SQUIRREL

It was a point of immutable fact that Steve Squirrel was a total blether.

“You’re a total blether, Steve Squirrel,” his mother used to tell him, as if just saying it out loud was all the proof needed.

“I know, mum,” he would reply, eyes downcast in a vague approximation of contrition. “I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t really sorry, though. Steve was utterly convinced that talking to people was the only way he would ever get to have an adventure, and adventure was what he craved more than anything.

Steve Squirrel talked to trees, plants, ducks, geese, owls, insects, rabbits, pigeons, seagulls, and sometimes even rocks. If ever you visit Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens, and a squirrel scampers up to you, chittering away nineteen to the dozen, it’s almost certainly Steve.

His mother said he should avoid speaking to human beings, because sometimes they turn nasty and poke you with sticks. But Steve had no intention of being such a scardey tail. After all, nasty humans were the ones most likely to bring with them a promise of adventure. Any day now, one might turn out to be a burglar, or someone who drives more than 20mph in school zones, or a heavy metal fan. Then perhaps Steve would be able to foil one of their dastardly plots, and he would be a hero.

The type of human being that he really longed to meet, however, was a pirate.

Not the nasty kind you see in the news these days, always kidnapping Scandinavian tourists and demanding impossible ransoms. An old fashioned pirate, with a hook for a hand and an in-depth knowledge of rum, and pistols, and buried treasure. Pirates, Steve knew, were always having adventures. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to put out to sea in a ship full of bloodthirsty buccaneers!

One day he was daydreaming of how this would all go down, when a group of four year old boys dressed in bandanas and eye patches descended on the gardens for a birthday picnic.

Steve didn’t notice they were there at first – although how he managed to daydream his way through all that sugar fuelled whooping and shrieking is a mystery – and in fact his first interaction with the crew came when the leader poked him in the bum with a plastic cutlass.

“Aaaaarrrrrrr,” the pirate shrieked impressively, before collapsing into giggles.

“Parrot?” he asked Steve, hopefully.

“No,” Steve said sourly, rubbing his posterior, “I’m not a –”

He stopped.

Maybe this was his opportunity for adventure!

“I mean... squawk! Squawk! Pieces of 8!”

The pirate captain picked his nose distractedly.

Quick as a flash, Steve ran up the side of his leg and perched on the boy’s shoulder.

“Parrot!” the boy’s face split into an enormous grin. “Your name will be... Swishy!”

Steve frowned.

“But my name is Steve,” he said.

“Come on Swishy,” the pirate captain ordered, “let’s play pasta passel!”

He ran back over to the rest of his crew, who were sitting in a circle as various of their mothers laid out a picnic for them.

“There you are,” said one of the human mothers. Steve assumed she must be responsible for the pirate captain.

“Swishy wants to play pasta passel,” the captain announced.

“We already played pass the parcel this morning,” his mother reminded him, “don’t you remember? We played it four times, two of which didn’t even have a parcel, but we had to keep going because you cried when I said it was time for musical chairs.”

“They’re too small for musical chairs anyway,” one of the other mums interjected, emptying a packet of crisps into a plastic bowl.

“Let’s not get into that now,” the pirate’s mum said, through gritted teeth, “not in front of the children.”

“Swishy wasn’t there before,” the pirate said. “We have to play again.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Steve said, “I don’t even like pasta all that much to be honest.”

“Who is Swishy?” the pirate’s mum enquired, looking at her son properly for the first time.

“Oh. My.”

“Oh my goodness that’s adorable!” Cooed one of the other mums, “Hold still Josh, and let me take a photo!”

She produced a disposable camera and started snapping away.

“Get that thing off you,” Captain Josh’s mum said in a voice barely more than a whisper, “now.”

“No,” Josh replied, “he’s my parrot.”

“He’s probably riddled with disease,” she groaned, handing a plate of cocktail sausages to the nearest child, who took it as a sign to dig in.

Within moments, all the pirates were scrabbling for food, two of the mums were screaming – one with laughter, the other in an attempt to restore order – and Steve had had enough of being a parrot.

“Happy Birthday, Captain,” he whispered to Josh.

Then he leapt off his shoulder and ran as fast as he could back to his mum.

“Have you been blethering to humans, Steve?” she eyed him suspiciously. “You’ve got that look about you.”

