The Man Booker and its Newest Contender

A man called Simon Holliday has submitted a bus timetable for the Man Booker Prize. Timetable in question is the First Bus Number 1 service in Bristol. And why? 'I have been using this service since August last year, ' says Mr Holliday. '....and I can personally attest to this timetable's suitability as a work of fiction, since it bears absolutely no relation to the times and frequencies of the buses' journeys. I conservatively estimate that since August I have wasted about 50 hours of my life that I won't get back, waiting for buses that never turned up.'
(As originally reported in Andrew Taylor's 'Grub Street', a regular column in The Society of Authors' magazine, The Author)

Now that is a bit of nonsense in a rather slow week, when writing has not motivated me enough...I've been lazy/tired, so I must put on a rather large boot and kick myself into action. Short stories to write!

Still, there is time and a need for dreaming too...an ethereal buffer zone that drops plots and characters into place from some sort of ether in which they exist. The great thing about writing is that I am a firm believer in directional daydreaming. This is the only job (don't try it if you a long distance lorry driver) where that is allowed..no, actually essential. I am also rereading Helen Dunmore's The Siege, a tragic, evocative and deeply poetic novel about the Siege of Leningrad.

So I am dreaming for a while. Please do not disturb.