Out Of Control

Today I took my driving test. 

It's been a year since I started driving; a couple of hours a week, every week save for a couple of big gaps caused by work, or travel back to Deal, or just forgetting to rebook lessons for four months as work with GW got hellish and eventually I was dismissed. 

Fun times. 

It's a strange thing, driving. There you are, sitting behind the controls of a potential death machine, with a random stranger sat next to you, desperately trying to ensure that you don't kill anyone or demolish anything. You spend hours of your life with this person inside a moving metal death-cage, sharing the experiences of near collisions, what feels like hours worth of stalling, and then general chit-chat about life, the universe and everything, before you take your test and eventually part ways forever. It's a strange feeling. 

That said, I didn't pass today. I've felt ready for the test for months, and my driving instructor has been sure I was ready for even longer. So what happened?

As arrogant as it sounds, my biggest concern was always that "something silly, out of my control" would happen, "like someone stepping out into the road". Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. A handful of minors and a single major, and I genuinely don't feel that one was within my control. My instructor even commented that the incident could have easily been classed as a minor fault due to the circumstances, but hey, sometimes the cookie crumbles soggily into the bottom of your tea. 

So what happened? The exam was going well enough, I'd done my maneuvers near flawlessly and had been driving confidently enough. Calm, collected, I drove down the hill into the town centre and was asked to make a right turn into a side road. I checked my mirrors, indicated, and moved into a safe turning spot. I waited for traffic to pass by me, checked everything was clear and began my maneuver. Enter "Woman on Phone". 

From my right side, a pedestrian - shopping bags in one hand, phone in the other, and face buried in said phone - stepped off the curve without looking. I technically was not into the side road at this point so, despite the fact the woman looked up and immediately took a single step back up onto the pavement, and was the other side of the road from my maneuvering vehicle - despite the fact that I had driven to the best of my ability - this was scored as a Major Fault. According to the examiner, I should have 'shown more notice', in other words, stopped in the centre of a lane of traffic down a busy high street. 

Now, personal frustrations aside, I understand that this is 'just how it goes'. Honestly, I'm not bitter - slightly disappointed, perhaps - but it returned me to that thought of life and making plans. Sometimes, these things are out of out of your control, and no matter how well you plan and prepare, no matter how many hours of practice you put in, the chaos of the universe conspires against you and unravels it all, making it all seem worthless. 

If course, it's not worthless. If I hadn't prepared as much as I had, I'd have made other errors, both in judgement and execution that would have racked up other minor and major faults. At least I can come out of this knowing that I failed, not because of my own ability (or lack thereof) but because of external, uncontrollable factors. It's heartening because it means that the practice I have put in has paid off - and next time I'm sure I'll get it. 

Just remember: Planning helps, but no plan is foolproof. 

Land of Hope and Glory... And Rain.

It's cold. 

I don't know why I find that at all comment-worthy, what with having lived in England my entire life. After twenty five years, one might assume that I would be used to the idiosyncrasies of English January, but some how here I am, shivering over my phone and coke. 

Sidenote: My phone has the blogger app. Win. 

For Christmas, Morgan signed me up for an online writing course. In the third module, it talks about how weather can be used in stories to set the empathic mood for a scene. Notice how when the two lovers break up in a chick-flick, it's always raining. That's called 'pathetic fallacy', a term I never quite understood until studying etymology in my past time. Yes, these are the things I do for fun. Pathetic, as in 'pathos'. 

It also goes as far as to mention a syndrome that apparently we English suffer from due to, supposedly, lack of sunlight. Considering that when I was asked what the British weather was like, I told the questioner that the rainy season started circa 400 AD and has continued ever since, I can believe it. Perhaps I'm just a 'Soft Southerner', but I am about to move all the way north to Lancashire, so hey, at least I'm doing something about it. 

I'm actually really excited about it all. I mean, sure, I'm going to seriously miss all my friends, but we've already got a place to live lined up, and job prospects and I recently stumbled across a gaming group when they randomly commented on one of my recent tweets. That said, it is an exciting new adventure; it's new inspiration and scenery for my writing (what better place to write traditional fantasy than the middle of nowhere!), and whole new experiences for me. 

As Morgan is saying to her mother on the phone now, right next to me, "instead of a tiny, squished up one-bed flat, we're getting a three-bed house with a garden! Where else were we going to have all those barbecues??" My thoughts exactly. Well, I'm not sure about the barbecues - I'm an adequate cook, but the prospect of giving a whole chunk of people food poisoning is quite disconcerting. Especially when one of those is her mother; I'm terrified enough of Mrs. Morgan without having hospitalised her. 

I am excited. I am terrified. This is a scary new beginning for me, full of hope, wonder and mystery. I find myself anxious to go, but also saddened at the prospect of leaving. It's a strange bubbling cauldron of mixed emotion, and I just hope that when I chug down the contents in one, I can hold it all down and make something of it properly. 

Anyways, I'm pretty sure my song is up next ('Poison', Alice Cooper) and my fingers are going numb, so I'm headed inside. 

Marooned, a short story by B M Kelly

This piece was originally going to be my 10,000 word Black Library submission before they changed the submission policies. The task was to write 10,000 words based on a subject of my choice, so naturally it was going to be the rat men known as Skaven, but there already exists a lot of BL writing based on them, so what would my hook be? 

It didn't take long before I realised that it had to be Claw-Captain Rip Skrimgnaw of the piratical Clan Skurvy. What follows is his first ever recorded exploit...

Change, and the Problem of Planning

It's been a while since I last posted, and there's no real excuse for that. I could claim I have been incredibly busy (and that claim would be true) but it's no excuse for taking half an hour out to sit down with a cup of tea and write.

In fact, it may even have helped somewhat.

That said, being busy, now that it's over at least, has given me a lot to write about; today I wanted to write about change and the problem with planning. Hence the cleverly thought out and beautifully descriptive title.