A Portfolio Life - Writing

A Portfolio Life

The Elan Valley

10/6/2018

For our 30th anniversary Anne and I headed off to the Elan Valley for a wee break. The Elan Valley is in Wales and I had never heard of it, despite it being not far from us and only an hour from Lampeter. It’s a piece of Victorian colonialism – Birmingham needed water – Wales could provide. All that was needed was to dam up a couple of rivers and flood the valleys and then, using gravity alone, build a pipeline to Birmingham. A system which still exists and works. Damn them Victorians.

We stayed in a re-built Long House – of the kind the Welsh used to build length-on into the hillside, with the living quarters at the top and the animals at the bottom – surrounded by sheep and birds. Bobby was quite beside himself.

The Elan Valley leads up to the Cambrian Mountains. We drove over them to Aberystwyth on a day trip back to Lampeter and Aberaeron. I have to say, I’m with George Monbiot when it comes to the Cambrian Mountains. There is little beauty here. It’s a monoculture. Of sheep. Stretching over bare hillsides for miles and miles. But I’ve just re-read his (brilliant) anti-sheep polemic “Feral” and notice it doesn’t mention the Elan Valley at all. Which strikes me as one-eyed accountancy. It probably didn’t fit into his story. Which is, of course, the problem with stories.

Because the Elan Valley strikes me as the opposite to everything he’s talking about. It’s affected by man-made solutions for problems a hundred miles away, but it is also a perfectly acceptable marriage of sheep and wildlife, in exactly the same place as he says there isn’t one.

The woodland is exactly what he mourns the passing of. Oaks and ferns and mosses and – um woodland. And I’ve never been anywhere with so many birds. Not least so many birds of prey; buzzards, red kites, ospreys, sparrowhawks, cuckoos all over the shop. Our Long House was basically alive. Swifts and swallows in the eaves, redstarts a-plenty, hundreds of birds I couldn’t begin to name. Luckily the cottage had a huge Book of World Birds, so I can say with some confidence that nesting under our bedroom window was an African Stella Blue Puffball Warbler. Probably. Plus, bats and mice. No, I can’t say we slept well.

But I can say it was a bit special, and highly recommended.

What's in a Name?

28/5/2018

Despite having perfectly balanced chips on both shoulders, I think it is fair to say I’ve had as easy a life as anyone can reasonably expect. But, amongst all my blessings, there’s one I’ve taken for granted, and have never hitherto thought of as an advantage, mainly because, for most of my life, it hasn’t been. But in this new golden digital age my name alone has significant value. Who’d have thunk that. That’s really something. Considering I’m called Gary. A name so redolent of a certain time and class that even now it’s the go-to name in gritty period drama about losers and simpletons.

But, the thing is, I just Googled my name. Don’t ask me why – we all know I’m solipsistic enough already, as this posting itself proves, but I promise you it’s not something I’m in the habit of doing, as indeed this post also proves, because what awaited me there was amazing. The thing is, there’s just me there. In the Google world I am unique. A one-off. Original.

(It is true there is a Gary Twynham – an ex professional footballer who sometimes clutters up my searches. An old schoolfriend emailed me a decade or so ago to say he had always assumed I had played for Darlington. I wrote back to say ‘wrong Gary’, but that I was flattered that he had imagined me as a professional footballer – my friend being so much better than me back in the day. He wrote back to say that, to be fair, it was only because it had just been Darlington. But enough about him.)

My Google search is magnificent. Seriously, try it. For on Google I am an author. Totally bona fide. Even though I really ain’t. I’m an established author with a whole series of books for sale and some of them even with pretty covers. Plus, some poems. What I wrote. The key thing is there is no competition. Just me. No need for refined searches or scrolling downwards. Just me (and Karin).

And that makes this an important lesson in life. Me, I just got lucky, long after I stopped rolling the dice or hoping for an inside draw to a straight. Having carried the name Gary around with me like a dark unfathomable class crime all these years. Having burdened my wife with an unspellable surname for nigh on thirty years. Having failed to come up with a plausible anagram for the best part of 56 years. I have stumbled upon a modern truth.

You can be anyone you wanna be. As long as no-one else has bagged it first.

Two Billion People Watch the Grand National...

22/5/2018

Or some such nonsense, which is trotted out without shame or scrutiny, each and evey year. The FA Cup also.

Well move aside, also-rans. Apparently - or at least according to my mum - THREE billion people watched the latest royal wedding. Or, to put it another way, 40% of the world's population.

