8 Questions for a Self-Published Author

Posted on by Steve Higgins

A few years ago, I published a post called 7 Questions for a Self-Published Author. This week I decided to update it and here it is, thinly disguised as 8 Questions for a Self-Published Author.

Question 1:

What made you want to write a novel?

I’ve always been a writer, even as a school kid I was writing stories and screenplays. I used to write scripts and do all the casting. Not sure whether Steve McQueen would have appreciated the roles I was planning for him though.

Later on when I was in my 20s I tried to move away from all the sci-fi and espionage stuff I was writing and write about something more personal to me, something that I had a personal connection with so I started writing about life working on the buses, which is what I was doing at the time.

I wrote about working as a bus conductor and driver and jotted down my observations about the people I met and carried on my bus. Then there were other stories about my personal life, drinking in pubs, chatting up girls in nightclubs, listening to music and so on. Later I realised I could link all this stuff together even though it was just a series of essays and make it into a short novel which is what I did. The process involved rewriting my essays to fit in with the story but that was fairly easy as the story was actually a fictionalised version of my own younger life.

Question 2

How did you go about publishing the finished book?

Floating in Space was turned down by three publishers. That was of course disappointing but rejections are par for the course for any writer. Some time ago I wrote a blog post about books rejected by publishers and I found out that The Day of the Jackal was rejected 4 times, Gone with the Wind 38 times and The Time Traveller’s Wife 25 times. Publishers are only human of course but these days writers don’t need them, we can just publish online, just like I did using Amazon.

The most famous book to come from online publishing is probably 50 Shades of Grey which was first  posted online as a story called Master of the Universe, on a fan-fiction website and later on the author’s own website.

Question 3

Tell me about the problems of marketing and getting your book noticed by the public.

Well, that is the hard part, writing a book was easy in comparison!

Building up a presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube was a gradual process and the same is also true for my blog on WordPress which I started really just to promote the book. I started off with essays about how I wrote the book and videos of me talking about the book and so on.

I read somewhere that over 5000 books are published every day on Amazon, an incredible figure, so how can anyone compete with that? Well, just by getting out onto social media and plugging away with tweets, new blog posts, videos and so on.

Question 4

Tell me about your website and your blog.

Well, my website was originally created just to promote my book and get my message out there to potential readers but it’s also a challenge, a writing challenge. My big problem is that I’m lazy and I need a big push to get me writing so having a deadline, 10:00am on a Saturday morning, is something that gets me motivated as a writer. I know that I have to write something by then.

That deadline actually makes me feel like a sort of writing professional as I’m always working towards it, trying to get something ready to post for my readers. I do feel really pleased when I have no idea what to write about but suddenly on a Friday afternoon I’ll settle down with my laptop and write a really good post.

The crazy thing is that the same problems that apply to my books also apply to my blog. Who has heard about the blog? Who will read the posts? I have to promote my blog as much as I promote my books and even when my posts get attention, does that convert to book sales? Not necessarily! I use social media a lot but I’m not sure I even understand it. Over on X (formerly Twitter) I have over 6000 followers and if all those followers bought copies of my books I’d be very happy, but do they? No. Why not? Well a large majority of those followers are writers and authors themselves who like to connect with other writers and authors. Ok that’s good but what I need are more readers than writers.

Question 5

What sort of posts will we find on your blog?

Generally, I try to write stuff that is similar to my book and short stories, little bits of fluff, anecdotes with a funny twist, things like that. The idea is that if people like the blogs they should like my book, Floating in Space, which is written in a similar style. A typical blog post and one of my favourites, is the one about hoodies (Hoodies and a Shaggy Dog Story) and an incident where an old lady’s handbag was snatched. Another favourite was called the Cat Wars and was about a crazy situation that built up when I was looking after my neighbour’s cat.

The only problem now is that I’m running out of anecdotes but I still manage to write about two other favourite themes, second-hand books and classic films.

Question 6

What about video, do you use video in your blogs and marketing?

Any internet post on social media performs better with images, a 37% percent increase in engagement and even more so with video.

Here are a few stats:

100 million hours of video are watched each day on Facebook.

500 million people watch Facebook videos every day.

Facebook videos receive 135% more organic reach on average than a photo.

Two thirds of content on Instagram is now video as opposed to pictures but video has to be snappy. If viewers are not hooked in the first few seconds, they just click away from your video to something more interesting.

I use video on my website to try and engage readers and all my adverts, because I do use advertising every now and then, are all video based.

A lot of years ago, in the 1990’s I really wanted to get into TV and video and I went on a video production course at the WFA media centre in Manchester. Subsequently, I made a few attempts to make some things for TV, all of which ended in failure but as a result I do have a bit of technical knowledge with video editing and production which has helped me a lot.

Luckily, technology today makes it pretty easy to create simple videos and I use them a lot in my blog posts.

Question 7

What are your plans for the future regarding writing and blogging?

Well, more of the same really. I’ve begun to work on a follow up novel to Floating in Space but a novel is hard work and I sometimes wonder if I’m up to the task. Even my latest book, Timeline, which is just a collection of stories and blog posts was pretty hard work. The big problem is just me, being motivated and just getting myself geared up to work and write. Writing short stories is much more enjoyable and I’m really pleased at how my stories have turned out. A few are available for readers to download and enjoy, just click on the download link above.

Question 8

Tell me about your other books

I mentioned above about my short stories and I put together a collection of those in my book Timeline. The title story is set in the present day but in a Germany which was victorious in World War II and there are another 10 stories in the book. Also included are some of my favourite blog posts and a little of my poetry. Talking of poetry, I have also published a collection of poems titled A Warrior of Words. Over on my YouTube page there are a mix of various video types and some time ago I decided to put all my poetry readings onto a separate channel. Click here to watch my poetry videos.

Click the links at the top of the page to read about Floating in Space, A Warrior of Words and Timeline. All are available from Amazon.

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Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

History on the Television Screen

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I have to admit I am a big fan of the television. Even when I was a child my old dad used to sometimes call me ‘square eyes’ because he would usually find me glued to the TV even as a child. (By the way, TVs were square back in the day!) What is really amazing is the way we can experience history pretty much as it happens through the medium of the television. Take this week for instance with the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

I did read some news snippets over the previous weekend indicating Starmer was planning to resign on the Monday but I pretty much dismissed that as just a rumour without any background. Of course journalists have their contacts within government and certainly whoever started that rumour off must have had a good source because he was proved fully correct.

Watching the TV news on Monday was really exciting because first we had Starmer’s resignation speech which to a great extent was similar to resignation speeches of the past, in fact the first thing I thought of when I saw it was the resignation speech of Theresa May who like Starmer began to get emotional towards the end.

Not long after that we TV viewers were treated to Andy Burnham making his way to Piccadilly station in Manchester where he was due to get on a train to London. Later more updates came with him arriving at Westminster to be sworn in as a MP. Apparently, according to the news media, it might only be a short while until he becomes our next Prime Minister. Not a bad few days work for Andy, one day Mayor of Manchester, the next day an MP and the next our Prime Minister in waiting. Anyway for me it’s all been rather exciting watching everything unfold on the TV screen.

I’m trying to think of some past historical events I’ve experienced through television. The very first one that comes to mind was in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I was only 11 years old then but I knew who RFK was and that he was the brother of John F Kennedy who had also been shot. I remember being very shocked by the shooting and going outside to be alone. In fact we had a shed in our garden and I went round the back and said a prayer for him. Kennedy was taken to hospital where he later died from his wounds.

Robert Kennedy picture courtesy wikipedia

Who killed him? It was a man named Sirhan Sirhan who later claimed various things. He had shot Kennedy because of his support for Israel and later that he had no memory of the shooting. Police found notebooks at his home filled with pages and pages of script repeating RFK must die over and over. Did he really kill Kennedy? The shot to Kennedy’s head was apparently fired at point blank range but witnesses say Sirhan wasn’t close enough and he was grabbed by people nearby after his first shot so how could other shots have hit Kennedy?

