Odd Bob's Good News...

So I’ve ‘won’ nano! Woo hoo!

That sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. All it really means is that I've writtn 50 000 words in under 30 days...It was very impressive but slightly overshadowed by some even bigger good news. News that I probably should have started this post with:

My little sister just got engaged!


(Yes that is her actual ring, innit perty! So shiny...)


I have two younger sisters and I can never remember how old they are! I’ve been getting it wrong all day by telling everyone that the newly engaged (middle) one is 21...actually she’s 20! That may be a little young for engagement you may say, but she’s been talking about settling down and having kids probably since before she was even interested in boys! She was always going to be the first of the three of us to get hitched and the lucky (or maybe unlucky) guy who proposed is perfect for her.

But whilst I knew that she would be the first of us down the aisle...I didn’t think that it would be quite so soon! Since I found out I’ve been sling shotting between ‘woo hoo! That’s brilliant!’ and ‘OMG that’s scary!’ and back again. It got worse when she said that I would have to be a bridesmaid and wear a pink dress!

Now you probably don’t know much about me yet if you’re one of those random people who have stumbled on this blog and decided to have a read...so here’s some quick details:

I hate dresses. I will occasionally dress up on very rare occasions but I prefer trousers if possible and jeans are best. If I ever get married I can so imagine strutting down the aisle in Jane Normal Jeans...Classy.

I’m not overly fond of pink either. The majority of my clothes tend towards the black end of the spectrum with occasional forays into red, blue and purple. There’s some white and grey too of course and I have some amazing turquoise cords...but not so much pink...

And yet she has decided that a pink dress is the way to go.

I’ve decided that if she wants me to wear a pink dress she will need to bride me with a lot of chocolate!

I have also decided that it is her special day so if I have to I would even wear this:


Just don’t tell her that!

Odd Bob's Train Curse...

I’ve been meaning to write up this one for a while...

I’m sure most people out there have their own train related stories of doom, falling asleep and winding up the other end of the country or losing luggage or something. I am slowly building up a nice collection of cursed tales of which these are just a couple...

So there was the Wales field trip at uni. All I had to do was get a train from Leicester to Pembroke and back again. Not too difficult right? Except on the way there someone threw themselves in front of the train which was therefore cancelled. I was at the station early, but not early enough to get the previous (uncancelled) which everyone else managed to get on so I had to get the later train and then they had to send the mini bus back to pick up me and the one other girl who had failed to be on the early train! (The minivan then waited in the car park whilst we were freezing on the platform! Lovely! But eventually we found each other).

Then on the way back we missed a change in Bristol I think, then one of the girls had her ticket in her bag which got moved to the luggage compartment so she then had a huge argument with the ticket collector and almost got us thrown off the train! (Thankfully being incredibly tired and stressed from the field trip she then proceeded to burst into tears and the lady felt so sorry for her she fetched tissues and water and let us stay!) Then, finally back in Leicester almost an hour later than planned...I got off the train only to realise that my wellies were still on board. I hopped back to get them and the door closed just as I was about to get off again. So I wound up in Melton Mowbray with an hour to wait for the next train back!
That one simple return journey to Pembroke took 8 hours to get there and 9 hours to get back! Fun!

Then there was the trip to York for a Student Forum meeting. I had my tickets in advance so that they were reasonably priced...then realised, once on the train, that my tickets were for a different time from everyone else. So I had to buy new tickets on the train. London to York at over £100! Eeek!

And then the other day I used the annoying little machine on the platform to get tickets up to Warwick where I have my second year report feedback meeting (argh!) I had to be up at 4am to get my train on time so was not quite awake when I went to get tickets (so should have got them in advance, but you saw how well that worked for York) I found the page of tickets for Leamington Spa, On the left was ‘Off Peak Single’ and ‘Anytime Single’, on the right ‘Off Peak Returns’ via London or Birmingham and then ‘Anytime...’ well I assumed return, bought it and then realised, nope, that was a single. A single that cost more than the off peak returns! I then realised that given that it was still 5am I could use off peak tickets anyway! The ticket office hadn’t opened yet so I couldn’t go change it so I had to pay for new off peak return tickets!