Extraordinary, really, considering only 25% of people in the UK watched it...

I am a Monarchist

22/5/2018

Golden Jubilee (or Harry's Wedding).
(because I couldn't be arsed to write a new poem)

I am a monarchist
I am a royalist
I know what I want
And I know how to get it
I wannna enjoy the royal fly-by
'Cause I wanna see the monarchy.

Monarchy in the UK
It's been here some time and praise be
She's gonna outlive you and me
Which spares us all from King Charles Three
Cause I wanna see the monarchy
It's in the city.

Be careful not to get what you want
I want the best, I fear the rest
I was the enemy
Now I cheer on Prince Will-E
Cause I wanna see the monarchy
It's the only way to be.

What's this I hear you say,
So, we get a holiday,
What the F-U-C-K?
Though Pippa's arse is okay
And I wanna see the monarchy
Another gaffe by Prince Harry.

Truth or Dare

30/3/2018

As an example of what I was talking about in my previous post about authenticity, here's a true story.

Back when Cheltenham was cancelled because of the Foot and Mouth disease, I was near the start of my journey as a full-time gambler. I had been due to attend on the Wednesday and had my ducks lined up in one beautiful row for the shooting.

Instead I sat at home doing nothing. So, I started fantasising and before I knew it had written a vaguely amusing two thousand-word pastiche which talked of the Wednesday as though it had actually happened, and I had actually been there and all of my fantasies had actually come true.

I can’t remember the horses, nor the trainers, nor the jockeys, but I do remember that they were glorious. Every bet ran true, every exacta, every double clove clean to the marrow. To put it as clearly as I can, I even mentioned being pleasured in the car park post-racing by the lovely Keeley Hawes. And you can’t just make that stuff up. Oh…

Anyway, my point is, Daryl, my gambling buddy, e-mailed me back to say “Wow – sounds like you had a good day.”

And then, the next day, “Hang on, I’ve just remembered, Cheltenham’s been cancelled.”

How much reality can you bear?

30/3/2018

One thing I was trying to play with, writing Indifferent Voices, was the notion of authenticity in story-telling.

For years my friends have listened to me telling stories. Some of them are true – they don’t need embellishment. Many others have been reframed, rebooted, stolen, just made up out of thin air. They often can’t tell the difference, accepting the bollocks but doubting things that really happened. Often, they were witnesses at whatever it is I’m describing it, and they listen and think – yeah, sort of. When I’m dead, at my funeral one of them will say, “he never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, for that is as close as I get to a mantra.

So, what’s authentic and what’s not when it comes to Indifferent Voices? Some first readers thought the interviews had happened. That they were real – the characters. Which was nice. And they are. Mainly. I’ve met most of the people in the book, in some form or other, and heard every story. In a significant way, nothing is made up, and yet all of it is.

One of the stories from the bankers is a straight reproduction of what he wrote on Facebook one evening. Several of the stories come directly from people quoted in newspaper articles. Two of the longer stories are real. Real-ish. They actually happened to me. If, in part, only in my head. Many are ‘true stories’ I’ve been told over the years, re-positioned, channelled through other characters.

And of course, some of the voices are versions of me. Including one I definitely wouldn’t put my name to. Some of the other voices are of people I’ve met, as best as I can capture them. Some are composite, and some are impressionistic. And, let’s face it, some are sweeping caricatures. I have never met a bicycle thief. I stole that one. Then again, I really am quoting taxi drivers verbatim.

So, is it a pastiche of London? A sideways glance? Stage-managed didacticism and flummery? A pile of inauthentic poo? You decide. ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’, as Eliot, who is the touchstone for the book, had it. That’s another one of my mantras. It’s not how we describe reality that counts, it’s how we re-package authenticity. Possibly…

Whither Shelley Swanson?

26/3/2018

When we had written Farewell Trip and were trying to get it published, Karin entered the first three chapters in a Romance Novel competition for unpublished authors – I forget the exact details. And we were shortlisted for an award, which meant we were invited to the Romance equivalent of the Booker Prize. To be honest, I think that was as exciting as it got for Karin. Me, not so much. I feigned indifference. Plus, luckily, I was busy that night so didn’t attend.

Karin did though. We didn’t win. But she got to mingle with the great and good of the Romance world. I asked how it had gone. She said she had a great time. She also said she had been taken to one side by one of the most important people at said event, and that person had said to her, seriously meaning to be helpful:

“Of course, you know, you need to get rid of your imaginary male co-author.”

