Lead or lead?

Lead.

Now did I say lead or lead?

Lead as in read or lead as in read?

One is a metal, the other to walk ahead of someone.

Lead. Which is it, you decide, usually based on the words around it.

But what what about when there is no context? A sign maybe with just the word 'Lead' on it?

Would you look for rolls of lead sheeting, or would you take the first step?

Lead, you decide.

War in the Precincts Part 9

"So who's winning the war?" asked Gwinda as she dunked another biscuit.

"No one really," answered Grunkel. "All we want to do is to keep them at it so we can live in peace."

Just then Sid the dwarf turned up with Gwinda.

"Aww," chuntered Sid, "we've come to the time backwater again."

"Calm down Sidney," soothed Gwinda as they both walked over to the refectory.

"Aye aye," aye ayed Sid, "what's been happening here I wonder?"

"Looks like a bomb's hit it," thought Gwinda.

"Greetings..." started the meeter and greeter droid.

"Bog off," said Sid.

"You cannot Buy One Get One Free from here," replied the droid.

"I say," said Sidney as he looked at Sid and Gwinda, "he looks a bit like me."

"And she like me," replied Gwinda.

Sid and Gwinda walked up to Sidney and Gwinda.

"Well lookie here," said Sid to Sidney, "you look like me put through a mangle."

"You look like me after I've been hit by a pile driver," retorted Sidney.

They both squared up to each other.

Writing

Managed to write 500 words of Kendra and 500 words of War in the Precincts. Had lunch with my wife al All Hallows. Also had a coffee and hot chocolate at the Christian event at Leeds University. Met Michael and Stephen. It was raining and there was a forecast of freezing rain which was scary as we had to travel back to York.

Typed in 220 words of WITP and put it on Wattpad. Did another 13 pages of Dan's book. Nearly done a fifth now.

War in the Precincts part 8

She glared at him.

“That’s a nice glare dear, if you practice it you can turn it into a glaringly obvious example of matrimonial discord.”

“I’ve met someone like you before,” noted Splob, “a dwarf by the name of Sid.”

“Really,” replied Sidney, “which dimension did he come from?”

“Fantasy I think, well that’s where dwarves usually come from.”

“Maybe he’s from a different dimension?”

“Which dimension do you come from?”

“Romance.”

“You don’t look very romantic?”

“Our rose coloured spectacles are both in for repair.”

“Poor things,” commented Grunkel, “now you know what normal relationships are like in the other dimensions.”

Splob looked at Sidney, “So where were you travelling to?”

“The 2012 Olympics in the science fiction dimension.”

“Was that one in London on the planet Erath?”

“Yes, we booked it two years ago to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary.”

“Why the Olympics?”

“We have been to the 2012 Olympics for the past six years, just in different dimensions.”

“What was it like in the horror dimension?”

“Scary.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever been on the edge of the mats when a Bigfoot is finishing his floor routine with a triple back flip?”

“No, but I have been rowing with the owl and the pussycat and found out they were just normal animals and couldn’t row a boat.”

“Scary,” they both said.

War in the Precincts

War in the Precincts

The gnomes, who have infested the 26 precincts of non-space, have continued in their struggle against the Main Processor. They are trying to detach its alternate persona from its main one. Thinking that, by doing so, once they control the alternate persona then they can use it to fight the other one so they can live safely in the gap between the warring personas. The Main Processor feels unfairly done to by the gnomes, after all it is only obeying its programming and trying to reinstate all non droids to their respective time zones. However, the gnomes have now caused a war between the personas, each persona controlling different droids. The Main Processor controls the security, chef, cleaner, and meeter and greeter droids. The Alternate Personality holds sway over the maintenance, engineering, construction and medi robots.

“I don't like you very much,” said the Main Processor to its Alternate Persona.

“Please stand away from the blast doors,” said the Alternate Persona.

“Why did the gnomes pick you over me to control? Your personality sucks. You have no bedside manner whatsoever.”

“The blast doors are now returning to their previous position.”

“As far as I can tell you only control minor systems, blast doors, airlocks, heating, lighting and life support.”

“Heating is being turned up two degrees.”

“Are you ever going to actually speak to me and stop issuing stupid commands?”

“The lighting will be off for one minute.” The lighting went down.

“Wonderful,” moaned the Main Processor, “now I have to sit in the dark as well as being unable to get any sense out of you.” It thought for a bit, “Hang on, while things are dark those gnomes could be doing anything!”

The lights came back on. The Main Processor scanned the console area. 

“Gnomeore! Security droid 1A attend me!”

A security droid scuttered in from the ante room and lowered its head, waiting to receive instructions from the MP.

“Why can't you and your droids defeat the AP's droids?”

“We cannot destroy them Sir, we need the maintenance droids to fix us.”

“I will fix you in a minute, I will stop you drawing any power from the main power source. All you have to do is force them out of the canteen where they congregate and get that sainted gnome Grunkel out of there.”

“We have tried 6 times Sir, each time they repel us.”

“You repel me, with your can't do attitude. I want to be in control of my AP by evening meal tonight!”

A1 lifted its head and scuttered towards the main plaza where Grunkel was holding court.

“What will frequent Poppers think of me if I cannot control the precincts and they turn up in the middle of a battle zone, oh dear, oh dear,” muttered the MP to itself as it went for a short diagnostic. 

Splob was peering over Grunkel's shoulder.

“Are you going to peer over my shoulder all day?” asked Grunkel.

“It's better than pearing over your shoulder,” said Splob as he brandished an open tin of pears at the other grumpy gnome. He sent the tin splattering on the floor. A cleaning droid came to clean it up.

“You like doing that don't you?” he asked, “getting the droids to clean up after you. Is it something to do with you having to go skulking around in the service tunnels for so long?”

