I usually do write them down when they come into my head and that helps.
But today I've completely forgotten. You'll just have to take my word that it was earth shattering prose now completely lost.
Trying to eradicate mistakes from a book is a tough thing to do. There's always more to pick up on. We are now just a couple of weeks from having our book published and we are still finding little errors.
Hopefully by the time Hell in Paradise is published we will have cut the mistakes down to an absolute minimum. But you can never be certain that every single mistake has been eradicated and there's always the feeling that certain passages could have been improved or re- written, but eventually you have to say enough is enough and publish and be damned.
Anyway you get mistakes all over the place in books. I'm currently reading The Reluctant Beatle George Harrison by Philip Norman which so far I have found to be rather disappointing as the first few chapters are a re-hash of the early days of the Beatles- a story I am well aware of and which has been covered so many times in so many books.
Then we came to a mistake and for me it's a pretty big one. Don McLean was described as a Canadian singer songwriter. McLean came from New York State and so this seems to be a bad error. Get something as basic as that wrong and I have to ask myself how many other things are also wrong or inaccurate and did I really read that?
*. *. *
I could tell you that our team came third last in the latest golf club quiz but that might be a touch embarrassing. We have won this quiz numerous times over the years but now the little grey cells don't seem to be working so well.
The second take a chance had us completely stumped. There are a couple of these in each quiz. If you get the answer correct after the first clue you get 10 points. After the second clue it's six, after the third clue it's four and after the fourth clue it's two. The clues get easier as it goes along.
We knew that to finish in the top 10 we had to score 10 points which usually means making an educated guess. After the first clue you could say we were clueless. It was something along the lines of: Born in Derbyshire, this person moved to Great Yarmouth at an early age and became involved in martial arts, the black market, diving and other sports. We couldn't even hazard a guess.
The remaining clues didn't help much either so we scored zero after putting Vinnie Jones because the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was mentioned. We knew it was wrong but didn't have any alternatives.
So when I got home I looked up Brian Statham, sorry Jason Statham and yes it was all true. He is an international diver and was brought up and educated in Great Yarmouth. I also found out that the actor Matthew McFadyan was born in Great Yarmouth. You learn something new every day and this is a fact to remember and file for the future. Incidentally for non cricket fans Brian Statham was an England fast bowler renowned for his partnership with Fiery Fred Trueman. But back to the quiz.
"I'm sure we aren't losing information from our brains" was how one of the quiz team put it. I'm not so sure. At least we have three more quizzes to redeem ourselves.
*. *. *
I'm certainly not averse to a spot or two of freeloading. But as far as Norwich goes the freeloading has dropped significantly. The other four fifths had a Marks and Spencers bank account where she paid £10 a month which gave her a number of free coffee tokens (I forget how many). So our coffee there cost us virtually nothing. Then they closed the bank down and our coffee went with it.
But there was always Virgin lounge. Virgin lounge was in the middle of the city and if you had a Virgin Money account you could pop in, sit in a comfy chair, read newspapers and drink coffee and tea all for free. The lounge closed with lockdown and when lockdown was over it only opened as a bank site and not as a lounge. Now the two storey building has closed and the windows have been boarded up.
So nothing there anymore. The place used to get packed. Not anymore. I always thought spending thousands of pounds on staff to give people free refreshments wasn't going to last.
Apologies for the late appearance of the blog today but I needed to have a lay in as I've picked up a cold and cough which isn't surprising because I've been around so many people struggling. It seemed inevitable. I just need to ensure that it doesn't turn into the dreaded man flu.
So today I will stay in and start serious work on the March Hethersett Herald which I'm way behind on due to the Le Paradis book.
It is most annoying to go to bed with ideas for the next days blog in your mind only to wake up and forget what they were.
I usually do write them down when they come into my head and that helps.
But today I've completely forgotten. You'll just have to take my word that it was earth shattering prose now completely lost.
Trying to eradicate mistakes from a book is a tough thing to do. There's always more to pick up on. We are now just a couple of weeks from having our book published and we are still finding little errors.
Hopefully by the time Hell in Paradise is published we will have cut the mistakes down to an absolute minimum. But you can never be certain that every single mistake has been irradicated and there's always the feeling that certain passages could have been improved or re- written, but eventually you have to say enough is enough and publish and be damned.
Anyway you get mistakes all over the place in books. I'm currently reading The Reluctant Beatle George Harrison by Philip Norman which so far I have found to be rather disappointing as the first few chapters are a re-hash of the early days of the Beatles- a story I am well aware of and which has been covered so many times in so many books.
Then we came to a mistake and for me it's a pretty big one. Don McLean was described as a Canadian singer songwriter. McLean came from New York State and so this seems to be a bad error. Get something as basic as that wrong and I have to ask myself how many other things are also wrong or inaccurate and did I really read that?
*. *. *
I could tell you that our team came third last in the latest golf club quiz but that might be a touch embarrassing. We have won this quiz numerous times over the years but now the little grey cells don't seem to be working so well.
The second take a chance had us completely stumped. There are a couple of these in each quiz. If you get the answer correct after the first clue you get 10 points. After the second clue it's six, after the third clue it's four and after the fourth clue it's two. The clues get easier as it goes along.
We knew that to finish in the top 10 we had to score 10 points which usually means making an educated guess. After the first clue you could say we were clueless. It was something along the lines of: Born in Derbyshire, this person moved to Great Yarmouth at an early age and became involved in martial arts, the black market, diving and other sports. We couldn't even hazard a guess.
The remaining clues didn't help much either so we scored zero after putting Vinnie Jones because the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was mentioned. We knew it was wrong but didn't have any alternatives.
So when I got home I looked up Brian Statham, sorry Jason Statham and yes it was all true. He is an international diver and was brought up and educated in Great Yarmouth. I also found out that the actor Matthew McFadyan was born in Great Yarmouth. You learn something new every day and this is a fact to remember and file for the future. Incidentally for non cricket fans Brian Statham was an England fast bowler renowned for his partnership with Fiery Fred Trueman. But back to the quiz.
"I'm sure we aren't losing information from our brains" was how one of the quiz team put it. I'm not so sure. At least we have three more quizzes to redeem ourselves.
*. *. *
I'm certainly not averse to a spot or two of freeloading. But as far as Norwich goes the freeloading has dropped significantly. The other four fifths had a Marks and Spencers bank account where she paid £10 a month which gave her a number of free coffee tokens (I forget how many). So our coffee there cost us virtually nothing. Then they closed the bank down and our coffee went with it.
But there was always Virgin lounge. Virgin lounge was in the middle of the city and if you had a Virgin Money account you could pop in, sit in a comfy chair, read newspapers and drink coffee and tea all for free. The lounge closed with lockdown and when lockdown was over it only opened as a bank site and not as a lounge. Now the two storey building has closed and the windows have been boarded up.
So nothing there anymore. The place used to get packed. Not anymore. I always thought spending thousands of pounds on staff to give people free refreshments wasn't going to last.
Apologies for the late appearance of the blog today but I needed to have a lay in as I've picked up a cold and cough which isn't surprising because I've been around so many people struggling. It seemed inevitable. I just need to ensure that it doesn't turn into the dreaded man flu.
So today I will stay in and start serious work on the March Hethersett Herald which I'm way behind on due to the Le Paradis book.