Tag Archives: observation

The funny things kids say!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve not been lucky enough to have kids but many years ago I remember watching TV with my girlfriend’s daughter, Wendy. I can’t remember the film we were watching but the star was Christopher Reeve, most famous perhaps for playing the part of Superman. Wendy was wondering why he wasn’t ducking into a phone booth to change into Superman and streaking up into the air at the drop of a hat. Well, I thought, it’s time for a serious talk with Wendy about the movie world.

I explained, pretty thoughtfully I thought, about how movies were made, about cameras, shooting, screenplays and actors. Wendy seemed to take it all in but after a while she looked at me, looked back at Christopher Reeve and asked;

“Right, so he’s lost his powers then?”

Here’s another one. One day Tania, Liz’s daughter was asking for a drink of juice. She was very young at the time, just learning to talk so Liz filled her cup with juice and handed Tania the drink. She was expecting a word of thanks but when it wasn’t forthcoming Liz held onto the cup. Tania tugged harder, Liz waited for a thank you. Eventually she said; “Tania, what’s the magic word?”

Tania thought for a moment and replied “Abra cadabra!”

Kids. What funny things have your kids said?

 

The Day the Cat War Started.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Theday the car war started

Neighbours! Well, there’s a subject! Some years ago I moved into a place called Newton le-Willows. A nice enough friendly place, I thought, but it was a black cat that caused the end of our neighbourhood harmony.

Okay, here’s how it started; My neighbour was a guy called Tony and he and his wife were going on holiday and he asked me to look after his cat Blackie. It needed to be fed once a day, in the morning, for a week. OK, not a big deal and it put me right where I wanted to be with my neighbour: him owing me a big favour so ‘no problem’ I told him.

Day1

I’m up and showered and all ready for work and so I nip into next door’s and sort out the cat food. Tony has shown me where it’s all kept, which bowl to use and so on. I sort it all out, set it down on the mat and who is there waiting and purring? Not one but two cats. I thought there was only supposed to be one so do I do two bowls? No, he specified the cat food and showed me the bowl (the one bowl) so OK it’s sharing time for the cats and I’m off to work.

I jump in my van and I’m off and as I drive away there are the cats giving me a little catty wave from the kitchen window. Happy days.

Day 2

I mention sort of randomly as I’m off to work that there were two cats in next door’s house and my wife (now my former wife) says, ‘What!’ in a big sort of screamy, scary way and I’m thinking, ‘here we go, what have I done?’ The thing is there is only one cat living next door so I’m tasked to throw out the intruder cat and just to feed the main cat. So, in I goes and I don’t really know which is the proper cat and which is the cheeky intruder cat. Neither of them seemed to respond to the name ‘Blackie’ so sod it I thought. Cat food sorted -I’m off.

Once again as I drive off there are the two cats happily washing themselves in the kitchen window and as I passed by a revolutionary thought occurred to me. One of the cats was actually a black cat so it could be (sound of penny dropping) that he was Blackie and the other cat, the ginger cat was the cat interloper.

Day 3

Feeling a little bit like Sherlock Holmes and armed with this new deduction about ‘Blackie’ I popped into next door and chucked out ‘Ginger’, sorted out the cat food and then left for work. Was I dreaming or did I really see the two cats once again at the kitchen window? Did Ginger have a sort of ‘you’ll have to do better than that’ look on his face? Surely not!

Day 4

According to my (former) wife it was a major criminal offence to have a strange cat enter your neighbours’ house and scoff half the cat food, so once again I chucked out the ginger cat. I did think about locking the cat flap but feeling this could have repercussions in case Blackie wanted to exit the property I left it open. Driving off as usual I spied the two cats smiling happily from the kitchen window engaged in their morning feline ritual of washing themselves, only this time they seemed to have been joined by a third cat! Christ, I thought, hope the neighbours get back soon before a cat colony starts up in their house!

Day 8

Our neighbours returned from their break in foreign climes. I wasn’t sure about mentioning the intruding cat but what the heck; I told them anyway and they said not to bother, ‘that cat comes in all the time anyway. We’re sure its owners don’t feed it properly.’

