Just a quick update today as I am away from home for a couple of days. A big 'Hi!' to 'Wringer', 'Madmonkey' and others who have left comments or emailed me - I'll be getting around to dealing with comments tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I get back. I have had my head down slaving over a hot computer these last few days - practically non-stop and practically to the exclusion of all else. But it's been worth it. The book is finished!!! All bar the shouting (whatever that means - I've never been too sure). All that are left are little details such as getting the page numbering right (that part got all messed up when I did a little editing on holiday using OpenOfice 2 on my netbook) and that sort of thing - a bit of fiddling about, basically. Even the chapters are numbered - all 38 of 'em!! - and the problem with the front cover has been corrected. There is one chapter I want to read through again and a couple of pages or so that I hacked out but that I may now re-include (if I can make it work) now that I have a little time to spare, mostly because the piece is highly descriptive and I am sort of proud of it. I may also put together a little something to make the back cover more interesting along with the usual blurb type of thing - mostly because I enjoy the artwork side of it so much.I could do with a little help with the final proofreading - there are over 400 pages in the thing - so if there is anyone out there willing to take on 100 pages or so, please step forward now. I'll send the whole thing out to each as a word file and with a page range to proofread / edit. The first five or six folks to email me perhaps? I don't feel I can impose on those that I have already roped in for the initial proofreading of the individual chapters, although I will send PDF versions out to all those concerned for their opinions of the finished (but probably still imperfect) product once the formating has been finalized and I have converted the files.
Changing the subject: I have now added a brand new section to my blog list specifically to house links to blogs having a strong mind-control / hypnosis content as pertaining to the world of D/S, domination and corporal punishment etc. This new section may be found between the French Language blogs and the Thumblogger blogs in the right hand sidebar - explore and enjoy. I have also added to the main blog list a family of blogs I have just stumbled across; namely 'The Pink Report', 'The Pink Papers' and 'The Pink Reviews' (all listed under 'P' for Pink rather than under 'T'). Click blog titles here to visit or check out my list in the sidebar. Despite the 'Pink' nomenclature none of these have anything to do with the Gay scene (not boy-on-boy anyway) but very much to do with the gentle art of spanking - well worth checking out!
Now, those of you that have read INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 may remember the description of the heroine's father's funeral and the streets and roads the procession passes through. If so, do you recognize anything about the two photos above? Well guess what; it was based on the area of London I grew up in - Queen's Park - and this is what it looked like (the two pics above). Anything like the imagery you had in your mind at all? I'd love to know! Bye for now!!
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6 comments:
I'm coming out from behind the shadows to give a big thanks to you, Garth, for the shout out and the added links.
Very much appreciated, kind Sir.
xx,
Pink
Could you please tell us the whereabouts of the father's funeral in the book?
I'm not asking for chapter and verse but roughly where it can be found since I've no time these days to read the book again.
No problem 'Pink'. It was the least I could do considering you had listed me on your blog. I spotted visitors coming from your direction, that's how I found you.
Now, Orage: To answer your query; it was in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1, chapter 2, page 38, in a section entitled 'A Funeral: In Finality a New Beginning?'. I guess that is chapter and verse, though. I had to look it up myself; it had been so long ago. But volumes 1 and 2 had a contents page which rendered it a simple task. I did away with the contents page and also the glossary in writing volume 3 - the later because it is so easy nowadays to look up an unfamiliar word or phrase on the internet (it also reduces the page number which Lulu uses to calculate their charges).
Sorry, Garth, I should have read again the contents page before asking, it was so easy to find!
It absolutely fits the imagery I had in my mind, grimy bricks included.
Now I'm glad you put the second photo since I had been rather baffled when reading "At each turn a pair of spired roofs identified the corner houses"
Hi Orage - and all those others out there! Grimy brickwork? Well, where I come from and back in the day this estate was considered 'quite nice housing'. In hindsight I should have probably said 'pyramidal spires' or something like that.'
The other side of the Harrow Road (the local high street) and across the ha'penny steps (an old green-painted close-sided iron footbridge that invariably smelled of piss) on the far side of the Grand Union Canal was the local swimming baths and Middle Row with its bus garage and dire multi-story grey fronted houses,
This was like a dark and frankly scary canyon on all but the sunniest days of mid-June - and then only for an hour or so either side of noon. That street marked the boarder of that area known as Notting Hill. Now, that was grim; talk about grimy brickwork! We kids only ventured over there only to go swimming with the school or to visit a little sweetshop that had stuff that others on our side of the canal didn't, such as 'clickers' and what nowadays would be called 'trade cards'. The latter were packets of cards packed with a stick or two of chewing gum and featured the American Civil War (these packs also came with facsimiles of either union or federal currency I seem to remember). It was some sort of anniversary of the start or end (the latter, I think) of the civil war, which dates my recollection somewhat.
Now I bet you yanks out there especially (and a good few Brits I'd wager) will have an image of Notting Hill based on the film of the same name. No! it was nothing like that then - it was a foul rat-infested pile and dangerous to visit if you didn't know what you were doing.
Later on when a lot of the dingier housing in my neighborhood was being demolished a friend and I, in the school holidays, would collect old cloths and shoes and stuff left behind by the old tenants and take it to the local 'rag and bone man' - a yard based over the canal - the proceeds so generated would be dissipated in the Portabello Road (of the famed antique market) in the ;pie and mash' restaurant (which I believe still exists to this day, despite the efforts of 'gentrification' - correct me if I;m wrong you USA types).
Actually I think such shots are interesting as they show London's 'ripped backside' to quote good old Iggy , the bit the tourists don't see. Yes Notting HIll, especial at the Holland Park of things, is an exemplar, but the older shabby bits still remain. My father's side of the family originated in SE 17, Bermondsey - guess what, he could box.. rather well! That area in is childhood was populated almost exclusively by dockers and railway men - as the world over, such types fight. Now you would not recognize it - it is all bankers and 'young professionals' (whatever they are), all those old streets that had withstood Hitler's V2 weapon - and my dad's mum's house lost its roof through a V2 coming down a couple of streets away, it had quite a wallop - succumbed to the developer's bulldozer back in the late seventies or early eighties. My granny on his side used to brag that none of her children had gone without shoes - kind of says it all, that!
Anyway some of the conditions I can remember still exist a spitting distance from where I am sitting today, in a pub in Woodgreen. Listening to 'Boys and Girls' by Blur incidentally. I think I might pop out later and take a few shots of the arse end of this shit hole. I am off to Hampstead then, and a different outlook entirely.
Well, Garth, such an interesting historical survey of your former whereabouts!
I'm most grateful for these souvenirs, who else could have described the place so accurately and with such heatfelt words?
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