Lego, Old Toys, and Serious Nostalgia

Today (actually, the day before yesterday now), I spent two hours moving Happyland figures over my desk and building Lego walls around them for my stop-motion thingummywhatsit that's going to be in the music video I'm making for my Media Studies coursework. It was more fun than I thought it would be as my teacher and some people who’d done it before said it was a chore. So I surprised myself at how my inner child found moving yukky chemical-smelling plastic toys half a centimetre after every picture, very thrilling indeed.

See this grin?? 

Those are the colours of happiness, nostalgia, and that freaky smell of new plastic.

Nobody would lend me any Lego though, and weirdly, my family never actually ever had any 'proper' lego, just the huge Duplo stuff. So I had to buy some proper Lego of my own (who knew it was so expensive?) and make up a story about my actually-existing-but-not-yet-anywhere-near-four-year-old-brother's fourth birthday coming up next month for the nice checkout guy who commented on my age and my obvious wide-eyed childish excitement (I'm guessing I was smiling too much?) at finding myself in a toyshop . . .

Anyway, yes. Lego is awesome, and I'm totally going to build houses and ducks and have mummy invasions (two mummies holding scorpions are the only people I have) to relieve college/life stress.

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="535" caption=""My Scorpion will kill you even though you're already dead! Muahahahaha!!""][/caption]

*smiles happily*

Anyway, the awesome thing is, I actually have lots to talk about for once! Rediscovering Lego has made me remember all my favourite old toys from when I was a kid. I still have a few, and some I think must be in the loft somewhere, but I'm very saddened now that I sold so many. Ebay's helping me find old favourites I've lost though. My bank account doesn't like toys, though, the boring old fart.

So this is going to be my List of Most Awesome Toys from my Childhood.

First up is my Polly Pockets:



I got the wedding set (big purple heart) for my fourth birthday, I remember opening it and everything. It's always been one of my favourite toys, and though I don't have as many of the pieces as I used to (I was always really careful about bits, but we moved house a lot), it still looks new and plays the sounds and everything. xD The other one was one my dad bought for me when I was about eleven from a toy fair – I was a bit too old to play with it, so it’s in much better condition and the bits aren’t so . . . obviously nineties, if you know what I mean.

Second is the Teeny Weenie Families Grand Hotel:

Apparently this series of toys are quite rare now, and I'm gutted to say I used to have many more. There was a teapot cafe (I still have the characters and some of bits for it though, so it might be in the loft), a sewing machine tailors shop, a little tiny flower shop, and all sorts. They were like Polly Pockets but so much more awesome and cuter. The furniture and accessories, though . . . geez, some of them were so tiny it's hard to believe they could be made by machines and that the dreaded HealthAndSafetyDemons actually allowed them to be made for four year olds. Anyway, it's an adorable set, and I hope my (future, maybe) daughter might like them as much as I did. I’m currently stalking eBay for the other sets. :3

Third is the Pound Puppy Diner:



I had a huge Pound Puppy addiction when I was a kid. I can still hear the TV adverts in my head, word for word. I pined for the Pound Puppy Play Van for a long, long time, and was absolutely thrilled when I got it for Christmas when I was five/six. If I still had the Play Van, it would have the No.1 spot, purely because it's so awesome. It had a little Pound car and everything. However, I sold it to one of my brother’s friend’s little sister, who I reallyreallyreally hope looked after it.

The only Pound Puppy toy I still have is a miniature diner set (no original bits, though). The bits in the picture come from a later version of the Pound Puppies toys, when the dogs and cats stopped being steamrolled flat and gained normal animal shapes. The reason I kept these ones was because they were my favourites and it was these guys that I wrote my first 'proper' story about, when I was six. I don't have the story anymore, sadly, but can still remember it well as it was a game I used to play over and over again. I can still remember all the characters' names: (in order, left to right) Charlie, Maddy, Gregory, Bright-Eyes, Angel and Shiloh. (I was apparently much better at thinking of names when I was younger, too . . .)

Also, the last one, because I can’t find all of my Micro-Machines, here’s a picture of my awesomely pretty marbles. Don’t they just make you feel like a seven year old again?



. . . if you’re thinking, ‘No, they make me think you’re a seriously weird eighteen-year-old,’ then you need to go spend some time with your inner child . . . now.

Anyhoo. So yeah, if anyone ever reads this, and actually cares about my rants or whatever, then I’d really love it if you commented and told me what your favourite childhood toys were. Nostalgia is good to share, don’t you think?

Dragonflies

She made paper birds on the porch
and once she’d given them eyes to see,
she shut them away in soap boxes
and stacked them beneath the steps
like old toys growing dusty in the attic.

Sometimes she’d use tissue instead,
and sometimes those birds tore their wings
and managed to fly up and away, taken
by wind and clouds with no love for paper,
or they’d catch the horizon and swoop.

