invertedhourglass.com blog of history, writing, poems and comedy videos!

The First Ever Monthly Blog Post!

Fri, 3 Sep 2010 14:07:57 +0100

Hello everybody! Welcome to the first ever monthly blog post! I never realised how popular the posts where I prattle on about what I have been up to were! Well in true dan brown fashion I have ended the first three sentences of the blog post with exclamation marks so I suppose I should tone down the excitement a little, allow me to introduce the new monthly blog post. The theory is that now it is monthly instead of weekly I will have actually done something decent that I can write about instead of just saying, “Yeah it has been another quiet week”. To this end the monthly blog post should be posted every 4th Friday from now on.

So then what have I been up to? Well, it has been a question of everything returning to normal after the hernia operation, that is now well behind us all and I am back to full health, that is the good news. Unfortunately it seems that in the two months that I stayed in the house I may well have become a little bit less fit than I was, this is my suspicion as now that I am out walking again I can’t help but feel a lot more tired far sooner than I would have... also when I first put my belt back on I had to use the hole next to the usual one i tighten it up to... Eeeeek!

Speaking of walking I have discovered in the last two weeks that for over a year I have been walking right past what I will now call “The Secret Lake”. Just through some tree’s and maybe a few hundred metres from where I have walked passed many times before is a small lake possibly linked to the old Mansion that used to be nearby my beloved Candy Woods. When I found the little makeshift pier and upturned rotting broken old boat it almost felt as if I had stumbled into a dickens novel or at least stumbled into a place that I should have been wearing a top hat while I toured the manor grounds!! Anyway Just wanted to share that with you.

One of the biggest activities outside of walking that I have been involved in recently is making ice cream milkshakes... yes maybe I can see where the extra belt notch came from now! After a milkshake bar opened up in town (for new readers I live in Oswestry, UK) me and some friends got a taste for them, but being the skinflints we are with our money we decided to borrow a blender from somebody else and then set about making our own... Plenty of ice cream, a bit of milk and then some kind of chocolate bar.. Those are pretty much the ingredients, blend them and then all will be well! We quickly found out that in most cases no matter what we put in they ended up tasting like mars bars. The moral of the story is, milkshakes are delicious, often taste like mars bars and are inevitably very unhealthy!

Taking us away from the milkshake glass and back towards a healthy lifestyle I have a few interesting wildlife moments to share. On a recent walk with a friend around the small town of Chirk I saw something that was like a scene from a Beatrix Potter book. Dozens and dozens of rabbits. Running around in all different directions in a field only about 50 meters from me. It was incredible, and to add to the magic they were in a field that I believe belongs to the cadbury’s chocolate factory just behind!

Later on on that same walk when we were entering the long tunnel that takes a canal below a portion of the roads to the town I made the mistake of using a torch... the arched brick roof was covered in spiders, not something that I am overly fond of to say the least... so lets move on! It was quite interesting to see lots of bats flying around above the canal and just into the tunnel on the other side though, how on earth anything can fly like that and be blind is astounding.

On a very late night walk on some country lanes me and a friend were also treated to a relatively rare sight. Just as we were turning a corner in a very small, narrow and dark country lane (this was about midnight) we heard a scrabbling scratching sound and a low, dark animal scuttled across the road, when it got to the other side it couldn’t find a way into the hedgerow for a few seconds and was running up and down in a panic. Judging by the shape, size and scratching it made as it scuttled about I am more than happy to say it must have been a badger. It was a nice little moment and somehow seemed to make the walk seem really calm and pleasant. Lovely!

Finally on a completely unrelated note I have also been clearing out an awful lot of junk from the loft, some has gone on eBay, some to friends and some to charity shops. After spending the last 6 years moving the junk from my bedroom into the loft it is not surprising to find all sorts of old junk up there. I have found a few old things that make you think about “the way we were” and you could well see some completely different style videos on the site in the next few months... more on that in the future though.

