Happy Anniversary

I went to a gig this week. I know, look at me trying to be hip and trendy at my age. But don’t get any ideas about me seeing any cool young bands. I went to see a guy called Mike Peters, who was celebrating 30 years of his once-quite-popular beat combo The Alarm. He’s older than I am and so were many in the audience. There wasn’t much thrashing, moshing or stage-diving in evidence. To be honest there wasn’t much movement from the crowd at all, unless you count the frequent trips to the loo. Well at our age, and with many of us having a prostate the size of a goat’s head, after a few beers it’s a case of one in, one out.

But it was a great gig, I loved every moment of it, just as I did when I saw 10cc not too long ago. Kiss were fantastic too and so were the old guys in Yes. I think it’s fairly obvious that I don’t see young bands these days. I prefer to relive my youth, my glory days (not that there were that many of them - and they weren't particularly glorious).

But isn’t that what most of these guys are doing? OK, they’ll maybe throw in a few new songs in the hope of attracting interest in a new album (and to give us in the crowd time to replenish our glasses) but in most cases they’re living on former glories. Some of them are blatantly cashing in on them. Bryan Adams’ upcoming ‘twentieth anniversary arena tour of the Waking Up the Neighbours arena tour’ springs to mind. He has nothing at all to promote apart from an evening of unabashed nostalgia. But hey, if it makes people happy.

A look at the upcoming gig list shows that Big Country, Shakin’ Stevens and Go West are all soon embarking on thirtieth anniversary tours. Rush, W.A.S.P., Level 42, Ultravox – they’ve all recently done the same with varying degrees of success. Perhaps I should take a twenty-night road trip around the country, seeing a random band in a new city every night to celebrate my thirty years of gig-going?

But why should this kind of thing be restricted to musicians? Many major authors do book signing tours too, and those are usually much more intimate affairs than seeing a band in a huge arena or even in a sweaty club. With authors you usually at least get the chance to get your copy of their latest product signed and maybe even have a little chat with them. It’s much more civilised.

So as we approach 2012 I’ve come up with a cunning plan. I’ve taken a look at a list of books published in 1982 and have decided to have a word with my local branch of Waterstones to see if they could arrange some thirtieth anniversary tours.

Published in 1982
Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote
Sidney Sheldon – Master of the Game
Robert Ludlum – The Parsifal Mosaic -
Isaac Asimov – Foundation’s Edge
Arther C Clarke – 2010:Odyssey Two
Roald Dahl – The BFG

Ah. Looking at that list of authors, I think there may be a slight flaw in my proposal.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

I Want to Turn My Brain Off!

I’m a writer. I write. I get up and turn on my laptop. Then I write, all day long. Eventually I’ll log off and have my evening meal. When that’s done I tell myself that I’ve stopped working for the day, which is why I never turn my laptop back on after, say, seven pm (I eat early). But I always make sure that I have a notebook and pen close to hand just in case inspiration strikes (as it so often does) when it’s least expected. So even when I’m chatting with my Beloved, watching a film, sitting in the pub, even at these times I’ve still not really finished writing because the thoughts are still there, the stories are still growing, bubbling, fermenting away at the back of my mind. My characters are still living their little back-stories in my subconscious whether I want them to or not. And I even dream new ideas. I’ve been known to keep a notebook in the bathroom so that I can scribble things in the middle of the night without waking my Beloved. I might wake her regularly because I’m a heavy snorer (apparently), but never because I’m an author.

Now that I’m living my dream of being a full-time writer I find that it really is full time. Like Moira Shearer in ‘The Red Shoes’, I can’t stop. (Come on, I can’t be the only fan of 1940’s ballet movies, can I? Or perhaps you’re more a devotee of the 2005 Korean horror version?)

New ideas dribble out of me constantly, oozing like a stream of consciousness. I’d love for them to pour forth, but at the moment I’ll accept a little trickle. I can‘t keep up with them as it is. I start hundreds of stories and articles, but only finish a fraction. In some cases I realise that the quality of the piece isn’t what I initially thought and I pull the plug on it, but many times it’s simply that I’ve thought of something new – and new equals exciting. I simply can’t find the enthusiasm to finish the job in hand.

That’s the difference between nature and nurture I guess, the inborn talent versus the craft and graft of the author’s trade.  My fear is that I’ve had some fantastic ideas and missed them while I was concentrating on the mediocre ones that I’ve continued to work on. And as I haven’t yet developed a good quality filter, I’m trying to do them all.

Even the best ideas need polishing. Mine certainly aren’t the best that mankind has ever had, but they won’t even be seen by anyone else unless I finish them off. And I don’t mean finish off as in polish, bump or knock off. I mean that I have to complete something.

Just like this.

