PHILHARMONIC

Philharmonic by M. Trevelean is now available to read on the Weaponizer Press website.

Philharmonic tells the comically dark tale of a man who strives to create a soundtrack for his life and the horrifying consequences of his obsession.

http://www.weaponizer.co.uk/onearticle.php?category=fiction&articleid=274

'ZER0' debuts on Weaponizer Press

From Her0 to Zer0...

'Zer0' by M Trevelean has been published on the Weaponizer Press website. With special thanks to Bram Gieben for his support and hard work on the site. Cheers.

http://networkedblogs.com/BNDq0

Tartare - Free Give-away - 25/08 - 27/08

TARTARE by M. Trevelean

A pitch-black satire that deals with addiction, societal norms, personal responsibility and tricky ethical questions like -  "Should I eat my Postman?"

FREE TO DOWNLOAD FROM AMAZON THIS HOLIDAY WEEKEND (25/08 - 27/08)


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tartare-ebook/dp/B006F6FKI0/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t


Tartare by M. Trevelean - How far would you go to quit?

Fringe Cringe

Tourist – (Noun): A person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure.


I like being a tourist; I like travelling and visiting places for pleasure. I hate tourists. Yes, I am aware that makes me a hypocrite but I believe there is a distinct difference between my idea of tourism and what others may believe.

When I go travelling I try my upmost to respect the local cultures, to blend in, learn the local customs and to try my hardest to make the least impact I can on the local infrastructure and everyday life. Whether I always achieve that is open to debate, but at least I try.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no animosity to other nations and cultures, far from it (in fact I am very fond of certain foreigners living here) however there are those who seem to believe that life in Edinburgh during August enters some kind of suspended animation, where businesses close and that we all have the time to wander about town like extras from ‘Dawn of the Dead’.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city, full of history and culture, however it is also a very small city with tight streets and compact lanes. The Festival and Fringe Comedy spectacular attracts thousands of people from all over the world every year and most of them seem happy to stand about blocking every street, shop entrance, business premises and establishment as they check an oversized map to see where the castle is. (Hint: it’s the big castle-like structure on top of the volcanic crag in the city centre. You literally cannot miss it, unless you spend your entire time here staring at a map.)

‘Tourist Dodging’ becomes a seasonal sport in August. By the time the festival ends most residents have hips so supple they’d make Roger Milla jealous (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j78m7EArbY). Huge groups of rucksack wearing, camera-wielding bobble-heads walking sixteen abreast across the street at a pace that even slugs would call ‘laboured’ during rush hour. Trying to get anywhere quickly at the moment is nigh-on impossible.

Then there is just the plain inexplicable. Queuing for half an hour in line at the cash machine as a guy stares glassy-eyed at the strange hieroglyphics on the keypad. Correct me if I am wrong but the numbers 0-9 are the same in mainland Europe as they are here. You’d think some people were trying to crack into the Pentagon mainframe the amount of time it takes them to take cash out. It may be a small gripe but cumulatively over the course of this month alone it must have at least cost me a Sunday.

If you manage to negotiate the amalgous mass of human traffic then you run the gauntlet that is ‘crossing the street’. Between tourists playing chicken with the buses (a foolish game, buses rule the roads in Edinburgh and won’t stop for Alex Salmond never mind vacant Americans looking for Buckingham Palace) and the selective colour-blindness of most drivers – red means stop everywhere in the world apart from Edinburgh city centre it seems – it’s a miracle that there’s anyone left to attend any of the shows at the Fringe.

So please, by all means come to Edinburgh, enjoy the sights and the shows, laugh at the comedy, wonder at the street performers, but for the love of God get out of the way.

M.

To forgive.

So let's see you smile
'cause i'm not impressed with your loneliness
and it's been a while
since you forgave all your changes made
so let's count the miles together.

x

Latest review for 'Tartare'.

Reviewed by Paul Fenton

Tartare tells the story of Edgar Ferrol, a smoker from Edinburgh who has decided to quit. The combination of the general smoking ban in the UK and the death-by-lung cancer of a family member is enough to push Edgar to toss the death sticks in the trash.

But is it enough to make him leave them there?

The craving for cigarettes is not something Edgar can easily shake, and he finds it affecting his mood, his sleep, his personal and work life. Then, one night out at dinner with colleagues, he mistakenly orders the steak tartare. Rather than admit his error, he eats it small bite by small bite and discovers that his cravings for cigarettes have abated. Raw meat, it seems, is the only thing capable of curing him of his addiction, and that soon becomes the only thing he can eat. Naturally he moves on from mince and steak to more uncommon delicacies, kidneys and liver and other rare cuts. Unfortunately for Edgar the effects wear off after a time, and he has to eat more frequently to quell his desire for cigarettes, and expand his palate to creatures not normally found in a butcher's display case, the fresher the better.

