Moving in a good direction

After many, many years of people saying, 'Why don't get your books made into a film or TV, they'd be so good on screen!' and me replying, 'Well, yes, that would be amazing,' and thinking 'Yeah, right, easy!' it is now more of a distinct possibility. Londonia could be moving in that direction. Early days indeed but it's great to feel that it's more than just 'Well, yes, that would be amazing.' Just as finding an agent, and a publisher is not remotely easy; film/series is another enormous and complicated step, one we are currently learning about. 

In the meantime, Londonia is available from the publisher, Tartarus, or Amazon. The audiobook is on Audible, and we are starting to work on another of my novels - for which Mark is already collecting weird sounds, inspired by the book's varied themes.

                                                         Lady Thames, 2073. Londonia.

78 G

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssuqGyaxrw&t=37s

Narration by the author -Kate A Hardy 

Soundscape by MarkLockett

After listening to a particularly worrying podcast about the declining rates of literature world-wide, notably the reading for pleasure element, due in large part to smart phones,  I remembered my short story Orwellian look at a possible near future, which at the time of writing had a strong element of tongue-in-cheek. But with increasingly dark events in the USA, well . . . it suddenly seemed oddly plausible, maybe not the half man/half vehicle character, but who's to say . . .

  

Birthday events

Nothing like going to see Black Midi play Wembley, or eating in a Michelin starred restaurant, rather more low key but no less enjoyable - by my reckoning anyway.

Tea and presents at 6:30, featuring very cool grey astrachan slippers - not often in one sentence - cool and slippers, but they are. 

Mini road trip/psychogeographical exercise - looking back at our house (on a hill) from an equally elevated section of forest that we see from our bedroom window; after which, sweet chestnut collecting/dog walk in said very lovely woodland. 

                                                    Our house - somewhere on that hill line.

                            

                                             very old sweet chestnut tree and less old husband

Lunch in a genuine 'le routier' truck stop restaurant - three/four courses, if you can fit cheese in too, for sixteen euros a head. It was recommended by our electrician, and he was right - super friendly service, copious food, too copious - the dog will be happy tomorrow lunchtime.

Back home for a post-lunch snooze, followed by a trip to the dump (whoopee) to take a car load of smashed up ceiling plaster; and a visit to Aspire, one of our amazing local recycling emporiums. Result, two winter coats of an excellent make, CDs inc a limited edition of The Pet Shop boys, grey wool trousers, and a complete 1970s Breton dining table and chairs, delivery of said furniture, all for around a hundred euros.

Hoxton and Jarvis would be proud of us - (main Londonia characters). 

Our lad sent me a hand made birthday card featuring his many mad facial expressions. Love it.

Loads of lovely birthday texts and phone calls. Thank you lovely friends and family. 

Now off to see a film. I might even have an ice cream. Or not. Lunchtime is very much still with me, plus the birthday cake Mark made.

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P.S: we did see the film (One battle after another), and I didn't sleep much after it. Incredible production by Paul Thomas Anderson - he of the brilliant, There will be Blood, and weirdy, creepy, hilarious, Magnolia.

I think Leonardo De C utterly excelled himself as the hyper wound up, booze-infested, bomber with a big heart. The whole cast were amazing, and some of the road shots were just . . . well, that's why I didn't sleep. Hyper adrenalin rush!

Portrait

If I'd tried to set this up properly it wouldn't have worked, but as a phone-snap taken in a friend's sitting room with just the right amount of 'Vermeer' sidelight it was a happy accident. I probably should have moved the basket of towels, perhaps added a few relevant-to-Mark books to the table, but sometimes no thought is better.

        Mark Lockett. Composer, pianist, audiobook producer, cake maker, and general polymath.

Jobs I couldn't do but like the idea of

I always loved climbing trees as a youngster, something that went on long after I should have been practising cool, experimenting with make-up etc. More recently I scaled our huge and ancient pear tree at the previous, previous house to prune it back, but I can't quite imagine doing that now - a few years on, due to having done far too much heavy work on the last house project. 

