Changing the Narrative

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Once again as we have for the past ten or so years, Liz and I have escaped the dismal cold of January in the UK and flown over to sunny and warm Lanzarote, leaving behind the dark nights, the cold and the rain.

Noel Coward did a similar thing every winter and went off to the Caribbean or anywhere he fancied really. Perhaps the cold is just not for us writers. Certainly not for me at any rate. Anyway, its nice to think I have something at least in common with a great writer like Coward.

Our day started last Sunday with my alarm going off at the utterly inconceivable time of 5:30am. Well, there was a time when I used to have to get up even earlier, happily, not any more. A quick wash and shower, a much-needed cup of tea and soon our driver was knocking at the door.

A pleasant surprise awaited us at the airport. On previous trips we have had to endure the hell of passing through security, taking out all our numerous electronic devices and putting them in plastic trays to be X rayed. This year, thanks to new technology, we didn’t have to do that. No longer was I running about, beltless, hanging on to my trousers while trying to grab my various belongings from numerous trays and pack them again in my cabin bag. This year the experience was much more civilised.

On the aeroplane I settled down and opened up my book to read. I have, as usual, plenty of reading matter with me but the book I chose to read on the flight was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as it was a fairly slim volume and fitted easily into my shoulder bag. I chose this book as it is the basis for the film of the same name, one of my favourite films.

It came as a bit of a surprise then to find that the book was almost completely different to the film. Yes, there is a Best Marigold Hotel just like the film and it is about a bunch of retired British people who take up residence there but after that, the similarity ends.

It’s almost like watching one of those James Bond films where Ian Fleming’s original story has been evolved out of recognition. Take Moonraker for example. The book is about a German officer who has been hospitalised in WWII during the Battle of the Bulge. Some German troops had been dressed in captured allied uniforms to confuse the enemy and Drax was injured while in British uniform. When fully recovered Hugo Drax continues the deception. He builds up a great business empire but decides to take his revenge on Britain by building a rocket, the Moonraker, which he intends to drop on England. In the film Bond investigates the disappearance of a space shuttle only to find Hugo Drax wants to wipe out the earth population and replace it with a master race.

The problem with film is that it is a group project and various people have an input on the final script. Screen writer William Goldman wrote a wonderful book about his screen writing career called Adventures in the Skin Trade. He described a typical screenplay development something like this. I should point out that I’m going by memory only as my copy of his book is thousands of miles away.

Goldman writes a script and gets a director interested in the project. The director likes the idea but he thinks the ending is not right so the author produces a second draft. The director is happy and brings a big star on board. The star likes the screenplay but is not happy that his character is killed at the end. Goldman produces a third draft and the big star is happier but thinks this and that needs changing. Goldman rewrites and comes up with draft number 4. At this point the Big Star decides to sign up with another project and he is out. The director is not happy so he drops out too. Enter director number 2. He likes the screenplay but thinks a few changes are required. The writer comes up with draft number 5. Enter big star number 2. He likes the screenplay but wouldn’t it be better if his character got the girl instead of the other guy? New draft please!

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be great if we could order a new draft of our lives. Could I rewrite the bit where I spent 17 years working for the bus company? What about the time when I wanted to be a newspaper reporter? Maybe I could have walked down to the Manchester Evening News and perhaps asked if there were any jobs going?

Another production, actually a TV series, is another example of how producers can change the characters from a book. Hamish Macbeth is actually completely different to the books on which the series was based which was a little of a surprise to me and most of the characters in the series are the invention of the TV writers and not M.C. Beaton who wrote the books. I’m not sure how happy I would be if someone made a TV show out of my book and then proceeded to change all the characters, still I did enjoy Hamish Macbeth as a TV show. It was an oddball quirky little drama which ran for only three seasons. Macbeth was played by Robert Carlyle and he is the village bobby in the small fictional village of Lochdubh. Macbeth is a laid-back relaxed character. He is not averse to poaching the odd salmon and he likes to apply the rule of law in his own way. He avoids promotion as all he wants is to remain in his beloved village. Back in 2022 Liz bought me a whole stack of the Macbeth books and they are all an enjoyable and easy read.

Anyway, getting back to the Marigold Hotel. I was rather unhappy with the book at first. It had originally been published under the title These Foolish Things and was written by novelist Deborah Moggach, but to cash in on the success of the film, new editions were published with the film’s title. As I began to get into the book, I actually began to like it. The central theme seemed to be the story of the lady played by Maggie Smith in the film although in the book another layer of her story has been added which the film ignores. She is mugged and goes to see her well off son for help only to find he has been involved in some dodgy deal and has left to escape the police. She refuses to go back home but her doctor recommends a place in India where she can rest and recuperate. In fact, the Marigold Hotel which he has recommended is a business venture in which he is also a partner.

Various other people decide to go and stay in the hotel too. Some correspond to the characters in the film and some do not. All in all, it was actually quite an enjoyable read and kept me entertained during our flight and for my first few days stretched out on my sun lounger enjoying the warm sunshine of the Canary Islands.

Come to think of it, I’ve changed my own narrative too, exchanging the cold of the UK for the warmth of the Canaries.

Now, what can I change next?

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The Democratic Way

Posted on by Steve Higgins

As I write this latest blog post it’s the 20th January and Donald Trump is about to be sworn in as the 47th president of the USA. This was apparently the 60th such ceremony according to the first speaker although how that has been worked out, I’m not sure. Going by the huge amount of coverage on British TV, you might think that Trump had been elected president of the UK also.

When you look at it, Trump has pulled off an incredible comeback, He was defeated in the last election by Joe Biden and universally condemned for instigating a riot after claiming that his defeat by Mr Biden was a fix. He has been at the centre of various legal actions and prosecutions for numerous things including a pay off to a porn star hoping she would keep quiet about their affair. The porn star in question did not keep quiet and I’m pretty certain Mr Trump would be within his rights to ask for his money back although I doubt if he will.

The only other political comeback as impressive as Trump’s was the comeback by Richard Nixon.

Vice President Nixon as he was then was beaten by John Kennedy in the Presidential Election of 1960. He decided then to run for Governor of California but he was beaten in that contest too. He looked up at the assembled reporters and journalists and told them bitterly that that was it, ‘You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.’ He appeared to be retiring from politics. Even so, eight years later he was back as the Republican nominee in the election of 1968 and on that occasion, he won.

Picture courtesy Wikipedia

Some years later, things weren’t going too well for Nixon. He was caught in the middle of the Watergate scandal. Watergate would ultimately be the end of his presidency but his downfall would be his own presidential recordings. He tried to hang on to his tapes but when he appointed a special prosecutor and that same prosecutor began to want more and more tapes, Nixon fired him and various others in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Did he order the bugging of the Watergate building? Of course he did! Did he try to justify it? Well, he did say famously, ‘when the President does it, then it’s not illegal.’

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been watching a BBC documentary about King Charles the 1st and Charles, like Richard Nixon, was removed from office although in a much bloodier fashion. After his defeat in the English Civil War, he was put on trial and asked to plead either guilty or not guilty. Charles declined to plead. He was the King and had a divine right to rule over his kingdom. The court decided that his refusal to plead could only be interpreted as an admittance of his crimes. He was pronounced as guilty and only a few days later was put to death. The day of his execution was on the 30th January 1649. It was a cold and chilly day and Charles asked for an extra shirt in case the assembled crowd though he might be shivering with fear. He gave a short speech in which he said he was ‘going from a corruptible to an uncorruptible crown.’ Below is the King’s final scene from the film Cromwell.

Oliver Cromwell ruled England as the Lord Protector until his death in 1658 and two years later Charles II was recalled from exile and asked to return as the King.

