I’m in one of those moods again, but have added some of my random photos to decorate the page.

I go out to dinner for two reasons; 1) to eat, and 2) to eat. Pleasant company is also acceptable, as is ‘couldn’t be bothered to make a sandwich when I get home.’ What I don’t want to go out to dinner for is stuff like this:

Long-line caught lumpsucker nestled on a sumptuous bed of foraged mushroom essence enhanced kinmemai premium rice topped with young coconut powder and the sperm of a bewildered sea snail.

I mean, please… Or, how about this one?

First year iberico sheep child delicately turned over larvanous grill coals, served with precious ground growth, scented bulbs, and teased goat’s milk juice hinted with garlic.

I’ll translate: It’s a grilled lamb souvlaki with cucumber, onions and tzatziki.

There are plenty out there if you care to take a look, or if you are of the sort who really wastes hundreds of Euros on pretentious food just so you can say, ‘Oh, have you not been to Rick Ramsay’s latest eatery? We have attended twice, and both times, the smacker fish and truffle ice cream was delightfully toothsome. You simply must try the seal snot risotto. It’s only ninety Euros, and the chef will sign it for you too.’

Actually, ‘Toothsome’ did turn up on a review in CityPaper. The reviewer wrote of a dish … salty cubes of farm-fresh bacon overshadowed the crispy, toothsome fish. Toothsome? Get a thesaurus, mate.

Back to our order, what shall we have next? How about something deconstructed? To me, that means they’ve not been bothered to bung it together. Anyone can fry up some mince, pour some Smash in a jug, add water, mix, slop on, chuck some baked beans with it, and call it a deconstructed cottage pie. If it’s lamb mince it should be called a shepherd’s pie, because all shepherds eat their flock, right? Whatever, it needs to be constructed. Imagine if you bought a deconstructed Barratt Home. ‘Right, mate, here’s your mortar. Your bricks are over there, but you’ll want to get your foundations in before the rain starts.’

There are some other totally pointless and pretentious terminologies employed by restaurants throughout the world. In no particular order, here’s a glossary of but a few:

Hand-glazed.              Wiped with a pasty brush.
Reduction.                  Been left on the heat too long.
Nestling.                     Fighting to be noticed among the other bits and pieces.
Succulent                    Wet.
Tripple-cooked.         ‘You done the spuds, Ted?’ ‘Can’t remember.’
Snuggled up with…   See ‘Nestling.’
Seared.                        Burnt.
Beer-battered.            Chef was pissed.
Soft-boiled.                 Could do with another minute.

The supremely superfluousness extends to sentences too. For example, I read this on a menu: ‘Hand in hand with a delightful English courgette.’

Sounds like a review of Lady Marshall’s debutante Ball, where, and I quote, Viscount Bugger-Chop-Manic was seen hand in hand with a delightful English Courgette, the latter being Lady Edith Courgette of the Henley Squash-Courgettes.

And what accompanies your farm-fresh bacon chunks (I can still hear the squealing, it’s that fresh), your Soupçon d’un crapaud gris, or your Chose gluante à peine cuite qui est venue dans une coquille? *

Why, a whacking great bill, of course! Who in their right mind would pay £2,500 for a steak? Some people do, and you can do it while you’re on holiday on certain Greek islands. Maybe not the $2.5k shank, but we’ve all read of people being ripped off by unscrupulous restaurant owners overcharging, and that’s one thing. What gets me is people willingly paying stupid amounts of money for something that looks like a dog’s sneezed on someone else’s leftovers. Worse, it’s then dragged up in grandiose menu-speak, which only does one thing for me, and that’s to give me indigestion.

Sorry, it gives me a delightfully fluffy taste of hand-reared bile nestling on a seductively burbling pool of vinaigrette du estomac, followed by ambrosious delectations of comprimés de Maalox, with a barely constructed Renie and Gaviscon reduction.

Whatever you think of this trend for nuttiness, let me wish you Kali orexi. Or, as we say in English, Bon appetit.

* Soupçon d’un crapaud gris. Suspicion of a grey toad.
Chose gluante à peine cuite qui est venue dans une coquille. Hardly cooked slimy thing that came in a shell.

Here’s a morning ramble of the first degree with some random shots of Symi just so there’s a point to this Symi site other than me rambling about all and anything.

