Views From The Bike Shed - and a writer's guide to blogging

To be released,  1 March 2023

It's been quite a journey...

But, at long last, I'm delighted to confirm that my new book will be released on the 1st of March.  

Views From The Bike Shed is a retrospective collection of posts from this blog. Spanning almost fifteen years of my writing, it includes a series of new essays that make the case for blogging as a form that deserves more serious attention. 

I've never ceased to be amazed at how in pressing 'publish' our words take on a life of their own. Views From The Bike Shed may be a tiny corner of the internet, but through its online pages, I've reached people and made connections I never dreamed were possible. That my posts have now found their way into print is confirmation of blogging's unending capacity to delight and surprise. 

In truth, I'm immensely proud too, for the collection showcases a body of writing I have loved creating and hence crafted with care. I'd like to think it demonstrates that blogs can be more than mere diaries or publicity vehicles. Above all else, I hope it shows how, through blogging, we tell not only our own stories but also those of the world around us and the events (big and small) which shape our lives.

Since its very beginning, I've tried on this blog to write 'from' my life rather than simply to record it. In this sense, Views From the Bike Shed is not, and has never been, about me — rather, it's about us all.  That my publisher has shown faith in such a vision is a joy and privilege. My thanks to them and to all my blogging friends and readers who've made this possible.

Meanwhile, our journey is far from over — which is good news, because I'm hoping the book will bind us even tighter.

---------

Views From The Bike Shed, and a writer's guide to blogging is available to order from all bookstores and online retailers and direct from my publisher Cinnamon Press - or order it from your local library!

The Sound of Being Human

My book of the year so far - brilliantly done.

I’ve long held the view, that when writing from experience — be it for books, blogs or essays — it’s the inner story, rather than any outer narrative, that’s the true test of quality. From great epics to country diaries, readers find meaning not so much in the sequence of events as the struggles, discoveries and growth of any protagonists along the way. This is what separates literary from pulp fiction; biography from CVs; life writing from journalism…. It’s also, somewhat ironically, what makes stories universal.

Jude Rogers’ The Sound of Being Human does all this and more. Mixing deeply personal memoir with career expertise and a sprinkling of academic research, she explores how music (and particularly popular songs and their artists) shapes our sense of self, binding moments to melodies that become the soundtrack of our lives. What’s especially remarkable is that she does so with a playlist that though essential to telling her story, isn’t necessary to ours — indeed, I’d not heard of many of the tracks she chose to hook her chapters — for in truth, her choices are proxies to personal equivalents we cherish just the same.

All that’s required to appreciate the book’s central theme, is that we associate music, of whatever genre, with times and events of significance in our lives. Rogers begins with a childhood memory of her father’s parting words before going into hospital: Let me know what gets to number one. He died, aged 33, two days later... And the song that made the top spot that week — Only You, by the Flying Pickets — becomes an anchor in the storm of emotions that might otherwise have wrecked a five-year-old child, metaphorically lost at sea. More broadly, its lifelong resonance becomes a base note of the book: that music can heal and help us make sense of the rhythms and refrains of our lives.

And so the chapters continue, like verses in a song: from adolescence to coming of age; leaving home to finding love… and friendships, career, parenthood, illness...  Music accompanies us on all of these journeys — sometimes centre stage; sometimes playing in the background — and by processes we don’t fully understand, becomes so cemented to our memories that it's capable of triggering the most vivid of recollections. I especially liked the section in which Rogers lists songs as substitutes for former boyfriends; a sort of mix tape of — on the whole — generous memories that she can smile at and sing along to. Her chapter on why so many of us feel grief when famous musicians die also resonated, taking me back to seminal losses (not always musically connected) of my own.

But it was the last chapter, based on an interview with Paddy McAloon (leader singer and writer of the band Prefab Sprout) that intrigued me most. For not only is McAloon my favourite pop artist, his albums the backing track to my twenties, but the interview took place during the Covid lockdown, a period I found so severely disconnecting that only now am I (slowly) coming to terms with its impact. I should mention that Rogers interviewed me at that time, for an article in the Guardian, not about music, but about living on the border between England and Wales during the severest restrictions. She found solace in music, and particularly in McAloon’s composition I Trawl The Megahertz; I searched for it in the landscape, access to which was a chief prohibition of those terrible months.

Reading McAloon's thoughts got me wondering how (in some parallel universe) Rogers — or indeed all of us — would have coped if music had been what was forbidden?  How would we have fared without the sounds that buoy us up and soothe our souls? How many of us would have found the melodic silence unbearable: no tunes; no dance; no hymns or communal singing (indeed that was banned)…  I recalled how little music I listened to in lockdown; how I stopped playing my saxophone too. And how to me, place and music are more connected than I realised.  

I’m not sure what that says, but I suspect it’s linked to the deep anxiety —and anger — I felt at the time – and how sensory denial, especially of that which feeds our being, leads to consequences we can’t consciously control.

Of course, this is all open-ended pondering on my part. But in a sense, that’s the point of the book — and the mark of its quality. For ultimately, it's not about Jude, or her back story, or the hundreds of interviews she’s conducted as a music journalist…. Nor is it about the artists, their genius or otherwise, or the academics and musicologists whose research she summarises so well. Rather, the Sound of Being Human is about all of us and each of us alone. The soundtracks of our lives are as personal and private as they are shared and universal, as much inner as outer story.  Like the Flying Pickets' aptly acapella (literally ‘unaccompanied’) cover of Yazoo’s original, they are…  all I ever knew… only you.

The Sound of Being Human – how music shapes our lives
By Jude Rogers
Published by White Rabbit / Orion Publishing Group Ltd
ISBN: 978-1-4766-2292-9

The Girl's Own Annual -1901

I don't generally like second-hand bookshops. They smell fusty and are usually full of poorly curated stock, infused with a sentiment that yellowed pages have a value greater than their words. For a writer, second-hand books mean no commission too—not that I've ever earned more than a pittance through sales. 

