I have been suffering quite some discomfort this week due to the unfortunate recurrence of an old sports injury. I say sports injury but of course I mean something far more embarrassing. I don’t know why I said sports injury really. It was instinctive, the way an only child will instantly deny all knowledge of tiny teeth marks in the chocolate cake. In fact I have haemorrhoids.
There, said it. Did you know that haemorrhoids is officially the hardest word in the English language to spell correctly ? I don’t know how they find these things out myself. I mean, who goes around writing the word haemorrhoids other than doctors and people who work in ointment development? It’s not something you see much in modern graffiti is it? Haemorrhoids rule OK!
Anyway, I made that fact up. I am stalling for time, as I did in Boots the chemist when it turned out that the only pharmacist on duty was utterly gorgeous. I actually withered with dismay. People thought I was fainting. I could have simply chosen some over the counter cream or potion, but it’s been a surprisingly long time since my last attack - a phrase I do not chose lightly, incidentally. I was sort of hoping that boffins had made some great leap forward in the field, say by developing a miraculous dry ice remedy. One quick, cold and not entirely unpleasant puff of frigid air, and moments later the offending article freezes to a solid ball of ice, which is then tapped gently with a small silver hammer, causing it to shatter into a thousand tinkling pieces. If I can think of it surely they can’t be far behind.
‘Can I help you?’ the pharmacist asked, surprising me out of my reverie.
‘Yes, do you have a less attractive assistant?’ I said. ‘This would be so much easier to explain to a woman with matronly facial hair and really stout little legs.’
I didn’t say that of course. Instead I just muttered something about painful haemorrhoids and needing a lotion with a little extra kick. Again I don’t know what I was thinking. I was half hoping that she would have something under the counter. A furtive glance around the store to make certain we were not observed, then a plain brown paper bag pressed quickly into my hand.
‘This is still in development,’ she would whisper. ‘I could lose my licence for this, but, my God, you’re a sexy man. Just rub that in three times a day, beautiful, and don’t sit on anything hard.’
She didn’t say anything of the sort of course. Instead she said, ‘Well, Preparation H is meant to be good.’
I stared at her for some moments, wondering if I could train to be a pharmacist and dish out such esoteric wisdom myself. There didn’t seem much to it. It would take longer to train as a flagpole designer.
‘Great,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll take some, and perhaps you can give me a call in a few years time when there’s been a new development, say in about nineteen fifty-eight? You’ll find me in the phone book easily enough, there’s still only the four of us.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sorry but that’s about all there is.’
‘What about an anti-inflammatory?’
‘Ibuprofen.’
‘Anything stronger?’
‘I’ve got a mallet in the car,’ she said.
‘Oh you’re fucking hilarious. I thought you were meant to be sympathetic?’
‘I’m meant to be discreet,’ she said. ‘Sympathy you don’t get. Now do what everyone else does – get yourself some pile ointment and an amusing cushion shaped like a Polo mint. And in the words of the Fonze – sit on it.’
That was more or less the way the conversation went. Sadly there is no miracle treatment yet, at least not one that’s available without the added misery of having to face your doctor. Or face away from your doctor, as the case may be. Personally I would rather go with the mallet.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 04, 2009
Starving
I have decided to eat more food. I have been feeling lethargic and generally out of sorts over the past few weeks, and I have craftily put it down to not getting enough to eat. It’s the sort of thing that comes home to me whenever I visit my local Lidl, a store that sells cycling clothes and seven different types of pickled herring but mysteriously refuses to provide something as basic as shopping baskets. Instead you have to use a trolley.
Incidentally they have a notice outside that reads THEFT OF TROLLEYS IS A CRIME. WE WILL PERSECUTE ALL OFFENDERS, which is more than enough to put me off taking one home I can tell you. I’m not sure why people continue to pinch shopping trolleys. The fun danger element of riding around in a bone-shaking basket with four multi-directional wheels has surely been superseded by skateboards and mountain bikes, not to mention the theft of motor vehicles. Or riding in the back of my sister’s Land Rover, come to that, which at times also appears to corner sideways and steer dangerously close to people’s ankles.
I think people simply wander away in a daze, preoccupied with daily worries or too busy chatting on mobile phones. Suddenly they look up and realise they are pushing a trolley full of groceries and herrings and cycling clothes up a duel carriageway. At that point, obviously fearing persecution, they flee in panic to the nearest canal, where they dump the offending trolley wheels up. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
Anyway, it’s somewhat embarrassing to arrive at the checkout pushing a trolley that contains only a small tin of tuna and an interesting packet of biscuits with all the labelling written in seven different languages, none of which is like any you have seen before. You think one might be Swedish and another a sort of Hedbridean Scots. The biggest surprise is when you sit down at home with a nice cup of tea and find they are not even biscuits at all but a kind of dried fish jerky traditionally enjoyed by Alpine shepherds.
Actually I never have a trolley that bare, because there’s usually a bottle of wine and a pack of beer to bulk things out. Anna reckons I drink too much. This coming from a woman who drinks wine from a glass so big that when she lifts it to her mouth half of her face is obscured. It’s like watching a partial eclipse of the sun. She’s probably right, but what do you do about it? She’s a repressed lesbian too frightened of her own sexuality to actually date women, and my girlfriend lives six thousand miles away and has a pet buffalo. There’s a danger that we might not be drinking enough.
So to get back to the point, which is the conscious decision to pig out more. This is a rage against three years of food rationing, which began when I quit smoking and lived in fear of ending up as one of those people who can only fit inside jogging pants – ironically the very last people who actually need to fit into jogging pants. You always see them outside the shops, in pairs, a grubby baby between them, munching on Pringles and sausage rolls and swigging from cans of pop. So I completely retrained my appetite, and now I eat small, healthy meals and live with a breed of fluttering hunger that never quite leaves me.
Until now that is. I have just been to Lidl, where I bought rye bread and pâté and what I believe to be a variety of exotic cheese but which might also be toothpaste or tile grouting – it’s difficult to tell as the label is only written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. No matter. As the man almost said, you either get busy living or get busy dieting.
Incidentally they have a notice outside that reads THEFT OF TROLLEYS IS A CRIME. WE WILL PERSECUTE ALL OFFENDERS, which is more than enough to put me off taking one home I can tell you. I’m not sure why people continue to pinch shopping trolleys. The fun danger element of riding around in a bone-shaking basket with four multi-directional wheels has surely been superseded by skateboards and mountain bikes, not to mention the theft of motor vehicles. Or riding in the back of my sister’s Land Rover, come to that, which at times also appears to corner sideways and steer dangerously close to people’s ankles.
