Challenges...

You’ve probably noticed this, frankly I’d be surprised if you haven’t, but I’ll say it anyway: Why has the media become so obsessed with challenges?

I’m not talking about challenges like scaling Everest or searching out the source of the Amazon. I’m not even thinking about the challenge of trying to get a parking space within a mile of a supermarket entrance if you’re not disabled.

I’m talking about the artificial obstacles that are considered critical for a challenge to be interesting. Take the X Factor, for example.

It’s a music competition, that’s what it is. People sing, lobotomised people vote, and the winner with the biggest dream, who always wanted it, wins. To eek it out over the 2/3rds of the year its on they have to come through rounds. Fair enough.

But to make it even more interesting to its viewing public (who, lets face it, would find The Sky at Night interesting if they could vote off a planet each week) some of the contestants have an unseemingly impossible obstacle to overcome – like coming from Northern Ireland, or voluntarily taking drugs. Come on, its not their fault.

While I’m on the subject of the X Factor, do me a favour – consider the maths. Nearly a million people turned up for auditions. Did the judges watch every act? Get real. They saw the ones they wanted to see – those that would fit into the tightly scripted format of the show. The Mousetrap has more spontaneity in it.

Anyway I digress. The reason I’m heading towards the New Year with a rant is this false sense of challenge is becoming a mainstay of travel books. It is not sufficiently interesting to read about someone travelling around Ireland – they have to be towing a fridge. I’m not having a go at Tony Hawks who did the towing, but why did he follow it up with trying to get a piano to his house in France? Would he indeed have bothered with the piano move at all if he didn’t think there was sufficient challenge in it to fill a book? For me the piano was the most irritating part of the book. I suspect his publishers - flogging a winning formula until its so mind numbingly boring you’ll only find it in a pound shop is a common theme.

Why do publishers get so obsessed with the need for a spurious challenge? Even Slash, my editor wanted to know what my hook was.

‘There isn’t one. It’s about the journey.’

‘Mmm… he said, rubbing his chin and drinking another glass of Rioja (which is quite a skill). ‘No hook eh?...’

Bill Bryson went around Britain on public transport. Some may say that that in itself must have been some challenge, but he didn’t tow anything. Eric Newby got up one day and took a short walk in the Hindu Kush. And he managed it without a piano. Paul Theroux jumped on a train in America and got off in Patagonia. In between he chatted to a few people, contemplated his naval, and looked out of the window. It was a brilliant book.

The great thing about all these wonderful books is that the challenges are all do-able. Anyone could, with a little effort admittedly, experience the written page in real living Technicolour.

The journey is not the challenge at all. The challenge is holding your readers’ attention for 200 plus pages.

This brings me to my challenge. I lost over 30,000 words of my book just before Christmas. Now this next statement might sound a little dramatic to you, but I assure you its true: it was like bereavement. And I don’t mean to belittle anyone who’s suffered a loss this year (you know who you), but the truth is I hadn’t realised how emotionally attached I’ve become to my book.

Anyway, after a Herculean effort I’ve recovered the missing words – manually – by re-writing them, and I am now back to the point at which I lost most of my book – the gobbing restaurant.

It meant writing 5000 words at each writing session- that’s about 15 pages of a book each day. Doesn’t sound much? Try it – now that’s a real challenge…

Consequences

Consequences: Friend asks for some copies of some photos - I burn them to a CD - Lose all of my book in the process - that's 50,000 words, or about 150 pages, or if you still can't work it out about 100 solid hours of work - I also lose 30,000 words of another book and 20,000 words of other assorted pieces...

Moral: never do fucking favours

I'll be back if I ever get my data back...

Slasher's Back

Have you ever wondered how long it takes for your brain to forget how stupid you are? It’s about a month. How do I know this? I’ll tell you.

You might recall I recently told you about Slasher the Editor pouring me into my train after an eight-hour lunch that involved very little in the way of solids.

I met him again last Friday. It started innocuously enough.