Day 9

I was outside washing my van and had a chat with my neighbour Elaine, the lady who ran our neighbourhood watch group. I told her about the cat caper thinking it was a pretty funny story but she seemed rather shocked by it all. Well, humour wasn’t one of her strong points I thought as she marched off to see Stella, another neighbour from further up the avenue who I have to admit I wasn’t too fond off. As the afternoon wore on I noticed Stella storm past me and knock on next door’s and have something of a minor row with the occupants. She stormed off fuming and gave me a pretty black look when I offered a cheery “afternoon!”

Day 9, later.

Tony gave me something of a black look too and didn’t respond to my friendly wave. I did wonder if this was vaguely connected to the cat saga. No, surely not I thought. Later, Tony’s wife came round and told me through a veil of tears that Stella had knocked on their door and accused her and Tony of being ‘A pair of f**king catnappers!‘ It turned out that Stella owned the ginger cat and Tony’s wife wanted to know why I had even mentioned it to Stella. Well, I don’t even really know Stella I said, the only person I mentioned it to was Elaine. “What!’ fumed Tony’s wife. (Wish I could remember her name!) The next thing you know she storms across the road, bangs on the door and appears to be having it out with Elaine. I couldn’t hear what was said but there was a lot of finger pointing, some at my house, some at Blackie wandering innocently along the avenue, some at her house and some, in fact quite a lot now I think of it, at Stella’s house.

Day 10

A chance encounter at Tesco’s with Elaine. I’m scooting through the store, not really looking where I’m going as shopping is not high on my list of favourite activities and as I scoot along I’m throwing bread and milk and all sorts of stuff in my trolley when who should I bump into but Elaine.

“It wasn’t my fu**ing fault you know!” she said.

“That’s OK,” I told her, “I never look where I’m going with a shopping trolley!”

“I meant about the cat!” Elaine gave me a mean look and was gone, never to speak to me again.

Good job I didn’t mention that the third cat I saw in next door’s was hers!

If you liked this post why not check out my book ‘Floating In Space’? Click the links at the top of the page for more information, or click the picture below to go to my amazon page.

 

Sex and The City -What was your favourite season?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I do love Sex and the City. It’s one of my favourite shows and I’ve got the whole lot on DVD so when I come home after a late shift and fancy a glass of something and a DVD, Sex and the City invariably gets slipped onto the DVD player.

51WNVUght3LI have my favourites like everyone, particularly Mister Big, the coolest guy ever and my personal hero but I like all the characters, especially Carrie. What a life; living in New York City and working as a journalist and not in a nine to five way either; working from home writing about her friends and her life. Why can’t I get a job like that?

Recently I worked my way through the whole of season four, the very best season. Mr Big was involved with a movie superstar, Carrie had got back with Aiden whom I have probably more in common with than the super cool Mr Big. There was the whole Trey and Bunny saga involving Charlotte which was so good. Personally I thought Trey was great for Charlotte. He was quirky and interesting, if only they could have worked out their problems.

What else was there? Miranda’s Mum died; what a great episode, and later Steve, her ex gets testicular cancer so she sleeps with him to cheer him up and gets pregnant. Anyway, loads of good episodes but I loved it when Big and Aiden met and Big came down to Aiden’s country cabin for a chat with Carrie. Aiden, naturally I thought, was not happy so eventually he and Big have a fight and later become friends, of a sort.

Finally, Carrie splits with Aiden in a really bitter sweet episode and Mr Big moves to Napa in California. Like Charlotte and Trey I wished Aiden and Carrie could have worked things out. In a lot of ways they were more suited than Carrie and Mister Big. Anyway, you can see how much involvement I have tied up in this show. I really felt that in season four the show came of age. Serious relationships, serious problems, some fabulous characters, some humour and some moving stuff especially right at the very end when Carrie is too late to meet up with Mister Big. He has gone to California but left behind his Moon River album for Carrie. Great stuff.

Pity about those Sex and the City movies! Sometimes you just have to step away, and I guess that’s the same even for TV production companies! You made a great TV show but now it’s over! Step away!

So,what was your favourite season?

 

paperback writer!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s been a long wait but you can finally buy the Floating In Space paperback version from Amazon! Just click on the picture below to take you to literary heaven! (OK, that’s a little over the top but, what the heck?)

