Tag Archives: blog post

Writing the Blog Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve spent quite a few years writing my blog posts. I started back in 2014 with the idea of creating posts to help promote my short novel, Floating in Space. Now, 730 posts later, I often wonder how I might have gone on had I achieved my schoolboy ambition of becoming 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. Come to think of it, writing a post every week can be a bit of a challenge. Anyway this week’s post is about how I actually go about writing a blog post.

What is quite handy for me is that I haven’t restricted myself in a way other writers who belong to a particular niche have. For instance if this was a cinema blog I could only write about films, just like a book blogger can only write about books or a cycling blogger must confine himself to cycling. For me I write about anything that happens to take my fancy, although usually I stick to books, films, the occasional Formula One post and things that happen in my life.

Most of the time I’ll come up with an idea for a blog post while lying in bed. Not only that, I’ll also begin to write the blog in my head, so that when I’m fully awake I’ll have a sort of template in the back of my mind all ready to write out. Sometimes that process can go on for about a week, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter but at some point I’ll need to actually start writing. If I can’t get to my laptop I’ll sometimes jot some ideas down in my notebook.

The notes you can see in the picture here are for one of my frequent film connections posts in which I try to connect various films, actors, directors and personalities together and use those random links to tell a few cinema stories to my readers. In this one I’ve tried to connect Douglas Fairbanks to Marlon Brando.

After the note making process I’ll usually need to drink tea so I’ll drag myself up out of bed and into the kitchen where thoughts of food will begin to enter my mind. I like to start the day with a combination of various things and I’m now talking about eggs, bacon, sausages and hot buttered toast.

A good breakfast is important for a blog writer and after scoffing some food I’ll usually get down to checking my emails and scheduling the posting of numerous links to my blogs in places like Instagram, Facebook, X and so on.

After that more tea is generally a good idea and I like to leave blogging alone for a few hours and watch a little television. A good World War II documentary or a classic film noir are the sort of things I like to watch when I have time to myself in an afternoon. After a little TV entertainment I usually find that the new blog post has settled down in my head and I’m ready to start work on my laptop and get a first draft down on paper. Well not actually paper but Microsoft word. I’ll work on the post a number of times throughout the day and in fact throughout the week, then when I’ve finally got something I’m happy with, I’ll transfer it over to WordPress.

Then it’s time for another brew. I don’t think I can really stress enough the importance of a good cup of tea in the blog creation process. I drink numerous cups of tea throughout the day and it gives me a break from typing but it’s important to relax and I always think it’s quite fascinating how the post develops while I’m actually focussed on something else, reading a book or watching TV while the blog post matures a little up there in the old grey matter.

When I’m ready to once again focus on the post, I find that most of the time something new will come to me, a new idea or even just a new way of looking at the subject and then I’ll just update the post when I sit down again with my laptop.

Now that the post is on WordPress I can access it on my iPad and that little change from laptop to iPad always gives me a new perspective so I’ll refine it a little more before passing it to Liz for a quality check and final proofreading. This is the point where numerous embarrassing errors are spotted like spelling, grammar, repeated words, punctuation and so on. Then I’ll add the graphics, pictures and videos and everything is ready for my publishing deadline of 10am on Saturday.

For the graphics I mostly use a simple site like Quotescover but when I’m feeling really artistic and creative I’ll use Adobe or Canva. Sometimes I’ve even asked chat GTP or Claude to produce a graphic. I’ve not always been totally happy about those results and usually I prefer something I’ve actually worked on myself although recently I asked Claude for a new graphic for the website and it came up with this one which I think is rather good.

Not long ago I was watching the classic film Treasure of the Sierra Madre. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of Americans prospecting for gold down in Mexico. The leader of the prospectors played by Walter Huston in the film, explains the value of gold in this way: A thousand men go searching for gold. One man finds an ounce of gold. His small find represents not only his hard work but the work of the other 999 men who were unsuccessful. Gold is worth so much because of the effort that went into finding it. Now I could argue the same point about this blog, that even though it is free to read this humble post, it’s actually worth quite a lot because of the hours, weeks and sometimes months of effort that went into preparing it, writing it, editing it, making the videos shown here and designing and producing the graphics that adorn this and all my many other posts.

Of course once the post is finished and ready for publication that isn’t the end. Next I’ll start planning where and when to publish links to the post. On a weekday I’ll publish links on all my usual social media places, Facebook, X, Instagram and so on. On a weekend I publish a post every two hours over on X and I’ve started making short videos that go out on Instagram and TikTok which have pulled in a lot of new readers and followers.

