A Christmas Cracker

Every year, without fail, I tell myself that I'm going to release a Christmas collection of stories and every year, without fail, time drifts by and the opportunity vanishes. Therefore, this year I've decided that the only way to ensure I actually extract my digit and do something is to announce the impending publication and force myself to adhere to a deadline. Hence this post.

'A Christmas Cracker' a collection of Christmas-themed stories designed to get you into the Christmas spirit (whatever that is) will feature some old, some new and some previously unpublished tales and will be available on Kindle from 12th November (solely because I don't think Christmas advertising should start prior to Remembrance Day).

Drat, now I've got to do something!

A Bull Market?

I'm not quite sure why, but the fourth and most recent book in the 'nostalgedy' series has not exactly taken the world by storm!  Why this should be the case is beyond my comprehension.  After all, it is just a continuation of the other three in the series, all of which have sold well and been fairly popular. It's also had some good reviews, like these:

"This is the fourth book by this author that I have read and I think it is the best. It was enjoyable to hear all the stories about the different cruises he went on and the funny situations Philip and his wife found themselves in. It was also very nice to see all the photographs included in the book.
There was also funny stories about rail travel, and coach travel, one horrifying story that I could not believe people would do, is crossing a motorway on foot to get to their coach the on the other side (one of the party was in a wheelchair) they crossed safely. Unlikely that this could be done in today's traffic.
The title of the book "Giving A Bull Strawberries" I know that saying as "Giving A Donkey Strawberries" an interesting twist in different parts of the country. This is a lovely book."

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"This is the first of the nostalgedy collection I have read - and it was good. Probably not the kind of book that you would sit down and devour feverishly in one sitting, but one that you would pick up and fall into, comfortably, chapter by chapter, having a wee quiet chuckle as you did so. Charming."

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"Giving a Bull Strawberries, a collection of stories from yesterday and today by Philip Whiteland is another comical adventure that had me giggling from the start. The author has no problem making fun of himself and loves to go for the laugh. This an entertaining escape that I had to pick this book up on release day. I have read the others in the series and couldn't help cracking up out loud with people looking on.

As always, I love the old photographs. I would call them 'vintage' but I don't wish to upset the photographer. They really bring the stories to life. Takes you back in time. Precious!

This book is a real treat and something I found comical and endearing. I am all for 'nostlagedy' and no better writer could do it so well. This is an adventurous ride I enjoyed taking."

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In addition to which, how many books do you know that have a 30 foot high stainless steel shovel on the cover?  Come on, be honest ;-)

Giving a Bull Strawberries - read it and gain instant cult status!

High Spirits!

This is this month's Derby Telegraph article, further relating my shameful carryings-on in 1970s Spain.  Here's the link to the article on the DT website High Spirits and this is what it looks like in the print edition:

and, in case you can't read the article from this image, here's the content:

Last month I was shamefacedly admitting my teenage drinking excesses during a holiday in Majorca in the early 1970s.  I would love to say that this month marks my embrace of a healthy lifestyle with good regular exercise, but I would be fibbing.

Three highlights (or possibly, lowlights) of that holiday spring to mind. 

The first was the Medieval Banquet.  This was a pretty ubiquitous feature of Spanish holidays at that time, which involved being carted out to some mountainous retreat where you were treated to chicken in a basket, plied with unlimited amounts of wine on the table, had a waiter pouring more of the same down your throat (cue raucous laughter if you messed this up and finished with it pouring all over you) and finally consumed some dubious spirit to round the night off.  Partially fed and enormously drunk, you then staggered out to watch a jousting match with various locals dressed in allegedly medieval costume. 

The one we attended was made all the more dramatic by a thunderstorm playing out in the surrounding mountains, ultimately leading to a power-cut (not unusual in Spain at that time, there were power cuts most days) and the whole place being plunged into darkness.  The jousting was also more dramatic than intended, as one of the players was knocked off his horse with considerable ferocity and, presumably, hurt himself as he was still on the floor surrounded by a crowd when we had all ambled off to the bar.

