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A Portfolio Life

Where Do Stories Come From?

30/1/2014

“I love that chapters, stories, poems fall out of you. Your overnight brain must be phenomenal.”

Karin wrote this to me just now. I'd sent her a short story for her appraisal before I sent it off somewhere. The story came to me overnight, between about 4am and 7am. In half sleep. At 8:15 I got up and wrote 62 words (I just counted them) on a piece of paper, then showered, dressed, took the dog out for the papers, did my chores, had breakfast and read the sports pages in the Guardian. Then I checked e-mail, Facebook and Twitter and finally got on and wrote it out. In one go, in one hour. Fully-formed. And yes it needs a haircut, phrases need re-arranging and it needs a damned good proof-read, most of which Karin has supplied. If you must know, we're currently musing on an important dangling modifier, whatever one of those is. But it really is what it is. And in truth I have no idea what it is. It might be good, it might be utter garbage, but that isn't actually what I'm interested in right now.

The same thing happened with the letters in Farewell Trip. They just came suddenly, often after weeks of waiting, fully-formed into my mind overnight and then there they were. The muse had spoken. I kept waiting for Karin, beta-readers, proper editors, to pull them to pieces, but amazingly they all exist pretty much as they were written. One insightful reviewer dared called them prolix, which I think was his nice way of saying rambling, but even that itself seemed purposeful at the time.

But then they were musings on stuff I know, like an uncomfortable spring clean of one's own closet, and my writing is by nature rambling so I was hardly on foreign soil. This story is about a Mexican boxer in America in the '60s who did something terrible. In his own voice. It came to me so real I could see and hear each blow. Where on earth did that come from? Really. Psychosis? Channelling? Synergy? Blessing or Curse?

G. S. Twynam - Poet

28/1/2014

Anne's been doing Poetry Floods Facebook and, when I asked to join in, the poet she assigned me was G.S. Twynam. Sadly, I'd never heard of him and had to look him up on Wikipedia – and, wow, what a man, what a life! Some of you will know him as the winner of the Conti's Coffee Award for the novel he co-wrote with Kerry Dixon, the ex-Chelsea striker, but it is for his poetry that immortality beckons.

You wouldn't know that from his debut collection though, based on his experience as an officer in the trenches of the First World War. The left-wing intelligensia has buried this book in the mud of Passchendaele, its tone not fitting their myth-making dogma. Titled My Great War, it thrills to how wonderful the break of day was in the trenches, for example in Let's Play a Game of Footy. Elsewhere it marvels

It's a long way to Tipperary but Brighton's surprisingly close.

Controversy is never far away when considering his career and in certain quarters he's been accused of treating his troops as cannon-fodder. Whispers of his lack of respect for the lower ranks can be heard in certain interpretations of the climactic It's Pronounced Ypres for Fuck's Sake. However, as we near the centenary his version of events is set for a long-overdue airing. Michael Gove has insisted every school-child study the book in place of Blackadder, little knowing that Baldrick's classic anti-war poem Boom Boom Boom is in fact one of Twynam's.

Post-war he became the father of the most important modernist movement,Opaquism, whose general belief was that where something was easy, clear and obvious it was the duty of the poet to complicate it with a lot of pointless and confusing metaphor. Twynam himself later said this was an over-simplification of what the movement meant, like a one-tune busker playing for tips, before farting outside the local Arndale. He later expounded on this in Hoof-Hearted with the inimitable line;

dangling participles are the very stuff of poesy.

The influence of Opaquism was felt far beyond poetry. The movement can be seen as the direct progenitor of Finnegan's Wake for which they apologise annually. The post-surrealists were particularly taken with it. Indeed, there's still a nightclub in West Wales where you can see Salvador Thali's fresco poster proclaiming:

Twynam is an Anagram of Twat

This was in the days after his calamitous falling out with Cummings. After years of friendship Edward Estlin and he fell out when a drunk Twynam pointed out that actually the moon isn't a balloon nor does the rain have any hands. To differentiate themselves, for ever after, Twynam wrote only in capitals, so people can hear me better.

There followed a dark, dark, decade, now known as his White Period where he became obsessed with the purity of the page, to such an extent he was scared to type anything upon it. He turned instead to scandalous art events, and became the enfant terrible of the 60s Greenwich art and music scene. Greenwich, London. Candy Crush, his installation of a naked fat man sat in a bath of chocolate fudge brownie ice-cream can still be seen at the Tate Modern by anyone with an active imagination.

