Friday Fun – November Nonsense

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ 37 Comments

Where does this door lead? Find out further on.

What is your latest time waster?

One could say it’s a good warming up exercise for writers. Words with Friends, will they still be your friends after frenzied competition? If you have friends or relatives on other continents there will always be someone who is awake to play, even if you are up very late or early. Unlike Word Blitz and Quiz Planet there are no time constraints, so I do not have the excuse of my hands not working quickly enough for losing all the time.

In the meantime I don’t seem to be getting very far with Duolingo and the owl is always sending me sad or cross email reminders.

Meanwhile back in the real world, did Aliens leave this strange monolith? Find out where it is at the weekend.

Do you like peeping in windows? Who lives here?

Not sure… perhaps you prefer eavesdropping.

Cafes provide ideal opportunities to listen in to other tables, perhaps even snap what they are eating…

‘It was so windy his hearing aids blew off.’

‘She’s a tidy sort of person, so usually when she says the house is a complete mess she means she hasn’t emptied the dishwasher, but when we went to stay, the house was a complete mess.‘

When you hear a whole coffee and cake’s worth ( slowly eaten ) of a holiday from hell you are tempted to join in. ‘Oh that’s just like when we went away with… ‘

But you don’t need to pretend you are looking at your phone or absorbed in your cake. The queue at the shop till is just as fascinating. This is why we must keep human beings at the till. The young chap on the till is busy taping two large rectangular multi photo frames together for a customer. She had explained in great detail what happened last time she bought two such frames and why she needed them taped together to make carrying easier. She then went on to explain why she had bought and was buying again these frames and detailed how many grandchildren she had, referring to how many children she had had and probably about to describe how she had met her husband, but by that time he had finished wrapping. A self service checkout would not have helped her, nor listened with interest to her saga…

How has your week been? Eavesdropped on anyone interesting?

Do you play any addictive games?

Silly Sunday – Wittering on WhatsApp

March 23, 2025 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ 10 Comments

No I haven’t touched anything since the screen started flashing

I just clicked on something on Facebook

About polar bears

What’s clickbait?

Okay, what time?

No it’s crocheted

Did you get your prescription?

Well don’t worry, as you have to take them for five years I’m sure missing one or two days won’t matter.

Or three.

No they’ve all got it now.

Yes, the whole school by the sound of it.

He can’t come round till this evening. I’ve switched everything off.

Don’t they have spare tyres any more, what did the RAC say?

No of course not with your shoulder and your knee.

Don’t go and volunteer, you know what happened last time.

No, not now I’ve got the new carpet.

Yes, all up the walls as well.

It sounds wonderful, pity you wasted the first three days at the airport.

Only 58 minutes of deep sleep

What’s my resting heart rate supposed to be then?

Hang on, what does this mean, I was dead for 27 minutes, no wonder my readiness is poor this morning.

Silly Saturday – Careful How You Comment

October 12, 2019October 12, 2019 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ 34 Comments

Bloggers love to recieve comments; especially ones that go like this…

Terrific post, I would really like to go there, your photographs are fantastic. ps. I have just downloaded your latest novel.

But comments can go horribly wrong, especially if you decide to check your social media on your smart phone, on a bus stopping and starting in traffic or on the back of a motorbike. I often do the former, haven’t tried the latter. The combination of predictive texting and hitting the wrong letters can lead to disaster.

Hollow Join i rea11y lived your block. i wouldlove to sieve thatport of rhe wwwwwwwwwwwwwprlf. i hive donwlodads you’re knew book and will rewrite my will.

Here is a handy guide to commenting on your favourite bloggers. First make sure you are sitting comfortably and unlikely to be disturbed, otherwise you could end up writing ‘Coffee please’ -‘Don’t forget to get bread’ – ‘I’ll be finished in half an hour’ or ‘Who was that at the door?’

There are just four standard comments you will need.

Beautiful pictures, thanks for the wonderful tour. – Use for anything from blogger’s own garden to The Great Lakes.

You’re so right, if only everyone saw things the same way. – Use for opinions expressed on everything from Brexit to Climate Change.

Fantastic book review, sounds like a great series. – Use when someone else’s novel is being reviewed.

Thanks so much for the wonderful review, Reblogged… – Use in the unlikely event that it is your book being reviewed.

What is the strangest place you have followed social media from?

Silly Saturday – How to Cheat at Photography

February 16, 2019February 16, 2019 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ 7 Comments

A hundred years ago this girl and her cousin managed to cheat at photography, even Sir Arthur Connan Doyle was taken in and was convinced these were real fairies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

With the advent of digital photography everyone can have a go at cheating, not just the enthusiasts lurking in the dark room.

The experts and enthusiasts are still around; they like playing with big lenses and buy expensive software to digitally manipulate their images – sometimes beyond all recognition.

http://www.photogog.com/inmymindseye

Visit Cyberspouse’s website to see some creative work.

But those of us who only point and shoot with compact cameras and smart phones can still produce strange pictures.

