Names
p. On my very long and very dull drive today on work-related matters (I won’t bore you with the details), I saw the best place name ever — Ansty Cowfold. When I looked it up on Multimap, I found out — disappointingly — that it’s actually two villages which just happen to share the same road sign. Still, never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, I have decided that if I ever write a novel (like that’s ever going to happen), the main character will be called Ansty Cowfold.
p. Ansty is a rough-hewn straight-talking man, who — in a bid to avoid “nominative determinism (Say what?)”:http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf108/sf108p14.htm — takes up accountancy instead of a life as a man of the soil. But somehow he feels empty. In the wee hours of the morning when he lies sleepless, gazing at his tie draped over the “Corby trouser press”:http://www.corbypress.com/howtouse.asp , he listens to “Farming Today”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/farmingtoday/index.shtml on the radio, and longs to be looking instead at a prize herd of Herefordshire heifers, grazing placidly in the dawn mist. Instead, he sighs, puts on his grey pinstripe suit and prepares himself for another day of compound interest rates and deductible expenses.
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Good start
Add in a nice strong minded milk maid, struggling alone to bring up a child of anunnamed father, who can be his redemption, after many tribulations and an inheritance just big enough for some cows and a small dairy farm,. you have a modern mills and boon. 
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Oh, you are a witty, articualte writer. I am sure you could write a good, entertaining novel of academic and local life. Go for it. We need a new Tom Sharpe.
by dave murphy @ 14/03/2003 1:03 pm • Permalink •
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I like the milk maid idea - how about calling her Lillington Melplash (http://www.multimap.co.uk around Salisbury Plain)?
You're very kind about my writing, but at the moment I struggle to find the time to write this blog, let alone a novel. Plus, you really have to leave academia before you publish a satirical novel about it, or you end up like Dorothy L. Sayers and get snubbed in the Senior Common Room.
by bsag @ 14/03/2003 8:03 pm • Permalink •
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