At our now-house, there is a beautiful pine tree which shades us in summer, provides bird-shelter and give us cones for fire lighting; however it is/was extremely tall and during gales would thrash and bend alarmingly, and as the house would be a direct hit I thought it was time to invite in a tree specialist. Also, our house insurance guy had shrugged at my mention of the tree even though we had bought extra insurance to cover any eventual tree-house-debacle. 'It is your responsibility to manage the tree, madame'. So . . . not exactly sure what the extra house insurance was for . . .   

The tree-guy arrived yesterday morning, and after moving his van in, and partaking of a coffee, he donned a harness and zipped up the tree as agile as a marmoset. We'd had a quick word about not lopping the top off as if Goliath had done a touch of strimming, and he'd said, 'of course, Madame, I will sculpt it so it looks natural', and he did, swinging in circles from the already sawn top section grasping the chain saw and lopping as he went. 

An hour later he was clearing up the branches, the birds had returned to scoff sunflower seeds and it was as if nothing had happened except the tree is now five meters shorter. 

 

Global, semi conscious, mutually assured suicide

Or, in my mind, the potential overuse of Artificial Intelligence, and more worryingly, Artificial General Intelligence. 

And not really global. Not everyone in every country is waving on this madness; very far from it. Where's the choice, the voting, the real information? Hey, would you like clean drinking water or would you rather the water was diverted into that town-sized silver building over there that you can probably see from the moon? Or, would you like to continue using heating? or shall we divert everything from this brand new nuclear plant into your local data centre?

And, not mutual. Just a race to see who can get to creating something unbearably powerful and unknown with no apparent off switch, where there will be more money. F*#$ everything else. AGI will of course sort it all out. Even how to construct water, as most of what we have left seems destined to end up cooling ever increasingly enormous data centers.

We might actually be living in a Douglas Adam's novel. But without the humour element.

Having listening to many lectures and podcasts by people (scientists /professors) who actually spend all their time researching and exploring these subjects I feel I know just about enough to feel extremely scared. They certainly are.

As one researcher put it, AGI could be undeniably useful if it had a narrow usage, for example, solely investigating and suggestion solutions for say a certain type of cancer - and within rigid guidelines and and following an actual brief. Well, he didn't say that word for word, but it's what I could extrapolate . . . rather than a full on massive free for all - everything from how to lose pounds unbelievably quickly without having to self-amputate a limb; how to convince people that you are highly intelligent without the trouble of learning anything (ah - that's already out there), make your own film of world leaders dancing with each others' entrails, or how to build a car from vegetable peelings - actually that last one would be rather useful. Etc.

Imagine if all this human ingenuity and energy could be put to solving the real problems that threaten to wipe out out our maligned species (and all our fellow species, although I suspect tics, hornets and cockroaches would continue to thrive, along with bunker-dwelling billionaires). Imagine the greening of cities, efficient water capture, affordable, ecological housing; new ways of growing real food for everyone; a kickstarted education system where kids learn real hands on skills, and learn to appreciate this world rather than a generated unreal one. Real learning rather than a quick cheat. Re-learning to share this planet with fellow humans, and re-learning how to appreciate the mega complex natural system that underlies absolutely everything about life on this extraordinary space-sphere.

I suspect, left to their own devices, which ever AGI becomes sentient first, they'll just think: Right. What an utter mess . . . let's find the Homo Sapiens off switch. World wide no-cure virus? or, oops, nuclear holocaust . . . just have a cup of tea first.

At the end of our road . . .

It's usually been a corner shop or a hill or a maize field or a busy intersection of road but this time it's a chateau that surveys the landscape of the Loire Valley. Every time I pass by its towering form I think about what it must have witnessed over the hundreds of years, currently mostly various wine/horse/night film festivals, less of the marauding, arrows and boiling oil of the distant past. And the future . . .? we'll be around a while to see - no intention of moving, again!