“Yes, mum,” he admitted. “But I don’t think I’ll do it again.”

She nodded in satisfaction.

“Not for a while, at least,” he added under his breath.

After all, the next group of pirates to visit might be an entirely different story.

Chapter Seventeen

Links to parts 1-16 available here.

"Bert," Nicky whispered fiercely, "wait a sec!"

But the old guy was long gone. Probably away to find that guard with the kind voice.

Nicky through the sheet off him and sat up in the darkness. It was so black in there he felt as though someone has carpeted his retinas. Which in this bloody place, he thought, was not completely outside the realms of possibility.

"fucksake," he said out loud.

"Nicky?" came a voice from surprisingly close by.

"Bracken?" he recognised it, whirling round to try and locate her. "what are you doing here?"

"Hell if I know. Esmeralda had some heavies kidnap me from outside the library and now here I am, strapped to some kind of victorian hospital trolley in a room where it's perpetually night time."

"I was kidnapped too," Nicky said, "on my way home from poker. So have you been here all that time an Aw?"

"no," she told him guiltily, "I've not. Just got here really. I think. I don't have much concept of time in here. Nicky, is the wean with you?"

"No," he replied, "is he not with Nige's mum?"

She drew in a shaky breath. He thought she might be crying, or trying not to.

"Nut," she started, "he went missing the same time as you. I've been so worried about you both, and I keep phoning the police but they just take the piss it feels like. And I've asked around and tried to think of the places you guys might go together but you've never been there.. It never even crossed my mind that you might not be together!"

She burst into tears - not pretty girly ones but the trembling, wracking sobs of someone who thinks themselves completely and utterly defeated.

Nicky moved towards the sound, arm stretched out in front of him, intending to give her a hug.

He banged his hip on something hard, which turned out to be a handle of the trolley she was on.

"Did you say there were straps?" he asked, gingerly feeling for them.

"yeah," she sniffled, "go and get the head one first? It's too tight and it's hurting me."

He fumbled around to find it, accidentally poking her in the eye and pulling her hair before his fingers hit upon the cold metal of the buckle. He undid it, and then moved on to the ones binding her wrists.

Bracken shook her head from side to side in relief. She'd never take the right to stretch her neck for granted again, she vowed.

"Are you not wearing any shoes?" Nicky asked as he got to the straps around her ankles.

"That cow took em off me when I was unconscious. Seemingly she thought I might have a knife in there."

"Aw, like a wee skein dhu," he chuckled.

"Well she's not from round here," Bracken said.

"I was wanting to ask you about that," he said, suddenly serious. "who is this woman? How do you ken her? Why does she hate us?!"

"Well," she said, "it's sort of a long story..."

"Oh, dinnae bother then."

"Har Har. You need to know the enemy."

"I have heard that's preferable, in some states."

“Her name is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo,” Bracken started. “She used to go out with the new guy that works at the library, Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe.

“Those might actually be the stupidest names I have ever heard,” Nicky interrupted.

“Shut it, bawjaws” she snapped, “I’m trying tae fill you in.”

“You’re right,” he said, contrite, “I apologise. You aren’t the one who named them, after all.”

“No,” she nodded, not that he could see her as they were still in the pitch dark, “I didn’t. Why would you even say that? Weirdo.”

“Anyway, that’s basically all I know. She turned up the night Al’s mother died, and tried to convince me that the two of them were still together – which I don’t think they are-“

“Ooooh, Al now is it,” Nicky trilled, “darling Al, with his ridiculous name and his job in the library.”

“Yeah, you need to work on your insults a bit more Nick.”

He lowered his eyes in agreement. Not that she could see that as they were still in that room that was really really dark. But had she been able to see, she might not necessarily have recognized the eye-lowering thing as an admission of wrongness. It’s not the conventional sign in this day and age.

“She drives everywhere,” Bracken said, “she thought I’d keep weapons about me because she’s a racist…. And that’s about it. Oh, well she’s nuts of course. Seems perfectly nice till she drugs and kidnaps you.”

“That’s it?” Nicky asked, sounding askanced. “That’s your long story?”

“It sounded longer in my head,” she admitted, embarrassed. “Oh, wait, there was something else.”

“What was it? Another bit of her name that you missed out of the list?”

