Isolato

I haven’t been paid this week.

I don’t mean that I haven’t received any cash for my writing, though that’s also true: I have no idea when payments will come for any of that. I mean that this is the first month in over twenty years that I haven’t had a payment from my (now ex-)employer hit my account. The world of regular incomes is rapidly becoming a speck in my life’s rear view mirror. It’s a strange feeling but, apart from having no cash, I love it.

I love being able to choose the work that I do.
I love the freedom to work or not on any given day as I please.
I love the ability to work at 4am (as it is while I’m typing this) and finish at lunchtime, or any other working hours that I wish.
I love being able to just grab any clothes that are to hand and be writing within just a few moments of waking.

I love writing on my own at home, away from the buzz of a busy office but, as everyone always says when they leave a job that they’ve been at for a number of years, I certainly miss the people. I made some good friends in that office. Writing is a solitary profession and if I’m not careful I can go for days – weeks even! – without leaving the house or speaking to anyone apart from my Beloved. She becomes my one sounding board and single inspiration for every idea that I have, good or bad. That’s not a healthy state of affairs for either of us. I have to get out of the house.

One of the things that I was really looking forwards to when I left work was being able to step away from the keyboard at the drop of a hat and go for long walks in the snow. I love winter wonderlands; a deep, crisp, even blanket of white with no tracks apart from mine and the local animals’ and birds’. For example, at around this time last year we followed the early morning tracks of a fox, reading how a little event in his life had unfolded as clearly as if it were written on a page. Here he walked briskly, heavy little steps as he bounced along. Then slower, more precise step upon step. His tail scraped the snow as it brushed the ground until he must have stopped a moment. Then there was a clear gap between paces where he had pounced and a small scuffed area where he had grasped his prey. A mouse perhaps? Whatever it was it had left behind a final tiny dark smudge of blood before the fox’s happy bouncing stride began again, carrying its meal away.

This was the kind of thing that I was looking forwards to this winter. This and long, exhausting walks that give you a perfect excuse for a hot chocolate or maybe even something more medicinal but just as warming when you return home. You’ve deserved it: it’s bitter out there.

So what do we get? Despite the best efforts of the weather forecasters telling us to wrap up well and prepare for several inches? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. A few white fluffy flakes tried to get me excited but never even made it to the ground. I’ve heard tell of other parts of the country where they actually had a little snow and no doubt some readers will tell me that it was up to their windowsills, but here in my wild bit of South Yorkshire we haven’t had a single flake stick to the ground all winter and, quite frankly, I want my money back. When I was young I used to watch a programme called ‘Tomorrow’s World’ which showed inventions that they thought would have real practical uses in the future. According to them we should all be flying in personal jet-packs by now. The non-appearance of snow this winter has the same feeling of broken promise about it.

And now the lambs are starting to appear.

Did I mention how much I love springtime?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Giving My Heart for Valentine's

‘You have lovely skin’ he said as he held my hand. He patted the back of it lightly, as if searching for something. ‘Unfortunately you have lousy veins.'

Things weren’t going well at all. They got worse when the young doctor stabbed me again. And again. Three, four, five,times and still he couldn’t draw any blood. He didn’t seem to recognise the irony as he said ‘you’re going to feel a little prick’ while trying (and failing) to withdraw some of my precious fluids for the sixth time. I didn’t point out that he was referring to the wrong one of us, but did suggest that he might call in an experienced nurse.

I was happy when he agreed but less so when she took one look at his inept work and pointed out that while jabbing in roughly the correct area – my arm – he’d actually managed to slip the needle alongside my vein, not into it. On noting that I was a slightly greener shade of pink than usual she moved him aside and went to work.

Within seconds my claret was flowing like a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie victim’s (NB: younger horror movie fans may wish to substitute Eli Roth for HGL here. Normal people can ignore both references).

The doctor patted my arm and apologised but I think he knew that he’d blown his chance to impress. I looked around for someone else to provide some comfort. Fortunately she was at the other side of my hospital trolley, having travelled with me from home in the ambulance.

