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Subject Matters

I learnt yesterday that Jamie Oliver has withdrawn his children’s novel Billy and the Epic Escape over accusations that it stereotyped Indigenous Australians. It had already been on sale for six months.

As the backlash dies down, it’s being quickly replaced by puzzlement. If this book had been written by a previously-unknown author and released by a small press, it’s easier to see how this might have happened.

But this is one of the country’s best-known celebrity chefs contracted to one of the five largest publishers in the world, namely Penguin Random House. The manuscript will have been seen by countless pairs of eyes before the first copy was even printed. Each would have looked at a specific element such as grammar or typesetting, and that would typically include some consultation with the community it portrays. The story is also widely believed to have been ghostwritten, adding another possible layer to the checking process. We’re unlikely to find out who this is. It’s almost always a contractual requirement that the identity of a ghostwriter is not revealed.

Still, this book somehow slipped through the net, and the reason might never be known. I’m only conjecturing here, but it’s possible that everyone involved assumed someone else was dealing with the matter, or maybe any concerns didn’t reach more senior ears.

It must be stated that there’s nothing wrong per se with authors writing outside their own experience, but it’s vital to have an insider’s perspective. When Frederick Forsyth wrote The Day of the Jackal, a fictionalised background to a real assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, he used his background in investigative journalism to construct his plot. It shows in the precision of the language and imagery, even if I personally think he could have deployed a few more commas.

Regardless of whether it’s done for well-justified reasons, banning or withdrawing a work is often the best promotion it can receive. I wasn’t aware of Billy and the Epic Escape before this news broke, nor about Oliver’s most recent cookbook, which is also on sale and has attracted no controversy.

At the time of writing, it’s still possible to bag a copy of the novel from Amazon UK, and you can bet the remaining stock will sell out soon.

Performing to an Audience

Flight and Fright

This morning, I attended a talk by Professor Angus Wallace. His name might not be immediately recognisable, but you’re likely familiar with his story. In 1995, he treated a passenger with a collapsed lung using improvised surgical equipment on a flight from Hong Kong to London.

Judging by the number of slides skipped, he probably brought twice as much material as he needed for the hour-long slot. The mid-air incident formed only a part of his speech, with the rest devoted to his many inventions in shoulder surgery and his later career as an advisor in major air and rail accident investigations.

All this could be a terribly dry subject, but the professor knew his audience was from a non-medical background. Any medical terminology was kept to a minimum or explained in simpler terms, and the whole structure of the presentation kept the audience engaged.

I suspect his rhetoric skill was developed through necessity. One of his earliest inventions was a tool for ingrown toenails which reportedly worked well, but was not marketed properly, so few people knew of its existence. From that point, he was sure to amplify his ideas more forcefully.

Quite by coincidence, I’ve been thinking more about my longstanding desire to start a group dedicated to helping people to overcome stage fright. I can tell you there are writers out there with some top ideas that will never make it onto a stage because they have no motive, whereas Professor Wallace did it as part of his job.

Just yesterday, I received an email from a local organiser, who brought to my attention that I’d been mentioned in an interview between two mutual pals. I started to compose a two-sentence reply, which quickly turned into several paragraphs outlining how I’d like this proposed group to look.

I have some definite ideas, such as aiming it at members who aren’t yet ready for more formal organisations like Toastmasters International. But there are many details that need input or experimentation. This organiser probably opened my reply this morning and thought What is this wall of text all about?

By writing about this proposal in such a public forum as this blog, and by speaking to the right folks, I hope to make it a reality and to help more people face their fear of the stage.

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War in Pieces

I had to make a journey on Sunday involving a change between two buses. In case of delays, I’d left myself plenty of time, so I made a last-minute decision to grab a book for the journey – but not just any old book.

For several years, I’ve owned a paper copy of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Before falling out of the habit, I’d already reached the halfway point and it had remained virtually untouched ever since.

Despite its reputation for being dense, the structure is surprisingly reader-friendly. The book is actually an omnibus of four volumes, each divided into several parts and subdivided into a lot of short chapters. So in the 45 minutes between buses, plus the journey itself, I made some decent inroads.

Even the text itself is rich in humour, not something I expected from a tome about the Napoleonic Wars. That said, I took a decision early on not to worry too much about following the plot and simply enjoy the current page.

