Thursday 31 May 2012

Accidental Crime - 1


Dawn

It had been an unusually busy morning.
Woken at 5 by a neighbour’s insistence on publicising their departure for work, Dawn had found herself in an irritable mood and such a discovery could never be met with even a degree of appreciation.
She had risen at 5.10, offering herself a ten minute possibility of returning to the dream she had resented being jolted out of, but soon resigned herself to the reality that her inability to sleep once roused was unlikely to be solved, today of all days. Slinging her faded pink dressing-gown over her stuttering frame, she crept out of her room, glancing furtively towards Jarrod’s door-knob. Sucking in her breath, she turned back towards the stairs and slowly slid down each step, still steeped in slumber, carefully avoiding the ‘creak zones’ that he had so helpfully pointed out the morning after he moved in.
Yesterday’s post had been tidied into size-order, leaving Gemma’s wedding invitation – years of copying her work in French lessons had left Dawn over-familiar with the handwriting – at the very top of the pile. She’d spent almost twelve hours not opening it and so she could surely wait another few minutes, if not hours, before tearing through the ‘G & T’ heart-shaped-seal securing the envelope. There were few suitable activities one could perform at 5.10 and that most certainly was not one of them.
She shuffled towards the breakfast table, eyeing-up the ‘to-do’ list she had composed under the new-found semblance of organisation she was keen to bring to her life.
7 am – wake up.
She had known at the time it was a ludicrous waste of ink.
Slumping into the chair before her, she noticed that an additional column had been added on the far-right of the A5 page she had meticulously mapped her life upon.
‘Jarrod’s day’.
A blank column. An empty day.
He would, no doubt, express some notion that one can never know what one’s day might bring and that we are merely actors ready to walk upon an empty stage, encountering whatever God/fate/chance (delete as appropriate) lay before us. But, what was of more pressing concern to Dawn was the manner of his intrusion. Intrusion was to be expected – desired, at times – but never in the same colour. This was addition.
She shook her head, bemused at the time it had taken for her to fill the kettle. Perhaps it should have been on the list? Or was the very presence of the list the reason for her delay?
As the water powered into the limescale-laden kettle, it occurred to her that she had always awoken and prepared her morning tea without prompting from last night’s pen. The list had brought nothing but guilt and confusion. If she had the energy, she would tear it from the pad.
She glanced down at the faded guide outlining just how much water she needed for a single cup of tea. Images of innocent birds trapped in monstrous mounds of discarded plastic bags flooded her head, while the unnecessary water wound its way ever downwards – recycling in action. She would do what she could.
Don’t up-set, off-set!
It was unlikely to launch her to international slogan-stardom but she was, nevertheless, impressed by her creativity almost two hours before her official wake-up time.

‘You’re making tea.’
It took a moment for Dawn to realise the words had been voiced by a whisper in the doorway. She replayed the last five minutes at breakneck speed, querying the decibel level of each action, before recalling that the breakfast chair belonged to the same early-morning-avoidance-areas-family as the ‘creak zones’ she had remembered to side-step only minutes earlier. She winced, as his disappointment drove deep down into the –
‘It’s 5 am.’
‘Quarter past actually.’
‘You’re making tea.’
She glanced down at the crumpled tea-bag clutched within her left hand, briefly considering returning it to the canister in an act of defiant contradiction.
‘Yes’.
‘It’s 5 am.’
She finally turned, his fingers lingering on the frame a little longer than the rest of his already-departed body. Slowly, he peeled each finger away, as if counting down to the deadline for an appropriate response to warrant his return to the scene.
She feasted her eyes on the flaking paint of the door-frame as her ears traced his ascent. Her fingers closed around the tea-bag. Instinctively, she thrust a mug beneath, half-expecting brewed drops to begin filtering through. Slogan-stardom and the world’s first human tea maker in one morning. And all before 5.20.
The click of the kettle confirming it was ready to do what her hand could not prompted a sharp ‘shush’ to pass through her slightly dampened lips. She closed her eyes, willing him away in case he were standing behind her ready to identify how illogical it was to command inanimate objects to be quiet.
Enough. Pour the water. Brew the bag. Drink the drink. Regain control of this morning.
She nodded to no-one and proceeded to fill the patient mug before her.



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Check back tomorrow for the next chapter!
If you can’t wait to read the rest, the novel is available to buy here.
Many thanks to everyone for their support! If you enjoy the novel, please consider leaving a positive review on Amazon.