Either way that was a very sad day. Later that year Apollo 8 reached the moon and the astronauts made a broadcast on Christmas day reading from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Looking on the internet I see that it was actually Christmas Eve when the crew made that transmission so maybe my memory is out or the US/UK time difference meant it was on Christmas Day for us in the UK. Anyway, it was something that made a huge impression on my younger self.

In July 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and I’ve mentioned in a few posts how exciting that was. I was getting up for school on that particular morning and watched the astronauts on the moon before getting dressed and being dragged away from the television by my mother.

On August 31st 1997 I had come downstairs to watch old episodes of Doctor Who that were then being shown on cable TV. I made a cup of tea and turned on the TV to find that during the night Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris. Every channel I turned to seemed to be full of the same story. Diana had been in Paris with her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed, the son of Mohamed Al-Fayed the owner of Harrods, the famous London department store. They were staying at the Ritz, also owned by Dodi’s father.

Apparently, the couple wanted to get away to Dodi’s nearby apartment. A decoy vehicle left the front of the hotel to draw away the paparazzi and Dodi and Diana left in a Mercedes from the back of the hotel. Their Mercedes was driven by Henri Paul, who was deputy head of the Ritz security team and also in the car was Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones.

After leaving the Ritz the car entered the Pont de L’Alma underpass and the driver lost control at 65mph and hit one of the tunnel’s central roof supports. The only survivor of the crash was Rees-Jones. Diana survived for a while and was helped by an off duty doctor. She was taken to hospital but died at 04:00am.

By John Mathew Smith & http://www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA (Archived link) – BEST ALL-TIME DIANA! (Archived link), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85061623

I think I probably spent most of the day watching the news as well as watching things unfold over subsequent days. Charles flew to Paris to bring back Diana’s body and every day the stack of flowers left at the palace grew and grew. The royal family were criticised as they stayed away from London and even when they returned there were more issues as the flag at Buckingham Palace was not shown at half-mast. It seems that the Royal Standard is never shown at half-mast even if the sovereign dies as then a new King or Queen immediately comes into play. As a compromise the Union Flag was displayed at half-mast instead.

Fast forward to September of 2001 and I turned on the news to see that an aircraft had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. The pictures were shocking and terrible but I remember being almost unable to come away from the images. As I watched another aircraft slammed into the second tower and it was some time later when both the towers collapsed.

The suicide attacks were organised by Al-Qaeda the terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden and four aircraft in all were hi-jacked. One plane was flown at the Pentagon in Virginia and on the final plane, the passengers became aware of the other hijackings and a group of passengers got together to try and take the aircraft back from the terrorists. During the struggle control of the aircraft was lost and the airliner crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

The recent newscasts about Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham have had their parallel in recent years. David Cameron decided to resign after backing the ‘remain’ movement in the Brexit referendum. Boris Johnson, like Burnham a former Mayor, perhaps should have taken over then but lost out to Theresa May in a leadership contest. She resigned after her draft EU withdrawal bill was rejected by Parliament. Boris was finally made Prime Minister but tried to continue in government despite reports of his Downing Street staff flaunting social distancing rules and partying during the Covid 19 pandemic. Eventually he was forced to resign and Liz Truss took over for a short while until a disastrous budget made her resign in favour of the man she had just beaten in a leadership contest, Rishi Sunak.

Keir Starmer has been dubbed the most unpopular Prime Minister of all time and he has now been forced to resign as the Labour party begin to look ahead to the next election and clearly feel Starmer will not be a vote winner. Elections are held every five years so the next possible election, unless called earlier by the Prime Minister (whoever he or she may be) will be on 15th August, 1929.

Hopefully, If I’m still alive I’ll be sat in front of the TV with a ham sandwich and a cup of tea, ready to watch history.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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One Old Picture

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week’s post is about the picture just below. Not a particularly outstanding picture I know but that house is the one in which I spent most of my childhood. I took the picture a long time ago after a sort of nostalgic drive around my old neighbourhood of Wythenshawe in Manchester. Yes, the house with the white door, that’s my old home. It’s changed a bit since I lived there. The privet hedge has gone and the car space is new. One amazing thing I found out on that visit is that the walk to my old junior school, which seemed to be a heck of a walk as I remember it, (surely at least a thirty or even forty minute walk) was actually more of a ten minute walk, well, it was a long time since I walked to my junior school. I stopped in the road, took my picture, became lost in thought for a moment as a thousand memories crowded my mind, then drove off.

Those memories and other ones always come back every time I look at that picture. I happened to be looking at it this week as I scanned through some of my old posts looking for inspiration. The photo only took a moment to take but it’s nice to think about that house and all the happy times I had there. Not only that, my Grandmother and Grandfather lived there before us. They later moved to Prestatyn in Wales and my Mum and Dad took over the house when they were first married so it’s almost like a little bit of Higgins’ history, wrapped up in a picture.

Wythenshawe is supposed to be the biggest council estate in Europe, at least I remember reading that somewhere. When my dad left school at 14 during the Second World War the estate was surrounded by farms and market gardens. Gradually as the estate became larger the farms were swallowed up and built on. Dad worked on a farm in those early days and one day he decided to show me that same farm he’d worked on. I doubted there would be much to see but he took me through some unfamiliar streets and we came to a green with a few trees and there, just at the head of the green was an old house. The house was surrounded by the council estate which had been built around it. This, he told me used to be the farmhouse where he once worked. The green had once been part of the orchard. As we looked closer, I could see that the trees were pear trees and I tried to imagine this place in a rural setting, instead of the urban one it had become.

Dad worked for Manchester Highways and his job title was, if I remember correctly, a flagger’s mate. His job was to lay pavement flags throughout Wythenshawe in south Manchester as well as to work tarmacing roads and repairing potholes. He rode to work on his bicycle every day of his working life armed only with his backpack containing his lunch; his sandwiches made by my mother and his brewcan. He used to use that brewcan even when he retired. Where he got the hot water from when working on the roads I don’t know unless he either went back to the Highways office or perhaps asked people where he was working to top up his brewcan.

The Highways depot where dad worked closed down years ago and now a small private housing estate occupies the spot where he used to work. Funnily enough, just next door on Fenside Road was my old school, Sharston High School. It was demolished years ago and in its place there is now another private housing estate which is surrounded by the same old iron fence that encircled our school many years ago.

Our school gym still stands on Fenside road. It is now some sort of fitness or sports centre. Apart from those railings I mentioned it is the only surviving reminder of our old school.

The school was large and was built in a sort of ‘C’ shape. There was a north and a south side and inside the ‘C’ were the school playing fields; cricket and football for the boys and rounders for the girls. On the north side -to be honest I’ve always got the north and south sides mixed up, but the top of the ‘C’ anyway- there now stands a nursing home and it was here that my mother spent the last years of her life suffering with dementia.

Getting back to my old house, I was living there in July 1969 and one morning when mum got me up for school I came downstairs for breakfast to find that the TV was on. Now back in 1969 there were only two TV channels (or was it three?) Anyway, neither of them broadcast in the early morning but this was a pretty special day as Apollo 11 had landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking about on the moon’s surface.

I was 12 years old at the time and I was crazy about sci-fi and space travel and how on earth my mother managed to drag me away from the TV and off to school, I’ll never know.

Back in the late 60s was when I got my first adult sized bicycle and I learned to ride it in the very street in the picture. It was a big bike and my feet couldn’t quite reach the ground so it was important to either stop by the kerb or jump off the seat before coming to a stop.

Like many other local kids my friends and I made a soapbox cart with some wood and parts of an old pram and we careered through the streets with it. One time my friend Gary Chapman was given a set of walkie talkies by his dad for Christmas and he and I used to chat to each other at night as our houses were pretty close together. We used to have conversations like this;

ME: Gaz, are you receiving?

Gaz: Gaz here. Loud and clear. Are you receiving Ste?

ME: Steve here. Loud and clear.