I have this phrase which I pass on to newer writers when they ask for advice: Don’t get it right, get it written – then get it right. Meaning, bang out a first draft, it’s going to be rubbish, but then you do it again, only better. (That’s another phrase I used a lot when directing musical theatre, ‘Lovely, love, but let’s do it again, only better, shall we?’) Anyway…

I was browsing a social media group over the weekend and came across a post which read: Of all the people who have read my novel, only 2 have made it past chapter 3. What did I do wrong?

For a start, your numbers should be written in word form, but let’s not be picky as we’re here to talk about the replies.

Oh my God, goodness, Lord, days, word! Here are some examples:

You gave it to the wrong readers. Say what? Gave it? For a start, you’re kind of missing the point of writing a novel for sale; who gives away their work? And what author has the opportunity to vet their readers?

Wrong audience most likely. Possible (see above).

Probably the quality of the writing or editing/proofreading. That’s just about every base covered, and I expect this reply hit the nail on the chapter header, but it was the author’s reply that had me: I swear I edited the novel 20 times. I caught so many errors every time. Now, Sir, what does that tell you?

But did you get story arc feedback across the entire novel? Ah ha! Now someone is talking my language, except they went on to say: Personally, I like a modified story grid analysis because it forces me to think through the full arc.

A modified story grid analysis? Wtf is that? Actually, I know what they mean. They mean a plot. A modified story grid… Oh please, that puts me in mind of pretentious restaurant menus, which is the subject for tomorrow’s ramble.

Another helpful poster asked about sympathy with the characters, which is very important, and you don’t gain sympathy just by having a one-eyed orphan with a dead BF and a history of being a smuggler’s unwitting mule. Another poster told how she added two chapters to the start of her novel and now, instead of readers finishing at chapter seven, they get as far as chapter nine before they switch off – go figure. Someone else used abbreviations that we’re all clearly meant to know, such as… so they get dgaf when she was in peril… now they dnf at chapter… At which point I dnf, and moved on to another post.

Someone else asked what the genre of the novel was, and the author replied it was an epic LGBTQ+ Sci-fi space opera. It’s an epic something alright.

Another helpful replier suggested there may have been triggers that put the readers off. Now, to me, trigger was a horse and not a ‘You may be offended because this novel contains words,’ warning on the packaging of Rupert the Bear, or whatever. Warning, ‘The Lord of the Flies’ may contain descriptions of children. Warning, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ may disturb readers who have an allergy to real life, and so on.

I had a browse to see what the latest news on trigger warnings was, and the question came up: Should books have trigger warnings? The best answer, which sums up my feelings, was, No, books shouldn’t have trigger warnings. People like you should stay away from reading books. And from posting on the internet.

Lmfao – well said. Other people’s sensitivities are not my problem. How can they be when I have a potential audience of eight billion people? Anyway, the point was, I was having a pop at that poor writer who had a disaster with their book for a reason I’d only know if I read the thing, and as no-one appears to have made it to the end, I don’t think I’ll bother. What was good to see, though, was the number of other readers offering to read it and offer advice, to help and even to edit. If you ask me, they probably just wanted a good laugh.

Good morning, and welcome to Monday!

I’m ending the blogging week with ten photos. Having had another early morning thanks to the stuffy, humid, sultry night, my brain’s not completely on form as yet, but it’s five o’clock and I want to get on with the next project. It’s also 30° and 70% humidity, and the streetlight outside the house has died, so there’s a better view of the stars. Things to look forward to today? Hearing what my tax bill will be, investigating why we have to pay €70 because of the change in Greek law that means same-sex couples can now marry rather than simply have a cohab agreement, which is what we have, and thanks to the new law, we’ve now got to pay for…? What? An upgrade? I have no idea, so we’ll investigate that with KEP at some point, or Neil might do it today after he’s been for a swim. It’s too early in the morning to put my mind to all that. Let’s have those images instead, and take the rest of the week off.

Ps. There are now 11 photos, becasue I added a chicken.

Another mixed bag of oddments for you today. Let’s start with some words I was forbidden from using yesterday:

Stooge.
Acerbic.
Claustrophobic.

