Bring on the Dancing Horses

This might not mean anything to non-British readers but apparently a dog won a talent show this week.

It picked up its prize on a Simon Cowell TV show. I’ve never seen any of his product, but I did see a picture of this cute dog (and its cute owner) in my newspaper. They are now officially ‘celebrities’.

They will now be photographed falling out of nightclubs at three in the morning, have their love lives dissected and reported in graphic detail in the press and no doubt will be odds-on favourites to have the Christmas number one single. And in a year’s time they’ll be in rehab to break their prescription Bonio addiction and that will be the last that we’ll hear of them.

I’m not a fan of competition TV. The entire point of these shows is negativity: each week the crowd roars its approval as someone is told that they’re not good enough (“you’re fired” as they say on another show I’ve never seen). The hard-nosed business of ‘show’ is by its very nature a cruel one, that’s true, but these cheap programs add nothing to the world’s cultural landscape. There’s no aim to produce artists with long shelf-lives. Most of the British and American Factor/Got Talent performers signed by Cowell to his record label have been released within two years.

I understand the argument that these shows are really no different from the ‘New Faces’ or ‘Opportunity Knocks’ of my youth, but I can’t really remember Middle of the Road, Fivepenny Piece or Millican and Nesbitt dominating the charts and newspapers of the day in the same way as today’s contestants do. And these were only once-a-week shows. Cowell’s televisual behemoths and their like (Big Brother, Get me out of the Jungle etc.) clog up weeks of prime-time schedules like a major sporting world championship but three times a year.

And while ever these shows are taking up hours of TV there’s less airtime and budget available for quality drama. Which means that there are fewer openings for scriptwriters and actors than there were in the pre-reality TV days. It makes sound financial sense I guess. You can’t really do an arena tour of ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’.

But I’m guessing by the popularity of elimination shows that I must be in a very small minority. The reason that they’re shown so often is that they’re popular. It’s what the masses want, guv.

I’ll get my coat. There’s probably an unsold script in the pocket.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

‘I can’t do Tuesday, we have to go and see Tyler’s teacher that night. How about Thursday?'

‘Ooh no, that’s my Zumba class. It’ll have to be a week on Monday then.'

Riveting stuff, isn’t it? Not exactly the kind of conversation that you want to eavesdrop on at any time, but especially not when yelled down the street at two in the morning. My neighbour Kayleigh and her friend Laura have never been known for their respect to others though. I really wanted to lean out of the window and scream, ‘If you don’t shut the hell up you’ll not see daylight, let alone next Monday!’ (or perhaps even something witty) but my duvet and my Beloved were very comfortable so I snuggled up with both and tried to get back to sleep.

I’ve lived near a pub for almost twenty-five years now and it’s mostly been fine. When I say close I mean really close; just thirty-four steps from my back door to the bar, though it’s occasionally taken many more steps to get back home. In all that time we’ve never really had much to complain about, not even on traditional nights of revelry like New Years, people have generally been pretty quiet when leaving in the early hours. But not last night when these two young ladies decided that a hundred metres was the optimum distance to have a conversation.

By the time they’d eventually said their ‘goodnight’s the damage had been done. My body wasn’t quite awake but my mind was, and it was racing with ideas that screamed to be preserved. Much as I wanted to just burrow my way further into the duvet and fall back to sleep I knew that I couldn’t. I’d been here before and was well aware that if I didn’t immediately write down these gifts from my nocturnal muse then they’d fade aware to nothing like dreams in the morning light. I couldn’t afford for that to happen. One of these ideas could be The One, the spark of inspiration that could propel me to literary stardom, or at least brings in a three-figure cheque.

So that’s how I found myself in the wee small hours of the morning sitting on the loo with a notebook and pen in my hand. Initially it wasn’t just ideas that were flowing (I’ve learned at my age never to pass up a bathroom opportunity) but eventually I found I’d filled twelve sheets. A big chunk of notebook.  It was quite possibly the best use of paper that my bathroom has ever seen.

Now I just have to begin the mammoth task of typing it up and making sense of it all. Writing, like all acts of creativity, is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. I’m not sure that Thomas Edison was thinking of my and my bathroom when he came up with that idea but it still holds true. I have the ideas, now it’s time to put the hard work into making them into something that others would find interesting.

But first I think I deserve a little nap.

Time Flies

All writers want to write. If you want to plumb or arch instead, then you’re in the wrong job. Invest your time in plumbing or archery. It’s not a vague fancy, a passing whim, it’s a vocation. It’s a basic need as important as air, food and access to a reliable broadband service. The mythical ‘they’ claim that everyone has a book inside of them, but many people don’t understand this basic truth of the writer’s yearning. That’s why many books are unreadable tosh. Or even worse, D*n Br*wn.

If you don’t want to write every day, you’re not a writer. My advice would be to find something else that eats away at your insides instead like being a defence lawyer or gargling with acid, because this is how it is when the stories need to be released . Writers have stories that burn inside them, little bundles of information that yearn to claw their way out and be seen by the world.

