AND THE WORLD KEEPS TURNING

It’s been an eventful weekend out there, hasn’t it?

The Rugby World Cup came to an end, and although Wales weren’t playing, it was still great to see the cut and thrust of the final matches play out, and then of course we all lost a great comedy figure with the passing of Matthew Perry.

Seeing the tournament finish, then waking up on Sunday to the news that one of our ‘Friends’ was no longer around made me think on the way that people who mean something to us leave an enormous hole when they leave us.

At the Rugby World Cup, which takes place every four years like the Olympics and the Football World Cup and is a massive world wide event, players get the chance to pit themselves against other nations to discover who’s the best. It’s a huge honour to be selected for an event like this and it can very often be seen as the pinnacle of a players career, but this also brings along with it the chance that it could be a players swansong.

At the end of each World Cup, there are players who call time on their careers at the highest level and this time was no different. Wales legends like Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric and Rhys Webb all announced their retirement from the international game before the tournament started and Dan Biggar made it clear that after the event concluded, he was finishing too. Leigh Halfpenny was another to announce after he’d got back home that he was calling time with Wales and just like that, players who’d provided years of service to the cause, those all too familiar faces who were the architects of so many great memories for fans of the game slip away to the legend status of just being memories.

Matthew Perry is a global star and recognisable almost everywhere on Earth thanks to Friends and the other shows and films he starred in. How many people grew up watching each new Friends episode with family or their own tight knit group of pals? How many memories do we all have surrounding the work that Matthew Perry produced?

My wife and I quote Friends to each other on occasion as we watched them all together and they can feel like an almost ‘calorie free’ TV show because it’s on all of the time. Watching an episode if there’s nothing else on just feels like that super comfy sofa that just fits you properly and you can remember all the good things that come along with the particular episode or season.

It’s the same for both of these things, the retiring players and the loss of entertainers, as we watch as a piece of what makes us us is taken away. I can remember as a kid, my parents reacting when they heard news of an actor they knew from way back when passed away and as with so very many things we witness, it’s only much later that you ‘get’ it.

The world will keep on turning and we’re all going to keep on aging. It’ll always happen that those people we looked up to, those people who were a part of our memories, even if we never met them in person, will stop playing, stop working, or pass away, and leave us with a hole we never expected.

Eventually, we’ll be the ones doing the leaving.

Memories are what we’re making all of the time, and the best ones we have are those that come from something important to our life. Whatever created that memory, be it a person or a team, or an object or an event, recognising and then accepting that time has claimed them in some way or another brings into stark focus how fleeting we all are. It shows us that we’re aging along with everyone else and eventually, these people and places will all be gone, living only in the memories of people who loved them in their individual ways.

I just hope that when my time comes to leave the stage, that people think of me fondly.

Stay safe all.

WHAT CAN YOU SENSE?

I’ve spoken in the past of how important it is when I write to always keep in mind each of the senses we have at our disposal but a story doesn’t need them all to be successful.

Writing a description of a location or an object comes to life when you add the different perspectives of the different senses we have. Understanding that an object is smooth or pitted, sharply cold or searingly hot, if a location smelled of flowers or vomit, if there’d been a noise of any kind means we are drawn deeper and deeper into what’s happening so we can truly be immersed into the action.

But things can be just as engaging in a story if a particular sense is removed.

The loss of a sense means you’d have to lean more on the others.

There’s been a few films over the last few years which have relied on the idea that certain senses become actively dangerous to the protagonists. The Quiet Place takes away the ability for people to make a sound so vocal speech is taken off the table. So how to communicate? Sign language is the easy option in terms of story telling but beyond that, it’s any noise that becomes a problem, not just speech. Just consider our daily existence today and imagine that you can’t make any sound or you could very well die. I type quite ‘heavy’ so I’d have to amend that. You’d need to make changes to how repairs were done at home, you couldn’t use a hammer. Driving goes out the window, washing clothes will need to change, even where and how you walk. The film looks at these issues to show how sound is baked into what we all do but there’s a great example used in there which also shows just how disciplined we’d all have to be every second of every day. Don’t hurt yourself, stub your toe, catch your finger in a door, you scream in pain and that’s you stuffed.

