Kicking The Tyres - Michael J Dixon's Blog

"Can I take the dog for a walk?"

2008-03-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

...asked the little girl.
"No," said her mother, "she's on heat."
The little girl goes to her father and repeats this.
"That's all right," says clever old Daddy, "I'll smear some petrol round her bottom."
So he does so, and off goes the little girl with the dog.
Half an hour later she's back...but alone.
"Where's the dog?" says her father.
"Well she ran out of petrol half way round but it's all right; another dog's pushing her home."

Would a wedding in Ely see a hat like this?

2008-03-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

Check out youmaynowkissthebride for a priest (looking ever so slightly like Rasputin) wearing the sort of hat that I'm sure the Russian would never have entertained....

This wedding photographer would repair a Canon 300D

2008-03-12T14:49:00.000-07:00

...when the plastic shutter pin broke. Why? I'll tell you; it's such a lovely sounding shutter, a sort of woody, grandfather clock ticking, cork coming out of a wine bottle sot of noise. It's nice.
And because it's nice, it's not intrusive. It's nothing like the 350D which is a sort of frenetic, moped going into orbit, whining toddler sort of yowl. And because it's not intrusive...you don't mind it, even in a church.
If you soundproof the camera it's even better and discreet wedding photography is possible during the service. If the light’s really low then I’ll use a Canon 5D (higher ISO range, much less sensor noise) which, funnily enough has the same sort of shutter sound as the 300D (when it’s not broken). The 5D is just louder.
But my all time favorite has to be a 1960s Hasselblad, and if you take the lens off, it’s easy to see why; the mirror is huge. You could do your hair in it.
Click here if you've got a broken 300D. My website may help.
And click here if you're getting married and you're looking for a photographer with a nice sounding shutter!!

How many legs does a Windsor Chair have?

2008-03-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

speaking of Dell Boy, the number of wheels on his van has somehing in common with early Windsor Chairs; Because they were intended for the hoypoly, not the toffs, they often had three legs so that they didn't rock on uneven surfaces.

Me, I charge extra for missing out the fourth leg.

Bet you don't know what Windsor Chairs were for?

2008-03-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

Originally, that is, before they became the tasteful alternative to lots of upholstery?
They were garden furniture, the deck chairs of yesteryear, cheap to make because, apart from the seat, all the "sticks" and bows were small, thin pieces of wood. And because the wind could blow through them, they didn't fall over when left out in the garden. Dell boy would have sat on a Windsor (whereas nowdays he'd come round in his three wheeled van to sell you one)

Not a lot of people know that.

Wedding photographer

2008-03-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

...not formal, not "reportage" (dreadful word) but somewhere down the middle, was something I always wanted to be. I love "carefully casual" shots, where everybody is looking the right way, seemingly by accident. It's not, of course, but by setting up a shot and then going with the flow you can capture some wonderful moments.
And that's how www.youmaynowkissthebride.co.uk came about.

You may now kiss the bride...

2008-03-02T00:50:00.000-08:00

What, now? Here? In front of all these people?

...Oh, all right then.

Apparently this invitation was only extended to the groom. Oh well, we all make mistakes.

I did, however, buy the website, www.youmaynowkissthebride.co.uk ! Not a mistake, jolly good idea in fact for a wedding photographer, a much better idea than michaeljdixonweddingphotography which would have meant very long thin business cards with a correspondingly wide bride to fill the space below.

Now there's a name: the wide bride... www.widebride? Maybe not, bit of a mixed metaphor. That's a better idea: www.micksmetaphors...not quite sure what I'd use it for though.

Right, shut up now, www.youmaynowkissthebride.co.uk it is

Why would a priest wear a hat like that?

"****ing the tyres...."

2008-02-23T22:45:00.000-08:00

An engineering student phones up his friend. 'That Google thing isn't much good. I'm trying to learn about cars before I buy one, so I typed "shock absorber" into it and you should see what hits I got.'
Pause while the other student tries it.'Wow! Mind you I've just typed in "rubber bush" and didn't get anything dodgy. Maybe it's your brouser.....Why do you want to know anyway?'
'I'm going to buy a car tomorow and I want to know how do test it.'
The other student thinks. 'Well, there is a way that my Dad told me about. You can Google it.....'
Two days later they meet up in the canteen. The first student says. 'Well, I looked up that method of yours, and found more iffy websites. And I don't see how it helps me decide about the car. All I've got is a tongue that tastes of tyres and a lot of funny looks.'
The other student looks wearily at him. 'I said Kicking, not Licking.'

