Does romance only exist in fiction?

You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” – Mr Darcy

Swoon! It was already lovely in the novel but when Colin Firth’s Darcy utters the words to Jennifer Ehle’s Eliza, it’s just breathtaking.

So romantic. Until he follows it up with some insult about her mother – Jane Austen may have inadvertently inspired the modern day insult, “yer ma”, back in the 17th Century.

Jane Austen was the master of romance, in my humble opinion. Her formula is regurgitated time and time again, indeed, I hold my hands of up and admit that unintentionally, Inspired by Night also emulates the Pride and Prejudice way, right down to the sensible, no nonsense, female lead character. Although, in a way, Olivia Jones follows Darcy’s path rather than that of Elizabeth Bennett, because it is 2014 and I’m all for equality of opportunity, so why shouldn’t the roles be reversed slightly?

Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kiss you right now.” – Steven Teller

Swoon.

But let’s be honest for a moment. Ladies, look at your man – go on, look at him sat there on the sofa watching sport / playing Call of Duty / picking his nose. Imagine him looking over at you and saying:

you are too generous to trifle with me…”

You’re going to look at him and say

mmmm trifle!”

Or at least that’s what I would think immediately prior to laughing at him.

Because we don’t live in a romantic world. Our minds jump to comedy retorts faster than they process compliments, and there’s plenty of unromantic comedy moments in popular culture:

I love you”

“I know” – Princess Leia and Han Solo

“I love you”

“Quite right too” – Rose Tyler and The Tenth Doctor

“I love you”

“Thank you” – Leonard and Penny

We went to see an amateur dramatics group perform an original play called Jefferson’s Tale this week, a romantic comedy set against the theme of time travel, which ticked all the boxes for me, I was well prepared to love it before it even started.*

There was a proposal scene, and as the lead guy got down on one knee I felt my heart sink.
Oh no I thought, he’s going to propose.

I was expecting a really cringey speech – this was theatre after all – of love and feelings and I want to hold your hand til the end of time type stuff. And that’s exactly what we got. And I felt awkward watching it because it felt real, and unnatural. That sort of stuff is surely only acceptable in books and movies.

See, we’re not a romantic couple. We never have been, except for that one time, when he bought me a Stormtrooper helmet for Valentine’s day (to be fair it was only 4 days after we got together and we weren’t sure of the valentine day etiquette at that point) and I saw the Stormtrooper helmet and raised him a pose-able Yoda.

But is anyone romantic anymore? Has romance ever really been a thing outside of literature. Do we dust reality off our hands before turning the front cover, rather like leaving a muddy pair of shoes outside the back door? If we suspend reality to enjoy a work of fiction, then anything goes. Is romance just a notion invented by early authors?

Blinded by the romance of it all

When I hear girls complaining about their unromantic partners, I sometimes wonder what it is we expect from our partners. Chocolates and flowers? To be wined and dined?

They’re all just gestures aren’t they? I wouldn’t thank my other half for jumping out of a plane and snowboarding down a snow covered mountain to present me with a box of Milk Tray – I don’t like half the fillings and you get more chocolate to the pound in a Christmas tin of Quality Street. And it’s fine, you know, to just bring them round to my house, I don’t need a dramatic gesture.

And flowers just stink. I had a boyfriend once who bought me a red rose on valentine’s day. He left it on the floor outside my bedroom with a note, starting a treasure hunt… Which would lead me to the prize of… Him. I buried my nose amongst the petals and took a deep breath, and immediately started coughing and spluttering.

I knew exactly where he would be, so I don’t know why I bothered doing the treasure hunt, cursing him all over town because he knew my car overheated and couldn’t go very far. As I broke down just outside the town and waited an eternity for the RAC I took immense pleasure in imagining squashing the red rose in his face.

When I finally got to the pub I realised it had been a ruse to distract me so he could watch football. What an absolute insult. Not only do I not give a crap about Valentine’s Day or flowers, but I also missed the match. Apparently he didn’t know me very well at all, if he thought I would rather traipse across town on my own in a car spewing smoke from under the bonnet than sit in a pub with him and watch my own team play.

Just be nice

Sometimes I hear girls say things like “well, he knows I love tennis so he got me tickets to Wimbledon, he’s so romantic” or “we went to Venice to see Verdi’s Requiem, it was so romantic.” But see, for me, I’d rather get a KFC boneless banquet and watch The Simpsons.

