Tag Archives: phoenix from the ashes

Holiday of a lifetime…?

Posted on by

Holiday of a lifetime...?

Last year we accidentally spent an evening in a caravan park entertainment facility in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, where static caravans – thousands of the buggers, all in rows – are let by the week …those which are not cherished second-homes. We wouldn’t have missed it for worlds.

Driving through the gates it was alarming to see the conditions in which some people take an annual holiday …the shaven-headed security-guards were polite so that I was choked with remorse for ever having been afraid of them. The first room in the complex was filled with the buzzers and sirens of one-arm bandits pumped by desperate-looking men. The second, the restaurant, was a huge child-friendly affair in which it was heart-warming to see what liberty the children enjoyed as they climbed over tables with food hanging from their mouths …it was like a come-as-you-please party at Wayne and Waynetta’s – and judging by the carpet we’d only just missed a bloody-good bun-fight.

We sat down at a table in which the previous diners had whiled away their long wait for service by drawing amusing faces in the grease using their fingers. The waitress handed us each a sticky menu listing four or five dishes incapable of disappointing. When she noticed the grease-drawings she seemed genuinely shocked that people of our age could be so childish. With that she lost all patience with us and stood tapping her pad with the end of her pen to let us know that we seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to read a menu only four items long; and had better things to do than idle her life away with us. It was diverting to imagine that she was someone’s daughter …and that she would one day marry, and make someone very miserable.

Two cinema screens competed for our attention, the first was reminiscing on the 100 best goals this season – it wasn’t one of your moody, dull-and-dusty, quiet reminiscences: in between shouting himself so hoarse the only the word you could recognise was: ‘GOAL!!!’ …that commentator was weeping real tears – the other screen was filled with penguins singing rock-ballads.

In the third room -The Cabaret Suite – the bar was illuminated with UV tube-lighting causing everything to glow with Persil whiteness. Down a few steps there was a dance floor; above that a fluffy pink-stage surrounded by coloured light bulbs which turned themselves on and off in a mexican wave – and with commanding views over all, a horse-shoe arrangement of tables at which blokes wearing string vests held not pint’s – but Vases filled with lager, in hands the size of shovels. They were hard-looking men whose heads and torsos had con-joined like overfilled Mr. Grumpy balloons – opposite them, malnourished wives, and face-painted children wearing wings, tails and halo’s. The women had gone to lengths to dress-up and wore pomagne-cocktails of frocks - not available on the high street – which flowed-ever with bustle …and set them off with plastic Tiaras. They were dark haired women with pretty eyes which concealed a secret. And when they hit that dance floor they looked as though they’d been sitting perfectly still for an hour, and now had only three minutes in which to enjoy themselves.

The cabaret singer was surprisingly good, a Buble-style crooner who made you wonder what on earth he was doing here. Dressed like one of those loveable-ragamuffin porcelains you see in the Prize Cabinet of a Bingo Hall – he wore a Trilby tipped down over the eyes, baggy cavalry-twill trousers ending in turn ups, white socks and shoes. His second song answered the question of how he came to be here  …it sounded identical to the first – as did the third, and by song four – also identical – he was boo-ed off stage.

Boo-ed off stage, for christ’s sake – were they mad? …Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face - what the f–k are we going to do for a singer now? …all the way out here; at short notice …and at this time of the night?  It was humiliating for the crooner, and you somehow wanted to make it all right for him – if you or I had been boo-ed off that stage, by that audience, we’d have said to ourselves: ‘ That is the LAST effing-time I ever walk on a stage in my LIFE!’ If he managed to get away clutching one last shred of dignity – the Entertainment Manager took it from him with her next breath: a blonde-haired woman of about 30 she rushed onto the stage to head-off the growing rebellion dressed in Ostrich Feathers, and looking like a pink candy-floss; ‘Come on – Clap!’ she bawled at us; ‘ …he wasn’t THAT bad!’

Just a thought: If you live in West Kensington and have just tossed aside the usual pile of holiday brochures tediously filled with the selections of Nile Cruises; Kenyan Safaris; or Pilgrimages to Angkor Wat – why not stay at home this year for a holiday which really does offer something for everyone? Fill your boots.

Justin is author of Phoenix from the Ashes, an accidental adventure…

 

For people who love the sea, at Christmas…

Posted on by

Caol Ila's Bowsprit

Lay-up Mooring

Earlier in the year one of the Whisky Distilleries here on the Isle of Islay had an open day and invited me to be one of their attractions: they suggested I park my sailing boat at their pier, invite their guests on board for a ‘wee nozzy’, and set up a table-sale of my artwork, and book on the pier head. I knew I’d find it humiliating.

I took it as a bad sign when less than a minute into the voyage to bring my boat to them I hit a rock …mounted it actually.

At the show I set up my display with a growing sense of shame; for an hour no one walked onto the pier, then came the moment I’d been dreading – a visitor. It’s very generous of her, I thought, to come out of her way – but I hope she makes short work of it, looks through my prints, says something kind, and then moves on.

As she approached, I sauntered away …well, she didn’t want me breathing down her neck – did she? She put her bag down on my un-manned table, and when our eyes met, called a cheery ‘hello’.

She looked through my prints one by one. My stomach churned – had she nothing better to do?

‘Where did you draw this scene?’ she asked holding one up. I told her …I even managed to stop myself from apologising for it in some way.