After making such a positive start on Sunday, I wanted to continue the good work. As such, I’ve given myself a target to finish the last page by the end of December, and I’ve even set up a spreadsheet to monitor my progress. And when it’s finished, I’ll be sure to pass it on to someone else who wants to see what all the fuss is about.

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Cycling Around

On Thursday, realising I had a free evening, I took the opportunity to see some performance art. This was hosted by my pal Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne, who was reading a series of autobiographical pieces over the span of 12 hours. I only had time to see around two hours.

I don’t want to focus on the performance itself, particularly because the aftermath is still on for the next five days. Rather, I want to look at something I did during that performance.

One of the organisers handed out pens and paper to the tiny audience with the intention that we could draw if we felt inspired. Much as Luca has tried to teach me some art, I’m still far more inclined to write by default.

I enjoy the challenge of improvising poetry on the spot, so my rough plan was to compose a rough version based on the performance I could see in front of me, and then extract a polished version from that. Yet after writing my so-called polished version, I felt it didn’t quite work, so I tried another.

I ultimately ended up with a total of seven poems. Put together, they form a cycle of sorts, each of which approaches what I want to say without being able to cut to the heart of the matter.

I feel there are diamonds to be dug out of the mess here, so I’m going to keep these drafts for the moment until I find some sort of home for them.

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A Short Trip Across the Water

Every March, I make a point of going to the St Andrews poetry festival, or StAnza. While I’m there, I take the opportunity to visit a pal who lives at the back end of town.

A couple of years ago, he lent me a poetry book – Occasional Poems by Callum Rodger – which I thoroughly enjoyed. I recently found it again while clearing out some old papers, and I asked whether he wanted it back, which he did. I happened to have some free time that coming Saturday, so I arranged to pop over.

He was unwell on the day of the visit, but I didn’t plan to stay long anyway, as I had other places to be before and afterwards. I was glad of the visit because I came away with several suggestions for novels to read, to the point where I’m considering reactivating my Audible account.

St Andrews is also home to my nearest branch of Topping & Co, somewhere else I usually make a point of visiting, but time wasn’t on my side. There will always be a next time, though.

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Dungeons & Diaries

Since just before the pandemic, I’ve been involved in at least one Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game. I’m currently in two: one every fortnight in Dundee, and another every six to eight weeks in Fife.

For those unfamiliar, D&D is a tabletop role-playing game where players create and improvise adventures, guided by the Dungeon Master (DM). Players describe what they want their characters to do, and the DM narrates the outcomes based on dice rolls and the game’s rules. The setting is usually a fantasy land where weapons can be wielded and spells can be cast.

Every D&D game is unique. In my case, the Dundee players are all in the same writing group and live in the same general area. As such, we know each other well and sessions tend to be filled with in-jokes. By contrast, the Fife players generally need to travel and won’t see each other from one week to the next. We make the most of our time with longer and more intense sessions than the Dundee game.

One of the few factors that unites both games is that I’ve volunteered to be the designated note-taker. I’ve long been able to touch-type, so I can keep an eye on the action at the same time.

But why is this important? The simple answer is: there’s a lot going on. It’s not necessary to capture every detail, but because campaigns can span multiple sessions, it’s easy to lose track of key names, plot points and locations.

It must also be stated that my notes are still predominantly from my character’s perspective, so I can’t stress enough that the other players should keep additional personal notes. For instance, while tidying up the Fife notes yesterday, I realised one character had encountered two others in a room we entered, but I hadn’t recorded what happened to them during or after that interaction.

It sounds like tedious admin, but I enjoy this process as it helps me out enormously with co-ordinating the two games.

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A Personal Path to Paisley

Back in July, I mentioned I had my poem January & You published by Speculative Books. The launch was scheduled for Tuesday of last week in Glasgow.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time to catch the bus after the end of my shift. As such, I’d kept my phone off to avoid any distractions, only turning it back on once I was on the bus. Shortly after it pulled away, however, I received an email. It explained the launch had to be cancelled because of illness, with apologies for the short notice. There is a hope to reschedule it for later in the year.

My time on a Tuesday evening is typically ring-fenced to run a writing group, but I’d arranged with the other leader to make an exception. Had I seen this before we started moving, I might just have cut my losses on the cost of the tickets and stayed in Dundee to help out with the group. Now I was stuck on the bus for around 45 more minutes until we reached the park-and-ride in Perth, so I considered my options.