Do we, in fact, confuse a simple case of doing something nice with romance? I don’t consider it particularly romantic on my part, if I return from the shops with Cheesecake for dessert as a treat, it’s simply a gesture because I know my other half likes cheesecake. Once in a while he’ll present me with a packet of shortbread fingers because, as I’m fond of declaring, I love shortbread. I always rip the packet open, and after the first bite I say to him “this is how I know you still love me, when you buy me shortbread for no reason.”

But if he told me he loved me, unprompted, I’d furrow my brow and give him a sideways glance of suspicion and probably just say, “well, good, I should hope so too!”

The suffragettes called and they want their bras back

I’m a sucker for a good romance novel. The pure fantasy of being swept up in strong manly arms and showered with kisses and declarations of love. But in real life I think I’d just find that a bit too full on. The male love interest in a lot of novels, is described as being strong and powerful, capable of taking care of his leading lady, protecting her, treating her like a princess. In real life that sort of behaviour would be creepy and controlling.

Take Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight. These books have had women going insane over Christian Grey and Edward Cullen, while they imagine themselves playing the damsel in distress characters of Ana and Bella. Seriously, these girls haven’t got a backbone between them. Do you know what I would do if my boyfriend started spying on me at work and forbid me from walking to the sandwich shop to buy lunch, or sulked if I even spoke to another man? That’s right, I’d dump him. Probably slap a restraining order on him too!

So what does it mean to be romantic? Have you ever been swept off your feet and treated like a literary heroine? Or is romance just a work of fiction?

 

 

 

* By the way, I did love Jefferson’s Tale, which is a welcome relief because a friend of ours was in it and it would have been awkward if it had been rubbish. Thankfully it wasn’t and neither was our friend, who was pretty awesome actually.

Does romance only exist in fiction?

A nice cup of tea and a slice of cake.

You know by now that a nice cup of tea is the cornerstone of my diet, closely followed in another corner by pizza. But one cannot live on tea alone, sometimes the beige nectar needs to be accompanied by cake.

We have a cupboard in our house dedicated to cake and biscuits. My other half has quite a sweet tooth and there’s always something sugary to eat.

When I was a kid my mum used to bake scones. I always loved a nice scone with jam and cream.

Want to make these bites of loveliness? Click the image for the recipe courtesy of BBC Good Food.

But they’re not very cool are they? When I went to uni I had my head turned by things like dough-nuts and caramel slices and before I knew it fifteen years had passed and I hadn’t given any thought to the humble scone.

I was at a work event one day and there at the end of the buffet table was a tray of scones with jam and cream. I smiled at the quaintness and popped one into my mouth. Oh my word. It was like a little taste of heaven. All the memories came flooding back, of home baked scones and tea.

It’s top of my list now. First choice cake, and the reason I’ve developed something of an addiction to Afternoon Tea.

Followed swiftly by another classic: the Victoria sponge cake.

Click on the image for this recipe courtesy of Channel 4 food recipes.

A friend of mine recently poo-poohed the simple classic Victoria sponge as being the cake equivilant of Spam.

Now I’m something of a convert to Spam at the moment. We are in a recession after all and I can get a good few dishes out of a tin of spam. Grilled like crispy bacon. Yum.

Still, I believe my friend meant to insult the Victoria sponge and needless to say, he is wrong.

There is something of a theme here of course – the Victoria sponge with its jam and cream filling is a lighter alternative to the scone, reserved for those times when you don’t want to risk a tongue strain injury dislodging bits of mashed up scone from around your teeth and gums.

Dessert Cakes

I do like some of the fancy desserts though. In recent years I became  a big fan of banoffee pie. Especially after I found a cheat that didn’t require me to boil a tin of condensed milk for five hours. I microwaved the milk in 20 minutes! But now you can buy tins of already caramelised condensed milk.

Get the recipe from the chocolate cake recipe blog by clicking the image.

I like the banana flavour and the vague feeling that I’m getting one of my five a day while eating something sweet and naughty!

