A Right to Know

What would you do if you knew too much?

The strapline to my new novel,  A Right to Know, cuts to the heart of an issue facing not only the lead character’s struggle for revelation and justice but also a wider society reeling from scandal after scandal:

- What do we have a right to know?

- What do we do with that knowledge?

While I briefly flirted with the idea of imitating Russell Brand’s call for social revolution – even reaching a new all-time-best 10 days without shaving – you will probably be pleased to know that I have in fact settled for fanciful prose rather than political polemic, and the tale of Daniel Farndon’s desperate search to uncover the mystery behind his wife’s death is (thankfully) mere fiction.

As I give you a few moments to consider whether or not there really is such a thing as mere fiction, I’ll remind you of what we all wish really could be nothing more than fiction:

Phone hacking.

Scandalous violations of privacy.

Investigations and inquiries.

What exactly did we have a right to know?

You can happily (or unhappily, as may be the case) trawl the net for timelines, news and views, and a wealth of cartoon images reminding us of Rupert Murdoch’s octopus-like qualities, but before you rush off to do just that – perhaps even playing a quick game of ‘hunt for the most hideous hacker’ while you’re at it – let me offer you another way in…

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Devastated by the news of his wife’s death, Daniel Farndon is convinced that the crash that killed her was no accident. His determination to discover the truth uncovers more than he could have ever imagined, exposing a world of deception and corruption affecting the whole of society. Armed with revelations from beyond the grave, Daniel is left with one final challenge to face: what do you do with the knowledge you have gained?

A Right to Know is the gripping story of one man’s struggle for the truth and a moving portrayal of a relationship revisited and re-evaluated through the lens of grief.

Available now on Amazon Kindle – and coming soon to paperback! – A Right to Know is the latest novel from Sam Lenton (author of Accidental Crime and It was the tree’s fault).

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Not sure if it’s your sort of thing? Then try before you buy with the FREE SAMPLE, available to download to any Kindle app on a tablet, phone or PC.

Daddy Cool

So, it appears there’ll be a new addition to Sam’s Town in just under 6 months. Photographic evidence exists. This is, it seems, actually happening.

I’ll still be a tad sceptical until it pokes its little head out and flutters its eyelids for the first time. Sure, my wife’s waistband might well expand beyond all proportions but there could be any number of explanations for that. And as for the pictures – well, they could be anyone’s baby, couldn’t they? No sign of my blue eyes or a genetic susceptibility to shoulder dislocations quite yet…

It’s all a bit odd really. Out of nowhere we’re suddenly rifling through boxes we’d forgotten even existed, clearing a little bit of space here, a little bit of space there – presumably to give me somewhere to hide when the crying (mine or the baby’s?) gets all a bit too much. We’re painting walls and dismantling things like there’s no tomorrow. Saws are out, hammers are misused and kitchen knives are delightfully deployed to carve through whatever unwanted material we can lay our hands on.

I have begun asking such questions as ‘do you think a child could bang their head on that?’, assuming (quite logically) that reckless abandon will indeed be their middle name. I have stood in the doorway to our living room, hand on chin, picturing just how it will all look, like a film director checking out the suitability of the setting for the unfolding drama ahead. And as for the cat, well, she has been well and truly warned of what lies ahead for her…

Apparently we are now at shrimp size. Last week it was lime. In fact, I believe every measurement used to determine the growth has been something edible. Slightly concerning. Still, I prefer shrimps to lime and so I suppose we’re heading in the right direction. When we finally get up to duck size we’ll really be talking.

I suppose the big question we’re all asking is, what will this mean for the future of this blog?

No? Not even one of you?

Well, just in case, be assured that I have no plans to produce a daily record of every development. In fact, I doubt I’ll even stretch to a weekly or monthly report. But every now and again, up I’ll pop and this page will surprise us all with the fact that it’s finally been updated.

In other news, it’s exam season and so it’d be nice if those I’ve taught produced something readable. Hopefully they might even cause an examiner to smile and go tick-crazy in a flurry of Sam-induced praise that justifies my existence over the past 8 months or so. That would be nice. Achievement is always nice.

As for me, well, I’ve achieved a blog post and that hasn’t happened for a long time, so that’s a metaphorical pat on the back for me. Oh, and I’ve created a baby. At least, I’ve done something to help kick-start a new life and that can’t be too bad, can it?

Let’s start the new year right

Something tells me it’s not going to be quite as good a year for flags as 2012.
Perhaps for just a few minutes, as Sky’s Breaking News banner informs us that Kate has finally given birth after no doubt enduring hours of ‘gruelling labour’ (their words, not mine), we will raise our flags for one final hurrah, clinging on to the spirit of 2012 by our union-jack-painted fingernails. But weeks of overenthusiastic, shoulder-dislocating-levels of waving? I’m afraid I can’t see it.
2013 looks like going down in history as the ‘meh’ year. The year in which we sit around in dusty cafes mourning the loss of 365 days we’ll never have back, flicking through channel after channel in desperate search of five precious minutes of blind 5-a-side football to keep the spirit flowing. No Olympics. No Euros. No World Cup. Not even a Jubilee. Just 365 days of normality. 365 days of life.
Stifle the yawn if you can and remember that fridge magnets, t-shirts, posters and who knows what else are providing the solution to our national stupor: When all the light seems to have gone, Keep Calm and Carry On (italics, capitals and the opening phrase are mine – lawyers on standby).
Carry on. Continue as before, with a song in your heart and a flag in your hand, and do it with a calmness that will keep the neighbours at bay. Sounds like a plan.
Amidst the calm, permit yourself an ounce of excitement that the next 12 months might in fact offer more than expected. 2012 promised much and delivered much, much more. 2013 promises precious little and so just imagine how surprised we’ll all be if something good happens. The re-opening of Woolworths perhaps? The creation of a new business called Banana that wipes Apple and Orange out of the financial fruit-bowl? A new Sam Lenton novel/play/film/blog post?
Possibilities abound. If any abound in my direction, I’ll be sure to let you know but for now let me simply bid you a ‘Satisfactory New Year’ and I’ll leave you to put those flags back in the attic for the next 6 months or so. The moment the news comes, you have my permission to go crazy – Olympic crazy, if you will – and risk wrist injury with every fibre of your being as we welcome the Union Jack back into our lives one more time.
Over to you Harry to plan 2014’s magic moment…

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BREAKING NEWS! (of the non-Sky variety): My novel Accidental Crime is currently only 99p on Kindle. A complete and utter bargain, even if I do say so myself. Go on. Treat yourself. Tell yourself that Sam says it's OK. And then tell others. There really are no limits to this news.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accidental-Crime-ebook/dp/B00871CQAG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357142253&sr=8-1

Three is a Magic Number

We’ve known for some time that 3 is a magic number.