On sunny days, the sand would shine
and she’d make parchment horses
to gallop the distance home again, scattering
paper crumbs between the seashells
and breaking their legs in the fall.

Sandals left out in the rain fall apart
as those birds watch the dune grasses grow
longer through their breathing holes.
They witness the dragonflies dying
when it rains, sinking with origami flowers.

It’s the paper-cut that makes her stop
– the slice of blood that makes her consider
Science at work – and wonder if she is God
to the boxed birds, and to the dragonflies
she burns, wing-tips first.

Rose Heads

Bring me the rose heads
from last summer and let me feel the fibres
of their decay beneath my fingers;
brown confetti floats down and sits
on the surface of a puddle.

My thumb presses a thorn, skeleton
to skeleton, and here’s to flat champagne
and the petals you picked and scattered
like ashes in the flowerbeds — you still think
they follow the sun?

I liked the red roses best; an old cliché.
They grow like nettles between rocks, now,
and their heads float, decapitated as buds,
face-down

in the pond.
Where I left you
wanting an answer I couldn’t find
when it mattered, there grows
a daisy, breaking all the rules,
and I think I’ll let it grow.

 

/awfulpieceofdrivelyesIknow

The Red Bicycle

When I was six, I unwrapped a bicycle
as red as the goo in a Jammy Dodger.
My feet were unwilling to pedal, still connected
to the ground like webs between windows
in the wet. The day was grey,
and the world still
small. You never taught me about gravity;
that going down
-hill always means lonely circles.

The treads lost their definitions at the weekends
and the bare screws pock-marked rust
between the years. Spiders wrote of
old words and choruses in their webs,
wise words I couldn’t read.

Later you saw me racing like a child
twice my age, fearless and perhaps a little
fictional? Sometimes when the clouds rained
reality in grey, you told me about the Amazons
and their feather-tail boats.

The bicycle, growing smaller, kept collecting
spiders between its webbed spokes,
spinning through years faster than a storm
through Neverland. You’d forget
my ABCs, paint the letters back into your greyscale,
and like bad songs on the radio,
blame it all on how ignorance breeds
among the young and stupid.

Your face fell into photographs
and late birthday cards,
rather than days with capital letters.

I remember a tower made of satellite dishes,
watching with a swollen smile amid blink
-ing lights, red and green, through the car windows,
and I remember you said you’d race me
one day in the past, long before
I knew how big the skies could be,
and when it rained and rained and rained.

(Revised: 25/01/11)

Cast List - Sins of Jade House

I haven’t written a blog post in almost a month . . . O.o
I can give excuses: coursework, homework, life, Christmas, but heh, they’re just words and don’t really mean much from the other side of my screen, so I’ll just write something and make the snow look useful or something.
I was reading through a friend's blog (all my friends seem to have blogs, it’s cool) and saw she’d done a cast list for her characters, and thought that it was such an awesome idea, that I thought I’d steal it and do one of my own. (Sorry!)
I thought about this for a very long time, because I have lots of stories and lots of ideas of who would play my characters if they were a film or something. But my newest story is hardest, because the characters are all new, except for my main character, Will, and I have had less time to think about it all. So three hours of Googling later, here I am:
William Chance
Will is my main character and was hardest to cast because I’ve never seen anyone that looks completely how I imagine him, and the ‘completeness’ is important because he’s my main character. BUT I found some pictures that work with my imagination and fit him, though the actors themselves may not suit him or look like him in other pictures/films, etc  . . . *sigh*
Ryan Gosling . . . yeah, he looks kind of like (younger) Will in this picture, but not in others, except he’s not got coppery-brown hair, but ehhhhh, I’m a perfectionist. There’s also Paul Bettany, who normally doesn’t look like Will at all, but does in this picture, so I’m going with that.
I do have some drawings I’ve done of (older) Will, but I’m too much of a wimp to post them, and I have issues with all of them.
Issues already, how fun. Moving on . . .
                
Roderick Chance
Will’s brother (younger) isn’t as hard – Andrew Buchan, for sure. He’s got the nice-guy look but can play someone a bit more complicated and mixed up, as well as do the whole banter/argument shebang. Needs to be red-haired though.
Older Roderick is harder, because I figure he’d have a kind of weathered/serious look to him that Buchan doesn’t – my possible idea was Damien Lewis as he’s got all that, plus the gingerness. xD













Isabella Chance
Not an actress, but some picture I found from a bridal magazine. However, this is exactly how I imagine (younger) Isabella to look like. She is beautiful and her hair is amazing, and she’s got the whole sensitive-with-hidden-spirit kind of look, which is great, if that even makes any sense.

Annalie

She’s the hardest, because I still haven’t found someone who looks like her, how I imagine her. However, I saw the BBC’s new Nativity adaption before Christmas, and Tatiana Maslany grew on me, mainly because of her hair. Her voice is all wrong though and Annalie is taller and has a thinner face, but I’ll compromise.