But a few months ago I made an exception. There was a pop-up charity stall at the National Trust and for some reason, we wandered inside. Ignoring the displays of hardback novels and Seventies cookbooks I headed to a section of old magazine journals and one, in particular, caught my eye: The Girl's Own Annual from 1901. It's a collection of that year's weekly issues and a fascinating insight into how our lives and expectations have changed — for better and worse.

A little research tells me that the Girl's Own Paper was first published in 1880 by the Religious Tract Society, later becoming Lutterworth Press. Astonishingly, it ran through to the Nineteen Fifties. The weekly journal was a mix of stories and articles focused on the interests and aspirations of girls; its editorial mission was one of self-improvement, urging its subscribers to make the most of their talents, albeit always with an element of decorum.  A modern-day reader might reasonably conclude that its pages are proof positive of the subservience and frustrations that women were expected to bear.

And in the obvious sense, they'd be absolutely right.  

But in another—the one that struck me most—they would be missing something of its virtue. For there is much in this little long-forgotten magazine that we would do well to remember and for which, in its loss to our outlook more generally, I'd suggested we are more diminished than developed.

Take for example, the quality of the writing. Sure, it's aimed at educated middle-class girls, but nonetheless, it's of a standard we simply wouldn't see in magazines today. The weekly stories are full of long passages of complex dialogue, and yet if you stay with them, they are skillfully constructed and a lesson in serialised fiction. Some of the titles made me smile, including the travails of Pixie O'Shaughnessy and the growing pains of little Barty's Star. Others are retellings of classical myths, including The Fair Captives of Castle Vulcan - a tale of love and loyalty. Imagine that in a teenage magazine today!

But it wasn't so much the stories that I liked dipping into as the informative articles and the 'answers to correspondents' pages, both of which shine a light on the opportunities for educated girls at that time. One reader enquires about working in a post office, another about the route to becoming a teacher.  Detailed and encouraging responses are provided—though interestingly, always concluding with a note that on becoming married the applicant would, of course, be expected to resign! 

Turning the pages this morning I found a lovely article on life in a laundry, another on soldiers returning from conflicts abroad that's an early lesson in recognising post-traumatic stress. There's a piece on Eastertide in Russia sitting side by side with this week's Household Hints; pictures of Our Queen Alexandra front a cover, but more commonly it's taken by profiles of women making contributions to science and art. For musicians, there's the Fidelio club which discusses concertos and classical pieces in astonishing depth. And there are regular columns on nature, needlework, points of law, careers, poetry, cooking, geology and puzzles so complex they make the Times Cryptic seem a doddle.  Sport is tellingly absent.

To read The Girl's Own Paper today is like looking through a window to our past. Of course, it was a bright and shiny and rose-tinted one, and I sense that large sections of the poorly educated working classes would have found little of interest—or comprehension—in its content. I know too that it's all too easy to fall into a high-brow lament about a loss of educative endeavour and lessening of standards...  The truth is, there's much more information available today (albeit in different formats) and we shouldn't think that all writing has been reduced to the level of tabloids and Twitter.

And yet still I am struck by its mission and zeal.

Opportunities for women have been rightly transformed in the decades since my time-bound volume was published. But at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, aspects of its stance and choice of content were radical and are worthy of praise today. I wonder, how many readers of the Girl's Own Paper became suffragettes; how many went on to make contributions to art, science, commerce —or fostered those of the next generation, for whom they carried ambitions that had been kindled by their weekly reading of this magazine for betterment. 

An annual subscription in 1901 would have cost four shillings and four pence - about forty pounds in today's money or 80 pence per issue. That seems extraordinary good value to me. So too the five pounds I spent on this quaint volume at the National Trust bookshop 120 years later.  If the magazine was still in print —there was evidently a boy's version too — I reckon I'd subscribe on the spot.

Letter to America

If you were to stand on the cliffs near my house looking in a vaguely west-south-westerly direction, the next dry land in your line of sight would be the eastern seaboard of America. To reach it would require 3,000 miles of sailing into the wind, assuming that is, you don't drift north to Canada or slip south to the Bahamas. Only a few centuries ago, thousands of migrants took that chance, departing from the harbours of Pembrokeshire, just as they did from Cardiff and Bristol and Cork. 

I often think about how grim life must have been to impel those early settlers. Anyone who lives here doesn't romanticise the danger of the sea; to embark on that journey in the full knowledge of the risks must have taken great courage. If we add in the one-way nature of the voyage and the ignorance of the land and life they were sailing towards, it's near certain that desperation was their most likely driver.

In what's a free-flowing post, it would be understandable if I were to now veer off my intended course and make comparisons with the migrants of today. After all, there's little doubt that what drives the diasporas from the Middle East to Europe, from Central to North America —or for that matter, from rural to urban India— is a not dissimilar anguish. 

But instead, I'm going to hold to my compass, and reflect, as I did while looking out to the ocean this morning, that it's because of our connection with its past, that North America is simultaneously foreign and yet familiar to us today. In many ways travelling to France is a more alien experience, an idea that's  captured in the classic geopolitical essay question: 'The Channel is wider than the Atlantic. Discuss.'

This tension between the foreign and the familiar was surely key to the appeal of Alistair Cooke's legendary radio broadcast, Letter from America. For over fifty years, he wrote a weekly epistle on the everyday lives and politics of the USA, gently—and generously— exploring the subtleties that are lost in mainstream media. In a sense, it was not that dissimilar to a blog, reflecting on his comings and goings and those of people he knew; building a picture of a place and its people over time. I miss those broadcasts, and more to the point, think we are lesser in our understanding for their loss. 

How I wonder, would Alistair Cooke would have written of the Obama years, or of Trump and the Capitol riots? Here in the UK we tend to think of US history in terms of its presidents and wars, just as we delineate our own in relation to monarchy and conflict. But I suspect Cooke would have focused more on the attitudes and aspirations—as well as the despairs and desperations—that define us more accurately than the words or policies of any politician. 

There's a growing trend in academic writing for what's sometimes called 'history from below.'  In contrast to the traditional focus on supposedly seminal events, this 'micro-history of communities' emphasises the role of everyday struggles and beliefs as underlying drivers of change. When I think of my own village, and the reality that even today I have neighbours who've travelled no further than Cardiff, I wonder if it's not a more accurate perspective on our past, and indeed our present. 

