Perfect Pitch and Porno Post

I thought I'd start this week by bigging up a couple of other good writers out there.  Of particular interest to all you magazine people should be Pitching the World.  He's strayed off the subject a bit, but the original idea was to pitch ideas to all 642 magazines in the Writers and Artists Yearbook.  Along the way there has been alcoholism and the breakdown of his relationship, none of which sounds very funny, but his latest post 'Journalists I'd like to kick fuck out of' should, if we share a sense of humour, make you laugh out loud.

A really good journalist (and a thoroughly nice bloke to boot) is Jon Wilde.  I first saw Jon's name up on a framed magazine cover in the old IPC building - he'd interviewed Paul McCartney for a music magazine.  Later I got to meet him in my former incarnation as a Photo Editor when I was at a shoot with John Thomson (Fat Bob, Jazz Club on the Fast Show).  He's got a great dog too. Jon, not John.  Anyway, brilliantly bonkers interview that Jon did with Keith Floyd is here.

I'm laid up in Sussex convalescing after having my cruciate ligament in my left knee reconstructed. Before I went in last week my mind delighted in torturing me with the possibility that I might wake up mid-operation to see a couple of surgeons yanking stringy ligaments out of bloody holes in my leg.   Hardly the discovery of the century but I'm happy to report, however, that anesthetic is extremely effective.  Although they told me that it should take me about 20 seconds to go down, I don't remember anything after they put the mask over my face.  Next thing I knew I was waking up in the recovery room with Lucozade in my right hand. 

It's a funny thing, being back at your parents.  I'm in the same room as I was when I left, except now there's a flat screen TV instead of a Commodore 64.  It's a bit like a writers retreat.  The routine of my semi-retired parents consists mostly of afternoon naps, doing crosswords, watching the telly and in the case of my Dad, getting pissed.  None of which holds much interest for me, so I've just been doing loads of writing.  Or telling myself that I have.  In actual fact I've been clearing out my inbox and trying to get the Telegraph to take a photostory that I think would be great for their Saturday magazine.  If you haven't seen the photographs of dogs they published last weekend, they are, seriously, worth a look here.

Two more things to share with you and they're both in the section on the right hand side (Stuff I've Written).  The commission that I got for the Lake District got printed in The Lady and Sabotage Times took a piece that I wrote about threesomes (sort of).  If you read it, you can see if you agree with James Brown, who thinks it reads like a letter to a porn mag.  The Lady, Sabotage Times and Razzle; come to this blog for diversity and you shouldn't be disappointed.

Knocked Up

 

It was impossible to relax until this thing was done. In Ghana, there's a lot of hanging around and time weighs heavy on your mind. To make our engagement official in the eyes of her family, my fiance Karen had arranged for us to have a traditional 'knocking' ceremony, in which the groom (me) formally asks for the bride's hand in marriage in front of her family, friends and well wishers. For some reason, I hadn't done the thing that I normally do with anything I have no knowledge of: Google it. Karen had asked her Auntie Gladys if we could do something to mark the occasion as we were travelling to Ghana to celebrate her Grandmother's 100^th birthday. Given that was a such a momentous landmark, I think I didn't expect our little ritual to be anything other than a small token gesture.

In any case, it had been underplayed. The information I'd received was that I had to imitate the sound of knocking on a wooden door ('ko-koh-ko'), state that I had seen 'a beautiful flower' and that I had come to pluck that flower, offering whisky and schnapps as compensation for the loss of the bloom. With all the knocking and plucking, my biggest worry was fluffing my lines. Since we'd arrived in Accra, it soon became evident that a couple of bottles of booze wasn't going to cut it. Each day, Auntie Gladys would ask us if we had brought another thing, 'Have you bought the cloth?', 'How much money are you putting in?', 'Have you got the engagement bible?' We had spoken to her before we travelled and she hadn't mentioned any of this - I began to suspect that the old girl was testing me. The goods were to be gathered in a suitcase and presented on the day of the 'knocking'.

Heathrow is a big airport right? Bound to have schnapps there. Uh uh. Have you ever tried getting schnapps in Accra? Even a savvy friend of the family that agreed to try and help us out had to squeeze his 4WD through several teeming streets while chickens and children disappeared scarily beneath the horizon of his bonnet before mercifully appearing unscathed grinning (the kids, not the chooks) on the other side. The third shop eventually unearthed a bottle housed in a box that looked like it had mildew, but it would do. Getting hold of an 'engagement' bible (who knew they existed?) proved similarly elusive. Our driver scratched his head as he headed up and down Oxford Street as the shops were putting up their shutters, stopping at a party shop (which turned out to be a supermarket) and a chemist before we realised he didnt have a clue where to find one either. In the end a cousin who'd grown up in the city and was getting married a couple of weeks later came through for us when we'd arrived in Abetifi, 3 hours drive North of Accra in the mountains. The village had a church at its highest point, a few tarmac roads dotted with potholes and shops in shacks. Best of all were the cool breezes that made the climate more comfortable than in Accra.

