Writer-insighter – Page 42 – Maybe it doesn't matter if it's true. So long as you believe it is.

Power to the people and other comedy sayings

Roger Lloyd-Pack died of pancreatic cancer today. According to Cancer Research UK, sometimes it’s caused by drinking too much. Or by smoking. Or by gum disease. But as the man who played Trigger in Only Fools and Horses had long been elevated to the status of National Treasure don’t expect that to be discussed in the press any time soon. The Sun’s front page was taken-up not just with the headline Bonjour Trigger but also by the helpful explanation that Bonjour doesn’t mean goodbye except in a TV comedy show that last aired in 1991. That’s how funny the headline was. The sound of barrels being scraped is something everyone’s familiar with now, but this was above average scraping. We can get back to hating immigrants and trying to start a war with whoever shouldn’t be running Syria tomorrow.

Roger Lloyd-Peck, in character as Trigger.

Every paper I saw had the same nonsense in it, amusingly gauche things Trigger said. For years I went to the same pub as someone who worked with Roger Lloyd-Peck and said he was a lovely bloke. I’ve no reason to doubt it. What’s bugging me is the Guardian’s survey of writer’s earnings, which actually does have quite a lot to do with the sad news, or at least, with the way it’s being handled.

Apparently the average writer in the UK earns just £600 per year. This from the newspaper that pays £85 for an online piece and £285 for something they run in the paper version. As Claude Rains said in Casablanca when he shut Rick’s bar for illegal gambling and just before he was handed his winnings, I’m shocked. Shocked!

Every newspaper I saw continued in the same vein about Roger Lloyd-Peck. Apart from the Soaraway Scum through the Telegraph and the East Anglian Daily Times, the same stuff. “The world according to Trigger – some of his best moments.” Then a little bit of filler regurgitating the hilarious malapropisms and plain wrong phrasing an actor spoke in a show that hasn’t been on for nearly a quarter century.

This is Funny. That’s Official

During a conversation about their schooldays the boys probe Trigger about his time at school when he banged his head on a sign which read ‘Mind Your Head.’ Trig answers with all the eloquence and rationality the viewers came to expect from him.

Uncle Albert: How did you walk into a mind your head sign? Didn’t you see it?

Trigger: Of course I saw it. But in those days I couldn’t read.

Oh my sides. The first time it was on TV it was funny. The script was so good that the fifth time you saw it it was still funny, delivered by good actors at home with the material they were using. But that’s what it was. A script. Delivered by actors. Not written by them, but by a man called John Sullivan, who died in 2011, who wrote the show along with Citizen Smith, a pseudo-Marxist revolutionary whose catchphrase was ‘power to the people.’ Sullivan liked a laugh, obviously.

Citizen Smith, played by Robert Lindsay.

Roger Lloyd-Pack was by all I’ve heard, a nice bloke. I liked his politics too. Roger Lloyd-Peck didn’t come up with these sayings any more than Bogart wrote ‘Play it, Sam.” But the avalanche of Triggerisms an actor’s death er, triggered doesn’t just miss the point. It confuses reality with fantasy, the substance with the delivery. The spin, the acting, with what went before.

Which seems to be the main purpose of media today including the newspaper which pretends to give it to you straight, the Guradina. At £85 a go comment isn’t quite free. But it’s pretty close.

Since I’ve Been Loving You

Not you. Me, maybe.

The stand-up poetry gig went well, but the reason I’ll remember it will be a combination of things. None of them really connected to what I was doing but somehow all of them connected too.

I drove down to Aldeburgh, which is about nine miles from where I live. The moon was up and although it’s been rainy the sky was clear and the road was empty.

Robert Plant was singing on the CD, an old Led Zeppelin number, Since I’ve Been Loving You.

Robert Plant. Still exactly what rock stars should look like. And I'm sorry, if you disagree then you're simply wrong. — Robert Plant. Still exactly what rock stars should look like. And I’m sorry but if you disagree then you’re simply wrong. And actually I’m not really sorry. Just English It’s what we say when we’re being assertive.

