Category Archives: The Life of a Writer

Aliens, F1 and a Quiet Saturday

Posted on by Steve Higgins

7.44

My alarm goes off early on Saturday morning as a man from the council is coming to service my boiler. The council have given me an appointment ‘window’ which is from 08:00 to 15:00. Sometime during that window, the gas guy is coming to do the check.

08:00

I’m up and washed and wondering if the guy will actually turn up at 8am. I hang about expectantly in the lounge and by 08:10 I realise he isn’t coming this early, in fact he’s probably still asleep in his bed somewhere. I decide to make a quick breakfast, just a few rashers of bacon and an egg.

08:30

I’ve had my breakfast which was actually a little rushed so as I’m still hungry I think I’ll have a slice of toast and marmalade and another cup of tea.

08:45

I’ve had my tea and toast and I’m still checking the window for the gasman. No show so far. I take a quick look at the internet but I’m worried that I might see something about the qualifying results of the Australian Grand Prix. The qually took place early this morning but is not due on terrestrial UK TV until 11:15 so I don’t look at my notifications and quickly delete any emails that even faintly resemble F1 newsletters.

09:15

Time for another brew. I check the hall as the last time I waited in for the council I happened to pop into the hall and find a card slipped through the letter box which said we called today but you weren’t at home. This was after an entire day sat watching TV with the sound turned low so I wouldn’t miss a knock at the door. As you can imagine I was fuming and sent numerous threatening emails to the council and the next time the guy turned up on time.

Anyway, quick check and no card.

09:30

I decide to check the doorbell and I find that it is making no sound! I change the batteries and all is well, the bell is ringing again.

09:40

Time for another brew. There seems to be nothing on TV so I watch something I taped last night about Bob Lazar. You may have never heard of Bob but he is an American physicist whom claims he worked at Area 51 in the late 1980s to help reverse engineer captured flying saucers. He first appeared in the media with his face and voice disguised using the name ‘Dennis’. Later he went fully public and it was his claims that brought Area 51 into the public eye. Lazar says he worked at an Area 51 facility called S-4 and there were nine captured saucers there. These vehicles were powered by an antimatter reactor and the propulsion was anti-gravity based.

(I just realised I’ve written taped instead of recorded. Do people still say taped or is it just old guys like me?)

Bob says he worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory but according to the documentary when staff at the lab were questioned, they said that no Bob Lazar ever worked there. However he appears in the lab’s own 1982 phone book as Robert Lazar and a clipping was found from the 1982 Los Alamos Monitor which profiles Bob and his interest in jet cars and mentions he works at the lab as a physicist. Are the authorities trying to discredit Bob or has he made up the whole thing? If he did make all this up, why would he do it?

10:00

I get a notification on my phone and I take a look without thinking. Luckily it’s from WordPress telling me my latest scheduled post has just been published. No more notifications now until I have seen the qualifying.

10:30

I need to use the toilet but I take a look outside and I can see a van arriving with ‘Gas’ on the side. No movement yet so maybe he is just sorting out his paperwork or something. Actually I fully expected him to arrive at five minutes to three. He was originally due last week but I was busy and so I asked my brother to let him in for me. My brother waited in all day only for me to get a call from the council late in the afternoon telling me the guy had called in sick!

10:40

The gasman has arrived!

10:57

Gas check all complete. I actually wanted to ask him something but he shot out of the house like a rocket. Well, it is Saturday, I suppose he was eager to get home and enjoy his weekend.

The documentary shows that Bob Lazar had a polygraph test which he passed with flying colours. His mission seems to be to tell the world there are extra terrestrial beings and the government in the USA is aware of them but for whatever reason is not telling the public. I do love these UFO documentaries. The next one was about people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and tested and probed like guinea pigs. When you come to think about it, the universe is big, really big. So vast it’s silly to think that life exists just on Earth and not elsewhere in the universe.

11:00

Kettle on. Now I can visit the toilet without worrying that the guy is going to knock on the door while I’m otherwise engaged.

11:15

Got myself a fresh cuppa and all set for the Australian Grand Prix qualifying.

The big problem with modern formula one is that a lot of the interviews that precede the big events as well as those that come afterwards are just full of modern PR talk. You know what I mean, the team did a great job, thanks to the guys back at the factory blah blah blah. No one seems to have anything that is actually interesting to say. In today’s broadcast there seems to be a lot of focus on Daniel Riccardo, the Australian driver, who thanks to his sacking is not actually driving this year. He now seems to be a sort of reserve driver for Red Bull but the other day I heard their team boss saying Daniel couldn’t expect a drive even if either of their main drivers were sick or incapacitated. So what is he then, just a test driver? Due to testing restrictions Daniel can’t do much testing except in the simulator. The McLaren he should have been driving isn’t looking that great so perhaps he’s glad not to be driving. I bet he wouldn’t mind a go in the Red Bull though.

11:35

I’m still hungry after this morning’s rushed breakfast. Should I go for a quick toast? Wait a minute, we’re seeing some actual action on TV. Better wait for the adverts.

13:02

Qually over and actually it was a pretty exciting session. These days I really think the qually is better than the race. Max in the Red Bull came out on top but his teammate skidded off at the first corner without even setting a time. He’ll be starting from the back tomorrow. Nico Hulkenberg was looking good in the Haas as was Alex Albon in the Williams. Great to see these drivers doing well in cars that are not really much good. Lewis Hamilton and his team mate George Russell were up at the top too so looks like a good race in the offing tomorrow.

13:04

Time for another brew. Time to do some writing so I can actually call myself a writer. I’ve finished some bits and pieces I’ve been working on as well as tweaking some other things. I had a look through some of my older blog posts looking for inspiration. Didn’t really find any but I took two posts about a similar subject, wove them together and published the result on my Medium page.

(I mentioned to Liz I have a Medium page. She said wouldn’t I be better with an XXL one? She can be a little cheeky.)

14:26

I started looking for a photo I took ages ago which I wanted to use on the Medium post and now realise I’ve spent over an hour trolling through my hard drive for it. Note to self: Start to label your pictures better Steve and add some keywords!

As I’m looking through some old pictures and graphics I thought I’d add some completely random pictures into this post. Here’s a self portrait I used to use on my Flickr page where I showcase my photography. I’ve always liked this picture, it was shot in a mirror and then reversed.

15:00

Time to crank up my microphone and record some audio for a couple of my latest poems. I publish them over on writeoutloud.net where fellow poets can offer their comments. Reading through some of the latest poetry blogs, I see there are some good poems there, well worth taking a look at. I’ve got the TV on in the background without the sound but I see Ancient Aliens is about to start so I think it’s time for another brew and a bit of TV watching. What about a ham sandwich too?

16:00

My brother is due round later on for some food and drink and a bit of a natter so I should start thinking of what to make. I’ve got some beef mince so I’m thinking chilli or spaghetti bolognese or even curried mince. I’m not a great cook by any means and I’m lost without my cookery books. Anyway, out comes the frying pan, in go the chopped onions and mince. I see I don’t have any garlic so I’ll have to do without. Next, throw in the spices including some fresh chillis, then come the tomatoes, a little stock and some tomato paste then I throw the whole lot into the slow cooker and leave it to simmer away. I have a little taste; yes, definitely one of my better ones.

16:26

My brother tells me he has a better offer for tonight but he’ll be round tomorrow. He’s obviously not forgotten about last week’s wasted wait for the gas man. Oh well, dinner for one then.

If you are interested, Max Verstappen won a chaotic Australian Grand Prix after various red flags and restarts. Lewis Hamilton took second place and Fernando Alonso was third.

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Take Me To The Pilot

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I was watching the TV show Countdown the other day and when the contestants took a short break from their word and maths games, Suzie Dent, the mistress of Dictionary Corner went into her usual talk about words. In this particular episode she decided to talk about the word pilot which inspired me to write this entire blog post on the subject.

The word pilot comes from the French word pilote which in turn was derived from the Latin word pilotus. Back in the 16th century the word pilot denoted someone who steered a ship and the term is still in use today mostly referring to those who fly aeroplanes.