In fact she’d been beside me when the chest pains had started, only I hadn’t wanted to mention anything as I didn’t want to spoil her evening. We’d had a lovely Valentine’s Day together and, for her at least, it was about to get better. Emmerdale was due to start on TV.

I don’t like to cause a fuss so I kept quiet as some people onscreen argued noisily in a pub, even though the ache in my chest was getting worse. I stoically bore both pain and program when someone was complaining about how they were being blackmailed even though I could feel pins and needles spreading down my left arm. I really didn’t want to spoil her evening but was grateful that my increasing light-headedness and racing pulse coincided with the end titles.

'I don’t want to worry you’ I ventured, ‘but I don’t feel too good.’ For the first time in half an hour her eyes moved from the screen to my face. I don’t know what she saw there but she immediately took control.

All credit to our fantastic ambulance service. Within ten minutes they were attaching cables to my hairy parts and loading me into one of their finest vehicles. And it was shortly after this that I was introduced to the world’s worst medical vampire.

It’s amazing what goes through your mind in moments like this. Of course I thought of my loved ones, and the fears that I may not get to do the things I want with them but the other thing that kept going through my head as I lay in Barnsley General Hospital with wires and needles attached to me.

'I wonder if the Beloved remembers we have an insurance policy that pays out massively if I’m confirmed as having had a heart attack?'

We’ll never know, as it turned out that I had no cardiac problems at all. Pills were dispensed, graphs were read, blood was (eventually) tested and in the end they decided that Vinnie Jones didn’t need to practice his ‘Staying Alive’ dance on me. My heart was (and hopefully still is), in the words of the doctor, ‘in terrific condition’, which was nice to hear.

I finally managed to escape A&E in the early hours, when the local drunks had turned out in force. My favourite was the elderly ‘lady’ who wasn’t causing any trouble but just wanted us to ‘give me my tinnies and turn out the lights’. Dean Martin never put it so eloquently.

At the start of the evening I was scared. By the end of it I was scarred but basically fit and well, but what had caused my anxious evening? In ‘A Christmas Carol’ Dickens made Ebenezer Scrooge believe that his night-time troubles were caused by ‘an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.'

It appears that mine may have been brought on by a Marks & Spencers fish cake and a dollop of my Beloved’s gorgeous cheesy mash.


© Shaun Finnie 2012

Covers, Parodies and Theft

If I were to pick up my guitar – which I do with increasing rarity these days since I got old enough to watch my dreams of teenage rock stardom crumble to dust – then chances are that it wouldn’t be one of my own compositions that I’d play. I’d badly strum something written by one of the bands who have provided the soundtrack to the best days of my life. The Alarm or Kiss maybe, or perhaps James Taylor (I’m old; get over it). I certainly wouldn’t think ‘Right, my fingers are in position, it’s time for me to create something brand new that nobody’s ever done before’. I’d more likely try (and fail because I have fat sausage fingers) to nail a ridiculously difficult Steve Howe guitar solo.

So how come each time I open my laptop to do some writing that’s precisely what I’m expected to do (the ‘create new work’ thing, not the Steve Howe solo)? There’s an expectation on me as an author that every piece of work I produce must be something original. It’s not even acceptable for me to simply base my new story on someone else’s previously published prose – that’s called plagiarism or even worse, parody.

If I decided to knock off a quick note-for-note Harry Potter cover version say, even one where I wrote really simply because the original version contains some twiddly bits that are beyond my ability, then the heavily anti-piracy Ms Rowling would send her legal team round quicker than I could decide on the correct spelling of ‘Expelliarmus’ (and I’m still not sure if I got it right).

I’d end up with a criminal record and would have to give her all my worldly goods, chattels and intellectual copyrights for the foreseeable future and beyond. Good old Jay Kay. I wish she’d write something new but I guess she’s got all on fronting Jamiroquai at the moment.

But I ask you, isn’t this ‘copying’ exactly what the likes of Susan Boyle have based their entire careers on? She’s wildly popular but doesn’t create anything new, she ‘just’ presents her own interpretation of somebody else’s work. She gets applauded (and paid handsomely) and the original writer of the piece gets a chunk of cash for her doing it too; a small portion of each sale. Everyone wins. Surely the same could be done in other artistic fields?

