Let me catch it, pass it to you. Intense rain rolling down the windscreen of the bus, caught by the wipers, pass it over, the windscreen wipers, just for a few seconds, clearing the windscreen of the rain, halting its downward flow, the torrents of rain on the bus windscreen, two wipers, one on either side, working in unison, let me catch it, pass it to you. These mundane and helpful robots entrance me, mesmerise me, I hope the driver doesn’t see me staring in his rear view mirror and think I am staring at him, let me catch it, pass it to you, back and forth they swing, back and forth, as the bus passes through deep puddles, hear the water in the wheel wells, it’s absolutely torrential, let me catch it, pass it to you, let me catch it, pass it to you.
I have vivid memories of being a child on the back seat of my parents car, which would have been an Austin 1100 or a Austin 1800, there were no seat belts in those days, no buckles, and the seats felt like leather but probably weren’t, they were comfortable, the seats, I remember being in the back seat with my parents in the front and we were probably driving from my uncles house near the airport home along the dual carriageway, because it had rows of streetlights which I recall so vividly, these streetlights lit in the dusk and lined up like robot soldiers, they looked so pretty, these street lights, and there were electricity pylons with electricity lines slung one to the next, and they had these ceramic separators to stop the lines from touching, and when I was a kid in the back seat of that Austin 1100 I’d look at these ceramic separators and it looked like they were moving along the electricity line, it looked like they were moving back and forth, back and forth. The streetlights would curl away following the route of the dual carriageway. And then it would rain, and the rain would tumble from the sky as if flung down, and dad would put on the windscreen wipers and I would stare at them, let me catch it, pass it to you, let me catch it, pass it to you. And the rain on the windscreen would smear the view, spoil the symmetry and the order of the row of streetlights, the ceramic separators moving along their electricity cables, that these mundane and helpful robots would do their best to clear a view so that I could see the ceramic separators doing their own thing and the streetlights like soldiers protecting us from whatever was gathering in the autumn dusk, on this rainy day, near the airport of one of the busiest cities on the planet, and it’s no wonder that I’ve always found beauty in the urban environment, it’s no wonder that I’ve been able to assign personalities to inanimate objects.
Let me catch it, pass it to you. I wonder if the bus driver thinks I am staring at him. He’s sitting there safe in his cab concentrating on the road in front of him. He doesn’t know that I am thinking of my dad.
Today I went and sat on the terrace of a restaurant / bar on the seafront, at a picnic table, with a book and a Coca-Cola that I had ordered from the bar. I was reading the book and drinking the Coca-Cola, which had been my intention when I’d decided to go to the restaurant / bar. It was a bit breezy, and I was worried either the glass of Cola, or the tin that they’d given me, would blow away, but both were heavy enough not for this to occur.
But the more I drank the Cola, and kept tipping it into the glass from the tin, the more likely it became that the tin would blow away in the breeze. The trouble was that I was also reading the book, which meant that I didn’t have a spare hand to hold the tin while also turning the pages of the book, and if I let go then the pages would flutter in the breeze and I’d lose my place. I had my bag on the table, which I tried to use as a rudimentary wind-break, but this was insufficient, and the Cola tin, now that it was less full, kept wobbling in a worrying manner.
When I decanted the last of the Cola into the glass, the tin was now prone to rolling off and clattering on the floor of the terrace, and I didn’t want this to happen because I’d have to put down the book I was reading. I thought about putting the tin into my bag, but I considered that this might look odd to the other customers and to the staff, even though there was a logical explanation. It was a lovely sunny day, but it felt chilly in the breeze, and I hadn’t brought a jacket.
The book was an account of an Arctic expedition to measure the sea ice and it had some fascinating passages about the way that the ice flows around the Arctic Ocean, and another section which detailed the way that the magnetic North Pole has moved over the years, wandering from the far north of Canada in an easterly direction. I must admit that I am not entirely sure what the magnetic North Pole is or why this is important. When there’s no wind, I can read the pages uninterrupted without having to worry about losing my place in the book. I am drawn to books or documentaries which take as their subject the frozen North and I wonder if this is because of something primal deep within me, and a need for exploration, or maybe I just like being away from other people. The nose tusk of the narwhal is slightly off-centre because it isn’t a tusk, but a very long tooth. I learned this from the book about Arctic exploration, the one that I was reading on the terrace of the restaurant / bar, while also worrying about the cola tin.