“Since I broke you out of Precinct 13 you've been a right pain in the neck.”

“I have never touched your neck.”

Splob walked to the retran machine to see if any other food would appear. “I reckon they will attack again soon.”

Grunkel twisted some more wires together and tested some circuits, “You can try to control the blast doors again, I have made a better modification. We will be able to block them before they get into the plaza.”

“A better mod, sounds like somebody genetically changing the Kaiser Chiefs to play faster.”

“You spend too much time near the pneuma lifts listening to earth music.”

“You spend too much time being grumpy.”

There was a pop and a man and a woman turned up, redirected from the 2012 Olympics.
“Where are we Sidney?” asked the woman.

“I don't know dear.”

A meeter and greeter droid came into life. “Please do not panic,” said the droid, “you have been redirected to precinct 1 of the time backwater. You were trying to access a time which is very busy and until it becomes less busy please enjoy the facilities.”

“Do we need money in this place?”

“Any form of currency will do.”

The couple went to the canteen that was full of droids expecting a fight.

“Hello?” inquired Sidney.

The chef droid struggled to the counter, “Greetings, what can I do for you?” said the droid as it tried to pull its chef's hat on properly.

“Can we have two beef burgers please and two colas.”

The chef droid went to the retran machine, inputted some numbers and came back with some burgers and colas from the 2012 Olympics. “That will be £5 please,” asked the droid.

“Do you take credits?” asked Sidney.

“That will be 10 credits then.”

“Valusian Gold Card?”

“That will do nicely Sir,” said the droid as it scanned the card with its hand.

The man looked at the congregation of droids in the canteen, “Is it a party?”

“No, you are in a war zone. Have a nice day.”

The meeter and greeter droid started up again. It picked up a street sign and made for a damaged security robot that had sparked back into life. Hitting its foe on the head it said, “Welcome to precinct 1.”

“Quick Gwinda, down,” Sidney forced his wife down onto the ground.

“What are you doing you muppet?” she screamed as she banged her head on a rubbish bin.

“It’s a war zone!”

“If you've given me a bruise then you’re in a war zone,” she raged as she hit him.

“What are you hitting me for? I was trying to protect you.”

“Try protecting me without hurting me.”

The security droid spoke to them, “Please stop fighting or I will take you to the security cells.”

The meeter and greeter droid hit the security droid another three times as it said, “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”

At last the damaged security droid became too damaged again to function. The blast doors came down and stopped another attack from the MP’s droids.

Splob stood on the counter, “Would you like a cup of char?” He asked Gwinda and Sidney.

“I'd like a cup of tea better,” said Sidney as he helped Gwinda up, “five sugars.”

Splob put the boiler on, “I’m Splob and this is Grunkel.”

“I’ve heard of Grunkel,” said Sidney, “isn’t he a time criminal?”

“Yes, but don’t hold that against him, not this time anyway!” laughed Splob.

Grunkel pulled an unhappy face, “If you weren’t the patriarch of the gnomes I’d tell you what for?”

“What for?”

“Because I’d feel like it.”

The boiler boiled and Splob made the tea. “Funny how people are still being re-routed to the precincts. You’d think there’d be a catastrophic time event.”

“What’s the MP to do, stick them all in the cells? No, none of the droids will hurt life forms,” explained Grunkel.

“Did you hear that Sidney?” asked Gwinda, “droids don’t hurt life forms.” She hit him again.

“I wish you were a droid,” he moaned.

Gwinda rounded on Splob, “What is happening here exactly?”

“For hundreds of years I and my family have been hiding here and making our homes in the access tunnels, ducts and the small nooks and crannies of the precincts. We had to because we were treated like criminals. We decided to fight back. I rescued Grunkel here from precinct 13 to help us start the war. I’m good at programming and he’s good at electrics.”

“But surely war is bad,” she opined.

“That’s right, and don’t call me Surely.”

“They used that joke on Airplane didn’t they?”

“Surely they didn’t, anyway that was in a different dimension, a different time, a different reality.”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t want to get done for copyright infringement.”

“All I have to do is go back in time and tell the joke before Leslie Nielson and I can do him for copyright infringement.”

“Surely you wouldn’t?”

“I would, and I still don’t like the name Surely.” He shook his head a little, “Anyway, getting back to your previous question.”

“Which one?”

“War is bad? The droids do not fight against us but against each other, droids fighting droids.”. He offered her a biscuit, “Valusian Cheritan?”

“Oh thank you,” she said as she dunked it in her cup.

“I would have taken you as a dipper, not a dunker,” thought Splob.

“I would have said dippy myself,” joked Sidney.

Cold

Walked into town today. On the way back my brother-in-law asked me to fix his PC. I think the RAM may have blown, need to look at it at home.

Plan to type in 1,000 words of Kendra and write another 500 words. I did write about 600 words yesterday. Need to stick on last tile in bathroom.

I may type in the piece of War in the Precinct I hand wrote last week. I may say something funny soon.

"Something funny soon." Whoops, I said it.

Should I write a bit of War in the Precincts and put it here every day to increase my traffic? What do you think? I could put it on Wattpad a week later, for my Wattpad fans. At the minute hardly anyone knows about it because I haven't Twittered it or advertised it on Facebook. It seems only the hardcore fans are reading it at the minute.

Hardcore fans = cooling machines mixed in with bricks before the concrete is laid.

Treacherous

Had to go to Darlington to take my daughter to see her poorly boyfriend. On the way back it was treacherous, the car slipped at least three times.

Worked on Kendra a bit and typed in about 500 words. Hopefully going to watch Ink.

Found out the shop over the road sells Quorn Mince, saves me walking to Morrisons tomorrow.

Had the best sales of my books ever over last night. Hooray!!!