Category: Blogging

well, it’s our last night in the Loft (in Ballyliny) tomorrow we head off to my mother-in-laws house to avoid the last of the 12th of July celebrations, coming as they are the day after England’s defeat at the Euros.

We went to Ballintoy today.

It’s the location used by Game of Thrones for part of the Iron Islands. Small and winding road takes you down to the port, and it’s tiny, but very pretty – and just choca-blocked with cars. Go early if you ever fancy, though, truth to tell, unless you’re taking a boat out (£15 per person) it’s unlikely you’ll find much to do so the turnover in parking is pretty rapid, usually someone leaving.

After that we headed to Ballycastle to dip in the sea, but, turns out the weather… well winter was coming (or at least some horrible dark clouds). That’s Northern Ireland for you.

After that, home, popped to Bushmills for a Chinese. We don’t really get chinese food any more, once I went gluten free it was impossible to get chinese food that definitely didn’t contain gluten. So everyone got that and I ended up with a good fellas frozen gluten free pizza. Yes, it’s an unfair world.

Then we watched the football. I’ve never been in to football, you’ve probably guessed. It honestly does nothing for me – not watching it, not playing it. But my wife likes it (sometimes) and the kids (occasionally) enjoy it, so we all sat down to watch the match. And let’s move on from that.

On another front, once again I thought I’d give video games a go! I have apple arcade, so I’ve played a couple of rounds of solitaire. It’s good when it’s easy, first hard game and I’ve lost all interest in playing solitaire.

Drawing is about the only thing I’ve ever been able to turn my attention to and keep it focused on that, but that’s got harder and harder as the years go by. Sometimes that’s my own internal brainfarts moving me hither and yon and sometimes it’s just run of the mill family stuff.

Anyway, have got about half way through a book – John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes, which, I admit, is only about 236 pages. BUT I TAKE THE WIN WHERE I CAN.

And have done zero writing – aside from these blog posts.

Oh well, it is supposed to be a holiday, innit?

Is it possible to have finished the internet? Maybe not, but it’s almost certainly possible to exist those little corners of the internet that you regularly check on. In that endeavour, I use twitter like a filling. Filling the gaps between big chunks of internet. So I’ve been missing twitter. I replaced my twitter app on my phone with the kindle app, thinking (oh-so-cleverly) that muscle memory will make me open up the kindle app and read a book instead of twitter. Half right, muscle memory means I tap the icon but when confronted with a book I half swear and close the app.

Anyway, day 2 of no twitter is going swimmingly.

Today we hit The Giant’s Causeway.

We’ve done the giant’s causeway innumerable times with the kids – and while the causeway never change our kids have gotten progressively bigger over the years, and that always make you feel a little melancholic.

After that we headed for Coleraine, not a town I’m very familiar with (though I’m sure I’ve done a comic festival there once) but it has a waterstones and I love a book shop. Picked up Brian Bilston’s “Alexa, what is there know about love?” a signed short collection of poetry lots of funny, short clever little pieces. I enjoyed, particualrly “The Caveman’s Lament” which opens with:

me think about her when sun rises
me think about her when sun sets
me say to her how much me love her
she tell me love invent not yet

I also wanted to pick up Junji Ito’s Uzamacki, but Thomas (13) and I have been struggling over which of us would get to keep the book on our shelves. (He’s also probably a bit young for it)

Headed for a McDonald’s in Coleraine too, and look, I’m aware that’s not exactly fancy eating, but when you’re trying to avoid gluten you find options close down and sometimes getting a McDonalds without a bun is your least-worst option. (We had lunch at 1:30 or so, by which time we were all ready to make war such was the level of hangry)

I woke up about 6 nearly throwing up, not sure what was wrong, and my stomach has felt like it’s been sitting a vom-mark 4 all day today. I suspect an over dose on sweets and just too-much food. So I’ve been trying to eat less crap today (and mcdonald’s was ..er.. borderline that).

Still not sure how I feel now.

Anyway, after Coleraine back to the loft and I fell asleep for a few hours, as I’ve gotten older after/early evening naps have really become my goto strategy for filling a few hours of each day.

Generally two locations in one day is enough, but for whatever reason the kids wanted to head off somewhere else, so we went to Portstewart – Portrush and Portstewart are pretty close together on the North coast, but they’re fairly different.

Portrush was where my parents would take us as kids if we wanted the sand and gaming machines – and Barry’s amusements. Barry’s was the famous amusement arcade in Portrush – though ‘arcade’ is doing the thing a disservice. It was a national institution for kids from Belfast.

It’s closed now, covid did for it (though actually I think it’s been closed already, the website suggestions they’ve been trying to sell it either as an ongoing concern or for development. I suspect someone will make flats out of the place.

