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.

I read a most interesting article recently regarding the sudden increase in the sales of physical CDs as opposed to Downloaded tunes. It seems that CDs are making a more than spirited comeback and it’s something I’m pleased to hear about.

You see, I’m not one of those who took their CD collection to the nearest charity shop as soon as downloads came to the fore. I still have hundreds of the things. Likewise, when the CD was first introduced, I sensibly held on to all of my vinyl LPs and just look at the resurgence they have made.

And I like the old compact discs.

Oh, I know that vinyl sounds warmer and more personal yadda, yadda, yadda and that downloads are far simpler etc, etc, etc but for perfect sound and tone, you can’t beat a well-produced CD. And no, I’m not one of those crusty old farts who bleats on about the scratches and pops and crackles of vinyl. I do like vinyl but sometimes it gets on your bloody nerves and you end up longing for the sharper and cleaner sounds of the CD.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make, and going all around the houses in doing so, is that the article I read talked about how record shops now have a 50/50 market between vinyl and CDs and that there are indeed rare CDs that go for a ridiculous amount of money. Also, there is the growing trend of people wanting something physical rather than just uttering the words, “Alexa, play Phil Collins!”

Not that I ask Alexa to play Phil Collins unless it’s his 70s era Genesis albums where Peter Gabriel handles the vocal duties and Collins occupies the drum stool. Then I’m in my musical comfort zone. Sorry, but I don’t do pop music and I don’t believe he should have either.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that the article got me thinking about the correlation between physical book sales and Kindle or tablet downloads. And so I did a little research on the matter.

Well, the good news, I suppose, is that physical sales still outnumber downloads and that downloads are actually decreasing in sales. Globally that is.

Then I looked at my own sales figures, which was a bit depressing I have to say, and the tale of the tape is that it’s pretty even Stevens between the two as far as my own book sales are concerned.

Interesting.

But if physical sales are still performing so well then why are so many wonderful independent bookshops failing and going under?

The answer of course is the internet and I just don’t get it.

I do use a Kindle which I find useful for reading in bed without the light on and therefore keeping my wonderful wife awake at night but at other times of the day you can’t beat the feel of paper between your fingers and the rustle of the pages as you turn them. Books also smell nicer than Kindles, whatever their age, and there’s something oddly fulfilling about walking out of a bookshop with several purchases made.

Second-hand bookshops in particular are a personal delight of mine and the dustier the edition I buy the better. Second-hand books look good on the shelf and give off a simply delicious odour even when unopened.

And I have to say that many of the smaller independent bookshops are doing the right things in order to survive. Most of them provide café style refreshments and a comfortable place to peruse the books you’re thinking of buying. Indeed, many of them have book signing and reading sessions and support local independent authors like yours truly. In fact, if you’re ever in the gorgeous little market town of Kirkby Lonsdale then do pop in to The Book Lounge and get yourself a copy of Ah Boy! or Mutch Wants Moor.

The sad truth of the matter though is that independent bookshops are suffering from the internet blight in the exact same way that is seeing major chain stores going under. Why walk to the bookshop when you can just go onto Amazon, Abe Books or Barnes & Noble (to name just three) to order a book and let the postman bring it to you in a day or two? Particularly in Winter.

Likewise, why even go to that length of waiting for the mailman when you can buy a Kindle or tablet for a mere sixty quid or so and download the book directly to it and be reading the thing in less than a minute?

Kindle versions also tend to be a damn sight cheaper than the physical paper or hard back. And of course we’re all watching the pennies these days, aren’t we? With a download though, all you’re paying for is digitised information and like downloaded music what do you do when your device crashes or gets stolen?

If someone broke into my house and stole my Kindle (not that they’ed want to touch the heavily finger-stained thing) I’d be a lot less gutted than if they took all my physical book collection. The same applies to my Alexa device compared to my CDs.