By taking away a sense, it changes the scope that character has to experience the world. It’s not a question of pointing at someone who’s hearing or sight impaired for example and saying that they won’t be able to exist or how sad it is, rather it’s important for all of us to imagine putting ourselves into a place where the things we all take for granted are taken away.

Could you adapt to life without your sight?

If you lost both legs?

But that which is no longer available doesn’t have to be anything of this kind to be able to cause a massive re-evaluation of how we do things. Look at your life and imagine changes to your day to day.

Would you be able to live the same way if you no longer had the luxury of a car?

You now can’t ever use a mobile phone?

You have to live in a house that doesn’t have any heating?

You have to live on such low income that you have to choose between food or warmth?

Just imagine a world like that?

Our senses are how we interact with the world around us and process what we discover and a story which removes the faculty of one of them can create struggles as the characters have to work to adapt to what they can and can’t do but far far beyond just being an idea of recognising that specific hurdle, it, as all stories should, makes the reader have to consider the life they have and how they would potentially face such a time as something important was lost.

If we can all do that little bit of thinking along the way, maybe there’d be a bit more understanding.

I can just sense it.

Stay safe all.

IF YOU’RE GOOD ENOUGH ……..

Last week, I pondered the view out there around the relative merits or drawbacks of age. Seems only fair now to examine the opposite end of the continuum and look at the youg.

The title of this post comes from the saying, ‘If you’re good enough, you’re old enough’ which tends to get rolled out when discussing the idea of selecting a very young player in a team but it can also be used in the reverse about the more experienced players being brought in seemingly in the place of someone younger.

You can be capable of doing a job but if you’re brand new, freshly minted, you don’t have that background of proof that you can. That lack of proof creates uncertainty in the minds of others when trying to consider the relative merits of the young, people being unwilling to risk it on an unproven commodity.

Now the idea of picking a player for a sports team could be seen as a risk but as a one off, something which could be worth the risk, but imagine choosing someone for a job role. You look at that line of proof as important to know that a person is more than just book learning because it shows an ability to extrapolate from that base knowledge and experience comes from doing things over time.

That’s just practical thinking but there does seem to be an almost universal mistrust of the young.

There are any number of talking points about the young and how they’re just not up to standard. Each year we’re treated to the papers being filled with stories of the exam results only going to show that the standards are dropping because why else are so many kids getting top grades? The young are renting because they don’t think about the future, only eating avocado toast because they’re pretentious and generally don’t try very hard in anything.

But are the young being as bad as ‘they’ all say?

Of course not.

Could it be that all the people writing the stories or filling the airwaves with their opinions are just jealous?

Find a picture of yourself from when you were twenty and compare to now. Remember all the good times that you had back then when you could party all night, have two hours sleep then get started again. Back in the day, you could train and train in the gym and then still play sport without pain, but now, you can put your back out just by sleeping oddly.

It’s said that youth is wasted on the young and when you hear that as a youngster it means nothing but as you age you find the truth there.

Being young is great.

Being young was great.

I’m not young any more and I do miss it but looking at the whole spread of age, the young and the old have advantages and disadvantages which there for all to see, though it’s all too easy to look at the other and see only the things they have that you don’t but maybe just recognising that you change over time is the whole point. Being able to put yourself in the shoes of others is the only way we get through this thing called life.

Either way, none of us get out alive.

Stay safe all.

ALONE

Well this last week has been a bit of a struggle.

I developed symptoms consistent with Covid-19 so was forced to work from home, to stay away from everyone I live with and quite tightly curtail the day to day life I led as I entered isolation.

Now the overall picture of my time locked away is really nothing more than I was spending time in the office at home rather than going to work and then I was pretty much living the spare bedroom so as not to potentially infect everyone else.

Now I’m feeling much better now so everyone can relax but I couldn’t help but consider the topic of isolation and how it can be a point of exploration for characters in more ways than first thought.

Now I was confined to basically three rooms for a week so in the grand scheme of things, not much of a hardship but suddenly being chained to rigid rules of movement and contact with other humans, thereby stopping me doing so much that I just took for granted on any day, suddenly gave me the irrational desire to go and do all those things which burned like a fire.