How far do things escalate? I don't want to spoil the fun for readers, but if you feel squeamish at the idea of carving fresh steaks off your pet kitty and picking your teeth with her tail bones, then you should probably stay away from this book. If you can cope with that, however, I strongly recommend you take a trip inside Edgar Ferrol's dark and fractured mind, and ride it right to the twisted (and wonderful) end.

It takes great skill to provide a first-person perspective on such a sick mind while still maintaining that thread of empathy, the leash the author tugs on to pull you along, and Trevelean pulls it off with almost uncanny ease. Edgar Ferrol might make me sick at times, but I'll still root for him to best his boss, to get the girl, and to get a good meal ... though not necessarily in that order.


Paul Fenton is the author of the hilarious 'Punchline' and his new work 'Cellar Door'.

A Cannibals Guide to Quitting Smoking.

                      FREE TO DOWNLOAD ON AMAZON 02/06 - 03/06

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tartare-ebook/dp/B006F6FKI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338548591&sr=8-1


"Fair warning, it's not cosy, it's not cuddly, it'll send more sensitive souls running to the relative comfort of a night of Frankie Boyle stand-up." - Simon A. Foward


WARNING: QUITTING SMOKING CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH

Downtime

My short story 'Downtime' has just placed third in the Multi-Story short fiction competition. Below you will find a link for the story itself.

http://www.multi-story.co.uk/winners-1500word3.html


And here are the judges comments:


3rd Prize - Downtime by M. Trevelean
Comments - The style is very spare and uses the present tense to convey a sense of tension and immediacy. The use of a countdown towards an event that is not obvious to the reader until the very end creates a sense of danger. The style is in harmony with the only character, about whom we are told very little except that he is a rich, risk-taking shit - which is all we need to know. This is very effectively done.
This is a dark story and its conclusion is open to interpretation. It isn’t clear if the underground room is a tomb or an engine by which the “hero” asserts the triumph of his will over Nature and his enemies. One suspects that both interpretations are true.
I chose this story for third prize for its general competence and I thought it original and provocatively ambiguous.

My Sweetshop Life

Flash fiction with a sweet tooth.

My Sweetshop Life

The illusion of choice. Sherbet Lemons, Pear Drops, Midget Gems, Cola Cubes, Pineapple Chunks, Sports Mixtures, Bon Bons, Wine Gums, Tom Thumb Drops, Pontefract Cakes, Sherbet Pips, Milk Bottles, Cola Bottles, Red and Black Berries, Flying Saucers, Blackjacks, Fruit Salad, Astro Belts, Jelly Beans, Flumps, Cough Candy, Mint Imperials, Pan Drops, Jelly Babies, Peanut Clusters, Chocolate Raisins, Yoghurt Gums, Liquorice Allsorts, American Hard Gums, Chocolate Peanuts, Foam shrimps, Sugar Mice, Salad Gums, Cherry Lips, Red Laces, Parma Violets, Cinder Toffee, Chocolate Limes, Cough Drops, Raisin Fudge, Butter Toffee, Aniseed Balls, Liquorice Comfits, Love Hearts, Sour Plums.

I'm not five. I'm not greedy. But too much choice is no choice at all. I can’t have a selection if I can only pick one. And if I can only pick one then I can’t pick any. That’s the problem. If I knew what I wanted before I saw the selection then it wouldn't be a problem, but confronted with a choice without time to consider all the options? What kind of choice is that? There's no kindly shopkeeper either, to point me in the right direction. So I believe I have no choice. I turn and leave the shop empty handed. Every time.

Either / Or

Knowledge is Power. Ignorance is Bliss. I think I fall somewhere in-between - I don't know enough to be powerful, yet I'm not ignorant enough to be blissful. Oh nuts!

The ‘Great’ Scottish Summer

As I write this I can hear the wind lashing torrential rain at the window, while I have the heating on to try and keep warm. It’s May in Scotland.

Scotland, as most people will be aware, is not known for its weather. The four seasons of the year tend to blend together to create one long ‘mono-season’ which, for sake of simplicity, we’ll call - ‘winter’.

The thing about the weather in Scotland is that it’s not necessarily that bad, it’s just not ever any good either. It doesn’t suffer from extreme cold, minus thirties or having six feet of snow eight months a year. Neither does it have blistering heat in the hundreds. What it does have is constant rain, drizzling, cold, grey, ever-present rain.

Atlantis is drier.

It’s the insipid dullness of it all that really affects people. In the winter it’s cold and dark, in the summer it’s cold and grey, in the winter it’s cold and dark, in the summer…well, you get the point. Scotland has a high suicide rate, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever visited during July, when there is a real risk of drowning (on the way to the pub).

