Bubbles on fire!

I sometimes have a candle on my desk or somewhere in the room, a scented one.  At the moment it’s mulled wine.  About 15 minutes ago Bubbles (cat #1) jumped up onto my desk, brushed passed the candle and set herself alight.  She stepped over my keyboard and I managed to pat her on the side once pretty hard and the flames went out, but the damage was done.  The room stinks of singed hair, Bubbles went sprinting out of the room not because of the flame, but because of me giving her a thump and then both myself and Grete making a lot of noise and ‘chasing’ type noises to check she was ok.

She was hiding upstairs, we dragged her out, brushed and combed her down, and she’s phsyically fine, although her pride is dented.  She’s got a really thick multi-layer coat and the flames have singed the outer long hairs and the very tips of the second layer, but never got anywhere near her skin.  We gave them both some tuna to help convince them they weren’t going to the vets (the normal result of ‘chase’ type noises).

Scary for a moment.

Back from roleplaying

-5 celsius in Mansfield and -3 celsius in Nottingham (western edge).  Pretty damn cold.  Mansfield still has a lot of snow on the ground and any ungritted roads are really dangerous – the road down to our friends’ isn’t owned by the council yet and was slick with compacted snow and ice.

Made it in one piece though.

Gonna be a cold night.

Five days adrift

Haven’t blogged anything for a few days, because Gradwell’s hosting hasn’t been very reliable among other reasons.  So here I am.  And I guess I don’t have much to say.  Not painted anything, not done much, oh I watched some CSI.

Quite a bit of CSI.  Two Miami episodes (penultimate and series finale), one Vegas (start of new season) and one New York (start of new season).  Turn away now if you don’t like spoilers.

Continue reading

David Gemmell Legend Award news

gemmellaward

Quick update about the David Gemmell Legend Award, there’s an article in the Guardian Online covering the award, you can read it here.

Here’s the article intro,

A group of fantasy authors have teamed up to launch a new award celebrating the genre and the bestselling author David Gemmell, who died in 2006.

The 18 authors on the steering group for the annual award, chaired by Stan Nicholls, author of the bestselling Orcs novels and administrated by Deborah J Miller, who has written the Last Clansman and Swarmthief series, hope the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy will help to redress the negative way in which fantasy is often viewed.

Don’t forget to visit the main site (http://gemmellaward.com/) and check out the long list, you have until the end of March to read and vote.

Squinting

Cats got me up at 6:00am today, fighting under the bed, so I’ve spent most of the day yawning and squinting.

And now I’m sharing.