I also love Cheesecake. My other half is on a mission to sample every type of cheesecake imaginable. Regardless of what is on the dessert menu, if there’s a cheesecake he hasn’t tried then that’s his choice. We recently discovered blueberry muffin cheesecake in Asda, bringing together a much loved tea cake with a much loved dessert cake. It was beautiful!

But my ultimate favourite dessert is Trifle.

I know, another uncool classic. But there it is. I’m very particular about my trifle.

I like to make it with a Swiss roll and Strawberry jelly base. Thick custard layer and dream topping with chocolate sprinkles.

I do not, under any circumstances, want it ruined with sherry.

Or real fruit!

Click the image to see the recipe on the Guardian website.

The perfectly set trifle will always make a sluuuuuuuuurppppp noise when the first spoonful is removed for serving. It’s become a high pressure deal among my friends. Everyone crowds round silently listening for the sucking slurpy noise as the jelly and custard is ripped apart. A successful slurp will result in cheering and back slapping and compliments to the chef. But fail in the slurp and the silence of anticipation turns into an embarrassed disappointed silence.

And I know. I can see from the consistency whether it’s going to slurp. My last trifle was a resounding failure, so much so, I sloped off quietly to dish it out alone, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would not slurp. The custard just wouldn’t set. The trick to the perfectly set custard layer is using the old fashioned custard powder not a quick mix packet or a tin of ready made. We’d only had quick mix sachets. Custard should be made with boiling milk not boiling water. A schoolboy error. Still it tasted like trifle even if it was a big old sloppy mess!

So they are my favourites, although there’s also something to be said for the absolute classic apple pie and custard. Always a winner and smells better than all of the above by a mile!

I’m starting to feel a bit peckish now. I only need to talk about food to get my tummy rumbling.

What’s your favourite cakey goodness?

A nice cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Teabags, phones and automobiles

I’m not sure if I believe in a master plan or that things are meant to be. I think that we can achieve anything we put our minds to and while I will occasionally pause and acknowledge a random set of events culminating in something amazing, I generally err on the side of coincidence than on the side of fate.

However this afternoon I needed to nip out to Asda to buy some tea bags. As I was pulling the front door behind me I stopped and remembered I had left my phone on the sofa. I paused and hesitated between rushing back in, because I hate being without my phone, but then something inside me whispered “you know what? You’ll only be gone five minutes, why would you need your phone?” And I pulled the door shut behind me and got into my car.

20 minutes later I’m sat in my car, head in my hands with lots of Asda shoppers all casting glances at me as I try again to get my car to start. Whurrrrrrr whurrrrrrrr whurrrrrrrrr it said to me until I let go of the key.

Once it caught, coughing and spluttering into some kind of ignition only to immediately cut out. Whuuurrrrrrrrrr whuuurrrrrrr.

As a new set of shoppers started noticing and looking my way, I stopped again and sat, fuming. I wanted to throw the steering wheel out of the window, but who’s fault is it but my own?

Normally I would phone my brother in law. He’s a mechanic and owns a garage about ten minutes away from my house. Not that it’s open on a Sunday, but generally, anything car related and we turn to him for advice.

To make matters worse my stupid bank which used to charge me £15 a month for a cool account with rewards, one of which was breakdown cover, decided to do away with that account and with it went my RAC membership.

Not that I could have phoned them, anyway.

Oh and finally, for the first time in history, as far as I can remember, the random set of groceries I bought in Asda had come to exactly £10 so I didn’t have a single scrap change on me, to use a pay phone.

I finally climbed out of the car and started walking home. Not only was this a massive inconvenience, not only was I fuming at myself for not taking my phone, but on top of it all, I was having unwanted exercise forced upon me.

I walked home, scouring the pavements for some rouge 20p pieces for the pay phone, but all I saw in my entire journey was a shiny bronze penny.

“It’s okay, I’ll soon be home with a nice cup of tea.” I told myself, but I also dreaded telling my other half, knowing that his first response would be: why didn’t you take your phone?

I slammed the front door shut behind me.

“I’m a massive dickhead” I announced, and recounted my tale of woe.

“Why didn’t you take your phone?” He asked me, causing me to smile.

10 minutes later, with a cup of tea in hand, I’d phoned Asda to ask them not to clamp my car, and my brother in law had promised to sort something out the following morning to get the car moved to his garage.

Sorted.

I suspect though, that as soon as I get to my car tomorrow, it will just start first time.

