Autumn In Saint Savinien

Anything I can babble on about today is quite pathetic as I watch the drama along the east coast of the USA. My heart goes out to all those affected. We are so weak and small when Nature bites.

I heard the news today - Oh boy, they're gonna sell New Scotland Yard. Yes, they are going to sell the iconic HQ of the Metropolitan Police, the centre of Detective Inspector Anna Leyton's world. Who would buy it? Perhaps a couple of Mexican drug cartels have the cash? Sometimes I cannot believe what I hear. Earlier this week they sold Admiralty Arch to a hotel chain. We have already sold our energy and water companies, all our public housing, our railways and airports. All our automotive brands have gone and all our ships are built abroad and mainly sail under foreign flags. Maybe there'll always be an England but for sure, we'll have no democratic control over it. You know what will control it don't you....yes MONEY. 

Sold! Perhaps her majesty may pass.

For Sale. No parking issues for owners

Still, why should I care today? I am at my own home in France. As far as I can tell, the French resist all attempts to lure them into the total fluidity of globalised moneydom. In my village, you need the local accent to buy a baguette. They tolerate me because I am a cranky old Doris who knows enough local people to be seen in public kissing clinches. 

sun sets over CharenteMaritime

So, I went out with my camera and took some postcard shots of autumn in rural France. Although I'm fairly much in work ethic melt down, I have been writing. Just between us I'm getting to that lovely state with my current book where I'm kinda in love with the hero. This sent me into a frenzy of poetic remembrance of past amours and you'll soon see the ripe fruit. 

Today was calm and mellow with the river full and reflection rippled. The shots are from the river bank at Taillebourg. This place is truly paradise.

Emma Thinx: Romance is not a love story. It's a fictional truth. 

Good Evening Viewers, Here Is The Latest Past.

I'll do any background  face you want. Give me a job. Please!!!

Here is the Past. I'm sorry we cannot bring you any News because we are saving today's News for 2056. Here is some News from the 1960's, 1970's and a little trailer for some 1984 news. 

Is it just me, but can we have enquiries into everything that has ever happened that go on for ever? This means that today's News will always be about stuff that should have been on the News at the time. I know that live TV has a small delay to edit out obscenities, celebrity flatulence, nose picking and pubic scratching by dentally enhanced household name heart-throbs. It now seems that the delay is about 35 to 40 years. I know we need the truth and closure but if the current News is all about history we will never ever ever catch up. I also think there is a real danger in judging one period with the ethos of another when all the fear and need for quick decision is passed. To me it is as if we are recording the present for later viewing and spending our lives watching all the recorded stuff. Ho ho Comrades, does that mean we are not looking at our current issues? Who could possibly want that?

However, if the rest of time is going to be filled with televised enquiries about stories that half the living population don't know about because they were not born, I want to get on the bandwagon. I want to be an extra. I want to be one of the folk who sit behind the person in the pillory/spotlight. I can look concerned, cynical, bored quizzical, stupid, beautiful, sophisticated, angry or completely neutral. There are now so many televised public enquiries, parliamentary enquiries, judicial enquiries,civil enquiries, tribunals and reconciliation committees that there must be a job for me. Ideally I would like to look at the evidence again on the Anne Boleyn case. I never did like that King Henry VIII. The whole thing stinks of a frame up to me. I can dress up as a concerned Tudor citizen if that would get me the job.

What we need is good fair news at the time of events! Seemingly nothing has happened for months and months. The featured video is the scene today as politicians in white shining armour attack
unarmed BBC chief for not revealing that Jimmy Savile (exitainer- a Calinesque term for dead entertainer) was a vile selfish pervert forty years ago. Since everyone in clique elite knew at the time, I think the News is forty years late. Victims can only come out now because it is all in the News. Well, duh.... if it had all been in the News back then............

Before I move on, I do want to tell the lady sitting behind Mr Entwhistle to the right that she has kind brown eyes and that she is the face for my current novel. I bet she didn't know that was going to happen when she got up this morning. If you know her please tell her. It could change her life and release her from her role as a background person.

In my own very small way I am in the News today. The lovely American author and selfless Janna Shay has featured me in an interview. I have exposed myself. Click the link if you can bear it.

I know I'm a Romantic Novelist and this is all all socio-politico rants in your pants but sometimes you need to say wot ya fink.

Emma thinx. Live grammatically. The past is a noun not a sentence.

Emma's Dilemmas

When I was at school, deep deep down, I wanted a badge. Many other girls had sports teams badges and there were badges for prefects and monitors. My one ascent to power was when I stood in as a deputy lavatory monitor but I was not given a badge. My temporary position gave me the power to eject loitering girls from the toilet area and report any incidences of cigarette possession to the Authorities. I was ready to betray every friendship in pursuit of a badge but no one offended and my chance slipped away. 

