Author Archives: Steve Higgins

Film Connections (Part 5)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s time for another post in which I try to put together a few golden age cinema stories connected by a thin, sometimes very thin, connecting link. Today I’m going to start with Olivia de Havilland.

Olivia de Havilland was one of the great film stars of Hollywood’s golden age. Amazingly she died only fairly recently in 2004 having lived to be 104 years old. She appeared in eight classic films with fellow star Errol Flynn, including The Adventures of Robin Hood in which she played Maid Marian to Flynn’s Robin Hood. Flynn claimed in later years to have been in love with Olivia but nothing ever happened between the couple, or so they both said.

In my favourite Hollywood book Bring on the Empty Horses, David Niven paints an excellent portrait of Flynn. You always knew where you were with Errol, wrote Niven -he always let you down.

Flynn hailed from Tasmania, an island state of Australia. In Australia he became involved in a film production called In the Wake of the Bounty, a documentary film about the mutiny on the Bounty that featured reconstructions with Flynn as Fletcher Christian. After this he made his way to the UK where he became an actor and spent many years in repertory in Northampton. He was fired from Northampton rep but was spotted by producer Irving Asher and given a part in a film made at Teddington Studios in 1934. The film was Murder in Monte Carlo which has since been lost but apparently Asher, who worked for Warner Brothers, sent word to Hollywood recommending Flynn for a contract. After a successful screen test Flynn was given the starring role in the swashbuckling adventure, Captain Blood, after Robert Donat turned down the role. The film was a great success and made stars of Flynn and co-star Olivia de Havilland.

Olivia began living in Paris in the 1950s but continued acting not only in films but also on television and on the stage. She received numerous awards and she and her sister are the only siblings ever to both receive Academy Awards.

Olivia’s sister was Joan Fontaine and the two had a famous feud or falling out which seemed to consume most of their lives. Olivia seems to have ‘blanked’ Joan when Joan won an Oscar for her role in ‘Suspicion’ in 1942. They seemed to become friendly for a while until they differed about looking after their elderly mother.

My favourite of Joan’s films and perhaps her most well known was Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Joan played the part of a shy young girl who falls for Maxim de Winter, played by Laurence Olivier.

Rebecca was filmed in 1940 and was Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. In Monte Carlo a shy young girl played by Fontaine encounters English gentleman Maxim de Winter and thinks he is about to jump off a cliff. Later the two fall for each other and marry but the new Mrs de Winter -her actual name is never revealed- seems to feel Maxim’s love for Rebecca, his late wife, is overshadowing her life. It’s a great film and one of Hitchcock’s best. Olivier apparently wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh, to play the part which Hitchcock ultimately gave to Joan.

Vivien Leigh was the surprise choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in the film version of Gone with the Wind. The film was a major film adaptation of the book by Margaret Mitchell which had been a huge success and producer David O Selznick bought the film rights. Production was delayed for a long while as Selznick was determined to get Clark Gable for the part of the roguish Rhett Butler. Another delay was a distribution deal with MGM which couldn’t be finalised until Selznick’s then current deal with United Artists had expired. Selznick used the delay to promote a huge search for an actress to play the part of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoilt daughter of a plantation owner in the deep south of America. He eventually chose Vivien who was in the USA visiting her husband who of course was filming Rebecca.

Clark Gable was known as the ‘King of Hollywood’ and in 1935 he made a film with Loretta Young called The Call of the Wild. During the production, Young became pregnant with Gable’s child. Their daughter Judy Lewis was born on November 6th 1935. Loretta hid her pregnancy and gave birth in secret and then later arranged to ‘adopt’ the child. Judy never knew the circumstances of her birth although it was an open secret to many in Hollywood. When she finally learned of the rumours, she confronted her mother who admitted she and Gable were her biological parents.,

In 1939 Gable married Carole Lombard. She was a great star particularly in the screwball comedies of the day and Gable adored her. They met while making the film No Man of her Own in 1932 but nothing romantic happened until they met again at a Hollywood party in 1936. Gable was separated from his then wife Ria Langham but still married. Eventually she agreed to a divorce and Gable was free to marry Lombard.

When World War II began, Carole travelled to Indiana to a war bond rally where she raised over 2 million dollars for the American war effort. She and her colleagues were due to return to Los Angeles by train but decided to take a faster option and fly. The flight crew of the aircraft were thought to have been in difficulty crossing the mountains surrounding Las Vegas as safety beacons had been turned off in case Japanese bombers tried to enter the area. The aircraft crashed into the mountains and all on board were killed. Gable was devastated. Afterwards he joined the US Air Force and saw action over Germany as a gunner.

In 1960 Gable began work on his final film, The Misfits. The screenplay had been written for Marilyn Monroe by her husband, playwright Arthur Miller. She was not happy playing a character called Roslyn who she felt was based too much on herself. She and Miller were at the end of their marriage and their deteriorating relationship caused tensions on the set. Miller was stressed as he was doing multiple rewrites. Monroe was frequently late or didn’t turn up for work or didn’t know her lines while Gable, the complete professional was on time and word perfect every day. Director John Huston had to hold all the differing elements together but the film was finally completed. It was the final film for both Monroe and Gable. He died some weeks after filming completed aged only 59 and despite having two other marriages after Lombard, was laid to rest beside her.

Another star of The Misfits was Montgomery Clift. He was also a ‘method’ actor and along with Marlon Brando and James Dean was one of the three great method actors of the 50s and 60s. I have always thought that his first film was The Search, a film made in bombed out post WWII Berlin in which Clift played a US army soldier who helps a refugee boy find his mother. Clift gave such a natural performance that director Fred Zinnemann was asked where did he find a soldier that could act so well?

Clift’s actual first film was one of my personal favourites, Red River with John Wayne, a western about an epic cattle drive across the US. The Search, despite being filmed later was actually released first.

Clift became great friends with Elizabeth Taylor and the two made many films together. In 1956 while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a terrible car crash in which he suffered severe injuries to his face, particularly the left side. Taylor comforted Clift in the wreck of his car while they waited for the emergency services. Clift returned to complete Raintree County after taking two months off to recuperate from plastic surgery.

Montgomery Clift was a homosexual in a time when such things were covered up by Hollywood and his sexuality was not mentioned in public until Elizabeth Taylor spoke about it in a speech in 2000.

After the success of The Search, Paramount offered Clift a major contract which he accepted and the first film he made for the company was The Heiress directed by William Wyler.

Bringing us full circle, Clift’s co-star in The Heiress was Olivia de Havilland.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

20 Outstanding Instrumental tracks (2024 Update)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

As it’s been such a dreadful summer here in the UK, I think it’s high time for another music post. In the past I’ve done posts about Christmas chart hits, one about comedy chart hits and one listing some random hits from pop music’s vinyl past. These days I do like listening to chilled down electronic dance tracks, so I thought ‘what about a blog post featuring instrumental hits?’ Anyway, here we go. I’ve tried to find advert free videos where I can but it’s not always been possible. Some tracks are film themes, some are TV themes and some are just great pop, jazz or soul tracks. This post by the way is an older one that has been subtly updated from 19 Outstanding Instrumental Tracks to a round 20.

