Tag Archives: Justin Ruthven-Tyers

Blind helping the blind.

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'Blind' Dog - fraudster

On a walk, if there are no hares to chase, Scooter amuses himself by provoking bulls and then stands behind me for protection when things turn nasty. I’ve saved him from drowning; stopped him from trying to eat an Adder, twice; and carried him in my arms back down from the upper branches of a tree, where he felt certain a squirrel lived …and what thanks do I get? He tip-toes upstairs at 3am, pulls me from my bed to the floor, asleep, then hops up into the warmth of the new vacancy.

A couple of months ago he got me banned from Falmouth, in Cornwall.

Walking with him down the High Street, I was hoping to get him back to our friends’ garden – with whom we were staying – before he could defecate. Linda’s better prepared than I am and always carries a pocketful of plastic bags so that she can poop and scoop. Well – so that she can scoop, - I think even she would draw the line at performing both jobs.

Anyway Scooter suddenly did that little dance with his back legs which lets you know you’ve got less than a second to drag him to a gutter. I must have dragged him pretty fast because I noticed little puffs of smoke coming from the pads of his feet as our wills battled it out.  Whilst he performed I stood there patting my pockets pretending to look for a bag I knew I didn’t have; and on finding that I didn’t have it, feigned confusion and wonder about what I would do next. Suddenly something caught my eye.

In an alleyway leading off the High Street there was one of those newspaper-round canvas bags which paper-boys dump when they can’t be arsed to deliver their papers – but this one (ideally for my purpose) was mounted on a frame and wheels (leading me to conclude that the paper-boy was in his eighties, and probably lying nearby having died of exhaustion). Scooter was smiling and kicking up dust with his hind feet in that curious way that dogs do when they’ve just performed, as if to say: …now deal with that! - when I dragged him to the sack, hooked the wheel end of the frame over his head, and took the other end by it’s handle.

Ping! Instantly he looked like a guide-dog whose training had been sponsored by the Western Morning News.  In this guise I saw the glowering looks of shop owners and customers alike melt to sympathy; and completed the ensemble by slipping a pair of dark glasses over my eyes, and began tapping the pavement, side to side, with a length of dowel I’d just bought. The dowel was the master-stroke. I think I would have been willing to pay double for it had I known what service it would be to me …way beyond any use I could give it as a craftsman. In that manner we floated buoyantly along on the swelling pity of passers-by.

The only downside to the scheme was that I now had to go where Scooter wanted to go: First he visited a pillar supporting an awning outside WH Smith, then another which he peed on; then he called at each of the remaining three to see if they had been visited by anyone he knew. Some chance, 500 miles from home. After that he spotted another guide-dog – a real one this time – across the road and ran over to it straight into the path of a taxi which screeched to a halt, nearly killing both of us. The taxi driver wanted to say something about it all until he saw my glasses and dowel; then he climbed reluctantly back into his cab, mute with pity.  For more than a minute me and the grey-haired blind woman who owned the other dog – which in spite of its honeyed-looks could fight as savagely as any Pit-Bull – pointed our visages toward the sky, and thrashed our sticks wildly, demanding to know what was going on. During the chaos I stole a glance at Scooter, took aim, and separated he and the other dog by giving him a winding kick to his back side. There was such heartfelt power in that kick, such purpose, that he travelled through the air and a moment later I, still holding the frame, followed him.

Out of that tangle, we weaved back and forth across the street like a pair of drunks trying to remember which pubs had, and which pubs hadn’t banned us; then we fell through a bush and landed in a car park where a delightful-looking young woman came up to me, politely announcing her presence by clearing her throat, got me to my feet and asked if there was anything she could do to help. Her innocent smile, and the twinkling sincerity in her eyes conquered me. I would have given worlds to spend longer in her company and began casting about for something to say:

‘I’m trying to find my car.’ I told her.

‘What colour is it?’

Cars are very dull-looking these days – ten or fifteen years ago they were painted in primary colours with different patterns of polka dots to distinguish them one from another – pretty soon manufacturers realized in their droves that if they painted their cars dull-grey they would stick out like sore thumbs, with the result that these days they are all painted dull-grey …the exception to this rule was a yellow mini I noticed in my periphery vision:

‘It’s a yellow mini.’ I said.  She looked around the car park;

‘Is it that one over there?’ She asked, pointing.

‘What – just in front of the BMW?’

