November Rain and Hovercraft Reminiscences

Hi Orage and others (vie email), thanks for your comments as regards hovercraft routes. Gibraltar to Tangier? could be a little rough, that one!

Here in the UK there used to be a Hover ferry running between Pegwell Bay (Just outside Ramsgate on the Southeast Kent coast) and Calais, France. Big buggers they were, with four fans or propellers - one at each corner. The could carry cars, coaches and the like. I went on one as part of a school trip to Belgium, along with the coach we were traveling on - it was that sort of scale.

That was back in 1970 and the hovercraft was a SRN4 (SRN = Saunders-Roe Nautical 4). The old Isle of Wight passenger craft (when I went on one as a kid) were single fan driven SRN6s. It is interesting to note that the modern incarnation utilizes a pair of ducted fans as do the military versions.

The SRN4 cross-Chanel Hover ferries, though, were a sight to behold - the shear scale of the things! I traveled across to France on them on several occasions when I lived in Ramsgate and later Broadstairs. Yes they were quick - but they sure weren't for the faint of heart! On a calm day they were amazingly quick and equally smooth. Provide a change of tide, a little wind and a bit of a swell and... Let's just say that if you like roller coasters and similar fairground thrills you'd love it! It is telling that a sick-bag was provided, tucked within easy reach in a pouch in the back of the seat in front. At times a crossing could be likened to being a little like sitting in with a particularly deluded would-be rally driver on a switchback dirt track - and pissed. The thing would be surging along, then suddenly come to a near dead stop before then surging ahead with prodigious acceleration - pressing the passenger back in his or her seat - before again treating the unwary and unintentional thrill-seeker to a nauseatingly rapid deceleration that threatened to throw one's stomach contents all over the chap (or chap-ess) in front. I kid you not; I have a good set of 'sea legs' and once owned (late 1970s) a two-seater deep-V hulled boat capable of a solid 80 MPH on aa calm day at sea (don't know - nor care what that is in KPH; I'm in that sort of belligerent mood) but I reached for that paper haven more than once on one trip. Actually, that recollection brings to mind a good analogy - it was like being in a powerboat... with brakes!

By the way – it is absolutely peeing down here in London; currently at Highbury Corner in Weatherspoons pub (The White Swan – sounds picturesque, but isn't) where there is a beer festival ongoing (up until this coming weekend)and which had resigned myself to missing. hope to be getting on with a little writing shortly and have just bought a new tele' in a moment of madness.

Sorry to hear that some of you are having problems reading the Blushes reader's letters scans I recently posted. It is possible (likely even) that I over-did the resizing process I put them through in order to save web hosting space and upload time. Let me know if the problems are insurmountable and I'll repost as necessary - Ta!

Hovering Home and More spanking Letters from Blushes

Sorry to have been away for so long. I had hoped to have made a couple of worthwhile full-sized postings from the Isle of Wight (IOW) (where, as you may have gathered I lingered somewhat longer than originally intended). But free WiFi access proved as rare as hen's teeth, and to cap it all the netbook developed a fault whereby the screen turned purple, making critical appraisal of images impossible even if it was still possible to write to some degree (a bit of a strain on the old 'peepers' though!). I have just this minute arrived back in 'The Smoke' (London) via an eclectic mix of transportation. Eclectic? you may ask – well, for example, how many out there have ever seen one of these things in the flesh? (see photo). Yes it is a hovercraft and I doubt there are many hovercraft routes still active in the world – this one runs between Ryde on the northeast end of the IOW and Southsea on the UK mainland south coast (just outside Portsmouth, where HMS Victory lives).

Quite a few have emailed me while I have been away to say how much they have enjoyed the Blushes letters posts sent in by Allan. I find them great for triggering off new ideas when things are getting stale on the writing front. And at times such as these – during which I have had little free time available, due to a mixture of traveling, writing and assorted domestic conflicts (the majority of which revolve around the time I spend writing – the rest around the time spent pubbing) – they provide a good source of content, taking the strain off yours truly. So here are a couple more to be getting on with (click to enlarge / view). See you'all later... Garth.

Thumblogger Problems - Continued

Yes, as you may have noticed; no sooner did post a report that I'd fixed the pop-up problem (only this morning) then it recurred! I removed another Thumblogger blog from my blog link list earlier this afternoon and for a while the problem ceased... then it started up yet again!!! Arrrgh!!!! This is waisting so much time! I have now removed all links to Thumblogger hosted sites - sod 'em!!! I don't know what these Thumblogger types are up to and whether it is the fault of the individual blog authors or the Thumblogger host but from now on they can go without any traffic coming from my site - I for one will not be hosting links to any of their blogs in future. Actually, I was looking back through my blog archive a little earlier and realized I have run into this problem once before, when I posted up a link to Ladywriter on Sensualwriter (I think it was) again hosted by Thumblogger. The weird thing is that some of the links I have had to delete have been in situ on my blog link list for quite some time without problems.

Annoying, but Fixed!

As you know, an error message demanding a password has recently and annoyingly been popping up stating something to do with hot-linking to: www.wastedblogs.com at hotlinking images (including favicon.ico) from thumblogger.com

For the technically minded among you: I looked through the HTML code and could find absolutely no reference to wastedblog.com. I then searched the source code to all references to thumblogger.com and systematically removed all blogs links pointing to that server.

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The culprit or rather culprits (there were three!) turned out to be; schoolgirlspankingstories.thumblogger.com, schoolgirlspankingstories.thumblogger.com, lesbiantoons.thumblogger.com. I would like to suggest that if they want to play that particular game I would urge you to vote with your feet and boycott visiting these sites! I have never knowingly hot-linked to anyone else’s material in my life - however, it does seem possibly more to do with thumblogger itself than anything else.