It is painfully depressing for all inhabitants, having survived the long dark of winter, having not seen the sun for six months, to get to British summertime, only to find that it has been cancelled yet again in favour of a new season – ‘Diet Winter’ - all the rain of winter with none of the festivities.

So, next time you’re having a BBQ in the sunshine on a warm, balmy summer’s day, spare a thought for Scotland – whose inhabitants will be hard at work under the dark rain clouds.

Building an Ark.

How NOT to quit smoking - for FREE!!!

Tartare by M Trevelean will be FREE to download from Amazon over the holidays from the 5th May - 7th May. 


Edinburgh, March 2006. The smoking ban begins across Scotland. Many smokers would kill to give up cigarettes. Edgar Ferrol will.

Edgar Ferrol has stopped smoking. He blames the countrywide ban that came into effect last week and his Uncle Derek, who inconveniently died of lung cancer. He can't sleep, has a horrible cough and thinks he might be coming down with something. It is not going well.

Edgar is a 31 year old data administrator living in Edinburgh. He is single and lives in a small flat on his own, has family in England that he hardly speaks to and a bunch of work colleagues he calls friends.

After weeks of misery, having tried every conventional way to beat his cravings, Edgar stumbles upon an unlikely cure whilst drunk in a local restaurant. Raw animal flesh. Things start to improve but as the animal meat becomes less effective and his life takes a turn for the worse, Edgar decides on a new course of action, one that will drive him to murder, cannibalism and self-destruction.



'Tartare' is a black comedy about the nature of addiction, personal choice and a stolen cow called Frank.

Plane fair?

I remember when travelling by air was glamorous, before it became dangerous, until the present day when it’s merely tedious. Where better a place to see in full glory the gradual erosion of our civil liberties than at an airport; a place by dint of booking the flights in the first place, where you can easily afford the most expensive shake-down of your life.

I don’t like being suspected. I don’t like feeling under suspicion, even when I’ve done something wrong, when you could be excused into thinking that I should at the very least expect to be suspected, even to have the suspicion that I may well be suspected as I am a suspect, which I feel is suspect in itself. However to be suspected when I have cheerfully paid my money, turned up at the allotted and quite unnecessary 4 hours before take-off and then stood in line quietly and patiently is patently absurd.

I understand the need for security checks, after all as a nervous flyer I quite often find myself hoping to reach my destination whereas others are expectant. I understand the need for bags to go through X-Ray machines; that I should have my carry-on belongings scanned for metal or pointy implements, I even don’t mind performing a strangely edifying striptease in front of strangers, whipping my belt off with gusto and a wiggle as I hand over my trainers to be scanned for foot odour (100% clean record and counting).

What I don’t and won’t excuse however is the worrying increase in gruffness and inhospitality that is starting to reek from these terminals. After all, the prelude that I’m referring to is often followed by family holidays, special occasions or a trip to see a loved one. Airports and the process of air travel should be an ode to the human spirit, one of adventure, of family ties, love and conquering of distance. Instead it has been reduced to a long line of people nervously wondering if they’re carrying over 100ml of shampoo or whether they can take their lighter on the flight while they wait for the next stony-faced official to bark at them to walk through the next bit of technical wizardry which checks to see if your dentist was a member of the Third Reich.

During my travels I have experienced some mind-boggling procedures at international airports. The USA for example still has the most accidentally hilarious Visa questionnaire I’ve ever set eyes on with questions such as:

“Have you ever been convicted for an offence involving moral turpitude?” – As long as moral turpitude doesn’t mean ‘sex with animals’ then that’s a no from me.

 “Are you involved in espionage?” – Oh if only it were that easy the Cold War would’ve lasted half an hour.

Do you intend to carry out terrorist activities while in the United States? – Define ‘Terrorism’. Blow up a skyscraper? No. Go to Disney World? Yes.

Or in Australia, where it takes the best part of a day to fly to from pretty much anywhere, where they ask things like -

Are you carrying any porn? – No but my wife’s a prostitute, does that count?

Are you carrying any Biological specimens? – Yes I’m smuggling an Alien in the stomach of my companion here.

Are you carrying any soil or Earth? – Yes I asked the pilot to pop in to Home base on the way so I could plant some magnolias during the stopover in Dubai.

Of course the security questions are there to improve safety and security, but asking someone if they’re a drug dealer is never going to give you balanced results and the common sense vacuum doesn’t stop there. On my last trip I had the contents of my suitcase rifled through while I waited to check in, then I went through security (wearing a suspender belt just in case there were tips on offer) and then after waiting to board I got patted down in the tunnel as I was boarding the plane. Why? I’ve been in the terminal for the last 6 hours; the only thing I’m smuggling on board is my last drop of patience with airport security.