'Let's just slink through here', I suggested, gesturing to the rhododendrons. A hot tropical night. The sweat was pouring down my face. Out to sea there was thunder, lightning flashing, but here on the beach, fairy lights and candles threw multicoloured light and shadows which danced. 'Slink?', Jack asked. The scent of jasmine and honeysuckle hung in the Caribbean night. The sky was dark and starless. 'There's a storm coming'. 'It's just . . The choice of word'. Others on the beach were standing at the water's edge, looking out at the storm. It was obviously getting closer. 'Are we just going to stand her end argue about a word?' 'It's better than arguing about whether we should argue about a word, which is even more pointless than arguing about a word'. 'OK, let's just ignore that and shimmy into the rhododendrons'. 'Shimmy?' 'Oh, for heaven's sake!' There was a rumble of thunder, and fat lazy drops of rain began to fall from the sky. They thudded into the sand as perfect darkened circles like sudden coins. We penetrated the outer fringes of the rhododendron and found ourselves surrounded by branches cross-crossing, and roots, and a sandy, springy earth. We could hear the rain falling on to the fleshy, heavy leaves around us, as if the world were applauding our efforts. It was cooler within the foliage. 'This might not be the time to tell you', Jack said, 'But I'm a member of the RSPCR'. 'What's that?', I asked, ducking to avoid a low branch across the face. 'The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rhododendrons'. 'Bloody hell, what are the chances?' 'We also cover hydrangeas and certain types of buddleia'. 'Well, we're not exactly being cruel, are we?' 'The constitution has several definitions . . .'. 'You're making this up!' 'I might be'. But he had a point. I hardly knew him. We'd met at the backpackers hostel the night before. He'd let me use his spork. 'There will be spiders in here'. 'GAH!' 'And snakes, probably'. I'd not thought about either of these scenarios. Thunder boomed and the whole earth shook. Neither of us said anything for a while, and then, of a sudden, we entered into a tiny clearing surrounded in all four sides by rhododendron bushes and tall palm trees, sheet lightning behind the overcast swirling clouds. I took a step, and spluttered, wiping a spiders web from my face. He emerged behind me and we stood there, feeling the heavy drops of rain on our shoulders. 'Amazing', he whispered. And then the storm begun in earnest, ripping the sky with vicious lightning bolts, the rain thudded down with increasing intensity, we sheltered under the dripping leaves of the vegetation, his warm body pressed close to mine as the thunder boomed and crashed and roared around us. 'Do you think', I asked, 'that this is a sign from the universe? That we should be together forever?' Because all of a sudden, I was caught up in the sheer magic of the moment. And at that second, a bolt of lightning hit one of the palm trees right in front of us, a vicious spew of sparks tearing off one of its branches with incredibly ferocity 'Not really', he said.
2.
Amid the midnight neon and the motorway flyovers of Tokyo, the incessant thrum of feet on the busy pavements, the night itself an electric pulse of brash branding, logos, cartoon charms and corporate magic, I found the doorway to the capsule hotel, the Paracetamol, between a gaming arcade and a brightly lit vending machine selling live koi carp. The front desk was automated and I booked in using my credit card, taking a lift up to the fifth floor, where a sign on the wall, accompanied by an over-the-top cartoon caricature of a hotel porter who also happened to be a giant panda, reminded me to be quiet, respectful to the other guests, and to take care of my own personal hygiene. My backpack almost didn't fit in the locker provided, and then I realised that the locker that I was trying to cram it in to was actually my room for the night. A mounded plastic bunk into which had been added a television, the bed, control panels for the heating, some robes. I put on the robes and went wandering around the corridors of the Paracetamol. As well as showers, bathrooms and a row of vending machines, (instant noodles, books, lanyards, and what looked like weasels), there was a small lounge right in the very corner of the building, looking down on one of the busy intersections below in all its neon glory. There was only one other person in the lounge. I sat down on one of the soft cushioned sofas and I looked out the plate glass window at the intensify and madness of the city. I then looked at the other person and I let out a gasp. 'Jack!' 'Yes?' 'Remember me?' He kind of frowned. 'Paya de los Aquafresh? We hid in the rhododendrons during the thunderstorm that time!' His face lit up. 'Yes! I remember! My god! We sheltered in the rhododendrons . . . And that lightning bolt took a branch off a tree right next to us!' 'What are you doing out here?' 'I'm in a business meeting with the RSPCRHB'. 'I thought that was a joke . .'. 'Deeply serious'. 'What are the two extra letters?' 'They've let in hydrangeas and certain types of buddleia since I last saw you'. 'I can't believe you're here!' He got up and joined me on the sofa and sat right next to me. And it felt good, his being there. In our robes, loose fitting and comfortable, it felt almost as if we were naked. How amazing! Two souls, coming together in spite of all the odds. 