So, a couple of things have happened in the last 48 hours to make me ask questions of myself and what I truly believe. You know, not meaningless likes or dislikes, all that airy-fairy I don’t like semolina but I like rice pudding kind of thing. No, I mean real truths that I hold dear and which form the basis of who I really am and what makes me Alan Stevenson.

So basically, here’s my credo. But before you read it, please take time to consider point number 5 before losing your rag as it may help you when forming or reforming an opinion of me.

Ok, here we go.

1. Bigotry and racism is a massive no-no with me. As is a negative stance on immigration. Immigrants saved my life when I was at death’s door in 2003. If it hadn’t been for a Chinese doctor and an Indian nurse then I wouldn’t be typing these words right now as I’d be deceased.

2. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE has a right to believe in which ever faith or religion they choose to follow without slander, abuse or piss-take. My own beliefs are Christian but if you follow any other faith I may not agree with you but I’ll stoically defend your rights and decisions to have that belief; as all men should.

3. Tik Tok is wrong on every level. It’s just wrong. Morally wrong.

4. Number three was just put there to lighten the mood a little bit, although it is true.

5. You may have opinions that differ with mine or you may not appreciate my opinions. You may even get offended by what I say, write or do. And that’s ok, although I do think we all get offended too easily these days. It’s become almost fashionable. My point is, if we do differ on opinions or get offended with one another then I like to think we can be adults and discuss our differences without the need for social media unfriending or having long-standing tantrums with each other. Let’s all be grown ups, shall we? Like we used to be. Also, if you should ask me for my opinion on any matter please be respectful of the fact that I might not want to give it to you.

6. Women, or men for that matter, are not to be sexually objectified and the voyeurism that we now have to contend with on our TVs, computer screens and phones has reached such levels of depravity that would make Mary Whitehouse soil herself and reach for the Valium. I’m looking at you again Tik Tok.

7. Contrary to popular belief, science does not have all the answers. In fact, it has very few.

8. FOR FUCK’S SAKE STOP USING SINGLE USE PLASTICS!!!

9. I’m an omnivore. Always have been, always will be. If you choose to pursue a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle I shall certainly respect that decision. All I ask is please extend to me the same courtesy. My human teeth are designed to eat both plants and animals and my digestive system can cope quite easily with meat. Now, whether you believe in Creationism or Darwinism that is a plain, unavoidable fact. Incidently, I don’t eat meat with every meal, so there.

10. Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. That one’s easy innit?

11. Your sexual preferences are yours and yours alone. Personally speaking I’m hetero but I won’t lambaste or belittle gay people and neither should you. I have gay friends.

12. I have a sense of humour that is rooted in the 1970’s and 80’s. That’s when I grew up. I’m able to laugh at myself and I’m ok with people laughing at me. The world needs to be able to do more of that.

13. Bullying at any age is reprehensibly vile and should not be tolerated in a civilised society.

13a. I know what I consider to be bullying and what is not.

14. Look after the elderly. Hopefully you’ll make it to that age one day and if you do don’t despise it. It’s a gift that’s not given to everyone.

15. If you’re unhappy with the current government yet you voted for them, stop belly-aching on social media and lobby your MP. Also, next time, use your loaf in the polling station.

16. Jimmy Carr is not funny. Never has been, never will be.

17. On the other hand, I really like Tim Vine. He’s delightfully silly.

18. Travel may broaden the mind but literature enriches it.

19. If I see you throwing litter on the floor I will ask you to pick it up again.

20. Lists are great!

So there you go. Please feel free to unfriend me, unfollow me, loathe, detest or verbally disembowel me if you feel so inclined. After the last 48 hours I no longer care. I am who I am. I am Alan and I like Alan. Don’t try to change me baby.

Where on Earth have you been Stevenson? You piss-poor excuse for a scribe. I hear you cry. Or not, you’ve probably just got fed up with waiting for me to pull my chubby, stubby finger out and given up. It’s been quite some time since I last blogged and I’m just as unhappy at the situation as you are; believe me.

But before you go off on me like a Prosecco cork (I can’t afford champagne) please give me a chance to redeem myself or, at the very least, offer some explanation as to my whereabouts for over a month now.

Let me break it down into sections for you. I think that would be easiest all round.