Anyway, back in 2017 Donald Trump was declared the victor in the election and duly became the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the United States for the first time on January 20th of that year and all seemed to go fairly smoothly. The chap who introduced the proceedings back then -I’m afraid I can’t remember his name- commented on the inaugural speech of President Ronald Reagan which I quote here:

“To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”

Ronald Reagan via Wikipedia Commons

Reagan touched on the whole essence of democracy in that speech which is essentially this, that of the leader of a nation voluntarily handing over power to the new leader, the victor of the election process. In the news that same day in 2017 was a story about The Gambia’s long-term leader Yahya Jammeh who had, until then, refused to accept that Adama Barrow had defeated him in the election the previous December. He finally decided to hand over power as threats from other West African nations forced him to concede defeat. It would have been interesting if Barack Obama had said in 2017, ‘sorry, no, I’m not stepping down, I’m not ready yet!’ The last president who had to be forced from office was the man I mentioned earlier, Richard Nixon who finally accepted that the Watergate scandal had destroyed his presidency in 1973 and resigned, handing over to Vice-President Gerald Ford.

Joseph Stalin continued as leader of the Soviet Union until his death in 1953 at the age of 73. When he did not arise from his bedroom one morning at his dacha in Kuntsevo, just outside Moscow, his guards were too nervous to enquire if the feared dictator was alright. When they finally entered the room, they found he had collapsed and assumed he was suffering from a bout of heavy drinking the previous night. The guards made him comfortable on a couch and then withdrew. When he was found unable to speak the following day, only then were the doctors summoned.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party swept to power in Germany not by a revolution or by a military takeover but by the ballot box. Hitler’s Nazi party was the largest party in the Reichstag, the German parliament. Various other parties supported the Nazis all with the same thought, that Hitler was a simple man who could be controlled. They supported Hitler and convinced President Hindenburg to appoint him as chancellor. The thing is, once Hitler gained power and became chancellor, he gave himself emergency powers and began to imprison his political enemies. When Hindenburg died, Hitler combined the office of president and chancellor in one office. He outlawed other political parties and stopped elections.

Seen in that light, the events in the USA are, as Ronald Reagan said, nothing less than a miracle.

A US president can only serve two terms as the US senate, perhaps resentful of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s three terms in office, voted to limit a president to only two four-year terms. Eight years, not much time to change the world, is it? And there are only four years left for Donald Trump to make America great again, part of which seems to be the reappraisal of drug cartels as terrorist organisations, to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to take over the Panama Canal.

What will happen then when Trump’s four years are over? Will he hand over to the next president as easily as Biden has handed over to him? Will he anoint a successor? His vice president, JD Vance perhaps? Or will he even try to stay on somehow for a third term?

Donald Trump. Picture courtesy Wikipedia

The election last year was interesting in that Joe Biden declined to run again. His decision was perhaps a little late and his chosen successor, vice president Kamala Harris, didn’t have a great deal of time to start her election campaign.

The very last time a sitting president decided not to run again was when Lyndon Johnson decided against being a candidate in 1968. Johnson wanted to create a great society for the American people but his administration was completely caught up in the Vietnam war. In one of 1968’s first primaries, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy featured well against Johnson, prompting LBJ’s arch enemy Robert Kennedy to enter the contest. Johnson withdrew and Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. The Democratic candidate eventually turned out to be LBJ’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey. I don’t think Humphrey even entered any primaries so how he eventually won the nomination I really don’t know. Either way he ran but was ultimately soundly defeated by Richard Nixon.

I personally didn’t rate Trump’s inaugural speech that well, it was hardly up there with ‘ask not what America can do for you but what you can do for America.’ Interestingly, many of the TV pundits I watched seemed to think it was all pretty wonderful stuff. Can he end the war in the Ukraine in one day like he claims?

Well, I’ll give him at least a week.

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January, Don’t You Just Hate It?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I might as well start off this post by coming out and saying what I think straight off the bat; I don’t like January. I don’t like it at all because the thing is, I just hate the cold. I reckon it would be rather nice to just hibernate for the entire winter period just like many creatures do.

I’m not that keen on Christmas so maybe late November would be a good time to just settle down somewhere warm and comfy, snuggle up into my duvet and perhaps wake up round about late March. I know that March can be unpredictable in terms of the weather. It’s generally windy and cold but certainly not as cold as January. Waking up in March would give me time to get my bearings before moving into April, my favourite time of year when the days are getting longer, nature is starting to revive and warmer days are coming.

January 1970

Recently while pottering about trying to sort out the tons of ‘stuff’ I seem to have accumulated over the years I came across my schoolboy diary from 1970. As this post will be published on the 18th of January, I thought I’d take a look and see what I had written. Back in 1970 the 18th was a Sunday and all I decided to record was “Watched Captains Courageous and Randall and Hopkirk”.

Randall and Hopkirk was a TV show first broadcast in 1969 through until March 1970. It was an action and adventure drama despite the slightly tongue in cheek premise. Randall and Hopkirk are private investigators but Randall is helped by his partner Marty Hopkirk who is murdered in the first episode but comes back as a ghost to help his partner find his murderer. Marty stays on and continues to help Jeff Randall for the entire series of 26 episodes. It was later remade with comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer in 2000. Personally, I prefer the original.

Captain Courageous was a film starring Spencer Tracy based on a book by Rudyard Kipling. The story follows the adventures of spoiled brat Harvey Cheyne Junior, the son of a railway tycoon. Harvey falls overboard from his father’s yacht and is saved from drowning by Portuguese fisherman Manuel Fidello played by Tracy. The boy demands to be returned home but the fishing vessel is on a three month fishing expedition and will not return early. The captain offers to sign Harvey on as a crewman until they return and under the tutorship of Manuel he begins to learn about fishing. Harvey becomes close to Manuel and is devasted when he is drowned. Returning home, he is reunited with his father as a changed person.

January 1649

This week I watched an interesting documentary about Charles the 1st. Back in January 1649 parliament was deliberating about what to do with Charles who had been defeated by the Parliamentarians. The parliament was known as the ‘rump’ parliament because any MP who was suspected of supporting the king was prevented from entering. Parliament voted to put the King on trial but the upper house, the Lords, declined to support this and then promptly gave themselves a holiday. Parliament then went ahead without the Lords.

King Charles was put to death on the 30th January, 1649.

January 1965

Another great British leader died in January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill was an army officer, an MP, an author and a Prime Minister. Nothing I can write in a short post, even one dedicated fully to his life can do justice to this great man’s many achievements but let’s have a go. Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace on November 30th 1874. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, his mother Lady Randolph was formerly Jennie Jerome from the USA, the daughter of Leonard Jerome, an American businessman.

Churchill began his military career with the 4th Hussars but later left to become a politician. He failed to be elected as MP for Oldham then went to South Africa to serve as a journalist. He was captured by the Boers and later escaped which brought him much publicity which must have helped him when he stood again as a Conservative candidate for Oldham in the 1900 general election. This time he emerged as the victor. Later Churchill became a Liberal and later still moved back to the Conservatives. The years between 1929 and 1939 became Winston’s Wilderness years when he was out of office but began to warn against the rise of the Nazis. On the 13th December he was visiting New York when he was knocked down by a car which incidentally inspired my story Timeline, the title story of my new book.

Churchill’s warnings about Nazi Germany proved correct and with the outbreak of war in 1939 he returned as a government minister and later succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister when Chamberlain was forced to resign as the Labour party declined to serve in a national government headed by him.

As well as serving as a politician, Churchill wrote many books and one, My Early Life, was made into a film, Young Winston. I’ve always loved that film but it annoys me no end when I see it on TV these days as for some reason a final scene in which Churchill falls asleep and dreams of meeting his late father, is cut out.