Three wise men. Three lions on my shirt. Three books in the 50 shades of grey series.

The number speaks for itself.

I’m not sure though that before Barack Obama’s fans crowded the streets of New York chanting ‘U-S-A’ over and over again I had quite appreciated the power of 3 when it comes to a good old-fashioned chant. Sure, lists work in threes but syllables? Who’d have tho-o-ought it?

They were some scenes. Let’s be clear about one thing here: this was not a sporting event or even a rock concert. This was an election. You know the one – it’s the thing that about 60% of the British population roll out of bed for every 4 or 5 years, slipping into a secret booth in their local pub to put a large cross next to the person with the most interesting name. The thing we then moan about for months on end as we reflect on the fact that only about 30% of the population actually wanted the party in charge running their country.

Nevertheless, out we go into the streets on results day and begin our chanting:

‘UK! UK! UK!’

‘GB!’

‘Brit-ain!’

Or perhaps not.

Yet, in America, this is what happens. Why? Well, take one big look at their acronym and you’ll have your answer…

‘U.S.A’.

Three syllables. Three powerful letters. Three good reasons to chant the life out of results day.

Somehow, our two syllable country doesn’t quite hack it. We need only look at football crowds to see this:

Eng-land? Oh no, we are En-ger-land. Always have been. Always will be.

Is it any wonder O-ba-ma is back in office? Rom-ney never stood a chance.

With a Ca-me-ron and a Mi-li-band lining up against each other in a few years, we will at least have an even fight on our hands. Mr Clegg might as well just give up now and join the rest of his one-syllable crowd tucking into a bag of doughnuts while the fate of the government is set without him.

As a Len-ton, my hopes of being the subject of (positive) chanting are surely slim and may well be reason enough to not even consider running for PM.

If you can think of any other reasons, do feel free to let me know…

Vote Me!

With the American election a full 5 days away, why not indulge your democratic itch by voting for 'A True Hero' on the Enter the Pitch website?

A few months back, I sat around in a planning meeting and we came up with the plot for a feature film based on the stories of David and Jonathan, Saul and Mephibosheth as found in 1 Samuel 17 - 2 Samuel 9. My role was to then write the script for a 2 minute trailer before passing on to Demelza Jarrett and others to make this a reality by filming and editing something that would meet the criteria of the competition.

Well, we have now made the long list and would love to make the short list too, so why not head on over to  http://www.enterthepitch.com/view/a-true-hero/ and vote for 'A True Hero'? 

Thank you so much for your support everyone!

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

Happy Halloween everybody!

Except, I’m actually not that happy that All Hallows’ Eve has come round again this year. Seemingly unimpressed by my silent protest 12 months ago, the day has reoccurred once more and a day and evening of frightful fretting has commenced. No matter how much people try to convince me that there’s nothing wrong with a good old bit of dressing up, I just can’t seem to like Halloween.

This afternoon, fearful of the impending onslaught of trick or treating, plans were made to cope with what lay ahead. We would, quite simply, pretend we were out. Lights would be turned off, curtains would be drawn and doors would stay firmly shut.

Then, in a glorious twist of fate, the weather forecast foretold of downfall after downfall of wonderful, wonderful rain. I was, of course, mainly thinking of the farmers, glad that their crops would continue to grow (assuming such things still continue in late October) but as a by-product I could sit back and relax, listening to the pitter-patter not of little sweet-hungry feet but of droplet after droplet raining on their parade. Bliss.

I’m not sure what troubles me more – the idea that I might have to converse with people in costume (always awkward in all areas of life) or the fact that I would be forced to relinquish the treats I had carefully stored up to help me cope with all the pressures of this life. What do children know of pressures? They don’t need mini bags of Tangfastics. I do.

And then there’s the pumpkin. Apart from its obvious flaw of being orange, the pumpkin is part of the dubious ‘festival family’ (also featuring the Brussell Sprout), marked out as something that is only worth eating once a year. In fact, its chief selling-point seems not to be its taste but rather its capacity for being carved into something barely resembling a face. Give me a broccoli any day.

On reflection, I suppose my Halloween hasn’t been too bad. I have eaten more chocolate than the local children, endured only mild heart palpitations when the sound of excitable voices skipped past our door, and written a blog to encourage those like me out there who can’t wait for All Hallows Day to swing its beautiful figure into view.

On the downside, the end of the day brings the start of November. Don’t even get me started on that.

Something might happen

I will, it seems, watch just about anything.

Not content with having recently wasted significant hours of my life staring at the wet grass broadcast on ITV when England were supposed to be losing to Poland last Tuesday, it seems I am now spending my time watching stationary doors and rotating swirly patterns accompanied by undeniably-riveting phrases such as ‘Preparing Windows’ and ‘Getting your devices ready’. Indeed. Wouldn’t want to miss that.

Who else joined me last Tuesday in enduring an hour or so of Chiles and co commentating on the wetness of the grass and the openness of the roof that surely should have been closed many hours earlier? Yes, Adrian, it most certainly should have been closed – I am with you there and I would suspect most of the country were too. We were with you for the first non-bounce of the ball that indicated we should all be changing channel as soon as our fingers have finished tapping away our frustrations on Twitter. We were even with you when you sought to speculate as to when this match might actually go ahead. But why, oh why, did we stick with you for a single second more, especially when there was a good old tussle going on between Belgium and Scotland on a channel sporting far drier grass than anything Warsaw was able to offer? Especially since there was enough good old English rain to look at through the window if we began to miss the Polish variety.