‘Yes.’ she said.

‘That’s the one …would you mind taking my hand and leading me over to it?’

We arrived at it all too quickly; I wasn’t ready to lose her attention:

‘Now then, I’m very keen – eager even – not to put you to any further trouble …but would you happen to have a key for it?’

‘No.’ she said, blinking; ‘I haven’t.’

‘Have you lost it?

‘No,’ she said, ‘you didn’t give it to me.’

‘In that case I must ask you’, said I,  ’…if you have ever broken into a vehicle and hot-wired it?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, would you like to see how it’s done?’

She looked nervous, and backed away a step – but I only asked because I’d noticed that Scooter had somehow managed to get into the vehicle, and was rummaging around under the steering column with some wires in his hand.

It was just then that I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a uniformed officer. He asked me if this was my vehicle; to save confusion I told him it was. He asked me if I was blind; and again, to save a long story I told him I was. Then he arrested me for failing to park in a disabled bay.

You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m out of prison now, and working on the sequel to Phoenix from the Ashes.

Olympians flock to the Hebrides…

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That was my sis, on the phone.  You know, my twin sis – the one whose Birthday I always forget.

Although we are separated by hundreds of thousands of miles we like to stay in touch via the baked-bean cans and piece of string supplied by our service provider. I think it’s important to keep up with family news, and so don’t begrudge the hour or more it takes to hear about all the things that haven’t happened to her; and to tell her about all the things I was hoping would be achieved at this end, but weren’t.

There were a lot of tears, here, when the Olympic torch passed within 104 miles of our island. Tears of joy, I mean. Whether that was because it came so close, or remained so far away, I can’t tell.  I don’t think anyone can.

But it set off a kind of Olympic hysteria that you are probably too reserved to show on the mainland: at one stage hardly a month went by without the word Olympic being used.

The egg and spoon race was hotly contested by residents of the nursing home. There were no winners there.  There were no finishers, actually. A woman from West Kensington asked Matron if they were free-range, but Matron said ‘No’ – for her liking they didn’t go out often enough.

A tossing-the-sheep competition was mounted by the young farmers – it turned out to be not nearly as dubious as the name promised – so there was a lot of disappointment amongst the ever-dwindling audience …many of whom were professional sheep-groomers.

They had a drinking-race in the Ardmore Inn. Actually they have drinking races in the Ardmore every night – but not with that same sense of Doing it for Britain. The sad result of their selflessness was that there were three deaths in the bar that night – whereas you’d normally only expect one or two.

We had a fantastic closing ceremony. Fat Freddie and his Inter-Gallactic Pram-Rocket was the highlight – I believe everyone on the island turned out to see that …though there were grumblings about the height he attained – especially when you think how much petrol we all contributed; at island prices. When you donate £1.50/litre on the promise that Fat Freddie is going to Mars and won’t be coming back, it must contravene some law or other if that promise isn’t fulfilled.  But for speed you couldn’t beat it – it’ll be a long time before any of us see another pram with fly-squash on its leading edges. And it did – it looked like a bloody comet. I think if we put our hands on our hearts, not many of us thought he’d make it to the next island – so I think there were mixed feelings when we got the call from the Hospital in Cuba.

Everything after that was a bit of an anti-climax. Hamish set fire to his farts – though that happens every time he falls asleep with a fag in his mouth. There were some German tourists in the bar who don’t normally find farting, they told us – or anything else for that matter – funny, but wiping tears from their eyes they assured us that that, for them, will always remain a golden example of the subtlety of British humour …and they doubted to-a-man whether they would live long enough to see anything funnier.

And as for Maude Grave singing ‘I wanna have your babies’ – that was never likely to succeed …but she wouldn’t listen.

I notice that there’s a damning review for my book on Amazon – it wasn’t you, was it? Even if you gave me permission to remove it, I think I’d keep it for the perspective it adds to all those good ones.

But I’m confused – I can be fairly sure that the events described in my book took place because I was there, in person – yet I am aware that we interpret what we see about us, and that two people witnessing the same event tell different stories about what happened …so I don’t want to get too anal – but could you have a look at that withering review and let me know if she (or he) is on to something I haven’t spotted?

