Madeleine was blessed with sensational good listens.

English is full of colourful phrases and mysterious words that we often use everyday without ever thinking of where they came from nor what they actually mean. This is one of the things that makes the language so unique and rich with texture but when you analyse some of these ideas they quickly start to quake under the scrutiny of observation.

In writing, it is always agreed that one should avoid clichés like the proverbial plague and there are good reasons why this is prudent advice. The use of an over familiar phrase indicates that the writer has taken the safe and comfortable path of describing an event or scene in such a way that we are readily able to digest the various aspects very quickly. But by doing it through the use of pathways laid down by others they are missing the opportunity to bring new dimension and value to the idea being conveyed.

Take for example, the phrase: ‘He was as dull as dishwater’ (or often: ‘ditchwater’). Whilst we might understand the idea that a person might be as uninteresting as waste water - opaque, grey and unpleasant, by using this phrase the writer has failed to recognise that by renovating the familiar with a new and personal twist they could have illuminated the concept in the reader with a startling freshness. So, for example, a writer could have said: ‘He was as dull as a stormy day’ which suddenly has a range of connotations which can be expanded upon. It is this altering and highlighting of the ordinary which makes all art more original and inspiring.

The next example I’d like to examine is a case where an idiom has become so well used that the meaning is actually bizarre when the laws of grammar are applied to it. If someone was describing an attractive woman they might say that she was ‘Good looking’, or possessed ‘Good Looks’ however this description seems to defy rational language logic on a variety of levels. This can be demonstrated by changing one of the words. If the phrase had a rule which defined its meaning then it could be applied to a variety of other attributes. So, for example, if that woman had a beautiful voice would we say that she had ‘Good listening’? If she wore sweet perfume would we describe her as having ‘Good smells’? In actual fact - because they still make sense in a mysterious and antique way - we could, in fact, use those descriptions as they quite clearly reference the original phrase and throw fresh light on an old idea.

Finally, my attention is drawn to ancient words which become startlingly unusual when put under the spotlight. Just recently I was concerned about a splinter of wood which had become lodged in my finger and in conversation I described it as a ‘spell’. Aside from the etymology behind this particular word, it occurred to me that at some stage, somebody must have determined a series of measurements which define a ‘spell’ in terms of its size. At what size does a ‘spell’ become a ‘splinter’ or even a ‘sliver’? Is there an actual size? As big as a matchstick? (how big is one of those?) As big as a drumstick?. There seems to be a whole division of unspoken scientific understanding at work here and we seem to know instinctively the dimensions involved. But someone, somewhere, at some point must have taken time to put boundaries upon it. 

English is pebble dashed with such words, phrases and ideas, many of which have fascinating origins washed ashore on the beach of our daily speech. As a writer, nothing is more powerful than researching, expanding and restoring them with a new and invigorating architecture. Conversely, a writer who is content to make the ‘ordinary’ tell their tale will remain forever; ordinary.

Facebook has changed the world in many ways and in spite of the negative coverage it often gets in the popular press, all of us who use it cannot deny the positive benefits it brings to our everyday lives.

In a world where much of our ‘digital’ life is stored in ‘the cloud’ - that mysterious place in the ether where all the music, films, photographs and email messages reside - it is wonderful to realise that I have a cyber-mantlepiece filled with birthday cards and greetings.

Facebook has truly linked our lives in an intimate and immediate way that never existed before (unless we lived on the same street, same house etc) and for that it has truly brought us closer together. I genuinely enjoy reading the sincere updates of the daily lives of people who are special in my life and although I don’t always interact with their news, I feel that I am connected with them.

Yesterday was my birthday and as a treat to myself, I disconnected from the internet for a day. This in itself is an usual thing (as most of us smartphone users will know) but as I was out of range of any signal for many hours it was an easy task. I felt freed from the need to continually poke at a screen and as much as the curiosity burned in me, I resisted the temptation to see if anyone had remembered that it was my special day.

But what a wonderful surprise it was to return to see a page filled with thoughts and good wishes. Facebook has made it a relatively easy task to be aware of each other’s birth dates but the fact that so many took just a few moments to click on the link and type a message is genuinely heart warming and means a great deal to me.

To mention a few (in no particular order): Lizzi, Daniel, Holly, Dave, Minnie, Edwina, Paul, Jennifer, Jo, Colin, Jon, Rachel, David, Nibbe, Ulrike, Hope, Jason, Kyra, Annie, Alannah, Michelle, Bill, Dave, Karl, Lee, Matt, Joe, Gazz - your thoughts are wonderful and I thank you.