I think people simply wander away in a daze, preoccupied with daily worries or too busy chatting on mobile phones. Suddenly they look up and realise they are pushing a trolley full of groceries and herrings and cycling clothes up a duel carriageway. At that point, obviously fearing persecution, they flee in panic to the nearest canal, where they dump the offending trolley wheels up. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
Anyway, it’s somewhat embarrassing to arrive at the checkout pushing a trolley that contains only a small tin of tuna and an interesting packet of biscuits with all the labelling written in seven different languages, none of which is like any you have seen before. You think one might be Swedish and another a sort of Hedbridean Scots. The biggest surprise is when you sit down at home with a nice cup of tea and find they are not even biscuits at all but a kind of dried fish jerky traditionally enjoyed by Alpine shepherds.
Actually I never have a trolley that bare, because there’s usually a bottle of wine and a pack of beer to bulk things out. Anna reckons I drink too much. This coming from a woman who drinks wine from a glass so big that when she lifts it to her mouth half of her face is obscured. It’s like watching a partial eclipse of the sun. She’s probably right, but what do you do about it? She’s a repressed lesbian too frightened of her own sexuality to actually date women, and my girlfriend lives six thousand miles away and has a pet buffalo. There’s a danger that we might not be drinking enough.
So to get back to the point, which is the conscious decision to pig out more. This is a rage against three years of food rationing, which began when I quit smoking and lived in fear of ending up as one of those people who can only fit inside jogging pants – ironically the very last people who actually need to fit into jogging pants. You always see them outside the shops, in pairs, a grubby baby between them, munching on Pringles and sausage rolls and swigging from cans of pop. So I completely retrained my appetite, and now I eat small, healthy meals and live with a breed of fluttering hunger that never quite leaves me.
Until now that is. I have just been to Lidl, where I bought rye bread and pâté and what I believe to be a variety of exotic cheese but which might also be toothpaste or tile grouting – it’s difficult to tell as the label is only written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. No matter. As the man almost said, you either get busy living or get busy dieting.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Fair Enough
A friend of mine popped over for coffee today. Well, what I mean is, a friend of mine who does a bit of shoplifting came over to see if I wanted to buy an extra large jar of Nescafé, which is practically the same thing. I use ground coffee myself, but I decided I would keep the Nescafé for low-ranking guests and workmen.
‘You work from home too,’ my friend said, noticing my computer screen, which fortunately was full of words and not lurid images or pictures of cats and their funny captions.
‘You’re a burglar, Tony,’ I reminded him. ‘I think you have to work from your own home.’
The radio was on at the time. Some ambitious economist was jawing on about the recession, which is today apparently worse than deepening. They are fast running out of ways to make it sound any more dismal. I don’t know about the future of the economy but we must surely be almost out of economist bearing terrible news.
Anyway, Tony and me naturally began chatting about the state of the nation.
‘We should put a stop to all this fair trade bollocks,’ he said. ‘We need to start ripping off Mexican peasants again ASAP. And all those Poles should go home now the work’s dried up.’
‘I think they have.’
‘Latvian Lukas hasn’t gone home. He was doing some tiling work at the Green Man the other day.’
‘Well for one thing, Latvian Lukas has a job, so he actually contributes to the economy. Secondly, he isn’t Polish. He’s from Latvia.’
‘Latvia?’ Tony asked, grinning incredulously. ‘Is that a real place?’
‘Yes. What did you think it was?’
Tony shrugged. ‘I thought it was sort of milky coffee. Speaking of which, do you want the Nescafé or not?’
I didn’t really need it, but I decided to do my bit to keep one of our local peasants in gainful employment. It seemed like a fair trade to me.
‘You work from home too,’ my friend said, noticing my computer screen, which fortunately was full of words and not lurid images or pictures of cats and their funny captions.
‘You’re a burglar, Tony,’ I reminded him. ‘I think you have to work from your own home.’
The radio was on at the time. Some ambitious economist was jawing on about the recession, which is today apparently worse than deepening. They are fast running out of ways to make it sound any more dismal. I don’t know about the future of the economy but we must surely be almost out of economist bearing terrible news.
Anyway, Tony and me naturally began chatting about the state of the nation.
‘We should put a stop to all this fair trade bollocks,’ he said. ‘We need to start ripping off Mexican peasants again ASAP. And all those Poles should go home now the work’s dried up.’
‘I think they have.’
‘Latvian Lukas hasn’t gone home. He was doing some tiling work at the Green Man the other day.’
‘Well for one thing, Latvian Lukas has a job, so he actually contributes to the economy. Secondly, he isn’t Polish. He’s from Latvia.’
‘Latvia?’ Tony asked, grinning incredulously. ‘Is that a real place?’
‘Yes. What did you think it was?’
Tony shrugged. ‘I thought it was sort of milky coffee. Speaking of which, do you want the Nescafé or not?’
I didn’t really need it, but I decided to do my bit to keep one of our local peasants in gainful employment. It seemed like a fair trade to me.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Horny
Would not life be grand, a ceaselessly joyful and effervescent experience, if each of us came with our own horn section? It would be noisy, granted (though noisy in that delightful way of a basket of chapping puppies or the distant – strategically distant – cacophony of a primary school playground), and you might have to stand up on the bus home more often, but what an improvement on things none the less.
OK, that’s a silly idea and we both know it. My apologies if you have made a special trip over here just to be confronted with a daft and impossible fancy. Or indeed if you arrived here hoping to discover what side dishes go best with fishcakes, which for some inexplicable reason is the google search phrase that brings most visitors to my weblog. This fact makes me rather glum, if you must know. I was under the illusion that people found me by typing phrases such as ‘Dashing Leeds Author Gary James’ and ‘That Brilliant Weblog All The Girls At Work Talk About,’ and such like. Instead my legacy to the world will be an infinitely recurring series of puzzled and disappointed women whose dinner parties I have either delayed or spoiled outright.
I’m actually here because I don’t know what to write. That’s a bit like meeting a friend in the doctor’s surgery and asking how he is, only to be told, ‘Oh fine, thanks!’ It’s my other stuff that’s stalled, the fiction stuff. I picked up an old book a few weeks ago - when I say an old book I don’t mean as in Great Expectations. I mean one of my own, so definitely no great expectations there, ha ha. In fact it was a story I started a few years ago and then abandoned when the block really began to hurt. It’s a story I have always regretted leaving incomplete, largely because the ending is so clear in my mind, but also because it was going so well. You could even say it was swinging, blow those horns, Daddy-O. I liked everything about it – the characters, the mood of the story, the setting, the pace, everything was good; as a writer learning the craft, it was turning into my winning piece.
And then…well, this is not the time to go into the whys and wherefores and howdoyousupposes, needless to say I contracted a near-terminal case of writers block. Picking up the story again should have been daunting, perhaps even impossible. Yet it wasn’t. I was ready to write again, you see, really hungry for it. The only problem was that this story had a gap in the plot that I couldn’t seem to bridge. I tried a number of things but each felt clunky and unnatural. The way I did it in the end was to invent a completely new character, one that was connected to the story but situated in a different setting. The result was practically magic, like wiping a dirty window and seeing everything inside. I immediately saw how my new character would link the rest of the story together – not just conveniently, but essentially. In that respect he was the veritable missing link.
