Author Archives: Steve Higgins

Bankers, Potboilers and J. Edgar Hoover

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Bankers, Potboilers, J Edgar HooverHow easy, or hard, is it to write a weekly blog post? Well there is no straight answer to that. Sometimes I just seem to get a whole host of ideas and other times I struggle to find one. The important thing is to keep jotting those ideas down, the ones that come when you are feeling creative or just full of ideas, and use them on the days when you don’t seem to have anything new.

One thing I try to do is have a few ‘bankers’ as I like to call them. Bankers are fully completed posts that I can use whenever I’m stuck for something to write about and that blog deadline is looming ever nearer. I’ve currently got two bankers in the pipeline and they give me that little bit of reassurance, that confidence that if the current blog goes wrong or is just not working, then the banker is there, ready for my Saturday deadline.

I also have a few ‘potboilers’. Potboilers are draft posts that have been going on for a while and need more work to get them right. Every so often I’ll review the potboilers, update them, do more research and add to them. I have two on the boil at the moment. One is about Oliver Stone and is part of a series about movie directors. The first instalment was about Woody Allen, my favourite director and although I‘ve researched a lot about Stone, and his films are great favourites of mine, the post just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t have –yet- that personal anecdotal connection I like to have in my posts. The Woody Allen post seemed to just work straight away but then I do so love his movies. I love that balance he maintains between the serious and the humorous, something I look for in my own writing.

Another one is about Watergate, the scandal that erupted around President Nixon in the early seventies. Watergate and the US White House of the sixties and early seventies are two of my great interests but Watergate is one of those things I know perhaps too much about. I wanted to talk about an interesting connection to Howard Hughes that I think explains a lot about the core of Watergate but now I find I’ve produced the War and Peace of blog posts! A little trimming is in order before I publish that one.

One interesting aspect of Watergate was the involvement of the FBI. Nixon wanted the FBI to do his dirty work, to wiretap his enemies and to provide all kinds of dirt on the people Nixon thought were against him. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI chief, would not help and this was the reason for the creation of the ‘Plumbers’, the covert White House group who searched for leaks in the government and did Nixon’s dirty work for him.

Hoover, Gray, Higgins

Hoover, Gray and Higgins

J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972 and was replaced by a fellow called L. Patrick Gray and it has always made me wonder if I became the director, pretty unlikely I know, would I have to be known as S. Ralph Higgins?

The great goal of a blogger is to write something that really takes off and becomes, in internet parlance, ‘viral’. The nearest I have come to going viral was a post I wrote some years ago that suddenly cranked up 192 views in a very short while. All the views originated in Argentina so either ‘Floating In Space’ really rocked their boat down there or there is an Argentinian Steve Higgins who pulls in a lot of Internet traffic!

While I was labouring away last week to sort out the Watergate post I came up with an idea about book trailers and quickly knocked out a post about the making of these video trailers. I always seem to produce something in the nick of time, in fact, that deadline of 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning is good for me as a writer: it forces me to produce the goods. Still, a while ago I had five bankers. Now I’m down to only two!

A few nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a perfect blog in my head. I was lying there writing it mentally even though I was still half asleep. It was a cracking post: The title was Blog Heaven. It was all about blogging and writing posts and was full of quirky humour. I knew I’d quickly forget it all so I thought I’d grab my trusty tablet and send myself a reminder e-mail so that when I was fully awake I could crank up my laptop and knock out the post.

Later on I sat down checked my e-mails and saw this:

Viral writing- moulding the blog – blog viral- FBI J Edgar Hoover

Sound anything like the post you have just read? Well, it wasn’t half as good as the one I woke up with that other night!

If you liked this post why not try my book? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or watch the video below.