Karin deemed this hilarious, but underneath was also furious. I asked if it would help our chances of being published if we erased me from the pitch. 'Absolutely not,' she said. 'Fuck ‘em.' Bless.

This story stayed with me. And in its very instance, I remember thinking to myself, oh, I want to play with that…

Indifferent Voices - what's that about?

20/3/2018

So, Indifferent Voices, what's that about?

Here’s the blurb:

Indifferent Voices is a novel about the state of London in 2015. It contains interviews with people who work in The City. From financiers to florists, bankers to bicycle thieves, postmen to poets. 65 voices, all with stories to tell, collated and presented by co-editors Gary Twynam and Shelley Swanson.

The book looks at life after the banking crisis, at austerity, and at the notion of amorality. The interviews precede the vote for Brexit but in many ways anticipate it.

Help much? No? How about, it's TS Eliot's the Waste Land, updated and re-packaged for a new London and a new world? Yep, that’s probably one good reason why I couldn’t find a publisher.

Okay, how about what the people who read it in its various stages of pupation? From kindly first readers through to potential publishers. Here’s some of their feedback. (As an aside, TS Eliot himself used to put his own reviews on the flyleaf of his own Faber and Faber books.)

Pre-publication Reviews:

"I really connected with the concept of this book. Not enough to publish it, admittedly…"

"I found myself laughing quite a lot, probably not at the bits I was supposed to, but still."

"There's no obvious narrative and it's very nearly unreadable which, given its nod to TS Eliot, I assume is intentional."

“Really good, some of it excellent. Just finished it and the nice dark twist to Joan was a great one to end on, plus the ‘noiseless, faceless, unheard.’”

“When I started I wasn’t sure about the various lengths and styles but after a bit it had a nice rhythm to it – also found bits and pieces popping into my thoughts. Like it a lot.”

“I think the bloke in the hat did something terrible.”

“I liked the structure. In my head they were a series of small stories that I could dip into and out of, read the voices in isolation or flick through to headings that took my fancy.”

“I do wish you well with this: it is a genuinely interesting idea and the writing is consistently good.”

'Who's Shelley, and how come you've never mentioned her before?'

“It is very clever and much of the writing shines with wit and subtle observation. I also like the sense of you being a Londoner who is now able to see London from a distance but also with a nostalgia of once belonging. It's Eliot-like in its elegiac tone and I really love that about it. “

"Is it readable?", I'd say "yes, but only just..."

“You haven’t got London right, you haven’t got the bankers right, and you haven’t got the other voices right.”

“That Bart White, he should have his own book.”

“How did you choose who to interview and how did you get them all to talk?”

“Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.”

Indifferent Voices

19/3/2018

Buy it on Amazon here (I make about a quid).
Or on Lulu here (I make about £3.50)

I guess Indifferent Voices would be called an experimental novel, should anyone want to publish and market it in any way, which they don’t. Having sent the first part out to as many independent niche publishers as I could find, I sat back and waited. In silence. To be fair, one publisher e-mailed me back to say could I please send him the remainder of book, “I rush to say, not because I want to publish it – that way commercial suicide lies – but because I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I really hope someone else wants to take it on.”

That was as good as it got. (Apart from my friend Iain - cheers mate.) Some of my friends’ comments on it were more than honest. Anne helped me through the self-doubt enormously when she said, “I’m not sure why you’re asking these people, including me, what we think. Most of us have never even read TS Eliot, and those of us who have, find his stuff unfathomable. It’s not even poetry.”

Just a piece of rhythmic grumbling, that’s what Eliot called The Waste Land. And that’s what Indifferent Voices is, I guess. I started hearing voices in my head. I started writing them down. The Waste Land is a heap of broken images in the mind of a man having some sort of nervous breakdown. Quotations tumbling round and around, high art, low art, snippets of conversation, song lyrics. London as a kaleidoscope representing a dying culture. Or something. I don’t claim to be an expert on The Waste Land but that’s how I’ve always read it.

And that’s what I found I had when I’d finished channelling all the voices in my head. The Waste Land gave me an idea of how to tame the voices and apply some sort of structure that might make sense of them – might do justice to them. I even embedded a piece of the poem into each of the stories. And now when I read it back, whenever I get to a bit where I think to myself – oh my, that’s good – I as quickly realise that, yes, that is Eliot.

