Always hanging around: July 2014

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

Holiday

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Pupils getting into a Frenzy over Author's visit.

Monday, 28 July 2014

Always-hanging-around as normal

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With all this hanging around at least I have something to look forward too. This week the family and I are off on our holidays. We are flying from Norwich airport to Tunisia for a week. I believe in positive thinking so I already know that the weather will be none stop sun shine, the food will be excellent, and I'm going to have a wonderful relaxing time by the pool, or on the beach. During these sort of times I can hang- around doing nothing just relaxing while on holiday, and not give a damn that I'm not using my time in a more constructive way.

Both myself and the wife have decided to leave all electronic devices back in the U.K including our phones so we will be totally off line for a week; although we are taking a camera for family snaps. Yes a whole week without Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google +, Goodreads, my blog and generally surfing the net. While laying in bed the other night thinking about having no access to the world-wide-web, for a fleeting second, I had a panic attack. The thought of not having any type of access to modern media including the television, or radio, can be too hard to bare for most people; then another thought shot across my mind, " I know I take some books to read!" That might seem like a silly thing for an author to say, but like all working people I now spend so much time with computers, and on phones, I have forgotten how little I read an old fashioned paper back book.

I've already selected one book to re-read, and another that was given to me, which has just sat on the self. I have a tradition of buying a book at the airport to read on holiday. It is a fantastic way to kill two hours in the terminal browsing away in the book shop, but I don't think they have one at Norwich Airport as it's a smaller regional airport, and not like one of the big ones that are more like shopping centres than somewhere you catch a plane to another destination.

I will need a third book to read because I know from previous experience that once I get into a good old paper back book I won't be able to put it down, and will soon polish it off in two or three days. I've still got four days to go before I fly away so I might do something else I haven't done for a while, and that is pay a visit to an old fashioned book shop where I can spend a half hour, or two, getting lost in the joy of darting from one book to another.

Regards

Mark

Friday, 18 July 2014

Joy or dread

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FRENZY on Amazon U.K
FRENZY on Amazon America
FRENZY on Amazon Germany
FRENZY on Amazon Canada
FRENZY on Amazon India
FRENZY on Nook
Frenzy for the rest of the world
Mark King on Goodreads.
FRENZY Facebook Page
Email markkingtheauthor@gmail.com
@author_king

It's coming up to that point in the year that children love, but parents dread, yes the summer school holidays. The lead up to the holiday can be a busy time with end of year sports days, school shows, concerts and the many other activities and clubs that children attend. From choir, to football and from Brownies to Beavers they all come to a stop for the teachers, and volunteers, who work so hard with your children throughout the school year.

It can be a relief not having to act as a constant unpaid taxi driver for the little ones, but if the long hot summer that you long for turns out to be a damp rainy wash out then it's hard work trying to keep children entertained.

Of course in my youth during the seventies it was a different matter. Parents didn't need, or bothered, to keep you constantly amused. As long as you had a bike, or a football, and a friend to play with you were expected to keep yourself busy, no matter what the weather conditions. In them days in the U.K there were only three television channels and they weren't 24 hour channels either. They would only start showing in the early afternoon.

I'm starting to sound like my father, talking about the past as if it was a different planet. Time is constantly changing and so do people and attitudes. We have all scared ourselves silly with thoughts that there is some pervert on every street corner waiting to snatch your child the minute you turn your back on them, but like I say there is always a but, history is littered with children disappearing never to be seen again. Of course it happens to adults as well. Thousands every year just vanish and loved ones are left behind to fret, and worry, and dread the day they last saw them. Although in today's age with our total reliance on technology I wonder how any adults can't be traced one way or another. Then again in dictatorships and conflict zones around the world innocent people are made to vanish and the people who did it are in no hurry to own up to it and admit what they have done.

Talking about conflict zones the family and I are off to Tunisia in a couple of weeks for hopefully some relaxation in the sun by the pool. This is where the Arab spring as it became known started before spreading throughout the Muslim world and which is now being played out in Syria. As the saying goes, "only mad dogs and English men go out in the midday sun." It seems only the British are prepared at the moment to venture there as our European friends stay in friendlier places.