So as you read this post you now might be thinking, wow, what a great deal you’re getting! All that effort, just for you. Should you click on one of the links for Floating in Space or A Warrior of Words or Timeline and maybe buy a copy? Personally, I’d say ‘yes, you should’ but even if you don’t you can catch a new blog post every Saturday at 10 am UK time and don’t forget to have a scroll through all those previous posts too.

New post published, now I can relax. The only thing is, what shall I write about next week?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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A Writer on Holiday

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s always great to get away from things and to take a break. Writers though just cannot stop writing even on holiday. Well at least I can’t. I’m currently on holiday in a motorhome in France so how do I mix relaxation with writing? Let’s see if I can successfully answer that. Here we go.

Morning.

It takes me a while to get used to sleeping in our motorhome. It’s only small and there is a little dip in the bed just at the point of my lower back which has given me some backache in the past but lately I’ve learnt to either avoid it or just live with it. Another issue that affects our sleep is the way the van is parked and parking properly is very important. A tilt to the left and Liz will be rolling over and crowding me. Over to the right and I’ll be crowding her. A slight tilt forward and we tend to slide off our pillows and down the bed. If we have to have a tilt it’s better to tilt back toward our pillows but we do have chocks which we can slip under the wheels to level us up. My place on the bed is over by the window and there is no way out for me except by climbing over Liz so one of my rules is to not have beer prior to going to bed. Otherwise I’ll be waking in the night wanting to wee and struggling to get out.

On holiday I find myself waking up pretty early. I’m not totally comfortable sleeping in the motorhome but I usually wake up with my head full of various thoughts for either a blog post or a short story. I tend to lie there and get those thoughts in some sort of order before dragging myself up.

I’m usually the first one up so I’ll shuffle over to the small bathroom for a wash and a shave.

Despite being late September it’s still very warm in the Loire so in a morning I can handle a wash in cold water but when the warm weather comes to a close I’m less inclined to do that. I can switch on the water heater but usually I just put a pan of water on the hob.

Despite the bathroom being small, actually very small, there is a basin, toilet and even a shower in there. To shower it’s important to switch on the water heater first, pull round the panels that keep the water away from the toilet and basin and then switch on the water. In a motorhome I’m always aware that there isn’t an endless supply of water so a good idea is to apply shower gel liberally to the body, switch on the water and get washed as quickly as possible using as little water as you can.

Note to self: Don’t drop the soap as it’s pretty difficult to bend down and pick it up in these cramped conditions.

Shower over, towel yourself down, get dressed and get the kettle on before hanging your towel out in the sun on the bike carrier to the rear of the van.

Next I’ll check my emails while the van chef, Liz, gets herself ready too.

I’m a big lover of breakfast, in fact I’m even tempted to say it’s my favourite meal of the day and I love a standard English breakfast. Bacon, sausage, black pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs, preferably poached, served with toast. That can be a little difficult on the cramped three ring stove in the van so lately we’ve been having a bacon omelette with some French bread. I’ll either walk to a bakery if there is one nearby or we usually have some bread in our little freezer which always keeps pretty well and defrosts quickly in the sun.

Noon

Another option is to not have breakfast at all but to save ourselves for lunch. In France there are many places that serve a cheap lunchtime menu which will consist of a buffet starter, a simple main meal, a cheese course and a dessert.

We found an excellent restaurant near to Parçay-les-Pins called the Restaurant De La Gare, the Station Restaurant. The buffet starter is always my favourite and I fill my plate with pâté, cold meats, coleslaw and various salad items. A basket of French bread will appear and is usually topped up when it gets low. Vin de table is provided as well as some chilled water and a large bottle of cider. Not bad for 15 euros each!

OK, breakfast (or lunch) over it’s time to grab my laptop and tap out in rough form my ideas for this week’s blog post. Sometimes I can’t be bothered to drag my laptop out of its safe place in the boot so I’ll just write notes in my notebook. The notes you can see here in the photo are typical notes for a one of my Film Connections posts.

We will usually be parked in an aire in France and these special parking places, reserved for motorhomes, tend to have all the necessary things we might need. A very important thing is a place to empty the van toilet. It’s not a pleasant task but I tend to empty it whenever we get the opportunity. A lot of French aires have a water tap to help you rinse your toilet cassette but many require a token, a jeton that is usually available from nearby local shops although there are many aire de camping cars that are completely free.

The van navigator (Liz) will usually have perused google maps for a plan d’eau, a French swimming lake and we’ll be off to find it. We usually factor in a stop for some French bread and some more French cheese as well as a box of wine. This year is probably the first in which we haven’t really been interested in cheese, having said that I’ve still enjoyed the cheese course in a restaurant.

