Mostly Autumn

Just like Jeff Wayne’s nameless departed lover, I get a real buzz from kicking my way through autumn’s golden gown. I most definitely love this time of year. There is no way that any fallen leaves in my path would ever go undisturbed.

The sudden sharp downturn in the temperature, the early dusks, the primal thrills of Halloween and bonfires – this is by far my favourite season. But apart from clogging up gutters and drains with its wet and rotting leaves, what’s the point of autumn really? When you look closely the other seasons have a definite place in nature. Autumn? Well it just sort of fills the windy gap between the heady delights of summer and the semi-hibernation of winter doesn’t it?

I mean, spring is really useful, I get the point of it. It’s the season of new birth. I can pretty much guarantee that if you were asked to think of an image to sum up spring then you’d conjure up a picture of new lambs happily bouncing about in a hilly green field. They’d almost certainly be gambolling. Has any other creature ever gambolled? It’s like the two words – ‘gambolling’ and ‘lamb’ – are joined at the hip, like ‘lying’ and ‘politician’.

The winter season is a time of cleansing, of killing off the weak and old to make way for all that new growth in springtime. That’s perhaps not such a good thing in nursing homes but really useful in our fields and woodlands. When the trees are stripped bare of their leaves they let the light in to the forest floor where all the nasty creepy creatures that we don’t like to think about can do the kind of work that we want to picture even less – most of it involving chomping on something that’s decaying. It might not be pretty but don’t knock it. We all have to earn a living somehow.

Summer is a celebration, a time for growth and fattening up of all things before the harvest to come at its end. Assuming that summer hasn’t been rained off (and that’s a big assumption) then crops grow tall, people north of Watford try to work out just what the heck to do with Pimms and I try my best to dodge salads for the two weeks or so that we see the sun in England. Summer’s fine, I understand summer.

But autumn? I can’t see where autumn fits into this cycle so neatly. Spring is birth, summer is growth, winter is death. It’s all nice and neat.

I have a theory though. Perhaps autumn’s just there for me to go out and enjoy? Maybe it’s sole purpose is to let us have fun in nature’s playground when it’s not too hot, not too cold and not too crowded. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.

Thanks, autumn.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

All In The Family

We made a big breakthrough this week while researching our family trees. We discovered that my Beloved (whose family have never moved far from a little village near to where I live now) and one of my closest friends (whose ancestors also lived in the same village for centuries) are related. Very distantly related, it’s true, but related all the same. It turns out that he’s the great-grand-nephew of the husband of my Beloved’s great-grand-aunt. On their fathers’ sides. I’m not sure if this knowledge is going to bring them closer but I think it might mean that they’re ineligible to marry.

Why do so many of us feel the need to trace our family trees? Genealogy is the second most popular topic searched for on the web (I think that you can guess what the first is). A recent study found that 84 million of us worldwide are actively searching for our ancestors. Those who want to get serious about it can spend hundreds of hours, pounds and miles tracking down that elusive great-great-great-aunt, about whom the only bit of information they know is that she was the sister of a boy named Valentine and she died in infancy sometime around 1749. Give or take a decade.

And on the other hand why do some of us not care at all? The past is the past, they say, and a family tree is just a list of names and dates, dull and boring like some kind of trainspotting with gravestones? Some people also don’t have the blokey-collector attitude required to spend hours tracking down the missing item, although the highest demographic of family historians are ladies in their late-middle age. Maybe it’s a generational thing too? Certainly more of us start taking an interest in researching our bloodline as we get older.

Not everybody wants to share their family information either. Many people have asked, ‘Tell me about your grandparents and aunties, Granny’, only to be met with pursed lips and a reply of ‘Oh you don’t want to hear about that old stuff. Now come and cut my toenails for me, there’s a good lad’.