I wasn’t playing it about anyone or anything, even if most of my stand-up act is a thinly-disguised catalogue of the emotional train-wrecks which seemed to comprise my relationships. It’s just a nice song.

Actually, it’s more than a nice song. I know it’s probably just my age, but some songs, they’ve just got everything. And that’s one that has.

Proving that parents always know less than nothing at all, that song, like a lot of the songs of that time, had the lot.

Guitar. Slow bits. Pomp. Screaming. Moodiness.

What else do you want in music for teenagers? What else just is there for those years?

Well? I’m waiting. It’s your own time you’re wasting. I get paid to stand here (cont.)

A brilliant night. Like the moon that evening with the road stretching away in front of me, bright and round, with almost no cloud at all.

In Silence

This is a new poem that came to me yesterday morning, checking my email, seeing who’s email that was once there a lot wasn’t there any more. A pity. So this one’s for you.

In Silence

I met you through songs

In a bar full of happy noise.

You got up and sang

And forgot the words

And hearing you

So did my heart.

I heard your silent music

Stranger than the sounds

We played together at night,

Rehearsing our short chorus

To the tune I thought you liked.

We sang together and talked about

The Book of Love and long ago

And touched on God above

And if the Bible told us so.

We sang through our songs.

You left me in silence.

Doing it standing up

It’s only the middle of January. So far this year my life’s changed quite a bit. Unexpectedly and most of it for the good. There’s still stuff to sort out, but when isn’t there? But most of it for the good.

It’s not just that it’s getting lighter, although that helps me massively. When it’s not pitch black at five o’clock I can see a point to being alive. That’s overly dramatic but those few weeks when you can’t see daylight at tea-time seem much, much longer than they possibly can be, and much more hopeless. Trendy Scandinavian affected daylight deficit ? SADD, as we call it? Maybe.

Two weekends ago I went to an Open Mic event in Woodbridge, at The Anchor. I’d been invited to perform some poetry at The Mariner by Justine de Mierre, who’s running one of her Tales and Tapas events on 29th January there. I was a bit nervous about it, so I thought I’d get a practice debut in first at the next open mic gig.

So I did. I ran through All Of Your S**t and Back To Ourselves. And while it didn’t have people swooning three other performers said it was good, I got invited to Woodbridge’s finest and most select soiree and only one person stopped speaking to me. Result! Nobody ever invited me to a soiree before.

So I’m doing more. One of the things about poetry is that it’s good therapy. If you get crossed in love you don’t just run down the contents of the biscuit tin (and we won’t talk about peanut butter ice-cream. It’s worth getting dumped for). You get new poems.

So tonight maybe I’ll get up behind the mic again. I’ll do All Of Your S**t and the other one again and maybe, just maybe a new one. It’s called In Silence. It’s about open mic gigs. Sort of.

Ebay Customer Service

The only thing I have altered in this exchange is my thick-fingered spelling. All of the rest of it is depressingly true. If you want to know why Bradley Manning et al are pilloried for telling the truth it’s not ‘national security’ that’s to blame. It’s the 1984 don’t-argue-it-won’t-make-any-difference culture that’s been sucked up and embraced wholesale. Was this the point of mass education? Please someone tell me it wasn’t.

Kieran Sears 20:48:24
Hello and welcome to eBay Live Help, my name is Kieran. How may I assist you?

yoxfordcafedeli 20:49:58
Hello, I wanted to bid on some cutlery. Ebay is insisting it does not know how old I am .

yoxfordcafedeli 20:50:16
and wants age verification by credit card. I do not possess a credit card.

Ebay demands age verification if you want to buy a knife. Including a knife and fork. But obviously, not all the time. Only when eBay feels like it. But anyway, let’s go with that for the moment.

yoxfordcafedeli 20:50:52
I do not believe in credit cards. I tried to give my VISA debit card details but Ebay claims it cannot recognise the card number.

Kieran Sears 20:53:25
Thank you for sharing your query. In this case you can use any other credit card, if your family members have it or a friends, if they are with you.