GAZ: Receiving you loud and clear Ste.

Years later when I worked for the Highways Agency and became the radio dispatcher, I would be using the radio once again, this time to deploy officers to incidents on the motorway network in conversations like this:

Me at work in the Highways control room.

ME: Romeo Echo 24, can you make to an RTC on the M6 northbound just after junction 18, over.

RE24: Message received. ETA 10 minutes.

Once I was training a new staff member called Clive and he took a message from a patrol which had encountered a pedestrian on the network. We contacted the Police and they seemed quite interested and asked for the person’s name and date of birth. We passed the details over to the police but the pedestrian had one of those dual gender names, something like Leslie Smith. The police came back again asking for the pedestrian’s gender and Clive, the trainee was having a difficult time. He wasn’t making himself particularly clear over the airwaves which wasn’t helped by the patrol being stuck in one of those airwave black spots where reception was bad.

CLIVE: Is the pedestrian a man or woman? Over.

RE24; Say again control, over.

CLIVE: The police are asking for the sex of the person, over.

RE24: You’re breaking up control, please repeat, over.

CLIVE: Can you confirm the sex of the pedestrian, over.

RE24: No answer.

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, we need the sex, over.

No answer

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, I need the sex, I WANT THE SEX!

Cue for the entire control room to burst into gales of laughter.

That’s probably enough memories and personal history for this week, all inspired by one photo taken on my mobile phone so many years ago. Looking at it again, I find myself wondering what the house is like inside. Would I recognise any of it? Perhaps there will be a new kitchen. What is the garden like? Will our old coal bunker still be there? Will it all be different?

One thing is certain, the people who I remember, the people who used to live there, are all gone.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the two great English bands of the 1960s. Both went on to become supergroups and pop legends. This week I thought I’d take a quick look at the evolution of both bands.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were schoolmates until the Jagger family moved home from Dartford in Kent to nearby Wilmington in 1954. Jagger formed a band with his friend Dick Taylor and they played material sourced from performers like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

In 1956 over in Liverpool, John Lennon formed a skiffle band called the Quarrymen. On the 6th July 1957 Lennon met Paul McCartney at the Woolton village fete and invited him to join the band. A year later in 1958 McCartney asked his school friend George Harrison to join but Lennon declined thinking the 15 year old George was too young. The two kept on at Lennon and he finally allowed George to join up after hearing him play guitar on the top deck of a bus.

By 1959, the three were playing together whenever they could find a drummer and they performed under the name Johnny and the Moondogs. John’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band in 1960 after buying a guitar. The group performed later as the Silver Beatles, later becoming The Beatles as a sort of tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

On the 17th July 1961, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met up again on the platform at Dartford Railway Station. They later met up with other friends and formed a group called The Blues Boys. They read about the Ealing Jazz Club in a newspaper and sent some of their recordings to Alexis Korner who had a band called Blues Incorporated. They visited the Jazz Club and met members of Blues Incorporated including Brian Jones and drummer Charlie Watts.

In 1962 Brian Jones had left Blues Incorporated behind and advertised for musicians to make up a new band and Jagger, Richards and keyboard player Ian Stewart decided to join. While Brian Jones was on the phone to Jazz News he was asked the name of his new band. Apparently, he looked around, saw a record by Muddy Waters lying around and quickly snapped off the name of one of the tracks, naming the band The Rolling Stones.

The Beatles meanwhile had taken on Pete Best as their drummer and went off to Hamburg to perform at a former strip club in the Reeperbahn district. While they were there, they met Astrid Kirchherr who took the first semi professional pictures of the band. Later when Harrison was found to be under age the group was forced to return to Liverpool. In 1961 during their second Hamburg engagement Astrid cut Stuart’s hair in a distinctive hairstyle, later adopted by the other Beatles. Sutcliffe became close to Astrid and the two became engaged and he dropped out of the band to concentrate on his art work.

Back again in Liverpool the group were spotted by Brian Epstein and he became their manager in 1962.

The Rolling Stones via creative commons

On 12th July 1962 the Stones performed at their first ever gig as The Rollin’ Stones (later becoming The Rolling Stones) at the Marquee Club in London. The line up was Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart and Dick Taylor. Later that year Bill Wyman joined to replace Taylor. In 1963 Charlie Watts joined as the band’s regular drummer.

Brian Epstein was meanwhile trying to get a recording contract for the Beatles. In January 1962 they had a New Year’s Day audition with Decca who rejected the group with the famous comment “guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein”. Even so, it was barely three months later when EMA signed the group to their Parlophone label.

On 6th June 1962 the Beatles had their first recording session with George Martin. He didn’t like Pete Best’s drumming and brought on board his own session drummer. The three other Beatles were already contemplating dumping Best and in August Ringo Starr left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join the band. Even so, George Martin still preferred to use a session drummer on their recordings.

In January 1963, Please Please Me became their first ever number one single.

Also in 1963 the Rolling Stones first single was a cover version of Chuck Berry’s Come On which rose to 21 in the UK singles chart. Their second single was a Lennon/McCartney song, I Wanna be Your Man.

In 1964 The Rolling Stones were the first band to play on the new TV show Top of the Pops and their first number one record that year was a self-titled EP. (To those younger readers EP stood for extended play, a single sized record which contained usually about 4 tracks).

1964 was the year the two bands began to conquer the world. It was also the point at which the music press started encouraging fans to pick a side. Were you a Beatles fan or did you prefer the Stones?

The contrast was easy to spot. The Beatles smiled for the cameras, cracked jokes during interviews and generally looked like the sort of young men your mother would happily invite round for Sunday lunch. The Stones, on the other hand, went for an entirely different image. They looked scruffier, a little more dangerous, and seemed to delight in annoying respectable adults. One newspaper famously asked, “Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?”

It is difficult to imagine anyone asking the same question about the Beatles. At that time their image was keenly cultivated by their management. Brian Epstein made the Beatles wear smart suits and it was Allen Klein, who took over as the Stones’ manager in 1965, who wanted something different for his group. In 1971 Bill Wyman claimed that the Rolling Stones were the first band to break away from a sort of ‘Cliff Richard’ mould, that of dressing smartly and doing little coordinated dances and steps.

Behind the scenes there was a good deal of mutual respect between the Stones and the Beatles. In fact, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had helped the Stones early in their career by giving them the song “I Wanna Be Your Man”.

As the decade progressed, both bands grew more ambitious. This is where comparisons become particularly interesting. The Beatles seemed determined to reinvent themselves every few months. Listening to their records from 1965 onwards is like watching a time-lapse film of musical evolution. One moment they were producing catchy pop songs, the next they were experimenting with new instruments, unusual recording techniques and increasingly sophisticated lyrics.

The Stones developed too, but in a different direction. While they certainly experimented during the psychedelic years, their real strength remained rooted in rhythm and blues. Where the Beatles often sounded as though they were trying to discover where music might go next, the Stones excelled at taking older musical traditions and making them feel exciting and contemporary.

Both bands experimented with drugs and both Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were arrested for drug use. Brian Jones though seemed to be the most affected by drugs. He decided to leave the band and sadly in July 1969 was found dead in his swimming pool in mysterious circumstances.

By the late 1960s the differences between the two groups had become even more pronounced. The Beatles’ music became increasingly varied and eclectic, while the Stones doubled down on a tougher, earthier sound. At this point they were no longer travelling along the same road. They were heading towards entirely different destinations.

On the 30th January 1969 the Beatles final live performance was filmed on the roof of the Apple Corporation Building in the centre of London and used as the finale of a cinema documentary project.

As a band, the Beatles had come to the end of the line. There were arguments about the cinema film, the final album mixes, whose songs were to be included on the final album and all sorts of business issues. Allen Klein became the Beatles’ new manager but Paul McCartney wanted John Eastman, his new father in law. He was overruled by the other Beatles and Klein became their business manager and Eastman their lawyer.

The legal disputes dragged on until 1974 when the dissolution of the band was finally formalised.