I have now filled out some annoying paper work in the hopes that they might give me some money back. I really hope that they do.

Oh well, it could always be worse:


It’s at time like these that I think I really should get on and learn to drive!

Alcohol induced oddness...

After some odd Chinese alcohol, vodka and cider...I decided that it was time to write. I’m not sure if this was a good or a bad idea, I will find out when I reread everything in the morning.

I started with nano (see last post) because I was a little behind on words today. I’m now caught up on words but I may need to rewrite in the morning...we will see.

I moved on to the forums (I may have mentioned this previously too) apparently one of my threads has become quite popular and I spent far too long replying to every single person who had commented...I’m not sure this was necessary but alcohol told me that it was!

Finally I have moved on to the blog so I apologise if this is nonsensical and/or odd. It’s now gone 3 in the morning and I am still wide awake and buzzing so I had to find something to do! I may now give up and go to sleep...but I will leave you with cute pictures:




Which make it all worth it!

Bob's odd November...

It’s November, which means a couple of things for me:

1. My room is flipping freezing! With no central heating and a single glazed window which moves in the wind 15’C is average to warm for this side of the year. Time to find out the blow heater, ski socks and start sleeping in a jumper again!

2. Second year report viva:S So the big report is written and handed in, but now I need to go and get feedback both here (Rothamsted) and up in Warwick. I’m just waiting for people to realise that I really should not be doing a PhD. I mean what were they thinking letting me loose on a research project?

3. and most importantly: NANO! Nanowrimo is short for ‘national novel writing month’ which is basically a month in which you are challenged to write 50 000 words in 30 days. It started in America but has slowly spread and last year my local library’s email told me all about the crazy challenge and I thought ‘hey what the hell?’


I mean I already write stuff all the time. Usually getting to about 8000 words and then getting bored and moving on to something new. How hard can it be to stick with something long enough to reach 50 000 words?

The answer is pretty Damned hard!

Somehow, through either luck or miracle, I got to 50K last year (go me!) then carried on to complete (the first draft) of an 80k novel (double go me!) It still needs a lot of work and probably a complete rewriting in places, but still I feel a huge sense of achievement just to have finally got from the start of something to the end.

So it’s not all that surprising that my brain went ‘the end you say? What is this strange thing? Nope we are not done yet, there is more...’
Which is why this year I’m back (as Elenelathuin if you are bored enough to go have a search) and writing the sequel.

In book 1 Con realised that his brother in law is a demon, his grandfather trained a Fairy to be a PI and he might be a little bit gay. (Well he did sell his Name to find the only woman he would ever love, and then she cheated in him!)

So now in book 2 Con gets kidnapped and it’s up to his ‘potential’ new boy friend (yeah they were just about to have that big moment where they work out whether they really do like each other or if it was just the whole near death experience thing when the goblin who sometimes looks like a clown broke in on them. Typical!) to go save him.

I’m over 30k in now and loving every minute. Although it is so easy to get distracted by ‘the forums’. Here there are games to play, questions to answer and people in serious plot hols in need of shovels. I could spend all day running round them...but I can’t. November remember: must write, must also do work, and insulate room...fun.

Oh and apparently I’m organising the Christmas party for my department...which may become the Christmas party for the whole of Rothamsted...O dear...Help!!!

Bob's Odd Sport...

I discovered a new odd sport yesterday. And by discovered I mean I went to a friend’s house to watch zombies and would up watching this strange new sport on Scottish TV.

The zombie thing was ‘The Walking Dead’, which I wasn’t overly impressed by. It was great at building suspense, but then completely failed to use it. The whole point of anything zombie related is either to gross you out with decaying, flesh eating madness. Or build up stupid levels of suspense then make you jump. The building up they managed, but I didn’t jump once! Oh well, maybe it’ll get better as the series progresses. And maybe the protagonist will learn some of the basic rules for zombie survival. Like to stop leaving his guns lying around right when he’s going to need them! He was a bit of an idiot.