January 2003

Looking at my diary for 2003 I see I was suffering with a sore neck that January. I was off sick from work and my boss was not happy. While off sick I had written a screenplay and wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was living in Merseyside at the time so decided to send it to Phil Redmond, the producer of the Liverpool soap Brookside, thinking that he might like it enough to either give me some advice or even a job on the writing team. I had sent it with a self-addressed return envelope and guess what, I received it back in the post only a few days later minus any sort of feedback or a job offer.

January 1986

In January 1986 the spacecraft Challenger was ready to be launched into space. It was a unique mission in that school teacher Christa McAuliffe had been selected to broadcast lessons from space. The flight was the 25th shuttle mission and the 10th flight for Challenger itself. The mission was originally scheduled for July but the date was put further and further back until NASA finally decided on the 28th January. The temperature of -8 degrees was a record low for a shuttle launch and many engineers were unhappy. Their cause for concern was the shuttle’s O ring seal in a joint between the shuttle and the solid rocket boosters. In cold temperatures it was thought that the rubber rings might not be flexible enough to seal the joints. Sadly they were correct. Hot pressurised gas was released which burned into the external propellant tank which then exploded 73 seconds into the flight. All the astronauts were killed.

January 2025

To finish on a somewhat lighter note, today as I write this I was in Manchester. I decided I needed a few items of shopping so I walked into the nearby civic centre. It was still pretty cold despite the melting snow so I wrapped up well.  I had a woolly jumper on, my anorak and a baseball cap and gloves. Happily, it wasn’t quite as cool as I had originally thought. At the civic I popped into the cheap bookshop there but after a few minutes I realised that it was far too hot and I had to get out. Instead of walking further to Asda, I popped into the Iceland store a few hundred yards away from the book shop. After about 5 minutes I realised that in there too, the management had for some reason decided to crank the heating up to a level usually experienced in a Sahara Desert heatwave.

I grabbed the few things I wanted then headed for the till. Sweat was running down my face but there were two people at the till, both with enough shopping to last the entire winter. I opened my jacket and then heard some wonderful words, “can you come this way please?” Yes, a new till was opening up and me with my 4 or 5 items was through and soon out into the open air.

January, don’t you just hate it?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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Writing and Blog #1 of 2025

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Ok, here we go. It’s 2025 and it’s time to kick off with my first proper blog post of the New Year: I settle down in front of the fire, crank up my trusty old laptop. The blank page glares at me as usual; what to write about today?

I first started posting in 2014 and that year I managed to get 2341 views which I was pretty pleased about. If I had also managed to sell 2341 copies of any of my books, I would have been even more pleased but hey, that’s another story.

Last year in 2024 I managed to accumulate a total of 14,182 visits which is pretty fantastic although I’m sure there are plenty of blogs out there that have an even larger readership. My most read post has been Manipulating the Image, a look at various aspects of photo manipulation. I’ve tried a couple of follow up posts on the same subject but that post, actually from 2022, continues to boost my readership. Why is it so popular? I really don’t know despite looking at things like subject matter, keywords, search engine optimisation and so on, I still don’t understand its popularity.

A lot of blogs on the internet seem to focus on a particular subject. Things like cycling, classic films or canal boating for instance. Those blogs always know where the next post is coming from; another cycling trip, another classic film review or canal journey. As there is no actual focus on this blog it’s sometimes hard to hone in on a new subject although generally, I stick to books, films and my little old life. Plus the occasional plug for my three books.

I have tried to occasionally write one of those ‘how to’ blog posts and impart some of my blogging knowledge to my readers and fellow bloggers but I reckon those sort of posts might be of interest only to my fellow writers. One of my previous posts was about three ways to write a poem (click here for the video version) and when it comes down to it, I think those three ways could also be used to write a blog post.

The first way was the easy way, a flash of inspiration; a great idea comes to you out of the blue and hits you square in the face and you are off and running. That is probably the best way to write a post or a poem. The second way is when something happens to inspire you. In my poetry example I wrote about a time when I returned home and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While I was waiting for the kettle to boil I looked out of the window and watched the cat that belonged to the house opposite make its way across their lawn, take a good look around and then settle down under a small young tree and go to sleep in the afternoon sun.

Later subdued screams and cries were heard over the way and it turned out that the lady of the house had returned home to find her cat was sadly dead and it seemed to me that I had seen the cat resign itself to its fate, even taking a last look around before slipping away to start the next of its nine lives. Inspired by these events, shocked even, I went away and began a poem.

The third and final way of writing a poem or indeed any kind of creative work is an obvious way known to all professional writers everywhere and that is simply hard work. Unlike mere amateurs like me, the professional has no choice but to sit down and get on with things, firm in the knowledge that at a certain time their editor or publisher or Hollywood producer will be asking for that article, blog, book or screenplay.

I too have my deadline, that of 10:00am on a Saturday morning and sometimes even that is hard to work to. Sometimes I have finished a post on Friday afternoon and have passed it over to my proofreader for a quick final check, confident that all will be well for Saturday and then later find that I have forgotten to hit the schedule button or even worse, scheduled the post for the wrong day.

Coming up with a new blog post week after week just seems to get even harder and here I am on my 649th post. Six hundred and forty-nine posts! I suppose to those of you who have been writing for years, 649 may not be such a big milestone but for an amateur writer like me, it’s pretty special. The crazy thing is this, looking through my diary from a few years ago I see I was commenting on one of those online forums, praising WordPress and blogging and someone commented that if I hadn’t been blogging I might have finished my second book!

Looking back I now wonder whether that guy was actually right. 649 blog posts, times my average word count per post: That comes to over 700,000 words. I could have written another book and to be fair, that was part of the idea behind Timeline, to utilise all those old forgotten posts in a new collection of stories and blog posts. Perhaps I could have written another novel. But then again, it’s not just the words, it’s the idea behind the words, the creative thrust of a book that’s important. Get that and the book should just follow. Still, that fellow had a point. Should I give up my blog posts in favour of my book? Well, if that would guarantee me producing a book then yes, great! The thing is, it’s not a lack of words that have kept my sequel to Floating in Space in a constant state of abandonment. It’s really my own laziness.

Laziness, fear of the blank page, procrastination, they are all enemies of the writer. The only way to overcome them is just to keep on writing. If you are writing a blog post and it won’t come, switch to something else; that other post you had on the back burner or that script you had started a few years back. A great deal of my work is done like that, in small bursts of activity. A while back I had an idea for a film screenplay and worked away creating the first quarter of the work. Later I decided to turn it into a book and as I worked with the text, adding in all sorts of detail that wasn’t in the original script, the story came alive to me in a different way and I started to bring something new to the book version. Don’t hold your breath though, it’s still far from completion.

Oh well. Here’s another script story. Ages ago when I first met Liz and we began socialising in St Annes, we started frequenting Wetherspoons there. It’s a pretty friendly pub and we made friends with quite a few people. There was Big Steve who I wrote about in another post but we also met two guys, Craig and Danny (as usual, names have been changed to protect the innocent!) They were brothers in law who were married to twin sisters and they both owned and ran small hotels in St Annes. The hotels were on the same street opposite each other and the sisters were identical twins so their whole scenario seemed to scream ‘sitcom’ to me.

I used to ask them what funny things had happened to them in their work as hoteliers and being married to identical women. ‘Loads of things’ they would always say but I could never get any details. Anyway, when I had a quiet moment, I started off a pilot sitcom script using their situation, rival hoteliers married to identical sisters. It’s nothing brilliant but mildly amusing and it sat in my documents folder for a long time. Every now and again when I slipped into that blank page syndrome, I’d pull out the script and add a few more pages.

