Tag Archives: crystal palace

The Case Of The Flying Laptop

I will soon be famous. Let me rephrase that. I will soon be famous in my own locality for at least 15 minutes. It will be as a consequence of my writing. The reason I hear you ask? Have I written a short story which will wow the inhabitants of Crystal Palace and it’s environs when it appears in the local newspaper? No not quite. I am however fed up to the back teeth with my laptop which is not behaving as it should. To take just one example when I visit websites the machine frequently freezes and the only way in which I can close the internet is by resorting to the use of task manager! I have on several occasions been on the point of hurling the hapless computer out of the window. What a satisfying crash that dratted machine would make as it hit the ground. I can see the headlines now

“Mad writer flips his lid and throws laptop out of window accidentally braining neighbour”!

Well on the basis that all publicity is good publicity can someone open the window please, there is a mad writer on the loose.

I Am Taking A Break And I May Be Some Time!

I shall be taking a break from blogging for a week or so while my mum and her partner visit my sprawling estate in the country. Err I mean my flat in Crystal Palace (the estate was wishful thinking)! I must go now due to the need to brief the servants on the preparations for tonight’s banquet. See you all in a week or so. Kevin

The Blackbird

Yesterday evening on the way home from a restaurant , with my friend Jeff, he and I where delighted by the singing of a blackbird. There he sat atop an urban chimney in the heart of Crystal Palace singing fit to burst. His singing filled that busy street with music and he made me feel life coursing through my veins. Beauty in the heart of the city.

ME

Below is a short biography of yours truly. I won’t claim that it is comprehensive, it certainly isn’t, nor will I state that it reveals any secrets (not that I have any secrets to reveal you understand)!

 

KEVIN MORRIS BIOGRAPHY

 

I was born in Liverpool on 6 January 1969, a year best known of course for my birth. Well no actually it is better known for the moon landings which certain peculiar conspiracy theorists still maintain never took place (the moon landings that is, not my birth).

One of my earliest recollections is of eating roast dinners, on Saturday in British Home Stores with my grandfather. Although cooked in the kitchen of a department store they tasted wonderful to a small boy but then again it is easy to look back at one’s childhood with rose tinted spectacles.

On Saturdays my grandfather and I would invariably pop into W H Smiths and buy a book. Often he bought Enid Blighton books and I’ve happy memories of him reading to me about the adventures of Julian, Dick and Ann not forgetting Timmy the Dog (who could)! Being blind it was a real treat to sit on my grandfather’s knee hearing him regail me with children’s adventures. It was from my grandfather a man who had never so much dreamed of going to university that I derived my love of literature.

As I grew older I learned to read braille which opened up a world of independent reading to me. Only a tiny proportion of books are available in braille, however it was still amazing to me, as a young boy to be able to sit with a book on my knee reading for myself. Besides braille I was also a huge consumer of spoken word cassettes, everything from Treasure Island to Wuthering Heights. I still possess almost all of the many cassettes which I have purchased and had bought for me over the years but many of them have now warped with age so are, sadly unusable. Today it is the text to speech facility on my Kindle and Ibooks (using voiceover) on my Ipad which is my favourite means of accessing the wonderful world of literature.

I attended school in Liverpool and later went onto read history and politics at university. I must be a glutton for punishment as having obtained my degree I went onto study for and obtain a MA in political theory (I can see your eyes glazing over already)!

Since 1994 I have lived and worked in London. I live in Crystal Palace a part of London high above sea level and famed for it’s steep hills. It is very green and the air is much fresher than many parts of London. I like were I live and I’m lucky that my home overlooks a large garden and an historic park.

Enough about me for now at least.

Forever in search of the new

Yesterday (5 March) I popped into my local independent book shop in search of a present for Easter not entailing Cadburys cream eggs! Having purchased a book on the Dinosaurs in Crystal Palace park I fell into conversation with the book shop’s owner. I asked whether the growth in ebooks was impacting on his business. Somewhat to my surprise he replied that he haden’t noticed a fall off in business, he had, however seen a rise in the sale of graphical (picture books). I speculated that the growth in sales of this particular type of literature perhaps stemmed from the low attention span which can flow from excessive use of the internet and he agreed.

The above conversation reminded me of an earlier post on this blog (http://newauthoronline.com/2013/02/02/going-to-hell-in-a-hand-cart/) in which I pointed to the growth in website hopping, the practice entailing the surfer inanely clicking on links with no particular purpose in mind. I argued that this constant search for new and exciting content fosters a spirit of instant gratification and a shallow view of the world. In contrast reading entails concentration and yes, on occasions cudgelling one’s brains in order to comprehend what the author is driving at. In contrast to the inanity which can flow from web surfing reading fosters a deep appreciation for the world in which we live.

To return to my visit to the book shop, perhaps this obsession with the internet is leading to a breakdown in concentration whereby people find it difficult to read anything other than short novels or works containing lots of illustrations. I certainly hope that this is not the case.

Returning to the subject of ebooks, my latest book, Samantha is currently free in the Kindle store (the offer ends on 7 March). For Samantha please visit http://www.amazon.com/Samantha-ebook/dp/B00BL3CNHI