But that’s not what I wanted to blog about. What I wanted to blog about is Shinty/Hurling.

Shinty is a Scottish sport not unlike Hockey. The players thwack a ball up and down a pitch using hockey-like sticks called camen and try to get it into a goal or hail. The main difference from Hockey that I can see is that it’s a little more violent. Sticks can be used to block and hit over head so other players have to work hard not to get brained!

Hurling is the Irish equivalent and is mostly similar from what I can tell although the sticks, or hurleys, are much broader and can be used to flick the ball up off the ground and even to carry it like an odd egg and spoon race! The goals are also different with Shinty goals being like a football net whilst Hurling goals are like rugby posts.

The fun comes when the two are combined! Scotland vs Irland. Shinty vs Hurling. The rules are modified a little so that they fit but it’s pretty much like a fast and violent hockey match with goals scored by thwacking the ball between the hurley posts or into the shinty net. The Irish players flick and carry the ball, the Scottish players dribble and thwack and everyone tries not to get hit around the head and often fails. I saw at least one player who needed a broken nose patching up. But being Scottish he was back on the pitch barely two minutes later! (Almost as good as the motoGP riders who carry on racing with broken bones!)


I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the most sporty of people. I mean I dislocated by elbow playing badminton of all things. The only sports I really do now are for the inter departmental league at work, which I only do because the rules state that each team requires at least one girl and I usually can’t find anyone else to bug into doing it. So there’s no way you’d ever see me playing this insane game...but watching it is another matter. The commentary was entirely in Gaelic; the players names the only bit I could understand except for a few brief translations from James. But that didn’t matter at all. It’s fast, often brutal and totally insane. I love it!

Bob's odd holiday

Yes I know I’ve not written anything here in ages. No I didn’t die; scarily I’ve actually been doing work! (Shock horror!) Then I finally got my summer holiday…at the end of October…so not so summery then. It was brilliant though. 10 days of doing nothing! (and making corrections to my second year report :( - yes even on holiday I couldn’t completely escape work)

So I was gona blog about the brilliant holiday but…it was mostly brilliant because I didn’t do anything exciting or blog worthy. I mean I saw some odd comedy and sang along to some class holiday entertainment acts, climbed a 9m climbing wall and abseiled back down, and made a voodoo fairy vanish. But other than that it was pretty much just relaxing. I did some knitting, read a few ‘fun new occult mystery novels’, watched prison break (why would someone call their kid Wentworth?) and planned for nano… not exactly blog worthy. But well needed.

I got back home on Monday and almost wished that I could go back and have another 10 day holiday…except there were 3 good things about coming home:

1. Nano has started: national novel writing month, the aim of which is to get 50 000 words worth of fiction written over 30 days (November). I did it last year so I’m having a go again.

2. I missed my snails! I’ve finally rehomed most of the babies I kept so now there’s just Nicky, Dovitz and 2 un-named not quite baby anymore snails waiting to be painted and named. I’ll post about that later me thinks.

3. My Shower!!!!

I feel the shower incident may require a whole post of its own but here goes. So we stayed in a caravan on a lovely camp site/holiday park type place with its own swimming pool and amusements and nightly entertainment (plus prize bingo which I’m reliably informed you have to dress up as a little old lady to win). There were also showers of the usual camp site standard. Always slightly too cold, you can’t move the shower head, pick one without mud walked into it and good luck keeping your clothes dry. So I usually look forward to escaping, but this time it was far worse…
There was a poo in the shower!!!


No not that Pooh, the other kind…ew.

Seriously! I mean it’s not as if the toilets aren’t right next door or anything…freaks. I feel so sorry for whichever cleaner got stuck clearing that up. Ew.

So anyhoo I am back now, back to the snails and nano and my lovely poo-free shower! And maybe back to getting some blogging done as well…although most of my free time may be taken up by blatting out 50 000 words of vaguely coherent fantasy.