Any credit card other than the one I said I didn’t have, obviously.

Kieran Sears 20:55:01
If you have no access od Credit cards at all, in tha case, you can contact the seller and then ask them to provide you with any alternate payment method, so that you are able to pay for the item , however as perebay policies on UK, you have to put a Credit Card on file for the age verification, to bid or purchase a cutlery item

yoxfordcafedeli 20:56:43
So I can’t bid on it.

(And let’s ignore the fact eBay already has my age on file from other transactions in the past. But presumably they would pretend “Data Protection” wouldn’t let them use that information again, in more made-upness).
yoxfordcafedeli 20:57:13
Because Ebay demands I have a credit card.

Kieran Sears 20:57:36
If you can use any other credit card then you can bid any family members debit card will do

Kieran Sears 20:58:08
Ebay in accordance with policies of UK, in many other countries there is no such policy, an example can be Germany

yoxfordcafedeli 20:58:44
WHAT policy in the UK demands that I have a credit card, exactly?

yoxfordcafedeli 20:59:02
There is NO such policy.

yoxfordcafedeli 20:59:07
Except Ebay’s own.

yoxfordcafedeli 21:00:12
Let me get this right. You have just said I can use ‘any family member’s credit card.” You said this, not me. HOW will that verify MY age?

Kieran Sears 21:00:45
The system , will accept it , as it had happened with our members

yoxfordcafedeli 21:01:41
That does not answer my question. How will using someone else’s credit card verify my age?

Kieran Sears 21:04:05
This will, we give this workaround to our members so as to facilitate the buying , when it works then our members are able to purchase the cutlery items, there is no logic to it

yoxfordcafedeli 21:05:32
So why does Ebay have this policy?

Kieran Sears 21:06:30
eBay as per the norms of UK (under their influence) have this policy, let me give you a link of the same ‘

Kieran Sears 21:06:41
Pushing Url: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/firearms-weapons-knives.html

Kieran Sears [Push Page] http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/firearms-weapons-knives.html21:06:41

yoxfordcafedeli 21:07:27
No, I know Ebay has this policy. I asked why.

Kieran Sears 21:07:58
Carl, I request you to please try by ading other Credit Card, discussing about the policy wont help here, if you have to purchase the item, then you can wirk on this solution, wont it be good to be able to purchase the item

yoxfordcafedeli 21:11:46
Yes it would, if I could bid on a cutlery set so I could eat my dinner without being made to go and get someone else’s credit card. Ebay’s idea of customer service is a joke. I asked a simple question. You can’t give me the answer and instead say discussing it won’t do any good. I am not discussing anything. I asked what law says I have to have a credit card and you just talk about ‘the norms of the UK’ which is totally meaningless. You then suggest I can validate my age by using someone else’s card and when I ask how that validates it you can’t answer that either. I am really looking forward to the email transcript of this. It will make a brilliant blog post.

System21:11:48
The chat session is being wrapped up.

System21:11:48
The chat session has ended.

System21:11:48
This chat was on 01/10/2014. All times in the above transcript are in the following time zone: (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London

Kieran speaks an interesting version of English. It’s almost as if his name is totally made-up and fictional. So now you know. Verification is meaningless. Debate is useless. Questions are an irrelevance. Make-up a rule and call it the law and pretend it’s totally normal, inevitable and inescapable. Above all, don’t argue. Resistance is useless.

In the year when we’re about to celebrate millions of people being killed for ‘freedom,’ this is the kind of freedom we’ve embraced. The freedom to do exactly what we’re told. Oh brave new world.

Still life

A quiet, still evening in Ipswich a few days ago. Unnaturally still at ten to five, waiting to see someone, waiting to see what I could do for the next year maybe. Maybe longer. The light only just going now as the street lights shone, the evenings spinning out longer each day, building towards the summer, a little more life as the clock turns, a little more promise every morning, every evening.

At a dockside on Christmas Day the same as in Ipswich town centre two days ago, the same thing. In the middle of the concrete, the cars, the sodium streetlights I can hear a nightingale sing its song for you.

