Category: Writing

It may well be rubbish, but even so I do quite a lot of this.

There’s Nothing New Under The Sun

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Writing

I’ve got a new phone.

Whenever this happens my wife insists on getting a screen protector for it, and this time was no different. It makes sense of course, I know that – in fact I’ve only needed to replace my old phone because its screen protector broke (giving its life in the line of duty) and then before a new one could be fitted, the screen (now unprotected) broke too.

Nevertheless, when I came home on Wednesday to find the screen protector for my new, Trump-baiting Huawei phone had arrived, I must admit my heart sank; and sure enough when my other half got back from work soon afterwards, literally her first action was to demand my phone and to render its screen duly protected.

I don’t know why I resent the whole screen protector thing – well, I do, but it’s wholly irrational. There’s something about the newy newness of a bright, clear, new phone screen that is in someway tarnished, or at least diminished, by being placed behind a protector. It’s the same kind of minuscule bereavement when the first icon is put on the desktop of a brand-new computer, or the first footprint into a fall of snow.

Of course I know nothing can stay new forever. But knowing it isn’t quite the same as accepting it. There’s something hard to explain about the appeal of newness, whether it’s the semi-mythical ‘new car smell’ or the electric buzz of a new relationship. Or the shiny-but-unprotected pixels of a new phone.

“After the passion fades,” my Dad told us before we were married (this was his pep-talk in his role as officiating minister, I hasten to add, it wasn’t an awkward after-dinner conversation) –“After the passion fades, there’s a great joy in companionship and support.” That’s true, and no doubt if it had been ten years later he would have used the analogy of a new and ‘naked’ phone screen versus the wisdom of applying a screen protector.

New things carry with them a sense of unbounded possibility, whether that’s in the excited imagining of what might happen on that first date, to all the ludicrous things promised in adverts for mobile phones. But it’s not real, and when the newness wears off, when the passion fades, is when we get to the truth of things. It’s nice to have a shiny phone… but one that works when it’s needed, where the reminders pop up on time, where it gets a signal when I really need to make a call, is much more useful.

Even this blog, which started last year with a hoover repair and almost started this year with a washing-machine repair until my wife (at a bit of a loose end without any phones in need of protecting) interceded and did it while I was at work; even this blog isn’t new any more. The notion of adding to it weekly lasted quite a while, but in truth when I’m moaning about TV programmes or praising The Sound of Music there’s a clear element of padding to it, a bit of classic Doctor Who third episode ‘running up and down corridors, getting locked up/escaping/getting locked up again’.

I don’t want to let it disappear completely, but it turns out I don’t have burning issues to address every week – so I should blog when I need to, not because I have to. The passion has faded, the newness and novelty has faded, now it’s got to have a reason and a purpose. We’ll see how that goes.

After all, it’s a new year now, I don’t want to just… phone it in.

The C-Word

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas, Doctor Who, Family, Writing

I’ve been thinking, whisper it, about Christmas.

For the past couple of years, I’ve posted a daily ‘advent blog’ on Facebook, mixing Christmas thoughts and memories with the occasional moan and the odd gag or two. It’s something I’d been thinking about, in a rather casual and disorganised way, for a few years before finally getting my act together in 2017 – and my ego was sufficiently flattered by some of the responses, to give it another spin last year.

As it turned out, some of what I thought I remembered from the Christmasses of my youth was entirely wrong – meaning, for example, that there is now a cloud of uncertainty over the exact nature of my Gran’s stuffing recipe; and it would also appear I entirely imagined what I had previously considered a firm, even eidetic memory of the late-70s, of my Dad measuring the boot of our car to see if my brother’s new Pot Black table would fit in it. I can’t recall whether it did or didn’t, but apparently that trip back home to spend Christmas with family in Cornwall never happened either, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Nevertheless, there’s fun to be had – in part, it’s been interesting to see what does and doesn’t grab people’s attention. Morecambe & Wise in 2017 got barely a reaction at all, much to my surprise; whereas what I thought would be greeted with little more than a polite shrug, the fact that I’d never seen the ‘Batman & Robin’ episode of Only Fools, turned into a full blown debate on the Trotters.

So, and anyway, I’m in the throes of debating with myself whether or not to do it all again this year. On the one hand, I’m not certain that I have enough thoughts and topics and complaints and opinions, to fill 24 days. But… on the other hand, doing a third batch and billing it as definitely the last might allow me to riff off Peter Davison’s “I met Patrick Troughton in a car park” anecdote, which is sinfully tempting.