‘I like them all,’ she told me, ‘…but particularly this one.’ She held it close-to, then far away, back and forth; before finally getting out her purse. ‘Yes! – this is the one I’ll have, I think..’

I wanted to say to her: ‘Listen, you don’t have to do this.’

But if I didn’t stop her from buying it I’d be able to answer the inevitable after-show enquiries with the words: ‘Yes – as a matter of fact someone bought a picture.’

I was just giving her some change when a Japanese man purposed up to my table and began flicking through the prints. He bought two. And by the time he left with his pictures, and his change, and had had his picture taken with me and his friends; a small crowd had formed. Arms reached in from all directions grabbing prints, and copies of my book. Not only that, but so it continued for the rest of the day. It was a sell-out; it was thrilling, and immensely encouraging, too.

At the risk of cheesing my story – I notice that it’s nearly christmas, the time when we all buy shed-loads of interesting pressies for each other – if you know someone who’d like one of my mounted Maritime Limited-Edition Prints – which are £48, normally – tell me which one you like, and I’ll send it to you for £29 – including UK postage. The quality of the ink and paper remains the same ‘collectors’ standard. Hmmm, sounds interesting. Overseas, postage may be another fiver or so, by air mail.

And if that’s not what you’re looking for – I’ve got a Weimaraner you can have for nothing; and I’ll pay the postage on him to anywhere in the world.

T5PZXCCR7V8Q

 

Hebridean Bandit in the house.

Posted on by

When I woke up this morning there was a ferret in the house – well, what I thought was a ferret.

Yesterday there was one outside the window – for about an hour. Even so you couldn’t get a good view of it because for most of that time it had its head stuck inside the chest cavity of a dead Hare. The Hare had died a few days earlier, and although I had noticed it; as the days rolled past I felt increasingly disinclined to go and pick it up. Well, you don’t like to, do you?

And in any case it had been raining hard for days – and then on the first dry day when I could have picked it up, I noticed flies taking off from it, practising for an air show, so I didn’t like to disturb them in case I caused an accident.

That ferret was huge.

Anyway, this morning I was just in the utility room feeding the dog when I noticed some strange droppings. Scooter the dog is a Weimaraner – Weimaraner’s have the most sensitive noses on the planet …It’s a little known fact, but ya Weimaraner can detect the presence of a pigs-ear doggy-snack even when it has been welded inside a lead box and thrown into 100ft of murky water.

So I was slightly puzzled when he showed no interest in the droppings. But then I remembered the other thing about the Weimaraner …the other thing about the Weimaraner is that as soon as the lid comes off the doggy-cruckle bin all five senses immediately vacate the body so as not to get damaged whilst the frenzied corpse goes into epileptic spasms of excitement, and return only hesitantly to it after the bowl is empty.

When ‘Smell’ had decided to reinvest the corpse with its powers – Scooter went straight over to the droppings, and then followed the footsteps (invisible to the human eye) of the creature that had deposited them onto my floor – whether because it had suddenly found itself caught short, or as a personal slight to me, history will probably never learn – out into the next room and to a heap of Linda’s horse-grooming equipment. Having got to it Scooter stopped and ‘pointed’, as much as to say the creature that has incomoded you is sitting under that horse blanket (Weimaraner’s are very Dickensian in their speech patterns) …remove for me that blanket, square away, and I shall obtain the retribution you seek – right down to the last squeak.

Before I could remove the blanket, as instructed, Scooter shot backwards and went around to the other side of a partition wall, and at the same time I remembered that there was a hole in the wall down there, which had been made by a diligent plumber who had every intention of preventing the house from flooding by running an overflow pipe through it one fine day before he retired – but happily he is not yet even sixty; has time on his side, and so the hole remains: through it, the intruder made good his escape …and Scooter saw him go. But he only got as far as the next room.

You know those fishing nets you can buy for children in seaside Toy and Novelty shops – the ones mounted on a bamboo pole, with a wire hoop, and some green netting? Well, one of those was amongst the toot bequeathed to us by the previous tenants, and this morning it made it’s very first catch.

I put the ferret – or whatever it was – into a big plastic tub, threw in some sawdust so that it had something nice to lie back on, and then waited for my farmer/neighbour to pop by – as he does everyday- to see my zoo. He took one look at it, declared it was a Pole-Cat, and then proposed we train it to hunt rabbit, and keep us in rabbit-stew for the rest of our natural lives.

I wanted here to ask you – I wanted to run a little opinion poll – I was going to ask you what you thought I should do with it, and kick things off by positing three possible courses of action; viz -

1/ Drown it.  2/ Drive it a long way from the house, and restore its freedom. 3/ Keep it as a pet and use it for ferreting-out rabbits so that me and my neighbour can enjoy the economic advantages of a sharp reduction in butchers bills.

I was going to run that little opinion poll – but one of my blog-responders who appears on these pages; and who lives in a church overrun with rats, mice, cats, rabbits, bats, owls, and cockroaches – and doesn’t dream of carrying out a little discreet pest control – caught a whiff of my plan and threatened to have me thrown into prison if I hurt a hair on its head.

So I’ve decided that its best chance of success can be secured by dropping it off at her place.

Phoenix from the Ashes has been shortlisted for the Mountbatten Maritime Award.

Olympians flock to the Hebrides…

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

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.

 

 

I just took a shortcut through a field…

Posted on by

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…

Posted on by

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…

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

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

Posted on by
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?