So everything was going fine until today, when the engine stalled and here I am. I’m not worried too much – this isn’t writers block, more like writers constipation. I write much less than I did in the old days. I don’t really understand how the machine works anymore. I have no idea what fuels it and what causes it to sit down like a stubborn child in the supermarket. On the days that I can write I usually end up with something that looks like one of those arrestingly unstable constructions put together by early aviation pioneers, the sort of flying machines that often came apart in a clownish tantrum of steam and popped rivets. But even these touchingly hilarious monsters occasionally get off the ground, albeit briefly, often at the disregard of all rules and logic; once in the air, where all that ugly clunking and clashing of moveable parts is no longer visible or audible to the senses, they go like swans.
Tomorrow is another day (respondez avec des cornes), and, hopefully, another story.
OK, that’s a silly idea and we both know it. My apologies if you have made a special trip over here just to be confronted with a daft and impossible fancy. Or indeed if you arrived here hoping to discover what side dishes go best with fishcakes, which for some inexplicable reason is the google search phrase that brings most visitors to my weblog. This fact makes me rather glum, if you must know. I was under the illusion that people found me by typing phrases such as ‘Dashing Leeds Author Gary James’ and ‘That Brilliant Weblog All The Girls At Work Talk About,’ and such like. Instead my legacy to the world will be an infinitely recurring series of puzzled and disappointed women whose dinner parties I have either delayed or spoiled outright.
I’m actually here because I don’t know what to write. That’s a bit like meeting a friend in the doctor’s surgery and asking how he is, only to be told, ‘Oh fine, thanks!’ It’s my other stuff that’s stalled, the fiction stuff. I picked up an old book a few weeks ago - when I say an old book I don’t mean as in Great Expectations. I mean one of my own, so definitely no great expectations there, ha ha. In fact it was a story I started a few years ago and then abandoned when the block really began to hurt. It’s a story I have always regretted leaving incomplete, largely because the ending is so clear in my mind, but also because it was going so well. You could even say it was swinging, blow those horns, Daddy-O. I liked everything about it – the characters, the mood of the story, the setting, the pace, everything was good; as a writer learning the craft, it was turning into my winning piece.
And then…well, this is not the time to go into the whys and wherefores and howdoyousupposes, needless to say I contracted a near-terminal case of writers block. Picking up the story again should have been daunting, perhaps even impossible. Yet it wasn’t. I was ready to write again, you see, really hungry for it. The only problem was that this story had a gap in the plot that I couldn’t seem to bridge. I tried a number of things but each felt clunky and unnatural. The way I did it in the end was to invent a completely new character, one that was connected to the story but situated in a different setting. The result was practically magic, like wiping a dirty window and seeing everything inside. I immediately saw how my new character would link the rest of the story together – not just conveniently, but essentially. In that respect he was the veritable missing link.
So everything was going fine until today, when the engine stalled and here I am. I’m not worried too much – this isn’t writers block, more like writers constipation. I write much less than I did in the old days. I don’t really understand how the machine works anymore. I have no idea what fuels it and what causes it to sit down like a stubborn child in the supermarket. On the days that I can write I usually end up with something that looks like one of those arrestingly unstable constructions put together by early aviation pioneers, the sort of flying machines that often came apart in a clownish tantrum of steam and popped rivets. But even these touchingly hilarious monsters occasionally get off the ground, albeit briefly, often at the disregard of all rules and logic; once in the air, where all that ugly clunking and clashing of moveable parts is no longer visible or audible to the senses, they go like swans.
Tomorrow is another day (respondez avec des cornes), and, hopefully, another story.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
If You Want Blood
Nobody sees everything you do. In fact most of your life will pass unrecorded. As far as others go, you are an intermittent broadcast, an irregular signal interrupting an important transmission of their own. Despite all the clues you leave around, the photographs, the journals and letters, the bricks and mortar and the commemorative bulbs that blossom each spring, you will always be an enigma. You go about the daily business of being you in relative obscurity. You, with all your high seriousness and flashes of brilliance, your quiet comedy and those moments of horrifying shame, are mostly hidden from the world above like an iceberg. From lifesaving to shoplifting, you’ve got your little secrets, haven’t you?
Well so have I, and I’m not about to reveal any of them here. I only mention it because Anna has been nagging me to give blood again, and I don’t want to. She is convinced that I am harbouring a secret fear of…well, of the unknown I suppose. When I say the unknown I actually mean big fuck off needles of course, but don’t tell Anna that.
‘There’s a mobile unit at the Catholic day centre at St Peter’s,’ she said when she called at my flat today. She was here to open and close kitchen cupboards and idly scan their contents. At least that’s what it seemed like. ‘I didn’t know you liked Ready Brek!’
‘Didn’t you? I’m sure I mentioned it. I’m always telling people stuff like that in the pub. Did I also mention that little pile of toenail clippings I end up with whenever I sweep the living room floor?’
She closed the cupboard door and moved to the fridge. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I’m not Catholic.’
‘It doesn’t matter, anyone can go. And you so are Catholic! You put all your Father Ted DVD’s into blank cases. Is this your shopping list?’
I made to grab the shopping list but Anna was too quick. She snatched it from the fridge magnet and read it by the window, holding me at a distance with one arm held out like a policeman halting traffic. I could have easily swept it aside of course, but she does kickboxing and stuff, which is sort of unfair if you ask me, practically cheating.
I hate people seeing my shopping list. My shopping list is very colloquial, quite personal to me. In fact it hasn’t progressed much beyond the letters I wrote to Santa as a child.
‘What’s this?’ Anna asked, smirking. ‘Pongy buffalo cheese? Is that your Red Indian name?’
‘It’s a blue cheese made from buffalos milk,’ I muttered. ‘It’s nice, but it smells a bit.’
‘What are happy chicken thighs?’
‘Free range.’
‘And oh my,’ she went on, obviously having a ball, ‘listen to this, and I quote: “Get some of that peanut butter we like, we deserve a treat!”’ She looked at me with furrowed concern. “Referring to yourself as we is possibly the most disturbing thing you have done since you played for the fifth form rounders team.’
‘They were short of a man! Some of them still are!’
‘Ha-ha,’ she said, sticking the shopping list back on the fridge with one of my homemade beer bottle top fridge magnets. ‘So what about giving blood?’
I shrugged regretfully. ‘I don’t have time. I’ve just got back into the new novel. I hate going anywhere when I’m writing well.’
‘It’s only a mile away.’
‘Can’t I do it online?’
‘Don’t be stupid. How can you give blood online?’