Hence I’ve been thinking, and occasionally writing, about Christmas today, from musing over when exactly calendars became such huge business, to what mince pies are made of, to who invented pigs in blankets. A cursory glance over those three topics sort of highlights my problem I feel – namely, that the really big subjects (Father Christmas/Nativity Plays/Putting the tree up) have already been done.

It has, though, given me just a small insight into the world of entertainment. Not, I hasten to add, that I’d want anybody to confuse my Facebook posts with entertainment (I suspect there’s probably no danger of that, but even so). What I mean is, it reminded me that many of the Christmas TV shows we’ll be watching later this year are probably already in the can.

I recall Steven Moffat writing in Doctor Who Magazine (see, Magazine, it doesn’t even call itself a comic) during the Summer of 2010, to say that it was a glorious Summers day, but that he was sat inside listening to Carols and other Festive music, desperately trying to get into the right frame of mind to write the Christmas Special that was soon to start filming.

Now obviously, I’ve not got Matt Smith impatiently waiting for my words of wisdom (and frankly if Karen Gillan was here, it’d be an awful waste to spend my time writing on a laptop) but even so, I can’t exactly wait until 1st December and then spend three and a half weeks just winging it.

So, reluctant as I am to admit it, and although I sometimes (by which I mean, specifically, in 1st December 2018’s Facebook post) moan about it starting earlier every year, Christmas is already underway.

May the Lord have mercy on my soul.

Making Up For Lost Time

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Work, Writing

Never mind the hour last night, I’ve lost a whole day.

Not in a “we’ve all had weekends like that, fnar fnar” sort of way. My ‘lost day’ refers to the fact that I worked on Friday. I admit that’s not tremendously dramatic in itself, other than I normally work a four day week, Monday to Thursday. Even then I’m secretly pining for the brief heady period in 2017 when I was only doing a three day week. (My bank manager is understandably less nostalgic about it.)

This week, however, and as previously advertised, I worked Friday as well – and unexpectedly it’s thrown me off kilter for the entire weekend. ‘Entire weekend’ in this instance is only two days, of course, and it really does feel so much shorter than usual. (As well it might, having been reduced by a whole third.) Just as you start to get into the swing of it, it’s over. Compare and contrast that with my normal routine, where there’s a whole day of prologue before Saturday even arrives.

It’s not much, I suppose, in the scheme of things; and the feeling of a curtailed weekend has probably been accentuated by having time taken up yesterday afternoon in cutting the grass for the first time this year (a chore I hate). And of course there’s the mysterious hour lost overnight. Put all these things together, and this weekend really has had a sense of being more ‘edited highlights’ than ‘full-length feature’.

As a rule, I manage to get in a bit of writing every morning of the weekend, sometimes in the evening as well, and although it only ever comes after a ridiculous amount of evasion (laundry, walking the dogs, idly gazing out of the window, that sort of thing) I do usually end up getting something done.

Somehow, without that initial kick-start of Friday to get things underway, this unusual two-day weekend has not made any headway in that regard – although after an unusually enthusiastic rush of it last weekend I must confess I’d run up against a wall anyway.  I’ve not exactly run out of plot but I have reached a point where I don’t quite know how to bridge the gap between big chunk of plot A and big chunk of plot B. So as it happens a weekend off probably won’t do it any harm.

And I realise that not having Friday to get things going sounds like a really lame excuse, because arguably as regards time it isn’t how much you have, it’s what you do with it that counts. (That sounds vaguely familiar…) Nevertheless there’s just a tiny warning light there, or at least a timely reminder, that for almost twenty-five years, when I did work a five-day week, I hardly did any writing at all.

As John Rowles opined on yesterday’s Pick of the Pops (1968, to save you Wikipediaing it) “If I only had time.” Or, if you prefer, as Sylvester McCoy said of the punishing BBC schedule in the documentary about the making of Silver Nemesis (1988, to ditto) “we didn’t want more money, we wanted more time.”

Next week, as far as I know, it’s back to normal, back to the four day week and the three day weekend. It’s swings and roundabouts of course (as my bank manager would point out). Yes, there’s more weekend (and less stress) with my job now; but there’s also less work and hence less income.

I still wouldn’t want to turn the clock back though.