Wreck of the Week

I love crumbling old things.

Show me something pristine and I‘m impressed no doubt.

But the thing that captures my imagination is some romantic old ruin – one awaiting the care and attention of the dedicated.

People who can bring a ruin back to life are my heroes.

However at heart I love things when they are showing their age. Shabby, crumbling, worn are all aspects that interest me.

I have been following a site called Wreck of the Week for a year or more:

http://www.wreckoftheweek.co.uk/

in which Sue lists out the most intriguing old ruins she has found recently – often with land or to-die-for features.

I love this website.

Whilst I have spent way too long in my life looking at crumbling old ruins my first love is for things mechanical.

Every week I spend a daft amount of time perusing classic car sites and auction sites looking at heaps of rust – those which someone with enormous resources might just restore to working order.

Sometimes I even see some post restoration.

I now think that a wreck of the week based on cars, vans, trucks and so on would be an idea.

Like Wreck of the Week it won’t exactly be weekly. I am considering that I’m only going to look at it if it causes me some interest.

With luck it will be of interest to others too.

So for this week I thought that we’d start with:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ford-Cortina-MK1-Pre-Air-Flow-1964-2-Door-1500cc-/112728034430

I find it awe-inspiring how much anything with the Ford badge attracts now.

I started out with a profound love of everything with a griffin on the nose (Vauxhall). It seems I chose unwisely based upon the values that Ford cars now attract.

This one is a 1964 so 54 years old at present and with the appealing CND rear light arrangement.

There is a large amount to do with this one.

The seller states that he has only the shell.

Such that although it is declared as a 1500cc this is largely moot – someone will be supplying a suitable engine from elsewhere.

The car was last on the road in 1984.

But given there is no running gear – a seized engine or rusted on brakes are not going to concern you.

The shell, does not look as doily-fied as many such vehicles.

If you stick around to read probably many I shall feature on this blog.

But the seller does state that the front panel needs replacing. Whether such things are still obtainable after all this time I do not know.

Thankfully it has a V5 – so you would not have to wrestle with registering it.

However availability of spares for a 54-year old car may not be optimal in my experience. Especially items like front wings and interior for example.

The registration number is listed as historic, 4 numbers and 2 letters, xxxx NU. But it is hard to know if this is sufficient to justify the final bid which was £2,050.00 after 43 bids.

This in anyone’s book is very healthy interest.

It would be interesting to see if the car pops up again post restoration. Firstly to know how long it took to restore (surely measured in years rather than months). In addition to know how much a restored one of these would fetch.

At least you can say that it would be something that was nearly entirely of your own building. There is so little left of it.

Books On Writing

From writing courses I find that I have various book recommendations.

Some of these I have actually read.

If I find any that are any good I will include a review at some point.

I suspect that this list will grow with time:

Book	Author	ISBN
Creative Writing: A Practical Guide Bookfinder	Julia Casterton	1403942633
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Bookfinder	Stephen King	9781444723250
The Writer’s Block: 786 Ideas To Jump-start Your Imagination Bookfinder	Jason Rekulak	0762409487
The Writer’s Voice Bookfinder	Al Alvarez	0747579318
What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers Bookfinder	Anne Bernays	0062720066
The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative Bookfinder	Vivian Gornick	0374528586
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within Bookfinder	Natalie Goldberg	9781611803082
Grammar Guide – the way the English Language Works Bookfinder	Gordon Jarvie	0747513856
Eats, Shoots and Leaves Bookfinder	Lynne Truss	1861976127
Writers Handbook (A different one is published each year)	J. Paul Dyson	1909935131
Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (a new version is published each year)	A & C Black Publishers Ltd	9781472935052

Hopefully you will find some of them readable and/or useful.

I welcome suggestions for other books that I have not included.

Beginnings

One of the exercises that I practiced on one of the writing courses was to create beginnings.

The beginning is important to any writing.

There are different styles of beginning this one – the “Third Person Objective.”

The Third Person Objective depends upon a narrator overlooking the proceedings (from outside the story).

This narrator having no interest in any of the characters. He can describe each without bias and has a great insight into the entire proceedings.

