Review: The Time of My Life, by Patrick Swayze & Lisa Niemi

The Time of My Life by niemi-lisa-swayze-patrick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have always been an avid fan of Patrick Swayze's work, but hadn't realised he had written an autobiography until recently, so I managed to get my hands on a second hand copy. I was even more surprised that it was written by him and not his wife, as it is authored by both of them on the cover, though it does tell her life story too as they began together and were never apart. He wrote just after he had fallen sick with cancer, and there's a sort of sad tension as you read, knowing that he didn't survive it yet he didn't know that when writing, and still hoped he would.

There was so much about him I didn't know. That his mother was a ballet dancer and he was a trained professional ballet dancer. The incredible drive he had, and how much he had put his body through physically, not just with dance, but with doing his own stunts, including some serious and nasty breaks. And also I didn't know he was such a huge horse whisperer!

However, in terms of the writing, sometimes I felt the content was a bit repetitive and dry. He seemed to use the same expressions to describe meeting people. He also spoke endlessly about his love his wife, and was quite repetitive about his feelings about her, and how insecure he had been in the early days and how he'd felt when they were first married. Saying that, I can only imagine how hard it was for her to lose him, having spent her entire life with him. It's utterly heartbreaking.

He was a driven man and insisted on excellence in everything he did - as was seen by his successes. I will always love his work, and always remember him as he died on my birthday.

If you are a fan of Patrick, this is definitely a book worth reading.

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Review: Hallowe'en Party, by Agatha Christie

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I do love a Christie, story and I was inspired to read this as I'd just seen the film based off it, A Haunting in Venice, and I have to say they really only took a nugget out of this story. The murder itself, and a few other tiny elements. The rest had little relation.

This was a more rambling Whodunnit, as there seemed to be a lot of tangents and narrating of what had happened, not so much action. But as always, even though you think what you are reading doesn't seem to relate to the murder it all ties up in the end. I have no idea how Christie managed to always do that so well; she doesn't mention any of it in her autobiography, if anything writing was an afterthought in her life.

This is a Hercule Poirot novel and his character comes right off the page, and you get a definite sense of him. And I liked that she had a famous murder mystery writer in there too, as though she was sort of appearing herself. As always it was very well done, but maybe not one of her best books.

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Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 311

This week's picture prompt was taken by Julio Lopez Saguar, a photographer from Madrid. It was taken at Central Station at Koln (Cologne), Germany. As I have been there I can confirm that it is a huge station. I like the balance of the links above and below. 

Taking me a while to put this one together but I'm really happy how it came out. This picture always reminds me of the opening of Some Kind of Wonderful - if you are old enough to know that film! 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Tracks

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked these tracks. Back and forth all day long, checking connections, clearing out dirt, making them stable, fixing lines, defrosting signals, replacing lights, the list goes on and on.

There’s a thrill to it as you cross the live lines, and occasionally risk being squashed between two trains going in different directions. You don’t have to keep an eye out though, you can feel it through the ground: the tracks vibrating, shots of lightning dashing along the lines above your head. Trains have an energy, and the longer you work on the lines the more in tune with it you become.

No matter how busy the world is around you, all the rushing about people do: going to and from work, shopping, catching a show, out on the town; once you’re on the tracks all that disappears. You tune right out and into the frequency of that energy. Like hearing a tuning fork all day long. And you still feel it in your body when you leave at night.

Although I seem to have been here for ages today; longer than normal – at least it feels like it.

This morning I was busy chasing off some of those graffiti lot. They were over by the siding spraying their rubbish on anything they could find. There are some that call it art, but it’s not art, it’s indecipherable letters that only have meaning for them. Like some kind of turf warfare, where they are passing messages back and forth.

You never see their faces, always dressed in baggy clothing and several hoodies over their heads, and sometimes scarves to stop the toxic sprays from getting in their faces – though I always thought part of it was about getting high from the fumes.

But I’d been running them off, shouting and threatening to call the cops, and they ran out across the tracks, exactly where I didn’t want them to go.

The 5:15 from Doncaster was coming through, as was the 5:12 from Sheffield. They always crossed here. And I knew they were coming, I could feel it - had for a few minutes already.

Cleaning up the mess of people who get in the way of high speed trains is not fun at all, I can tell you. Plus it means stopping everything on the line for hours while the police come, and all the emergency services, and the reporters; it’s a complete melee.