Thanks for reading,
As always until the next time
look after yourself
and have fun

Dan

A Little Bit of History: Odds and Ends!

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:43:22 +0100

Hello folks, plenty of history for you today! I am also in need of feedback and lots of it! See what you think of todays episode and then bombard me with ideas for sections, improvements and outright criticisms! Either send me an email at contactdan@me.com or leave a comment down below!

I have decided to continue experimenting with the podcast formula and this episode am going to try the magazine layout for the show, I would also like to have your input on whether you think any of the following would be a good addition to the show, having a book review, having a roundup of events that happened during this month in history, having a roundup of things to look out for on TV and radio and also highlighting any events such as re-enactments and open days at locations around Britain and possibly other recommendations for people in other countries.

Len Smith Drawing Enemy Fire
The first thing on our list this episode is the extraordinary work of a World War One artist by the name of Len Smith. Smith was an artist based in Essex in England and surely never could have imagined the adventure and daring circumstances that his profession would have brought to him.

On the 22nd of November 1914 not only did young Len Smith turn 23 but he also enlisted with the City of London Regiment. The war having only just begun it would still have not dawned on the population of Europe that this war was going to become a conflict unlike any they had seen so far and it would not be unimaginable for Len to have been part of the large section of society who were expecting the war to be over by Christmas and put down in the history books as another of those Great British adventures overseas.

This of course was not the case and over the course of the next few years Smith was to be involved in all manner of no mans land based activity. His talents as an artist were soon picked up on by the higher ups and a suitable use was found for them. Len was instructed that he must go out into no mans land and draw the enemy, their weapons, positions and any details that may be of use.

Yes that’s right, he was instructed to head towards the German trenches with only a pencil and paper to protect him. This he did with immense courage and as such quietly contributed an awful lot to the war effort. Not only did he draw enemy lines but he also recorded personal events and friends and allied things of interest in a secret diary he kept. This itself throws up some interesting items such as what he describes as their first periscope which in reality was nothing more than a mirror attached to the end of a bayonet that would be in turn attached to a rifle and then lifted above the trench to peer over at enemy activities.

The beehive is also mentioned, it was a kind of net covered with camouflaging materials from around the trenches almost like a ghilli suit that was just for the head and neck. This acted as an invisible blanket that a soldier could peer over the trenches with and if needs be fire a weapon from.

Perhaps the most famous works of Smith though are focused on the German lines. At one point he was set the task of creating a panorama of an entire section of the German front line at Vimy Ridge. This took him four days to complete; during this time there was a persistent bombardment by the German artillery. When the work was complete he had created an incredible work that was almost two meters in length.

Another famous, and certainly my favourite, task that Smith completed was the drawing of the spy tree. Smith had to creep within a matter of meters of German lines and make an accurate drawing of a dead tree stump that had been damaged in battle. Why did it need to be accurate? Well, because the generals intended to make a steel replica of the tree and then replace the real one with the steel imposter over night, this was successful and then to add even more of the romantic wartime adventure aspect of the story a tunnel was dug to the steel tree allowing a single troop to secretly get to it and then hide inside listening in to the German conversations.

Even with all of this heroism and bravery in the face of extreme danger Smith was never given any honors above the respect paid to all soldiers of the war, he did however live a long and full life until 1974 when he died aged 83, where it is said he kept on writing a diary until a matter of days before his death.

Reviews!
Now then lets have a look at two book reviews, I don’t like to think of them so much as reviews and rather recommendations as I feel it would be much better suited to spend time on things that I think other people will enjoy rather than things that I don’t think people will enjoy! As this is my first attempt at reviewing out loud I have two books to recommend and have written their reviews in different styles, remember that you can leave feedback on what you liked about this episode as well as find links to these books on amazon at the website invertedhourglass.com.

Utterly Impartial History of Britain
This is a fantastic book, once I had started I literally read at every possible moment until it was finished! Definitely one of the top books I have read in recent times, the author John O’Farrell deserves a standing ovation for this excellent trip through British History.

