Self Distract

I am sixty years old and I have never had a hobby before. Well, there was this one thing you’d call a hobby and I couldn’t disagree, but I never called it that because I realise now that I regard the word as pejorative. That’s not in the way that I still remain convinced that “bucolic” is a serious illness. I believe I know what the word “hobby” means, but to me it is somehow bound up with not taking something seriously. With playing at something. Something that doesn’t matter. Writing is a…

There are no rules in writing, but if you break them… Here’s a thing. There are certain ways of writing, certain ways of doing all sorts of things really, that are frankly naff and yet there are people who do them well. I would tell you, for instance, that the sole way I can stomach reading a narrator is if they are lying sods who are out to fool me and preferably along the way are also kidding themselves. Unreliable narrators, can’t get enough of them. Regular narrators, forget it. A regular…

If you happen to remember BBC Ceefax, you’ll know that it had pages of news that you selected and read on your TV set. What you will have no reason to know is there were two sets of these pages, and at midnight the system switched from one to the other. It was so that you could set up the pages for tomorrow and they would go live on time, unless you did something disastrously wrong. Disaster was possible because switching to the new set meant switching away from the old. So one of the jobs on…

I still haven’t seen The Odyssey but one of the writers who first made me want to write is insisting I should and that’s harder to resist than it is to find the time to see it. Nonetheless, if this film is more interesting in the discussion than the watching, it is interesting and a thing that keeps catching my mind is how it used mirrors in its production. Stop me if you know this one, but I already knew that IMAX cameras are so loud that all dialogue is re-recorded later. Or it is for most…

At about 02:30 local time last night, says William reading to the court from his notes, I observed a suspicious milk delivery. Now, I need you to know that I am not yet so old that what happens outside my window is my entire world, but when you’ve finished three hours of studying your bedroom ceiling, you’ll take anything. Plus it’s recycling day and our council has us using these large blue sack things that as yet have not blown away on a whim, but it didn’t half sound like that’s exactly what…

Okay, I would like to change some names here, except one is mine and I’m going to pretend I’ve forgotten the other. I think she’s married, anyway, so half her name will have been changed to protect the innocent. But still, the name you want to know about is Andy Pandy. If you don’t know that one, he was this puppet thing on TV when I was very young, and if you do know that name, forgive me. This is a children’s classic, this is a boy (I presume) who was always dressed head to toe in this huge…

I was criticised earlier this week for always watching films with a writer’s eye. The implication was that only non-writers can see movies correctly, and the inference I took away was that there are people who will sit through any old shit. It is true that I get very bored, very quickly when all a film has is good-looking visuals. It’s also true that I have watched movies because of who wrote them where I have never once chosen a film because of its director or for that matter, actors. I need…

Okay, I just wanted to say “Clear and presenter danger.” Let’s you and I see if there’s any chance I’ve got something to back that up. I think I have. Earlier this week, a friend did me the favour of alerting me to how a show called “The Piano” was about to start on Channel 4. She didn’t then do me the favour of admitting that she soon gave up on it. I’m not going to say that I only watched because of her, because she might hear me. Instead, I’ll tell you I watched because of her, and because…

So it’s been on my mind to tell you that when Nigel Farage made his faux resignation speech this week, I was in the House of Commons. I had it in my head to quote you a line from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” by Mary Kay Place, where Mary insists that “I’ve been around… well, alright, I might not have been around, but I’ve been nearby.” Only, I like that line and I don’t like talking about Farage. Plus while I did actually think he was in the same building making that speech, he was in fact half…

So apparently there’s this new film, right, called “Young Washington”, and at the end of it, Kelsey Grammer talks directly to the audience. It’s not as if the film is breaking the fourth wall with a character suddenly turning to us, it’s more a separate advert that will presumably be ditched when this thing finally goes to streaming. But it’s Kelsey Grammer, he’s talking to the audience, and he’s asking them to buy more tickets to this film, whether or not they then go see it again. “With your…