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Spiders, Spider-man, and why I’ll always admire James Bond

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-85Recently, one of my friends put this on her Facebook status; ‘why are spiders so big?’ Indeed, why are they so big and why did the Almighty allow them to get so big? My friend had encountered a large spider in her home and was prevailing on her husband to remove it. Various comments followed on Facebook, some telling her to grow up and some hoping that the offending creature be put to death immediately if not sooner. In fact my friend’s husband commented later that the offending spider was really a plastic toy one, not that I believe him because the simple truth is that I, a grown man, really hate spiders.

I’ve always rather liked Spiderman though; in fact Spiderman is my very favourite super hero, partly because he’s so different from other super heroes. He’s young, nerdy, full of teenage angst (whatever that is) and as well as being a superhero he has to deal with a lot of stuff teenage people deal with, spots, acne, girls and so on. Peter Parker, as you may know, was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him his incredible powers. If I was Peter Parker though, a radioactive spider would have got nowhere near me because (1) I would have splattered it immediately it came within range or else (2) my screams would have made it scuttle off pretty quickly!

James Bond has always been one of my favourite fictional characters. I read all the books as a teenager and once spent a hot afternoon in Manchester in an Oxford Road cinema watching a double bill of Goldfinger and From Russia with love. Bond has been in some pretty tight spots too, you may remember him strapped to a table and being threatened with a laser beam, then there was the time in Live and let Die when they left him on a little island surrounded by alligators. Remember when he was in a shark filled pool in You Only Live Twice? All pretty scary stuff but the scariest ever was in Doctor No when he wakes up, switches on the light and finds a massive saucer sized spider crawling over him. Luckily, as a double O agent he is licensed to kill and clearly this includes spiders as not long afterwards the spider met it’s just end.

2048px-Cobweb-spider-frontal-mzeThe other day at work, I was having my morning ablutions in the comfortable surroundings of our disabled toilet, when a spider the size of a house, a mutant gargantuan spider limbo danced under the door and headed straight towards me. Now you may not know this but like Gandhi, I subscribe to the ancient tenets of Ahimsa, the culture of non-violence and also in recent years I have gravitated towards the Buddhist faith. Buddhism is a religion that is at peace with all mankind, a religion of respect and understanding. It also embraces the belief in Karma, the universal force which ensures that you will be paid back in equal measures for your kindness and also for your wicked deeds. Now, the thing is this, I may have to go out and find some old ladies to help across the road or donate a large portion of my earnings to charity because, well, perhaps you’ve guessed already:

As that spider came hurtling at me I didn’t think for a moment of Gandhi, Buddhism or Ahimsa. I just did what any right minded individual would have done: I put out my foot and squashed that spider!

If you enjoyed this post why not try my book, Floating In Space. Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

If Only . .

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Just looking through my old videos the other day and I came across a documentary about James Dean called ‘James Dean’s last day’. It’s an interesting film and a sad one too as it counts down Dean’s last day, his leaving Hollywood and his departure for a racing event at Salinas. If you don’t know much about Dean then you won’t know he was an amateur racing driver and was killed in a car crash in his new Porsche.There are so many ifs and as I watch the film I keep thinking if only Dean had left the Porsche on the trailer instead of driving it to the race track. If only the speeding ticket he was given had made him slow down. If only a man called Donald Turnupseed had seen Dean and not turned across him. Such a shame, such a tragedy. Dean, I’m sure, would have gone on to make so many great films and one day he would have directed some too.

Racing driver Ayrton Senna is a man would have gone on to greater things too, more world championships and more race wins. I even read something by Ron Dennis the other day in which the McLaren boss said that Senna had political ambitions too. Could he have run for the Brazilian Presidency? We’ll never know because Senna was killed at San Marino in 1994 and we are left only with the on car video pictures of him as his car slipped from under him and hurtled towards the crash barrier. The on car pictures fail before the final moments of impact when a suspension arm was flung back and pierced his helmet, causing his death.

A video that did show someone’s final moments was one I saw the other day. I was lying outside in the sun and I could hear a video playing on Liz’s I-pad. It was a woman talking about her son’s motorbike crash and hoping the video would help other road users, particularly car drivers who need to look out for bikes. I was reading a book at the time and the video distracted me, then I heard the sound of the bike, the rushing of the wind and then the impact.

