Elin Gregory

I can’t NOT share this, because it’s just crazy good fun.

What do you get when you cover a 30ft obelisk in lard and make a load of sailors climb up it?

Apparently it’s an annual event.

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Filling a last minute gap in the schedule today with info and pics about the Isle of Man. I had a camping  holiday there when I was a kid. Never been so wet in all my life!

If you’ve ever wondered what a dimple rumpy is click on the picture to find out.

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Here we go again – Six Sentence Sunday! The usual thing – register with the site then on Sunday post just six sentences from a published work or WIP. Links on the site will allow you to go whizzing around the world reading other people’s sentences. It’s a lot of fun.

Here are mine – again I’m using my WIP “A Fierce Reaping” based on the 6th century AD poem Y Gododdin.  Introducing another character here who will become more important to Cynfal as time goes by:

The harper he had noticed earlier, crouched at Marro’s feet, was not a boy, as Cynfal had thought but a man grown, though the boniness of his wrists suggested that he was still young.  Dark hair swung forward to shadow his face, a close cropped beard shadowed his jaw, but the clear grey eyes, rimmed with black, were on Aneurin, watching for cues, and the thin lips moved, shaping the words silently. It was an austere face, with prominent but beautiful bones – the face of a fanatic, or a saint, or of a young man who had been desperately ill.
“Who’s that?” Cynfal whispered, nudging Aeddan.
Aeddan leaned and looked then made white eyes like a frightened horse. “That’s Gwion, Cynon’s young cousin – a man to avoid.”

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Today is my first bit of the torch relay blogging – the rest of the posts may be found here!

We are supposed to add a bit of a story about the area we have been allocated, something that has either been published or is about to be published. As a very new author I can’t do that  but I can post a bit of one of my many WIPs here and link to it.

So here’s my offering. This is a section of a very long story about a place between places where the old influences the new and sometimes seeps through into the present day but this part is about loneliness and community. It’s a winter story to cool us down on what is promising to be a very hot day.

February Fill-ditch

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Reasons to be cheerful:

• It’s sunny and warm. I think we may be having summer this week!
• Yesterday, I got a bit of a mammoth’s tooth stuck in my finger! First person in Wales to be bitten by a mammoth in 15 thousand years, probably! Go me!
• This morning I finished writing a very tricky inserted scene in my pirate novel. So glad that’s over.
• My dog is upside down and looks like he’s smiling.
• My story “A Few Days Away” has been accepted for the Lashings of Sauce anthology that will be out in July!
• I have organised my mind to bother some authors to do Comfy Chair interviews!
• At work, I have not only finished the annual reconciliation but have finished the April one and done the prep work for May’s AND have made a new price list for the shop. Of course I would much sooner have been editing On A Lee Shore or finishing A Fierce Reaping, but I need a day job and this one means I can get bitten by mammoths!

On the whole a damn fine day, I think. Now I need to write a bit more. I only hope it doesn’t ruin my mood.

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Back to the usual SSS format this week! Yes I remembered to register – go me!

But last weeks neglect was useful because it introduced Moried, no friend to the scruffy bunch in Troop Three.

This weeks Sunday Six is from my WIP A Fierce Reaping, a story of the Gododdin, set in Scotland and Northumbria in the 7th century AD.  A reminder of the premise – King Marro of Din Eidin is alarmed by the encroachment of Saxon forces lead by Aethelfrith upon the lands just south of his borders. With the help of Gwlygad, his steward, he devises a plan to drive the Saxons back to the south. He gathers a band of heroes, trains and feasts them for a year and unleashes them on the Saxons in the spring.  But at this point in the story Marro has three hundred young men packed into a small space with energy to spare and nobody to fight apart from each other.

“And how goes the training?” Moried asked.  “I hope that Cynon is providing instruction in baggage handling and camp fire cookery because we won’t be able to take non-combatants and one can’t expect real soldiers to sully themselves with domestic chores.”
“You mean you kill it and we’ll cook it?” Cynfal snorted.  “Spit roast Saxon with horseradish might put some hair on your chest.”
Moried glanced at the front of Cynfal’s shirt, unlaced in the heat of the hall. “Speaking from experience, I see.”

Click on the picture above to go to the Six Sentence Sunday site and see the list of participating authors. There’s something there for  everyone.

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Today the Olympic torch was lit at Land’s End, the southernmost tip of the UK. It was a very touching ceremony. The flame had been carried from Greece to Cornwall in the safety of an old brass Davey lamp, as carried by miners back in the days when we still had a mining industry. They had to get all kinds of permissions to carry a flame on an aeroplane, but the miner’s lamps would have been by far the safest means of transporting it.

Ben Ainslie, the first torch bearer, shows the torch to the crowd.

Ben Ainslie was the first in the relay. A local lad, a sailor with several Olympic gold medals and, we hope more to come, he was clearly delighted to have the honour of starting the journey. It was very touching to see him move slowly through the crowd allowing them to have their moment to hold the torch as he passed.

Over the next 70 days the torch will pass from hand to hand as it is carried through the towns and villages, from city to city, passing through all the most densely populated areas and a few where there are just sheep 🙂

To celebrate this event a bunch of us have got together and will be making a post a day about the areas through which the torch will travel. The site is here and I’ll be posting links as and when I remember :D. My first slot will be Day 8 – next Saturday! – and I’ll be covering the southern valleys of Wales. Yep there will be sheep!

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Can you think of any reasonable secular reason why two sensible adults who love each other shouldn’t be able to say so, committing solely to each other in the sight of all their friends and families? I’m racking my brains and I can’t.

If you can’t either and you live in the UK please consider going to this web page:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/consultations/equal-civil-marriage/

The government of the UK are actually consulting the citizens of the country about their feelings on extending the possibility of civil marriages, as opposed to civil partnerships, to those who want them. In addition anyone who would like to change an existing civil partnership to a marriage will be able to do so.

This does NOT mean that churches will be forced to marry anyone they do not wish to marry. Nor will they lay themselves open to prosecution by such refusals. This shouldn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference to those religious organisations who would not agree to conducting such marriages.

It shouldn’t make a difference but you can bet it does and that the Home office is getting a good number of “OMG the cities of the plains!!1!” responses to the consultation. If you believe that every human being has the right to love and be loved by another consenting adult of whatever sex, gender, orientation, then please take some time to fill in the online consultation form. It would be a terrible pity if the only people who did it were the haters.

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Please have a look at my otherblog today where I am talking about the marvellous work done by the Albert Kennedy Trust – a UK charity that supports LGBT teens who have been ejected from their family homes after coming out.

I’m offering both a copy of my novella “Alike As Two Bees” to a commenter that I’ll pick randomly on the 20th when the Hop finishes, because those are the rules. But I’m also offering to make a donation to AKT on that commenters behalf. Please drop by if you have time. AKT are great folks.

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 I’ve been so sick this week that I forgot to register! I have just about got a working brain again so sincere thanks to everyone who commented last week and apologies for not replying individually to you. Next time,  I promise I will do better.

Six Sentence Sunday – lot’s of opportunities to sample a range of works from sci fi to paranormals to action adventure to historicals by way of masses of red hot het erotica.

But I’m not doing it this week so I can post a longer than usual excerpt.

Cynfal arrives in Din Eidin under stressful circumstances and sets about making an impression.

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