Baron Von Richtofen: The Red Baron

Baron Manfred Von Richtofen was an ace German pilot in World War I. He flew a red triplane and was one of the most feared pilots in the skies. He was born in Kleinburg, near Breslau in 1892 and began the First World War as a cavalry officer serving on the eastern and later western front. Trench warfare soon made cavalry units outdated and Richtofen became bored with dispatch work and applied to transfer to the newly formed German Imperial Air Force.

At the beginning of the war it was felt that officers should not be pilots and Richtofen started his flying career as an observer. Times quickly changed though and after meeting the ace pilot Oswald Boelcke, Richtofen asked to be trained as a pilot. He started out badly crashing on his first solo flight but later Boelcke, who had created Germany’s first fighter squadron, Jasta 2, asked him to join.

Fighter combat in WWI evolved quickly. At first aircraft were used for reconnaissance but then aircraft from opposing armies took pot shots at each other with rifles and then later, fixed machine guns. British aircraft were ‘pusher’ aircraft with a propellor at the rear to push the plane along. This meant that a machine gun could be placed at the front so the pilot could shoot at whatever was ahead. Aircraft with propellors at the front were better and faster but how could a gun shoot through the propellor blades?

In 1915 Fokker produced the first fighter plane with a machine gun synchronised to the propellor so the machine gun could fire through the arc of the propellor. This gave the Germans a considerable advantage in the air.

Richtofen’s first confirmed kill came in September 1916 and he ordered a small silver cup engraved with the date and type of aircraft he had shot down. He continued this tradition with his next victories until he had 60 cups but by then the war had limited supplies of silver in Germany and he had to stop. His kills and victories however went on.

In January 1917 he assumed command of Jasta 11 which came to be known as Richtofen’s Flying Circus and which many celebrated pilots of the time joined. In late 1917 he began to paint his aircraft red and also began to use the Fokker Triplane, one of the most famous aircraft of the period.

Richtofen was shot down in April 1918 and killed. He was flying low while chasing a British Sopwith Camel piloted by rookie pilot Wilfrid May of 209 squadron. May’s flight commander Captain Arthur Brown intervened to help May but the dogfight drifted over British lines and the fatal shot to Richtofen is thought to have come from a machine gun on the ground. The British buried the Red Baron with full military honours.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart was the first famous female aviator of the 20th century. She was one of the first of many female pilots. She was born in 1897 and in 1920 she paid ten dollars for a ten minute flight in an aeroplane. The short flight changed her life and afterwards she knew she had to be a pilot. She worked at a variety of jobs to fund her flying lessons. In 1921 she purchased her own aircraft and the next year flew up to 14,000 feet setting a new record for a female pilot.

In 1928 she was asked to join the crew of an aircraft that was to cross the Atlantic. The flying crew were a pilot and mechanic and Amelia was basically a passenger and admitted that was the case. ‘I was just baggage’ she told the press. Even so, she was the first female to cross the Atlantic in an aircraft and she and the crew were treated to a ticker tape parade in Manhattan and a visit to the White House to see President Coolidge. Later, in 1932 she flew solo across the Atlantic arriving in Ireland on May 20th. Amelia made many other trips and also competed in long distance air racing. She became a celebrity in America and in 1937 began a round the world flight. Amelia piloted a Lockheed Electra 10E and the only other crew member was navigator Ted Noonan. The pair departed from Miami on June 1 and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. The final 7,000 miles would be over the Pacific. The duo left Lae at 10:00 am on July 2nd and were heading for Howland Island, a small coral island in the Pacific. The US coastguard had sent a cutter there to assist with navigation. As Amelia neared Howland Island the coastguard picked up various messages and it became clear that the Electra was lost and could not see the island. The last transmissions stated that fuel was running low and that they were flying at 1000 feet. The coastguard generated black smoke in the hope that the aircraft could see them but the aircraft never appeared. The coastguard cutter initiated a search an hour after the last message but nothing was found. The next day the US Navy began a search which lasted for three days but no trace of Amelia Earhart was ever found. Some thought the aircraft had ditched in the sea and that the crew had drowned. Various other theories were put forward: The two managed to get to Gardner Island but died there or perhaps they were captured by the Japanese and shot as spies. The mystery has continued to this day.

Elton John and Take Me to the Pilot

Take Me to the Pilot was a song written by Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin in 1970 and released as the flip side to Elton’s Your Song that same year. Some sources on the internet say the single was a double A side disc but apparently DJs preferred Your Song and that became Elton’s first chart hit.

Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong was born on August 5th, 1930. He went on to become a pilot for the US Navy and saw action in the Korean War flying aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Essex. After the war he became a test pilot flying various aircraft including the famous X-15 Rocket Plane. He joined NASA in 1962 and flew into space aboard Gemini 8 in 1966. The flight was a difficult one as the crew were the first to try a space rendezvous. They docked with a target vehicle in space but a faulty thruster caused the Gemini capsule to roll uncontrollably. Fortunately, Armstrong was able to undock from the other vehicle and stabilise the capsule. Too much fuel was used up though forcing the crew to make an early return to earth.

In 1969 Armstrong flew to the moon on Apollo 11 and became the first man to walk on the moon. It was a tricky mission though and during the landing as the Lunar Excursion Vehicle dropped towards the moon’s surface the spacecraft’s computer kept throwing up ‘1201’ and ‘1202’ program alarms. Neither Armstrong nor Aldrin knew what that was but the controllers at mission control knew. The on-board computer which had less memory than a modern mobile phone, could not deal with all the data it was receiving. Armstrong switched over to manual flight, hopped the lunar lander over a rocky area then finally dropped down safely onto the lunar surface with only a scant few seconds of fuel remaining.

Landing on the moon made Armstrong a hugely famous and popular man and that fame was something he and his fellow astronauts were unprepared for. Armstrong later resigned from NASA and took on a teaching position at the University of Cincinnati. He died in 2012 after suffering complications from bypass surgery.

Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III

Sullenberger, known as Sully was the pilot of US Airways flight 1549. On take off from La Guardia Airport in New York in January, 2009, his aircraft was hit by a flock of Canada geese and power from both engines was lost. Sullenberger realised that the only thing he could do was to ditch in the Hudson River. He did so and all passengers and crew were rescued safely.

Scott Tracy

Thunderbirds was a TV puppet series from the 1960s produced by Gerry Anderson. The series was part of an entire futuristic world set in the 2060s which other puppet shows in the Anderson canon all became a part of. Puppet series like Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 were futuristic TV shows all produced by Gerry and his wife Sylvia.

In Thunderbirds, Anderson tells the story of International Rescue, an organisation created by Jeff Tracy with a secret headquarters on Tracy Island. Thunderbird 5 is a space station constantly monitoring the airwaves down on Earth and listening out for calls for help. When an emergency situation is detected, Thunderbird 1, a rocket plane, is immediately despatched to take charge of the situation and its pilot Scott Tracy will find somewhere to set up a mobile control centre and take stock of the situation.

Millionaire Jeff Tracy is a former astronaut (the first man on Mars if I remember correctly) and it is his sons who pilot the Thunderbird craft designed by their technical genius, ‘Brains’. Jeff’s other sons are Virgil, Alan, Gordon and John, all named after US astronauts from the 1960s.

Scott was named after Scott Carpenter and voiced by the actor Shane Rimmer.

The TV Pilot

Another type of pilot is a TV show. Producers often produce a pilot episode for a projected new series and then decide whether to make a full series depending on the success of the pilot. A famous pilot was the one made for Star Trek. In the pilot episode, Captain Christopher Pike is played by Jeffrey Hunter and he and his crew investigate a distress call from an unknown planet.

NBC apparently weren’t happy with the result and asked for another pilot episode and in that one William Shatner made his first appearance as Captain Kirk. Later the original pilot was re-edited into a new two part episode called ‘The Menagerie’ in which a court martial on the Enterprise views footage from the earlier mission.