But damn it all, bookshops are just about the best thing in the whole world and for me, growing up, it’s where the literary journey began. I still recall going in to the small independent bookshop on Leicester Street in Melton Mowbray with my mum to buy the latest Willard Price or Joyce Stranger book and the wonderful sense of anticipation in doing so. I remember feeling as proud as Punch leaving the shop with that little paper bag in my sticky hands (probably from an iced bun in the Wimpy Bar) and not even waiting until I got home to start reading it, beginning the first chapter on the back seat of the car until motion sickness took its toll.

That little shop has gone but the memories never will.

There is no independent bookshop in that town now. There’s a W.H Smiths and the ubiquitous The Works, but no proper olde worlde bookshop that a market town like that needs.

Thankfully I live in North Yorkshire these days and in an area where there is no shortage of good bookshops. How long that will remain so remains to be seen but I’m hoping it will be a long time.

And here’s the thing about self-publishing…

Whenever I publish a new book on KDP I have to upload the Kindle version first and then the paperback one afterwards. Yes, I do a little jig when I get the confirmation email telling me that my Kindle version is now live, but I get an even bigger buzz when the box full of author copies of the paperback arrives. It’s only then that I feel like it’s real; when I’m holding that new book of mine in my hands.

Physical copies of anything, whether it be music, film or literature is always preferable in my humble opinion. And to prove it, here’s a short list of some of the best independent bookshops that I know personally that are local-ish to me.

The Book Lounge, Kirkby Lonsdale

Limestone Books, Settle

Sleepy Elephant, Sedbergh

Hatchard and Daughters, Howarth

Keoghs Books, Skipton (no website)

Clitheroe Books, Clitheroe

Scarthin Books, Cromford (this is one is actually in Derbyshire but I have included it in the list as it is the best bookshop in the whole wide world)

So in summation, physical paper books are the absolute best and the article I read also mention that VHS video tapes are also making a comeback and there was a time when even charity shops refused to take them, so do yourself a favour and hang on to those records, tapes, CDs and more importantly – books. You just never know.

It’s been a rough old year here at Blessham Hall; bad health, bad vibes and far too much loss. In fact, I can’t recall a year quite like it. As Her Majesty would have called it, it has been our annus horribilis and no, before you ask, I’m not going to make any gags about a horrible anus. If you want that kind of cheap comedy you must look elsewhere.

So far this year we’ve lost 2 close friends, our next-door neighbour and a beloved brother in law to cancer and also our dear little cat, Sooty, who passed away a couple of weeks ago from a heart attack.

That’s a lot of grief.

I’ve also bid farewell to two podcasts that I worked very hard on, although I now see that it was the right thing to do.

Worst of all, I nearly lost the love of my life as Ange also had a heart attack at the end of January. Thankfully she recovered and is doing very well.

I could go on and on but I prefer to focus on the positives in life, of which there have also been many. Not least with the life streamlining I’ve been doing lately which I have detailed in this here blog.

Things are going extremely well in that particular area of my life. I’ve found more time for writing and blogging, I’m sleeping a lot better and I’m losing weight. I feel that for once I have a good work/life balance and it shows in my output. I’ve made greater strides with the current WIP (Work In Progress) in the last month than I had in the previous six!

Of course, there is also a lot of self-care going on. I know when I ned to rest and I know when I need to write. I know when I need to exercise and I know when I need to be still. All good.

It’s funny to think that even though I’m writing more I seem to have more time to myself as well. And rather than just fritter away my free time I’ve upped my reading quota considerably and I’ve taken up a new hobby…

I’m learning to play the ukulele.

It’s such fun, it really is. I’ve always been interested in stringed instruments but found the guitar too difficult due to my short, stubby fingers. I know my way roughly around a bass but that’s all. However, even after just one two-hour lesson with U3A and some practice at home I’m already coming on in leaps and bounds. I can play the Banana Boat Song so far. Ok, ok, so it might not be Stairway To Heaven but it’s a start. Jimmy Page started by learning nursery rhymes.

One great benefit I’m getting from the uke is that my fingers are getting some good exercise too. I do get monstrous pain in my fingers at times but I’m finding that by making chord changes and moving them on the fretboard its having a profound effect on them. Well, my left hand at least.