I couldn’t watch TV with my wife and mother in law. I couldn’t go downstairs. I couldn’t go and see my mum. I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t sleep in the same bed as my wife. I couldn’t hug my wife.

I wasn’t locked in a cell without anything to see or do. I had my tablet so could look at all kinds of things on the interweb and I had a book to keep me company so it wasn’t like I was buried alive, but in my mind, the sudden loss of contact with the world that I was familiar with was hugely magnified and I was acutely aware very quickly of what I couldn’t do. The suffering was born from knowing what I’d lost and that there was nothing I could do about it.

No doubt we’ve all read stories or seen films or TV shows where the protagonist is imprisoned. There are examples of both lawful and wrongful incarceration and then how characters are able to confront their sudden loss of liberty. How do they come to terms with their lot? What do they have to overcome in the new life they have?

But isolation isn’t solely incarceration.

We can feel isolated despite being surrounded by hundreds of people. We could feel utterly alone despite speaking with hundreds of people. We can be isolated by actions of people around us or we could feel isolated because we feel that no one understands who we are and what we could be going through. We are more than capable of building  prisons for our minds so putting a character in a cell isn’t the only way that they can be separated from the crowd.

The world over today, the reality of isolation is something that we all have to deal with in some shape or form so I think that we all have a much deeper understanding of the realities of what we all do but more importantly, we can see just how a small change can really shatter the calm normality we all know and love.

Maybe that could start to give some kind of explanation why there are so many people apparently happy to ignore the advice of the experts and not stay home during the current pandemic?

Nobody wants to be isolated.

No-one wants to be alone.

TO LAUGH

The world has been a pretty dark place recently with every news bulletin we see holding a different description of the horror that awaits us so it looks to be the perfect time to investigate humour.

We all enjoy a good laugh.

What may be making us laugh will vary from person to person but the sheer joyous release of a laugh is too wonderful a gift to overlook.

Comedy can help us look at topics which have seemed to be off limits and shine a different coloured light on them. The world is easily populated with activity which could appear to be far away from the idea of laughter but in the midst of pain and suffering, the chance to erupt with laughter can not only allow us to release a shot of tension but it can give us the chance to fight back against those horrors.

If all we see is a single problem, with no respite in sight and nothing but the looming threat, it’s easy for that problem to grow arms and legs and the issue grows beyond the scale it should have. Making that problem silly or laughable can remind us that what could appear to be awful could actually be very surmountable.

Laughter is the best medicine and can allow us a way to release pressure. I’ve seen the release myself a few years ago. We visited my dad in the hospice on a Saturday and he and I had always enjoyed what could be described as stupid or mildly inappropriate toilet humour but pain and suffering he’d been going through had robbed him of so much that the idea of laughing just didn’t enter the equation. It just felt that none of us had laughed in so long.

And that’s when I found the image on Facebook.

Childish toilet humour with the strange looking alien and I lost it.

I just erupted laughing and couldn’t stop. It just poured out of me, tears filling my eyes and leaving me red faced and barely able to breathe but it was so very needed. It was a stupid joke but it was in line with the usual nonsense I used to joke about with my dad and for that instant, all the crushing horror of the real world was pushed aside and for a short time, I could laugh.

Laughter is a tool to expose truths, and humour can make facts seem less stark so it should never be discarded but at the most base level of who we are, the chance to laugh can bond us to ideas and to people and bring in the smallest shard of light against the darkness which may be attacking us.

Don’t overlook the chance to bring laughter to the world.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

It’s Armistice Day and this is a major day that should always be held up for the world to see. I’m not saying that I’ll be banging the drum of UK military might or that it’s only that we should be concerned with the allies.

Armistice Day is there to show that all those who served were doing just that, serving.

The armed forces the world over are there in a multitude of forms and they depend on the perspective you have. Are they the righteous force for good reaching out to spread their goodness to the world or are they despotic invaders wanting to bring the world to it’s knees?

All in all, the way we see the actions of troops or armies is the major point rather than the troops themselves.