Lady Francesca

After seeing Romola Garai in Emma, it’s without a doubt that I think she’d be awesome playing Lady Francesca. She looks like a lady, can act and speak like one, and carry great emotion. Can just imagine her throwing a riding hat at Will and telling him he’s a pig-headed clown.

Uncle Anton
I spent absolutely forever trying to find a match for Anton, who is currently my favourite character, and thus, has to be perfectly cast. I scoured IMDB for all the cast lists of films where I could remember there being an old man or something in them, and eventually, found Jim Broadbent from the Chronicles of Narnia, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, (though finding out his name was difficult) and he is PE RFECT. :)

Just look at the expression and the hair and the costume and the glasses! Geeese, I should just steal Digory Kirke, add some madness, alcohol, bad eyesight and hearing, and have done with it.

Lord Chance, Will’s Father (doesn’t have a fixed name yet)

He absolutely has to be Michael Caine, because he’s awesome and hardcore and everything. Seen Harry Brown? Yup, terrifying, right? Michael Caine is one of Britain’s very best actors (in my opinion) and could play Will’s father easily. He’s got the voice, the seriousness, the fierceness, the look, the everything.

Michael Garrett

Annalie’s husband, and my main bad guy for part one, Garrett has to be played by Richard Armitage. He’s one of my all-time favourite actors and can do both the merciless terrifying-ness at the same time as deep sensitivity, and certainly makes an awesome complex character with little to lose, or maybe I just love Spooks wayyyyy too much. xD

Anyway, he’s perfect, without a doubt.

Tomas
Tomas is a minor character, so I wasn’t originally going to put him on here, but I have two actors for him. The first is Matthew McFayden as the younger Tomas and Martin Freeman for the older Tomas. Both of them look, I think, surprisingly similar . . . kind of anyway, and Martin Freeman’s voice is just how I imagine Tomas’, but a bit more whiney. xD
      






The next few are mainly from the second/original story which I haven’t written yet except for a couple really bad and very different drafts two years ago, but I am in the process of planning so it makes sense with the first. The first is:
Adam Chance
Will’s son would definitely be played by Barney Clark if he was still as young as he was in Oliver Twist, but *sigh* this is all make-believe so a little time travel won’t harm me. He’s cute and looks perfect, has the right voice and is the right age (or was), and I can’t imagine Adam any other way. :)
      

Derek Garrett

Hugh Dancy is almost perfect for Derek, though I think that maybe he looks a little too old. I’ve never seen him in anything so I can’t really comment on acting skills or comparisons to character or anything, but he looks how I imagine Derek, so all’s good. :)

Jesse

Jesse is Adam’s accidental gypsy friend, and was very hard to cast as I have a very good picture of what he looks like in my head, and I couldn’t find anyone who really looks like him. He’s supposed to be a bit older than Adam, maybe twelve or thirteen, and more mischievous-looking than quiet. William Miller was the closest I could find, but heh, not really happy.

Hettie Cairns

This is one of those pictures that doesn’t look how the person normally looks in other stuff. But ah well. Amber Heard, as she is here, works for Hettie, but I guess that’s another spell of time travel owed here. xD She and Hugh Dancy would be a cute couple, though.

And, I know it’s not a character, but it’s one of the most important paces in my novel, so I feel I should include it. This is how I imagine Jade House, just with a much larger garden, near a cliff and behind a coastal road:

Woot, all done! Now I really must do less procrastinating and actually do some work . . . *sigh*

Purpleness!!

The penultimate day of NaNoWriMo dawns bright and early with my alarm clock bleeping its head off at 6am. My arm promptly keeps on snoozing it until I become aware it is semi-daylight and I've missed my bus to college by fifteen minutes. Oops. On the other side, I feel rubbish and have been ill all weekend, and I only have one lesson, so I make a quick guiltless phone call to my college attendance monitor and then promptly go back to bed. Having not slept much that night, I sleep right through until 2pm-ish and feel extremely lazy and unproductive.

Knowing I have a media essay to write today, too, I get started on Nano. Sadly, there is nobody around to war with me; my regional chatroom has three people in it, none of whom say anything in the fifteen minutes I wait for some kind of answer to my feeble 'hi'. Facebook also proves rubbish in provinding me with a warring partner, so I decide to go it alone. Jamming headphones into my ears I squeak up the volume of James Blunt and The Script's new albums (my novel's writing mix) and attack my novel's key scene (the midway point!!).