'I often think about that night', I tell him. 'Really? I can't remember much about it'. 'The storm, and the rain . . . And being with you'. He smiled. We were both speaking softly now, hushed tones in case we were to wake any of the other people staying at the Paracetamol, but the hushed tones could very well have been the purred small talk of love. 'You said slink, remember that?' 'I did' 'And then shimmy'. 'That's right'. I was so happy. I felt like putting my arm around his shoulders. 'You see, I would have said something different. Plunge, perhaps, or even hide. Or shelter. Let's shelter in these rhododendrons. But the way you said it . .'. 'Yes?' 'It hinted at something different'. 'This is a very weird conversation'. 'Is it?' 'A conversation about a conversation, and that conversation itself was mostly about the conversation that we were having'. 'I don't see why you've had to bring this up now'. 'Well, it's not like we're going to be meeting up again, is it?' 'Why not?' 'I . . . Don't know'. ‘Do you think', I asked, 'that this is a sign from the universe? That we should be together forever?' Because all of a sudden, once again, I was caught up in the sheer magic of the moment. He was quiet for a couple of seconds, and maybe it's my imagination, but he kind of snuggled towards me on the sofa, his body getting ever so slightly closer to mine. And at that moment, a sudden bolt of lightning was hurled from the overcast sky, lighting up the traffic intersection and the lounge with incredible ferocity, hitting the neon sign directly opposite from us of a cartoon duck advertising some local brand of shampoo. And before our eyes the cartoon duck sizzled, smoked and swung on its screws, turning upside down, unlit, where it pendulumed from side to side. 'Not really', he said.
3.
By my third day in the tiny Arctic community, I’d already worked out that there wasn't really much to do. The small huts, shacks and prefabricated homes sat shivering in the snowdrifts by the frozen sea, and it was dark by two in the afternoon. Once I'd visited the Museum of Permafrost and had a look around the art gallery built to resemble the tusk of a walrus, I'd more or less run out of activities. My only solace was the town library, a quaint prefabricated structure whose tiny lit windows created elongated squares in the fallen snow. I'd found a quiet corner, in between Arabic Numerology and Paranormal Studies, where I could sit near a radiator and read the hours away. And this is what I was doing, one never ending afternoon after dark, when I looked up and . . .oh, for heaven's sake. 'Jack?!' 'You!', he said. And he just kind of stood there for a bit in his big Arctic survival suit, and I stood, and we faced each other across the town library. 'What are you . . .'. 'Rhododendrons ', he replied. 'The feasibility of Arctic growth'. 'And?' 'None'. 'I can't believe it's you!' His face relaxed, and he came over and sat next to me. The tiny window between us began to be speckled by another snow shower, each fleck illuminated by the library lights. 'The last time we met . . in Tokyo . . Do you remember?' 'Yes'. 'We had a conversation about having a conversation about the conversation we'd had in Paya de los Aquafresh, in which the conversation had been about the conversation'. 'And now we're having a conversation about those conversations'. 'Yes', I laughed, 'we so tend to have a lot of conversations'. 'No fear of any lightning today', he said, 'though it's just started snowing again'. 'It's so good to see you'. 'You too'. 'Thanks for letting me use your spork'. 'Yeah, no problem'. And then the conversation kind of ran out of steam for a while, and we just sat there, listening to the sound of water in the heating system, the crunched footsteps of people walking in the snow. It was good to see him. The padded layers of his Arctic survival suit gave him a sudden cuddly physicality. I could hardly believe that he was there, that e we're together yet again, but it had happened twice before and yet again I could feel the planet turning, the magic of existence itself funnelling down, very much like the aurora borealis itself, and this isolated community. I looked past him, to the reception area of the library where Librarians were busying themselves, and a poster warned of the drawbacks of trying to pet a polar bear. The same old question seemed to press itself up from deep within me, into my vocal chords before it got a chance to be processed by my brain. ‘Jack’, I said. He gulped. ‘Do you think . . .’. ‘I'll have to stop you right there’, he said. The two of us smile at each other. In the pallid fluorescent glow of the Arctic community library, he looked serene, playful. I could hear someone moving bins outside and it sounded like thunder, but it wasn't. ‘I think I'll saunter out in a bit’, I say to him, ‘and see if I can get any dinner’. ‘Saunter?’ ‘Yes? What's wrong with that?’ ‘Nothing, it's just . . A very strange word’. ‘What should I have said? Mooch? Jimmy?’ ‘I don't know, it's just . . .I mean, of all the words you could have chosen . .’ The snow was coming down increasingly heavy now and piling up on the little windowsill. ‘I'll come with you, though’, he said, after a short while.
