Tag Archives: author

The Joys of a Second Hand Bookshop (Part 2)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

You can’t beat a second hand book shop and an afternoon is never wasted when spent rummaging through the stock of a really good one. What’s so good about a second hand book is that its story, its message has been sent already to someone else and now that same message, that same story is coming to you; If you buy the book. I love it when I pick up a book and there is an inscription on the front page: ‘Best wishes and happy birthday John, love Anne.’ I spend a lot of time wondering who Anne was and where she is now. Who was John and why has he decided to part with this book? Anyway, here are two selections from my book collection.

Miscellany One by Dylan Thomas.
IMG_20150729_113409I love lots of writers but probably my all-time favourite is Dylan Thomas. I love the outstanding power of his writing, his incredible imagery, and the wonderful pictures he creates with his words.

‘Miscellany One’ is a collection of poems, stories and broadcasts by Dylan and I picked it up one windy afternoon at a bookshop in Morecambe.

Dylan is the sort of writer I’ve always wanted to be: A bohemian, pub crawling, boozing writer who fought with himself as he laboured to paint his word pictures. Whether that was really the case I don’t know but Dylan did like his pubs and he did enjoy a drink.

The fact of the matter is that I’m nothing like Dylan, except we both share a love of words, particularly the sound of words, which is the key to the richness of Dylan’s work, especially his poetry.

If you think about it, there must be a connection between the sound of a word and its meaning, a deep organic connection. After all, how did words begin? Imagine some ancient caveman, just wanting to get some concept over to his mate. What are the deepest and strongest feelings for a human being? Well, for a caveman food must be one, and love too. Surely love was present in those primordial days when every caveman went out on Saturday with his club looking for his mate. There must have been a moment when ancient man strived to say something to his mate, tried to express his feeling and a sound that was the precursor to the word love slipped uneasily from his lips.

If you have read any of Dylan’s poems and are yet to understand his magic, let me give you a tiny bit of advice: Listen to Dylan’s voice. Yes, Dylan, like many poets wrote for his own voice and if you click on to any Dylan Thomas page or search anywhere on the internet you are bound to come across some old recording of his voice. Don’t make do with lesser voices, even when we are talking about great actors like Richard Burton or Anthony Hopkins. Search out Dylan himself and you will be won over, like me, by the power of his voice.

It’s not just his poems that are rich with the power of words. Dylan wrote and performed a good many radio plays and broadcasts and my very favourite is ‘Return Journey’ which can be found within this slim volume. It’s about Dylan himself returning to Swansea in search of his former self ‘Young Thomas.’ He visits young Thomas’ old haunts and meets with people who knew him fleetingly; like the barmaid who used to serve him, journalists who worked with him and even the park keeper where Dylan and his young friends would play in the park. It’s a lovely piece where drama merges with prose and we slip in and out of the two as the story progresses.

Many years ago I visited Dylan’s former home in Laugharne, now a museum dedicated to Dylan. I can only say I loved the place and didn’t want to leave. I wandered through its rooms and looked at the black and white photos on the walls and tried to imagine Dylan living here and banging out his poems and stories in his writing shed then later ambling down to the pub for a pint. I had to leave early the day I visited, so I went back the next day and the staff recognised me and let me in without paying, so in return I bought some books about Dylan and a copy of his collected stories. Keep a look out for Miscellany One and its companion volumes, you’ll love them.

A Kind Of Loving by Stan Barstow.
IMG_20150729_113646 (2)In the late fifties and the early sixties the UK film industry underwent a minor revolution. A new type of gritty realism began to emerge in a series of films like ‘A Taste of Honey’, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, ‘Alfie’, ‘Georgy Girl’ and of course, ‘A Kind Of Loving’.

The movie is a wonderful slice of early sixties northern life and for a northern lad myself a great chance to see the north represented in the cinema. The movie was based on the book by Stan Barstow and it was another find in a second hand book shop.

The book shown here is actually a trilogy, three books in a series about the main character Vic Brown: ‘A Kind of Loving’, ‘Watchers On the Shore’ and ‘The Right True End’ and the cover pictures are not from the film but the TV version that was made in the eighties.