I shrugged again. I’ve sort of got used to the idea of doing all your important stuff online, stuff that used to mean leaving the house. Shopping, voting, visiting close relatives. Even Nana has Facebook these days. ‘I don’t know. They must have a Facebook page. I could just add them, show my support that way.’
‘Come on,’ she said. It’s really important. You’ll only look a bit of a prick.’
‘Feel,’ I said heavily. ‘It’s feel a bit of a prick.’
‘Whatever,’ Anna giggled.
‘They make black pudding from your blood.’
‘They do not!’
‘They do so. The NHS is the biggest producer of black puddings in the world, it’s a fact.’
‘Right,’ Anna said with a worrying note of declaratory purpose. It was the sort of right that usually heralds a slap around the chops or some other breed of attack. Instead she whipped a pen out of her jeans pocket and quickly scrawled something on my shopping list, which she then thrust into my hand.
Right there, directly beneath where I had written ‘Bag of prawns, because you’re never alone with a prawn,’ it said:
‘Give Blood. If we don’t we’ll get our head kicked in!’
Obviously I’m about to leave the house. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even like black pudding.
Well so have I, and I’m not about to reveal any of them here. I only mention it because Anna has been nagging me to give blood again, and I don’t want to. She is convinced that I am harbouring a secret fear of…well, of the unknown I suppose. When I say the unknown I actually mean big fuck off needles of course, but don’t tell Anna that.
‘There’s a mobile unit at the Catholic day centre at St Peter’s,’ she said when she called at my flat today. She was here to open and close kitchen cupboards and idly scan their contents. At least that’s what it seemed like. ‘I didn’t know you liked Ready Brek!’
‘Didn’t you? I’m sure I mentioned it. I’m always telling people stuff like that in the pub. Did I also mention that little pile of toenail clippings I end up with whenever I sweep the living room floor?’
She closed the cupboard door and moved to the fridge. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I’m not Catholic.’
‘It doesn’t matter, anyone can go. And you so are Catholic! You put all your Father Ted DVD’s into blank cases. Is this your shopping list?’
I made to grab the shopping list but Anna was too quick. She snatched it from the fridge magnet and read it by the window, holding me at a distance with one arm held out like a policeman halting traffic. I could have easily swept it aside of course, but she does kickboxing and stuff, which is sort of unfair if you ask me, practically cheating.
I hate people seeing my shopping list. My shopping list is very colloquial, quite personal to me. In fact it hasn’t progressed much beyond the letters I wrote to Santa as a child.
‘What’s this?’ Anna asked, smirking. ‘Pongy buffalo cheese? Is that your Red Indian name?’
‘It’s a blue cheese made from buffalos milk,’ I muttered. ‘It’s nice, but it smells a bit.’
‘What are happy chicken thighs?’
‘Free range.’
‘And oh my,’ she went on, obviously having a ball, ‘listen to this, and I quote: “Get some of that peanut butter we like, we deserve a treat!”’ She looked at me with furrowed concern. “Referring to yourself as we is possibly the most disturbing thing you have done since you played for the fifth form rounders team.’
‘They were short of a man! Some of them still are!’
‘Ha-ha,’ she said, sticking the shopping list back on the fridge with one of my homemade beer bottle top fridge magnets. ‘So what about giving blood?’
I shrugged regretfully. ‘I don’t have time. I’ve just got back into the new novel. I hate going anywhere when I’m writing well.’
‘It’s only a mile away.’
‘Can’t I do it online?’
‘Don’t be stupid. How can you give blood online?’
I shrugged again. I’ve sort of got used to the idea of doing all your important stuff online, stuff that used to mean leaving the house. Shopping, voting, visiting close relatives. Even Nana has Facebook these days. ‘I don’t know. They must have a Facebook page. I could just add them, show my support that way.’
‘Come on,’ she said. It’s really important. You’ll only look a bit of a prick.’
‘Feel,’ I said heavily. ‘It’s feel a bit of a prick.’
‘Whatever,’ Anna giggled.
‘They make black pudding from your blood.’
‘They do not!’
‘They do so. The NHS is the biggest producer of black puddings in the world, it’s a fact.’
‘Right,’ Anna said with a worrying note of declaratory purpose. It was the sort of right that usually heralds a slap around the chops or some other breed of attack. Instead she whipped a pen out of her jeans pocket and quickly scrawled something on my shopping list, which she then thrust into my hand.
Right there, directly beneath where I had written ‘Bag of prawns, because you’re never alone with a prawn,’ it said:
‘Give Blood. If we don’t we’ll get our head kicked in!’
Obviously I’m about to leave the house. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even like black pudding.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
I've Got a Bike
I have just been out to buy myself a new bike, an experience which has made me strangely nostalgic. They say there are some things you never forget. You never forget your first pet, your first kiss (which in the case of Mad Barry, a weird kid who lived at the bottom of our street and reputedly died from ingesting the mystery poison inside a Stretch Armstrong, may well have been one and the same), or your first car. I would add to that list. I would say that you also remember your first pay cheque, your first broken heart, and the first time you bit into a Birds Eye crispy pancake without checking how hot it was inside. And for me, I have never forgotten my first bike.
I have very clear, if not altogether fond memories my very first bicycle. It was a hand-me-down from an older sister, which of course made it a girls’ bike in the sense that it varied slightly in construction from a regular boys’ bike. The difference incidentally has nothing to do with the anatomical differences in the sexes. Instead the variation was demanded by the sensibilities of an age when ladies wore long skirts and carried dainty little umbrellas to shade them from the sun, when they strolled in parks and received courteous greetings from smartly dressed gentlemen with splendid moustaches. It was not a time for ladies to go hoisting their legs over the top tube of a bike, flashing their bloomers at passing chimney sweeps and undermining the very fabric of the Empire. A bicycle without a top tube allowed a lady to mount the saddle discreetly, almost as if she were slipping prettily onto a drawing-room buffet in order to do a little embroidery or light reading.
It seems a strangely redundant practice to continue into modern times, given that women no longer go cycling in ankle-length skirts and the risk of accidentally exciting a passing chimney sweep considerably lower than it was, but continue it has. Not that it mattered much to me back when I was five or six. A bike was a bike was a bike. I grew up in the early seventies; money was tight and the must-have philosophy of the Thatcher years still some way in the future. It wasn’t that we didn’t have things, only that we couldn’t ‘magic’ things out of thin air in that way that modern parents from the present, wealthier society seem apt to do. My sisters’ kids throw their unwanted mobile phones in a kitchen drawer. These are telephones for crying out loud – we didn’t get a telephone in the house until I was about seven, and it was a long time before anyone we knew got a phone of their own and called us on it. What a day that was. We had rehearsed answering the telephone the way wartime families practised for an air-raid, only when it finally happened we were caught off-guard and ended up charging around the house in a hopelessly confused and over-excited tizzy. Drinks were spilled, someone wet themselves and a dog’s tail got stood on; I’m not even sure whether it was our dog or just a stray attracted by all the commotion.
