Day 21

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Here's today's prompt for you to post your updates and any excerpts and thoughts etc in comments.

Comments

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Just over 980 words written this lunchtime. Two scenes, leaving me close to the end of Chapter 3. Zack and Zoe don't yet know that Rob's missing.

Extract:

Zack left his bedroom window open a couple of centimetres, and didn't latch it. If Rob did get away, he could climb up that way without disturbing Zoe. He'd done it before, and he'd done the same thing to get into Zack's old room, before Dad went away. It wasn't ideal, him wandering round town completely on his own at night, but he knew how to look after himself, and there was a lot less trouble here than somewhere like Leeds or Sheffield.

Curling up on the far side of the bed from the window, Zack pulled the duvet around himself and thought about all the escapades they had planned for the summer. If they stuck to the back roads, they could get all the way to Carlisle on the bike in a day, and if they left early enough they could have a good mooch around and get back before anyone noticed they'd gone. They could even try going South: see if they could get somewhere like Northampton without being stopped. Rob was as keen as he was to find out if the ghost towns really did look like the pictures in their textbooks.

Zack thought about messaging Rob with this new idea, but it could wait till morning. He'd have plenty of time for messages during European History, and Rob might be less thoroughly grounded by then.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That's a really impressive wordcount for lunchtime! The mention of ghost towns piques my imagination - what's going on?

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

There was a terrorist attack (dirty bombs with bio-warfare elements) some decades before, which pretty much wiped out everything living south of the A14. Hence Harrogate being the centre of goverment for England, and various yet-to-be-mentioned interesting border issues with Scotland and Wales

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Ha! The Revenge of the North!

980 words in a lunchtime is - wow!

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've been to a 'secret nuclear bunker' in the South of England, and it always struck me that they'd be better getting further from London in the event of a threat (assuming the idea is for the government to survive, of course).

[azdak.livejournal.com]

assuming the idea is for the government to survive, of course

The idea is always for the government to survive! It's like that episode of Yes, Minister where the MPs and the local councils all have bunkers so "essential services" can continue in the event of a nuclear attack, but none of the citizens have access...

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Joking aside, I've always wondered exactly what they think they'll have left to govern once they emerge from their bunkers. But there's definitely material for another story in which the civil servants direct the government to a closer bunker than the one they're going to, because no one's really that bothered whether the elected officials survive.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you could have one of those civil servants in your novel. :-)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Not in this one, but it's worth considering as a future idea.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea! The gov. thinks it's getting a convenient luxury bunker, the civil servants offer to take the risk of the more distant one.

(And was it the German or British government that considered having a wartime govt. at Harrogate in the event of an invasion? Or is that one of those things in my head that isn't actually true.)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

The historical reference rings a bell, and may be what gave me the idea in the first place. Google is so far being unhelpful on the subject.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I was guessing a limited nuclear war in which London was hit, but I see it was terrorists. Muslims or something new?

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

That would all depend which history books and/or contemporary texts you read. But the Catastrophe was one of the events that led to the various ongoing wars (the Second Falklands War had pretty much died down at that point, although no truce had been signed).

More of that will become clearer when Rob's kidnappers reveal their real agenda.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I love how you have such a detailed and well worked-out background.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I try. Last time it all fell down when I tried to calculate how many generations there would be between (An)Tony (Wedgewood) Benn and the Prime Minister Benn that I'd mentioned in Rob's history lesson. This time I'll stick with being vague on that point.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

A productive lunch indeed. The ghost towns are officially off limits?

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Very much so. Northampton's not too dangerous in terms of residual contamination, but that means there's more chance of running into the sorts of people who might live there.