Well first off I ought to begin by saying a slightly belated Happy New Year to you all – Happy New Year TO YOU ALL!!! There, that’s out of the way now. Actually, in all seriousness, I do hope it’s a good one for all of us.

Last year saw me publish my 6^th and 7^th full-length comedy novels which ain’t too shabby for a shabby old thing like me. And believe me those books were produced under great duress. 2023 wasn’t a particularly spectacular year for Ange and I in so many ways but we came through it together and we’re looking forward to 2024 with hopeful eyes.

I haven’t made any resolutions as such. I have done in the past; every single 1^st of January. I was going to lose weight or write 3 books in one year or exercise more or drink less or try and do something about all the flatulence etc etc etc…

The list is a long one.

And in all honesty I’ve never achieved a single one of them because I’ve always set the bar too high for what I can actually achieve. You see, deep down, I do know my limitations.

So this year I just want to improve myself in whatever small way I can.

I’m starting with dry January and before any of you scoff, let me tell you that this will be the third year I’ve done it. And I have to say that I recommend it whole-heartedly. I’ve always felt marvellous by February.

Unfortunately, I’ve then gone on to undo all the good I’ve done the rest of the year. I do enjoy a drop of vino but sometimes it’s a bit more than a drop as my waistline will testify.

So from now on I’m going to be an occasional drinker. That’s not a resolution as I know I won’t keep it but I’m going to try and limit myself to just having booze when we’re at an occasion. Weddings, birthdays, parties, bar mitzvahs etc.

To tell the truth, I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah but I’m always up for one if there’s an invite going.

As for the age-old resolution of trying to lose weight – HAH! Never happens. So this time I’m just going to try and eat less and exercise more. I find both of those activities difficult at the best of times but the fact that I’m currently using the very first notch on my belt tells me that something seriously needs to change. I looked in the mirror on New Year’s Day wearing just my underwear and I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t like it all. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Ergo, change must happen. And it can’t just be another resolution that comes and goes but instead has to be a complete lifestyle change. I know it won’t happen overnight and that’s where I’ve gone wrong in the past – believing it will and then getting despondent when it doesn’t. Small consistent steps are what I need to take.

Then there’s my career – being an independent author.

In a nutshell, I need to change how I work. I’ve got to try and be more constant in my approach. Last year I made the massive mistake of launching myself into Medicine Show when the ink was still drying on Vole. I wrote like a maniac for about a week and then hit the proverbial wall and didn’t touch the thing for another two months. By which time I’d completely forgotten where I was going with it and had to back-pedal to try and pick up the threads.

No, that can’t and won’t happen again. I think my books, and more importantly my readers, deserve better than that.

I have been working on my time management an awful lot but it’s those days when my body lets me down that are the problem. I still need to find a way to work when fibromyalgia is kicking the living tripe out of me. Otherwise I lose continuity with the story I’m working on you see.

On those days, when the fibro is at it’s worst, I find it hard to sit on my office chair for long periods of time. The solution to the problem is literally staring me in the face. My office space is in the bedroom therefore why not use the bed when it hits me hard. I can plump up all the pillows (6 in total between us) and fashion a make-shift couch for myself.

I’ve tried it once so far and it works. Even if I get brain fog and drift off for half an hour or so then I’m in the right place where I don’t have to try and fight it. I can close my eyes for 30 minutes and when I come round again there’s my laptop with the document open for me to resume what I was doing. I’ve even invested in a mouse jiggler, which isn’t a sex aid for small rodents but a plug-in device to keep my laptop screen awake whilst I snooze.

I know, I know, I’m making it sound easy when in reality it’s far from it but like I said earlier, small consistent steps and not beating myself about the head and neck with a blunt instrument if it all goes tits up occasionally. Which it no doubt will as that’s the nature of the beast.

So no resolutions but plenty of good intentions. I’m not going to start spouting blasé things such as, “New year, new me!” but I do want to do things differently whilst still being the same old me.

I hope that makes sense.

So indeed, happy new year to you all my friends and here’s to slow and steady self-improvement.

The term poleaxed is a funny one isn’t it. It’s a rather archaic term for one thing, stemming from the Middle Ages when soldiers on the battlefield would quite literally be knocked down with an axe. It’s derived from the middle English word “pollax” which was another word for battle axe and was later bastardised, as much of our language is, into poleaxe.

Today it simply means to be hit so hard by something that it’s difficult to recover. And that’s where I enter the story.

I’ve been poleaxed gentle reader, by COVID 19.

There are two things that I’m finding hard to believe about it right now. The first being, why has it taken four years to catch up with me and the second being, why now? Why just before Christmas?

It’s not fair I tell you.

I did everything right in 2020 when the pandemic was at its zenith. I isolated like a hermit, I wore one of those awful, eye-rubbing masks everywhere I went, I avoided visiting friends and relatives as if they were total strangers to me, I was zealous about keeping my hands sanitised to the point of fanaticism and I followed all the rules even though the lying hounds in our government did not.

And now, here I am, four years later, with the damn thing and its knocked the stuffing out of me and knocked Christmas into a cocked hat.

I was first aware of it on Friday morning having gone to bed on Thursday night feeling perfectly well, in good spirits and full of a rather pleasant medium-bodied Malbec. The next morning I was proverbially poleaxed.

At first I thought that it was just a “bug going around” but somehow that didn’t feel quite right and so on Saturday morning I awoke early and decided to take a lateral flow test and sure enough it read as positive. Bugger!!!

Since then it’s gotten progressively worse. The coughing is both painful and persistent, my head feels like it’s full of play-fighting puppies and breathing is becoming something of a challenge. I can’t remember a time when I drank so much water either as my mouth is drier than a Jewish comedian most of the time. Seriously, the fear I have about our water rates going up is very real.

But if truth be told, I can cope with the physical symptoms. I’ve had a lot worse when SARS nearly killed me in 2003. Compared to that this is a stroll in the park on a sunny Sunday morning in May with a stop off to feed the ducks and then a quick latte and a slice of carrot cake in the café.