My Mum once told me that I shouldn't ask questions about the family’s history if I wasn't prepared for the answers. I haven’t found any particularly juicy stories yet but you only have to watch a couple of episodes of ‘Who Do You Think you Are?’ to know that most family’s cupboards hold a couple of unexpected skeletons. It’s the historical equivalent of ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

Anyhow, so my Beloved is related to my mate. Me? As far as I know I’m not related to the actor Albert or the football legend Tom, even if they had ever learned to spell their surname correctly. But I suspect that I may have famous blood in my veins, even if it’s severely diluted by generations and beer. Some people dream of being related to a pop star or a supermodel perhaps? I’m aiming for one of the angriest, grudge-holding geniuses that this fair land has ever produced.

My mother’s family hail from a tiny village in Lincolnshire. Even now it’s not much more than two streets, a general store and a couple of derelict buildings where the pub and the post office used to be. In the seventeenth century – when just  about every second servant in the area bore my family name and the squire’s offspring – it was even smaller, the only building of any note being the manor house where little Isaac Newton was born. Now in those days people didn't have Sky Movies or X-Box to pass the winter evenings. They had to make their own fun. I reckon that I’m just one broomstick-jump away from grafting my tree to that of the country’s most famous fruit-header. How d’you like them apples?

It’s nice to see where we come from but ultimately I guess that those of us who research our family’s history don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for our kids, our grand-kids, our nieces and nephews born and yet to be. We do it so that they will know, long after we’re gone, that we were here and we cared. And so did those who had gone before us.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Dream a Little Dream

 “I’d love to be rich.”

“I wish I were famous.”

“I have this dream of being a star.”

How many times do we hear people say things like that? How they want to be world renowned for something, whether it’s as a musician, a sports person, a writer or just ‘a celebrity’.

It’s good to have aspirations and (putting the selfish nature of these particular ones aside for a moment) we should all aim to be the best person that we can. Ambition is good, but there’s just one thing wrong with these statements.

Wishing, dreaming and hoping won’t make things happen.

There is not a single successful person in the world whose wishes dreams and hopes came true simply by sitting on the sofa and wishing, dreaming or hoping. Every single one of them got up off their collective behinds and lived their dreams.

Several times recently I’ve heard people say that lack of money or opportunities is stopping them reaching their goals. Do they really think that Jessica Ennis, 50 Cent, Richard Branson or Helen Mirren (replace with your own idol as you see fit) had fame and fortune handed to them on a plate? Or did they put in years of hard work, unseen and unrecognised, before becoming an overnight success?

If you want to be the best at your chosen discipline then follow their lead. Think of the things that will get you the life that you want and start to make them happen. Nobody will do it for you. If there are obstacles in your way, remove them. You can do it. Remember that hero of yours? They did it. Why can’t you?

This is going to sound hard but the truth is that in many cases the person stopping you from being the success that you want to be is you.

“But I need some cash to help me start up!” Then stop watching reruns of Star Trek and go and find a second or third job to earn that start-up cash.

“But I need a talent scout or agent to recognise my ability!” Then get out and show them your work, either physically or by mail. And don’t just target one or two potential customers either but tens, hundreds, thousands of them if that’s what it takes to get your talent noticed.

“But I don’t know how to….” Then teach yourself. That’s part of the job.

“Stop being so hard on me!” Sorry. No. If you’re going to put your work out in a public arena you’re going to hear much worse criticism than this. You and your work will be savaged. That’s how it is. Live with it or quit.

It isn’t easy. Nothing worthwhile is. That’s why there is only one Number One in any given field.

Dreamers dream. Workers win the prize. Most of us get the success we deserve.

 

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Self Service

In the olden days things were simple. A writer wrote something that they though other people might be interested in reading and they sent it off to as many agents and publishers as they could thing of (or find listed in The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook). Then they sat back, bit their nails and waited for the rejection letters to pour in, which they inevitably did.

If they were very, very lucky someone would print their book and promote it, they would get a small advance and manage to pay their food and lodgings just long enough to see them through the writing of their next manuscript. And the cycle would start again.

These days things are different.

The best thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.
The worst thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.

It’s an oft-used cliché but it’s true. Everyone who feels that they have a book inside them can now log on to one of the many online publishers and make an e-book available for sale within minutes. With just a little more effort they can produce a proper paperback, or even a hardback – which puts them on a par with that Dickens fellow, doesn’t it?