It’s quite a jolly little instrument is the ukulele. Makes a very pretty sound and even if you’re just strumming away practicing you can still make up nice tunes as you go along. It’s a musical instrument that’s good for the mind. Plus, it hardly weighs anything at all, unlike the bass guitar I had which felt like a lead weight around my neck. How those rock stars leap around the stage with one is unfathomable.

So when I do get proficient at it where will it take me? There’s always the possibility of me doing a George Formby tribute act. But as I recall, George wasn’t a hulking, bearded, long-haired ogre of a man with a voice like slow-moving treacle. Still, I would like to learn When I’m Cleaning Windows, just for fun.

Another wonderful thing about the uke is that practice doesn’t mean sitting for hours on end if you don’t want to. I find that many short ten-minute bursts throughout the day are more beneficial. I write for an hour or so and then I have a strum on the uke for a few minutes. Then a cuppa before getting back to the writing. Or if I’m watching the TV, whenever there’s a break, I pick up the uke and have a go. It’s great!

So, after what has been a shite year so far, there have still been a lot of blue-sky moments. I’m enjoying the ukulele, my wife’s health hasn’t been great but it’s meant that we’ve spent a great deal of precious time together, I feel more light-hearted having dumped a lot of the dross I was carrying around in my head and let’s not forget that I published my 6^th novel, Vole, in February.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll do audio books where I sing the contents accompanied by the uke. Then again, perhaps no, I’ll stick with things the way they are for now because life is actually quite good at the moment.

And, as Mr Formby himself once said, “In my profession I’ll work hard, but I’ll never stop, I’ll climb this blinking ladder till I get right to the top!”

When I was a kid we called it an Indian Summer. Nowadays it goes by the alarmist epithet – a heatwave! You see, I vividly remember the Summer drought of 76. Now, that’s what I call a heatwave! You were a pariah back then if you even mentioned the word hosepipe let alone used one. If you were caught using one you were lucky if you didn’t have an angry mob bearing torches and pitchforks on your doorstep.

Everything we’ve had at this time of the year since then has been a typical British Summer, this year being no exception where for the whole of June the Sun shone like the seat of my old school trousers and for July and August it alternated between the odd sunny day here and there and Biblical proportions of rain at all other times.

Now, I like to sit outside and write, preferably to writing inside. I can’t explain it, whether it be the fresh air or the azure skies or the bird song or the trees or whatever. The fact remains that I produce more and better copy when I sit outside. Sadly, for the last two months the opportunities to do so have been few and far between.

Until now!

Last week was quite the most marvellous weeks’ worth of writing I’ve had in a good long time. I tell you I was both stupendous and prolific and made huge great strides with the current work in progress. I wrote witty prose, sparkling dialogue, thoughtful phrases and, above all, lots of it.

The reason being of course that I was sat out on the decking in glorious sunshine but under the shade of the gnarly old ash trees. And I was in my element, gentle reader. My element I tell you.

I’ve never been a sun worshipper, you know, one of those people who sit out in it for hours on end and go as brown as Bovril. That’s never been me. I burn like unwatched toast if I stay out in direct sunlight unprotected for just a few minutes and I’m never seen without a hat on sunny days. But despite that, I still see myself as a definite heliophile.

I need sunshine and blue skies to function properly as a writer and last week was proof positive of that. I seem to remember that Ernest Hemingway was exactly the same; although he usually had a glass of alcohol near to hand as well whereas I have to keep a clear head. Horses for courses and all that.

Sitting out in the open-air last week really helped me to unclog the narrow drain I’d written myself down in recent months. I’d got Joe into an almost impossible situation and I didn’t have a clue how to get him out of it. Then, last week, it all became so obviously apparent and within a day the plot had progressed and I now have a crystal-clear vision of how the book will end, how Joe wins against the odds (again), how the villain of the piece gets their comeuppance and even what the cover should be. All through spending five days typing away whilst sat on garden furniture on plastic decking at a static caravan on a holiday park in the Forest of Bowland.

