Identity Theft

If a neighbour’s cat persistently leaves its erm… ‘doings’ in my garden, is it acceptable to collect up all the offending matter and post it back to them in a large jiffy bag marked ‘Return to Sender’ (FAO Mr Fluffy at Number 47)?

Just wondering. I’ve been doing lots of wondering while wandering in the recent fine weather. Just walking in the fields and woods near home and pondering things like…

·         Is it acceptable for the Mr Fluffy’s owner to allow it to drop bio-bombs wherever it will (though short of making him eat a dozen eggs a day, or the application of corks in a manner unapproved by the RSPCA, I‘m not sure how they could stop him)?

·         How can it be legal for motorcyclists to encourage their engines to scream their particular brand of noise pollution at such ear-splitting levels? Especially on those rare mornings when I’m trying to have a lie in?

·         And is it right for me or any other writer to use a story that someone told me in the strictest confidence as source material for my next bestseller?( You’ll understand that in this instance ‘bestseller’ means ‘book of mine that sells better than my previous ones’.)

Sure, I’m going to change the names and tweak the details a bit but if the person in question reads a little into those shiny white gaps between the lines then they might still be able to see tiny fragments of their painful tale, mulched up and used as fertile soil in which to plant my ideas.

I’ll happily admit that I’ve used fictionalised versions of those I care about as characters in my writing before, many times, but I’ll be surprised if anyone recognised themselves. Sometimes it’s just the briefest stolen detail, like the way they flick their hair or a particular figure of speech they use. But other times their story has been rewritten much closer to the bone. I’m not citing any examples here, but I hope that one of my relatives never reads a certain short story about… well, that would be indiscrete.

I’ve also frequently used my own life experiences for inspiration, as all writers do. Helping my nephew with his football sticker collection became a story about a man in a fruitless rush around town to grab the last few packets for his own son’s collection. Loud animal noises in the night while we were in a secluded mountain-top cabin ruined what should have been the perfect romantic weekend away but lead to a fearful tale of a family trapped in their home while criminals tried to break in.

Things that have happened to me personally are fair game for dramatizing, but I’ve used many stories that friends and family have told me as well, though naturally I’m not going to break those confidences here. Not explicitly anyhow, though some of them have most definitely appeared in the short stories that I’ve posted on www.shaunfinnie.com each month.

So today’s question is, would you be bothered if you found one of your true-life experiences displayed to the world in my not-so-completely made up prose? Maybe it’s OK for me to steal the funny tale of the time you fell face-down in the cake at a friend’s wedding, but what if the interesting but intimate details of your painful divorce turned up in a story of mine? Or your one of my characters just happened to go through your own medical trauma?

Not that I ever would of course. But just how far is too far?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

We Were Promised Jetpacks

What a fantastic name for a Scottish Indie band: ‘We Were Promised Jetpacks’. They do indeed rock.

The thing that struck me when I first saw their name on a poster was that it seemed so sad; it painted a mental picture of disillusion and shattered dreams of a bright new tomorrow. We were promised jet packs. Nazi Germany developed basic individual flying machines to propel its troops safely over minefields during World War II, James Bond used one as a futuristic getaway vehicle in ‘Thunderball’ and who can forget  Bill Suitor flying his rocket pack into the Los Angeles Coliseum during the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics? Given that these technologies have been available for decades, is it too much to have expected that by 2012 the local biker gangs would have given up their two-wheeled thrills and now be annoying old ladies by revving loudly high above their heads?

We were promised jet packs… but nobody has delivered on that promise. And that includes Bell Aerosystems who strapped lucky old Bill Suitor into that flying bomb at the Olympics. My redundancy cash won’t be going into their shares, that’s for sure.

When I was young Raymond Baxter, James Burke and Judith Hann presented a programme called ‘Tomorrow’s World’. It looked at innovative scientific breakthroughs and basically promised us jetpacks on a weekly basis. And flying cars. Swimming ones too, for that matter. And houses that made sure you never needed to clean, cook or iron again. That was another promise that nobody has ever delivered on – unless you count my Beloved (thanks, love).

Now I’m trying not to be gloomy or live in the past (though I appreciate that even mentioning ‘Tomorrow’s World’ dates me) so the more I think on it the more I see that there’s also a veiled optimism in the band’s name. They weren’t content to live their lives as repetitive shadows of their parents. They wanted more; to them the idea of zooming around in flying suits signifies a better way of life than the previous generation had enjoyed. Surely that’s something for which we should all strive?