But now, at last I have a badge. I have become an editor. Thanks to Loveahappyending.com I have started to edit a regular feature on writerly topics. Smoking and loitering will be permitted. If anyone knows where I can get an official editor's lapel badge, please please please Miss, I want one so much!


Emma thinx: You never grow taller than the shadow of childhood.

Wolves, Predators And Vixens.

When I am not writing about love, need and tendresse in the Venice lagoon or the ecstasy of passion with oysters, wine and hot baguette, I am a right little drab Domestos.

A vixen fix'n her gaze

Beyond my little world of kids, buses and ASDA is the drama of landscape and nature. Regular readers will recall my delight at the recent visit of Mrs Fox. You know those stories where some kind of magical animal appears and changes lives. Well, that is how I felt when Mrs Fox somehow chose to share my mortadella sandwich. I figured we might never meet again, but today she came back. All those times when I wasn't selected for the sports team or voted girl most likely (only because I already had), were swept away. I know this beast loves me. Maybe she has one of my works in her burrow. 

I am not religious in any way but to connect with this animal is a joy that seems beyond this world. Can't say why. Does anyone know.....?

Now let's get a bit serious. Half of today's News is all about the serial sex offending of the deceased  Sir Jimmy Savile (for non UK readers, he was a famous TV entertainer and charity fund raiser). The other half of the News is Lance Armstrong who has been labelled a drug cheat. 

The connection between the two matters is that both were protected by an insidious culture of celebrity worship. The great and the good are now wringing hands and thrashing around with enquiries and public inquests as if no one understands why these things happened and no one spoke out. The issue is not quite as simple as I suggest but the celebrity as god is a major feature.

Great wedges of righteous hypocrisy will be heaped upon these sinners. All the pus of "totally unacceptable" clichés will crowd around the wound. Speeches will be made. But remember this - at present some 200 hundred detectives are working on the phone hacking case against the News Of The World. Most of the hacking "victims" were celebrities. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been paid to them as "compensation". Millions upon millions of pounds are being spent to persecute the hounded vixen editor Rebekah Brooks. They have even scooped her driver to put frighteners on her. The case has been adjourned for perhaps a year. Lawyers will receive fees for one hour that a bus driver earns in a month. I will not bore you with explaining who will be paying for a lot of this, but you know don't you.

Rebekah with her child. Hundreds of detectives are on her case.

The allegation is that The News Of The World broke rules. Many journalists and private detectives are not selfless kind people. We do not need a show trial to tell us. Celebrities who want the fame and cash were terrified of the "Gutter Press". I know (and believe me, I do know), that the newspapers knew all about Savile. All the glitzy full gloss sports writers knew all about Lance Armstrong. I just say  you may have to accept a few celebrity squeals of intrusion or tolerate the alternative. Because that is what we've got. The inner cliques knew it all. We did not and that is the way they wanted it.


Emma thinx: In a sewer a soiled hand will hold the lamp.

Warning: This Post Has Adult Contentment

The Power of Love

Like so many others, I have been reading Fifty Shades. This book has many aspects but nothing much caught my attention before the scene where Anastasia goes to the ball  wearing silver jiggle balls in an intimate location. Now, that could have given a whole new meaning to the term college drop out. At least no one would need castanets. May I just say at this point that top critics (Oh yes, they really exist) of such devices complain that they are too noisy. In my view this only applies if you are a stick insect and there is little flesh to suppress the percussion. 

Writing my latest novel has led me to research the world of sex toys.(Of course, I had no existing knowledge). There is a reference to the term dildo in Shakepeare's Winters Tale, where the general tone is the jumping and thumping of maids. Now that sounds more like Fifty Shades. Several references to the dildesque can be found in serious literature by the likes of Saul Bellow.  William S Burroughs's novel "The Naked Truth" features a dildo named Steely Dan III. In my life I have met several complete dildos with very ordinary names.

But, here is my point. Seemingly most females have at least one sex toy. Judging from reviews on sales sites such as Ann Summers, much satisfaction is gained thereby. This being the case, should a modern cutting edge writer of Romantica expect to enter such elements into her own text? Recently I saw an advertisement for a vibrating mobile phone that the lady wears within her under garment. This enables her lover to call her to express his love. This would revolutionise the commuter train experience. Just think - no more calls about "Did you remember to get the cat castrated and buy some dishwasher salt?" Instead there would be nothing but orgasmic gaspings. Trouble is, the show-offs would be faking remote controlled cyber-joy like all of those righteous anorexic joggers proclaiming their discipline and sacrifice . Oooh - I'm a scratchy bitch.  