Jesus, she’ll be telling me I’m wrong about the closing ceremony next…

Justin’s brilliantly entertaining, international best-selling book Phoenix from the Ashes is desperate for your support. Could you make a point of stopping strangers in the street to tell them how much you enjoyed it? If you are a do-gooder, this will count toward your five-a-day random acts of generosity …and if you harbour any religious convictions, a place in heaven will be reserved for you for every recommendation of yours which results in a sale. I personally don’t profit from the book – but it does help Bloomsbury keep their heads above water. And I know that’s cause we can all get behind.

It’s stress… but not as you know it.

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The Stressful Hebridean islands.

I love shopping in the Hebrides.  It’s all part of the lifestyle.

I was down at the Co, as we call it, standing third in line at the checkout having browsed the empty shelves and had almost half the things I’d come in for.

I was just running through which were the best-stocked bird-tables between there and home, in my mind, when I noticed that the Gentleman being served was elderly, in poor health, and wasn’t responding to stimulus. We’re all going to be there one day. So I smiled, congratulated myself on how patient I can be if I really try, and then, as the minutes ticked by, began chalking off the things I was hoping to get done later in the day… the dentist; the bank; the intercontinental flight I had to catch… and let them go, one by one.

Fifteen minutes later my body went into torpor – a kind of precursor to Coma, and shortly afterwards I lost the will to live. I became merely one of the statues in the queue, but with the last few electronic impulses of brain activity reviewed, with painful regret, the ambitions I had for my life that will never now be achieved.

Suddenly I was wakened…

‘Thank you! Bye! Take care now!’

…by the exaggerated cheerfulness of the cashier. There’s hope! the queue is about to move up one – and I’m still alive; I remember thinking. Before making way for the next shopper, our man had a five pound note to put back in his wallet…  but where on earth can that wallet be? ‘I had it a minute ago’, you could see him thinking, as he patted his pockets. There was nothing for it but to unpack the shopping, whilst examining with some surprise, one or two of the items therein, and wondering how they got there.

‘Is this yours?’ someone asked, bending to the floor behind him.

No reply; a third person taps him on the arm, and points behind him. He looks; there is no one there.

‘Mm?’ Points again… looks  - suddenly there is someone there. Right up close. Whoa – overload! Our shopper is now struggling to take in everything that is happening around him in what war journalists know as ‘a fast-developing situation’.

We queuers, without speaking, urge him to look at the wallet. We can’t move, not now, it’s been too long.

‘Is this yours?’ the voice asks again. He looks:

‘Mmm?’

‘Is this yours?’

He looks at it. ‘No.’ he says, definitely.

Then he looks at it again, anew. ‘Oh yes! – Yes it is!’

Collective laughter, and the elderly gentleman meets everyone’s eyes to acknowledge what fun we are all having together.

‘Where did you find it?’ He asks, out of casual interest, whilst checking that she hasn’t rifled it.

‘On the floor.’

‘I must have dropped it!’

The very conclusion we were about to arrive at ourselves.

At length he says good-bye to all his new friends –  checks he has everything both by carrying out a visual examination of the surrounding area five times, and by interviewing everyone as to whether or not they are of the opinion that he has everything… and, at last, asks to be directed to the exit he is standing next to. Gone.

The next customer, of course, does not rush to fill his place – it would seem rude. Instead she pretends to be busy examining the nutritional information panel on a bottle of bleach. Looking up, with an exclamation of surprise she finds that she is next; and, as if by magic, the cashier is ready for her.

She and the cashier are of a similar age – both in their sixties – the customer leans confidentially in toward the cashier;

‘I haven’t been at all well;’ she whispers, gravely.

‘Och, that’s terrible!’ Says the cashier unable to hide her delight: ‘…this is more like it!…’ I could see her thinking to herself…  ’This is why I took the job!’

She throws a furtive glance in my direction to see how important I am; and having laid that concern to rest, leaned forward, made herself comfortable onto the belt, and settled down to hear the exact nature of the illness in question, and to allow their hair-do’s to have a bit of a tangle and really get to know each another.

For ten minutes I and the folk behind me gaze longingly at the unmanned cash desks. No one speaks. We hear to the muffled whispering; notice the accusatory glances in our direction to make sure we’re not eaves-dropping; and have our suicidal despair punctuated every minute or so by an encouraging ’Och, that’s terrible!’ from the Cashier.

‘No, that really is terrible, that is!