1. We’ve moved home. Whilst not a particularly valid excuse for not blogging it does offer some insight to what I’ve been up to and, as most of you will agree, it’s a very stressful and time consuming job which requires a great deal of both mental and physical energy. Which brings me nicely to my next point.

2. I’m seriously lacking in both of those energies. My brain is immensely foggy at the moment to the point where I wake up in the morning and panic that I’ve ben kidnapped in the night only for the realisation that I’m in my new bedroom to kick in after a few seconds. Added to this is the fact that my body can’t take much more. I seriously think it can’t. It’s at breaking point and I mean bedridden breaking point. It’s now just a matter of when.

3. My lovely wife has gout in her right foot and is in a lot of pain and therefore unable to do any of the more manual tasks involved with a home move. I’ve been caring for my carer and been extremely worried about her. We spent a whole evening in A&E one Saturday in August. Five hours we were there with Ange in the most awful discomfort. Very stressful indeed.

4. We had a holiday a few weeks back. A much needed and well deserved break to the charming seaside village of Crail near St Andrews, Scotland. I spent the first 24 hours of the holiday in that muddled place somewhere between sleep and waking as my whole being gave a collected sigh of relief.

5. This is an odd one but I’m actually struggling to put words together in a coherent way. Either on paper or verbally. The only thing that I’ve been able to do with any degree of success is my podcast which I’m determined to do every week without fail. The novel I’m working on hasn’t seen a shot fired in anger since… well, that’s just it, I can’t remember because I’ve lost my little pocket diary with all that information in. But it was the back end of July.

Anyway, that’s my 5 point excuse. In a nutshell, we’ve moved home and I am…

EX!

HAUS!

TED!

I’m tired, worn out, spent, shattered, weary, depleted, drained, fatigued, on my last legs and oh so bloody knackered.

So, apologies for the huge gap (no I’m not talking about my front teeth) but I’m going to try a little bit harder. Even if it’s just a paragraph or two here and there. The thing is, I do enjoy blogging. Been at it for years. In fact, the final episode of Stevenson Speaks, my video series, will be about my blog, so you might want to tune in to that. And, I’ve even set myself a little challenge. I’m going to try and do a follow up blog tomorrow; just to see how it goes. Watch this space!

Ok, first of all, sincere apologies for the huge gap between posts. But I have my reasons/excuse. My old sparring partner – Fibro-bastard-bloody-arsing-myalgia. It’s been a tough couple of weeks here at Blessham Hall gentle reader, a tough couple of weeks indeed. I have been a mere husk of a man. A hollow and echoing void of a human being who has existed on painkillers, CBD gummies and a whole lot of help and sympathy.

This is quite possibly the worst and most protracted episode of it I’ve had. Certainly in the last decade at least. I’ve been as fatigued as a sloth on Valium and in more pain than I would have imagined possible with only one body. I have seriously considered leaving my shoulders and arms to medical science over the last fortnight and my legs, once strong and sturdy pillars of sporting prowess, now shake, rattle and yes, even roll as I shuffle along like a geriatric version of the Tin Man. People stare and gawk at me in the street and shake their heads in pity, covering their children’s eyes from the horror as I shamble by.

In truth, I have popped more co-codamol in the last fortnight than I have in the rest of the year combined and we all know where that leads to, don’t we? That’s right, agonising sessions on the throne; moaning and groaning like some kind of disconnected and constipated ghoul. Oh how I long for the days when my bowel movements were a thing of beauty. Too much information, I know, but that’s how bad it is.

And the thing is, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it all began. It doesn’t work like that you see. It’s been a gradual build up over a couple of months, starting with a tinkling of annoying little aches and pains in the limbs, followed by a symphony of exhaustion and fatigue and rising to a resounding crescendo of pure muscular suffering and torment.

Now, that may sound a little bit over the top to you but it’s my body and I’m telling it like it is. And what you’ve just read is the absolute truth. My body isn’t working properly and it hurts. Badly. But what hurts as well is the fact that this is the first time I’ve sat down at my laptop and written since July 28^th and that ain’t gonna get the next novel written, now is it? Actually, now I think about it, that last writing session wasn’t exactly all that fruitful either.