What really rankles me the most is that all my carefully made Christmas plans are now just pie in the sky. And believe you me I had planned it meticulously.

You see, I do enjoy Christmas. On my own terms of course; I don’t fall prey to all that commercialism that has blighted this annual festival ever since Coca Cola turned Santa Claus red. No, I love to do Christmas my way and I always, always enjoy it as a result.

I plan a nice meal for the family with the emphasis on rotating the meat choice every time so that we don’t have the same thing two years in a row. I take pride in doing a nice spread and being a good and generous host and I try to buy presents that people actually want or need or would make them genuinely happy rather than some crappy old tat that’s going to be broken by Boxing day or in a charity shop by Easter.

In short, I make a bit of an effort without buying into all that grotesque advertising that we’re subjected to from the middle of October onwards.

But now…

Now all my plans are scuppered by some ugly, grubby little lab-grown virus, invisible to the naked eye. It’s just not showing any signs of leaving and I can only surmise that I shall still be riddled with the wretched thing this time next week.

Oh sure, I’ve got a back-up plan, I always do have one, but it’s not going to be anywhere near the same. I shall miss not being with my granddaughter on Christmas day and spending time with loved ones and dear friends, for truly, that is the greatest pleasure of the season. Can I get an amen? No? Please yourselves, but it is for me.

Instead of the traditional family Christmas my lovely wife and I shall be isolating here at Blessham Hall watching rubbish TV, drinking wine and feeling pretty sorry for ourselves.

Actually, Ange is yet to show any signs of the disease and I’m hoping and praying that it passes her by. She’s had enough health battles for one year and doesn’t need to finish 2023 on another one.

So that’s the situation here. It’s a shame but life goes on and there’s always next year if we’re all still here by then – I do hope we are.

All that remains now is for me to wish you all the very merriest of Christmases. My heartfelt thanks go out to all those who have supported us in various ways and anyone who has bought my books this year and it is my fervent and heartfelt wish that you all have a happy and healthy time on December 25^th.

Cheers everyone and stay safe x

As you all know, around this time of year I like to have a bit of a rant about the gaudiness that has become prevalent at Christmas time. Last year I, quite rightly, had a pop at Tesco for their frankly abominable Christmas advert featuring lumbering buffoons in Santa hats dancing in the snow with wheelie bins. This year though, I thought I’d take aim at the drinks industry.

Christmas, of course, is a time when the drinks industry do their best business of the year as we all tip alcohol down our necks with an almost feverish glee in the desperate hope that it will make us feel Christmassy.

I’ve nothing against that, not in the least, but what I do object to these days is the ever increasing fadiness in the drinks industry. It seems to me that its just one gimmick after another. They know that people just want the alcohol but it’s the tiresome ways that they constantly re-badge the stuff that gets to me.

Time was when you could walk into a pub and the fanciest drink available would be Babycham, which ladies in the 1960s, 70s and 80s would often consume with brandy. It was an expensive evening if your date chose that particular beverage as it was essentially two drinks rolled into one… For the price of two.

Other than that the girls would either have a half of lager and lime, a glass of enamel-loosening Liebfraumilch or possibly both if you were feeling flush and trying to cop off with her. The older lady would prefer a glass of sherry or a bottle of Mackesons and the middle-aged, more sophisticated woman would sip a Cinzano Bianco simply because Joan Collins was in the adverts and it sounded decadent.

Yes, there was a bottle of Noilly Prat on the shelf but no-one ever drank it for the simple reason that no-one, the bar staff included, actually knew what the hell it was.

Men would typically drink pints of beer, hand pumped not bottled, unless it was brown ale. Mixed drinks such as shandy or lager top were considered somewhat on the wimpy side and often frowned upon when drunk by anyone wasn’t driving or was over the age of 14.

And then… along came snakebite, and the game changed dramatically.

Somebody thought it would be a good idea to mix super strength cider with lager and as a result great seething pools of vomit soon began to appear on every street in Britain every Friday and Saturday night as the disgusting fad caught on and spread across the country like a foul-tasting plague. It wasn’t lager, it wasn’t cider, it was just an evil and ill-conceived hybrid of the two whose only guarantee in this world was to make your gorge rise.

Getting off your tits on cheap alcohol is of course seen as a rite of passage in this modern era. And who amongst us hasn’t necked supermarket own brand vodka with their so-called mates whilst talking utter bollocks and making complete twots of themselves in public? I know I certainly have. Thank God for the wisdom of the years, that’s all I can say on that one. You’ll understand when you get to my age kids.

But of course, it didn’t stop at snakebite did it? Oh no, those clever fiends in the marketing departments soon got to work and a whole new level of piss-artistry was introduced. The alco-pops.

I always found the alco-pops to be a particularly heinous invention when you take the time to consider who they were being marketed at. Let’s face it, they weren’t targeting middle-aged men or old maiden aunts were they? No, it was aimed at the young; the very young in fact. No longer did kids have to screw their faces up and gag and retch as they drank their vodka on the swings. Now it tasted like pop or cordial. A thousand fruity flavours to tantalise the teenage taste buds like never before.

This meant that our parks, beaches and other recreational areas were soon liberally strewn with empty WKD, Smirnoff Ice and Hooch bottles as teens the length and breadth of the land got shit-faced on sickly sweet concoctions that, whilst packing a punch, tasted just like Vimto.

But kids tire of things quickly and what one generation sees as cool and trendy the next sees as jaded and pathetic.

What on Earth shall we do? Cried the alcohol producers.

We know, said the marketing men, let’s rehash all the old drinks and fool everybody into thinking that they’re now in some way fashionable.

