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A Portfolio Life

I'm telling you cows are bloody dangerous (237)

26/3/2014

Here we go again, my annual encounter with death.

This morning's was the scariest yet. Between Kemberton Mill and Grindle Forge there's a field running down to the Wesley and a herd of youngsters has been in there for the last week or so. Kindly the farmer has put a one-wire fence alongside most of the footpath, so you can cut along the bottom of the field, thus avoiding eye contact with the inquisitive little shits.

Today the cattle were on the skyline and saw us straight away. That's okay I thought, they're the other side of the fence and we made our way halfway across the underside of the field. Next thing I know, 30-40 of them are charging at full tilt down the hillside towards me, the fence seemingly a thing of the past.

I was stuck in their headlights long enough to do a little wee before leaning down and unleashing Bobby as we're advised. They were all but upon me when I ducked behind two small trees, just in time for them to bump and barge and slip and slide to either side of me. Without the trees it would have been almost exactly like that scene in Tamara Drewe.

Half of them veered off to chase Bobby, who jumped the stile from whence we'd come, tucked his tail between his legs, sat down on the other side and generally said “you're on your own mate”. The rest of the herd decided on a much deserved drink at the Wesley where they forgot all about me, congratulated each other on a job well done and generally humped each other playfully. I fought my way back through them and got the hell out of Dodge.

Also good with horseradish sauce...

Farewell Trip - Shakespeare's lost novel...

23/3/2014

Farewell Trip is about to slip out of the top 100,000 best-seller list on amazon.co.uk for the first time since publication 4 months ago. And how have the authors spent this fateful time? On the road, pressing the book into the hands of grateful strangers? On social media, tweeting and facebooking, interviewing and generally being all chickliticious? On the radio, in the local press, covering the angles?

Well, no, not really. Karin's been in and out of hospital like someone with a bit part on Casualty and I've been obsessing about something corporate that may or may not pay some of the bills that our very first royalty cheque (due in 7 days) won't cover. I plan to frame mine.

On the other hand we have been playing with one of those games on facebook. Instead of actually sitting down and writing our next novel we've been copying and pasting parts of it into an “analysis machine” that claims to tell you whom you write like. (And I thought I'd spent 30 years finding my own voice).

Still, there is some good news. Apparently, Karin's chapters are like Raymond Chandler and mine are like Kurt Vonnegut. Now that's a novel I'd buy.

To check this wasn't some fluke, some pointless social media diversion, we put a number of excerpts from Farewell Trip into the machine. And our words were crunched and cogitated and deliberated and we were unveiled as HP Lovecraft, Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahunik and William fucking Shakespeare. Um, and Dan Brown. But, hey you need to keep turning the pages, right?

Now, come on, are you really telling me such a book should be outside the top 100,000...

Read all about it...

22/3/2014

Every Saturday morning Bobby and I become paperboys. Anne wants the Guardian, and I get the Racing Post for me. Whilst there I get Anne's dad a copy of The Times. Anne's mum (rather sweetly) won't read anything funded by Murdoch so I have to pick up an Independent also. For some reason no-one's ever explained to me, I also buy a Telegraph - perhaps it's obligatory for any house with an Aga.

The girl on duty behind the counter Saturday mornings has been working there for 6 months or so. For the last few months I've taken to dumping all the papers on the counter and asking her to remember how much it all comes to (minus my Guardian subscription voucher). Over the weeks it's become part game, part test, part joke and if I'm honest part disbelief on my part – as someone who can still remember what regulars' rounds came to at The Grove in 1984. Anyway, this morning for the first time ever, she correctly guessed that it was £7.60. She was mighty pleased with herself. We whooped and even high-fived.

Except I've just looked and the Racing Post has gone up. Should have been £7.70...

I feel the need, the need for speed...

16/3/2014

Anne won the West Midlands Police motorway driving lottery a while back, and as her reward they kindly invited her to attend a Speed Awareness Day for a mere £60 up front and not a word to the insurers.

She went Friday and on her return I asked how it had gone. She said “Four hours in a room of the walking dead listening to someone drone on about road safety – how do you think it went?”