“No, don’t be facetious.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“She gave me a lift to work, even though she probably knew it was an in service day,” Bracken started, “but there was more… Before we got out of the car, she’d started to tell me something. She’d been asking me loads of annoying questions based on her blinkered social views of what it means to be a single parent, and then she admitted that there was a reason why she’d been doing it…”

“Then what happened?”

“The weather.”

“What?”

“There was a big clap of thunder that drowned her out and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and we ran inside to avoid the rain taking out one of our eyes.”

“Rain can’t take people’s eyes out,” he snorted derisively.

“Yes it can,” Bracken said defensively, “from a certain angle. It was on a repeat of 999 Life Savers.”

“So why didn’t you ask her about it when you got into the library? Was she sucking face with Al?”

“No,” Bracken fumed, “she was not. As it goes Nige was trying it on with him at that point. But I forgot all about Esmeralda’s cryptic nonsense because Adric told us that the library is being closed and probably knocked down so that they can search for Mayan gold underneath.”

“You what?”

“One of the kids was digging outside and found some Mayan gold. They had it checked out by experts, it was definitely real.”

“Shut up,” Nicky squeaked incredulously, “what would it be doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Bracken told him, “that’s exactly what I said as well. Adric seemed to think pirates brought it-“

“But that’s absurd. Pirates never actually buried treasure, that was a myth put about by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“I know,” she said wearily, “I said that as well.”

“OK, sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment. The blackness seemed to swirl around them, a bit like treacle, only less likely to drown a man. Or woman. Or otter. Can otters drown? Yes. But it’s pretty rare, because they’re generally quite good with water.

“Right,” Nicky said briskly, “enough of this otter chat. Let’s escape.”

“How can we,” Bracken said, “its pitch black and I’d imagine that if we ever find the door it’ll be locked.”

“Why would they bother? It’s not like you were getting out of those straps any time soon. And the last person in here was Bert, who was rescuing me.”

“Who the hell is Bert and why was he rescuing you?”

“The two of those questions seem quite closely linked, as it goes,” he mused. “Bert is an old geezer who claims that he is my real dad, and that he wanted to make up for lot time. He sort of hinted at some kind of dark past, but didn’t really go into it in any detail. I think he was trying to keep a sense of mystery for later on in the text.’

“What?”

“I think he might genuinely be my dad but. Steve and I were never very alike.”

“Whereas you and this Bert character are like two peas in a pod,” she posited sarcastically. “You know literally nothing about him.”

“True,” Nicky agreed, “but what I do know is that he got me out of that weird smelling little cell, and he would have got me out of the building if your pal Esmeralda hadn’t turned up and given him the willies.”

“Given him the willies? Where are you, an Enid Blyton book?”

“Point is, I reckon he’ll come back.”

“Assuming Esmeralda doesn’t strap him to a trolley and lock him in a dark room somewhere for mucking about with her fiendish plan. Whatever that may be.”

“Nah, he works for her,” Nicky said, “she trusts him. That was how he was able to get me out.”

“He works for her?” Bracken was incredulous, “then what exactly is it about him that you think we can trust? You utter muppet! This is probably all part of her grand design!”

“Jeez Bracken, she’s not Kevin McCloud.”

“I’ve told you before about making jokes about programming on channel four.”

“Sorry.”

Bracken crossed her arms dejectedly. What she wouldn’t give for a wee cuddle from the wean right now, with his sticky face and perpetually paint covered fingers.

“Oh my Christ,” Nicky said, as though reading her mind, “the wean!”

“What about him?”

“He must be here too!”

“What? Why?”

“You said yourself he’s nowhere to be found on the outside… And I’ve just remembered, the guard that Bert ran into said there were three McCrackens here!”

Nicky slapped his forehead, as people do on telly but less often in real life.

“I can’t believe I didn’t work it out then – I guess I was thinking about trying not to make any noise that would give us away. Three McCrackens though – you, me, and the wean!”

Bracken got to her feet.

“We are getting out of here,” she decided, stepping off the trolley and lurching forwards into the darkness.

“Ow,” she added, falling over. She had severe pins and needles and couldn’t feel either of her feet. Those straps had been tighter than she’d realized.

“Bracken, are you OK?”

He moved towards where he thought the sound of her crash to the floor had come.

Finding her hands, he pulled her to her feet.

“Ow ow ow,” she squeaked, hopping from foot to foot as the blood began to return.