It’s not poetry though, it’s mockumentary. 65 voices represented as fact. A talking-head community chronicle of the sort you find from historical societies across small-town England, but transplanted to the City of London. Most of the stories are true – in the sense that they either happened to me, or I heard them second or third hand, or read them. So, yes, I play with the notion of authenticity. (I interviewed a chap for a job once. I asked him what he was doing currently. He said he worked down Eastville Market, selling leather jackets. “Well, leather-ish,” he said. I believe he’s a director of an insurance company now.)

Which is the other thing the book is about, the notion of amorality - which has infected corporate life in my lifetime - and its consequences (one of which is Brexit).

So, there you have it, an experimental novel, purporting to be a piece of journalism, rhythmically grumbling about the City of London and amorality, through the channelling of loads of voices, in hommage to TS Eliot’s the Waste Land. Have you any idea how much Karin would have hated that…?

Whatever, it’s about as good as I can write. It’s almost certainly my last novel – unless I have another mini-breakdown and can find no other way of taming the voices. It turned out pretty much as I had it in my head, and that's all you can aim for really. So, you’re welcome to it.

The Grand Military Cup

11/3/2018

And so, to Sandown for the Grand Military Cup a horse race that’s been run annually since 1841 (take that Sky Premiership). I used to go to this every year when I lived in Tooting, not because of its age and prestige but because I used to go to every midweek meeting at Sandown as a day off from the grind of being a professional gambler. For I have imagination to burn.

The Grand Military Cup (and its sister meeting in February, The Royal Artillery Cup) is a race for horses owned by military folk and ridden by military folk. So, naturally, at Sandown on those days, there is a lot of military folk. By which I mean officers. Mainly. By which of course I mean men. Mainly. Men, with identical haircuts, dress-sense and accents. By which I mean posh ones. Mainly. (Not entirely. Our parsing of her military initials had us assuming that one of the jockeys, Jody Sole, was a Lieutenant Brigadier, but she turned out to be a Lance Bombardier. Male also. Who cares, she won.)

Speaking of the jockeys, Iain and I used to come every year to have a side-bet on which fence Captain Dominic Alers-Hankey would fall off at, and to shout “hurrah, hussar, hurrah” at whomever won, like the London vagrants we remain at heart. That’s how I remember it anyway, though a quick Wikipedia check shows that dear old Alers-Hankey actually won it twice. And I do remember it being wall-to-wall 20oz tweed, whatever that is, but we were always in the Grandstand whereas this time we were in the Premier Club or whatever it is called, the main differences being that it costs a few quid more, there’s some welcome plush seating for old legs, it’s where the champagne bar sells bottles for £420, and it’s full of first class passengers.

Which, in this case, here today, meant middle England. After the second race Mike said to me, “I’ve never been at a sporting event with so many posh people”. Then again, he is from Manchester. Strictly Grammar. And we were now oiks at Public School. For it was true. The Premier enclosure was a different world. The Grandstand is full of geezers down from London for a dodgy day off at the races, ranging from young lager-necking city boys in cheap suits to grizzled old form students backing Gary Moore runners blind and screaming “Come on my Babby” when their bet jumps the last in the lead. Yes, Ok, that’s me. (A fat old Bristolian shouted it from the rafters the first time I ever went to Eastville Dogs and there and then I decided I would take that flame and carry it with me and I always have. Sometimes even without winning.)

Anyway, there’s a ritual on Grand Military Cup day. I’ve no idea when it started – 1841 for all I know. The running of the hounds. The Master of the Hunt and his sidekick, Lord Fortescue Bothering-Heigham, bring the pack up to the Premier enclosure, blow their horns, and do some other big mystical olde English juju, before the Master, astride his stallion, takes his hat off and bows to the massed ranks, of officers and their garlanded National Hunting fraternity. Who cheer. And applaud. And applaud. And cheer. A lot. Then the dogs run down the track, dreaming of sex and freedom and a nice wee fox to rip to pieces. For it is genetic. No?

Meanwhile. in the Grandstand, not a word, not a cheer. People barely notice this alliance of Middle England, these happy few of Jumps and Army, this howl for tradition, for God’s Ordered Universe, for Torydom, for Harry and England, for the right to dress up in silly clothes and rip a fox to pieces for the mere fun of it. Then again, in the Grandstand, them, they were all pissed.

Two enclosures. Two classes. Same race. Different world.