There but for the...

Two weeks ago today we were docked in Gibraltar on the Independence of the Seas at the beginning of a 2 week Mediterranean Cruise.  I was going to post some observations about our holiday, and will do so soon, but the news from Gib today re the explosion alongside the Independence has made me decide to leave a decent interval.  I really hope that this turns out to be just a tragic accident and not something more sinister and I sincerely hope that those injured make a full recovery.

Slim Pickings

This is the continuing story of how Steady Past Your Granny's found its way into print, and eventually an e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA) - that commenced in Booked Up!

Before I could get my 'expanded booklets' printed there was one further river to cross - the ISBN number needed to be converted into a bar code format.  This proved tricky unless I was willing to part with a considerable amount of money.  As my foray into self-publishing had already cost quite a bit more than I anticipated and showed no signs of generating any income in the foreseeable future, I was not inclined to sink any more funds into what was rapidly becoming something of a money pit.


However, diligent searching of the internet finally threw up an altruistic computer buff who offered conversion of ISBNs into bar codes for a limited period under licence for a modest sum.  Regrettably, because I am a dyed in the wool idiot, I only converted the one ISBN number I needed there and then into a bar code in the paid-for period, instead of taking the opportunity to convert the whole set of ten for future use.  It's at times like that, that I wonder how I manage to breathe without the aid of instructions.


So, with the cover sorted and the bar code obtained, my friend set to with a will and supplied me with my initial (and probably hopelessly optimistic) order of 50 copies.  In conjunction with the local Ottaker's a book-signing event was arranged and a friend of mine who was then the Deputy Editor of a local newspaper kindly ran a story plugging this.  Looking at the picture they ran with the article (see below) you may be amazed that anyone dared to turn up!  I always  think it looks like someone who is attempting to breed chins for a living.

Slim Chance

This is the continuing story of how Steady Past Your Granny's found its way into print, and eventually an e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA) - that commenced in Booked Up!

There is nothing quite so frustrating as waiting for something that you have eagerly anticipated, to arrive through the post.  Each day I irrationally expected my parcel to appear, and each day I was disappointed.  Days turned into weeks and then months.  Christmas (which was when I hoped to have them) came and went.  I chased the marketing company responsible for the promotion and was fobbed off with vague promises of the books arriving shortly.  I even found a discussion forum in which hordes of other prospective authors were venting their spleen about their missing books.  Eventually, in April, 2006, the books finally arrived.

I have to admit that the books were impressive.  They looked the business (see Booked Up!) and were reassuringly weighty.  Even the pictures had transferred successfully.  The only downside was that I had been forced to choose between single or double spaced lines and had opted for double spacing in a desperate attempt to make the book look better value than it actually was.  The end result was something like those Janet and John books of my childhood.  Nevertheless, I now had a book of my own in my hot little hands.  After foisting a number onto my friends and relatives, I naturally began to think about selling the remainder.  However, I soon came up against a snag in that the major bookshop in our town (whilst quite supportive of my attempts) could not stock the book without an ISBN.

I seemed to be back to square one again, until a friend of ours in the same village said that he could help me to self-publish the book.  The only problem would be that it could not be in a conventional book format, with a spine.  As a home published effort, it would be more like an expanded booklet.  To keep the number of pages down to a level that could be realistically stapled, it was no longer possible for each chapter to start on a new page.  Nevertheless, the book could be published and printed (after a fashion) and I hurriedly applied for my set of ISBN numbers.

Casting around for a suitable photo for the cover, I remembered that the urinal that featured in the final title story had just been rescued, refurbished and granted pride of place in what was then the Bass Museum of Brewing.  It was too good a chance to miss.  Armed with a camera and a ticket to the museum, my long-suffering wife captured a picture of me striding purposefully toward the Convenience, thus creating a picture that would baffle and perplex potential readers for years to come!

More in the same vein in the next instalment - Slim Pickings

Completely Booked

This is the continuing story of how Steady Past Your Granny's found its way into print, and eventually an e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA) - that commenced in Booked Up!


In a desperate search for material to fill the book, I started to cast around for anything else that I had written.  I became increasingly aware that, despite the fact that I had always thought of myself as a writer, I hadn't actually written much at all for years.  It was quite a sobering realisation.  Apart from something of a flurry in my teenage years,  most of my writing since that time had been limited to funny doggerel in birthday cards (see Occasional Showers), and the occasional attempt at a novel that had never survived longer than half a dozen pages.