A motor racing horse riding novel....

2008-02-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

Sounds unlikely, I'll grant you. And I never set out to write it. I certainly never set out to write "Kicking the Tyres" from the middle, gradually filling out the plot (and the characters) towards both ends. And I definitely don't recommend it, unless you actually like re-writing stuff.
Writing my novel this way was just a natural consequence of starting from a bare idea which I only wrote down to get it out of my head. And, once I'd decided to try to make it into a book, it concerned me and my immediate critics (that's another term for "wife") that it wouldn't have a target audience because the themes were too widely spread (horses, cars, racing, inventing...love).
But I carried on because I was writing it for me, rather than, primarily to sell, and I'm very glad I did, because the people who've read it, ranging from academics to teenagers to older people with no particular interest in any of those things, have all said that it's an exciting read that they found it hard to put down.
YES!!!!!
I think the message is that most things are interesting to most people...up to a point. So if it's woven int othe plot, and doesn't dominate, then its ok. Real life is made up of lots of different things.
So it is possible, fellow authors...go with your instincts, if you want to write it, go for it. If it's well written, I reckon it will have a market somewhere.
Mike

It runs on grass....

2008-02-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Lots of it, mind you, takes a whole field to keep it going, and an awful lot seems to come out of the other end in a slightly less desirable form but, what the hell, it's good for the roses. Meanwhile, this grass conversion machine has been carting me round a set of very, very small showjumps, under the expert instruction of one John Adams, an excellent riding instructor, running a clinic today for Cambridge Riding Club. He gets my vote; he shouts loudly but clearly at you, one thing at a time and, by the end of the session, had clearly installed in me the fact that the reins are there for steering, not for pulling on when you've lost your balance. And Gulliver, (the cross-bred grass converter) seemed equally pleased by this discovery. Check out situpandkick for some before and after pictures,and watch this space for the next episode (when my back has stopped hurting).

If I was a horse I wouldn't jump that...

2008-01-29T08:56:00.000-08:00

More accurately, I wouldn't jump off it: I'm talking here about the drop-fence at Burghley three day event which is, and I kid you not, six foot three inches straight down, onto a forty five degree slope which just goes on for miles. I take my hat off to anyone who approaches on a cantering, steamed up thoroughbred and then just "pops" off the edge. Me, I'd use a rope and pegs and I'd need a gin and tonic when I got down.
But Phoebe Buckley did it, last year, on Polly Taylor's Little Tiger (a tiny mare considerably under six foot three, no matter where you you measure). Regrettably, they retired further on...but wow!
You can read the full story here.

The wing mirror conundrum:

2008-01-15T02:17:00.000-08:00

Here's one that really bothers me: if I was to back my car into a parking space, every day, for ever, eventually I would make a mistake and bash my wing mirror into someone else's. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that this would happen once evey 10,000 attempts. (It probably wouldn't take that long).
When it happened, I would say something along the lines of "Oh bother, how careless of me...", assuming that it was my own fault.
But what if it wasn't my fault? Who says that the real, physical world, the set of rules that says that when when piece of overpriced Europlastic collides with another, that generally one of them breaks, never makes a mistake? Perhaps I just got real close to the next car, then the cosmos slipped a tiny little gear and the plastic broke when it didn't really need to.
Was it really my fault? Does quantum mechanics never get just a tiny bit over-enthusiastic, and ping something off when it didn't really collide? Is Heisenburg sitting up there on his cloud, looking down on me with his binoculars..."Yup..near enough, let's snap it off this time...Oh wait, no..."
Too late.
Is that why no-one ever parks next to me?

The man who designed the strimmer

2008-01-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

There was an old girl with a Zimmer
Who wanted to make herself thinner
She sat on the grass
Drew a line round her ass
And cut the bits off with a strimmer

and thats the only use for the thing...has anyone actually tried threading a new spool of line onto one? It makes clingfilm in space seem trivial. It's impossible, it can't be done, and is presumably why they didn't have window boxes on the Space Shuttle. (That and the problem of watering them).