Seeing as we British seem to have been at war with one country or another over the last five hundred years maybe we are more used to it? Or maybe we just like a good deal when we see one?

Regards

Mark

Saturday, 12 July 2014

The school visit

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I turned up and Mrs Fletcher the teacher who I had been emailing was there to greet me. Her welcome was so friendly it bowled me over. There was a photographer there from the local paper and the two of us were led into a large room. I expected to speak to just a hand full of children, and there were just that number in the room;.Then behind us came a child holding a chair followed by another, and then another, and then another, and then even more.

Before I knew it the room was full with over sixty pupils and teachers from the whole of year six. The sweat started to flow down my cheeks while the panic within me darted from head to toe. Once everyone had settled down I gave a short history of my life; then Mrs Fletcher settled down the children down once more, and then asked, "has any one got a question to ask Mr King?"

Well so many little arms shot into the air it took me nearly forty minutes to answer them all. Then a girl asked me for an autograph, and then it went crazy. The children swamped me and I had to be rescued by the teachers.

Once again the excitement bubbled over and when the children had been settled down for a third time I read some chapters from the sequel to FRENZY a Daniel Jones Story. The children all gathered sitting on the floor as I read chapters from Daniel Jones DOOM. They loved it and after I had finished they came for more autographs. Finally some of the children read out loud stories they had written, and it was only the threat of the final bell that brought the whole proceedings to an end.

Although I had been then for only two hours I was knackered, but more importantly I felt uplifted.

When people moan that teachers have it too easy they don't know what they are talking about.

By the end I left a copy of my book to give as a prize to the children and the school has asked me back to present it to the winner during a school assembly. So in the next week or two I will returning to Meadow Primary, and to tell the truth this time I will be looking forward to it with all my heart.

Regards

Mark.

Saturday, 5 July 2014

And then there were none (once again)

Postings every Friday

Links to

FRENZY on Amazon U.K
FRENZY on Amazon America
FRENZY on Amazon Germany
FRENZY on Amazon Canada
FRENZY on Amazon India
FRENZY on Nook
Frenzy for the rest of the world
Mark King on Goodreads.
FRENZY Facebook Page
Email markkingtheauthor@gmail.com
@author_king

It's Wimbledon fortnight and after the excitement of watching Andy Murry win the championship in 2013, so being the first British player to achieve this feat in over seventy years, we Brits are back to normal. After the first two days the fair ladies of this country were all dispatched by their much more aggressive foreign counterparts, and by the start of the second week Andy Murry was the last British hope. He went out with more of a whimper than a bang, and now there are none (once again).

The English football team were knocked out of the World Cup after failing to show any fighting spirit, and the English cricket team were smashed from one end of Australia to the other in this years ashes tour, it has been a damp squid for sport in this country in 2014.

After the London Olympics and the fantastic Para Olympics it's all been down hill since. If you take into account my football team Norwich City FC were also relegated from the Premier League then it has been a disappointing 2014 for me when it comes to sport.

Never mind as they once sung on Monty Python, "always look on the bright side of life."

My son has received his first ever football trophy, which if I remember correctly from my youth is equal to what I achieved throughout all my sporting life, and he has many more years ahead of him to keep adding to the total.With my daughter now competing in her first athletic events things are looking up.

Sport is a ruthless thing because nobody ever remembers a looser and only the winners take all the glory, and rewards. I think it's because of competitive world sports that modern industrial nations general no longer go to war against each other. All wars are based on nothing more than personal egos. It's the people at the top whose ego needs satisfying, and it's generally everyone else below them that end up paying for it with misery and pain.

You very rarely see a politician at a general sporting event, but as soon as their national team make it to the final of what ever event it may be; there they are sitting in the grand-stand lapping up all the glory even if they have no interest in that particular sport. Come the final of the world cup (and who every reaches that final) you can guarantee their respective leaders will be attending, and I'm quite happy for that to continue, because while they are sitting in the stands in their smart suits in the stifling Brazilian heat, their ego's won't be starting some pointless war.

Regards

Mark