The only reason that there was anything to put in the book at all was as a consequence of a competition run by a local bookshop for stories about growing up in Burton upon Trent.  My effort, "The Wreck", didn't trouble the judges much but did make it into the compilation book.  Inspired by this limited success, I submitted an article to a nostalgia magazine published by the local newspaper which was favourably received and I was given the opportunity to have an article included in the bi-monthly publication on a regular basis.  So, with a handful of articles published and one or two more in preparation I had the basis of a book but by no means enough to fill it.  


I found one or two pieces that I had written whilst on holiday, contemporary observational humour which I thought might amuse people.  I also had a story written to amuse my friends the previous Christmas (A Stable Upbringing).  It was a bit of a mish-mash but it got me above the required word count.  I was aware that the book might work better if it was focused solely on nostalgia but  I was concerned that I might just be seen as a 'one trick pony' and never again get the chance to show what else I could do.  


I sent the lot to the Daily Mail, with my batch of clipped out vouchers, and awaited my books anxiously.


More in the same vein in the next instalment - Slim Chance

Booked Up - Part 2

This is the story of how Steady Past Your Granny's found its way into print, and eventually an e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)


I thought this customer review on Amazon.com beautifully summarised the content of the book and I'll explain how it came about in the next post:


"Side effects of reading this book may include frequent chuckling and occasional guffawing - at least that's the effect it had on me. I do like a book that actually makes me physically laugh.

The book is a collection of reminiscences of English boyhood during the fifties/sixties, one or two amusing short stories and some curmudgeonly reflections on growing older and modern life. The book doesn't really have a point, mainly it's an enjoyable meandering memoir of a different time and place with some sharp observations thrown in. The stories have an English sensibility (that gentle British humour I alluded to) but I think that the stories will have universal appeal to anyone of the baby boomer generation.

If you are waiting to see the dentist this would be the ideal book to cheer you up."


Find out more about how the book came about at Completely Booked

Booked Up!

This is the story of how Steady Past Your Granny's found its way into print, and eventually an e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)


I don't know if you remember the ill-fated offer by a certain daily newspaper to "Print Your Own Book" way back in the Autumn of 2005? The idea was that the readers could submit a manuscript of 20,000 words + and would get any number of copies printed up in a standard book format in return for a set of coupons from the newspaper and £5 per copy requested. I think they expected to get about 5,000 orders, they finished up with more than 10x that amount and a backlog of angry punters who had hoped to have their seminal novels in their hands in time for Christmas and were still asking where they were by the following Easter.

Anyone remember that? Did you take part?


It was a daily paper that spends most of its time annoying the British Middle Classes - any ideas ;-)


I had always wanted to publish a book but had never had the time or money to self-publish and had never sufficiently excited the attention of real publishers. Therefore, this newspaper offer seemed a good way to get some copies printed at a modest price. The best of it was that there was no minimum print run, you could have 1 or 100 if you so wished. The only stipulation was that your manuscript had to be 20,000 words or longer.  At that time, although I had been lucky enough to have a few articles printed by a local newspaper, I simply didn't have enough to fill a book and certainly not 20,000 words worth (perhaps I should have been a Lake poet?)

Continue the story at Booked Up Part 2

The Cat in the Coalhouse (Part 2)

In the last instalment, The Cat in the Coalhouse (Part 1) I recounted how a neighbouring cat suddenly appeared one Sunday afternoon, proudly leading her new kindle of kittens to take up residence in his family’s coalhouse.  Despite our entreaties, Mum decreed that “those kittens were not to come into this house”.  Now read on…

Over the next few days, the antics of our new feline family took over from the television as the main source of entertainment for our household.  Frequently, during the course of the day, and particularly in the evening, the Mother Cat (MC) would appear through the hole in the coalhouse door and set off across the neighbourhood gardens, reappearing some time later with something she had scavenged from a dustbin somewhere or with an unfortunate mouse or small bird.  She clearly had her work cut out, feeding her growing brood.

As for the kittens, they would tend to appear in the late afternoon/early evening.   MC would keep a sharp look-out as they dashed wildly around a small area that covered the top of our two gardens and across our joined back yards (ours and Mrs. B’s).  Play fighting and what seemed like an endless game of ‘tick’ seemed to be their main pursuit but they also enjoyed stalking (unsuccessfully) the occasional insect and each other.  However at the first sign of anyone approaching, the whole family shot straight back into the coalhouse, with MC bringing up the rear.

In my mind’s eye, I felt sure that there were four kittens in all (and said so in the last instalment) but digging out some photographs for this post (and checking with my sister) I found that there were, in fact, only three.  In my defence, it seemed a lot more at the time!