Clutch control with an umbrella

2008-01-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

Having stood on a nail sticking out of a piece of wood, which attached itself to my foot rather in the manner of a short, rather primitive ski, I was faced with the problem of getting to the local hospital before it shut for the night. No way could I press the clutch down with that foot (even after removal of the nail/wood add-on) so I used an umbrella.
Which is incredibly difficult, just try it. The nurses nearly injured themselves laughing.

Just a Lady Godiva!

2008-01-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

Well it was my first time, I'd never written a novel before, but "Kicking the Tyres" is now for sale, the cover price is £8.00 but twist my arm, I'm a fool to myself, tell you what I'll do, just to keep them moving when everyone's skint after Christmas, steal it off me for £5.00 and I'll throw in the adjectives for free, can't say fairer than that can I?

I published it myself: I was shy, and nervous, but I knew I really wanted it, so I formed a relationship with a printer (and yes I did take precautions) ...and he guided me, and I came away feeling satisfied but not at all used...and with a great big pile of books. Which sort of makes me my own publisher.

I didn't like to tell people at first, but I knew it would be better to talk, get it out in the open, so I shifted a few at the local horse trials (where I'm the photographer), gave a few away for Christmas...and people were really complimentary:

"I found "Kicking the Tyres" easy to pick up yet difficult to put down, with a good balance of drama, romance, technical bits and tension from the start. The reader feels like he's alongside the characters - sharing the challenges and excitement. Looking forward to the sequel!"
So here we go then, let's shift some more at rock bottom price, I'll swallow the postage if you'll tell all your friends, I'll even eat the paypal charge if you'll just part with one Lady Godiva for three hundred and fifty pages of my finest prose. That, madam, is about 0.006p per word, not including the adjectives. I say "madam", it's a boys book as well. The girls will like the soft, furry bits (and the boys will too although they won't admit it) and there's lots of action in racecars and on horses. And then there's the ending...

Adding value to a novel

2008-01-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

The thought was prompted by an article in the Independent which states, fairly categorically, that authors will never ever be able to make a respectable living from the sales of their novels. Period.
I'm sorry, but I really don't see why not. It's certainly true with the current book trade model, but presumably (and I am currently putting quite a lot of effort into this) if one removes all the entities who don't add any value to the work along the way (but who take a cut of the profits) then the author would be left with a much bigger share?
One could start with the agent who seems to me to be nothing but a middle man designed to get you an audience with the next middle man; the publisher. And I'm certainly confused as to what publishers actually do: they don't actually add any value to the book, they sub out the cover design and they certainly don't print it themselves. They just take the finished article and pass it on...to the bookseller, who takes a considerable cut for taking the book and camouflaging it on his shelves by putting it alongside...thousands of other books! Why?
I'm not going to bore you with numbers here, but your average £8.00 paperback returns something like 50p to the author as a royalty, while the bookseller will take about £3.00.
So I will admit to being slightly baffled when I read of authors working extremely hard to push their published novel: they go to book signings, they lecture, they give out freebies, they blog, etc, etc, and all for a tiny percentage, while the middle men take the rest.
I could see the problem when you had to print 5000 copies at a time, but this is, after all, the digital age. If we ignore all the endless discussions about self-publishing/vanity/internet ditto and accept the simple fact that one can now print a few hundered copies of a book at a price per copy which still leaves a reasonable margin for the author (about £3-4 on an £8.00 cover price), then it looks to me as though the opportunities for going it alone are better than ever. You only have to sell one copy for every half dozen under the old method, you don't have to wait several months for your money (another little feature of the book trade) and, if the thing really does take off, you can stay with the same printer but then order your5000.
And at that point your price comes down to around £1.00 per copy. I'm sure you can do the maths on what the profit ratio becomes.
So what the catch? I'll tell you.
It's not difficult to build a website, and it's not even particularly hard to get a stream of traffic to it...but converting those visits into hard sales, with a credit card number tapped in and a nice address for you to post the book off to...wow, that takes time.
I console myself with the though that each sale represents at least five by the old way, and that mine should grow.
Assuming that "Kicking the Tyres" is any good of course!!