Starting out with Iron Age Britain while reading this book we travel nearly 3,000 years to Britain just after WWII. It is not a heavy dull or long dragging trip at all, it is a trip filled with comedy, humorous references to pop culture, imagined comical conversations between historic figures and anything else that can enhance the story with a smile!

If you are interested in a deep revealing history then this is not the book for you, with it dealing with thousands of years of history it can’t be expected to detail all the events of time and that is not what this book is about, it is meant as a simple overview of major points on the timeline written to entertain and amuse while at the same time secretly making the reader a little more aware of the past!

The beauty of this book is in the fact that it is as much about history as it is about comedy. This is one of the history books that I wish that I had written! It is exactly what I try and do in my podcasts! The fact that comedy is such a big part of the book means that even if you have no interest in history at all you will surely find it a good read for the laughs!

Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives
Back when I was in college, which is a disheartening amount of time ago now, Terry Jones presented a TV series based on medieval history which I enjoyed greatly and as such immediately bought the book!

    This is the Terry Jones that many of you will know from the Monty Python gang, knowing this might make some people suspicious that this is likely to make this book another branch of some sort of comedy. This is however not the case, it certainly has it’s moments and there are many humourus stories covered, but this is a book of solid history. I do find however that it is written in a much less academic or maybe even less uptight style. Reading this is like reading a conversation in many ways, it seems that you could say things from this out loud and it wouldn’t sound like you were reading straight from wikipedia for example. It sounds like normal everyday talking, rather than simply telling you how it was!

    I have promised myself to keep these reviews short so I will give you a brief overview of the structure and then let you get on. The book is separated into eight chapters, each covering a different person or group in society, these chapters are: Peasant, Minstrel, Outlaw, Monk, Philosopher, Knight, Damsel and of course King. Each chapter is made up of an explanation/description of what/who these people were along with various stories of the events in these peoples lives and tales about individual people who lived an interesting existence. There are some great little pieces in here, and an awful lot of genuinely fascinating events. This book is also however full of facts, it has a rather nice little explanation of the legal system, as with most of the things in the book, not vague at all and yet never bogged down in unnecessary details, just enough so that almost anybody would understand immediately and then continue reading without a second thought. Like the third bowl of porridge in the Goldilocks fairy tale... Just Right!

    I have said it before and I’ll say it again, it is this books mixture of interesting stories and everyday, maybe even friendly language that made me realise just how good history can be, it is that simple formula that inspired me to first start my humble podcast career, and that’s why Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives is still one of my most flicked through books on the shelf!

So that’s, Terry Jonses’ Medieval lives and An utterly Impartial History of Britain that comes with a big thumbs up from me!

And A Little Bit More History!
Lets bring things to a close with a very quick look at an event that cast unknown shadows over future events and then an even older quote that will lighten the mood!

In 1915 a 22-year-old student at a Chinese college in Changsha wrote an epic 4000 character long piece of graffiti on the toilet walls. It not only attacked the college but also general society in China at the time. Who could have imagined that this vandal and unruly young man would become known as a mass murderer and founder of his own republic?
He is now remembered as none other than Chairman Mao and the republic was the People’s Republic of China.

This famous leader acting in such a way reminded me of an old quote that is attributed to Socrates that always make me smile, think about the general idea of the youth of today and then consider this is what was said nearly 2,500 years ago…

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

It doesn’t bear thinking about what he would say now

Thanks for reading/listening,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

The Monthly Video Post!

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:25:14 +0100

Hello again ladies and gentlemen. Hope you are all well and looking forward to this months mixed bag of comedy, timelapses and a completely random bubble video! Remember to subscribe on youtube so that you can get your dan brown video goodness delivered as soon as it goes online!

I will post my favourite first so you can see my scale of quality in action!