 

How to deal with Laptop Failure and the Rules of Writing

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Steve Higgins's avatarLetters from an Unknown Author!

quotescover-JPG-23Take a look at the picture just below. Not a particularly outstanding picture I know but that house is the one where I grew up. I took the picture a while ago after a sort of nostalgic drive around the old neighbourhood. Yes, the house with the white door, thats my old home. It’s changed a bit since I lived there. The privet hedge has gone and the car space is new. One amazing thing I found out on that visit is that the walk to my old junior school, which seemed to be a heck of a walk as I remember it; surely at least a 30 minute walk, was actually more of a ten minute walk: Well, it was a long time since I walked to my junior school. I stopped in the road, took my picture, thought for a moment as a thousand memories crowded my mind…

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Fast food, slow food, and French food

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Just fancied a Big Mac -Nahh, I’ll reblog this post instead!

Steve Higgins's avatarLetters from an Unknown Author!

macweblogoIn the late 1930s a fellow called Patrick McDonald opened a fast food stand in California selling mainly hot dogs. Later, his sons took the business over and realising hamburgers were their top selling item they decided to revamp the entire operation, focusing on quick service and snack food that was served literally ‘fast.’ They reopened with their new concept in 1948 calling their fast food establishment simply ‘McDonalds.’ They franchised their operation and other ‘McDonalds’ started springing up over California and Arizona. In 1954 a man called Ray Kroc bought up the franchise for the rest of the United States and in 1961 he bought out the McDonald brothers for 2.7 million dollars. He then went on to build the McDonalds Corporation bigger and bigger and to export the McDonald restaurants all over the world. Even to France.

Plat du jour Plat du jour

Now as a great lover of France and…

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The Author’s Guide to Book Trailers.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Book TrailersOne of the objects of this blog is to publicise my novel, Floating In Space. In these digital hi-tech days it’s just not enough to whack out a novel then expect people to clamour around wanting to buy it. How will they know it even exists? Well, as I said in Confessions of a Self-Published Author, the writing of a novel is only the first part, then comes the promotion of the book. Yes, this blog, of course, is a great part of that, as are my posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and elsewhere. Anywhere in fact that I have a social presence, I will be knocking out a post either directly or indirectly related to my book.

The important thing is not to keep going on about it; that is probably the social media equivalent of knocking on someone’s door and saying “Hi. Buy this book and it will change your life!” Floating In Space will not change your life but it will give you a few hours of enjoyment, taking you back into the world of the 1970’s, a world so different, and yet so similar to that of today.

Another way of connecting with those potential readers is the video and that is where the book trailer comes in. Back in the 1990’s I went on various courses in video production so I know the basic principles of shooting and editing but nowadays I make use of on line editing sites like animoto.com which can be used to build your video.  Here’s an updated version of the first book trailer I made using nothing more than still images uploaded to one of Animoto’s templates:

One of the great things about YouTube is that you can add annotations to the video: Links to other videos, links to my Google+ page and YouTube cards which open up when you hover over with your mouse and can be customised with web links. You can also add little information boxes which clarify or expand on information that is given in the video.

Here are a few tips for making your own.

1 Use a tripod. I’ve experimented with grips and clamps and selfie devices but the best way to shoot is to put your camera on a tripod, set up your shot and press record.

2. Keep it simple. Make sure you know what your message is and put it over quickly and simply. Attention spans are short these days for video. If people don’t like what they see, and believe it or not they make that decision in the first few seconds, then they just click away from your video to something more interesting.

3. Plan ahead before you shoot. Make a list of what you are going to do or say in the video. Even consider making a short script.

4. You Tube is the second most popular search engine after Google, so work hard on your video’s title!

5. 13% of video plays were made using mobile devices so make sure your video is mobile friendly! Click here to read some more interesting stats!

Not only do I have my videos on YouTube, I also have a few on Vimeo. Vimeo.com presents the video in a more stylish way but the cards and annotations that can be utilised on YouTube are not available. Here’s a promo for my latest book, Timeline.

Here’s another video, this one is short and sweet hoping the average surfer will make it through to the end. In this one I replaced my own voice with a dynamic US accented ai created voiceover. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. What do you think?

Weather’s looking good lately, why not make a start on your video promo?

If this post has got you interested in Floating in Space, click the links at the top of the page for more information. Click the icon below to visit my Amazon page.