This is a style that is hard to do well. In fact I can’t recall reading any fiction written in this style.

One problem is: if the reader is receiving the story via a disinterested messenger it is hard for them to have sympathy for any of the characters. This can result in reduced emotional involvement in the story.

Without any attachment to the story, why keep reading?

My beginnings all involve what was my favourite character for a long time “Dave the Effective Detective”.

Unfortunately whilst I loved the character I couldn’t find a suitable story for him.

Perhaps he’ll pop up as suitable for something in the future.

The Third Person Objective Beginning

There lies our hero, as unlikely a hero as you are likely to meet. Forty, chubby, unadventurous; such is the stuff that the fates have to work with.

Right now he is slumbering, dreamless, drooling a little into his pillow. His equally chubby wife snoring loudly at his side.

But – on awakening, the story of the rest of his life will begin.

Dave Cooper an accountant with Huntchett and Spendler. (An old and quite prestigious firm).

An accountant of some respect among his peers.

Never failing to make taxation savings for his clients. Never-failing to disguise the true extent of earnings using some clever legal loophole. Never-failing to make a healthy salary.

So, how is it that Dave still drives an elderly car? How can it be that Dave has never left this three-bedroomed semi (purchased twenty years ago)?

Why are the suits, hanging in a neat row in his wardrobe, both worn and unfashionable?

Why is it that today, his fortieth birthday, he will see that his whole life has been a waste of the breath that he expended?

How can a man so respectable sit this very afternoon hunched in his car trying to end his own life?

Why should Dave, an accountant (let’s not forget) of little imagination, become a mumbling simpleton of little use to anyone.

More to the point, how does this make him the hero of our story?

See my next post on beginnings here:

https://magic-phil.co.uk/2018/01/09/beginnings-pt2/

Character

Over time I have attended various courses on writing.

These have not had any lasting effect on my ability to actually write anything.

As an after-effect of these different efforts I have various short pieces of work with no home to go to.

I can’t see that any of these will be the foundation of some best seller.

I am gambling that displaying your old work has no deleterious effects on future writing.

On that assumption I will put them out there warts and all.

On the basis that it is possible someone might get some small pleasure from reading them.

From some old writing exercise I have this short piece of writing that did not make the grade.

The idea was to describe a character. But the feedback was that the character was one-dimensional.

In fact the reflection was that he was a little shit and that this made the end satisfying to read.

I was very sympathetic to Mike and I quite liked him. In some aspects I felt an affinity with him. So it is sad that he did not make the grade as a character.

Anger

Mike gripped the Momo steering wheel, his knuckles pale. Petite hands, not like a man’s at all, slender wrists and puny forearms, which are currently in tension. So that the slim muscles are clear.

His acne scarred face reddened with aggression.

Mike barks out “Move you bastard!”

He weaves his lowered Vauxhall Nova towards the right-hand side.

The darkened purple interior vibrates in time to a huge subwoofer behind his left ear – “50 Cent”. Mike adjusts the baseball cap forwards a little and leans forwards. His nose inches from the screen; he revs his engine with a whoosh of the dump valve.

The ash from his fag is forming a scree slope down the front of his T-shirt. His clothes are market-stall “designer”; all sportswear accented with gold jewellery from Argos. Today Mike wants to look cool.

Finally, he has passed his test at the ripe old age of 18, old for a license. He would have to tell them he passed months ago. They couldn’t know he was a new car virgin.

He’d had to be nice to his god-awful parents for a whole week now. He’d finally persuaded his dad to give him the money for this real bitching car. He could tell them it was all his own work – they’d think he was cool then.

His face ape-like in concentration screwed up. With ears stuck out at right angles beneath his close-shaven hair.

He looks for even a minute gap in the traffic “Fuckin’ Wankin’ Granddad, why not fuck off and die”

He edges his lurid green front spoiler close to the boot in front and flashes the four-way headlights. His laceless trainers describe a dance on the “custom” pedals until the unbalanced car slews sideways.

He leers, “Hope that scared the old bastard!”