One day I noticed on one of my occasional visits to the BBC Writersroom page that a window of opportunity was coming up for a sitcom script. The BBC, rather than accepting ‘spec’ scripts all year round open a small ‘window’ of a few weeks where you can submit your work in certain areas, sometimes a film script or a play, sometimes drama, other times situation comedy. I went back to my sitcom script, pulled it quickly into some sort of shape, added an ending and bunged it off to the BBC. Then I sat down and waited, glued to my inbox, awaiting the BBC email that may or may not even arrive.

Of course, I do wonder what might happen if the BBC actually decided that my sitcom script is worth making into a pilot? Imagine if the BBC said “we’re going to make a twelve episode series!” Imagine me trying to write twelve episodes when it took me months to write one 25 minute episode! Even the great Spike Milligan had a nervous breakdown writing the numerous scripts of the radio show ‘The Goon Show’. Of course, someone at the BBC could be reading this very post. Did I say something about 12 episodes? Would I be able to write 12 episodes?

Of course! What’s 12 episodes to a top writer like me? I might even start episode 2 straight away. Well, straight away after a cup of tea. And maybe a sandwich. Better make it first thing tomorrow. Well, tomorrow afternoon might be better . .

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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2024: My Blogging Year in Review

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing a blog post about looking back at 2023 and now, here I am looking back at 2024. I don’t intend to cover everything that happened to me in 2024 but just to mention a few things of interest and of course, a few of my own blog posts.

All the links below open up in a new page.

New Year’s day was a cold and wet one although not quite as cold as I had expected. There were amber alerts on the weather forecasts for rain and wind and although there was a slight spitting of rain here in the north west it was hardly windy. (Well that was the situation outside of my window. Only a few miles away there was serious flooding!) According to the news, New Year Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh were cancelled due to high winds despite an influx of visitors from all over the world. My own celebrations were also curtailed due to a nasty bout of a coughing bug which many other have also experienced. Our visit to the Pier Inn went out of the window as well as another proposed pub visit. Liz and I were so poorly we decided to leave each other to our respective own devices and I drove back to Manchester for a few days. There is a lot to be said for spending time alone. I wasn’t giving the bug back to Liz and she wasn’t giving it back to me. Any coughing and wheezing that kept me awake was my own and not hers and I could eat when I wanted and choose my own TV shows to watch.

image courtesy flickr.com

Not that there was a great menu of new programming to watch. It was the same old tired films and old TV shows that I have seen time and time again. It’s a Wonderful Life used to be one of my favourite films but over this year’s Christmas and New Year period, I’ve have noticed that particular film shown about 6 times on separate channels. I reckon I need to not watch it for another few years so perhaps in 2027 I can finally watch it and enjoy it again. The big Christmas James Bond film was the one they showed last year, No Time To Die, the final film starring  Daniel Craig as 007. Sorry but I didn’t like it the first time either.

The Railway Children, that charming film starring Jenny Agutter and directed by Lionel Jeffries was a lovely film shown on New Year’s Eve even though I have seen it before. Another great film was The Apartment directed by the great Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.

All in all, New Year’s Day 2025 was pretty similar to New Year’s Day 2024. As a matter fact, on checking my diary I found that I had the same breakfast on both days, egg on toast with beans. Throw in two sausages and that was the exact same breakfast I used to have in my days as a bus driver in the late 1970’s.

Back in January 2024 I published a post about sandwiches, one of my favourite things to eat. In February Liz and I had flown away from chilly Britain to holiday in Lanzarote. The weather back then was probably the best we’ve ever experienced in Lanzarote at that time of the year and hope we’ll have much of the same when we go back there in a few week’s time.

Collectable cigarette item

Being in Lanzarote meant that it was time for another Thoughts from a Sun Lounger post and I must have been having nostalgic thoughts because I wrote another post about my days as a cigarette salesman in Liverpool.

In March technology issues made me write a post called Not Responding as well as giving readers another Slice of My Life.

One of my most successful posts and one that brings a huge influx of readers onto my site is one I wrote ages ago called Manipulating the Image so in April I tried to replicate its success with a post called Manipulating More Images. It was perhaps a little more focussed on graphic design that the original but sadly, it failed to light up the internet unlike its predessor which is far and away the most read post I have ever written. WordPress stats give me a lot of insight into what my readers are reading, when they read it and where they are but using all that data to make even more successful posts sometimes is just a little beyond me.

In May Liz and I were as usual touring the Loire in France in our little motorhome. The weather wasn’t so good in England and in fact, it wasn’t much better in France. Not only that but while travelling my back became really sore and at one point I was in real agony. Not surprisingly, the next post I produced was called Wet Weather, Books and Back Pain!

In June I was writing about dreams and in July I had music on my mind which led to a rebooted post called 20 Outstanding Instrumental Tracks.

In August the UK elections took place and so I wrote a post called Elections and Questionable People. Labour were the overwhelming victors in the election although perhaps everyone knew that the Conservatives were due to be kicked out of number 10. Surprisingly, Labour’s share of the vote, despite their huge win was only 34% and the Reform Party, whose share of the votes was 14% only ended up with 1% of the seats in Parliament. Both the Reform Party and the Green Party have called for a fairer system of electing the government. Personally, I can’t see that happening anytime soon.

In September after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden began to realise what everyone else was thinking, namely that perhaps he was getting a little too old to be the president and so he stepped down as a candidate in favour of vice president Kamala Harris. That inspired me to write a little quirky fantasy post called Becoming Joe Biden.

This year the Formula One World Championship has encompassed an incredible 24 races, far too many if you ask me. At least Max Verstappen didn’t have everything his own way and it even seemed for a time that Lando Norris might be on course to actually take the crown from him. As it happened, Lando’s team, McLaren, won the constructor’s championship but Max became the 2024 World Champion. I didn’t write much about this year’s racing but I did do a post about 7 Great F1 Designers.

In November, I finally managed to get another book together. It wasn’t the sequel to Floating in Space which I still hope to one day finish but a collection of short stories and blog posts with a little poetry thrown in. By the way, Timeline is available from Amazon as a Kindle download or as a traditional paperback.

That brings us round to December when I seemed to have my music head on as I finished the year with two posts about music albums, Slightly Less Than 10 Great Albums, actually 4 and the final 6 albums in last week’s post.

I’m actually starting to feel a little better and hopefully I might be ready to go out and drink some of that beer I’ve been missing over the last week or so.

Thanks to all my readers. Hope you all had a good Christmas and all the best for 2025.

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10 Great Albums (The Final 6)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I was struggling to finish my post 10 Great Albums last week. I did manage to get as far as 4 albums along with a little background for each of my choices so this week I’m going to try and finish the job with another 6 albums. To do so I thought I’d open up my Spotify account and see what I’ve got in my favourites.

The Very Best of Sting and The Police

Looking back I think that the late 70s and early 80s were the height of my record buying life. I spent many hours each week trolling through boxes of vinyl singles in record shops. I rarely bought any single while it was still in or going up the charts, choosing to buy when the record was out of the top 30 or at least dropping down and in the half price section. The Police were one of my favourite bands and I bought many of their singles. They were formed in 1977 and the lineup stayed the same until they went their separate ways.

Sting, aka Gordon Sumner was the lead singer, bass guitarist and writer. Stewart Copeland was on drums and Andy Summers played lead guitar. Their first hits were Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You released in 1977 from their debut album Outlandos d’Amour. They had numerous hits, all penned by Sting until their eventual break up in 1986 although they returned for a reunion tour in 2008.

Sting went on to have a successful solo career. His first album was the jazz/rock album Dream of the Blue Turtles which included one of my favourite tracks, If You Love Someone, Set Them Free.