In any event, the telephone was a big deal, and then one day it wasn’t, like so many things, including video recording machines, personal computers, and of course a bike of your own. We weren’t desperately poor but as I’ve noted, money was scarce in those days and a bicycle represented a major purchase for a working class family of five. If you wanted a bike of your own you had to either bump off your rival siblings (an attractive if messy and potentially risky prospect), or wait until an older brother or sister had literally outgrown theirs.
As luck would have it, both of my sisters sprouted into lanky, coltish individuals while I was still a squat, part-simian creature grubbing around in mud puddles with a spoon. This meant that I spent a period of years wearing tee shirts with what to me were meaningless yet vaguely unsettling slogans such as I Luv David Cassidy and Donny is King, but it nevertheless secured me a bicycle too. As you can imagine this was not the kind of bike to win any beauty contests. Mine had survived two sisters and nothing comes through that unscarred. By the time I took my first excited, wobbly ride around the street, my red bike was a rusty shade of dark brown or orange, with a bent rear mudguard that was slowly gouging a furrow in the tyre, and a slightly buckled front wheel. It was only marginally prettier, only marginally easier to manoeuvre, than a wheelbarrow, but it was my first bicycle, and I was very proud of it.
My bike did however have one structural flaw that was a little more serious – you might even say dangerous – than a few surface scratches. At some point in its long and eventful life the bike had mysteriously broken in half, literally snapped clean in two halfway along the frame. We think it was left in the road, possibly in someone’s eagerness to dash inside to beg for ice-cream money, whereupon it was run over by a car. This being the early seventies a new bike was out of the question. Instead my dad took it to work and welded the two halves together again. This should have been good news for me, except for one minor point: My dad wasn’t a welder.
Not that anything as piffling as mortal danger was going to put me off. I was too busy having fun to worry about the charred knot of metal sitting halfway down the frame, or the ominous metallic stretching sound that would get more and more pronounced until, with a sweetly ringing ping! the bike would snap in half.
This happened with annoying regularity. Passers-by would hear a surprised yelp and turn to see a curly-headed kid flying past on a unicycle. Marvellous! they would remark. That kid must be from a circus or the Telly or something! I would then carry the two halves of my bike back to the house and dump them by the bin, where my dad would silently collect them on his way to work. The next day my bike was back again, and the welded knot halfway down the frame that little bit bigger and uglier.
I picked up my shiny new bike this afternoon, and it has turned into such a lovely evening that I may just throw my leg over the top tube and go for a ride. Lock up your chimney sweeps!
I have very clear, if not altogether fond memories my very first bicycle. It was a hand-me-down from an older sister, which of course made it a girls’ bike in the sense that it varied slightly in construction from a regular boys’ bike. The difference incidentally has nothing to do with the anatomical differences in the sexes. Instead the variation was demanded by the sensibilities of an age when ladies wore long skirts and carried dainty little umbrellas to shade them from the sun, when they strolled in parks and received courteous greetings from smartly dressed gentlemen with splendid moustaches. It was not a time for ladies to go hoisting their legs over the top tube of a bike, flashing their bloomers at passing chimney sweeps and undermining the very fabric of the Empire. A bicycle without a top tube allowed a lady to mount the saddle discreetly, almost as if she were slipping prettily onto a drawing-room buffet in order to do a little embroidery or light reading.
It seems a strangely redundant practice to continue into modern times, given that women no longer go cycling in ankle-length skirts and the risk of accidentally exciting a passing chimney sweep considerably lower than it was, but continue it has. Not that it mattered much to me back when I was five or six. A bike was a bike was a bike. I grew up in the early seventies; money was tight and the must-have philosophy of the Thatcher years still some way in the future. It wasn’t that we didn’t have things, only that we couldn’t ‘magic’ things out of thin air in that way that modern parents from the present, wealthier society seem apt to do. My sisters’ kids throw their unwanted mobile phones in a kitchen drawer. These are telephones for crying out loud – we didn’t get a telephone in the house until I was about seven, and it was a long time before anyone we knew got a phone of their own and called us on it. What a day that was. We had rehearsed answering the telephone the way wartime families practised for an air-raid, only when it finally happened we were caught off-guard and ended up charging around the house in a hopelessly confused and over-excited tizzy. Drinks were spilled, someone wet themselves and a dog’s tail got stood on; I’m not even sure whether it was our dog or just a stray attracted by all the commotion.
In any event, the telephone was a big deal, and then one day it wasn’t, like so many things, including video recording machines, personal computers, and of course a bike of your own. We weren’t desperately poor but as I’ve noted, money was scarce in those days and a bicycle represented a major purchase for a working class family of five. If you wanted a bike of your own you had to either bump off your rival siblings (an attractive if messy and potentially risky prospect), or wait until an older brother or sister had literally outgrown theirs.
As luck would have it, both of my sisters sprouted into lanky, coltish individuals while I was still a squat, part-simian creature grubbing around in mud puddles with a spoon. This meant that I spent a period of years wearing tee shirts with what to me were meaningless yet vaguely unsettling slogans such as I Luv David Cassidy and Donny is King, but it nevertheless secured me a bicycle too. As you can imagine this was not the kind of bike to win any beauty contests. Mine had survived two sisters and nothing comes through that unscarred. By the time I took my first excited, wobbly ride around the street, my red bike was a rusty shade of dark brown or orange, with a bent rear mudguard that was slowly gouging a furrow in the tyre, and a slightly buckled front wheel. It was only marginally prettier, only marginally easier to manoeuvre, than a wheelbarrow, but it was my first bicycle, and I was very proud of it.
My bike did however have one structural flaw that was a little more serious – you might even say dangerous – than a few surface scratches. At some point in its long and eventful life the bike had mysteriously broken in half, literally snapped clean in two halfway along the frame. We think it was left in the road, possibly in someone’s eagerness to dash inside to beg for ice-cream money, whereupon it was run over by a car. This being the early seventies a new bike was out of the question. Instead my dad took it to work and welded the two halves together again. This should have been good news for me, except for one minor point: My dad wasn’t a welder.
Not that anything as piffling as mortal danger was going to put me off. I was too busy having fun to worry about the charred knot of metal sitting halfway down the frame, or the ominous metallic stretching sound that would get more and more pronounced until, with a sweetly ringing ping! the bike would snap in half.
This happened with annoying regularity. Passers-by would hear a surprised yelp and turn to see a curly-headed kid flying past on a unicycle. Marvellous! they would remark. That kid must be from a circus or the Telly or something! I would then carry the two halves of my bike back to the house and dump them by the bin, where my dad would silently collect them on his way to work. The next day my bike was back again, and the welded knot halfway down the frame that little bit bigger and uglier.
