My Signs & Portents Submissions Policy

Here's an idea I'm going to adopt.

I'm going to write three or four shortish articles for Signs & Portents on a variety of topics. Then, with the approach of a new month, I'll send Charlotte one of those articles: the oldest, the most well-edited (I've already submitted one item this month to S & P: another Ship's Locker article, by the way. I'm off the hook for now).

That way, I won't have to worry about the end of the month approaching. I'll have plenty of material to send off to the magazine: all I have to do is write a new one or two when I get the chance. The articles I'll have waiting will act as a sort of buffer, giving me a grace period in order for me to concentrate on my more major creative projects.

Such as, for right now, the psion expansion module I'm currently doing.

I want to take a good, long look at the parts of Book 4: Psion which were missed out, or perhaps never covered. I mean, four pages of phobias. Four pages of powers would have done.

Or a Psionics Institute's layout, presented in the same way as the Scout base item in Book 3: Scout. Yes, I'm going to cover a sample Psionics Institute in my lengthy article.

I also have to take time to get back into Chric' World of Darkness: Manchester stuff. Fortunately, since I've taken care of the most urgent Traveller stuff for now, I can get on with my WoD stuff.

And I better had: I'm getting other interested fans asking me to collaborate with them now.

Boxed In

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Writer's Block: When I Was Young

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- Very little.

I remember being a huge fan of Space. I couldn't get enough of it. The further away from Earth I found myself in my imagination, the better I felt. (No wonder I fell in love with Traveller before any other roleplaying game).

There was this book about a robot dog. I can't remember all of it, because my memory of it is sketchy. I remember being in Caernarfon and seeing it there in a bookstore. I also remember the weekly Saturday shop in Tesco with Mum, and a shop just a little way up the road, where I saw these little magnetic ladybirds and bugs.

I don't miss the school, or the staff, or the other pupils. A place so full of hatred that it really ought to be torn down. A surprising number of former pupils of that school went on to do time. The exceptions are, like Bryn Terfel, truly exceptional.

(Yes, I went to school with Wales' finest opera singer. He used to tease my sister something rotten, the gentle soul that he is. And I admire him so much because he was kind to me, as I was to him and his big sister Rhian).

There was pain, and violence, and suffering, delivered by staff as much as by the pupils. When I drew something, it would be ripped to shreds by a bully; teachers would make me stand in the corner, even though I was able to answer questions that nobody else in the class could answer - perhaps because I could answer questions nobody else could answer. Like how to spell "tongue," or the French word for thirteen ("Treize," which next to "Do svedanya" is one of the earliest bits of foreign language I ever learned).

I was described as "hating maths." Perhaps I could have grown to love maths back then. If the teacher hadn't been that abominable child abuser, the monstrous Mr Roberts.

It might be ironic to the staff of that school to learn that, long after departing that hell hole and moving to Wrexham, to take up schooling at St Joseph's; long after school was just a distant, bitter memory; I have one of the sharpest minds for mental arithmetic in this town. Numbers are beautiful. The world turns on numbers; the laws of the universe are based on them; numbers underpin matter, energy, time, space, love and life itself.

And do you know when I learned this love of number? In my adulthood.

Those motherfuckers in infant school never taught me a fucking thing. Whatever I learned, I taught myself.

So no. I don't miss that part of my childhood.

I do miss some things, though.

Taid playing with me, with little brass candlesticks and spent bullet casings. (I wasn't to know those were WWII surplus ammunition casings) and talking about things like The Tomorrow People back then. I had no idea he was hinting about the Proffwyd line.

Wonder if Taid would be proud that I grew up to be a writer? Or a computer geek with friends from all over the world? Or a Klingon language fan?

Or a Proffwyd warlock?

Taid showing me magnets. I remember that so clearly. I'd never imagined anything like it. Metals that pull at one another, and stick together like something's keeping them from separating. It had to be magic!

I remember Lon Ddwr, and walking along with Taid, and falling asleep with his coat wrapped around me as he carried my little frame home, and getting sunburned, and this teenage girl called Lydia, and falling in love with the actress Ayesha, and being amazed and delighted to see my first black and Asian people - "O brave new world, that has such people in't" and all that. Their beautiful faces and skin. Their smiles. The joy of moving in to a brand new place, and all the possibilities that they could see.

Those little moments, I miss.

Learning Latin, and French, and falling in love for the first time, and missing someone who went away forever. Those, too.

Glyn Owens. I miss him. It must be, what thirty years. He was unforgettable.

And some memories I do not miss, because they are with me always. The Big Hat Man, from my childhood. The skeletal form that loomed over my bed, with the long, bony hand descending towards me. I must have been only a few months, and Death paid a family visit to look at the newcomer to the Clan.

(Which is why, when I draw the Death card in a Tarot spread, I always say "Hello, old friend.")

I miss those few moments of love in my life. Like watching the Apollo 11 landing. Like little brass candlesticks, and red genie bottles, and not pointing at rainbows in case they went away, and being able to say "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll - Llantysiliogogogoch" for the first time, and my first pocket calculator, and getting a Swiss Army Knife at 16 (how very Klingon Rite of Ascension of me!).

But you can keep the bullying and the pain. That is something civilisation should learn to do without. Maybe we would be civilised if people who made a habit of bullying were branded and treated as pariahs, and those who loved and accepted, and who were honest, were given roles of prominence in society. But since we venerate bullies and trample peacemakers into the dirt, I guess that means we are not a real civilisation.

At least, I've never felt like I've been living in a civilised society. And that is something I cannot miss from my childhood, because I don't think I ever had that feeling to begin with.

My Last Tuesday At A4e

Right. That is it. My last Tuesday afternoon A4e slot. I only have this Friday morning's session, and that will be it.

No more A4e.

I won't exactly miss it.

Okay, tonight I may be offline again. I kind of piggyback (with his kind permission) on the next door neighbour's wireless router - and his missus has this habit of switching his router off.

I only have to wait until my folks get a wireless router and laptop of their own, which sadly won't be till the end of July.

But for tonight, I'm likely to be AFK again. If anyone needs me, and they have my mobile, you know where to call.