I mean, it’s all very well for Giles Coren and Melanie Reid and Josh Clancy and Robert Crampton who write their once a week columns in The Times or Sunday Times: but I have to come up with something fresh every day and this during days when, quite frankly, there is very little new in the world, and certainly very little new in my few square feet of office space. This is Blog Number 29 ( funny how time flies when you are enjoying yourself doesn’t it? ) The average blog is about 1800 words long so multiply by 29 and you get over 50,000 words. I reckon my average novel is about 100,000 words long and they each take about a year to write. So with 50,000 in a little over a month I am well ahead of schedule I guess. In fact if the Big V lasts beyond the end date I originally predicted of July 31st ( and I can be wrong although I’m not generally one to admit that ) then by the time the sooth-sayers and doom merchants say it will end I could have written something longer than ‘ Wolf Hall ‘, ‘Bring Up the Bodies ‘ and The Mirror and The Light ‘ all combined. Eat your heart out Mantel when I get the Nobel Prize for Bloggers.
I did feel last night I might be beginning to scratch around for material ( though I am not quite reduced to the dire straits being experienced by my grandson, Sam who keeps repeating some phrases over and over to fill his column…. It’s cheating Sam and if you really want to fill it then give my blog a “ shout out “ as you call it without trying to charge your elderly Grandpa for the privilege. Which brings me nicely to Enfield Council. What? I hear you say, is that a segue ? Really ? Well, yes, it is. Read on.
At the very start of The Big V I reckoned I was vulnerable. I told everybody who would listen I was vulnerable. I told you, my readers that I was vulnerable. I called my GP and told them and they confirmed and said I would be getting confirmation of that ( I never did, by the way) . If you recall I used all my experience and expertise as the author of “ How to Complain ‘ ( still available at knock down prices on Amazon ) to get the CEO at Sainsburys to acknowledge I was vulnerable. Now, some six weeks later I got a phone call from London Borough of Enfield ( a very pleasant young lady who’s obviously never dealt with anybody like me before ) to tell me that they had ascertained I am vulnerable.
“ You took your time, “ I said, by way of a friendly greeting
I then told her of my Sainsbury triumph, I went through the names of all my willing shoppers ( good opportunity to give them another ‘ Shout Out ‘ and also fills a line or two…. Told you I was scratching the bottom of the barrel…. No offence willing shoppers you were all stars, Matt, Sophie, Angela, Naomi, not to mention Marvin, Florin and Joel who were all non-playing substitutes whom I did not have to summon off the bench ( interesting syntax there, who or whom ? Any suggestions welcome ) And as for footballing substitutes I may get on to the subject of footballers and their pay-cuts later this week . I think nice lady from the Council who called me was fairly anxious to end the call by then but she did plough on with her script and gave me the help line number in case I needed anything. I am thinking of ringing and asking if they can get me a few kosher pot noodles and I am running short on Rakusen’s Chocolate Digestive biscuits too and maybe they can get some Mentos and deliver them to Sam in Pinner. I mean six weeks. They could have found the phone ringing out in a house populated by two skeletons. They aren’t so slow when it comes to collecting my Council Tax. Maybe when I get the bill I will try the Helpline then .
I thought I might let you into the creative process that goes into this blog. I don’t just sit in from of my Macbook and bang away randomly for an hour or so. There’s as much thought going into this as Shakespeare put into ‘ King Lear ‘ More probably as he nicked all his plots. Reading a great book by the way by, Emma Smith, an academic called “ This is Shakespeare “ which gives a new spin on most of his plays. Will return to that in a blog or two when I am even nearer the bottom of my inspirational barrel.
What I tend to do, as an idea crosses my mind or even, as more often happens hits me slap in the face, is to make a note of it so I don’t forget. First of all I have to remember to make the note. I keep meaning to have a notebook and a pen by the side of my bed as most of my ideas come to me in the middle of the night and I lie there writing great openings or middles or ends and then when I wake up I can’t even remember what the idea was let alone the Pulitzer Prize literature that I have created around it. But, when I do remember to try to read the note then I have another problem. I can’t actually read my own writing.
I mean, nobody can read my writing. There was one exception to that my old secretary Lucinda, now sadly deceased. She was a resting actress and worked for me for years. She played Miss Mooney in ‘ Grange Hill ‘ if you want to put a face to her. I loved ‘ Grange Hill’ and watched it long after my children grew out of it. She could not only read my writing, but on the rare occasions she couldn’t ,substituted something that was so much better than my original effort. It was her idea to gather up all the complaint letters I wrote and get them together in a book which became “ How to Complain” ( did I mention that was still available on Amazon at a very modest price ? )
In fact my writing ( that’s my hand-writing not my literary writing ) is so bad that I had to marry a pharmacist as she had cut her teeth on Doctors’ scrawls on prescriptions. Mind you, when she takes my letters to post at the local post office the lady there and she have to take several minutes to translate addresses on recorded letters and I suspect don’t always succeed. I think they are several people in Workington surprised to receive a letter from me that I thought I had clearly addressed to an intended recipient in Woking,
Anyway, assuming I can read my notes I update them into a list every night and then tick them off as I use them. I think my mistake has to been to utilize too many of my good ideas in one blog leaving me scrabbling around the next day. But, don’t, worry even after today I still have no less than fifteen ideas still on paper ( of which I can read at least six of them ! )
I am going to use one of my BIG ideas today. Forget vaccines, forget blood transfusions, forget holistic medicine ( yes definitely forget that ) forget PPE’s ( until today when I heard of the shortage I thought that stood for Private Physical Education … which was a bit puzzling given that none of the school children seems to be getting very much education so why privatise PE? My BIG idea comes from learning that The Big V doesn’t transfer via the printed page. So, I intend setting up a business manufacturing clothing from old newspapers plus face masks from the same material. When I shared my idea with Sam he did put a bit of a dampener on it ( there’s a joke coming so dampener was used deliberately ) when he asked me what happened when you got caught out in the rain, and the suit got wet and soggy. He wasn’t impressed when I said you carry a rolled-up paper as a spare. My daughter-in-law was even more scathing as she asked quite simply “ why can’t you just go out in the car? “
I am nothing daunted and still think it’s a BIG idea so if any of you agree and want to invest let me know. Don’t be put off by Sam. When we asked him what his favourites subjects were at school he said PE ( I knew that my thought as to the meaning of PPE canme from somewhere ) and play-time so what does he know? Mind you. anybody who wants to charge his own grandfather to promote his blog has to have a good head for business.
Anyway, enough for the day. Saving stuff for the duration. See you all tomorrow if we are spared ( my Mac keeps typing “ speared “ instead of “ spared “ Do you think it knows something we don’t ?