At last the shopper – who had so much more to say – turns to me with a resentful sniff: ‘I’m holding you back.’ she says. It’s a favourite saying – and I’ve never worked out if it is a question, an apology, or simply a statement of fact… but the expected answer – which you have to supply if you want to get on on the island – and which I found myself giving, is: ‘No, you’re alright.’

I am now back at home and responding well to treatment – but tell me: Do you have the same thing in Fortnum and Mason… those of you who live in West Kensington?

Justin.

Jesus – all those words and I never found a way to mention my  book.

 

 

My journey back to 1984…

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The view from George Orwell’s window

We’ve just come back from that house on the Isle of Jura where George Orwell wrote 1984. Can you tell?  Has some of his brilliance rubbed off on me?

The house is so isolated and hard to reach that even the road gives up four miles short of his door. From there, you either have to walk, pushing your belongings ahead of you in a wheelbarrow, or, if you want to arrive a bit more stylishly, get your wife to push. For those of you who live in West Kensington and don’t own a wheelbarrow, ask your pilot to fly you in and give him this grid reference: NR 705 970. Land in the front garden if you can because some of the slates are loose.

Once indoors you’ll find that everything is just as he left it in 1949… even his pipe is still smouldering on the arm of a sofa. Ashton’s Consummate Gentleman – ready-rubbed, unless my nose deceived me.

My first confusion was in ratifying the view from his writing window with the oppressive Big Brother regime he described whilst staring out of it; hammering out each letter on a manual typewriter… and if you look closely at the photograph above you’ll see that the deer are still trying to puzzle it out today.

The house is large, comfortable and shabby. The kitchen lacks nothing the traditional English cook would expect to find, right down to a trussing needle – essential equipment if you’ve arrived with hopes of stuffing a really big bird.  A noisy generator fires-up whenever a light is turned on. The wind whistles around the windows and under the doors. The kitchen is heated by a coal-fired Rayburn… there’s a coal-fired stove in the lounge; the remainder of the house is un-heated – yet warm and cosy… and coal is in unlimited supply, needing only to be ferried by scuttle from an out-building. The bed was damp, but you didn’t notice it after ten minutes. Speaking for myself, though, I would always be a summer visitor.

Outside, the unspoiled ‘go-anywhere’ walking and the scenery is as generously abundant as you expect in the highlands of Scotland. A first walk might be to the Corryvreckan – one of the worlds great natural whirlpools. In fact, if ever you find yourself in the position whereby you’ve murdered someone who was getting on your nerves, book a week at Hillbarn, and make it your first walk: carry the body over your shoulder, under cover of darkness, along to the whirlpool and pop them in.  There’s no telling where the body will turn up, and you may well get off scott-free. But be careful not to fall in yourself or you’ll miss out on some of the other very attractive walks.

There are so many deer on Jura that the 200 people who live there form an ethnic minority.  I’ve heard that there are 8,000 deer – but all I know is that if you stand anywhere in Devon you’ll see sheep, and if you stand anywhere on Jura you’ll see deer. That’s all very well for eleven months of the year, but in October, during the rut, their moods change and they become very aggressive. I’m talking about the deer now, not the sheep.

Just in case you’ve ever wondered – the iconic black and white photograph I use as the header for my blog is of Jura islanders John Macgregor and Katie Buie – I’m not sure when the photo was taken but Katie Buie died in 1917 at the age of 80.

I don’t know what it is I love about Jura – the list is almost endless – but above all it’s a place where you can relax; let ya hair down; and allow your eccentricities room to breath… after putting on my Austrian Leiderhosen – which so rarely sees the light of day – I popped into the pub and stood in the corner for a quiet drink when someone was kind enough to ask me if I was enjoying myself:

‘VEE LOFF JURA! YAH!’ (I was shouting to aid translation) THE PEOPLE ISS FRENLY – AND I LEAF MY BAG HERE ALREADY SREE HOURS AND NO ONE TOUCH! YOU DON’T HAVE TO CARE ABOUT DAT!

Are you from West Kensington?  they asked.
Justin
Have you read my fascinating book by any chance?

…crunchier than a stack of poppadums

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Squat Lobster with Home-made Mayonnaise

If, like me, the current economic climate has renewed your interest in spring cleaning down the back of your sofa in the hope of finding a penny dropped in some un-remembered season of abundance, you’ll love this week’s money-saving recipe.

Using only the finest delicacies fished up from the crystal waters of the North Atlantic ocean which lap these Hebridean shores – may I present Squat Lobster Salad, dressed with a home-made Olive Oil Mayonnaise?