One of the delights of writing this blog is that I never know what metaphoric shores my words will wash up on. Over the years, I've made connections as far apart as Australia and Alaska, neither of which places have I physically visited. In writing that last sentence I  could have equally have chosen Nepal and New England both of which I've travelled to, but would not pretend to know in any deep sense. Indeed, with the exception of France, I suspect I've learned more about life overseas from the blogs I read, than my limited time abroad. 

A few weeks ago, two US followers of Views From The Bikeshed asked me how they might obtain copies of my books. It seems that copyright laws aren't as internationally seamless as we might wish them to be. No matter, a trip to the post office and the packages were soon on their way to Pennsylvania and North Carolina. What a joy that I could do that so easily... 

Seriously, what a privilege it is to be able to share words across continents.  And what a delight that someone should take an interest in my life and what I have to say, thinking that perhaps it has something of relevance to them. That one copy is now in Pennsylvania is especially appropriate for it was there that the majority of welsh settlers found a home. The other in North Carolina is but a geographic stone's throw from my friend, now resident in Greenville, but who once lived down the road.

In truth, none of my writing is really about me. It's intended to be universal, and if it succeeds it's because the connections between us are closer than we think. This autumn, I had hoped for my latest collection to be published; it's now scheduled for next year. When the first copies arrive I shall send some to the US once again; to those bloggers who follow me and who in their way correspond in return. If I can be so bold, I hope it will be my own small Letter to America;  a tiny contribution to narrowing the width—and the fear—of the ocean between us.

Marram by Leonie Charlton - a tale of coming through

Sometimes coincidences are too many and too strong to resist. Just occasionally they're so close as to give rise to discomfort; the best resolve themselves into a fortuitous delight as if their happening —and our finding—was written in the stars.  I feel this now as I fumble my way into reviewing the excellent Marram, by Leonie Charlton.

It was the author's name that first caught my eye—there aren't many Charltons writing about nature. That she's also, like me, published by Cinnamon Press was coincidence number two. Having missed the online launch of her poetry collection (thanks to a traffic jam on the A40), I'd ordered Marram as much in atonement as surname solidarity. 

I'm glad I did.

The book recalls a journey Leonie made across the Outer Hebrides. Travelling with her friend and their two ponies, they trek from Barra through the Uists to Harris and Lewis. It's a logistically challenging trip, requiring ferries and route planning, the help of friends and fellow horse lovers...  Her prose is well crafted, lyrical but not cloying, and sufficiently sparse to leave space for our imagining of the wild places she portrays.  

But if that were all Marram was, it would be yet another book on the pile of pleasant(ish) nature writing that now fills a table of its own in most Waterstones' stores. I'd feared it might also be a 'book about books' in the way that so many of the putative new-nature authors use the landscape as a foil to show how clever and literate they are. Thankfully, it avoids that trap.

Which isn't to say that Leonie's not astute or well read—rather, it's that in Marram she has the confidence of her own words and story, quoting others only for context or inspiration. One review on Amazon compared her writing to Robert Macfarlane but I sense more the influence of Kathleen Jamie, a far finer and more authentic essayist, and as it turns out, a tutor at Sterling University where Leonie took the MA course. Coincidence number three: studying writing a little later in life.

And it shows.  

In travel and nature writing of any quality, there are always two tales. Firstly, there's the outer story: the getting from A to B, the paths travelled and the trials overcome; if there's a climactic tension then much the better, which is why mountaineering books can be so compelling. And then there's the inner story; the one which reveals why the journey has meaning, how it changes the author... the lessons they learn and the truths they find.  It's this reflective quest—not the physical journey—that's the reason we care, and which speaks to our lives, regardless of whether or not we'll ever visit the Scottish Isles, let alone with a horse for company.

This is the soul and strength of Marram.  

Leonie Charlton set out not only to traverse the Hebrides but to come to terms with the relationship she had with her 'impossible' late mother.  The story of Marram is one of finding our strength and accepting our shortcomings—it's a universal tale of love and sorrow, and how to come through (not 'get over' or 'put aside'); of how we might leave our parents and yet be trapped by them too. 

This was almost a coincidence too far. My book Counting Steps is a series of essays on the power of landscape and fatherhood, and more deeply, a coming to terms with the ghosts of my past. Leonie's mother wasn't violent like my dad, but she'd led a lifestyle and exerted an influence that had cowed her daughter's flourishing.  When I read the date of her mother's funeral I almost dropped the book—the exact same day as my father's. 

But these connections are mine and not why I think Marram is so good. That's because of Leonie's skilful spinning of the threads of her life and the weaving of those into a tapestry of place and feeling; the recounting of a journey that's both physical and heartfelt. There's climax too, and tension in its unfolding; a coming through in more ways than one. 

I'm conscious, in re-reading what's above that I've not said much about the trek, or for that matter the ponies—but in a sense, these are details and beside the point. I should say that on occasions the reading takes some effort, in part because the place names don't naturally sound in our heads; it's a problem with Welsh, but even more so with Gaelic. Aside from this, the twin stories progress with a pace and ease that belies their crafting.  It is beautifully done.

As a life writer, essayist and blogger I'm acutely aware that one of the hardest things is to write honestly of ourselves, but in a way that speaks to others. It's not really about me, I try to explain to those who ask. This little review is almost a reversal of that rule—but then I didn't write Marram. I just read it and felt the connections and am reeling from its elegant notes. Like those of the whisky from the Western Isles, they will linger a long while yet.

Broken Ghost - Niall Griffiths, Wales Book of the Year

Wales Book of The Year

It's twenty years since the publication of Niall Griffiths' first book, Grits. I remember reading it in a weekend, being blown away by the rawness of the words, the truth to power in the voices, the refusal to soften language or sweeten its pill... Six novels later Griffiths returns to similar themes and narrative structure with Broken Ghost - surely, the deserved winner of Wales Book of the Year.

In truth, Grits isn't a novel in the traditional sense - more a collection of interrelated stories, centred on the drug and rave culture of Nineties Aberystwyth.  Inevitably, it was compared to Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and it's he who again provides the front cover puff, describing Griffiths as `a magnificently gifted writer'.