Many would argue that self-publishing is basically worthless, that no author of any value would have to resort to self-publishing as the quality of their work will shine through the dross in the slush pile at a publishing house.

I’m not so sure. There’s some truth in that but surely luck and timing play their part? And won’t some writers always prefer to have full artistic control of their work? Self-publishing is certainly a way to keep that, but the price is that you then have to do all the promotion and publicity yourself as well.

And of course self-publishing is nothing new. It’s been going on since the Catholic Church got their buddy Johannes Gutenberg to knock up some bibles for them, a small vanity press project that brought printed material to (the) masses.

Way back when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth I self-published my own magazine called ‘Cult Movies’. I was fourteen and didn’t know that there was any other way. I wrote it, printed it – after negotiating a bulk business rate on the photocopier at my local Post Office – and made it available to the masses via the small ads in the back of the NME and other youth-culture magazines of the day.

I learned about sales and what to do when you don’t have any. I learned how to meet deadlines and I learned how to self-promote. Truthfully I wasn’t much good at any of these things – ‘Cult Movies’ folded after just five issues – but the theory was sound.

I now have five self-published titles available and copies of them sell every single day. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is, that people who I don’t know are spending their hard-earned cash on something that I’ve created.

Now, if only it was as financially gratifying as the work of a guy called John Locke. He’s sold over a million copies of his self-published books.

Good luck to him. I think I need him to teach me the art of self-promotion.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Categorically Speaking

I’m fat. I’m grey haired. I’m in my forties. I’m English. I’m a Sheffield United fan.

Does any of the above make you automatically like me any less? (I’ll excuse you if it’s the Sheffield United part. Some things can’t be helped) I hope not. In these so-called enlightened days I’d hope that most of us would be able to see past the superficial and make our own judgements (unless we’ve brainwashed by some ‘religion’ into thinking that all people who think differently to us are evil – I still can’t get my head round that one).

Still with me? Good. So you can think for yourself. And you read stuff. I know you do, you’ve made it this far.

But what kind of books do you read? What sections of a bookshop do you automatically walk towards? What if a book has a pink cover bearing a cartoon of a young woman walking a poodle. Or a rocket ship blasting off into space. Or a couple making use of some bondage gear. Would you even take it from the shelf or would you just dismiss it automatically because you already know that kind of thing isn’t for you?

Book covers are designed to tempt us into thinking ‘I’ve read and enjoyed something that looked similar before, therefore I will probably like this book too’. But it’s all too easy to fall into their idle trap and become complacent. We see certain types of books as being aimed specifically at a particular demographic and sometimes find it difficult to think outside of this box. But why should that be? We’re smart folks aren’t we? We can think for ourselves? Why can’t we enjoy writing that ‘they’ won’t aim at us?

And isn’t automatically dismissing a particular genre of book (and even, by extension, giving books any genre label) a form of discrimination? Enlightened people don’t do discrimination. Suggest that war stories or sci-fi are just for men and love stories are solely the domain for women and you really should be slapped with a sexist label quicker than you can say ‘Caitlin Moran’.

So why do many of us pull our noses up and say ‘Fantasy books? Urgh, no. I can’t be doing with trolls and such’ or ‘crime fiction? It’s all clichés isn’t it?’ even though we’ve never actually read any of the objects of our derision? Apparently we just know we won’t like it so we don’t even try.

I thought I’d left all that behind in my teenage years – ‘I can’t listen to that stuff, it’s Mod music. Look – there’s a kid wearing a parka on the cover, so I definitely won’t like it’. I never understood that kind of argument any more than the one that that haughtily says ‘of course, the finest science fiction is allegorical in nature’. Huh? That’s as idiotic as saying that the erotica works at its best when it has something to say about the socio-economic condition of Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Where’s the difference between an ignorant person saying ‘I don’t like westerns’ and ‘I don’t like ginger haired people’?