The Stones too had their legal issues. They parted company with Allen Klein and in 1971 formed their own record company, Rolling Stone Records. The first record they released was the album Sticky Fingers with a cover designed by Andy Warhol. They also made a documentary film; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones about their 1972 North American Tour.

Despite changes in their line up, The Rolling Stones have continued to the present day. Their new album Foreign Tongues is due to be released in July this year, 2026.

John Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980 and George Harrison died of cancer in 2001. The final Beatles song to be released was Now and Then. An old demo tape of Lennon’s was remastered using AI technology and combined with musical input from the other Beatles, even from George Harrison.

There is no definitive answer to the question which is the better group? Perhaps it is a question that doesn’t even need to be asked. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones might have had some similarities back in 1963 but they were really two different musical groups. One specialised in innovation and constant reinvention. The other mastered attitude, live performance and longevity.

To a certain extent, neither band is my perfect cup of tea. I could only find one Stones CD in my collection although I do have many of their vinyl singles in my old record box. Many years ago, I decided to gradually buy all the Beatles albums on CD. I think I only bought three and then gave up. I’ve always thought the Beatles hit records to be outstanding but I find a lot of their album tracks are just not to my taste.

Still, if music fans are still talking about -and listening to- the Beatles and the Rolling Stones after all this time, both bands must have done something right.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

More French Stuff

Posted on by Steve Higgins

When we get close to my publishing deadline, the usual one of Saturday at 10:00am UK time, my inner manager starts to mither me. I usually get things like Steve, it’s Thursday, has your proofreader checked your post yet? Have you got the graphics ready? Any pictures? What about video links? I get the same thing on Friday except in a slightly more urgent tone; STEVE! IS THE POST READY YET? And so on.

This week I seem to have arrived at Friday with only two partly written posts and one of those is a longer version of a post I’ve done before. I wasn’t sure what to do and then I came up with an idea. What about merging the two posts together?

Wait a minute, merging the two totally different themes into one stand alone post? Is that possible? Suppose I used all my writer/blogger creative authorly skills and actually did that? I’d be a sort of creative writing genius, well I would, wouldn’t I?

OK I said. Let’s give it a go.

Some weeks ago I thought it was about time I sorted out my water rates. They are pretty low but they are in my late mother’s name. She died many years ago and I did inform the water people. I mean they send messages to my phone, send emails to my email address. I had a feeling that they had mixed up Mr(s) Higgins with Mr S Higgins, just like they used to do years ago when I lived at home. Anyway, I called up the water people, put them straight and immediately they put up my water rates to a quite shocking figure. That can’t be right, I complained. Well, the only way they could reduce the bill further was by fitting a water meter. Could they sort it out before I left for France? As it happens, yes, they could.

As I don’t really spend a lot of time at home, I’m either up in St Annes with Liz or off out in our motorhome, I was hoping that the water meter could be a really big saving. Anyway, the guy from the water board (United Utilities in 21st century speak) arrived on time and he was really good, a really friendly, chatty and helpful guy, a huge improvement on the last person to come to my house to do work who had exactly zero people skills whatsoever.

I was a very happy guy but a few days later I got a text from the water people. It asked me to reply using numbers, 1-10, to rate the service I had received. Naturally I texted 10.

The response was instant. We don’t understand your message, please call 0800 blah blah blah. Text deleted. Why did I even bother?

Anyway, part of this blog is supposed to be about my holiday in France so let’s talk a little about that.

Our holiday was a sort of mixed bag. The first week we were away the weather was pretty good and then it went cold, actually really cold. The first week was spent travelling which can actually be really nice in a motorhome. My iPad and laptop come along with me as well as a selection of books so I have all sorts of things around to keep me entertained. Usually, we travel to places that have a plan d’eau, a swimming lake so we can have a dip and simultaneously cool down and enjoy a little exercise. This year we made straight for a house that we regularly rent in the village of Parçay les Pins and it was there, just as we settled down by the pool with the barbecue pretty much set up and ready to light, that the weather turned cold. It was like that for almost 3 weeks.

Although it was cold, our pool was heated so we could swim in it which we did, although the hard part was actually exiting the warm pool into a rather cold wind. Still, after a spirited swim and some equally spirited towelling followed by the quick popping on of a fleece, everything felt rather good. We even managed to barbecue outside, both wrapped up in our fleeces again although we were able to dispense with them when the sun came out and then quickly grab them when it went cold again.

One day, round about the beginning of our last week there, the heat suddenly ramped up very quickly. It was almost as if some unseen hand had switched on the exterior central heating and things went from cold -we were wearing fleeces and had the inside heating on- to T-shirt and shorts weather, in fact most of the time it was too hot for even a T shirt.

A typical day on holiday goes something like this. I usually wake up about 7am but as our motorhome has a fixed bed and my place is over by the window I either have to climb over Liz to get out or just turn over and go back to sleep.

Usually, I just go back to sleep. Round about 10am is a good time to surface and put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea. Like any decent English man and woman, we believe that the day’s business cannot possibly begin until after a cup of tea. Round about 12 we might gravitate towards the bathroom for a wash and brushing of the teeth and for me, a shave. On this trip our water pump conked out so we had no choice but to fill up numerous containers with water and use one of those to fill up the basin.

Breakfast, this being France, is usually a croissant sliced in half and buttered and filled with jam. Then we are all set to either hit the road or relax outside and perhaps read a book or take a swim, assuming we are parked by a lake somewhere. This year we didn’t do much lake swimming but we did spend a lot of time in the pool of our rented house.

At the weekends and bank holidays we tend to go off in search of village fêtes and vide greniers. Vide greniers are the French version of a car boot sale and usually these events will always have a bar serving beer and wine as well as a food tent which will usually be frîtes (chips) and sausages. Little village committee members man the bar and food areas and sometimes things will be very organised although some will be the exact opposite. One fête we visited had a caisse, a cashier who sold everyone plastic tokens (jetons) and these tokens were used to buy drinks and food. If you had any left over you had to return to the caisse and cash in your tokens.

In the evening we would usually have a barbecue, made much easier these days by our little ‘Camping Gaz’ gas barbecue which means we don’t have to wait yonks for the barbecue to get going or have to have it relit (a common occurrence when I’m in charge of the coals). Yes, our little gas barby clips together in minutes, the gas bottle is slapped into place and we are ready for those burgers.

On our last week it was so hot I was usually a big sweaty mess after carrying out the cutlery, food, drinks and everything else so it was actually pretty wonderful to slip into the pool just before eating and cool down.

Stepping out of the pool into a warm towel and a cold glass of rose must be the height of luxury. I certainly thought so!

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Book Bag May 2026

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Which books have you taken to read on holiday? This was my selection.

Slow Days, Fast Company

I first heard about Eve Babitz from a blog I follow over on Medium. It’s written by a guy called Loren Kantor and he tells some pretty interesting stories all based in California or more specifically, Los Angeles.

I’m pretty sure Loren has a background in film making but these days he teaches wood cut printing mainly to elderly people in care homes in LA. In one home there were only a few people wanting to take up his course so he asked some other residents if they were interested and someone he tried to bring on board was a woman called Eve, the other residents though didn’t care for her at all and didn’t want her in the group.

Anyway, Kantor got talking to her and she mentioned that she used to be a writer. Later he found out her name -Eve Babitz- did a little research and found that she was a pretty serious writer, well known for documenting the social scene in LA through various semi fictional memoirs written in the 1970s.

I’m a great lover of blogs and the essay was so interesting I searched for the book he mentioned and quickly got myself a copy of Slow Days, Fast Company.

It’s a really good read, a very personal series of essays and the book is split into 10 essays or chapters, each one about a different man she was either involved with or friendly with and set in a different area around LA. I read it rather quickly and then found myself going back to it and reading parts of it again. One chapter is about a man who is a soap actor on a long running US TV series. One day he gets to look at the flimsies. What are they I hear you asking? Well the flimsies are a sort of book, detailing what the coming storylines are and sketching out roughly where the show is heading. There are no scenes or dialogue, it’s just a sort of guide for the writers. Anyway this guy takes a peek and sees that his character is heading for a plane crash that leaves him alive but surviving as a vegetable. The guy is crushed and as much as Eve tries to help him he cannot get over this news.