And then this morning, as I sat down for a leisurely post-9.30am breakfast, I found my eyes transfixed not by the oaty goodness contained within my bowl but by the close-up shot of a rather impressive looking door. A door that, we were informed, would soon see the arrival of George Entwistle, Director-General of the BBC. This was, I’m sure you will agree, quite a privileged door.

Debate was rife:

- would he stop to speak to the press?

- would he be alone?

- would he use his left or right hand to open the door?

- would he offer a conciliatory turn, smile and ambiguous right-hand gesture that we could draw all sorts of wild conclusions from?

- would he miss the door entirely and become the first man on TV to walk through a brick wall?

I was hooked.

Then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any more exciting, I returned from a brief break to discover the ‘Breaking News’ on Sky that he was ‘looking forward’ to the meeting. This was indeed breaking news and I wondered just how many minutes of this defining moment in history I had missed when I naively chose to get changed at that exact time. If only I had heard him say those words in person rather than having to settle for second best of seeing them recorded on the yellow bar scrolling across my screen. Such experiences are sent to try us, no doubt.

Needless to say, I watched the entire duration of his questioning, nodding and shaking my head where appropriate and only pausing briefly to fuel up on coffee to get me through the remaining minutes.

In fact, that is not actually the complete picture because I succeeded in multi-tasking in my devotion to whatever is put on a screen in front of me by spending a considerable number of minutes watching my laptop inform me that Windows was ‘finalizing my settings’. Mainly, I was furious that ‘finalising’ had been spelt with a ‘z’ and found it hard to look away from such a blatant Americanism but I have to confess that it was hard to tear myself away from the screen just in case something new happened. Sure, that new thing would probably only be ‘preparing’ or ‘initializing’ (again with a rogue ‘z’) but at least it would be different and if there’s one thing that excites a man who’s spent the past 5 and a half weeks at home recovering from an operation then it’s the prospect of change.

Change did come after a surprisingly-large number of minutes and all seems to be well with the new (trial) Windows 8 software at the moment. I have torn myself away from loading screens and doors and am free to resume my refreshing of email, Twitter and Facebook. Or perhaps I’ll even go as far as to write a blog post and continue with my play this afternoon so that I can hold my head high when my wife returns from work this evening?

Well, I suppose part one of the plan is now complete. On with the play…

I’ll be waiting

Think of something you do in your life and you can be pretty sure that there’ll be a statistic for it somewhere.

Sleeping? Well, you spend about 14 years doing that.

Eating? Let’s go for about 7 years.

Feeding the cat? That’s got to be at least 2 years.

Even seemingly rare occurrences such as clipping your nails, putting the bins out or saying something encouraging to someone else must rack up the months over the course of a lifetime. In fact, only two weeks after its release date, the new Muse album has probably taken up about twelve hours of my life so far. Twelve glorious hours.

But what about waiting? How long does not actually doing anything take up?

My life seems to involve a lot of waiting at the moment:

- Waiting for my friend’s baby to be born

- Waiting for the Muse album to come out (we finally got there with that one)

- Waiting to be able to use my left arm again (hurrah, the time has come!)

- Waiting for a couple of emails I’d really like to receive

- Waiting for my dinner when my wife’s late home from work (I’m still playing the ‘I can’t really cook with only one arm’ card…)

- Waiting for inspiration so that I don’t end up writing blog posts about waiting

The Bible claims that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength but it’s less clear on what will happen to those of us waiting upon our dinner or the latest bit of bold-type to appear at the top of our inbox. My guess – and it’s a guess built upon quite a bit of experience recently – is that this sort of waiting is actually likely to sap rather than renew our strength and I’m not convinced that living in 2012 is helping me/us with any of this.

Even if I move away from the computer – and I do, occasionally, do this – then I am likely to be only inches away from my phone which now has the capacity to do pretty much everything the computer can do. Certainly, it is more than capable of catalysing my crushing obsession with just having one more quick check…

What must it have been like to have lived in a time when news came to you via a hand-delivered note (preferably on a silver tray carried by a butler) and you could happily while away the hours/days in between each correspondence without the slightest anxiety as to why you hadn’t heard back within a few minutes of your message being written? I suppose it must have been possible to relax, to sit back and accept that you wouldn’t hear anything for days on end. Maybe this is how books got written and read for so many years?

Now? Well, to be honest I think I’ve probably checked email/Facebook/Twitter three or four times while writing this blog. Surprisingly enough, not an enormous amount has happened but I might just pop off quickly to see if that’s changed since the last check…

OK, I’m back (apparently, front-row tickets for the Rolling Stone concert will cost £1000) and I’m off to post this now and then wait for the statistics to roll in.

Reading Sam’s blog? Be careful, you could probably spend a couple of months of your life doing that.

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(N.B. All statistics included in this blog are pure guesswork – I considered looking them up but decided that it would be a waste of my precious waiting time)

These Arms of Mine

Two weeks ago I lost the use of one of my arms.

I should, of course, point out that it is only a temporary inconvenience before you all start suggesting I get myself training for Rio 2016. The Paralympics have indeed shown that almost anything is possible with only one arm or in some cases none at all – in the process scuppering any hope I might have had of garnering much sympathy for my situation – and so it is perhaps a little wrong for me to claim too much of a disability, particularly since six weeks doesn’t exactly stack up against the lifetime of inconvenience some people have to go through.

However, one thing is clear: living with only one arm is not that easy. In fact, I think it goes to show that God certainly knew what he was doing when he gave us two. Whether it’s hugging a loved one or squeezing the toothpaste on to the brush, two hands don’t half make the job easier...