Dance for the New World

I’ve always been a bit of a jazz fan and perhaps that’s why I like a lot of Sting’s jazz orientated work. Back in the 90’s I was a big fan of the radio station Jazz FM. Jazz FM started up in 1990 and they played a lot of modern easy listening jazz and soul. In 2004 the station was rebranded Smooth FM and began to play a mix of classic pop. Back in their Jazz FM heyday, they played a lot of tracks from Dance for the New World, an album by modern jazz pianist Rob Mullins. I loved it straight away and bought it despite it having a hefty price tag as it was a US import.

You can find out more about Rob by clicking here.

Favourite track: Dance for the New World

Aerial by Kate Bush

I don’t know about you but in the past I’ve never had any real interest in Kate Bush. I’ve never disliked her but I’ve never felt compelled to buy any of her music, in fact, her early work has always sounded good but sort of odd if you know what I mean. Her slightly screechy ‘It’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home’ was interesting but I never bought a copy and ‘Babooshka Babooshka‘ was ok but again, I never felt compelled to buy Kate’s work.

Kate topped the UK singles chart in 1978 with Wuthering Heights when she was only 19. She has had various hits over the years including Running Up That Hill which first charted in 1985 and was a recent hit due to its use in a Netflix series, Stranger Things.

Some years ago I watched a documentary about Kate on BBC Four and I found myself liking the sounds and the melodies I heard. Straight afterwards I started searching on eBay for her records. Aerial is a double album full of lovely rhythms and melodies. It’s perhaps more akin to music that comes under the genre ‘chill out’ than her earlier frantic singles. I love the quick changes of direction, the way one track merges into another or into some soothing morning birdsong. The tracks on this album do not comply with the standard three-minute rule and they ebb and flow with Kate’s mood. Lovely stuff but be prepared to sit back and enjoy. This album is not something that can easily be put away.

Favourite track: Sunset.

Remote by Hue and Cry

Hue and Cry are a Scottish duo comprising brothers Pat and Greg Kane. Their first single Here Comes Everybody was released in 1986. It wasn’t a hit but it caught the attention of Virgin records subsidiary Circa Records and they signed up the duo. They released I Refuse on Circa, one of my favourite tracks and then went on to make Remote from which they released a couple of hit singles.

My favourite track on Remote: Looking For Linda.

Images by the Crusaders

I bought this album a very long time ago. I’m not sure where I first heard it but back in the late 80s I used to listen to a Manchester radio DJ called Mike Shaft who used to play a great deal of soul and funk and jazz/fusion. There was also that great track which was a hit in 1979 Street Life, featuring Randy Crawford.

When I was a budding amateur video maker I made a number of videos using this album as the soundtrack. Most of those videos are over on YouTube but I did have to substitute the Crusaders for some copyright free music. Pity because I do love this album. I used to have one of those programs where you can connect your record player to your PC and digitise your tapes and vinyls. Sadly, the result sounded really tinny but happily in recent years I was able to find Images on Spotify which I tend to play quite a lot.

Favourite track: Bayou Bottoms.

 Greatest Hits of James Taylor

I’ve got pretty a wide taste in music and I do like a good folk or country singer. I’m not sure when I first heard James Taylor but he was one of the first people to be signed by the Beatles new record label Apple. According to Wikipedia he is a six times Grammy award winner and was inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame in 2000.

Taylor started out as a singer in New York, part of a group called The Flying Machine but he fell into a cycle of drug taking and the band split up. He became hooked on heroin until his father came to New York, picked him up and took him home. Later he decided to have a new start by moving to London where he met Peter Asher who worked for Apple records and was instrumental in signing up James to Apple. He later became his manager.

Favourite track; Carolina on my Mind.

Spotify

As it’s close to the end of the year Spotify comes up with a whole lot of statistics that are pretty interesting. My top five most played tracks were a complete surprise to me, for instance my most played track in 2024 was Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty. In second place was Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel which of course featured Gerry Rafferty.

Third was Escape, the Pinocolada Song by Rupert Holmes. I’ve always loved that song, particularly the theme and the lyrics. It’s about a couple who are bored with each other and decide to meet someone else who likes Pinocoladas and getting caught in the rain but is not into yoga and has half a brain. Guess who they meet on a blind date? Each other of course.

At number 4 was The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News and number 5 was Top Hat sung of course by Fred Astaire.

In complete contrast, my top artist of the year was Nora Van Elken. Well, I did say I’ve got a pretty wide taste in music although you’ll probably find no new tracks or artists in my choices this year. Oh well, perhaps I should widen my taste a little for 2025. Spotify does recommend a lot of new music for me but I’m not sure I’ve actually listened to music that much lately, except in that one spot where I need advertisement free music; in my car.

What did you listen to in 2024?

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(Slightly Less Than)10 Great Albums

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I can’t say I had any great interest in pop music until my brother and I received a record player for Christmas 1972. I always rather liked Olivia Newton-John but to be fair, my interest in her was based more on her looks rather than her singing. The very first singles I ever bought were two 45s by Olivia. Both had dropped out of the charts and my local music shop were selling them for half price so I picked up The Banks of the Ohio and What is Love for a grand total of 48 pence.

That was the start of my music collection although back then I always went for singles rather than albums which of course makes this post so much harder. Anyway, I did buy a few albums. I bought quite a few by Olivia although I can’t really say they are ones that I have loved ever since. One of the first albums I did buy was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and that is one album I still play today.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was released on October 5th, 1973, two days after my 17th birthday. I’m not certain when I bought it although I reckon it was probably the following year. Numerous singles were released from the album, notably the title track and Candle in The Wind, a song about Marilyn Monroe. Another hit was Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Interestingly a big hit in the USA was Bennie and the Jets which was seen as a soul track in the USA and Elton was even invited onto the US show Soul Train to perform the song. In the UK the song was on the flip side of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

I saw a TV show about the making of this album on the Sky Arts channel a while ago and Elton’s guitarist Davey Johnstone told some interesting stories. Elton and his band had wanted to record in Jamaica but the facilities at the studio were basic and rudimentary so they flew to the Château d’Hérouville near Pontoise in France, where they had recorded previously for Elton’s album Honky Château . One rather surprising thing was that when Elton and his band arrived at the studio they had no songs written. Elton composed all the songs from the album while at the studio. In some cases he wrote the music, ran through it with his band and then they went into the studio and recorded. As usual Bernie Taupin wrote all the lyrics. Dee Johnstone was on bass guitar and Nigel Olsson was the drummer.

Singer Kiki Dee helped with backing vocals as did the other band members. Davey mentioned that Elton was notoriously difficult to be with when he didn’t have much to do so when everything had been recorded he left and the rest of the band got on with recording the backing vocals without Elton ‘getting on their nerves’. Presumably then Gus Dudgeon, the producer made the final mix.

I still have my original vinyl album as well as a double CD version. I lost interest in Elton in later years and I never liked his work throughout the 1980s but Goodbye Yellow Brick Road remains one of my favourite albums and something that I play frequently on long car journeys.

Favourite track: Difficult but I’d go for The Ballad of Danny Bailey.

Band on The Run by Paul McCartney and Wings.

I can’t say I’ve ever been a really big Beatles fan. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the Beatles. A few years ago I decided I was going to buy all the Beatles albums on CD but the more I bought, the less I liked them. The Beatles classic hits are wonderful of course but I found that there is a lot of other stuff on the Beatles’ albums that I just didn’t like so I just stopped buying them. In 1974 I went to see Paul McCartney and Wings at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Their tour had been in part to promote their album Band on the Run which had been released a few months before in November of 1973. A number of tracks had been hit singles but I’ve always particularly liked the title track Band on the Run.