The story is a simple one, boy meets girl, she gets pregnant, the boy doesn’t really love her but gets married to her anyway. Reading this book brought back my own early childhood and all the stories about office working and family weddings all ring true for me, so much so that sometimes I felt as though I was reading about myself.

I do love that in a book when the writer finds something inside me, the reader, and turns it round to make a personal connection between reader and writer. Stan Barstow was born in the west Riding of Yorkshire. He was the son of a coal miner and worked in a drawing office like his character Vic brown. He died in 2011 aged 83.

To read part one of my second hand books post, click here.

If you liked this post, why not buy my book? Click here to go to amazon or click the links at the top of the page to find out more.

 

 

What Happened to my White Jacket and my 70’s Pop Star Heroes?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

David Cassidy

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

I wasn’t so much a fan of David Cassidy, I just wanted to look like him. I always thought he was a pretty cool dude and although I didn’t rush out and buy his music I always kind of liked him.( You can click here to see what happened when I went for a David Cassidy haircut!) Cassidy was an unexpected superstar, the son of actor Jack Cassidy who crops up frequently in classic Columbo episodes.

David began working as an actor and musician and was signed up by Universal studios in 1969. He worked on many TV shows of the time like Ironside and Bonanza until he was signed up for a part in a show called ‘The Partridge family’. Cassidy and the show became a runaway hit and ten albums produced during the show’s run sold over a million copies each. David became a teen idol and his personal concerts were sell outs but a Cassidy mania, not unlike that experienced by the Beatles years earlier, caused numerous problems and culminated in a stampede at White City stadium where many people were injured and one girl fan sadly died.
Today Cassidy is still singing and writing and has appeared in many stage shows and musicals. You might even have seen him in a TV version of his life story, ‘The David Cassidy Story’.

Gary Glitter
Gary Glitter’s first big hit, back in the early seventies was ‘Rock n’ Roll’ parts 1 and 2, a double-sided single which on part 2 was mainly instrumental with group chants of ‘rock n roll’. Glitter followed this up with a string of hits throughout the early seventies with singles like ‘I’m the leader of the gang’, ‘I love you love me love’, ‘Do you wanna touch me?’ and ‘Hello hello, I’m back again’. His career faded afterwards but in the early 90’s his records were discovered by a new generation of record buyers and many modern artists have acknowledged that he was an inspiration to them in earlier years.

The late 1990’s saw his image become fatally destroyed by his arrest and conviction in 1999 for possession of child pornography. Some years later, in 2006, Glitter faced criminal charges and deportation from Vietnam after a court found him guilty of obscene acts with minors. Glitter was deported back to Britain and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life. These convictions turned Glitter from being one of the best-loved stars in British pop history, into a hated and reviled figure. As much as I like the glam music of the seventies, I actually feel bad today playing Gary Glitter’s music.

blogpicheroes

David Essex.
David Essex was another performer who made his name in the early seventies. I remember seeing his album in a record shop and thinking what a cool dude he looked. The album was ‘Rock On’ and the single went to number 3 in the UK charts in 1973. The next year David released one of my all-time favourite tracks ‘Gonna make you a Star’ which went all the way up to number 1. He also appeared on the double album ‘Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds’ and went on to star in many musicals such as ‘Godspell’ and ‘Evita’. In 2011, he joined the cast of TV soap ‘EastEnders’.

david-essex-rock-on-cbsThe White Jacket
David Essex sang ‘Rock On’ wearing a white suit on ‘Top of the Pops’ and as I have said above, I thought he was a real cool guy and it seemed that one way to transform my gangling self-conscious self into somebody ‘cool’ might be to get that very same white suit. I couldn’t afford a suit at the time so I settled for a jacket, a white jacket and I well remember admiring myself in the mirror before my first Saturday night out wearing it sometime back in 1973.