Thanks to Wikipedia Creative Commons for the pictures of Manfred Von Richtofen, Amelia Earhart and Neil Armstrong.

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A Writer’s Life

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I often wonder how I might have gone on had I achieved my schoolboy ambition to become a journalist. It’s hard enough writing a new blog post every week but what if I’d have had to have written something for a newspaper every day? That would have been a pretty tall order.

I’ve got nothing in the pipeline for today’s post so I decided to just start writing and see where it gets me. Ok, here we go.

Despite having nothing in the pipeline, I’ve actually done a great deal of writing this week. I always have lots of ideas floating around in my head about all sorts of things and I make mental notes about them but converting those ideas into a novel is a pretty big undertaking.  A better idea I thought would be to perhaps make those ideas into short stories. I could even put together a book of short stories and poems and maybe even some selected blog posts.

As it happens, I was watching a documentary programme the other day about Ernest Hemingway and one of his first publications was a short collection of his stories and poems called not very imaginatively, Three Short Stories and Ten Poems. I’m not sure if it did particularly well but as every writing help blog that I’ve ever read tells us, anything that gets you writing is important.

I also find it well worthwhile to look back at other things I have written. For instance, ages ago I wrote a short script for a script competition. It was about a police officer who has a nightmare about being in an army firing squad. They are about to execute a soldier for some unknown transgression but when the victim is revealed, he is a young boy. Later, the officer comes across the boy in real life as part of his police work. It wasn’t brilliant and disappointingly, it didn’t win me any prizes but later I remade it, rewrote it I should say, as a short story.

Another story I wrote recently was one that combined a lot of my knowledge of France into a story of a young man who meets an interesting lady while travelling in France. I thought it was rather good. I did a bit of research and thought I’d found the perfect magazine to send it to. I checked their website; yes they were in the market for short stories and yes, they were happy to receive submissions. They wanted the stories as a word document. OK. They wanted no headers or footers in the document. OK, remove the headers and footers and finally they wanted the word count in the title of the document. OK, change Isabelle, my short story title to 6348 Isabelle. Happy days. I sent off my short story and only a few days later got a message back saying thanks for your story but it’s too long!

I had another scan through their submission guidelines and yes, they want stories of 2000 to 3000 words! I must have missed that bit. Another search and I found another magazine, this time an online one. They were happy with 6000 plus words but they wanted a £4 submission fee! Oh well, what’s £4 these days. I coughed up and sent off my short story but then thought perhaps that’s how they make their money, waiting for mugs like me to send off their hard earned four pounds!

Another thing I’ve done recently when I’m short of ideas is to take a look at my older blog posts, dust them off, merge them with one with either similar ideas or even think of some new additions, sort out some nice new shiny graphics and pictures and repost the whole thing as a new blog post. I actually thought I’d hit upon a new and revolutionary blogging idea but then I noticed a blog post on another site about repurposing old content! Yes, there’s nothing new under the sun.

One of my most read blog posts lately is this one, it’s called Manipulating The Image and in it, I talk about photo manipulation from Instagram glamour models to Lee Harvey Oswald and what he claimed were fake backyard photos showing him holding his infamous Italian made rifle. I spend a lot of time on my analytics page, both on WordPress and on YouTube and to be honest, I’m not sure any of that helps. Why is Manipulating the Image so popular? It’s great that my readership is booming and that more and more readers are exposed to the availability of Floating in Space, not that many of those potential buyers take advantage of that.

How can I replicate the success of that post though? It’s the same over on YouTube. A video about Manchester I took months working on and perfecting gets few viewers and another in which I walk about Manchester yakking into my camera held in front of me on a selfie stick and spent thirty minutes editing, gets a shed load of views. I don’t get it. Then again, perhaps I don’t need to get it. Maybe I should make more videos of me yakking into a camera or more blog posts about manipulating images. Of course integrity as a writer is important. Do I really care about getting more readers and more likes and better and better stats? Shouldn’t I care more about doing justice to myself as a writer and being true to myself?

Actually, I kind of like getting more readers and more likes.

Images are important to blog posts as well as social media posts. It’s a statistical fact that social media posts perform better with images and better still with video content. I tried the face app that I found when researching the Manipulating Images post but naturally, being the tightwad that I am, I declined to pay for the version that does the best effects. I tried another app recently, one that creates avatars for use in your social media pages. An avatar is essentially a picture, a stylised image that people use on the web. Sadly I found that once again, this new app required me to pay money which naturally, I wasn’t happy about. However, rather than subscribe to the app it was possible to pay a one time fee of £2.99 for 50 avatars. This required me to upload a shedload of pictures of myself, the minimum required was 15 so the app could give the best results. The results weren’t instant, I had to wait most of the afternoon for them to appear and some were a bit naff, in fact there was even a feminine version of myself but there were a couple that made me look like the real tough hombre that I’m actually not.

Yes, I might just start using those ones on my social media. Perhaps I might scare up a few new readers.

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Transformations

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I hit on the theme of transformations whilst watching a film that I haven’t seen for years. It was My Fair Lady so without further ado, let’s get cracking.

My Fair Lady starred Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in the story of how Professor Higgins, an expert in phonetics, tries to turn working class flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lady. The film is based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The rude and bombastic Higgins played so well by Harrison enters into a wager with colleague Colonel Pickering played by Wilfrid Hyde White. Higgins boasts that he could pass the lowly flower girl off as a princess and embarks on a wearying schedule of training so Eliza can improve her speech and deportment.

I’m not a great fan of musicals but I’ve always rather liked this film. The songs for the most part are wonderful and the performances excellent. Audrey Hepburn was a controversial choice for the film as the part had been played on the stage by Julie Andrews and as this was before she shot to fame in The Sound of Music, the producers wanted a big star in the role.

The story had been filmed before of course. There was an earlier version, a non-musical version made in 1938 starring Leslie Howard. Howard is probably most famous for his portrayal of Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind but his version of Higgins was to me, much superior to Harrison’s although I love both. Wendy Hiller plays Eliza Doolittle and she is much more believable as Eliza, no disrespect to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Howard is a bright, eccentric Higgins. What is interesting from researching the film on the internet is that a controversial (at the time) line was included in the film: Eliza saying ‘Not Bloody Likely!’ This made Wendy Hiller the first person ever to swear in a British film. Dear me, how times change! That I suppose is a transformation in itself, the language of the cinema becoming ruder and coarser by the day with the F word becoming more and more prominent in film dialogue. These days, ‘Not bloody likely’ is hardly worth a second thought.

The main transformation in both Pygmalion and My Fair Lady is that of Eliza Doolittle from common flower girl to well-spoken princess. She is the butterfly that emerges from Professor Higgins’ training although the experience does not necessarily make her happy. She returns back to Covent Garden and no one recognises her there. She is dressed differently, she speaks differently and no longer resembles the woman she used to be. Her father recognises her though as he has been transformed too. Higgins was so impressed by Alfred P Doolittle that he has written to an American millionaire advising him that Doolittle is one of the great wits and philosophers of the day and the millionaire bestows a large amount of money on him. The result is that friends and family have appeared out of the woodwork all intent on eliciting financial support from Doolittle and the tables have been turned on him. Instead of his previous happy but poor existence, now the the worries of supporting others lay heavily on his shoulders.

I of course have experienced transformations too. Some years ago, I was in full time work, now I am retired. I made the transition slowly. I first opted for semi-retirement and went from working a shift pattern of six days on and three days off, to one of three days on and six off, a much more agreeable working pattern. I had thought that the new working pattern would give me more time to myself, more time to get acclimatised to retirement. Instead, it actually made my working life more difficult. In our hi tech emergency control room, things were constantly changing and I was not always up to speed. I was using old templates when I should have used new ones, using codes that were now obsolete and so on. I missed updates and briefings that happened on my six days off. Looking back, I should have just retired fully and looked for some part time job to top up my cash flow. Anyway, now I am transformed, a retired former civil servant, writing blogs and making YouTube videos.