I don’t actually phone anybody with my smart phone, I just use it to put pictures on Instagram and send photos to family and friends on messenger. One day I discovered you can write on the pictures. On Instagram you can turn your picture black and white or brighten it up, share on Facebook, then download to your computer and use it for your WordPress blog. On WordPress you can crop pictures, reverse them or turn them upside down.

We bought an ipad to Facetime two continents, but I discovered you can take photogaphs with different effects.

A saucer of floating flowers.

The hot summer of 2018.

But you don’t have to rely on magical equipment – this is the Odeon cinema taken through the bus window on a rainy night.

…and this is not my nice tidy garden shed, but a picture of the side of the garden centre’s truck.

A puddle.

Visit my picture gallery to see more pictures or spot some cheats.

https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter-three-picture-gallery/

Silly Saturday

March 10, 2018 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ Leave a comment

I have loved taking photographs since I was eight, though I have never been interested in the technical side; merely pointing and shooting my way through black and white, colour slides, Polaroid and back to colour prints until digital changed photography for all of us. Suddenly we could take lots and lots of pictures and I became addicted. When I finally succumbed to a smart phone I was even more obsessed; joining those I had previously sneered at as they gave everyone a pictorial commentary on their meals or child’s tantrums.

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, my Website… all waiting to be filled with pictures. Here are this week’s silly selection. A week of all weathers made it especially fun. 28584870_2000526599977120_2006830012_o

The phenomenum of freezing rain created real frosted windows. 28641119_2000128503350263_185788723_o 28642842_1996678273695286_74645765_o All Fired Up Cafe provided a winter retreat.

http://potterycafebournemouth.co.uk/

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Then suddenly the snow melted and the sun shone.

Boscombe Pier is full of musical instruments.

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On Friday we had torrential rain and more photo opportunities…

28872393_2010324878997292_623618002859851776_o …on the bus. What luck that the first bus to come along was…

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https://www.bybus.co.uk/features-offers/blog/the-gallery-bus-such-fun

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Back into town to ‘All Fired Up’ to collect my fired camper van; a money box to save my author earnings and a reminder to get on with writing my camper van detective’s novel.

Every chapter of my website is full of photographs.

https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/

You can read two novellas and a short story featuring Tobias Elliot Channing, the young camper van detective, in Someone Somewhere.

Virgin Snow and Virgin Boxes

March 7, 2018 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ Leave a comment

There was more disruption in our house this past week due to upgrading of the Virgin Box than there was due to the Beast from the East. The new box had been safely delivered before snow. Cyberspouse was waiting for an open ended day to unplug the life support system and replace the old box; Virgin claimed two hours should be allowed, he wanted five hours to be on the safe side, but there is never a good time to detach the umbilical cord to the outside world and the ether we writers need to breathe.

Thursday night brought freezing rain on top of the day’s continuous snow. Friday morning was a white delight, but the beautiful virgin snow was now frozen hard. We were not going to starve if we stayed home, would probably not get scurvy if we relied on baked beans and frozen peas. But with local shops so handy we’re used to daily shopping, more importantly I did not want to miss out on Day 2 Snow Experience and more pictures for Instagram, Facebook and my website. We planned a circular walk to the cliff top and down Grand Avenue to the Grove for coffee and shopping.

It was a foolish mission that could have ended in disaster; impossible to walk on the icy crust of snow, hanging on to garden walls was not an option as they were covered in ice. We weren’t the only ones who made it to the cliff top, just the only ones without dogs or children. It wasn’t as cold as Thursday, the sky was heavy laden, insulating us and I could just about take my gloves off without getting frostbite and operate my smart phone.

Our favourite Ludo Lounge was open and it was packed. With schools closed and parents unable or unwilling to go to work it was like summer holidays, but with ice and slush. A waitress said they had received twenty eight phone calls before 9.30 am checking if they were open; people had their priorities right.

The greengrocers’ was closed, however Sainsburys’ was open with enough veggies for a good stir fry. But something was wrong, there was no milk on the shelves. It hadn’t occurred to us that out in the real world milk tankers would be unable to get to farms or back to dairies, nor would delivery lorries be able to get to supermarkets or corner shops. With only enough milk left for me to have two cups of tea this was a First World Problem of mega proportions, but Cyberspouse takes everything black and we have a Tassimo coffee machine. Worse was yet to come.

Saturday the snow melted, I bookmarked everything appearing on line and the WiFi was switched off; as predicted by me, the new box did not work. The help line was rung, the engineer would come out on Tuesday. No Saturday night Swedish Noir on television, no Facetiming Australia early on Sunday morning and no blogging.

This big First World problem had a First World solution, our smart phones would keep us in touch with the outside world and I could still put pictures on Instagram and Facebook, but phone screens are small. If I was a Borrower it would be fine… The Borrowers, by the English author Mary Norton, published in 1952, features a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of an English house and “borrow” from the big people in order to survive. How they would have loved to borrow my Samsung phone to use as an interactive big screen TV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borrowers

Smart phones are great when you are out or on holiday, people can’t resist checking them at five minute intervals. But with minute writing and the perils of predictive texting it is not the way I like to read, enjoy and comment on blogs and photographs. If anyone has received any strange comments from me I apologise.