The first problem came on the bus into town. I sat on the back seat and in those days, the back seats of our local buses were a little notorious for being dusty and grimy as they were over the engine and absorbed all the engine fumes and also there were people who put their feet up on the seats leaving marks to which people like me (the twerp in the white suit) were highly susceptible. Another thing too is that all my life I have been cursed with being clumsy and once I had met up with my friends I managed to spill beer all down my sleeve. Anyway, the night went on, more or less successfully. I certainly remember having a good time although the white jacket failed in its primary function, that of attracting gorgeous girls. Later on we stopped at the kebab shop and somehow I managed to land a sizeable portion of chilli sauce down my front. Rather than feeling like David Essex, I felt a little like Alec Guinness in that film ‘The Man In The White Suit’, wanting to get away from everyone! I never wore the stained jacket again and it lingered sadly in the back of my wardrobe until my Mum decided my room was cluttered up enough and threw it out.

Of course, it could have been worse, I could have gone out wearing jeans, a white t-shirt and a red jacket and tried to look like James Dean! (Actually, that was another night!)

If you liked this blog, why not buy my book? Click the picture below to go straight to my Amazon page!

Floating in Space

 

Why I wrote a Novel and 10 Reasons Why You Should Buy It!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Why write a book? Why indeed. Why would anyone want to spend months, or in my case years, writing a book? There is so much to it, and so much involved. It’s so difficult and once done writers are instantly faced with another question; why would anyone want to spend a lot of their hard earned money buying it?

Screenshot 2015-02-08 15.55blog title ed2Well, to start with the writing part first. Why write? The answer is easy for me because I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I write for me, for my own personal pleasure and enjoyment and if anyone reads my work, well that’s just a bonus!

I love reading and I love movies and TV, and remember; before a word can be filmed on a movie, we need a script, and scripts need writers! As long as I can remember I’ve always had ideas forming in my head: Scenarios and stories, and I’ve always written them down. My home is full of old notebooks and computer files littered with half started stories and story ideas. When I was a school boy I used to write scripts and always noted down who would play the character on screen but looking back at one of them in particular, I think my producers would have been hard pushed to attract Steve McQueen to play a secret agent based in Manchester!

So there it is; I write because I want to, and because my imagination is at work churning out ideas randomly. Some time ago though, I looked at the things I was writing and felt that in order to be saying something worthwhile I had to turn away from sci fi and espionage and write about the life that was right in front of me, working class life in Manchester and the North West of England. I’ve spun a story in my book ‘Floating In Space’ that was more observation than anything; a northern world from the late seventies recreated not necessarily with accuracy but pretty much how I remember it. Buses with bus conductors, pubs and barmaids, music and beer, and men and women and their attraction to each other. I suppose it’s a bit of a flashback to fiction from an earlier generation. Remember those working class ‘kitchen sink dramas’ from the late fifties and early sixties, things like ‘A Kind Of loving’ and ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’? Floating In Space is similar to those works but set in the late seventies and I’ve tried to recreate the atmosphere of the pubs and bars of those times, especially the busman’s working men’s club, as well as I can.

The answer then is that I like to write, in fact I love writing and as I have said so often before, my blog gives me a taste, be it ever so small, of being a real writer and putting something together every week for my deadline, my one weekly deadline of Saturday morning.
Next question: So why should you buy it? Why should you shell out your hard earned cash to read my book when you can go out and buy the two classics mentioned above straight away for a guaranteed wonderful read?
Well, here are a few reasons:

1. Support new writers! If we don’t support new and up and coming writers then the publishing industry will die on its feet and what are we hungry readers going to read then?
2. The Kindle version is just over a pound so surely it’s worth taking a chance for a measly one pound ten pence!
3. You might just enjoy it!
4. Think about me up there in the rainy north of England! Who is going to support me if you don’t buy my book?
5. Still unsure? Why not go to the Floating In Space page here and check out some more information?
6. Even better, check out this video of me talking about my book!
7. For two unbiased, impartial reviews go to my amazon page here! (No they absolutely were not written by two of my mates who had been plied with alcohol!)
8. For a little taster have a look at this excerpt when two of the characters visit an Oxford Road pub!
9. I’ll be upset if you don’t buy it!
10. After all the months and years of writing, editing and re-editing, would you really deny a new writer the chance to be heard?