And I’m sat outside as I write this very blog post. Yes, it’s a little cooler but then we are halfway through September, however, my fingers are still dancing over the laptop keys like Fred Astaire on my right hand and Ginger Rodgers on my left. My mind is focussed, I know what I want to say and how to say it and when I’ve finished writing and uploading it to the Blessham Hall website then I’m going to turn my guns back onto the current WIP and get stuck in again.

My body hurts of course, you all know that by now, but for the first time in what seems like forever my mind is as sharp as a tack. Heck, I almost ran amok with myself when watching Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge on Monday evening, getting question after question right. I’ve not been so lucid in ages and I put it down to good old-fashioned fresh air.

As I type this I am also consciously aware that the countryside, where I’m currently based, isn’t necessarily a haven of peace and quiet. I can hear sheep in the fields behind me, birds in the trees overhead, a tractor chugging away in the distance and from time to time a barking dog from somewhere on the park. None of which cause me consternation like the sounds of urbanity.

The tractor doesn’t have the same nerve-jangling effect on me that a passing ambulance siren has. The occasional woof from one of the vans isn’t jarring compared to the almost incessant yapping of the poor little Jack Russell that lives opposite us in the town and has to spend most of his day in the back garden trying to attract his owner’s attention to get back inside again. The soft sighing of the leaves in a gentle breeze is music to my ears compared to the cacophony of the bin lorry and the supermarket delivery vans back at the flat.

Don’t get me wrong, I like where I live. Compared to other places I’ve dwelt Settle is like Shangri-bloody-La! But as nice as Settle is it’s still not the open countryside; close but not quite. And I have limited opportunity to sit outside there without constant interruption. Believe me, I have tried.

So, in summation, I’m doing well on the writing front and it’s all down to a change of scenery pretty much. I hear the weather for the rest of this week isn’t going to be so good so I’d better sign off now and crack on with Mr Wilkie and friends and try to get 4000 words done if possible.

When the weather does turn tomorrow, and it will, I shall sit inside the caravan, by an open window and get as close to nature as I can as I write. The Sun will be back; it always is and when it does return it’ll find me with my ample backside in a garden chair with my laptop in front of me doing what I do best and damn well enjoying it.

Have you ever felt that you have too many irons in the fire? I mean, I think it’s good to have a few, but just lately I’ve realised that I have far too many and so I’ve done a spot of online pruning.

In short, I’ve done away with the podcast (which you knew already) and now I’ve called temps (as the French would say) on the website. Well, that’s a bit too succinct perhaps. Let me elaborate.

As it stood I had a website, a blog, a podcast on multiple platforms, a totally amateurish Youtube channel and two social media outlets. That’s quite a hefty web presence for one fibromyalgic man who sometimes finds it damn near impossible to even get out of bed some mornings. Far too much in fact. I’ve felt like I’ve been spinning plates for some time now and they’re beginning to fall.

Ergo…

From here on, Blessham Hall (where you are right now) is my main outlet. A one-stop-shop as it were for all things Stevenson. I noticed recently that I didn’t need a separate website that was draining my time, energy and finances in equal measure. Foolishly, I hadn’t realised that I had it all here on a plate in the first place.

So you may notice that there have been a few tweaks to Blessham Hall. Oh, nothing Earth shattering but it now has the feel of a proper website rather than just a blog. The old alan-stevenson.co.uk website will remain live until the subscription runs out in November and then it shall be no more leaving just this here site for me to maintain.

Also, I’m taking down all those Stevenson Speaks videos from Youtube. Let’s face it, they’re about as professional as Harry Maguire and about as easy on the eye as well. I know I have a face for radio and nobody wants to see it. I was an ugly child in fact; my mother used to hang a sausage around my neck so that the dog would play with me. Happy times!

I’ll still have a social media presence on Facebook and Instagram as they are easy to manage and don’t take up a lot of my time. Likewise, the new blog that I mentioned last time will be going live soon and I’ll be looking at fortnightly posts on there so that too will be manageable.

I think my biggest problem is that I tried to run before I could walk where my online activity was concerned. Too much too soon. I mean, hardly any bugger even knows about me and yet there I was attempting to do podcasts, videos and interactive websites like some kind of Johnny Come-Lately.