So let’s give this a go. I’ll get some copies of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ printed up with my name on the cover instead of D** Br**n’s. I’ll even use a different font (Comic sans serif might be appropriate), correct some of his more ridiculous factual errors and lighten the clichéd, bombastic prose style to make it a wee bit different. Then I’ll release it as a cheap download via some app store, making a name for myself and a few quid in the process.

Surely he won’t mind?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Taxman

I made an important phone call this week. I phoned my tax office. I know, talking with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs office is something that’s usually as pleasant as having root canal work done or watching reruns of X-Factor, but this time it was a call that I was pleased to make.

'Hello. My name is Shaun Finnie and I’m an author.’ That introduction was part pride, part guilty admittance and wholly necessary. But it was my next sentence that was really scary. ‘I’d like to register as being self employed please.’ There we go, It’s official. I now make my living primarily as a writer and I pay my taxes as such.  So in buying some of my work you’ll ultimately help some poor but talented child attain his dream of a university degree, or maybe ease the pain of a kindly old lady in a hospital bed in Nuneaton. Or contribute to decimating a sandy bit of Asia that you can’t find on a map. Sadly you don’t get to choose.
But – working under the foolish assumption that my work has some artistic merit – how can they tax ‘art’? How can they put a price on the joy, revulsion or any other emotional reaction that a good artwork might evoke?

If it’s on the price that the artist sells it for then Van Gough’s work is worthless, as he was only paid for one piece during his entire life. I’ve managed more than that: does that make me a ‘better’ artist than dear old deaf ‘n’ dead Vinny?

Or maybe it’s on the perceived amount of pleasure that the artist’s body of work brings to the masses? If that’s the case then the collected music of Sir Paul McCartney would result in him being taxed at about 90% of his earnings I’d guess, whereas a more controversial figure such as Tracey Emin might see her income tax rate drop to a negligibly low figure, 4% or so.

As for my writing? Well if it’s on the amount of happiness that I give to a buying public then I suspect that I’d be in line for a tax rebate. But just think: when the country’s collective chest swells with national pride at the start of the London Olympics I’ll be able to humbly claim that the tax pennies obtained from my writing has contributed towards their success in some tiny way. Probably a bolt underneath plastic seat number 148F.

So how come I still couldn’t get any tickets?

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Defensive Flying

I don’t have wings, yet I spent much of yesterday flying. The human body isn’t designed to spend hours on end in the air, certainly not cooped up in economy class and most definitely not as the financial plaything of an Irish horse fancier.

I just put in a nine hour shift in the cramped hell of cattle class. By British law a sheep heading to the slaughterhouse is required to have more personal space than I was given on the Airbus. Probably. Whether that urban myth is correct or not, it’s certainly true that an aircraft passenger today has much less space than say, thirty years ago.

I get really defensive of my allocated space on a plane, spreading myself out to its very limits on both available armrests and slumping down in my seat so that I can wedge my knees hard into the back of the one in front. Woe betide the person in front of me if they try to recline their seat. We’ve all paid for the same amount of space, I’ll be damned if I’m letting them steal a few of my ridiculously expensive inches. There’s no way I’m going to fly from one continent to another with someone’s headrest in my face.

Another fun way of passing the time is to draw up a virtual hit list of those passengers that you would gleefully use as floatation devices should the plane go down in water unexpectedly. These are the people that I’d willingly volunteer to be the first overboard should we suddenly need to lose weight to stay aloft. They’re the people who slam their seats back as far as they can go the second that the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign goes out, or those who let their children run riot up and down the aisles in an attempt to tire the little loves out so that they’ll sleep later. But how about those of us who are trying to sleep right now? Does our rest not count for something? They wouldn’t allow their precious cherub to run up and down a hotel corridor at three a.m. would they?

Plane drunks who take serious advantage of the free drinks still found on many long haul flights: I’d willingly eject them at 30,000 feet too, along with chair leaners. They’re the ones who are oblivious to the fact that their resting on a seat back while they chat to their mates causes that chair to pitch back suddenly resulting in instant nausea at best, or occasionally even a Leonard Rossiter / Joan Collins-style spillage (ask your granny).