In another chapter Eve talks about the demolishing of the Garden of Allah, the home of a silent film star that later became a famous hotel. It was knocked down and a dull office building was erected in its place and it seemed to Eve, that it was hard to believe that Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, two of the more famous residents of the hotel, ‘even existed’.

The book is full of similar sharp observations and I found it really intriguing.

Verdict: 9/10 highly entertaining.

Red Strike by Chris Ryan

Chris Ryan is the pen name of former SAS sergeant Colin Armstrong who uses his background in the SAS to great effect in this action packed book. In fact it reminds me a little bit of the novels of Frederick Forsyth in that the author tells a lot about preparations and planning and then the action suddenly takes centre stage. This was a great little read full of exciting incidents and with a pretty good story at its core. One thing struck me about the villain of the piece, he’s a British politician, known to be on the so called right wing, a beer drinking populist and a friend of the American president. Who does that ring a bell with you? Well for me I thought immediately of Nigel Farage. I like to think that Farage has a pretty good sense of humour so I’m fairly certain he’d be the first to have a laugh although whether the character was based on or inspired by Farage only the author really knows.

Verdict 9/10: A great holiday read.

The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

This is a follow up to his previous book, Moab is my Washpot. In the first few pages Fry mentions how obvious it was that he chose that title although for poor uneducated non university me, that went right over my head. The book continues in the same stream of consciousness way of the first book, charging on headlong into the story with various forays to the left and to the right but this time perhaps not as so intense. A lot of the book is about his life at university and he patiently explains to us non-university folk the ins and outs of life as a student and about life at Cambridge in particular. He meets soon to be famous friends like Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie although I was surprised to find that Rowan Atkinson was not a contemporary of his but from an earlier student intake and Fry and his colleagues look up to Atkinson almost as much as they look up to Peter Cook and John Cleese.

Fry wonders what he will do after university but after success in the Edinburgh Fringe he acquires an agent and is soon involved in a TV show and then goes on quickly to writing for magazines, doing the book for a musical and creating the sketch show Fry and Laurie with his friend Hugh.

A lot of autobiographies of film and TV celebs seem to end up becoming lists of films or shows that the celeb has appeared in; I did this and then I did that, but this book is so chatty and interesting with a host of fascinating little stories about TV and film making and the characters involved in those pursuits, that it never seems to become boring.

Fry was a friend of Douglas Adams who wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. The two bonded over a love of computers and Fry gives a compelling portrait of Adams and his stop/start way of working. (Adams famously said he loved the sound of deadlines as they went whoosh past his head.)

Ben Elton is one of those irritating TV personalities that I have always detested and Fry talks about Elton and how his poor reputation is so apparently undeserved. Fry puts forward a very positive case for his friend but I’m afraid Elton has always come across to me as obnoxious. (Not long ago he was a guest on Saturday Kitchen, the BBC cookery show and after a few minutes I was compelled to turn over.) Full marks to Stephen though for defending his friend.

This is not only an entertaining book but very personal and gives the reader a great insight into not only what makes Fry tick as a TV personality but what makes him tick as a human being.

Verdict: 10/10 well worth reading.

The Man who Died Twice by Richard Osman

This book is the follow up to the popular Thursday Murder Club and I have to say I enjoyed it more than the original. Perhaps I’m a little more used to the characters and the author’s interesting way of presenting alternate chapters as if written by a member of the club, actually a lady named Joyce. The Thursday Murder Club is a group of retired friends who meet to discuss murder cases, aided by two of their friends who they met in the first book, a detective and a female PC. The ending was a little fantastic and not something that I could really see happening but anyway, this was a very entertaining holiday read and I enjoyed it very much.

Verdict 9/10 due to the slightly fantastic ending.

It’s Not a Rehearsal by Amanda Barrie

Amanda appeared in Coronation Street for a number of years but I’ve always known her as the girl who played Cleopatra in the Carry On film Carry on Cleo, you know, the one where Kenneth Williams says ‘Infamy, infamy; they’ve all got it in for me!’

Liz bought this book as Amanda went to school in St Annes where Liz has lived all her life and she was interested to read about that part of her life. I was running out of books to read so I was very happy when she passed it over to me.

Amanda tells us her story starting off with her life at school then becoming a dancer and performer. She explains how hard life is for dancers with rehearsals and late night performances. Amanda goes on to work in the West End as well as in film and television and I found the book very entertaining and interesting. I really do love reading about life in ‘showbusiness’.

One really interesting element was her life living in Covent Garden and the great sense of community there, especially when the market was in full swing. She tells of the early opening pubs to cater for the porters and market staff and how if you were ever short of something like an onion for an evening meal, you would always find whatever you needed out on the streets.

When the market moved away Amanda worked with local residents to preserve the area as the council just wanted to knock everything down and build houses.

The latter part of the book concerns her time in Coronation Street which was a complete contrast to her theatre days. Then she was working late at night but on Corrie, she had to start in the early morning, a complete turn around for her. Amanda found out early on in life that she was dyslexic so imagine how hard it must have been learning all that dialogue!

She cautiously tells us also about her love life and the men and women in her life and the result was a really engrossing look at the life of an actress in the theatre and TV as well as a little about her famous foray into the Carry On films.

Verdict 10/10

What’s in your holiday book bag?

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French Stuff

Posted on by Steve Higgins

We started out on our usual May mtorhome holiday with a trip down to the south of England staying at a place we have stopped at before. The Jolly Boatman is a pub by the side of the Oxford canal which winds its way from the south of England all the way to Birmingham. The Jolly Boatman is a little bit pricey for us northern folk but even so, it’s a friendly place and the food and beer are nice.

After a stay there we made our way over to Newhaven ready to board the ferry to Dieppe the next day. We stayed overnight at the Hope Inn in Newhaven, another pub which allows motorhomers to stay in their car park as long as you eat or drink in their establishment.

As it happens Liz had done some very thorough research and found that not only did the Hope Inn serve food but also there was a quiz night on the very night we had arranged to stay. So, we ordered some beers and a nice selection of Tapas and as much as I’d like to say we won the quiz, we sadly didn’t. Even so it was a fun night.

The next morning it was a short hop over to the ferry terminal and a few hours later we arrived in Dieppe. From there we drove down to one of our favourite stopovers in France, the L’Escale restaurant just south of Rouen.

The manager always welcomes us and lets us park in the staff car park away from all the overnighting wagons and HGVs. On this night though the following day was a bank holiday and as the place would be closed we had to park in the car park. We got chatting to a couple of English HGV drivers there who told us that French wagons are not allowed to run on the bank holiday but they were still planning to drive on anyway and risk being stopped by the French police as their boss wanted them back home.

The next day dawned lovely warm and sunny. The bank holiday was to celebrate VE Day, Victory in Europe Day back in 1945. 81 years ago!

For tea we had salad and cold meats, one of my favourite meals for a hot day, washed down with plenty of red wine of course. Afterwards the fromage came out and we sat and ate our cheese as the sun gradually dipped down over the horizon. In the warm evening the soft French cheeses melt and take on a new consistency as we smooth it over our crusty bread. There is something so very exotic about having cheese and wine on a warm evening, something that happens only rarely in England.

My favourites are Rondelé Bleu, a commercial cheese found in various supermarkets in France and a good Tomme. Tomme de Savoie is my real favourite but today we are eating Tomme de Montagne which is really lovely.

It is really only in restaurants where my poor schoolboy French comes into its own and I can ask for a table pour deux and a cinqante centilitre pichet of vin rouge and by the way what is the plat du jour?

One thing I feel I do know in France are my French numbers although I do have a blind spot around sixteen; onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, something (actually seize) and then dix sept, dix huit, dix neuf and vingt. Sixteen gets me every time.