Theme from Rocky

One of the best things about the Sylvester Stallone movie Rocky has to be the theme tune. For a long time I used to have it as my ringtone on one of my first mobile phones. Its proper title is Gonna Fly Now composed by Bill Conti and the track made number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977, the year the movie was released.

Axel F

Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer was the theme to Beverly Hills Cop, a forgettable film starring Eddie Murphy. If not for this catchy tune the film would long have been forgotton. The track made number 2 in 1985 but younger readers may remember the 2005 Crazy Frog version.

Theme from Hill Street Blues

Hill Street Blues was an outstanding TV show from the early 1980’s about a police station in an unnamed US city. The show won critical acclaim and according to Wikipedia won a total of 98 Emmy Award nominations. The show featured a lot of hand held camera work which gave the series a documentary look and the theme written by Mike Post reached number 10 in the Billboard top 100 and number 25 in the UK singles chart.

(Angela) Theme from Taxi

Angela was written by jazz pianist Bob James. The theme was written for episode 3 in the series but the producers liked it so much it became the main theme for the show.

Theme from Miami Vice

Miami Vice was an American TV cop show from the 1980’s and the theme music written and performed by Jan Hammer was released in 1985. The single reached number 5 in the UK charts.

Love’s Theme by the Love Unlimited Orchestra

Okay, that’s the film and TV themes sorted, let’s move on. Love’s Theme was by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, Barry White’s backing band. I’ve always loved this track and many years ago I frequented a bar in Manchester known as the Playground where the DJ used it as his theme tune. Every time I hear it I never fail to be transported back to those days in the 1970’s.

Apache by the Shadows

The Shadows were British singer Cliff Richard’s backing band and this worldwide hit made it to the UK number one spot in 1960.

Classical Gas by Mason Williams

Classical Gas was a track by Mason Williams and it was a one hit wonder from the year 1968. Steve, the Matty character from my novel, Floating in Space played it for me back in the 1970’s and I fell in love with it straight away.

Pepper Box by the Peppers

Pepper Box by the Peppers is a track you may think you have never heard of but as soon as you hear it, you’ll probably recognise it. It was a popular track way back in 1974 when it peaked at number 4 in the UK charts.

The Hustle by Van McCoy

The Hustle, what a great track! It just brings back memories of nightclubs back in the 1970’s. The Hustle was a single by Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony. It went to number 1 on the Billboard chart and number 3 in the UK. Even better, here’s a clip from 1975’s Top of the Pops with Pan’s People dancing to the track.

Pick up the Pieces by the Average White Band.

I’m not totally sure how to categorise this one. I suppose it’s 70’s funk but feel free to tell me if it isn’t. It was released in 1974 but failed initially to chart in the UK. After it took off in the USA the track begin to sell in the UK and eventually made the number 6 spot.

Hocus Pocus by Focus

Hocus Pocus is a song by the Dutch rock band Focus, written by vocalist Thijs van Leer and guitarist Jan Akkerman. It was recorded and released in 1971 as the opening track of their second studio album, Moving Waves. I remember hearing it originally on the Alan Freeman radio show. Heavy rock isn’t usually my cup of tea but I kind of like this one.

Time is Tight by Booker T and the MG’s.

This track was recorded in 1968 and was used in a film called Uptight released that same year. A slightly slower version of the track was released as a single in 1969 and reached number 4 in the UK charts.

Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MG’s

Soul Limbo was a hit for Booker T and his MG’s in 1968 but is probably best known in the UK for being the theme for BBC TV’s cricket coverage.

Garden Party by Mezzoforte

Mezzoforte were a jazz fusion band formed in 1977 and their biggest hit was Garden Party which made it to number 17 in 1983.

Song for Guy by Elton John

Elton is not exactly known for instrumental works but this was released as a single in December 1978 reaching the number 4 spot in January of 1979. Elton dedicated the song to Guy Burchett, a messenger at Elton’s record company Rocket. Guy was killed in a motorcycle accident on the same day that Elton wrote the song.

Jazz Carnival by Azymuth

Azymuth are a Brazilian jazz funk band formed in 1971. Jazz Carnival was a 1980 hit for the group reaching number 9 in the UK charts.

Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet

Take Five was composed by Paul Desmond and originally recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in New York City on July 1, 1959 for their album Time Out. Two years later it became a hit and the biggest-selling jazz single ever. Numerous cover versions have been produced since then.

Theme from Shaft

The theme from Shaft was written and performed by Isaac Hayes and was the theme to the 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree as private eye John Shaft. The song won an Academy Award for best original song. In the UK the track reached number 4 in the music charts. I remember hearing this back in 1971 and after buying the single just playing it over and over. The flip side, Cafe Regio, was pretty good too and looking back this was the track that started off my love of soul and funk.

Fanfare for the Common Man by Emerson, Lake and Palmer

This was a 1977 hit for Emerson Lake and Palmer. It was a track from their album Works Volume I and was adapted by Keith Emerson from an original 1942 work by Aaron Copland. The single reached number 2 in the UK singles chart.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

My Life in 5 Meals

Posted on by Steve Higgins

That may sound like an odd title for a blog post but I actually pinched it from the BBC website before adding a small but subtle change. I was scanning through the news and right at the bottom of the page I saw something about My Life in 5 Dishes. It was actually a BBC podcast series in which several celebs are interviewed and asked to name 5 meals that somehow relate to their lives. One episode which I partially listened to was Nigella Lawson talking about elements of her life including her mother who had various eating disorders and died when Nigella was young. A dish she used to make was a sort of chicken stew and Nigella used to make the same dish for her family which in turn brought back memories of her mother.

(Click here to listen to the BBC podcast)

Anyway, that’s enough about Nigella, time to crack on with my five dishes.

Boiled Eggs

Yes I know boiled eggs is a rather simple dish but actually it’s the first meal, apart from cereal and tomato soup, that I ever actually made myself rather than just putting cornflakes in a dish and adding milk or opening a can of soup and heating it up.

I’ve always liked boiled eggs, not only because it’s the first thing I ever made for myself but also because I just like eggs. I prefer my boiled eggs soft but not runny although like a lot of the things I make myself, they don’t always turn out the way I want them to. Still, I like eggs soft or hard so even if I overdo them, I’ll still enjoy my eggs. Two minutes and fifty seconds is my optimum boiling time but I tend to be slow in putting the toast in and so usually at the two minutes fifty deadline I’m still buttering my toast and so my eggs will be overdone. (Note to self: start the toast off sooner!)

