Apologies for being away for so long but holidays, finances and cars have got in the way of writing and blogging just recently. Thank you to the lone viewer from Canada. I could do with more of that and also anyone from other English speaking countries (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc) and also those with good English from Scandanavia to join the two from Sweden. And is it really true that Kazakhstan and Mongolia are internet dead spots...?
Anyway, on with the blog.
I have been reading The Deceit by Tom Knox (Harper 2013), and it highlights a couple of important points even in chapter one.
Consider this, right at the start, were the viewpoint character is on th outskirts of Cairo:
The taxi stopped in the City of the Dead. Victor Sassoon stared out of the dusty cab window, adjusting his spectacles, and cursing his seventy-five-year-old eyesight.
Great first sentence, but who misread the name as Vidal Sassoon, the famous hairstylist? The present participles could be replaced by past participles but, this time at least, the simultaneity is OK.
Later we have this:
The drive took merely ten minutes, past the last of the Fstimid ossuaries, past the final tombs of the Abbasid nobles, past an Ottoman mausoleum adapted into a car repair workshop.
I get it - the author has been there and actually seen these things. And Sassoon is an expert on such things. But does the reader really care? Or bother looking these things up? I had this problem with a main character of mine where her bedroom was filled with Georgian furniture. Yes, she loved it, but who else gave a shit if it was deigned by William Gomm? Nobody, I bet. That's why I had to introduce it to the reader by her having a new friend round, Besides it made it more immediate. I was wondering if Knox could perhaps have introduced his facts in diary entries or letters and perhaps concentrated on how impatient or uncomfortable the Sassoon character felt in the grubby taxi.
Jacl Orchison
August 30, 2014
Saturday 30 August 2014
Friday 29 August 2014
My biographical bit, part 16: University 7
It seems strange that I ever made it out the other side with a PhD, especially being a self-critical doubter by nature. But hard work and method won out.
Being in the Chemistry Department was never without its drama. And there was never smoke without fire - quite literally. One day there were visitors and a senior member of staff was showing them his research lab. The lab had two doors, one at either end. The students in there managed to set light to something at both ends, temporarily trapping the visitors inside (ooops). I spotted a fire in the photochemistry lab once (some elecrical fault had ignited methanol, I believe). I also incinerated the floor next to my bench with sodium hydride - it burnt a hole in the fire blanket and the fire brigade dumped the lot on the lawn in the quadrangle outside. Nothing grew there for years, apparently. But by far the worst episode, which was in no way amusing (in fact it was deadly serious) was the fire in the lab next door where work was lost and people injured (Des McNamara and Harjit Gill). Indeed the professor's diminutive wife put Des out in the sink. The building and equipment suffered a lot of smoke damage, too.
Someone else mangaed to set light to a carcinogenic substance (HMPA, hexamethylphosphoramide)in the fume cupboard, and was later seen actually in the fume cupboard cleaning up all the crap. One wit (Judith Buck) was heard to comment that the guy would have tumours on his tumours. No idea if this ever came to pass. Also, there were rumours of solvent-sniffing competitions (not for abuse but to detect what was in the mixture) and pure ethanol punch. Neither could be substantiated. One thing I do know, though: acetone (the main ingredient in nail varnish remover) is great for getting rid of wasps. One squirt and they're done for.
Next time - back to normality!
Jack Orchison
August 29, 2014
Being in the Chemistry Department was never without its drama. And there was never smoke without fire - quite literally. One day there were visitors and a senior member of staff was showing them his research lab. The lab had two doors, one at either end. The students in there managed to set light to something at both ends, temporarily trapping the visitors inside (ooops). I spotted a fire in the photochemistry lab once (some elecrical fault had ignited methanol, I believe). I also incinerated the floor next to my bench with sodium hydride - it burnt a hole in the fire blanket and the fire brigade dumped the lot on the lawn in the quadrangle outside. Nothing grew there for years, apparently. But by far the worst episode, which was in no way amusing (in fact it was deadly serious) was the fire in the lab next door where work was lost and people injured (Des McNamara and Harjit Gill). Indeed the professor's diminutive wife put Des out in the sink. The building and equipment suffered a lot of smoke damage, too.
Someone else mangaed to set light to a carcinogenic substance (HMPA, hexamethylphosphoramide)in the fume cupboard, and was later seen actually in the fume cupboard cleaning up all the crap. One wit (Judith Buck) was heard to comment that the guy would have tumours on his tumours. No idea if this ever came to pass. Also, there were rumours of solvent-sniffing competitions (not for abuse but to detect what was in the mixture) and pure ethanol punch. Neither could be substantiated. One thing I do know, though: acetone (the main ingredient in nail varnish remover) is great for getting rid of wasps. One squirt and they're done for.
Next time - back to normality!
Jack Orchison
August 29, 2014
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