I picked up my shiny new bike this afternoon, and it has turned into such a lovely evening that I may just throw my leg over the top tube and go for a ride. Lock up your chimney sweeps!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
They're Football Crazy
I’ve just been to the shops. Hardly a thrilling opening but there you go. Sometimes ordinary things happen. Anyway, in order to get to the shops I took a short-cut over the football pitch. They play Sunday League football on there. I love it. I can’t see all the action from my flat but I can hear the swearing and the occasional cry of ‘Man on, Stu!’ All the girlfriends sit on concrete bollards by the side of the road next to the pitch, shivering inside pink fleece tops. The sensible ones bring a book based on someone's awful childhood with them while the rest look as bored and uncomfortable as their boyfriends did when they were dragged around all the shoe shops in town the afternoon before.
“Do you like these or those others, Stu?”
“Those.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“The others then.”
“With that white top? Don’t be daft. I’ll text Joanne…”
So I started crossing the football pitch, when all of a sudden I noticed the gulls. They were everywhere, perched on the crossbar of the goals, mulling around the faded centre circle, pacing up and down the touchline. And I stopped and thought to myself, I wonder why gulls like football pitches…
Because they do, you know, and I don’t know why. You would think a bird that was more used to cliff tops and large expanses of rough salty water would roost on tall buildings or hang around garden ponds looking a bit homesick.
Food, I thought, and walked on, satisfied that I had solved the mystery. Gulls come in to town to scavenge for food. That’s why you always see them on rubbish tips and footb…
That can’t be it then. As I said, I’ve heard cries of ‘Man on, Stu,’ and ‘On me ‘ead, Dave,’ but I’ve yet to hear an urgent request for lunch.
“Pete! Pete! Over ‘ere, come on, pass it through...agh, what ‘appened there? I asked for tuna-sweetcorn and you pass me a spam and beetroot! I’m putting Tony on for the second half; it’s a choice of jam roll or trifle and I don’t want it messing up! Mark, get up front and fetch me some brown sauce..come on, Dave – use your napkin!”
I’m afraid you’ll have to work this one out for yourselves. I really don’t know why gulls like football pitches. Maybe they just do and that’s all there is to it. Maybe we spend so long looking for – or hoping for – hidden meanings, we miss the really bleeding obvious.
“Do you like these or those others, Stu?”
“Those.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“The others then.”
“With that white top? Don’t be daft. I’ll text Joanne…”
So I started crossing the football pitch, when all of a sudden I noticed the gulls. They were everywhere, perched on the crossbar of the goals, mulling around the faded centre circle, pacing up and down the touchline. And I stopped and thought to myself, I wonder why gulls like football pitches…
Because they do, you know, and I don’t know why. You would think a bird that was more used to cliff tops and large expanses of rough salty water would roost on tall buildings or hang around garden ponds looking a bit homesick.
Food, I thought, and walked on, satisfied that I had solved the mystery. Gulls come in to town to scavenge for food. That’s why you always see them on rubbish tips and footb…
That can’t be it then. As I said, I’ve heard cries of ‘Man on, Stu,’ and ‘On me ‘ead, Dave,’ but I’ve yet to hear an urgent request for lunch.
“Pete! Pete! Over ‘ere, come on, pass it through...agh, what ‘appened there? I asked for tuna-sweetcorn and you pass me a spam and beetroot! I’m putting Tony on for the second half; it’s a choice of jam roll or trifle and I don’t want it messing up! Mark, get up front and fetch me some brown sauce..come on, Dave – use your napkin!”
I’m afraid you’ll have to work this one out for yourselves. I really don’t know why gulls like football pitches. Maybe they just do and that’s all there is to it. Maybe we spend so long looking for – or hoping for – hidden meanings, we miss the really bleeding obvious.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
We Have the Power
A boastful little sticker on the unit of my shower proclaims it to be a ‘Power Shower.’ It's a bold claim if you ask me. Frankly I’ve been more convinced by those photographs of Alan Titchmarsh above a caption that says ‘author.’ In fact my shower has all the surging force of a slight nosebleed. I would get wetter standing beneath a defrosting chicken.
Anyway, I was taking a shower the other day when a slightly worrying thought occurred to me, one that I just couldn’t keep to myself. I consulted all my friends but none of them could…
When I say I consulted all my friends, I mean later of course. I know exactly what my friends would say if I were to phone them up and say something like, 'Hey, Dave! Listen, are you doing anything tonight? Good, why don’t you pop over for a shower and a chat? You won’t need anything, I’ve loads of soap!'
So I spoke to my friends but none of them could answer my question – namely, why bother to label the shower? This isn’t an advertiser’s mark I’m talking about here. This is just a plain blue sticker with the words Power Shower printed on it. Are the manufacturers concerned that people like me will confuse it with some other item of household equipment? Did the design team hold an emergency meeting and discuss the possibility of someone like me attempting to mow the lawn with it? I know I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but but I can honestly say that I have never yet climbed naked into the oven with a bottle of Wash and Go and a loofah, nor have I tried to warm a pizza on the toilet cistern.
So I am at this very moment writing a letter of complaint to the manufacturer of my shower expressing my disgust at being treated like some kind of dangerous simpleton who needs constant reminders of –
Hang on, I’ll be right back. My iron’s ringing…
Anyway, I was taking a shower the other day when a slightly worrying thought occurred to me, one that I just couldn’t keep to myself. I consulted all my friends but none of them could…
When I say I consulted all my friends, I mean later of course. I know exactly what my friends would say if I were to phone them up and say something like, 'Hey, Dave! Listen, are you doing anything tonight? Good, why don’t you pop over for a shower and a chat? You won’t need anything, I’ve loads of soap!'
So I spoke to my friends but none of them could answer my question – namely, why bother to label the shower? This isn’t an advertiser’s mark I’m talking about here. This is just a plain blue sticker with the words Power Shower printed on it. Are the manufacturers concerned that people like me will confuse it with some other item of household equipment? Did the design team hold an emergency meeting and discuss the possibility of someone like me attempting to mow the lawn with it? I know I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but but I can honestly say that I have never yet climbed naked into the oven with a bottle of Wash and Go and a loofah, nor have I tried to warm a pizza on the toilet cistern.
So I am at this very moment writing a letter of complaint to the manufacturer of my shower expressing my disgust at being treated like some kind of dangerous simpleton who needs constant reminders of –
Hang on, I’ll be right back. My iron’s ringing…
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Ladybugs' Picnic
Despite being a rock of sorts, a typical introspective loner who packs up his troubles and soldiers on, Anna somehow noticed that I was feeling a bit down in the dumps. Perhaps there is something in that women’s’ intuition thing after all. Though in fairness there was a bit of a hint in the text message I sent:
Feeling glum :(
She phoned a couple of hours later. ‘Oooh, a girls’ night in!’ she trilled. ‘We haven’t done that for ages.’
I was alone and still I coloured with embarrassment. ‘Listen, don’t call it that, OK? It’s nothing like a girls’ night in.’