Fair enough, or at least I thought, until this morning on our drive to Church Stretton. Forty minutes later I'd had every single road sign pointed out to me: “Now that's a Gateway sign. And look, that small one, that's a repeater, there should be one of those every three seconds, but people steal them for people's 30th, 40th and 50th birthday presents. But look, repeater, repeater, repeater, repeater, repeater, repeater...oh look Gateway.”

I was contemplating chucking myself out on the roundabout just outside Much Wenlock when she said - “Ah, street lights – now, when in town, one gear down.” And so my education continued. The white circle with the black diagonal means something very important but I was too busy stabbing myself with a pen to learn what, considering I don't even drive and all. Still, it's nice to know if things don't work out in Housing she's got a future in Health and Safety.

Honestly, I wish I'd just taken the points...

Inheritance Books

10/3/2014

The lovely Rhoda Baxter invited me to contribute to her on-going blog question - what book would you most like to hand on to future generations (Farewell Trip aside)?

Something by a favourite writer maybe: TS Eliot, Lawrence Block, Julian Barnes, Jonathan Raban?

Or a first edition: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Fever Pitch, The Lost Continent, Ariel?

You can read my reply here.

Soon Be Cheltenham...

7/3/2014

It's been a beautiful pre-Spring Spring day up here today. I started off my walk in winter habit, wrapped in a fleece and coat and finished it down to my t-shirt. I did the longest of my daily circuits (7 miles) enjoying the moments when the clouds parted and a big sky warmed my back and eyes.

And I wasn't alone. As we passed Evelith Mill Cottage on the way home Bobby spotted a fox, the first we've seen all winter. It was settling down in the long grass to enjoy the sun. Bobby was nearly upon it before the fox took fright along the ridge. Bobby chased it along the escarpment, silhouetted against the sky, gap unchanging, a couple of hundred yards. It was a strange sight, for the fox had hanging from his mouth a dead animal I couldn't identify – a baby rabbit maybe – which it was plainly reluctant to surrender. Bobby for his part, not to be outdone, kept his favourite rubber ball in his mouth the whole chase.

Had he actually caught up with the fox who knows what would have ensued. A game of tag? A fight? A swap meet? We'll never know, the fox escaped down into the dingle and Bobby trotted on mighty pleased with himself.

Hey We've Been Interviewed...

6/3/2014

I've always read those interviews with celebrities in magazine and weekend supplements and sighed - is that the best you can come up with?

Well, what do you know, turns out it's damned hard to say anything of interest.

Still, I'll keep this one here, just for vanity, like a footballer's scrapbook, like a memory, like a carving of my name on some wood or stone somewhere:

GT and KD wrote a book, here, 2014.

What's in a Title?

3/3/2014

It's the 20th anniversary of the release of Four Weddings and a Funeral, apparently. Pause whilst you wonder where your life went. Stop weeping at the back. And I was reading that it very nearly wasn't called that at all. Allegedly, it was nearly called Toffs on Heat. Or Charles and Chums. Hard to imagine it being a success with either of those titles!

I was thinking of this because of a lovely review of our book by Becca's Books in which she writes “Firstly the title. Ambiguous and I LOVE it”. I was overjoyed to read that to be honest.

The title seems so right now, but it was one of the last things we wrote. The original title of the book was Wish You Were. Not 'Wish You Were Here' - though yes, we expected people to add a silent 'Here' at the end. Which we then mirrored with the last line of the book – 'PS', so that the last thing people were supposed to read was a silent, unwritten “I Love You”. (Of course, in reality, we not only changed the title, but the proof-readers missed out the PS at the end of the novel).

So, the title was Wish You Were for 95% of the time we were writing the book. My guess is most people reading the book will imagine that the title came first, and that explains why Trip has such a silly nickname. But in reality we came up with the nickname first, at least a year earlier. It was only when we were improvising a dialogue scene on facebook chat that I used the phrase “a farewell trip” and suddenly realised that was an obvious title.

It still took a while to take hold. I was worried about using such a corny pun. Karin and I had become attached to the original title. Wish You Were what? And Anne had stated constantly that she hated the name Trip. Tim also. Even Karin wasn't keen.

Now, to me anyway, just as with Four Weddings and a Funeral, it feels like the book has always been Farewell Trip, was always meant to be, and could never have been anything else. And Becca's review sits nicely with that.