Just like Elton John, McCartney wanted to record an album in an exotic location and found that his record company, EMI, had a studio in Lagos, Nigeria. Prior to leaving, McCartney and guitarist Jimmy McCullough had an argument and McCullough quit the band. Danny Seiwell the drummer also left the group on the day before the band flew to Lagos. This meant that McCartney himself would play the drums and lead guitar with his wife Linda on keyboards and Denny Laine on rhythm guitar.

The studio in Lagos was disappointing. It was a ramshackle establishment and there was only one tape machine and the control desk was faulty. Even so, the band stayed in Lagos and began to record. Lagos had just experienced a civil war and corruption and crime was commonplace. One night Paul and Linda went for a walk and were mugged at knifepoint and as well as losing valuables they also had a bag of demo tapes and lyrics stolen. On another occasion McCartney keeled over gasping for air. Everyone thought he was having a heart attack but the eventual diagnosis was a ‘bronchial spasm’.

After six weeks of recording, the band returned to the UK where the 8 track recordings were converted to 16 track and various overdubs added as well as orchestral arrangements.

Perhaps inspired by the cover for Sergeant Pepper, McCartney decided to create another noteable cover. This time Linda, Denny and Paul posed as prison escapees with various celebrities such as Michael Parkinson, boxer John Conteh and film actor Christopher Lee. Also included were TV personalities Kenny Lynch and Clement Freud.

According to Wikipedia, the album did reasonably well in the music charts then began to drop down a little. Later, buoyed by the success of two tracks released as singles, Jet and Band on the Run, the album began to rise up in the charts, hitting the top spot in the USA in June and in the UK in July.

The album sold 6 million copies and became EMI’s best selling album of the 1970’s.

Favourite track: Band on the Run.

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.

Rumours was released in February 1977 after recording the previous year. The album was recorded with a background of relationship breakups and heavy drug use by the band members. I first came to be interested in Rumours as I loved the four singles from the album, two of which I bought as vinyl 45s. I’ve never been much of an album man but when more tracks were released as singles I thought it made more sense to buy the album rather than more singles.

The album was recorded first at the Record Plant in Sausalito which consisted of heavily soundproofed small wooden rooms and the band were not completely happy but Mick Fleetwood insisted they stay. John and Christine McVie had recently split up and would not talk to each other except for musical matters. Apparently it was only later than the group realised that many of the lyrics revolved around relationship issues.

After spending two months in Sausalito, the band decided to test some of the new songs by performing them in concert. Later, they returned to the studio, a different studio, to complete the recording sessions.

Favourite track: Go Your Own Way.

Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

Back in the late seventies when I used to work for a bus company, one of my colleagues was a guy whose name I can never remember. His nickname however was Clouseau as he was the image of Peter Sellers’ famous creation, Inspector Clouseau. Clouseau, my Clouseau, was a former disc jockey who talked non stop music. He ran a mobile disco and still dreamt of being a radio DJ. He was always giving me albums to take home and listen to and was always eager to get my opinion. Some of the music he gave was good and a lot of it just wasn’t to my taste but one album he insisted I take home and play was War of the Worlds and I loved it pretty much on first hearing it.

Jeff Wayne was a producer and musical director working with singer David Essex and he was looking for a new project, a story that he could give a musical interpretation to. His father suggested War of the Worlds and the idea caught Jeff’s interest. He acquired the musical rights to the story and even booked a recording date in advance to give himself a deadline to work to for creating the music. David Essex appears as an artilleryman as well as singing and Justin Hayward and Phil Lynott also sing. Jeff convinced Richard Burton to record the narration and the project was ready for the recording.

A prototype 48 recording system was used which apparently malfunctioned numerous times but the resulting double album was released in June of 1978. According to Wikipedia it was the UK’s 32nd best selling album of all time.

I still have my vinyl version plus the CD version. There have also been remixes, new versions and even a live concert.

Favourite Track: Forever Autumn sung by Justin Hayward.

I did mention earlier I’m more of a singles man rather than an album lover which is why I’ve only covered 4 albums rather than 6. I could add in various Greatest Hits albums from my collection to make up the 10 albums I mentioned in the title but I think I’ll save them for another post.

What are your favourite albums?

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Drive Time

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I thought I’d write about cars this week. Then I added a story about my old motorbike and then one about my Mercedes van so my original title of Car Stories went out of the window. A quick change of title to Drive Time and so, let’s get started.

It took me three attempts to pass my driving test. Still, it was difficult for me. We had no family car. I doubt if we could have afforded one even if my father had been able to drive. That meant that when I had my driving lesson of just an hour a week, by the time the next week came around I was almost back to square one again. I failed my test twice and then bought a motor bike. It was a Honda 125cc trail bike. I loved it but the day it was delivered my brother and I went to see Paul McCartney and Wings at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and the two young lads who came to deliver it were unable to give me the starter lesson they had promised.

That meant many weeks bumbling about on my own in an effort to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I knew the basics, in theory, and I used to ride out of the estate, turn left and keep going left until I ended up back at home. Now I think about it, I had a number of scary escapades learning to ride that bike. Anyway, when I passed my motorcycle test that enabled me to drive a three wheeler car so I sold the bike and bought a three wheeler. I was able to build on the lessons from my instructor by practising in my little car until I finally passed my test.

I’m probably pushed to tell you the registration number of my current car but PDB 71M, the VRM (Vehicle Registration Mark) of my Bond Bug, my very first car, is still firmly anchored in my old memory bank. The Bond Bug was a sporty little three wheeler car and as I mentioned above, I could drive the Bug on my motorbike licence.

It was actually a pretty eye catching car for a three wheeler. It had no doors but the roof lifted up to gain access and the side windows were plastic held on by Velcro. I always remember bringing it home and showing it off to my family with a certain amount of pride and my Dad looking at it and saying “How are we all going to get into that?” Perhaps he thought I was going to take us all away for a holiday!

Still, we had some nice times, me and the Bond Bug but then one cold and snowy Christmas I decided to chance going out to a Christmas party in the car even though it was losing coolant. I topped it up with water and went off for a night of Christmas cheer. I walked home sensibly, I might add, but when I returned the next day I found that the car had frozen overnight and it ended up having to have an engine rebuild. That was a pretty expensive night out! Later when I passed my driving test I got myself a proper car.

I’m pretty happy with my current car generally. It’s a Skoda Scout with 147 thousand miles on the clock. But even so, it has never let me down.

My previous car was a Renault Megane convertible and I used to like being just a bit of a poser, driving round when it was sunny with the roof down and looking generally pretty cool what with my leather seats and my shades but you do get those days when things go wrong. I remember once setting off for work, top down and shades on and then just as I joined the M6 motorway the sun disappeared behind a mass of rain clouds and soon it was pouring down. Luckily I managed to get to the services and pop the roof back on.

I always wanted to take the Renault over to France and tour the Loire with the top down. Sadly the roof folded into the boot which meant that there was no where to store the gallons of French wine we tend to bring back to the UK. Pity!

Back in the 1990’s I used to have a Mercedes. Actually it was a Mercedes Sprinter Van and it wasn’t mine although it was for my use pretty much exclusively. I worked for a cigarette company and the van was a company vehicle which I used on my round, filling cigarette machines in Liverpool and collecting their cash takings.

Liverpool could be a dangerous area to be driving about with a van full of cigarettes and cash so I tended to start work early. The cleaning staff in plenty of the pubs in my area of Liverpool started work early so I used to visit them first. In some of them I went in, filled the machine, extracted the takings and gave it a quick clean before heading for my next pub. My busiest day was in Huyton. In one of the pubs the cleaners usually stopped for tea and crumpets about 11 and when I got to know them the head cleaner, a lady called Marge, asked me to give her a call when I was on my way so I’d arrive just at the right time. I used to spend ages in that pub, chatting, drinking tea and munching on toast or crumpets.