My missus had planned a secret getaway on the Friday night and we drove away, deep into the North Yorkshire countryside to a marvelous hunting lodge hotel, where she had arranged dinner and an overnight stay. The following morning, after a huge breakfast we went out into the foggy, crisp morning air for a walk around the village then set off to visit the nearest town: Malton. From there we went back to York, picked up my daughter, Hope and we drove to the coast to have doughnuts. Taking the scenic route back we went into York and had massive amounts of pizza. Finally, I indulged myself with a couple of hours of Harry Hill on TV then fell asleep on the sofa. Tired but (for once) very happy.

The last twelve months have been an unusual experience all in all, and this birthday marks some important landmarks: It was the year that I wrote a novel and became a grandfather (amongst other lesser events). I shall look forward to the next twelve with great optimism as I feel that we all are the source of our own destiny.

It’s a very strange feeling having completed a book. On the one hand, there is the elation that it is all finished: that every twist and turn has been explored, every angle examined and every exposition exposed. But, on the other hand, there is the very tangible feeling that it is ‘all over’. In some ways, that is more terrifying than the prospect of embarking on such a project.

They say, that for a gambler the most euphoric moment is when all the winning money is spent. The feeling of emptiness frees them from the compulsion to gamble and they are faced with the empty page of neutrality. But, as we all know, the desire with any addiction is to engage ‘just this once’ with the very thing that fills every thought.

VALVEPUNKS! ‘The long road to Quixotica’ (Working title) is the name of my newborn and it’s a ripping yarn of deliciously vintage proportions. Set in the future (but rooted in the past) it follows the adventures of am old man as he goes in search of his sanity. Or, as the blurb says:

“When an old inventor and radio star of yesteryear is visited by a journalist - keen to learn more about his past - he takes them both on an incredible journey to find the facts and in the process; to be reunited with the woman he loves. Struggling to cope with his forgotten life and facing an uncertain future, he tries to discover serenity and some crucial answers by time-slipping back into his troubled youth, then fast forward into one version of the future. Knowing the truth brings a dilemma; does he follow his previous timeline or choose to reinvent history?”

It’s a A quirky, dark comedy, mad science, time-slip, love story. Filed under: Steampunk / Mad-Science Fiction / Scifi / Comedy. But who is he? - “Reggie is a frail old man lost in space and time. He seems not to remember where he has come from nor where he is going. All that he knows is that he is fleeing from a forgotten enemy to a destination he can’t remember, using a machine that he built which can travel through time, space and matter.”

The research for the narrative has led me through hundreds of visits to antique shops, carboot sales and auctions. Along the way, I have joined astronomical societies, radio enthusiast circles and scientific forums. I have spoken to a great number of elderly friends to garner their impressions of the modern world (as well as their recollections of the past) and through it all, I have become transformed- both in my understanding of the world around me as well as the history of the universe itself.

But now I am faced with a sense of grief and panic that there is no more to do. Apart from the obvious sequel (which I am already working on) I am struck by an overwhelming feeling of loss now that my daily routine is devoid of any ritual obligation.

For the past 184 days I have spent an average of four hours (every day) writing a typical 800 words a day and to not have that focus anymore brings a feeling of loss which I am not sure how I will fill. In the space of exactly six months (from 23rd May to the 23rd November) I have written 146,127 words towards my book which represents approximately 736 hours (or a full working month) of writing. Whilst this is, in itself, a feat of no mean measure, I am now faced with the absence that its completion presents.

For the sake of my sanity, I intend to take Christmas off, and review the book in the new year and then the re-writes will begin. - that glorious process that involves the polishing and perfecting of all that is good. Hopefully, at the end of it there will be a story that will be worthy of reading. But, between you and me - I think it’s going to be great. I can’t wait for you to read it.

The city streets of York are the last place on earth that one should consider taking LSD. However. If you are, in fact, the sort of person that would ever consider taking LSD in the first place (just to restate my observation) then York is the perhaps the last place you should do it and I’d like to explain why I think so.

Coming from an unremarkable, West Yorkshire market town as I do, my childhood and youth was spent roaming the terraced streets looking for like-minded lads my own age to go on adventures with. Not that it was completely like the set of Coronation Street back then but the many characters they featured in the ’60s and ’70s were ones that I could identify with and would see on a regular basis.

Grim faced, old women in dark overcoats - their hair strangled into what was known as a ‘bun’ - leaning over picket fences or clattering galvanised buckets about in their outhouses would (more often than not) shout at us youngsters to: “Stop playing football in that ginnel. You’ll make my sheets dirty.”

At the time, it meant nothing at all, but as I look back and remember fondly the scuff-kneed, sticky-haired escapades of my childhood, I am struck by a few distinct and mind altering changes. Firstly, I should explain to any non-Yorkshire speaking readers that a ‘Ginnel’ is an old Norse word for ‘a narrow path sometimes linking streets at different heights’.