At some point I’ll look back on this story and laugh. I’m not quite there yet. But the blueberry muffin cheesecake I bought from Asda, may just help.

Well played fate. I’ve learned my lesson about gambling with you. And I’ll never leave home without my phone again.

Teabags, phones and automobiles

Did Harry Cunningham Inspire Doctor Who?

I was never big on hospital dramas or what I perceived to be Sunday night telly so I had never watched Silent Witness. I know it’s not a hospital drama as such, it’s a murder mystery show but there’s just so much medical stuff in it and medical stuff makes me a bit queasy.

But I sort of got over that when Greys Anatomy hit our screens, mainly because McDreamy and McSteamy were both worth putting up with the occasional sharp blade slicing into flesh.

Anyway. A couple of years ago my other half and I stumbled into unchartered territory for us: we started a regular weekly thing. We started watching murder mysteries on a Sunday night. We became obsessed with stories that were told in 2 parts that we could watch in the one night.

We started with Prime Suspect and then watched Messiah. But then we decided we were ready for the big leagues: Silent Witness with its 15 series under its belt seemed like a mammoth task to under take but within a year we had caught up to real time.

Over the course of that year I noticed something quite interesting. I’d already formed something of a crush on Dr. Harry Cunningham, naturally, but it was sometime around series 10 when I noticed the spikey forward hair, sideburns and the big dress coat that I thought to myself he looks a bit like David Tennant.

Correction: he looks a lot like David Tennant.

Now at this point in my viewing we were well into the Eleventh Doctor’s reign but obviously, being a nerd, I’d been long term crushing on the Tenth Doctor – although as previously discussed not generally David Tennant because it turns out I have a thing for sideburns.

So suddenly what had started as a minor attraction to Harry Cunningham turned into a full on replacement for Doctor Who. My new poster pin up of choice, fast tracked to the top of my freebie five list.*

So imagine dismay when we started watching series 12 and he looked like this:


I mean come on!

What is that jumper? Gone is the smart coat and the nice shirts, to be replaced by a jumper from a carboot sale that looks like it’s been slept on by cats for the last five years.

Add to that the hair cut that makes him look like he’s about to audition for Oasis. Oh dear lord, no!

Now looking back, I think when they were filming series 12 it was the year after David Tennant hit our screens as the Doctor.

He went from a young policeman:

To Casanova…

To The Doctor…


Sporting a sharp suit and an overcoat that looked not dissimilar to the fashion choice of Doctor Harry Cunningham.


Did the BBC, in their wisdom, decide there could only be one attractive spikey haired, sharply dressed, doctor on TV? And given the high profile of Doctor Who compared to Silent Witness, poor Harry Cumningham was made to look as though, sometime during the break, he’d lost his home and all his belongings in a fire and was reliant on handouts from the charity shop?

Thankfully, it only lasted for one series. Perhaps there was a public outcry, or someone had a quiet word with hair and make up and insisted they restore Dr Cunningham to his former glory.

They returned his smart suit and improved his hair to this:

And by the end of Series 15 when Tom Ward quit the show, he was back to normal – making his exit all the more distressing.

It’s taken me a long time to admit this, because it goes without saying that The Doctor, in several of his guises, hits my list of celebrity crushes. The Doctor, that is, not the actor playing him. But Tom Ward has played a long line of sideburns before and after Harry Cunningham. Last seen playing Colonel Fitzwilliam in Death Comes to Pemberley, he was looking mighty fine.

Yep, that decides it. Tom Ward is officially, my current celebrity crush, poster pin-up guy!

Anyone else see a similarity between Doctor Cunningham and Doctor Who?

* I don’t actually have a freebie five list, but if I did…

Did Harry Cunningham Inspire Doctor Who?

Everything is Awesome... When you're playing Lego games.

Who didn’t play with Lego as a kid? I used to love building things. The suspension of reality that we have as children is wonderful. Running out of red bricks and giving a car one random blue door or building a house with a brown roof and a green chimney pot.

If you haven’t seen the Lego Movie yet, I won’t spoil it for you, but there is a sentiment there about grown ups following the instructions to create perfect lego models while kids just build whatever they want and create fun exciting worlds in which to play.

