Daily Hopcott Online Magazine

Rural affordable housing - a simple solution

2008-01-29T03:18:00.000-08:00

Housing is an emotive issue in rural areas but a large part of the problem is that local working people cannot afford the housing that is available.

Many millions of pounds have been spent on rural regeneration but little has changed because the money has been spent on buildings and not the people who have the small businesses that provide the employment in rural areas.

Better paid jobs in rural areas would enable local people to compete successfully with town dwellers looking for a second home and solve the housing problem, at least in part.

Communication is often at the heart of boosting small businesses, improving their profitability and enabling them to afford more and better paid staff. Yet communication is often the most difficult thing to achieve amongst people who are widely spread or businesses driven to hide below the radar in rural homes by draconian business rates.

Bureaucracies hold the purse strings of rural regeneration grants. Sadly, they know little about growing small businesses and probably care even less. On the other hand, they understand capital projects such as building a new town hall or a marina, so that is where the money goes.

The local small businesses therefore struggle on, unaided. Their employees continue to receive poverty wages and the housing problem remains unsolved.

Ironically, the well paid town based grant awarding bureaucrats are vastly more able to afford rural housing in the form of second homes than the rural families and struggling small business owners and employees the bureaucrats are paid to help.

Bye for now

Rob Hopcott

CO2 KO'd in my reduced carbon home

2008-01-15T01:01:00.000-08:00

I found my wife poring over a price comparison site for electricity and gas. She looked up and said:

"Look Rob, I think we can save 10% by switching to a new supplier."

I said, "Why not save lots more than that my switching off all the small bits of electric equipment that have transformers between the mains supply and the equipment."

Her eyes lit up as if I was talking dirty - perhaps I've finally found a way back to her heart.

Items we found were on all the time included:

two cordless telephones; not needed over night therefore eight hours saving
one TV digibox in the lounge probably only used two hours a day but always left on, therefore twenty two out of twenty four hours saving
a Sky TV box that could be switched off when not in use half the day at least
the broadband modem that is always on but which could certainly be switched off during hours of sleeping (eight hours out of twenty four)

The point about these savings was that we were getting no benefit out of keeping these devices on and they were burning electricity all the time they were on.

If you are in doubt about whether a device which has a transformer is using electricity, check if it is warm to the touch. All mine are which means that they are using up power.

Devices which may also have transformers include mobile phone chargers and laptop chargers and I'm sure there are many more that I haven't thought of.

So if you have a device that runs on a power supply different to the mains and uses a transformer, consider switching it off when not in use.

Here's the disclaimer. I'm not an electrician and you must always use your equipment in line with the instructions of the supplier. These are just suggestions as to how you may be able to save money, an avenue of enquiry you may like to check out as to feasibility.

Good luck and happy CO2 saving.

Bye for now

Rob

Whence bohemia?

Which is more important people or places? Network more or become an expat?

2007-12-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

Are people and what they do more important than places where they live? I'd like your opinion.

Or would moving to another country really make a grumpy old man (for example me!) happier?

Confused? All right I'll explain a bit more.

For as long as I can remember, I have been saying that people are more important than places.

Instead of admiring the architecture in some far away place, I would rather mingle with the locals and find out what it is really like to live in this place or that.

When Channel 4 TV program 'A Place in the Sun' comes on, I don't want to ogle yet another boring bedroom carefully presented for viewing or an ideal cellar ripe for conversion to a games room.

Instead, I want to know whether there is a tennis court nearby and whether they play folk music in the nearby pub or bar.

To me, how people spend their day, the things they talk about and the ways they spend their time is more important than living in France or Ecuador.

So why do I yearn to find the perfect place to live instead of England where living costs next to nothing, the climate is good and the senoritas dance all night?

I'd love to have your opinion and if you have a place you would like to live instead of where you are, spill the beans.

Is the world of expat land out there greener?

Thanks in advance

Rob

(online author - fiction - news)

Free online novel / novellla about recession

2007-12-17T05:45:00.000-08:00

As the credit crunch starts to bite around the world, people are once again wondering how they can survive the downturn.

