Once again as we have for the past ten or so years, Liz and I have escaped the dismal cold of January in the UK and flown over to sunny and warm Lanzarote, leaving behind the dark nights, the cold and the rain.
Noel Coward did a similar thing every winter and went off to the Caribbean or anywhere he fancied really. Perhaps the cold is just not for us writers. Certainly not for me at any rate. Anyway, its nice to think I have something at least in common with a great writer like Coward.
Our day started last Sunday with my alarm going off at the utterly inconceivable time of 5:30am. Well, there was a time when I used to have to get up even earlier, happily, not any more. A quick wash and shower, a much-needed cup of tea and soon our driver was knocking at the door.
A pleasant surprise awaited us at the airport. On previous trips we have had to endure the hell of passing through security, taking out all our numerous electronic devices and putting them in plastic trays to be X rayed. This year, thanks to new technology, we didn’t have to do that. No longer was I running about, beltless, hanging on to my trousers while trying to grab my various belongings from numerous trays and pack them again in my cabin bag. This year the experience was much more civilised.
On the aeroplane I settled down and opened up my book to read. I have, as usual, plenty of reading matter with me but the book I chose to read on the flight was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as it was a fairly slim volume and fitted easily into my shoulder bag. I chose this book as it is the basis for the film of the same name, one of my favourite films.
It came as a bit of a surprise then to find that the book was almost completely different to the film. Yes, there is a Best Marigold Hotel just like the film and it is about a bunch of retired British people who take up residence there but after that, the similarity ends.
It’s almost like watching one of those James Bond films where Ian Fleming’s original story has been evolved out of recognition. Take Moonraker for example. The book is about a German officer who has been hospitalised in WWII during the Battle of the Bulge. Some German troops had been dressed in captured allied uniforms to confuse the enemy and Drax was injured while in British uniform. When fully recovered Hugo Drax continues the deception. He builds up a great business empire but decides to take his revenge on Britain by building a rocket, the Moonraker, which he intends to drop on England. In the film Bond investigates the disappearance of a space shuttle only to find Hugo Drax wants to wipe out the earth population and replace it with a master race.
The problem with film is that it is a group project and various people have an input on the final script. Screen writer William Goldman wrote a wonderful book about his screen writing career called Adventures in the Skin Trade. He described a typical screenplay development something like this. I should point out that I’m going by memory only as my copy of his book is thousands of miles away.
Goldman writes a script and gets a director interested in the project. The director likes the idea but he thinks the ending is not right so the author produces a second draft. The director is happy and brings a big star on board. The star likes the screenplay but is not happy that his character is killed at the end. Goldman produces a third draft and the big star is happier but thinks this and that needs changing. Goldman rewrites and comes up with draft number 4. At this point the Big Star decides to sign up with another project and he is out. The director is not happy so he drops out too. Enter director number 2. He likes the screenplay but thinks a few changes are required. The writer comes up with draft number 5. Enter big star number 2. He likes the screenplay but wouldn’t it be better if his character got the girl instead of the other guy? New draft please!
Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be great if we could order a new draft of our lives. Could I rewrite the bit where I spent 17 years working for the bus company? What about the time when I wanted to be a newspaper reporter? Maybe I could have walked down to the Manchester Evening News and perhaps asked if there were any jobs going?
Another production, actually a TV series, is another example of how producers can change the characters from a book. Hamish Macbeth is actually completely different to the books on which the series was based which was a little of a surprise to me and most of the characters in the series are the invention of the TV writers and not M.C. Beaton who wrote the books. I’m not sure how happy I would be if someone made a TV show out of my book and then proceeded to change all the characters, still I did enjoy Hamish Macbeth as a TV show. It was an oddball quirky little drama which ran for only three seasons. Macbeth was played by Robert Carlyle and he is the village bobby in the small fictional village of Lochdubh. Macbeth is a laid-back relaxed character. He is not averse to poaching the odd salmon and he likes to apply the rule of law in his own way. He avoids promotion as all he wants is to remain in his beloved village. Back in 2022 Liz bought me a whole stack of the Macbeth books and they are all an enjoyable and easy read.