So here’s the plan. It’s starting to ease a little, but by ‘little’ I mean a miniscule amount every day. I’m as frustrated as a eunuch on his day off but I need to gently ease my way back into some kind of routine, even if that means just 500 words a day or maybe 1000 words but then take a day off. Seriously folks, that’s how bad it is. As I write these few words I’m utterly exhausted due to having recorded this week’s Blessham Hall Podcast and the latest episode of Stevenson Speaks earlier. So that will be it now until maybe tomorrow afternoon.

Best I can do for now, I’m afraid, but it’s better than nothing. The next novel will get done. When, I don’t know, but trust me, it will. In the meantime you could always read Hot Eire or re-read any of my other books: Ah Boy!, The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham, The Pheasants Revolt or Mutch Wants Moor. They’re all good.

Bear with me gentle reader, I’ll be back.

I honestly believe that if it started raining right now, I would strip bollock naked and go and stand in it for ten minutes singing Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. I’m sweltering gentle reader. I’ve just asked Alexa what the temperature is and she replied “Piss off! I’m too hot to care!” Actually, she said it was 28 degrees centigrade which is ok for July but at the moment I write this it’s only 10:30 in the morning and its set to climb to at least 35 degrees by the afternoon.

And my trouble is that I’ve got two trains of thought going on:

1. We shouldn’t moan about the hot weather because we get enough cold weather and rain in this country.

And

2. Help me someone please! My skin is turning into crackling.

But what worries me the most is that scientists are saying that we should get used to this because it’s going to be the new normal due to global warming.

Now, I usually tend to trust scientists about as far as I could spit a live rat, but in this case they may have a point. I was shocked to watch the news last night and see great swathes of forest in France and Spain ablaze with such ferocity. We’re used to seeing news footage from Australia of such devastation but I feel we don’t really connect with that because it’s on the other side of the planet.

Seeing it so close, just across the channel, is another matter, however, and it does bring to mind the thought that how long before the New Forest or the Forest of Dean or any large area of precious woodland in the UK goes up in flames.

I’m very worried. Very! And very isn’t a word writers should use too often, but I can’t think of a better one to describe how worried I am. I live in Settle, near the North Yorkshire Moors and the Forest of Bowland and the thought of seeing plumes of black smoke drifting across the sky isn’t a pleasant one.

But, if this truly is the new normal then it’s only a matter of time.

And an even more stark fact is that we cannot rely on world leaders to do anything about it. There was a COBRA meeting yesterday to discuss what measures to take during the heatwave yet there was one glaringly obvious absentee. Whilst the rest of the country were ordered to stay indoors and progressively fry throughout the day, our prime minister went poncing off for a Top Gun style jolly in an RAF jet fighter. Glad to see he’s taking it so seriously. Twat!

No, it’s up to all of us I’m afraid, that’s if it’s not too late. We need to cut down on travel, cut down our electricity usage, use less packaging, adjust your thermostat, plant a tree… Oh I don’t know there’s loads of things aren’t there? Just try and make a difference, that’s all.

Please stay safe during this unprecedented weather. Drink litres of water (tap not bottled), wear a hat, try not to use the car unless you have to and stay in the shade. All totally obvious advice I know but there are already reports coming in about people who have died from swimming in reservoirs, canals and rivers and others admitted to A&E with heat exhaustion and sun stroke.

I find it perversely funny that Labradors are so very easy to train and yet human beings, who claim to be infinitely more intelligent than dogs keep making the same tired old mistakes time and time again. We’re not intelligent at all. We’re the stupidest species on the face of the world. Whilst dogs and cats and every other fur covered creature on earth is hiding in the shade, we’re happily baring our beer bloated bodies on Brighton beach to let the Sun do it’s very worst. I know there were a lot of B’s in that sentence but I think it works.

If this is the new normal then send me back to the 1970’s. Yes, we still got sunburnt but back then that was normal. Summer was normal. If you went out in the Sun with nothing on you came home red raw and you doused yourself with calamine lotion and stank the place out for a day or two. After a while you peeled and felt rather foolish and extremely itchy. Tales of sun stroke back then were few and far between. Now, they’re normal. The new normal.