The second lowlight was when we discovered a nearby ten pin bowling alley.  I've always enjoyed ten pin bowling, largely because it's the only 'sport' for which I've ever shown any aptitude, so I was particularly pleased about this.  The first unusual element was that the whole thing was outdoors, set in a garden of sorts.  From the front, it appeared to be a standard bowling alley, with multiple lanes and all of the usual paraphernalia.  It was only when we began to bowl that the awful truth emerged.  Although it was a regular bowling alley in all other senses, the aspect that was different was that it had no mechanism behind it at all.  The whole thing was entirely operated by very young children!  Pins were reset and balls returned by kids no more than 5 or 6, who then tucked themselves in behind the pins (where the mechanism should have been) whilst the balls were hurtling down.  That this was clearly an unsafe pastime was evident from the number who were sporting plaster casts.  Such were the joys of Franco's Spain.

The third and final lowlight was when the three of us decided to go for a night on the town.  Dressed to the nines, we made a start at 'El Leon Dorado', our local pub across the road.  The idea was that we would then head off to the nightclubs.  We ordered a pint and then a round of shorts.  I decided to show off by demonstrating how to swallow a whole shot of brandy in one smooth movement.  The barman, obviously aware that this was an idiot worth cultivating, kept refilling my glass and I kept 'Bogarting' them down.  I even fell for being served a shot of Tabasco (of which I'd never heard) with which I did the same, and then had to pretend that my throat wasn't on fire and my eyes watering fit to burst.  All of these brandies had a predictable effect and I dread to think what the Hotel Receptionist thought when, forty five minutes after us leaving, all dressed up for a night out, Kev and Den returned dragging a near-comatose me to be returned to the room.

Apparently, they had a brilliant night out in the nightclubs, whereas all I remember was wakening some time toward noon the following day, still fully dressed and with a mouth like something small, furry and foul-smelling, had hibernated there.  Certainly not my finest hour.

Next time I'll tell you about our next door neighbours and their unfortunate proclamations, how we met some BBC types and how we managed to upset the hotel cleaning staff.

In The Drink!

This is the second instalment in my 'Back to the Balearics' mini-series of  articles which are currently appearing in the Derby Telegraph.  This is this month's article which was published today (26.08.16). This is the link to the Derby Telegraph Bygones website, Bygones.  In the meantime...

In case you can't read it from the photo above, here's the text of the article:

The accompanying picture should give you a fair idea of the theme of this month's article.  I'm willing to bet that anyone who had a holiday in Spain in the 1970s has one of these buried, and thankfully forgotten, amongst their holiday snaps.  Before you ask, it is not a photograph of someone trying to put out a fire in a horse-hair mattress, but we'll come to the explanation later.

You may recall, from last month, that I had embarked on a holiday in Majorca with my friends Kev and Den in the early 1970s?  Hotel Pollensa Park in Puerto de Pollensa, in the north of the island, was our destination for 10 days of sun, sea, sangria and anything else we could find that began with 's'.

We arrived at our hotel late in the evening and discovered, to our chagrin, that we had a room with one double bed and one single camp-type bed.   Kev was first through the door and was quick to claim the camp bed as his own, which left Den and me with the double.  Common sense should have told us to ring Reception and ask for the bed to be converted to twin singles, but we were young and unsophisticated and, as this was only the second time I had been in a hotel in my life, we just decided we would have to make the best of it.

Kev decided that he had had enough for one day and decided to turn in for the night, but Den and I were excited about arriving in Majorca and set off for the pub across the road, El Leon Dorado.  Whether this was a good idea, or not, can be judged by the fact that we burst in on Kev an hour or so later, in search of more money for alcohol and declaring that the beer was "just like Pedigree" (our usual tipple at home) It wasn't!

I have always said that the English are really only happy when they are confined by rules and regulations, particularly when it comes to the partaking of alcohol and, by the English, I really mean me.  After years of sneaking into pubs whilst under the legal age (I know, I know, I should be ashamed of myself) and dutifully heading for home each evening at 10.30 when the pubs shut, I had rather decided to take full advantage of the more liberal, continental approach to the consumption of alcohol on this holiday, starting from Day 1.

Our first night pretty much set the tone of the rest of the holiday for me.  Den was a keen cyclist, so he wasted no time in hiring a bike and setting off each day to discover more of the island.  Kev joined him on a few occasions.  I made one trip out to the nearest village with them and decided it was too much like hard work. 

Kev and Den were also keen to get a decent tan and, therefore, headed down the lane to the nearby beach quite frequently.  I, on the other hand, usually didn't surface until midday and then only to drag myself across the road to El Leon Dorado.  Any tan I got was purely accidental, usually as a result of the sun having moved so that the parasol at my bar table was no longer protecting me. 