‘Book, coming on nicely Slash, just under 40,000 words, I’m in China now.

‘Drink?’

Something tugged at my brain when he said this, a brief flash of alcoholic carnage, a tiny niggle, but nothing I could form into a proper thought.

‘OK. So do you think I should take, say, the first 10,000 words and polish it to see if we can get a publisher interested?

‘Another?’

An alarm bell started ringing, but in the distance, like it was coming from somewhere down the street.

‘What I thought was, I’d get them over to you, and you could give them the once over.’

‘Wine I think now, beer’s a little gassy,’ he said.

More alarm bells, closer this time, perhaps next door.

‘Then I could do any re-writes before I go to Libya.’

‘Another bottle? Shall we go onto red?’

It was at this point I had a distinct feeling of deja vue.

Slash, being a wily journalist of the old school, recognised in my face the dawning of a very nasty memory, and quickly asked a question to distract me.

‘Do you like Rioja? Shall we order a bottle of that now?

The rest, as they say, is a blur.

The time between each encounter was about a month…

At least, in the intervening period I’ve been quite productive. My book is edging towards 45,000 words, which may not mean much to you, but represents hours of work for me.

And I’m just about to get to the gobbing restaurant. As the name suggests it is a combination of eating and hoiking, and I’ve written it so many times in my head, I can’t wait to get it down on paper.

The experience of writing a book is strange. It’s like doing the trip all over again. When I read my notes I am transported back and it triggers even more memories I haven’t committed to paper. It makes for a vivid recollection, and I recommend you keep a journal whenever you travel. Its more fun than looking at photos. And you make note of the weirdest things. My notes are littered with record of my digestive transit, or lack of it, but I don’t remember making a conscious effort to record it. Also you pick up on your mood, in a way that photos rarely convey.

This is reflected in my writing. On reading back the last 40,000 words I can see that Russia was like a death march compared to China’s quick step. That’s not to say I didn’t see the funny side in Russia. I mean who wouldn’t find something to laugh at in a death march, they always look so bloody daft, all that leg lifting and morose timing.

But listen, now I’m waffling, which is a literary sin. I better get back to work. Which is just as well, because my brain only has about a month before it forgets how stupid I am…

Virtual Madness

I’m going to make a bold prediction; one day we will live entirely in a virtual world. Frankly I can’t wait.

Work will be done from home, and commuting will be something our grandchildren will look back on and laugh at. The concept of travelling to concrete and glass high rises, in a tube of metal, filled to the gunnels with sweaty human beings, spewing out pollution from the carbon residue of a billion year old forest, will illicit the same response we give to a 1950s film on the health benefits of smoking.

Yes, this new virtual world is the new Nirvana. I look forward to the day I can play my round of golf on a cold, wet, windy day, from the comfort of my bed. It sounds like heaven. All I’ll have to do is slip on my virtual golf kit, select a suitable golf swing from a pre-selected list on my Phone-Interweb-Widget device and go round in 11 under par.

Some people will be ahead of others in arriving at the virtual Promised Land. Take the company I’m working for on the Libyan project – they have a virtual office.

What does this mean? Well, to some this is enlightenment. No one travels to a central point because there isn’t one. Need a meeting? Conference call over the World Wide Interwebby thing. Need to access an important client file to see what the Managing Director likes to be given for Christmas? Simple, computer networks can be accessed from anywhere. What about getting feedback on that presentation? Doddle E-mail is made for sharing.

And they’re not the only ones at it. Take my credit card company. I can ring them and spend virtually all my life in their phone system gathering information. It’s like walking into their office, picking out my file and having a read.

Of course there are some things that don’t, on the face of it, fit into this brave new virtual world. For example, half way through writing this Blog entry I had to go and collect someone from the hospital who had undergone an Endoscopy. For those of you that don’t know what that is, the first three letters of the word are significant. The remaining letters branch from the root word, telescope, and as a final clue I’d like to offer you another word - insertion.

If the truth be told, this highlights a significant problem with virtual worlds. Endoscopies really are pointless if performed on a virtual arse.