It always used to be that the top prize on a TV gameshow, especially in the heyday of the game show in the 80s, was a car; a brand new top of the range family car. The motor car is probably one of the great status symbols of our time and also one of those things that give us unprecedented freedom, certainly compared to our ancestors. Turn the clock back to the 1950s. If people wanted to get out and about and enjoy the great outdoors on a bank holiday, the only way to travel was by bus or train. Yes, public transport was crammed with people in those days, all on their way to enjoy the great British seaside destinations.

Today, we are free of all those past restrictions, no waiting for trains or buses. It’s just a simple matter to pop outside, start up the motor and you’re off. The only restriction is probably traffic congestion. How many of us spend our bank holidays stuck in some traffic jam that clogs up the roads to the holiday hotspots?

Traffic can be a nightmare in the UK but then when you consider the densely populated nature of the UK it’s hardly surprising. That’s why I just love driving on the roads of France. OK, Paris may be just like driving in the UK, if not worse but out in the country in departments like the Loire, Brittany and Burgundy the auto route and the A roads are just a joy to drive on. Forget also the drab overpriced service areas in the UK. In France it’s so nice to drive into an ‘aire’ as they call them, a lovely picnic area with toilets and picnic tables. How often have Liz and I stopped at one of these delightful places and opened our sandwiches and bottles of water to find a French couple stop at the next picnic table, cover it with a table cloth and open a hamper the size of a house complete with wine, salad, cold meats and God only knows what else.

Our motorhome parked by one of my favourite lakes in France.

It’s relatively easy in the UK to drive over to France on the ‘shuttle’. A quick trip to Folkestone, drive onto the train, handbrake on and off we chug down and under the channel.  Thirty minutes later and we are driving off in Calais. Sometimes I think about my old Bond Bug and wonder if I could have made that journey in that car. Perhaps but I don’t think it would have been quite as comfortable.

Here’s one final Drive Time story. I’d had my Skoda for quite a few years and as usual it was packed with CDs. I had them in the glove box, in the doors and I had various boxes of CDs in the passenger footwell and the boot which I’d rotate every so often. One day I noticed a small slot in the front of the stereo. Was that a slot for a memory card? Yes it was! Now it just so happens that all the music I have copied and digitised I have already placed on a micro SD card for my MP3 player. I copied all that to a standard size SD card, popped it into my stereo and now I can listen to my entire music collection without changing CDs, without rotating boxes of CDs, without having the car jam packed with CDs. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. OK, I’d have to copy all the newer CDs in my collection that I hadn’t already transferred to the SD card but even so, I still have a huge collection of music on that card, all of which I like and all advertisement free.

The only thing is, what shall I do with all those CDs now?

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Transformations (3)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This the third instalment of a post on the theme of transformations. The very first one (which you can read by clicking here) started off with the transformation of the common market flower seller Eliza Doolittle into a refined lady.  I hope that explains the basic idea so let’s get cracking with a few more interesting transformations.

One that came to me while lying in bed one morning was a story told to me by my mother. Walking down our old street many years ago she pointed out a tall, thin man who we used to let on to whenever we passed. He was, I assumed, very old as he had a great mop of white hair. Mum had lived on that street most of her life. She had come to Nuffield Road with her mother and father as a child and when mum grew up and married they gifted the house to her. She told me that the tall lanky man wasn’t old at all. He had gone away to war in the 1940’s and had been captured by the Japanese. He had endured a terrible time as a prisoner of war and when he returned he was a shattered man and his hair had turned snow white.

Shirley Valentine

Shirley Valentine started life as a play by Liverpool writer Willy Russell. Later the story was turned into a film with Pauline Collins starring as the eponymous heroine. Shirley Valentine was a lonely Liverpool housewife who spent a lot of her time talking to her kitchen wall. Her children had left home, she had lost touch with many of her friends and she felt alone, sitting at home all by herself when her husband was out at work.

Her husband Joe, played by Bernard Hill, demands a steak dinner every Thursday. He sets so much by this that Shirley calls it the 11th commandment; thou shalt have steak on a Thursday. The thing is, Shirley gives the steak to the neighbour’s dog and makes chips and egg for tea. I personally rather like chips and egg. If I am ever on my own on a Saturday, the first thing I think about making is chips and egg. I always think of it as the perfect Saturday evening meal. Shirley’s husband however does not like chips and egg on a Thursday; he likes steak and this is the catalyst for a big row and for Shirley going on holiday with her friend Jane and leaving Joe to fend for himself.

While on holiday Jane deserts Shirley for an affair with a man she meets on the flight over. Shirley however, begins to gain confidence in herself and far from being lonely, she begins to come out of her shell. She meets Costas, a Greek bar owner with whom she has a brief dalliance.

Shirley is at the airport ready to leave when she decides not to go. Returning to the bar she asks Costas for a job. Meanwhile Jane tells Joe that Shirley has been having an affair but she denies this saying the only affair she is having is one with herself.

The film finishes as Joe arrives in Greece to speak with her but she has changed so much he fails to recognise her at first. Shirley has finally found herself.

Educating Rita

This was a breakthrough film for Julie Walters and I remember Michael Caine who also stars in the film saying that this film would do for Julie what Alfie did for him. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. The film is about a Liverpool hairdresser played by Julie who wants to better herself. She decides to take an Open University course in English Literature. Her tutor played by Caine is initially confused as he has the name of Susan White on his documents and Susan explains that she has now changed her name to Rita after reading Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. Frank Bryant (Caine) is not keen on taking Rita on as a student but she convinces him otherwise. Rita finds Frank has ignited her passion for literature but has to contend with her husband who wants her to be a traditional wife and produce babies. Husband and wife finally split leaving Rita to pursue her studies. She moves in with a fellow student and gradually, as she mixes with more students and studies more, she becomes less and less like her former self. Frank becomes more and more fond of her, possibly even in love with her but his position as a university lecturer is compromised by his heavy drinking.

Just like Shirley Valentine, this story began life as a play by Willy Russell and the film shared the same director, Lewis Gilbert, who also directed Alfie, mentioned above. In a lot of ways this is such a good film. Julie Walters is outstanding as Rita and Michael Caine is excellent too. The big problem for me is that while Julie plays Rita as a typical scouser with a superb Liverpool accent, the setting clearly isn’t Liverpool. Not only that but the other accents in the film all grate with Julie’s as they are a mix of various northern accents. Caine of course as the lecturer, doesn’t have to have to be a Liverpudlian but the hotchpotch of brogues, some from Manchester, some from Liverpool just seemed to jar to my ear. The film was apparently filmed in Ireland so why not make Rita and her family Irish? That would have made more sense although filming in Liverpool with a local cast would have been the better option. Perhaps production finances made that impossible.

The Incredible Hulk

Back in the days when I used to read comic books, I used to read plenty of Marvel comic strips and one was the Incredible Hulk. The origin of the Hulk (every superhero has an origin story!) is a story about a scientist called Bruce Banner who is exposed to gamma radiation during an experiment. Gamma radiation featured in quite a lot of the Marvel comics as I remember but, on this occasion, the result of exposure to gamma rays means that when Bruce gets angry, he mutates into a green skinned, muscular giant with incredible strength and while he cannot fly like other super heroes he manages to get about in some incredible jumps or leaps.

Back in the 1970’s there was a TV version starring Bill Bixby as Bruce Banner although for some reason, perhaps because he was travelling incognito, he used the name David. I can’t remember the opening episode but Bruce travels about the USA and gets involved in various incidents. He tells a lot of people to not make him angry as they won’t like him when he is angry but as you can imagine, various people just go ahead and make him angry anyway which turns him into the green skinned monster. Rather than beef Bill Bixby up with green makeup and fake muscles, the production team brought in the already muscular Lou Ferrigno. He appeared as the Hulk and when he calmed down after a good bout of rampaging and smashing stuff up, he morphed back into Bill Bixby again.

