In Her Name: - A Book Review

Indie Author Michael R Hicks, who goes by the Twitter name of @KreelanWarrior  published the latest instalment to his In Her Name Series of books on Monday 3rd October.  I immediately downloaded it from Amazon on to my Kindle at the amazing price of £2.21!!!!

This is a brand new book, number 6 in a series, and it is immediately on sale at the bargain basement price of £2.21.  The thing about that is, that while the price may be bargain basement, the story telling is anything but and indeed if you click on the link above to Michael Hicks site you can even get one of the books in the series free.  Daft or what, well no, not really.  I think Hicks knows exactly what he is doing, he also knows, without shouting it from the rooftops, that he is a skilled story teller, and that once you read one of the books in the series, he has you hooked like a master angler, who seems so effortlessly to catch his large fish and then begins to reel it in to it's eventual doom.  But, for the reader of an In Her Name book it is is not the doom of the fish that awaits you it is the surprise of finding a SyFy writer who weaves a seamless story of Love and War, Pathos and Humour and Space battles akin to the great Sea Battles of our History.

In her Name was released in the same way as the Star Wars film genre with the up to date (in terms of the future setting) books of:

Empire 

Confederation 

Final Battle

and then, like Lucas, he wrote and released three further books telling us how humanity, who had been colonising space for hundreds of years but had never discovered any alien life, stumbled across the one Alien life force that they would die regretting the meeting, and not understanding, WHY!

These books are:

First Contact

Legend of the Sword

Dead Soul 

If you have never read a science fiction novel in your life YOU MUST NOT be put of by the genre, Hicks does not sprinkle his books with unintelligible gobbledy gook that would put most of us of, no, his is a thought provoking opus of tenderness one minute followed by unforgiven brutality the next! In Empire a young boy witnesses his parents slaughtered and his planet decimated by the Kreelan Warriors.  There is the tenderness and growing love between him and another orphan in the 'workhouse planet' he is assigned to by his human rescuers, and then there is the renewed hatred for the Kreelans as he is captured and his second home is destroyed by the Kreelans!

All three books are fast paced and unlike many books it is sprinkled with characters who all have  a story to tell.  These stories all add to the spiders web of intrigue that Hicks so skilfully weaves adding political infighting between politicians and soldiers who believe that they are in a winnable war and are jockeying for their own seats of power, to Warriors of The Kreelan Empire whose only desire is to fight and Die with Honour for Her, The Empress.

Dead Soul, brings those of us who have discovered In Her Name, up to date with the Kreelans and how the war was started.  It seemed shorter than the previous novels, or was it that I was just reading faster,  and at the end the only regret you have is, that it did end!  You feel, when reading one of these books, elated, you feel hatred for the Kreelans, then you don't, how can that be, they are killing machines, they do not give up, they do not retreat and they do not regroup when they themselves are being killed in battle, they just keep coming, survive and win, or die, there are no alternatives in Kreelan warfare.    

It is this single mindedness, that Hicks I think, uses to bring out the best and the worst in his human characters .  The humans have to be as equally ruthless in their own defence, they have to be ingenious in the craft that they bring to survival and Hicks captures all of it and presents it to us in a way that makes us tearful and poignant, angry and aggressive but most of all he makes us not want to stop turning pages to see what happens next.

In recommending this author and his books to you I really am at a loss to tell you where to start whether it is with the first three books published, which are also available in an omnibus or now that he has finished the prequel of three books 'from the beginning', but, whichever way you choose to go, you will be hooked!

Good reading 

Series rating: A definite 5 stars out of 5

See also: Season of the Harvest - Book Review (also by Michael R Hicks)

Mr Fat - an update

I have to confess to having become a little bit despondent over the last month or so.  Don't get me wrong I am still of the mindset that losing weight, for me at least, is to be taken at a leisurely pace. But, it seems that I reached an impasse around the 19st 10 lb mark 276lbs. It didn't seem to matter that I had reduced my calorie intake and that I had increased my walking/exercise regimes, I just seemed to be static and in fact a couple of times I even went back up to 20 stone.  Last week, Thursday, I said to Ishbel that I was pissed of explaining the situation and she in her usual way reassured me, wives eh! always there whether you want them or not and in most instances the rock we that we rest on...

Someone said to me recently, "you are a fat bastard and YOU smoke, but, like a tortoise, unless the fags kill you which they probably will, you may well live for another 50 years"! What a thought that is, mind you that will make me a 105 when I die, so is that so bad?

So I said, "and why do you think I am like a tortoise"?  and the reply was this.