“What was that?” I asked, “Was the crash filmed?”

Indeed it was. The rider was wearing a helmet camera and his fatal crash had been recorded. Later I took a look for myself. The rider was a relatively young man, only thirty eight years old and the video starts off as he waves goodbye to his friends at an air base and immediately he leaves the car park he is gunning his bike very, very, fast. As his mother talks sadly about her lost son, holding back the tears we cut again to her son, riding extremely fast and passing cars quickly on a single carriageway road. He pulls out and slips quickly past a car. As he pulls back in front of the car he reaches a junction, another car pulls across to turn right in front of him and he has only time to shout ‘No’ and he hits the car and tumbles onto the verge. The impact is shocking, so shocking I awoke last night still thinking off it. The rider had been doing 97 mph and had no chance whatsoever of surviving or avoiding the crash. Why was he going so fast? If only he had tucked in behind the car at the junction he would have avoided the crash altogether.

These are questions without answers. Riding a bike very fast is exhilarating and exciting but a rider needs to be so very aware of what he is doing, what is happening ahead and he must react so much quicker than a car driver as he is so much more vulnerable. Listening to the video, as I first did when it played on Liz’s I-pad, it seemed to me that the clip was aimed at motorists who do not look properly, who do not check properly for other vehicles before turning. After actually watching the video it is clear that the speed of the rider, 97mph on a sixty mph road, was the main factor in the accident and it meant that the rider had no time almost to react other than to hit his brakes. Still, if the car driver had taken a second look up the road, a second glance, he might have seen the bike and stopped. If only.

I’ve had a few scary moments on my motorbikes but I don’t think I ever hit 97 mph, even on the motorway but then I’m not sure the 125 and 250cc bikes I had could go that fast. At work they used to call me the fair weather rider because if it was raining I would always get the bus to work. When I bought  my first car I hung up my helmet for good apart from a brief fling with a Kawasaki 500 when I had split up with my girlfriend.

The car driver was prosecuted and had his licence suspended for 18 months and was also sentenced to 130 hours of community work. The Bike rider lost his entire life, his whole future that was ahead of him, gone, just like that of James Dean and Ayrton Senna. He wasn’t a famous man and wouldn’t have, I suppose, made any great movies or won any motor races but he would have married, perhaps had children and gone on to live a happy, contented life. All lost in a single moment.

When Bad Driving is just a symptom of Something Bigger

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The TV news brings the news right into our homes and I’ve been close to the news, via the TV, many times. I was watching TV when the 9/11 attacks happened and remember switching on one Sunday to find that Princess Diana was dead. Shocking events indeed but other news, personal news can be hard to take and sometimes shocking things are inside us and we need to let them out.

One day many years ago, when I was a bus conductor I worked with one of the worst drivers ever. We had numerous arguments about his fast driving and even worse, his fast stops. A bus conductor needs a smooth driver and one he has confidence in because he needs his hands free to deal with cash and change and to issue tickets. Keith, not his real name, was a dreadful driver and sometimes used to stop the bus in an emergency by using the dead man’s handbrake, so called because it locked the wheels of the bus. We nearly came to blows after I had been sent sprawling across the top deck once too often and Keith’s excuse was that he had to slam the brakes on to avoid an accident. Of course, if he hadn’t been going so fast he wouldn’t have needed to slam on!

Eventually I went to our chief Inspector and told him frankly that Keith was dangerous and I wouldn’t be working with him again so they sent an Inspector from the training school to check him out. The inspector was in full uniform so you might think that Keith would have modified his driving style but no, he drove at his usual mad speed, lurching to a stop and seemingly enjoying throwing passengers and conductors alike all over the place. I always felt I needed those clamps that rock climbers have so I could clamp myself to a rail while I issued fares.

Later on, on what turned out to be our last shift together, we stopped up at Woodford where we had a twenty five minute lay over. I sat down and poured out some tea from my flask and started reading my book. Every time I got into the book Keith would say something so I’d have to stop, sigh, mark my place and say something in return. Eventually I could see he wanted to talk and wasn’t interested that I wanted to read so I put my book away.