Lego has never been so popular. I hadn’t given much thought to Lego after I left primary school, until Travellers Tales started making video games, which sparked a whole new love affair with Lego.

Throughout Inspired By Night, Olivia Jones is playing the first Lego Batman game. I have to confess that even though the Lego games have developed considerably over the years, Lego Batman remains my favourite because it was the first one I played and actually really got me into video games in a big way. So it felt right to have her play it in the novel.

I don’t really feel like going out tonight can we just stay in and play Lego? – Steven Teller

I believe authors tend to write about what they know. Certainly I’d be lying if I said there was absolutely no similarities between myself and Olivia Jones. Though I stress that is only in personality and taste and not in action. My disclaimer is that I exhausted all my creativity inventing the more intimate scenes so everything else had to be borrowed from real life.

In our house we have a policy about completing all the Lego games. We’ve been known to come up against a bug/glitch in a game that would prevent us from achieving 100% so we’ve started the game again from the beginning. Oh yes. 100 percenting Lego is a big deal in our house. It always amuses me when people say “you do know these games are aimed at kids?” Because frankly, I don’t believe that for a second. Sure it looks like a kids game but the jokes and references are aimed at grown ups. Lego City Undercover was littered with film and TV references that no child of the 2000s would ever understand, unless they have particularly cool parents that have brought them up to love the classics – and by classics I mean Star Wars, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, oh you know what I mean!

But what really persuades me that Lego games are not really aimed at kids is that my boyfriend always says that nothing turns the air more blue than me playing a Lego game. I get so frustrated by some of the challenges, that I have to invent swear words. Only because the commonly used ones are just not enough to really vocalise my frustration, at a little lego guy trying to jump onto a rope. Or whatever it is that I inevitably fail to do in a short space of time. Oh yes. Time trials and jumping are not a good mix for my sense of calm.

On the flip side, playing Lego games is great for relieving some anger and frustration, mainly because you have to destroy all the objects and scenery that are made from bricks. Controlling a Lego Batman and having him punch and kick Lego trees and flowers and walls and cars and everything else on the screen is surprisingly cathartic.

I destroyed every Lego building I could see and when there was nothing left to break I punched Robin. Part of me liked making my character punch his assistant, it was as close as I was going to get to doing it in real life. – Olivia Jones

Lego games have progressed so much over the years, what we still lovingly refer to as the bat cave – the base camp of the game from where you select the levels or change characters or view your progress – has grown into a whole open world game. Completing the levels in story mode accounts for such a tiny percentage of the game and really it’s the open world side that gets us excited. Lego Batman 2 was a triumph, wandering around Gotham City, flying through the air as Superman, performing acrobatics as Robin and unlocking characters like The Joker.

But still, the original Batman game holds a special place in my heart.

I mentioned recently that we’d started playing Lego The Hobbit. We finished it last week and it was brilliant. I’m hoping for a short break before the next Lego game, otherwise I’ll never get my sequel written. The air did turn blue though, but it also inspired a scene in the next novel, which I’m looking forward to writing.

What games do you enjoy playing? Which is your favourite Lego game?

Everything is Awesome... When you're playing Lego games.

If I had to choose one food to eat everyday it would be pizza.

Oh, I am such a foody! I love eating. It’s one of the most pleasurable activities that I know of. As soon as I’ve finished eating one meal, I’m planning the next one. I often have meals planned three or four days in advance.

On the flip side, my other half couldn’t care less about food. He views it as a necessity for staying alive. On the one hand this means I can place pretty much anything in front of him and he’ll eat it, but it also means that when I ask him what he fancies eating, he just laughs at me. He eats one meal a day while I like my full three meals a day and three snacks… and if any of those meals can be three courses, then so much the better!

Our food habits are completely incompatible. Despite not really caring about food, he does have a preference for very strong flavours, he covers his food in black pepper and chilli sauce, while I like to think of myself as having a delicate palate, (also occasionally referred to as bland, but I don’t agree with that insult, not at all).  In Nandos, for example, he goes with the hottest flavouring and uses the hot sauce from the scary little black bottle with the evil red X, while I opt for the no flavour option and find the garlic bread a little spicy. But we do have some compromises such as chip shop curry sauce.  He loves smelly mouldy cheese and I like soft brie and mild cheddar, but we both love Feta. He puts fresh chilli on pizza while I favour his much loathed mushrooms… but we both love pepperoni.