If you happen to know a fisherman, preferably a crabber – and I realise that the chances of this are but small if you live in West Kensington – ask him not to throw back the Squat Lobsters which come up in his pots and are merely a by-catch for him; a nuisance that crawls its way into his wheelhouse, tea caddy, and the trouser-pocket of his apron, unless he chucks them overboard before they get a chance to make themselves at home. He’ll be happy to put them by for you – particularly if you are willing to barter with him for something you may happen to have in abundance… say: some award-winning vegetables; a bottle of your finest home-brew; or (as in my case) five minutes of sarcastic wit.

Even consider paying for them if you have to, but once you own them, throw them heartlessly into a cauldron of vigorously boiling water into which some ginger, onion, garlic, celery, star-anise, fennel, salt or pepper… or all of the above… have already been sacrificed; for three minutes. Strain, and allow to cool in a soft summer breeze, out of the reach of rats.

Now comes the tricky part.  When I went to school, most classifications of animal subordinate to man consisted of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen – though creatures are constantly evolving and animals may not still consist of those same body-parts today… but if they do, and you remove the head and the thorax, you’ll find yourself left holding a segmented, armour-plated tail which looks and (as you are about to find out) tastes like a wood louse.

Inside this tail you’ll see a tempting morsel of flesh which you will be filled with the most urgent ambition to consume.  At the break, you’ll find about a quarter of an inch (now evolved into 6mm) of flesh is sticking out from the shell. (There will be a small quantity of unpleasant-looking grey-brown liquid adhering to it which I presume came from its stomach, but I am not going to draw your attention to that for fear of spoiling your appetite… I mention it merely to identify which end we’re talking about.) What I do is to take that fleshy bit gently between my teeth, ignoring the colour, and softly tug at the shell with my fingers – it comes away surprisingly easily… usually. When you’ve removed it, dip it into the home-made mayonnaise, and pop it back into your mouth.  You will have one of those out-of-the-body experiences whereby you acknowledge that if the good Lord took you right now, you would die happy knowing that you had nothing worthwhile left on earth to achieve.

If you live in West Kensington, ask your Butler to pull this morsel of flesh out for you – but get him to use a cocktail stick rather than his teeth, otherwise he’ll be unable to resist the temptation, swallow the very morsel you were hoping to get, and you’ll face the choice of either starving-to-death, embittered, and resentful; or slumming-it on something from Harrod’s food hall.

Next week we’ll take a fresh look at the common or garden snail.

Justin

 

 

I just took a shortcut through a field…

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shortcut through a field

I lost your attention, didn’t I?  I didn’t post to my blog for a month… you got bored, and left me.  Sorry about that… let me try and win you back.

I do have an excuse – Linda’s not been feeling very well and had to go to hospital on the mainland for a couple of days; I was camping in the car so that she’d have someone to visit her. She’s on the mend now I think; though I’ll never be the same again…

Is there a degree of shame attached to camping in your car – or was it all in my mind?

As I crossed and re-crossed the lonely hills of Argyll, late at night, looking for somewhere discreet to park the car and bed down – drawing ever more attention to myself from farmers, their sheep; and subscribers to the neighbourhood watch scheme who happened to be looking out for characters like me – I noticed on my sixth drive along the same (normally) quiet road at gone eleven o clock that a local vigilante had militated against me, and were in the process of setting up a road block.  It doesn’t get dark at night in Scotland at this time of the year, so fortunately I saw them first, took a quick left through a gate which gave me a short cut through a field – where I stopped to take a picture of a cow (as you do); over the stony bed of a parched river (we’ve had lovely weather up here, thanks), rally-drove up through some trees, and eventually found freedom by driving down the embankment of a motorway and following it for seventeen miles against the flow of traffic. All to save the humiliation of explaining that I was planning to camp in my car.

The car’s ruined, of course – and the only reason I haven’t had a knock on the front door from the old bill to have my licence off of me, is that I took the very sensible precaution of swapping my number plates with those of a vehicle belonging to a visiting dignitary during the Jubilee. It pays to draw around you the cloak of diplomatic immunity when your car has no insurance, tax, MOT, and you’re running it on red diesel to save the duty even though it’s petrol-engined. I understand the diplomat has now been deported.