As each day passed by, the weather continued to deteriorate.  It was certainly getting colder but we assumed they were keeping reasonably warm in the coalhouse (we didn’t dare open this in case we scared them away totally).  For the first few days the crisp autumn sunshine gave a spring-like quality to the daytime but there was no denying the sharp edge of winter on the keen breeze.  Then came a series of sudden squalls in which driving rain or, worse still, hail would lash across the yard.  Late Saturday morning a particularly vicious squall suddenly appeared out of nowhere and caught MC and her brood unawares as they played in the yard.  Standing at the window, I made a unilateral decision – they couldn’t be allowed to stay out there in this weather.

I raced out into the yard and, in the confusion of hail and high winds, I managed to catch the two long-haired kittens before they could leap back into the coalhouse.  MC and her smooth haired kitten eluded me and shot straight into their sanctuary.  I dashed back into the house with two cold and wet balls of fluff tucked under my arms.  Mum had just come down stairs.

“I couldn’t leave them out there in this” I said, nodding toward the hail now beating a tattoo on our living room window.

“Well, I suppose you had better put them in front of the fire” Mum said resignedly, but it seemed to me that she was secretly relieved that a difficult decision had been taken out of her hands.

Cats are pretty pragmatic and these two clearly quickly weighed up the pros and cons of life in the coalhouse versus a roaring fire and soft carpet and decided that it was no contest.  After a little mewing and pacing about, they settled down in front of the fire to wash and bask.  Meanwhile, MC and the smooth haired escapee stayed put in their coalhouse.

A few more days passed by and our life with the now semi-detached cat family continued.  We found a box and some old blankets for our two refugees to sleep on and made some toys out of ribbons and cotton reels.  Mum was concerned about how we could cope with setting up a litter tray (the family budget not being able to stretch to any further expense whatsoever) but, after a little research, she discovered that common or garden (mostly garden in our case) soil would be fine, provided that it had been sterilised by baking.  From then onwards our kitchen was frequently filled with the rather unusual smell of freshly-baked earth, roasting in a biscuit tin.

MC and her sole remaining kitten carried on pretty much as before.  Playing together when the sun shone (which was becoming more infrequent) and hunkering down in the coalhouse at all other times.  Inevitably the weather worsened further and when snow started to fall and the temperature plummeted, Anne and I finally set up a pincer movement in which one of us guarded the coalhouse door whilst the other chased the kitten, cornered it and managed to haul him, hissing and kicking, into the house. 

With all her kittens now inside, MC decided that she might as well take a look at what was on offer and gingerly made her way in, with our encouragement.  Soon the whole family had taken pride of place in front of the fire and no-one would have ever known that they had not been used to this lifestyle from the start.

Of course, Mum’s dire warnings about the amount of hard work involved in kitten rearing were absolutely correct.  For the next few weeks it was by no means unusual to find kittens climbing up the curtains or chasing furiously up and down the furniture, aided by their razor sharp crampon-like claws.  MC seemed to be completely at ease with divesting her responsibilities onto Mum and took to curling up on any available lap at every opportunity, as did the kittens, in an orderly row, once they had exhausted themselves in one of their “mad half-hours” as Mum called them.

The kittens were christened as Fluff (long haired, all white kitten with a splash of black on both ears and a penchant for laps and creature comforts), Scamp (short haired, all white with a splash of black on his right ear, a rugged individualist) and Fred (long haired, white and tricolour and a born comedian).  Fred had to be rechristened Freda when it became clear that she was a little girl cat (which shows how far she would go to get a laugh).

It was a struggle financially and logistically to manage our new-found brood but we managed.  Well, Mum did, to be fair, although how she coped with keeping our house clean and tidy when she had kittens traipsing soil through the kitchen and wreaking havoc on the furniture, I’ll never know. What with the cat, kittens, our Cocker Spaniel, Jane a budgie (Dinkie, they were all called that, don’t ask me why!) and some goldfish, we had a pretty full house.

The kittens grew rapidly and it was obvious that our small house would never be able to house all of these cats for ever.  Once again we were very fortunate.  Our friendly local vet heard of our plight and recommended a number of people to come and see us.  One by one, our kittens found very good homes indeed and we heard how they were doing in the cards and letters that followed.

Mum decided that MC really needed a quiet house in which to bask in front of the fire and tried to rehome her with a little old lady who had lost her cat and lived just a few streets away, but this was doomed to failure as MC had clearly decided which home she fancied and she reappeared at our door a couple of days after her ‘rehoming’.  She took up residence, as if this had all been an unfortunate aberration, and remained with us for the rest of her life.

Strangely enough, the coalhouse didn’t seem to appeal anymore!


You can find this story, along with a host of others, in the new bumper collection of stories Crutches For Ducks