"Well you know that some tortoises can live up to 200 years of age and the reason for that is that they, as a living creature and like their internal metabolism, works at a much slower rate than most other creatures on the planet and this 'laid back' approach is one of the reasons they live so long.  You are a bit like that you never rush about and you most certainly do not appear to be in any hurry to lose that gut you have been carrying about for so long, but, (and this is the bit I liked most) you are still a bastard but not quite as fat".
The reason I liked it was because it was true, not the bastard bit you understand, the other bit. I see it and I feel it. I have said it before in other blogs, that losing the weight is making a tremendous difference to me and then of course there was the lifting of the spirits at the end of last week.

(Just found this 4th October) Tortoises: 255-years-oldA zookeeper tends to Addwaita, a giant Aldabra tortoise, at the Alipore Zoological Garden in Calcutta, India.
A tortoise’s long life span has been linked to the reptile’s slow metabolic rate. Experts reckon as a general rule, animals with a high metabolic rate die early, and those that burn energy more slowly can live on for decades. Reports in the media are frequently claiming that the world’s oldest tortoise has died – take Harriet and Tu’I Malila for example, who died at 175 and 188-years-old respectively. But, Addwaita, a tortoise that lived in Bengal is estimated to have been around 255 when it died, making it just a toddler around the time of the American Revolution. Its age was verified by a technique called carbon dating, confirming Addwaita as one of the oldest creatures of modern times. His long life ended when his shell cracked and a wound developed some months before his death from liver failure in March five-years-ago.

Remember I said that I mentioned to Ishbel about not losing any weight, well added to that was the fact that I was running a bit late on Thursday and Friday and so did not get my morning exercise done on the Friday.  I hadn't gone for a walk on Thursday night and decided not to, because I was fed up on Friday also.

Well, stuff me with a baguette filled with cream cheese and salmon, but I weighed myself on Saturday morning and I had cracked the 19st 10 barrier and had gone down  to 19st 9lb. So, straight on to the exerciser and then later that day before the grand kids arrived I went for a cycle run too.  then of course it was stuffing the face when the kids arrived with home mad Tapas on Saturday and a Magnum of champagne as a day early birthday drink for Ishbel.

Now on Sunday I am normally the first one up anyway and then I get the grand kids up and we have breakfast together before Granny and the parents surface and I had intended to do that but get on the exerciser before breakfast with the kids, but as usual they so knackered me on the Saturday that I slept in and was the last one up and so, no exercise was had.

Sunday birthday dinner was again home made with crusty bread and olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping and olives, although you have to be quick with them as 5 year old Shannon will happily demolish a whole platter of these and still eat her dinner, followed by two different kinds of chicken, thighs in sweet chilli sauce and breasts in lemon butter with garlic and pumpkin seeds and various other little herbs thrown in, with potato wedges and onion roasted in chicken stock (and I forgot to add the chorizo but nobody noticed or cared) with lemon rice mixed with peas and carrots  - so not a lot of exercise or walking done that day!

Monday morning, slept in, so no exercise, carried out the morning ablutions and thought, what the hell, stepped on the scales and roast me over a hot barbecue but I have now dropped down to 19st 8lbs or 274 lbs.  So, all my worrying was for nought from the middle of last week and the message is; stop worrying, I chose to do this slowly and there will be peaks and troughs, but I am still getting there and still feeling good.

A BBC Radio reporter and a Press Journo annoy me

    I manage a small office and shopping centre for a property company.  They, the property company, bought the site from a Quango back in the mid 1990's.  A Quango if you do not know what that is in the UK is a:

    Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Body in essence what it means is that they are Government Funded with a seemingly Bottomless Pit of money and in many instances with Power and Authority and in some cases power and authority to run rough shod over local authorities in planning matters. If you want to know more about that here is an interesting article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph back in 2009, but do please pop back and read the rest of my little ramble, it's about a newspaper and a local BBC outlet!

    So, this site I manage, it has a car park with around 400 parking spaces on it and being a generous and magnanimous local landlord the company who own it has and still does allow free parking on a 24/7 basis.  However, the site also has a very large permanent street market on it that has existed since the 1970's, prior to that the market was a stone's throw away and I do literally mean a stone's throw.

    Problems started to arise when the local Tesco and retail park also in very close proximity to our site , imposed restrictions on parking and while the parking was still free, a time limit of three hours was imposed, remain after that time and you would have to pay a parking charge. Now, we and the other two sites mentioned also share another common thread in that we are all within walking distance of the local rail station and so commuters who did not want to pay for parking over there were using either the retail park or Tesco car parks and walking the few minutes to the station.

    However, when both of these introduced limited parking, commuters started to park in our car park.  Again, we were not to bothered to begin with, but, we did notice that while the car park was usually about half full on most days most of our tenant shops were seeing no appreciable increase, if any, in sales/ turnover.  In addition of course this was having an impact on market days as well when we needed every space and we needed to have a turnover of visitors to maximise the footfall to the market.