Sarah's Price, my free online thriller novel / novella was written during the recession of the 90s. It seems that, since then, little has changed.

It's a free online novel, so it won't contribute to anybodies debt - except perhaps mine :-)

I hope you enjoy Sarah's Price.

Bye for now.

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author - fiction - news - philanthropy)

Copyright Rob Hopcott 2007, all rights reserved. All characters and places in this free online novel or novella Sarah's Price and other free on-line humor, short stories, flash fictions, micro-fictions, sudden fictions, post card fictions or very short stories referred to by this site, are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.

Postcard stories and microfictions from Rob Hopcott

2007-12-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

It is wonderful to report that there has been an upsurge in the popularity of my free online flash fiction stories site.

Each day, I try to add a new story and the genres have varied widely from romance stories through to science fiction, always with a smattering of humour.

I like my stories to have a theme and the themes have been equally varied from global warming and climate change to infidelity and lost relationships.

Today's extremely short story, which fits well within the genre of postcard fiction at around two hundred and fifty words, is on the subject of death, bereavement, grief and grieving.

It is called Time to say good-bye but not to cry. I hope you enjoy it.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author - fiction - news - philanthropy)

How to survive death and dying

2007-10-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a wonderful site based in New Zealand which is all about the process of dying and which offers help for those who have to deal with death and dying.

The site is run by a wonderful lady called Lynda Hannah and is called Living Legacies.

It describes itself as:

a natural funeral company which has an innovative, sustainable and celebratory approach to life, death and funerals.

Lynda Hannah's site has many words of wisdom and offers an amazingly caring approach to supporting people through their grieving process.

Without a doubt, Living Legacies gets the Hopcott High Five for Caring.

We all probably try to avoid thinking about death and dying. But as I get older and more people are inevitably dying around me dealing with grief becomes more frequently necessary.

My mum died a couple of years ago and coping with her death was much harder than I expected.

I think, if I had known about Lynda's web site at the time, it would perhaps have been easier to cope with the death of my mother.

Finally, I found a way to live with the pain of my mother's death.

But I think it would have been easier with the help of Lynda's Living Legacies site.

Bye for now

Rob

I still hate Thatcher T Shirt reminds of 1990s Tory recession

2007-08-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

“I still hate Thatcher” displayed in large print on a white t-shirt at an otherwise happy music festival last week publicly demonstrated how the pain from the 80s and the early 90s UK Tory economic meltdown still lingers on for some.

Speaking personally, the economic crashes of the 90s lost me everything I’d saved and worked for over the previous 20 years so I well understood the anger of the middle aged man who wore the t-shirt.

Read full article about the 'I still hate Thatcher T Shirt' which is an article about anger management

Bye for now

Rob

News of Rob's articles and stories

Rivetting author domain name for campervan

2007-07-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

Getting readers is an online author's life blood and most of us on line authors would go to almost any length to grab a whole host of readers. Well almost!

We read articles on SEO. We learn tips about how to write better. We edit. We re-write. We slave away.

Yet, despite all our efforts, even our best and most creative writing seems to achieve little exposure to the masses who, all too often, just pass our creative writing by.

Here's my latest idea of how to get more readers, honed to perfection by a weeks worth of sleepless nights :-)

Forget search engines, directories, forums, on-line communities.

Find a busy (real world) road, park a campervan with a prominent URL displaying a catchy hook domain name and set about writing your articles, short stories or novels for all to read online at the domain advertised on your camper van. (I suppose a car would do just as well but you can get bigger lettering on a camper van and also make cups of tea when you need inspiration).

So what wold be a truly attention grabbing URL that would persuade passing motorists to type it in when they get home?

Well here is where things get really interesting!

Scarily, when you are standing by the side of the road or peeking out from behind the curtains of your campervan, you are looking at your audience and they are immensely variegated.

What would interest the boiler suited man in the white Ford Transit? Would the gimlet eyed lady in the Subaru want something different? How about that attractive young mum in the SUV, with her long flowing blond hair and five screaming kids? Yikes! What about the kids?

