Where did the summer go? (Part One)

Good evening, campers. I hope you’ve survived without me.

Yeah, it’s been a while. No excuses, really. Life got in the way, so they say…

Where to start? Since April, life very definately got in the way. Not just the usual spate of summer gigs with the salsa boys, wedding band, Sundown or any other music work. Not just the temporary relocation at work or the weekend away with the guys. I’ve been busy.

So has Pip, who’s nopw back in China.

After failing to secure a job in the UK, and missing her family more than ever, she decided to return to her homeland. I wasn’t ready to go with her. It’s a long but rather obvious story. I may go into it in the future. That remains to be seen for definate for now.

With everything going on, finding the opportunity to write anything, and summoning the will to start hitting the keys proved very difficult. And the longer it was left untouched, the harder it is to restart…

More will follow. I plan to take the mre interesting interludes and experiences from the last six months and edit them into a readable form, transforming the clouds of memory into the harsh reality of words on screen (had originally written ‘page’ there – some cliches are difficult to shake off).

Take care, and bye for now

Back to the drawing board (a recession tale)

Even when you consider the current economic situation, you’d think that they’d have seen it coming.

Over 100 outlets charging a high amount for Chinese herbal products and even more for acupuncture treatment, with at least two major rivals in the UK. Changes come quickly for small businesses, but surely someone must have realised that bankruptcy was a possibility?

Well, for DR. China, who were until very recently the largest Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) chain, the answer is: seemingly not.

It was less than six weeks ago when Pip interviewed for a position of manager of one of these branches,and she was only three weeks into her training down in Plymouth when we heard the news. Just as well I didn’t hand in my notice, really. I couldn’t anyway – not until I knew where she was going to be based after her training. Now we know. Nowhere.

Obviously, any company faced with have to make its workforce redundant applies a first in-first out policy, so Pip’s return to Newcastle was a foregone conclusion, but it doesn’t stop there.

Several of Dr China’s staff are losing their jobs, the majority of which are qualified doctors. Wether or not they can find work in the NHS is a difficult matter, as government-linked organisations can be prickly towards Chinese nationals (even highly qualified ones). Pip herself had been denied a position working for the job centre in the post room. I know the workings of both the department and post rooms in general, and doubt that she posed so great a security risk as to not even make stage one of the recruitment process.

Still, water under the bridge, move on and all that…

So now Pip’s job hunting again, and while there are several possibilities, the same depression that came over her the last time is starting to resurface.

The reason is simple: No matter how many places we apply, how many perfect application letters and constantly updated, edited and revised CVs are posted and emailed, she received one offer for an interview, and that was with a Chinese company; Dr China.

But TCM is no longer a viable option for employment, so what happens when the offers don’t come in? Bar and cafe work is fine as a stop-gap, but not exactly a preferred way of life for one halfway round the planet from home, and qualified way beyond the level of those who teach your children every school day, so the other option is a relocation to China.

Hopefully, I’d be able to find work teaching English without any real problems. In an ideal world, I’d rather write for a newspaper (or travel magazines, if any editors are reading this a they pass!) but that remains to be seen, and is, without a doubt, a topic for one of the next incoming instilments, so watch this space.

Also, if any of you have been affected by the current economic meltdown, do please get in touch and share your stories – I might even showcase some highlights from the best of them!

Until next time…

P.S. – The writing continues, but albeit at a slower pace, since my return to work. Needless to say, my free time is presently consumed with trying to find suitable employment for Pip. Anyone have need for a talented young lady with an Msc in Psychological Research and fluent in Mandarin? Anyone?

Rubber necks and inspirational windows

I like people watching. It seems the last few weeks have offered several instances where I’ve been stuck between two legs of a journey, forced to sit for an hour or so in a nearby coffee house or bar until the next train/coach comes in. I say forced, but I don’t mind that much. It’s preferable to being stuck on a cramped and sweaty bus and if I find a seat by the window in these leisurely waiting periods, so much the better.

It really is true what they tell you: No two windows are the same. By ‘they’ I mean those who sit about staring out of windows so frequently it becomes their occupation, rather than a hobby. Something that defines them. A people watcher. They’re right, of course, though not in the pedantic sense (any keen physicist will tell you that bad things happen when there’s two of anything in the same place). Some windows have character, some new viewpoints on the world we live in. Others merely afford you the crack from a brickie’s behind as they build yet another office block for people to be made redundant from.

With this in mind (though not too graphically) and aware I was in the capital, I hardly expected to find an oasis of serenity, especially at lunchtime. But right between Victoria’s rail station and her counterpart for coach travel, I found somewhere relaxing enough for me to to knock out this entire blog, and also write the majority of a new article and even pen in half a scene for the novel (more on that later) all while finding time to gaze at the travellers and city-slickers go about their business. How can I possibly have been so productive when I spent half of my time there people watching?