    So, we imposed restrictions similar to the other retailers in the area but unlike them we employed a chap who walked round the car park on market days and put  Vehicle registration numbers into a hand held device.  He would walk round all day and eventually if he put a registration in that had been recognised as having been there for more than the allowed three hours, than a parking charge notice would be issued.  The other units installed number plate recognition cameras to do this for them, which at the end of the day was/is a much more viable way of doing it in terms of making sure that anyone overstaying the three hour limit would have to pay the parking charge and then think twice about doing it again!

    SO, eventually we also decided to go down this route as we knew, without being critical of the chap employed to go round with the device, that it was a boring repetitive and tedious task, and we also know that some cars were being missed. We took the decision to change to the automatic number plate recognition system in late May early June with a commissioning date set for mid July.  All went well and the system was installed and trialled. The signs we had in the car park were replaced, 10 of them that included one on the public highway before entering the car park and flyers and leaflets were put in all of the local shops.  The only difference this time was that instead of enforcing the three hour limit on market days only we would also do as the other retail units around us had done and make it 24/7.  Bearing in mind that I have been getting quotes recently to re-surface the car park and the cheapest one obtained was in the region of £400k and that is a cost that the tenants have to pay for on the service charge.  So while we were not expecting to make a profit from the introduction of the scheme, my thinking behind it was that any monies raised, once the capital outlay for the cameras, etc, had been met, could be off set against the repair and maintenance bill, which I believe is a reasonable stance to adopt, you'd think!    

    So what has all of this got to do with the press and the BBC that I mentioned earlier?

    Well, about a month ago, which would have been a month into the new system I received a phone call from a local BBC Essex Radio reporter.  He introduced himself and then proceeded to tell me that he was calling to investigate a story, as a result of complaints received from local residents, on the introduction of car parking fees to a long established and local council car park!  He went on to inform me that prior to making the call he had in fact established that the car park in question did not in fact have anything to do with the local authority in question.  Did I have a comment?

    Well, as a matter of fact I did.  I started off by jumping past the local authority thing and said that in actual fact the car park was as it always has been in the past, FREE, to anyone who wished to use it, but for the benefit of the tenants in the shops and offices and for the market we were restricting the period of FREE parking to THREE hours every day and not just on Market days, so there really is no reason for anyone to feel that they are being charged as long as they comply with our reasonable directions not to exceed that time limit.

    Secondly, I enquired if he had called the local retail park or the local Tesco Extra to make the same enquiry of them.  This question was at first met with silence and so I repeated it only to have the reply to me of, " I don't understand why you are asking me about these other places and why you are being so aggressive about this, why should I be contacting these other places, it is you I am talking to"?

    "Well", said I, "the reason I am asking is that in your introduction to me you told me who you were and why you were calling and you said that you were calling, to investigate a story, as a result of complaints received from local residents, on the introduction of car parking fees to a long established and local council car park!  You then told me that you had established that we were not in fact 'a local authority' before you called me, is that correct", I asked.  "Yes" he responded.  "So. I will ask you again", says I, "why are you phoning.  You receive calls complaining about the introduction of parking fees where none apply to a council car park that is not a council car park and UNLESS they overstay the three hours and then you tell me that you have not investigated the same thing happening with two other businesses who did exactly the same thing some 18 months before we did.  And then you accuse me of being aggressive in my responses, why do you think that is"? I ask  "I've no idea why you are responding to me like this he says, It's not as if I am trying to do an expose".  "Yes, but forgive me for being so obviously obtuse here, but having established before you made the phone call to me today wasting both of our time, why did you think you needed to call a private company to enquire about their management of a car park in a small insignificant shopping centre, it's not as if it is a hospital car park where you might have had an interest and there might indeed have been some public interest, now is it, can you see my point"?  "No," says he and then tells me that there is no point in continuing the conversation.

    I thought that was the end of it until today, 27th Sept. There I was having popped out of the office as it was a nice sunny day to enjoy the summer revival.  Minding my own business and standing in the car park chatting to a couple of surveyors who had arrived on site at the behest of the London office.  As we chatted we were passed by a rather seedy and scrawny looking chap with a man bag slung over his shoulder ( I use one too so that was not a critique) and a pen in one hand and a notebook in the other.

    Without introducing himself he says, "Can I ask who you guys are"?  Now, normally that's my line. The receptionist will give me a call and direct my attention to a camera with some suited or not, person taking photos or writing notes as they wander about the centre and of course curious as we are I would pop out, INTRODUCE myself and ask if I can be of assistance, and then ASK who they are!

    Not this weedy little character, he asked us who we were without an introduction. And having already guessed who he was I then enquired who he was. He responded without giving his name as if to make us tremble in our shoes, "I'm a reporter from the (Basildon) Echo," says he, "I'm doing a story on the recent introduction of charges in the car park and the lack of signage"!