Why, you ask, was I banned? Because I was putting together a chapter set in 1893, and because I am developing a sixth sense about these things. When I started on my first Victorian Mystery book, it was set in 1888, and I intended it to be in a kind of parallel universe, which is why I called Whitechapel ‘Greychurch’ and so on, and why I had characters using words like ‘Okay.’ Well, I soon discovered I wasn’t writing a standalone book, ‘Deviant Desire’, I was writing an ongoing series, and I’d better do more research than the books about Jack the Ripper I’d read. While doing so, I realised that ‘Okay’ didn’t come into popular English usage until around the 1950s, certainly not in print. By this time, I was on book four, I think, so I went back over all books in the series and took out/replaced words I shouldn’t have been using because the characters wouldn’t know them, among them were: acidic, teenager, adolescent, and homosexual. These days, I’ll be merrily writing along when I trip over a word, such as I did yesterday with ‘claustrophobia’ and I think, ‘I’d better check that,’ so I do, and there you go. Not allowed.

All this was after I’d been for a walk around the village for a mile which I did not long after sunup because it was or felt cooler than of late. That’s when today’s images were taken.

Sometimes, it’s hard to write about a snow-filled night in the alleys of Whitechapel in 1893 when it’s 35 degrees outside, and you’re living in the lap of relative luxury. But the sight of other people’s misfortunes helps with perspective. I’ve been noticing more and more refugees/immigrants over the past few months; they are sat in lines, some handcuffed, I’ve been told, in the Schengen area by the clock tower and there, they wait for the Dodecanese catamaran to take them on to wherever. I’m sure the problem wasn’t as bad this time last year, and it’s been growing more pressing in recent months. It seems it’s even reached the point of the people traffickers bringing them over in broad daylight, but dressed as tourists. I was also told that we’d lost our Frontex boats, and that, I imagine plays a big part in opening up the seas for these unscrupulous people shifters. It’s this immigration that’s sending Europe to the far right, and before long, countries will only be interested in helping themselves, and not their neighbours. One of the short stories in my short book, 1892 takes that theme, and it’s a very worrying one.

Still, that aside (because the problem is way beyond me to sort out, I still can’t even vote – I mean, I could have done in the recent UK election had my papers not arrived a week after the event), let’s pretend it’s not happening, that you know who won’t soon be back in office and caring only for the white folk of America and all that, and put our minds to having a good old jolly Thursday. This image might smooth the savage whatever:

If you were wondering, by the way, here’s what I discovered:

Stooge.                       1920s
Acerbic.                      1950s
Claustrophobic.        1940

(Approximate dates – and first appeared in print. They were probably in spoken use a little while before.)

Today, I’m turning away from the ongoing debate about the cost of sunbeds, Greek salads and holidays. I’m not paying any heed to the debate about whether the island is pricing itself too far to the rich right and losing the loyalty of its regulars who, one might say, are from the economic left (of an imaginary scale). I am not getting involved in the worrying thought that there will soon be no properties for locals to rent, and the rising cost of those that are available. Trying not to think that our 21-year-old godson has to pay more for a bedsit in Harani than we’ve ever paid for a house with extra rooms in the village. I am not taking any notice of all of that, except I just have, so now I’m moving on to something else, and I have another question for you.

Does anyone have a map of the London sewer system circa 1892. I know it’s a bit odd, isn’t it? But I’d be fascinated because I am working on a story which involves just that system, and I’d like to know more. I’ve been wading through old newspapers and a collection of writings, but haven’t yet found a map.

Completely unrelated to that, I have some random photos of cats for you. I was going to take a walk yesterday morning and take some more, I was up in time. Well, I woke up at two, three, six minutes past four and finally, five to five, but when the dawn started, it was already over 30 degrees and 60% humidity, and I was a bit dopey. That, I can put down to the antihistamine I had to take before bed because I’d become a mosquito’s pin cushion, and I have almost run out of haemorrhoid cream. (See earlier posts; it’s a cure for itchy red swellings, i.e. mosquito bites.)

Before bed, we’d watched Titanic again as it had just come on Netflix. There are a few blunders in there which you can look out for on your next time around. There’s a classic continuity oops when Rose breaks the glass for the fire axe. Clearly, the smashing of the sugar glass and her taking the axe were shot at different times, because the formation of the broken glass is different in each shot. I expect there are others, but I’m not decrying the film. It’s still moving (not him dying, that was inevitable, but the general loss of life), and it’s still big, dramatic, sumptuous and a good way to kill three and a quarter hours. If only it could also kill mosquitoes.

Right! I must get back to 1893 and the London sewers, the works of Maskelyne and Cooke’s home of mystery, and vanishing acts generally.