Sounds easy, right? Have the desire, put in the time, reap the rewards. The problem is that unless the writer is hugely successful they simply won’t have too much time to devote to the craft of writing. Life will get in the way. The kids will still need bathing and the bills will still need paying. For most that means a day job. Giving away those eight hours or so out of every twenty-four to an employer means that the writing gets shunted to the dark ends of the day when the mind is at its edgiest. Some would say that’s a good thing but even so it would be nice to have a choice.

Even for those writers who are fortunate (and fortune plays a huge part in it) to be able to make the break and write full time, they still won’t be able to commit all their working hours to their chosen creative art. There’s the small matter of promoting their work to be done. It’s no use writing the world’s most florid prose if nobody gets to read it, so for those at the bottom of the success ladder that can mean hours spent online telling the world about their work, formatting their self-published books, designing covers, chasing payment from third parties, keeping track of accounts… unless the author is scrupulous in their timekeeping these hours can soon build up until they take more time than the writing itself.

So, what do you do for a living? A full-time writer, you say?

There’s no such thing.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

One Wedding and a Funeral

A few days ago I went to a wedding. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome and their mothers were teary. All was as should be and a great time was had by all. It was also the first wedding I’ve been to with a Jewish element (‘mazel tov!’). This made the arrival of a huge plate of bacon sandwiches a surprise but very tasty addition to the proceedings.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

Then two days later we had a family funeral. As you can imagine it was a much more sombre affair and they didn’t have bacon sandwiches in the service. But the place was full of people mentally reviewing their personal histories with the deceased and with the other attendees, some of whom they hadn’t seen since the last family funeral. The crematorium was in a very peaceful rural location with a magnificent view over rolling fields and a lovely walled duck pond. As the preacher preached my eyes strayed to this pond and in particular to a lovely white duck looking over the wall to the water where all his ducky mates were splashing happily around. He looked, bobbed up and down a bit and leaped, just as the preacher asked us to bow our heads in prayer.

Unfortunately his tasty little ducky legs failed him. Or maybe it was his tasty little ducky wings. Or his inability to do the distance / mass / energy required calculations in his little ducky head. Anyhow he missed, slipped off the wall and landed on his fat ducky parson’s nose in a flurry of feathers and indignant quacking.

And so it was that among the solemnity of this terribly sad event there was a little laughter. From me and the Beloved at least.

There has to be a story there somewhere.

These kind of major events with lots of people interacting are goldmines to any writer worth their salt (note to self: stop thinking of bacon). But it’s not just big gatherings like this that should trigger the writer’s imagination. Just keeping our eyes open to everyday events should inspire us too. A brief hug between friends in a coffee shop. A group of children on their first unsupervised trip to the cinema. An old lady struggling to get on the bus with her shopping.

Stories are everywhere. We just have to be open to them.


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Weigh-Hey

I’ve never felt gruntled. I’ve felt disgruntled many times but I can’t ever remember gruntling even once.

I don’t believed I’ve ever ruthed anyone either. I’m sure that I’ve been ruthless a few times though.

And, while I’ve had many mishaps in my life (and occasionally been hapless too for that matter), I’m not sure that I’ve had too many haps.

My point is that here are some things in life that you can only do one way. Gruntling, ruthing and happing are some of them. And so is losing weight. Despite what you might read in glossy magazines there’s no short cut to weight loss. Forget all the fad diets and pills promoted by celebrities. The only thing you’ll lose by following them is your cash.

It’s a simple logical formula: if the amount of energy you stick in your mouth is less than the amount of energy you use, then you’ll lose weight. And I was recently shocked into the realisation that I really need to lose some weight when I’m worked out that I was around twice the size of my Beloved. And no, the idea of fattening her up to redress the balance isn’t a good one.

So I’m cutting down on my beer intake and upping my hill walking. I’m replacing crisps and chocolate with fruits and nuts. And I’ve done something that I’ve thought about doing for the last thirty years but could never bring myself to do. It’s something that many teenagers go through a phase of doing but I never did. I thought about it lots but never got the chance to put those dreams into practice. Well I guess I’ve finally made it to my teens, as I’ve bought some weights.

I read that doing squats while holding weights at chest height is a good way of burning the fat so I gave that a go. Three sets of ten squats, go! I held a dumbbell against my sternum and dropped to my haunches. I immediately heard a series of cracks like gunshots as my knees complained but that was OK. There was no pain so it must be alright. And even if it’s not, I’m ignoring it as that’s The-Manly-Thing-to-Do.

Slowly I pushed myself back up and, much to my surprise, made it all the way to five foot nine again. That was good, no bad results. Down again and up again. With The Archers playing in the background this really wasn’t too bad. I was actually enjoying myself.

After the first set of ten squats though I began to reassess the situation. By the time Leonie told Lynda and Robert Snell her shocking news (I didn’t see that coming, Archers addicts!) I was starting to feel the burn. It was in my thighs, just above the knee. It felt like someone had used a lighted match as an acupuncture needle. But I sucked it up and pushed through it to the end of the reps. And do you know what? My knees didn’t smoulder, ignite or spontaneously combust. I must be made of sterner stuff than I’d thought.