Seven Questions about the Bobby Kennedy Assassination

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Robert F Kennedy died from gunshot wounds on this day in 1968.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of shocking events on television over the years. I remember hearing about the death of Princess Diana one Sunday morning while I waited for the kettle to boil for a mornin…

Source: Seven Questions about the Bobby Kennedy Assassination

Captain Kirk, Al Jolson, and the problem with Windows 10!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

captain kirkTime passes, as Dylan Thomas said in Under Milk Wood. Time passes and the new replaces the old. Okay but why is it that the old is sometimes better than the new? Here are a few cases in point.

Star Trek.

Here is something that may be a revelation to you; if you don’t know it already it will vastly improve your understanding of Star Trek. It’s a simple truth and here it is, Star Trek is about three guys, Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Doctor McCoy. Sometimes there are four, we can maybe throw in Scotty but that’s it, that’s the essential truth about Star Trek and that’s why things like the Next Generation and Deep Space 9 will never come up to scratch, simply because Kirk, Spock and McCoy are not involved. Even the Star Trek people themselves understand this, which is why Star Trek has been reinvented (re-imagined to use movie speak) with new actors playing Kirk and his crew in the latest Trek movies.

Forget about Mr Pointy-head Captain Picard and the cocktail lounge style bridge on his version of the Star Ship Enterprise. Why on earth does he have to run every decision over his number two, his councillor and everyone else on the bridge when Kirk would have just sorted that situation out like a shot and would even have found a pretty girl to flirt with too? Deep space 9: A load of old tosh and as for Star Trek Voyager? Well, I have to say I do like the later episodes when Captain Janeway finally got rid of her previous weird hair styles and the drippy Kes got the bullet from the show and was replaced by the rather interesting Seven of Nine, a young lady rescued from the clutches of the Borg. As much as I like Voyager, it really can’t compete with the original. Yes, in every way, old is better.

Movies.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I like my movies. I much prefer old classic movies to the latest films. The last movie I caught at the cinema was the latest Bond movie, well actually, not even the latest one, it was the one before that! I did try to see the new one, Spectre, but when I enquired at the picture house about the movie, the lady behind the counter looked at me and said: ‘Spectre? That movie has been and gone,’ as if I had been talking about Gone with the Wind. As I remember it, there were still Spectre film trailers being shown on the TV so my enquiry was not all that silly, although shortly afterwards they released the film on DVD. There seems to be a short shelf life for movies these days; they are released, shown for a while at the cinema and then whoosh –straight to DVD.

DVDs.

Talking of DVDs, one I picked up lately from e-bay for a measly few pounds was a DVD with two movies: The Jolson Story and the follow up, Jolson Sings Again. The Jolson Story is typical of the kind of movies watched in our house when I was a child. My Mum was a big musical fan and we watched a lot of musicals. I do love those movies of the forties and fifties, the ones where someone says something like ‘let’s put the show on right here!’ White Christmas with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby is the sort of movie I mean, some light comedy, some great songs and they put on a show in their old wartime colonel’s failing hotel. The Jolson Story has some wonderful songs, proper tuneful yesteryear classic songs and Larry Parks plays a great part. Sadly he was black listed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and only made a few more films afterwards.

A much more modern movie I picked up recently on DVD was A Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg’s reputation as a great director precedes him as they say but for my money, I don’t really think his films are that great. I can’t rubbish this film by any means but it was a little tame and I have found that with a lot of his films, they always seem to fall slightly short of the mark somehow. Might have to sell Bridge of Spies in the same place I found it, on e-bay!

Windows 10.

Now, here is a perfect example of the old being better than the new. With my old laptop kitted out with windows XP and later windows 7 I could carry on doing the simple nerdy things I have always done on my laptop. As you know from these posts I have a long trip to work every day, I hate radio with adverts so I play a lot of discs, most of which I make up myself. I used to drop a DVD into my laptop, use windows sound recorder to copy some music or dialogue. Later I’d use various software bits and pieces to cut and paste, mix, and create a CD of favourite film music and dialogue that I could play in my car.