Worst still, how many of them actually read online short stories, online novels, online novellas, online mysteries, online romance, online science fiction or online creative writing of any sort?

Suddenly, the mind boggling complexity of satisfying the reading needs of the unwashed general public seems to take on mountainous proportions.

The domain name, too, needs to reflect the writing that is being offered. Yet the domain name also needs to be as inviting to all prospective readers as a general purpose bar of chocolate.

Horrifyingly, you might come to the conclusion that your writing challenge has just been altered.

Instead of continuing your life long search for traffic for your brilliant article or exciting piece of creative writing, the name of the game has suddenly become to find something that will really be of interest to Joe or Joanna Public. Truly scary!

So what about me?

Well, I'm off to have a look at those people driving along ... To see if they can give me some inspiration.

If you can think of a really great domain name or adverting hook for an author to put on his camping van to pull in the readers, I'd love to hear your suggestion below as a comment.

I'm off now to see my public ... And I may be a while!

Rob

(online author)

Writing hints for creating and writing intriguing characters with secrets and personalities

2007-05-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Stories are about secrets. We all have them. Secret dreams, fantasies, hopes and sometimes even desires. Occasionally a dream becomes reality and then maybe there are a million reasons for not telling anybody about it.

Think of somebody you know. What is it that describes them most? Is it their job? Is it the way they speak? Are they a stereotype?

Unlikely - we are all individuals with complex personalities and secrets. Tell a few of the secrets about a character and you have their personality!

Perhaps they are defensive inside and therefore always seek to look well dressed. Character reveals itself in their clothes, in the places they go and in the friends they choose.

When your characters are created, carry out the following audit:

Do your characters emerge through dialogue?

Have you chosen the right central character?

Can the readers identify with the characters?

Are there too many characters for the reader to follow easily?

Are main characters too shallow?

Would greater immediacy be created by using first person instead of third person?

Creating a new character is like finding a new friend. Carry your main characters with you and enjoy being with them. Learn their nuances and secrets in your daily life.

Talk to them. Ask them: ‘How do you feel about this situation?’ Consider whether to write to them ‘wish you were here’ when you go on holiday.

Don’t be afraid to make your characters real with boils, bumps, anxieties and dreams. After all, you are an author and they are your creations and if you don’t want their company, why should the reader?

The heart of any good story is memorable characters. Readers love them and the more they like your characters and characterisation, the more they will form a relationship with you and enjoy your stories.

And when you do create the perfect character or characterisation, enjoy them. Greet them as friends, for they will now be with you for always.

Congratulate yourself because your characters through your expert characterisation will now have a life of their own and that is sure to give you and your readers great pleasure.

Then get down to writing about them. Give them their chance to live on the pages of your short stories or novels!

More about writing great fiction

UK Government's gamble on benefits of gambling to gamblers distinctly dubious

2007-05-04T02:27:00.000-07:00

The UK Government's gamble on the benefits of gambling to gamblers and their families seems hard to support.

Members of Parliament (MPs) who supported the recent Gambling Act 2005 to liberalise (promote) gambling should search their conscience now and answer the following questions.

What good does gambling do in our society?
Does it nourish, feed or make our society better?
Do those who gamble feel better afterwards?
Do the families of gamblers look forward to their fathers or mothers spending the family money gambling?
Is the total sum of happiness in our society improved by gambling?

What do you think? Has gambling ever kept it's promise to you that you will win?

What other questions about the benefits of gambling would you like your legislators to answer?

Rob

Crops, UK National Park Authorities and global warming

2007-04-25T01:57:00.000-07:00

It seems that all crops are not equal in the eyes of UK National Park Authorities, at least judging from the National Park Authority local to me.

It was with sadness that I noticed in my local newspaper that my local National Park Authority had refused permission for a farmer to grow elephant grass as a biofuel crop. Reasons given included the need for caution, more time to create a detailed control policy and, apparently, elephant grass was not very nice to look at anyway and not in keeping with the traditional local countryside.

