I went for a walk this morning.  Been doing a fair bit of walking lately, in an attempt, possibly vain, to prevent (or at least stave off) the moment when I must upgrade to a new size of trouser.  Indeed, vanity has thus far prevented me from throwing away the moderate stock of lesser-sized clothing that continues to gather dust in my wardrobe.

So. A walk.  It didn't look very promising when I left - a light drizzle was falling, and it looked very gloomy.  However, as I left the flat, I was hit by that wonderful smell of fresh rain on hot, dry ground.  I pressed on.  An urban walk - Oldchurch Road, and up Crow Lane as far as Whalebone Lane - then just retrace my steps; nothing fancy, about three and a half miles.

With every step, I was assailed by new smells.  Smells of Spring, of things growing, of the earth.  The smell of damp wood and fresh compost in the underpass beneath Oldchurch roundabout.  By the remains of the old hospital, deep drifts of forgotten autumn leaves, mouldering aromatically in the damp, pierced by fresh spears of green, overflowing with the creamy scent of cow parsley.  The sun came out, and the humid, intimate smells of spring were suddenly joined by the broader, extrovert ones of blazing summer.
Every garden I passed fizzed with a new wave of glories.  Cut grass; an early iris; a moment of heady, almost unbearable sweetness from an unseen jasmin; a freshly-painted fence; sawn timber; the hint of a barbeque... and everywhere a mélange of unidentified, but intensely familiar smells; smells I've known all my life; the smells of every family camping trip; of every school nature walk; of every lazy, sunny, grass-stained summer afternoon.

I can't deny that I'm a sentimental old fool, and experiences like this make me rather glad of it.

Three days of my allotted eight done.  About a third of the way through the book.  Rather enjoying myself.  I wasn't sure if I would, to begin with - the first day was quite a tough one, and something of an assault on my self-belief.  I'd always considered myself quite a decent cold-reader, with moderately good diction - but this belief was based on a slightly skewed experience:  That of cold-reading scripts.  Scripts have one particular characteristic that other pieces of text do not - gaps.  When cold-reading a piece of dialogue, especially if it's a conversation, there's usually a liberal sprinkling of gaps - while another person is speaking; while one's own character thinks what to say next; "pauses for dramatic effect".  It turns out that what I'm good at, is reading ahead, and having the next phrase, already adorned with appropriate inflection, cued up in my head ready to fire.

Audiobook reading, I've quickly discovered, is a very different technique.  At least, in the case of a non-fiction book like the one I'm currently working on.  Why?

There are no gaps.  The occasional paragraph, yes, but that's about it.  Where there is conversation, the reader must provide both sides of it - no opportunity to prepare your next, perfectly-inflected line while another actor is speaking, because the other actor is you!  Dramatic pauses are possible, but there's precious little chance to see the opportunities coming before they're upon you, and then, if you're not careful, the moment has passed, you didn't seize the moment, and read ahead, and you're back into the onslaught again.

It's one of those "Zen" skills, it seems, like so many things.  Direct path from eye, via subconscious, to mouth.  The conscious mind is watching, certainly, directing the performance, but the moment it interferes, the flow stops, and every second word is a fluff.  To my surprise, I found the most successful passages to be those where my conscious mind had drifted off, and was thinking about something entirely different.  At one point I realised I'd spent something like a minute worrying whether I'd turned my phone off, and how embarrassing it would be if I got a call or a text.  As soon as I spotted myself doing it of course, in waded the posturing bully of my consciousness, and I tripped over a simple word.
Definitely getting easier though.  Yay for the learning of new skills!

Internet clichés.  Specifically, the rather predictable responses that are so frequently trotted out on discussion forums.

Some tend to be specific to a particular type of site, such as, on social networking or dating sites, it will often only require a few minutes between somebody starting a thread complaining about being single, before another user will tell them one or more of the following:  Seeming needy isn't an attractive trait; you can't love somebody else unless you love yourself; relationships aren't all they're cracked up to be; it's better to be single.

Similarly, a bad luck story in a support forum will almost certainly quickly produce a post from a contributor telling them they should think themselves lucky, and either: a) go on to mention a far worse experience that they went through and survived, or b) tell the original poster not to be so selfish, and to think of all the people in the world who are less fortunate.

Some are more general - a lot of forum users, for instance, are familiar with Godwin's Law regarding the tendency of internet forums to end up in references to Nazi Germany.

The first point about all these, like the majority of clichés in all probability, is that they are largely true.
The second point, is that, by and large, in the context of an discussion forum, they're absolutely no help whatsoever.
The third point, is that they're the grist to the mill of most forums, which would be duller places without them.

So I was delighted to discover a new, emerging cliché - in, of all places, a discussion board on an acting jobs website.  I've seen it about three or four times now. It runs like this:
Somebody starts a thread, asking about an item of acting technique: Specifically, how to cry on cue on an occasion when, for whatever reason, the tears won't come.  There will be a smattering of posts about "tear sticks", onions, pepper (!), Vicks vapo-rub, etc. And then, always, without fail, some bright spark will say that using these aids is cheating, and that they should try acting.  Always.

Ticks the boxes nicely:  Is it true? Yes it is.  Is it any use to anybody? None at all.  Will it incite the other posters on the thread to expansive gestures in defence of the original poster?  Damn straight :)

A rather specific example, certainly, but I felt a sort of warm, patronising glow at the thought that a comparatively young set of discussion boards had somehow come of age. 

The same set of forums now has the beginnings of a major rant at the owners of the site about a tiny unsubstantiated rumour related to data protection.  I'll get the popcorn.