Nay, nay and thrice nay, I need to just focus on what I do best (well, I think so at least) and that’s writing good content; be it in the shape of novels or blog posts. And in any case, calling myself an author, novelist, blogger, podcaster and Youtuber was becoming tiresome and more than a mouthful.

Yesterday I worked on Blessham Hall for several hours to get it how I wanted and I’m happy with the results. I also cancelled that Go Daddy subscription for the other website that was clearing over a hundred quid out of my bank account every year. What a dozy prat I’ve been.

But the thing now is that it all feels rather cathartic having purged myself of all that weight of stuff. Just stuff, that’s all it was. Stuff that clogged up my mind and time that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Talking of which, I wrote nearly 10,000 words last week on the next novel and it feels tremendous. Oh sure, my arms hurt like hell from the physical effort but my head feels something akin to achievement.

This has been a strange period of time for me. But now I’ve had bit of a clear out and I can see past all that clutter now and it’s like a breath of fresh air. 2023 hasn’t been the best year for Ange and myself. We’ve had terrible health problems and lost some good friends. On Friday our adopted cat, Sooty, passed away which has left us both a bit on the devastated side of things. Ange in particular has taken it very badly. So it really is a great relief to me to do all this streamlining as I’ve felt in limbo for quite a while now, bouncing between this, that and the other without any real sense of direction. Now, I actually feel I have one.

So do me a favour and point people in the direction of Blessham Hall won’t you. I always say that word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways of advertising anything.

Thanks for sticking with me through all the turbulence.

A x

I’ve made a decision that I think I needed to make a long time ago regarding my blogging activity. No, don’t worry, the Blessham Hall Blog isn’t going anywhere, but it is going to see a major change.

Regular readers will know that I often make references to my overall health which isn’t good due to the ever presence of fibromyalgia. That particular condition is bad enough itself but it’s compounded by Depressive Anxiety Disorder, Vertigo and Sleep Apnoea. In short, I’m a wretched, echoing void of a man most of the time.

But here’s the thing, I’ve woken up to the fact that you probably don’t need to hear all that on a regular basis. Heck, we’ve all got enough problems of our own without reading about someone else’s which isn’t going to enhance our existence in any way. I mean, if I had to sit and read about somebody else’s lumbago or how the screaming habdabs affects them from day to day then I’d probably go stark staring mad.

Unless…

Unless of course I wanted to read about lumbago or the screaming habdabs (yes, there is such a thing) in which case I would be utterly delighted to stumble across such a blog.

So here’s the deal. I’m not going to talk about my health problems any more on the Blessham Hall blog unless merely as an excuse for my own piss-poor performance. It does come in handy for that. What I’m going to do instead is start a brand-new blog strictly for fibromyalgia and it’s related conditions where people who do have FMS or ME or CFS, yadda-yadda-yadda, can get some encouragement, advice and maybe a bit of a laugh as well along the way.

It’ll be a place where I can unload my health issues without yanking the respective chains of my regular readers. I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from you all. Like a warm breeze wafting across the rolling landscape of my subconscious. Gosh, that was a load of old bollocks, wasn’t it?

But! I also hear you say. Are you physically up to doing two blogs Stevenson, you overweight sack of offal with an hyperactive spleen? Can you write two blogs and still write novels at the same time?

In short, yes, I think I can. I’ll still aim to do Blessham Hall at least once a week and fit the new FMS blog in whenever I can, be it once a month or every two months or whatever. Hey! It’ll give me a greater sense of purpose of nothing else.

And I really have been working very hard on my time management lately. I schedule in novel writing time, blogging time, reading time, researching time and resting time. And so far it’s going ok, with the occasional and expected bump in the road every now and then.

I’ve got a name for the new blog but I’ll hold fire from telling you just for now until I’ve got it set up properly. I also need to come up with some kind of artwork for it but I’ll probably ask my granddaughter, Erin, to assist with that as she really is the most extraordinarily gifted young lady when it comes to drawing. And yes, we are very proud grandparents.