Indeed, I was quite surprised that anybody could tell a farmer what he could or could not grow.

Read full article about Crops, UK National Park Authorities and global warming

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online writer who believes, if it grows and it's green, it's not half bad!)

Webbers Post Exmoor Somerset UK - Rural wood carvings

2007-04-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

It was lunchtime and I was feeling frustrated having spent all morning sitting in my driveway uploaded the articles I'd written the previous Friday from my camper van via my wireless link into the Internet connection in my home.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. Uploading was only supposed to take half an hour and then I would be free to wend my way into the countryside and find somewhere nice to sit and write my next batch of articles. I must find some ways to speed the process up or, perhaps, do the uploading at the end of the day.

However, I reflected that lunch times are for getting out, taking a walk and relieving the frustrations and tensions created by the morning's hard work. So I pulled out of my drive and headed for Dunkery Beacon with my sandwiches and flask of coffee to where I knew I could find some very pleasant wood carvings amongst the trees at Webber's Post.

A well written short story by Eric Wilder

2007-04-13T03:02:00.000-07:00

Todays google alert on the term 'short story' threw up a wonderful short story by Eric Wilder called 'Downthrown side of the fault'.

Eric Wilder has a fluid, easy to read writing style and the story pulls the reader in nicely.

I have to confess that I'm surprised that my short story google alert hasn't produced more actual short stories over the last few weeks of the alert. Most of the blog entries have seemed to be reviews of short stories in paper published books.

I've been toying with the idea of setting up a blog to replace my collected links to other author's online short stories and to complement my own personal list of short stories and online novels.

I was just on the verge of cancelling the alert when Eric Wilder's short story popped up.

Maybe I'll keep the alert going a little longer and see if there are any more good short stories that surface.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author and lover of a well written short story)

Short story about anime and animation entitled 'Animated Friends' by Rob Hopcott

2007-04-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

The gleaming saxophone animation appears prettily before me on my screen glinting brightly. She exists, she is perfect, she is anime and she is my creation. She looks to the left and then to the right nonchalantly .

All around me, the office is silent. The other animation workstations are dark and, outside the skyscraper offices where I work, the early evening traffic is humming with people returning home.

Read the full short story 'Animated Friends' by Rob Hopcott

Can gambling advertising guidelines prevent damage to vulnerable by UK Gambling Act 2005 liberalisation?

2007-04-12T01:44:00.000-07:00

Guidelines have just been issued seeking to mitigate damage done to vulnerable persons by the liberalisation of gambling under the UK Gambling Act 2005.

Many who saw the liberalisation of gambling under the Gambling Act 2005 as a measure that encouraged a fundamentally harmful activity, will doubt whether these advertising guidelines can be effective.

Even though advertising professionals are past masters at targeting specific groups of people, the reality of advertising an activity to any part of the population is that the activity inevitably will be promoted to the wider population as well.

Read full article about advertising guidelines prevent damage to vulnerable by UK Gambling Act 2005 liberalization?

Creative flu or short stories that keep nagging to be written

2007-04-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

Creative fiction short stories are rather like colds or flu. They'll bug you until you have a good sneeze and let them out.

I've had a science fiction (SF) short story that's been nagging me to be written for something like three years now. You know the sort of thing. Somebody tells you about a story they've written and, ping, your mind conjures up a variation.

Like a cold that needs to break, this SF short story keeps niggling me and wanting to come out.

Problem is I don't write Sci Fi and don't particularly want to.

While this short Sci-Fi story has been nagging me, I've written lots of other fictional stories so it isn't a question of writer's block or anything like that.

Maybe I'm just a stubborn old *** that doesn't like to be pushed around.

Here's the real rub. It's now been joined by another short story that also want to get into print.

Aaaaeghhh! They're ganging up on me!

It's a romantic Thomas Crown Affair chess short horror story ... You know the sort of thing. Lots of sultry eye contact while chess pieces are moved about the chess board like the hero and heroine want to manipulate each other. It's got a twist that makes it a bit different and a touch of horror. But I'm not sure how different it would be so that's perhaps why I don't want to write it.