So huge is the toy industry that it would be pointless for me to add anything technical. I was only eight when Barbarella came out but it played on T.V. late slots for many many years. I have always thought that perhaps it encouraged women to break out a little. If you are too young to have caught it, take a peep at the machine of excess pleasure. Since then huge amounts of silicone have travelled many valleys. These days the soft hard and limp ware is there, whatever your needs. 

The issue is their context in modern love. At what point can the meadow of unexplored love be nibbled by the rampant rabbits? (If you are in a private location and unaware of powered rubber rodents click here). If I am being deadly serious, many real life heroines have only come to know themselves by taking a walk on the wilder side of a toy story.  Let us imagine such a person.

It was their first night in Venice. The Spring sun had teased the ripples of the lagoon before departing with a raised eyebrow of promise and return. The night drifted in, slowly weaving its slim cold fingers  around the halos of lamps and the calls of boatman on the Grand Canal. This moment of life  lived itself and was beyond her own desires. Only now  she took his hand  as the darkness seeped into them. Dare she reach out and offer her warmth as contrast to the chill? All day, the city had seemed to blind him. Now it slipped away from sight and she was aware of his restless young body and of her own. A night would be and could not be held back. She was tired but thrilled to the animal possibilities of decadence that she had not the power to resist. She let her hand soften a little to hint at her mood. She breathed more slowly and let her eyes find nothing but his. Although his gaze was on the horizon she knew he sensed her focus and that she was a woman. It had been a risk to bring him here. The dusk had blurred their differences and she was beginning to enter a remembered flow. Her lips needed his and yet she bowed her head and merely let her forehead rest on his hard upper arm. The last false light silhouetted La Chiesa Santa Maria de la Salute as he turned and with his palm raised her chin. His gaze caressed her and drew her out from her body so that their kiss was disconnected from time. She drowned in his strength and had no sense of will.

'This place isn't Venice, it will ever be you,' he said.
'I was wanting it to be us.'
'I've wanted that since you stepped out of that Bentley.'
'Then we've some kisses to catch up,' she said.

He let out a groan and cuddled her to him with a  boyish bear hug clumsiness. He was to be her lover. She reached up to push his hair back and hold his face. She offered her lips and he took them instinctively as a man taking a girl. For now she could define their roles and he would respond. She knew in his kiss that soon enough he would tell her of his love. And she knew she would love him more  but never let him leave with such a trophy. 

Now, I had intended to spoof this with some kind of flat battery, vibrator cheap shot but I just bloody well couldn't because I was enjoying it. The fact is that sex toys are sex. Romance is Romance. The above scene is a glimpse of my next book. I suspect that this lady may well have found herself more fully as a result of experiment and a falling away of shyness. Late in her life she has learned of pleasure. It will be her gift. 

Emma thinx: Keep the private lessons secret. Share the knowledge.  

Post Card From Bournemouth UK

Dark drama at dawn as Phoebus warns of his impending absence 

October just sounds more like winter doesn't it.  I always see it as an island month serving as a migration stop for birds and souls heading for the sun. Wiki tell me that there is an October Revolution Island and it is also the name of a 1952 novel by William March. Why has someone always done everything first? Why has someone always already said something that I wanted to say? Pre-emptive plagiarism is plundering my originality. Please don't tell me someone has already said that! 

Now, I teased you with a sex toy in literature special. It's coming but the research is taking a little longer than I imagined. I want to get it right. In the meantime I decided to use the last week end of summer to bask in the glory of the English sea-side.

Wedding photos on the sand. Just get me those shoes (and the figure)

As you know, I am a francophilly. I would still love to dance the can-can but for sure it would be the can't can't. England is the true land of the eccentric. We have everything from guys collecting the serial numbers on railway locomotives to people in their best clothes posing for wedding photos on the beach. Because I spend so much of my time in France I kinda see we Brits in a different objective way - ruthless creators of Empire queuing quietly for iPad 4s.

The day knew it was the last in the way that both you and I know we are the last that will be of the us-ness of us. 

 Sea birds balanced on the wind.
 People married on the sand.
 Guys in suits swigged beer from cans. 
 Christian surfers surfed, not sinned. 

Onward Christian surfers

Hey - I did a poem. Well let's say the wonderful resort of Bournemouth wrote a poem. There is nothing on Earth like a British coastal resort town. And you know, I love you so so much for all my childhood castles, roundabouts and blue sky days. Thanks for having me back for your last stolen summer day. 

Hey - relax

And to round it off there's a fabulous sculpture on the beach that says it all. And of course it's all been said already. On Bournemouth sands I can connect nothing with everything. OK - you got me. T.S Elliot almost kinda said that.







Emma thinx:  Britannia Waives the Rules.