Here are five things that two arms undoubtedly do better than one:

1) Semaphore

2) Getting peanut butter out of the jar and onto that piece of toast

3) Typing

4) Opening the pouch of cat food when your wife is late home from work and the cat is scratching everything in sight wondering just what it did to be denied its dinner

5) Climbing trees

It’s not all doom and gloom though. On Tuesday, I finally conquered the crisps, cutting open a packet with a pair of scissors while it rested against the bread board at the optimum severance angle. I was triumphant and rightly so, I feel. OK, so I haven’t exactly hits the heights of survival shown in the film 127 hours (definitely worth watching if you get the chance) but at least my world had a greater salt and vinegar flavour to it than the last 10 days had brought.

Typing has been a little harder. This blog post has been written with very few fingers at all, with the voice activation software on Windows 7 doing most of the work. I still have to talk though, so it’s not been a complete breeze. For some reason, they still haven’t invented a device that types out your thoughts so that you can just sit back on the sofa while your novel is written by the computer. Feel free to go on Dragons’ Den with that one if you can come up with a solution...

For now, I leave you with this thought: cherish your arms. Both of them. Look after them and keep them safe. And, the next time you’re spreading peanut butter with consummate ease, think of me munching on my dry bread, ducking under the ironing board to try and stop the cat scratching the chair and gazing longingly at that tree I could never climb.

In a few weeks I will be like the rest of you, opening pouches until there isn’t a pouch left to open. Until then, use your arms wisely my friends and – here comes the sentimental ending – give someone a big old hug this evening while you still can.

If they ask you what you’re doing, tell them you’re doing it for Sam.

A Day at the Races

On Saturday evening, I met the superhumans.

When I say met, I do of course mean that I sat at a considerable distance and waved a cheap plastic flag in their direction but, in this time of goodwill and community spirit, I’m sure you’ll permit me more than a slight nod in the direction of my good friend hyperbole.

It was some meeting too. Pistorius’ blades sliced through the air at a considerable speed, a Chinese triple-jumper leapt a full two metres further than his nearest competitor and Jason Smyth’s Bolt-esque domination of the 100m was quite simply incredible to behold. I clapped and I clapped and I clapped some more, ever wary that all this over-eager clapping could at any moment send my shoulder rocketing out of joint to rack up dislocation number 11, and waved with patriotic pride as the British runners generously donated the medal positions to our international visitors.

Walking through the Olympic Park for hours on end as we awaited the athletics it was clear that something was clearly not right. People were actually smiling and enjoying being in the presence of other people. The lion was indeed well and truly laying down with the lamb and not even the presence of two poorly placed trees slightly blocking the view of the big screen could dampen the mood. Rather, a general sense of unease permeated the park as we all realised that we simply had nothing to moan about. In fact, perhaps the only complaint we could have is that things didn’t actually turn out quite so badly as we all thought they would. Surely they could have at least forgotten the ramps for the wheelchairs or something, couldn’t they, so that we could all enjoy a good grumble?

Alas, the world has seen us as we have never even seen ourselves before. We are, it seems, a people who can cheer everyone on through triumph and adversity, who can put our metaphorical arms around anyone and anything that could do with a good hug, who can get things right when it matters most.

It’s all a bit tiring though, isn’t it? I’m sure we’ll all take a deep sigh of relief when we can finally stop celebrating things. Christmas is going to get a raw deal this year and Fireworks night might as well not even bother turning up.

Sparklers? That’s nothing. We’ve seen Becks on a speed boat. We’ve seen Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah. We’ve seen the world sparkle.

Put that on your bonfire.

Work for the Working Man

Unbelievably, I am being expected to go to work tomorrow.

You might as well go right ahead and wipe that ‘A Day in the Life’ post from your memory banks (assuming you haven’t done so already) because it ain’t happening again for a long time…

Well, not until Friday at least.

Friday? National Crunchie Day? The ‘Thank God It’s…’ day? That one?

That’s it, you’ve got it in one. The day after Thursday will indeed herald a return to the halcyon days of waving my wife off to work while I think of more words beginning with ‘w’ to continue this impressively-alliterative sentence. Unfortunately, I may need to try and be slightly more productive than I have been over the course of this summer but one thing remains consistent: the day will be mine.

After much bargaining, arm-wrestling, pleading and hunger-strike-threatening, I have secured every Friday off for the foreseeable future to further my foray into the world of unnecessary alliteration, hopefully achieving the added bonus of accomplishing more than was possible these past three years. Excited? You should be.

In the meantime, I need to navigate myself through the next three days of what I like to call ‘actual work’. Contrary to all expectation, I am employed as an English teacher (apologies if this is news to you and you’d now like to trawl all previous posts to hunt down the inevitable errors that render this claim absurd) and so I am all set to jump on the ‘we was robbed’ bandwagon regarding the recent results as we dissect, reflect and something else ending in –ect before settling down to realise that yes it would indeed have been nice if more people had achieved a C grade but what are you going to do?

I’m not sure what we’ll do, to be honest, but at some stage groups of students will appear before me and I’ll be expected to string a few sentences together. Perhaps some of them will even smile at a few of them or offer me a nod of appreciation, doffing their metaphorical cap in my direction as they stride out of the classroom thanking me for all I have taught them?

Or perhaps I will dream of Crunchies and will hum along to Friday, I’m in Love (stay tuned for that inevitable blog title) while all around me is chaos?

Whatever happens, there’ll be no Twitter checking or time spent gazing out of the window wondering why on earth my package hasn’t been delivered yet. No, professional man that I am I give you this promise: I will be at work and I will give it my all for four days every week.

But not the fifth day. Oh no. That’ll be mine. Always mine.