And so dear old Guinness became no longer the drink of the Irish, the unwell or old Fred at the end of the bar who had three bottles of it on a Friday night that the landlord had to blow the dust off first before he served it. Oh no, thanks to some very stylish advertising involving surf boards and more merchandise than you’d find at a Kiss concert, Dublin’s finest became the go to drink of the hip and trendy young things. Sales of the black stuff shot through the roof and everyone’s iron intake rapidly shot up as well.

But let’s not stop there said the marketing men. Let’s fart about with the Guinness. Yes, it’s a perfectly delicious drink on its own terms but let’s make it extra cold so that it has zero flavour and can hardly be enjoyed by anyone who isn’t an Eskimo, people will still drink it because the adverst tell them to and they listen to every word we say.

They can’t leave anything alone can they?

And so, having well and truly buggered up Guinness, they then turned their guns back onto cider.

Snakebite wasn’t trendy any more unless you were a biker from Croydon or an ageing skinhead fresh out of Wandsworth and something had to be done to get the stuff moving again.

The marketing men spoke and it came to pass that cider was turned into piss water.

Who wants the thought-provoking complexity of traditional scrumpy when you can have syrupy sweet Strongbow, which, like Guinness before it, underwent a quite extraordinary advertising campaign.

Didn’t just stop at Strongbow did it? Along came Woodpecker, Blackthorn, Magners, Thatchers and a whole host of others. And the worst of it was that it didn’t actually taste all that much like cider. It was just fizzy alcoholic apple juice that didn’t really taste of anything. You couldn’t even tell one from the other. They all tasted, and still do taste, the same. At least even with a blindfold on I could tell the difference between bitter, mild and stout. These “ciders” were all just one homogenous great lake of nothingness.

But again, as Britain’s drinkers continued to lose their sense of taste, in favour of utter blandness, the fad caught on and soon every pub in town that once had one cider in stock now had about half a dozen different ciders to choose from as the young men and women over-enthusiastically quenched their collective thirst on the stuff.

However, there were rumblings in the boardroom; the marketing men still weren’t satisfied.

Not everybody was keen on this new, bland cider and so they began to think of a way to make it more appealing to teenagers. The solution was staring them in the face. Good old alco-pops held the key, namely, fruity flavours. And so they made the cider taste like strawberries or blackberries or loganberries or whatever berries they could think of. And it came to pass that cider sales went astronomical.

Giddy with success and high on the smell of money, the marketing men pushed on. Cider became an international concern. We began to see ciders appearing from Sweden, France, New Zealand, Belgium and basically any country on Earth that grew apples. Some of which were almost unpronounceable. The nation had gone absolutely mad for shit cider.

And while our backs were turned and we poured the fruity cider down our throats, out of the blue Gin and Tonic became something much, much more than the drink that made Granny a bit tipsy at Christmas. It went stratospheric. Suddenly, there were more brands of gin on the market than there were off licences. There was a time when you could get Gordons and that was just about it. Now there’s gin distilleries popping up all over the place, including Japan. Come on, you’ve all seen the adverts.

Gin and tonic had gone, literally overnight, from being the beverage of grouchy ambassadors and their fragrant wives in the far flung reaches of the British empire, to become perhaps the number one drink in the country. There are now bars dedicated solely to the sale of it. I heard of one, I think it was in York or somewhere, that has over 1000 gins to choose from.

Now, Is it just me or does that sound ridiculous to you as well? I mean, don’t get me wrong, a nice G&T is a lovely refreshing drink and I often enjoy a large one, but hasn’t it all gone rather too far to the point of confusion.

And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, gin got the alco-pop treatment as well and soon the choice became bewildering with flavours ranging from rhubarb to quince and everything in between with the exception of burnt rubber. So far that is. The entire drinks market had finally lost the plot and gone totally insane. All within the space of about thirty years or so.

And in that time we’ve had urine-esque Mexican lager with a wedge of lime stuffed in the neck of the bottle, Fosters cut with lemon (Cut? Cut? What is it, heroin?), we’ve had unfiltered Stella Artois that looks like a glass full of dysentry, we’ve had revolting shots that come in all the colours of the rainbow and taste like battery acid mixed with treacle, vodka mixed with red bull, which is a bad idea from the start because then you have annoying drunk people who want to stay up and talk a load of bollocks all night, and we also had beer cocktails. As modern parlance would put it, W.T.F! The list is endless.

So what do we do now? Sit and quietly sip our crappy on trend drinks whilst we wait for the next big thing? Not me matey boy. A pint of real ale or proper Guinness or a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon or if it’s a special occasion a large Jack Daniels. Give me that and I’m more than happy.

I could go on and on about what they’ve done to good old-fashioned beer with the huge ever increasing influx of foreign brews with unusual and interesting names flooding the UK market, none of which are as good as our own, but I fear I’m going to make myself physically ill if I do continue.

All I will say is, stop falling for the bloody gimmicks, they’re taking the money out of your wallet and the roaring piss out of you with their sickly, sugary and addictive little drinks. Stop buying into it. It’s just one gormless idiot proof cash cow fad after another and the next one will be along very soon you can be assured of that. I don’t know exactly what it will be, probably alcoholic Bovril or rum and Domestos or Irish whisky flavoured with shag tobacco and talcum powder or something equally as stupid.

Oh, and whilst I’m on this subject, I mentioned pubs earlier but the sorry truth of the matter is that there are very few real British pubs left. They’ve all been rejected in favour of pubbing-by-numbers Wetherspoons and chic continental style bars where sun burnt Brits sit outside and sip there e-number-loaded drinks and cackle incoherently like Macbethian witches whilst imagining that they are in some way cool. A word of wisdom if that describes you – (sotto voce) you don’t look cool.

As those irritating kids from Grange Hill once so sincerely sang, just say no! Say no to the hype.

And don’t even get me started on the sizzling gut-rot poison that is prosecco!

Rant over.

As an independent author, I’m a member of many writers groups and forums on social media. Makes sense doesn’t it? Sharing information, tips and encouragement with one another is a fantastic way for the indie author to not feel that they’re alone, which can sometimes happen.