Anyway, in Windows 10, which I updated to not long ago, there is no sound recorder. There is however ‘voice recorder’ which I assume works in the same way only the tab on my computer is greyed out and when I click on it a message appears which says go to the windows store. Okay, I click that; a box opens up saying ‘windows store’, looks like it’s doing something for a minute than just closes. Right, so next I go to the Microsoft website, click on ‘windows store’, find windows voice recorder, click the download button and nothing happens. After a quick search I find windows sound recorder, I click on that and it says ‘not compatible with your device’!

While I’m on a rant about windows 10 here’s another thing. When I first installed windows 10, everything seemed to be in order but lately, every time I click on the start menu I get a critical error report and a box comes up saying ‘log out of windows and we will repair the error when you log back in’. So, like the box says I log out, log back in but did they keep their word? Have they fixed the critical error? No!

Wonder what Captain Kirk would do? Knowing him, a good blast from a Phaser will solve everything!

If you liked this post, why not try my novel, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

A Tale of Four Horses.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Bank Holiday retweet time . .

Steve Higgins's avatarLetters from an Unknown Author!

The Grand National is one of those institutions of British sport, and coming in the early part of April like it does, it’s one of those events that herald the gradual warming of the days, the better weather and the move into the summer. It also heralds, at least where I work, someone going round with a card asking for money to enter the office sweepstake. Pay a pound, choose a horse at random and hope you are going to win some money. The National itself is pretty random. The nature of the event with its long course and numerous fences mean a huge amount of luck is involved. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular with the betting public. Anyway, it made me think about horses and their connection with my family which, when it comes down to it, is more considerable than I had originally thought.

Royal Horse artilleryMy Grandfather, George…

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Have Movies Influenced your Music Choices?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

classical music + moviesClassical Music and Three of my Movie Favourites

I’m not a great lover of classical music but the classical music I do know and love has come to me through the medium of film. Yes, movies have inspired almost all of my favourite classical music choices.

The Blue Danube

The Blue Danube is a waltz written by the composer Johann Strauss II. He was an Austrian composer known as the ‘Waltz King’ and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna in the 19th century. I first heard the music in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the memorable sci-fi movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick used numerous classical pieces in the movie and the Blue Danube is used during the space station docking and lunar landing sequences.

I first saw the film in the summer of 1968. I was only 11 at the time and I remember my Mum being surprised I had spent hours at the cinema on a lovely hot day. I watched the film in the huge movie theatre in Northenden, now a Jehovah’s Witness assembly hall. There were only a few people in the picture house that day and it was wonderful having this huge place almost to myself and seeing this incredible film in 70mm on the big screen. I recall being somewhat confused by it all, especially the jump from neanderthal times to the future, until I bought the novel by Arthur C Clarke which explained things in a way the movie did not.

2001 is a particularly visual film. Kubrick cut out a lot of dialogue because he wanted the film to stand as “basically a visual, nonverbal experience” that “hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting.”

2001

Picture courtesy Flickr.com

According to Wikipedia, despite the few people in the cinema with me that day in 1968, the movie went on to become the highest grossing North American movie of that year.

2001 set the pace for the sci-fi movie with its depiction of spacecraft drifting slowly and silently through space. The first Star Trek movie was heavily influenced by 2001 which made it look a little dated when the movie Star Wars was released and did the opposite thing, showing spacecraft whooshing across the screen at incredible speeds.

2001 is a wonderful movie and as well as continual enjoyment, it has also given me a love of Johann Strauss.

March of Pomp and Circumstance.

The March of Pomp and Circumstance was written by Sir Edward Elgar and there are actually six marches altogether. The most famous is the ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ march which traditionally ends the last night at the proms. I first heard this classical piece in the movie ‘Young Winston.’

The music for the movie was written by Alfred Ralston and includes his original work as well as arrangements of Elgar’s music. I used to have the soundtrack to Young Winston on vinyl and on the back cover there were extensive notes by the producer. He rather pompously announced that neither he nor Richard Attenborough, the director, had any interest in making a film about the British Empire, which is rather sad because the British Empire, in my view, was something we British should be rightly proud of. Anyway, Churchill himself was certainly proud of the Empire and his part in it, and in making this film the producers therefore did what they say they didn’t want to do. The movie is based on Winston’s early life, indeed his autobiography of his early days was entitled just that: ‘My Early Life.’ It is a wonderful read and has been made into a lovely film.