Like many people I started the year with a resolution to lose some weight, but unlike some I kept pretty quiet about it. It was my little secret. Well, one of them, but you don’t need to know about the others. I don’t want lawsuits.

But now it’s time to come clean. I’ve lost eleven pounds since January. Let’s see how low I can go.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Your Name's Not Down...

When I was a youngster my parents read me a story. It was supposed to be about three little pigs but to me it was always The Story of the Persistent Wolf. He went through the same routine every night…

‘Little pig, little pig, let me come in.’
‘No, no, not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.’

I loved the idea that, even though he kept getting knocked back, the wolf kept on giving it his best shot. To me, that persistence made him the real hero of the story.

When I got a little older and had hair on my own chinny-chin-chin I kept trying to get into nightclubs. And I kept getting the same reaction each time from the gangsters dressed in dinner suits who manned the door.

‘Your name’s not down, your not coming in.’

I’m even older now and my chinny-chin-chin hair is mostly grey with a highly unattractive ginger patch near the middle, but there  are some things that never change.

‘Access denied. Please re-enter password’

But I only want to check my bank details.

‘Access denied. Please re-enter password’

But it’s the right password. It’s the one I use for everything.

 ‘Access denied. Please re-enter password’

I daren’t. That’s three goes; any more wrong efforts and it’ll bar me forever, meaning that I’ll have to go to my nearest branch (ten miles away) and stand in a line with people that I don’t know (and like even less) just to do the most menial of tasks. Like get hold of my own money.

What really galls me about this kind of thing is that it’s not really asking for my password. My password is a lovely word, one that is really easy for me to remember because it means something to me personally. I’ll never ever forget that word. That’s why I chose it.

What it’s really asking is ‘Please enter the password that you thought up on the spur of the moment when I said your normal password didn’t meet my security standards; the password that must include some capitals, some numbers and some of those squiggly things that you only find in Wingdings font’. It’s not a password that I want, nor is it one that I’ll remember. And seeing as the bank advise me never to write it down, it’s one that will fade away like tears in rain within seconds of me first using it.

So once again it’s time for me to dance to their merry tune and jump through their hoops and mix several dodgy metaphors just so that I can get to my own cash.

In the meantime, ‘Beloved, can you cash me a cheque? Yes, again’.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Muscling In

I’m not used to running any more. Until fairly recently I went jogging quite a lot, even completing a 10k road race a couple of years ago. I used the time out on the road as a necessary break from writing, somewhere that I could try to switch my brain off and let the steady rhythm of my feet take over. I was aiming for the ‘healthy mind, healthy body’ perfection model but it soon became apparent that I was never going to be a fully fit fighting machine. And anyway, I have a dirty body…

Life, as they say, got in the way and I simply got out of the habit of getting up early and doing it in the dark before the locals awoke. So this week I decided to dust off my running shoes and hit the streets again. But sadly, the streets hit back. I’d done my warm up stretches and started with a brisk walk before moving up to what I laughably call a run. Others may see it as the world’s fastest nonchalant stroll but it’s the best that I can manage, OK?

I hadn’t been running for very long – half an hour maybe? – before I felt a twinge in my right calf. Within a few steps the twinge turned into an ache, which turned into a nagging pain, which soon felt like I had an angry tiger trying to give birth to the world’s fattest and sharpest tiger kitty quintuplets under the skin in my leg.

I had cramp.

I know, cramp is a bit of a wussie excuse. It’s not like I’d been hit by a beer delivery truck or I’d fallen down a manhole due to daydreaming about hot baths and hotter pasties, but it was painful and debilitating just the same. And anyway, this was more than your average cramp; this was man-cramp. Apparently somebody had inserted a lump of lead just above my right heel. And worse, it didn’t just sit there weighing my leg down as I tried to run. It extruded molten fingers up my calf, higher and deeper into the muscle.

I tried to run it off. I’d heard footballers and other sporty types talk about running it off for as long as I can remember – ‘Ah, he’ll be alright, it’s just cramp, he’ll be able to run it off’ – but in truth I knew no more how to run cramp off than how to steer into a skid without crashing into a wall, or how to smile on the other side of my face without opening up a big gaping wound in the back of my skull.

So I just kept going. I ran and I ran and I ran. That was a total of three steps before I had to stop completely. I put my foot up on a wall and tried to reach my toes so that I could pull on them as I’d seen footballers do. No good. Footballers don’t have my belly restricting their reach.

There was nothing for it but to try some freaky hop/limp combo to get me home. One step forward, stop for a minute to swear, a little hop, a stumble, some more swearing and trying not to look at the drivers laughing at me as they tore past. Repeat until back to the house.

I eventually made it but my time was a personal worst for that particular circuit.

Which leads me to right now, the morning after. I’m back at my desk typing away and my foot’s raised up on my printer to increase the blood flow to the calf muscle, or to stop it getting gangrene or something. Whatever, I’m told that elevation is good for it so it’s up on the printer like Jerry Lee Lewis’s on his piano. Only more tunefully.

I’ve hidden my trainers under the kitchen table, which is the last place I’ll look for them. Anything that puts me off hurting myself further seems like a good thing.

© Shaun Finnie 2012