Liz makes great boiled eggs. She usually takes the eggs out of the fridge in advance and brings them up to room temperature by popping them in a pan of warm water for a while which also stops them cracking in the pan.

Egg on toast with beans and a sausage

One of the reasons I like this dish is that when I was a bus driver, I always used to have this meal in our canteen. The canteen used to have a breakfast special which was egg, bacon, sausage and either beans or tomatoes and a slice of toast, all for a very cheap one British pound. This was of course back in the late 70s and early 80s. I used to find though that the breakfast special didn’t quite fill me up so that’s when I developed the egg on toast with beans dish. There was a time when I didn’t like my egg to touch my beans and the canteen staff used to make me a barrier with the sausage between the beans and the egg which they all seemed to think was quite funny. After a few trials with just beans on toast I decided to go adventurous and have the beans on top of the egg and then I found I really liked it that way, especially when I threw in a sausage on the side.

Here’s a sort of odd footnote though. Yesterday I had egg, bacon, sausage and beans for breakfast and guess what, I used the sausage as barrier to stop the beans spreading all over the plate to my egg!

Sunday Lunch

I’ve always loved the great British Sunday roast. My mother used to make a really lovely roast beef dinner. The beef always had that wonderful melt in your mouth texture. I once asked her how she made it and she told me she roasted the beef in a casserole dish with a little stock or water at a high heat for 20 minutes and then lowered the heat down and cooked the meat very slowly. These days my favourite for Sunday dinner is a gammon joint. Liz cooks it slowly in a pan of water and dried peas and the result is lovely. Throw in some roast spuds, some peas, some carrot and turnip or swede, some Yorkshire pudding and gravy and you can’t go wrong. Just thinking about it brings back the memories of childhood, huddling up in front of the fire watching television and of course if mum called out that dinner was ready my dad took great delight in switching off the TV while we ate.

Later my brother and I would be back on the rug in front of the fire drinking tea and watching some old black and white film while Bob, our family dog, tried his best to push past us and get as close as possible to the fire.

Chicken Curry

In my late teens, when my friends and I used to go out, we’d sometimes end up at a Chinese restaurant in a village called Gatley. A long time ago Gatley used to be a traditional country village but these days it has been caught up in an urban sprawl and is not quite the same as it used to be. I always used to plump for chicken Maryland which was probably the only non Chinese dish on the menu and was just chicken in breadcrumbs. After tasting some of the dishes my friends were ordering I one day took the plunge and ordered a Chinese chicken curry with fried rice and today it’s one of the only two dishes I tend to order in Chinese restaurants, either that or chicken with green peppers and black bean sauce.

Not so long ago I went back to Gatley and had a walk round and even made a little video. One of the former pubs there is now a Tesco supermarket. A café I used to go in was still a café but seemed to be permanently closed. The Prince of Wales, the pub where I had my very first pint of beer is still there. Another pub, The Horse and Farrier is just a few minutes walk further on. Once, when I was in the 5th form at school, my friends and I nipped inside for a lunchtime pint. We left our jackets and briefcases outside and had just ordered a few pints when who should walk in but our physics teacher, the highly unpopular Mr Farragher. Luckily there was a back door that led to the beer garden so we legged it out the back way, picked up our jackets and bags and quickly left.

After that we used to refer to the pub as the Horse and Farragher!

Back in the 80s after a night out in Manchester, we would sometimes pop into a place called the Plaza Café in the city centre. They served curry but they only had three types, mild, hot and suicide. I can still hear one of my friends calling out for ‘three suicides please!’

Chilli Con Carne

I wasn’t sure what to choose for my last dish. I’m not a great pizza fan although I do like making a pizza but the quality of my home-made pizza dough is not consistent. Sometimes it’s good and other times it’s just average. I like to serve my pizza with a fresh side salad or coleslaw. I like a lot of Italian dishes these days, particularly spaghetti aglio e olio which is spaghetti with garlic and chilli. Another dish I’ve always enjoyed making is chilli con carne. I like to start it off in a big pan or my old wok and then transfer everything into my slow cooker and serve it later with chips and rice.

Well after all that I’m not sure what to have for tea. Chilli? Well, I should have started that a while ago. Egg on toast with beans? Nah, I had eggs for breakfast. I think I might go for that old favourite, one thing I’ve not mentioned yet. A cheese sandwich!

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

 

Naming That Hurricane

Posted on by Steve Higgins

These days I’m retired but back in my working days I sometimes dreamt about having a really interesting job. You know, something special, something really interesting, something out of the ordinary, something like a Hurricane Namer. Let’s face it, someone out there has to do it; someone has to name those pesky hurricanes. Whenever I was having a bad day at work I used to think that one day I’d search just that little bit harder, go that extra mile and maybe, just maybe I’d land a job like that.

Today in the 21st century, searching for a job is a completely different thing to what it used to be. No more searching through the situations vacant columns in a newspaper. Job hunting nowadays is pretty much internet browsing. OK, you’ll still see jobs advertised in newspapers but the internet is where the job action is. Technology has even reached a point where you can have an online interview. Once I had a video interview with the BBC. I’m glad to say I passed the interview but as so many people applied there wasn’t a job available for me. Pity as I really did fancy working for the BBC!

I had another interview not long ago which was for a weekend job manning the helpline for a bank. I started off by entering a lot of information about myself and answering some questions and then I came to a section about selling. Selling? I wasn’t going for a sales job so when the question came up asking if I was confident about selling financial products I answered ‘no’. Big mistake because the interview terminated there and then. I later learned that part of the helpline job including trying to interest the customer in the bank’s financial services.

I remember once back in the 90s when I was unemployed for a short while I was sent to join the ‘job club’. There was one compelling reason to go, attend or we’ll stop your unemployment benefit! OK, fair enough I said, I’m on my way. The very first day at the job club in Levenshulme, Manchester, the club was that packed we couldn’t all get in. It was just a case of give your name, register and get going.

The next week there were slightly fewer people and by week four our numbers had reduced to just a small group. We checked the job cards in the unemployment office, checked the newspaper job advertisements and worked on our CV’s. The staff gave advice on interviews, letter writing and so on, and in between we supped plenty of tea, ate a considerable amount of biscuits and generally had quite a friendly, sociable morning. Why people didn’t want to attend I really didn’t know. I kind of liked it. When I actually got a job, I used to find myself thinking, ‘wonder what the guys are doing down at the job club?’

Many years before that I embarked on a career with GM Buses, the main bus operator in Manchester. It was always intended to be something to pay the rent while I found a proper job but somehow, I never found that proper job I was always looking for. After a few years I started to realise that, so I started trying for promotion. One day I put in for an inspector’s job. It was more money, it was a supervisory role and best of all it was based in the depot so I didn’t have to deal with the great unwashed public. There were two vacancies, one in the Ardwick depot, about ten minutes from the city centre and another in Rochdale which was on the other side of Manchester. I wasn’t interested in the Rochdale one as it was much too far away and I didn’t have any transport at the time. Ardwick though was pretty easy to get to, a quick bus into Manchester from Didsbury where I lived and then there were lots of buses heading south from the city centre through Ardwick.