In actual fact there are a few flaws with my other two examples too. I’ve spent about 10 days being trained on a piece of software so that I can train people on it in Libya. The training has been delivered virtually. All manner of things have gone wrong, not least the lack of compatibility between the trainer’s computer software and the computer software on the machine I’m using. You could say we are each in the same virtual office, but not the same room. If we were really in the same room the training could have been completed in half the time.

Also, I didn’t enjoy the half a day I spent in my credit card’s virtual world. No office in the real world forces you to make choices on every single aspect of your visit. That would be bizarre.

“Welcome to our office, would you -1, like to enter, 2 - like to leave, 3 – break in through the back door.”

‘1 – enter.’

“Congratulations on entering our building, do you 1 – want to speak to Reg, 2 – want to throttle Reg or 3 – want to club Reg to death

‘3 – club Reg to Death.’

“When clubbing Reg to death would you like 1 – a baseball bat, 2 – a cricket bat, 3 – a plank of wood

Its easy to see how tedious this could get, especially when, after going through 100 layers of options, you’re deposited in India and speaking to Sanjay pretending to be Reg. Further, he will have no idea of the options you've already chosen so you will have to repeat them. This would, of course, not be necessary at all if Reg had answered the phone at the beginning of the process.

Right, now what was I going to talk to you about today? Ah yes, my book. Good news.

It’s virtually finished…

Planning

Today I was going to talk about planning. I’ve just sold an article on it, the basic premise being that we can avoid all sorts of problems with a little planning.

How about a live example? Book wise I was planning to write 3000 words today, put the finishing touches to a feature on shopping in Bangkok (don’t), and slip in a Blog entry.

Then, last night I got a phone call from my Libyan paymasters asking me to bring forward a training day originally planned for tomorrow, to today. So today has been a frustrating training day (frustrating because it has been more disjointed than a magicians assistant).

In fact, its been so bad that I still have to do the training tomorrow. I’m meeting my drunken sot of an editor on Friday and therefore, despite extensive planning, I won’t get anything I’ve planned done. Unless I think laterally.

Which is why you're getting an excerpt from my book. It will probably be nothing like this in the finished format, but it does mean I can tick “Blog entry” off my list of things to do:

Peeking inside the cabin I find a woman divesting herself of a very large purple rucksack. She is tall and gangly with a cropped haircut so short it looks prickly. When she turns I notice her small piggish eyes that are dark brown, almost black. She has the sort of expression you’d find on a Llama that’s just realised what a vet has to do to check for a breached birth. Her mauve leggings look thicker than chain mail. I immediately assume she prefers the company of her own sex and is a vegan.

‘Hello,’ I say placing my bag on the seat opposite her.

‘Women don’t share with men,’ she says without looking at me directly, which is difficult in such a small space. She’s either English or very good at impressions. I apologise and go back to check with the carriage attendant, or Provodnitsa as I must get used to calling her.

‘Excuse me, there is a vegan in berth twenty two, she says they don’t share,’ I say.

She looks me up and down in the same way a coffin maker might and shoos me away, rattling off some Russian that sounds to my untrained ear like ‘fuck off you soft westerner, can’t you see I’m busy standing here doing nothing.’ I thank her with all my heart for her unstinting dedication to customer service, which may have sounded to her untrained ear as ‘fuck off yourself you cabbage eating dwarf.’ I traipse back to my cabin sharer. Perhaps if I promise to castrate myself she might trust me not to find her irresistible.

When I get back I find my bags outside the door, which is now shut. I’m just about to tell her, through the gap at the bottom of the door, that I’d find an alligator in suspenders more sexually alluring when I realise the cabin houses berths twenty and twenty one. Twenty two is next door. I pick up my bags and shuffle along to it.

 

Oh yes, that’s the other thing about planning – making it up as you go along is sometimes the only option…

Never go back to school

On Tuesday morning I whizzed through France, hammered my way across Spain, spun round and bolted through Germany, only to find myself back in Spain. I did this without leaving the country.

