I re-cemented the low wall that I broke. Tip: If you are lousy at vertical cementing, go for ‘rustic’. Works for me. A coat of masonry paint and everyone thinks you did it like that on purpose.

It’s also too hot to sit at the computer before midnight. Even now, it’s over-warm in here. This room gets the sun all afternoon and it’s like a little solar oven. Then, all that damned insulation keeps the heat in! Opening the window is of little use when there’s no air movement outside.

The last two summers have been grey and cold so I can’t complain at getting a nice bit of weather for a change. Why does it have to be so abrupt though? At the start of the week I’d drape a shirt over the hot water tank at night so it was warm for the morning. By the end of the week I was putting them in the fridge.

Lidl might have come to the rescue. They sell a roll of silver window film for £6.99. Two metres, enough for two small windows or one big one. I had to wait until the sun was gone before putting it up – easy, as long as you follow the directions exactly – and the office window is now a two-way mirror. Yes, it does look like tinfoil but you can see through it if you’re on the darkened side.

It claims it will reflect around 70% of the sun. We’ll find out tomorrow. If it works I’ll consider further rolls and make the whole house look like a mirror-ball. Maybe it will reflect heat back in in the winter too.

There’ll be short blasts of blogging while this oven-room cools down. It has to cool, I have writing to do and I can’t stay in here when it feels like a sauna.

It seems someone beat me to it. Totally by accident, of course, but then that’s how I want it to look when it’s my turn. The deceased even managed to get right up the nose of a fully-paid-up Righteous, who naturally complained and showed their Righteousness by invoking the cheeldren.

‘I am sorry about their loss and have every sympathy, and I understand they were trying to do this peacefully.

‘I just don’t think a public ferry, when there are children onboard, is the right place.’

And who actually cares what you think? Well, in the Righteous mind, everyone. Everyone will bow down and accept that they are in the wrong. Apologies are powerful things and the Righteous will take every opportunity to get one out of you.

‘It’s not something you want on a public ferry like this. I told a conductor, but he just told me to ‘get a life’.

Sound advice, and good to see at least one official who won’t play the Righteous ‘sorry’ game.

Let’s hope it’s a sign of a turning tide. It could be. VGIF has noted what happens when the public see the true face of Righteousness. They don’t like it.

They don’t like it at all.

‘Swelter’, for those whose education is lacking, is the chef in Mervyn Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy. Most times I would say read the book before watching the television/film version but in this case, you are more likely to work out what the hell is happening in those books if you see the somewhat simplified TV version first. Even though I think it only covers the first book (Titus Groan), maybe the second. It certainly didn’t touch the third which is the sort of book that renders the word ‘bizarre’ obsolete.

I did enjoy the TV version. Swelter has a pointy snaggletooth like mine and Flay, the butler, is wonderfully dark. I thought Steerpike came over as a bit of a weed though.

Anyhow, it’s too hot to read the news. I’m sweating like a Spanish finance minister here. Instead here are some other bloggers’ contributions to your blood pressure…

The Trooper has news on the EU’s latest net-grab.

OldRightie sums up the chaos that passes for thought in our masters’ heads.

Dick P has more on the slippery slope that the Dreadful Arnott denies.

Subrosa brings up the tale of the Magwai again and the case is still open – who fed him after midnight? This isn’t as clear cut a case as some want to believe.

And Dioclese has a case of terminal mirth.

Okay, I’m going to try to get some sleep but it’s not looking good. It’s like sharing a single bed with a fat bird in Barcelona but I’m on my own. By the morning I might be a puddle.

It’s going to happen. It must. Already we have the first stage of no safe level of alcohol (stick that up your arse and swivel, CAMRA) and now we have ‘scientific’ proof that rock and roll makes you deranged.

Okay. I know Gary Glitter’s first hit was ‘Rock and Roll parts I and II’ but I think he was twisted before then. You could tell by the hair and the shiny suits. I really don’t think that shouting ‘Rock and ro-o-oll, hey, rock and roll’ over and over was what perved him but well, Studies have Shown and Experts have Said so…

It is now only a matter of time before sausage rolls, those mainstays of obesity, are linked to some obscure kind of phallic symbolism leading young chubbies to have sex without wrapping it in pastry condoms while snorting Homepride flour and wearing white-dusted bowler hats like in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Which, incidentally, had all the drugs you could ever want on sale in milk bars.