And for the most part, being a member of these groups is a great experience.

But every silver lining has a cloud.

There can often be a lot of negativity in these groups. Not just from writers struggling with their WIPs or character development etc etc, but more to do with putting an actual downer on the whole ethos of being a writer.

I’ll give you an example.

You log onto Facebook and there on one of the writers groups is a meme about someone having something akin to a nervous breakdown because they are at the editing stage of their book. You see it all the time.

Reams of memes!

Oh, they’re always disguised with a big dollop of tongue on cheek humour with references to copious amounts of coffee and red wine but that veil of humour is obviously transparently thin. There’s more than an element of seriousness behind these memes. They make out that the editing process is in some way similar to some kind of sadistic medieval torture that has to be endured rather than it being an enjoyable undertaking.

And I don’t know why because I bloody well love the editing process, me!

I once read somewhere (I forgot where and who the author was) that writing a novel is a lot like cooking a meal. Plotting the thing is like getting the ingredients together, writing the first draft is the actual cooking part and then the editing/proofing and all that is the washing up afterwards. And I think that is a brilliant and rather accurate analogy.

And the washing up stage is where I am at now with my current WIP and I’m having a great time with it. I think the thing I like most is the anticipation that all the hard work is done, having written well in excess of 85,000 words for this one, and now the end is tantalisingly close. Publication is on the near horizon.

There’s the relief, for one thing, when you read it back and realise that it is a coherent body of work and there are no plot holes or outrageous anomalies that require another month’s worth of rewriting. There’s the joy of discovering that giving almost a year of your life to the project has been worthwhile because you’ve produced something enjoyable and entertaining and the realisation that if you like it yourself then there’s a fair chance that others will too. And there’s the gentle frisson that you feel, similar to an expectant parent, that you’re about to birth a shiny, brand-new novel into the world.

Seriously, the editing process is great fun in my humble opinion.

So, you may ask, whereabouts are we in terms of publication?

Very close actually. The main edit where I add and subtract various bits and pieces and check that the book flows well is all done and dusted and that tomorrow I move on to spelling and grammar checking but also making sure that all of Joe’s little wordplay nuances all match up. That will probably take a full day, or maybe even longer, and then it’s the final proof read which will take a few days as I always proof read at least twice, if not three times.

Or to put it another way, I’ve nearly finished the washing up.

I’ve also begun work on the cover of the new book. The front is pretty much finished and the back is underway. Obviously can’t do the spine yet until I know the final page width of the thing but that’s a small matter that just requires a little bit of basic arithmetic to get right. I’ve learnt a heck of a lot about cover design and formatting in the last four years and six novels.

I do honestly still believe that a December publication is on the cards as I would like people to have the book in their hands for Christmas. It would make an ideal present for the reader in your life (hint hint!) or even just to perhaps give yourself a festive treat.

So yeah, exciting times here at Blessham Hall yet again. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you the title as a sort of pre-Christmas bonus. It’s a Joe Wilkie/Blessham novel and it goes by the title of…

Medicine Show

I won’t go into any further details just now but please be reassured that it’s an absolute corker (in many ways actually) and that Joe gets himself into all the usual scrapes and hi-jinks. I’ve read it through a couple of times myself now and it makes me laugh so I hope that’s a positive endorsement for you.

Right, enough said! Must press on. Now, where did I put my Marigolds?

Just a quick one this week.

I’m not a huge fan of Elvis Presley, although I quite like Suspicious Minds and I don’t mind In The Ghetto, but I’d like to quote the man for just a second or two – My hands are shaking and my knees are weak, I can’t seem to stand on my own two feet.

I’ll elaborate.

We’re now one week into November and the amount of progress made on editing the current WIP is exactly… drum roll please…

Zero!

Yes, a big fat zero. Zilch. Zip. Nought. Nil. Nothing. Or as they say up here in Yorkshire – Nowt!

Was I merely full of hot air (or should that be Hot Eire, bit of a plug there) in my last blog post or has something happened to hamper and impede my editing? The answer is the second one. Something has indeed happened.

Look, I know I sounded full of great intentions of what I was going to achieve after the last blog post but since then I haven’t stopped trying to fit a gallon into a pint pot. My body, on the other hand, has stopped. And I can’t seem to get it going again.

Without going into too much detail we’ve basically filled the flat with everything from the caravan, which has now gone to scrap. We didn’t have a large window of time to do it either and so I’ve had to force my weak and wasting muscles into doing things that are, quite frankly, beyond them.

The result?

I’m all shook up.

Quite literally as it happens. I’ve got this uncontrollable shaking in my limbs when I do anything vaguely physical and my restless leg syndrome seems to have taken on a life of its own and my knees are going like road drills whenever I try and rest. It’s all very disconcerting.

I think I’ve broke myself.

It’s a bit like Tonka Trucks. Remember them? Yeah, they were brilliant weren’t they? They were sold as ’The Toys That Last!’ The idea being that they were virtually indestructible. And whilst they were certainly tough and hardy little toys, let’s be honest now fellas, who amongst us didn’t try to prove the slogan wrong? Yes, it took a lot of heavy duty play but they broke in the end. And that’s basically the state of play with me at present. The last week has been heavy duty and now I’m broken.

The solution?

Well, basically do nothing for a week and then try and have a go at editing. That’s the plan. I know it’s not much of a plan but it’s the best I can do for now.

Listen, I know I said I wouldn’t burden you with my medical woes anymore but I just thought I should let you know the state of play with the WIP. I’ll get there. All I can ask is, please be patient whilst I’m being a patient.

As a final note I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to Debbie and Barry Gibson for their fantastic help and support. You two did the bulk of the lifting and have been marvellous. We’d have never done it without you.

I’ve done it! I’ve only gone and flipping well done it! What have you done Stevenson? I hear you cry. I’ll tell you what I’ve done, I’ve finished the first draft of my next novel; that’s what!