When we arrived for the 100^th birthday celebrations, no one seemed to exactly know when the knocking would be. After two days of celebrations on the Friday and Saturday of the weekend, no more mention was made of it. We were asked to turn up to church on Sunday but it was so full we headed back to the guest-house and lolled around for another hour. This was when my butterflies started fluttering. Each successive person would say something like 'Today's the day eh?' with a sharp intake of breath and a pitying grin. After numerous photo-calls with all of the 148 attending relatives of Mama (as the grandmother was known), I was taken aside by Aunty Ophelia, who said, 'Dont worry; I'm on your side.' It was on. Another car scooped me up and onto a life changing moment.

Arriving to a forecourt filled with a couple of hundred people on either side, I was shepherded past them into a wood panelled room with family portraits on the walls, as family members filed in behind me. 'They're going to hide Karen. You have to convince the brothers to help you find her', somebody said to me as we went in. Mischief was evidently big in Ghana. It had been a hot day anyway, but suddenly it felt like there was no air in this room My palms secreted a glaze of sweat. At the front of the room sat Uncle Alex, the eldest son, with Aunty Gladys and Aunty Joanna alongside him, all of them resplendent in kente robes of bright orange. To my right sat Karen's Mum, Cecilia. As the service was mostly conducted in the Twe, a Ghanian language I didnt speak, Aunty Ophelia was to represent me. A call from outside the room came of 'A-yeh!' (basically, 'Get out of the way!') and she marched in, accompanied by other female members of the family. Barbara, Karen's sister, was put in front of the trio and asked if she was free to marry me. 'No Uncle, I'm not free. I'm not Karen!', she answered to hoots of laughter and whatever the Ghanian version of 'wa-hey' is. After the chuckling had died down, Karen was brought forward and asked the same question; when it was determined that she was free to marry, Uncle Alex wanted to see the goods. A hitherto unseen bottle of wine was presented, then the schnapps, followed by the whisky. The crowd heckled – it wasn't enough. They wanted to see the cash. The larger denomination notes we'd included in our suitcase were absent, in their place Ophelia held up a fistful of 2 Cedi notes (just less than a £1 each). A bunch were proferred to my future brother in law, Mike. Up to that point in the trip, we'd been getting on great. His face suddenly took on that of a mechanic about to fleece you. Aunty Ophelia offered a few more notes with a brow like thunder and mindful of that brow, Mike consented, at which point a rowdy cheer went up. My nerves had all gone by this point: this was pure theatre.

As the brothers had consented, so the family was happy. Uncle Alex then related a story of a man that was looking for a plantain. He went into the field and turned the plantains this way and that, inspecting them in turn until he found one that met with his satisfaction. Once he had found the perfect plantain, related Uncle Alex with a wag of his finger, there was no need to keep checking out the other plantains. 'You are now accepted into our family' he said, with a broad grin as the applause and wolf whistles exploded. I'd been waiting for my turn. Assuming it was expected of me to say something and with reference to the flower I had now plucked, I thanked him for his words of advice and assured him that I would do my best to take care of this 'rare and exquisite flower'. More hoots and clapping. After being told who everyone in the room was and greeting them with a handshake or a kiss, we were lead into the courtyard and presented to the crowd with Uncle Alex at the microphone. It's probably the closest I'm going to get to feeling like a celebrity.

After that the music kicked in and the caterers removed the metal covers from the food, letting spicy smells quickly mesmerise the people into forming a queue . Seated at the front of the dancefloor like Charles and Camilla when they visit a foreign country, we were congratulated by person after person, the most memorable one being the MC, complete with a triple size bottle of Scotch and shot glasses. Though I'd come to mark our engagement, I'd ended up a married man (in Ghana at least). My new wife and I took to the dusty courtyard floor and fell in with the rhythm of everyone else, our smiles never fading as the party continued into the night.

Coverlines and Moral Dilemmas

I inadvertently got married since I last posted.  My partner and I has asked to do something to mark our engagement with her family before we travelled to Ghana a couple of weeks back.  We were going out there to join in the celebrations for her grandmother's 100th birthday.  Bit of an eye-opener for me in a couple of ways - I'd never been to West Africa before and I got to meet more members of the family I was going to marry into than a person usually does.   Mama Ntim (the grandmother) had 11 kids, all of whom have since spawned their own.  I lost count of the amount of cousins I was introduced to but, when you meet your in-laws, you don't expect to meet around 150 of them in the same sitting.  Nor did I expect to have offer compensation for their loss of Karen to me in the form of whisky, schnapps, money, cloth and an 'engagement' bible.  That's another story (one I'll post here another time), but suffice to say there were lots of firsts.