Mr. Kipling will become the face of Big Cake and Gregg’s complaints over the pie tax will be swept aside as they are blamed for the new epidemic of drugged-up fat kids and they become the new Big Pastry, evil wicked vicious entrappers of the stupid.

There is so much stupid on this planet now that if there was ever a conference of stupids it would collapse into the first black hole of idiocy the universe has ever seen. No logic or sense will escape its dement horizon and any probe looking in sees only a gaping mouth saying ‘Duuuuh’.

The good part is that this compression of morons won’t let smokers in. We’ll just orbit it, laughing.

I wonder though. I grew up with Kraftwerk, Captain Beefheart and Tangerine Dream. It had no effect on me at all.

If there was any truth in this ‘report’ I’d have turned out at least a little bit odd.

One thing I try to keep an eye out for are reviews on my published drivel. Amazon don’t inform me if anyone posts a review there. Neither do any of the other outlets with the sole exception of Smashwords, but nobody buys anything there.

This means that once in a while (not too often, it gets depressing when there aren’t any new ones so once a month is enough) I scout around the booksellers to check for new reviews. So far, most are good. Occasional low ratings I can live with. I know my stuff isn’t to everyone’s taste although it does make my teeth grind a little when someone posts a bad review on a free story. I mean, it’s not as if they paid for it. If you don’t like it just throw it away.

On the whole, as far as reviews go, I’m doing okay. There’s a new one just up in the Horror Zine – I knew this one was coming because I sent the book there for review. Always a risk, sending the book does not guarantee a good review, but so far so good.

I’ve had to learn something about marketing now that the stories are making a little income. The big problem is figuring out what works. Amazon (Kindle / CreateSpace) and Lulu.com report sales in real time but all the rest can take up to three months to send reports back. Going through a publisher means that the publisher has to wait for the booksellers’ reports and then I have to wait for the publisher’s reports. So if I try a bit of marketing it can be six months before I see any results – and then I don’t know which marketing strategy worked.

This also means it’s hard to tell what effect reviews have. It doesn’t cost any more than a copy of the book and postage, so it’s a cheap bit of marketing, but does it do anything? The reviews on Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc are spontaneous, I don’t send books to random strangers, and they are certainly useful because they are right next to the book someone is (hopefully) considering buying.

What about those site-specific reviews? Any use? I’ve never been sure – but there was a spike in sales of ‘Dark Thoughts’ just after the Horror Zine review which might or might not be coincidence. I have no idea whether reviews of Jessica’s Trap are effective because I can’t follow that one in real time. So far then, I have a sample size of one. Not enough for any meaningful conclusion.

Perhaps a more useful indicator, on Amazon at least, is the number of resellers latching on to the listing. Currently there are eleven hovering around Jessica’s Trap but the weird one is the reseller hooked into both ‘Dark Thoughts’ and ‘Fears’, both of which have only just become available as print versions on Amazon UK.

He’s offering a ‘used’ copy of each of the books at three times the price of the Amazon listing, which makes no sense at all. Why would anyone pay three times as much (plus postage) for a used copy? These are just short story collections, not maps to the gold of the Incas. Maybe there’s some nefarious reasoning behind it. Maybe he thinks the dollar is going to skyrocket and the Amazon UK prices will go off the scale, but I don’t see those used copies getting snapped up any time soon. What the hell, if the competition selling my books are selling them at a higher price than I am, that can only be good for me.

So far, I think my best marketing game has been the free short stories with ads for the other books in the back. I put those up to 99-cents (comes over at about 70 – 80 pence in the UK depending on the exchange rate) after a while, and I have been surprised to find that they still sell! They cost nothing to produce because it’s all electronic, no paper.

All the same, marketing is a whole new ball game for me and I’m trying to do it on as close to a zero budget as I can get. I also don’t wear a suit while doing it, nor do I drink double gin and tonic for breakfast, so I am a long way from being a proper marketer.

The flyers and cards I started with for Jessica’s Trap don’t give a good return on the cost of printing them. People mostly bin flyers unread – I know I do. The little magnets gained more attention because they were a bit of a novelty but I hadn’t put enough information on them (told you I was a novice). The bookmarks I made and laminated worked better but the free short stories work best of all so far.

Anyway, I have to start thinking hard again because ‘Samuel’s Girl’ will be out in November and this time I’m not pimping just one book. I hope to have either ‘Panoptica’ or ‘Channelling’ out before then as self-published, and ‘Norman’s House’ sorted into a good enough form to send to a real publisher. Hopefully the same one because I’d like some consistency in the cover art on that series. Meanwhile ‘Victor’s Will’ languishes in the ‘fix this’ pile because I want to re-set it in the UK where cops don’t all routinely have guns yet and because the result of firing a tazer at a zombie is so hysterically funny.