Or for me. Or for any of us. But I like to pretend it was for you. Another you. My gift and one not mine to give. But now where there wasn’t last week there’s just time to walk in the last of this day, the last of the light of today.

There will be more tomorrow. That’s the promise.

Resolutions: 2014

There’s an old Wicca tradition about bad stuff. I know, I’m doing a lot about traditions at this time of year, but it’s a good time of year for it. Christmas is over and whatever you think about that, the days are going to get longer and longer until they’re magically, sleep-stealingly long, the way they were when I swapped stories and dreams with someone with a bottle of wine under a eucalyptus tree last summer.

After this year I have a lot less bad stuff to get rid of. But I’m going to write down some things I’m going to do this year and being a hip and happening kind of guy I thought I might as well put these things here, where everyone can see them and challenge me on them. So here they are. My resolutions for 2014. Or goals. My resolutions are for me and those they affect. My goals, well, this will kick me on along towards them. As we say down the stables.

1) I will direct and broadcast No Batteries Required on radio.

2) I will re-draft No Batteries Required as a screenplay and pitch it to Cascade, same as Not Your Heart Away.

3) I will find an independent publisher for Not Your Heart Away.

4) I will learn to play the ukelele. Actually, on advice from a friend who thinks my saxophone playing is pretty good, I’m sending the ukelele back and making a promise to myself to play the saxophone every single day. A quick blast through Kirsty McColl’s A New England was today’s effort, copied from the radio. The radio in my head, anyway.

5) I will perform 3 poems at the Open-Mic night at The Old Mariner, Woodbridge, 29th January.

6) I will write The Cloud Factory.

7) I will finish writing Janni Schenck, which started life as School Lane.

8) First I will decide the format for Janni Schenck, film, book or play.

9) While I’m there I might as well re-draft No Batteries Required as a stage play and get it performed, probably using the same actors and actresses who are doing it for radio.

10) I can’t actually think of a tenth thing. I mean, I can, but I can’t really put that on here publically so not that, not here. Instead, I will get better at playing my old low tone saxophone. I might even team up with someone who can do the music while I do a 1940s crooner set. This is a thing in my head. In a progress update I’ ve found someone, but she’s a bit committed. Life stuff. You know. Stuff.

I don’t know why when I was 14 the first album I ever bought was original 1944 RCA Victor Glenn Miller recordings. But it was and they were and they’ve stuck in my head forever. And I thought the other day that a Christmas present to myself might usefully be a mic-ed-up concert uke to accompany the songs I’ve always known. The Nearness of You. Fools Rush In. The Glenn Miller version obviously, not the pathetic Bow Wow Wow lift musak one. And probably Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens, the song my disappeared friend Simon Talbot used to introduce his radio show in Florida, about a thousand years ago. Or maybe How Long Will I Love You? If you want to do something useful in 2014, find Simon and tell me where he is. A lot of people who love him would like to know. And we don’t. It’s been years now. We miss him. A lot.

When the animals talk

I took a trip back through time this Christmas. In those strange days between Christmas itself and the New Year, when nothing is as it should be, when it’s too late to do much about this year and too early to do much about the next I drove to Poole to see an old friend, then up to Warminster to see an even older friend, one whose voice I used as Liz in Not Your Heart Away. I took two of her children to Bath. They wanted to do some shopping and I wanted to see yet another friend in the city. They were about the age Ben and Claire and Liz were in the book.

Along the way I turned off the A36 in Rode and took the old route I’d driven a hundred times and more, the same way Claire and Ben drove in the book to find The Red Lion. It’s fiction. I should have known. And I should have known better. It’s not just that the past is another country and they do things differently there. Whoever wrote that didn’t say ‘and they build executive homes in the car park of the Red Lion and ponce-up what was a brilliant pub into someone’s Disney fantasy of a baronial hall to live in.’

