Notebooks and Targets

I am a terrible person. Last week, last Wednesday in fact, I intended to write a post about the food festival that was in Nottingham last year. It came back this year and on Wednesday, all excited, my friend T and I got on the bus expecting to try lots of tasty food. Sadly it wasn’t to be. The food festival was gone and we were left staring at the square in total disbelief. We didn’t really know what we were going to do with ourselves.

Then we decided to do what any self respecting writer would do and went looking for notebooks. I love notebooks. I’ve said this a dozen times and I’ve often shown you pictures of them. I have changed in my approach to buying notebooks though and I realised this on Wednesday, when we were walking through all these stationary stores, staring at some beautiful creations and yet I didn’t really want to buy any of them. It used to be that I saw a notebook that I vaguely liked and I’d buy it without thinking. But that’s all changed. I’ve realised that for me to buy a notebook now, it needs to speak to me on some level. I know it sounds corny but unless I have that desperate urge to get it then I won’t buy it. If I think ‘meh maybe it’s alright, maybe I’ll get it’ I won’t buy it. There has to be that punch in the gut, that ‘Oh my god I need it’ moment or I don’t spend my money.

It’s the same approach I take with my stories too. Unless the idea won’t go away I won’t write it. I won’t even plan it. I make a note of the idea, sure, but I don’t go back to it unless I’m pulled back to it, my mind racing with a dozen ideas. I don’t know if that’s because I’m changing as a writer, or because I’m becoming a grown up. I do know though that I like the new attitude. It means I’ve not got dozens of works in progress plaguing my mind and running on my computer trying to get me to split up my attention.

But enough about my crazy new attitude towards notebooks and stories. I just want to talk about the notebooks. Look aren’t they pretty?!

I'm not the best at photography I would like to add.

The first one, the one with the colours and the bird, I got from Wilkinson’s for a couple of pounds. It might have been less than that actually, I’m not sure, I lost the receipt. It’s small, it’s slim and for the price the paper quality isn’t that bad really (It turns out that there's actually an entire range of things with the same pattern/theme... type... thing). I have in fact already begun to write in it for some stuff regarding something I talk about below. I’d include pictures of my writing but it’s a bit scrawly and hard to read. Besides, the pages won’t stay open enough for me to photograph.

The second one, the brown plain looking one, (Actually called a Kraft A5 exercise book I have just learnt,) is from Paperchase. Most of you probably know that Paperchase is known for being a bit pricey when it comes to anything that they have to sell. That’s why I was so surprised when I saw that it was only £4. I grabbed it, I bought it and I’m already getting around to using it. The paper is gorgeously creamy, there’s a lot of it and the cover’s pretty hardwearing despite it being so plain. I think by the time that I’m done with it the cover is going to be battered to pieces and covered in doodles. It’s weighty and for some reason I’m totally in love with its plainness.

Bask in the majesty of my amazing handwriting

The writing on the cover at the moment is all me by the way. It’s connected to something I mentioned last post, about Autharium, the indie publisher community that I recently joined. They were asking for member contributions to the blog that they run. I decided that I would offer to write a series of blog posts about publishing a book, from concept to release, in six months from the perspective of a newbie writer. It’s the six months bit that scares me. I’m hoping though that it might finally encourage me to finish something and get it out there. My introductory post goes up on 13^th May and from that point onwards I’m going to be posting my progress and hopefully working to deadlines as I go.

That doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning this blog though. On the contrary, I plan on updating this blog every week with a little progress report. The Autharium blog has had a lot of response to the request for contributions so my posts may be spaced far and few between. But I want that added responsibility, besides the whole working to deadlines and aiming to be done in six months (as if that wasn’t enough pressure, I’m clearly a crazy person), of being reportable to someone else, to have to explain what I’ve done each week.

It should be interesting. We all know that I’m not the best at sticking to a reliable schedule or staying on track for posting. But I’m hoping that I can manage it this time. There’s a lot to share each week, or at least I hope that there will be. So I’m just going to try to do at least two posts on here a week, one for the progress and one for my general jibba-jabba and nonsense. And we’ll see how long I can keep that one going.

Food, Glorious Food: The Encore

On Wednesday I was in Nottingham. That in itself is unusual for me. I was meeting someone. Also unusual for me. It happened to be a male. Yes! I know, boys are evil and covered in cooties. Anyhow, that ‘date’ if you can call it that (he turned up hungover, unshowered, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a bobble hat. No not that cute Jayne hats everyone’s talking about recently. A hideous green and black thing) went alright, despite the whole... ick factor. I was wondering why he thought that turning up to meet me for the first time dressed as he was, was a reasonable thing to do. Surely he’d try and impress me, wear his nicest clothes, shower etc. Moral of that story boys is: make an effort when you’re on a date, even if it is a weird pseudo date done on the fly. And don’t go out the night before.