Age has transformed me too. In the picture over on the right you can see me as I was when I was aged 19 or 20. It was taken in France by my best friend Chris. Now I am older, at least older on the outside. On the inside I’d have to say that I haven’t really changed that much. You might think that now I’m probably much wiser with different ideas and different thoughts. Actually though, I’m pretty much the same on the inside with similar ideas and similar thoughts.

Here’s another film with transformations at its heart, Silence of the Lambs. It was the first horror film to win a best picture Oscar and it was about a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill by the press. The FBI are trying to catch him and send rookie officer Clarice Starling to visit Hannibal Lector, a psychiatrist and murderer, currently detained in a high security prison in the hope that he might give some insight into the current murderer. Lector agrees to talk but only on his terms.

Jodie Foster plays agent Starling. She wants to work in the Behavioural Science Unit of the FBI and Lector, chillingly played by Hopkins, finds her interesting. He seems willing to give his information and insights about Buffalo Bill but in return he wants information about Clarice herself. He initiates a quid pro quo, he gives her information and observations about Bill and in return she must reveals snippets of information about herself, her background and her life. When Starling reveals the murder victims have something inserted into their throats Lector correctly guesses the item is a butterfly. Buffalo Bill, says Lector, wants to transform himself, in his twisted way into a female.

Much of the content of the film is terrifying but at the same time, it is a compelling film and comes together in an exciting climax. Silence of The Lambs won five Oscars.

I wrote in a previous post about another type of transformation, one achieved by using imaging technology to transform one’s own appearance. Using image editors today, it is possible to smooth wrinkled or pock marked skin and to trim away unwanted flesh. Over on TikTok recently I seemed to be bombarded on one particular day by endless videos of women using a filter for video that made them all seem younger and more glamourous.  Here’s an example below from YouTube.

The best transformation though are perhaps the ones that we make ourselves, the transformations that occur on the inside.

Floating in Space was a great achievement for me. I had always wanted to be a writer and finally completing and publishing my book was something very exciting for me. Of course, Floating has never come near to the best seller charts and is not ever likely to. If it did, I can imagine another transformation from quiet part time writer to international author. I could swap my Skoda for a Porsche. Buy some new clothes for my media interviews and join the international jet set. That might be a fun transformation but with my bad back and sore neck, I might have trouble getting into that low slung Porsche. Then there’s my strong northern accent. Would TV viewers be able to understand me? Would I need some vocal training?

Perhaps I should be looking for a Professor Higgins to help me?

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Another James Bond 007 Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

James Bond has been in the news this week. The books by Ian Fleming are apparently being rewritten as they might be considered offensive to a modern generation of new readers and the producers are still looking for a new actor to play their famous secret agent. OK, time for another James Bond 007 post.

The publishers of the Bond books have decided that it’s time for a reissue of the best selling series with a disclaimer telling readers that the novels use language that may be considered offensive by modern readers. Of course the books were written in the late fifties and early sixties and reflect attitudes of the time. I have the entire collection of Bond books and most of them have a reference on the back saying they are outrageously entertaining, which they are, but take away the outrageous part and they are no longer outrageously entertaining but perhaps just somewhat entertaining. Of course if we begin to tamper with books written in the past where do we stop? Roald Dahl’s books are also in the news as they have been updated by ‘sensitivity readers’ although I’m not sure how these well-read children’s books can upset anyone. James Bond of course is a different matter and any sensitivity readers might have a problem with a book like Live and Let Die which is partly set in Harlem and Ian Fleming uses most of the unpleasant racial epithets which were in use at the time.

I started reading the Bond books when I was a schoolboy and unfortunately the very first one I read was the only one they had in our local library – ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, one of writer Ian Fleming’s worst Bond books. Fleming used to write his initial drafts of the novels and then write a second one, adding in all the details which make the Bond books so interesting. Things like details of Bond’s clothes, (the Sea Island cotton shirts) his food, (Bond always had scrambled eggs for breakfast) his cars, his cigarettes (the special handmade ones with the triple gold band) and all that sort of stuff. ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was published after Fleming had died and sadly, he had not revised his original draft. I persevered though, did some research, found the proper order of the books and began to read ‘Casino Royale’, the first in the series. April this year marks the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale and it is this anniversary which has prompted the Bond books to be reissued, complete with disclaimer.

That first book is a pretty original story. ‘Le Chiffre’, a gambler and also a member of SMERSH, a murderous department of the KGB, is engaged on a desperate effort to win a great deal of money at the casinos of Royale Les Eaux in France. Le Chiffre is desperate because he has used SMERSH funds for his personal use and his spymaster bosses will not be pleased if they find out. Britain’s secret service happens to find out about this and sends Bond to France to make sure Le Chiffre doesn’t recoup those funds as of course, as we all know, James Bond 007 is a bit of an expert with the cards.

The book is interesting in another way too. Ian Fleming sold the movie rights to Casino Royale separately from the rest of the books and this enabled producer Charles K Feldman to produce a movie independently from Eon productions who own the rights to the other books. Feeling that he could not compete with the mainstream movies, Feldman decided to make Casino Royale into a comedy version. David Niven starred as Sir James Bond and ironically, Ian Fleming had mooted Niven as a possible Bond when casting began for Dr No, the first movie in the series.

Eon Productions finally acquired the rights to Casino Royale ready for the debut of new Bond actor Daniel Craig. I’ve got to say I didn’t like Craig at first. He didn’t look like Bond and I honestly thought he would have been better cast as one of the Bond villain’s henchmen but I did warm to him eventually and although I didn’t much care for it at first, I really do think Casino Royale is one of the better Bond films. It was released in 2006 and follows the book pretty faithfully which many of the previous films rarely do. Craig’s last Bond film was No Time To Die which I really thought was the poorest of Craig’s five outings as 007 and Bond has been in the news frequently as writers, journalists, bloggers and everyone and his dog have speculated about who the next James Bond 007 will be.

Will it be the usual upper class white guy or will Bond be black? Will there even be a female Bond? What does a 21st century secret agent look like or act like?

James Bond, the character created by Ian Fleming, was a commander in naval intelligence in World War II. He learned to ski in Kitzbühel in the 1930s and fought in the Second World War. He was an officer and a gentleman. He frequented expensive restaurants and gentlemen’s clubs as well as casinos and card tables. He drove a Bentley, lived alone in a Kings Road, Chelsea flat where he was looked after by an elderly Scottish housekeeper named May. He drank a martini made with three parts gin, one of vodka, a half measure of Kina Lillet, shaken with until ice cold then served with a slice of lemon peel. Bond is a character entrenched in mid twentieth century England so making him into a character from the 21st century will not be easy. What can the film makers do? Well, they could set the Bond films back in the 1960s. That’s one option although I doubt if that will happen. They could go radical and make Bond an ethnic character; I’m forever seeing posts about Idris Elba as the next Bond in my social media feeds but then, the character wouldn’t be Bond, would he?

The first change of Bond actor was from Sean Connery to George Lazenby. I liked Lazenby and his one 007 film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was one of my favourites. Connery returned for Diamonds are Forever and then Roger Moore took over Bond’s licence to kill. His films ranged from bad to supremely dreadful and as much as I’ve always loved Roger, I hated his Bond films.

Timothy Dalton stepped into Bond’s shoes when Moore stood down and made two pretty good films. Legal issues kept Bond off the screen for a long time but when the franchise finally returned it was with Pierce Brosnan as 007. Goldeneye was one of my favourite Bonds but his other films weren’t so good and even looked for a while as if they were going to go down the same road as Roger Moore’s Bonds into slightly ridiculous territory. With Casino Royale though things got pretty serious. The film makers played down the gadgetry which always was a staple of the early Bond films, things like cars with ejector seats, watches fitted with special magnets and belt buckles firing climbing pitons. None of that played any part in the Daniel Craig era but here’s the thing; in the previous films each new Bond has just carried on as before with hardly a nod to the previous actor, although George Lazenby did famously say ‘this never happened to the other fella!’