I could have stopped there and found my way back to Dundee. But some of the buses are painfully slow and infrequent, while the railway station is at the other end of Perth, so I might not have made it back before the group was over. Besides, booking at the last minute is never cheap.

Instead, since I knew the writing group was in good hands, I elected to continue to Glasgow and then on to Paisley.

I was at university there between 2002 and 2005 taking a BSc Music Technology course, long before I was interested in prose and poetry. While I’d been back several times, my most memorable visit took place in 2017 when I thought I might find some inspiration for poetry.

I did find inspiration, but not in the way I’d expected. In short, I barely recognised the place beyond the town centre and I wrote an entry about this when it happened.

Today, I would have taken the time to find the layout of the area, see where the side streets were leading and work out the most convenient way to visit other places. For example, I used to volunteer at a community radio station in the Glasgow district of Govan. I can’t understand why I always paid extra for buses when I can now look at a map and see two more direct routes covered by my travel card.

I didn’t intend for this entry to be so personal, but I also didn’t intend to visit my alma mater. If there was a silver lining, it’s that the resulting poem from 2017 was published in a collection about the town. The more I think about it, the more I’m inspired to write a sequel, so I’ll see where that takes me over the coming days.

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The Fringe, But Not That Fringe

A few weeks ago, I announced a show called the Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee. The premise was to present an audience with ten stories about the city and ask them to guess whether they were true or false, in the style of a pub quiz.

Just over a week ago, it finally happened. My co-host and I adopted the alter-egos Magdalen Green and Albert Street – named after real locations – and took the risk. It helped that most of the audience knew one or both of us, which helped the banter to flow.

We’d built in a lot of slack to allow for chat, delays and/or technical hiccups. It ended up being too much time and we finished early. Most shows run over, so it was a refreshing change in that sense. Of course, we weren’t the only act in town – far from it.

For the last four years, Sweet Venues has run the Dundee Fringe. It’s run on the same principle as its much larger and more famous Edinburgh counterpart, in that they provide space for acts rather than running shows or dictating the content. The scale, however, is very different. Approximately 70 acts were booked, which was huge for our single venue but dwarfed by the 3,700 acts who pack out the capital every August.

I made a point of going to other shows, with highlights including the student burlesque company Marvelesque taking their show off campus for the first time, Buckets of Blood featuring Grimm fairy tales told as they were originally written, and Tango the Pain-Proof Man who performed stunts such as chewing glass and lying on a bed of nails.

I can only speak for the shows I attended, but while crowds were small, they were loyal, and I’d often meet the same people at the box office. I hope there is a 2025 edition and that the enthusiasm continues, especially as I’ve now had time to reflect on our virtual tour and understand what to do differently next time.

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Leaving Hotchpotch After Nine Years

Persons! I had a technical failure yesterday, the like of which I haven’t seen in a long time. This meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry.

I was at my weekly Tuesday writing group as usual. The Internet can be dodgy there, but it normally connects after a few tries and/or a reboot. This time, my laptop was having none of it, so I tapped out a short entry on the Jetpack app briefly explaining the situation.

However, it’s another literary group I want to talk about today. Long-term readers will know about Hotchpotch, which is a monthly open-mic primarily aimed at writers, where members can sign up for five-minute slots. I didn’t set up the group, but when I took over in 2015, it had already existed for five years.

One week ago, at the last meeting, I announced my intention to step down from running it after nine years and pass it on to Eilidh, who’s been assisting for well over a year. We’ve taken a couple of months to discuss how we would make the transition, and that process will continue into our next event in October.

The reason I chose this time is not because Hotchpotch is in a bad way. It’s arguably the most streamlined and consistent it’s ever been, and it’s precisely because it’s so strong that I feel able to step back from it in favour of new projects.

Indeed, that very Sunday, I took part in a one-off show as part of the Dundee Fringe, and in next week’s entry, I’ll cover how that went.

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Technical Problems – Join Us Again Soon

I’ve had a technical failure today like nothing I’ve ever had, with my laptop failing to connect to the Internet since lunchtime.

As such, I’ve had to bash this out quickly on my phone, and I’m not going to be able to type out everything I want to. As such, I’ll aim to put a full entry out by 8pm tomorrow.