Arriving back to Heathrow, I spotted my first coverline, on Marie Claire's September issue.   A PR who had helped me out with the Company story I wrote (thanks Sade) told me of a case study she had.  Jasmia Robinson had been on Britain's Next Top Model and her career was on the up until her neighbour stabbed her boyfriend in the stairwell of the building where Jasmia lived.  Her boyfriend survived, thankfully.  It was a challenging interview given the sensitivity of the tale - would it be awful for Jasmia to live through the story again as she related it to me for example?  Her PR assured me that she wanted to tell it as an example to others that you can live through terrible experiences and come out the other side to carry on with your life.  She's brave - the story is on p133 of the September issue of Marie Claire. 

The interviews with Jasmia went well and for the most part, she was very strong.  The copy got submitted and I felt like I'd fulfilled the brief.  As I read the magazine in Heathrow, the story bore only a passing resemblance to what I'd written though.  It had been sensationalised - there were words in the story that are not on the tape.    I've asked for feedback from Marie Claire but haven't had anything yet.  It made me feel firstly that I'd let Jasmia (and Sade, the PR) down, that I'd misrepresented them, although I got a mail today saying they were happy with it.   Less importantly, it made me feel like the writing must have been a load of shit for them to change it so much.  My conclusion was that I'm still young in my writing career and I have to experience a lot of different things before I know the kind of writing I want to concentrate on.  The truth was that I needed the money (and the byline) for that story, but perhaps I should have put my morals first.  It can be a grubby business sometimes.

Commissions, Connections and Canine Affection

Haweswater Lake.  And some sheep and rain.

July has been busy.  First the good stuff.  I got another commission out of the Express after the Peak District travel piece I wrote for them - this time I had to write about the Olympics and it should be appearing tomorrow as it will be two years until the Games begin.  Hedge magazine commissioned me to write a feature about crowd funding, for which I had to interview Charles Taylor, who decided to crowd fund his business after Patrick Wolf did it.  On the back of that commission something very cool happened that involves me doing something at the end of August but I'm not sharing until I'm actually on the plane.  Lastly I've just written a travel piece for The Lady about the Lake District.  It absolutely pissed down with rain most of the time I was there but it was still beautiful.

So how did these come about?  It's who you know.   I'd been following Martin Deeson on Twitter as I'd liked his writing ever since he did a feature about begging.  It was at the time when all the papers were full of stories about beggars making a small fortune and in my hazy memory he tried it for eight hours in the freezing cold and made about £1.57.   Since then someone else I know has suggested that he may not actually have been there all that time but whatever; I thought it was a breath of fresh air against all the outraged bile filled rubbish that the papers were printing at the time.  Where was I?  Oh yeah - I found out that an ex-colleague of mine was working with him, got Martin's email address, did the pitch, added a couple of Twitter nudges and then he got back to me saying go do it.  Hats off to my ex-colleague Eugene Costello, who I think supported my cause by mentioning my email to Martin, probably one of several hundred he gets every day.

The Lady (you have to say it like Walliams don't you?) thing came about because I've done some freelance picture research in there.  Amazing building to work in.  A member of the family that owns it lives in the top part of the building and there are gilt framed portraits on some of walls.  Rachel Johnson's dog, Coco, wanders around whilst you're working and I think every working environment could benefit from a canine presence.  A quick head rub makes everyone feel better.

Three commissions earned me £690 so the answer to the question at the top of the page is, currently, no.  Unless any of you lot can survive for a month on that.  The only answer is more commissions.  Must work harder.  Until next time...

Peaks and Troughs - slight return

You've got to love England in the summertime, right?  Absolute smasher of a day this sunny Sunday and I've woken up to my first national newspaper byline (page 79 of the Sunday Express today).  It's the travel feature about the Peak District that I wrote about in the original 'Peaks and Troughs' post on this blog.  It's a good feeling - feels like I'm getting somewhere.  More importantly it part answers the question that this blog was set up to answer and that is, if only for a few days, I can write for a living.  There certainly needs to be many more commissions for it to be a viable proposition though.  Two of those a week could keep me pretty well.