On a more positive note: It did give me the opportunity to catch one or two broken links and the blogs - Tickle My Bum and Real tears have both been removed as it seems they have closed down.

I am still on the Isle of Wight but will be returning sometime today, so you should get a more interesting posting tomorrow or Friday, all being well.

Popping-Up Pain

In response to 'Orage' and the many others who have contacted me by email to flag-up the problems that have been occurring while I have been away. Many thanks, chaps. I am aware of the problem but only became so on Saturday, when I last had the opportunity to get on the Internet. I am still on the isle of Wight and will be so for a couple more days due to unforeseen circumstances (Translation: the sun has come out!) The pop-up appearing on this blog is a real pain, isn't it? This is not the first time this as happened and it is beyond me while anyone running a blog should put in place such a measure when surely all the listing of their site in my blog-roll is likely to do is increase their visitor frequency / business turnover (assuming some sort of commercial setup). As soon as I work out which link it refers to I will remove it - and from previous experience, that should fix the problem. This is a temporary post forced on me by this issue and will be removed / replaced as soon as I have dealt with the problem, which may have to wait for my return home due to the limited access to the Internet I have while on my travels. While I'm at it, my thanks go to Allen for providing the Blushes letters pages scans I have been featuring recently and my apologies for referring to him as Anon when in fact he is one of the few who does not employ the appellation of anonymous.

Blushes, Braces and Booze (And a Length of Pliant Malacca)

Boy, did or I have a skin-full yesterday: Green King Abbot Special Reserve no less (6.7% alcohol by volume, wowza!!!). It was not all oblivion though; I did get another chapter of the new book finished. I've just got to read through it and make one or two corrections are no longer to send off to my illustrator chum in the States to see what he thinks of it and whether or not it triggers off in him any ideas as regards art work. It's just a little something that involves the enforced wearing of leg braces, something encouraged by various devious means, partly psychological partly physical, the psychological domination of a young girl by her implacably strict governess, the application of a swishy Malacca cane across defenselessly-bared chubby teenage buttocks and plump adolescent curves squeezed into a charmingly-sweet one-piece sailor-suit-styled acetate sleep suit and experiencing for the first time the intimate slickness of a night spent encased by the waterproofed final lining of the humiliating garment’s lower section. Of course it goes without saying that there are shutters on the windows and padlocks, steel bars and security devices in profusion - one can't be too cautious in this day and age of rising burglary rates.

Now, as I said last time, I'm off to the Isle of Wight in a couple of days time and may not have Internet access so I thought I'd use this opportunity to paste up another of those letters page from Bushes scans that were kindly sent me some time ago (click to enlarge) and also a bit of art work that I came across in my searches and that I found inspired me.

Sorry, but I have been too busy of late to do much with the blog. I'm still hard at work refining the new volume or volumes (I'm still undecided) aiming to get them out by Christmas (can we still say that? No? It offends who? Oh! Those - we mustn't offend those! OK - The Mid-Winter Festival then). I am off to the Isle of Wight for a week this coming Sunday and although I'll be taking my computer I doubt I'll get much done, judging from my trip last year, so that's another week gone! The illustrator I have been working with has come up with yet another nice illustration, but I can't say much about that at the moment for fear of giving too much away of the plot (for what there is of it at the moment).

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I think that come Chris... I mean The Mid-Winter Festival... Yes, come the The Mid-Winter Festival anything not finished will have to remain that way as I am going to have to focus my energies on earning a decent crust. I am examining the idea of setting myself up in business as a personal trainer. I have a master's degree (M.Sc) in human nutrition from King's College, London and practically live in the gym (when not in the pub) and have done for more years than I care to think about. These days, for health and safety (and insurance) purposes one needs certain physical education qualifications but these can be acquired through a couple of short courses run by the YMCA among others
and in addition there is a specialised course to allow one to work with 'older people' (whatever they are - it's all relative, isn't it?) which I intend to undertake. That - along with nutritional advice and focus on improving body composition rather than on weight-loss per se - will be my USP (Unique Selling Point) in what is quite a competitive market. Basically my idea is to work with folk of around my own age or older, the advantage being that they can see what is possible and that they are not going to be asked to do anything that someone of their own vintage is not clearly capable of. In addition, having suffered most pitfalls and injuries over the years and come up against one or two age related limitations, I have an understanding of where the boundary lines exist and a good knowledge of working around those limitations. I'm sure you get the idea. So although I intend to make sure the illustrated version gets completed, any written material that doesn't make it in will just have to remain in limbo. One possibility I have been thinking about is handing over any incomplete work along with an outline sketch of the story direction I envisage to someone else to finish off - but we will just have to see how it goes for the time being.

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Now, I for one was enjoying our anonymous contributor's running tale appearing in the comments section and it seems a shame that he is now going to be posting it elsewhere (the link you can find in the comments under my last posting) especially as he is no longer posting as anon. That was the only problem I had with it - too many folk all using the moniker 'anon' - it was all getting terribly confusing. Partly it was my fault: I had intended to gather together all the separate parts of 'Anon's' Natalie reform school tale up to that point and publish them as a single post in the main section for ease of reading but never got around to it. I probably still will in some spare moment at some point. Now, as for today, I thought I'd put up a couple more scans of those old letters pages from Blushes et al that inspired me so much in the early days - these kindly supplied by an anon contributor. (I have lost the original email somehow - but thanks... and have you got any more? What a cheeky git, you're probably thinking!). Just click to enlarge and read. There are plenty more - including some I have scanned myself from my own magazine collection - scattered throughout the blog archive, try clicking on the relevant tags or use the archive search facility over on the right situated near the top of the sidebar. The pic I just came upon and just like - and it seems to fit in somehow with the sentiment.