A big hello!

Hello and welcome, by the way, to fan #80.

Fire up the swearbox.

When I was small, my parents didn't swaer around me or my sisters. I suppose it was the good parenting thing, as children are notorious for picking up phrases and words quite quickly once they reach a certain age. Even when I was older, the 'f' word was never used, and there were a whole host of other words that never ever featured. Years later I discovered that my Father certainly knows and will use on occasions the 'f' word. It's just that he refrained from doing so around his children until long after we all passed 18.

More often these days I keep hearing foul mouthed parents with their little children in tow. These children will sadly become the foul mouthed future of our society. I remember living in Durham, and hearing the mother next door shouting to their child who could have only been no more than 8 "Put your f**king shoes on!". Predictably, that evening when the child came back from school, he spent some time gleefully in the back garden repeating the phrase his mother had managed to 'teach' him that morning over and over again at high volume.

More recently I have heard through the paper walls that divide us from nextdoor, the same foul mouthed language being used when trying to get children ready for school. Is it only me that regards swearing at small and easily influenced children to be very bad parenting indeed? Whenever I am around my neice and nephew, I always am careful to modify my own language. I actually find myself doing what my parents did, and cutting out all those swaer words and slang which would raise eyebrows at playgroup if the little child started repeating them. The word 'poo' has been dusted off and brought out of retirement. What a strange word that is. At least children won't be learning the words 'shit' and 'turd' off me.

Zoë tells me that I'm from a privelaged background, and I guess she is right. But it still doesn't change the fact that teaching children foul language is very wrong and very bad parenting. It's just a shame that it seems increasingly other people don't share that view around their own children.

Can you feel the sparks from my Bri-nylon?

An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation.

Fear my shell suit!

One of those strange days full of intrigue.

I've been teaching Zoë to drive over the last few weeks. It came about partly with her niggling me to get her insured on the car, and partly because - as it turned out - I got a discount for insuring her on the car when the insurance came up for renewal. Something about a 'partner's discount' and that when you pass 25, insurance isn't as expensive as for younger people, regardless.

She's getting good quite quickly. No longer does she take out unwary wheelie bins and veer towards the kerb every time she changes gear. Bunny hops are a thing of the past, and I'm proud of her progress. The last two frontiers are confidence (always something that comes slowly) and lane discipline. One of my pet narks is people who use every lane (wrongly) at roundabouts, so I'm determined to make sure that she isn't one of them.

She's out on the campaign trail today. Around about now she is at Bolton town hall with William Hague smiling and looking pretty for the television news crews. She really wants to enter politics seriously at some point, so it is a good exercise. It will be the third time that she has met William Hague, so maybe he might start remembering her name? That can only be a good thing for a potential career within the Conservative party.

In other news, the car that belonged to the shady people who came to our door last week asking if there was "any money in [our house]" turns out to have been a false numberplate. The Police did a search, and even tried permutations of the number, but to no avail - there are no green Fords with that numberplate or any similar to it still officially in existence. It only adds further mystery to that strange few minutes. Aparently it isn't unheard of for Eastern Europeans to turn up and ask for money (in the hope that they will be paid to go away?). We've been told to report it immediately if they ever come back. The Police have issued advice to their people to be on the lookout for the car in the local area. But how weird?

Tweet, tweet - caution vehicle reversing!

There is a bird that comes and sits and sings in the tree in our back garden. It comes every day and tweets out its tune. There is nothing strange about that, I know. What is strange though is the way that its singing perfectly - and I mean perfectly - mimics the old-style reversing alarms that bin lorries used to have in the late 1990s.

The first time that I heard it I really thought that it could be an old J-reg Seddon reaking of last week's cabbage. But it wasn't. Instead there was this little bird fluttering from branch to branch. Just as well really, as I didn't fancy having my car blocked in - that lane is too narrow for a real lorry.

It made me think about the calls that birds make. They must each learn their calls from their parents, by listening to them. That would have been all well and good for millenia, until humans came up with glorious noise pollution. Suddenly there were mimickable sounds that were being blasted out day after day. The birds are listening it seems, and they are picking it up. That means this is a bird that will never sing its proper cry again. Nor will its chicks. How many bird calls are being lost to this steady increase in noise pollution? I suspect that give it a hundred years and bird calls might be very different sounding indeed.

How many drivers can drive their car into the wall of heroes in two hours?

I'm sat here at the computer typing away at the new book. I hadn't realised just how enjoyable it is to write just plain old literary fiction. No sci-fi, no dragons, no lasers and certainly no roving death star-like moons out to destroy the planet of the funky retro hairstyles. I can see why so many authors write this kind of stuff. I just hope that my effort comes close enough to stand a chance on the bookshelves.

I'm watching the 2006 Canadian F1 Grand Prix. It shows me how much F1 has changed even over four years. It's not a bad race so far, though I have to be honest that I'm merely listening as I write and only occasionally dropping into the video feed when excitement happens. Certainly compared to last Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix it was far more exciting. I think there is a lot of merit in the idea of spraying the track with water. It seems that in the last couple of years that the only interesting races have been those that have featured rain on the day.

Election day has been announced. Looks like it'll be fun. Zoë has got me helping her with the leafleting campaign tomorrow. Luckily this time the conservatives haven't given us the really rough estate (though I find a man with a can of beer and manky Y-fronts really about as unmenacing as anyone can get as he screws up a leaflet that just came through his letterbox whilst glaring at me). We also need to stop off on the way back and buy beans. Remember kids: you can never have too many tins of beans.

I have discovered the full scary extent of just how bad the double glazing job on this house was. I think the cowboy who fitted them didn't need a ladder. Instead I gather he just lassooed the chimney whilst his horse waited at the door. Really, they have holes around the edges that from outside I can see the plasterboard of the inside. I've called the landlord three times now, but he never returns his calls. There are other issues too (leaky pipe, flickering electrics, mold in a bedroom that keeps on coming back). If we get no joy there will be a nasty letter and, if no reply comes from that, we'll just get the repairs done and dock the cost from the rent money. I bet you the landlord will appear miraculously the moment the rent money falters to pay for the building work.

I can breathe, as long as no-one prods me too much.

The more eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that updates have been a little few and far between. I make no apologies, given how ill I have been. Hopefully I am over the worst, but a chest infection that has been the follow on from a bad cold has floored me over the last week or so. I had pneumonia as a child which left scarring, and that in turn has left me with difficulty in fighting off any chest infection. Thank goodness I don't have asthma too!

On the writing front things have begun to progress again. I'm getting into the swing of TLSOW, and it is starting to fill out and grow. In some ways it is nice to come back to something that I wrote quite a while ago now. I am distanced from the creative process, and I guess it makes it easier to see the words as how an unbiased reader might. At any rate, in places the text seemed to deal with the subject matter rather too briefly. That's more than likely as a direct result of me trying (and in the most part failing) to keep the original word total down to short story length. At least now I have free reign to expand as much as I like. There's a really nice story in TLSOW and I do hope I can do it justice. So far, for the number crunchers amongst you, I've passed the 23,500 word mark. Of course, some of that was the original long short story, though I have deleted and rewritten an awful lot of it - when you expand something like this, sometimes it is easier to start again with whole sections than to tinker.