As I was saying, it was as the... thing... was ending, when I was returning to Nottingham Market Square to catch my bus that things got interesting. The Square was covered in tents and marquees and I could smell food. A lot of yummy food. I had a look around. It was some sort of food festival. I wanted to go.

And that my friends is how I found myself, the very next day at 11:30 in the square again. I took my friend T with me. She’s much better company and makes me laugh. We hadn’t eaten all morning, wanting to save as much room as possible for food. We decided to walk around first, see everything that was available before we bought food. There was much squealing as we saw cute things and tasty things. We wanted all of the food and all of the trinkets. It was fun. And then, as we were making our second trip around the food festival, this time with the intent of actually getting food T squealed and ran off to one side. She had seen something called a kuksa at the Finnish stall. Unfortunately I happened to be between her and the stall and almost went head over heels into the stall next door. She squealed over them for the next few minutes, had a very rapid conversation with the nice stall lady before eventually we moved on. She was still debating buying one.

From Finland we ended up in Poland. We had a Polska Barbeque Sausage, split in half, covered in ketchup and eaten in the beer tent set up behind it. We decided it was still a bit too early for beer. The sausage was delicious. Served on proper Polish bread, it was like a fancy hotdog and even more delicious. Each bit took me back to my trip to Poland around the time the nation was voting on joining the EU (I was 14 and all I remember is the food, the singing and the drunkenness when it was announced). Then, bellies slightly less empty than before we continued wandering.

We decided to try something really different and had a kangaroo burger. That’s right, you heard me, I ate Skippy. Well I say ate but really I nibbled at it, gagged a little and shoved my half of the burger at T. For the record kangaroo tastes surprisingly similar to steak. I don’t like steak. With T munching away at her Skippy burger, sharing a Tweet with the rest of the world about it we continued our wanderings, looking for something for me to take the taste of Kanga out of my mouth.

T looking very happy
with her boozey drinks

We decided it wasn’t too early for booze anymore and tried Cider slushies. Probably a poor choice considering it was rather cold and I didn’t much like the taste but ah well. I got a shot of Vimto in mine (that's why it's purple) and we spent the next hour or so continuing to wander around. It may be possibly that those cider slushies made us slightly drunk for the rest of the day. Things start to get a little fuzzy and mixed up after this point.

I do remember a fantastic stall with a bunch of handmadecraft items and the most beautiful journals I’ve ever seen. I wanted one at the time but I couldn’t afford one. I still want one though as they are so gorgeous and each one seems to be made with love. *Hint hint* They were so pretty that I was actually afraid of picking them up.

I tried a very tasty Greek dish called Gyros; pork, onion, tomato, chips, tsatsiki and paprika all wrapped up in a slightly fried pitta bread. It was delicious and T and I shared it and wolfed it down in record time. I can still taste it and I want another one. What was most telling about the quality of the dish is that a bunch of construction workers were all queueing up to buy them for lunch. They were JUST THAT GOOD.

Like this but with chocolate buttons on it too.

Then we had what I think was THE BEST dish of the day. Sicillian Cannolini. It was tasty, it was tiny and it was so good that I wasn’t able to get a picture of it. I wanted it in my mouth straight away. It was also sold to us by a very enthusiastic Italian man who was loud and young and enthusiastic. T likened him to a puppy. I decided that although he was cute if he were a few years older his selling methods would be bordering on creepy. Either way the cannolini was good and I ate it before I could take a picture. T did try to remind me but I was preoccupied with the food so instead you get a stock image.

My second Polska barbeque sausage

We took a brief break to go somewhere else to warm up, I had a chai latte and got the feeling back in my fingers before we headed out to the food stands once more.

I insisted on another Polish barbeque sausage and this time we each had a beer while I munched it down. We started discussing Firefly and Serenity (where they fit together and how they're just cool) and the amazing work of the brilliant Nathan Fillion (mostly how he's gotten more attractive with age. He really is ruggedly handsome)  before we knew it we’d lost 2 hours and it was probably time to go home. We didn’t.

That is the face of regret. When you
realise you've been walking around
 with basically a bag of sausage.

Anyone know any recipes
for salami?

Instead we walked around, trying small bits and pieces of cheese and salami. I particularly liked a sticky toffee cheddar I tried and almost wish I'd bought some. I did buy something to take home though. I am blaming the Polish beer for the fact that I went home with £10 worth of salami in a carrier bag. I only realised the truth when I was waiting for the bus. T managed to get a very amusing picture of this moment.

it's even prettier in real life

Despite the rain and the fact that at times it was so cold that I could see my breath I think our trip to the food festival was great. I had fun, I ate a lot of food and I actually left the house during the week. Sure I wish I’d tried other stuff, taken more pictures and bought some of the crafts but there’s always next year.

Oh and T did end up buying that kuksa.