I’ve always thought that it is interesting how the French use numbers for instance in a telephone number. Let’s take a made-up number, 0161 932 4646 for instance. We English would just repeat the digits so we’d say oh, one, six, one and so on. For the French this is far too easy, they say the number in multiples of two so for that 0161 number they would say, zero one, sixty one, ninety three, twenty four and so on! The larger numbers in French are really odd. Sixty in French is soixante but seventy is soixante dix; sixty and ten. Ninety is even more difficult: quatre vingt dix; in other words, four times twenty and ten!

I do love the French way of eating, the entrée, plat, fromage et dessert and plenty of bread, I do feel though that French cuisine is a little over rated. The fact of the matter is, some of the things that the French like to eat, well, they are just a little bit odd.

If you think about it, you can perhaps imagine ancient man many thousands of years ago. Picture him now, taking a good look at something like a cow for instance and thinking, “you know, bet there’s some tasty meat on that animal. I could slaughter it, cut a thick wedge of meat off, slap it on a griddle over the fire, some salt and pepper and bet it would taste lovely!” Yes, that’s thinking that I can understand, especially later when that same ancient man refined his original idea by adding a baked potato or a few chips to the meal and maybe even a side salad.

The ancestors of today’s Frenchmen must have thought in a different way, well different to us Anglo Saxons that is. Just imagine some ancient Frenchman in the same situation but instead of checking out the cow he has his eyes on a frog, hopping merrily about and croaking, as they do, and he begins to think like this: “Hey, wonder if I killed that frog, chopped its legs off and cooked them in a little garlic, what would they be like?” A thought that would never occur to any right minded Englishman in a million years! Imagine another Frenchman, coming out of his cave on a damp morning and noticing a lot of snails wandering about in his back garden: “Hey, why don’t I cook those with some shallots and garlic?” he thinks. “What a great idea!” Wrong! Crazy idea! Take another look at that cow Monsieur!

A few years ago a worrying situation occurred when a random warning light appeared on the dashboard of our van. A quick check on Google showed it to be an engine fault. I started to worry that the engine might be ready to conk out so we went to a friendly garage and they plugged in their diagnostic equipment. They weren’t sure what the problem actually was so they suggested we go to a Ford garage as our van was of course, a Ford. The garage wouldn’t accept any money so we went off to a Ford garage and after what seemed like hours they emerged from their garage and told us not to worry, the engine was ok to drive but you owe us 150 Euros!

This year the same engine light popped up again even though the van had been serviced just a few days prior to us departing the UK. Once again I looked up the fault on Google and once again found the bland answer; engine fault. This time I noticed a YouTube video come up in the results and thought it might be worth a look. A slightly embarrassed Asian man told his viewers that the fault could be one of 4 things, the first one being that the diesel cap was not shut properly. Pause the video while I check the diesel cap and yes, I had not put it back on correctly. Cap sorted and I turned on the ignition and the fault had cleared! If only I had seen that video last year!

We had another small issue with our van on this holiday which I hate to admit was probably entirely my fault. After getting the van up and running again now that spring is here I filled up the water tanks ready for our trip. One thing I neglected to do was shut off the tap in the bathroom when I locked up. (During the winter months I drain all the water and leave the taps open.) With the tap still running all the water emptied but happily still left open was the waste water drain plug otherwise I would have flooded the van!

Anyway, I shut off the taps and filled up again and everything seemed ok but the taps kept making a harsh gurgling noise. Later they conked out completely so when we get home I’ll have to get a new water pump and find someone to fit it. I’ve always wished I was one of those men that can fix things, you know like leaky taps, fit outside electric lights, knock down and build walls, sort problems out on cars and so on. There was a time many years ago when I could change the oil on my car, change the spark plugs and do other stuff. Those days are but a distant memory and once back home I’ll be surfing through Google trying to find someone who can help.

Surfing though, I am quite good at that . . .

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The Police

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve given myself a theme this week, that of writing about the Police. Being British I’m going to try and focus on the British Police but I’ve added a few paragraphs about the US Police too.

The Police in TV and Film

I have to say that I’ve struggled to think of films about the UK Police without resorting to Google although there are quite a few TV shows I could mention. The obvious one that comes to mind is Dixon of Dock Green.

Dixon of Dock Green ran from 1955 to 1976 starring Jack Warner as Police Constable George Dixon. Dixon was the traditional ‘Bobby’ who patrolled a regular beat in London, working out of the Dock Green Police Station in London’s East End. The show was inspired by the film The Blue Lamp in which Jack Warner originally played the character of George Dixon.

In the TV show Warner famously introduced each episode by saluting and saying ‘evenin’ all’ to the camera. He also ended each episode by saying a few philosophical words about that night’s episode before wishing his audience a ‘good night’.

The Bill

A much more recent show was The Bill which started out as a one off ITV drama in 1984 which so impressed ITV executives that they commissioned a series. The idea was to look at a day in the life of a police station and show the sort of situations encountered by officers on the beat. I first remember the show as being on a few times a week in a 30 minute format which was later extended to an hour. The 30 minute shows were self-contained episodes but when it was updated to an hour it became a serial show with each episode following on from the last. The show was cancelled in 2010 after 26 years.

Hill Street Blues

Moving away from UK TV to the USA, one of my favourite TV Police shows was the Hill Street Blues. It was similar to The Bill but set in a fictional US Police Station. Each episode began with a briefing and roll call to start the day’s shift although in later episodes this was replaced with one of those ‘previously. . .’ sequences.

The show won a total of 26 Emmy awards during its run of 146 episodes between 1981 and 1987.

The theme tune was written by Mike Post and became a major chart hit reaching 25 in the UK charts and no 10 in the USA.

As I said earlier, I can’t think of any films featuring UK policemen, certainly not uniformed ‘Bobbies’. Even American films tend to focus on plain clothed detectives but here are two particular favourites, both from the 1970s.

Serpico

Al Pacino stars in the true story of Serpico, a New York City cop who tried to fight the culture of bribery and corruption in the NYPD in the 60’s and early 70’s. This 1973 film is directed by Sidney Lumet and is shot in a gritty natural style. It starts with Serpico being shot in the face and then on his way to hospital it flashes back to tell the story of rookie cop Frank Serpico and his graduation to detective and his refusal to take bribes. It is shot and acted in a very natural documentary style and the film portrays Serpico’s ongoing disappointment with his superiors and those he trusts to look into the situation very well indeed. A brilliant example of 70’s moviemaking at its best.

I have Serpico on DVD and one thing I love about DVDs are those special versions with extended features, documentaries and so on. On the DVD of Serpico there is an interview with the producer Dino De Laurentiis where he tries to explain the character of Serpico this way; he and Serpico go to a screening of a film in New York. They are checking out possible directors or something, anyway, the theatre is empty and ignoring the no smoking sign, De Laurentiis decides to light up. ‘Wait a minute’ says Serpico, ‘you can’t smoke in here.’ De Laurentiis replies ‘what does it matter? There is no one here but us.’

Serpico points to the no smoking sign and replies ‘Look, you just can’t smoke here’ and makes the producer put out his cigarette. That, says Dino on the DVD, was when he began to understand what Serpico was about. There were no grey areas with him, everything was black and white.

The French Connection

The French Connection still feels electric even decades later. The movie throws you right into the gritty streets of 1970s New York, following tough, reckless detective Popeye Doyle, played brilliantly by Gene Hackman. What makes it so gripping is how raw and real everything feels; the shaky handheld camera work, the chaotic energy and of course that legendary car chase scene that practically rewrote the rules for action movies. It’s not a polished Hollywood crime story where the hero is clean-cut and noble; Doyle is obsessive, messy and sometimes hard to like, which somehow makes the whole thing feel more authentic. Directed by William Friedkin, the film has this tense, documentary-style vibe that keeps you on edge the entire time and you can really see how much influence it had on modern crime thrillers.

