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A Portfolio Life

You say Tomato...

13/8/2018

We were in Rome, maybe twenty -five years ago, and had a salad to accompany something tasty. "Oh, so that's what a tomato's supposed to taste like" I said, in astonishment. I honestly hadn't properly savoured one before. I'm not saying my own homegrown versions quite hit that spot but, with Anne's touch our current greenhouse glut received the tender loving they deserve...

Brushchetta, goat's cheese salad with slow-roatsed toms, a tart of caramelised tomatoes and mascarpone, and a tomato jelly with creamed cheese and basil. (The latter was the best).

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Strix - Issue 4

18/7/2018

Those nice folk at Strix have once again chosen a poem of mine, this time for the 4th issue of their cutting-edge, brilliantly-designed volume of wonder, easily the best poetry magazine in the world right now. Possibly.

And you can buy your copy here, for a mere fiver, including postage.

I also helped out on the drums for that tricky third album, so why not pick up Issue Three whilst you're there..?.

The Siege of Krishnapour - or "we've all rather had enough of experts"

9/7/2018

I’ve just read The Siege of Krishnapour by JG Farrell – a sort of Flashman meets Carry on up the Khyber – and it contains the most incredible Brexit parable, not least considering it was written in 1970.

The English camp is under siege by ‘mutinous sepoys’ in deepest and darkest India. There is an outbreak of cholera. There are two doctors still alive in the camp. As people start dying of cholera the rest of the camp takes to carrying around cards saying which doctor they want to be treated by should they be afflicted. Each doctor believes they know what causes cholera and from that have deduced a cure. One of them – let’s call him Doctor Boris – is sure that the cause of cholera is poisonous vapours in the air. He is flamboyant and eloquent and does a very good job of convincing all of those around him that he must be right and that his cure must be the way forward. The majority of people in the camp have his name written on their card. The only problem is that his patients mainly die.

The other doctor is more of an expert – let’s call him the Good Doctor – and has been reading up on the latest studies, especially that of Jon Snow, and believes that cholera is a water-borne disease. He shares with the camp lots of dull and dry statistics, and all but bores them to death with his considered suggestion that probably the best way to treat the disease is through rehydration. Many of his patients recover, though not all. Plus, you know, boring.

They even have an evening where both are allowed to present their ideas to the camp – dashing Boris thundering and showboating, evangelical and proselytising, whilst the dry Doctor mumbles and suggests and doubts. Boris has the numbers against him, but he’s a showman, and a charlatan, and people prefer that despite the evidence. Plus, he knows the importance of a grand finale. One, where to prove his case, he drinks the “squits” of a cholera patient. Brings the house down. And his pants shortly after, as he catches cholera.

He orders his daughter to treat him by his own sure-fire method. Grows delirious. Unconscious. Dying. In despair, the daughter calls for the Good Doctor, who changes the treatment to his own method. Boris recovers. Wakes up and praises his daughter for following out his instructions.

The daughter admits that it was the Good Doctor who saved him. Boris is furious, demands that his daughter goes back to the leeches and the juju and whatever else make up Boris’s own treatment. The daughter complies. Boris falls again into a coma. The daughter again calls on the Good Doctor. His treatment again leads to Boris’s recovery. Boris is furious. Calls his daughter a traitor and forbids her to go against his words again. She doesn’t. Boris dies. (At this point, it should be said, I stood up and cheered.)

And the rest of the camp? They still can’t decide. Perhaps, if the daughter had stuck to Boris’s path for longer, then perhaps he’d have recovered. Perhaps the Good Doctor’s ministrations were the real cause of Boris’s demise. Perhaps, they fancied themselves as amateur experts and found themselves on the wrong side of science. Maybe they had taken sides based on a hunch and couldn’t bear to admit they’d been horribly, horribly wrong.

Or possibly, just possibly, humans are fucking idiots.

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…