“Lean on me,” he said, putting an arm around her waist, “and lets do this thing together.”

She let him support her weight, and together they inched slowly forwards, arms outstretched, in search of a door.

Amazingly, unbelievably luckily, the first thing that Nicky’s fingers alighted on was a door handle. Holding his breath, he gently pressed it down, and the door swung open.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t locked,” Bracken whispered mildly, blinking as the dazzling white light of the lavish marble corridor hit her corneas.

“There was no need,” Esmeralda said coldly, appearing out of the shadows and making them both jump, “you were supposed to be secured.”

Bracken sighed.

“Better do the introductions then hey. Nicky McCracken, this is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo. Esmeralda, this is my cousin, Nicky McCracken.”

“Oh, I know Nicky already,” Esmeralda said, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips and getting a bit confused into thinking that maybe it was a sneer.

“What,” Nicky said, genuinely confused, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Oh but you have,” Esmeralda said enigmatically, making a mental note to stop beginning so many of her sentences with ‘oh’.

“Sorry hen, not ringing a bell. You must have one of those forgettable faces.”

Esmeralda’s nostrils flared in irritation.

“It’s about time both of you heard a few home truths,” she said. “I think you should come with me.”

“Where’s my son?” Bracken demanded, on the verge of tears. “What have you done with my wee boy?”

Esmeralda regarded her with arctic cool.

“That little boy,” she said deliberately, enunciating every syllable like a crisp footprint in snow, “is not your son.”

Chapter One

Remember NaNoWriMo? I'm having another bash this year. And with no Beatblogger interviews pending, I might even have time to get it done. Here is chapter the first. 1828 words so far, hooray!

"Nah, that's lies," Bracken McCracken told the man behind the counter with certainty.

His sandy sideburns glistened uncertainly. He was quite attractive, she noticed then. He had all his own hair and limbs, two eyes, comparatively clean clothes… the whole package.

"Sorry Ms McCracken," he began stiffly, "I have to ask you - it’s my job.”

“Right,” she begrudged, grudgingly. She didn’t want him to know she had been swayed by his physical charms. After all this was 2010, when women had the vote, and rights to education and the like.

“The computer thinks you owe us £39,” he continued. “So I let’s see… If I read them out can you tell me if any of the titles ring a bell?”

She glared at him, in what she hoped was a vampish way. He cleared his throat nervously.

“'The Hispanic Trillionaire's Cruise Ship Baby', perhaps?”

Bracken folded her arms, showing off her signet rings to their full advantage.

“OK, I can see that’s a no go. How about 'Her Inexperienced Sugar Daddy'?”

Slowly and deliberately, she shook her head. Her hair, scraped back by a daring array of polyester scrunchies, cracked about her face like a cat o’ nine tails. Somehow though, he remained impervious.

“Uh, the next one is 'The Lady Pirate's Navy Tryst'?"

She flushed with embarrassment and anger.

"Do I look like the type of person that would read any of that stuff?"

He raised an eyebrow, taking in her velour tracksuit, silver puffa jacket and gold plated accessories. The buggy beside her contained a baby of indeterminate age, which was holding a pasty from Gregg’s.

'Dextrous,' he thought to himself, before replying as politely as he knew how,

"I'm sure I don't know madam. All sorts of people read those books and I wouldn't dare to presume anything about anyone’s reading habits. I can’t, ever since we assumed one old chap who takes twelve of these romances at a time got them for his wife, then he told us he’s never been married.”

Bracken was interested in spite of herself.

"You can get 12 books at a time?"

"Oh yes, for three weeks at first, and then you can renew them by phone or online if you need them longer."

"Michty me."

"Quite."

They paused awkwardly for a moment. She tried to remain defiant, but forgot herself when she looked into his eyes, which were like deep bubbling pools of blackberry jam. Bracken was rather partial to jam, particularly blackberry flavour.

"Delicious," she said out loud.

"What?"

"Sorry," she replied, visibly reddening even under a thick layer of itchy but affordable foundation, "I was thinking about scones."

He smiled warmly for the first time, and the jam eyes crinkled a little bit at the edges.

"My mother makes lovely scones. Or at least she did, before-"

He stopped dead, a frown passing over his manly jaw.

"Before what?"

"Before... The accident."

A dramatic chord sounded.

"Sorry, forgot to put my phone off," said an old man who was sitting on the sofa reading the Daily Record whilst he waited for the rain to go off.