In the end the airports, governing bodies and nations are all just trying to protect people from acts of terrorism, smuggling and people trafficking – all of which are good, morally responsible reasons and reasons which the vast majority of passengers agree with. But it doesn’t mean that everyone is a suspect. It doesn’t mean you should treat people like animals, or you should be rude or short with paying customers or inflict draconian measures on people who are simply trying to get from A to B without a rubber-gloved hand poking into C.

In short, try making flying and going to airports an enjoyable experience if you can, lest you start doing the terrorists job for them and put people off flying altogether.

M.

Little cherubs

Children for many people are a gift, a wonderful miracle that changes people’s lives forever, creating families and untold joy to old people the world over (it gives them something to do). Many of my close friends and family have done their bit to contributing to the world population recently and I congratulate them all sincerely on the new lives they will get see grow up and hopefully flourish.

However, there is a little down side to all of this celebratory procreation – baby photos.

If any more baby photos turn up on my Facebook page I’m afraid I’m going to be investigated and put on a certain register for undesirables. There are only so many confused faces one can handle staring at you every time you log in.

Unless your little darling is jumping out of an exploding helicopter, I’m just not interested. A picture of a static baby is about as captivating as a picture of a static caravan. They all look the same. Now whether they have their father’s eyes, mother’s hips or milkman’s twinkle in their eye is irrelevant – they are all bald midgets and not the comical Vern Troyer type.

Three hundred photos of the same child only sitting on a different coloured blanket, or lying down or looking at something off-camera, or sitting eating food may well be endless rapture for doting parents or relatives but to the rest of us it’s like watching slides on a recent trip to Death Valley –

“Ooh this one has a cloud in it. See?”

Fascinating - look I appreciate that your little one is the apple of your eye, really I do, but changing your Facebook profile picture to a shot of an infant just suggests that you really don’t have anything else worth talking about other than how many attempts it took your son to pour his breakfast over his head.

Ah, but we can still flick through those photos in later life though, all those memories to look back on. Look, there’s the time you sat on a blanket. Oh and there’s the time you sat on a chair and aw, that’s when you sat on the slightly smaller chair only it was red. Here’s the time you lay on your back on the carpet – remember that? This is the one with you with a window in the background and there’s you sitting on the same blanket as in the other photo but it was taken from a slightly different angle. Oh! And there’s you wearing a hat.

Yeah…baby photos are not my thing.

Next week – Charities: Who needs ‘em?

M ;)

Follow me on Pinterest for visual aids to some of the things pinging around in my head.

http://pinterest.com/mtrevelean/

If you're on there then give me a shout, say hello or send some cool pics. I'll re-pin everything I like the look of. Cheers, M

Halcyon Days

This is a trip down memory lane (the lane has subsequently been torn up and turned into a lovely water feature). For all the commuters who have it all to do again tomorrow.

Hell is the Number 22

There is a reason why Hell is the number 22. What it is not is the number of chromosomes a parent contributes to the start of human life. It is not the number of times Julius Caesar was stabbed or the number of Grand Masters of the Knights Templar. It is not the most commonly quoted prime number. It has nothing to do with Darwin’s 'Origin of the Species' or the Number of the Beast. It has nothing to do with the Birthday Paradox, William Burroughs or racial supremacy. It is not the average human physical biorhythm. It has nothing in common with Discordianism or September 11th. It has no other meaning to me apart from one. It is the number of the bus that I take to work each day and it is hell.

Bus stop politics is a cut-throat world. I never wanted to be a politician but I have little choice in the matter. Without being able to debate with my body, to push and to shove and cajole myself into the front of the queue, I would never get to work. In comparison to some I am a chivalrous gent. At least I queue in the first place; I take a place in line, I believe in this social order, common courtesy you may call it or self-sacrificing defeatism.

Not all are like me. Some, which is increasingly becoming most, don’t bother queuing at all. Instead they loiter, hovering around the front of the queue until the bus arrives and then dive on before everyone else. Once in a while someone pulls them up, heckles at them, even grabs them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a quick yank backwards. But most people are too polite or too scared or too busy playing commuter politics.

The number 22 is the commuter bus. The most frequent service in the city that runs every five minutes (or so the timetable would have you believe). It runs from the bottom of Leith all the way to the South Gyle and it takes in the breadth of the city on its way between the two. It travels through Princes Street, Lothian Road and beyond. It is my least favourite mode of transport of all time and that comes from a man who hates flying. It is hell.

Unlike the other 99% of the Edinburgh bus fleet, for some inexplicable reason the busiest bus route is maintained with single decker buses. So while I stand shivering at the side of the road watching empty 45's with their vacant top decks rumble by I can't help think why it is necessary to shoehorn myself onto the next available 22. Maybe it is penance for working in the industry that I do. It is my punishment for further perpetuating the status quo. What goes around comes around, unless it is a 22 bus which inevitably goes around and eventually comes around 10 minutes behind schedule and doesn't stop because it's already full. Maybe life is trying to tell me something. It is hell.