But things are never exactly as they seem. It all reminded me of a Christmas tradition we have or had in my family. I don’t know if anyone else still keeps it. I couldn’t, this year. Our tradition goes that at midnight on Christmas Eve, the animals talk. The year before I was born my mother and father stayed on my aunt’s farm and nearing midnight went into their stable to see if it was true, that the animals really did speak.

Last Christmas I went to church close to midnight but this is a dying village. The church was closed. As I got near the dark and silent building I remembered that Midnight Mass had been brought forward to six pm, a more convenient time for the old people who make up most of the village and all of the congregation. As I walked home along the empty road I remembered my family’s story. I got a torch and went to the tree where my chickens roosted then and shone it on the big young cockerel. I heard the church clock strike and as the light caught him the cockerel stirred and put his head back.

And is it true? Do the animals speak, remembering a stable in a story?

What sort of question is that? Of course it’s true. Nobody ever said they have to speak with a human voice.

Year End

A bit like the end of term round-up, this post. If I was marking up 2013 though, I’d have to have a word with its parents and note ‘must try harder’ on its report.

What did I do this year? Some of the things I set out to do. Got rid of my house. Re-homed most of the chickens. Won the BBC Writers Room competition. Did I mention that? Oh. Ok. Well, actually, I won the BBC Writers Room competition.

With a screenplay based on my book, Not Your Heart Away, which I also finished and published this past year.

Wrote some poems. Got a radio show. Wrote No Batteries Required, about a bankrupt chicken farmer who decides to kidnap a celebrity chef the same day the Prime Minister he was at school with goes to offer him a job as Minister of Food.

Anything else? Quite a lot. Tried to help. Lost my heart. Found it again. Put it in trust for someone who might appreciate it. Tried to stop acting like an arse quite as much as I managed to do for several months this year. Vowed to listen more and decide less. Walked a lot. I liked that. Took some decent photos. Got a new house to live in, that I think is nicer than the one I moved out of. Saw some old friends, made some old friends (no, not like that), caught up with some old friends and realised how fantastically valuable they are when you need them.

Tried to write School Lane, a story that started in Not Your Heart Away, a story about an old man who had been a young boy when he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, like almost every other small boy in Germany. And I couldn’t do it. Maybe I can next year. It became too complex, too involved, too much about Janni Schenck, the boy whose teacher beat him and his classmates up to stop them being killed by the American patrol coming to their village. Janni’s story expanded to include the Edelweiss Pirates, which meant I had to get him from Hamburg where they hung out to a small village in the mountains, where the real story, the one I heard from an old man in a pub long ago now was set, which was a story in itself.

And alarmingly, bought an electro-acoustic ukelele to do an open-mic 1940s crooner set comprising Fools Rush In, The Nearness of You and either Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens or How Much Do I Love You. Maybe. Or April Played The Fiddle. That bit might need some work. Like learning the ukelele for a start. And it’s sung impossibly high for me. I could do it fine when I was fourteen. Can’t do it now.

So this year coming, 2014 is a new start. New house. A new heart and some new friends. See you there.

Back to Ourselves

It’s been a hectic time, this Christmas, with a house move, a move into a hotel, a trip to Wiltshire and back, some 600 miles, then another house move and just time to meet some incredible new people and glimpse a life I know. So sorry, I haven’t posted anything recently. But as I was going through my stuff I found time to post up this poem what I wrote recently. It’s a bit Hugo Williams derivative, but I like Hugo Williams. It’s not about anybody specifically, just the end of summer, the end of holidays and the way people change, too.

Back to Ourselves

When one of us or both decide

That the songs don’t matter,

That it’s done, that we do have

A choice and somehow we don’t

Have to do the things that last week

Or last month or even yesterday we had

To do instead of everything else;

On the last day we start packing for

The trek back to ourselves after

Our little holiday, sand between

Our toes, another little white line,

And something sticking at the corner

Of our eyes; I expect it’s just a speck,

Probably. But you know, glad we went.

But we’re tired now and grateful to

Be home again, bags unpacked now

That we’ve shut the door;

Time to turn the lights on soon.

It gets so dark so early now.

I can’t quite see where I am at all.

Carl Bennett 2013