The interview seemed to be going pretty well. There were three interviewers all coming at me with various questions and, because I had just read a book about how to have a great job interview, I had a shed load of answers as well as a host of questions to throw back at them. Anyway, after a while they asked me to step out of the room. When I was called back they asked me what would I do if they offered me the Rochdale job. Rochdale? That’s miles away I thought, so I said no thanks. No thanks? It felt like a good decision at the time, well, for about five minutes anyway.

These days I’m retired but even so, I haven’t cancelled my job alerts and the crazy thing is I’ve actually had quite a few job offers lately. I get a lot of messages from the sites where I have uploaded my CV and two lately were from companies who liked my CV and asked if I wanted to be interviewed for two managerial jobs. Thanks but they were a few years too late. One job I did apply for was to be the Belfast correspondent for ITV news. I sent off my CV and linked in some of my ‘talking to camera’ videos. I didn’t for a minute expect to get the job but I did get quite a nice email back thanking me for my application and interest in ITV News.

Anyway, back to the Hurricane Naming job. I suppose it was a bit of a silly dream really, not unlike the accountant on Monty Python who wanted to be a lion tamer . . .

Hurricane naming must be one of those home working jobs I imagine, perhaps one where you have to be on call, after all a hurricane could erupt out of the weather front at any time, night or day. Maybe there’s a control room or central office where you are based but I’d guess that every few weeks or so you’d have to work from home and perhaps be on call at the weekend.

I can just imagine the scene, it’s the middle of the night, I’m tucked up in bed at home and my work’s ‘Hurricane Naming’ mobile rings . .

STEVE: Hello, Hurricane Naming Officer.

CALLER: (AMERICAN ACCENT.) Hey, this is the Pacific weather station and we’ve spotted a new hurricane forming over the south west. We need a name straight away.

STEVE: OK, give me a minute here, bear with me.

CALLER: OK but look, we need that name.

STEVE: OK I’m on it. (If my work’s ‘hurricane’ laptop is anything like my own laptop it does take a heck of a long time to boot up!) Let me see, which letter are we up to? Oh yes, J. So it’s going to be . . Joan. Yes, Hurricane Joan.

CALLER: Joan? Hurricane Joan? Look, this hurricane looks like be a real ‘kick ass’ hurricane and I’m not sure Joan is up to it as regards a name.

STEVE: Well sorry you don’t care for it but as of 02:35 hours I’m officially naming this hurricane; Hurricane Joan.

CALLER. Holy smoke. Joan? You gotta be kidding?

STEVE: No. Joan it is.

CALLER: The thing is, my old Mom was kinda looking forward to having a hurricane named after her. She’s 86 this year and not in the best of health. In fact, (fights back the tears) I wonder if she’s going to make 87.

STEVE. Well, what’s her name?

CALLER: Betsy. Hurricane Betsy would be just great, a real gutsy hurricane name!

STEVE. Yes but we’re up to the J’s. We did the B’s a while back, last year actually.

CALLER. Well what about Juliet, my wife’s name is Juliet.

STEVE: Juliet? But what about your old Mum?

CALLER Well, this way we kind of keep it in the family and well, when it comes down to it, that’s my frikkin’ hurricane. I found it and I can’t believe some goddamn limey is going to choose a name like Joan!

STEVE: Well what sort of a name is Juliet? Joan has got an old world feeling about it and here in Hurricane Naming we like to keep old traditions going.

CALLER: Juliet is the name of the woman married to the guy who found the hurricane!

STEVE: Well it just so happens that I am the duty Hurricane Namer and as I said earlier, I’m naming that hurricane Joan!

CALLER: You Limey b-

LINE GOES DEAD. STEVE SIGHS AND MUMBLES TO HIMSELF: It’s all in a day’s work for a hurricane namer!

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

Working with YouTube

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week I’ve been having a long look at my YouTube page. I have quite a lot of videos over there and a few relate to this actual WordPress site which you are currently looking at. Some are promotional videos like the one you will find right at the bottom of this post which try to persuade the viewer of the merits of either Floating in Space or my poetry book, A Warrior of Words.

Back in the 1990s I felt it was about time that I did something about becoming a film director so I went on a video production course at a now defunct place in Manchester called the WFA. The Workers’ Film Association was situated in Hulme near the city centre and had what was at the time quite a hi-tech video editing set up. Sadly, a few years later, the digital revolution came and all the training I had done with video tapes and super VHS cameras was rendered not worthless but seriously behind the times.

The video I made back then was about the taxi drivers of Manchester and it was one of the first videos I was able to digitise and upload to YouTube. Manchester Taxi 1992 is my 5th most popular video with over 4,200 views. The four more popular videos are all, with one exception, old VHS videos that have also been digitised. The one exception is a promo video for Floating. It has six thousand views which I have to put down to using it in a Google advertising campaign some time ago.

My big issue with YouTube is that despite having a small handful of videos with pretty substantial views -my top video has over 180,000 views- I don’t make a penny in royalties because in order to make money on YouTube, you must have over a thousand followers. I have at the moment about 402 YouTube followers and it’s been difficult to even break that 400 figure. For a long time I had 398 followers but every time I found a new follower, I would lose one. I would get to 399 and be on the verge of cracking the 400 barrier, only to drop back again to 398 or even 397. Just lately I seem to be remaining steady at 402.

Why am I losing followers? Well even though I manage to produce a new blog post every Saturday, I don’t produce a new video every week. In fact I don’t even produce a new video every month. Why not you might ask? Well, for a kick off, videos are pretty hard to make. They have to be filmed and then edited. They need a lot of time and effort and I seem to spend all my time and effort writing my weekly blog post. Sometimes in the past when I’ve struggled to make a video I’ve tried to take an old blog post and make it into a video. I’ve done quite a few versions of my book bag posts as videos but some work out well and others don’t. I remember making one and feeling quite pleased with myself but then reviewed the video and found myself talking about my Book Blag and also about Bleak House by David Copperfield!

A lot of my regular videos are video versions of my poems and I began to wonder whether those people who come to my site to watch my old VHS videos of motor racing at Oulton Park or Manchester Airport in the 1980s are perhaps a little put off to encounter my poetry videos.

Not that my poetry is in any way offensive, in fact I personally think it is rather good or at least I like to think it has a certain charm. Then of course as they are my videos and I made them, I’m bound to say that. The thing is, those people who come to my page to listen to poetry might not necessarily like my other videos and those that like the other things might be thinking ‘what’s all this poetry stuff doing here?’