How? I was in a language lab, in a very prestigious girls school in north London, that’s how.

And boy do they work fast – 35-minute lessons delivered at break-neck speed by teachers who can carry on 7 conversations simultaneously without exploding.

And like policemen, they seem to be getting younger. The German teacher was about 12.

I went to the staff room at mid morning break expecting tranquillity, but in fact, it was just as manic as class. I don’t think these teachers have a slow speed. I think they go full pelt, then, at the end of term, go blank, like computers being logged off.

The purpose of my visit was to see how the language lab that I’m helping to introduce to Libya works in a real environment. Not that schools are real environments. If you looked at one under a microscope, you’d see the friendly bacteria in Yakult. At end of class they swarm out of the classrooms and the corridors become the narrow streets of Pamplona.

In addition to all my educational endeavours I picked up some more writing commissions. I’m not complaining, it’s just my schedule is tighter than a tight thing with tight things on. Sadly, the editors’ deadlines are even tighter. But there is a golden rule in freelance writing; never turn a commission down. I haven’t

Two of the commissions have been lengthy, around 2000 words. That won’t mean much to you, and why should it. It’s about the size of three double decker buses… no its not. It’s about 3 to 5 pages in a magazine, depending on how they lay it out, and what photos they incorporate.

Two other commissions were from in-flight magazines so you won’t see them unless you’re flying over Asia in January. The other two, also come out in January, but are published here in the UK, and if you feel the urge you can buy them and have a read. Look out for Sweet magazine (no, its not about sweets) and Real Travel. WH Smith’s are your best bet.

The only reason I’m telling you all this is to prepare you for the bad news on the book front. I’ve only managed about 2000 words this week. OK, they’re all top of the range, Rolls Royce, solid gold words, but its a measly return. My target is nearer 10,000.

Still, the social scene in Libya is, shall we say, limited, so I hope to get back on track while I’m away. Then again, I’ve also pre-sold a feature on Tripoli, and another magazine is thinking about a proposal I sent on Benghazi…

Writing - who needs it?

I haven’t been too productive on the book front since my last entry. It’s hovering at about 24,000 words, which is behind my schedule. The trouble is paid work keeps getting in the way.

That’s not to say I don’t expect to earn anything from my book. The time between my actually doing the trip and the book being available will easily be 6 or 7 months. In between the book earns me nothing at all. And that in a nutshell is the problem with books. OK, if I was Bill Bryson I’d get a whopping great advance and could concentrate on it full time, but I don’t have that luxury. Anyway I can’t grow a bushy beard or speak in a credible American accent.

If I write a feature I generally get paid immediately its published.

I suggested recently that taking a blank page and turning it into a piece of writing is great fun and immensely rewarding (although rarely in the financial sense). Turning it into something that another person enjoys reading is even more satisfying. All this is true, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Making a living from it is even harder. Or so the story goes.

But here’s a thing. The UK sells more magazines, newspapers, and periodicals, per head of population, than any other country in the world. If you want the latest news on narrow gauge railways, a better understanding of Llama breeding, or how to make scale models of tall ships out of matchsticks, you’ll find a magazine that will help you. If you’ve got a job, there will be a magazine that is the ‘voice’ of your industry. If you don’t have a job, you’ll find a magazine explaining how to get one.

Then think about the last piece of junk mail that fell on your mat. Did it have any words on it? Picked up a brochure recently? Read a website? Looked at a poster? Listened to a jingle? Watched a TV show? Nicked any training course material lately?

Now think back to the last visit you made to a bookshop? OK, 50% will be by that bloke who writes about Botswana’s No 1 Lady’s Detective Agency (he must produce a book a week), but that still leaves a lot.

And the common denominator is; someone had to write all the words.

But, and here’s the catch, writing doesn’t actually start with a blank page and a few jumbled sentences tumbling around your head. It starts with an idea. And, in the case of magazines and newspapers, it’s the idea you have to sell to an editor to get a commission. That’s assuming he’s prepared to read your proposal, hasn’t printed something similar recently, or doesn’t steal your idea and write it in house.