On one occasion, I did get up enough enthusiasm to stagger down to the beach and join them.  I dimly recall deciding to have a dip in the Med. and set about demonstrating an enthusiastic front crawl (to the dismay of all in the vicinity) which later turned out to have been in roughly six inches of water, this went some way to explain the extensive cuts to my arms and legs when I tottered back up the beach.

All in all, I was single-handedly confirming the worst perceptions of the British teenager abroad, way before this became fashionable!  And the holiday was yet young, we still had two drinking highlights to go, a night at a medieval banquet (hence the photo) and another night out clubbing, all of which I'll tell you all about next time.

You can find Part 1 of this mini-series here -  Back to the Balearics

It's me, not you!

There is absolutely no reason why anyone in their right mind would want to know more about me, and yet, in defiance of all rational thought, someone has interviewed me!  I'm afraid I can't promise any tantalising insights into my sordid existence.  In fact, it would seem to be the case that I'm just as boring as I always thought I was.  However, if you're remotely interested, then here it is:



https://authorsinterviews.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/here-is-my-interview-with-philip-whiteland/

Back to the Balearics!

Last month's Derby Telegraph article rather slipped under the radar! Not only did it appear on the wrong day (even I missed it) but it never made the DT website either.  For those who missed this particular journalistic jaunt, it's reproduced below with the text in full.  Next instalment will be (abw) in the Bygones section of the Derby Telegraph on Friday, 26th August.

Last month you left me in the not-so-splendid isolation of my 'office' at Harold Wesley Ltd., in Victoria Crescent, Burton.  I think it says something about my career choice, back in 1972, that the highlight of my week was calculating lengthy long-division sums by hand.  As I said, last time, spending at least two days per week with nothing to do, whilst trapped in an office on your own, with no excuse to go out of it, nor any need for anyone to come and see you, is enough to drive anyone to the edges of their sanity, and I probably didn't have as far to go as most.

Fortunately, there was one small light on the horizon.  Something to look forward to even when I was sure I was losing the plot.  For this, we need to take a quick trip back to my former job at the DIY Plastics warehouse. 

Regular readers, and there must be at least one of you, may remember the week's holiday I spent in Arenal, Majorca with my mate Kev during the summer holidays when we were both at Burton Technical College?  In conversation with the gang at the warehouse, I waxed lyrical about this holiday, the sun, sea and sangria, and how ridiculously cheap it all was.  One of the gang, who had been a good friend to me as I was learning the job and, for the sake of protecting the innocent, I'll call Den, was particularly interested.

The end result was that Kev, Den and I decided that it would be fun to repeat the experience.  The difference this time was that, because we had more funds to splash about (previously it had been just what we could earn in the few weeks of holiday) we could afford to have ten days instead of just a week, and we elected to go to a more exclusive (well, it was in 1972) part of Majorca.  Accordingly, we booked ourselves in to the Pollensa Park Hotel in Puerto de Pollensa.  This was largely because it looked as if it was right on to the beach from the picture in the brochure (it wasn't) and because it was within our budget.

Three is a difficult number for any group.  The potential for two to align themselves against the other one, is always quite high.  Our group was inevitably going to be a tricky one because we had very little in common.  I only knew Den as a work colleague, and I now no longer worked there, whereas I had known Kev for a couple of years by now and quite a bit of water (and beer) had flown under the bridge.  Kev, of course, only knew Den through me and so they had no common ground at all.  To try to overcome this, we met up on a relatively regular basis in the months preceding our holiday.  Thankfully, we all liked a drink and a game of darts, which was a good starting point, and we seemed to get on.  As it turned out, the main irritant in the group, once we were on holiday, was me!

My memories of this holiday are a bit fragmented, for reasons that will become obvious later.  I'm not even certain which airport we flew from.  At that time, I was panic-stricken by the thought of flying and took my then usual precaution of trying to anaesthetise myself to the whole experience by consuming quite a large quantity of alcohol before the flight.  It must have worked, because I don't remember anything about it. 

What I do recall is that we nearly missed our transfer bus from Palma airport because we were held up at Customs (I think there was some sort of strike in progress).  This could have been potentially very serious as we had no concept of just how far away our hotel was from the airport (56 kms apparently).  Finally, jammed on to a coach full of people, mostly of our own age, we set off, as night fell, for the long trip across the island of Majorca.