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Accidental Crime

Novel cover edited 2

How far would you go to make things right? This is the question that torments Jarrod Bowman as a series of unexpected events force him to revisit past mistakes and ponder afresh just what it means for there to be justice in this world. A day of disasters and coincidences leave Jarrod and his unsuspecting housemate, Dawn, wondering whether there really is any fairness in life, whilst Dawn’s quest to launch a new kind of lunch leads her into situations that will make her question whether it is not only our actions but our words too that might come back to haunt us.

The novel is finally here! After weeks, months, perhaps even years of wild speculation, agonising anticipation and diminishing belief that this day would ever come, I am pleased to announce that my debut novel Accidental Crime is being launched on Amazon Kindle today (with a paperback version due shortly).

This has been a big part of my life for the past few years and particularly since I completed the first draft at about this time last year and so I hope you’ll forgive me for using this blog to celebrate its launch. To sweeten the deal a little, I will post a chapter of the novel on this blog on each day for the next month for you to read for free! So, keep checking back for your daily dose of the world of Jarrod and Dawn…

To kick things off, here’s the prologue:

Accidental Crime

She held the book between her hands, her fingers tapping a disjointed rhythm against the faded cover, and waited.

She wanted to claim it was an accident and perhaps, just perhaps, it was. But even in their rehearsed, unspoken form the words sounded so hollow. If she couldn’t believe herself, how could she hope that others would share the conviction?

‘Are you ready?’ the voice across the table muttered.

She raised her eyes to meet the intensity of his stare, her eyelids flickering in apprehension, and nodded. Another lie.

‘We need to go through what happened.’

‘I told you what happened. I told you everything.’

‘Why don’t you put the book down for a moment?’

Her fingers relinquished their grip and the book slid onto the table with a reassuring thud before being swiftly swept to the opposite corner, nestling precariously by his right hand.

‘I don’t know what to tell you.’

He clasped his hands together and leant forwards. She felt his breath on her over-sensitive skin.

‘Just tell us the truth. It’s as simple as that.’

‘The truth is never simple, Mr -’

‘Thorpe.’

‘Of course.’

She smiled and brought her hands together.

‘You told my colleague it was an accident,’ he said, flicking through the notebook before him. ‘You were quite adamant.’

‘It was an accident. I’ll be adamant for you too, if you want.’

She sunk her teeth into her lower lip.

‘And you’d be willing to testify to that in court?’

‘I’d rather not go to court at all.’

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t seem to be a choice open to you.’

‘All choices are open to us, Mr Thorpe.’

Where were these words coming from? She cursed the selection of the Quotes of the day app, certain that it was to blame in some way. If she began declaring the dream she’d had that her children – as yet, unconceived – would one day be judged not on the colour of their skin but on the content of their character then she could call off the investigation for good. As it was, her imagination – and occasional viewing of television police dramas – would have to take the brunt of the blame.

‘We have witnesses placing you at the scene.’

‘Of course you do. I was there.’

‘And I suppose that was an accident too?’

She leaned towards him.

‘In a way. Isn’t everything?’

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Check back tomorrow for the next chapter!

If you can’t wait to read the rest, the novel is available to buy here.

Many thanks to everyone for their support! If you enjoy the novel, please consider leaving a positive review on Amazon.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Our House

There are some moments in history that will live with you forever, that you simply have to be there for, whatever it takes. Think ‘the moon landing’ (inverted commas offering token fence-sitting scepticism), England’s World Cup win in 1966, John Prescott punching a man in the street, and so on. Sadly, I wasn’t around for two of those events – and narrowly avoided being the man who got punched by staying safely locked up inside my own house – but even within my relatively short lifetime I have witnessed some similarly-headline-grabbing moments.

Tomorrow evening – Thursday the 24th May 2012 – at 22.58ish, the credits will roll, the music will start, the voiceover will risk atmosphere-destroying interference and the end will finally have come. The end, my friends, of House.

I know I’m one of the biggest fans of hyperbole in the world but I don’t think I’m really offering even the slightest hint of exaggeration when I call House the greatest television series of all time. And yet, eight seasons in, the end has come. Television – and, quite possibly, the world – will never be the same again.

I first heard of House when my dad blasphemously suggested that he would rather watch this mysterious programme than the Middlesbrough UEFA Cup game (ah, those were the days). A programme called ‘House’ was taking precedence over football? It simply made no sense at all. Something was up.

I remember, or I think I remember, hearing of a horror film called ‘House’ (does such a thing actually exist?) and so, logically, the conclusion I came to was that this must be the TV series of the film. You know, like the Stargate spin-off series only with scary things going on.

Imagine my surprise then when I sat down one day expecting to be frightened to the core, only to discover a gripping medical drama staring back at me. And not just any ordinary medical drama. This was thriller, comedy, romance and mystery rolled into one, turned upside-down and inside-out and spat right back out again. And, more than that, it was good. Very good. So good, in fact, that requests for box sets were made at subsequent birthdays and Christmases. I even went so far as to use my own money (a rare occurrence) to purchase future series and watched and re-watched every episode in record-breaking time (I assume, having never checked the records…).

My dad’s blasphemy was forgiven. Heck, this was a show that was so good it was almost worth giving up watching football altogether. Hugh Laurie had created a character so unbelievably captivating that my moral compass was losing all sense of where North was, whilst my affinity for metaphors was growing by the hour. He was everything a character should be and everything a character shouldn’t be in equal measure. He was, quite simply, incredible.

And yet, life must go on. There is, it seems, a world beyond House, however hard it is to contemplate such an idea, and so into that world I must trek from tomorrow evening onwards. I’ll always have the box-sets and the memories and, who knows, one day I may set up my own medical practice and call myself Gregory House.

Until then, I invite you to join me in a minute’s silence to mourn our loss…

Monday 7 May 2012

Cool for Cats

Well, we have had quite a fretful morning here in Sam’s Town.

The disappearance of your cat for a few hours in the evening might cause a slight tremor of concern but nothing quite shakes you into full-on fretfulness like an evening, night and morning of disappearance. Posters were being sketched out in my mind, tales of sadness to pass onto family and friends were being rehearsed and speculation over whether we could cope with or without another cat was rife. We even stepped out in the rain of all things to take a look in the neighbour’s garden, before retreating into the warmth of our house for a well-earned coffee.

Nothing. Not even a despairing cry of a cat caught in a nearby hedge. The chance to don my superhero costume and endear myself to her for ever was diminishing by the second. We were at the ringing-up-the-vet stage, certain that they would confirm that, yes, the stroking days were indeed over. The fur she had shed these past weeks as she donned her summer coat would be the lasting reminder of her previously-permanent presence. It would, quite simply, all be over. Cat number 3 to have departed from us in the last 3 years. Guinness World Records on stand by…

And yet, at 11.15ish (I was far too excited to check the exact minute), the prodigal cat nonchalantly stepped through the flap and sashayed towards her plate of food as though nothing had happened. A scream of delight emanated from the kitchen, I bounded down the stairs like a child at Christmas and the reunion was complete. Cries of ‘where were you?’ were met with little more than a twitch of the whiskers, clearly communicating the message that we should be far more trusting than to question the every movement of a 4 year old.

So, with the stroking days and the potential for lap-sitting returning, we can finally join the banks in their holiday today and cease our anxious whining. I hope the rest of you have had far more relaxing days off today and have enjoyed the greyness of the sky.

And may your cats be safe.

Amen.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

The Four Seasons

A brief football blog this evening and so fans of cricket, croquet or criticising blogs based on football can look away now…

You see, my team Norwich City have just secured their status as a Premier League club for another year, having only been in League 1 two years ago. I say my team because I have, of course, made a huge difference to the team’s achievements and it is almost certain that without my pessimistic comments on Twitter and regular trawling of the fans’ forum that we would have got nowhere near reaching the heights we have managed to climb in these past couple of seasons. Norwich have much to thank me for and I look forward to continuing to help them next season whilst claiming any win as something we’ve achieved and any loss (they do, occasionally, happen) as their fault.

Forget David v Goliath, Jonah v The Whale, or Moses v The rest of the Israelites, Norwich v The Premier League looked like being one mismatch too far this year and yet somehow, somewhere, someday (that one’s for the musicals fans out there…) we have triumphed against all odds, beaten back the tide of inevitable failure and completely and utterly spanked any other clichés people would care to throw at us.

And so next year we go into Season number 4 in this tale of unexpected revival, hoping for so much but realistically expecting very little other than a last minute defeat against Man Utd once more. One thing’s for sure: whatever happens it is bound to be predictably unpredictable. And, if that doesn’t float your boat or ice your cream-cake (that’s a new one I’m trying out) then I guess you can always bask in the glories of future blog entries about far more cultural affairs, such as ‘things you can do with broken umbrellas’ or ‘Poems about pigeons: the unwritten verse’.

N.B. Future blogs about umbrellas and/or poems about pigeons may or may not exist. 

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