The Blank Page — Long Words

Blog Sweet Blog Part 1 - One Small Step for Dan

Now is a time of crisis. In fact, as we move deeper into the 2020s, I think we can finally admit that now is a time of many crises. Many, many crises. It’s a tidal wave of crises. A crisis crisis. You can’t move around here for crises. They get under your feet. They get in your food. They get knotted in your hair.

If only we’d found some way to harness the speed with which they reproduce, then maybe we could’ve used them as a new power source. That would’ve sorted out the energy crisis. Or we could’ve rounded them on, kept them on farms, set them up as a new food group.

“What looks good, darling?”

“I hear the Cajun crisis sliders are to die for.”

Who's Who 20: Webbing

She always killed spiders. She’d been raised to kill spiders. Her mother killed spiders. Her grandmother killed spiders. Generation after generation of women in her family had raised the tea towel, slipper or newspaper in defence of their homes. Probably while the closest male ancestor rolled their eyes, turned up the TV or noisily rustled his paper.

Story, Short story, New houseChristopher Long3 May 2019Who's who, Spiders, Underdogs, EggsComment

The Second Pencil Case

I suppose some people like to keep the defining north and south poles of their empires a little further apart. Span a larger axis. For whatever reason, life has really made sure I’ve kept my own poles far more provincial. Hoping between two neighbouring counties, whose defining edges are so uneven that they practically border on incest. Still, it’s okay, there’s some history around here. Shakespeare wrote plays and poems not too far away, before commuting to London and possibly not existing. Richard the Third, pantomime villain turned award winning role in one of those plays, slept under car park after forgetting where he parked his horse. Alan Moore only lives one country over, sewing seeds of magic, myth and political mayhem. Not a bad neighbour to have in these times.

If They're Out to Get You

We live in an age of fast acting paranoia. Horrendous car crashes become intricate webs in which to snare a woman who was once married the heir to the throne. Lone gunman become the front for a speakeasy of unhappy assassins. Every mention of certain names or countries on the news can cause us all tense, as the Doomsday Clock ticks over our shoulder. Our dreams are tinted with nostalgia. Our nightmares are shaded in paranoid gloom. A gloom that can be trigger by the littlest of triggers.

Of pumpkins and boxes

Hey, Internet, it’s good to be back amongst you. After a couple of chaotic weeks and some incredibly painful days without any sort of signal that belongs in the 21st century, The Blank Page is up and running again. I’d call it 2.0, but let’s not fool ourselves. We’re in for more of the same here. The overly long posts and occasional reveries that don’t quite add up to a bigger pay cheque. Still, that’s hardly the attitude to start on. The Longs have moved finally moved house. Let’s begin there.

The Disconnect

The house move that's been consuming our live since we started looking at locations back in March has finally locked into place. Over the space of a rapid Tuesday afternoon we went from feeling like we were never going to actually move to finding out it was happening in a week’s time. It was pretty dizzying. A happy flavour of panic.

Writing, Storytelling, New houseChristopher Long20 October 2017writing, New house, Stranger Things, Thor Ragnarok, OverthinkingComment