One interesting feature of ‘Young Winston’ is that at the end of the film there is a rather poignant scene where Winston, in his later years, falls asleep in his study and has a dream about his late father, his relationship with whom, as we see in the movie, was not good. In the sequence his father, Randolph Churchill, returns to him; he and Winston discuss life and finally part with a sort of understanding nod to each other. I have always thought that it finished the film off rather nicely but whenever I see Young Winston on TV, that scene has been cut. Years ago I bought the video version and the scene had been cut on the video too, so if I ever decide to buy the DVD version, I’ll be checking the running time before I buy!

Manhattan

Manhattan is Woody Allen’s ode to New York. I have always loved that opening sequence with the monologue by Woody. He narrates the opening of his book and is not satisfied with it so starts the book over again. The dialogue goes something like this;

‘Chapter one. He adored New York City. He idolised it out of all proportion.

No, make that he romanticised it out of all proportion.

To him, no matter what the season was, it was a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwyn.

Oh no, let me start this over.

Chapter one . . .’

When he finally gets the book opening he wants, then the music of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ roars into focus. Manhattan is a movie shot in black and white and is one of Woody Allen’s most famous and successful films. Allen plays a 42-year-old writer who is involved with a 17-year-old girl played by Mariel Hemingway. The photography is wonderful as is the movie. There is a lovely part played by Meryl Streep who plays the part of Allen’s ex-wife who has written a book about their former life together.

How have the movies influenced your music choices?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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

Bicycles, Barry White, and a Man with a Chip on his Shoulder

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Bicycles, Barry White and a Man with a Cjhip on his Shoulder!Digital memories are pretty easy to save these days. Take a picture with your camera or smartphone and press the save button. That’s your picture saved.

Later you can transfer the picture or video to a laptop or a hard drive for safekeeping. Years ago it wasn’t so easy but at least today you can scan those old photographs into your PC and save them as digital media. Even old videos and 8mm home movies can be digitised and saved if you have the right software.  Still, memories are not just pictures. There are all sorts of things that can trigger your thoughts and bring back some long forgotten moment or event, or just something you haven’t thought of for a while.

It could be a piece of music or passing some old haunt, some pub you used to go in when you were younger but haven’t visited for a long while.

Something that was a trigger for old memories for me was an old tape recording I made when I was in my teens.

I used to make lots of recordings when I was much younger. I saved up and bought a tape cassette recorder and apart from recording music –they call them mix tapes these days but I never heard that term years ago when I was making ‘mix’ tapes- I used to record little plays and sketches I had written. My brother was press ganged into helping with these enterprises and I used various techniques to get him involved:

  1. Bullying
  2. Threats and intimidation.
  3. Violence
  4. Bribery

Yes, they all worked to greater and lesser degrees. It’s funny to listen to the tapes now because I can tell pretty much by his attitude when he went along with me willingly or otherwise. One other inducement I used was swapping. He might want a particular record or something that I had so we would swap that and some weeks later usually swap back. Lots of times I used to swap a record for my bicycle and that’s where I felt I really had one over on Colin, my brother, because he couldn’t, and still can’t ride a bike! Yes, I was on to a winner there because I’d swap my bike for a record or book and I had full use of the item while he couldn’t use the bike because he couldn’t ride it!

One time he really got one over on me. I had swapped my bike for one of his records or something or other; I can’t really remember what. Anyway, one day I went to go out on my bike- OK, his bike- opened the shed and it was gone. What had happened? Had it been stolen, where was it?

‘The bike?’ he answered blithely; he had sold it to his friend because he wanted money to buy a new LP!

My Mother facilitated the removal of my hands from his throat with a firm whack to the back of my head and asked what was going on?

‘He sold my bike!’ I yelled.