Our food differences mean that we eat an awful lot of takeaway, and we tend to prefer going to restaurants that present us with a buffet, so we can eat as much or as little of whatever we want. It’s not that I can’t cook, or that I don’t like cooking, it’s just that most of my adventurous dishes are time consuming and make a lot of mess, and require ingredients like mushrooms, tomatoes  or pretty much any kind of vegetable, that he won’t eat. I have little motivation to spend hours slaving over a cooker to present him with a dish that he’ll eat with the same amount of appreciation as he would tuck into something I took out the freezer and slammed into the oven 20 minutes earlier.

Pizza is like the food of the Gods! – Olivia Jones

If it was up to me, I’d probably just order pizza every night. It has the perfect blend of carbohydrate, protein and vegetables. Okay it might exceed a person’s fat intake, but it tastes so good. When I was at university we had this coupon card for a pizza delivery place that gave us a huge discount on everything we ordered. So we pretty much lived off pizza for 12 months. That’s probably why I still eat so much of it now. Like most human bodies are 60% water, I’m pretty sure that as a result of that year at university, my body weight is at least 30% pizza, so I need to keep topping it up, on at least a weekly basis, to ensure I function. The other 70% of my body weight is almost certainly tea.

Pizzaland – the home of the perfect pizza.

It’s funny how your first memory of something sets it in stone as the ultimate version of that thing. I remember the first time I ate pizza. It was in a Pizzaland in Liverpool with my sister. I remember going to Pizza Hut and complaining about the thick base and garlic bread slices, because they were the complete opposite of the way Pizzaland served them and Pizzaland was the best.

I was so disappointed when it closed down. The closest I’ve found to Pizzaland is probably Pizza Express. Perhaps it’s just the thin base that I like, but I’m not convinced I’ve tasted anything as good as Pizzaland pizza and sadly now, I will never be able to compare it and find out. Pizzaland lives on in my memory as the ultimate pizza. But I’m a big fan of Pizza Express. I love that it feels like a posh restaurant, rather than a big chain fast food place like Pizza Hut or even my beloved Pizzaland did. And the pizzas are beautiful.

American Pizza Slice in Liverpool City Centre and Waterloo, is a pretty good contender for the best pizza though, with a base so thin it almost falls apart under the sheer weight of its toppings. It’s definitely a gourmet pizza that must have a secret ingredient somewhere along the way, because I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere else. If you live in Liverpool, you’ll know what I mean.

The Waterfront in Streatham (London) also does a really good fresh pizza. I’ve not tasted anything like that either, interesting toppings and they serve cocktails too, so that makes for a pretty awesome night out, there’s also The Duck in Clapham that does a Peking duck pizza which is a thing of beauty.

Okay so this post seems to be descending into an unintended review of pizza takeaways. Like my novel writing, I started with an idea and found myself accidentally on a different path. I like it though, I’m going to keep going and see where it takes me.

So, Just-Eat is a pretty big deal in our house. Unfortunately we don’t live in the delivery zone for American Pizza Slice (and our favourite Chinese restaurant doesn’t deliver  but it’s okay, it’s in walking distance). Our favourite delivery takeaway is Sizzlas on County Road. Anyone that regularly goes to the football will know Sizzlas. They’re a mixed bag of pizza, Indian food, kebabs and burgers. They do the best garlic bread and cheese ever made (although that may be because it comes free with orders over £12. There’s something about free food – it just tastes better). We do have a bad habit of over ordering just to hit the £12 total. I once ordered and paid for a GB&C because I was on my own and couldn’t possibly justify ordering £12 worth of food for myself, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the free one. Weird.

Sizzlas solves a lot of our food problems – he can get his Chicken Madras and I can eat my pizza. Annoyingly the garlic bread and cheese is also something we agree on. Which I’m sometimes a little gutted about!

So what’s your favourite takeaway? Any pizza recommendations for me? Share them below.

If I had to choose one food to eat everyday it would be pizza.

Prologue launch day minus three

On Friday I will be posting a prologue to Inspired By Night.

You’ll get a little taster of some of the characters and a sense of the general tone throughout the book.

I hope you like it.

Please make sure you let me know what you think.

Prologue launch day minus three