Yet even through my murky adventures the sun has shone its shaft of golden light promising better times ahead… I’ve just been awarded funding from Creative Scotland to write the sequel to Phoenix from the Ashes. Hurrah!!  I notice on their web site they state their mission as: investing in talented people and exciting ideas. They’ll be embarrassed when they see how little juice comes out of me… I must have slipped through the net. But I won’t let that stop me from becoming insufferable.

The funding means I can write full-time which will at least allow me to update my blog – would you do me the huge favour of finding time to read it?.. only, without you coming to visit there’s no point.

Justin

Hang on a minute, there’s a dignitary the door.

 

 

Phoenix takes flight…

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Crashing onto a bookstand near you!

Four parcels arrived this week, by three separate deliveries.  I – that live in an isolated house, on a lonely road; which dawdles through a remote Hebridean island  – get quite excited to see a parcel come through the door.

If there was any disappointment attached to the deliveries – and I admit that there was some – it was only that they were all addressed to my neighbour, and had come to me by mistake. I handed them over when I saw him tending his sheep in the field by our house.

‘And did you see who woss drivin’ the vaan?’ he asked, confused as to why after 70 years on an island where everyone knows everyone else the driver had forgotten where he lived. Four times. But you never see who it was – because they don’t trouble you; they just open the door, walk in, ‘clump’ the parcel down on the first surface which will bear its weight, sign the chitty in your name, call out a cheerful ‘Nay Bother!’, and then leave.

Then a parcel arrived which was for me – 120 copies of my book Phoenix from the Ashes which will be launched on Thursday. If by chance you find yourself on the Hebridean island of Islay on March 1st – at 7:30 pm; come along to the Lagavulin Distillery where I’ll be signing copies. It’ll be great to see you.

The book tells the story of our house fire, and the boat we built as amateurs for a new home – but it’s actually about the people we met on our seven year journey.

When someone publishes a book, I’m always nosey about their ‘writing process’ – from first idea to finding a publishing house. A lot of people who are interested in ‘writing’ are – so here’s my process:

To produce the 90,000 words in Phoenix from the Ashes, I wrote 9 million. The letters wore-off my keyboard leaving me to guess which was which.  Half the 9 million words made me feel smug; half made me cringe – but knowing that I would soon boil them down to extract any juice meant that for now I didn’t have to worry whether it was good or bad – leaving me free to just write. Brutal editing – that takes the most time; having struggled to put some words onto the page, I begin to take every word out that fails to add anything to my story; at first it was like pulling teeth, now I’m resigned to it.

Out goes all the padding – such as lengthy descriptions of familiar objects; all the words which moderate or amplify the one which follows, like quite good, or very large; I take out all the bits which I’d slipped in to make me look good, sound scholarly, or ‘save-face’ – the latter particularly when I’m trying to justify myself after describing something stupid that I’d done… and, God knows, there are no shortage of those; I took out everything that told the reader what he ought to be thinking… and left it up to him to think as he pleased; then I took out all my jokes, leaving the humorous bits to tell their own story.  After that, of course, there was bugger-all left.

So I wrote more words to replace those I’d lost. Actually – it’s like boiling-off a pail of sea-water to get a spoon of salt… yet I would always get my salt.

I try (but don’t always succeed) to remain aware of how irrelevant I am, to write with humility, and to own my vulnerabilities – it’s painful sometimes, but it’s all done in enlightened self-interest: when you read something written by someone clever, you forgive them their pomposity – when you read something written by me, you don’t.

In the book I tried to maintain a balance between humour; drama; and action – and constantly got the balance wrong… but I found that it helped if I put it away for a week, then came back to it ‘fresh’, and read it again, when it would be clear whether the passage was too long – or not long enough… whether it took the reader up a side-road; or introduced him to an interesting new subject which needed to be more fully explained.

And I discovered late that the whole story comes together – gels – if each apparently disparate passage is linked to the next. Continuity announcers on the radio are constantly forced to link the un-linkable, such as when an interview about a near-miss asteroid is followed by an item on home baking. Yet linked they must be; well-linked passages allowed the story to flow. And if two passages couldn’t be linked, they turned out to be in the wrong place, and one or other of them was moved.