So there you go. Less of me moaning about my physical well-being and more of the stuff that matters on this here blog. All I would ask of you is that when I do post a link to my new blog that you would direct anyone you think it would help out towards it.

Well, I’m shocked and not a little surprised, I really am. England have actually reached the World Cup Final. Well done ladies. The nation salutes you; now, just go on and win the damn thing.

I’m also shocked and very surprised at the abject failure of my new podcast – The Curmudgeon. Not to put too fine a point on it but it’s tanked. Well and truly tanked. Maybe I’m just not cut out for podcasting or maybe I just suck at it, either way, there’ll be no more for the foreseeable future.

But never mind, as I mentioned last week, it’ll give me more time to spend on other projects that demand my attention.

It is a little disheartening though as I feel the podcast itself is rather good and has great comedy value. Plus, each one comes in at less than 15 minutes long. I really thought I’d cracked it this time, but no. So sod it! No more podcasting from yours truly. I know when I’m not wanted.

One good thing that has come out of the two podcast series that I’ve done so far though (Blessham Hall and The Curmudgeon) is that from playing the hundred or so recordings back to myself I’ve actually started to like the sound of my own voice.

I don’t mean that in some bragging, boastful way where I like to command every conversation that I enter into, but that I actually like how it sounds, literally.

You see, for a good many years I’ve been one of those people who cannot stand to hear themselves speak. It was so bad that I wouldn’t leave people voice messages or speak to answerphones in case I happened to hear it later.

My voice has, in the past, been described as booming. Not something to proud about unless your name is Brian Blessed and it was comments such as that that kept me from speaking too much. I’ve always known my voice is incredibly deep. In fact, I even remember the day that it broke.

I was about ten years old and sitting at a table in primary school when quite literally all of a sudden I stopped being a soprano and became a bass baritone whilst talking to my chums. I recall the shock on one of my friends faces as he stared goggle eyed at me and said, ‘Alan, what’s happened to your voice?’ Yes, it was that sudden. My Mum had sent a young Aled Jones soundalike to school and got a Barry White tribute act back at the end of the day.

Of course, bang went any hopes of joining the school choir. School choirs are notorious for not having anyone who sings like Paul Robeson in them. Sorry, did I say sing? My apologies, what I meant is croak, for that is as close to singing as my voice gets having had my tonsils removed aged six.

Over the ensuing years my voice has been mocked and appreciated in equal measure. To some it is a thundering foghorn of a thing that might wake the baby of I go over a certain amount of decibels. To others it has been described as relaxing, soothing and even “chocolatey”, whatever that means.

It has turned ladies both on and off and one person even said it was “scary.”

All water under the bridge though as here I am aged fifty-seven and barring castration, I can’t see my voice getting any higher. And I’m not planning on becoming a harem guarding eunuch any time soon. But let’s just say that until I started podcasting a couple of years ago I loathed and detested the sound of my own God given voice.

Until now! Now, instead, I’ve come to appreciate it myself for what it is. I can’t change it or do anything about it really so I just try to make the best of it.

Which brings me to my main point (finally, I hear you cry), which is this…

I went to Skipton on Saturday as there was a food festival near the canal basin and the family had asked us to go along. The weather wasn’t great (to put it mildly) and I wasn’t feeling too good at all physically (to put it even milder). Still, I did manage to force my trembling legs to shuffle around one or two of the stalls like a doddering old man and tried a few freebie comestibles here and there, which were all very delicious I can assure you, the curry in particular.

We then came to a stall for the Dogs Trust charity. Naturally I was surprised that such a thing should be in a food festival outside of Pyongyang and so Ange and I zoomed in for a closer look as we already give to that worthwhile cause.

We spoke at length to a nice lady who works at Dogs Trust and after a while we agreed to increase our monthly donation being such suckers for our canine friends. Ergo we now support both puppies who need a home and much older dogs who are reaching the end of their lives and require more care. But that’s beside the point.

The point is that the lady we spoke to commented on my voice. In fact she positively enthused about it to the point where she said that I really ought to get myself some voiceover work on television or audiobooks. And the thing is, she genuinely meant it. She wasn’t feeding my ego to try and get me to sign because we’d already done that by then. No, she honestly thought I could do voice work.