Bracken gave him one of her patented scowls, before venturing, "Is she...?"

"…Paralysed from the waist down," he responded, heavily. "She can't reach the kitchen work top to use the mixer anymore." He closed his eyes, overwhelmed for a moment by some terrible kind of mental anguish. "Damn tiny wheelchair."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Bracken said sincerely.

"Thank you," he replied, and lo, it was as if some sort of spark exchanged between them. It was invisible though, not like an actual spark. Sort of just like a feeling you get sometimes when you click with someone. You know the one.

"Oh," he said, in a sudden moment of clarity, "Speaking of mothers - does yours have the same name as you? Perhaps she took those books out!"

Bracken frowned deeply, the hood of her puffa crinkling with the effort, before stropping,

"My maw ran off wi some bawjaws nae guid drug dealer when I was a bairn. I dinnae ken anyhin about her and I dinnae want tae."

She tended to enunciate less when upset.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't know. Were you raised by your dad then?"

"Who d'ye hink the nae guid bawjaws was?!"

"Oh."

She shrugged. He might be beautiful, but seemingly he wasn’t the brightest.

"Ah was brought up by my gran, which is pretty normal round here. But she kicked me out over the bairn-" she gestured in the direction of the buggy - "so I live wi Uncle Nicky the now. He’s a bit o’ a soft touch, but his hearts in the right place."

Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe – for this was the strapping library assistant’s name - looked back over some of his own life’s tragedies, of which there were many. They were, he reflected somewhat pretentiously, the sorts of things that might come to light if he were a character in a novel. In real life, though, they would never be known to another living soul. He had often wished there was someone he might share his pain with, but he had always thought it hopeless. Who could ever understand the effect of such trauma? Who would want to look far enough beyond his averagely dashing good looks to even try? But now, as he compared his darkest times with the experiences of this orange faced girl, he wondered whether Bracken's pain and suffering might rival even his own…

There again no, he thought, how could her pain be anything in comparison to his? Here she was, getting on with her life, feistily arguing the toss over what were quite clearly her library fines, as a queue of irate locals gathered behind her. Would she be able to do that if her past was full of secrets, hanging over her like fat, juicy ghosts?

Maybe she would, a voice in his subconscious pointed out, making him feel a little schizophrenic. He had heard tell in the past that women were different from men in some ways. Was this one of them? Aloysius sighed demonstratively, and his strong shoulders wobbled with the cyan coloured jelly of mixed emotions. How he wished he was able to pack all his sorrows in his old kit bag like that. Perhaps if he had a baby, like Bracken did, he would be able to be strong for it…

“So,” she said, interrupting his reverie, “are ye gonnae take they fines aff ma caird?”

“Well I don’t actually know how,” he admitted, “This is only my first day on the job.”

Bracken knew this already, because she was in the library every day. It was nice here, she thought. The flat was cold because they couldn’t really afford to heat it, and Uncle Nicky was a little bit wrong in the head and kept making hats out of tin foil to protect them from UFOs. But in here they had internet access, and daily papers, and lots of activities with kids, like storytelling and rhyme sessions and craft activities.

“Could you not ask someone else to show you?” she asked him.

“Well, they’re having a meeting,” he began apologetically, “and I don’t really know if I should interrupt.”

‘Who knew customer service would be so complex,’ he added to himself. Before working in this place, he had never had to deal with members of the public in his life.

Behind her in the queue, a middle-aged man with no front teeth tutted melodramatically.

“Ach, nevermind,” she snapped suddenly in exasperation, “I need tae get tae work anyway.”

“Work?” he replied, in that way you do when you can’t really think of anything to say.

She narrowed her eyes, about to completely misinterpret his meaning with potentially disastrous results.

“What, you don’t think a schemie single mum like me would bother holding down a job?”

“No-"

“Hink ah had the wean just so I could get a free hoose, is that it?”

“That’s not what I-"

“You dinnae ken ANYHIN about me and don’t even pretend you do, ya pompous, self satisfied, ‘oooh, when they made us read Shakespeare in school I actually enjoyed it’ piece e good for nothing, up your own arse, TRAMP.”

“Bracken – Ms McCracken – I –"

But she was gone, in a bittersweet cloud of hormones and Impulse body spray.