Thanks for reading/watching,
As always until the next time
look after yourself
and have fun

Dan

Original Short Stories: An Undignified Manor

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:38:47 +0100

Hello again lads and lasses, welcome to another short story. Lets take a peek at a snapshot of the life of one old man... Remember to subscribe and rate the stories podcast in iTunes to help spread the fun and games of these little tales! But now lets get on with the story!

An Undignified Manor

His home was overrun with strangers. Everywhere he looked he saw more and more faces he didn't recognise. Who were they? What were they doing here? They didn't look like they were officials representing some agency or another powerful family in the county. This was all most un-amusing for the Gentleman, his home was a mockery to his dynasty right now.
None of them seemed hostile which was a good thing he thought, he knew that his temper could easily boil over if there was any sort of confrontation. He looked round the main dining hall, there were people everywhere, what was worse they looked like the sort of scruffs he expected to find in the cities. He was hoping to find one of them who might look like they were in charge of the spectacle.
As he did so he had a sudden realisation all of these people were looking at all of his possessions, the paintings on the walls, the cutlery, the tables and chairs. There was an auction going on, he had been away for a few months and now that he had returned he had discovered the treachery of his children they were selling up. As soon as he come to this conclusion he exploded in a rage, shouting and pointing violently that everybody should get out.
It startled almost everyone in the room and as confused as they were they soon obliged not wanting to see the wrath of this random old man for one moment more. He continued shouting as they hurriedly left the room.
Just as the last few people were leaving a tall man in his late twenties, possibly early thirties burst into the room, followed closely by a girl a few years younger than him. The old man didn’t recognise them, proper city folk he thought, he turned his wrath against them demanding they leave this instant or face the consequences.
The man approached him unafraid of the threat. He stretched out his arms and placed them gently on the older mans side, “Dad” He said, “It’s me your son” at this the old man seemed to change into a different person altogether, he didn’t recognise this man telling him he was his son, but at the same time he knew it was true. The young girl, his daughter came across to meet them. The three stood in silence in the room for a few minutes.
The sister finally broke the silence, “I knew it was a bad idea to bring him back here” She said, “When we lost this place the shock of it put him in a home so what good was it ever going to do bringing him back?”
The brother was about to reply when a man in a suit rushed in, seeing what the disturbance had been caused by he looked sympathetically towards the two siblings and said in a kind voice, “Hello Mr Farthinton” and extended a hand, the old mans hand reached out for a solid handshake, stronger than he should be able to muster. The suited gentleman remembered it though, it was the same handshake that had taken a debt ridden country estate and transformed it into just another project for the new owners to turn into a national attraction.

The End.

Thanks for reading/listening,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

The Random Left Overs Blog Post!

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 10:37:27 +0100

Hello folks, I hope that this post finds you all happy and well. I have been sorting through some old projects for this site that have never seen the light of day so I thought I would take this as an opportunity to get them some fresh air! So here we have an announcement, a video and two comics!

The announcement first, it is a slightly disappointing one to make but alas it needs to be done. As of now the “Walking With Dan Brown” comedy podcast series is no longer available in iTunes, don’t worry though as the series is still available on youtube and there are plenty more episodes ready to go live, in fact the other day me and a friend (the famous jono83 from my very first website attempt “The Nintendo Clubhouse”) went out and filmed 5 new episodes!

It is sad to have to take them from iTunes but it wasn’t catching on like the History series had so I couldn’t justify the amount it was costing to keep online, so that you don’t miss any make sure you subscribe to my youtube channel!

Anyway on to some cleaning up of old projects, you will see that there is a tab in the menu at the top of the page entitled “comics” this is something that I thought could be quite good but I failed to realise just how much work and how difficult it was to produce simple 3 panel comics! So here are the last two episodes I drew but have not seemed to be able to fit in to the site anywhere, please enjoy them as the little bit of fun they were intended!

Finally many many months ago some of you may recall that my little group of friends had an infatuation with chinese lanterns, we tried one and it was a terrible failure, but then we tried a second time and had much better results, for some reason I never posted the video on the site even though I must have talked about it at length! So without further ado, nearly a year late... Here is that video!