The last nine months have been like some hellish, torturous literary nightmare where I have wrestled with the Orcs of comedy writing and emerged scathed (badly scathed) but victorious. Now it all seems like a dream and I can’t quite believe it.

You see, I love writing Joe Wilkie. He’s a lot of fun to work with is that cute and curious little chap. I love to get his words all mixed up for him and I love to create all his little adventures, anecdotes and idiosyncrasies. He’s just a brilliant character and it has been my absolute great pleasure to see him develop.

However…

This time it’s been like pulling teeth!

And I’ve never actually pulled a tooth personally but I’ve had them pulled professionally and it’s not a great experience. Especially for the tooth one imagines. But I digress.

No, the reason for this personal descent into novel writing hades is purely my own fault. What’s the expression now? Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Yeah, well, I didn’t read that last line very closely.

I didn’t plan this novel as well as all the others and it shows in the fact that it’s taken nine months to do the first draft. First drafts just shouldn’t take that long to write.

I planned the first four chapters meticulously in the trusty old exercise book but then I got carried away with myself and started going off at tangents and had to keep reeling myself back in and re-writing this, that and the other. I’ve had to scrap whole passages simply because they were little more than mawkish shash that didn’t deserve to be read by the decent, honest, hard-working book buying public.

And so what is normally a joy; writing a Wilkie novel, became an arduous slog where at times I scarcely dared to turn the laptop on in fear of what horrors would pour forth from the keyboard as my unprepared mind sent all sorts of deranged and erratic signals to my poor, overworked fingertips.

There have been so many ups and downs during the process. On the up side, I wrote 6,500 words in one day and was delighted with all of them. On the down side I wrote about 850 one day which were then mercilessly deleted without hesitation or qualm. And then there was a period of about six weeks where I didn’t even write one damn word because the mere thought of it made me want to puke.

But!

Here I am, bloodied but unbowed (actually I am a tad bowed but that doesn’t sound as good). I have crushed the wretched thing underfoot at last by sheer, almost superhuman, effort and the carcass of the slain beast stands at 82,278 words. Which is actually 8,000 more than my last novel, Vole, when it was complete.

There now follows several rounds of editing before I’ll release it but by then I’ll have it honed and polished to a high degree of excellence and that will be a joy compared to writing it now that I’ve reached the end of the long, dark first draft tunnel.

You may be thinking that after all I’ve just said that I don’t like the book. Au contraire mon ami! Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a very good novel in my opinion and one that I’m now very keen to get out into the public domain. And so it bloody well should be after all that I’ve been through with it.

It’s everything you’ve come to expect in a Joe Wilkie novel. The bumbling but loveable protagonist gets himself into all sorts of scrapes and shenanigans. There are multiple violent outbursts from Lady Stark-Raven. There’s an angry mob (a common occurrence in Blessham). There’s an antagonist like we haven’t seen before who Joe locks horns with and a host of other crazy characters both old and new. What’s not to like?

There’s also a bit of a different side to Joe in this one and he isn’t the hopeless doormat he usually is. Well, not all the time. Most of the time but not all. But I won’t give too much away at this stage.

When will it be released? Well, I don’t have an exact date in mind but I’m looking at early December hopefully so that everyone can fill their Christmas stockings with it. I’ve put the manuscript away for now until next week and will return to it on November 1^st to begin the editing which gives me one month to buff it up and sand off all those splintery rough edges. I think I can just about manage that.

For the next few days I shall simply bask in the radiant aura of my victory over adversity and maybe have a glass of wine or three. Maybe even a fourth.

Sod it, I’ll have a bottle.

Watch this space for further updates.

Permit me if you will, to get a touch misty-eyed and a little bit schmaltzy. Romantic even. For, as a creative person, I do have romance within me and I’d like to take the opportunity to let it gush forth for this blog post.

Exactly five years ago today, I became lawfully wedded to the woman I adore and my life couldn’t be any better.

But, of course, I keep asking myself that oft repeated question – where has the time gone?

It was quite the most brilliant, wacky, quirky wedding you could imagine, but then, Ange and I never do anything by the book.

It was a registry office do and we chose Real Love by Tom Odell and Louis Armstrong’s All The Time In The World as our music. My great friend Kenny was my sort of unofficial best man and he got me there on time. Top bloke is our Kenny.

My beautiful bride looked… well… beautiful, and I was as dapper as I’ve looked in a very long time. But the overall theme for our guests was to keep it cool and rock ‘n’ roll, so nobody was over-dressed for the occasion.

Photos were taken at the boatyard where we were living at the time on our old wide-beam barge – Walrus. I know a boatyard doesn’t sound like the most picturesque venue for wedding photos but trust me, it was. The weather was incredible for October as well and added a certain joie de vivre to the already happy atmosphere.

We had our wedding breakfast at the local carvery and no-one went hungry as a result. There was strong drink aplenty and good cheer all round.

Then it was party time!

We didn’t have a cake but instead a huge cake stand full of 150 Crispy Kreme donuts, which went down a treat with the younger attendees. And let’s face it, who wants a heavy old lump of fruit cake at a celebration. I mean, I do love a nice bit fruit cake, just not at weddings. So donuts seemed like a lighter and more fun filled option for us.

We had a live local rock band – Sawdust, playing two sets of classic rock tunes and the dance floor was rarely empty save for when they took a break so we could serve up the food, which was three huge pans of curry from our favourite restaurant; Cardamon, in Bingley. We also laid on pie and peas for those who didn’t like spicy food and yes, one of the curries was a vegetarian option; before you ask.

We paid for a professional massage therapist to provide free massages for the guests and rather than one of those photo booth things that you see nowadays, our excellent friends Carl and Karen provided an instamatic camera and a load of films so that people could capture the event for posterity.

And as our guests left the party they were each presented with a little gift – a cactus! I don’t know why cactuses in particular. It was Becky’s idea and everyone seemed genuinely pleased to get one.