I’ve had a good week — I signed a book contract — but there was one part of one conversation that was miserable and I keep thinking about it. A writer nearing the end of her university course asked me about joining the Writers’ Guild and at one point said that emerging writers who do not use AI are at a disadvantage, I think even that they are left behind. Now, that reads as if she were arguing in favour of AI and she was not at all. She was asking about it because this is how the industry…

Writing never changes, it is always and forever one word after another, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the first time you’ve written the words “Chapter One” of the fiftieth time you’ve written the phrase “Fade Out”. And yet the writing does change. I can’t yet say what this is, but I got sent a contract yesterday for a writing project I’ve been officially working toward for a few months, and unofficially working toward for, well, my entire writing career to date. So, you know, no pressure. And…

I did not know until one minute ago that this line was written by Ian Fleming, and I did not remember until one minute ago that it begins with the word “happenstance”. It’s a fine word. But the line is that “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” You know the line, even if you only half-remember it like me and just imagine writing a line that gets even half-remembered. I adore that I half-remembered it, went to check, and learnt all this. I cannot get enough…

Last Saturday, I had to wait 90 minutes at my barber’s. Obviously I’m not complaining, in fact it was good to see a local business being busy and especially so when I’ve often been there at times where my greying hair on the floor would be indistinguishable from tundra blowing by. But this time I was in a hurry and there wasn’t anything I could do, so I had to sit there for that hour and a half. True, I worked on various things to do with a book I’m producing, and I read a bit of a novel, read…

This image is a view of Lowlands University from “A Very Peculiar Practice” by Andrew Davies. The show is now on the BBC iPlayer to mark 40 years since its first transmission, which means it’s also four decades since I used to sit so very unhappily while facing exactly that view. For while the show actually filmed in two different universities, the main one and the one with this view, was Birmingham University. I didn’t attend Birmingham University and while I’ve spoken there, I’ve presented…

I can’t claim to have known actor Michael Keating, who died this week, but I did interview him once and we did have at least one phone chat. And I want to tell you about that chat. Not because of what was said, I imagine now that it was just about arranging the time for the in-person interview, but because of precisely when it happened. Please picture me taking notes as I watched an episode of Blake’s 7. Specifically, I’m sitting at the end of our couch, my MacBook is on the arm to my side, my…

So I did this thing yesterday, I had a tune in my head, just ten notes or so, and for the first time in my life, I automatically went to my piano to try to work out what they were. Now, I failed, and now, I have not one thin clue how I thought I could do this since at present “Chopsticks” is beyond my grasp, but I tried. And most significantly to me, I went to the piano as automatically as I might to a keyboard to write on. I concluded, briefly, that I am now a musician. I concluded, even more…

So there’s this book idea, right, and I first pitched it in the 1990s but not only couldn’t get anywhere with it, someone else did. They got a book published on precisely the same non-fiction topic and all these years later, I still remember my first thought when I got it: they’ve queered the pitch for everyone else. Flash forward to now and it’s not as if I’ve sold that book proposal, but I am close. Close enough that all reason and logic says the pitch is done and the contract should be on…

Nothing you ever learn is wasted, even if it’s originally trivia and over time becomes pointless. I’m not selling this very well. But I did a thing this week and without any conceivably connection to anything I happen to have picked up before, there was a connection and I’ve been fixating on it. All I did was have a week off. Mostly. Actually, pretty close to entirely. And I quickly found myself having to check what day was which, I was quickly living at odd hours of the day. I had a bad…

It feels like a badge of honour. Years ago I was fired from ITV’s Crossroads, today I’ve been banned by TikTok. I’m a rebel. I’m dangerous. I’m bad. You thought you knew me, but this is a whole other side I’ve kept hidden. I know how to battle social media, and I’m just crazy enough to do it. Okay, it’s more likely a server error, but still, I’m having to appeal the decision and everything. All I do on TikTok, by the way, is post a version of the short tip videos I make for my 58keys YouTube…

Only this week, someone compared my piano playing to that of Rachmaninoff’s. To be precise, they said: “He’s not as … Continue reading →

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