He bounced back as a huge influence on the alternative poetry scene that sprang up in the late '70s. People had tired of smug conservative poets on prime-time Saturday TV, with their adherence to strict metre, jazz and masturbation. As Twynam put it in the first edition of his semenal, proto-punk, poet-zine Enough Larkin About,

Scansion holds the goal up – it's not the point of it

a phrase later misquoted by Eric Cantona at his beatification for kicking the shit out of a Crystal Palace supporter. But then Twynam loved football. It was often rumoured that he once played in goal for the Algerian national team, but this later turned out to be false. It was left-back.

As for his politics, they are little known, It is known he stood up against state obsession wherever he found it, witness his mid-seventies call to arms The Denunciation of Rubik's Cuba. Plus he was a lifelong anti-monarchist, even in his short stint as poet laureate, where he greeted a new birth with his infamous Kill William, later adapted as a ninja comedy-caper by Quentin Tarantino.

He and music were syncopated like lissome lovers. He was responsible for the Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head scene in Butch Cassidy when he suggested to the director, what this film really needs is a bicycle. And who knows where TS Eliot would be now if he hadn't taken this advice when staging his now classic musical, the only thing he's remembered for;

Dogs? – nah that's too easy, they'll follow anyone, anywhere, Try cats.

As for his love-life, there are many who swear that his menage a trois with Penelope Keith and Sue Mehenlick off Pan's People wasn't entirely in his imagination. We do know that he spends his dotage sharing his wife with an otherwise unwanted black headless shop mannequin.

It's so hard to choose a poem to do justice to his range. Anagram poems, shape poems, monosyllabic poems, his tin-ear series where every inch of poetry has been carefully stripped out. But it's a little known fact that he played drums on most of Ogden Nash's longer poems and helped him out with the trickier rhymes. He kept a few of the choicer cuts for himself so let's share this one which he dedicated to his wife, a strict omnivore.

Some Guardian readers are coming to tea
Famously tolerant of all they see,
Except wheat and dairy obviously

A Writer's Best Friend

27/1/2014

When our book was published we were told by our publishers that Amazon reviews were our top, top, marketing priority. We already had a lot of interest from friends – especially Karin who has a vast army of supporters. Mine were more "meh, yeah, but Louis Saurez – he really looks like Bernie Winters doesn't he?" This could be because most of Karin's friends are women and mine are men, or maybe because Karin gets a cancer vote, or more likely because my friends are jerks.

Anyhow, we begged them all for reviews , and 30 blessed angels responded accordingly. Indeed, I happen to know that several of them loved the book, had read it even. We thank you by name, nightly.

However, because we're grown-ups, grizzled old cowboys who've seen it all before, we knew that the book would not be to the taste of all our friends. So we made a big point of saying to everyone not to worry if they couldn't be bothered to buy the book, or if they bought it but didn't get on with it, or if they bought it and liked it but couldn't bear to give it 5 stars, or couldn't get round to writing a review. We would totally understand. No worries.

Well, it turns out we lied. I spent an hour this morning writing out a list of people yet to review, or to falsely gush, or to even make a fucking comment, and it came to 19. I didn't even know I had that many friends. I Facebooked Karin for a moan. Her illness has given her a gimlet-eyed clarity of judgement.
"Bastards" she said.

Free Country

23/1/2014

I've been enjoying a book that's been self-published, very successfully – which gives me great heart as my own Shropshire book tip-toes into publication in that way. It's called Free Country and currently has 672 five star reviews on Amazon as I write, which puts Farewell Trip in its place.

The author, George Mahood – and his mate – dressed only in Union Jack underpants, arrive at Land's End with a plan to cycle to John O'Groats, without spending a penny. They have no clothes, no money, indeed no bikes, but they do have a lot of face, and presumably an incredible manner for within minutes they are up and running.

Ok, so the book could have done with a haircut and manicure from a good editor, but how publishers didn't pick up on it (I assume) is beyond me. Because it does more for the countryside and the people in it than anything outside Paul Evans's Country Diaries. It's a celebration of humanity and the British love of eccentricity. The generosity of most of the people they meet is extraordinarily heart-warming – excepting in Bromyard, Herefordshire.

And Shropshire bats well above the average, which considering that includes Ludlow came as a very pleasant surprise. Indeed, I was proud.