Anyway, today we went to Portstewart, and Portstewart is very different. Golf courses, and fancy eating places, and that’s your lot – not a single amusment arcade to be found (at least not that I saw). Historically it was upper middle classes would go there. Yesterday in Portrush we saw some young fellas lay into each other in a fight, today in Portstewart we saw some old people order ice-cream. They are very different places.

We have a National Trust membership so went to Portstewart Strand parked the car up, got out some collapsable chairs we bought a couple of days ago and watched our kids play on the beach. It was a good day.

Got dinner at Bob & Berts (gluten free options aplenty, but to be honest, not as nice as the mcdonalds). Man, we’ve got to start budgeting for eating while on holidays – it’s our biggest expense.

Came back to the loft having broken our youngest (age 13 and taller than me but honestly, if I could’ve carried him from the car to the loft he would’ve been glad of it).

And, in fact, everyone is away to bed, it’s 10:12pm.

Except me, but then I had that craft nap earlier on, eh readers?

I’ve been reading Wyndams The Kraken Wakes and found myself at some dialogue when the husband and wife journalists are talking about inviting guests over to wheedle some info out of them:

“Darling, you know you thoroughly enjoy the art of the little finger. And you’d be furious if I concealed you under a bushel.”

“well, that’s very well,” she said. “But I’d just like to feel a little more certain whose little finger we’re talking about.”

having watched game of thrones, I thought “I’ve heard that term in that context before” – I’d assumed “Little Finger” in game of thrones – a quick google search suggests his name is specifically about two things:

Petyr grew up at House Tully’s castle Riverrun with Hoster’s daughters Catelyn and Lysa, and son Edmure; Edmure nicknamed Petyr “Littlefinger” in reference to his short stature and his family’s lands on the smallest of the peninsulas called the Fingers.

And googling, I found this on urban dictionary:

Littlefinger v. to manipulate people excessively and brilliantly to achieve your own goals.

ah hah! I thought, clever writers littlefinger is clearly named for his manipulative beha… oh

Origin: Game of Thrones Character Littlefinger

no, I’m pretty sure little finger refers to manipulation of people predating game of thrones; the kraken wakes was written in 1953, and I also found this reference in an article written in 1932

But the thought occurs,–imagine rising with a hangover to greet a nine o’clock on the “Amenities of Gin,” and an eleven o’clock laboratory exercise in “The Art of the little finger as applied to Chartreusel”

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1932/12/10/the-pied-piper-pdr-william-muhlberg/

but that’s it. Now it’s entirely possible I’m overthinking this, and “the art of the little finger” is just an uncommon usage of something like “skilled at wrapping people around their little finger”.

anyway this is the sort of nonsense I save for Twitter.

I’m on me hols!

Which, as my family knows, usually means I’m doing everything exactly the same but with slightly worse internet.

I got 10 pages of pencils of the most recent thing sent off to the writer, and I’m off for few days over the 12th of July holidays in Northern Ireland. This time of the year I usually try and get out of dodge, this year may go off without incident or may be chaos, I have no idea.

I decided to delete twitter off my phone and ipad, I can still access it from the website, but not having the app may mean I don’t sit there hitting reload like a rat hitting a button wired up to its pleasure centres.

I’ll be honest, it’s not been a great success so far – I checked it this morning, in a fit of “what on earth do I do with my hands” (which, I imagine, is how a smoker might feel after giving them up – the nicotine hit is one thing, but what do you do with your hands now they’re suddenly free?) Of course the moment I checked I had a dm which meant I was responding to that, but, I’ve tried not to respond to anything on the general twitter feed.

Honestly, I think I’m pretty good at twitter (in so far as I enjoy it and I use it regularly, but – let’s be honest, no one is handing out eisners for tweets) but I don’t half use it too much.

Taking a break isn’t a bad idea, and the fact that even the attempt at it feels like I’m missing something tells me I really need to take a break. Obviously, I’ll be back.

I figured if I saved up all my stupid twitter thoughts throughout the day I could then blog them and get some of the same hit from tweeting (it hasn’t worked).

We’re staying in a loft in Ballylinny at the Giant’s Causeway, it’s beautiful up here and we’re having a good time. I’m up from a typical 3k steps to 13k steps today, and will probably do similar over the next few days.

These are our ideal holiday conditions – a large house to stay in, decent internet and something to go visit every day.

Today we went to Mussenden Temple – incredible views, and a real sense that wow, people in the past had a lot of money to waste on follys.

The we hit the beach at Portrush – pretty much empty, I assume because it was later in the day and anyone with any sense had started heading home, some wading in the icy cold atlantic ocean (it’s what passes for warm here) and back to the loft totally exhausted.

Tomorrow I’m determined to look at my phone less and I’d really like to sit and see if I can hack away at one or two of the ideas I’ve written in my script ideas book (a red notebook that becomes the new home for any half baked story idea that I would normally tweet out, like a loon).

Anyway, good evening and we’ll chat tomorrow!