So you see, a most unusual wedding but one that people have long remembered.

That was five years ago and I can scarcely believe it. It’s almost as if I’ve still got the buzz from it at times and can you believe we’ve still got our Just Married felt bunting hanging up. Well, it seems such a shame to take it down.

 We’ve moved home four times in those five years, having now settled in Settle! But home is where the heart is they say and my heart has always been where my lovely Ange is. We won’t be moving again any time soon though.

So much has happened since that happy day and, like all married couples, there have ben ups and downs, although the ups have far outweighed the downs by a considerable margin. It’s been good dear listener. Bloody marvellous in fact and I’m a happy man whereas for much of my life that wasn’t the case.

I was 52 and Ange was 58 when we married so I guess it’s true, it’s never too late. Be it getting married or whatever takes your fancy. If you’ve got something burning away inside you then let it out. Write that book, climb that mountain, sing that song, travel that road. Be what you want to be.

A psychologist once said to me, ‘If you’re not happy then you should do whatever you can to change it.’ Well I did. I met the most wonderful lady and moved in with her. There isn’t a day goes by that we don’t laugh like naughty schoolkids together and I am proud to be seen with Ange by my side.

I’m sure she feels the same!

I hope!

Nah! I’m sure.

So here’s to the last five years and also to the next five. If we’re all still here and alive by then I’ll write another blog post about it. And no doubt I’ll be asking myself, once again, where has the time gone?

Thanks for allowing me to gush.

I’ll be back to being an old curmudgeon next week.

My lovely wife and I have been talking recently about her retiring from work next May when she turns 64. I know, I know, she doesn’t look anywhere near that age but it’s the truth. We know the actual UK retirement age for her is 67 but we’re not going with that. She has had a raft of health problems in the last twelve months ranging from gout to type 2 diabetes by way of a heart attack and we both thing enough is enough.

So we’re making plans for the rest of our lives and I for one am quite excited at the prospect. We know we’ll have a bit less money to play with and so we’re looking at getting things we need whilst Ange is still working.

One of the things that Ange has lovingly suggested is a new laptop for yours truly and as much as I’d really like one, I’m struggling to justify the expense.

You see, the laptop that I have and the one that I’m writing this blog post on, is now nine years old. It’s an Asus something or other that I bought in 2014 after I foolishly left my old laptop on the roof of our boat one night and the dew got at it. Although I think home-made wine played some part in the fiasco but that’s by the by. And it’s a budget model which I paid less than two-hundred quid for.

When the new laptop arrived it most certainly wasn’t love at first sight. I really didn’t like it. I thought that the keys were too far apart and I didn’t think the mousepad was up to the job. The whole thing just felt somehow awkward and not In any way user-friendly. But seeing as how it was the best I could afford at the time I had no choice but to persevere with the thing.

Fast forward nine years and I can say in all total honesty that I love the old girl.

She’s become like a pair of well-worn slippers or that threadbare dressing gown that you just can’t part with. She’s become comfortable. Notice I’m using the female vernacular, but maybe that’s just me.

I love how the way her keys are now smoothed by years of my fingers gently pressing on them and the way that the mouse pad has a shiny surface now after all the rubbing it has taken during its three-and-a-half-thousand days in my employ. It’s got an amusing slogan on top of the lid that reads, “This would be really funny of it wasn’t happening to me” that I bought from a book shop about fifteen years ago that’s now dog-eared to perfection and I’m on my third charger, which thankfully you can still get on Amazon very cheaply.

Seriously, I have no problem with my laptop.

However, other people do.

I’m constantly getting messages popping up whenever I log on saying things like, “Chrome can’t support your version of Windows” or “You need to update to Windows 10 now!” And always I ask myself the same question – Why?

All the software I need runs perfectly well on it and I can and do update Windows 365 on a regular basis with no problems. I’ve written six and a half full length novels on it, one-hundred podcast scripts, about two-hundred blog posts, created dozens of videos, have files and files of documents that I’ve written for other people and I have a perfect internet connection.

Oh sure, she’s a bit slow to wake up sometimes but aren’t we all. So I make it my business to empty the temporary file folder as often as possible. There’s a short cut for that if you want to email me for details.

But to round it all up, my old laptop is working fine and I don’t feel the need to replace her any time soon.

It’s good of Ange to be so thoughtful about getting me a new one; that’s the kind fo person she is. But when retirement brings it’s own fiscal juggling issues then I can’t justify the cost of a new piece of technology yet.

I know that one day there will be that terrible moment when she does pack up and I’ll have to send her to the great laptop graveyard but until then we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing for almost a decade. And don’t worry, I’m a stickler for backing everything up in duplicate so nothing will be lost.

So no retirement plans for me and Asus the Laptop. We’ve got a lot of writing to do yet.

There has been quite a furore (and rightly so) in the last couple of weeks about the mindless, senseless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall. Like so many others I find myself in utter shock that someone could commit such a perverse and destructive act on a thing of natural beauty like that beloved and iconic tree.

To think that someone skulked out in the middle of the night with malice aforethought to cut down a tree that not only outlives all of us, and many generations before, but also has such a fond place in the national consciousness, is one that troubles me deeply.

You see, to me, it’s not just the cutting down of that wonderful old behemoth of the North that bothers me but something that goes much deeper. To me, the felling of that beautiful sycamore is just another example of gross dysfunction in the ever-growing depraved and sick society that we live in in the UK. A society that is increasingly without morals.

This is not just about a tree. It’s about mankind in general.

One cannot switch on the news of an evening without hearing of a shooting or stabbing somewhere in the UK. My own family was robbed last year of a dear and much-loved relative at the point of a knife, wielded by a deranged and malevolent woman who is thankfully behind bars now.

Murder is nothing new of course, it’s been around for millennia, but here we are living in a so-called civilised and progressive age and yet there are twelve-year-old boys being arrested on an almost daily basis for stabbing someone to death or running them over in a car.