The Tartare 'Taster' Menu

Experience the mouth-watering flavour of rich chapters drizzled with fresh sentences and garnished with the finest satire, imported all the way from my debut novel - 'Tartare'.

Try before you buy at M. Trevelean's Facebook page. Service not included.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/M-Trevelean/201615073201946?sk=page_insights#!/pages/M-Trevelean/201615073201946

'Sociopaths in suits' - Why the Banks won't change.

The financial crisis, The Credit Crunch, The Apocalypse (as some would have it) - we all have a different take on the crisis that has affected so many of us all over the world. Lehman Brothers went KABOOM and the whole economic world went into a tailspin. Of course this was years ago now and we are still feeling the pinch – Greece is on the verge of collapse, the European Union is fumbling about trying to figure out what the magic bullet looks like and the press have indulged themselves in the kind of scare-mongering that used to be the reserve of the Cold War and nuclear Armageddon.

What of the perpetrators, what of the Banks? Much has been said and written about Bankers bonuses, how UK banks that are part or majority owned by the British taxpayer are still paying bonuses out to their chief Executives and the backlash it has had from the general public. But what people don’t understand is why, after being bailed out, why they have not apologised, why they are still paying bonuses for failure and why they haven’t changed their ways. Want to know why?

I am an ex-corporate banker. I worked for one of the large UK banks that were bailed out by the taxpayer and I can tell you with 100% certainty that nothing has changed. The culture of the banks is exactly the same pre-Credit Crunch; the people that got us into the mess in the first place are still there, still drawing a salary, still getting bonuses.

There has been no apology, not to the public, the taxpayers or even the staff. As far as the Banks are concerned it wasn’t their fault, it was the market. They weren’t to know that the bubble was going to burst; they couldn’t forecast that borrowing had reached dangerously unstable levels. Couldn’t forecast or didn’t want to see the truth? Banks mitigate risk, they manage it, they spend millions on analysis and risk assessment – it’s what they do. Couldn’t forecast market change? That’s like the weatherman not being able to predict the weather.

Then there are the bonuses. Banks have been defending big bonuses with the excuse that without them they would be unable to attract the best talent. A fallacy if ever there was one. Most banks hire from within, they promote rather than look elsewhere. Even if they were to look outside their walls they would find unemployment at record levels. I’m pretty sure there are a few people out there that they could hire. Of course they need to attract the best people – like the ex-Chief Executive of the bank I worked for. Before he ran the bank into the ground he was in charge of a major Supermarket chain. Not banking, supermarkets. Imagine trying to get a top job anywhere with no experience of the role you were applying for. That’s why they pay the bonuses, to attract people with no experience, makes perfect sense.

The other issue with bonuses is the perception of ‘rewarding people for failure’. Take another publicly owned bank which recently announced losses of over £700 million. They paid ALL their staff bonuses. Can anyone think of a situation where a company loses money and the staff are rewarded for it? But if you talk to bank staff the bonus is EXPECTED – regardless of whether the bank is doing well or not. This is a cultural issue inside the banks and until that is changed we the taxpayer will continue to see people that we bailed out, that we kept in a job, that have made all our lives more difficult, being paid extra money on top of their salaries regardless of whether a publicly owned company succeeds or not. Getting rewarded for failure or getting rewarded regardless? Either way it is wrong.

Now for the dirty little secret that all the banks want to keep quiet – they are set targets of how many customers they have to get rid of. So the bank that you own, that you may have banked with for many years and have showed loyalty to, is taking your money while scheming to get rid of you behind your back. They have too much debt and the little people who aren’t super-rich or run a small business are of no use to banks. Instead they have taken the Governments bail-out money and used it to balance their books – why do you think they’re not lending? It’s better for them to keep the money rather than wasting it on small businesses or first time buyers looking for a mortgage.

The FSA could step in, if it were not for the fact that the people who run the banks are ex-bankers themselves with connections to the same institutions that they should be sanctioning. Cronyism runs deep within the financial industry. People are promoted not based on any kind of meritocratic system but rather because their ‘face fits’ (which is a nice way of saying that nepotism and favouritism is rife). Half these people couldn’t run a bath never mind a bank.

The Banking culture hasn’t changed. Rather like a Vegas Casino - ‘The House always wins’. We are being held ransom by greedy avaricious institutions, run by the guiltless and apathetic. This is not a rant by some third party commentator - this is based on my own personal experience, an experience that I eventually had to threaten legal action against in order to bring to an end. Don’t expect anything to change anytime soon because as you’ve probably already noticed the Banks will put themselves first and everyone else second, or to put it another way - 

Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behaviour on others.

