{"id":8365,"date":"2020-09-30T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/?p=8365"},"modified":"2026-11-03T10:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T10:12:10","slug":"the-meerkat-muse-30th-of-september-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/?p=8365","title":{"rendered":"The Meerkat Muse: 30th of September, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently my dreams have turned pretty grim. In one, I\u2019d gotten up to go downstairs, but then as I walked down the stairs, I decides to lie down, feeling low for some reason, before going back to bed, and feeling an enveloping blackness closing in around me. I then woke up for real. In another dream, I kept needing to pee, and couldn\u2019t get way from this feeling, and this left me in a really bad mood \u2013 until I woke up and realised I really needed to pee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a side note, I had a dream that one of these was buried in a field near my house, and I was looking for it.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
(Update, Nov 2026: I can’t remember what it was that was buried, so here is me, as a meerkat!)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I can only imagine these dreams are a manifestation of the current, seemingly endless issue of the pandemic, though there\u2019s other stuff too. I am finding myself contemplating that I will forty in the not-so-distant future, and I am wondering if that represents the halfway point in my life \u2013 and what that means. My daughter will start secondary school next year, and I can only grip hope tightly that it is a good experience for her \u2013 it was a mixed bag for me. What I am grateful for is that my daughter is inheriting my love of Nintendo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For better or worse my daughter has become a fan of Breath of the Wild. The game \u2013 and story \u2013 has captivated her, and from there she\u2019s gone on to find other Nintendo stuff, such as Pokemon, which she absolutely loves. It\u2019s nice to see the next generation embrace what I love \u2013 though she\u2019s not remotely interested in Star Trek! She\u2019s inherited her mother\u2019s love of Star Wars though, as well as a love of Doctor Who, so we\u2019re doing something right!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah\u2026 surely Pikachu will be level 9999 by now, and capable of vaporising cities with a small discharge. Ahem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going back to dreams for a mo\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right, this is where things get super weird. The other night I dreamed I was involved in some kind of high-octane car chase around Monaco, which also involved making models of F1 cars with my Mum and Dad. At some stage during this I wound up working at a crematorium-type establishment (only it wasn\u2019t a crematorium), which was struggling to stay in business, so we were trying to find ways to make money to keep it afloat. Cue Father Ted (from a Channel 4 comedy series of the same name) trying to help us stay solvent, and me making a lasagne that soon became an apple pie. I woke up then, thoroughly confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publishing is Hard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since self-publishing my book to Amazon, I\u2019ve been exploring other means of publishing as well. I\u2019m keen to push and promote as much as I can, though there is a limit to what I can achieve on my own, so getting published in the traditional way would be a major feather in the cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Achieving this is proving quite the challenge. I\u2019ve exploring a couple of options (for both publishing and marketing), but the results keep proving to be very expensive, and in the case of one publisher they ask<\/a> for a considerable upfront payment, which bucks the accepted trend of traditional publishers (who ask for nothing upfront and get a cut of the royalties). \u00a32,500 is a lot of money to put up without any guarantee of making it back. They\u2019re not technically scamming anyone (the author of Writer\u2019s Disease makes that point), but they\u2019re taking none of the risk and making a lot of money out of it in the process, whereas the author \u2013 who has written the work, investing a great deal of time and effort into the process \u2013 is taking all<\/em> the risk. There\u2019s no incentive to take that kind of leap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snotty Season<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kids have barely gone back to school and inevitably there are sore throats and runny noses running around everywhere<\/em>. I\u2019ve been feeling run down lately, as has my wife (and no, we don\u2019t have Coronavirus, but this serves as a lesson, which I\u2019ll come to in a mo), thanks to my daughter getting a cold and spreading it through the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kids spread colds very<\/em> easily, without necessarily being major sufferers. Case in point is Covid-19 \u2013 children are more likely to have very mild symptoms, if any, but they\u2019ll spread it around quickly and effectively. It is not surprising that a number of schools have had to close or part-close already, less than a month after the term began. I\u2019m not sure what other outcome the government expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the weather has definitely gotten colder, despite a brief reprieve \u2013 this isn\u2019t a surprise, we\u2019re on the cusp of Autumn, so it\u2019s time for the rainy season \u2013 or for the rain to get colder. In one month we have Halloween, though whether we actually<\/em> have Halloween remains to be seen, what with the spike in Coronavirus cases. Who knew that urging people to return to pubs, offices and schools would lead to an increase in cases?! What a shocker\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d be amused at this latest display of Tory ineptitude if it didn\u2019t carry such deadly consequences. They\u2019ve tried to blame matters on the general public for flouting rules (but let\u2019s not forget, the government can break the law in a specific and limited way, or breach lockdown to test one\u2019s eyesight), but the reality is the Tories have never had much of a strategy, and the strategy they did<\/em> have has been poorly implemented. Now, with colder weather typically bringing an increase in cases of colds and the flu, we\u2019re going to suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I don\u2019t want to go back into lockdown. It\u2019s the last<\/em> thing I want. However without any kind of meaningful handle on this crisis that\u2019s exactly<\/em> where we are headed, with all the ramifications of it. Ultimately if we have to lockdown again I will do so to save lives, though I hope we can find a way to protect people and live vaguely normal lives in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to The Meerkat Muse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently my dreams have turned pretty grim. In one, I\u2019d gotten up to go downstairs, but then as I walked down the stairs, I decides to lie down, feeling low for some reason, before going back to bed, and feeling an enveloping blackness closing in around me. I then woke up for real. In another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,11,126,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-stuff","category-family","category-funny","category-gaming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image-6-scaled.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8366,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365\/revisions\/8366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}