A Good Stick is Hard to Find

17/1/2014

Bobby is fussy when it comes to sticks. And he doesn't bring them back, so the game is to find one he wants to, um, stick with for the rest of his walk. And this is difficult, even now when rain and wind has left the ground tumbling with options.

So many of them are rotten, or soft, or gnarled. Or they're too fragile, or too green. And he doesn't like them too smotth, That doesn't interest him. He wants a little roughness, something interesting. Something a bit difficult, something that represents a bit of a challenge. Seems like he wants a stick to be a metaphor, or something.

I have found two perfect ones of late and am determined to keep them in circulation. There's a small oak tree near the start and end of my walk. It has one of those green plastic protectors around the base of its trunk, forming my very own outdoor umbrella stand.

Look, see.

Dead as They Come (a literary reference!)

15/1/2014

It's with a certain sadness that I have to announce that Twelve, the Shifnal dress shop, is no more. The owner has had enough and shut-up shop. In what I like to think is her parting present to me, she has left standing in the window of an otherwise empty shop the last of the shop mannequins. The beauty, always the more serious one of the two, now stands forgotten, abandoned, and heart-broken, and really quite alluring in a long black dress with diamante trim.

There is a new dress shop nearby on the main street, bigger, flashier, more certain of itself and boasting four new models. But they aren't the same. They don't attract me in the same way. They have no charm, nor soul, if equally no heads. And currently they are wearing t-shirts screaming Sale. Mine would never have done that. They were far too classy.

In memoriam – here's a reprise of my relationship with the shop over the years – taken from The Northern Line to Shropshire.

Shifnal's Dress Shop (2007)

One of the things I miss about London is that, as you go about your daily life, there's a parade of female loveliness wherever you look. I once fell in love five times on one tube journey from Balham to Leicester Square. It's a numbers game. In London you can bid fond adieu to your latest five minute crush safe in the knowledge another one is just round the corner. In Shifnal, not so much.

But we do have a shop selling second-hand designer clothes and it seems to be thriving. Window-shopping isn't really my thing and, besides, hardly anything fits me, but I pass by the shop every day and I'm always taken by how beautiful the displays are. There is a mannequin in each window and most days they are wearing something new and stunning. I'm particularly drawn to the one on the left.

Striking up Conversations with Strangers (2009)

In her excellent book 'Watching the English' Kate Fox suggests two places where men can innocently start a conversation with women. The first is when queuing for drinks at a bar, and the second when looking at horses parading at a racecourse.

I'm betting Kate isn't a dog owner, because dog walking is a much more obvious situation, and even I am able to chat to complete strangers when out with Bobby who ignores all such etiquette and just gets stuck in (much like Fresher's Week at college).

Striking up conversations with strangers isn't something I've ever done before. Seriously. Well, once on the last tube home I did connect telepathically with a young Glaswegian trainee pensions actuary in such a familiar way that she could only have been my love in a parallel universe, but who left me at Clapham South in this one, and led me to ponder for years on the existence of 'soul circles', at least until I finally managed to transfer my affections onto a slightly slutty dress-shop mannequin, who is pleasingly soulless, if slightly aloof. Headless also.

Anyhow, I was walking the dog the other day and fell into step with the owner of a black labrador, and found that she was from the local village. Wondering whether she knew Anne I asked if she went to the village WI. For the next mile she regaled me with her disregard for the people of the village in general, and its WI in particular. It was a pleasing tirade, and I laughed out loud several times, whilst encouraging her to tell me more. Twenty minutes in, she stopped, took a breath, looked at me and said: “Oh, your wife's a member isn't she?”

Dedicated Follower of Fashion (2010)

Being hunkered down in a small town it's obviously hard to be at the cutting-edge of fashion, and it's to their great credit that the pair of bodacious babes in the boutique manage to keep their standards as high as they do. Not forgetting they're headless dress-shop mannequins.

Still, I try to keep up with the fast-moving trends as best I can from afar, only choosing clothes from my wardrobe that could well have come back into fashion again and I rather think I cut quite a dash as I stroll through town, a dandy amongst peasants. Of course sometimes my attire will be beyond the curve of their imagining. Indeed only this morning I was walking in my “I've got the the Edge” t-shirt, black track-suit bottoms and brown brogues. A girl, probably seven, holding her granny's hand, walked past me. As she came alongside she said very loudly: “Oh, that's not a good look”.