You can find the full shameful story of Philip's first holiday to Majorca in 'Crutches for Ducks' available from Amazon.

Passport Photo - don't have nightmares!

How Sweet To Be An Idiom

I used a phrase in a story the other day, which I thought was fairly commonplace, but someone commented that they were now going to add it to their lexicon (see comment).  It made me realise just how much I rely on the use of idioms in my everyday speech, and in my writing.  Frankly, I blame Readers Digest.  Whenever I was waiting, either at the Doctor's surgery or the Dentist's (and waiting used to be the main feature of the NHS) as a child I always used to make a bee-line (there's an idiom already) for the Readers Digest magazines, of which there were always a plentiful supply.  I never used to read the articles very much, on the grounds that they might prove too long and I might have to depart for my appointment before completion (although, from experience, you would usually have ample scope for 'War and Peace' and still have time to kill).  I usually read those little sections that contained jokes that readers had contributed or that section called something like 'Toward More Colourful Speech' which encouraged the use of idioms as a means of brightening the otherwise dull conversation of the typical Readers Digest subscriber (presumably).

I like idioms.  I do think they add colour to any story.  The trouble is that I pepper my speech (another one!) with them and this infiltrates my writing.  All of my books have idioms as titles (see examples on the right), largely because they are based on things my mum and dad used to say, which struck me as amusing as a child.  I like saying "I'll go the foot of our stairs" to express surprise, even though it means nothing at all.  I think the description of someone looking as if they had "lost a bob and found a tanner" perfectly sums up a hangdog expression, as well as being delightfully anachronistic.  An old friend of our family used to say, of someone who was a little confused, that he didn't "know whether his a*se was bored or punched", which I thought was terrific.  I'm sure every family has their own collection of such phrases, they sort of act as the family jargon - a mode of speech that everyone in the family instantly understands but which can confound (but also, hopefully, amuse) the stranger.

Where you really encounter potential difficulty, if you're as wedded to idioms as I am, is when you are trying to convey your meaning to someone for whom English is not their first language.  Idioms are rarely a feature of formal language classes and, anyway, it would be impossible to learn all of the possibilities for every region of the country you are visiting.  I found that, when I was teaching a class of students which comprised mainly non-U.K. citizens, I had to police my language carefully to remove any trace of the vernacular.  Even so, I was always aware of a widening gulf of incomprehension.  I remember one particular class, which consisted primarily of Chinese students, in which I became increasingly convinced that I was only getting through to a handful of the class.  At the end of the session, I half-heartedly indicated the notes I had written up on the white board, summarising the key points of the lesson, and asked, without much hope, "Does that all sort of make sense to you?"  This was the sort of vapid question I often asked the U.K. students and they, being no strangers to the English concept of saying one thing and meaning another, would nod and smile brightly and, in all probability, leave the class none the wiser.  In this instance, one particular student had been sitting on the front row and frowning at me throughout the lesson.  When I asked my question, she answered firmly "No", which quite threw me as I'd never had that response before.  At least it was honest and we spent the next 20 minutes or so trying to summarise the content of the three hour session in a manner that she could understand.  I'm not sure that we succeeded.

Another time when idioms rather let me down was with my Subject Administrator at the time.  Subject Administrators are the fine rain that falls upon the groves of academe which keeps knowledge burgeoning.  Without them, the whole system would fall apart. 

On this occasion, my invaluable assistant originated from Portugal and there were many times when I could see that we were not necessarily singing from the same hymn sheet (sorry!)  On this particular day I had a number of interviews arranged with prospective students followed by an interview with a rather recalcitrant current student.  Amazingly, all of the people booked for appointments actually turned up (quite a feat) which only left the recalcitrant student to be seen at the end of the day.  As the Subject Administrator and I were walking up to the interview room, I remarked on how well the day had gone so far and then said, "We only need Sunshine [meaning the recalcitrant student] now to turn up and it will have been a good day"  I knew immediately that we had wandered into the thickets of mutual incomprehension by the deepening frown on her face.  She looked at me, and then stared out toward the darkening Nottingham skyline and said, very earnestly, "Yes, we do need sunshine."  Which, I decided, was a statement you couldn't (and shouldn't) argue with.