Of that, there's no doubt. There are passages in Broken Ghost that left me metaphorically breathless, reading and rereading them to catch the rhythm of the words, often in long extended sentences reminiscent of Cormac Mcarthy. And like McCarthy, Griffiths writes compellingly of landscape and place, connecting them to the forces at play with an intangible, gravitational pull.

Not that the landscape or even the plot is really the point of the book. Ostensibly, the story is of three people who witness a vision at a lake in the hills above Aberystwyth - and of the tumult of events which lead them to return for the tale's apocalyptic conclusion. But if that were all it was, Broken Ghost wouldn't be the tour de force it is. 

For the real story lies in the minds of the three central characters, each of whom exists on the edge of society: disconnected, disadvantaged, despairing almost at the prospect of the 'normality' of lives lived more like mine - and probably yours.  Emma, Adam and Cowley respectively find their release - if not redemption - through sex, drugs and violence. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. 

And its language is unforgiving too. Part written in dialect, always unremitting in its force, these are thoughts and words unfiltered by polite sobriety. Consider what follows as a trigger warning, for Griffiths would no more type an asterisk to soften the word c**t as he'd use manhood in place of prick or foursome in the stead of his vivid description of a husband wanking as his wife is willingly shagged every which way by two of his best mates. You no doubt get the gist.

And that's just the sex. Griffiths spares us no less detail of drink, drugs, violence... and their aftermath. At times I wondered if all this was deliberate - and of course, it is - in a sense gratuitously so, because holding back wouldn't be so real, wouldn't have the power,.. wouldn't be true to anyone who's been on the end of a fist, a bottle or needle.

But then, what do I know?  For this is a world away from the life I lead - a tee-total, non-smoking, monogamous abhorrer of laddish banter, let alone thuggery. Is my admiration of Griffiths' writing some sort of voyeurism, or a repressed disclaiming of a comfortable, quasi-intellectual life?  Leave aside the mountains, and a reasonable question of myself, is why do these words speak so directly to me?

And I think the answer is that they speak for all of us. Our lives - and our natures - are nearer the edge than we like to think. We navigate the network of chance and possibility by means of a tension that's as intricately constructed - and as easily broken - as a spider's web. Griffiths' characters - in their uncompromised exaggeration - are a mirror to what might have been - and perhaps in our darker moments, to what might still be.

But I sense there's more to their resonance than a fear of falling or the worry that we're one short step from brutality. Emma, Adam and Cowley may be damaged and disconnected, but in so being, they see others through a lens that magnifies the vanities, injustices and ultimately, the absurdity of our human condition. It's not so much that their perspectives amount to any greater truth, as that the clarity of their attentions is uncomfortably familiar. We don't need to be like these people to relate to their abandon, or indeed envy their elation - however temporary that may be - in living true to their natures. 

My favourite author - and the only one whose books I've read multiple times - is Jean Rhys. Her thinly fictionalised novels portray the faltering life of an 'inconvenient' mistress exiled to Paris, the slow loss of youth, the taking of comfort in drink and men... Like Griffiths, Rhys lays bare our hypocrisies and willful deceptions - in her case, writing with precise understatement rather than raging profanity.  But the parallels are there: the crossing of lines, the erosion of hope... the inevitable gravity of it all... 

To compare Broken Ghost to novels written in the Thirties may be unconventional, but I'd argue that its themes, though rooted in today's Wales, are of a seed that's more universal in time and place. Indeed, my only substantive criticism is that some of Griffiths' contemporary tropes - the references to Brexit; the abusing catholic priest - felt somewhat obvious; as if shoehorned in for the purposes of polemic. A few of the plot lines too were rather neatly convenient.

But these are minor gripes. For the true mark of a story - like the legacy of all great fiction - lies not in its unravelling, but in how it leaves the reader. In my case, as blown away as ever... Griffiths is the finest writer of fiction in Wales - and his words deserve more attention.

Guidebooks - a source of inspiration and memory

Just one of my shelves of guides

I suppose I’d always been a walker. But aged eighteen and barely a year into the assorted pleasures of university life, tramping the hills wasn’t exactly at the top of my ‘to do’ list.  At least that was the case until I bought a small paperback, which – no exaggeration here – changed the course of my life.

The book was The Backpacker’s Handbook by Derrick Booth, part of the Letts series that were popular in the Seventies and Eighties. More of a ‘how-to’ manual than a route guide, it had chapters covering the kit to buy, the craft of camping; even instructions on how to fashion a homemade tent!  Booth’s mantra was to keep weight to the minimum and time on the trail to the max.

But the Backpacker’s Handbook was more than mere instructions. Apart from anything else, it was beautifully written - Booth's prose resonant with the notion that the simple act of walking might contain within it, possibilities that are more profound.  Here are its opening lines:

Time was when the world was limitless. Time was when the human race moved around - if at all - on its two feet. Time was when man didn't crave freedom to wander but took it for granted...

Forty years since I first read those words, they evoke a yearning that feels as urgent today as it was for a young man uncertain of his place in the world.

Shortly after buying the book, I quit my holiday job and walked the Pennine Way. Later that summer I completed Wainwright’s Coast to Coast, tramped from Tynemouth to Berwick along the beaches of Northumberland and ticked off the major peaks of Lakeland and the Dales. In part, I did this because for family reasons I had nowhere else to go, but also, as I walked, I discovered that those deeper possibilities were real and nourishing - and that I wanted more.

If I look back on the walks and journey’s I’ve since completed, it’s interesting how many were motivated by guidebooks of one kind or another.  My shelves are crammed with volumes that range from the Munros of Scotland to Trekking in Nepal. Last year, I must have bought half a dozen more, including guides to the Haute Savoie, The Cambrian Way and a walk that’s been far too long on my tick list, The Reivers Way in Northumberland. 