When Daniel Craig took over the series was to a certain extent rebooted. Bond was new to the 00 section and Casino Royale his first mission. His mission in No Time To Die was also his last, his very last because, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away here, because Bond actually dies. How could the producers start over then with the next Bond? Well, many fictional characters have come back from the dead, most notably Sherlock Holmes who author Arthur Conan Doyle killed off when he got bored with the character.  Holmes perished by falling off a cliff but a few years later Conan Doyle bowed to public pressure and Sherlock Holmes returned. It turned out, he hadn’t really died after all.

image courtesy flickr.com

Ian Fleming didn’t kill off Bond but in You Only Live Twice, Bond is seriously hurt and is rescued by Kissy Suzuki who was posing as his wife while Bond was on a mission for Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese secret service. Bond had lost his memory and Kissy hides Bond away from the authorities. One day though, Bond sees something about Vladivostok in either a newspaper or a book, I can’t remember which, and still suffering with amnesia decides he must go there. You Only Live Twice ends there but in the next book, The Man With The Golden Gun, Bond returns having been brainwashed by the Soviets into assassinating his own boss, the head of the British secret service, known only as M.

The producers never used that storyline in the film adaptations of those two books so if I was the writer of the new Bond movie, that’s exactly how I would start the new era of Bond films off.

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Nothing Lasts Forever: A DNA Story

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Looking back at the past is always interesting, at least I’ve always found it so. I love reading about history and I watch lots of TV history documentaries. Shakespeare once said ‘what is past is prologue’ and he was right! One area of the past I’ve been looking into recently was my own and my Christmas present to myself was a DNA test.

I got the test from the website Ancestry.co.uk and I received my testing kit just before Christmas and sent it off on the 24th December. I kept checking the website to see if the ancestry people had received it yet but nothing came up. Maybe Christmas Eve wasn’t such a great day to post something so important. Anyway, they finally got the sample and to make things exciting, on the ancestry web site you can see how things are progressing with updates like sample received, sample ready for testing, sample tested, DNA extracted, checking DNA and so on.

While I was waiting for all that to happen, I still seemed to be getting nowhere tracing my great grandfather Patrick Henry Higgins. He is mentioned on my grandfather’s marriage certificate of 1920 as being deceased so clearly he passed away sometime before that date. A distant cousin on the Ancestry site seems to think he was born in Roscommon in Ireland. Perhaps so but Patrick Henry Higginses are ten a penny in that part of the world so I turned my attention to my grandmother who was born Ellen Beresford. I vaguely remember my dad mentioning that he had relatives in the Staffordshire area and that Ellen originally came from there. I know from her marriage certificate that her father was George Beresford, a collier and Ellen was born into a mining community in Leycett, Staffordshire.

A few clicks on the internet and I find that the village of Leycett, as well as having a colliery, also had a miners’ institute, a church, a village shop with off-licence, a post office, a butcher’s, and a railway station. They also had a recreation ground built by the miners which had a cricket and football pitch and later tennis courts and a bowling green.

The colliery closed down in 1957 and by the mid-sixties the main part of the village had been demolished. The terraced houses which formed the main part of the Leycett community are now completely gone.

My grandmother Ellen

My father told me that Ellen left Staffordshire and came to Manchester when she was only young. Dad told me she was ‘in service’ to a rich family. In the census of 1911, when Ellen was 15, I found her registered as a domestic servant to the family of Mr Chilton. His occupation was registered as a beer seller and his address was the Queens Arms on Brunswick Street in Rusholme, Manchester. Brunswick Street runs from Rusholme to Ardwick and today has almost been completely redeveloped. No Queens Arms exists in 2023 which is a little surprising. Back in the late 1970’s I used to travel up and down through Ardwick and  Gorton many times when I was a trainee bus driver at the GM Buses driver training school at Hyde Road. The area was in the process of redevelopment back then and many buildings were being knocked down although it seemed to me that the pubs always seemed to escape the destruction. The Queens Arms sadly did not. Ellen and my grandad were married in Gorton Monastery in 1920 and I suppose it is not inconceivable that the two met in the Queens Arms.

I joined GM Buses in 1976 or 77 and little did I know at the time that Hyde Road was an area that my Grandparents were very familiar with.

Looking at the tips for tracing relatives it seems that the main one is talking to older relatives. My dad died in 2000 and my mother is aged 93 and stricken with dementia and is not in a position to tell me anything, although such are the quirks of memory that when I sometimes show her old pictures, she can sometime name those in the picture and tell me a little of the background. My only other relative, my dad’s sister, is someone I haven’t seen for years although I do have Facebook contact with her daughter, my cousin.

Alas, my messages to her on Facebook had not been answered for a long time although happily I did get a reply from her recently. She didn’t have much to add to our family story except she knew that George Higgins worked for the Manchester Tramways Department at Hyde Road and was injured after something hit him on the head. My brother remembered that it was something that connects the tram to the overhead electric cables. As a result of that he suffered with epilepsy for the remainder of his life. George died in 1954, two years before I was born.

Quite often, I try to rack my brains and think about the memories my dad shared with me years ago. I know he mentioned family in Staffordshire which is how I was able to trace my grandmother’s background. On the ancestry site I use, I found a record of her birth and applied to Staffordshire council for a copy of her birth certificate, hoping that might divulge some further information. One interesting thing that it revealed was that her maiden name and her married name were both Beresford

Eventually my DNA results finally arrived. I can now reveal that I am 56% Northern British and European, 19% Irish, 17% Scottish 6% Swedish and 2% Welsh. The site also threw up 24,785 DNA matches, mostly distant cousins although one of my cousins, the son of my mother’s sister, came up as my closest DNA match. Strangely, not a single person named Higgins was on the list although that only means that few on the Higgins side of the family are interested in DNA testing.

I’m not sure why but I actually wondered whether the DNA test might show up some unknown brother or sister. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much of that TV show Long Lost Family.

A lot of this looking back into the past makes me sometimes wonder about how impermanent our existence seems. Dad used to tell many stories about his time in the army. I honestly think his army life was probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to him. He travelled to Germany, Northern Ireland and Hong Kong. Once he mentioned that he and his best mate who went by the name of ‘Lulu’ Lownes (I’m not sure why he was nicknamed Lulu) were in Hong Kong for a night out. They jumped on a bus or tram at the traffic lights. The bus conductor wasn’t happy and when they went to pay asked them for the full fare, even though servicemen were entitled to either free or reduced fare. Lulu was so upset by this he decided to throw a punch at the conductor and the two of them, Lulu and Dad, jumped off the bus and ran off into the night despite the conductor blowing a whistle and calling for the MPs.

Dad on the left of the picture with two of his army mates.

That must have been back in the 1950s and Dad and presumably Lulu are now long gone. Probably the conductor and driver are gone too as well as the MPs who gave chase. The conductor may have reported the incident and the bus company may have in turn reported the matter to the police. The police officers who dealt with the case, if indeed there was a case, are also long dead as well as the Royal Hong Kong Police themselves as back in 1997 control of Hong Kong was returned to China.

It may be then that only myself and my brother are the only ones who know about this event and the only actual record of it may be in this blog post. One day when I am gone WordPress will send a message to my email asking me to pay the small amount for my dedicated website address, stevehigginslive.com. No answer will be forthcoming and stevehigginslive.com will presumably either revert to its original WordPress web address or just vanish into cyberspace.

One day some search engine might flag up this blog post in return to some query about Hong Kong and British servicemen and the researcher will click the link only to find something like ‘502 error: Bad gateway’ or ‘site not found’.

If the researcher is not happy with that, he may wonder who Steve Higgins was and decide to do a further search for Steve Higgins, writer and blogger. Then he might even find my YouTube page. There he will find me, just as I used to be back in the 2020’s asking the viewer to buy Floating in Space or to read my blog posts that may no longer exist.

Nothing lasts for ever.