It’s important of course to keep a check on our fuel. We usually fill up with diesel at French supermarkets as they tend to be cheaper than the usual petrol stations, however we were chatting with a couple of English people in a restaurant one evening who told us that ‘TotalEnergies’ petrol stations were considerably cheaper than the supermarkets. It seems that they are under the control of the French government and they are keeping prices lower, approximately 20p a litre for diesel, but consequently most of them had run out and those that hadn’t had long queues.

Our fridge and cooker are powered by LPG, liquid petroleum gas and we always keep a look out for stations that provide gas. The big problem when we first came to France was finding a petrol station with LPG. There didn’t seem to be any until eventually, we realised that in France it’s called GPL! Duh!

Swimming

Over the years we have made a note of our favourite places to stop. A typical camping spot we prefer will have a swimming lake and a parking place for camping cars, (that’s what they call motorhomes in France) and at this time of the year they usually won’t be too busy.

The locals usually arrive around 12 noon with picnic baskets for lunch and few might have a pre lunch swim. I’ve noticed that this year the water levels in many lakes have been low due to the hot summer and in one particular lake we visited the water was only a couple of feet deep.

At another lake we watched a couple of fishermen dip their rods in the water and wait patiently for the fish to bite. We read our books, competed against each other to finish that day’s sudoku and then it’s time for a dip.

Later on we need to find somewhere to stop for the night. Usually, we will stay by the lake or if we are trying to make our way to somewhere in particular, we might get a few miles under our belt before stopping again.

The sun going down after a day by a plan d’eau

Evening

When evening comes we will have sorted out a place to stay the night. I usually get out our little gas barbecue and we will cook some sausages, burgers and maybe a steak to have with our salad. A glass of red wine is always good to wash the food down with and after clearing up I’ll go back to what I’ve written earlier and develop it a little and tidy it up.

I happened to notice something on the internet this week about Ian Fleming and the way he used to work at his holiday home in Jamaica. He was up at 7:30, had breakfast and then at 10am he began writing. He aimed for 1500 words before going for a swim at about 12:15. Later in the day at about 5pm he would write some more, put the pages in a folder and it was time for a drink. Perhaps that is what I need to do, plan my day like Ian Fleming’s day. Then again, I think I prefer things my way!

This year one of our stops was at La Meilleraie-Tillay. It’s a place we have stopped at before and one of the great things about it is that there is a toilet block with hot water. Sounds pretty normal doesn’t it but believe me, when you have not washed with hot water for a week, having a wash and shave in hot water is wonderful.

In the park next to the motorhome aire, a circus had set up, the Zanatteli circus and one night as we sat outside in the twilight we got chatting to Rico, the circus clown. He told us that he was the latest in six generations of his family that were circus people. After that first meeting Rico came to see us every night and told us stories of the circus. Despite a huge array of vehicles and equipment, there were only five people in the circus; him, his wife, his two sons and a daughter. The two sons were jugglers and acrobats. The daughter did some acrobatics too. Rico was the clown and his wife ran the box office, gave out tickets, sold refreshments in the intervals and also acted as a scene arranger. We attended their first afternoon performance before moving on to pastures new.

We usually relax in the evenings with a book but a problem this year with our leisure battery meant that our lights faded very early. If I’ve got a good internet signal I’ll transfer this week’s blog to wordpress then access it on my iPad and refine it a little more before passing it to my proofreader Liz for a final check up. Then I’ll add the graphics, pictures and videos and everything is ready for my publishing deadline of 10am on Saturday.

The next problem is what shall I write about next week?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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

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

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

8 Random Films: Can you Guess the Connection?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve done a few of these posts where I connect one film to another through either the actors or directors or other random things. This week I’m going to talk about two groups of four films and see if you the reader can guess what links them together. I’m hoping this might be a bit of a challenge, even for the most ardent film fans but anyway, here we go.

Top Hat

Top Hat was a film produced in 1935 and starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It is one the great song and dance musicals of all time. The premise of the film is just Astaire following the girl of his dreams, Ginger Rogers, across Europe but the story is just background to the wonderful songs of Irving Berlin. Two stand out favourites are Cheek to Cheek and Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. The film was directed by Mike Sandrich who also directed 5 of Rogers’ and Astaire’s films.

Together Astaire and Rogers made 5 films together but the most successful was Top Hat.

Red River

One of my favourite westerns, Red River stars John Wayne and Montgomery Clift who have to drive a shed load of cattle from Texas to Missouri. There’s a great moment when Wayne says to Clift ‘Take ‘em to Missouri Matt!’ and the cattle drive begins. The film was produced and directed by Howard Hawks way back in 1948. Taking a quick look on Wikipedia, it was interesting to find that there were various versions of the film but the original theatrical cut was reassembled by Janus films in 2014 for the DVD release.