In 1992 I was 18 years old and wanted ever so desperately to be a writer. I was inspired by anyone who could make me laugh. Douglas Adams and Clive James were both very important in my writing aspirations.
It was incredibly fun to write and I enlisted the help of various friends and classmates. My friend Damian designed the cover, and I included quotes from various friends throughout the novel.
The story was very slim. Bill and Justin go undercover at a sixth form college to stop criminal activity. The plot was just secondary to the endless jokes and wordplay, a lot of which, looking back, weren’t very clever at all.
So here are some of the pages of that pivotal work!
At ten years old, I did feel somewhat held back, and I worried that my stories about secret agent dogs were getting a bit old hat. In late 1985 I must have been given another exercise book, because before I knew it, I’d started a brand new story which was innovative on a number of different levels. The first level was that the lead character was not a secret agent. He was a skier, who competed in the skiing world championships and the Winter Olympics. The other level was that he was a human being. And his name was Bill Board. Now, looking at the title of that first book causes a shudder of embarrassment. Yet I can at least comfort myself that I did not come up with the title. You see, the story begins with a skier by the name of Clive, who comes up with the idea that he get a head start at the beginning of every ski race by having his friend, Bill, give him a hefty push. One day Bill pushes too hard, Clive falls over, and Bill goes off down the mountain on his own. Indeed, so well does Bill do, inevitably winning the race, that he is invited to participate in every ski race thereafter. So, representing the UK, Bill becomes, by the last chapter, the skiing world champion. And the title? ‘Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack’. At the time, I thought this a rather clever title. My friend Mark had suggested it, because Bill won his skiing races so often that the organiser had to keep the Union Jack out so that they could raise it on the winner’s rostrum. But soon afterwards I became aware of the patriotic overtones, which I found, even at the time, somewhat silly. I don’t know why I was intelligent enough to realise that the title was overtly and perhaps stupidly patriotic, and yet not intelligent enough to realise that I could simply change the title. By now I was 12 years old and I wanted, oh, how I so desperately wanted to be a writer. I was obsessed with writing, and it was probably all I ever did. Once Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack was finished, I launched into several more Bill Board stories. And some old habits began to creep in. Bill and his friend Clive, having won the skiiing championships, were then asked to become - oh dear - secret agents. Over the course of 1986 and 1987 I churned out fourteen of these buggers. I remember family holidays in which we’d all stay in a caravan somewhere like Bognor or Hastings, and I’d be writing away whenever I had the spare time. I vividly recall a summer evening in Hastings, walking along a hedge-lined country lane after dinner, riding a funicular railway down to the town where I bought an exercise book, the opening paragraph of the next Bill Board story winding its way through my head. We played crazy golf and walked along the beach, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the caravan. Once we’d taken the funicular back up to the site, I remember sitting at the caravan table, opening the exercise book, and writing into the night. By now I was at secondary school. You’d think I’d have to put all of my energy into my studies, but alas, the Bill Board stories came thick and fast. My English teacher, Mr Smith, was encouraging, and took a few of them home to read, and it’s a wonder that he didn’t then decide to retire right on the spot. He did correct some of the spelling, bless him. I remember that Christmas sending him a Christmas card and saying to my mother that he’d probably mark it out of ten and send it back. In 1988, I realised that I’d slowed down the Bill Board output. As a remedy,I bought an exercise book and worked on one final story, which was called ‘Robot on the Rampage’. A couple of things changed in this book: Bill’s friend Clive moved away. A lesser character, Ed, and Ed’s wife Lenda, kind of took Clive’s place. Bill was desperately