(It’s Good) To Be Free

The best things in life are free.
For five days, so is the script for Who’s the Baby?. Unlikely to make many people’s ‘Top 10 Best Things in Life’ list I know, but free it is nonetheless, reckless promotion-hunting freak that I am.
Basically, this is for everyone out there who said ‘you know what, I like the blog and I like the sound of a play with the word baby in it but you have got to be kidding if you think I’m shelling out 77p for something like that.’
Perhaps you’ve never read a play script on your Kindle before? Perhaps you don’t even own a Kindle but are desperate for the first play script to read on your Kindle software on your PC, Laptop or Phone? Or perhaps you’re simply hear expecting another tale of gourmet fish and attempted murder and are by now, quite frankly, extremely disappointed?
Whatever your thoughts at this exact point, at least I’m not asking you to pay anything. You’ve got to give me that.
It would be nice if more things were free, wouldn’t it? Paying for things really puts a dampener on life. I’ve tried to accommodate this thinking by only charging 99p for It was the tree’s fault and £1.99 for Accidental Crime but I appreciate that even that falls someway short of the heady world we’d all like to live in where we simply take things and enjoy them. Kind of like the riots last summer, only less illegal and with fewer fires.
Here’s my slightly more realistic dream: hundreds of people download Who’s the Baby? for free, think to themselves ‘it would be fun to put this play on at Christmas’ and this December churches across the country (if not the world! – no, too big) put on productions to reach thousands of people with the message.
I wouldn’t get a single penny for any of this but, I’ll tell you what, I’d rather see that happen than sell 1,000 copies of Accidental Crime this week…
(P.S. I’d be perfectly happy to sell 1,000 copies as well, just in case you were wondering.)

This Is My House

Sometimes it can be hard to know what to write about. It doesn’t matter how many staircases you climb – literal or metaphorical, take your pick – you simply cannot focus in on that tale that must be told. You can take a walk to clear your head, surf the net to fill your head or position yourself in the way of a swinging bag to hurt your head, but sometimes the ideas just aren’t there.

Then, one day, one lonely day when you least expect it, someone knocks on your door (quite literally) and practically writes the blog for you…

‘Hello!’ he called out, my 28 year-old face staring back at him. ‘Are your parents home?’

My parents? Um. Hmm. Let’s see. Would those be the parents whose house I left over 10 years ago and who probably are at home in their house 4 hours away from here?

‘This is my house,’ I responded, confidently (because, you see, it is my house – I’m a big fan of the truth).

‘Oh,’ he replied, slightly taken aback. ‘I’m just doing a bit of cold calling and I was wondering whether you’d be interested in some gourmet fish?’

Well, at least he wasn’t trying to get me to change energy supplier. Perhaps he’d seen the glint of a Cambridge graduate in my eye or something?

After a brief exchange in which I blamed my wife’s occasional vomiting problem on fish, it was clear that the cold calling wasn’t getting any warmer and so he began retreating, speaking as he did so:

‘Oh, and sorry I questioned your ability to own a house.’

So, it seemed we had gone from me being confused for a child to now being someone incapable of owning a house. Perhaps he actually did think I was 28 – or in my twenties at least – but one quick look as the door swung open communicated quite clearly, in his mind, that this man was certainly not capable of home ownership?

What exactly is the look of a man capable of owning a house? What am I lacking that I need to start doing?

Should I be rubbing the door post with my ‘owner’s hand’, as if stating quite clearly: this is mine, or should I reach out my hand ready to shake the salesman by his while shouting ‘Welcome to my house!’, ready to follow up with ‘I bought it with my own money…and the bank’s’ as soon as that first look of doubt appeared?

I suppose the obvious answer is to get a plaque. Something that makes it absolutely clear that the house belongs to ‘people who look unlikely to own it’ (I’m unfairly including my wife in this, I know, but I banking on her being happy to stand with me in solidarity). Maybe I could even stick a photo of us on the door to lessen the shock?

And, if all else fails, I suppose I should simply nod and say ‘yes, my parents are indeed home, so if you get on the next train to Norwich you should catch them by mid-afternoon’.

Or – and this is definitely the final or – I could always grow a beard. Beards scream out home owner, don’t they?

A Day in the Life

It was so obvious I almost overlooked it completely.

You see, as I was climbing the stairs a few moments ago wondering what on earth I could blog about it suddenly occurred to me that you are no doubt wondering what I actually get up to on a daily basis when I’m allegedly on summer holiday. No? Well, single-minded man that I am I’m going to press on regardless and let you in to the secrets of how I spend my time…

Picture the scene: my wife scurrying around to get ready for work while I curl up on the bed keeping my eyes as tightly shut as possible. It’s a nice scene and I maintain it until the moment the front door clicks into place. Then, against all the odds, my eyes spring open (yes, eyes do spring – look it up) and I switch my phone on to check that nothing of global importance has occurred over the past eight hours that might affect what I choose to do next.

On arrival downstairs, my cat inquires as to whether it might be possible perhaps, if she were ever so good, for her to have a second breakfast. Disappointed at my inevitable refusal, she slumps off to the living room to lay down for the day while I do my best to make some sort of stab at eating something.

We’re back up the stairs now (a lot of my day seems to involve stairs) and the laptop is being switched on in anticipation of today being the day that I finally write that magic sentence, that life-changing paragraph, that viral tweet that will have the world’s media queuing up outside my front door to catch a snap of me in my PJs.

After 45 minutes or so of what I like to call ‘general surfing’, it occurs to me that I should probably start writing something. I look at the clock – if it is not on the hour or 15, 30 or 45 past the hour, I simply cannot begin. I don’t make the rules up; it’s just the way it is.

I head on over to Twitter and tweet something very much like the sentences above, wondering if there’ll be someone out there who might come ever so close to a chuckle at my worldly wisdom. Once I have assured myself that there are probably dozens skipping over the post without a moment’s notice, I reopen the document of my latest novel (which also begins with the letter ‘A’ – that’s exclusive news, so keep it to yourself…) and re-read what I wrote the day before. Then it occurs to me – I could enjoy reading this even more if I did it on my Kindle – and so as the document travels through cyber-space I check out the response to my tweet, draft and redraft a few follow-up tweets and then delete in a flurry of self-doubt.