At this time of year, we see so very many examples of old warriors remembering with tears in their eyes, the friends that they lost on any number of battlefields around the world. They recount tales of brutality and terror as they looked into the abyss of war and strode onwards without a thought for themselves. These aren’t people who glorify war or long for the fight. The stories they tell are of the friends they made and lost. They remember that they were never war mongers and rather that they just wanted to protect the ones they loved. And very often, they are crushed by the weight of guilt as they bare the weight of the years they had which their friends didn’t.

On Armistice Day, we don’t cheer for war. On Armistice Day we remember the ones who stood to protect.

DOING WITHOUT

I’m writing this on my phone and it’s not easy.

It’s said that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and I can attest to that very fact regarding so many home comforts, most pertinent to this post being the internet.

We’re currently without WiFi and a phone so I’m reliant on the mobile. It’s almost impossible to consider how we even survived before the internet made it’s way into our home.

I’ve spoken before about the importance of grasping chances as they present themselves but never overlook the majesty of the lives we’re already living.

None of us should take anything of our lives for granted.

THE FALLING GLOOM

Greetings all.

Last week, I discussed how the way that we view the world can have a powerful effect on everything in our lives and that there are coping mechanisms that can mean that when you’re confronted by problems, you can navigate a way through.

But flipping the coin, we will always experience times where the darkness wins. Then what?

As an author, I’m very aware that when I write a story, there more often that not has to be a ‘happy ending’. If you think about so many of the stories we have in our lives, the couple who’ve been so close all the way through, finally fall in love, the terrible monster is vanquished or the moustache twirling villain has their dastardly scheme foiled. It’s a warming feeling when the characters we’re invested in are able to beat down the challenges and emerge victorious.

Painfully, the real world isn’t always like that.

We can lose.

Now last week was the joyous knowledge of at least being able to break problems apart and deal with the fragments rather than the whole thing but it’s very easy to have that mindset become, well if I do this, everything will be fine, and you don’t see the huge storm as it approaches.

Have you met the eternally optimistic person who just always glosses over any possible downside?

It always then comes as a crushing shock when something breaks and can have the chance to shatter their whole world view. We’ve all been in a similar position when the smart money says one outcome and you end up with the other. I asked my cousin if he wanted to go for a few beers and watch the Wales v Fiji match in the Rugby World Cup and he said that he was going to give that one a miss but he’d be out for the Quarter Final match against South Africa after Wales beat the South Sea islanders.

Wales lost and were knocked out of the tournament.

I walked home from the pub in a numb state of disbelief that the result had gone that way having been thinking the same thing that my cousin had. Wales were obviously going to win. And then they didn’t.

Neither of us that day had even prepared for the outcome that was delivered and it was that shock that did the damage. We both just assumed that Wales would turn up and the game would be a relative formality. Not that Fiji would be crushed but the idea that Wales lose? Preposterous.

When the darkness of our own minds reaches out to drag us into the depths, having considered the realities of what could happen before can allow us to at least have some understanding of what’s taking place while we suffer through the darkness. That understanding can ultimately give us the first step on the climb back from our own dungeon.

Recognising the risks that are inherent to the lives we lead means we can make sure we do our best to avoid them. Having a permanent sunny outlook means you end up missing the potholes as you walk. My characters will have the same worries as I write them because that’s what people go through but having too much of one or the other gets you nowhere.

Hope for the best and enjoy those sunny feelings but we all know how important a little bit of shade can be on a hot day.

DON’T WAIT

We’ve just arrived home after the fifth Spartacus convention in Paris and despite having to deal with the usual post convention blues when you get home, this time round we’ve been treated to the additional horror of the knowledge that this one was the last one.

Yup. No more of these conventions with these guests, these fans, or at this location. It’s been amazing going to these events each year and having the chance to catch up with all the people who feel the same way about the TV show that we do so having that taken away has left something of a hole.

So how often do we see the like happening in our lives, a mightily important person, activity or thing is taken away and all you’re left with is the understanding of just how important you really found it?