trying to vanquish a rogue robot while at the same time take part in what he knew would be his last ever Winter Olympics. Things were changing, not only for Bill, but also for me. The big thing that had changed was that my Grandparents had given me a typewriter. It was a huge old Olivetti, the kind that wouldn’t look out of place in an old black and white film of a newspaper office. And oh, how I loved that typewriter! I nicknamed it ‘The Tripewriter’, and wow, I really had to bang down on those keys to get the feint ribbon to make any kind of mark on the page. It must have been insufferable for my parents and our neighbours in the estate, what with those thin walls, to hear this typewriter banging away all afternoon. I ended up using it in the garage, knowing that this would keep some of the noise pollution down, not knowing that our neighbours were running an illegal mini cab company from their caravan and the racket from my typewriter was interfering with their antiquated radio system. I’d grown up, and I’d decided that my stories should grow up too, now that I had a proper typewriter. My parents gave me a wad of yellow typing paper and I started work on a story called The Ghost of Professor Burton, a ghost story set in the fictional village of Englemede. It felt weird writing some that that didn’t have Bill Board as the lead character. In my mind, he was now safely retired from both skiing and being a secret agent, thus allowing me the serenity to work with other characters. The Ghost of Professor Burton was a minor achievement. I asked my sister to draw a front cover for it, and then launched into another ‘book’ based in the fictional village of Englemede. But I missed Bill. Oh, how I missed Bill. Once the second Englemede story was done, I knew that I would easily lose interest in writing unless I did something drastic. And that drastic thing was to bring back Bill Board. Only this time, things were different for Bill, too. The third Englemede story begins with Bill moving to the suburban village and, rather inexplicably, being hired to be the village policeman. His first job is to investigate a shady businessman who wants to build a theme park on the outskirts of the village, and this book, Scheme Park, (and oh, how I loved that title), was probably one of the most important things I’d write. By keeping a character I knew well but changing all of his circumstances at a time when everything was also changing for me, it felt, with hindsight, that Bill was also along for the ride, and that he’d never actually left me. Sure, Clive had moved away. And sure, now he had moved away from Ed and Lenda, but now he was in a new town, with a new job, and a new purpose. And I was on the cusp of my GCSEs and I had discovered that I rather liked men. I was very happy with Scheme Park. Happier still when a classmate called Kevin actually made an electronic Kraftwerk-inspired rap-infused song with Bill as the subject matter. The chorus went, ‘Bill Board, Bill Board, B-b-b-b-ba-Bill Board’, followed by, ‘Englemede, Englemede, Eng-eng-ah-Engle Englemede’. Kevin was a genius before his time. In 1989, I decided that what the Englemede stories needed was more Bill Board. But I was a veritable writing machine. Not satisfied with Englemede, I also wrote Ed and Lenda books, done the old fashioned way in exercise books, detailing their lives running a seaside bed and breakfast, and for some reason, a second hand book shop while getting into the usual japes, scrapes and highjinks. These were of lesser importance, as I was rationing my typewriter ribbon and typing paper for other projects. (Incidentally, I still have The Tripewriter even now and I often use it when I'm a poet in residence at various corporate events). The next Bill Board / Englemede story introduced a new assistant for Bill, in the shape of Justin. Justin was a by-the-rules stick-in-the-mud, and also, in my mind, significantly younger than Bill. In fact, to be honest, I see Justin as representing myself, whereas Bill was more the Bob Newhart kind of character who surrounds himself with eccentric types and bizarre storylines. And once this new partnership of Bill and Justin was established, I also introduced Bill’s girlfriend Polly, (artist and daughter of an inventor who lived in Scilly Isles, because, why not?), and his bosses Sue and James. So by the end of 1989 I had a lot going on with school work, an infatuation with various classmates, the usual throbbing