If I’m to be completely honest, while it can technically be classified as ’people watching’, that’s not strictly what I do. People encompasses all ages of both sexes, whereas I’m a little more select than that, certainly where gender is concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely devoted to Pip, and have no plans to stray, but I’ve always had what I call an appreciative eye (Pip calls it a wandering eye, but potato po-tah-to). If she doesn’t fully understand this characteristic in me, than she certainly accepts it.

London in particular brings out this dubious quality in me more strongly. It’s not that the women in the big smoke are prettier, just that there’s more people in general. Percentages are raised across the board, including the chance of seeing someone worth a second glance. At the risk of sounding like a small town hick, half the appeal may be the vastly varying types of lady for the visual palate to digest, and while I’m not behaving anywhere near like a dog with two happy-sticks, I am a man with two eyes.

There’s no harm in looking, after all, right? Right? That’s what Pip tells me anyway. Though she does have a curious way of making that phrase sound like a threat…

Still, a rubber neck is harder to strangle, right?

 

Until next time…

 

P.S. - ’The Novel’

Yes, you heard me right. I’ve actually bit the bullet, taken the plunge and [insert yet another motivational metaphor here] and started, all so tentatively, on my novel.

A few of you may already be aware that my book has been in the planning stages (ie. the not-started-writing-it-yet stages) for quite a while now. As usual, life gets in the way. At least that’s the excuse. It was more the fear of writing nothing but woeful bin-fodder which continued to stall my progress.

Now that pen has quite literally been put to paper,a huge part of the worry has been lifted. The nervous ‘what ifs’ have started to fade away into what I can now officially call a ‘work in progress’ and as I’ve been told something countless times, something written can become something improved. As long as I write something, anything, however bad, I’ve still written. Revisions can be made (changing it into something unrecognizably different, if it’s anything like my other writing), but nothing will always remain nothing.

Now that I’m back (and almost back to normal, for now) a new worry nags at me: I hope this new productivity doesn’t just happen in coffee houses. If so, I’ll have to claim my caffeine expenses back from Starbucks, or worse still, be forced to write the entire book in London. I’ll keep you posted.

New Articles

Another day, and since I’m technically on holiday (from the day job, at least) I’ve decided to write as many articles as I can for Helium.com (the link’s in the column on the right). So far, to add to my peice on joke delivery (abridged below) I have today written on the titles:  The blues: A doomed music genre?  and How to travel cheap in the UK and London and are all visable, along with all my others, via my Helium homepage.

It’s good fun to do something I get a little money for, and they’re often very quick to write and submit. I treat it a little like a writing exercise on those days where I really need to walk away from fiction before my head caves in. A quick scan aroung existing titles brings up something I know about and hey presto! Another article to my name!

My personal favorrites are my music related pieces ‘Who are the best Bass Players?’ and ‘Top Five Progressive Bands’. Both have mercifully been highly rated and I’m quite proud of the content, as they were among my first attempts.

Check them out and let me know what you think:

http://www.helium.com/items/1007682-who-are-the-best-bass-players

http://www.helium.com/items/934950-top-five-progressive-bands

Until next time…

…stay safe, and keep on rockin’.

Joke Delivery

I was asked to contribute to a series of articles entitled: Joke Telling – Timimg Is Crucial. Here’s a slightly edited version of my submission:

Timing is crucial, but equally important is the ability to remember a joke all the way through – there’s nothing more annoying than a guy who starts off well, until a cloud of confusion passes over his features and he’s stalled long after any decent chance of a recovery.

Best way to avoid this: USE SHORT JOKES, and fire them out QUICKLY.

Many people say the best jokes are ‘one liners’, the kind you can fire off very quickly. Usually it’s a retort to something that someone else has said, or a very quick self-depriciation line, that us Brits do well, but the classic example below is from the US’s master of the form, Rodney Dangerfield – you’ll have heard this one, without a doubt:

“I was such an ugly kid, my parents tied a stake aroung my neck just so the dog would play with me.”

Personally, I prefer the ‘two line’ delivery, either representing a quick conversation, or (on screen) a small bit of repartee, or banter (like a knock knock joke in a sense). Groucho Marx was legendary at the solo two-liner, but English comedians such as Bob Monkhouse (or Bob Hope – yes, he was English!) also made a life-long career out of this style, and as long as you remeber the whole joke and deliver it quick, you can’t go wrong. Here’s some of my favorites:

“I want to die like my father, peacefully in his sleep, not screaming and terrified, like his passengers.”

“I can still enjoy sex at 74 – I live at 75, so it’s no distance”

“You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”

“I grew up with six brothers. That’s how I learned to dance – waiting for the bathroom.”

To finish off, here’s a ‘story joke’ for you here, it’s not the worst joke ever, but it’s hardly Groucho Marx. The trick with these kinds is to make them last a while (depending on how well it’s being recieved), adding parts, description, etc. Here’s the crux of it below…

A man had gone to bed late one night, cuddled up with his wife, when a knock came at the door. Somewhat annoyed, the man rose from his bed, wrapped his dressing gown around him on his way down the stairs, and answered the door.