Singin’ In the Rain

This is another film classic, perhaps even the ultimate Hollywood musical. Released in 1952 it is set in the 1920s and stars Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. The film has some hugely famous scenes, like that unforgettable opening number where Gene Kelly splashes through puddles and sings the title song. It’s also got a super fun storyline about the transition from silent films to “talkies”. The film was directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donan.

The Shining

This was a film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the book by Stephen King. King apparently hated the film which is why he went on to produce another version years later. The film stars Jack Nicholson who gives an eerie performance as author Jack Torrance. The plot revolves around the Overlook Hotel which closes during the winter as the location becomes inaccessible due to heavy winter weather. Jack and family are chosen as caretakers to look after the hotel until it reopens in the spring. Throw in a child who ‘shines’, that is to say able to communicate with the spirit world and an evil spirit who apparently takes over Nicholson’s character and you have a pretty terrifying film.

The film was actually shot in the UK at Elstree studios although a second unit did some exterior shots in the USA. At Elstree huge sets were built to represent the interior and exterior of the hotel.

A famous scene involves Jack chopping through a door to reach his wife played by Shelley Duvall. The scene was originally shot with a fake door but Nicholson who was a former firefighter in the national guard chopped through it too quickly and so a thick solid door had to be used.

Kubrick demanded numerous takes of many scenes and Shelley Duvall in particular argued with Kubrick about retakes, dialogue and her acting style.

Ok that’s the first of four films I want to talk about. Any idea of the connection? Let me carry on with a second group of four films and the connection might finally become clear.

The Last Picture Show

Another modern classic. This film was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and is set in a small town in northern Texas in the early 1950s. The film has an ensemble cast but the two main characters are Sonny and Duane played by Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges. The two are teenagers and old friends and various things happen to them. They fall out over a girl called Jacy played by Cybill Shepherd. Ben Johnson plays ‘Sam the Lion’ who owns the bar and cinema in the town. Sam has a mentally disabled son who Sonny has befriended. Various things happen to the pair but towards the end of the film Duane enlists in the army and is due to leave town so the pair decide to visit the town cinema for the very last picture show as the cinema is about to close after Sam’s sudden death.

Crimes and Misdemeanours

This is one of Woody Allen’s darker films. There are many interlocking stories but the central theme involves Judah Rosenthal played by Martin Landau who has an affair with a woman played by Anjelica Huston. The woman -Dolores- is threatening to confront Judah’s wife and Judah, desperate to save his marriage isn’t sure what to do. He asks his brother, a gangster and he recommends violence and even murder. Other stories include a rabbi facing blindness and on a lighter level, Woody plays a documentary film maker who falls for a woman played by Mia Farrow. She in turn is romanced by Alan Alda, playing a TV producer, who Woody’s character despises. It’s one of my favourites of Woody’s films but don’t expect too many laughs.

The Green Mile

Like The Shining, this is another film based on a book by Stephen King. Tom Hanks plays the head of a death row section of an American penitentiary. One of the inmates is John Coffey, a huge black man who appears to have healing powers. He cures Tom Hanks’ bladder infection but the mood in death row is not good after sadistic Percy Wetmore joins the team and deliberately sabotages the execution of another inmate causing the prisoner to die in terrible agony. The warden’s wife is terminally ill and Hanks and his team wonder if John Coffey could cure her.

Twister

Twister is a disaster film made in 1996 which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers. They and their team are trying to get first hand information about tornados and cyclones. The two are separated and are about to divorce but together they are in competition with another group of storm chasers. The special effects are good and I’ve always found it to be a hugely entertaining film.

Ok. That’s my final four films. Are you any the wiser? Do you have the connection yet?

Here’s the answer, the first four films were all featured in the second four films.

In The Last Picture Show the town’s small cinema is about to close down and Duane and Sonny pay a visit to see Red River.

In Crimes and Misdemeanours, Woody Allen’s character Cliff Stern invites Helley Reed played by Mia Farrow to watch Singing in The Rain on his editing machine while they eat a take away curry.

In The Green Mile, the story is told in flashback and Tom Hank’s character Paul, who was cured of the bladder infection is now 108 years old. He watches the film Top Hat and tells the story of John Coffey to his friend Elaine.

In Twister, the team of storm chasers relax and stop at a garage area. By the garage is a drive in theatre and the team enjoy snacks and coffee while the picture is playing. A storm begins to approach and strong winds quickly develop. What film was playing? Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The theatre is destroyed just as Jack is chopping through the door in The Shining’s most famous scene.

They were my film connections for this week. Hope you enjoyed reading and tune in again next Saturday for another post.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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McLaren, Big Ron and Lando

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I do find it really strange that the F1 season should still be going on in December. Still, the F1 season these days is a long one. It starts off in March and winds its way around the world until it ends up in Abu Dhabi at what is essentially a twisty turny mickey mouse sort of track in the middle east.