How to install an oil leak...

2008-01-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

It's quite simple actually: just take one old car and drain the sump, ready for some fresh stuff. Ignore the words of wisdom at the back of your mind ("if it aint actually broke, don't fix it...") examine the chewed up sealing washer and the pock-marked, I've-been-abused-by-a-monkey-in-a-garage sealing surface on the sump and put the plug back in. Then fill the engine with clean oil.
Take a few minutes to congratulate yourself and then crawl underneath again to admire the steady drip-drip from a part of the car that was, until your thoughtful intervention, completely sealed from the outside world.
Then start the process of draining the clean oil out again, transfering it into another container so that you can pour it yet again into the top of the engine and start thinking of ways to make it stay IN the wretched engine. Do this at least five times (which will take most of the day) and don't forget to do it on a diesel, as the oil is so much blacker and smellier and stains the driveway so much better.
And don't, whatever you do, make the mistake of trying this in summer. It's SO much more fun on a winter's day.

Solution? Why does everything have to be a solution?

2008-01-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

"Solution" seems to be the new "effective". Not so long ago, everything had to be effective: we had effective communication, effective strategy, effective this, effective that, just as if ineffective versions of the same thing were somehow still quite useful....
Now we can't even have the noun on its own: the train has become a transport solution (but not a very effective one), the electricity board has become an energy solution...
Does this mean that my lunchtime sandwich is now a hunger solution?
Or the floor of my office is an anti-gravity solution?
Send me your answers (which of course should now be referred to as question solutions...)

Why didn't they take sandwiches to the moon?

2007-12-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

I'll tell you why: because they would have had to dealt with the clingfilm. It's bad enough on earth, with gravity and all, but can you imagine Neil Armstrong, hurtling round and round, trying to get the wretched stuff off his cheese and tomato?... That's why Nasa invented all those freeze dried things.
The MG's watching jealously (we're off clingfilm now) as I render some footage from the chicane at Snetterton race track, shot this autumn when the MG car club were there. I think it wants a go (me too actually).
Check it out

The Fridge Magnet Blues Band

2007-12-29T14:12:00.000-08:00

Ok...so we had a good lunch on boxing day, and the cam-corder came out. Unlike previous films (like the Ely Mountain Rescue Team which was filmed on Super 8 and then converted) the Fridge Magnet Blues Band was created with out-of-the-box modern technology with a lot of post-synching (on account of the alcohol).
Happy new year!!!

Ely Mountain Rescue Team

2007-12-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

A lot of people think that just because the Fens are completely flat, there's no need for mountain rescue...well I've just found some archive footage!!

why don't paper shredders have an "undo" button?

2007-12-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

Not that I've mistakenly shredded anything I wanted...I just thought it would be cool. So much so that I've added one, made out of masking tape, to the shredder outside my office door, and I'm now watching carefully to see if anyone presses it.
Even cooler would be if, whilst recreating the piece of paper, it could suck up all the fragments of shred, or shreds of fragment, which now trail across the carpet from the last time someone tried to empty it.
Looks like the swarf trail in my workshop, which is also the camera repair shop, and the studio, and the print lab...and the steam test lab.
....And the winter garage for the MG. It's a 1972, 1275cc MG Midget and it features on the front cover of my motor racing novel "Kicking the Tyres". So do I, fighting the wheel with a manic expression on my face, a blur of hands on the steering wheel, a shaft of light reflected from one crazy eyeball, and trees whistling past in the background.
It really doesn't look like it was shot in the garage.
Does it?

I have a friend!

2007-11-29T05:33:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the US of A apparently. My spies inform me that, since posting the video of the VapourMotor not quite running on Youtube, someone has commented that a dude called Bill Ryan has done the same thing...and fitted it in a go-Kart. This man I must meet.
In the meantime, attempts to re-create the heady success of twenty-five years ago when my VapourMotor went round and round of its own accord (for a grand total of three minutes i can now proudly announce, having found my original report in the loft) are hampered by the fact that the engine, when obstinately refusing to run, emits vast clouds of hot water and steam...in many directions, but usually towards the cameras, computers and printers that it currently shares the workshop with...you get the picture.
Why do so many of the fishermen you see sitting beside canals wear camouflage jackets and trousers? Is it to stop the fish seeing them?

suddenly it looked like a book....