Thought for the Day...

If you're intolerant of intolerance does that make you a hypocrite?

What price Freedom?

Sigh. Here we go again. On Friday the powers that be, or rather those who’ve found themselves in charge despite themselves, decided that it would be a good idea to start charging a minimum cost per unit of alcohol in England, in order to stem binge drinking culture.

Now I hate binge drinking, I really do, I used to do it myself and any fun there is to be had is usually completely forgotten by the next day when you wake up to find you’re barred from the pub, disowned by your family, bailed due to lack of evidence or in Uruguay. However trying to tackle it with the age old ‘let’s make it more expensive’ tactic really isn’t thinking anything through.

Firstly, what is the infatuation that modern governance has with making the small pleasures in life the domain of the rich? Cigarettes went up 7% above the rate of inflation last week in what I can only describe as ‘tobacco gentrification’. Good idea, that way in the future the only sick people would be the rich - could be worse.

Are we to believe that cost is the major determining factor for why Britain has such a large binge drinking problem? Do the law-makers seriously think that putting prices up will stop those with drinking problems acquiring alcohol? It would be a spectacular feat of naivety if that were the case.

As is well documented we Brits don’t get great weather. Yes, in the south during the summer it can get hot and is invariably sunny but during the long dark of winter it can be several months before you see anything resembling our nearest star.

I’m also led to believe that we work longer hours than our European counterparts and receive less statutory days off. So we spend more of our lives at work than we should like to which, unless you’re one of the fortunate few who genuinely enjoy their jobs, is not a good thing.

Then you consider the fact that we are relatively small island which is fast becoming over-populated, where the cost of living is sky high and that currently finds itself suffering from record rates of youth unemployment and an economy that is stuttering - happy days.

People who drink excessively are doing so to escape. They’re trying to escape the darkness, the cold, the wet, the metronomic grind of working life, of being skint, of all the daily reminders that life in modern Britain isn’t exactly a bowl of cherries. So why do you surmise that a price hike will make a blind bit of difference to the status quo?

We need a cultural change, whether its grass roots education, more holidays, less stress or European-style table service, we need to do things differently if we’re going to exact change. Following the same old formula of ‘charge more’ will only force more people to resort to crime to feed the monster, as the last habits people tend to change are their bad ones.

I’ll leave the argument with the best sound-bite I heard from the news reports on Friday as the BBC canvassed opinion on the street. One sharp lady who was obviously unimpressed by the proposed price increase gave this very commonsensical reply –

“We’re all adults. Once we’ve paid our taxes it’s none of the Governments business what we spend our money on.”

 If only that were true.

FREE BUFFET - All the 'Tartare' you can eat ( Sat 03/03 & Sun 04/03)

Willpower will get you so far and then it'll get you killed...

Are you a non-smoker? Have you ever wondered what all the fuss is about when people try to stop smoking? 

Are you a smoker? Have you ever wondered how far you would go to quit? 

Are you a cannibal? Have you ever wondered about the practicalities of obtaining food on a daily basis? 

'Tartare' by M. Trevelean is available to download free of charge on Amazon from Saturday 03 - Sunday 04 March


http://www.amazon.com/Tartare-ebook/dp/B006F6FKI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330082136&sr=8-1

 "Oh, my god, this book. A terrible, hilarious, nervewracking, deeply upsetting experience you are going to LOVE."  - Maria Bustillos (Dorkismo : The Macho of the Dork)

Tartare - FREE on Amazon 24/02 - 26/02

Willpower will get you so far and then it'll get you killed. 

If you like raw meat, cat-hunting, goat-napping, nicotine-deprivation-induced hallucinations, drunken Tourettes, accidental dwarf murder, botched suicide, KC and the Sunshine Band and the most bizarre curry recipe ever? Then you may enjoy Tartare by M Trevelean. 

If you don't? You're a normal upstanding member of the human race. Bad luck.

Tartare is available to download free of charge on Amazon from Friday 24 - Sunday 26th February.


http://www.amazon.com/Tartare-ebook/dp/B006F6FKI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330082136&sr=8-1

Tartare - First Goodreads review

Here is the first review for my novel 'Tartare' - written and reviewed by Goodreads member Simon Forward.