The first full season of Formula One that I personally followed was in 1970 and so 2025 was the 55th season that I have been a motor sport fan. Back in 1970 the final race of the season was in Mexico which was round 13 on the calendar. The eventual world champion that year was Jochen Rindt who was sadly killed during practice for round 10, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. It was thought that a brake shaft failed on the car sending Rindt’s Lotus into the barriers. The car hit a solid stanchion holding up the crash barrier and Rindt, who had not fully fastened the crotch straps on his seat harness, slid down into the cockpit in the crash and suffered a fatal neck injury.

Jochen Rindt (Picture via creative commons)

This year the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi was the 24th round of the championship which has made it a heck of a long season. Back in 1970 I was a major motor sporting fan, subscribing to various magazines and writing to my favourite drivers asking for pictures and autographs. These days I still follow the sport but I’m not quite as enthusiastic as I once was. I don’t subscribe to the Sky F1 channel and I’m content to watch the race highlights on channel Four.

Last Sunday this meant that I had to put down my phone and iPad after the race started about 1pm UK time so I could watch the later Channel Four broadcast without knowing the outcome. Lando Norris came home third which was enough to secure him the world championship by 2 points. Strangely, I actually found myself almost wanting to root for Max Verstappen. In the past I have not considered him to be a particularly likeable character but recently he seems to have matured quite a lot. The commentators on Channel four made great play about how Max has recently made up a deficit of over a hundred points to become a contender, along with Lando and Oscar Piastri, for the ultimate title in motorsport. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Lando turned out to be the champion but I always find myself wanting the underdog to win and this year, Max was the outsider who just could have done it. All it needed was a bad pit stop for Lando or maybe a puncture or something to drop him outside of the top three and Max would have won a really incredible victory. As it was, he won the race but Lando was able to secure the championship. It was good to see Max magnanimously congratulate the new holder of the crown and I’m gradually starting to find four times champion Max much more likeable.

picture courtesy monsterenergy.com

After the race various pundits gave their opinion of how Lando did it but there was one aspect of his win that was never mentioned and which I personally think was the key to his victory and that was loyalty. Lando joined McLaren in 2019 when the team were just middle of the grid runners hoping to move up towards the front. Lando stuck with them unlike his team mate at the time, Carlos Sainz who I bet was probably wishing he had stayed put instead of moving to Ferrari and later getting dropped in favour of Lewis Hamilton. Lewis of course is probably wishing that he had stayed put at Mercedes as this season has been his worst in F1. It turns out that Sainz has actually had a better season at Williams than Lewis has had at Ferrari.

Fernando Alonso. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Another driver who may be looking at McLaren wishfully is another of their former drivers Fernando Alonso. Alonso is one of the all time greats of the sport, still soldiering on and looking for success in his twilight years. He is the winner of two world championships but he has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ron Dennis, the former boss of McLaren, enticed Alonso over to McLaren in 2007. Alonso wanted to be the undisputed number one driver there but his new team mate Lewis Hamilton had other plans. Alonso left but came back again with the promise of Honda engines in 2015. Sadly, Honda arrived late into the hybrid F1 era and their engines lacked development so after enduring a torrid time round the back end of the grid, Alonso moved on as did the great Ron Dennis who sold his shares in McLaren and retired from the sport. Ron had previously merged his old team Project 4 Racing with McLaren back in 1980 which is why all the cars were designated McLaren MP/4’s. Dennis took Bruce McLaren’s old team and made it one of the most successful in the sport taking Niki Lauda, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton to multiple world championships.

By Matthew Lamb – FoS20162016_0626_105537AA, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49763509

In 2007 the ‘spygate’ scandal emerged in which a former McLaren employee, Nigel Stepney, then working for Ferrari, decided to send his former colleague at McLaren, Mike Coughlan, copies of the latest technical designs at Ferrari. The FIA fined McLaren 100 million dollars for having had private information about a rival team although according to Wikipedia, they only paid half that, 50 million dollars, still a huge amount of money. No evidence that Ferrari’s designs were used on the McLaren cars was ever found. In 2017 Ron sold all his shares in the McLaren Technology Group and McLaren Automotive and effectively retired from motorsport.

The current CEO of McLaren is Zak Brown and it is he who has led McLaren back to the winners circle, winning back to back Constructors’ Championships in 2024 and 2025 and of course winning the 2025 Driver’s World Championship with Lando Norris.