hormones of any 15 year old, a weird interest in American stand-up comedy from the 1950s, and the pop music of the Pet Shop Boys. Things needed simplifying, and this is when I came on the novel idea of ditching the Englemede stories, the Ed and Lenda stories, and combining them all as The Defective Detective Casebook. By this time I’d also started reading other humorous writers. It didn’t matter who they were, so long as they made me laugh. Not only obvious choices like Douglas Adams and PG Wodehouse, but also anything else which used humour primarily, such as the Heroic Book of Failures, the Garfield cartoon strips, and of course, anything by Bob Newhart. As a result, the tone of my writing shifted towards an impulse to crack a joke in almost every sentence. And while this felt great at the time, the results are, sadly, quite unreadable. And in the midst of this maelstrom of gags and meta-fictional narrators who would address the reader personally and say things like, ‘Look what happens in this next sentence’, was Bill Board. Reading my work from this period now can be quite exhausting. It was around this time that my parents bought me an electric typewriter. And to be honest, I don’t blame them. They were probably fed up of the house being shaken to bits by the clunk and crash of my old Tripewriter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the plaster wasn’t falling from the ceiling below my bedroom. But that electric typewriter was a godsend, and it meant that the typing process certainly wasn’t as strenuous as it had been with my old Olivetti. Indeed, for the first few months I would press the keyboard of this new electronic typewriter much more heavily than I actually had to because I wasn’t used to using a machine with such a light touch. Indeed, even today typing these very words, I have to make a conscious effort not to hit certain buttons heavier than others, because I have been so conditioned that certain letters stick. Like Z or X. It’s such a novelty to write words like zebra or xylophone without having to stop everything and prize the hammer away from the page. So by 1990, Bill, Ed, Justin, Lenda and Polly had been consolidated into the Defective Detective series. This made everything much easier. Ed and Lenda still lived at the seaside, but it seemed that every storyline had some reason for Bill and Justin to have to go down to the coast to solve a crime. Or perhaps Ed and Lenda might come back and visit Bill and Polly, and help with whatever case they were working on. Everything seemed right with the world. Also by 1990, I’d moved to sixth form college. And now I was studying for my A-Levels. I was never the world’s greatest student, and it is only recently that I’ve discovered that I’m one of the many people who have dyslexia, which certainly would have made things more difficult when it came to comprehending the higher levels and concepts of A-Level syllabuses. So the fact that I started churning out even more Defective Detective novels really was taking my attention away from my studies. The first Defective Detectives novel was just called Defective Detectives. The second, (and, oh dear, I’d discovered surrealism at this time), was called The Final Revenge of the Boring Spud. The third was called A Healthy Alternative to Suicide. These novels became fairly formulaic, with Bill and Justin tasked by their bosses, Sue and James, to go and investigate some robbery or kidnapping, only to discover that their arch nemesis, Count Ivan Von Wurstfrech, was behind everything. A trip down to the coast would follow, and invariably, a car chase or two, until Count Ivan was stopped in whatever mad scheme he had undertaken. Yet the storyline really served a secondary purpose to various one-liners, jokes and bits of silly wordplay which were probably far more fun to write than to actually read. Take this first paragraph of 1991’s Impending Headache:
Things never seem as bad as they are when seen from a different angle. But then again, things seem worse when they are viewed before they have occurred or if viewed from yet another angle, but things may turn out as expected if expected, but sometimes, if you expect something to happen, it doesn’t happen at all or happens but not as expected. This will cause the expector or expectee to look back upon what had happened and decide whether or not it was better or worse than expected, I expect. Unless he’s dead because of what happened. Or she. Can’t be sexist.