‘Wine and Footloose, I’d call that a girls’ night in. Anyway, you were in the rounders team, so you qualify as an honorary girl.’
‘I was never in the rounders team,’ I said flatly. ‘God, we should ring someone tonight and clear that myth up once and for all. We’ll do it straight after we’ve watched Grease. I mean Goodfellas, obviously.’
It’s about seven weeks until I go to Thailand again, and about the same since I returned from my last trip. In a couple of weeks I will turn the corner and begin looking ahead, but for now I feel sort of trapped in an unchanging view, like a miserable little fish staring out of a bowl. It’s enough to trigger this malaise in any case. I just seem to drift through my routine like a ghost, not touching anything, here but not quite here.
A similar thing happens at the end of the visit of course. The last day is always a pretty subdued affair. This time my girlfriend brought her son and two young sisters to hang out with us at the hotel. We had a great time spending the last of my money on cheap comics and sweets. And something for the kids of course. Then they all took it in turns to unpack my big rucksack and decide which of my t-shirts were staying behind.
About an hour before my taxi arrived we went down to the rickety little bar adjoining the hotel – I say adjoining, it actually looked as though the hotel was trying to sneak away from it – and had a drink while the kids dashed back and forth to the 7-Eleven through traffic that flowed like a herd of stampeding wildebeest. They do it with such ease. I have been known to stand at the edge of the kerb for whole minutes, staring fixedly at a point on the other side, before hurtling wildly across in a manner that brings to mind a do-or-die charge on an enemy machine gun post.
The taxi came too early. It caused me a lurch of dismay to look up and see it parked expectantly outside the hotel. I could have sent it away but that’s really only prolonging the inevitable.
We decided that they would leave first. I paid the bar bill, and when I came back they were all wearing matching ladybird helmets. I expected to see a rack of motorbikes outside going down in size to something like a Minimoto for the lad, but alarmingly they all climbed onto the same moped.
‘Oh, be careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t go fast, OK?’ I went to kiss my girlfriend and felt many arms slip around me and cling on. A small fist grabbed the loose material at the back of my shirt. For a few seconds I couldn’t speak. I just kept thinking, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep leaving them here. It’s not fair on them and it’s not fair on me, and I matter because I’m selfish and childless and I don’t want to care anymore because it’s too fucking hard.
So that was then. Anna came over as promised. We compromised on the movies and watched Lost in Translation for the umpty-ninth time. I had beer, she had red wine. I didn’t tell her why I was down – it didn’t seem to matter by then, because it comes and goes, like an ache - but I’m telling you.
‘Do you want me to call Nicola Simms?’ Anna said between Lost in Translation and Footloose. OK, so maybe I’m not always that selfish. ‘She was captain of the rounders team, remember?’
I eyed her narrowly. ‘Why would I remember? I was in the football team.’
‘Except for that rounders play-off we had – rounders team against the fifth-form football team. Is it coming back now?’
‘Nope.’
‘And we were a player short, and the football team gave us you because Phil Tate – Titty Tate – said you run funny and throw like a girl.’
‘He could be so hurtful,’ I said under my breath.
Anna nudged me. ‘We won, remember?’
I couldn’t help my face splitting into a grin. Of course I remembered! We beat the boys! Go girlfriends!
I coughed hurriedly into my first. ‘We’re definitely watching Goodfellas next,’ I said.
Feeling glum :(
Bring films and drink
She phoned a couple of hours later. ‘Oooh, a girls’ night in!’ she trilled. ‘We haven’t done that for ages.’
I was alone and still I coloured with embarrassment. ‘Listen, don’t call it that, OK? It’s nothing like a girls’ night in.’
‘Wine and Footloose, I’d call that a girls’ night in. Anyway, you were in the rounders team, so you qualify as an honorary girl.’
‘I was never in the rounders team,’ I said flatly. ‘God, we should ring someone tonight and clear that myth up once and for all. We’ll do it straight after we’ve watched Grease. I mean Goodfellas, obviously.’
It’s about seven weeks until I go to Thailand again, and about the same since I returned from my last trip. In a couple of weeks I will turn the corner and begin looking ahead, but for now I feel sort of trapped in an unchanging view, like a miserable little fish staring out of a bowl. It’s enough to trigger this malaise in any case. I just seem to drift through my routine like a ghost, not touching anything, here but not quite here.
A similar thing happens at the end of the visit of course. The last day is always a pretty subdued affair. This time my girlfriend brought her son and two young sisters to hang out with us at the hotel. We had a great time spending the last of my money on cheap comics and sweets. And something for the kids of course. Then they all took it in turns to unpack my big rucksack and decide which of my t-shirts were staying behind.
About an hour before my taxi arrived we went down to the rickety little bar adjoining the hotel – I say adjoining, it actually looked as though the hotel was trying to sneak away from it – and had a drink while the kids dashed back and forth to the 7-Eleven through traffic that flowed like a herd of stampeding wildebeest. They do it with such ease. I have been known to stand at the edge of the kerb for whole minutes, staring fixedly at a point on the other side, before hurtling wildly across in a manner that brings to mind a do-or-die charge on an enemy machine gun post.
The taxi came too early. It caused me a lurch of dismay to look up and see it parked expectantly outside the hotel. I could have sent it away but that’s really only prolonging the inevitable.
We decided that they would leave first. I paid the bar bill, and when I came back they were all wearing matching ladybird helmets. I expected to see a rack of motorbikes outside going down in size to something like a Minimoto for the lad, but alarmingly they all climbed onto the same moped.
‘Oh, be careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t go fast, OK?’ I went to kiss my girlfriend and felt many arms slip around me and cling on. A small fist grabbed the loose material at the back of my shirt. For a few seconds I couldn’t speak. I just kept thinking, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep leaving them here. It’s not fair on them and it’s not fair on me, and I matter because I’m selfish and childless and I don’t want to care anymore because it’s too fucking hard.
So that was then. Anna came over as promised. We compromised on the movies and watched Lost in Translation for the umpty-ninth time. I had beer, she had red wine. I didn’t tell her why I was down – it didn’t seem to matter by then, because it comes and goes, like an ache - but I’m telling you.
‘Do you want me to call Nicola Simms?’ Anna said between Lost in Translation and Footloose. OK, so maybe I’m not always that selfish. ‘She was captain of the rounders team, remember?’
I eyed her narrowly. ‘Why would I remember? I was in the football team.’
‘Except for that rounders play-off we had – rounders team against the fifth-form football team. Is it coming back now?’
‘Nope.’
‘And we were a player short, and the football team gave us you because Phil Tate – Titty Tate – said you run funny and throw like a girl.’
‘He could be so hurtful,’ I said under my breath.
Anna nudged me. ‘We won, remember?’
I couldn’t help my face splitting into a grin. Of course I remembered! We beat the boys! Go girlfriends!