If only I was one of those writers who could work on just one story at a time. There is a huge collection of horror-writing articles I did for ‘Alienskin’ magazine before it closed down. They’re waiting to become a book. I have sketched outlines of ‘Demdike’s Revival’ and ‘The Apocalypse Show’ too. I’m in danger of ending up like Mervyn Peake, with someone else finishing my books after I’m dead and that just guarantees some other bugger will make a load of money while I get cremated in a cardboard box, wearing an ASDA polyester suit with the arse hanging out. I mean, I can’t turn up to the afterlife in polyester. It’s a fire risk. Especially where I’m going. Polyester will get all sweaty and clingy at those temperatures. I’ll need a pinstripe in asbestos at least and I’d like to take my own pitchfork. No harps for me. I’m practising the banjo, for soul-tormenting purposes.

I’m also still looking for that part-time job and I just know that if I do manage to get a night shift it’s only going to cause more ideas. Hell, if I worked as a receptionist for an architect I’d get ideas… uh-oh, one just arrived. Satan wants a house overlooking the fiery pits, but the heat in there will melt glass. And he wants a pool. Of lava.

And so, two questions:

If you’re a marketer, do you have any suggestions for marketing tricks that cost little to nothing and how many G&T’s will it cost me?

If you’re a writer, how do you get the muse to shut the hell up and let you concentrate on one thing?

Agh. Right. I have one thing on my to-do list I can clear up fast. A review of The Night Library which is, so far, an excellent collection of short stories.

And they give me ideas…

The Mail has another story designed for scaring the drones. This time it’s the old ‘long-term harm’ of second hand smoke. They have to call it long-term because nothing has actually happened yet and nothing is likely to. They can only keep the scare going by pretending it’s in the future. Rather like those asteroid strikes, solar flares and global warming.

There are only a few comments and most of those are just declaring the newspaper to be talking crap. The bubble is bursting, Puritans. Your drones are losing interest.

Still the relentless march of the Righteous continues. Snowolf has discovered a new law that applies to publicans (when you own a pub, you don’t own it, you just pay the bills. The Righteous own it). I’d never heard of it.

So the Government has started applying the booze control long before they get their minimum pricing in place. Quietly, by the back door, they are hastening the demise of the pubs. When the current round of Righteousness falls, the smoky-drinky just has to put up a sign…

Long ago, when business intranets were a new thing, I worked in a place that ran a rebel network. One employee, disgruntled with the mess the IT department made of their intranet, set up a server on his desk and wired it in. The Rebel Network ran on the same wires and connected to the same computers but the IT department didn’t even know it was there. It bypassed their servers and linked to the internet. Unless you knew the codes you couldn’t get in. As it spread, more and more computers became servers so taking it down wasn’t going to be easy. I left before I found out what happened. Maybe it’s still there.

The IT department worked on the basis of powerful centralised servers. The Rebels worked on the basis of lots of small machines. The IT department weren’t looking for lots of small machines, they expected to find a big server somewhere.

The Righteous work the same way. They have to have centralisation and hierarchy. They insist we are all in the pay of Big Tobacco or Big Booze or whatever because they cannot conceive of people taking the initiative and thinking for themselves. In their world, it can’t happen. There must be someone telling us all what to do. It can’t be God, because God only speaks to the Righteous. Well, some disembodied voice speaks to them.

Frank’s idea for Smokernet would effectively produce a rebel network on the Internet. It would have no central website and no command structure. Try to take out the ringleaders – there aren’t any. Try to shut down the website – there isn’t one.

Fighting such a net would be, literally, as effective as punching smoke.

Okay, off to get a bit of sleep and let my battered fingers heal. If it’s fine tomorrow I should only have some cement to deal with, and that will help to fill up the dents in my hands.

I have been shifting slabs on the patio since I had the opportunity to get that done. Almost complete, Plasters on several fingers and many swear words spoken and it’s now down to cement in the gaps and looks a little bit like the jigsaw whose last piece doesn’t fit. Tomorrow it will be solved. That is why God gave us angle-grinders. God is the only one who knows what that will do to my fingers tomorrow considering what a two-pound hammer did to them today. Tomorrow I might be slow at typing.