Anyway, that’s your ten reasons, so why not buy the book: Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

Questions, Answers, and the Wild One

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-88I don’t know if you ever used to watch that classic TV show The Prisoner. Number 6 played by Patrick McGoohan was trapped in a mysterious village and those who ran the place wanted to know the answer to one question: why did number 6 resign?
Prisoner_smThey had a saying in the village-‘Questions are a burden to others, answers a prison to one’s self’. The village was a surreal place and number 6 became increasingly paranoid in that sinister, almost sci-fi world and although he came close to answering the resignation question a few times, ultimately, he never did.
The thing is, as we go innocently about our business, there are plenty of people wanting to upset us by asking questions.

There was a time, just after I left school when I thought great; exams over, won’t be answering any more questions like that again. The thing is though, exams of one form or another are sent to try us throughout our life. Trying for a new job is a form of examination, there’s the application form to fill in which is always pretty hard work and if you get through that then there’s the interview to contend with.

Just recently I applied for a job as a team manager and while I wasn’t totally successful I did end up with a temporary promotion, filling in as team manager for two months. Sounded great at first but then there was a whole lot of people management and paperwork that I didn’t realise would be so hard, or so time consuming. No more quiet moments in which to churn out my blogs!

Still, this recent promotion got me thinking about interviews in the past and where I’d gone wrong. One was an Inspector’s job when I worked for GM Buses. The job I wanted was a post at Hyde road depot which was only ten minutes away from my home. I didn’t have a car but there was a great bus service so it would have been perfect. There were two Inspector posts available, one at Hyde road and another at our Tameside depot in Rochdale.
During the interview in which I thought I’d done pretty well, the three interviewers asked me to step outside. I returned a few minutes later and they asked me, “Steve, what would you say if we offered you the Rochdale Inspectors job?”
Well, that was the job I didn’t want. I wanted the other one, the one that was only ten minutes away and another thing, at the time I didn’t have a car so how could I get to Rochdale? So what did I do? Well, I’m sure you can guess. As usual I took the worst possible option: I turned them down!
Even as I walked away I knew I’d done the wrong thing and every time I have an interview I think of that moment. Still, in a way that’s a good thing. Remember the mistakes you’ve made and move on. Do the right thing next time. Be positive.

Another time I applied for a job at Manchester Airport. It wasn’t a great job but it looked interesting and I hoped I might have passed the interview but it floundered when the interview veered off into an odd direction.
“How will you get to work?” asked the interviewer.
“By car.”
“But what if your car breaks down?”
“Well, I could always use the wife’s car.”
“But what if she needs it for work?”
“Well, I could get the bus.”
“But you might have to start work at 5 in the morning.”
“Well the first bus from Stockport is 04:15 in the morning.”
“The buses don’t run that early.”
“Yes they do, I know as I currently work in bus timetable enquiries.”
“Well suppose they are on strike?”
“Well I’d have to go on my bicycle.”
“What would happen if you had a flat tyre?”
I paused for a moment then asked: “Are you joking?”
Needless to say, I didn’t get that job either. I didn’t understand the interviewer’s line of questioning at all and a little frustration had crept in to my answers.

Now, in the 21st century questions are a part of life. They come at you when you are least expecting them. This morning, I was trying to get ready for work and the phone started ringing so I ran through to the lounge to pick it up. The caller said, “Good morning? Is that Mr Higgins?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Mr Higgins, do you own your own home?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Do you own your own home?”
“None of your business” I answered as I put the phone down, rather offended at this intrusion into my private life and not only that, I’d put my toast back in the toaster as it wasn’t quite done enough and when I legged it back to the kitchen it popped up black and burnt! Not happy!

When I was younger and working in city centre Manchester I used to spend my lunchtimes either in a pub somewhere down Oxford road or sometimes I’d sit in St Peter’s Square if it was nice and sunny and eat my sandwiches there. The annoying thing was I’d usually have to run a gauntlet of canvassers asking me questions.
“Excuse me, if I told you of a new bank account that would save you money would you change accounts?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t? Why not?”
Nowadays I’d just say ‘none of your business’ but back then when I was young and polite I’d tend to try and justify myself and say why I was happy with my bank and why I didn’t want to change and so on. If I had been number 6 I’d have probably said ‘I will not be pushed, filed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!’
As it was, by the time I’d got rid of the interviewer that would be half of my dinner break gone!