OK, some of the ideas on ‘Tomorrow’s World’ look laughable now but many have become accepted parts of our lives. CCTV, IVF, cashpoints, barcodes, compact discs, digital cameras. All these scientific breakthroughs were introduced to me and countless millions of others via the show, leaving a lifelong interest in science and gadgets in particular. Call me a geek if you will, but at least I appreciate the brilliant irony in reading the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on an i-Pad, or the nerdy delight of speaking into a personal communicator that looks pretty similar to the one Captain Kirk used in the futuristic ‘Star Trek’ forty-odd years ago? I can even just speak a name into it and be put through to them just like he did, though I don’t personally want to befriend anybody called ‘Bones’.

And just because some of the more outlandish inventions from the past haven’t yet come to fruition – paper everyday clothing, food made from worms, floating bicycles etc. – that doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually become part of our world. Perhaps  even tomorrow. Maybe someday even time travel will become a reality. That would put book-makers out of business overnight.

So let’s be more optimistic and see what happens. It’s certainly been a smiley week for me. My long-awaited collection of short stories has finally been unleashed on an unsuspecting world. See www.shaunfinnie.com/TinyTreats.html for more details. I say it was long-awaited… at least it was by my Beloved. She’s hoping it’ll pay for her next Florida trip.

Keep hoping, love...


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Travel. Writer.

I’m not here right now. I’m a hundred miles or so away from home, in a cabin on the edge of the Lake District. But don’t think about going round to mine and stealing my priceless collection of 1970s Avengers comics because I’ll be home soon; in fact just about…  now.

I actually wrote this blog just before I went on holiday so if there’s been any earth-shattering news about that celebrity from that reality show, then I’m sorry but you won’t read my take on it here. Not that you ever would. I’m proud to say I’ve never seen any Simon Cowell or Ant ‘n’ Dec’s work. And I bet their just as honoured to say that they’ve never come across mine. I think we’ll all get over it.

When I get back I have an interview to do with a minor local football hero from forty years ago. Nothing too taxing, just an 800 word article for a sports magazine. I can do that easily, but if I’m going to come across as Frost to his Nixon then I’ve got to prepare my insightful questions first (‘Do you ever laugh at your old haircuts in team photos  like the rest of us do?’). So prepare I did, using notepad and pen instead of keyboard and screen.

And it was while I was writing my notes for this world exclusive that I was struck, for the first time ever, by how completely blank a notebook’s pages are. I didn’t have a case of the dreaded (and, as regular readers will know, in my view totally fictitious) Writer’s Block, it was just an observation. There was absolutely nothing on the page in front of me except for the 23 straight. Faint grey lines scored across the page. I was preparing to meet my deadline by filling in dead lines; the lifeless pre-formed structure of the notebook. Before I started making my notes it looked to me as though all my wonderful ideas had already flatlined, as if they’d been guest stars in their own episode of Holby City (Note for my American readers: it’s a BBC TV series like Grey’s Anatomy but without the eye-candy) but hadn’t made it to the final credits.

I wonder how I’m going to work this wonderful new philosophical awareness into a discussion on owning a pub when you retire and other merits of being a footballer in the ‘seventies.

Anyhow, I’d best crack on, It’ll be last week in a few hours.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

What's In A Name?

I took my nephew walking around a local country park the other day. He loves to go on nature walks with his Uncle Shaun and enjoys looking at the wildlife, especially all ducks great and small. It was a magnificent setting and like just about any grassed area near a large body of water ours has an infestation of those hefty but pretty nasty tasting birds, Canada Geese.

Deciding to test his identification skills, I pointed at one of these very distinctive creatures and asked the little lad, ‘Do you know what that bird’s called?'

He screwed his little face up deep in concentration for a few seconds and then ventured, ‘Is it Dave?'

Brilliant. You can’t make this stuff up. We then had a happy few minutes working our way through the flock with him dubbing them all, like some King in his play castle. ‘I name you, Oliver the goose. I name you, Jake the goose. I name you, Ethan the goose’, and so on. And on. And on. Truth be told, his patience with this game lasted a lot longer than mine but it kept him happy for a while, which was surely A Very Good Thing.