I did at least get more of my novel written with no distractions. By the time I got home on Tuesday evening all was restored. I’m blogging again, but my Bookmarked list is longer than ever. Visit my website to see snowy pictures.

https://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter-two-coastal-views

No Time Like The Present

February 19, 2018 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ 2 Comments

There’s no time like the present, especially for authors. How long does the present last; a year, a week, a day, a second?

My first novel Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’ was set in the present, that was where I intended it to remain. I did not want to name a year; the characters lived in London and the 2005 bombings were still quite recent when I started writing, I did not want their story overshadowed by such a major event.

But first novels, especially long ones, take a while to write, to be read by others and edited. The present was fast becoming the past. World events were turning out differently to what most of us could ever have imagined and technology was racing ahead. My characters had mobile phones that took photos, they Skyped and went on Facebook, a few of them had SatNav. But they did not have smart phones, tablets, ipads, Kindles etc. and the last thing I wanted them to be able to do was Google their location or look up information on the internet with their smart phone; that would have wrecked the plot. More of the Twenty First Century passed by while I went down the traditional route of looking for agents. In the meantime I had written my second novel, Quarter Acre Block, a shorter straight forward family drama set firmly in 1964 and 1965. It became the first novel I published on Amazon Kindle.

I decided to stick to self publishing, Brief Encounters became a trilogy and I describe all three novels as being set in the early years of the Twenty First Century. As far as my characters are aware, they are living in the present and in a new century.

My work in progress was initially inspired by a local event during the Valentine night storm of 2014 and the novel should come to an end within 2014. All the places the wandering hero finds himself are real. But real places can present problems if your story takes place in the present; pity the author whose character goes shopping or works in BHS, no sooner is it published than the shops close down.

If you avoid ‘the present’ and set a year you still have to be on the alert. London and other cities have many familiar and iconic landmarks, but well known scenes can change dramatically. If you set your novel in a particular year, don’t have your hero enjoying the view from the top of The Shard before it has even been built, or the heroine after years away abroad, tearfully spotting the iconic cooling towers on the horizon that mean she is near home – the cooling towers that were demolished two years previously.

But there is no need to rely on your memory; what did authors do before the internet? Rush down to the library to search through old newspapers. Whether you are writing an historical novel or a millennial saga you can look up when Queen Victoria visited your local town, or what the weather was like in Portsmouth when your hero set sail for his solo trip round the world.

As for getting the future right, you will just have to wait and see; not many writers from the past got it completely right or completely wrong.

Confessions of a Photophile

December 30, 2017 ~ tidalscribe.com ~ Leave a comment

I laughed at the radio comedy; the woman in a state of panic who couldn’t go out to dinner with her friends because she had lost her mobile phone and wouldn’t be able to take a picture of the meal…

Have I become that woman? Of course not, when I take pictures of meals or glasses of festive mulled wine, it is with a large dose of irony. Besides, I love taking pictures of everything, thus proving I am not obsessed with recording the minutia of my everyday (dull) life.

I do belong to a camera club, but I don’t ‘do technical’. My enjoyment comes from looking out for interesting shots, not working out what lens to use. I point and shoot, but my photography has evolved from black and white prints to a computer full of digital images. First of all I joined Facebook and started sharing pictures, then I acquired a website with blank pages that needed to be filled with more than writing. Soon I was taking pictures not merely for family and holiday memories, but searching for original images for FB and my website. At this stage I had only my compact digital camera and marvelled at people instantly downloading images on line from the dinner they were about to eat or the tropical seas they were about to dive into.

But when I acquired a second hand smart phone I was hooked. Seeking shade from the glaring sun so I could see properly to send instant images to Facebook; fumbling to share my picture to the camera club FB page before Cyberspouse could. Mostly if I am out with other people I lose sight of them as I continually stop to take pictures.

My latest media outlet is Instagram. I’m not sure what the actual point of it is; you can only use your phone, but you can also share to Facebook and numerous other destinations in the ether that I haven’t yet navigated.

Yesterday, with a long winter walk planned, I had camera and phone in my rucksack, but vowed not to take them out till we reached our destination; firstly because it was too cold to keep taking gloves off or stand around and secondly I was looking forward to unpacking the flask of mulled wine, glasses and mince pies the long suffering one was carrying in his rucksack. But near the end of the woodland road that leads to the beach with the most expensive beach huts in the country, our route required us to manoeuvre round huge puddles and in the muddy puddles were interesting reflections of trees. We were planning to return a different way, so I just had to take my camera out…

And when we finally reached our scenic destination, the answer to the question ‘Where shall we sit?’ was obvious. ‘Where can I get the best shot of the red wine against the late afternoon sky, so I can post it on Instagram?’

Visit my website to see local seasonal scenes, the illustrated Beachwriter’s Blog and a winter picture quiz.