You recognise that you had something amazing and without the slightest clarity of what was going to unfold, you sat and watched on as the last time came and went, leaving you adrift and lost.

Everyone has a passion, even if they don’t think they do.

Everyone has that thing that they just love, be it an object, a sport, a club, a book etc. and each and every one of us should make the most of all of those things because when they’re gone, you don’t get the chance to turn the page back and go round again.

As a theme, regretted loss is something which we all feel at some point in our lives so is recognisable as a method to drive story telling forward. The characters in the Circle books of mine all have this as an aspect within their make up because it’s a feeling which can shape who we all are as people regardless of how it comes into our lives.

Jo and I are planning the next step with the family of friends we made at the Spartacus conventions so although the events have come to an end, we’re all still going to have the chance to catch up together and have a blast.

Make sure you make the most of your passion and indulge as often as you can.

A DECENT SEND OFF

I used to live in Kent and I went to university in Lincoln. Now I understand that for everyone reading, those are, in themselves, Earth shattering facts but stay with me. These two locations have something very important in common.

Airfields.

Due to their locations on the east of the UK, during the Second World War they were vital in both defence and attack. The Spitfires and their fighter brethren swarmed from airfields famously during the Battle of Britain and the mighty Lancasters and the other ‘heavies’ left on their missions to drop their bombs all over Europe.

Now I’m not going to start banging on about the war nor am I trying to make any sort of comment about any possible political view point, so again, stay with me.

I can remember air shows as a child where the planes had to travel over where we lived on their way to the airfield and it was one of these in particular that just blew my mind.

It was the early 80’s and the Falklands War was not long over so when my dad explained that, for the first time, the local air show would be welcoming a Vulcan Bomber, the carrier of the UK nuclear deterrent during the Cold War and recently retired from active service, he impressed upon me with his own excitement, that this plane was important. He knew that it was going to have to fly over our house on its way so we were all dragged into the garden, just waiting for the barest glimpse of it.

We could hear the engines approaching and my dad was buzzing around in anticipation. I stood in the middle of the garden and just looked straight up and when she passed overhead, I swear the sun went out.

That Vulcan’s gargantuan Delta-Wing just blotted out everything and in my mind, everything slowed to the point of leaving that plane suspended just above me. It was one of the most beautiful sights my young eyes had ever seen and as you can probably tell from the way I’m writing this, it still gets me.

Now the three planes that I’ve named so far, the Spitfire, the Lancaster and the Vulcan, all had a massive role to play in the national eye and each of these machines seems to have taken on a greater significance that just being aircraft.

There are 54 airworthy Spitfires left on the planet.

Only 2 airworthy Lancasters.

And most painfully for me, there are no remaining Vulcans in the sky.

And finally, we get to the point.

The send off is a vital thing for people as a part of a grieving process. The funeral of friends and family is something that we can see as a way of recognising the life of the person in question but that same need is often bestowed on ‘things’ as well.

I used the idea of an organised memorial in my first novel, The Circle of Fire, where everyone involved was able to remember those who weren’t with them anymore but we see in so much of life, that we as a race of people seem to need to recognise and celebrate a passing, be it a person or a thing.

When I traded in my last car, I couldn’t help but remember all the journeys we’d shared. When my parents moved to Wales it meant that the home I’d grown up in was leaving the family. I walked into every room and all round the garden before I drove back to Wales, just saying goodbye.

What drives us to do it? Do we regret that we never said enough to show that we saw the service that was being given for us? Do we just not like change so lament the arrival of the new? Do we just miss the good times so need to spend a last time there with the rose tinted glasses on?

A few years ago, Jo and I were visiting her mum in Lincolnshire when I heard an amazing sound. I almost fell over myself to get a good look out of the correct window but I made it in time to see a mighty Lancaster thunder overhead on her way to an air show, which was very soon followed by the last Vulcan. I was just as excited as I’d been all those years ago and just being able to catch a glimpse of those ladies as they headed off as part of their on-going send off was amazing.

I watched them come home that evening and just stood in awe, recognising that we all need a send off. I think it just boils down to appreciating what the person / object has been, has done but also the silent hope that one day, someone will look out and think of us with the same feelings.