The Police (the Pop Band)

The Police were one of those bands that somehow managed to sound completely different from everyone else at the time. They showed up in the late 1970s when punk rock was taking off, but instead of sticking to straight punk, they mixed in reggae rhythms, catchy pop hooks and really polished musicianship. The band was made up of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland and together they created huge hits like Roxanne, Message in a Bottle and Every Breath You Take. Even now, those songs are instantly recognizable, certainly for me anyway, the second they come on.

What made the band especially interesting was how talented each member was individually. Sting brought the distinctive vocals and songwriting, Andy Summers added those atmospheric guitar sounds and Stewart Copeland’s drumming gave the music a ton of energy and personality. Their music turned them into global superstars, though behind the scenes the band members famously clashed with each other. They eventually split up in the mid-1980s and Sting moved onto to a successful solo career. They reunited for a tour in 2007 reminding everyone just how influential and timeless their songs really are.

The UK Traffic Police

I thought I’d finish with a few words about my own experience of working with the Police. I started work for the Highways Agency in 2006 as an operator and later deputy manager in the North West RCC (Regional Control Centre) and I worked closely with the Police. Here’s the thing that struck me almost straight away, I always thought the Police were just the Police. Well, how wrong was I because the Police are actually a number of separate forces. In fact, there are 45 regional police forces in the UK and 3 special forces. The 3 are the British Transport Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and the Ministry of Defence Police. The forces that I used to work with in the north west of England were Lancashire Police, Cumbria Police, Merseyside Police, Cheshire Police and Greater Manchester Police. All of them had different ways of working and even different computer systems. We at Highways used a system called Command and Control, similar to that used by Cheshire Police. Cheshire Police headed the NWMPG (North West Motorway Patrol Group) and as their system was similar to ours, they could send incidents to us electronically.

GMP had an entirely different system so they could not send a job to us except by actually picking up the phone and telling us about the incident. What they tended to do was send the job to Cheshire Police who would manually input the job on their system and then send it to us at Highways. Kind of long winded but it worked as long as the Cheshire operators checked their GMP screens to update us, which when they were busy, didn’t always happen.

When I was in training I spent a day at both the Cheshire and GMP control rooms. Cheshire were very friendly and helpful but it wasn’t the case over at GMP. They had a bunch of mature ladies who manned the ERTs (Emergency Roadside Telephones) which were due to be taken over by Highways so that those ladies refused to speak to us as to their minds we were stealing their jobs. Instead, I spent an afternoon sitting with the officers manning the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras which were being used at Manchester Airport, catching drivers with no MOTs or insurance and even stolen vehicles.

Some days afterwards I went out with Cheshire motorway police. Their officers were rude and bad mannered and no help at all but the next day I went on the road with a GMP officer. He was a very friendly guy. I met him at his outstation in Salford and after a brew and a chat we went off to patrol the M60, M62 and M602. Interestingly, despite the officer being friendly over a cup of tea, when he went on duty he went straight into professional mode and focussed fully on his job. No chit chat, no jokes. He spotted at least three people not wearing seat belts and pulled them over. Why would you not wear a seat belt, especially on the motorway?

At one point we had a call to put on a rolling road block for another officer on the M602 who was trying to retrieve some debris in the carriageway; cycles that had fallen off the back of a car and were causing problems stuck in lane 2. We headed to the scene, spotted the other officer on the opposite side and turned round at the next junction. As we headed to the exit ramp I looked over at his speedometer and saw we were doing 120 mph. Vehicles on the roundabout moved quickly out of our way and we turned, pulled onto the other side of the road, stopped the traffic and the debris was removed.

That was a heck of an interesting day and a real eye opener for me.

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The Importance of Being Alone

Posted on by Steve Higgins

There is a lot to be said for being alone. Not all the time of course, we all need someone most of the time and I know from experience, how sad being alone can be. When my father passed away in 2000, my mother seemed to slip into a little shell. She went shopping every day even though there was always food in her fridge or cupboard. She went to the shops to see other people, to speak with bakers and grocers and other shopkeepers before returning to her empty house. When I got divorced and came back to live with her, I like to think that me being there gave her a sense of purpose once again.

Occasional time on your own though can be good. It gives you time to think and do things that perhaps annoy your usual close partner. Playing music for instance or watching TV shows that your partner does not like. When you are alone you can eat early or eat late. You can get up early or you can get up late. You can even sit in the garden and read without any need to go back inside until you are good and ready. You can indulge in foods that are bad for you and no one will know. That cream cake that you should not have eaten is a secret between you and your inner self but you and you alone will know had good it tasted. Same goes for that Spam sandwich.

Sometimes I might get up early just for a change because together, Liz and I never get up early. Other times I might just lie in bed and read. I’m currently reading Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. Goldman wrote the screenplays for films like A Bridge Too Far, Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men.

He gives advice on screenwriting and tells a number of film making/writing anecdotes. One I found particularly interesting was how directors want rewrites incorporating their ideas for the film. Then a big star comes aboard but doesn’t like it that his character dies at the end. New rewrite and the character is not killed. Then the star leaves the project and another star arrives. Cue new rewrite, this time the star wants to die but the director leaves and the new director wants to bring his own writer on board.

During All the President’s Men, Goldman interviewed the two newspaper men, Woodward and Bernstein, who pursued the Watergate story. After a year of research and interviews particularly with Woodward, Bernstein who was then married to Nora Ephron, put his own screenplay forward written by himself and Nora. Goldman wasn’t amused. Later he says that only one scene of the Bernstein/Ephron screenplay was used in the film but it wasn’t a scene Goldman was happy with. All along he had tried not to ‘Hollywoodise’ the story and keep scrupulously to the facts. The scene that came from the Bernstein script was one where Bernstein tricks a witness into talking. That says Goldman, was pure fiction.

Woodward and Bernstein (Picture via creative commons)

Time to drag myself up and into the kitchen. Breakfast for one is usually bacon and/or sausages cooked on my George Foreman grill. Poached egg and toast and a cup of tea.

After breakfast it’s time to write. Most of the time my laptop is full of part written stories and blog posts and my usual way of working is to write my stories in my head and then when I seem unable to go any further or sometimes when my head is just too full of stuff I’ll write the story down. I’ve got a lot of stories that start off well and then seem to lose their way.

Blog posts are a different matter. I’ve always felt that my deadline of 10.00am on a Saturday morning gives me an impetus to write. I can’t just write in my head or leave unfinished a half written blog post (although to be honest, I actually do). I must write, I must create something ready for Saturday morning, even if it involves dusting off an old blog post and re writing or re-hashing it to create something new.

The best time to write is when it’s raining. That way, particularly in the summer, I don’t feel bad about being inside writing when I should -if the weather is lovely- be outside. I remember once back in 1968 I spent a very enjoyable afternoon on a very hot and sunny day, at the cinema watching 2001 A Space Odyssey. When my mother found out where I had been she told me off for not being outside and enjoying the sunshine.

I don’t eat lunch but round about four I generally feel the need for a cup of tea and a ham sandwich. I do love sandwiches. Another thing about being alone is that I like to cook. I make pretty much the same old things, spaghetti bolognese, chilli, pizza. Most of the time I make a pizza by buying one of those cheap cheese and tomato pizzas and adding more cheese and more toppings but I do like to make a fresh pizza including making the dough. A lot of my pizzas came out a little soggy until I found the perfect solution. When using home made dough it’s a good idea to first bake the dough for a short while then take it out, add the tomato sauce, cheese and toppings and then slap it back in a very hot oven.

As I am writing this, exactly one year ago on the 30th April 2025, I made a pizza with home made dough and that was probably the first time I had made a perfect, well, almost perfect pizza. It had, if I remember correctly, cheese, onion, pepperoni and mozzarella chunks. I served it with salad for myself and my brother although he declined the salad. We had a nice evening. We chatted and watched one his favourite Bond films, Octopussy with Roger Moore as 007. I’m a big Bond fan but I’ve never liked Roger Moore as James Bond. Eventually my brother’s taxi arrived and he left.