And just recently my ideas have been hitting the mark and I’m getting more commissions.

So you see, writing is getting in the way of my writing.

Also I’ve run into another problem. My 24,000 words have only got me as far as leaving Moscow. At this rate my book will be 150,000 words long. Most travel books are between 75,000 and 100,000.

Never mind. I’ve employed the services of a drunken editor (see previous Blog) who goes by the name of “slasher.” I’m confident he will knock my family of words into shape.

But at what cost?

I mean, I’ve written over 3000 words on the bathroom facilities available to me on the train to Moscow. I think people need to be made aware of the dangers of having a dump into a toilet that delivers a 100mph updraft. He may suggest I concentrate on the view from the window.

And soon I will be describing the antics of a freelance toilet attendant in China. And then there’s the gobbing restaurant. He might suggest my planned 200 words on the Great Wall might need expanding at their expense.

I can see some flashpoints, especially as he thinks diplomacy is the method by which you obtain a diploma, and tact something you hammer into wood. But nothing will happen until I finish writing the damned thing, and I’ve already wasted 700 words on this.

Told you writing has a habit of getting in the way of writing didn’t I?

Never trust a journalist...

You may be wondering why a diabetic like myself is tapping out his Blog entry this morning while munching his way through a packet of Jaffa Cakes. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s all to do with my School Careers Officer.

I only saw him once, but in that short fifteen-minute interview he planted a seed that’s grown into a lifelong vocation.

            ‘Ah, Millard, Millard, Millard,’ he needlessly repeated while shuffling through my paperwork. Then, peering over his glasses he motioned me to sit.

            ‘What do you want to do when you leave school?’

            ‘No idea Sir.’

‘What’s your best subject?’ He looked at his paperwork again and added ‘In your opinion.’

            ‘English Sir.’

            ‘Mmmm, you’re a gregarious sort Millard, and maths is actually your best subject. I suggest a career in the licence trade,’ he then dismissed me with a leaflet.

After reading said leaflet I realised he meant a publican. And to be fair it’s a career I’ve followed with much interest for many years. But only from the other side of the bar…

As careers officers go mine was a good geography teacher. In fact that’s exactly what he was, my geography teacher, and he was wrong about the maths. My English results were always strongest, for which I have to thank Mr Mason, my English teacher.

He would spend complete terms on one subject. Once we spent a whole year on précis. Ironically, he enunciated many thousands of words on the subject of brevity but I loved all of them. The idea of taking a two hundred word paragraph and shrinking it to one hundred, without losing the original meaning was, in my view, literary alchemy.

And it’s never left me. I wouldn’t say I’m obsessive about it, but why use ten words when five will do? Even as I write that last sentence I find myself checking it to see if I can shrink it. Maybe I could drop the ‘about it’ bit?

Nowadays, thanks in no short measure to Mr Mason, I earn a chunk of my living from writing down words in ways that makes them, hopefully, entertaining and easy for people to read. It’s wonderful. You can’t beat taking a blank page and turning it to something else. It’s like a carpenter making a piece of furniture from a chunky piece of wood, or a jeweller fashioning a necklace. I often spend hours every day writing. I hardly know where the time goes. It can be very absorbing.

Take my book, for example. I’m now the proud father to twenty thousand words and the family is growing by at least a thousand a day. Like all parents I want what’s best for my words. When they leave me to venture out into the big wide world I want them to be productive, yes, but most of all I want them to be happy. After all, happy words are entertaining words.

But giving birth to, and raising words can be a lonely occupation. To counteract the loneliness it’s often helpful to speak to someone you can bounce ideas off and get feedback from. Which is why, from time to time, I rely on a trusted source whose opinions are insightful and always welcome. He’s an ex journalist, editor, and erstwhile writer of some repute, and he too has a deep interest in the career path of publicans.

