Archives for themself - Page 5
To the Brink of Death (part 1 – becoming unwell)
I am back from the brink of death thanks to the heroes of the NHS who pumped me full of industrial quantities of antibiotics and other drugs when I felt unwell last week. This time last week I was in hospital, overnight on Wednesday I was so ill that if it hadn't been for the medical intervention there is a high chance that I could have died. My temperature was over 40C and my heart rate was over 120. My blood pressure was really low. I got IV fluids, oxygen and antibiotics injected into me. However that's not where the story starts, and we should start at the beginning. Demolition Job The old shed in the aftermath of demolition and its contents (photo: James Kemp) On Monday afternoon my wife and I set to demolishing our old hut. This was…
The Last Hundred Days a Hundred Years On
Wednesday 8th August 2018 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the last hundred days of the first world war. Although the Hundred Days Campaign didn't actually last 100 days, it was five days short! The last hundred days are a little studied period of the war, and that's a shame because they represent the high point of the transformation of the British Army. In 1914 there were 100,000 regulars organised as an Imperial expeditionary force. By August 1918 there were millions of men under arms operating in a recognisably modern fashion in large scale operations. Mobile combined arms, not mud and blood Canadian vehicles preparing to move forwards during the Battle of Amiens 1918 (photo: Yukon Archives, Canada) There is a totally different narrative, Britain was the main participant in the allied campaign. Three British Armies (which included…
The Secret life of the secret life of reality TV
Steerable camera watching the house (photo: James Kemp) We've had a film crew parked in our street for a week to shoot a reality TV show for Channel 4. Before you get excited, I'm not in it. My neighbours are though, and that means we've had a lot of people waving cameras about. Secret Life of Teenagers A couple of weeks ago our next door neighbour came round to tell us about the reality TV show his partner had signed them up for. The show is being made by the same people that produced The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds. The intention this time was to do something similar with teenagers. The folk next door have three teenagers, so obviously a good start for the production firm. The idea was that the parents would go away for the weekend…
Themself Giveaway – 100 ebooks via Goodreads
As an experiment I'm running a Themself giveaway using the new e-book giveaway service on Goodreads. This is only available to people with Kindles registered with so do please share it with people you know living in North America. Also my apologies for not making the Themself giveaway available in the UK. I'll run a UK giveaway in the comments section below. If you want an e-book version leave me a comment before 21 March and I'll email you the e-book in return for an honest review. 100 e-book copies of Themself are available between now and the 21st March for users using the link above (or the button below). Themself Giveaway Themself is a collection of contemporary fiction, poetry and life writing reflecting on James Kemp's life experiences as a part-time student, father, cub scout leader, school governor…
Game of Thrones revisited [Review – NO SPOILERS]
Cover of Game of Thrones Season 1 DVD (Photo: HBO) Long term readers might remember that Game of Thrones is one of only two one star reviews that I've posted. Generally I avoid negative reviews because I don't think they help much, especially when all I've got to say is that it wasn't really my sort of thing. Game of Thrones in video As I said in my original review of A Song of Ice and Fire, there's a lot to like in the story, but there's also a deplorable level of unnecessary misogyny. This didn't sit right for me as when you base a fantasy world on history you can change it. What made me give Game of Thrones another chance was two fold. First there was a chance that the translation from book to screen had changed it…