“Women, eh,” the toothless man from the queue intoned sagely.

Aloysius sighed once more, and the knees of a nearby schoolgirl who was skiving off to check her bebo went weak.

“Can I help you?” he asked the man, without really meaning it.

“Aye. Ah’ll have twenty lammy bammies please lad.”

“You’ll have what?”

“Lammy bammies. Fags! Chop chop, we huvnae got aw day. Specially after waiting on you and your bird sortin’ oot yer wee lovers tiff.”

“We’re not… she’s not… fags?”

The toothless man nodded, expectant.

“But… This is the library, though.”

The toothless man blinked and looked about him.

“Whaddya know,” he laughed phlegmily. “So it is as well. Ah’ve no been in here for aboot twenty years. It’s aw changed since then!”

“Ha, yeah.”

Not into a shop, though, he thought.

“Still dinnae sell fags though eh?”

Apparently this toothless wonder was something of a mind reader, even if his standards of dental hygiene left something to be desired.

“I’m afraid not,” Aloysius replied graciously. “I could do you a book with Audrey Hepburn smoking on the cover though?”

“Naw laddie, dinnae hink so. Audrey Hepburn? She was a man. Heard it on the Discovery Channel. Or was it a dream? I have dreams like that sometimes.”

“Oh right.”

“The libray though eh. What a pranny I am! Looks different than when I was a bairn. That a telly ower there?”

Aloysius smiled politely.

“Yes,” he replied, “we do a lot of youth work in here these days.”

“Oh aye?”

“Yes. I mean aye.”

“Rather youse than mese, heh heh heh. A telly eh. No like when I was a bairn. Librarian’d gie us a clip round the ear and send us on our way.”

“Well sir, the times they are a changing.”

“They are that. And ah’m only 32! Heh heh.”

“Ha ha.”

“OK well, I’ll see you when I need ma bus pass renewed,” the man coughed.

With that, he slouched off out into the rain and Aloysius, aside from stamping the due date on to a few Joan Jonker classics and exchanging weather-related pleasantries with the remaining people in the queue, was left alone with his thoughts.

He was surprised and slightly disconcerted to find that for the first time in several years, all of said thoughts were not of his dark past, but of a shapely young mum clad in a bright pink velour tracksuit set off by camel coloured ugg boots.

“I promised myself I’d never love again,” he muttered.

But if he was to keep that vow, he would have to stop thinking about Bracken McCracken’s heavily kohled eyes, which he had noticed were just the colour of gooseberry jam.

“Delicious,” he said.

MGEITF

So, the reason I finished at the library in the middle of the week was to give me time to cover the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (MGEITF) for The Edinburgh Reporter. Naturally this is on a voluntary basis, ie for no money. In all honesty I just wanted the thrill of being around loads of buzz word spouting TV industry people, who are all very trendy and mostly made out of iProducts. HOWEVER, I feel that the delegate goody (goodie?) bag thing has actually been payment in itself. Check that bad boy out. Highlights which you should be able to locate in the photograph include:

- The Radio Times! Normally costs more than one of your GBP. (Arj Barker reference there for two of you)
- The Doctor Who Adventure games, the main review of which seems to be 'OK but a bit slow'
- A YouGov memory stick! (no idea, they must be a sponsor)
- A tiny bottle of water!
- Mints from ITV!
- Chocolate coins!
- Chocolate in bar format for the less piratically inclined amongst the delegates!
- And a DVD extolling the virtues of the Clyde Waterfront. At an event which has, since its inception, always been held in Edinburgh.

This is loads better than the Film Festival press pack, which just had, like, film related stuff in it. And a notebook so that you could write about the films. Whatever dudes. There are kids* at this event, and we will give them sugar.

Anyway, I will link to stuff as and when it goes up on the reporter, but until then you'll just have to watch telly or something.

*I don't really mean kids as such, just young persons - part of the point of this festival is to help young people gain knowledge and experience of the industry, which is quite a nice thing. Course nobody ever fuckin' told me about it as a young(er) person, but still. It's all good.

What Is A Pirate's Favourite Shop

Someone at my weekend branch has conducted a vicious cull of pirate related fiction in the past fortnight.

Why would anyone do such a thing? Fear, perhaps. Or a long standing love of the Empire. Or hatred of grog.

Whichever scenarios be true, it scarcely matters. They're mine now. Arr.