Magazines and journals are formative too. It was an article by the late Richard Gilbert in the first-ever edition of High (no longer published) which encouraged me go hut hopping in Austria. In a sense, I owe to him my passion for mountain refuges and all the joy that a lifetime of alpine walking has brought me. Still today, titles such as The Great Outdoors and Trail are packed with articles that provide us with facts and information, but most importantly, inspiration!  For it is this imaginative desire that unlocks the multitude of possibilities from which we are so privileged to choose.

I’m often asked by those who are interested in walking more seriously for advice on this or that route to take. In France, where I spend much of the year, I’m invariably quizzed on the mountain huts; in Pembrokeshire, it’s usually how to make a loop from a trip on the coast path!  I’ve still not figured that last one out very well, though actually, there are guides which address precisely this challenge. Perhaps that’s another reason why I have so many – because they tap into knowledge and experience that’s invariably deeper than my own could ever be. Not every guide is as beautifully written as Derrick Booth’s, but almost all are infused with a love and care for the landscape they are recording.

And it seems to me that it’s this intangible experience of being ‘in and among’ the landscape that’s the real delight of walking. The views from Snowdon’s summit might be spectacular and I suppose there’s a satisfaction of sorts in counting steps or calories burned.  But I’d suggest it’s seldom the highlights alone – and certainly not the data - that we remember most and which compels us to keep on shouldering our sacks.

I have a friend who told me she cried when her boots wore out recently. They’d been with her, she said, at all the best moments of her life aside from the birth of her children. I don’t have that sentimentality for footwear, but somewhere in my garage I still have the rucksack that I bought the same afternoon as the Backpacker’s Handbook. To throw it away, although it is now well past practical use, would feel like discarding part of my past.

My guidebook collection is not dissimilar. The most treasured copies are embellished with notes, their pages stained with water and earth; covers that creak on opening. I have one –Cicerone’s Trekking in the Stubai Alps – that’s been cut into halves to reduce weight on the trail. In researching this piece, I opened my original copy of the Coast to Coast and a little fine sand fell from its spine to my hands.

To walk is to gather memories that make us immeasurably richer. The guides in my study are keys to that store of recall and possibility. I’m grateful to them, just as I am to family and friendships and all the joys which make for the palimpsest of our lives.  Perhaps I should order them chronologically – a sort of personal history told through the landscapes I’ve trod.  From Pennine Way to who knows where… there’s room on my shelves for more.

This post was first published as a feature article in Cicerone Extra 

Not the Sky - a memoir

Brilliantly done - my book of the year

A few months ago I resolved not to buy any books until I'd whittled down the ever-growing pile by my bedside. And in the main, I've been pretty good, catching up on a host of 'must-reads' including Chris Arthur's sublime Words of the Grey Wind, Robert Macfarlane's somewhat overrated Underland and Rory Maclean's distinctively human perspective on Eastern Europe, Pravda Ha Ha. But like most folk on a diet (even if mine is a literary one) I've had the odd lapse - and in the case of Gail Ashton's Not The Sky, boy was I glad I did!

This deceptively unassuming little memoir chronicles a working class childhood in Sixties and Seventies Birmingham, the premature death of Ashton's mother and subsequent loss of her father to a new partner, emigration and eventually cancer. Using dialogue to drive much of the narrative, she recalls her lost parents - and through their voices, explores not only the deprivation and abuses she endured but also the tensions of education, class and gender, that were a defining feature of those decades.

In a sense, Not the Sky is the antithesis of nostalgia - even allowing for the times, it's clear that Ashton had a particularly tough childhood, and while her father takes much of the blame, she is too intelligent a writer to moralise. Indeed, he comes across as one part victim - shaped by his own miscellany of expectations, sense of self, masculinity... a toxic cocktail of diminished self-worth that quickens fists and sharpens tongues. The feuds and secrets in the extended family add wider context,  even humour, to what in many ways is a compound tragedy.

As I read the book in a rather swish hotel in Keswick, I was struck by how so much of this would seem another world to my children - the past, as they say, being another country - and yet for my generation, these experiences were relatively commonplace, if seldom as intense.  Like many memoirs, Not the Sky is ultimately a story of coming through, but its resonance lies not only in the overcoming of ordeals (shocking though they seem now), as in its resurrection of the language, attitudes and behaviours of her family and community, which those of us of a certain age will recall.

The dialogue is internal too, transcending time as Ashton's parents continue to address her in the present. I laughed at her mother's description of her recent marriage to a female partner as a right funny how d'you do - closely followed by, I wonder what happened to that green duster coat I used to have?  And so, for all their faults, they remain ever-present; nudging and shaping her life, long after they've physically gone.

I find the questions of who we are and how we came to be, fascinating - more than that, they are a constant in my life and writing - which perhaps explains why I'm in awe of this brave exploration of those themes. Not the Sky has echoes of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; it reminded me too of Blake Morrison's When Did You Last See Your Father? These are lofty comparisons, but worthy. For this is a book which surpasses the ordinary - it is not so much about the past as it is about the present, and though rooted in particular experience, like all good memoir, it is really about us all.

Brilliantly done - my book of the year actually.

Shopping my library - Words of the Grey Wind

Earlier this year, Jane announced that she wouldn't be buying any new spring clothes. Instead, she would 'shop her wardrobe': a strategy, she explained, of restyling, recycling, and in some cases simply wearing the back catalogue of purchases that second thoughts or changing circumstance had left little used the previous years.

It would have been easy to direct a barb at what I've long felt to be the toxic combination of Instagram influencers and easy access - free returns - life will be better - clothing websites. But I wasn't about to risk a reversal, and in any case, if I'm honest, my study has it's equivalent in 'click to buy' purchases.

Though neater than a pile of clothes, and superficially more worthy than the lure of fast-fashion, the stack of unread books by my desk is just as wasteful of our resources as any unworn dress or last year's must have but now oh so passé sandals. For until we read them, printed words are mute - no more than totems of our good intentions (and reminders of their failure to be realised), clothed in fading if feel-good dust jackets.

Sure, there are those who'd claim bookshelves are storehouses of knowledge; research tools, food for the imagination and the soul; Umberto Eco had a library of 30,000 volumes, they'd say - there's proof, if ever you need it...  But really? Quite how is that soul-feeding ever going to happen exactly - other than when we open them?  The vast majority of unread books in my study were not bought for reference - they're simply forgotten notions that deserve revisiting, resorting, and most importantly reading, before they become buried under yet more of the same.