‘Your bike?’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you swap it with him? Isn’t it his bike?’

‘Yes but, yes but,’ was all I could say.

The tapes were mostly comedy sketches on the lines of Spike Milligan who was then a hero of mine. One of them went like this;

CUE COWBOY MUSIC

ME: Hey Stewart, I’m gonna knock that chip right off your shoulder!

COLIN: That’s no chip –it’s a potato!

ME: King Edward’s?

COLIN: No, he can get his own, it’s one of mine!

(These are the jokes folks, as someone used to say!)

My brother wasn’t the only person I dragged into making tape recordings. My old school friend Steve was a music fan like me. Well, I say like me but his music knowledge was prodigious. Name any record and he would say with certainty- ‘that went to number 2 in July 1974’ or whenever.

There was a radio programme we both liked. It was My Top 12 on Radio 2 and it was something on the lines of ‘desert island discs’. Someone from the music world would be interviewed and would choose their top twelve records.

Anyway, Steve and I decided to make a version for each other. One weekend I interviewed him talking about his favourite music for which he provided full chart statistics, naturally. On another weekend we reversed roles and he interviewed me for which I provided limited chart stats, usually something like, ‘that one just nudged into the top twenty to which my friend would reply, ‘yes, actually number 23 was the highest chart placing in October 1975.’

We slagged off all the music we looked down on and praised all the music we loved. Poor old Barry White (the same Barry White whose Greatest Hits is sometimes played in my car) got something of a drubbing. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were praised as a musical discovery of the highest order. (Steve who? Was he the guy who did ‘Come up and See Me, make me smile?)

Through the magic of the digital age I recently processed that old tape and converted it into a CD which I played in my car on the way into work today and it was lovely to listen to my old friend again.

Steve was the inspiration for the character of Matty in my novel Floating In Space. He was a lovely guy although something of a music nerd. We had a parting of the ways years ago when his brother came to rent a room in my house. He proceeded to wind up my bills; gas, electric and telephone, to such an incredible volume I could no longer afford to have him living with me. Steve took his brother’s eviction personally and alas that was the end of our friendship.

I always assumed one day we would have a pint together and talk about music, sci-fi and cult TV once again, just like we used to back in the seventies and eighties. We did keep in touch through an intermediary, my brother Colin. We last had a long telephone chat in the early 1990’s and talked about a reunion. I never heard from him again and when I enquired about him to his sister, whom I located on social media, she revealed he had been taken ill with cancer and had passed away.

Steve, as well as being a great music fan was something of an aircraft anorak too. He stars in my second most watched video on you tube, a documentary we made in 1986 with Steve espousing his love of aircraft. I think he’d be thrilled to find that over 11,000 viewers have watched it. Here’s another re-edited version with somewhat less views. I took out the chart hits of the 80’s and replaced them with copyright free music thinking I’d start to earn some money off YouTube. (No chance, they decided I had to have 1000 followers before shelling out!)

One tip just to finish with. Hang on to the recordings you make with your iPad and iPhone and all the other modern day gadgets. Keep them safe; invest in a portable hard drive to store them.

Get ready to invest in new software which will convert the files to whatever new application we will be using in the future because in thirty years time you’ll want to look back at those memories and relive those earlier times.

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 collection.

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

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

 

Catchphrases, Pub Friends, and Big Steve

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Steve Higgins's avatarLetters from an Unknown Author!

quotescover-JPG-23Not long ago at work I noticed something that wasn’t right on the rota so I spoke to our former rota lady about it. She agreed with me, there was a problem but she herself couldn’t do anything about it and I would have to contact the new ‘National Roster Team.’

“Drop them an e-mail.” She said, then added with a giggle. “Tell them you’re not happy!”

Now, at first I don’t think I quite understood that but the other day I had an e-mail from a colleague which was in reply to some procedural point I had raised. The e-mail said something like I’ll sort that out straight away because I wouldn’t want you to be ‘not happy!’

Now, we don’t always notice that something we say habitually has become a sort of personal catchphrase and I’m sure I don’t say ‘not happy’ that much but clearly some…

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