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Making The Video and Why I Didn’t Get In The Taxi

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Back in the nineteen nineties I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life. I’d split up with my girlfriend and had sold the lovely house that we owned jointly. I was stuck in a job that used to be so much fun but had now become a boring dead end job that I was fed up with. I was desperate to do something really exciting, something creative so after a failed attempt at running my own motor sport memorabilia business I decided to have a last ditch try at getting into TV by enrolling on a video production course in Manchester.

It was at a place called the WFA which, if I remember correctly, stood for the Workers Film Association. It was a rather left-wing place too as you can guess from the name, and certainly it wouldn’t have been a good idea to say you admired Mrs Thatcher!

To get a place on the course I had to give a presentation on a media subject. I chose working class representation in film and television and spoke about the kitchen sink movie dramas of the sixties and seventies, (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving, Alfie and so on) the TV soaps of the nineties (Coronation Street, Eastenders and Brookside) and how contemporary British movies were then, and now I suppose, very middle class, (Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill for example.)

On the very first day we had to introduce ourselves and explain why we were on the course. I gave a quick resumé of myself and my career, a re-hash of the above presentation and a quick mention of my film making heroes from Billy Wilder to Oliver Stone. I was somewhat surprised to say the least when the next candidate said he had just bought a video camera and wanted to know how to work it and then someone else said they knew nothing about video but wanted to know more. Well, I wonder what film making subject they chose for their presentation!

We were split into small groups of three and we had to come up with a subject. My idea was to make a documentary about taxi drivers and after some discussions I managed to persuade my two team mates to come on board. We were given a brief introduction to the camera and then we were off into Manchester to start interviewing taxi drivers and filming the comings and goings of cabs in the city centre.

We were rookies and we made a lot of mistakes. In particular, we didn’t think about the questions we were going to be asking the taxi drivers. We just sort of made them up on the spot but looking back it might have been better to have had the same questions ready for each new driver we interviewed.

A big issue that almost every driver mentioned was that the City Council was enforcing a new ruling about cabs being wheelchair accessible, which meant that drivers had to either buy a new cab or pay for a costly conversion to their current vehicle. Every taxi driver we spoke to mentioned this and they were clearly upset about it.

image courtesy wikipedia

Another thing the cab drivers pulled me up on was when I dared to call a private hire vehicle a taxi. Dear me no! Didn’t I know taxis and private hire vehicles were two entirely different things? Apparently not!

I think we spent a week going to the WFA in Hulme, picking up our camera and then getting the bus into town to start filming. We went to all the taxi ranks we knew. There was one at the top of Piccadilly railway station where we found quite a few talkative and sensible taxi drivers. Next we went over to Piccadilly itself where we came across a great bunch of drivers all trying to outdo each other with tales of drunken passengers and how Manchester City Council were trying to take too much money off them in licensing fees. At Victoria Station we met a very chatty driver who even wanted to show his singing talent. I felt his impromptu singing might have been a light hearted end to our video but my colleagues thought not. Oh well!

When we had shot a great deal of video we had to start editing and part of the training process was to screen a rough cut for the whole media school. In our film, one taxi driver had mentioned that certain places in the city were dangerous to go to as there was the possibility of passengers making off without paying or even robbing the drivers. The cabbie mentioned Moss Side, close to the city centre. One member of the audience complained that the driver was racist as Moss Side is a predominantly black area. I didn’t think he was racist; he just didn’t want to be robbed or lose a cab fare and didn’t care one way or another whether the passenger was black or white as long as he paid the fare. My co-directors wanted to cut the offending moment but I argued that the cabbie was just trying to highlight the risk factor in his job. I managed to win that debate and that scene was kept in.

Anyway, cutting the video and shaping it into something interesting was our next task and really the most enjoyable part of all. The big difficulty was that there were three of us, all wanting our own way and really the only way to make a video is for one person to have the lead. Anyway, we kept fighting to a minimum and most of the time we managed to either agree or come to a sort of consensus. The end result was a pretty reasonable video, at least I thought so.

At the end of the course I took away my copy of our video and started pestering documentary producers for the chance to make a full length broadcast version but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere until I wrote to channel 4. I went down to see them, they watched the video and the first thing they said to me was ‘Why didn’t you get in the cab with your camera?’

Well, we had asked taxi drivers if we could do that and they mostly said ok but all of them stipulated that if a passenger wanted us out then we would have to get out, no matter where we were, so rather than risk being stranded somewhere we didn’t take any rides in the cab. Not only that, there were three of us carrying a rather bulky 1990’s Super-VHS camera, a microphone and a tripod. On hearing this the Channel 4 producer looked at me and said ‘If you were a real film maker you’d have got in that taxi!’ After that, despite my protests and assurance that I would get in the taxi when fully commissioned, numerous assistants arose, handed me my video and quite quickly I found myself out on the street!

That was my part of my brief foray into the world of TV. I never did get a job in television but then again, perhaps I just wasn’t as determined or as pushy as I should have been. The one job offer I did get was from a small video company that did a little work for the This Morning TV show. They offered me an unpaid job which apparently is the usual way into TV, working without pay until you show yourself good enough for a proper job. Sorry but I had a mortgage to pay so unpaid work just wasn’t for me.

Not long afterwards Channel Four produced a documentary series about cab drivers although mostly shot with small fixed cameras in the taxi. I still reckon they pinched the idea from me!

If you’re interested in seeing our Taxi video you’ll find it below. It’s actually one of my most watched YouTube videos.

Due to issues of drinking far too much wine and lying far too long on my sunbed, this week’s blog post was an updated version of a previous post. Normal service may or may not be resumed next Saturday.

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Taking the Man out of Manchester

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I do love it here in Lanzarote but lately the bad weather has given me a different viewpoint. Yes, this is a wonderful place when the sun is shining but then, so are a great many places. When the winds are blowing and the rain is coming down, Lanzarote is as miserable as anywhere else. I have often thought about upping and leaving for pastures new, especially when I spend time in the other lovely villa we habitually rent in France. I love the pool, I love the quiet, I love the relaxing patio where we barbecue food in the evening. When it’s cold and the rains pour down I often think how I’d much rather be at home, back in Manchester.

Many years ago, one of my friends was a CB radio enthusiast and he told me that the CB code for Manchester was ‘Rainy City’. Manchester is renowned for the rain so yes, I can understand that. Anyway, that got me thinking about Manchester and I thought I’d take a close up look at the place where I grew up.

When I was a youngster growing up in the suburbs of south Manchester, we were a little short of cash and every year we would take the bus into the city centre and then go north to Ancoats to a huge former mill that had become the Silvana warehouse. Silvana had everything I needed for my years in high school and everything was cheap, much cheaper than the usual stockists but actually ever so slightly different. My school uniform consisted of a green blazer and jumper and Silvana stocked them, and they were green but actually a very slightly, ever so slightly different shade of green. It was hard to tell but kids being what they were, they knew we had gone to Silvana and bought the cheap uniform. It was the same with my briefcase. It was pretty much the same as all the other kids’ briefcases but then ever so slightly different. Silvana was huge and I remember wondering what the place was like back in Victorian times when it was part of the thriving cotton mill industry.

Nowadays a lot of those same mills have either been knocked down or made into flats. One of the media guys at my former job told me he lived in a converted warehouse in the city centre and I always used to think wow, how great was that, actually living in the city centre, a stone’s throw from all the bars and restaurants and everything that made the city centre, well, the city centre.

Looking up at the Beetham Tower

Not true he told me. His apartment had been created by building thin new walls within the old warehouse and he could hear everything that went on in the apartment next door. He quickly sold up and moved on. Either way, I reckon I’d still like to have a city centre apartment.

One of the more recent iconic buildings in Manchester is the Beetham Tower. The building cost £150 million and was completed in 2006. It was Manchester’s tallest building until 2008 when the slightly taller South Tower on Deansgate Square was finished. The skyscraper towers over Deansgate, one of the trendier areas of Manchester, like a modern abstract sculpture looking down at the converted warehouses and the regenerated canal area where Manchester merges subtly into Salford. Further down in Salford is the brand new revitalised Salford Quays which is the home to Media City where the BBC and ITV have based their television studios. The new set for the TV soap Coronation Street is now in Salford and the old set can now be seen on YouTube videos looking like a sort of post-apocalyptic street full of weeds and decay waiting for the bulldozers to move in and knock down the remains before, I suppose, new apartment buildings are erected. Oh well, nothing stays the same.