So taking inspiration from Jane, I've decided not to buy any books for at least six months, and instead to 'shop my library'.  For the first time my holiday reading has cost me zilch - at least in the present moment - and it comes with the bonus of a ticking the list / unfinished business  type satisfaction.

Which brings me to Words of the Grey Wind, Chris Arthur's sublime reflections on the interconnections of life, memory, place and time.  I can't recall when I bought this book, but have a vague memory of it being recommneded by a reader of this blog - someone who'd read Counting Steps and made a complimentary connection. Has it sat on my shelves that long?  What a waste if so.

Arthur's essays are not typical holiday fare - they take time and attention - every somnolant nod requires two or three paragraph of rewind. Yet there's something appropriate in reading them at a juncture which allows space for the density of his thoughts. These are marvelously crafted, deeply considered, essays; the perfect illustration of the care I was advocating in my post on words and pictures. They are like the mountains that surround me here - climbing them is never a stroll, but always worth the effort.

The collection opens with Kingfishers, weaving almost all the book's themes into its first 18 pages.  A masterpiece of linked juxtapositions, the narrative shifts from nature, to memory, tragedy -  insanity even - and slowly back to the bird, its and our transcience in the scheme of things. That decription is inadequate to the richness of the writing, for like in so many of these essays, Kingfishers spins question on question, picking away at, if not entirely unravelling, the Gordian knot of what it is to be human.

Many of Arthur's essays take an object or event - the ferrule on his father's cane, a conversation in a bookshop, the fossilised bone of a whale -  from which he crafts reflections on the miriad of  connections which lead to where we are and what we will become. There are frequent references to Ulster and his family roots, but my sense is that these are staging for his main concerns - this is not so much a book about place, as 'our place in the world'.

Words of the Grey Wind achieves that rare feat of being both deeply personal and yet universal in message.  It's evident that Arthur has studied philospohy and theology, and there's a recurring influence of Buddhist teachings in many of the pieces. But mostly, there's an existential underscore to his voice  - a sense of being alone in the enormity of it all - that resonates with me and is perhaps why I liked this collection so much.

I yearn to write as well as Arthur. Few books have stopped me so abrubtly in my tracks - to think that I took so long to open it. And now I want to read it again.

In North Korea: lives and lies in the state of truth

John Ruskin once wrote that drawing is as much the art of looking as it is of making marks. What he didn't say, was that there is more to seeing than meets the eye.

Anyone sketching a still life will quickly learn that the negative spaces - the gaps between the subjects - are just as vital as the objects in focus.  Something similar goes on in music - listen to any of the great jazz pianists, and you'll 'hear' the pauses between the notes.

Rory Maclean's and Nick Danziger's latest book IN NORTH KOREA: lives and lies in the state of truth is a masterpiece of what writers call 'show not tell'.  Interviewing a carefully selected (not by them) cast of everyday citizens, they chronicle the daily life and hopes of a farmer, fisherman, soccer player, student, subway attendant...  recording the stories, as told by the participants, always in the presence of Government officials, jotting down every phrase, full stop and comma.

A master of sensitivity, Maclean writes without comment  -  transcribing the assertions of love and loyalty to our dear leader, so accurately, and so frequently, that their emptiness echoes with his sorrow. Danziger's photos are a counterpoint to the verbatim: stark, graphical, at times arrestingly banal - they are disconcertingly rich, yet bereft of feeling.

If only those Government observers had been writers too, they'd have understood what's going on here. At face value, the book is a collection of staged photos and stilted interviews; behind this necessary deceit, its truth lies between the lines.  

IN NORTH KOREA (available only on Kindle) is a short work; more of a non-fiction novella. It was made possible with the help of the British Council, which facilitated access to the usually closed Democratic Republic. I've no doubt Maclean's easygoing diplomacy was put to regular use too - and the project, of course, is especially prescient given recent events. 

A side of me thinks it's a pity the book is exclusive to Kindle. Another - the one that's a fan of digital media - is pleased, for it demonstrates the format can launch important work from leading authors. The colour photographs are best viewed on a tablet version of Kindle, using the app that can be downloaded free of charge. At £2.99 IN NORTH KOREA shouldn't exclude on the basis of price. 

If there's any weakness, to my mind it's the two-page afterword - the only point at which the authors drop their guard to comment briefly on the rising tensions with the West. Perhaps that's inevitable but, to my mind, the stories and pictures are stronger alone - their interpretation best left to the reader, and to time.

In collaborating with such deliberate understatement, Maclean and Danziger have given a subtle and powerful voice to the people they met. For as all writers, photographers - and for that matter, all dictators, know - truth and lies are revealed not so much in what we say, as what is left unsaid.

Pictures of you

It's always a thrill to see one's writing in print, even if only a book review.  Here's a piece I wrote for Booktime Magazine, appraising Rory Maclean's new book.

Pictures of You: Ten Journeys in time
by Rory Maclean

Given unprecedented access to the photographic Archive of Modern Conflict, Rory Maclean chose not to chronicle its pictures and the circumstances of their taking. Instead, he responded with stories, inspired by the moments and lives that had been captured on fragile emulsion coated papers. The result is a collection of ten remarkable tales, at odds with the discord of the century they traverse.

The Archive of Modern Conflict houses more than four million documents. Taking a broad interpretation, its collection encompasses major wars to regional feuds and civil rights disputes; the scope stretching as far as relevant cinema from the last century.  And so Maclean’s stories travel across time and place: from Rangoon to Alcatraz, Cameroon to France… some triggered by pictures, others by diaries; one by a file of human hair.

‘A delicately beautiful book, haunting in its effect.’ - Alexander McCall Smith

The stories, each set in a different decade, form a chronological journey through the twentieth century. Taking inspiration from a photograph or group of images, Maclean reinvents the dreams and despairs to which the camera was indifferent. Imagining their back stories, he invites us to consider a possible history of the forgotten faces. By accepting the offer, we come to view these people and their conflicts anew, discovering a human perspective hidden in events that conventional accounts most often objectify.