Thanks for reading/watching,
As always until the next time
look after yourself
and have fun

Dan

A Little Bit of History: Witch One

Mon, 2 Aug 2010 12:26:43 +0100

We delve into the horrifying world of witch finding today, this episode is indeed a few days late as i had a sore throat and couldn’t record it! But now we are ready for our journey to the past once more. I tried a more serious tone to this episode just to see how it turned out, don’t worry lots of silly comments and jokes will be back in the next episode!

Witch One

If a man was to kill 300 women over the course of two years in modern day Britain he would surely be known as a serial killer and face a trial and certain imprisonment. But if we rewind the clock and travel back a few hundred years to 1644 we will find a man doing effectively just this, in full public view and in fact apparently on their behalf. This man was Mathew Hopkins, and by informing you of his title “Witch Finder General” things become a lot clearer.

Disappointingly there are almost no records of Mathew Hopkins before his infamous campaign against the perceived threat of witchcraft and then equally poor records of him afterwards. Something that doesn’t help the situation is that one of the few things we do know about him, his title of “Witch Finder General” was not even an official title, just something that he had made up! With all the obstacles of incomplete parish records and the fact he was active 366 years ago we can still piece together a very basic outline of the background the young Hopkins would have come from.

The boy Mathew was one of 6 children of a Church of England Clergyman who went by the name of James Hopkins. It seems that James was a liked and respected member of the community in Great Wenham where he was a vicar, one of the parishioners, Daniel Wyles even left enough money to buy each of James children a bible, though he does point out they are only to buy the bibles once the children were able to read it. The will was written in 1619 and only mentions three children, none of them yet being called Mathew, so it seems the Witch Finder General was yet to be born.

Assuming he was born pretty soon after that it gives us what seems to many people to be a very odd realisation. That is that if the witch trials occurred during the mid 1640’s then rather than being an older man theoretically experienced and trained in the art of witch finding, Mathew Hopkins was a young man in his mid twenties at the latest while he was going about torturing and hanging women.

The key date mentioned above is the 1640’s the time of the English Civil War, it is important to remember the mood of uncertainty that would have been present in the country at the time, who knew what was going to happen, who would win? What if the armies came marching towards your town? The fear that must have shadowed over everyday life is unimaginable to anybody who is fortunate enough to have never lived within a warzone and the potential for people to manipulate this or gain some kind of advantage is an often overlooked aspect of what would make a society act the way it did around the Hopkins Witch Trials.

The first person to fall foul of the self-named Witch Finder General was Elizabeth Clarke of Manningtree. Choosing this elderly widow was to set the benchmark for Hopkins’s career. She was a vulnerable woman with nobody there to defend her as many younger women would have had in the form of their husband. As torture was illegal, in theory if not in practice Hopkins had to be creative with his methods of gaining a confession, who would ever confess to witchcraft and effectively sentence themselves to death?

To ensure that he got his confession from victims and left no evidence of torture he would use tactics such as sleep deprivation and forced physical exercise in order to wear down a victims resolve and drive them to a state where they would say anything in order to stop the torture.

Even without a confession Hopkins had ways to reveal that the person was a witch. These do not have anymore a solid grounding in fact than the tortured confessions, when simply owning a pet could be proof that you were a witch there was very little hope for anybody accused. These pets were known as familiars, spirits that took animal form and helped in the witches mischief.

Based on this a method of witch identification known as Witch Pricking evolved, this involved an expert witch pricker who would strip the poor suspect and then use needles to identify dead zones on the body that in theory felt no pain and did not bleed, these were believed to be devil spots, that a familiar could suck sustenance from and acted as another nipple. In reality these spots were likely moles, birthmarks or other common marks on the skin.