Impending Headache was one of the highlights of the Defective Detectives saga. Indeed, it was my most ambitious piece yet, set at the sixth form college where I was studying and featuring thinly disguised version of my friends and teachers. Bill and Justin went undercover to infiltrate the college, where Count Ivan was up to his usual tricks, and in the process one became a teacher, the other a student. The storyline was the usual faff, but the process of writing Impending Headache was one of the most fun of the whole series. I involved all of my classmates and got them to donate sentences, which became enmeshed in the actual narrative. My best friend Damian helped design a totally bonkers front cover which showed the college and most of the teachers as cartoon characters. At the bottom of each page were totally unrelated cartoon featuring a set of cartoon characters we’d devised, Geoff and his friend Mr Woollytarnish. In between each chapter were hidden extras which had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. The book ended with this legal warning: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without first slipping the author a fiver. All major credit cards accepted. The thing is, I put so much work and effort into Impending Headache, and absolutely none into my A-levels. Consequently, my grades weren’t good enough for university, and in the summer of 1992, I started my first ever job at the local branch of Sainsbury’s. 1992’s first effort was called The Blue Chicken, which seemed a bit mundane after Impending Headache. Bill and Justin were tracking the evil Count Ivan and for some reason he’d ended up at the seaside town where Ed and Lenda had their book shop and guest house. By now, I would say that writing was definitely more of a therapy and an assertion of who I was as a human being. Still closeted, living in a world that was still largely homophobic, too afraid to find love as this was also the height of the AIDS crisis, and now separated from all my friends who had gone off to university, the only thing I could do, apart from cleaning the aisles, storerooms and toilets of the local supermarket, was write. And naturally, I fell in love, and had a brief friendship with someone which didn’t go anywhere much, so coming home every night and writing until about two in the morning seemed the perfect way to take myself away from the world. The Blue Chicken was followed very quickly by Bar Code Blues. This was probably the second best of the Defective Detective books. Kind of following the success of Impending Headache, this time Bill and Justin were sent undercover to the supermarket where I worked, where, surprise surprise, the evil Count Ivan was up to his ghastly schemes. Again, the actual storyline was thin to say the least, but the fun I put into presenting my new work colleagues as barely disguised characters was probably also deeply therapeutic. At around this time, some people in the office at the supermarket started a very short-lived newsletter and I answered a call-out for stories they could use for their monthly circular. And thus, the first half chapter of Bar Code Blues was printed and distributed around the staff rooms of the supermarket. This was the first thing I had ever had printed, and I would sweep the floors of the produce department and dream of the big time, of being a famous writer who got his first break with the staff newsletter of the local supermarket. It was probably read by as many as ten, fifteen people. In truth, at this time, I was probably quite a sad individual. In 1993 I decided to spend some of my wages on my first ever holiday alone. For some reason I chose the town of Looe in Cornwall, and on a Saturday morning I took the train from Reading down to the west country, and I booked into a bed and breakfast. I was 19 years old, and this felt like a big step for me. This would actually be the start of a life spent visiting towns, cities and countries and travelling to some wonderful places around the world, but this was the first time I had ever gone anywhere long distance on my own. And what did I do while I was in Cornwall that week? I started another Bill Board novel. By now I was running out of titles. And secondly, I thought, what’s the point? I don’t even have an audience any more. No more college friends to read the Bill Board stories, and the supermarket newsletter had disappeared after the second edition. And anyway, I thought, what’s the point of titles? I called the next novel 935, because it was the fifth thing I’d worked on in 1993. In the narrative, Bill and Justin had been sent down to Cornwall. The evil Count Ivan was doing something illegal which involved smuggling and the Isles of Scilly, where Polly’s family lived. And that’s about as far as the plot went. However, I did have fun working on the cover for 935 on Polperro beach, spelling out the numbers 9 3 5 in seaweed when the tide went out, and photographing it from several angles. As I say, I was 19 at the time. Three more Bill Board books followed. Last Resort Jack Chopsticks ended 1993 with something of a fizzle, and then in 1994 came A Date with Density, (I wasn’t too bad at titles after all), and then Some Stuff that Happened. (OK, maybe I wasn’t that good with titles). A Date with Density showed Sue and James being fired for incompetence and replaced, so that Bill and Justin had new bosses who they had to impress, but then their new bosses were also fired for incompetence and Sue and James came back. And Some Stuff that Happened kind