In 2026 there is a big rule change coming to F1 so all the teams with their designers and engineers will be starting with a clean sheet of paper. Will McLaren still be on top? Well the Aston Martin team have paid a huge amount of money for the sport’s number 1 engineer and designer, Adrian Newey to build their new car so could Fernando Alonso at the very end of his career find himself back in the winners circle? Well, we won’t have long to wait. The first Grand Prix of 2026 opens up for practice on March 6th 2026 in Melbourne Australia. Will I be tuning in? Well I wouldn’t want to miss my 56th season, would I?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

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

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

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

January, Don’t You Just Hate It?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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

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

January 1970

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

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

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

January 1649

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

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

January 1965

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

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

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

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

January 2003

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

January 1986

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

January 2025

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

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

January, don’t you just hate it?

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Writing, Recording and The Next Blog Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Well, I’ve had the Big 500, that was last week so time to move on and get on with Blog #501. Things are the same for every content creator whether it’s me and my blog or Martin Scorsese and his next film. One project finishes and we move on to the next one. It’s great to put together a creative piece of work but I’ve always felt a little sadness leaving a completed blog or video behind and moving on to the next one. In fact, I wonder if it’s a feeling experienced by all creative people? In the movie The Bad and The Beautiful, Kirk Douglas plays a film producer who goes into a deep depression every time a project is finished. Was the author or the director putting his own experiences into the film?

The other day I was scanning through my diary from 2021 and I noticed in one entry I was feeling pretty pleased with myself because I had put together not one but three separate blog posts. I must have been feeling pretty creative that week because these days I often seem to be struggling for ideas.

Lately I’ve done some beta testing work for the online editing website Animoto. I put together two short video projects for them and reviewed a new facility in their software and in exchange they sent me an Amazon gift voucher. Now it just so happens that my subscription with Animoto has expired and I tried to barter the gift voucher for a discount subscription but despite my charm, which I’ve always thought was one of my great assets, they declined. Pity really because I rather like Animoto.

During my separation from them I’ve tried other online editing sites but I’ve not been totally happy so I suppose that soon I’ll just have to cough up the appropriate fees and re-join Animoto.

In the meantime I’ve been wondering what to do with my voucher. Eventually I decided it might be an idea to invest in a good microphone so I can improve the voiceovers I put together for my YouTube videos as well as my podcasts. That seems like a good excuse as any to publish a link one of my videos with an extensive voiceover. The video below has a narration based on a number of my blog posts as well as text from my book. the voiceover isn’t actually bad but a new recording might make it sound a bit more professional.

I sent off for my selected microphone and the one I chose came in a set with a telescopic arm, just like the ones you see in recording studios. Later I thought I might as well have bought the usual one with a little tripod as I don’t really have the room for the arm. I don’t have a room, a special room for writing and recording but then I don’t think a lot of writers do.

My workspace: Laptop, cup of tea, notebook and the TV remote not too far away

Recently I decided to take a short demo screenplay I had written ages ago and rewrite it as a short story. I did so and feeling fairly pleased with it decided to send it to an online magazine that was looking for just such a story. I was actually going to use the story as a blog post but I noticed in the small print that the magazine didn’t want work that had been printed elsewhere. Well, if I recorded the story as a podcast then really it wouldn’t have been printed elsewhere, would it? That was my cue to set up my new microphone and start recording. The sound quality was so much better than my previous recordings.

Not long ago I read Agatha Christie’s autobiography and in it she mentions that many people ask her where her famous novels were written. The fact is, they were written any place that was handy at the time. She didn’t have a special writing place and I wonder if writers, or indeed any writer has a particular writing place? I like to write in the dining room but then I also like to write in the lounge with the TV on in the background but the sound on mute. Sometimes I’ll write in bed or jot down ideas at my desk at work.

The interior of Dylan Thomas’ writing shed.

Dylan Thomas famously had a writing shed in the garden of his ‘house on stilts’ in Laugharne. I daresay he didn’t write everything he ever wrote in there but of course he did write there when he was at home. I visited the house once many years ago. I was really impressed with it. The national trust or some such organisation had rescued the building, saved it from sliding into the sea and reopened it as a museum. I arrived late in the day, just before they were closing up so I returned the following day for another look. The staff didn’t charge me as they remembered me having to leave prematurely and so I bought various items from their museum shop.

One place I’d like to visit would be Charles Dickens’ home; Gad’s Hill Place in Kent. Dickens spent the last 15 years of his life in the house and it was one he had seen and fallen in love with as a child when he and his father took long walks together. It must have seemed quite an achievement for him to buy the house, even in a life filled with great achievements. Dickens died in the house on June 9th, 1870 aged 58. What would Dickens make of a present-day writer’s life I wonder? Writing blogs to promote his work, tweeting Tweets, and making Facebook posts. I’m not sure he would have been impressed.