I’m trying, I really am, but for the life of me I just can’t think of a single news story from my childhood that spoke of gangs of children going around the streets of Britain brandishing machetes with every intention of using them.

It’s like we’ve not advanced at all from the era of Dickens when cut-throats and foot-pads roamed the streets of London and all our major cities looking for any opportunity to kill in cold blood for the small gain of some poor sod’s purse or pocket watch. Only these days they’re after your bank card and smartphone.

The worst criminals aren’t on the streets though.

Every politician in the House of Commons, yes every stinking one of them, would put themselves before the good of this country without a qualm. Parliament is as corrupt as the rat ridden sewers that run beneath it and yet for thirteen years now the British people have sat back and listened to a continued barrage of lies spewed from the mouths of a government that isn’t fit for purpose yet keeps getting in every time there is a general election as the sheep-like majority of the populace vote them in to office.

And don’t complain about Sunak and Co if you voted them in in the first place! There were other choices you know!

And if those that run the country are so deceitful and full of self-serving villainy then you can hardly expect any criminally minded citizen to behave any different, can you? What kind of example is being set to the rest of us? Kids on the street hear about their prime ministers and other politicians breaking the law so why shouldn’t they?

There was a time when people entered into politics to try and make a difference, whatever side of the political fence they sat on. Now people enter into politics to make money. Pure and simple. Liz Truss was no sooner elected leader of the Tories when suddenly her autobiography came out to coincide with it. How about getting on and sorting out the hopeless mess your lot made sweetheart before you start telling us how great you are and raking in the profits.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, you and Kwarteng nearly sank the economy and jumped ship after 49 days, didn’t you?

But enough about her. It’s not just the current government though, is it? This country has been slowly rotting away from the inside out since the Second World War. It’s not a land fit for heroes. They’ve made it a land fit for cockroaches, criminals and chancers.

I’m glad I grew up when I did; in the 1970s. It wasn’t great but it was better than now. I’d hate to be a teenager at school now. And I couldn’t for the life of me be a teacher at any cost. I worked in a school twenty years ago as a teaching assistant and things I saw back then were enough to make you want to go home, sit in a darkened room and rock back and forth gibbering quietly to yourself in the belief that we’re not going to make it as a species.

It was bad enough then, now you begin to wonder if teachers should be armed in the same way that the police are. I seriously think they should. If some stinking, unwashed, greasy-ring-pieced, hoodie-wearing, coward rat bag with a knife thought for one minute that Sir or Miss had a taser in their pocket and weren’t afraid to use it then they might think twice about waving that blade about.

Extreme perhaps?

Well yeah, perhaps it is, but so what? Having an acned scrote of a 14-year-old push a carving knife between your ribs just for doing your job is pretty extreme too. Why shouldn’t teachers defend themselves?

I’m not one of those old farts who chants on about, “bringing back the cane”; those days are gone and can’t come back. But there has to be some kind of deterrent or anarchy reigns supreme and it’s the hardworking teachers who are bearing the brunt.

They took God out of the schools and the devil walked right in and took his place. Where there used to be a couple of hymns in assembly you now have condom machines in the boys toilets. You can’t say the Lord’s Prayer, hell no, but hey, look on the bright side, you can shag Stacey from 4C without getting her up the duff!

That’s progress for you folks!

The Royal Family is another institution that is hardly worth venerating. Three out of four of Queen Elizabeth’s children’s marriages ended in ugly divorce. Charles’s divorce from Diana was particularly acrimonious and publicly messy and now he’s sitting on the throne with the pickled-walnut-faced current Mrs Windsor next to him who he destroyed his first marriage for. Hardly a great example for the sanctity of marriage and traditional family values is he?

If the future king can screw around, why can’t the rest of us?

And we are (well, not personally). The divorce rate in the UK is currently about 42%. That’s not far off half. And the vast majority of them are caused by spousal infidelity. People just can’t seem to keep it in their pants these days, or so it seems, and then wonder why their kids go off the rails and start turning to promiscuity, drugs and crime. Erm, maybe the lack of a solid family unit might have something to do with it.

Sinead O’Connor once sang a song called Black Boys on Mopeds based on a true story about how the police chased two black youths who had stolen some mopeds and it ended in disaster with the two youths being killed in the chase. It’s a nice sentiment and a great song, and I do feel sorry that Sinead is no longer with us, but you have to ask the question, if they hadn’t stolen the mopeds in the first place would they still be alive today? I like to think so. And I’m not specifically blaming the two lads for what happened. They were victims of a rotten and twisted society that has let them and every other teenager down for years and years.

You often hear the teenage rallying cry of, “There’s nothing to do around here!” Well, if people brought their kids up right that wouldn’t be such an issue. There are actually plenty of things for young people to do. They’re just not encouraged to do it by their lazy, lack-witted, Kopparberg-sodden parents and so turning to petty or even serious crime is their only way to relieve the boredom.

And no, before you start, I’m not tarring all teenagers and parents with the same brush. There are some great kids out there from great families who are the hope for the future. But you’ve got to admit that teenage crime, particularly violent crime, is on an alarmingly rapid increase.

Even entertainment has become the playground of the ignorant, the arrogant and the downright crass. Cruelty for fun seems to be the watchword where entertainment is concerned these days. Let’s be as offensive as we possibly can. That’s the mantra of modern TV comedians.

All those absolute bollocks panel shows where talentless piss ants, who aren’t fit to tie Eric Morecambe’s shoelaces, sit and make crude and grossly offensive jokes about anyone and anything without fear of rebuttal is now the norm for comedy. There was a time when the F word was shocking and yet now is as common as the word “The” in the English language. We all say it but does it have to be bandied about with such abandon?

Television becomes more and more voyeuristic by the day. It started with Big Brother and all the nobody housemates getting their kit off for their fifteen minutes of fame and now there’s an absolute slew of reality shite broadcast night after night with nothing deeper than titillation at the core. Bloody hell! If you’ve seen one bikini clad, pneumatic-breasted, pouting, bottle blonde with micro-bladed eyebrows poncing around on a beach you’ve seen them all!