I met him yesterday and set about explaining I have twenty thousand words that are bursting to entertain. As always he offered me his undivided attention whilst simultaneously drinking, smoking and eating.

            ‘The thing is Dave; I get side tracked by the minutiae of life, which I find immensely interesting. But I’m not sure my readership will.’

            ‘Drink? He replied

            ‘Yes, and what about the tense, will the first person present give the book more immediacy?

            ‘Another?’

            ‘I like some of the passages, they make me laugh when I read them back, that’s a good sign isn’t it?

            ‘Shall we go on to wine, all this beers making me gassy.’

            ‘Also what do you think to my marketing plan?’

            ‘This wine’s good, I’ve ordered another bottle?’

And so it was that lunch turned into the 20.12 from Waterloo. We may have had some substantive conversations, I vaguely remember his promise to edit my book, and help me with promotion, but it’s hard to tell, because, this morning my brain cells are too busy dying. Some of them are very important and I can’t afford to lose them. For example, the cells responsible for spelling enebriated have gone.

So you see, I can lay the blame for my sugary indulgence squarely at the feet of my Careers Officer, possibly aided and abetted by my English teacher. Which, when you think about it, just about takes the biscuit…

Good ideas

A light went in my car last week. I know this because it told me so. No, it didn’t actually speak, it flashed up a warning light on the dashboard. The first thing I thought was how ironic it was to use a flashing light to tell me one of my lights wasn’t working. My second thought was, what if the flashing warning light stopped working? How would my car communicate that defect?

In my book garages fall into the same category as accountants and pickpockets, in that they speak a different language, and you generally feel, in coming into contact with them, that you’ve been robbed.

I once had a garage customer service representative give me all this spiel, that, frankly I had no interest in, on how Nissan had kicked themselves in the teeth by designing their cars so that things like light bulb replacements was easy for owners do themselves.

            ‘The thing is, we can’t really charge for this service, and anyway, its so easy to replace them,’ he said before disappearing into the workshop for an hour, and only then replacing it with the help of a fully qualified mechanic.

            So it was with my usual sense of foreboding that I took my VW in to have the light replaced. I sat like an expectant father in the waiting room while the operation took place and read a month old local paper, a magazine on boating, and Heat magazine. Apparently that woman who does the Iceland advert doesn’t have falsies at all.

Twenty minutes later a solemn looking customer service assistant ushered me to sit in front of him and told me he’d just printed out my bill. £6! I had to ask him to repeat it. It took every ounce of self control not to kiss him.

So you see it doesn’t pay to take a stereotypical view. Which is what I did when presented with a contract to sign for the job in Libya.

I don’t like contracts, even the name sounds uncomfortable. And they are always full of such odd English, the type you often her policemen using when being interviewed on the telly.

‘I was travelling in a northerly direction, and had cause to find suspicious a motor vehicle of a commercial variety, travelling at a speed excessive for the prevailing conditions, and in contravention of the roads traffic act of 1977, page 11, paragraph six, subsection, open bracket, A, close brackets. Upon stopping the vehicle I had reason to note the smell of alcohol emanating from the drivers facial orifice…’

When he could have just said ‘I stopped someone for speeding and suspicion of drink driving.’

So you see, contracts don’t actually contract things - they elongate them. Perhaps they should be called elongates?

I’ve found writing a book presents similar problems. The biggest being what to leave out. I find some of the most trivial things interesting, but I realise that not everyone else will. The issue of what to leave in and what to omit is vexing me, but I think I have a solution.

Travel Anecdotal X Factor. Or TAXFact for short. The premise is outrageously simple. When I’ve finished my first draft I’m going to make all the anecdotes compete with each until only one is left in. I know what you’re thinking; this might make for a short book. But think how good that one anecdote will be.

I mean, look at what the X Factor has produced. There’s wotsit, that fella with the chin, and the twat who answers its “Chico Time,” every time you ask him a question. And that black bin man who got ‘nil point’ at the Eurovision. I can’t lose with a formula like that.

And where did I get this fantastic idea? A light bulb went off in my head…

Principles...

