A lot can happen in the world in a day…

• Tony Blair stands down and Gordon Brown takes over as prime minister.
• IBM launches the world’s fastest commercial supercomputer.
• Scientists from Bologna University claim to have discovered an impact crater left by the biggest space impact in modern times – the Tunguska event.

And at the same time – on a more personal level – there’s a lot going on:

• I’ve been discussing cover art for my forthcoming novel with Christopher Teague of Pendragon Press, and cover art for my forthcoming short story collection with Andrew Hook of Elastic Press.
• The software company I work for have given me a company car – a Volvo V50.
• And tonight, I managed to swim thirty lengths of the local pool in thirty minutes – a total of 750 metres in 1,800 seconds – proving to myself that I’m not as unfit as I feared.

There’s a lot of discussion in the SF blogging community at the moment concerning writing speed. How much should you aim to write per day? How many novels can you write in a year? Personally speaking, I’m happy if I can write one good sentence in an evening. Sometimes, one good word. I have to juggle the twin demands of a family and a day job – so writing any amount of words in an evening is an achievement. And if what I get down advances the story, then I’m satisfied.

I’ve just migrated this blog onto the new version of Blogger, and I lost a lot of the things I’d added. I’ve organised some of the links and retroactively applied labels to some of the old posts – but there’s still some work that needs doing. Please bear with me until I’ve got it all done.

I spent the last three days at a sales conference in Edinburgh. I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel. The window of my room looked out at the castle. There were skateboarders in the square below. The flight from Bristol took an hour or so. Above the clouds, the sun shone like a new silver coin. We passed over mountains dusted with snow, and lakes like slabs of brushed steel.

The first night we went to a restaurant off Princes Street. I spent the evening talking shop with colleagues from our Norweigian and North Amercian offices. Then we went back to the hotel bar until four in the morning.

The second night we had a black tie meal at a stately home near the Forth Bridge. There were some tiger heads mounted on the walls as trophies. I stroked one when the security guards weren’t looking. It was softer than I’d expected.

The flight back was rough. Lashing rain and gale force winds on takeoff. I sat next to the MD. He slept through the whole thing.

Every now and then, a news story comes along and restores your faith in your fellow humans. Take this one, for example: it’s the story of a guy in New York who leapt in front of a subway train to save a fellow passenger. Or this one, which tells how two New Yorkers caught a five year old child falling from a four storey fire escape.

There was a pond in the field up by the bypass, behind the school playing field. A small pond in a ploughed field, with a few trees, like an oasis. We were about ten years old. We were up there looking for somewhere to build a den. And we found a sheep. It had been dead for a long time. A mess of bones and straggly wool. I picked up its skull. It was yellow – lighter than I expected – and as I turned it, green liquid slopped out onto my trousers.

Waiting for a taxi after midnight last night, standing on a street corner in Clifton. The wind spins leaves down the empty street. The air smells of rain. I’ve got a song stuck in my head and I want to get home.

Saturday night in London. I’m on a train from Island Gardens to West India Quay. I’m with my brother. I’ve been helping him move house and now we’re on our way to a tapas bar to get something to eat. The lights of Canary Wharf shine through the rain. In the carriage there’s this young Chinese guy wearing a German army shirt. He’s scratching at a fresh tatoo on his forearm. Lightning flickers over the Thames.

Sunday afternoon, we’re walking with friends on Peckham Rye, kicking through piles of orange leaves. Jet planes whine overhead on approach to the airport. A green parakeet flits across the path.

Later, I’m driving home with my friend Mark. I can’t wait to get home, to see my girls. We’re passing through Chelsea as the sun sets, heading for the M4. On our left, the river’s choppy, like an inland sea and the traffic’s backed up from Hammersmith Flyover. It takes us four hours to get home.

If you want to be a writer, listen to Tom Waites. His songs are a masterclass in economy. Take these lines for example:

“Through the bars of a Cuban jail
bloody fingers on a purple knife
a flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass
I’m on the lawn with someone else’s wife*“

*Lyrics Copyright © 1998 Island Records Inc, all rights reserved.

I had to scrape frost off the car this morning. The sun was just coming up and it shone white through the autumn leaves. The air was so crisp and clear it rang like a bell.