When I left school in 1973 my first job was in the Refuge Assurance Company on Oxford Road. The very first day that I commenced employment there I was told the difference between assurance and insurance. I’ve often thought about that and wish I could remember what the hell that difference was. Anyway, I mention the Refuge because it was and still is probably the most beautiful building in the city. It wasn’t knocked up in a matter of weeks, it was built with reverence and dedication by craftsmen, people who cared about what they were doing. Today it is a hotel and whenever I am in Manchester I like to pop in there and have a look around. The last time I was there I was shooting the video shown below. Now in my videos I tend to occasionally use stock pictures and video clips but one of the things I try to do in those videos -and I should explain here that I like to continually update and re-edit my videos- is to replace a stock clip or photo with my own shot, when and if that particular photo opportunity turns up.

In the bar at the Refuge, I asked for a pint of lager and then asked the barman if I could film him pulling the pint. I hoped it would be perfect for a video about pubs and bars in Manchester. ‘No!’ said the barman. ‘What if I shot you without showing your face?’ I asked. ‘Well, is it for YouTube?’ ‘It might be.’ I said. ‘We have a policy of no filming in the bar sorry,’ ‘Ok’ I said. I was disappointed but then I took a seat and relaxed with my beer for a while and then . . . I took a few shots when he wasn’t looking. Pity I didn’t get the one of the pint being pulled because that was the one I really wanted.

Just across the road is a pub called the Salisbury and when I worked at the Refuge my colleagues and I used to visit there frequently for lunch as well as in the early evening for after work drinks. On my 18th birthday I had a memorable lunchtime there and as I came to work with only my sandwiches and my bus fare I have to thank the company architect and others for treating me.

Many years later working at my last job before retirement with Highways England my team were planning a night out in Manchester and didn’t know where to meet. As they wanted to dine in the ‘curry mile’ in Rusholme, a short way from the city centre I suggested the Salisbury and we duly met there before leaving to eat which meant that the Salisbury brings back memories not only from my very first job but also from my very last one.

The Manchester Central Library

Further up Oxford Road is another lovely Mancunian building, the Central Library. The library was built in 1930 and in fact Prime Minister Ramsey McDonald laid the foundation stone on the 6th May that year and King George V was on hand in 1934 to declare the library open. The building is a domed structure with a columned portico and the design apparently was based loosely on the Parthenon in Rome. I’ve always thought it to be a beautiful building and when I worked in Manchester, I used to eat my sandwiches sat upon a bench across the way in St Peter’s Square. Sadly that seating area has gone to make way for the new tram.

You might think that I’m writing this post about Manchester after another visit there however in fact I’m a few thousand miles away in Lanzarote. I’m not sure what made me think of Manchester although perhaps it was having a meal at a resort in Playa Blanca where the staff and patrons were all English and the food they served was all English pub fare.

Like they say, you can take the man out of Manchester but you can’t take Manchester out of the man.

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The Dambusters and The State of The Union

Posted on by Steve Higgins

When I say the union, I’m not talking about the United States of America but that other union, the one between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So, what has happened to the United Kingdom? Why is it in such a state, beset by strikes and unrest?

It’s hard to say but a big factor is the Covid 19 epidemic which led to major lockdowns over the past three years. The nurses of the NHS are striking for better pay yet not long ago we, the British public, were clapping them outside on our streets because they were on the front line, risking infection whilst battling against the pandemic. Now, underpaid and overworked, they want more money. True they have done a great job but to be fair, all of us are in the same boat seeing our income dwindling because of inflation and seeing our utility bills soar as well as food prices going up and up.

Many suffered financially during the lockdown, especially those in the hospitality sector. Pubs and clubs were forced to close their doors, some feeling the financial burden so badly that they were unable to reopen and now they have further problems. Because of Brexit, many foreign workers in the licenced trade have returned home to Poland and other places in Eastern Europe. That means that pubs and restaurants are feeling the pinch because they can’t get the staff. It’s the same in the NHS; nurses and hospital staff are working more and more hours because there is no one to fill the numerous vacancies, and yet there are still 1,382,000 people unemployed in the UK according to the Office of National Statistics.

So why is it that despite all the available jobs going are people still unemployed? Is it that we as a nation think that jobs in bars and restaurants are beneath us? Are cleaning and hospital jobs not good enough? There is a great move in the UK to push more and more people into higher education which is great but it seems that these days everyone and his dog is wanting to go to university, so who is left to do the cleaning and beer pulling? The Poles and the other Eastern Europeans? No because they have all buggered off back home. Of course, there are a shed load of illegal immigrants parked up in various places in ex army camps and hotels that have been taken over by the government but they are too busy being looked after to do any work but perhaps in the future they could be offered work in the NHS and in bars and restaurants.

The other day I happened to be watching the film The Dambusters which as you will probably know is about 617 squadron which was formed in World War II specifically to attack the dams of Germany so as to destroy the Nazi industrial capability. Destroying the German dams flooded the Ruhr Valley and dealt a huge blow to the Nazi war effort. The story was more than that though, it was also about Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb and showed how he developed an idea from the drawing board through to models and finally to the real thing.

At the beginning of the film Barnes’ wife calls the doctor to look at their sick child and also to have a word with Barnes himself as his wife suspected he was working too hard and making himself ill. The doctor was a kindly old chap who came to the house, attended to the child and dispensed advice and wisdom to the hardworking inventor.

That was back in 1940 but try getting a doctor to pop round to your house these days! Not only would that be next to impossible but try to get an actual appointment to see a doctor! At my surgery I thought it might be possible to ask for a routine appointment, something of a non-urgent nature so I could perhaps discuss with the doctor some minor ailments that were causing me a little discomfort. No, I was told, not possible. I have to call in at 8am in the morning and try and get through for one of the appointments for that day which, based on previous experience, will all be booked up by about 8:30. Not only that but the last time I visited my doctor after two days of trying to get through on the phone, he was already writing out a prescription for painkillers before I had even finished telling him about my problem.

It was not easy for Barnes Wallis to develop his idea for the bouncing bomb and it was even harder for him to get Whitehall and the RAF to follow through and actually prepare to attack the German dams. Perhaps what we need in the NHS is someone similar, someone with vision, someone both creative and tenacious that can sort out the whole terrible mess we seem to be in now.

One of the problems of reshowing the Dambusters film on TV these days is that back in the 1940’s, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the leader of the Dambusters squadron had a black dog and this being the 1940’s he chose, like many others of the time, to call his dog by the N word. I’m sure Gibson chose that name quite innocently but it is a word that has caused untold pain and unhappiness to a great many people with dark skin. Just prior to the famous dam busting raid, Gibson’s dog was killed in a hit and run accident and he asked that his dog should be buried at the same time as he was going into action over Germany. I mention this so you can see it would be pretty hard to delete the entire dog scenario from the film so as not to cause offence with viewers today.

What did happen though was a pretty remarkable editing job in which the dog was renamed ‘Trigger’ via some really outstanding audio dubbing. So outstanding that you can hardly even believe a change had taken place.  In a way it’s a little sad that we worry so much about offending others that we must change historical names that are considered today to be unacceptable. It’s not as if by doing so we can change the past. Anyway, the result was that this story of ingenuity and heroism can still be told and seen by young people without upsetting anyone.

Guy Gibson won the Victoria Cross for commanding the raid on the dams of Nazi Germany. He was later stood down from active flying after completing his 174th mission in 1943. He was asked to join Prime Minister Winston Churchill on a trip to Canada. He also visited the USA for propaganda and publicity reasons. On his return to England, he was asked to write a book about his experiences, again presumably for publicity purposes.