So, in conclusion, I’m on my second pint of water so far today with many more to come. And at the first sign of any rain, I’ll be out there, sans clothing (well, maybe in shorts) and listening to the steam hissing off my body. Too much information? Yeah, maybe, but don’t tell me you’re not thinking of doing it yourself now I’ve planted that seed in your mind.

Something truly wonderful has happened on YouTube in the last couple of weeks, gentle reader, and if you don’t know what I’m going on about then I’ll gleefully tell you. The new/second series of Stevenson Speaks is now up and running. And in case you need me to expound further and are asking yourself, ‘what the bloody hell is he rabbiting on with now?’ then calm down, take a pew and I’ll tell you more.

Stevenson Speaks is a series of charmingly amateurish videos I recorded during the lockdown of 2020. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time what with not being allowed to do anything or go anywhere and all that. And so I sat in the barbecue area at Airedale Boat Club every Monday for a few weeks and knocked out five videos, which all prove that I do, indeed, have a face for radio.

But I did enjoy doing them, immensely, and so I thought ‘What the heck? Let’s do some more!’ And that’s precisely what I have been doing for the last two Fridays; recording, editing and uploading the first couple of vids of the second season of Stevenson Speaks to YouTube.

I’m a great believer in the old phrase – try before you buy, so I’m going to give you the low-down on what Stevenson Speaks is all about. Well, in a tight, compact little nutshell, I sit and talk to the camera for twelve or thirteen minutes or so about my books and all things connected. ‘What do you mean by connected Stevenson?’ I hear you ask. Well, I’ll explain.

In the first season of Stevenson Speaks I talked about:

• My first novel – Ah Boy!
• My second novel – The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham
• Believing in yourself and your writing
• The value of influence in writing
• The importance of planning your writing

See! All very much connected.

In this new series I’ll be talking about the following:

• My new novel – Hot Eire
• My third novel – The Pheasants Revolt
• My fourth novel – Mutch Wants Moor
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• My website
• Fibromyalgia – a condition that has plagued me for almost two decades

So loads to come for your watching enjoyment.

Hey, listen, I don’t claim to be great (or even good) at this video presenting thing but I’ve got a damn sight more charm and charisma than Richard Madeley; mind you, that wouldn’t be difficult would it? Alan Partridge has more charm and charisma than Richard Madeley. In fact, who doesn’t?

But I’m digressing now.

Please do take the time to watch my little videos and give me a thumbs up and subscribe. It all helps me to keep doing what I’m doing. You never know where it could lead. Ok, so none of my vids have exactly gone viral as yet but that’s not the point is it? They’re there to inform and hopefully entertain, and that is what you should expect from a writer.

Oh, and did you like my title for this post? A play on words of that awful new wave song by the Buggles. Admit it; you’ve got an ear worm now haven’t you?

I feel like I’ve had the absolute stuffing knocked out of me gentle reader. Fibromyalgia has flared violently in my body yet again and I’m walking with a stick and wincing at every physical movement. Even as I type this I have an overwhelming urge to shout ‘F*** IT!’ and go back to bed. Yeah, that bad.

However, if there’s one thing that I am it’s a trooper. I’ve always had that ability to push on when things get rough but of a truth I’m struggling, struggling badly. Ergo, this weeks podcast, whilst still 40 minutes long, was possibly my hardest one yet. I just couldn’t raise my spirits when I recorded it and even Joke of the Week hurt me when I laughed. And I’ve got to record a video on Friday. Oo ‘eck, as Joe Wilkie might say.

Then there’s the writing. I had a pop at the new novel on Monday afternoon and managed a paltry 400 words. Compare that to a month or so ago when I achieved over 7000 in one day; a personal best. Still, they were 400 good words so let’s look on the bright side.

You see, that’s the thing with fibromyalgia. It’s always there, a constant nagging reminder with aches, pains and tiredness which you kind of live with, and then you get a flare up, like this one, and by God you know about it then. Right now I feel as if I’ve single handedly arm-wrestled a whole troop of baboons and lost badly to each and every one of them. My shoulders feel like someone has set fire to them and my legs are neither use nor ornament. Especially ornament. As for the fatigue, let’s just say that right now, at this very moment, as I slowly and painfully type these words, I want my pillow.

