New Parsnip at last

Yesterday I finally got round to writing another piece of Parsnip, the thoroughly inept fantasy author.

They raced through the arid desert land which was what Zamora was comprised of, mostly. There were some nice bits but they were all on the coast. The two intrepid mercenaries had to go as fast as possible. They weren’t sure just when the news would come through that they were there, but when it did, those orclins and harbingers would be all over them, like a nasty rash you might pick up from a disease-ridden whore in the fetid city of debauchery that is Muckdanton. While Huth drove, he and Pedro exchanged tales of their lives so far.

“So, Pedro, how did you come to be in the service of Bogg-Ryder, the warrior Queen of Zlup?”

“Heh. That’s a tale, believe me. When I left Technocollege, I worked for a while with Blei-dorian, a jester who knows more than he is comfortable with. He was jestering then for Bogg-Ryder’s father, Marsh-Bender, and I used to help out, you know, wiping down the audience and picking up the limbs after each show. When Blei-dorian left to take part in the Eter-Tele show Jester Love Island, I was assigned to be Bogg-Ryder’s bodyguard. It was great work, and she came to really trust me, which is why I am here now. She wants to make sure this job gets done, and that you are safe. Let’s just say she would like to see the Tadotian uprising work.”

“Blimey! Right, well. It’s good to know we have some support. I knew her and Frek Necktuck, the Chancellor of the Blaartian ruling Council, didn’t get on, but that’s pretty amazing news! Hang on, what’s that ahead?”

Pedro engaged his megavision goggles and peered forth through the windscreen.

“Crikey!” he exclaimed. “A huge army of orclins on the horizon! The Praelector, acting on behalf of Gaxor, must be aware of our presence and sent these bastards to try and stop us. You have battled these bad-boys before, Huth, and survived. What should we do?”

Lack of Action

Not a lot going on here I am afraid. This is entirely due to the fact that I don’t have internet access at home, and now I do much of my web browsing through FeedDemon it’s a bit tricky doing stuff at work. But will try to make at least a post or two a day from now on.

The New Job

In response to my legions of demanding readers…

The new job is going pretty well! I work in a team of about 10 people, all of whom are jolly friendly. Essentially the team pimps itself around the Council doing bits of work for other departments. This can range from doing one off pieces of work, such as designing processes and peforming surveys, to managing whole projects. I think most people have several jobs on at once, so it is all very varied.

At the moment I have two things on the go. One is on the Council’s BroadBand project. Confusingly, it’s not that broadband, but rather a way of extending the County Council’s network to satellite offices and schools. A name change is in the pipeline. The other thing is that my boss is managing the project to create an all-in-one Customer Service Centre for the Council. I will be his gimp.

So it’s going well. The office is really relaxed and everyone seems to get on jolly well. They have booked me in for a few courses, which is always nice. And I can access the Palimp without too much difficulty! Hurrah!

Palimpsest’s Big Day Out

Yesterday was the Big Day Out for members of Palimpsest, the arts discussion site I help maintain. It was also my birthday, and what a great way to spend it. Whilst in the pub I discussed blogging for a short while with someone, and they remarked on the fact that (these are my words, not theirs, by the way) that this was a bit of a secondary blog, contentwise, in that I don’t post much original stuff. Most of the time I comment on what other people have written about. So here’s an attempt to actually compose something myself…

We all met up in London, at King’s Cross station. I was there first, as the guy nominally in charge of things, and soon people drifted by. Soon enough there were eleven of us and we headed to our first stop, the British Library.

Bdo

A word here, perhaps, about the Palimpsesters themselves. I remarked several times on the day that under what other circumstances would this group of people ever meet? Of course, the answer is (probably) none. But what makes Palimpsest stand out as a web site is the politeness and interest that everyone takes in each other. This meant that no matter what someone’s background or age or interests, they were treated with respect and friendliness the whole day. It was like the way we deal with each other online is a genuine reflection of the way we are in real life. It was great.

Anyhow, the British Library was pretty cool. One thing I found remarkable was the ‘King’s Library’ – a glass shaft that goes right through the heart of the building containing what looked like, er, Big Old Books. Must do a bit of digging into what those books are. The exhibitions were great, we saw stuff like the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Canterbury Tales, da Vinci’s notebooks (strangely no da Vinci Code manuscripts were there…) audio recordings of the Beatles and Florence Nightingale. Amazing. I reckon you could spend a week there and not get bored. We only had an hour, but it left us all wanting to return, which was a good thing.

Stpauls

We split up into two factions at this point, some went to a Chinese restaurant they knew well, and the others, including me, went to the pub, The Citie of Yorke. It was packed with guys in pin stripes, who, to be fair, didn’t take any exception to the rather disparate bunch in their midst. A discussion took place about the author Sean Wright (I would link to his site but can’t bear the thought of being responsible for the horror of it – just Google him if you must) and a few of the uninitiated got to browse some of his latest work. I had brought along my one interesting book – The Unfortunates by B.S. (NOT BORIS!) Johnson, the infamous ‘book in a box’. To my shame I was forced to admit that, of course, I am yet to actually read it. But Hey! It looks nice.

The pub session turned into an extended one – about 3 1/2 hours. The beer flowed freely as we talked about books, movies, art, TV and everything in between. Actually no, mostly we talked about how much younger we actually are than we thought we were. If that makes sense. A few photos were taken, more as the beer went down quicker. I think it was during this piss-up that acquaintances became friends.

Still, we had to leave the pub eventually, and when we emerged blinking in the sunlight, we headed to St. Mary at Woolnoth, a church mentioned in the Peter Ackroyd novel Hawksmoor.

Church

It was a beautiful building, and a very calming after the rushing around and busyness of the city. Afterwards we posed for photos outside, and Bakunin_the_Cat provided one of the days funniest moments by performing a most remarkable impression of a corpse in front of the Church.

Next stop was room 43 in the National Gallery, where we met up with the splinter group of Palimpsesters. This provided gil with the opportunity to show round some of his wonderful old books and curiosities. Then we moved onto a local hostelry for more drinks as everyone drifted off home one by one…

It was a great day. I know a few people from Palimpsest read this blog, so thanks for making it such fun. So many people asked me the question over the day of how the site got started, which is easy enough to answer (there wasn’t a site that did what we wanted, so we started our own) and how it got to be so good, which isn’t so easy. After all, we don’t choose who joins up, but somehow all of those who stick around are universally polite and helpful, and attempts are made wherever possible to be sensible and intelligent about things. It’s nice to have somewhere to be able to do that. And it’s even nicer when you can do it in a pub in London on a sunny May afternoon. Long may Palimpsest continue and thrive, and roll on the next Big Day Out.

Palimpblogging

As a sweetener for members of Palimpsest who made a donation towards the hosting this year, I offered them an @palimpsest email address.

This got me thinking about what other services could be offered to those who might be interested.

How about having a Palimpsest hosted blog?

I have a spare database that isn’t being used, and with WordPress being able to run multiple blogs, it would be easy enough to set up. The one downer is that the URL would be palimpsest.org.uk/blogs/user but as most people read these things through an aggregator (don’t they?) it really wouldn’t matter.

I’ll give it some thought. If anyone has any comments, just let me know.