What a difference a book makes. While my previous read - some lifeless vampire piffle - drained my will to live, this was the kind of book that re-ignites my passion for both reading and writing. Tartare is an inspired tour de farce that takes us on a twisted spiral of a journey through the world of addiction. I originally read a handful of sample chapters back on the HarperCollins authonomy website and it was one of the true standouts then. The impressions endured so as soon as I saw that the author had made it available on Kindle, I leaped at the chance to read it, much like its protagonist, Edgar Ferrol, leaps at - well, that would be spoiling it for you. Fair warning, it's not cosy, it's not cuddly, it'll send more sensitive souls running to the relative comfort of a night of Frankie Boyle stand-up. And yet, despite the popularity of edgier comics, this was never going to appeal to the risk-averse, safety-first publishing industry. Which is a recommendation in itself.

It's often customary to offer some sort of comparison with other authors, but the closest I can come up with is Iain Banks, back before I lost faith in him with The Business. But yeah, maybe if Banks was on his best form and wrote the movie Delicatessen, er, you might be somewhere in the ball park. That aforementioned twisted spiral follows a surprisingly natural progression, firmly rooted in reality, lending a compelling conviction to poor Edgar's descent into a personal hell - largely of his own making. The author does everything in his power to encourage us to dislike Edgar and yet, some bloody how, we're invested in his journey. We care.

There's some complex psychology at its core, with an exquisite line in scathing cynicism interwoven with Edgar's driven, self-obsessive mania. It's captivating, engrossing stuff and - in contrast with the vampire drivel - I devoured it (ahem) in four days.

The one main criticism I can level at it is that for all its clever natural progression, the end is delivered courtesy of a character who seems to come out of left field, spilling over into the outright surreal. And yet the story almost demands this kind of transition from sublime to ridiculous and in some respects fits with the more surreal elements of some of Banks' literary works - Walking On Glass or The Bridge, say.

Beyond that, it deserves five stars for being like nothing else I've read. But I'm knocking off a star for a smattering of typos that slipped through the edit. They're by no means ruinous and they're a common enough feature of mainstream published works these days.

The key difference is this story will leave a lasting mark. While the mainstream washes over us all and flows into an ocean of fast-food packaging.

This has meat.

Dreaming the Life

I hate big companies. There, I’ve said it. They invade your living room and your computer and your phone, your newspapers, magazines, radio. They infiltrate every aspect of your life from what to wear, what to drive, how to eat, where to drink…effectively how to live your life. They bombard you with adverts in every medium, promoting clean living, responsible drinking, being kind to one another. It’s all white teeth, sandy beaches, slim women with perfect breasts, hairless men with six-packs, happy pensioners, still in love, enjoying their twilight years…all the same old utopian bullshit.

If companies want to use symbolism then they at least should have the honesty to reflect the world that we live in, rather than an idealised dream where maybe 1% of the total world population can start off the day with a pillow fight with their semi-naked model girlfriend before driving to the beach for lunch followed by the best seats in the house for the World Cup Final and topped off by a pool party on a cliff-top locale. Why? Because while the playboys and millionaires can aspire to these unrealistic of ideals the rest of us are at WORK, in the real world, surrounded by ugly fat people who smell bad rather than of ‘Pretension’ by Calvin Klein.

Of course we expect corporations to sell the dream, after all images of ugliness and pain don’t create the necessary escapism we need. Fair enough but have you ever tried calling the people who are responsible for these modern myths?  - those same people that commission the ad with the puppy that brings you toilet roll when in reality it’s an uncomfortable jog to the kitchen cupboard with your under-crackers round your ankles. Yes, those bastards.

I do it every day. It’s my job and let me tell you something…its all lies. For example when you’re on a phone call and the robotic woman on the message says – “Please hold the line your call is important to us.” Then when you call through to speak to the Marketing Director  and the monosyllabic receptionist in Darfour says that they don’t take calls and you’ll have to email, the first thing you think is –

“But I thought my call was important to you.”

My personal favourite is if you’re the lucky lottery winner that manages to get through to them (when they’re not at lunch for 3 hours or in their fifteenth meeting of the week or they’ve gone home at 4 because they only work three days a week and finish early on a Friday – is when they get the hump because they’ve never spoken to you before and you have the audacity to call them at work. I always respond with – “Well I never gave you permission to invade my living room a dozen times a night selling your rubbish but you do it anyway.”

 So don’t believe the hype, don’t buy the products, watch as these businesses fail and get replaced by other businesses promising the same intangible dreams, of lifestyles that you’ll never have or women that you’ll never fuck. Be happy without things and they’ll stop trying to sell you them.

Plain Pain Packaging - The Smokers Repost

So Australia is going to introduce plain packaging laws from December 2012 to inhibit the promotional packaging power of cigarettes. Hmmm. That was my first reaction. Now I’ve had a chance to think about it and my reaction is – hmmm.

I’ve been trying to recall when I first started smoking, or rather started buying cigarettes. I’ve been racking my brains to think if the packaging ever made a difference to which brand I would buy or whether it swayed me into becoming a smoker in the first place and the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’.