I struggled, frequently, to set down the emotions I was trying to convey – of course, I wanted my descriptions to be brief, to sparkle, and be immediately understood – like the punchline of a clever joke; but instead they’d come out long-winded and vague. I find it’s an education to read ‘classic’ literature, and poetry (taking recommendations from John Drinkwater’s long out-of-print The Outline of Literature). I discovered that there is nothing anyone is capable of thinking or feeling that hasn’t been distilled into a few brilliant words by some intellectual powerhouse at some stage over the last four thousand years.

When the book is written, the real work begins. And it’s distressing to find that that is so. To find a publisher, or agent I looked up the most successful books I thought mine was like: McCarthy’s Bar; Driving over Lemons; and A year in Provence; and found out who’d published them; or who’d acted as ‘agent’, if the publishers didn’t accept manuscripts, and approached them. I sent my targeted enquiry letter (by email) made sure that it contained no spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors, and told them why I thought it would interest them, and their readers. No one refused to see it; many refused to publish it. But with each refusal I re-worked the script until I began to get refusals which explained (vaguely) why they were refusing it – and then I knew I must be getting warm.

When a publishing offer came, in my excitement I couldn’t see how bad the offer was… but eventually my excitement turned to militant outrage. So I got an agent, then an offer from a second publisher; and a contract which was fairer naturally followed.

I’d be very grateful if, when you’ve read Phoenix from the Ashes, you would let me have your applause or cristicism of it. Naturally I hope you’ll enjoy it – but it will be both more painful and more useful to me if you also point out any parts which don’t ‘work’ for you. I begin with an advantage: Having a house fire and then sailing along the coast for seven years in an unusual-looking boat, meeting strangers by the shore as you forage for your dinner at low water is bound to produce some interesting stories.

Now I come to think of it, among my deliveries last week there was a bag of kippers from a well-meaning friend… I pray to God that he may be forgiven.

Justin

What your florist won’t tell you about Pampas Grass…

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Willies punt

Is this Willies punt?

Shortly after I met my wife (she wasn’t my wife when we met, of course, she was a complete stranger to me) we went on holiday to the Island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. I wanted to take her somewhere from which she couldn’t easily escape.

We drove up from London to stay in a croft – it was the kind of holiday where you pitch-in with crofting life, milking sheep, shearing cows… that kind of thing; and on one of the days was trusted with Willy McPherson’s skiff – a boat built by his grandfather – to go and trip the Lobster pots which we’d watched him lay the previous day. It was glorious weather; flat calm, dazzling sun – we caught 40 mackerel (Linda 39, me 1) (this was back in the days when there were 40 mackerel in the sea to catch) and lifted the pots to find four lobsters.

Taking the following day off to recover from our exertions and explore the island by motor car (their words), as we left the croft-house we were unexpectedly handed a picnic lunch on a tray covered by a crisp linen tea-towel.  It seemed rude to peek under the tea towel and inspect our gift so we waited until we’d driven to the end of their gravel track.  I watched Linda pinch the tea towel to lift it by one corner, and saw her jaw fall open: Four Lobsters, cooked, halved, and served with sauce boat of mayonnaise, twist of lemon, and crusty bread. Where in the world are there people more generous than Scottish Islanders?

That’s why Linda and I now live in the Hebrides.   And, of course, what with booking the ferry and everything, Linda finds it easier to stay than to leave.

If you heard our Radio 4 interview (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bsmdd)… it won’t have escaped your notice that once-upon-a-time we had a house fire in which we lost everything.

On the evening following the broadcast I was celebrating how marvellous we both sounded with a glass of whisky when I accidentally started another.

Earlier in the week I’d mentioned that I thought it was dangerous to keep a display of dried Pampas grass on the mantle-piece directly above the wood-burning stove… ‘Suppose a spark flies up from the fire?’ I asked. Putting the whisky to my lips I found I’d inadvertently poured myself a brand I don’t like so, puffed-up by the days’ events, and imagining that there were things to which I was superior, I opened the door of the wood-burning stove and chucked it on. There was an explosion, of course, followed by a ball of fire which took off lazily – like a hot air balloon filled with sightseers – until it reached the height of our pampas grass which it stopped to admire; all of a sudden there was a phenomenon which I think firemen call a ‘flash-over’.

Sitting in our dining room, for the next few moments, was like sitting in a wood-fired pizza oven… and I think I remember Linda calling my name from her side of it. When I came to my senses I grabbed the vase – more aware of the roar of the flames than the heat they threw off – ran to the front door, and launched it into the darkness to arch over the gate like a terrible comet.