That is basically why I thought it might be a good idea to create a separate YouTube page dedicated to my poetry videos. After a quick bit of research, I found that I could create another page quite easily so with a few taps on my keyboard there it was! The next thing was to migrate my poetry videos over to the new page and this is where the problems began. I thought I might be able to do it with just a few more keyboard clicks but migrating videos sadly isn’t possible which is rather annoying. The only answer is to delete the videos from my main YouTube page and then upload them again to the new page.

The big problem with this is that firstly, doing all that takes a lot of time and secondly, it means that I’ll lose all the viewing figures from those original videos. Now a lot of my video poems don’t have great viewing figures or ‘likes’ but surprisingly quite a few of them have really good stats and it’s a bit of a shame to see them all go back to zero on the new page.

The other thing is finding the original videos. I don’t delete them and I still have them on my hard drive but in many cases I tend to edit them again and add perhaps different music, some subtle sound effects and sometimes even a new voiceover. I haven’t named the video files particularly well so it isn’t always easy to find which is the newest or even the best version. Not only that but as my trusty old laptop gets clogged up with loads of videos and has started running really slowly I’ve shifted them over to portable hard drives to free up space so they are not as accessible as before.

Message to YouTube if they happen to see this post. Give users the options to easily move videos to different channels. Things could be so much easier!

Anyway, I’ve started things off, added an introductory video and over the next few months I should eventually have all my poetry videos moved over to the new page. Of course perhaps I should announce the new set up to my small band of followers. How could I do that? Well, I’ve noticed that YouTube has made it possible for channels to create a post, much like Facebook and Twitter. So, I could make a post announcing the new channel and the changes I’ve made. I did a quick search on Google asking ‘how do I create a post on YouTube?’ The answer came straight away and looked pretty straight forward. Could I manage to create a post though? Of course not.

Perhaps that’s something that can’t be done on an iPad so I switched over to my laptop and guess what? I actually managed to finally create my first YouTube post. Happy days!

My usual YouTube page can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@SteveHigginsWriterBloggerPoet

My new poetry page can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@PoetrybySteveHiggins

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

6 Takes on Dreams

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I was looking back at some of my old blog posts the other day, hoping for a little inspiration. I usually find that my older blog posts are much shorter than the current ones and sometimes I can rewrite them or extend them and actually make them into a new post. Around the same time I noticed a blog post on the BBC web site about dreams in TV and film. That sent me searching for an old blog post about dreams and so here it is, suitably rewritten and extended.

My Dream

The other day I woke up far too early. It was 6 am when I stretched out and fumbled for my phone to check the time. It was a Friday and I didn’t have a completed blog post for my usual Saturday morning deadline, the deadline that for the past few years has kept me honest as a writer. I padded off wearily to the bathroom, had a glass of water and availed myself of the facilities and went back to bed. I don’t dream that much although a few years ago my dreaming seemed to increase, so much so that I started a dream journal, a notebook just by the bedside so that when I awoke I could jot down the details of my dream. Later when I came to review the notes, I tended to find a whole lot of gibberish that not only made no sense but didn’t in any way nudge my memory and bring back those quickly forgotten dreams.

A long time ago I awoke after a crazy dream in which I was out with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, and somehow, don’t ask me how, I had lost all my clothes. We had been out drinking and were walking home then something happened and suddenly I was somewhere without any clothes. I woke up then but that wasn’t the end of it.

The next night I had a sort of follow on dream. I was wandering around with no clothes, although I had come across a blanket somehow, and with me was Michael Portillo (yes, the ex-MP who hosts a show on BBC about railway journeys). Well we ended up in this hotel and I was starting to worry. Well, who wouldn’t? No clothes, no wallet, no mobile. Who could I call? Should I try and cancel my bank cards? What happened to my keys? Where am I and what has Michael Portillo got to do with it?

Michael was standing nearby and using his influence as a famous former MP. Someone brought him a phone and he started chatting into it. Clothes were brought for him and I could hear him speaking to his bank. It actually brought to mind that sequence at the beginning of one of the Bond films where Pierce Brosnan has been in a Chinese prison, escapes and finds himself in Hong Kong. He walks into this posh hotel, his hair long and unkempt, his clothes in rags and the guy at reception says “Will you be wanting your usual suite Mr Bond?”.

Some people just have that manner about them don’t they? Me, I’d have been unceremonially kicked out of that hotel, assuming I’d even made it past the front door! I can just imagine the scene:
“Your usual suite Mr Higgins? Just a moment please?”
The manager beckons to a large man looking similar to Oddjob from the Bond movie Goldfinger. The next moment Mr Higgins hurtles through the front door. As he is propelled into the street he murmurs, “that’s a ‘no’ then is it?”

TV

I mentioned earlier about the BBC post about dreams. I noticed it advertised at the bottom of a page I was looking at and I didn’t actually read it until later. A lot of the films mentioned in the post were ones I had never heard of but in the TV category was one probably everyone knows about. The return of Bobby in Dallas.

In case you have never watched an episode of Dallas here’s a quick resumé: It was about a rich family living in Dallas. The family’s money came from oil and the head of the family was Jock Ewing. The other main characters were his wife Miss Ellie, his sons JR and Bobby and their wives Sue Ellen and Pam. Larry Hagman created the famous character of JR, Patrick Duffy was Bobby, Linda Grey played JR’s wife Sue Ellen and Victoria Principal was Bobby’s wife Pam. There are more characters but those were the main ones. After season 8 Patrick Duffy decided it was time to leave and pursue other acting roles and so his character was killed off. The ratings dropped during season 9 and so Patrick was enticed back to the series, the only problem was how could he come back? His character died surrounded by friends and family so what could the writers do? Well, the answer they came up with was this: It was all a dream!

When you come to really look at it, what else could the writers do? Patrick could return as Bobby’s long lost twin brother. Or perhaps he didn’t die after all. That one would be tricky as he did die as I mentioned above, surrounded by friends and family so they could hardly try to make out he didn’t die. Maybe a double, a fake Bobby really died but that idea is a bit silly, after all Dallas wasn’t a spy or a sci fi show. So what happened was this, at the end of season 9 with Bobby dead and his wife Pam involved with another man, Pam walks into the bathroom and finds Bobby in the shower. The season ends there which was quite a finish and we had to wait for the next season to find out that Pam was having a dream and Bobby hadn’t really died after all. Some fans hated it but when it comes down to it, what else could they do?

The Novel

Dreaming a story and making it into a novel or a screenplay isn’t quite as strange as it seems. In 1898 an American writer, Morgan Robertson, wrote a story about an unsinkable ship called the Titan which sailed from England to the USA, hit an iceberg and sank. The story was published fourteen years before the Titanic disaster. I remember reading the story of this writer years ago, even that the writer saw the story played out in front of him like a movie but all the research I did on the internet for this blog seems to imply that the author was a man who knew his business where ships were concerned, felt that ships were getting bigger and bigger and that a disaster like that of the Titanic was inevitable.