Maclean’s imagination is a lyrical counterpoint to the detachment of the photographs that inspired them. In one story, he describes the life of a concubine in China; in another he’s a black undertaker’s assistant in a racially segregated US town. As readers, we too become these people, connecting with their lives and pondering what might have been. The circumstances which bind them to their fates, speak to a collective humanity across a century defined by progress, and yet scarred by some of the worst atrocities of all time.

Of all the leading travel writers, Maclean is perhaps uniquely skilled in bearing witness to the human side of conflict. He was in Berlin when the Wall fell; has travelled in Burma, across the Middle East and more recently to the Balkans and former Soviet States.  His signature approach is to describe place through its people, documenting lives that we relate to at a compassionate level, even if the circumstances are alien. In Pictures of You, the characters are invented, but the connections no less powerful.

‘A unique virtuoso exercise in empathy, narrative and imagination, with learning and hints of mysticism thrown in’  - Jan Morris

Between the chapters, Maclean weaves a second narrative, using notes that describe his time and findings at the archive. From his first exploration of its shelves, to nights sleeping by his desk - and as the stories take form, to inserting his own photographs into the files.  Here too, fact blurs into fiction and we are left uncertain as to which is which - or whether it matters.  In many ways, the greatest quality of Pictures of You is that by the time we reach the end, we don’t really care.

Mark Charlton

Rory Maclean is the author of more than a dozen books, including the UK top tens Stalin’s Nose and Under the Dragon. His recent Berlin: Imagine a City was chosen as book of the year by the Washington Post whose reviewer described it as ‘the most extraordinary work of history I’ve ever read’.

Fresh Thinking

People often ask me about creativity, looking for advice on how they might view things differently or overcome their ‘mental blocks’ to finding new ideas.

Often, they’re disappointed when I say there's no quick answer - while everyone can be creative, 'quick fix techniques' or 'idea formulas', simply don’t work. Those offered in the context of business are especially poor, seldom amounting to more than variants on brainstorming. 

The reality is, it’s a bit more difficult than that!

If creativity is the ability to respond, imagine and invent in a way that delivers something new - then doing this well is darn tough! Ask any painter, writer or composer - or for that matter any scientist or philosopher - and they’ll all tell you the same; that creativity takes courage and practice (lots of it), as well as an acceptance that most of our notions come to nothing.

In a sense this ought to be obvious, for if creativity were easy then we wouldn’t prize it so highly - or so many seek advice on how they might improve.

And yet still and so often I meet folk looking for a sort of inspiration alchemy: the 'bitesize solution', the 'idiot's guide' to generating ideas - the elusive formula to creative gold. 

It doesn’t exist! 

In the same way that we wouldn’t presume to become an accountant in a day, we shouldn’t expect creativity to be any different. Seeing things anew is part skill, part craft, and a huge amount of hard work - writers spend long hours at the keyboard; painters the equivalent at the easel - they both spend a lifetime looking.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t insights and practices (note that word again) that can guide and inspire us to a more inventive approach.  

Over a lifetime of creative practise (in painting, in writing and in business) there are many inspirational resources and mentors that have helped me develop the skills I possess.  

With the caveat that real knowledge is always hard won - and that practice is all - I offer my recommendations of some the more accessible books, which - if you make the effort - might just make a genuine difference. 

Ways of seeing 

John Berger

Penguin Classics 1972

Ways of Seeing was originally published to accompany a BBC TV series on art and media.  Nearly 50 years on it still resonates with questions and insights that prompt us to see the world differently. Widely used on university courses in creative arts - with the added bonus that it’s as easy a read as you’ll find in this list!   Jon Berger is a respected writer, painter, art critic, and winner of the Booker prize.  

The Artists Way 

Julia Cameron

Pan 1995

The Artist Way is subtitled ‘a course in discovering and recovering your creative self’. This hints at an element of spirituality in Cameron’s approach which won’t be to everyone’s taste.  But if you can get past the element of ‘crystal healing’, the book is full of helpful exercises and surprising recommendations.  The Artists Way is effectively a twelve-week course that guides you through a process of finding your creativity.  

Julia Cameron has a wealth of resources on the web www.juliacameronlive.com - her book ‘The Right to Write’ is also very good.

The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking

Stephen Law

An excellent and very accessible book on philosophy as an aid to creativity.  The Philosophy Gym is a collection of stories, thought experiments, illustrations and ‘thinking tools’ designed to explain ideas and wake up your brain.  Stephen Law has the knack of making complex issues easy to understand,  while also showing that the apparently simple is often very complex.

Draw; how to master the art

Jeffery Camp

One of the best books on drawing, and a world away from those dreadful ‘left side of the brain’ approaches. More a portmanteaux of inspirations than a manual of technique, Jeffery Camp encourages us to practice and experiment every day, even for a few minutes.  

Drawing - even doodling - is one of the best of all creative practices. It teaches us to look, to consider and respond - and it makes that response real and physical on the page. 

Think 

Simon Blackburn

Oxford University Press 2001

One of the best popular introductions to philosophy. Simon Blackburn’s guide to thinking challenges our notions of what it is to reason clearly, taking his readers on a journey that leaves us questioning the superficial assumptions of everyday life.

What’s that got to do with creativity?  

Absolutely everything!

Straight Life

The title of Art Pepper’s biography is loaded and layered with meaning. ‘Straight Life’ is the name of his best known composition: a virtuoso piece from one of the greats of twentieth century jazz. But the tune was always a contradiction; for Pepper’s body was wracked with addiction; his reasoning twisted by alcohol and heroin, and his life-path as crooked and fucked-up as they come.

Art Pepper was arguably the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-war era. Born unwanted, brought-up unloved, the descriptions of his childhood are as grim as they are shocking. There can be little doubt that his later problems stemmed from a deeply rooted sense of isolation – a craving to be loved and accepted, by himself as much as anyone else.

What follows is a life story that is staggeringly sad. In an echo of his music, it’s as if Pepper is improvising on his own desperate existence: playing ever faster, increasingly off-key, out of sync with himself and the world. Ostensibly he’s seeking redemption – but always, and inevitably, his actions resolve into a deeper and more pitiful hell.

