Gimcrack Pendergast's Big Boot Boutique

I wrote this for a Terry Pratchett competition (in others words to get some free stuff, I'm easy like that).

Idea was to create your own Ankh-Morpork business. Now Ankh-Morpork strikes me as the kind of city where utter bell-ends would prosper (in business and elsewhere), so I wondered what kind of manipulative and shady practice would sell well.

And since praying on people's insecurities, however dangerous they may be, is always a way to make money, I came up with the below;

It probably won't win, and will never be seen again. But I rather like it.

GIMCRACK PENDERGAST'S BIG BOOT BOUTIQUE

Finding it hard to get your face seen?

Overlooked in the work place?

Trodden on in the tavern?

Worry no more, at Gimcrack Pendergast's Big Boot Boutique we specialise in all forms of raised footwear for dwarfs.

Raised heels. In-built shin stretchers. Spring loaded soles. Our boots have a thousand* ways to raise you above the opposition.

And remember, just because you’re a dwarf, doesn’t mean you have to be of a “miner” height.

Come to Gimcrack Pendergast's Big Boot Boutique, for the modern dwarf who wants to make it big in a man’s world. You’re never too big for our boots.

*Please note this figure is rounded up to the nearest thousand.

On writing to authors.

A glance at Susan Hill's website has led me to this page for the first time. It's a snapshot of mail she receives from her many readers; some nice, more abusive, most of it weird. Having books on GCSE syllabuses can be a mixed blessing I suppose, but you've got to wonder at people who take the time to write to someone in order to compare studying their book to water torture, and stating how satisfying it was to then burn the book with the aid of WD40.

I'm all for honest criticism but at times its a wonder more people don't hunt down and apply actual water torture to the many wannabe hard cases hiding shivering behind their internet connections.

Still, it's given me an urge to read one of hill's books, and since the only books of hers I have in the house in The Woman In Black (which I read many years ago, but is due a re-read I think) it's going to have to be that. This is a book which, I don't mind admitting as it's not something which happens very often, scared the crap out of me a number of years back (and I really don't get scared by books, I've read a number which various people have promised will leave me terrified, The Shining being prominent, and nothing).



I've just finished two Pratchett books I've been alternating while ill over the past few days (yellow fever or manflu, you decide). One is an audiobook of Equal Rites, read by the ever welcome Cecilia Imrie, which was pretty much as I remembered it (still one of my favourite books, mixing fantasy, humour, satire in feminism in one glorious package). The fact it was an audiobook helped, as it enabled me to listen on my iPod while playing Super Smash Brother Brawl (ridiculously good fun I must say, and the return of the long missed Kid Icarus is most pleasing). The other was the print version of Mort, which I very much enjoyed, but can barely remember at all to the extent that I wonder if I ever read past Chapter 2 before, still, it has been a number of years.



And now it's two in the morning, and I can't sleep because I've spent most of the past few days sleeping. So what does a twenty-something man about town do in such a circumstance on a Saturday night. Go out, visit friends, do some of that late night writing authors always harp on about, perhaps go to a sauna? No, what I'm doing is sitting, doing a jigsaw online. The one below to be precise, dangerously addictive.

And it only took me twelve minutes longer than the website's average.

The World's Most Enhanced Woman And Me.

Thought if I mentioned any TV it would be the Terry Pratchett documentary (but I'm reluctant, primarily because I'd be struggling not to use the word 'brave), but no, it's Channel 4's latest lets stare at the freak documentary. The formula (so far) is basically a very irritating Brit talks - exceptionally patronisingly - to an American woman with very large implants.

She comes across as very likable, a nice girl with a history of depression who embraces the attention and is honest as she can be about her state of mind. He on the other hand comes across as a horrid little creep, droning out faux concern as to her well being and cliched lectures on just why she's so wrong to look like she does. He unconvincingly mimes his general disgust at girls who aren't flat chested, he attempts to blackmail her emotionally using her own mother, and he feebly protests that the attention is getting isn't good attention because its to do with her looks. Bit rich from a man who seems to have landed a broadcasting job on no other basis than he looks and talks a bit like Louis Theroux.

And Louis Theroux is exactly why this program is so horrid, in the same way this Mark Dolan is a substandard imitation of Theroux, the show is a pretty feeble clone of Weird Weekend, or at least its format. A smart-arsed, cross geeky/laddish Brit wonders around smirking at how weird foreigners are (I'm amazed this isn't being filmed in the US, but presumably Mexico is close enough) and generally displaying enough condescending self-satisfaction to make even the strongest stomached of us nauseous.