He wanted to arrive like a star in “2 Fast 2 Furious” in a rush, lights blazing. He wanted to impress (particularly Roz – she looked great in that pink mini skirt last week). But this idiot was holding him up. He felt his heart beat faster – he wanted to kill him in a serious way. He could imagine ripping out his still beating heart. Kicking the gagging corpse around until this feeling ran cold.

He hit the horn hard and then zigzagged out until he was parallel, nothing would stop him now.

What was this? The old guy was accelerating, fucker, he would have him. Mike plants the accelerator hard into the purple carpet. He feels the blood pumping past his calf muscle as he exerts great pressure to keep it there.

Sweat springs from his forehead as he looks ahead at the oncoming bend.

He won’t give way; this git will never take him. Every muscle in his 5’ 7” frame taut he grits his teeth. He will win this or die, the evil fucker.

The Speedo needle crawls upwards, the corner, not past yet, he won’t brake, never. He turns to give the guy the finger as the Volvo truck rounds the bend.

Using Online Tools to Improve Your Writing Pt 2

After Part 1:

https://magic-phil.co.uk/2017/01/23/using-online-tools-to-improve-your-writing/

We are still embarking upon the journey of testing out editing tools based upon the article:

http://nybookeditors.com/2016/02/instantly-improve-your-writing-with-these-11-editing-tools/.

Part one concerned AfterTheDeadline and did not exactly blow my pants off.

This time we are looking at Autocrit. Health warning the NYBookEditors article describes this as a pay for option and if there is no free trial option then I will not be exploring it. (On the basis of being a lifelong cheapskate).

The location is https://www.autocrit.com. (https reassures my IT Security bones – I’m feeling better about this option already).

In addition on browsing to the page I find that it states that you can paste in some text for free

For those who did not read the last post:

https://magic-phil.co.uk/2017/01/23/using-online-tools-to-improve-your-writing/.

Here is the text that I am analysing – filled with errors which several people have pointed out.

He stopped the car at the style gate. The handbrake was still a bit dodgy; he gave it a hefty pull and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t run away down hill.

The “Great Park” spread out before them – old stained post and rail fencing, long grass, the occasional tree dotted randomly. Zones of poor drainage where the marsh marigold was already showing saffron flower heads. He felt his heart quicken just slightly – he hadn’t done this sort of thing for years.

Mandy was here for the “rare mushroom” or that’s how he thought of it. Mandy had tried patiently to remind him that it was a fungus.

“Russula Pseudo-affinis” his ticket to pleasure land. This boring little brown-capped fungus had only been seen in one other place in the UK. Derek had found it surprisingly easy to convince her that he had seen some sprouting in the corner of the Great Park.

It’s amazing what a night spent with G.J Keizer’s “Encyclopaedia of Fungi” can result in.

A keen mycologist like Mandy Briggs couldn’t resist, he’d offered to drive, pretended he was as interested as she in the damn mushrooms.

Mandy – she was tall, bookish and appeared totally plain, no one ever saw Mandy in male company.

Derek knew something they didn’t. It was Mandy’s love of lose pullovers; they hid her body so well no one knew the joy beneath. That and that lengthy awful brown skirt, the one that was always heavily stained from studying the ink caps and wax caps on hands and knees.

Hands and knees, yes that’s how he’d seen her, examining a “White Spindle” fungus beside the car park; that over large pullover and the absence of underwear – a revelation.

He determined to introduce Mandy to the delights of male company as quickly as he could bring it about and he had no scruples about the use of subterfuge.

He steadied Mandy as she stepped over the style, gaining a glimpse of shapely calf as she did so, this was better and better.

Down the grassy slope, slipping and sliding in the dew-heavy grass his leather shoes unsuited to the terrain; the grass here a darker shade from the constant dampness. At the base of the slope a tiny copse, mainly ash and hawthorn but with the occasional oak tree.

He had planned for the “use of” a drier area beneath one stately member – it would be ideal for his carnal destiny – a blanket was too obvious for this “field trip”.

She was braced against a tree – back to him. This would be too easy.

