Readers of piss-poor non-fiction, particularly memoirs, will doubtless be delighted that finally work on that second difficult book is well underway. Following the lack of success enjoyed by my first book, Corfu, Not A Scorcher I have spent the best part of a decade trying to write a follow-up. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written, some in the right order, but until now they have been confined to the corner of my computer marked ‘Documents’, where they will probably remain forever. I have finally come upon a plan for a book that at least makes some sense to me, even though I know it will be of limited, or no, interest to everyone else.
This is not just me and my ‘hilarious’ self-deprecating humour because I know that book number two will have a very limited audience, which will likely be just me. I’m writing a memoir. The sheer brass neck of it.
I struggle to read fiction and I certainly don’t have the talent to write it. It could be that I like the kind of imagination for fiction. My gift is to craft (are you serious? Craft? – ed) essays and blogs about real subjects that next to no one is interested in. My loyal reader may find this hard to believe, but what you read on this blog, and indeed in my last worst-selling book, represents my very best work. Imagine what the stuff I reject as not good enough looks like?
That difficult second book will be a memoir with a difference. Both my academic and professional careers were hardly stellar successes, culminating with being sacked by a local brain injury charity for declining the opportunity of wiping someone’s arse. Apparently, no one else was available to do the job because they were too busy kissing management arse. I was one of those Jack Of All Trades when it came to everything else: I could do many things to a bang average level but I was no good at any one thing. You know the kind of thing: I could usually hit the board when throwing a dart but when it came to actually hitting a number I was actually aiming for, well that was a different matter altogether. Think of darts, think of many other things in life and that’s me. Dig deeper and there’s no consistent theme, no story at all. I’m making this into a very appealing read, aren’t I? So, I have tried to do something different: a memoir based around the music I heard at different stages of my life. I’ll bet you can’t wait to pre-order …
Here’s roughly what happens:
- Cabaret entertainer Frankie Vaughan has the number one single with Garden Of Eden on the day I was born. Given my future football affiliation (Bristol Rovers), it should have been Guy Mitchell’s Singing The Blues which was number one the week before and the week after I was born.
- Probably the first song I liked was by Bristolian piano player Russ Conway, which I first heard at my auntie’s house. Not that she was actually an auntie: we called all sorts of people auntie and uncle when I were a lad.
- I will tell the story of the song that reminds me of when I … ahem … became a man.
- There are lots of songs which remind me of my mum and dad.
- That kind of thing.
In other words, the lack of an actual narrative is being replaced by references to songs, in a desperate attempt to persuade people, even close family members, to read it.
On a more serious note – and I can do serious every now and then – writing the chapters has been a gruelling exercise. While some of the writing has had a cathartic effect on my mental health, a lot of it hasn’t. We are always encouraged to talk about issues that affect us and I think we all should, especially us mental people. I don’t like talking about myself so I tend to write about it instead. It is good to write about experiences and feelings – to an extent: absolute honesty and full disclosure is often a step too far. I hope that makes sense – but my reactions to dragging up memories from the deeper recesses of my memory have been tough.
I am thinking about stuff in much greater depth than I have for many years, decades in fact, and my dreams, always disordered and chaotic, running at a million miles an hour, have been closer to nightmares, with faces from the past seemingly coming back to life. It is making for deeply fractured sleep, but I am at the stage now where I must keep working at it. I have no idea whether completion of the book will provide some kind of closure on all the messy bits of my life, but I can’t be stopping now.
That difficult second book is coming and I am aiming for the lucrative Christmas market, a time of year when hopefully people will be short of ideas for presents, as well as being pissed enough to buy my latest volume of work.
If you think this project looks particularly unappetising, I fear you may be right. I’m not a superstar author like Tyson Fury’s wife Paris, Nadine Dorries, Katie Price or Geri Halliwell and indeed lack the glamour of all of them. So, prepare for the worst and perhaps you will be slightly disappointed than you might otherwise be.
But finally, that second difficult book is coming and it’s coming soon. And if it’s been that difficult to write, just imagine how difficult it will be to read.