Probably the most famous way to identify a witch during this time was what now we commonly call the ducking stool but at the time was known as simply “Swimming” the idea was simple, throw a woman into a lake, if she sinks she is not a witch but probably dies if she floats she is definitely a witch. The actual idea this was based on was slightly more in depth, it was believed that by entering into friendship with the Devil a witch rejected her baptism and that in theory if somebody was a witch the water would in turn reject them thus making them float.

Hopkins took this a step further making it into an elaborate setup that would gather crowds to come and see him in action, a suspect would be tied right thumb to left toe and vice versa to stop them from keeping themselves afloat, then placed on a seat connected to a rope that would be used to dunk them into the pond or lake three times, it is not known how many people drowned in such an awful way but they are more victims of the hysteria of the time and should always be remembered when talking about the figures for deaths from hangings after a trial.

It would be an interesting and no doubt gruesome thing to know just how far Hopkins was willing to go to get his conviction of witch in the courtroom, whatever means he used once he had his first victim Elizabeth Clarke he was soon on the hunt for more, based on the evidence he claimed to have collected from Clarke he found another five suspects and then from those another twenty-six. Out of the thrity-two suspects, using the methods just mentioned twenty-eight of them were found guilty and sentenced to hanging.

In this manner Mathew Hopkins during the years 1644-1646 went on an 18 month rampage through East Anglia condemning somewhere in the region of 300 women and a small number of men to death. Although he was allowed to do this unhindered for the most part it should be noted that there were some who spoke out against him, including both governmental and religious figures alike. The hysteria of the population and the fear of speaking out and risking being called a witch yourself was enough to intimidate many people into silence even though they didn’t agree.

Although we don’t know the cause of death, records do show that soon after the bloody time he had spent identifying alleged witches Hopkins was himself dead. Legend has it that he tried to pull his antics at one village that didn’t take to kindly to him and instead of going along with his accusations tied him to a chair and let him take his own sink or swim test, where he apparently floated on the water and was then hanged as he had done to so many others before him.

There is no evidence for this and it is more likely that he died at home from the all to common tuberculosis, his death may be a mystery but his burial itself was recorded as being on August 12th 1647. A popular poem from Samuel Butler in 1663 looked back with mockery at the figure Mathew Hopkins had become and the evil he had done, this is surely a fitting end for our story of horror and woe.

“Hath not this present Parl’ament
A Lieger to the Devil sent,
Fully impower’d to treat about
Finding revolted Witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hang’d threescore of them in one Shire?
Some only for not being drown’d,
And some for sitting above ground.
Whole days and nights upon their Breeches,
And feeling pain, were hang’d for Witches
And some for putting knavish Tricks
Upon green Geese or Turkey Chicks
Or Pigs that suddenly deceast
Of griefs unnatural, as he guess'd
Who after proved himself a Witch
And made a rod for his own Breech.”

Thanks for reading/listening,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

The Monthly Video Post!

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:16:50 +0100

Hello again ladies and gentlemen. Now that I am only gong to be posting here once a week I have decided to create a monthly post to contain all of the videos that I upload during the previous 4 weeks. Whether they are big or small all the videos of the month will now easily be discoverable through this single post!

I will post my favourite first so you can see my scale of quality in action!

Thanks for reading/watching,
As always until the next time
look after yourself
and have fun

Dan

The Last Sunday Blog Post: Exciting Times Ahead!

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:59:51 +0100

Welcome to Sunday lads and lasses! After another inexplicably entertaining day at work I have come home to find more people have bought the two audiobooks I have made (Click Here To See Them) I will thank everybody who has bought one so far here publicly but I also always try and send a personal thanks email to buyers. Why am I saying this now though?

Well, it is because people are willing to support me in this way that I really get huge motivation to carry on and create even better things for us all. I am lucky enough to have this hobby of writing that I really enjoy and even luckier that I have found it young enough to have time to put into and even luckier still that I live in a time when technology allows me to share it with everybody online. I will be honest at this point of this post I have already forgotten what I really wanted to say but basically I am really grateful to everybody who listens in iTunes, watches on youtube and visits this humble site.