2007-11-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

The fights with the printer, the fights with the glue, even the fights with the hand plane to trim the edges of the book to something approaching an acceptable finish, were all suddenly worth while.
Suddenly, it looked like a book. It was small, A6 size, which the first person I gave one too really approved of as it was convenient for holding in an airport queue, and when I opened it, the words seem to take on a "presence" that they just never had on a computer screen, or even printed out as individual pages with headers and footers.
I really recommend it! When you ask people to read it, they are already in the "mindset" of "this is a book" (as opposed to 400 sheets of A4, unbound). It helps.

no, actually I want the entire book printed in the same font!

2007-11-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

320 pages right? 320 pages of bookman old style, 9pt, with a half inch margin, and different headers on the odd and even pages, my name on one and the book title on the other. Not so hard for modern technology and printer systems with lots of little boxes that you have to go through?
You'd think???
I got 300 pages of bookman old style, 9 pt, with a half inch margin etc. etc. and then, somehow, I offended it. Maybe I forgot to compliment microsoft word on what a super job it was doing, maybe I omitted to polish the bonnet of my printer when it was expecting it.
Whatever.
It gave me the last 20 pages in Times **** New &%$£ Roman.
12pt.
Terrific....

hand made books....

2007-11-15T05:16:00.000-08:00

Are jolly hard work. I console myelf, as I try to retrieve 25 copies of "Kicking the Tyres" from the far side of the world (the unintended recipient having failed to respond to my very sporting offer that he just buy them off me and set up a sales outlet) that at least I hadn't made the things myself.

But I did first time round: two years ago, when the first draft was complete, and needed reading, I talked an old and very dear friend into giving it a go on a transatlantic flight. But she's tiny, and the weight of the manuscript would have doubled her transit time through Heathrow (from one to two days), so I made her a book.

Challenging? Not half!

First you have to persuade MS word to format the book to the page size you want without (and this is the tricky bit) converting it all back to "Times New Roman" because just occasionally, in some far flung corner of the cosmos, Times New Roman is just not what we want, is it?

Done that? Right, press "save" and gird your loins for the next bit: getting the printer to print signatures for you so all the pages are in the right order and the hapless reader doesn't get the last page right after the first page.
What went wrong? I'll tell you tomorrow!!

no such thing as bad publicity....

2007-11-15T01:09:00.000-08:00

"Kicking the Tyres", my self-published motor-racing novel, is currently generating rather more laughs than were intended:
Due to a complicated chain of events, I told my printer to deliver the next consignment of books to my place of work, as I couldn't be sure to be at home to meet the carrier. As it happened, I was not at work the day they arrived. Unfortunately, the books were packaged 25 at a time, in a cardboard box of very similar dimensions and appearance to those that the company catalogue is shipped out in....

Am now trying to explain to a customer in Singapore why he has, on his desk.....

2007-11-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

2007-11-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

A vapourmotor is an imaginary racing car engine...that's real. Imaginary because it's a key part of my motor-racing novel "Kicking the Tyres", and real because I invented it, about twenty five years ago as an engineering student. AND IT WORKED. Not brilliantly, not even very well, but it went round and round and made a chuff-chuff noise and scalded everybody who came within ten feet of it. To an engineer, that's success! You can see pictures of it at www.vapourmotor.co.uk and when I've got it going again, I'll post a clip. In the meantime, "Kicking the Tyres" is published and you can read the first chapter at www.michaeljdixon.co.uk

the vapourmotor won't run!

2007-11-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

It worked all right twenty years ago....no wait twenty six years ago. Just because I left it behind when I graduated, collected it off a shelf ten years later when I went back to the university for something else, let it go rust in the garage for ten years, piled it up in the back of a non-working landrover for five years....suddenly the highly precise high pressure water injector is up the spout, and the carefully turned, highly exotic PTFE piston rings have glued themselves to the walls of the cylinder.
Typical!