You’ve probably heard of the old saying, ‘in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.’ I’d like to nick its underlying principle and apply it to a saying of my own;

‘In the household that is skint money is king.’

Of course I took the Libya job, and no, it was not because they doubled the rate of pay. I’m a flexible kind of bloke and I’m happy to say, my principles are too. I meet him this week to finalise the details, and agree dates.

Libya, of course, isn’t actually called Libya. It’s the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, or GSPLAJ for short. Catchy eh? It may have a creative name but that creativity doesn’t flow over into its flag design, which is plain Green. No insignia, no design, nothing, just green.

Other than that, and the obvious (shootings, bombings, etc.), I know very little about a country, that is, in square footage terms, the 17^th largest in the world. Which, of course, means nothing unless you intend to walk around it. And I don’t because a lot of it is Saharan desert where temperatures rarely dip below 40 degrees.

And it’s not only the desert that’s dry. The whole state is. They don’t even sell wine gums. This is good, because unless I want to watch the latest Libyan soaps, my evenings will be free for writing. By the end of my secondment I might just have finished my first draft.

But in reality editing the first draft is where the work really begins. That’s when I am forced to dispose of sentences, (previously hours spent in the crafting of), for the sake of a coherent book. I’ve lost some of my favourite words in this culling process, but you have to consider your readership. Take the ones that pitch up here for example. I like the word ‘Quidnunc’, but what would be the point in using it, because most of you have no idea what it means, even though, I know for a fact, most of you indulge in it.

So you see I’m not writing this book for me. I’m writing it for you. I’m sure you already feel a moral obligation to buy it.

I’ve now written enough material to send to potential publishers. Although I am likely to take a self-publishing route, I still haven’t given up on mainstream publishers, who to date seem determined to turn a blind eye to my efforts. On receiving a proposal on my train book, with sample chapters to indicate my writing style, one very famous travel writing publisher put it to me like this;

            ‘The thing is Mike, it’s a good idea, and I like your style, but you’re just not famous, and without that celebrity angle I just don’t think it will sell enough books.’

A sad indictment on their view of their readership don’t you think? I mean, I’ve read travel books that have turned authors into celebrities, but I’ve never seen it work the other way around.

So, my route to mainstream publishing may mean I have to grow a pair of 40EE bosoms, date a footballer, and have children that are photogenic enough for Hello! Magazine. Or perhaps I can get away with swearing my way to winning Big Brother, a show so inane, the OED are busy inventing a word that can adequately reflect the mindless drivel that it is.

So you see the English language, as rich and flexible as it is, doesn’t yet have a word that can illustrate a programme that assumes filming someone asleep is interesting.

I have a few suggestions, but I’m not going to tell you. What do you think I am, a Quidnunc?

Recommendations

It’s always nice to be recommended. It gives you a warm feeling and makes you think you might be doing something right. I get most of my work from recommendations. Recommendation is the most powerful marketing tool there is, but you won’t hear that from marketing professionals, because recommendations are free.

However, sometimes recommendations get passed down the food chain. As did the one I received whilst in Thailand. No matter, I’m not proud. At least I was recommended by someone who was recommended.

I met the Director of said company on Tuesday in the rather plush surroundings of the Marriot Hotel by Westminster Bridge. This is not my usual standard of meeting place, but he was paying for the coffee. I wore a suit and tried not to look at the price list.

The project was an interesting one. It would combine both my business consultancy and writing skills, a perfect combination. And it meant an 8-week secondment in Libya.

We got along swimmingly, had two coffees, which I calculated, cost him my train fare to London, and he offered me the work. Marvellous.

Then as he was winding things up he re-iterated how he wanted someone on this project ‘with a strategic business background and experience across a wide set of business disciplines, and I noticed from your CV that you’ve been round the block a bit.’

As soon as he uttered those words I knew I wouldn’t take the job. It irritated me all the way home. Did he expect me to have ‘experience across a wide set of business principles,’ by working in the Civil Service for thirty years?

