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

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