Happy Towel Day

Did you know it's Towel Day?

Every year, around the known universe, fans of the late, great Douglas Adams do towel-related things to celebrate his genius.

I discovered Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my teens - on radio, then the books. They are the works I most wish I had written. I love his fount of ideas and the way he marries comedy with deeper truths.

If you have never read it, and I urge you to do so, click here for a full explanation of the significance of the towel, which finishes with:

"...any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with"

I blogged a towel-related story yesterday without having even remembered it was Towel Day, so I probably already have Betelgeusian* Brownie Points for that.

Despite the fact that I really don't like being told not to panic, some of my favourite quotes are from the first of the six books in the H2G2** trilogy:

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

"It's horrible - it's like being drunk."
"What's so bad about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."

A man who no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India company.

"I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."

Anyway, I can't sit here blogging all day - it's a beautiful day and I'm off up the nearest hill... with my towel.

Later...

And here is the proof (and there's Hilbre Island in the background again!

* Full list of races and species in the Adams Universe is here

** Geek shorthand for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and also an Adams-created alternative to Wikipedia which is seriously worth a browse: www.h2g2.com

The Odd Couplet... and other Poetical Films

One of the things I love about Twitter is how it's become a natural home for the dreadful pun. I've blogged before* about Hashtag games, where people compete to come up with the worst puns on a particular subject - usually a mash up of film titles, songs, animals and some topical theme.

This week I had a lot of fun with #poeticalfilms ... I don't know who started it but was surprised how many took it up and ran with it. Here are some of my faves...

Faust Amongst Equals
@bingaddick

2001: A Space Ode Essay
@adrianbriggs

Crocodile Spondee
@hudsonette

Doggerel Day Afternoon
Raiders of the Lost John Cooper Clarke
@pifflechimp

Private Betjeman
Die Hardy
Whitman Can't Jump
‏@Balls_to_Monty

Silence of the iamb
@Tarawuski

Rimbaud: First Blood
‏@m_yates

The Men Who Stare At Goethe
Honey I Shrunk The Keats
Debbie Does Ballads
The Odd Couplet
@CosyFanTootie

Look Ted Hughes Talking
‏@AntBeal

Mad Max Beyond The Palindrome
PignusDominus

The Hitchhaiku
‏@FakePaulCoia

The Hughes Brothers
Dead Men don't wear Plath.
@martysm

Con Ayres
@Trudski2012

Haiku Fidelity
‏@standardbrit

Here are some of my own: ‏

For Whom the Belloc Tolls
Anapest in Show
Truly, Madly, Hegley
Baudelaire of the White Worm
Woolf Creek
Quatrain Man
and of course Carol Ann Duffy the Vampire Slayer

@ClareKirwan

and, a personal favourite... drum roll...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day of the triffids
‏@JimGall5

Go to it! You may not be on twitter, but you can still join in here...

* Why are there so many songs about librarians?

Flash, bang, wallop!

It's all go here at Broken Biro Towers!

After a dry spell in terms of acceptances while I hunkered down to finish the novel and play (I mean I was writing a play, not playing!) I suddenly have developments to support on several fronts:-

FLASH!

I've been short-listed for a Flash Fiction Competition run by Liverpool's Writing on the Wall literary festival and the final's tonight!

BANG!

I'm in the final of the Chorlton Art Festival Flash Fiction Competition next Wednesday!

WALLOP!

Last night I won a place in the final of Pulp Idol - a competition for unpublished novels, also run by Writing on the Wall. Just getting to the final means my first chapter will be published alongside other finalists and sent to agents and publishers! PLUS I got to chat with experienced published writers like the host Cath Bore, and judges novelist Caroline Smailes and crime-writer Dave Jackson. It was especially nice that the other finalist from my heat is none other than Dave Hartley from Manchester's Flashtag collective - who are doing all sorts of whacky things in Manchester today for National Flash Fiction Day!

If you head over to that last website you can find out if there's anything going on in your area and perhaps read some super short stories!

p.s. ... and I haven't even mentioned what's happening with my play, and that 80's band thing... but BBC breakfast TV this morning might give you a clue...

Mum's the word

My mum is quite adept at the inadvertent funny line.

She said to me just the other day: 'You always EMPHASIZE with people.'

And she's ABSOLUTELY right - I do, I really, really DO!

She has also mastered the fine art of the compliment, telling me: 'If there's one thing I like about you, you're punctual.'

Thanks, mum.

When I first started writing poetry and produced a little booklet of it, I didn't have any blurb for the back so I used this genuine comment from her:

"I think these poems are great, but I know nothing about poetry... and I am her mother." Mrs T. Kirwan

Me: I'm really struggling with the plot of this story Mum: Can't you just make something up?

Sometimes she comes out with fascinating, almost poetic, statements about the world around her: 'Your father has no joie de vivre - that's why he never understood the dog.'

So I should have expected this, this week:-

Me: I'm going to see Status Quo at Speke Hall next month. 

Mum: Are they still alive?

Probably... it wouldn't be much of a show if they weren't, would it?