Ready: The first renewables course
All right, luvvies? Matt here with the Ready edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
The Ready edition is all about the things we've made that are ready for you right now – including our brand new environmental literacy course, Renewable energy – What is it and do we need it?
Skipton Business Expo
4 September, 10:00BST, Skipton Town Hall
We’re sponsoring the Expo’s Learning Zone, a seminar stage for sharing wisdom and advice, and Dad will be doing a session on 6 reasons why you should think about the environment when making business decisions. Tickets to Skipton Business Expo
Udemy Instructor Partner Summit
8 October, 19:00WEST, Hotel Cascais Miragem Health & Spa
Mum and Dad are both attending. If you’re a Udemy Instructor Partner or you know someone who’s going that we should talk to, reply to this email and let’s organise something.
Environmental literacy courses
BRAND NEW: Renewable energy – What is it and do we need it?
We're all being urged to make more use of renewable energy and to invest in a renewable energy future for our homes and businesses. But what is renewable energy? Do we need it and if so, why? Which technologies are renewable and what makes them so? This course will answer these questions and others, such as:
Is it true we can’t rely on renewable energy to keep the lights on?
Why should some countries be expected to build their economies on renewables, when others built theirs on fossil fuels?
And, if renewable energy is such a good idea, what’s stopping us from producing more?
Most of our courses up to now have been about helping you understand the climate crisis: what's causing it and the impact it's having on your business and the world. This course is the first of a series looking at ways the world's industries are addressing the crisis. Sign up now!
Merely Roleplayers
Vigil: Dream Big
Act Three of Four: Mick has a new rival for the giant’s favour, and she’s got something shocking planned. Listen now
Tomorrow is the finale of this production! Catch up now or binge once all four Acts are out.
Merely Roleplayers is taking a little summer break after that. The next two productions (Labyrinth Untold and Vigil: Tailor Made) are both recorded, they just need a bit longer in the oven before I can release them. As always, you luvvies will be the first to know when new episodes are coming.
And now, our feature presentation:
A Net Too Wide to Break His Fall
10. No one to save you but yourself
On the bright side, the one other person locked in the basement cell with Callum was someone he’d been introduced to; someone he existed for.
On the darker side, she was dead.
Callum wasn’t usually much of a glass half full person, but in this case he clung to the bright side for longer than was probably rational.
“Hey,” he said, “come on,” as he checked for a pulse, “don’t give up,” as a sluggish flow of blood soaked his wadded jacket, “it’s not over,” as he pushed down on the chest and heard a wet sucking in the throat, “don’t leave me alone.”
Once, when he was ten, Callum got himself stuck in a restaurant bathroom for over an hour.
When his sister Marielena finally found him, she said, “We were looking everywhere. Why didn’t you yell?”
Ten-year-old Callum had no answer to that. Yelling, making noise, getting the attention of a passer-by: the notion hadn’t crossed his mind. Only three people in the restaurant could hear him. Unless he knew one of them was the other side of the door, any call for help was futile.
Big Anton had taken his tools, but there was a keyring in the body’s pocket, which he uncoiled, and the chair she was tied to had metal parts, which he freed, only losing a couple of fingernails in the process.
It took a long time to stop his hands shaking, but not long after that to throw the lock.
But there was nothing in his makeshift toolkit to deal with the deadbolt on the other side of the door.
He injured himself some more throwing himself at the door, but for much less reward. The door was heavy and the screws bracketing the deadbolt were sturdy.
Callum packed himself tightly into the corner farthest from the door and the body, and tried to imagine a plausible scenario in which he was rescued.
The cell was just a small corner of the basement floor, which had been one of Vivian Hithercombe’s warehouses. Vivian’s people would have cleared out as soon as someone blew the whistle on the supposed informant. Callum had no idea what the basement was meant to be officially, if anything, or whether it would revert to being that without Vivian’s influence. Probably not soon, if at all. He was willing to bet Big Anton had secured the street door behind him, too; the man did nothing by halves. So the chances of anyone even coming down the stairs from the street to the basement were slim, let alone coming down with a reason to open the cell door.
Vivian Hithercombe herself would wonder where Callum had gone. He was an asset, and she kept track of those. But the first explanation to spring to her mind for his absence would be betrayal and desertion, and Big Anton would be there ready with his version of events.
Briefly, Callum pictured Marielena framed in the open doorway. But he hadn’t spoken to Mari since she’d introduced him to Vivian Hithercombe nearly two years ago.
The blood was drying on his hands. He’d wiped away as much as possible, but there was nothing to rinse off the rest with.
He had about three days to escape. After that he’d be dead of thirst.
See you in two weeks for the Waiting edition: all the things we're getting ready for you behind the scenes.