Headless Over Heels in Love (2012)

Woe is me. Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon my world. A dark curtain has descended, folding in on itself horizon to horizon. I am lost, forlorn, loveless, wandering through the valley alone. For my beloved shop mannequin is no more. I walked past yesterday to find just one remaining: The lesser one, the slutty one. It seems my love has been usurped by “antique furniture”. By a small footstool and a yard of chintz. They call this progress? My head is in spin.

I spent the day inconsolable and the night in torment remembering her many beguiling fashions and restlessly contemplating her fate. Has she been sold, or simply abandoned, supine and alone in some darkened attic? Or maybe kidnapped and held ransom against her will? I'm not sure how much money I can get together at such short notice. I'd best notify the police.

Oh my god, she might be dead....

Down in the Flood

10/1/2014

We just watched a BBC documentary on the bad weather of the last few weeks. As always when I watch these shows I can't help feeling they are just an excuse to show loads of footage of waves crashing, riverbanks bursting and blokes in canoes. They are impossible to watch without a deep sense of excitement.

And flooding is exciting. In the moment. It's visceral and scary and life-bursting. It's like one great log-flume of a fairground ride.

But in the aftermath, when the cameras have long gone, and you're living in a crappy hotel having lost everything you own, wandering around in a fug, filling in forms, crying on the phone to Call Centre staff, wondering what on earth you've done to deserve such a thing, that's where the real drama lies. Our deepest sympathy goes to anyone currently suffering an unexpected deluge.

This excerpt from The Northern Line to Shropshire, describes the night it happened to us , a full 7 weeks after we'd moved to Shifnal from Tooting, and which remains an anchor in our lives 7 years on...

Down in the Flood

A week ago we flooded. Tuesday. Not long after midnight. We were lying in bed when I woke to the sound of running water. I thought: “Oh, bloody hell, Anne's plumbed the dishwasher in wrong.” The lights weren't working and I stumbled nakedly downstairs to see what was happening, and stepped straight into water at the bottom of the stairs. I was still assuming the dishwasher was broken, until I opened the back door and a plant pot floated into the kitchen on a tide of water.

I woke Anne up. She had earplugs in and I rather think she might have otherwise slept straight through. I dressed and spent ages failing to find some shoes, by which time the water was coming in through the front door as well, and we were up to our knees. Anne phoned the police to see what was happening and was told we were flooding. They said sandbags would be useful. I was trying to save the TV when I tripped over the flooring which had lifted up and, as I slipped beneath the waves, I heard her say: “What do you mean, it's much worse in Bridgnorth?”

We finally evacuated the house when the water reached our waists. We've lost nearly all our possessions. We've been told the house will be uninhabitable for at least six months, so we are now effectively homeless. We are stuck in a hotel and are looking for a new place to rent. We're stumbling around like zombies, barely aware of what's happening to us. Life goes on but there's an other-worldly feel to it, like extreme jet-lag. I'm feeling completely unhinged. Anne appears to be heartbroken. We've only been here a couple of months and our lives seem to have fallen apart.

Sherlock - or How Fictional are Your Characters?

6/1/2014

There's a great moment in Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo – an actor in an old black and white movie has jumped out of the screen and run off with a desperate woman of the depression era. She explains her predicament, "Ok, so he's not real, but you can't have everything."

I was reminded of this today because I've been thinking about Sherlock. I watched the first of the new series yesterday. Hitherto I'd been avoiding reviews and twitter and stuff for I hate spoilers. But on catching up it's clear some people felt tricked.

Me, I was delighted. For I had solved the puzzle - well, sort of. When the last series finished on its modern take on the Reichenbach Falls, I was listening to a radio discussion of how Sherlock would escape from certain death. Preposterous theories were aired. In its own way it gripped the nation in exactly the same way as the original did. For those who don't know Conan Doyle really did kill off Holmes at the Falls, but public outcry made him resurrect him.

Moffat and Gattis deserve enormous credit for managing to not only update Holmes so successfully but to repeat the public outcry. Speaking about the twist, one of them was quoted as saying,

"There's something everyone is missing."

I listened to this, whilst grating cheese or something, and I remember saying to the radio and a salivating dog

"Yes, he's a fictional character,"

before spoiling my genius by going on to dream up my own wildly implausible scenario as to how he'd escaped certain death.

My solution need not detain us, but the fact that well-told stories and well-drawn characters become real should. Us writers anyway. I find the disappointment in certain sectors of the public that there's a fictional solution to a fictional problem both perverse and uplifting. And I say this as someone who has just published a novel that required me to make a life-like figure out of someone who was already dead. Fictionally.