He turned to me and told me about his wife who was pregnant. Then he said, “The thing is, I’m not the father. I’ll bring the child up as my own but I’m not the father!”

“Right,” I said. Inside I was thinking; what is he saying here? Have he and his wife had IVF treatment or something?

Keith cut me short and said, “She’s had an affair. It’s not my child. It’s my Dad’s.”

“Your Dad’s?”

“Yes, she’s had an affair with my Dad. It’s all over now. We sorted it all out. I’ll look after her. It’s all over. She’ll be ok with me now.”

Keith reached into his pocket and pulled out a newspaper and began to read. He had let it out, the secret that had been eating into him, perhaps even the secret of his bad driving. Perhaps he had been taking his anger out on the people and streets of Manchester with his mad driving. I can’t tell you how shocked I was to hear his story. I wish I could have been more helpful. I wish I could have been supportive but perhaps I was. After all, it was me he chose to tell and I did listen but I did wonder about his dad. What sort of a man was he? How could he treat his son like that?

My own Dad was a super guy. He died at a hospice not far from Manchester Airport in the early hours of the  morning many years ago but my Mum waited until six am to tell me, because she knew I got up for work at that time. He had been poorly for a while and the phone call wasn’t unexpected. Despite that it was still a shock. When I was much younger and dressed in denims and had long hair and was obsessed by pop music, just like many people of my generation, my Dad and I were worlds apart, but we managed to bridge that gap, eventually. Whether Keith and his Dad could do the same and bridge the gulf that had opened up between them, I don’t know.

The Inspector from the driving school took Keith off the road and sent him back into the driving school. The school failed his driving and he became a conductor on the all night buses. I never saw him again but I hope things worked out for him.

Floating in Space is a novel set in Manchester, 1977. Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information.

 

Self Publishing and more Shameless Self Promotion!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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Thought I’d write a quick update about Floating In Space. I’ve been a bit slow in producing the paperback version but a few weeks ago I thought I’d finally sorted it out. I’d got a good PDF file so all I needed to do was upload that to createspace.com, order a proof copy and the book should be ready in a few weeks if not sooner! The thing is, that’s not how it actually worked out.

Writing a book is a pretty big thing but I’m not sure I’d say it was a hard or even a difficult task. Of course, when it’s something you like doing, something that gives you pleasure, hard or difficult hardly comes into it, but editing and proofreading, that’s a different matter.

Spelling mistakes are an issue though most of them can be caught by spellchecker but even then there are some things that slip through. Sometimes spellchecker will okay a word even though it’s wrong, like a correct word but used in the wrong context for instance. And grammar, well there’s a sticky subject that I find really hard work, I thought I knew about grammar until I came to edit my book. No wonder people make a living by proof reading, it’s difficult and involves going over stuff you have written time and time again.  I’ve been DSC_0293through my book so many times I’ve developed a sort of word blindness, I seem to be skimming over things and reading from memory rather than the printed word. I think I’ve got the definitive version, order a proof copy then spot a mistake in print that I couldn’t see in the word or PDF version! In my latest version I thought the font was too big so I resized it, tidied up the chapter headings and some other things I’d spotted, sorted out the PDF file and thought; great, finally sorted it. When I looked through the book on line I noticed various big gaps in the text and on further examination there were various section breaks in the word version that required eliminating! Anyway, I think I’m nearly there!

The Kindle version has been updated with spelling mistakes amended, duplicated words removed, and a small index added to help you understand 1970s England! It’s also got a much nicer cover than the print version, even though it was created using the same cover photo. What’s really odd is that the Kindle worked better with a word file rather than a PDF, while the print version works better with the PDF.

Any of you self published authors had silimar issues? let me know. I’ll feel much better if I know I’m not the only one!

Blogging the Blog

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-15So just what makes us bloggers and why do we blog?

Well, if you write something, it stands to reason you will want someone to read it. It’s deep in the psyche, this need to communicate and express yourself but bloggers blog for a number of reasons. One is that we have a particular interest or passion that we just have to talk about. It might be a sporting interest or a hobby that we love. It could be a love of poetry or books.