So things here at Blessham Hall have somewhat ground to a halt. Yesterday was Becky’s graduation from Leeds Art University and I went and helped her celebrate. It was a lovely day, truly it was. Ange and I felt very proud of her. But I shuffled about the place like a centenarian on quaaludes whilst all around me energetic bright young things in caps and gowns with beaming smiles revelled in their academic success. They probably took one look at me and thought, ‘Poor old sod, they ought to put him out of his misery.’

Anyway, my fingers hurt from typing so I’m going to sign off for now. I’ll be back, you know darn well that I will, but for now I’m going to heed the lilting siren song of the mattress and crawl back into bed. See you very soon.

Sooty the One-Eyed Wonder Cat, I call him. That’s because everyone wonders why he’s only got one eye. Seriously, he wandered off one day in the late Spring of 2014 and came back three months later minus his left eye. Where he’d been and how he lost it is anyone’s guess. Anyway, he lives here with me and Ange at Blessham Hall now.

Truth be told he’s Becky’s cat actually (Becky is my step-daughter if you didn’t know) and she’s had him for nearly ten years. Well, apart from that ocular-organ-losing three month sojourn that he went on. He was originally intended to be ours though, mine and Ange’s. We’d lost our cat Pebbles in the June of 2012 and Ange felt like she wanted to fill the void he’d left behind. Also, we (somewhat misguidedly) thought that a kitten would be good for Pixie, Pebbles sister, who was still with us. How wrong we were on that one.

A friend of ours, Sue, rang one day to tell us that her daughters cat had had kittens and did we know anyone who might want one. Naturally we came over all warm and fuzzy at the thought of purring and cuddles and said that ‘Yes, we’ll take one. Thank you very much.’ And so off we went to Sue’s daughters with a large cardboard box (I think it had had bananas in it) lined with a fleece blanket to select our fluffy new addition to the family.

When we arrived we discovered that there were only two kittens left and we chose the one that seemed most lively and interested in us at the time. Sue’s daughter put him in the blanketed box and we trudged down the stairs again with our precious cargo. And then… and then I had a sudden wave of what I can only describe as abject mushiness and said to Ange, ‘We can’t separate them.’ And thus, the other kitten with the black, almost soot like, markings on his face joined his brother in the box and we set off for home again.

We were so excited to see what Pixie would make of her new step-brothers. Would she go into mother-mode and cosset the two little bundles of feline-hood or would she be a tad cautious perhaps and let them take time to get to know each other? The answer was neither.

Pixie threw a cat tantrum on an epic scale. She basically went on hunger strike, refused to even enter the boat we were living on at the time and kept sticking her head through the window to hiss and screech at the tiny newcomers like a woman scorned. ‘It’s no good,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to take them back.’ This of course made Erin, our granddaughter very sad and she begged Becky to let her and her mum keep them. Becky agreed and myself and Ange made a vow to help with the expense of raising two kittens – vet bills, food, toys etc etc.

And so the kittens were named Snowy and Sooty and went to live in the cottage with Becky and Erin and the rest, as they say, is history. And it was all sweetness and light with the exception of Sooty buggering off for a whole Summer and coming back half blind. It was agreed that Snowy was Erin’s cat and Sooty was Becky’s.

Fast forward to 2022. Becky and Erin are now living on a canal boat and are quite fond of moving around on it. And why wouldn’t you? That’s what boats are for after all. If they were meant to remain in one place they would be called Floating Bungalows. But boats they are and Becky in particular likes to cruise. Sooty, on the other hand, he don’t.

Every time that the boat moves he freaks out and disappears for days, sometimes weeks, on end. He never strayed very far and he was always located thanks to a combination of social media and human kindness. The trouble is of course, if your home is mobile then your pets have to be too and it seems like poor old Sooty just didn’t have the stomach for the waterways.

The solution! You’ve got it, he’s now come to live with us here at Blessham Hall. It’s win win win really, for all of us. Becky has got peace of mind knowing Sooty is safe, Ange and I are happy that we’ve got a little puddy tat running around the place again after we lost Pixie last year and Sooty, well, he has all the peace and quite he could wish for.

As with all our pets over the years he’ll be molly-coddled to within an inch of his life. He’ll eat the finest of foods, he’ll sleep wherever he damn well pleases and the whole world will grind to a halt when he starts meowing and we have to find out why. He’s basically going to live the life of Riley.