The man at the door was drenched from the rain and battered by the winds. He asked the owner of the house, “Excuse me, mate – can I have a push?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. No!” replied the man, before closing the door and heading back to his bed. When his wife asked who it had been, he relayed his exchange at the door with the stranger. His wife reminded him of a time fairly recently when they themselves had been stranded alone at night, and if not for the benevolance of two young men driving by, they would have been there all night.

“They gave us a push when we needed it – now go and help this man” she told her husband, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Feeling a little giulty, the man reluctantly got dressed and headed downstairs. As he put on his thickest jacket, he opened the door and called out, “Are you still out there?”

“Yeah,” came the reply, “still here.”

“You still need that push?”

“Yes please”

The man looked round for his torch, “I’m coming out. Where are you?”

The reply came from round the corner, “I’m over here on the swing…”

- I can only apologise for that one! I told you it wasn’t great but it’s clean, it works for all ages and gets a laugh nine times out of ten.

Good luck!

**This article, along with all the others I have written for Helium.com, is available for viewing via the following link. Enjoy**

http://www.helium.com/users/394047

The long road to Plymouth and back

It’s just over 400 miles from Newcastle to Plymouth.

And it’s not that cheap to get there.

Fair enough, it isn’t quite as bad as a round trip of Asia, but I could get return flights to most European countries for less than the cost of a return train ticket. There’s coaches, too – which is what I ultimately went with for my journey back from Britians’ South West. This was a day less I could spend with my girlfriend, or do anything useful, for that matter. 14 hours of travelling back up North (via London, natch), all for the sake of £20.

Pip, the before-mentioned (and long-suffering) girlfriend, stays in Plymouth for now. We went down so she could start three months store managment training for her new job. I was only ever going for a few days, primarily to get her settled in (and ensure she didn’t get lost on the way), but also because I’d never seen Plymouth before. After a day wandering around, exploring the city centre – identikit shops like any other town or city, with well-known coffee houses around every bend – and the ‘cultural’ side of the city (two museems, one of which was mostly closed), I finally made it to the waterfront.

Beautiful.

At least, not bad for a coastal city with no beach – its harbour knocks the spots of Liverpool’s Dock front.

There’s no dodgy pier a la Bournemouth (sorry pier fans, it’s not the structure itself, it’s the old biddies and ghostly atmosphere pier towns always have that puts me off) or gorgeous beaches or dramatic peninsulae like nearby Weymouth, set to host the sailing events for the 2012 London Olympics. But it does have a certain something.

Character. History.

Nearly all of the worlds most life changing voyages started from this bay, the meeting point of two of Devon’s rivers, the Plym and the Tamar (the latter the natural border between Devon and western land’s end county, Cornwall).

Francis Drake left from here to circumnavigate the globe AND meet the Spanish Armada (not at the same time, mind you – he was good, but not that good!). There’s a statue of him just behind Plymouth’s lighthouse, though he isn’t holding any bowling balls (NOT the ten pin kind, American readers!)

Captain James Cook, a fellow Northerner, left Plymouth for all four of his famous voyages, charting the southern half of the globe, and most famously, Australia and New Zeland.

Darwin left here on his well documented trip around the better part of the world, stopping off at the Galapagos Islands, where he studied the strange and wonderful creatures for as long as he could (as well as eating a fair few of them). Plymouth city makes a big deal out of this chap in particular, which is strange, given all the history altering events that started here, including of course, the pilgrim ship The Mayflower.

At the point where the first immigrants to America embarked onto that famous vessel, The Mayflower Steps, is a small monument donated to Plymouth by the state of Massachusetts, where they first landed. That town’s name is Plymouth too.

So this city was the birthplace of American towns. Maybe that’s why they focus on eveloutin instead.

Interstingly, if you look at a map of Plymouth, MA (the US supersized version) you’ll find a whole load of west and south eastern towns nearby: Worcester, Gloucester, Newport, Bristol, Barnsatple Town, then Norwich, New Yarmouth, Cambridge and somewhat optomistically, New Britian. But don’t think like Nova Scotia (‘New Scotland’) in Canada. Far from a sweeping eastern county, New Britian sits among a whole host of similar sized towns looking not very important at all – go figure.

But getting back to my own travels, which sadly had no water invloved (just as well, really, or it would have flooded the moterway): Here I am, back in Newcastle, with Pip in Plymouth, who’s still not had the chance to see the prettier part of the city, but I know she can’t wait – I rambled about it enthusiastically enough to her the night I came back from the waterfront.

We still don’t know where she’ll be posted once her training is finished, but it still looks likely to be Devon. Sadly, I feel it won’t be Plymouth, but as long as it’s near, I’ll be sure to visit on a regular basis

Hello world!

Hi there!

As you can see from the ’about’ page, I’m a writer looking to write more, and will return to update this very soon!

In the meantime, any comments/messages of suggestions/greetings, etc are greatly appreciated and I will try my best to get back to all who get in touch.

Bye for now,

Tim