In this scene, my MC, Will, finishes his fight with his brother by finding his 'true love's grave in the field where they are fighting, and in a mad panic, time-travels back to her time. The following involves a near suicide, lots of running, snow in July, two revelations, a enormous paradox and a whiskey in a tavern (not in that order). I must say, it was all terrifically fun to write and now, I leave Will at 50k, lying in his sister's bed (nothing vulgar) with more bruises than bones, his brother actually being nice to him for once while he's interrogated by his irate sister for time travelling after he faked destroying the watch that allows him to do so.

Geeee, I want to keep writing now . . .

However, back on track. Finishing a day early has been wonderful, especially considering the amount of stress this has all been this year. My coursework is in serious neglect . . . O.o I highly recommend the experience to anyone who struggles with first drafts (you write a hell of a lot of rubbish, but hey, it's out there and written) and longs to write that novel. The breaking down of your inner editor is hard, but satisfying.

I have 50k with which to find the first half of my story in (oh believe me, editing will be brutal this December: most of it shall not live to see draft 2) and I hope to continue to the end through December and January. This story, I hope, will be much easier to write and redraft than my other NaNo Novel, Hamartia . . . which, despite being my baby, is an utter pain to edit and plan. >.>

As a last note, though, congrats to all those Nano winners out there, great dedication, and best of luck to those who have yet to go green/purple, I'll be rooting for you tomorrow! However, as I write this, I am actually meant to be word warring with a friend who, by the end of this war, will also be a purpleite . . . time to get typing. Toodles, people! (or just Kanen xD)

"You cannot map a desert, for it is breathing."

A travelling man with straw hair gave me a map
of the desert and later turned out to be a hallucination.
the map contained my feet, bare and blistered,
as spots in sector A7, though I felt a rock nearby
would do better in blue than dried-out green.

I ask the map for names, though it cannot trace her
contours or find the water she cups in both hands,
and it tells me she is a desert with the syllables
of her name spoken with every step gravity rejects.

Sometimes the night tells me I’m going west
and other times it tells me the horizon awoke
in the east or south-by-north, lost in its own compass
because they forgot to turn the highway lights on.

In the daytime, the sky moulds to her curves, shaping
a horizon from twisted rhymes and broken poetry.
Planes (like pilgrims) find their wings clipped,
feathers dropped into watercolour tattoos
for artistic licensing, and nothing more.

Somewhere in the weedy fictions that populate
my mind, I see her lying belly-up, breathing
like the sun will melt her skin and make her as sand,
the sort that sweeps between the sable doily skies
and hugs a new landscape, turning it yellow.

I could tell you the nursery rhyme I first heard
from her lips; of a travelling man who never knew
her name, burning in the sand and passing on
a map that rewrites itself too slow and leads
me around in circles until flames follow my feet.

Weekly to-the-death Duels

My novel started with one, and I figure, it will end with one if I get to the ending. I'm currently just past the 23k mark, which is like wow because I've never been more than 1.5k ahead on Nano in previous years (and only or like two days before I got lazy), so now I'm waiting for my coursework to be set and my nice cushy buffer to disintegrate under the pressure. :S

But progress s going well. My MC, Will descovered time-travel a couple nights ago, has followed himself to the duel that started the story, thinking he's either completely wasted or been cursed by witchcraft, and is now sat in a London pub having a pint with a conspiracy theorist in 2006. His sister will kick his arse tomorrow, though, when she finds out he's still travelling, tut-tut. Getting excited though, lots of fun and explosions and stuff, not to mention a romance (O.o) to write.

. . . 50,000 words is seriously too short for a novel. I think I either pad too much or my characters like long-winded-ness.

So this is my day 10 update, I'll keep it short and sweet because I still haven't written anything today.

NaNoWriMo Kickoff Rant!

Woot, so yeah, I know this blog was intended for poetry and musings and stuff, but novelling is my better area, I feel. I've been debating what to do this year for weeks; the previous two years I've done Nano, I've worked on the same story, and now that story is at a point where it need's a serious going over rather than a slap-dash speed-writeup, it's off the cards for this year. I've also been working on a short story, but I intend that one only to be about 20/25k long, which still leaves me half a Nano. So I decided to throw in an old children's story to rewrite.

However, I have this character called Will, who I use in this wonderfully awesome idea called a Character Chatroom on the site www.teenagewriters.com and he's from a story I started in 2008 but never really did much with as I had too many different ideas for it and I wasn't able to research it properly. Buuuuut, I've been getting to know him through these chatrooms and now he's been coming up with his own background and character and all sorts (including a four-day argument with his brother in my head >.>) so, I thought, with some help, I could write his story instead of the children's rewrite . . . However, my novel of the last two years has also been getting back in my head and the characters begging me to write . . .

[Fully aware I sound insane right now]

So figuring this out's been hard, but I'm stuck on the short and Will's story now (though Will's story seems to have turned into a prequel to the actual story I vaguely started two years ago) and my other novel's being forced to shut up and sulk.

Ahem, soooooooooooooooo. Rant over, I'm so glad nobody reads this blog. :)