That gave my, currently low, self-esteem a bit of a much-needed boost, to be honest, and it also gave me a lot of food for thought. You can see where this is going can’t you.

So now I’m looking into it and doing some serious research. And why not? Others do it. Why can’t I?

Plus, it’s got to be easier than self-publishing comedy novels that no-one wants to read.

So just think, the next time you’re at the cinema, waiting for your film to start and there’s a trailer for the next Terminator or Star Wars movie, it just might be my deep and dulcet tones that you hear narrating it.

Now there’s a thought!

And don’t worry those of you who do read my books, I’ll keep them coming.

Ok, yes, I know those two words in the title of this post don’t normally go together. In fact, they tend to go together like a mushy peas and marmalade sandwich, but, speaking for myself, it’s my current modus operandi.

The reason I’m so tired is that I’ve recently been put on a course of amitriptyline (I think I spelt that correctly) by the doctor to try and resolve the blinding headaches I’ve been having. And I have to say that it is having an effect. My head feels so much better than it did. The downside is that the drug is making me so mentally foggy and exhausted even though I take it at night time before I turn in. God knows what I’d be like if I took it in the morning. I’d probably be limping around with my bottom lip hanging down below my chin crying, “Brains, brains!!!”

So that’s the tiredness dealt with but what about the excited part?

Well, I’ve got myself all in a lather about a new character that I’ve created.

Of course, there’s no details that I can give away at this stage but what I can tell you is that I am so confident in this character that I’m going to offer it traditional publishers first. Yes, you heard that correctly. I’m going to approach all the publishing houses I can with it before I even think about self-publishing.

But why Stevenson? I hear you ask.

Well, firstly, self-publishing does have it’s benefits but it also means that you have to do all the marketing legwork yourself and, as I’ve stated recently, I’m shite at that. It would be so nice to have someone behind me for a change.

Secondly, I think I need the kick up the arse that having to produce a follow up would give me. I work better when there’s a deadline. It helps me to focus and be more self-disciplined. Although, I believe a great many of us can relate to that.

So what it basically boils down to is this:

• The hilarious tales of Joe Wilkie in the Blessham novels will continue to be self-published.
• The Ingleby books will take a bit of a back seat and be fewer and farther apart.
• The podcast is being ditched (nobody was listening anyway).
• I’m going to approach traditional publishers with my new character.

Whaddya think about that then?

I’ve now got to map out how that’s all going to take shape and how I can get my wrecked body and enfeebled mind to rise to the challenge. Stopping the podcast is one thing for sure, aside from the fact that no-one was listening; it takes too much time out of my week to write, record, upload and promote the damn thing. Time that could and should be spent elsewhere.

The blog is no bother as it usually costs me only about two hours a week to work on. Plus, I’ve been blogging on and off for years now and I bloody well enjoy it.

I also need to re-vamp the website at some point and make it a bit more eye-catching.

Time management was never my strong point but like I say, when there’s a deadline I do tend to raise my game and work well towards it. Where the amitriptyline fits into it all I don’t yet know but I have to find a way of living with it and hoping that I’ll become adjusted to it in a short amount of time. I’m also toying with the idea of these talk to type software that I’ve been hearing about. It would mean that I can sit in a comfy chair or even lie down (on a and day) and still work. The technological possibilities are truly endless in this age we live in.

Other than that I can just hope and pray that someone soon comes up with a cure for FMS and a way of beating chronic fatigue and brain fog. I cannot adequately describe the frustration that I feel with having my head chock full of all these cool ideas and a body that doesn’t want to play and won’t let me get them down in words.

And if someone else could come up with a quick and easy way for me to lose about eight stone in weight so that I can function a whole lot better and not get out of breath when answering the door, that would be good too.

So, in summation, I’m as giddy as a schoolboy on one hand and as tired as a ninety-five-year-old opium addict on the other. Can this end well? I certainly hope it will, but for now I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get that current work in progress finished.