told me not to practice my pasta related preversions in front of her, or she would call the police.

So my dream of Penneochhio was not to be. I was all ready to be Gepasto the pasta puppeteer as well.

I'm still busy at work, but working lates, so I'm actually procrastinating while trying to write a story about time. Then I shall cycle into work, like the good cyclist I am, staying off the FUCKING PAVEMENTS!

Can you tell that they annoy me? You'd never have guessed, would you? Honestly.

I used to cycle on the pavements, but I found God, in the form of a policeman in Manchester who stopped me and tried to arrest me for cycling on the pavement. In my defence, I would have died if I had tried to cycle round the centre of Manchester in my bike, as I had no idea of what the one way systems were, and there are trams as well as cars, buses and psychotic taxi drivers in Manchester - coupled to the fact that you would get Scallies trying to steal your bike at knife point while you were riding it.

Anyway, I found God, an overweight and fairly grumpy God, who told me to get the hell off the pavements. And I have lived a better life ever since. So if you're a cyclist who cycles on the pavement, you've probably got aids. Pavement aids. It's the worst type.


You knew the risks.

HAND (Have A Nice Day)
- posted by Buntifer @ 9/01/2006 09:49:00 am