marlon-brando-392902_640Perhaps my old school friend Clive Hornchurch (once again, names have been changed to protect the innocent!) felt a certain amount of frustration too. He was by far the brainiest lad in the school and was constantly upheld as an example to other pupils. I remember once Miss Tyass, our history teacher telling me how hard I would have to work to pass the History O-level and perhaps I should use Clive’s notebook to revise from because he himself wouldn’t need it!
Yes Clive was the man; every teacher knew he would pass with flying colours and perhaps be off to university, if such a thing was possible from our urban jungle roughhouse comprehensive school.
On the day of our O -level examinations Clive added his name to the top of his paper, and then put down his pen. His blank test paper was passed in and naturally he failed. I often wonder what became of him and why he did what he did. Perhaps he was frustrated; perhaps he was tired of being held up as a shining example of all that is brilliant in a school boy. I sometimes wonder if I had asked him what he was rebelling against would he have answered, like Marlon Brando in The Wild One; “What have you got?”

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Why Writers can’t do Without Dreams

Posted on by Steve Higgins
image courtesy fotolia

image courtesy fotolia

Dreams; there’s a subject. I woke up a few mornings ago in sunny Lanzarote (sorry, just had to rub that in) after a crazy dream in which I was out with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, and somehow, don’t ask me how, I had lost all my clothes. We had been out drinking and were walking home then something happened and I woke up somewhere without any clothes. I woke up then but that wasn’t the end of it.

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

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

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

I often wonder where dreams actually come from. What is it in the deep recesses of the mind that produce these spurious dramas? When I was younger I don’t really recall ever dreaming that much. As I grew older I seemed to dream more but tended to forget most of my dreams very quickly. These days I do dream quite a lot and I dream pretty sensible things too. The ending of ‘Floating In Space’ was something I dreamt one night and I typed it up and replaced the original finale which, although inspired by real events, was a little unbelievable. Also, I have an entire story which I’ve partly written into a screenplay which I dreamt one night and which played out in front of me as vividly as if I was sitting at the front row of a picture house. It is about a man who appears one night wearing a white suit and who gets involved in some strange circumstances. So strange that those around him begin to believe the man is a kind of Saviour; a sort of new Jesus figure, and his companions become disciples in the way of those who followed Jesus himself. I still have my notes from that dream and the story is on my ‘to do’ list to finish.

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

Wikipedia describes dreams like this: Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. It’s easy to think that perhaps the basis of dreams, the make-up of dreams comes from within but it’s possible external forces can affect dreams too. Paul McCartney once said that he didn’t write his songs but that they were out there, waiting for him to catch them; to pick them up. Perhaps dreams too are there just waiting for us to dream them.

One other kind of dream is the daydream and T E Laurence once said that those who dream in the day are dangerous men: “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

I have to confess to being a daydreamer but as for being dangerous, well, I think not. I do have a persistent daydream though, one of becoming a best-selling author.

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Why Finding your voice as a writer is so important

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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I start Floating In Space talking about the weekend as ‘one long high energy cassette’ and looking back I wonder if today’s younger generation even know what a high energy cassette is, or even an ordinary cassette for that matter? Still, the important thing is the idea, the idea that the hero of my book, Stuart, is profoundly fed up of his nine to five life and spends a lot of his time waiting for the weekend to begin so that once again he can replay the high energy cassette and enjoy life.

Like a lot of first novels, Floating In Space is semi-autobiographical and based very loosely on some of my own experiences. Many years ago I left school and started work for an insurance company and very soon the whole nine to five existence became deadly dull and I longed to be doing something more interesting. I packed in my Insurance job and spent a few months in Spain but I quickly became bored there. I do love Saturday nights out but when every night becomes a Saturday night, the whole thing loses its attraction. Back in the UK I started work as a bus conductor just as a quick way of earning money and fully intending to get a ‘proper’ job soon but I found I enjoyed my new life working different shifts and meeting new and different people as I tripped up and down the roads of Manchester.