This in itself is not a particularly interesting fact but it is deeply fascinating when you look into the Northern culture and realise just what an impact the Vikings (and indeed the Romans) had on, not only our quirks and habits but our language and speech patterns.

Ok. Let’s fast forward a lifetime to the present day. I currently live in the venerable and historic city of York - capital of Yorkshire and the only city in that county that does not have an affiliation to any of them, be they North, East, West or South. It is: like the Vatican city. With its mighty blah-blah cathedral and incumbent seat of northern Christian importance, the place is so far removed from my entire early life so as to make the ‘true’ experience of what it actually is, something of a purely hallucinogenic one.

Granted, the day-to-day reality is no different to any other, similar town of its size. People go about their business, eat burgers, drink franchised coffee and generally function like residents of any lesser place but under the cobbled streets, something else lurks. Something occasionally glimpsed and photographed by Japanese tourists or by the coachloads of Scots that arrive like angry hoards to hunt for Christmas gifts.

It is the sheer history of the place; the way that the new nestles with the ancient; the commercial with the benignly decorative that the mysteries (and indeed the hallucinations) lie. Walking as an ‘outsider’, which I often do - and to this day still feel - I am never tired of being bombarded with fragments of curiosity washed up on a shore of fractalised detail like the splintered remains of a thousand shipwrecks, their cargoes bobbing in the lapping surf for all to see and pillage.

It would not be uncommon to walk down a single street and witness buskers performing on a welsh harp or an upright piano, just doors down from a legless beggar. A wiry underfed dog, shivering at his side as fur coat-wearing intelligencia pass by. Their jewellery jingling softly as they ponder which quaint coffee shop they should visit.

Astride this scene, stand crooked buildings bearing the faded paintwork of times long passed. Merchants and insurance brokers for the sugar trade, milliners and apothecaries, scriveners and spice blenders. All nestling, shoulder to shoulder amidst Dickensian windows and back alleys straight from The Pirates of the Caribbean (true! Google it.)

It is no wonder, then, that this place was the starting point for the main city in my current novel “Valvepunks” which follows the progress of a bewildered (but brilliant) old man and his young acquaintance as they go into deep space in the future in search of a love interest from World War II, finally arriving in the city of Divinestopia (working title).

Built underground in caves (walled city), Divinestopia (York) is a uniquely organic jigsaw of the ancient (the inhabitants of the planet they are on) and the modern (the presence of the antagonists). The buildings are interleaved in precision geometry leading from the filthy outskirts (York’s underbelly - yes it has one!) to the ‘inner sanctum’ where the palaces and fountains are. Its inhabitants ranging from the drones to the privileged intellectuals who exist contemptuously side by side in two completely different worlds in the same space. A beautifully horrible yet horribly beautiful place.

No surprise then, that York should have inspired a vision of a ‘selective utopia’ - a place that wasn’t all bad (depending on one’s perspective) nor all that fantastic. Divine and dystopic all in the same breath. Even the secondary main character is named after one of the shops in York, such is the wealth of detail inherent in this complicated city.

So, weary traveler, if you wish to experience York to its fullest, you might choose to visit for the day, spend a few nights at one of our many thousands of hotels, guest houses and Inns or perhaps even read my book for a glimpse of the mind altering effect it can have. But I would strongly suggest that you never, ever take LSD whilst walking its streets. You might never return.

This isn’t the usual kind of post that I would normally make but this week has seen some extraordinary activity on Tumblr that I couldn’t let pass without some acknowledgement. 

I am in the process of ‘workshopping’ my current work in progress: a valvepunk comedy epic psychological adventure, and from now on, various chapters and extracts will appear amongst the usual short stories, sketches and literary obseravations, advice etc. 

However, I was surprised to pick up eleven new followers in the week and thought that I’d like to give you all a big thank you. You are (in no particular order): bmulhill, readingme, scrawlingtruths, onceuponatimewriting, bvjk, theriverrunswild, thatneedstogo, pianoghost, iwanttobelikearollingstone, ninjamnah, nureenvelji - and I’d just like to say “Hi, I know you’re there and I’ve followed you back to say thanks”

Just because I don’t comment on posts as a rule doesn’t mean that I don’t read what you put. I enjoy checking stuff out just like the rest and as a writer (!) enjoy a distraction whenever it comes along, like we all do. 

Once again, thank you and I hope that you have enjoyed what you’ve read and that you will take time to trawl back through my archives and check out the new stuff as it comes along. The new novel is going to be great and there’s enough depth and intrigue in there to keep anyone guessing (and chuckling) for a long time. 

Yours, JB.