Of course all of these people are also drawing up their own hit list, top of which is probably the fat bloke spreading out to make sure that nobody invades ‘his’ space… 

© Shaun Finnie 2012

It's Competition Time!

Short story writers love a good competition. Or a bad one. Or any that we feel that we have a chance of winning to be honest.

It’s not the prospect of prize money that gets our creative juices flowing. Indeed, many of the prizes on offer are hardly worth winning. Twenty-five pounds for first prize? I mean, it’s always nice to have a little cash in your pocket but that’s not why we enter. No, the real benefit of winning a short story competition is the kudos that it brings with it.

It vastly improves a writer’s credibility when offering work to editors to be able to type something like, ‘…submitted by Shaun Finnie, winner of the prestigious Bridport Prize for short stories 2012’. That sounds a lot better than ‘…submitted by Shaun Finnie, some bloke who’s desperate for a break as he needs to pay his gas bill’.

The downside of competitions as that they usually demand an entry fee. It’s not normally much, just a few pounds or dollars in most cases, but if you enter a lot of contests every year then there’s no way you’ll ever win your cash back in prize money alone. Or use the prize money to pay your gas bill.

So perhaps there’s another way to use writing competitions to my advantage? Maybe I should look into setting up my own? It wouldn’t get me the acclaim that winning a prize does and I’m sure I’d have to read a lot of dross to find the golden nuggets but it would sure make my bank manager happier. And I’d get to play God with other fledgling (and established) writers’ careers! I’d be able to (hopefully) pick a handful of very good pieces to praise, but the rest I could treat the same way that editors and competition judges have treated me in the past. Ah, I can feel the power rushing to my head already. ‘You haven’t won: you’re fired!’  I could get a white cat to stroke thoughtfully while I read the entries as well.

Suddenly the idea of this is much more appealing. It would be like being paid to be a literary critic. How long have I wanted to pen something like, ‘Dan Brown, you’re books are badly written reworkings of other ideas, designed solely for the crass manipulation of people’s deeply held beliefs. I accuse you of being nothing more than a ruthless hack. That’ll be fifty pounds please.'

Now getting cash to write things like that really would be worth the effort.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

I.T.'s Just Another Job

I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt this week. It read, ‘Just because I work in I.T. doesn't mean that I want to fix your laptop’. I like that a lot, as for over twenty years I did indeed work in the Information Technology world. No matter that I was at various times a bookkeeper, probate officer, programmer and tax inspector, nor that I wasn’t allowed to do any unplugging or moving of the hardware that I worked with for insurance reasons, I was apparently fair game for some friends. I worked in I.T. therefore it was seemingly all right to suggest that I might ‘just pop round for a bit as there’s something wrong with my computer.’ That ‘something’ could be anything from a paper jam to a completely blown motherboard. They had no idea or inclination to find out. It didn’t matter because their  friend was popping round, and that friend worked in I.T.

'Working in I.T.’ is shorthand for ‘knowing everything that there is to know about every piece of hardware, software and connecting apparatus that has ever been invented, from the nineteen sixties to present day’.

Many of my old colleagues say the same thing, that at every party we go to we hear the words, ‘Really? I.T.? Oh, well I’ve got this problem. Would you mind..?’  It must be the same for doctors. Everyone has an ailment and it’s so tempting to take advantage of the trapped medic. Or software developer.

So, fellow geeks, here’s a suggestion. How about if every time we’re called upon to fix a P.C. problem we reply with the following?

‘Sure I’ll have a stab at it, on one condition. How’s this sound? I know that you're not a professional chef but I’ve heard you say that you make meals at home. So let me ask you a favour in return. Would you come round to my house at a time of my insistence and cook for me please? I don't know what meal I want you to create, or how long I'll expect you to be there, but I'll know whether what you’ve prepared for me tastes nice or not. If it isn’t we’ll bin it and you can start again. I’ll let you go home when you’ve made something that I enjoy, OK?

It may not make you many new friends, but it might lose you a fair few unwanted acquaintances.

© Shaun Finnie 2012