Time then passes. Hopefully, at some stage during this time, writing is done. Reading normally happens before writing and then tends to occur during it and after it too. Sometimes the writing is rapid and I clock up 1,000 words without realising it. Other times…well, I’ll let you finish that sentence yourself.

Lunch occurs when it dawns on me that it is past 2pm and I’m still sat in front of the laptop without a sandwich in my hand. Lunch is a dangerous thing – not so much the eating but the post-lunch malaise and procrastination it induces. Sure, the eating is enjoyable (perhaps even essential) but when a glance at the clock tells you that we’re now pushing 3.30 and I still haven’t returned to the writing then it’s time to admit that lunch is causing you a problem.

So, after losing a few games on FIFA – and, yes, losing is exactly what I’ve been doing recently (not that I’m remotely bothered about it, oh no, not one bit) – I decide to head on back up stairs (there’s the stairs again) and re-open the document. After 30 minutes or so of checking Twitter and occasionally taking the plunge and adding a comment of my own, I give the typing another go.

This is where it all goes a bit blurry. Some days, the fingers skip across the keys with reckless abandon, producing something that actually makes me smile, if not giggle to the empty room around me. Other days…well, I think we’ve been to this sentence before…

Then, just as I’m in the middle of my best paragraph of the day, the door will open and my wife will return, calling up the stairs (are you keeping count?) at the exact moment that I am trying to work out what the next ‘killer phrase’ should be. Loyal, loving husband that I am, I bound down the stairs (5?), throw my arms around her, ask her how her day was, make her a coffee, talk through the options for the dinner I will cook any moment now and will nod, smile and say ‘yeah, my day’s been OK, I got some writing done’ before asking if she minds if I skip back up the stairs (keep counting) to finish off my sentence.

And now I enter my most productive period of the day, reeling off word after word just when I should be cooking and conversing. In some cruel twist of fate, I am now more focussed and ‘in the zone’ (whatever that means) exactly when I need to put that world behind me for now and curl up on the sofa. Despair sets in. Hunger swiftly follows. Dinner is made, served, eaten and reflected upon. The evening begins.

I could tell tales of films watched, books read and outings undertaken but that is all for another day. The writing day is over and now all that awaits me is a sleepless start to the night as I think through all the things I’d like to put down on paper (well, keyboard and screen) the moment I awake.

Now, aren’t you glad you asked the question?

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Well, that all went surprisingly well, didn’t it?

Hang your cynical head in shame, because I’ll tell you something: London 2012 was a spectacular success.

Forget for a moment that Russell Brand sang ‘I am the Walrus’ and Liam Gallagher was, well, there. Forget the fact that you were anxiously looking at your watch from 10.30 onwards last night wondering if this thing would ever end. And forget, most of all, that the way it all ended wasn’t quite as good as the way it all began.

The fact is, few of us have witnessed a better couple of weeks in this country and we have well and truly waved our cheap plastic flags in the face of anyone who dared to question that we’d have the gumption to put on such an event.

OK, so it would have been nice if we could have achieved 30 golds, if only to leave us with a nice round number, but we can’t really complain with the 29, whilst at least some credit has to go to those who muscled in on the act with a silver or bronze. And all with the backdrop of a Mayor who dances to The Spice Girls, a Python who dabbles in a bit of Bollywood and a Bean who demonstrates remarkable dexterity with an umbrella. Now that’s what I call British.

The problem is, what do we do now? I suppose the flags will go back in the drawer, the bunting will be taken down and we’ll have to start shaking our fists at one another once again rather than holding hands in communal celebration. We’ll look at the Leisure Centre flyers dropping through our door, will picture ourselves pedalling away with all the ferocity of Chris Hoy and will briefly, just briefly, think about signing up. Then, as the theme music to Coronation Street kicks in, the only pedalling we’ll do will be stepping on the pedal-bin lever, opening the lid to deposit the flyer, while we whisper ‘honey, I’m home’ to the sofa and settle down with a bag of cookies to work on our curves.

Or, perhaps not. Perhaps this really will change things and we’ll all be jogging down the street, shooting pigeons and show-jumping on the backs of unsuspecting Labradors. Perhaps – and it’s a big perhaps – someone somewhere will get out a calculator and will realise that spending lots of money on this sort of thing will actually save us money when people stop needing to be wheeled into the local A&E for thousands of pounds of treatment that a few brisk walks to the shops would have prevented.

And when you’re reading that Daily Mail and are tempted to join in with the moaning about immigration, just remember two names: Mo Farah.

Maybe, just maybe, it won’t be the end of the world as we know it but the start of a whole new one (cue the song from Aladdin…). Now, wouldn’t that have made the last two weeks worth it all?

Head, shoulder, knees and toes

Injury update: I have now racked up 10 dislocations.

That’s right. Ten. As in, one more than nine and one less than eleven. You know, the same number we flirted with (but narrowly missed by one after accidentally using the number 5 twice) in the ‘Perfect 10’ blog. That one. Ten.

You see, the problem is that I live recklessly. A few months back I decided to dry myself with a towel after a shower and a few weeks later I was bold enough to put on my coat. The result both times? Dislocation. Pain. Relocation.

This time? Sneezing. Not even a flurry of violent ones. Just one, single, isolated sneeze.

This is all coming hot on the heels, you might recall, of my wife’s attempted murder which has left me with a bump on the head that I came very close to requesting an X-Ray for in a sort of 2 for 1 deal at the hospital. Considering I have also had surgery in the past for a torn cruciate ligament in my left knee, I’m starting to wonder whether my toes might be in for some punishment in the future…

Before we get there though, let’s reflect on which shoulder dislocation is the most pathetic. You’ve got 5 to choose from:

- A single sneeze
- Drying myself with a towel
- Putting my coat on
- Pulling a sheet over myself in bed
- Swinging up the stairs

Vote now!
The winning method will be immortalised, perhaps, in poetry, prose or drama coming to a blog near you. Most likely this one.

Perfect 10

I suppose London 2012 hasn’t gone too badly after all, has it?

