Good Young Boys

Those who saw my earlier post 'Good Old Boys' might like to compare this photo with those on that post. These are the same fellows, fifty+ years earlier at RAF Cosford School of Technical Training. (I've just unearthed the photo from a memory box). At 15 years of age, every one one them, they seem a lot more innocent and a darn sight better looking don't they? That's me squatting, bottom left, showing off my two good conduct stripes. I was never promoted to Senior or Leading Boy though. The big fellah at the back, with his hands on another lad's shoulders, went zooming up the ranks to Sergeant Boy. Good on yer, Tam.

They've got her on the list, the lady novelist.

So, the portrait of Elizabeth Fry is about to be replaced by a.n.other on the 5 pound note. To be quite honest, I only remembered that her picture was actually on the note when it was announced that she was about to be ousted. Did I ever know it was there, despite the fact that being a Quaker she was an ancestral member of the ever-shrinking bunch of people to which I myself belong? With constant daily usage, pictures on bank notes become wallpaper after a time: we become blind to the design on the paper which our grubby fingers handle on a daily basis. I'm not sure our Liz would even have approved of having the dubious honour of being there, though those old Quaker (mostly chocolate) families didn't actually spurn money, but used it wisely, the modest profits going partly to building houses for their workers and on other laudable projects. Elizabeth Fry was of course a woman who dedicated her life to reforming the awful conditions in Victorian prisons.

So, who is to be the replacement? It was with some puzzlement I heard this morning that it might be the novelist Jane Austen, an ancestral member of yet another of my groups, though 
one that seems to be expanding rather than shrinking. Jane wrote some excellent novels, dealing (under a flimsy veil of romanticism and 19th century manners) the human condition. An immensely talented woman, but really, did those made-up stories written in the comfort of a middle class home and earning the author a considerable income actually do anything to improve the lot of less fortunate men and women? (She has thousands of fans, so I'm expecting a lot of flack!) My money, my five pound note, would be on someone like Mary Seacole, who unlike Florence Nightingale, was actually there, on the battlefields of the Crimea, caring for the dying and wounded. Mary, from the West Indies, applied to become a nurse and to travel to the Crimea to do just that, but was rejected by whoever was running things at the time, so she used her own small income to get there under her own steam, where she opened a hospital she called the British Hotel. Laudable? If not Mary, someone equally unselfish and generous with their time and money. There are surely more worthy women than novelists?

Good Old Boys

These are a few of my classmates from an RAF Boy Entrants military school in the mid-50's. I won't bore you with names, but despite the fact that I hadn't seen most of them for 50 years, I felt an instant affinity with them at our reunion. Some of them had retained a vestige of their 15-year-old looks, while others had changed completely. All of us bore the ravages that time works on the body over half-a-century. The pictures above were taken 5 years ago and two or three of those in them are gone now, reminding the rest of us of our mortality. It's a very strange experience to walk into a room of people you knew intimately in your youth, but have not seen for over half-a-lifetime. In essence, once we started talking (and once I knew who I was actually talking to) they had not changed. Bob was still Bob and Tam was still Tam and so on through the gang. They were as easy to talk to as my own family, who have been by my side almost as long.

What have I garnered from this weekend that pulled the past up and put it before me in my dotage? Really, I suppose, that there is something eternal in a group spirit. Dave, Bob and dear old Alan have passed on, but though their faces won't be at the next reunion, which takes place this year, they'll still be there with us as an invisible part of the whole. We began our training at 15 years of age with almost a hundred of us - now down to a score. Most of them have achieved what they set out to do. I do not know any one of them who has serious regrets of any kind. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. They are the good old boys who served with me. Some of them reached dizzy heights in rank, others changed course and went into civilian life - 55 years of life so far -  but still, when I see them, talk with them, they still have that 15-year-old inside them, just below the surface.

The Bay of Fires

This is the Bay of Fires on Tasmania. I don't know how long the beach is, but it's loooong - and you can see how crowded it is. We spent a week in a beautiful house above that beach in 2006 with our Aussie friends, Carolyn and Pete, who live in Melbourne. Dolphins swam by most mornings and bright blue fairy wrens perched on the veranda rail. There was a deadly snake who lived in the woodpile underneath the house - I think they called him Bob - which the owners did not see the need to get removed. I don't have a snake phobia, but I do have a reasonable fear of a deadly poisonous reptile. I was always careful to tread softly when passing Bob's home of logs and I'm sure that were the place mine I would have have preferred a cold house in the winter to rooting around for firewood.

Anyway, what's my point? Well, I have a new collection of short stories coming out from Infinity Plus at the end of this month entitled 'The Fabulous Beast' and one of those stories was written in that house above the Bay of Fires. It was a perfect environment in which to write. I'm sure if I had spent a year or two there I would be in my shed making a shelf for a bunch of literary prizes. I know writers have different ideas about where they need to be to write - some probably like the blare of London or New York traffic - others the solitude of a garden room that faces a placid lake or tranquil river - still others the wild-weather Shetlands. I love the sound of waves breaking on the beach, a clear blue sky above, and a long crescent of sand curving out towards the horizon and dropping below it.

I should do it, I know, but real life ain't like that mate. There's other people and other things to consider. I'll leave my readers to guess which of the tales found its paper home over the Bay of Fires.