I coughed hurriedly into my first. ‘We’re definitely watching Goodfellas next,’ I said.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Cow is Dead
I read in a magazine the other day about an author whose first book was rejected 100 times. This is an extraordinary figure. It made my eyes pop even more than when my friend Mark told me about the time he had sex four times in a row. I was secretly thinking that the last time I had sex four times in a row was January, February, March and April 1996. This was a first novel of course, but it wasn’t as if it was one of those untouchable titles such as, say, 'You Can Be Your Own Dentist!' or '10 Great Days Out in Doncaster.' This was just a run of the mill novel.
Or not, obviously. Well perhaps not obviously. One person’s opinion is simply that. Although, the ninety-nine that followed must have had a point too, I guess. The really incredible thing is that this particular author’s second book sold over a 100,000 copies. That’s quite a lot of enchiladas. You’ve got to ask yourself what happened between books one and two. My money is on some kind of deal with the devil. Or an affair with a top footballer or something. It was probably neither though, which still leaves me wondering how a first book can be so unsaleable – and again I ask you to remember that it wasn’t merely passed around between a handful of disinterested publishers, it was rejected one hundred times – and the following book so popular. Presumably there wasn’t a gap of many years between the two. Who can know with these things?
I mention it because I’ve spent the last three weeks killing the cow. I’m talking about my book Freeze! Armed Farm Animals! of course, not a real cow. I haven't killed a real cow for, oh, months now. The most recent available version of the book differed greatly from the one that I released over a year ago. I had re-written it a number of times, and each revision produced a much better book. In fact it was so different from the initial release that they were effectively two different books.
I was pleased with the last version, and yet it never felt quite right. It always felt like there was a missing element. Even though I had fused many of the topics together to make longer sections, it still felt more like a collections of unrelated anecdotes and observations. The vague connection between them all was travel, with Yorkshire and walking being the two main themes. However the strong common denominator in all of them was the narrator – me! – and the small supporting cast around him. It was only when I looked closely at this intriguing little collision of lives that I began to see a whole new way of structuring the book.
I’ve often thought that the writing is only about sixty five percent of a successful story. The rest is about making connections. It’s no use having all the pieces if you can’t make them fit together in a way that pleases. What I began to see when I looked at the book with a fresh eye was how I could make a bridge of stones from the first page to the last. In other words, I saw how I could make a series of individual stories into a plot.
The temptation to simply novelise the last two years of my life never took a hold. It would have been fatal. None of this was ever intended as fiction (though lots of it was intended to read like fiction. I may write about the ordinary things that happen in a mundane existence, but to borrow a phrase from Andy MacNab, nobody said I had to be crap at it), and to try and make it so would have been like colouring a classic black and white film and expecting it to look modern and new. Fiction is fiction, and for the past two years I have written funny tales about travel, life and love, all of which to a certain degree happened the way I told them. Which is to say that what I wrote was non-fiction.
Which left me with a conundrum, namely, how do you get a collection of non-fiction travel tales to read like a good romantic comedy without completely messing up both?
Don’t look at me, I’m not driving!
I call the new book Small Steps (I nearly called it How to Change Your Life in Just 789,654 Easy Steps! But I figured if it becomes a success, and Simon Pegg plays me in the film, they’d never get the title to fit onto the side of a bus. Maybe on a bendy bus…). It’s the last revision I will do at this level. I think I’m now going to write a covering letter and send out a few sample chapters to agents, just to test the waters. Is there a market for a reads-like-fiction-but-its-not travel book? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure that I’m that bothered. I’ve read this book, and I think it’s really quite good, and that’s all that matters really.
100 rejections…blimey! I had better get started if I’m going to beat that…
__
You can have a look at the synopsis here. Paperback copies are available from Lulu at cost price.
Or not, obviously. Well perhaps not obviously. One person’s opinion is simply that. Although, the ninety-nine that followed must have had a point too, I guess. The really incredible thing is that this particular author’s second book sold over a 100,000 copies. That’s quite a lot of enchiladas. You’ve got to ask yourself what happened between books one and two. My money is on some kind of deal with the devil. Or an affair with a top footballer or something. It was probably neither though, which still leaves me wondering how a first book can be so unsaleable – and again I ask you to remember that it wasn’t merely passed around between a handful of disinterested publishers, it was rejected one hundred times – and the following book so popular. Presumably there wasn’t a gap of many years between the two. Who can know with these things?
I mention it because I’ve spent the last three weeks killing the cow. I’m talking about my book Freeze! Armed Farm Animals! of course, not a real cow. I haven't killed a real cow for, oh, months now. The most recent available version of the book differed greatly from the one that I released over a year ago. I had re-written it a number of times, and each revision produced a much better book. In fact it was so different from the initial release that they were effectively two different books.
I was pleased with the last version, and yet it never felt quite right. It always felt like there was a missing element. Even though I had fused many of the topics together to make longer sections, it still felt more like a collections of unrelated anecdotes and observations. The vague connection between them all was travel, with Yorkshire and walking being the two main themes. However the strong common denominator in all of them was the narrator – me! – and the small supporting cast around him. It was only when I looked closely at this intriguing little collision of lives that I began to see a whole new way of structuring the book.
I’ve often thought that the writing is only about sixty five percent of a successful story. The rest is about making connections. It’s no use having all the pieces if you can’t make them fit together in a way that pleases. What I began to see when I looked at the book with a fresh eye was how I could make a bridge of stones from the first page to the last. In other words, I saw how I could make a series of individual stories into a plot.
The temptation to simply novelise the last two years of my life never took a hold. It would have been fatal. None of this was ever intended as fiction (though lots of it was intended to read like fiction. I may write about the ordinary things that happen in a mundane existence, but to borrow a phrase from Andy MacNab, nobody said I had to be crap at it), and to try and make it so would have been like colouring a classic black and white film and expecting it to look modern and new. Fiction is fiction, and for the past two years I have written funny tales about travel, life and love, all of which to a certain degree happened the way I told them. Which is to say that what I wrote was non-fiction.
Which left me with a conundrum, namely, how do you get a collection of non-fiction travel tales to read like a good romantic comedy without completely messing up both?
Don’t look at me, I’m not driving!
I call the new book Small Steps (I nearly called it How to Change Your Life in Just 789,654 Easy Steps! But I figured if it becomes a success, and Simon Pegg plays me in the film, they’d never get the title to fit onto the side of a bus. Maybe on a bendy bus…). It’s the last revision I will do at this level. I think I’m now going to write a covering letter and send out a few sample chapters to agents, just to test the waters. Is there a market for a reads-like-fiction-but-its-not travel book? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure that I’m that bothered. I’ve read this book, and I think it’s really quite good, and that’s all that matters really.
100 rejections…blimey! I had better get started if I’m going to beat that…
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You can have a look at the synopsis here. Paperback copies are available from Lulu at cost price.
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