How did I come to write Floating In Space? Well, when I was younger I used to write a lot of things, mainly action, adventure and espionage stories. The only inspiration I had was film and television and my own imagination. Sometimes your own imagination is enough but for writing to have a real impact and depth it needs to come from within and that’s where an author finds his true voice. James Bond for instance, is a great character but he didn’t spring wholly from Ian Fleming’s imagination. Fleming, like the fictional Bond, was a Commander in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and his knowledge of secret intelligence helped him create the world of 007. When Fleming writes about Bond’s love of food and the good things in life, he is writing about himself. It was Fleming who smoked the bespoke cigarettes which he speaks of in the Bond books. It was Fleming who ate scrambled eggs for breakfast and wore ‘Sea Island’ cotton shirts and these small things he passed onto his fictional character, James Bond.

Finding your own voice is the key to finding your way as an author and one day I sat down and decided it was time to write about the world around me rather than what I was watching on television so I wrote an essay about an evening in the Busmen’s works club. It was an essay about beer and cigarettes, about playing pool and snooker and the banter of young men across the polished bar of the club and over the worn card tables. I wrote more and more about what I saw around me and gradually realised that I could spin all this material together into a novel. I wrote the book in the first person and began to develop a colloquial talkative style which I have used ever since. I never successfully put the various parts together into a complete narrative until a few years ago on a wet rainy holiday in France when I finally wove everything into the final book that you can buy today from amazon.

Go on, give it a read!

FIScoverbuynow

 

 

What happens when classic TV gets remade?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

. . . Or perhaps more importantly, why does classic TV get remade? Why not just let sleeping TV classics lie? What! When there’s more money to be made! The thing about classic TV is that people know what it’s about. When they made Mission Impossible into a movie with Tom Cruise we all knew that somewhere in the movie Cruise would get to listen to a recording giving him some impossible mission with the reminder that ‘if any of your people are caught or killed, the secretary will disavow knowledge of your actions!’ The PR man’s job is half done already, done by the collective TV memory of millions of people who watched the TV series.

Recently movie producers did the impossible, re created (re-imagined to use movie-speak) Kirk, Spock, and Scotty from the original Star Trek. The first was a pretty good movie, the second, Into Darkness, I wasn’t so keen on. Someone must have liked it though because director JJ Abrams has now been recruited to inject new life into the Star Wars franchise.

Every day the more visible you are on the internet the more stuff comes into your inbox. Some of it is unwanted, TAG_Teaser_Email_05_asome of it is junk but occasionally you get something pretty interesting. I recently received this picture to the left and a week later the video link below. Looks like there is a new version of Thunderbirds in the offing.

As a school kid I was brought up on Gerry Anderson’s TV productions. I vaguely remember Four Feather Falls, a cowboy puppet show, but then came Supercar, Stingray and Thunderbirds, all part of Gerry’s vision of the future. What was great about Gerry’s TV shows was that they were aimed at kids but all had a serious adult perspective. They didn’t look down at kids, they treated children more as future adults. Supercar, Stingray and Fireball XL5 were all thirty minute shows but Thunderbirds was a full hour and many of the episodes were serious and complex.

One episode entitled the ‘cham cham’ was about a musical code written into a song and it was up to Lady Penelope, the Thunderbirds London agent, to get to the bottom of things. Another Lady Penelope episode that comes to mind was ‘Vault of Death’ in which an employee is trapped in the vault of the Bank of England and the international rescue guys try to save the man before the oxygen runs out. Of course it is Parker, Penelope’s chauffeur, manservant, and former safe cracker who manages to open the vault with a hairpin!

Scott Tracy Thunderbird 1 pilot

Scott Tracy Thunderbird 1 pilot

Sylvia Anderson, Gerry’s wife, was the voice of Lady Penelope and Sylvia always had a credit on the shows for characterisation. It was always the characters that brought the shows to life, not just the incredible Thunderbirds craft launching from under the swimming pool or other hidden places. Gerry and Sylvia went on to make live action shows like UFO and Space 1999 before they had an acrimonious split. Later Gerry tried for a comeback children’s show with Terrahawks but without Sylvia’s characterisations the show didn’t really hit the mark.

Anyway, I do wonder how the guys from this new series targeted me. I must have left something somewhere, some random cookie in cyberspace that let the marketing people know that I used to watch Thunderbirds years ago. Well, I’m not ashamed to say that I did and I also subscribed to the Gerry Anderson comic TV21 and built a plastic kit version of Thunderbird One. Hope the new series lives up to the old one, although I seriously doubt it. Anyway, if today’s kids don’t enjoy the new Thunderbirds, they can catch the classic original on DVD!