The first film version starred Eric Bana as Bruce Banner and was released in 2003. The Hulk himself was a creation of CGI, computer generated images, although director Ang Lee provided the motion capture movements and the voice of the Hulk. This being the early days of CGI the result appeared to be rather cartoon like, at least to me.

The follow up film was The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton as Bruce Banner who is on the run from the military and living in Brazil but still trying to continue his experiments. He does so partly by collaborating with an anonymous individual online known only as ‘Mr Blue’.

The military trace Banner to Brazil and try to capture him but fail. It’s a pretty thoughtful and interesting film until the CGI takes over and a character called Emil Blonsky is injected with a substance aimed to produce a ‘super-soldier’ causing him to become a similar mutant like the Hulk. The two engage in a CGI battle which the Hulk wins.

Later Bruce Banner begins to be able to control his mutations into the Hulk and meets with Tony Stark, alias another Marvel super-hero, Iron Man, which preps the viewer for the next super hero film.

All in all it’s not a bad film and much superior to the first one but please, less CGI in future please.

The History of Mr Polly

This is not a science fiction story despite being penned by H G Wells. Our hero, Mr Polly, finds himself in a very dull job with a very dull wife and resolves to commit suicide. Anyway, events unfold and instead of committing suicide, Polly accidentally starts a fire which threatens the whole street and he then mounts a brave rescue of an old lady. Instead of dying, Mr Polly becomes a hero and when the insurance money comes in, he leaves his wife nicely settled with the insurance money, takes a little for himself and departs for pastures new. He sends some money to a post office in another village and gradually meanders in that direction, sleeping in fields and hedges, getting himself a tan. He works occasionally when he wants and sleeps when the mood takes him at other times.

He comes across the Potwell Inn and asks for work and right away finds himself at home. He potters about happily at the Inn, cleaning, serving and doing various odd jobs. One day the landlady’s nephew, ‘Uncle Jim’ appears. He is a violent bully having been in and out of prison for years. He doesn’t like Mr Polly getting in the way so he decides to scare him off. What should Polly do, stay and help or just leave? He decides to stay and after various battles scares off Jim.

Some time later he returns to see if Miriam, his former wife is alright. He finds that Jim has drowned wearing clothes stolen from Polly so now Mr Polly is presumed to be dead. Polly leaves, content with the transformation of his life.

I first read this book many years ago and I’ve always liked its simple philosophy. If you don’t like your situation, change it.

A film version was made in 1949 starring John Mills as Mr Polly and Megs Jenkins as the landlady of the Inn where Polly finds happiness.

I might as well finish with a transformation close to home. Yes, I’m talking about me. Once I was a ‘six shifts on, three shifts off’ motorway Traffic Officer, setting signals in our control room for the travelling public and now I’m retired, a man of leisure whose only worry is ‘what can I write about next week’.

I’ve also used artificial intelligence to transform me further, well, my digital image anyway. That’s me just above, or at least a version of me that’s similar to the original.

What transformations have you experienced?

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4 Funerals and a Pork Pie

Posted on by Steve Higgins

One of my favourite memes and one I often post on Twitter (or X or whatever the hell it is called these days) is a quote attributed to John Lennon, and what it says is this; Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted. I kind of like that quote and it’s one that I often think about when I’m pottering about either reading, watching TV or surfing the internet.

Having the odd day just pottering about is good for the soul and for me, an opportunity to indulge in numerous cups of tea and sandwiches. I really do like my sandwiches.

Last week Liz and I went to a funeral and I suppose I’m at the age now (let’s just say mid-sixties) when I tend to see more funerals than weddings.

I can’t say I knew John, the deceased, particularly well and I was surprised to find that he was a foundling, abandoned as a baby and never knowing his birth family.

The service was good and in fact the vicar struck what I thought was the perfect note, not too sad and not too light hearted. John’s son by a first marriage was brought up in Canada and he seemed a very pleasant fellow recounting stories of the fishing adventures he and his father had in Canada.

The first ever funeral I went to was my Uncle Raymond’s. Raymond was my favourite uncle and the most wonderful guy. When I first started work when I was sixteen, going on seventeen, I used to get off my bus, the 152, at the Bluebell pub in Handforth after coming home from work in Manchester and Uncle Ray was there, waiting for the pub to open. Inside he chatted to everyone, the staff, punters he had never met before and at the drop of a hat would produce the photographs from his recent cruise showing him and my Auntie Elsie sat at the captain’s table. He would come back home with us, have dinner and then take my dad out to finish the evening off.

When he died his funeral cortège took a detour past the British Legion, one of his numerous watering holes, and the staff and customers came outside to pay tribute as his coffin passed slowly by.

The funeral was sad and tearful and the wake was pretty similar. A lot of sad people, a lot of tears and my dad, who had probably lost his best friend, was devastated. I was driving that day and was asked to run some long forgotten relative home. I did so and returned a short while later. Only twenty minutes or so had passed but when I returned, I returned to a happy, noisy, enjoyable party, full of laughter and fun. I don’t know what had happened in the twenty minutes I had been gone but I came back to exactly the sort of party that my Uncle Ray would have loved.

When my Gran died the funeral service was held in Marple, I’m not sure why as it was nowhere near where my Gran lived or was buried. The journey from there to Southern Cemetery in Manchester was for me, a masterpiece of motor car management, juggling with high water temperature and having to dive into a garage to top up my car with water.

At the graveside I noticed my dad making signs to the two grave diggers and after the coffin had slipped into the ground and the final words of the vicar had faded, my dad, a former grave-digger in years gone by, had a happy and joyful reunion with two of his old co-workers, much to the dismay of my mother who stood with me and cried her heart out. (Not your finest moment, dad.) At least he thought better of introducing her to his friends which I thought he was going to do at one point.

Funerals are odd things; in a way they are not for the dead but for the living, those left behind after a loved one has died and I have to say, not only did I enjoy my mother’s funeral, although enjoy is not perhaps the right word, but it helped me more than anything to say goodbye to her.

Back to this more recent funeral and as the drinks began to flow the sadness of the occasion seemed to ebb away. The only really disappointing issue was that the funeral was scheduled for 9:30am which for someone, who since retiring no longer has to get up early, was a bit of a challenge.

The buffet was served at 12 on the dot and despite there being quite a considerable gathering there was no concerted rush for the food in fact I was the one of the first to get up. I really do love funeral food. A buffet is comprised of pretty much everything I love, pork pies, sausage rolls and of course sandwiches. There were my two favourites, cheese and ham and there were also some rather nice cheese and tomato pizza slices. The tuna sandwiches were not my cup of tea at all so I avoided them like the plague. Still there were plenty of other delights for me including a lemon drizzle cake for afters.

A pork pie selection: Terry Kearney, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A few years ago, I went with Liz to another funeral in Lytham. I felt distinctly out of place, an intruder even, as I did not know either the deceased or his family. There was however, a rather nice buffet which, under the circumstances, I felt it was important to do justice to. The world is full of wonderful food and some outstanding cuisines but I do think that there is nothing nicer than a pork pie. Some moist pork, some jelly, all encased in pastry, what could be nicer?

On that particular occasion the widow had seriously underestimated the demand for food and I did feel a little mean when I grabbed the last pork pie moments before a teary-eyed lady in black appeared and eyed the empty plate somewhat wistfully.

When I was introduced to her later, I could see from her expression she was trying to place me. As I smiled and offered condolences I saw the moment of realisation, and I almost heard her say in her mind ‘I recognise him- he’s the bugger who took the last pork pie!’

Some elements of this post came from a previous one so apologies to regular readers if it sounds familiar.

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