What about a short story about a short story writer driven mad by a plague of creative short story ideas that won't leave him alone.

Oh no! Not another!

Perhaps I should just sneeze, give in and go down with a really good dose of creative flu and get it over with ...

But how long would the respite last? There are so many creativity germs about.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author all bunged up with creative writing flu)

Bubbling with creativity - short story author Seamus Kearney

2007-04-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

Google alerts are really a useful way to keep up to date with topics of particular interest and my 'short story' alert's latest success is Seamus Kearney.

Living in France, he is currently a 38-year-old New Zealand-Irish journalist who writes online prolifically.

Most authors only offer small amounts of creative writing on their sites as a taster for their main activity of trying to sell their hard copy.

Seamus Kearney is the exception and offers lots of short stories and poems on his three sites Shameless Words, Shameless Fiction and Shameless Poems.

Well worth a visit!

Bye for now

Rob
(Rob Hopcott - online author and envious of anybody who lives in France)

Writing short stories is a smelly and noisy business

2007-04-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a post by Betsy Dornbusch about authors trimming word count being the single most important thing to improve a short story.

For me, movement is the key.

'She lunged forward, eyes wide' asks questions immediately about why, purpose and her inner tension.

Smell and sound also precipitate action.

'The acrid smell of burned flesh ...'

'The smell of freshly baked bread wafted through the window ... ' makes us look inside to see what else is happening in the kitchen.

Action moves story along in an environment populated by smells and sounds.

Smells and sounds stimulates characters reaction.

In many ways, sight is what the reader provides from their own personal library. We just have to tap into it.

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author and big on smelliness)

Fictional characters on the Internet rule OK

2007-03-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to my earlier comments about online novel characters, I noticed today that Uncle Crappy has documented occurrences of his name on the Internet with some surprising results.

In my earlier article, I discussed how the UK Government is busy trying to build up a consolidated database file on everybody and are pressing hard for ID cards and the such like which they claim will combat terrorism.

As an online author, with lots of fictional characters in my online short stories and online novels, I wondered if the Government has got files on all of them too. After all, the Government collects information from any source they can and probably lots of it is done by fairly mindless supercomputers, which quite possibly are also roaming the Internet.

Maybe there are even more records on Uncle Crappy than he is allowed to see .......

Rob

(Online author and admirer of creative characters who are brave enough to live the part)

10 Downing Street petition requiring UK elected paid Local Government Councillors to reply to reasoned emails and letters from constituents

2007-03-27T02:58:00.000-07:00

I'm completely fed up with Local Government Councillors who consistently do not reply to my communications. In desperation, I have set up a petition on the 10 Downing Street site to try to get something done about this ridiculous state of affairs.

The petition I submitted requests the Prime Minister to:

Require elected paid Local Government Councillors to reply to reasonable communications from constituents

The supporting narrative is as follows:

Elected local Councillors frequently do not reply to reasonable communications from their constituents regarding questions of Local Government policy.

A system of Official Public Local Government Forums must be set up to enable Local Authority constituents to publicly question Local Government Councillor’s about their policies and in which the Councillors will be legally required to make a written and reasoned reply.

A parallel system of email addresses must be set up for communications of a private nature to which there will also be a legal requirement for the Local Government Councillors to reply.

By opening questions of Local Government policy to forensic local public discussion, the quality of decisions made by Local Government Councillors on behalf of their constituents will be improved.

The individual quality of Local Government Councillors will be better audited by constituents enabling better voting decisions to be made during Local Elections.

Anger and frustration constituents feel when they spend time researching issues and composing carefully written communications to which they do not receive any reply will be eliminated.

It's not just me that's fed up with the ruling Tories in my Local Government Authority. Recently, the Chairman of the local Chamber of Commerce complained in a letter to the local newspaper that he hadn’t received replies to round robin policy questions he'd put to ruling party Conservative Councillors.