Britain have won a record haul of golds, London has looked stunning during the road races and Lord Coe has cosied up to the royals at every available opportunity. And, to top it all off, when Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah triumphed on Saturday evening the commentators informed us that we had all played our part in their success. Too right. Can’t wait for my segment of the medal to drop through the post…

To be honest, I’m not sure I deserve a segment. True, I have put in some considerable hours of TV watching and have sometimes had more than one screen going at once but I’m not convinced I’m working quite as hard as our athletes.

What I have been doing is blogging occasionally. Perhaps you’ve seen the tales of my wife’s violence – auditioning for the hammer event maybe? – or my call for the introduction of more ‘sitting down’ sports? No? Well, there’s still time and, in the meantime, let me present you with 10 things that simply have to change in this country following these games:

1) Cycling must become our official national sport. Whatever piece of paper it is that Cameron, Coe or the Queen have to sign, get it in front of them now and pass them the shiniest pen we can get our hands on. Then, call up the Lightning Seeds and get them to re-record Three Lions so that ‘cycling’s coming home, it’s coming home’ now resounds throughout the streets.

2) There should always be individual channels for individual sports. Who wouldn’t want the chance to tune into nothing but Water Polo whenever we fancy?

3) All young girls who ask for a pony for Christmas should be given one. The Equestrian golds will flood in for years to come. Trust me.

4) We must all say 'Ahoy!' rather than 'Hello!' when answering the phone in honour of Chris 6-golds Hoy.

5) Veledromes must be built in every city and cycling lines as wide as bus lines should be drawn on all our roads. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

5) It should be legal to use guns and bows and arrows in public and it should be deemed perfectly acceptable to shoot pigeons (clay or otherwise). Can’t see many problems with this either.

6) Fans should boycott football stadiums until footballers stop arguing back, swearing and playacting. Every time this happens on the pitch, the game should stop and all players should be forced to watch clips of Olympians on the big screen to show them how true sportsmen and women act.

7) Leisure centres should be free to use and pitches, courts, etc. should be free to hire so that there is no barrier to the development of future Olympians.

8) Next time, we should ‘forget’ to invite China and USA so that we can top the medal table…

9) We need to make sure there is a ‘next time’ – let’s rename London as ‘Londinium’ so that the IOC thinks ‘where is this city? They’ve never had the Olympics before so let’s choose them’. It’s a flawless plan.

10) The opening ceremony should be turned into a West End show and should then tour around the country with members of the public being given the chance to star in it as extras.

There you go, that’s my list. Undoubtedly, Britain would be a finer place if these ideas were to be put into action. But am I just one man and so what can I do?

Or perhaps you have even better suggestions? What would you like to see change?

Kiss with a fist

On Saturday evening, my wife tried to kill me.

Her weapon of choice? A blue, flowery beach bag recently purchased in Ibiza. Little did I know that the bag had been transformed into a full on killing (or at least, wounding) machine, weighed down as it was with trumpet mutes, a folded-up music stand and all manner of unlikely objects carefully packaged for maximum impact.

It had been such a quiet evening and I had, even if I do say so myself, been a rather generous (perhaps even magnanimous – always wanted to use that word) young man by agreeing to provide a lift to and from a concert venue that took me a full ten minutes to get to. I had even bought a friend a portion of chips, grilled a couple of gammon steaks and treated him to insightful comments such as ‘we really are rubbish, aren’t we?’ while watching Team GB limp out of the Olympics on penalties against South Korea. In short, I’d chalked up a few heaven points and was surely more due a pat on a back and a hearty word of thanks than the fate that actually awaited me…

The scene: I reversed the car into position on the driveway, stepped out of the car, opened the front door and returned to the rear of the car to shut the boot door once my wife had removed her belongings. Perhaps I should have been taking them out myself in the evening’s final act of magnanimity or perhaps I should have never been there at all, but it’s too late now to contemplate what might have been. All that’s left to me is a memory – a hazy, head-throbbing memory of brutality that will live with me for many a year.

At the foot of the car stood the cat, innocently brushing her fur against the legs of my wife in a timely reminder of our forgetfulness in leaving the house earlier without feeding her. She looked so – what’s the word? – huggable. So…pickupable. So…

It was at that moment that the bag struck. Swung with merciless abandon, the full force of the loaded weapon smacked against a face that was focusing on nothing other than the furry beauty of the cat below. Staggering backwards, I clasped a hand to my head, half-expecting blood to be seeping out. Staring back at me, with a look of mingled shock and amusement, my wife slammed the boot into position, thankfully missing the inquisitive head of the cat, and assessed her work.

To her great disappointment, I was still standing. I was even denying the need for apology, saying ‘no, no, this was my fault. Don’t worry about it’, while words such as ‘delayed concussion’ and ‘people have died from lesser blows’ competed for dominance in my already-clouded mind. Within minutes, the cat was fed, the car was locked (by me) and a glass of water was in my hand. Healing water. Washing away the pain.

A day and a half of concussion later and the attempted murder seems to be wearing off. In fact, I’ll probably even make a full recovery and will be in a good position to seek retribution the next time a flowery beach bag is in sight. But, then again, if there’s a cat to be stroked, picked up or simply pointed out, who knows what might happen?

And so, having been dragged back from the light at the end of the tunnel, I wonder what your experiences are? Have you too been close to death – I’m using ‘death’ in the broadest sense of the word here… – at the hand of a spouse, partner or cat?

Please tell me I’m not alone.

Bicycle Race

There are many things to thank Boris Johnson for – his use of the words ‘whiff whaff’ in a public speech, his trouncing of Ken Livingstone (twice), his inability to go down a zip wire without getting stuck half way (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19081335) – but perhaps his greatest legacy will prove to be nothing other than the simple two-wheeled machine that, centuries after its invention, simply refuses to go away: the bicycle.