It got me thinking about the names he’d chosen though: Oliver; Jake; Ethan; Cameron; Jack; Ryan; Luke. None of them would have been in my ‘Pick twenty male names for a character in your next short story’ list. I always go for the same kind of names every time. Carl; Steve; Richard; John; Paul. Come to think of it, they’re basically the names of the boys I went to school with thirty years ago.

Similarly, If I were picking a female name it would be Sue, Claire, Helen; something like that. Apparently I’m stuck in my ways. No surprise there then, but when I researched a bit into modern child names I was surprised at how out of date some of the names I give my younger characters are.  I’d never call a character N’Quisha for example. Then again, I can’t understand why a parent would call their daughter N’Quisha.

I think I’d be happy with the Danish system. It makes name selection so much easier. All parents have to pick a name for their newborn from a list of 7,000 pre-approved ones. If their choice isn’t on the list, then they have to make a special application to several official Ministries to use the name – and most non-standard names are rejected. N’Quisha? Sorry; not on the list. You’ll have to settle for Olaf.

Maybe I should set my next story in Denmark? I’ve got this idea for one about a Prince who goes a bit mad trying to avenge his father’s murder. I’d like to write that something rotten.


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Artistic infanticide

The other evening I saw a guy in a city-centre pub. He’d been to a football match earlier in the day and by the time I saw him he was incredibly well lubricated. It’s just what every busy pub needs, a big ugly drunk guy. And before you say it, no: I wasn’t looking in a mirror. He was much bigger, uglier and drunker than me, and he was swearing very profusely if not very creatively. After a while the barman wandered over and asked if he’d mind toning it down a little as he was upsetting the other customers. Here’s his response, word for word. Actually it’s a shortened version as I cut out most of the swearing.

‘They can [go away]. My kids swear like this to me so I can swear as much as I like.’

And then it all kicked off. Glasses, beer and punches flew and pretty soon he was dragged outside. But the barman didn’t really achieve his aim as the swearing got much louder (though it couldn’t get any more colourful) as he was being taken away. I wasn’t involved of course. Like all good writers (and most bad ones) I was quietly observing in a safe corner. And making sure my beer didn’t get spilled.

What impressed me most about the whole debacle was the reasoning that allowed him – so he thought – to be so belligerent. Now I realise that he was completely wrecked so his mental capabilities weren’t in top form but I can’t get the logic in that one at all. ‘My kids swear like this to me so I can swear as much as I like’.  It did however make me decide that I wouldn’t want to meet his children.

I’m sure that he, along with every other parent in the world, has at some point said, ‘I’m going to kill that child’. For him the sentence would have been much longer due to the addition of several expletives not usually found in a family blog like this one. Most other people would have been talking figuratively; they wouldn’t for a moment dream of hurting their little darlings.

Me? This week I took it literally. And maybe even a little poetically.

All artists (and I’m sorry if I sound pretentious but let’s for the sake of argument rank my writing alongside Tracey Emin’s tent, OK?) think of their work as a piece of themselves, little chunks of their soul to be broken off and pushed out into a generally apathetic world. They think of them, if you will, as their children.

With that in mind, I’ve had to kill one of my own babies.

For a few months now I’ve been working on ‘The Tipping Point’, a short story that I was hoping to include in my upcoming ‘Tiny Treats’ collection. It’s about a woman who takes her children to the park, and while riding the see-saw with them comes to certain realisations about her life. While on the see-saw she reaches an emotional tipping point – see what I did there?

Hmmm, exactly. ‘Tipping Point’ wasn’t working for me at all. No matter how I tried I couldn’t turn it into a story that I’d actually want to read and if I don’t want to read it, I can be damned sure that you won’t. And to make things worse, while I was hurling insults at it I also realised it was quite similar to another story that I’ve got earmarked for the same collection. So I took a difficult decision.

I killed ‘Tipping Point’.

OK, it’s not like I tore the tale  to shreds (although that’s precisely what I did with the printed copy I was working on at the time) and I know that it was only a story, but I’ve been astounded at the effect it’s had on me. ‘Tipping Point’ is short, not well formed and certainly not beautiful in any way yet I don’t want to let go of it. I’ve loved it and nurtured it yet it still won’t grow. I know that there’s a good story in there, but I just can’t dig it out yet.

I think I need a fellow artist to say that they do the same. Anyone?

© Shaun Finnie 2012