It reminded me why I’m trying to replace my business consultancy work with writing work. I may be poorer in the interim, but at least I won’t have to deal with people who make a judgement about you from two pages of a CV.

Anyway rant over. Writing, ah yes. I’ve made a start on my manuscript, a little over 7,000 words in the last 3 days. I’m happy with the words but not sure they’re in the right order yet. Some of the sentences are so funny I have had to type them directly into a lead box so they won’t leak out and infect the world with laughter. Others I just threw in because I like the sound of them. For example, no travel book would be complete without the word ‘fungal,’ or indeed ‘squits.’

There are some stock phrases too, ‘I heard the thwack of the rubber glove a full 30 seconds before the pain really took hold and I blacked out…’ And ‘a gash in the concrete, frankly, does not constitute a toilet…’

But I better not reveal anymore, salivating on a computer screen is so unbecoming.

I appear to have arrived home with a somewhat optimistic air combined with a prodigious output, and lets face it, we all need a prodigious output. This week I’ve sent out a writing proposal to an editor every day, re-written a website for a client, quoted to re-write a clients entire customer communications portfolio and marketing material, sent off a proposal to a publisher for a book idea I have, and found a pair of trousers I forgot I owned.

There’s nothing like activity to keep you busy. Mind you I can always do with more work, so if you feel like recommending me…

He hasn't got an ankle to stand on...

Last Friday I had this nagging feeling I’d left the iron on, so I came home. All travellers have to return home some time, or they’re called nomads. I needn’t have worried - I don’t have an iron…

My time between Saigon and coming home was spent with a large man in Bangkok who doesn’t have any ankles. He used to have two, one at the end of each leg, but they disappeared when he reached 146 kilos (that’s the equivalent of three double-decker buses or an industrial sized hamburger).

You may suspect gluttony, but in fact the reason he is so big is to do with his car. It’s called a Ford Mealtime and comes equipped with a unique function. The car automatically activates an emergency stop if the driver tries to pass a restaurant. The ignition system can only be re-activated after a break of 30 minutes, and only if the weighing machine in the driver’s seat registers the driver heavier than the last time he sat on it. Some people suspect he bought the car because of this function.

The other reason he has no ankles is his tendency to drink 10 gallons of beer in one sitting – this, he says, ‘helps him forget…’ and often necessitates him living like a monk for at least a week after ‘just till my ankles drop…’

Even so I had high expectations, we hadn’t seen each other for over 2 years. Surely I could expect a lively drinking session and high jinx. Sadly I arrived in a period of ankle dropping expectancy. So, despite my travelling 10,000 miles by rail, and diverting early to Bangkok, for the sole purpose of meeting him and having a celebratory drinking session, of the sort that sends you into a coma, we sat in and played PGA Golf on his computer for 4 nights.

Occasionally, to break up the excitement, he would read me the UK headlines from the BBC website. Knowing my investments had halved while I was away was so comforting, and it was so very thoughtful of him to update me of the UK’s forthcoming bankruptcy.

So my long trek across Europe and Asia ended with a whimper rather than with my head in a spittoon following an unsuccessful spoof for the contents of the toilet bowl. Ho hum…

By comparison my homecoming was far more exciting. After four days of listening to him denigrating my Country in comparison to his adoptive one, I landed back on it. Travel is great but coming home is always the best bit. I’d traversed 10 countries, all of them interesting, some truly beautiful, one inhabited by a 146-kilo, PGA golf playing monk, but none that can hold a candle to my Country. And the only people without ankles in this fair land are old ladies who smell of lavender and peppermints.

So now to work. Some of you may remember the whole idea of this project was to write a book and get it published. To help me get to grips with this I have written a ‘to do’ list on the white board in my office. I’ll share it with you:

1 – write book

2 – sell book

3 – do tax return

So, you could say, my journey is only just starting, and I hope you continue to follow it.

Oh, and if you have any suggestions for coaxing out a pair of ankles, I have a friend in Bangkok who would like to hear from you.