OK, so there may have been other men in history who have contributed more to the cause of the ‘cycle (the inventor, for starters) but Boris’ love of the pedals and his pay-as-you-ride London bike scheme has coincided with one of Britain’s greatest ever sporting achievements. As Boris has said, we are good at sports where we are sitting down (at the time of writing this, golds have come in cycling, rowing & canoeing) and we have surely missed a trick here by not introducing more sports for these games where standing is simply not allowed. How much better the basketball, volleyball and handball would have gone if only we could be lying back on the sofa, smacking the ball away with a more-rested limb, rather than being forced to leap to our feet and run around a court. Set up a few chairs, perhaps even with wheels on, and we’ll take the world on from there…

If the last few days has taught us anything, it’s that cycling can be well and truly…cool. A bit of a trite term to use, I know, but it really does fit because there is something so immensely cool about the way in which Hoy, Wiggins, et al glide through the air with power and grace, the wheels looking as though any moment now they’ll be flung into the crowd so intense is the pressure they are under, whilst all the time the rider remains a static presence of calm and unwavering focus. Oh, and all at 45mph (ish).

I bring this up because cyclists do not usually warrant such admiration from the general public and the word ‘cool’ would most likely be prefixed with ‘un’ when we think of ankle clips, fluorescent jackets, socks rolled up over trousers, bells, baskets and the decidedly non-Olympic posture of sitting straight up so that one’s eyes can survey the scene and one’s back can be protected from afternoon ache. Think too of the honking of horns as a cyclist nonchalantly swerves around the corner, skips a red light or passes by on the inside, smashing side-mirrors to the ground. Think of the sweat, the grease, the oil, the lycra. Think, my friends, of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, et al gliding not through the air but down the grey streets of London, doffing their caps to passers by offering muted recognition of their attempts to promote a greener world for us all.

Or, if you saw what I saw some years back – and the chances are slim, unless you happen to be me as well – then think of the man who held a bowl of noodles in one hand and a pair of chopsticks in the other while navigating a roundabout without the slightest concern for the safety of anyone or anything other than his freshly-microwaved noodles.

Come to think of it, that should probably be the next challenge for our cyclists. I mean, if Wiggins can win gold by 42 seconds and Hoy & co can break the world record twice in consecutive races, surely the next step is for them to do it all whilst eating noodles? Repeating these achievements in Rio would be OK – perhaps even more than OK – but doing it all while eating noodles? Well, knighthoods, double-knighthoods and triple-knighthoods would need to be rolled out for that one.

And I’ll tell you something: that would undoubtedly be well and truly cool.

Summer Holiday

So, it’s that time of the year again when all non-teachers declare in exasperated tones that they simply cannot believe we have so long off work. Indeed. If only someone had told them that school holidays existed. If only.

This blog post is actually coming a full two and a bit weeks into my summer holiday and so I’ve probably already had as long off work as the majority of you get over a five year period and I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that I still have another 27 days to go…

I have just returned from a week in Ibiza, where the closest I got to clubbing was tapping my foot as it dangled over the edge of the sun-lounger. The playlist on my MP3 player wasn’t exactly designed for bopping and grinding, or whatever it is the kids get up to these days, but it served me well and provided suitable accompaniment for my cocktail of reading and, well, cocktails.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, and so here are three gripes I feel compelled to share…

Sun-Loungers

OK, so it’s not exactly original material to begin moaning about sun-loungers being claimed by towel-hungry Germans, but I was disappointed to see the ethos spreading throughout Europe as fellow-holidaymakers arose at 6am to plant their flags. Phrases such as ‘I usually sit there’ and ‘They’ve taken our parasol’ were blowin’ in the the Balearic wind and by the end of our 7 days the stealing of cushions for extra comfort had become yet another crime to be conducted without even the slightest hint of concern that someone else’s rest might be unfairly affected by such a sweep of selfishness. People. You can’t really take them anywhere, can you?

Squid

So, what are you planning on eating this evening? A bowl of pasta perhaps? Or how about a curry or a good old meat and two veg? Whatever it is, you’re planning on cooking and eating one dish, right?

Why is it, then, that when on holiday I deem it perfectly acceptable to take a slice of pork, a spoonful of veal stew, a chunk of fresh cod, a handful of fries, a portion of pasta, a sprinkle of courgette/aubergine thing, and a pile of squid? Oh, and a few lettuce leaves, just to add some colour. The look of utter disdain on the faces of the waiting staff said it all – this man is an utter disgrace. Indeed.

Shades of Grey

It may have taken her a few months to get there but the first book my wife read on our holiday was none other than Accidental Crime. Not so the rest of the women. The rest? Well, you’ll have seen the images, you’ll have heard the hype, you probably even have it tucked away down the side of the sofa or hidden in the toilet cistern: Fifty Shades of Grey.

At one stage, four women in a row (if you skip over my wife – not normally a good phrase to use) where we were sitting were reading the same novel. Perhaps we should take Michael McIntyre’s comments on ‘The Metro’ and apply them to Shades? – why doesn't one person just read it out to everyone else?

More interesting was seeing the husbands reading the book near the end of the holiday, clearly wanting to discover why their wives had been so keen to go up to their rooms early at the end of the afternoon…

It won’t surprise you to discover that I am irked by the success of this book. So irked in fact that I’m going to use the word irked again here just because I feel so irking frustrated. *Runs off to check irking is a real word*. It also probably won’t surprise you to hear that I am yet to read a page of it (or the other two books in the trilogy, for that matter). No, no, no. I am far too irked, vexed and so on to do that. Instead, I have gone for the well-worn response of:

Oh? Is there something I should be angry about?

Yes? Right, well, I guess I’d better be angry about it. I’m not sure why I should be angry about it but I’d like to be angry about something and so I’ll choose this.

Now, let’s skim read something someone else has said about this so that I can sound knowledgeable and as though I were the first person to get angry about this.

To be fair to E.L. James, she has written something that many people enjoy reading and so for that she should be congratulated. For everything else, I’ll let you make up your own mind…

Anyway, I’m off to make a coffee and generally do other non-work things for the next 27 days.