My minor problems of wondering what to write pale into insignificance when I watch the terrible news from the Ukraine. A few weeks ago, the Ukrainians had similar problems to us here in the UK. Things like getting to work on time; would the bus be late? Picking the kids up from school. What to have for tea. Now they wonder if their homes will be destroyed by bombs. Will their loved ones be safe? Only the other day I watched a newscast where a distraught woman went to a makeshift hospital with her young daughter who had been hurt in the Russian attack. Doctors fought to save her and the cameraman followed their efforts. One man, a doctor turned and began to rage at the camera. I guessed he was complaining to the cameraman for intruding but when his words were translated, he was calling for the camera man to take the video and show it to Mr Putin: let him see what he has done raged the doctor. Sadly, the young girl died.

So, here we go. My laptop has been cranked up. The Saint is playing on the TV with the sound muted. A large cup of tea is ready to be sipped. I pause for a moment to nibble on some toast and marmalade then press the button for NEW BLANK DOCUMENT and I am ready to write.

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From Blog Post to Video

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve had my YouTube channel for quite a while now but unlike this, my WordPress blogging page, I’ve always found it rather hard to create regular video output. Don’t get me wrong, I like making videos, I really do although the best part of making a video, at least for me, is the editing. With virtually every one of my videos there are multiple versions to be found in the video folder on my laptop. Yes, videos are just something I cannot leave alone. Every time I rewatch one I start to think didn’t I have a better clip for that scene? Why have I put that scene before this one? Wouldn’t it work better if I swapped them round? Why did I say that in the narration? I should have said this! And so that’s when I start tinkering and re-editing.

A few years ago I thought about making my whole blog into a YouTube Vlog. Of course, that would involve shooting and editing and then adding in the music and perhaps sound effects. For someone like me who has taken laziness to new heights, I’m not sure that would be possible, at least not for a weekly Vlog.

When I’m stuck for video content I usually find myself looking back at my older blog posts and wondering what would work as a video. One regular blog I’ve managed to convert to video are my Book Bag blogs. It’s pretty easy to make them into a video. I sit myself in front of the camera, glance through my notes and then wax lyrical for the camera about the various books I’ve been reading.

The first Book Bag Vlog was difficult though. I made it on holiday in Lanzarote. I hadn’t brought my tripod along but I picked up an adjustable clamp in the market place, actually a gadget for taking selfies that worked pretty well once I had got things lined up. Back then I was using a small Panasonic video camera which looked a little bit like a mobile phone. Today I have a Canon GX7 with a viewing screen that can be flipped over so if I’m shooting myself I can easily frame the shot. With the Panasonic, it wasn’t so easy. The filming for that first Book Bag Vlog went something like this:

Take 1. OK, went pretty well, I blathered on a bit and forgot the author of one book so time for take 2.

Take 2. OK but I’m holding the books slightly out of camera shot.

Take 3. I lift the books higher but gradually as the take goes on the books are getting lower and dropping out of shot. Cut, I shout, getting my director’s hat on.

Take 4. I’ve reframed and lowered the camera a little. I’ve actually cropped off the top of my head but the books are centre stage. I fluffed one of my lines calling Noel Coward an historical figure instead of a theatrical one but recovered that one OK with a little laugh at myself. I also say the Germans were ‘disappointed’ with Hitler at the end of World War Two when discussing a book about Albert Speer, one of Hitler’s ministers. Bit of a understatement there, I meant to say shocked or devastated, anyway, time for take 5.

Take 5. Start to stumble a little here, perhaps I need cue cards. Dorothy Parker wrote what for New York Magazines? Check the blurb on the back of her book again and time for take 6.

Take 6. Looked pretty good. Wait a minute, did I really say ‘my holiday blook blag‘? Time for take 7.

Take 7. Radical re think needed here I think so I’ve smartened myself up a little, put on my favourite holiday shirt and re positioned the camera and my clamp gadget. Wish I’d brought my tripod along! Anyway here we go. Action: ‘Hi I’m Steve Higgins and I’m here in . . er . . ‘ CUT! It’s Lanzarote!

Take 8. Slight camera adjustment as take 7 wasn’t particularly well framed. Forgot to mention who Albert Speer actually was. Will people know who he was? Well, if they are interested in history and World War Two yes, otherwise no . .

Take 9. ‘Bleak House by David Copperfield’? What is this guy talking about? Cut!

Take 10. Not too bad, faltered a few times over some words, mumbled a little perhaps but generally not bad. Sure I can do better though; still a little slow. Needs more pace.

Take 11: Whoa, slow down boy! I said pace not rabbit on and on without taking a breath!

Take 12: Not happening! Time for a swim!