Coastal Waters

There's something a bit more than alliterative about sailing Turkish waters with a captain named Waters, but that's what we're doing on the 'Hilda May' out of Fathiye. Mountains all around us falling down to many, many little bays and coves where we anchor for the nights. Lazy hot days, sometimes interspersed with panic attacks as I'm supposed to do something nautical with ropes and anchor chains and sails. Everything has its own different name - heads, galley, taffrail, transom - I have to translate in my head before action and delay does not please the captain, who runs a tight ship while I softly sing that line from 'The Leaving of Liverpool' which paraphrased goes '. . . the captain's name was Waters and his ship's a floating hell'. The food in the small quayside restaurants is to die for: fish and prawns straight from the net. Most of them make their own bread in a wood fired oven as one rises in the early morning. Heaven. There is the added bonus of golden eagles flying over the hills and indeed we saw (and I photographed) one eagle owl on a branch. Scrabble of an evening on deck is a bloody affair, with the captain bemoaning the fact that flogging one's crew is no longer permissible. Nautical words count double, so you can imagine who scores most on that count.

On a recent blog I reported that I had found a new literary agent after the Maggie Noach Agency closed. I was premature. I met with the man, who seemed enthusiastic about my work, took my latest novel with him, called me the next day for an electronic version of the manuscript and promised to get back to me sooner or later. That was the last I heard from him. After nearly 3 months, four emails, one non-returned phone call (during which is assistant claimed he had not been told about me or my novel) I suddenly twigged that I was never going to hear from him again. I felt very stupid and somewhat angry. I could go on a little about good manners, honour, respect, and a few other social graces that seem to have fled in this case, and I could give the man's name, but I have absolutely no idea why he has not contacted me again after our first and only meeting. Straight dealing used to be standard, but standards seem to have dropped.

Fat Larry and Me

This is me with Fat Larry on my wrist (I didn't name him, his mother did), and as you can see I'm lost in my head somewhere as usual, wondering if there's a story in all this owl touching, while Larry is staring at me, probably thinking, 'What is this old git doing? He's supposed to be making a fuss of me, not day dreaming!' Afterwards Larry nuzzled up to my cheek, to comfort me for having bad thoughts about me.

We, the mistress of the house and I, are getting ready to join Colin on his 13 metre sailing yacht in Turkish waters for ten days. (Fat Larry declined the invitation). This is our third year crewing (I use that word loosely) for Colin, who unlike most of the yacht captains I have known, does not yell and scream when one winds the sheet the wrong way around the winch, or pulls on the halyard at the wrong moment. We have to re-acquaint ourselves with our knots of course (once learned in the scouts and guides and never forgotten) and get used to sliding into a cabin space not much bigger than a coffin, but the whole trip is a great experience. The Turkish people are friendly and welcoming, the coast line is full of antiquities and rugged scenery. The food is wonderful. The fizzy drinks are great. (I'm not a little ol' wine drinker, me)The music from Colin's guitar floats over the bays of an evening and later there's a fierce Scrabble battle on deck (Colin makes the rules - Ahab, Bligh, Colin - these tyrannical captains!) and blood runs in the gunwales. Wonderful.

On the writing front, my new collection of short stories The Fabulous Beast is due out from Infinity Plus - science fiction, horror and fantasy tales of the best quality and width. Later in the year, Poems, Peoms and Other Atrocities, a poetry collaboration with my great pal Rob Holdstock should cause a hurricane of excitement amongst those who enjoy verse and worse. That's All Folks! Hasta luego, baby, as Arnie actually should have said.

Owl Touching

My daughter gave Annette and me a gift voucher for 'Owl Handling', which ever since my dear wife has called 'owl touching' (and even once got the recipient a little wrong and called it 'turkey touching'). So owl touching has become the family phrase for our outing, which took place today on a beautiful sunny hillside in Kent. An email to a friend, Dean Howell, telling him where we were going and what we were doing, sparked the following reply: 'Owl touching OK, but Howell touching strictly forbidden.' You have to laugh, don't you? Anyway, it was great fun, despite my earlier misgivings about birds in captivity. These, we were assured, were all refugees and could not nor would not survive in the wild. Certainly they were as tame as domestic cats and dogs and allowed us to ruffle their feathers - in fact they liked being stroked - stared into our eyes as if to say, 'Whoooo the hell are you, buddy, to touch me? How about I touch, you?' Which they did.

On the writing front, my novel progresses. I punch the keys and the words appear on the page. I am for once really enjoying the writing. Oh, yes, I always enjoy finishing a novel, a bit like I would enjoy seeing the green edge to a desert I've been tramping through for six months. But often being immersed in the writing, though not unpleasant, is difficult. I'm not a great believer in inspiration and certainly don't sit around waiting for the muse to strike. Blood, sweat and tears, yes, but flashes of brilliance, not my forte. If brilliance comes it does so incidentally or accidentally, during a sweaty bout of 2000 words and has me saying afterwards, 'Hey, did I write that? Bloody hell!' Indeed, it is often a pleasant surprise, like a gift from the tooth fairy.

So, Ring-a-ring o' Roses is getting there, quite pleasantly, as if it wafted into my mind on zephyr. Yay!