But as you may be aware from this posts title this is the last Sunday Blog Post. I have become so busy and so advanced in my writing projects that I just don’t have the time I used to have to write a review every week and add a summary of the previous seven days every Sunday, it is not that i don’t love doing it, I am just trying to really make a success of my writing.

I have been readying around 30 of my short stories to start sending to publishers and agents in order to see if there will be any chance of publishing a larger collection of 101 of them in some kind of book. The obsessive proof reading and editing and tweaking and rereading for those 30 alone has been a huge task but now I think they are nearly ready. I am hammering away at the keyboard writing new ones as well as working on a history book that will also be something I can send as a series idea to the BBC at some point.

Even though I am having a much quieter calmer year than last year and doing a lot of sitting in front of a computer writing it is an epic time of my life! I actually feel like I am working towards something for the first time ever and it is both terrifying and exhilarating. My friends (in “real life”) have noted my relative absence from any crazy goings on and my wallet has stopped taking a battering every weekend, but my word count has risen at an alarming rate and my keyboard keys have all got a healthy used click to them! This is really exciting!

I will draw this last Sunday Post to a close now, I really wanted to just let you know how I feel at the moment in this one, I am chasing a dream, pursuing a goal, enthusiastic about the future... whatever you want to wrap it up as I am looking forward to seeing what happens, even if nothing happens I will have earned that nothing for the first time ever. I can’t wait!

I am sad that I won’t be posting here 3 times a week and just cutting back to once a week and one blog post per month but I hope you understand that I am an excitable young man with a cause!

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, seeing the thousands of downloads on iTunes, the views the site gets and the fact that people will literally support me by buying my work really has changed my life and given me an incredible amount of motivation to really do my absolute best and put work out for all to see. I hope that the stories, podcasts and videos posted here continue to be worthy of your time.

But now it is time for the future!

Thanks for reading,
As always until the next time
look after yourself
and have fun

Dan

Original Short Stories: Me and You

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:58:25 +0100

A Girl Looks through a window and see’s something she doesn’t like...

Me and You
By Daniel .M. Brown

She looked through the glass panel in the wall, to her surprise a face peered back at her, a girl who looked like she might have been a few years older than herself was staring back through the glass. She looked sad, Cathy had a lot of sympathy for her. Who wouldn’t be sad in this place? She thought to herself.
The girl seemed to just stand and stare at her, eye to eye. Cathy found it a little bit intimidating. Had it not been for the sheer feeling of desperation that seemed to pour out of the girl she would not have stayed. As it was though she found she couldn’t stop looking, an overwhelming sense of sadness and pity for the poor girl compelled her to stay.
She wondered if there was anything that she could do to help, should she say anything? What if it just made her worse or upset her more than she was already? A few minutes passed as they looked at each other in utter silence. Cathy could feel herself getting upset by what she was seeing, she didn’t know why but the girl seemed to really get to her, somebody who looked so utterly desperate for something but no idea what it was, the girl looked broken.
Feeling that it was all getting too much she moved her eyes away from the girls face and now looked behind the girl into the room it was similar to the one she was in, her attention was drawn to two things, the unmade bed with the quilt draped across the floor and the glass of water that had been knocked over on the bedside table.
A thought sprang into her mind and it terrified her. Slowly she turned around to look into the room she herself was standing in, her room, practically her home in fact. Her eyes were drawn to her bed, it was unmade and the quilt was draped across the floor, she then cast a glance towards the bedside table knowing what she would see, a glass of water had been knocked over and the empty glass glinted back at her.
Her fears were true. Tears immediately started to stream down her face and she started shaking uncontrollably. She turned back to the window and realised it was actually a mirror. The sad, lonely desperate girl she had pitied only moments ago was her.

The End.

Thanks for reading/listening,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

I Take It All Back, The Blog Will Move To A Once A Week Schedule!