The book bag posts are pretty easy to make, it’s just me in front of a camera chatting away. As long as I manage to chat without mumbling, getting words wrong, forgetting the name of the book author and so on, I usually end up with a reasonable result. I somehow don’t think I have a career as a TV presenter coming anytime soon. Here’s a video I made with a whole lot of out takes, How not to Not to Make a Promo Video.

As I said earlier, I’ve always found it hard to leave a video alone. After all, no work of art is ever finished, only abandoned, as someone once said. A few years ago I made a video about the Graves and Cemeteries of Two World Wars.  It was shot in Northern France and for the narration I used in part, the text from one of my blogs. I talked about time and how time seems to have slowed at those sacred places where once so many people fought and died and how it must have seemed, in the past, in the heat of the battle, that time flowed so quickly.

The big problem with that video, and I only seemed to realise it much later, when the video had accrued a sizeable number of viewings was that the opening sequence was not really in keeping with the tone of the film as a whole. I had started out with an idea that came to me while shooting at a French municipal aire, a quiet motorhome stopping place. I’d started off a sequence with a really impressive motorhome and then panned over to our, much smaller vehicle implying initially, that the first vehicle was ours, before showing the smaller one. It might probably have worked for a general motorhoming video but the humour was out of place for something about the sad subject of war.

For the re-edit, I removed that sequence, tidied up various fades and added some stock photos from the war years. To promote it I added it to various video festivals and at one, the Think Shorts festival, they decided to publish my video on their platform. I even got a special badge which I proudly added to the video icon.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago about the challenges of making an audio recording into a video, which I did for a radio interview in which I had to participate by phone because of Covid 19. I started by thinking, foolishly, that I could mime to the audio recordings to create a fully lip synced video. That didn’t work out at all so I made a video with still photos and screen grabs with a few shots of me talking into a phone although making sure my mouth wasn’t visible when I spoke. I think I got away with it.

I did make a video called A Letter to my Younger Self, the text of which came straight from a similarly titled blog post. The blog post was pretty good, at least I thought so. The video lacked something in the voiceover department as my monologue seemed a little less than dynamic. Another post derived straight from a blog post was 4 Simple Secrets of Self-Publishing which is not a bad little film which reminds the self published author that if anything needs doing in regards to his or her book; promotion, press releases, advertising and so on, the author is on his or her own. Being a self published author is a one person operation.

Over at the busy end of my YouTube page there is a video called Trucking: 1980’s Style. It was shot on my old VHS compact camera and I followed my old friend Brian for a weekend in the late 80’s delivering goods in his wagon. It was a tough old job, lugging great trolleys and boxes of Sharwood’s curry sauces about the country. Stopping in Truckstops, sleeping in the cab and finding his way about with the help of his CB radio. It is currently my most watched video with over 140,000 views at the time of writing. Lots of trucking enthusiasts follow me on YouTube expecting more of the same and what they think when they find a new poetry video in their notifications, I don’t know. I did think of making a follow up video with Brian, something on the lines of Trucking; 40 Years Later. Brian was still a truck driver until a few months ago but unfortunately for me and the YouTube world, he has just retired.

Last year Liz and I drove our motorhome up to Scotland for a few days visiting the Isle of Skye and various other places. I should perhaps have asked proofreader Liz to check the resulting video film because right at the end I announced that the music in the film was called Soul Grove instead of Soul Groove. I rectified that and some other blemishes which I won’t go into in a re-edit which I uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo has some great little advantages over YouTube, the main one for me is that if you choose to edit a video you can just replace the new version with your old one, without losing any of your viewer count. One disadvantage though is with a free Vimeo account, there are restrictions on how much content you can upload per week, which is why I had to make the resulting video into two separate parts.

Here are two final videos, both inspired by blog posts. The first is yet another re-edit. Manchester 1977-2017 is a visit to my home town of Manchester where I look at the city as it was then in 2017 and how it was in 1977, the year in which Floating in Space, my self published book is set. A lot of the narration is taken from a blog post about the city, Manchester 41 Years On. I talk about the pubs I used to visit, the square where I used to eat my sandwiches on sunny weekday lunchtimes and how the city centre has changed.

I have quite a few poetry videos both on YouTube and Vimeo. Most of the ones on Vimeo are re-edits where I’ve tried to improve on the original, either with the visual content or my usual weak point, my narration. In one blog post The Secret of Writing Poetry, I tried to impart my ideas on writing to the reader showcasing a few example poems on the way. That in turn inspired the video version which is pretty much the same, me talking to camera and delving into the background of three particular poems. I did it all one one or two takes and perhaps I might have been better going for take three but at least I think I have managed to get my general idea over.

Which of your blog posts would you make into a video?

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