At one level Straight Life is a chronicle of self-destruction, of time spent in and out of prison, of failed relationships, petty and serious crime; it’s the story of years wasted, in more ways than one – the consequence of a wilful surrender to substance abuse.

At another, it’s a troubling reminder of the fine line between brilliance and the void. Pepper’s life is a tale of obsession, of an uncompromising (if seriously warped) view of the world and what constitutes right and wrong. By any normal standards Art Pepper is an odious individual; the nagging question is whether normal standards should apply.

The book’s format is a transcription of recorded interviews which he gave towards the end of his life. In Pepper’s voice, there’s a disarming honesty and a declared self-criticism, but there’s also a less than subtle suggestion that his actions were a necessary consequence of his talent.

My suspicion is that fans of Pepper will sympathise. We often lionise our heroes, tempering our judgements and blind-eying actions that would be unacceptable in others. Art Pepper was as near to genius on the saxophone as they come. Whether that excuses behaviour we wouldn’t wish on ourselves, or for that matter, our worst enemies is a different matter.

Pepper, like his music, is difficult and mercurial – it takes time to figure him out. The book is much the same, and there’s a quality to Straight Life that took me a while to grasp.

Throughout the narrative, Pepper talks entirely ‘in the moment’ of his recollections. When he describes entering San Quentin prison, it’s as if he’s back there and his attitudes and opinions of the time are expressed as if he still held them now – by the end of the chapter they’ve evolved and moderated, but only as the tale unfolds. It’s as if each moment has to be fully relived – a sort of method acting as a means to honesty.

And just maybe that’s what’s required of great jazz musicians – the ability to live in the moment; achieving a creative dissonance that suspends reality; a sort of nirvana if you like. I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems plausible and might explain the link between his destructive qualities and musical talent – the flowering of good and evil, both from the same root.

Straight Life is not an easy read. It’s complex, self-indulgent and frankly, depressing. But there are moments of lucidity that make it worthwhile. The passage describing his first hit of heroin is a piece of brilliance – it’s too long to quote in full, but here’s an extract to finish on.

I looked at myself in the mirror and looked at Sheila and I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and I took the dollar bill and I horned the rest of them down. I said, “This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, then this is what I’m going to do, whatever dues I have to pay…”

Art Pepper died in 1982; his music lives on.

Straight Life
The story of Art Pepper
Mojo books: ISBN 9781841950648

Afterwards

My friend Satya Robin published a new book today.

I've no doubt it will be a good read, but it's interesting to me in other ways.

I first met Satya, or Fiona as I knew her then (she's since become a Buddhist monk), more than ten years ago, on a course for business facilitators. We were placed in the same 'support and challenge' group, and being a trained counsellor she was good at that sort of stuff - by far the best on the programme. And I especially remember us sharing doubts about the direction our carers were heading - neither of us sure which way to go.

As it happened, I stuck with the corporate world; Satya became a full-time writer and a counsellor. Despite our different paths, we've remained in touch ever since -  and both choices were right I think.

Satya could easily find a traditional publisher and indeed used to have one - but in recent years she's chosen to self publish, using Kindle and a network of contacts and social media to promote sales. I'm in awe of her constant initiative and regard her as one of the best and most innovative networkers I know.

It strikes me that this approach to self-publishing is good for all writers, new and old. In today's challenging times, even well-established authors find it hard to attract mainstream support. One option is crowd-funding through agencies such as Unbound - see here for Rory Maclean's project on Transnistria. But while traditional print still has its place, there's also one for well produced, well promoted - and well written - ebooks, that can be made available without the need to jumping quite such high hurdles.

There's a lot of bloggers and would-be writers who could learn from Satya. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read the reviews and buy her book, click here.

Enough from me for today - or actually, not quite

For to celebrate the launch of Afterwards, Satya has produced a gallery of works inspired by the title - if you click the link, you'll find an image and some writing by me.

Ramblings on the future of books

Sony e-reader - the UK's first mainstream e-reader, launched 2008

Last week my book was promoted as a free download for Kindle - as a consequence, it rose quickly up the Amazon rankings and many new people will now get to see my work. I'm delighted; I don't write for the royalties - the more who read Counting Steps the better.

The same can't be said for small booksellers who fear the growth of digital e-readers, regarding them as the final nail in their coffin. UK book sales were down 6% last year (in part due to price reductions), but the headline masks deeper issues. Every year the Internet takes more market share, and it is this shift, more than Kindle or Kobo which is undermining independent bookstores.

A major attraction is price - Amazon sells books at a rate which booksellers can't hope to match. But more than this, Internet retailers are convenient: 24-hour access, unlimited catalogues, free and speedy delivery...  Downloads, of course, are immediate - no need even to wait for the postman.

Technology has also transformed international availability. For every one of us who takes a bestseller on holiday, there are thousands more living abroad benefitting from access to English language titles that was once inconceivable. Before we rant at the evils of digitisation we might pause a moment for the positive impact on millions in the developing world - they seldom, by the way, download bestsellers. (Their determination to self improve is an inspiring topic in itself)

For all this, we still have an attachment to bookstores - and libraries for that matter. There's a special pleasure in the process of browsing; knowledgeable staff can be a boon, and there remains something to be said for the physical experience of holding a book, flicking its pages, feeling the weight... Interestingly, children's books have fared relatively well in traditional stores.

By any standard, the Charlton's are heavy book buyers - over 100 a year.  Being candid I purchase the vast majority online; second choice, the local bookstore; third the Kindle (my original Sony e-reader is now virtually ancient technology); and very occasionally, the library which is increasingly depressing to visit. So I suppose we support all types - even the local car-boot!

On a lighter note, I smile at the marketeers' need to define these new formats. There's a rather ugly tendency in the media to talk of 'hard copy and digital content'. Amazon more elegantly refers to Print and Kindle books - but is silent on the existence of competitors. I've even seen reference to 'bound books', 'traditional format' and my favourite - 'physical books' - as opposed to metaphysical ones? 

Quite what's wrong with 'books', I don't know.