So welcome to Blessham Hall Sooty. You’ve already made yourself very comfortable so it just remains for me to say: please leave the squirrels alone.

Drum roll please… Dr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-uh!

IT’S HERE AT LAST!!!

Yes, at long last my new novel is out and ready to satisfy all your literary comedy needs. It’s called Hot Eire and it’s available to download Here.

So come on then, what’s it all about Stevenson? I hear you cry. Well, it’s the third installment in the Joe Wilkie series and follows on directly from where The Pheasants Revolt left off. If you recall Joe was having a drink outside the Pig and Whistle on a Saturday afternoon at the end of his last adventure and a certain young lady arrived back in the village. Yes of course it’s Meg, surely you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you?

Anyway, Meg’s back and things don’t go smoothly. Some of the more self-righteous residents of Blessham aren’t entirely thrilled that she’s returned. Joe is though, naturally, and he sets about trying to protect his girl from the clutches of the new organisation that’s been set up to oust her again. Her Ladyship isn’t best pleased at his efforts though.

In a bid to give Meg some breathing space he takes her to Ireland to visit his mum and Seamus on their stud farm and once there all manner of chaotic calamity ensues. Especially when Joe meets a very interesting new character (whose name I won’t reveal – you’ll have to read the book) and takes in a few highly comical sight-seeing trips here and there.

They have to return to Blessham of course but things have gotten worse whilst they’ve been away and a showdown is on the cards. What will happen? Will Meg have to leave? Will Joe save the day? Will Lady Stark-Raven ever stop farting? These questions and more are answered in Hot Eire. There’s a host of new characters, the return of many of your old favourite characters, a spiteful antagonist who you’ll love to hate, romance, riots, raunchiness and of course all the usual barking madness that follows our old friend Joe wherever he goes. Well, you wouldn’t expect anything less, would you?

It’s a real side-splitter and no mistake and I strongly urge you to read it at the earliest available opportunity. In fact, why not do it right now? Go on, head over to Amazon and pick yourself up a copy. Your sense of humour will thank me.

Sorry for the long gap between posts but I’ve been so busy writing that pesky fifth novel that you’re all clamouring for.

Anyway, I’ve discovered my new favourite thing. Purely by accident and just having a go. It’s writing in an accent. I first got the taste for it in my last novel, the hilarious and very well received Mutch Wants Moor. Of course the main accent in that one being the Glaswegian brogue of Mary Mutch which comes to the fore when she loses her temper with her calamitous husband.

I found the character of Mary such fun to write and the influence for her accent came from my many years working with Glaswegian people. I spent six years, no less, working in a crisp factory with expatriated natives of that fair city. I won’t give away the name of the crisp factory other than to say it wasn’t exactly a Golden time in my life and it’s a Wonder how I managed to stick it out for so long.

But, I do feel I have a good ear for accents. My travels across the UK have seen me spend time in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, London, Norfolk, my current home county of Yorkshire and of course my early stomping grounds of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Lincolnshire, which all have their own very distinct accents. Perhaps not as pronounced as Geordie, Brummie or Scouse but still highly evident to the trained ear.

My new novel is full of a particular accent. I can’t reveal which one at this stage as I’d hate to spoil the surprise but what I will say is that I am having the most fun a writer can have by working with that accent. The only problem being that writing in an accent does tend to slow the writing process down a little. You really have to pore over every word and then double check each sentence. Mind you, I’m currently working at approximately 5000 words a day on writing days which is about three a week at the moment. The fatigue and pain caused by fibromyalgia being the dictating force behind my current output.

I do feel I would like to explore accents further in my writing but I do have a reservation about it alongside my enthusiasm for it and that is: how easy is it to read? Does it slow the reader down in the flow of the book and thereby reduce their enjoyment of it. I remember reading a John Buchan novel many years ago in which one of the characters, a bluff, no-nonsense Yorkshireman, got into a fight with some people of a different nation and the line he used was ‘Ah’ve bin knockin’ furriners abart for ten minutes.’ It took me a further ten minutes myself to work out what a ‘furriner’ was until the light bulb went on and I realised he meant foreigners. And that is my concern towards my own readers.