By the way, if you enjoyed this post then why not buy my book?

 

 

Tasting the Tapas in Lanzarote

Posted on by Steve Higgins

snaplanzaThis is week five for Liz and I staying here near the Marina Rubicon in Lanzarote. We’re here for six weeks in total, a nice break away from the snow and ice of the UK. The temperature here is in the early seventies and this last week it’s been a bit cool and cloudy which, I have to say, has played havoc with my swimming and sunbathing routine.

We’re away  from the centre of Playa Blanca by the Marina which is good because like a lot of Spanish resorts, the centre of Playa Blanca is a full of ‘British’ pubs and bars and restaurants offering British beer and meals like chips, egg and beans and so on as their staple fare. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against chips, egg and beans, as a matter of fact it is one of my favourite meals but I can make it myself back at home or go to any pub or café to get it. When I travel hundreds of miles I want something different, not something I can have any day of the week back home. It’s the same with beer. Why would I want a pint of British beer or lager when I can have something different? Of course, all the major brands of beer can now be found all over the world. My local pub has San Miguel on draft! The fact is that the whole world is getting smaller and more international by the day. Not so long ago my cousin was in New York tweeting he was at a bar drinking a pint of Boddingtons, the definitive Manchester ale!

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Tasty nibbles at Café Berrugo

I do like my food and dining out can be such a wonderful experience. All you need is a great location, great staff and of course, great food. As we’re here in the canary islands it seems fair to step away from UK pub food for a while and experience proper Spanish tapas. Tapas as you may know is Spanish for small plates. Small plates of food that is, so not long after arriving Liz and I went to our ‘local’ café, a place called Café Berrugo. Now at first I wasn’t sure if this place was a real authentic Canarian eating house. Why not? Well, with items like chips, egg and sausage and hot dog and chips on the menu that was something of a giveaway but actually when we come here of an evening, most of the clientele are local Lanzarote people and if you look closely at the menu there is a nice tapas section which a lot of the Brits seem to ignore. Anyway, we knew that tapas is small dishes so we ordered this lot: Garlic mushrooms, Canarian potatoes with mojo sauce, garlic prawns, Canarian boar with peppers and onions and a portion of, well I am a Brit after all, a portion of chips. (That’s fries if you are reading this in the US.)

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Garlic mushrooms and bread.

Now the thing is, at this cheap and cheerful café the portions are pretty big so we ended up fairly stuffed after that veritable feast but we managed to scoff it all and wash it down with a nice bottle of Spanish red and the excellent staff offered us a nice free vodka caramel to finish off.

Another night we decided to go up market to the Blue Note bar and restaurant and once again we went for the tapas. I only ordered five as part of the five for twelve euros deal and decided to have two as starters and three as a main meal. Now the thing was that here at the posh end of the marina, tapas clearly does mean small plates, or perhaps tiny plates would have been a better description. The chorizo sausages were nice but as there were only three small sausages I didn’t quite get to gauge the flavour. Same with the meatballs, there were only three of them. Anyway, it was all very lovely with nice staff and a picturesque setting by the marina with a small jazz trio playing away. I recommend it highly, unless you happen to be really hungry!

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Canarian potatoes with mojo sauce and a plate of serrano ham.

So after that little bit of research it seems that tapas do not come in a standard size. If you ever visit Lanzarote and happen to be staying near the Marina Rubicon at Playa Blanca remember this; if you’re not too hungry then have your tapas in the posh restaurants by the marina but if you are feeling even a little ravenous, go down to Café Berrugo!

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Floating In Space: Last day to download free on Kindle!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Yes, you can download ‘Floating In Space’ free for your Kindle until 22nd January.

It’s a novel following the adventures of a young man in Manchester in 1977. No mobile phones, no Internet and a pint of bitter cost only 25p. Here’s me talking about it in Manchester;

 

Floating In Space -two days left to download free!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Yes, you can download ‘Floating In Space’ free for your Kindle until 22nd January.

It’s a novel following the adventures of a young man in Manchester in 1977. No mobile phones, no Internet and a pint of bitter cost only 25p. Here’s me talking about it in Manchester;