The story behind it is that I met Duncan Craig, the Express Deputy Travel Editor a couple of years back when we were both invited to go up in the Stella airship.  Duncan, being a proper journalist and someone who was in a position to give them a plug, had a perfect right to be there.  Not sure why the PRs had thought I should be: I was a Deputy Picture Editor.  So, bit of a blag really.  Anyway, we got on, swapped business cards and when I decided to see if I could write, I mailed him asking for ten minutes of his time.  Surprisingly, given how busy he is, he said yes.  After some good advice, I added him to the mailing list for the blog and I think it might have worked as a regular reminder to his inbox that I was still here waiting for an opportunity, which he eventually gave me.  The other major factor in getting a full page in the Express was attending Peter Carty's Travel Writing Workshop.  Now, enough with the laptop.  Sunny English days like this are rare, so I'm off out.

Fear and Loafing

As a freelancer, one of the things I'm finding hard to learn is knowing when I can enjoy time off.  The whole point of being your own boss is that you can work when you want to, right?  Only true if you're in the happy position of being offered so much work you can pick and choose...and maybe not even then.  Most freelancers would agree that you take the work when its coming your way.  Enjoy getting fat feasting as long as you can before the anxiety inducing famine arrives.  You can't complain if a constant flow of work knackers you out because you'll only be cursing your own whinging when the phone has stopped ringing.

A new feeling I've encountered is freelancer guilt.  On a day like today, when the Scottish lady from breakfast TV is promising 28ºC (28!), you'd think I'd be justified in going to sit in the park for a bit with a good book and a bottle of something cold wouldn't you? I mean, how often do we get days when its 28º?  Maybe, in 365 days we might get, what, 10?  In the office where I worked full time it was actually a blessing that we were positioned under artificial light, quite far from the window.  If my terminal had been closer I would have spent most of my day staring out of the window wishing I was outside and wondering how all these other people seemed to be able to enjoy it.  Didn't they have to go to work?

Even worse was the lunchtime break.  Kensington Gardens was always full of dozy picnickers, unhurried and languid, who could stay in the sunshine as long as they wanted.  My lunchtime hour always flitted by super quick, as if some Time God was looking down guffawing every time I checked my watch.  Often I'd wonder what would happen if I just stayed in the park and returned to a bollocking which I could keep in perspective.  It always ended the same way - it just wasn't worth the aggro.  I would return sulkily to the office, still dozy from prolonged exposure to a happy sun to slump over a terminal and clock watch until I was released into the seemingly endless light of the summer.

So now I'm my own boss (to an extent) and given that we don't get many sunny days like this one, I'm off to the park, which I'm going to try to enjoy without thinking about the state of my bank account.  There is support out there for those agonising about loafing.  If this post has rung some bells with you, take comfort from The Idler.

The Trouble With Women

Sometimes its suggested to me that I should write something for a certain section (not generally by commissioning editors unfortunately).  A journalist who I met last year was kind enough to tell me that she'd enjoyed reading something on here and that I should write something for 'The Trouble With Women...' which is a section in the Times Style magazine.  Eva, this one's for you.  No feedback from The Times yet.  Do you think I went too far?

'The Trouble With Women is...They Insist on Giving You Gory Birth Details'

I’m overjoyed that you’ve given birth to your child.  Really, I’m made up for you.  Remember how you were stressing that you had left it too late?  We’ve known each other since, like, forever.  We sailed through our 20’s drinking and dancing and there was that that time when we had that sort of thing before we worked out that we were better off as friends.  And now I love having you as a friend, I really do, I’m still amazingly fond and though I’ll never tell you, probably still a little bit (a tiny bit, not even worth mentioning really, maybe about 1%) in love with you but its cool.  Harry’s a great bloke and anyway, we would have been a disaster.  It’s great that we’re still hanging out all these years later and I even get a weird sort of buzz when my mates tell me they think you’re gorgeous after meeting you.  We are close; I love you so I’m happy that you’ve got the thing that you always wanted. 

You’re a Mum!  How strange is that?  You’ve carried that little mite around for the best part of nine months and now you have a beautiful, curious little being that can make you melt with one tiny contortion of its perfectly formed fizzog.  Yes, of course I want to know what its like to give birth!  Tell me!  It’s an experience I can never have and although women have been doing it for thousands of years, it’s still the most visceral, primal, sort of unbelievable thing.  I mean, another human being came out of you. Like, really?  That is just too mind-blowing. 

However, what I really don’t need is the image of you on a birthing stool (which I didn’t even know existed before you told me) that looks like half a toilet and how the midwife put a mirror down there so you could see the head emerging out of the part of you that was once the source (if I’m honest) of quite a lot of longing and curiosity on my part.  And thanks to you I now know, with all that pushing (it happens a lot you say) that you did a poo in the middle of it all and how you didn’t even need that many stitches for the tear as it was only a little one and Gemma’s was much worse and she was in surgery for 2 hours.  I really don’t want to think about your fanny being torn.  I do love you, honest, but, please, not that.  Dear God no.