The Quote

The Hit Single (John Lennon; Number 9 Dream)

The Film

It took me a while to think of films based on dreams but then an obvious one finally came to mind; The Wizard of Oz. The film is about a young girl, Dorothy, who lives in a small town in Kansas. She decides to run away from home when her dog is about to be taken away from her. A friendly vaudeville entertainer encourages her to return home but when she tries to she is swept up in a tornado which deposits her in the land of Oz.

Once, back in the 70’s or 80’s, The Wizard of Oz had a cinema re-release and I took my mother to see it. She was a big fan of Judy Garland. When the film came on mum let out a sort of disappointed shrug and I asked her what was wrong. She told me that when she had seen the film originally it had been in colour. ‘Perhaps they couldn’t find a colour print or perhaps it wasn’t in colour after all,’ I told her. ‘I was sure it was in colour,’ she replied.

Later, when Dorothy wakes up in the land of Oz, the film goes from black and white to colour. I looked over at mum and she smiled back. ‘I was right after all,’ she said.

The change from colour to black and white also denotes that Dorothy had entered not only Oz but the world of dreams. Later in the film when she returns to Kansas, it is only then that she realises that her adventure in Oz had been a dream and that the cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and even the Wizard, were based on characters from the farm where she lived.

The Wizard of Oz was a classic film made in 1939 and was an adaptation of the book by Frank L Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland was forever linked to the film and in particular to one of the classic songs she sings in the film; ‘Over the Rainbow’.

To finish I think I’ll pinch a few lines from my original post.

Not so long ago I remember travelling on a luxurious aeroplane, not the cramped budget airline I usually fly on but something very special. I was in first class in a very comfy seat with lots of legroom. The hostess was handing me a drink, not in a plastic cup but a very elegant crystal glass. As I reached forward to take the drink, I slipped and went head over heels towards the floor.

I lifted my hand up to check my fall but I was back in bed at home and everything had been a dream. I looked over and Liz was scrolling down her mobile phone. ‘Bloody hell!’ she said, ‘that snoring was going right through me. Where’s my cup of tea?’

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

 

Wet Weather Writing

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Liz and I have always been pretty lucky with the weather on our holidays. This year in Lanzarote we experienced the best winter sun we have ever had. In late January and February, we had five weeks of sun with hardly a bad day. Well, we did have the odd bad day but they mostly consisted of a few hours of cloud and once, a short rain shower. This year in France we weren’t so lucky.

I can remember a lot of wet weather holidays as a child. Days in caravans reading books and comics while the rain poured down. Fish and chips in seaside cafes keeping warm and dry. A few years ago Liz and I had a very wet holiday in France. We spent a lot of time indoors in our small rented cottage. I used the time to sort out the manuscript for my book Floating in Space. The manuscript has a very disjointed history. I began the book in the 1980s, writing in longhand in a notebook. Later, I updated the story as I typed it up on my typewriter.

Later still I got hold of an old word processor. It was called a Displaywriter if I remember correctly and had floppy disks the size of old 45 rpm vinyl singles. Then came the computer revolution and once again I copied the text onto my new device. I backed up my work onto standard sized floppy discs but then came disaster, a big PC crash. My PC was under guarantee so it was shipped back to the manufacturer and came back a few weeks later all nicely repaired, updated but without all my saved files.

The big problem was the back up files, I just couldn’t find them, so once again I started from scratch and put the novel together from my typed version and my longhand originals. When I’d got to the three quarter point of the novel I found my back up disc but then I had two versions, both slightly different. That’s the thing when a writer starts rewriting, you get new ideas, you take the characters into new situations, you tell the story in a different way. So anyway, I did the only logical thing I could at that time, I threw my hands up in despair and walked away.

Later, much later, Liz and I had the wet weather holiday in France mentioned above and that was when I decided to sort the whole thing out. I went through the two versions, deleted a whole lot of stuff, rewrote the ending and managed to knit all the different sections together. I was pretty pleased with myself at the time. I’m a fundamentally lazy person so when I manage to get off my lazy behind and actually do some good work, I always feel pleased about it.

This year in France the first week was pretty good, weather wise. I particularly wanted to visit a place in France called Lochnagar. It’s the crater from the biggest explosion in WWI. In 1916 in the First World War there were two opposing forces facing each other. The German invaders on one side and the defending Allies on the other. They fought each other with guns and artillery but they also fought in another more unexpected way. Both armies were tunnelling under the front and the British dug their way under the German lines, packed a huge amount of explosives in an underground cavern, lit the blue touch paper and boom! That was the biggest explosion of the war and it left behind a pretty big crater.

Today the resulting crater is still there. Back in 1916  the 179th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers tunnelled under the German lines. Explosive charges were laid and detonated at 07.28am on the morning of July 1st 1916. The explosion marked the beginning of the battle of the Somme, the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. The British suffered 54,470 casualties on that first day including 19,240 fatalities. In return they gained just three square miles of territory. The offensive lasted till the 18th November and the total casualty list for the Allies topped 620,000.

The crater is a stark reminder of the First World War. Today visitors like me come to look and to remember. There are many memorials and even the wooden walkway around the crater contains elements that have been paid for by donations and the names of long gone soldiers are inscribed on its wooden planks. I had thought that perhaps the crater might have filled with water and become a lake but today, despite its covering of grass, it still looks an odd and unnatural part of the landscape.

Wilson44691, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The previous day we visited the nearby museum of the Somme battle. It was quite expensive to enter and there was a separate charge to go through and see the Somme memorial. I kept to the museum and wandered around looking at the rusty old shell casings and machine guns and helmets and thought of the young men who lost their lives in that terrible conflict. In another room I watched the old black and white films of the war which played in various languages and in a final room the last exhibit was a replica aircraft. It was a Nieuport originally piloted by Georges Guynemer during the battle of the Somme.

If I’d have been given a choice, I reckon I’d rather have been in that flimsy aircraft than down in the trenches.

After a week exploring the north of France we slipped further south to take up residence in our rented villa. As much as I love our motorhome I much prefer the luxury of a big house with a swimming pool. The weather wasn’t great but even so, the pool was heated and we did manage a few swims despite only having hot sunshine to dry us off on a few rare occasions.

The other big drawback to this holiday was the intense pain from my back. I reckon I must have suffered a slipped disc or a trapped nerve. The pain lasted about two weeks and luckily, Liz always travels with a good supply of painkillers, just in case, so never again will I be asking ‘Do we really need all these?’

You might be thinking that because of all the bad weather I did something similar to what I mentioned earlier about sorting out my book. Did I sort out another book? Did I finish the sequel? Actually, no but I did do quite a bit of work on putting together my short story collection which one day might see the light of day on Amazon. The other thing we tended to do when the weather was bad was eat. Eat in restaurants. Yes among my many loves such as writing, reading books and watching classic films there is also my love of a good restaurant.

