What a Cnut.

Just to keep you happy here's the rewrites of my college work. The differences are subtle but I agree with my tutor that shortening some of the sentences adds to the quality of the writing. The original passages can be found by clicking here . **************************** Setting. 1. The nursery was filled with toys of all shapes and sizes. A large rainbow mural was painted on the sky blue walls. A half finished puzzle lay on the floor. A shining metal robot was catching the rays of the morning sun that streamed through the bay windows. A child of unknown age was playing in the large walled garden. Screams and whoops of joy carried on the wind. 2. The air in most of the rooms of the house was so cold anyone going in them would be able to see their breath. Not that anyone ever went in them. The heating worked but it cost too much so Margaret-Anne mostly lived in the ...

To let you all know how things are going in the life of me. I have a £30 phone bill that needs paying asap. (Christ only knows how it's as much as that, I never phone anyone. Line rental? Don't get me started.) Scottish power have begun threatening me with a visit to discuss payment of their outstanding bill. (And we all know that Scottish Power is facing financial ruin if I don't pay my bill as soon as it lands on my doorstep. They only made roughly £600 million in profit in 2006 so I imagine 2007 was a lean year for them.) The council are chasing me for £50 in unpaid rent. Another one that puzzles me. My rent is paid BY the government TO the government and yet they still screw it up. (Must be short a few million due to the overspending on the Scottish parliament building and the tram system that is being put into place as I type. Which, by the way is massively overpriced, useless as far as travel anywhere outside the city centre is concerned and extremely unnecessary. Oh ...

Here's the creative writing gig nonsense... ************** (This first exercise was to rewrite a passage on a character named Dennis, a likeable pupil in a classroom, in a negative light.) Away from school, in the pub most of the teachers called him Dennis the Menace. More often than not I simply called him “You boy.” “You boy, come here at once… “You boy, no running… “You boy, are in serious trouble… “You boy, will amount to nothing in life… On one occasion I had threatened to call him an ambulance to take him home. The cheeky little sot merely pointed out that an ambulance wasn’t the kind of vehicle likely to take someone home. “Rather more likely to take me to a hospital I’d say.” He quipped, to the amusement of his classmates. I couldn’t stand the petulant little fart but in less than two years he would be gone from my life forever more and I would be rid ...

Like I mentioned earlier the guff for my creative writing course arrived last Saturday. Last night I sent off the first assignment to be critiqued by my tutor. It probably should have taken more than a week to do, given that the timetable set by the college is something like five weeks, but I found it to be easier than I expected and was able to rattle through it at a fair old rate and still make it as good as I could have. Part two of the course is slightly more challenging but still nowhere near as difficult as I initially thought it would be. In it I am given six topics and have to submit 250 words about two of them to the tutor. But as I am resolved to challenging myself more than the course seems to be I've decided to write 250 words about all of the subjects presented to me, if only for the practise and to keep me writing. The most interesting thing about the course is that I have evolved into a student type person. I went to the local supermarket and spent more time in the ...