Happiness hit her

Everything is beautiful lately. I just cycled to Stourhead, a National Trust property about two miles from my house. I took no photos, but we live in an age where words are not enough so I have attached a photo I took before. I don’t like to take too many photos. Photographs steal souls. I have a first class degree in Photography, so I know.

Stourhead was glistening and spiffy. I was very excited to see some snakeshead fritillary and some marsh marigold. I suspect these have been planted, but even so, they are so beautiful. I love them. Wood anemones are also really giving me a buzz at the moment. Everything is. I’m really buzzy. Lungwort is so, so pretty. Primrose, cowslip, wild daffodil, bluebells, red campion, stitchwort, lesser celandine, ivy leaved toadflax, speedwell, dog violet, lady’s smock plus loads of others are all out at the same time. It’s great!

I am cycling the vale quite a bit lately, and also I have taken to wearing dresses much more. I used to never wear dresses or skirts. Now I can’t get enough of them. I always thought cycling wearing a skirt must be quite stressful. But it is not. It’s lovely. Of course there is more wind resistance, but this means I am getting fitter faster. I recommend wearing sports shorts under the skirt because otherwise the highway will be exposed to your underdrawers, and I suspect it is a little colder.

It is my little sister’s thirteenth birthday today. I made her a storybook. It is a copy of a Young Dracula fiction I wrote a while ago. (you can read it here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5534456/1/Lacuna) My sister loves Young Dracula. She was the person who got me into it. Here is the front cover I made for her copy.

I have a strong suspicion that she prefers her new purple mobile phone to the story I wrote. I keep getting texts from her, even though she is just downstairs and I have notoriously poor signal at home. I am glad that I am no longer 13.

Submarine Review

I wrote a review for the book Submarine by Joe Dunthorne. The website EssentialWriters.com have featured it here: http://essentialwriters.com/submarine-by-joe-dunthorne-4818.htm

The review I submitted was quite long, so it's been edited. Other than a few bad re-phrasings I am happy with the review and am glad that EssentialWriters have featured it. The website is very good and a great resource. It's one of the best places to find jobs and places to submit stories.

I am excited about the prospect of the forthcoming film adaptation of Submarine. Richard Ayoade is the director and most of the stuff he's worked on before has been brilliant. I think he'll do wonders with Submarine. Craig Roberts who played Robin Branagh in CBBCs Young Dracula is playing Oliver Tate. Roberts is a very good actor, and I hope this film will provide him a solid platform to future success.

Talking of Young Dracula, I have gone and done the obligatory YD fanfiction. Yeah, I know: sad.

I needed something verbal to do in-between toning The Klandestines. I didn’t want to get stuck into one of my own novels so I decided to write a fanfiction. I chose Young Dracula because I had an idea which would allow me to twist the story a little. It has not all been uploaded yet. You can read it here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5534456/1/Lacuna

So far I've uploaded chapters 1-8 of 13 chapters. I'll link again when it's all up there.

It’s a kind of hardboiled thing and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what the hell Young Dracula is, since it’s from the point of view of Robin (played by Craig Roberts) who had a year of his memory wiped at the end of the series, therefore remembers nothing in the series.

This is the sort of very visual stuff I have been working on that has lead me into writing a fanfiction in order to do something verbal. It is a graphic novel called The Klandestines, written by me, drawn my Jian Yang Dong and toned by me:

I was going to post a clever response to a comment in The Daily Telegraph written by Boris Johnson. I wrote it out on a scrap of paper and showed Mr Kite, who really liked it. I left the scrap of paper at Mr Kite's house, so I'll post this silly entry instead.