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:32:36 +0100

Well folks yesterday I made the announcement that the blog was dead and the site will move to being simply a hub for all the podcasts and bits and bobs but all night long I had a sense of foreboding about the whole thing and it just didn’t feel quite right, so I am pleased to announce that apart from some minor layout changes (seen with the new “Quick Links” box on the homepage) the site will remain largely the same.

I will however cut the blogging right back to simply posting the transcripts of podcasts and new videos when they are released (once a week) With a standard blog post now appearing only once a month, this way I will not be constantly having to think up stuff to write instead of getting bigger things scribbled down and when it is time for the blog post I should gave something decent to write in it for a change!!!

I hope that everybody will be satisfied with this new system as it means the blog will be primarily filled with short stories, history and videos in a much easier to find layout!

On a final note I will write the last weekly blog post on sunday as well as delete this post and the last post so that nobody will ever know about my foolish behaviour!

Inverted Hourglass without its homepage blog just wouldn’t be right!

Thanks for reading,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

Sad Announcement About The End of The Blog

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:34:57 +0100

Welcome to one of the last blog posts folks, yes I am sad to say that on Sunday I will post the last ever “proper blog” post to the site and then the blog will disappear from the homepage next Wednesday. With the popularity of the podcasts and the potential for videos on inverted hourglass I feel that it is now time for the blog to step out of the limelight and that I should be focusing on creating the best audio and video content that i can.

I am incredibly grateful to the thousands of people who have read the blog over the last year I hope that nobody will feel let down by this decision, after putting tens of thousands of words into the blog it has not been an easy decision to make but ultimately not having to write two or three posts a week is going to free up an awful lot of time for writing stories and history so my hope is that without the blog the podcasts and videos will have their moment to shine.

There will still be new podcasts every month and very regular video uploads and possibly a new podcast series so please don’t worry about the future of the site, all this is really is a refocus of effort into the things that really can become fantastic additions to the internet!

Thank you all for your support over the year, this is just the beginning of what inverted hourglass can be I promise!

Thanks for reading,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan

Sunday Blog Post: Having a Paddle

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:52:09 +0100

Hello folks, it has been another calm quiet week, I’m back at work and life is returning to normal! Booo!
So then apart from counting pasta stock and putting hundreds of yoghurts out for sale what have I been up to this week? A good question indeed. Well I went on an interesting escapade in a canoe!

Yes you read that right, a canoe. I was invited to go on a little adventure on the canal. So three of us set off to go on a massive trip in a car of around 5 whole miles! Then we navigated our way through a small cafe to apprehend (read: hire) a canoe. Then we set off on an adventure that would see us sail the open canals all the way to the nearest lock... and back!

Well maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but it certainly was a nice few hours out. And before anybody gives me grief for having a hernia I did very little actual paddling... when you are in a canoe with two other people why would you need to! (Please enjoy the very short very random video below)

Me and a friend also recently discovered a mysterious flying gizmo that is basically just a cylinder of plastic with a little metal rim, fascinated by the claims it can be thrown for hundreds of feet I invested in one and discovered it to be a miracle! Imagine a small cylinder of plastic about the size of a wide mug and you will have the picture, (I don’t want to go to much into it as I am going to make a video and a review of it for wednesdays review), but when you throw it with spin it flies in a perfect straight line at head height like a weird mini UFO!
But more on that on wednesday!

Also it might be of note some time in the future that it was during this week that I have become obsessed with narrowboats, I don’t know how common narrowboats are through the world so HERE IS THE WIKIPEDIA LINK. I just thought it would be worth noting it so that one day in the future if I end up living on one I can say that this was when my obsession started! It is important to realise that round my area I am often walking next to canals so I see them all the time, but that is no excuse for running away and living on one!

I’m afraid that that pretty much sums my week up! Canoes, narrowboats and UFO’s! Oh and of course some chips and soup and a roll!

Thanks for reading/watching,

As always and until the next time:
Look after yourself,
and have fun,

dan