The exception he said was one Councillor who wrote to say that they weren't allowed to reply to his question because they were on a committee that made it against the rules for them to reply to his questions.

Please sign this petition. It is the single best way to make paid Local Government Councillors accountable for the policies they support.

Thanks

Bye for now

Rob

Has the Grim Reaper got a Laptop? Death, short stories and online authors.

2007-03-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Whilst reading the thoughts of Grumpy Old Bookman, in particular his notes about the point or pointlessness of writing online, a thought crossed my increasingly senile mind.

When the Grim (Happy?) Reaper takes all us authors off into the unlimited blue, I wonder how long our online short stories, online novels, online novellas and ramblings will last?

Perhaps quite a long time. Maybe, given a bit of judicious will writing to ensure the continued payment of web space and domain fees, it is possible that just a tiny bit of immortality could be won.

After all, gravestones can be dug up in favour of future new housing blocks all too easily.

But the Internet is vast and, in a way, could be timeless. The cost of keeping our stories online is low and there is always the possibility that our stories may be passed from hand to hand virally through pdf files and the like so there is a real chance that our stories could be read for ever.

Personally, I quite like reading my old stories sometimes. For some strange reason, they are exactly the type of stories I like.

So I wonder if the Grim Reaper has a laptop?

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - free online author - feeling old)

P.S. Hey, Mr Grim Reaper Sir ... I'm not ready yet :-) :-) :-)

Honest!

Aaaaaaaaarghhh ...

Online novel characters

2007-03-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

I just read an interesting article about fictional blogs where the character writing the blog is fictional or spoofed.

As a keen author who is trying to increase his writing online as much as possible, the thought of creating a fictional universe outside the strict constraints of a storyline was compelling. Imagining yourself as a character and then create an online world around yourself sounds great.

I wonder what problems could be created by all the identity issues that are becoming so depressingly prevalent these days.

In the UK, the government clearly wants to introduce identity cards as rapidly as possible and develop a database of information about each of us in huge detail. Are they going to pick up author's pseudonyms and build databases of information about those too?

Imagination is fun. It allows the spirit to soar and become free. The world will be the poorer if online author's ability to create is diminished.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author and laissez faire liberal)

New Year music resolution is to use new campervan to visit more UK and West County folk sessions and folk festivals

2007-02-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

Brilliant news! I now have my new (pre-owned) campervan / small motorhome with which I intend to visit new instrumental folk music playing sessions and festivals this year.

It's an old Ford Transit campervan which is white with blue flashes. Despite being an 'L' registration, it's in good condition for it's age and I certainly intend to treat it with all the tender love and care I would give to any of my ... well ... instruments :-)

Hopefully, getting to lots more pub jamming folk sessions and festival sessions will enable me to record lots of new info about folk sessions around and about in the West of England, UK.

If anybody knows of a good session that would welcome an additional musician and where there is (preferably free) overnight parking, I would love to hear of it.

Bye for now

Rob

(Rob Hopcott - online author and musician)

Evil spirits to be shot in West Somerset, UK tradition at the Butchers Arms wassailing

2007-01-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

On the 17th January 2007, there will be a traditional wassailing folk music playing session at Butchers Arms, Carhampton, West Somerset, UK with cider soaked toast (but that’s for the apple trees), shooting (that’s at the evil spirits in the apple trees) and singing the Wassailing song (which is for the entertainment of the apple trees).

See you there or more info about West Somerset traditions (with podcast) from Wassailing in West Somerset

Free podcasts now available for short stories as Rob Hopcott introduces podcasting

2007-01-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

The holy grail for authors is finding new sources of readers for their stories.

I’ve been wanting to check out podcasting for a while as it seems to be growing in popularity everywhere. The wonderful news is that it appears to be relatively easy to implement. My first effort is to pod cast my Christmas short story for 2006 entitled Three Christmas lovers.

Over the next few weeks, I will be podcasting lots of my short story content and hopefully some of my novels and novellas.

I hope to see you back listening to them :-)

Bye for now

Rob