So, early sleep for me and my leaky bruised fingers  tonight. In the spirit of the day, here is an exercise video. I thought of making one myself but the words involved would get it X-rated. Ladies, this is the way to trimness and Lara Croft levels of fitness.

Gentlemen will have worked up quite enough of a sweat just by watching.

It’s understandable. Who could expect the Government to deal with something as trivial as border control when they have far more weighty problems to deal with, such as the price of a pie, the amount Tesco charge for own-brand cider and what colour packets should be hidden behind the tobacco doors. I mean, they have priorities, these people.

Now, it seems that there are likely to be too few passport-stampers and dodgy-character-checkers to cope with all five of the Olympic visitors who actually intend to make use of their tickets as well as both contestants in the staring contest. The solution? Hire all those redundant workers back for the duration with a bit of a bonus to say ‘sorry’ for booting them out a year too soon?

No. That would be something called ‘sensible’ and there hasn’t been any sign of that in Wastemonster for at least twenty years. They are going to give their file-monkeys three days’ training and a wad of cash and let them loose on a horde of non-English-speaking tourists. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that half the contestants don’t get in, never mind the spectators.

Illegal immigrants and terrorists will have no trouble at all, as usual.

The Unions are saying that these temporary staff will not be able to pick out suspects. So? The border staff aren’t able to do that either. They have to check the granny and the infant and wave through the hijab in the name of political correctness. Three days’ training is more than enough, and two of those three days will be used to train them in how to steal tobacco from legitimate shoppers.

There is, of course, the comedy outrage from Labour.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added that the move was ‘taking risks with our security and with the country’s reputation at a time when the world’s eyes will be on us’.

Don’t worry, Mrs. Scrotum, we haven’t had a reputation worth risking since Tiny Blur. Nor have we had any border security. Your government saw to that, long ago.

She said: ‘This is all the consequence of a problem created  by the Home Secretary, ignored by the Immigration Minister and left unresolved by the Prime Minister.
‘Border control is too important to be allowed to become another government shambles.’

Well, yes, created by the Home Secretary, but not necessarily this one. A few Home Secretaries back and you could well be right. And yes, it has indeed been left unresolved by at least the last three Prime Monsters. Border control has been a government shambles for a long, long time. The Cleggeron Coagulation haven’t fixed it, and have probably made it worse, but the shambles was in place long before they took over.

Oh wait, is that a Labour politician demanding tighter immigration control? All together now, Lefties, deep breath and “Racist-Nazi-Bigot” (repeat ad nauseum).

It has, for a long time, been easier to get into this country than to cross a Schengen-zone border. Once in, the illegal immigrant can claim a benefit income that would make a banker jealous and they cannot be removed even if they openly support terrorists.

It would be cheaper, and perhaps more sensible, to forget about the borders and instead tell the EU that no, we will not be feeding and housing the strays of the world. They can walk right in and face a choice: work for a living, starve on the streets or walk back out again.

Harsh? Not really. Those who come to work will still come to work. Those who come to sponge will try their luck elsewhere. Nobody needs to actually die on the street although that is happening right now and has been for many years, with all the claimed safety net of the alleged welfare state. The criminals, guns and drugs? They get in anyway, so nothing will change there.

It’s interesting to note that the government hacked out a large chunk of border control just before the biggest influx of visitors this country will have seen for many years. They cut back on frontline police now that summer riots and many more demonstrations are taking place. They have cut the Navy while Argentina threatens war, cut the military while we are in the middle of wars and cut frontline NHS services (the essential empty suits still have their management jobs) while telling us there is going to be an imminent epidemic of something or other.

If there is three days’ training to be had, then I suggest that all those in Wastemonster sign up for three days of PowerPoint presentations, lectures and role-play in order that they may take their first steps along the road to becoming proficient in distinguishing their buttocks from their mid-arm joint.

Although for that particular skill, three days won’t be enough. Let’s make it fifteen weeks.

Fortunately I have other irons in the fire so if this turns out to be yet another of those never-responding jobs, I can just file it under ‘forget’ and move on. I’ve made it to stage 2 on another basic job and there is the remote possibility that I might have to become a banker. Not the bonus-earning variety, unfortunately. If I did that kind of job for a year I could retire.

It would make this whole thing much easier if the companies would say ‘no’ rather than ‘if we keep very quiet, maybe he’ll go away’. I can cope with ‘no’.

It’s Limbo I don’t like. Makes it hard to concentrate on other things.