Anyway, getting back to the Marigold Hotel. I was rather unhappy with the book at first. It had originally been published under the title These Foolish Things and was written by novelist Deborah Moggach, but to cash in on the success of the film, new editions were published with the film’s title. As I began to get into the book, I actually began to like it. The central theme seemed to be the story of the lady played by Maggie Smith in the film although in the book another layer of her story has been added which the film ignores. She is mugged and goes to see her well off son for help only to find he has been involved in some dodgy deal and has left to escape the police. She refuses to go back home but her doctor recommends a place in India where she can rest and recuperate. In fact, the Marigold Hotel which he has recommended is a business venture in which he is also a partner.
Various other people decide to go and stay in the hotel too. Some correspond to the characters in the film and some do not. All in all, it was actually quite an enjoyable read and kept me entertained during our flight and for my first few days stretched out on my sun lounger enjoying the warm sunshine of the Canary Islands.
Come to think of it, I’ve changed my own narrative too, exchanging the cold of the UK for the warmth of the Canaries.
Now, what can I change next?
I first started posting in 2014 and that year I managed to get 2341 views which I was pretty pleased about. If I had also managed to sell 2341 copies of any of my books, I would have been even more pleased but hey, that’s another story.
Looking back I now wonder whether that guy was actually right. 649 blog posts, times my average word count per post: That comes to over 700,000 words. I could have written another book and to be fair, that was part of the idea behind 
This the third instalment of a post on the theme of transformations. The very first one (
This is not a science fiction story despite being penned by H G Wells. Our hero, Mr Polly, finds himself in a very dull job with a very dull wife and resolves to commit suicide. Anyway, events unfold and instead of committing suicide, Polly accidentally starts a fire which threatens the whole street and he then mounts a brave rescue of an old lady. Instead of dying, Mr Polly becomes a hero and when the insurance money comes in, he leaves his wife nicely settled with the insurance money, takes a little for himself and departs for pastures new. He sends some money to a post office in another village and gradually meanders in that direction, sleeping in fields and hedges, getting himself a tan. He works occasionally when he wants and sleeps when the mood takes him at other times.
A film version was made in 1949 starring John Mills as Mr Polly and Megs Jenkins as the landlady of the Inn where Polly finds happiness.
The Bay of Pigs was a great disaster for Kennedy. He inherited the invasion plans from the Eisenhower administration in which Vice President Nixon was a prime mover. Nixon felt that an invasion would boost his chances in the election contest against Kennedy but the CIA seemed to be relying on the assassination of Castro to kick off the invasion but that planned murder, for whatever reason, never happened.
Ten Days to Destiny by John Costello
This book was the sequel to another book about Bill Clinton. The first one dealt with Clinton’s early life and his election to the presidency; this one takes us through his first four years as president. The author takes us through the years of the Clinton White House and documents the issues like Troopergate; when the former Governor Clinton’s State Troopers revealed the comings and goings of Bill’s various mistresses, as well as the disaster of his healthcare reform work which he entrusted to his wife Hillary. The public clearly weren’t keen on Clinton’s ‘co-president’ – his wife, and their healthcare proposals were rejected by Congress. The mid term elections were another disaster for Clinton and the Democrats and the book goes on to show how Clinton turned the final two years of his first term presidency around and was able to win a second term.
Encore Provence by Peter Mayle
Many have speculated about his true sexuality but it’s clear that Larry enjoyed being labelled as camp rather than gay. The main relationship in his life was with his sister who became a mother figure to him when his adoptive mother died. The two lived next door to each other for many years in later life.
Once again, Liz and I are travelling across France in our little motorhome, looking for restaurants to eat at and lakes to swim in. The weather hasn’t been great but at least it hasn’t been cold, although a little less cloud and a little more sun would have been nice.
The two spacecraft are of course made by different companies but even so I thought that this particular issue was addressed during the Apollo program. If you have ever seen the movie Apollo 13 you will know that a small explosion on the service module meant that the crew had to move into the lunar excursion vehicle in order to conserve power and oxygen in the command module.
I’ve actually read this book quite a few times and it’s one of those that I mention when people ask me to describe Floating in Space. As much as I’m fond of Floating, this book is infinitely better. It’s a very simple story and probably one that has happened hundreds of times to hundreds of couples.
As usual on holiday I always come armed with a stash of books and this year is no exception. A few of the books are ones I have dug out of a box at home and are ones I haven’t read for a while. One of them was Toujours Provence, a sequel to the successful A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.