I love everything about a restaurant. I love taking my seat and looking through the menu and that first taste of a lovely glass of wine. There is a lovely restaurant near to our villa, Le Restaurant de la Gare. You are shown to your table and given a basket of bread and a bottle of red comes over along with some water and a bottle of cider. Once settled you can then serve yourself from the buffet where you will find various cold meats and pates and numerous salad items.

One thing I could probably do without though is the waitress who has a voice which wouldn’t be out of place on a British army sergeant major. It’s a voice that you can hear miles away and even when she is inches from your head, rattling off the restaurant’s main courses, she still doesn’t tone down the volume. ‘Poisson, porc au moutarde ou steak?’ she bellows. I had the pork which turned out to be braised pork and was rather nice.

Frites ou riz? ‘Frites’, I tell her thinking that if I was married to her I would be deaf within a week.

It’s usually sad to have to return home but this year what with back pain and bad weather I was actually rather glad to be coming home. We had the most wonderful cabin on the ferry back. A really comfortable bed and a door which opened onto the rear deck where I could watch and take photographs as we left the port. It was interesting to see the pilot’s small boat running alongside us as we left Cherbourg. I had always thought that the idea was for the ferry to follow the pilot out but in these hi tech days the pilot was probably just on the radio telling the captain to keep starboard or keep port or whatever.

When we returned home, I turned on the TV to watch the celebrations and ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of D Day on television.

Now we are back home I see the sun has finally come out in France.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

 

Holiday Book Bag 2024 Part 3

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Parts one and two of my Book Bag were books I had taken to Lanzarote earlier in the year. This time Liz and I are tootling through France in our small motorhome. The weather has not been kind to us and rather than reading in the usual lovely sun, I’ve been reading indoors away from the rain. This year quite a few of my books are ones I have read before but I thought were due for a re-read. Anyway, here we go . . .

Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle

I wrote about this book a few weeks ago and you might be thinking ‘bet he’s included it here to pad out his post a bit’. Moi? As if I’d do such a thing. It’s the follow up to A Year in Provence, one of my favourite books about France by Peter Mayle. It’s a pleasant enough read but not a patch on the original.

Random Harvest by James Hilton

Wait a minute. Didn’t this guy write about this book a few weeks ago as well? Actually I did but as it was part of my book bag I thought I’d include it here anyway. A nice read, slightly different to the film starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. It was written before World War II and reflects the feelings of the time that perhaps more could have been done to either prevent the war or at least prepare more. A great read but I actually think I preferred the film to the book. Click here to read the full film and book review.

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

I read this book a few years ago and thought I’d throw it in my book bag for another read. As I remember, the first time round I absolutely loved this book. I saw it on a stall at a market once and mentioned to the seller what a great read it was. ‘Nah.’ replied the man. ‘It’s full of stereotypes!’ I wouldn’t say that at all. It’s a look at the life of a young man working in France as he tries to understand the French way of life and of course the language. The main character is engaged on a project to open an English tea room in Paris but feels that his boss and his colleagues are not that interested at all and when he eventually gets dropped by the company, he goes on to open the tea room himself. A nice read, humourous rather than laugh out loud funny and a little more biting than the Peter Mayle books. It’s a fun holiday read which goes a long way towards deciphering the French psyche.

The Kennedy Half Century by Larry J Sabato

This was billed as the ultimate Kennedy book but sadly it isn’t. It tells the story of John Kennedy and his run for the vice presidency, his years as a senator and then his presidential run. It goes on to look at his presidential years and then his murder and the last half of the book looks at how subsequent presidents have fared compared to JFK and the impact of Kennedy’s own presidency on the latter ones, all the way up to Obama.

A lot of it is interesting but there is nothing that I haven’t not only read about before but read in much more detail. The life and death of John Kennedy is one of my great interests. His murder happened on November the 22nd, 1963 when I was just seven years old and since then I’ve watched documentary after documentary and read numerous books.

The author tries to show an open mind about the assassination, looking briefly at the many theories that have been put forward over the years. Was the CIA or the mafia involved? Were the culprits the Cubans or the anti-Cubans? Was the military industrial complex behind the murder as Oliver Stone suggests in the film JFK? Perhaps it really was Oswald after all.

Looking back I think that one of the drawbacks to the book is that the author hasn’t really made his mind up what he actually thinks has happened. If he had a viewpoint himself, the narrative might have had more focus. The only real investigative effort in the book was to review the acoustical evidence, a recording made by a police officer with a microphone jammed open during the shooting and which led the House Select Committee on Assassinations to declare there was a shooter on the famous grassy knoll.

Well, maybe not says the author. Their research pinpoints a different officer with the jammed microphone and not the one selected by the HSCA which means there wasn’t another shooter after all. OK but there were clear shots of gunfire on the tape. Where did they come from? The author seems to think that they may have been noises from the officer’s motorcycle. Really?

An interesting read but the final chapters on the subsequent presidents and their relationships to JFK was actually a pretty pointless exercise that could have been summed up in just one chapter. If you would like to find out more, the book has its own website where you can read, among other things, the review of the acoustical evidence. Click here to access.

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

This is another book that has been made into a successful film and also a great TV series. It’s a kitchen sink drama set in the early 1960s about a young Yorkshire lad who gets a girl pregnant and then realises he really wasn’t as in love with her as he thought he was. I’ve actually read this book quite a few times and it’s one of those that I mention when people ask me to describe Floating in Space. As much as I’m fond of Floating, this book is infinitely better. It’s a very simple story and probably one that has happened hundreds of times to hundreds of couples.

If you ever watch the TV series Long Lost Family, it shows that many people were in the same position as the couple in the book only instead of getting married, some young mothers in the 1950s and 60s were forced to give up illegitimate children for adoption.

Vic and Ingrid, the fictional couple, do get married even though Vic hopes for a last minute escape before the wedding day arrives. Not only is the main story authentic but so is the background to the book. Vic is a draughtsman in Yorkshire and his father is a miner.

The description of family life back then rings a bell with my own background in Manchester. Vic’s mother is a lot like my mother and there is a very lovely chapter when Vic goes to give blood with his father and then the two pop into the local pub for a pint. It was just like moments out with my own father, down to the banter with my mother when we both returned home. A wonderful read and so glad I brought it along to France.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

The Queen of the Nile

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The Queen of the Nile

A short story by Steve Higgins

As you read this Liz and I will be pottering about France in our motorhome so for this week I thought I’d publish another short story in pdf form.

It’s another download which can be accessed over on the download page or by clicking the link below.

Queen of the nile pdf

Hope you enjoy the story and click back next Saturday for another blog post!

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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

Wet Weather, Books and Back Pain

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Our little motorhome has been fuelled and packed and it’s time to take another drive over to France. We decided to go over to France via Eurotunnel. The big drawback of course is that travelling from the northwest, it’s a helluva drive down to Folkestone. Not just the drive itself but we have to contend with the perils of the M6 and the M25, two of the UK’s busiest motorways.