Back in the house the first thing that struck me as the fire alarms throbbed was how black were the walls and the ceilings – which a moment earlier had been white – and how miserable the room looked as our lamps struggled to illuminate it.

This incident, small as it was, shocked Linda. After all our years together I’ve become pretty-good at spotting subtle changes in her behaviour, and couldn’t help noticing that as soon as I’d got the house clear of smoke – by opening everything up, on what unfortunately was one of the coldest nights of the winter – she took herself off to bed without wishing me ‘Good Night’

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3

Is this Willies punt?

Lovely bit of Oak, that.

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I quite like wood.

And I’ve been interested in ‘medieval’  Oak-Framed houses since I was ten. I’ve always wanted to live in one; and now, in the late summer of my life, I’m racing to build one before my body crumbles. It’s old technology – a thousand years old – and reached it’s perfection in the 1700′s with the development of wood-joints (no nails, no glue) upon which our Higgs-Boson age has been unable to improve. Crikey – a goodly number of Oak-framed houses that Chaucer would have passed on his way to Canterbury are still standing! So why is it that now that I want to build one… these days… when houses are built with a target life of 60 years – but nobody expects them to reach it -  that after three-and-half years of head-scratching our architects have yet to produce one on paper… never mind the ground?

Another life-long interest of mine has flourished even more slowly. It, too, began when I was 10 and I got my first toy typewriter. At 17 I confided to my English teacher that I wanted to write. As a career. His reply to me was the reason I become an advertising salesman.

But some desires won’t go away, and twenty years ago I decided that I wanted to write a book. I enrolled on a correspondence course – they were awfully pleased with me: they told me that if I ‘keep up this good work, my success is assured‘. Following their advice I sent off a stream of articles to National newspapers, Magazines, and Publishing houses; and got back, six weeks later, a rejection slip for each submission. I was responsible for our postman getting a trolley.

One day, by chance, I happened to send a list of suggestions for radio interviews to our local BBC radio station. They didn’t read it, but the arrival of my letter coincided with the departure of one of their ‘researchers’… and so I filled his shoes.

But a book deal proved elusive.  One hurdle to it was that I don’t write fiction (well, not knowingly) and in order to write non-fiction you have to have done something interesting. A blessing came one night when our house burned to the ground… so I tried to write about that, but found it too painful.

Another barrier for me was trying to find ‘my voice’. When I’m not trying to be funny, I’m trying to be a smart-arse… and people aren’t interested in that – they get enough of that from their neighbours; or in management meetings; or when they go to buy a mobile phone.

And the advice they give you in these correspondence courses is lamentable: ‘Just be yourself’; they say – as if people are interested in reading the words of someone tormented by self-doubt, failure, and insecurity.

If you can pop back to my blog in a few days, and you’re at all interested in hearing it – I’ll tell you how brutal editing helped get me into print.

Thanks for following me.

Best Wishes

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3

…lovely bit of Oak, that.

 

Cabin Fever

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Paps

Across the waterlogged ground to the 'Paps' on the Isle of Jura.

I don’t know how the Innuit deal with it, but there comes a stage during a stormy winter on Islay when even the islanders get cabin fever …now, in late December, we’ve reached that stage. We’ve had our third storm in three weeks; lost slates in all of them – even lost a door in one. Yesterday I ducked to avoid being knocked over, as I thought, by an RAF jet flying too low – yet when I straightened myself, I found it had only been the screaming of a particularly angry squall as it sung through the winter branches of a tree close by.

‘Two nights in Braehead, would do me…’ you hear people say, hopelessly, referring to a retail park just on the outskirts of Glasgow, a hundred miles away; ‘and mebbe a wee nozzy round IKEA.’ They don’t ask for much – which is perhaps why there is just a five-aisle Co-Op to serve the needs of 3,500 people. And when the ferry doesn’t run for a day or two because of the wind, and the plane doesn’t fly, the shelves get lonely.

We moved here from Cornwall five years ago, and love it, but this time of year is when we are closest to becoming unglued to the place. We dread receiving calls from friends back in the west country who have phoned to tell us that they’re having the mildest weather for 800 years, and that the daffs are already out.

It’s at this time of year that we have to count our blessings, like priests thumbing rosary beads. Everyday I look at my weather station to see by how much longer the sun will be above the horizon than it was yesterday.

Have I got cabin fever?