After writing his book, Enemy Coast Ahead, he was posted to RAF Coningsby where he was mostly responsible for planning and liaison which did not suit him at all. He was anxious to go flying again and was concerned that the war would end before he could get back into combat.

On the night of the 19th August 1944 an order came through for a raid on Germany and as senior officer he took control of a Mosquito aircraft for which he had only logged 9 hours and 35 minutes flying time. Returning from the mission Gibson’s aircraft entered into a steep dive over Steenbergen in Holland. The aircraft crashed killing all on board. In 2011 a British film maker made claims that Gibson’s plane had been shot down by a gunner aboard an RAF Lancaster who mistook the Mosquito for a German Junkers 88.

Gibson was buried in the local cemetery in Steenberegen where there are a number of streets dedicated to his memory, Gibsonstraat and Warwickstraat named after his navigator James Warwick.

This week Liz and I have flown to Lanzarote to get away from the cold of the UK. Luckily we weren’t flying last Thursday as Manchester Airport had been closed because of half an inch of snow. I read about that on an English newspaper site so I assume it was accurate, despite Prince Harry having a go at English journalists and blaming them for all his problems.

One of the books I have brought with me to read on holiday was a book by the BBC’s former World Affairs Correspondent, John Simpson. His book is called ‘A Mad World, My Masters’. In his introduction he says this.

I decided to lift the title of this book from the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton because I felt it expressed the sense that many people have now, and clearly had 400 years ago too, that things around them have gone mildly crazy. Of course, today’s craziness is tomorrow’s rational order, which becomes disrupted again at some future point and then becomes a new and and perfectly workable basis for society.

That was written in the year 2000 and seems still relevant today over twenty years later. Still, I’m sure the United Kingdom will still be in one piece when we get back. I can just imagine being stranded at Lanzarote airport like Tom Hanks in the film The Terminal. ‘I’m sorry, you cannot fly with a UK passport as the UK no longer exists’ the airport staff tell me.

Oh well, I don’t mind staying in sunny Lanzarote while the UK sorts itself out!

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If That was 2022, I’ve Had It!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s that time again when I like to take a look back to the previous year and review what I have done and what I’ve written. All the links here open up into a new page and will reveal my previous blog posts and open them up for another read.

January

I started off with a post called The Worst Week of My Life. I’m not sure where that subject came from but I’m guessing that it was a blog prompt idea that I’d seen somewhere. Having led a reasonably pleasant life, I’ve not really had many particularly low points, or particularly high points when it comes down to it. I mention fleetingly the time my car engine was ruined when I forgot to put anti freeze in and the time my Kawasaki Z500 was stolen but I mostly focus on the lives of some people in the news at the time. Boris Johnson who was then the Prime Minister wasn’t having a good week and in fact was later forced to resign.

February

The Electric Bill, The Banking App and Me was a post about the difficulties one can get into using modern technology. Banking applications can be pretty handy but they all work by removing people from the equation. When things go wrong it’s not always easy to find people; actual people, bank employees or staff from whatever organisation you are trying to get through to. You’ll get directed to various pages of the company website or even to the Frequently Asked Questions page but getting hold of another human being? That can be hard work.

January and February are my least favourite times of the year and when it’s cold and wet I tend to just clam up in front of the fire and wait for the Spring. One thing I like to do though is eat and I don’t just mean restaurants and pubs, I actually cook things and I look to my small collections of cookery books for inspiration, which I talked about in a post called Cooks and Cookbooks.

March

When I started this blog a few years ago my aim was just to promote my book Floating in Space. After all, writing a book is one thing but getting people to know about it and then actually buy it is another thing altogether. Since then, even though each post finishes with a little plug for my book, I’ve found that I’m actually more interested in the blog posts themselves rather than Floating in Space. That’s why hitting my 500th blog post with The Big 500 was such a special event.

Blogs, Video and a Social Media Marketing Mix was a popular blog post and in it I explored all the things we self published authors have to do in terms of social media to get our message out to the public.

April

2022 was the year Vladimir Putin decided he was going to attack the Ukraine. He wasn’t happy that the Ukrainians were getting too friendly with the west and reports indicating they were considering joining NATO alarmed him so much that he ordered his army to invade. Things however didn’t go too well for the Russians and instead of a quick takeover, the Ukrainians fought back and may even defeat the invaders. What this will mean for Russia and the world it’s difficult to say. Can Putin carry on as leader if the Ukraine repulses his invasion? I think we’d all sleep a little easier if someone less agressive and more democratic took over. I wrote more about Putin and other Russian leaders in Those Pesky Rouskies.

When I’m stuck for a blog idea I sometimes tend to just write about myself. I’ve done it a few times before and now I’m up to part 3 of The Story of My Life.

As you might have guessed if you are a regular reader I really hate the cold and I was so happy to see the arrival of summer. Liz and I dusted off our motorhome, filled up the tank and took off for an extended trip to France. We had a couple of problems but were helped by members of the motorhoming community and I wrote more about that in Returning to France and the Kindness of Strangers.

June

I retired this year and retirement was on my mind when I wrote about The Day I Finally Cracked It. Retiring brought back memories of an old bus colleague whose catchphrase was ‘have you cracked it yet?’.

July

Memory, Memories and Memorabilia was a post about memory and was inspired by a photograph of my late aunt Ada who was killed in a cycling accident before I was born. My mother suffers with dementia but a picture I found of Ada seemed to lift her up and stimulate her memories.

August

2022’s most viewed blog post was Manipulating the Image. It started off when some spam email sent me looking for an internet glamour girl called Olivia Casta. One internet post claimed Olivia was actually a much older woman made to look younger by an imaging app so I spent the rest of the post looking at ways images can be manipulated.

September

Blogging Out Loud was a post about sounds; the sound of my voice which I use in podcasts and video voiceovers and even sounds that conjure up old memories.

October

After a summer spent in our motorhome I decided to write more about A Day in The Life of a Motorhomer and filled readers in about a typical day spent in our small van out in the quiet of the Loire Valley.

I’ve not written much about Formula 1 racing this year, perhaps my interest in the sport is waning a little, despite following the sport since childhood. This year we had a number of world champions competing together; Lewis Hamilton with 7 titles, Sebastian Vettel with 4, Fernando Alonso with 2 and current champion Max Verstappen who added the 2022 crown to his controversial win the previous year. Ferrari started the year on top but their challenge gradually faded and Max took an amazing 15 wins in 2022. None of the champions I have mentioned made any great contributions to the action in 2022, perhaps because this is the era of the car and without a great, or even a good car, champions like Hamilton, Vettel and others are just wasting their time. Of course Perez, Max’s teammate had, supposedly, the same car as Max and although he won a few times he was hardly close enough to challenge for the championship. Even so the times when a driver like Moss or Stewart could manhandle a bad car into the winners’ circle are long gone. An F1 post I wrote this year was about the F1 of the past, Autographs, Murray Walker and F1.

Being a bit of an amateur film buff, I always tend to produce plenty of film themed posts and 2022 was no exception. Two particular posts I should mention were ones when I decided to review entire film franchises. This was greatly helped when Film 4 in the UK decided to show the entire Mission Impossible series and a few weeks later ITV3 or 4 did a similar thing with the Rocky films. I sat through both film series with my notebook in hand and jotted down my thoughts.

Another October post was one I wrote about Things I Couldn’t do Without and as I missed out music, I put together a music post titled If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On.

November

One of the places I visited this year was Compiègne in France where the armistice was signed which ended the First World War. Hitler came here in 1940 when Nazi Germany defeated France and forced the French to sign the surrender in the same railway car where the Germans had surrendered in 1918. I shot a short video at the site and wrote a post titled The Glade of the Armistice.

December

As we moved into December things started to get cold and as I mentioned earlier, I really do hate the cold, so much so I’m seriously considering moving to somewhere hot. It’s C C Cold was a post about the cold with a few links to cold themed films thrown in for good measure.

That then was my life, at least my blogging life in 2022. I’m looking forward to 2023 and hoping that I don’t run out of blog post ideas. I hope you had a good 2022. Best wishes for 2023!

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