If you spend a lot of your free time cycling for instance you might want to indulge your love of this hobby by writing about it and discussing cycling issues or sharing information and tips about cycles. I subscribe to a lot of blogs about my favourite sport, F1 racing, as well as blogs about writing and my favourite movie directors for instance.

Another reason for blogging is to promote a business. There are many photographer blogs on the web, some are from amateurs who want others to see and comment on their work, some are by professionals who are actively promoting themselves and their business.

Authors are frequent bloggers, perhaps because publishing has been turned on it’s head by the internet and the digital revolution. No longer must we writers wait for the publisher to find us, we can get our work out there straight away and build up an Internet presence which in turn benefits our self published works. Whether self publishing is a good thing I’m not so sure. I feel that personally I’ve rushed a little too quickly down the self publishing route but the experience has been good for me. I’m well aware of the state of my manuscript and it’s grammatical errors and I’m well on the way to sorting that.

I have to say also that the print version of Floating In Space will shortly have finished it’s re sizing and grammatical revisions and will be ready to hit the market soon. Blogging for me is primarily to promote my work but I do love writing and I do love writing my little blog. One good thing about blogging is that it gets the creative juices flowing. It gets you thinking, what can I write about? What can I write about next time? So far the ideas have kept on coming and I’ve got six or seven draft blogs in the pipeline although I have to say two have them have been there so long I think they may be heading for the trash file shortly.

popartpic1edQuite a few people have asked me about my novel. What’s it about? is a frequent question. Well, it’s set in the late 1970’s and it’s about a young man in South Manchester and his small group of friends. He goes from working in an insurance company to finding himself as a bus conductor in a short space of time and the background to the book tells us about life in the seventies: Music, drink, pubs and Mancunian night life.

Is it a science fiction book? No it isn’t.

Why is it called ‘Floating In Space’ then? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or, buy the book and all will be revealed!

Checking the Temperature and the British Summer

Posted on by Steve Higgins

checking the temperatureHot, boiling, sweltering, humid: Any way you look at it the UK is hot! We can’t complain about a rainy summer this year but in the UK we are just not prepared for heat. In Spain for instance it’s perfect for a hot, sunny, holiday. They have their cool outdoor pools, their outdoor bars and restaurants, and if we want to cool down more then we can go inside where traditionally built Spanish properties with their tiled interiors and whitewashed exteriors positively hug any coolness that might be about.

In the UK with our insulated walls and roofing, our houses seem to hug the warmth, it’s hotter in our homes than outside and when we leave our windows open to cool down you can guarantee some inconsiderate noisy sod will be playing his or her music far too loud, Well, that’s the British summer for you.

Something that really bugs me lately is the way the metric system has started to grip it’s clammy fingers around the UK media. When I’m watching a rather interesting documentary on the BBC I’m not interested in the least about how many metres long this or that is, or how many kilometres it is to there from here, I want to know it in feet and inches, I want to know in miles! I’m English and OK when I’m travelling in Europe I accept kilometres and KPH and do the mental adjustment but in the UK I shouldn’t have to do that. On the motorway I understand what it means when I hit the 300 yard marker to the next exit. I know what a yard is, I can visualise it. I understand that the next services are twenty miles away because I understand what a mile is and how long a mile is so don’t start putting kilometres on the motorway to confuse me!

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

And, coming back to the heat, when did all this Celsius start creeping in. The temperature today will be a maximum of twenty degrees? What is that about? If you are going to tell me the temperature tell me in the Fahrenheit that I have been  brought up with and understand then I know that seventy is hot and eighty is even hotter!

This is the time of year when the papers will say one day, it was hotter in Dartford that it was in Barcelona or hotter in Brighton than the Costa Del Sol! Interesting. Of course, they don’t say that happened on one day out of three hundred and sixty five or that the last time it happened it was 1973 but either way it’s still pretty interesting. But, and here’s something you should know, on the day the temperature  hits 37 degrees Celcius in somewhere like Blackpool the papers won’t tell you that. No, what they will say will be this ‘Temperature hits 100 degrees in Blackpool!’‘

Yes, the big one hundred, that’s Fahrenheit of course . .

Enjoyed this post? Well, if you did why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or HERE to go straight to Amazon!