    "You are" says I, "and have you noticed any signage in the car park where it clearly states that PARKING IS FREE for the first three Hours and that there are 10 signs across the car park"?  "Yes, I've noticed the signs, but they aren't very clear" he replied.  "And there isn't one at the entrance"  "Well, yes there is says I and in fact it is on the public highway before you even enter the site", but by then he wasn't really listening so with that I ignored him and went back to my conversation with the two visitors and he wandered off.

   Now I have reproduced one of the 10 signs for you below and all I can do is ask you, and having read  any of my blogs you will note that I am not one prone to issue expletives in print, don't get me wrong it is not a prudish thing, I really can't explain it and as anyone who knows me, apart from my kids, as they have rarely heard me swear, but I do, like a trooper and as one of my nieces said to me recently, "Go for it Unky Tom, sometimes a written piece just needs a good fuck, and do you know what she was right!  

    So, Is it me, or are these Motherfuckers just messing with me?  I don't think I am being over sensitive about this even from the point of view that I manage the place but it just seems to me that it is a NON FUCKING STORY initiated by morons who have lost a facility that was never theirs to lose in the first place and I cannot for the life of me understand why tarts from the press are finding it so compelling?

The phot reproduced below is one I just snapped on my phone today and it is the one out on the public highway but it is exactly the same as the ones inside the car park and even from that one you can clearly note where it says FREE PARKING FOR 3 HOURS

How do you feel about the Niqab?

Niqab women fined by French court | World news | guardian.co.uk:  'via Blog this'


So, two French women have been fined the derisory sums of £105 and £70 for ignoring the legal ban on wearing the Niqab.

Now I am neither Muslim nor female and I have really never been drawn to this form of 'dress' as something that draws a man's attention to a woman in the way that other forms of dress or clothing do, and maybe that is the intention of the Niqab as the wearer does not wish to be ogled by others and men in particular! The Wikipedia page on this goes into the history of the covering and goes some way to explain the history of it.

I do know plenty of women both Christian and non Christian and Muslim and Non Muslim and of the latter I don't know any who do wear one and I suppose like other westerners  I am at loss to understand why anyone would want to, but, that some do is clear, walk down any street in the UK and they are evident .

I am neither a scholar nor a philosopher so my take on this matter is purely a personal and probably an uneducated one.  I can only tell you that I have listened to various debates on TV, probably like most average people in Europe this is where we get our understanding from (or lack of) on this matter.

From a modern perspective, where we have so much mistrust and where apparently we are at war in a semi clandestine fashion with Muslims I can and do see the need for security measures where 'people' wearing a Niqab must allow themselves to be identified when going near or entering 'target' zones such as airports, and official government buildings and there may also be a need for this in busy shopping areas as we do know that suicide bombers target the soft target rather than the hard target, so it is a problem!

But is the outright banning of the Niqab and other coverings the answer.  Men and women of all races and creeds and colours go about their business on a daily basis.  Christians and non Christians, Muslims and non Muslims.  Each country town and village wherever it is on the planet has its fair share of criminals, murderers, rapists etc., but we do not brand those communities with the same degree of collective guilt as we appear to be doing to woman who choose to wear a Niqab.

Now it is only the French, so far, that have taken this action and I understand that a number of woman have defied the ban and yet it is only these two who have appeared in court, although I believe others have also been fined, presumably on the spot!   I also understand from the report in the Guardian that they had no problems lifting their Niqabs to have their identities verified. so it does seem as if it is a bit of an unenforceable and unnecessary law unless every country in the European union adopts it!

While the bleeding heart brigade may protest at my next suggestion I'll proceed with it anyway, why don't we go the whole hog and ban all Muslims from Western society and they can do the same with westerners, Christian or not, We could also send all Africans back to Africa and all white Americans back to the land of their ancestors.  Of course we here in the United Kingdom  could end up anywhere from France or Germany to the Nordic countries as we all probably have a bit of all of them in us.  Now you know I am being ridiculous here, right, you do know that don't you?  But the same thing applies to the above it just seems ridiculous.

It is a sad state of affairs that we are in today where we need to be considering such measures of banning people from wearing 'traditional' clothing whether we fully understand why they would wear it in the first place or not.  And of course it is both tragic and sad that we are where we are today with suicide bombers and whatever.  Do you remember that Arnie movie 'Total Recall' where, when he is escaping from the baddies down into the underground/metro station and he goes through the x-ray machine and all you see is his skeleton and his big gun?  Well sadly that is what we need in every transport hub and shopping mall.  The sooner they introduce it the better, then we can leave women and anyone else who wishes to dress the way they want to and let them get on with their lives, and the rest of us can get on with our lives  knowing that at least every single one of us will have been treated the same!

What do you think?