Give us something a bit more high-brow please.

There’s no decent role models for kids. Lads have got overpaid and under-performing cock-happy footballers and rappers who go on about ho’s and slapping their bitches up, to look up to and girls have got the likes of Katie Price and Madonna; or what bits of them are still their own. It’s either that or some bunch of naff, suntanned, tooth-whitened so called “celebs” from Essex or somewhere trying to be dramatic and convince us all they have meaningful lives when in reality they’re about as vacuous as a blank sheet of A4 but only fractionally as interesting. Hardly inspiring the next generation is it?

And will people please stop calling them “celebs!”

A celebrity by definition is someone who is celebrated. Who celebrates that lot?

And when I was a kid, if someone daubed spray paint all over someone else’s property it was deemed as graffiti and classed as vandalism. These days it’s called “street art” and the perpetrators are given a government grant to do some more and woe betide if you dare to speak against it; ye rattling olde worlde bigot ye!

I’m not totally against graffiti though. There used to be a lovely big picture of an aerosol sprayed cock and balls on the railway bridge near us and then the council went and painted over it. Bastards! They just don’t understand youth culture.

I’m being sarcastic, I hope it showed.

Another thing that was different when I was a kid was cannabis. At one time you had to hide away like some kind of hideous, flesh-tortured leper if you wanted to smoke cannabis for fear of getting your collar felt. You had to stay indoors to smoke it basically. Now you can’t walk into town without the whiff of the stuff up your nostrils. It’s everywhere. And I mean everywhere!

I’ve had so many cars pass me by when I’ve been walking through an urban area with a trail of the stuff billowing out of the window. That means that the driver is stoned! He’s not in full control of his vehicle and is therefore posing a serious and dangerous threat to other road users.

Listen, smoke the stuff to your heart’s content if that’s what you want to do. I agree that it should be legalised. It’s by and large harmless and people under its effect are generally non-violent and some people find genuine pain relief from it. I just don’t want any involvement myself. I don’t want to smell it, taste it or have you kill me because you’re off your tits on it behind the wheel.

Napoleon called Britain a nation of shopkeepers. He may have been right at the time but now we’re a nation of dope smokers.

And they’ve done something to the smell of it as well. Cannabis used to be quite a pleasant sort of sweet-smelling thing. Now it smells like half rotted leaf matter mixed with donkey excrement and public transport seating. It’s vile. Stomach churningly vile.

They can’t leave anything alone can they?

And it’s almost as if you are in some way not “cool” if, like me, you don’t smoke the bloody stuff. But then again, I never have been cool. Not really. But I’m happy to be a bumbling, beardy, old prog rocker come folkie who gets his kicks from listening to Jethro Tull and Steeleye Span with a nice glass of red wine in my hand. You see, not cool at all.

Cannabis of course is the mere very tippy, trippy top of the drugs iceberg. Class A drugs are now so endemic on our streets that a bit of weed is neither here nor there really and nobody seems to mind it anymore. Hard drugs, however, are a massive, potentially unsolvable problem that cause abject misery to so many and the whole country is rife with them.

And the boys in blue don’t give a toss about it either. Mind you, they don’t give a toss about anything much these days except hate speech. I’m strongly opposed to hate speech myself but when three coppers turn up at someone’s home to arrest them in handcuffs for reposting a mean tweet when there are smackheads driving around out there above and beyond the speed limit without a care in the world and young men (and women) sticking knives in one another, reeks of a wrong sense of priority to me.

And why would you trust the police?

Every week there’s a news story about an officer being arrested/charged/imprisoned for rape or extortion or perverting the course of justice. Hardly builds public confidence in the forces of the law, does it? But then, who else are you going to call when your BMW gets nicked off your driveway by some wasted 16-year-old and his mates? There is nobody else.

I’m not even scratching the surface with this. The country is in a mess that would take at least a century to get out of. You can’t go anywhere in the countryside anymore without seeing litter or fly-tipping because the dirty bastards who do it are so disgustingly lazy and self-centred.

And that, my dear reader, brings me to the very crux of the problem.

We have become a society of self-centred, high-minded, over-opinionated, self-righteous pricks who do not care what effect their own words or actions have on others.

We are not living in the age of reason, we are living in the age of, “I couldn’t give a fuck!”

And that is the bare truth of the matter. That is so many people’s attitude today. The “I don’t care” culture that now permeates our society regardless of class, creed or status. Nobody cares about anything much any more unless it inconveniences them in some way.

We should bloody well care. We should care about what we say and do. We should care about how we are perceived by others. We should care about the feelings and wellbeing of our fellow man. We should, as Jesus Christ said, love our neighbours.

And it is that wholly abhorrent attitude of not caring that caused that fine old tree to be brutally slain.

Who ever did it did it out of arrogance and the probability that they just didn’t care. They assumed that they’d get away with it and be some sort of modern Robin Hood style anti-hero and that there would be a raft of people guffawing like twats in bars (you can’t call them pubs anymore because they’re not) the length and breadth of the country about their paltry and mean-spirited deed.

And the sad truth is they’re right.

For every person lamenting the passing of the Sycamore Gap tree there is another one making some ham-fisted gag about it. Petty and grossly unfunny memes making mockery of the tree are appearing online even as I type this. That’s how sick our nation has become. We just don’t care anymore. Everything has to be turned into a crude and cruel joke and then shrugged off with a “so what” attitude.

I’ll finish here, but I’ll end by saying that I personally hope that whoever hacked that tree down slips with the chainsaw, the next time they use it, and cut their own balls off.

They’ll “give a fuck” then!

I need to go and lie down on the couch now with a cup of chamomile tea and a couple of paracetamol and try to remind myself that there is still some good in this world, for it is thankfully true that there is. We just need to see a lot more of it.

Rant over.