Anyway, one of them went and tripped, didn’t he? Went down like a sack of potatoes, and didn’t look like he was getting up anytime soon. So I rushed over to him, and tried to bring him round, his mates looking on from safety on the other side. They could hear the trains coming too and weren’t going to risk coming back for their mate. Bloody numpties.

I was trying to get him up, trying to move him, and then my walkie-talkie fell out of my back pocket, didn’t it, and bloody smashed on one of the tracks, which meant I had no way of notifying anyone it wasn’t safe.

The energy was really ramping up now, like a high-pitched whine in my nerve endings, literally any second now they were going to be here. If you looked you could probably see them in the distance. But I couldn’t look, because I was too busy with this bloody vandal who’d gone and knocked himself out.

Then that sound, you know the electric one that shoots along the lines above your head, telling you they are on their way, and coming fast and I couldn’t seem to get a grip on this lad; his clothes were all loose and baggy and I couldn’t work out which way to get a hold on him. His mates were shouting now, they could see the trains, and I had to debate, stay or go, but I knew the mess it was going to make. If I could just shift him over a couple of tracks.

And then it was over.

He was gone. The vibration must have woken him and got him moving.

His mates were gone too. Probably didn’t want to stick around to see the mess if he didn’t make it.

But I’m here, wondering how I’m going to get the other mess, the one they’d made on the wall, off. But I can’t find my bucket, in fact I can’t find anything and every time I try I just seem to end up back here at this wall. 

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 310

This week's picture prompt was created by Jeffrey Smith, it's called Summoned. I used one of his recently on Week 307 & couldn't miss this one with the build up to Halloween! He has some incredible art worth checking out.  

A short dark one this week, with an edge of hope. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

The Hunt

From our hidden burrow we saw it; the sequel had gone up to call them to him. It blazed with its evil grin and we shivered in the darkness.

We could hear the rumblings of the others coming to the call. All the depraved and twisted faces flashing past, lit up by the burning orange light making them more grotesque than normal.

We scuttled deeper under ground, running this way and that, hoping to be far enough away by the time they were gathered ready for their hunt – their ‘trick or treat’ as they liked to call it.

Both were for their benefit: the trick was to catch us, the treat was to eat us. Our bodies would join the blaze in the field. We only hoped they weren’t fast enough, clever enough, or thin enough to find us.

Some of us climbed trees, becoming like four legged creatures as we scurried to the tallest limbs. They rarely looked up making it would be the safest way. They would be expecting us to be underground, where we had burrowed for generations, since they cast our goodness out. And there would be weak among us who would not manage to remain hidden and from the tree tops we would watch their sacrifice as they were torn and roasted.

The only hope was that each year there were less of them and more of us. They were dying out, along with their rituals, which took place is fewer places. Each year they looked more ragged and feeble, some only there to watch, no longer able to walk. As they fed on our weakest, we grew in strength.

Our time would come soon and the only thing ablaze would be the remains of their lives.

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 309

This week's picture prompt is from photographer Christy Lee Rogers, an artist from Hawaii. This is actually a photograph taken under water at night. Quite incredible, and there's lots more to see on her site. 

Short and sweet, and maybe a little bit ambiguous. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Tangled

I’m not quite sure how it happened, how we all ended up in the pool – or even why. Though really, who needs a why? It’s a party, we’re all drunk, it’s warm and there’s a huge pool.

I remember Johnny thought it would be a good idea to be in there, even though it wasn’t his house. And when he jumped in and discovered the underwater music, the whole party had to move into the water.

Dancing underwater was fun, but I think it was Felicity’s dress I got my leg’s tangled in and she started to struggle, and even though Dan had his life guard certificate he couldn’t work it free, and then she began to panic pushing him under. By the time Harriet swam up, there were three more caught up in it, and the others just thought we were dancing and having fun.

The more people tried to get uncoiled, the more they seemed to get knotted up. It was like a churning washing machine of clothes and people, but in slow motion. And it felt slow; time crawls when you can’t breathe.

I don’t know who went first, it was hard to tell with all the material getting in the way of faces, but eventually they were gone, and I was there, floundering in clothing that had been discarded.