What we did was take a break and stop at a place called the Bricklayers Arms in Sevenoaks. We parked up, had some food and drinks and entered the pub quiz. The next morning it was only a quick trip down to Folkestone and soon we were chugging smoothly along under the ocean and over to Calais.

We drove across to one of our favourite restaurants, Le Mas Fleuri. It’s a quiet family run place and the simple food is always wonderful. I have to say I sometimes wonder how the place survives as, certainly in the evenings, it is always quiet. Anyway, this time we were dining at lunchtime and we found that not long after sitting down, a steady stream of customers began coming in after us and soon the dining room was full. The French do love their lunches.

We left Lanzarote a few months ago fit and well after five weeks of swimming and sunning ourselves but the trip back via Jet2.com was on the most uncomfortable aircraft I have ever flown on and since then I’ve been suffering with a sore back. I went into our local doctor’s surgery and they told me that they now have a practice physio. The physio, who I’m sure was a very competent fellow, didn’t seem to feel it necessary to actually examine my back in any way but even so, he felt confident enough to recommend that I take some over the counter painkillers and undertake a series of exercises which he thought would help. I have been doing the exercises, not totally on a full time basis but I have done them, well some of them, but the pain has been gradually getting worse.

That’s perhaps not the best time to drive a motorhome over to France and it has been challenging to say the least. My back soon went from sore to very painful and from then on to some moments of intense agony. The pain started in my lower back, then after a few days migrated to my right hip and now seems to be remaining in my right leg. At one point the epicentre of the pain moved to an area in my lower back from where it sent out electrically charged bolts of pain down both legs to a point where it seemed like my legs would collapse. I’ve still got a lot of pain but recently, touch wood, I have not had any what I tend to call screaming agony attacks.

Luckily, since then I’ve tried to anticipate when the bad times will come and gulp down an appropriate amount of painkillers. The bad times usually come in threes; the first comes at about lunchtime when Liz is doing our late breakfast. (Sorry I can’t assist Liz, I’m in pain.) Secondly about 6pm to 6:30 when Liz is making tea (Sorry I can’t assist again) and lastly late on about 1am, our usual bedtime (Liz, any chance of a back rub?)

It’s difficult to deal with certain situations now, situations that previously I wouldn’t even think about. I’ve dropped my handkerchief/tissue on the floor. OK. How the heck am I going to get that? I can’t just bend over. I can’t reach down. It happened the other day in a restaurant and I had to kick it over to Liz and she managed to raise it up with her collapsible back scratcher and I just managed to reach it. Situation (only just) sorted. Other situations arise that I wouldn’t even think about. I need to have a wee but an electric shock is going through my right leg when I try to move. What can I do? Just hang on until the pain eases, I suppose. I suddenly have a new respect for disabled people,

These last few days it is my right leg that is throbbing quietly with an ache that gnaws at the inside of my thigh and makes it difficult to walk and also to sleep. Another interesting thing is that while I’ve been researching the issue over on Google and YouTube, looking for exercises that might help, a number of those mysterious things called ‘cookies’ have clearly latched themselves to my iPad because everywhere I go on the internet, I find little adverts from someone who has discovered the ‘real’ cure to back pain and sciatica.

I can download their quick self-help guide and even sign up (for a small fee) to their regular pain free back sessions and discover the ‘secret’ to a pain free life.

The other thing about this trip is the weather. It’s cold! We have been coming to this part of France and renting this same property in Parçay Les Pins for a number of years but this is the first time we have ever had to crank up the heating. Week one, pottering about in our motorhome was pretty warm and week two was a bit of a mixture, some warm and sunny days and some cold and overcast. Today as I write this it has been cold and wet.

We drove down to a local fête and vide grenier this morning. As it is a bank holiday Monday in France, we knew that the local supermarket was only opening until 12:30 so we popped in to update our diminishing cheese supply. There was no bread of course, the locals had come in early doors and removed all that but at least we had a few ‘bake it in the oven’ loaves for later and of course, some cheese.

Just round the corner there was a local fête taking place. The roads were closed off as usual but from what we could see when we arrived, the rain had caused people to pack up and only a few solitary stalls remained. OK we thought, might as well drive down to our local restaurant for lunch.

The Station Restaurant which we both love was closed so as the rain was easing off we went back to the fête to take a closer look at the few stalls remaining. We found that on the other side of the village square there were some classic cars and motorcycles, all gleaming and wet. The bar was open and also a full multi course restauration was being served. All we wanted was the usual sausage and chips takeaway and a glass of red so we looked at the classic cars and motorcycles, watched the display by the local dancers and then went back home for some bacon and eggs.

Yesterday we had a lovely swim when the clouds parted for a short while and a burning hot sun appeared. Somehow I don’t think today will be swimming weather.

As usual on holiday I always come armed with a stash of books and this year is no exception. A few of the books are ones I have dug out of a box at home and are ones I haven’t read for a while. One of them was Toujours Provence, a sequel to the successful A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.

A Year in Provence has long been one of my favourite books. There are no gunfights or car chases. It’s a very gentle read, about the author and his wife deciding to move to Provence to live. The story of how they settle into their new home and their new country is told in a very easy going and humorous style. They have problems with their heating, they have a new kitchen built, they buy a great stone table for outdoor meals, the author describes the personalities of the locals as well as the restaurants and the wonderful meals they have there.

The follow up, Toujours Provence, is a slightly different book. There is no story linking the chapters together. Each chapter is like a short essay about all things French. Some are interesting and some are not and sadly, many fall into the latter category. One exception however is a chapter about writing that fits in totally with my own thoughts on the subject.

For most of the time, it’s a solitary, monotonous business. There is the occasional reward of a good sentence -or rather, what you think is a good sentence, since there’s nobody else to tell you. There are long, unproductive stretches when you consider taking up some form of regular and useful employment like chartered accountancy. There is constant doubt that anyone will want to read what you’re writing, panic at missing deadlines that you have imposed on yourself, and the deflating realization that those deadlines couldn’t matter less to the rest of the world. A thousand words a day, or nothing; it makes no difference to anyone but you. That part of writing is undoubtedly a dog’s life. What makes it worth living is the happy shock of discovering that you have managed to give a few hours of entertainment to people you’ve never met. And if some of them should write to tell you, the pleasure of receiving their letters is like applause. It makes up for all the grind.

In Peter Mayle’s case, various people have decided to not only write to him but sometimes to even seek him out and ask for his autograph on their copy of his book. One couple of complete strangers even arrived and made themselves comfortable in his house while the author himself was out on the patio. He only found them when he came inside for a glass of wine.

As for me, I’m happy with the occasional ‘like’ either on Twitter or Facebook or even here on WordPress but wait a minute, is that some sunshine breaking through the cloud? Time for a glass of wine on the patio!

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

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