I never saw him again; he died of a heart attack a few days later when Liz and I were en route to France.

Another thing I tend to do when I’m alone is to edit video and record my voiceovers. I’ve got a really good microphone and of course to record you do not need any background noise. When I was a school kid living on the council housing estate of Wythenshawe I was always pretty enamoured of Gatley. Gatley is a small village just next door to Wythenshawe. It’s a lovely village with nice pubs and shops and private houses and it’s a place I always thought would be rather lovely to live in. These days I couldn’t afford to live anywhere near unless I was lucky enough to win the lottery.

What I like about Gatley is that although it has changed it actually still looks pretty similar to the way it used to be, so one day I walked round the village with my video camera and then hooked up my mic and told my YouTube viewers my personal history of the village; the pubs I used to drink in, the cinema where I saw a lot of films (including 2001 A Space Odyssey mentioned above) the café I used to eat in, the chip shop I used to visit and the pub where my dad was the gardener and mum used to make the lunchtime sandwiches.

Another great things about being alone is being able to watch whatever I want on the television and not only that, to watch it the way I want to watch it. Sometimes I watch two or more programmes at once by flipping over during the advertisements or whenever I lose interest in one or other of the shows. Sometimes I’ll watch a DVD or even just watch the first half and then the second half the next night. Sometimes I stay up late and sometimes I’ll go to bed early and read a book. That’s the great thing about time on your own, you can do whatever you want.

After about three days on my own I find myself missing Liz and I pack up and drive up the M6 back to her place. The first thing I ask her is ‘have you missed me?’

She’ll look at me and say ‘missed you? I didn’t even notice you’d gone!’

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Islands

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Last week Liz and I were dining out with our friends Emma and Paul and Emma happened to mention about her ‘private island’. It turned out to be a computer game called Animal Crossing in which the user can design his or her own island. You can fill it with various animals and engage in activities like fishing, insect catching and fossil hunting. According to Wikipedia the game is known for its ‘open-ended gameplay, humorous dialogue and use of the consoles internal clock to simulate the real passage of time’.

Anyway, that of course got me thinking about islands so without any further ado, here we go.

 

Tracy Island

Gerry and Sylvia Anderson produced a series of puppet shows in the 1960s and their greatest success was called Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds was about a secret organisation called International Rescue that had a small fleet of highly advanced machines and equipment with which to perform rescue operations. Millionaire ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy was the head man and the organisation was secreted in his island home known as Tracy Island. His five sons were the Thunderbird pilots; John, Scott, Virgil, Gordon and Alan, all named after US astronauts of the 1960s. The genius behind the Thunderbird craft was Hiram Hackenbacker, known as ‘Brains’. Thunderbird’s nemesis was a secret agent known as the Hood because of his talent for disguise and in many episodes the Tracy brothers had to ask their London agent, Lady Penelope, to track him down and sort him out.

The entire organisation was hidden away in Tracy Island. Thunderbird One launched from underneath the swimming pool which slid away to reveal the launch silo. Thunderbird 2 lumbered to its launch point after exiting its hangar hidden behind a fake cliff face and Thunderbird 3, the organisation’s space rocket, launched through the circular round house.

The great thing about Thunderbirds and really, the secret of its success was the highly intelligent scripts which treated its audience of children not as kids but as intelligent young adults. That pretty much enabled myself and other viewers to overlook the realities of say launching a rocket from under a swimming pool or not having a team of technicians to service these amazing vehicles.

In one episode Tracy Island had a visitor and Jeff Tracy had to ask Tin Tin, the daughter of his manservant Kyrano, to take the guest diving and the Thunderbirds were able to set off on a rescue mission while he was underwater. A model version of Tracy Island was hugely popular over the years especially in 1993 when it was voted the toy of the year by the British Association of Toy Retailers.

Isle of Skye

It was back in 2020 when Liz and I decided to take our motorhome on a run out up to Scotland. (See the video by clicking here.)We travelled north along the M6 and stopped at various places along the way. Day 3 found us arriving at Mallaig, a quiet fishing village where we could board the small ferry to the Isle of Skye. Skye was a spectacular place, starkly beautiful and it reminded me so much of Lanzarote with deep valleys and great hills and mountains reaching into the sky. We found an excellent parking spot, again recommended by the Park4Night app which was conveniently just across from a fantastic chip shop. Fish, chips and peas was our evening meal and this particular chip shop served haddock rather than cod. The food was excellent and though it was a little pricey, the portions were huge. The view from the car park across the bay at Broadford was one we could only really appreciate the next morning.

The splendour of Skye (Photo by the author)

The following day we explored Skye bathed in warm autumn sunshine. We made a quick stop to pick up some Isle of Skye black pudding and after some more exploring we left the island over the spectacular bridge to the mainland. The bridge was opened in 1995. There was originally a toll charge but after numerous protests this was removed and now the bridge is free to use.

Lanzarote

For perhaps the last ten years, if you want to get hold of me during January or February, you’ll find me in Lanzarote.

What can I tell you about this place? Looking over on Wikipedia I see the Canary Islands emerged from the sea bed during a volcanic eruption about 15 million years ago. There is apparently some evidence the Phoenicians were the first settlers here although the first known records of the islands come from Pliny the elder, the Roman scholar.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, nothing is recorded about the Canary Islands until 999, when the Arabs arrived at the islands. In 1336, a ship arrived from Lisbon under the guidance of Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello, who used the alias ‘Lanzarote da Framqua’ which is where the island’s name comes from. Today Lanzarote is part of Spain.

When we first came here about ten years ago, we hired a car and drove round the island. We visited the volcano which was pretty much what you’d expect a volcano to look like, although the drive down a very narrow winding road in a coach towards the centre of it was a little scary. Otherwise, apart from the usual touristy stuff, there wasn’t that much to see and we quickly realised that the Marina Rubicon in Playa Blanca is by far our favourite place. Our rented villa is on the bus route and only five minutes’ walk from both the bus stop and the local shop so renting a car is not a particular concern.

Boats at Marina Rubicon, Lanzarote (Photo by the author)

What else do I do on Lanzarote? Well, I read a lot of books, drink a lot of wine and eat out a great deal in a variety of restaurants. Sometimes we have tapas, sometimes Chinese and the last time we went to Lanzarote we actually ate a great deal of Indian food as the closest restaurant to our rented villa was an Indian restaurant.

St Helena

Napoleon (Jacques-Louis David, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

St Helena is one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit. It was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 but these days is a British Overseas Territory. St Helena is located in the South Atlantic Ocean about 1200 miles west of Africa. It comprises 47 square miles, has a very temperate climate and is perhaps most famous for being the place where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to in 1815. Napoleon was taken to the island following his defeat at the battle of Waterloo and subsequent abdication. On October 17th that year Napolean took up residence at the Briars Pavilion hosted by the Balcombe family. In December he moved to Longwood House which was originally a farmhouse but converted for Napoleon’s use. Today the house is a museum owned and run by the French government.

The former ruler of France dictated his memoirs at St Helena and spent a lot of time reading. He died in 1820 aged only 51. An autopsy showed that he had died of stomach cancer although I remember reading some time ago that some experts felt Napoleon had been poisoned by arsenic. Others say that the amount of arsenic in his system was normal for the time. In Longwood House, the wallpaper contained arsenic but that was a common feature of luxury homes at the time.

Island Records

Just to finish on a more musical note, the Island record label was created by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall and Leslie Kong in 1959 in Jamacia. In 1962 Chris Blackwell brought the label to the UK and began to sign new artists and by the 1970s Island was a major record label. The first Island single I ever bought was probably by Roxy Music and I’m guessing it was either Pyjamarama or Street Life in the early 1970s. The label was eventually sold to Polygram in 1989 for 180 million pounds.

Completely irrelevant fact #1: One of my friends used to think that Brian Ferry sang ‘like a monkey’. What do you think?

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