I felt like I flailed for a lifetime. And as I turned onto my back, my arms and legs still bound up, I looked up at all the faces round the pool looking down at me. Their stricken looks as my last reserves let go, and bubbles of my last breath left me, are scored onto my mind for an eternity.

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 308

This week's picture prompt was created by Polish artist: Zdzislaw Beksinski. Unfortunately he was murdered during a robbery at his flat in 2005. (though he would be 94 if he was still alive). He has a lot of interesting art. 

This week's is short and dystopian. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Pinnacle of Life

This is what it had come to; the only way to communicate. I shivered in the cold night air. Despite the fire in front of me, I was too high up to feel its warmth, but this was my life now. This was how information was sent from place to place, and without me up here on the top of this pinnacle, there would be a break in the chain.

I’m not sure which I hated more, the climb up or the climb down. Either way it took far too long and I was so terrified I would lose my grip and then my life, just like Tomo did.

He’d been on the pinnacle to my left, and was clearly tired after the nightshift. Just four steps down and he’d slipped, fallen a few rungs, and then caught one. But I couldn’t work out whether he’d broken his arm during the short fall, or just couldn’t catch a proper grip on the rung, sometimes the cold weather up here covered them in frost. Either way he’d eventually given up and let go.

I’d called encouragement, but I’d been powerless to do anything else. And I’d cried off and on through the rest of my shift. I’d never climbed down as carefully as I had that morning. It had shaken me up badly.

But they said our work was vital work, despite the risks. We kept the world running. Smoke and fire signals were my life. I wasn’t trained to do anything else.

Everyone was shunted into specific professions to help humanity now. There were no choices anymore. I’d read the history and what had got us here, how people had been able to do whatever they wanted, with all this magical technology, but never actually realised it. And it had resulted in this; the wasteland we now lived in.

One thing being up here was good for, was reading – interspersed between my five minute fire check. I read about those days and daydreamed about what it must have been like to have things like trees and grass and animals. Where there had been vistas and not just rock and desert, and where there were all kinds of food. I couldn’t imagine what it must have tasted like; food was functional now, just the basics we needed to survive.

Oh for a time machine to go back to it, and be a part of it, and not stuck up here on the roof of the world, watching fires burn. But then I was lucky. I didn’t have to scavenge on the ground. I got to see the sky; I had my own vista, even if it was a deadly one.

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 307

This week's picture prompt was created by Jeffrey Smith, it's called Trust Your Gut. He has some incredible art, and there might well be another one soon. 

A short piece this week. Maybe a survivor of the shift, as depicted in my series, Tricky's Tales. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Adrift

He gripped the sides of the little boat, praying that it wouldn’t capsize and send him into the churning masses that were once sea. There had to be land out here, it couldn’t all be covered; he couldn’t be the only survivor.

The swirling waters took on their own pattern, a mesmerising one that took him further towards the setting sun. As the ocean rocked and rose either side of him, he felt like he was in a tunnel, driven ever onwards. He only hoped there was a destination, one that didn’t involve his death.

He’d lost the oars days ago, and had been drifting with the current for some time. He hoped it wasn’t sending him in circles but instead to a shore, where there was dry land and people.

Was he lucky to be in his boat? Maybe. But he didn’t currently feel like it. He just kept his eyes on the setting sun, and prepared himself for another night watching the starlit sky – a sky he had barely paid attention to until there were no more light sources to disturb it. The tumultuous events that led to him being in this boat were a blur in his memory, much like the landmass as it had shifted and been deluged by water.

He didn’t know how many days he’d been without food or drink. The spray from the ocean kept his face wet and covered with water, which he would occasionally lick as it ran down his face over his mouth. He wanted to dry out and drink a glass of sweet cold water. Hunger was there eating at his stomach, but it was just a background noise compared to the thirst. And he just wanted to stop feeling this churning, inside and out, and feel alive and safe again.

Was that a piece of land, there on the horizon, its hills silhouetted against the sun and cutting into the shape of it? He couldn’t be sure. It could be a mirage, a trick of the light, a play in his mind’s eye as the dehydration disrupted his cognition. It had happened before. But he didn’t keep his eyes off it as he was pulled closer by the sucking and drawing of the waves; he had to have hope, without hope there was no survival. And as the shape grew larger in front of the brilliant disc of light, his hope grew with it.