Once again Liz and I are on holiday in France and as usual I’ve filled up my book bag with books to read. My selection this year was a mix of new books and some books from my collection which I haven’t read for years. The one I’d like to focus on this week is Random Harvest by one of my favourite writers, 
The book tells the story in an entirely different way. It begins with a chance encounter on a train with Rainier and a young man who is looking for work. The two strike up a sort of friendship and Rainier invites the young man to work for him, He explains that he was in the war, was injured and woke up in a German hospital with loss of memory. He was repatriated through Switzerland but got his memory back after a fall and a collision with a taxi in Liverpool. The time between his earlier life and waking up in Liverpool is a blank. The young man becomes Rainier’s assistant and the two sometimes talk late into the night discussing what might have happened. Later in the book, Rainier is called to intervene at a dispute at the Melbury factory and his memory begins to return. He asks a local taxi driver about the hospital. The man asks does he mean the new or the old one? Rainier thinks the old one and goes on to describe it. ‘That doesn’t sound like either of them,’ answers the man but adds, ‘would you be meaning the asylum sir?’
Back in the 1970s my Saturday ritual involved getting the bus into town and scouring book and record shops for, yes, you’ve guessed it, books and records. One day back then I was flipping through the posters in one particular shop. The posters were the music stars of the 70s; Elton John, Mick Jagger, Suzi Quatro, David Bowie and so on but one was a picture of a really good looking guy with a fifties combed back hair style. In some pictures he was dressed like a cowboy and in others in a red jacket and denim jeans. The guy behind the counter must have seen me wondering who the guy was and he told me he was a film star called James Dean. He handed me a paperback book about the actor and I took it home and read it and very soon I was trying to find out everything I could about him.
The paperback book I bought that day in the record shop in the 1970’s was probably James Dean: A Short Life by Venable Herndon. It wasn’t a great book but an interesting introduction to Dean and who he was. It detailed his struggle for acting roles, TV work in New York, his apartment at 19 West Sixty-Eighth Street, his three films, his doomed affair with Pier Angeli and of course his death.
Another book I picked up only recently was another picture album James Dean: Portrait of Cool edited by Leith Adams and Keith Burns. It’s an album of photographs found in the Warner Bros archive and some have not been published before. Included are all sorts of documents such as casting sheets, production notes and messages. Dean’s address is listed as 3908 West Olive Avenue which I think might have been a place he shared with Dick Davalos who played his brother in East of Eden. During Rebel Without a Cause, Dean was listed as living at 1541 Sunset Plaza Drive.
Every Thursday Liz and I visit our local pub for our weekly quiz night. It’s not a particularly tough quiz and we’ve even won it on the odd occasion but one thing we do in advance is check the internet to see if any celebrities have died as Mike, our pub quizmaster, tends to throw in a question or two about recently deceased celebs. One name that popped up on Google was that of OJ Simpson who passed away recently from cancer. I tend to watch the TV news most days so either I missed the story about OJ or perhaps these days his name isn’t as newsworthy as it once was. Simpson was 76 years old and a former US sports star, actor and allegedly a murderer.
OJ Simpson: Made in America is an outstanding documentary, released in 2016. It runs for over five hours and won an Oscar for best documentary. Episode one details Simpson’s incredible sporting career and also showed how it was important for him to be seen just as OJ rather than OJ the black athlete. He was apparently a friendly and amiable man who made many friends in the sporting world and kept himself well away from controversy and was never involved in the civil rights movement in America unlike sporting celebrities like Mohammed Ali. Later episodes show how he made a life after sport by becoming a TV sports pundit and by courting wealthy friends in Los Angeles to advise on his investments. In particular he made TV advertisements for Hertz car rentals which were highly popular and did well not only for Hertz but raised Simpson’s profile in the USA even higher.
This fascinating book is a detailed look at the 1995 murder trial of former US football player OJ Simpson. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. The pair were murdered outside Nicole’s house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles and bloody footprints were found leading away from the scene. Simpson’s car had blood traces with matches to both Nicole’s and Goldman’s blood. There was even a low-speed police pursuit of Simpson that was broadcast live on TV bringing in a reported 95 million viewers.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 