© Shaun Finnie 2011

I Can Smell Burning Pants

Without wishing to cause offence to those lovely people on Dragon’s Den, The Apprentice etc, or anyone who runs their own business, I have a question that probably will do just that: To be a successful businessman or woman do you also have to also be a successful liar?

The question arose when I was watching one of daytime BBC’s many antique trading programs. The expert picked up a piece of pottery. ‘It says on the label three hundred and fifty pounds. What’s your very best price?’

The trader sucked his last remaining tooth. ‘For you guv, three hundred quid.’

‘Really? That’s the very best that you can do? Shame, I was hoping more like one twenty.’

They bantered on like this for a while and eventually the pottery changed hands for two hundred pounds. Deal done. But hold on a minute: just a few moments ago the trader said that his ‘very best price’ was three hundred. So three hundred wasn’t his very best and he knew it. He lied. If the orange antique experts on TV are to be believed then it seems to be a common tactic.

And of course every single trader in the land must have heard (and maybe uttered) the dreaded words, ‘The cheque’s in the post’. A week later they’re unsurprised to find no cheques littering the doormat, so they call again. ‘Really? It’s not turned up? It must have got lost in the post. I’ll write you another’.

When I was a bookkeeper I was on the receiving end of this sorry story so many times that it became a bit of a joke with some customers. I always wanted to ask one question in return: ‘If my postal service is so bad, how come my gas bill never gets lost?’

My Beloved has for many years sold items on eBay, and in that time has had more than her fair share of failed transactions. After a while this has made her naturally rather suspicious of all non - and late - payers.  One of my favourites recently was when a woman claimed that she wasn’t going to pay up for something she’d bought as ‘it wasn’t me, it was my eight-year-old niece what bid on it.’ Did she now? Using your account name and password? Clever girl.

Or how about ‘I know I’ve bought these items but I cannot pay for them as I’m new to eBay and I don’t have a cheque book or a PayPal account’. I suggested that the Beloved should write back, ‘No problem! I’ll just take whatever form of payment it was that you’ve used for the 83 other items that your eBay record shows you’ve bought and paid for over the last three years’.

The least pleasant of all though are those that claim, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t paid you but my child/partner/parent has just died.’ I’ve been amazed at how many times she’s been told this as a reason for late payment. It’s absolutely incontestable. Of course she has to sympathise and allow as much time as is needed. It’s astounding though how many people recover from their grief on the first of the month.

So now I find myself in the job of sending work to magazine editors and having to trust that they will pay for all work used and that the amount they send is the going rate. Surely they wouldn’t be unscrupulous, would they?

© Shaun Finnie 2011  

Mwah-ha-ha-haaa!

Boo!

Did I scare you? It’s the time of year for general spookiness, when the nights are cold and dark but generally clear and dry. At least that’s what the weather people tell us it’s historically been like in mid-Autumn. Not this year though – it’s mostly wet and grey around here. I think that a peek out of the window is required before I venture outside. And fireworks? Damp squibs are the order of the day I suspect.

Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night both give us good reasons to go out and party, or hide behind the sofa depending on how social you’re feeling. Or maybe you’re just terrified of the local kids with their trick-or-treats and their bangers. Innocent fun or heathen licenced thuggery and theft:  your call.

Two of Britain’s most ancient celebrations just happen to fall in the same week; just how lucky is that? Really? I suspect that it’s nothing to do with luck and more to do with the Catholic Church fiddling with our calendar. They did it when they picked a fairly random date to celebrate Christmas, so why not these two?

And the clocks have gone back too, meaning that somehow there are many more hours of darkness than this time last week. This means that many of us now go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. The farmers and muggers must love it.

So at this most fearful time of the year when the veil between the realms of the living and the dead is (allegedly) at its thinnest, what scares you? Me? Well it’ll come as no surprise to those who know me well to find that clowns terrify me. My coulrophobia to give it its posh name) isn’t as bad as it used to be, but I still don’t like to even see a clown, let alone have any interact with one. Real clowns, puppets, toys, even paintings of clowns, all put the fear of clowns up me. I know what you lot are getting me for Christmas now.

I’m told that it’s a much more common phobia than non-sufferers imagine. I know that a lot of my irrational fear comes from watching films like Tim Curry’s sublime ‘It’ and the ridiculous foam rubber creations in ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’, but I think that my inner terror is much more deep-seated than that. It’s a fear of all masks really. They all seem so unnecessary to me. What’s hidden underneath there? What does the so-called funny man have to hide? And in modern Britain, clowns aren’t regarded as all that funny either by most people. They’re a relic of bygone cabarets, ghosts of a dead comedy form.

So now it’s your turn. Turn down the lights, pull a chair up to the fire and tell us: what are you afraid of?

© Shaun Finnie 2011