If you were to take a casual look at the design of any cigarette packet, one thing that hits you immediately is how boring they are. Take a pack of Marlboro Lights for example (Marlboro Gold to our younger audience). It’s a white box with a kind of faint finger-print design in the background with a gold arrow on it. Now unless you’re a magpie or some kind of pan-handling purist, it’s not exactly the sexiest image ever. Does it make me want to buy Marlboro Lights? No. Do I still smoke Marlboro Lights? Yes.

Quite frankly it could have a horrific bestiality scene on the cover and I’d still buy them. Why? - Because I’m chemically addicted to nicotine. If the warning pictures on the cover don’t put people off then nothing will. I’ve yet to see a person walk into a shop and say – “Wow, what’s that packet over there with the moustachioed man with a tumour the size of a grapefruit on his neck? He looks like a cool guy. I’d like a tumour like that, 400 cigarettes please!”

If governments want to help smokers quit then why not make nicotine replacement free to all. Instead NR is just as expensive if not more so than smoking (certainly in the UK). Given a choice of quitting at a greater expense or choosing the cheaper option – what do they expect? So it boils down, in these austere times, to a money making exercise again – with the ultimate cost the lives of the smokers. Banning packaging is an Elastoplast on the problem, a conciliatory gesture that ultimately helps no-one. At best it’s preventative, as it won’t stop those already hooked on nicotine, at worst it’s a further slap in the face to smokers.

What the Australian government are doing is skirting around the issue again. Ban them in public places, make them really expensive, hide them under the counter, package them in olive green wrapping (one of my favourite colours by the way) - anything but the obvious. Anything to continue the piecemeal gestures that suggest that, they, in some small way care about the health of smokers, because if they did care, if they really were staunch in their convictions, they’d do every smoker in the world a favour – and stop selling them altogether. Next week I’ll discuss how the United States intends to stop gun crime by painting smiley faces onto ammunition. Gadzooks! MT.

Zer0

As Jonathan plunged through the air, storey by storey rushing past like a flick book of shiny reflective images, he could see his life unravel before him. Bubbles of precious oxygen, trapped in amniotic fluid, became the terrible miracle of birth; emerging from the cavernous dark into a cold world of fingers and scissors. Childhood seamlessly becomes adolescence in a blur of ice cream and party balloons, tantrums and ageing cartoons. The unpleasantness of puberty awkwardly passes in a blink of the secretary's eye, on-looking from the fortieth floor's accountancy firm; a company he had never cared for and whom coincidentally had never cared for him.

               Exams and GAPS linger longer but never more than an afterthought. University days are lost, as memories can only be recalled where memory exists. His working life stretched out before him, miles of blank road with grey featureless terrain trickling onwards in slow motion. Jon could feel tears in his wind-stung eyes, tears driven by gravity into his ears, intermingling with the screaming rush of suicidal gale. He catches a glimpse through the reflection of his thrashing-limbed body, of a man, bespectacled and be-suited, standing dumbstruck, hot palms against glass watching the end. That was my job and that was me, he thinks as the kiss of concrete looms larger. Ten seconds from inception to interception, by the pavement outside Starbucks, there less than a month, usurpers of thirty years of previous cafe culture, disingenuous to the last. Ten seconds, enough time for reflection and regret. Chances missed, chances snatched away and chances invisible to the naked eye. Jonathan never took a chance in his life. The world grows larger in the twin windows and he feels the brunt of the fall from grace. Hero to.

Distant sirens fade, as someone hands him a voucher for free chilled coffee. Fingers find no grip now and the flimsy slip, slips down the pavement's cracks of impact. People make a fuss and turn away. They shouldn't, he thinks his last. I got what was coming to me.

M. Trevelean 2005 - First published on Writers Billboard February 2009.

Who is this guy?

M. Trevelean at your service. I'm a young (yet of legal age - perverts beware) writer who specialises in, lets call it dark fiction. I write contemporary tales, anything goes, there are no limits to the imagination. I write because I enjoy it - I don't want to be famous, I don't want to be stalked by paparazzi, I don't want my name in lights. I don't want to read about myself getting married to a she-male talent show winner on a cloud made from fairy tears.

I just want to write and have some fun while I do it. That's all.

MT

Greetings

Hello and welcome to my blog, written by me - M. Trevelean. Here you will find all manner of distractions, diversions, banter, rants and if you're that way inclined - some new material, old and new. I hope you enjoy what you find, I can be a raving, cantankerous S.O.B but take it with a pinch of salt - rather like life. I like to observe, comment, criticise, poke fun and undermine, for my own amusement most of the time and with a bit of luck to the amusement of others. So welcome, pull up a chair, pour yourself a stiff drink and lets have a giggle together at the broken, weird, contradictory world we live in. Cheers! MT.