Book readers are supposedly intelligent people so act like one. Don’t take pride in your total rejection of a particular style of writing. That’s prejudice, pure and simple. Have an open mind. Expand your horizons. Read a different kind of book or better still, get out of the mind-set of pigeonholing literature and just think of all books as just, well, books. There are so many authors whose work deserves at least a look.

Graham Green and Günter  Grass. Jasper Fforde or Katie Fforde. HP Lovecraft and MC Beaton. Even the wildly differing political views of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. They’re all classics if you’re prepared to step outside your normal reading habits and give them a go. That’s why reading groups are such a great idea. They force their members out of their comfort zones. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires horribly. But at least it exposes the reader to something new, and that’s always a good thing.

It’s International Book week. Go on. Try something new.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

“mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”

There are some phrases guaranteed to strike fear into the human heart.  “The tax inspector will see you now” is one, as are “should it really be that colour?” and “We need to talk”. And also there’s the one that I’ve been forced to say this week; “It’s no good, I’ll have to go to the dentist”.

Kit Kat Chunky has to be the best chocolate bar in the world. It does exactly what it says on the label – it’s a Kit Kat but it’s chunky. Fantastic. They’re especially tasty straight from the fridge. Unfortunately that makes them a little more like yummy concrete than normal, so my usual “mmmm” of pleasure became “mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”  The chocolaty deliciousness melted away, leaving jagged pain behind as I found the remnants of my broken tooth.

I’ve since had it fixed but the dentist made it quite clear that my days of biting through hard things are over. I’m to be careful what I nibble on for the rest of my life. Chomping through a hard pear (or indeed a cool Kit Kat) is a pleasure that is now in my past.

I’d heard it said of old people many times – “A nightly tot of whiskey is one of his few remaining pleasures” – but this was the first time that I can remember one of my own personal pleasures being placed firmly in my past. I have never before noticed something that I like becoming something from my past. It has happened though, obviously. Things slip in and out of your pleasure zone as age and fashion dictate. For example, I no longer actively seek out the pleasures of sucking my thumb, skateboarding or lusting after Susan Stranks from ‘Magpie’. Well, she is seventy-three now.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you like doing something then do it now. Don’t wait until tomorrow because you never know what tomorrow may bring.

For me, it brings the small change of cutting up my Chunky Kit Kats from now on. I’m nothing if not adaptable.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie 

A Fresh Start

I don’t know about where you live but the children around here went back to school this week. I saw some of the younger ones trooping past my house, clutching tightly to their mums’ hands. Some seemed excited, some a bit nervous; all were on the verge of a new start.

It was a same at the bus stop around the corner with the older kids. Pushing, jostling, fighting, texting, doing what kids in or approaching their teens do. Every one of their young lives had changed in the last few weeks of summer. All were advancing a school year or in many cases moving up to a brand new school. Some were starting formal education for the first time. They all had different histories and different things to look forwards to but the were all the same in one crucial respect: they’d all grown up a little.

On the same day that I saw this our national news showed images of people in Belfast hurling missiles and abuse at police and other people who have different views to their own – mostly religious ones. Then they showed images of people in the Middle East doing pretty much the same thing.

So in the twenty-first century we’re still playing the ‘my god’s better than your god’ game? And the people involved think that they’re showing the world how great their god is by attacking anyone who thinks differently? I’m shaking my head in genuine bewilderment as I type this.

I’m no history student but it seems to me that religious intolerance has been the cause of more wars than any sneaky land grabs or political assassinations. And we all know who to blame, don’t we? It’s ‘the other guy’, the one who looks strange or has customs that seem entirely alien to us. It’s easy to look at a ranting fanatic and think that he’s an idiot who should simply take a chill pill. But isn’t that thought in itself a kind of religious intolerance? And aren’t supposedly-enlightened atheists and agnostics just as guilty of this thought crime? Casting my mind way back to my own schooldays, I was taught that The Crusades supposedly ended around seven hundred years ago. Looking at the state of the world today I’m not so sure.

Those children walking down my street showed signs of growing up. It seems that many alleged grown-ups are yet to follow suit.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie

Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘Make Easy Money from Writing’ and several other books – available from Amazon now.