However, a lot of people have told me that they enjoyed the character of Mary Mutch and would like to have seen more of her in the novel. I don’t know, maybe she’ll make a reappearance in one of the Ingleby novels further down the line. Who knows?

But for now, I’m having tremendous fun writing an accent of a particular character that I’m sure you’re going to love. In fact, you could call him a loveable rogue. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to meet him soon and of course re-acquaint yourself with a certain Joe Wilkie. And be honest now, Joe has an accent in your head, hasn’t he?

Mind out. Mind your back. Mind how you go. Mind over matter etc etc.

And so we come to the last in this little series of Self Preservation posts and I’ve rather enjoyed sharing my journey on the road to personal improvement with you. And the final, and perhaps most important stage of the journey for me is how to improve my mind.

Here’s the thing. I have a very profound fear of dementia based on very real facts that my poor brain has taken a proper pasting over the years. I have received more concussions via accidental blows to the head than I care to mention. There have been many such incidents during my time in manual labour and also one particularly bad one when I dived into a swimming pool on holiday when I was twenty years old, swam across the width like Johnny Weissmuller and then connected abruptly with the side of the pool with the top of my head. And yes, of course I was trying to prove my prowess to the ladies although having to be dragged unconscious out of the water by my friend didn’t exactly add to my appeal with the opposite sex.

On top of all this though, as a kind of warped little cherry on the cake as it were, I had encephalitis in 2003 which very nearly killed me and I’ve never been the same since. The last brain scan I had a few years ago revealed that there was something on the brain that didn’t look quite right but they couldn’t say exactly what. The last piece of advice they gave me was to live my life and if I ever had any problems with my head then to come straight back and tell them.

Hmmm!

So as you can see I am a bit of a walking time bomb. I may live to a ripe old age without losing the old marbles but there’s a distinct possibility that it could go the other way. And that frightens me gentle reader, it really does. Terrifies me. I recall visiting an elderly relative a few years ago in a nursing home and it was frankly awful. The odour of the place was as foetid as a navvy’s armpit and the food that was placed in front of these venerable ladies and gentlemen looked utterly revolting and about as palatable as a plate full of John Innes No.3 compost; but sadly those poor old souls were none the wiser.

I do feel that I’ve got genetics on my side a bit though. My mother is now in her 90’s and in rude health for her age. Yes, she’s getting very forgetful now but that’s a fairly recent development. Likewise my grandmother, 92 years old when she passed away, was as sharp as a tack right up until the end. Her secret? She kept her mind active. She read avidly. She watched interesting TV shows as opposed to soaps and trash. She took plenty of fresh air and beautiful scenery. She holidayed in Scotland where the terrain is pure mind candy. She did crosswords and puzzles in the newspaper and the dear old People’s Friend magazine. She kept the old grey matter as busy as she could.

And that, my friends, is what I intend to do also.

Obviously writing for a living will help massively but I want more than that. I want to exercise that big funny shaped muscle between the ears as much as possible. Quizzes, word games, joke writing, studying literature, learning new technical things and keeping up with the times, reading voraciously, engaging in meaningful conversation, appreciating the natural world; it’s all going to help.

Let’s face it. There’s no point in me using Dr Balls Bollock Balm or losing weight or having new glasses if I’m not going to get the most of them due to the gradual deterioration of my mind. And I do think it’s an area that a lot of us neglect. It’s too easy you see. We’re told what to do with our minds all the time. We’re conditioned to come home after a hard days work and slump on the couch to watch mind numbing shows like X Factor, The Masked Singer (God but I loathe Davina McCall), Big Brother, Love Island and a whole slew of trivial shash that does nothing to improve our minds or feed our imaginations.

Revolt, my friends, while you’ve still got a chance. Free your minds. Say NO to Simon Cowell and his ilk, don’t let the media dumb down your life so that they can fill their pockets. Put down that remote control and pick up that crossword book or novel instead. Trust me, by the time you’re in your eighties you’ll thank me.

So there you have it. I’m well on the road to making vast changes in my life, both physically and mentally and I would love it if you’d join me on the journey. As for me, I’m now off to read a few more chapters of the book I’m currently ploughing my way through and then I shall have a couple of hours bashing away at the old laptop on my own current work in progress.

Look after your minds folks. You only get the one.