She turned as he approached to indicate a spiny coral fungus. The contour of that bum beneath the plain cotton so wonderful; he reached forward to run his fingers lightly down the obvious parting of those two cheeks.

The impact was sudden, violent. He couldn’t believe the pain. He’d thought it a lie – it surely couldn’t be this painful? He folded like an emptying balloon cradling his soreness.

I’m hopeful if we keep the text the same that this gives the editing software chance to do its job. In addition it enables accurate comparison between the effectiveness of the tools.

Initially pasting the above into Autocrit caused the entire page to freeze completely (At least in Microsoft Edge). So I killed it and started again.

I tried again but the page didn’t even acknowledge that I had entered text – assume something to do with my choice of browser.

So start again using Internet Explorer.

Sure enough the tool kicked into touch and clicking analyse text took me to a page that asked for my email address (I have a throwaway email address for just such a purpose and I recommend that you do the same).

Once you complete the process it appears that you can keep going back to the same page and select from each of the options available, which are:

However a quick review of the output reveals that it is the same in each case so it is not clear why the options are offered.

(Potentially it is a way to target the marketing of the solution to you via the email address that you supplied – you did use a disposable address didn’t you?)

This is the output that I received:

Sadly the free version of the report does not actually point out where in the text the problems occur. So it is a case of looking carefully at the text using the prompts given and attempting to identify areas that need work.

This gave me this as an output:

He stopped the car at the style gate. The handbrake was still a bit dodgy; he gave it a hefty pull and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t run away downhill.

The “Great Park” spread out before them – old stained post-and-rail fencing, long grass; the occasional tree dotted randomly; zones of poor drainage where the marsh marigold was already showing saffron flower heads.

He felt his heart quicken just slightly. He hadn’t done this sort of thing for years.

Mandy was here for the “rare mushroom”. That’s how he thought of it. Mandy had tried to remind him it was a fungus.

“Russula Pseudo-affinis” his ticket to pleasure land. This boring little brown-capped fungus had only been seen in one other place in the UK. Derek had found it surprisingly easy to convince her he had seen some sprouting in the corner of the Great Park.

It’s amazing what a night spent with G.J Keizer’s “Encyclopaedia of Fungi” can result in.

A keen mycologist like Mandy Briggs couldn’t resist, he’d offered to drive, pretended he was as interested as she in the damn mushrooms.

Mandy – she was tall, bookish and appeared totally plain, no one ever saw Mandy in male company.

Derek knew something they didn’t. It was Mandy’s love of lose pullovers; they hid her body so well no one knew the joy beneath. That and the lengthy awful brown skirt the one that was always heavily stained from studying the ink caps on hands and knees.

Hands and knees, yes that’s how he’d seen her, examining a “White Spindle” fungus beside the car park, the over-large pullover and the absence of underwear – a revelation.

He determined to introduce Mandy to the delights of male company as quickly as he could bring it about and he had no scruples about the use of subterfuge.

He steadied Mandy as she stepped over the style, gaining a glimpse of shapely calf as she did so, this was better and better.

Down the grassy slope, slipping and sliding in the dew-heavy grass his leather shoes unsuited to the terrain.

The grass here a darker shade from the constant dampness. At the base of the slope a tiny copse, mainly ash and hawthorn but with the occasional oak tree.

He had planned for the use of a drier area beneath one stately member. It would be ideal for his carnal destiny – a blanket was too obvious for this field trip.

She was braced against a tree – back to him. This would be too easy.

She turned as he approached to indicate a spiny coral fungus. The contour of her bum beneath the plain cotton so wonderful; he reached forward to run his fingers lightly down the obvious parting of those two cheeks.

The impact was sudden, violent. He couldn’t believe the pain. He’d thought it a lie – it surely couldn’t be this painful? He folded like an emptying balloon cradling his soreness.

I am not an editor (that is why I was using a tool) and so this is not going to be sufficient for what I need.

No doubt the paid for version of AutoCrit is ideal in this respect, certainly the feedback is much more detailed than with the After the Deadline tool I evaluated last time.

https://magic-phil.co.uk/2017/01/23/using-online-tools-to-improve-your-writing/

Next time CorrectEnglish: