I’ve decided to write another novel.

For a long while I felt I had sufficient other writing avenues to satisfy my creative urges, but no more. It’s time to try something else. Rather, I’m currently in the process of trying something else. Thing is though, the Canterbury summer is not my optimal novelling time – too warm, too much to do, too much other stuff going on; too difficult to keep focus.

Busy hotness notwithstanding, the time is now. I found myself forming the first idea a few months ago. Every spare moment I am building on that idea. To be fair the idea is now pretty massive. It needs to come out.

I started yesterday. Today is Saturday. To date I have written a shade less than 2000 words in my most peculiar of novelling techniques: I start with a title. I write the beginning. I then continue through until the end. It’s truly bizarre stuff.

It’s called, Fighting for The Future, or Fighting for Our Future, or something like that. I’m not going to try and tell you what it’s about because, well, it’s a novel. It’s about many things. The theme however, is modern day world war. I think. Can’t really be sure what it’s about until I’ve finished writing it. That’s all I’ll say on it for now, but as I am much too lazy to maintain this site and write a novel, I’ll simply post the latest excerpt from the aforementioned piece of literary genius, each week.

Couple of things first. As I have zero intention of replicating my usual novelling schedule of ’80,000 words in 40 days’, your weekly excerpt mightn’t be much; also, given that what you see will be the draft, it is subject to, and in fact probably will, change.

This week I’ll rip ‘n stick the prologue, which is quite short.

 

 

 

Fighting

for the

Future

 

 

 Tim Walker

 

[PAGE BREAK]

I have no idea of the time, I am no longer certain of the date, but if the temperature is anything to go by, I can be pretty sure its still winter. That makes it somewhere close to July 2014. Anyway, like I said, its cold, I’m hungry, I wish I had a better way of killing time than just writing these dumb notes, that probably no ones gonna ever read anyway, but I don’t, so I am.

 

Still fighting for our future, K.

 

[PAGE BREAK]

 

The absence of screams belied her pain.

The level of discipline she had been forced to uphold since childhood was so deeply entrenched in the young woman’s disposition that even as she lay giving birth to her first child; even as the breached baby prolonged the agony of labour for another excruciating hour; even as the blood loss surpassed two litres; even as the husband squeezed her hand and begged her to accept pain medication; even as the colour drained from her attractive features; even as the final skerrick of life left her supple body…

“Congratulations, Mr Williams, you have a beautiful baby boy.”

…Even then, she didn’t make a sound.

 

 

See? I told you so. Exercise is bad for ya.

Really? I disagree.

Nah, they said so – too much exercise is bad for ya.

Guess it must depend how you define ‘too much’, because I recently heard that 20 – 40 minutes of exercise each day was beneficial to prolonging life.

Nah, but I heard them say it so it has to be right – Strenuous exercise can lower life expectancy, so there.

So there, what?

So, I can sit on my arse all day and play X-Box and it’s not bad for me anymore.

But it was before..?

They always said it was.

Similar to the way ‘they’ always said that fat was to be avoided at all costs..?

Yeah, just like that, but then they said that it wasn’t bad for me anymore so now I can eat all the junk food I like and play X-Box all day and now it’s good for me, eh.

Eh … You do realise that big corporations perform whatever research is required to produce whatever findings they need, to push whatever product is fashionable at a given time?

What? Whaddaya mean by that?

For example, if Cadbury wants to prove that their chocolate is at all beneficial to peoples’ health, they simply pay a research company to study it from every possible angle until they come up with the desired results.

Yeah, I thought I heard chocolate was good for me.

Along with a glass and a half a day of red wine, right?

Yeah man, and if a glass and a half is good for me, think how good a bottle and a half must be.

Not quite. The key is moderation.

What?

In moderation, wine is beneficial –

Yeah, so I drink heaps of it for heaps o’ benefits.

Nice one. In moderation, dark chocolate is beneficial –

Yeah, dark chocolate’s not sweet enough for me, I only eat white chocolate … that has to be some good though eh?

Unlikely. In moderation, exercise is beneficial.

Yeah, but they reckon exercise is bad.

Prolonged, strenuous exercise has been said to cause more harm than good, yes.

Right, so it’s like I said though, I can drink wine and eat chocolate and play X-Box and it’s good for me – talk about knowing your body.

Stunning. Idiots like you are the problem with media driven research.

Nah, it’s good, they tell me that I’m doing it right…

You hear what you want to hear; you hear half a story and make it sound how you want it to sound – then you have the audacity to complain when things go wrong.

Yeah but only because they tell us wrong.

No, because you comprehend wrong.

Well they shouldn’t tell us stuff that’s confusing and stuff like that.

They don’t so much confuse as they mislead consumers.

What? Why would they do that?

As I said, corporations hire researchers to conduct studies then manipulate their findings in order to produce results to support their product.

That doesn’t sound right…

No, it doesn’t, does it?

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Miss Leed Pablick

Photography by Doctor Fein Dings

 

 

Time Management. What a brilliant ability if you have it. Used properly it can lead to a person’s climbing ladders of respect, competency and the big one, success.

Conversely, poor time management can piss off a lot of people.

Generally speaking I possess adequate time management skills; which is to say, being late for an appointment, or even falling behind on my own clock, causes a great deal of anxiety.

Conversely, some people possess inadequate time management skills; what’s worse, the majority of these people aren’t bothered by their own tardiness. Often they don’t even seem to be put out by the fact that their lateness might be contributing to another’s lateness and that other person’s lateness might be perceived by them to be a significant thing which…

I’m way off track.

The point is that I detest – nay – I despise being late. I honestly cannot handle it. Even if the time of my appearance is not of great importance, if I end up being later than I intend to be, I am reduced to a trembling ball of stress. I don’t mind being early though, so much of the time, to avoid committing this utmost personal transgression, I afford myself a good half hour buffer which…

Shit. Off track again.

The point is that I have fallen into a gay little routine of posting my piece of weekly insight, not unlike the way I’m happily posting this very piece of scintillating perspicacity, every Wednesday. Sometimes I go a little bit nuts with excesses of scintillation and so forth, resulting in more than just a Wednesday post, but do be assured, there is and will always be, a Wednesday post.

Therefore, last week when I found myself stranded on an elongated New Year’s Eve getaway, with Wednesday approaching and my impending post comprising but a few scant lines about a topic with which I very much wished I was more familiar, and me over an hour’s travel from my beloved QWERTY board, I began to panic. I knew that what I had already written was largely bollocks and knew furthermore that even if I did manage to get home by Wednesday, it was going to be a push to squeeze out the required article.

Suffice to say, I take this crap pretty seriously.

With an effort I made it home by midday Wednesday. After quickly tending to the desolate wasteland that, on account of several weeks of unabated heat, had become my property, I sat at my computer and flicked the switch that makes shit happen in my head.

Yeah. To my surprise shit happened pretty readily: in a little over half an hour, including the time it took to delete the existing material, I had churned out a draft of over 500 words.

I was lucky that week. Well, I’m going away again this week and to avoid elevated stress levels this time, I’m going to ensure that this Wednesday’s post is…

Early.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Thar D Lad

Photography by Celia P Dint

The way we’re going, do we really think WWIII is that far away?

First of many recent global tumults was the commencement of this seemingly endless war in Iraq; sometime after that there was the prolonged skirmish in Afghanistan; some years later we saw the start of massive unrest in Syria; a little later on Russia kicked up a hell of a stink regarding possession of Ukraine or Crimea or something like that – firing off missiles, shooting down planes etc – but the big one, and in my opinion the most insanely volatile one, is North Korea.

In a few words, Kim Jong Un. The man was granted an inordinate amount of power as a virtual teenager after being selected for the position of National Dictator ahead of his elder brother because apparently the other sibling ‘wasn’t cruel enough’. That’s worrying in itself. More worrying though, is the fact that although North Korea occupies a chunk of land smaller than the South Island of New Zealand, it is the world’s fourth greatest military power.

Did you get that? That’s the world’s fourth greatest military power – to protect themselves against what exactly? The other thing about that, they also have China on side, meaning that if North Korea felt like dropping an A-Bomb on Washington DC, there’s little the US could feasibly do in retaliation; although after hearing Barack ooze his well rehearsed propaganda all over our TV screens one would be forgiven for thinking that all 50 United States of America are utterly untouchable…

It began with a movie. A satirical comedy based around North Korea; based around Kim Jong Un. Of course there were complaints. There are always complaints. It’s when the main complainant is a world renowned hothead, a famously rotund control-freak overflowing with petulant pugnacity, that it might be prudent to take a breath, cool off, and perhaps try a little compromise.

Huh, compromise. The problem is that when it comes to backing out of a scrap or in fact yielding in any capacity at all, President Obama is really no better.

There it is – the makings of our third World War. Another way to go about it, as we saw a while back from Australia’s Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, is to start threatening and handing out ridiculous ultimatums to Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, for being suspected of shooting down that Malaysian Airliner – the one after the one that went missing and has yet to be discovered. In principal this kind of tough talking makes a lot of sense, but you just know that that vodka swilling commie doesn’t give a damn about anyone else and is probably quite confident that should it come to it, Russia could trounce Australia in a fight anyway.

Let’s look at it objectively: we have one psychotic Korean dictator; one equally pugilistic republican US President; one astonishingly svelte Russian Prime Minister; one irate Australian piss-ant and one major problem. Our world leaders appear so taken by arrogance that they no longer understand the concept of humility; respect.

I reckon North Korea ought to release a satirical comedy based around the events of 9-11 and see what the US reckon.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Pug Nay Chess

Photography by W W Tree