of ended limply, with Bill, Ed, Polly, Lenda and Justin having Christmas dinner together. You could tell that I’d grown weary of the whole enterprise by this time, as the front cover was drawn in black biro in about three minutes, and the whole novel amounted to a massive thirty something pages. By now I was twenty. My life was a series of underwhelming events. I was still a couple of years away from my first relationship, and I had failed at A-Levels and had a highly prestigious job cleaning toilets. Which I know isn’t a bad thing, but when your friends are all off at university and having the times of their lives, it did kind of make me question several aspects of my life. I wanted to be a writer. Oh, how I ached to be a writer. Yet the Bill Board stories, even I had to admit, were virtually unreadable. One night in late 1994 I bit the bullet and decided that I had to write something - well, something well. And that meant no more Bill Board. By this time I’d made the mistake of discovering existentialism. Whereas before I was reading Douglas Adams, and reading for enjoyment, I was now reading for intellectual curiosity, and because I wanted to be feted as a serious writer. I turned my back on Bill and dived further into the world of existentialism, and as a result, probably further up my own backside. I started wearing black. I went into a shop and tried on a beret. I became the most boring twenty year old in existence. And I knew that one thing I had to do without was humour. If I was ever to be taken as a serious writer, then there couldn’t be any humour. Indeed, the humour only came back in - wait for it - 2009 when I discovered performance poetry, but that’s another story. So for an astonishing 28 years, I didn’t even touch the Bill Board books. I became a performance poet. I spent most of my twenties and thirties having lots of sex. I studied A-Levels, university and post grad university at night school. I moved to Devon. I travelled the world. And all the time, the Bill Board books remained as a kind of memory, as if a TV show I used to watch, the plots of which I could no longer recall, just the characters and the fun I used to have writing them, banging them out on my old Tripewriter. Also, I wonder if there was something deeper going on. At the time I was writing the Bill Board stories, I knew I was gay, but this was never mentioned not once in the text. Bill, Ed, Justin, Clive and James were all straight, in my imagination. (Though I have my doubts about Justin). Bill, Ed and Clive all had girlfriends or got married. The courtship of Bill and Polly is a major part of the later novels, though they never actually got married. It’s almost as if I had created a world where everyone was achingly straight and I, as their omniscient narrator, was therefore straight by association. In late 2021, I decided to start work on a new novel. And for some reason, I thought of Bill, and I wondered what he might have done during the last 28 years, and what he might now be up to. I decided that he would probably have left the police force by now. At the same time, I went to visit a friend and he was telling me the troubles he was having in getting a new recycling bin delivered. Indeed, he delivered this wonderful monologue which I told him should be the basis of an Edinburgh fringe show. And then when I got home that night, I kind of put this idea together with the idea of exploring what Bill might now be up to, and the narrative of Bin just kind of presented itself to me. It’s now the middle of 2022 and working on Bin has been one of the happiest projects I’ve been involved with for quite some time. On various streaming services you can now catch up with Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek, and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, because the trend seems to be for this kind of nostalgic comfort television, and in the same sort of way, this character who appeared in novels which only a sprinkling of college friends, one or two English teachers, and some staff of a suburban supermarket ever encountered, now has a chance, finally, to get something of a more modest appreciation. And only now do I realise, reading this, that Bill was there for me at a very important time of my life. School, college, my first job, and the entirety of my teenage years were echoed in the stories. Bill was there for me, and now, hopefully, I’ll now be there for Bill.
1986 Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack 1986 The Return of Hugo First 1986 Steve Cramp and the Flying Robots 1986 Who on Mars is Bill Board? 1986 Wallies at the Winter Olympics 1986 Aravanta 1987 The Phantom Dustcart 1987 The Revenge of Dan Druff 1987 Copellia’s Second Go 1988 Robot on the Rampage
1988 (Englemede) Scheme Park 1989 Defective Detective 1989 (Englemede) The Gold Mush 1989 Defective Detective Two 1989 (Englemede) The Really Interesting Club of Englemede 1990 Defective Detective Three 1990 (Englemede) Too Boring for Real Ghosts 1990 Defective Detective Four 1991 (Englemede) Notre-Dame-de-Bellecombe 1991 Defective Detectives 1991 Defective Detectives Two : A Healthy Alternative to Suicide 1991 Impending Headache 1992 Defective Detectives Three : The Final Revenge of the Boring Spud 1993 The Blue Chicken 1993 Bar Code Blues 1993 935 1994 Last Resort Jack Chopsticks 1994 A Date with Density 1994 Some Stuff that Happened 2022 Bin
I first started writing The Neon Yak about three years ago. I was going through some old poems that I had written while staying with my Grandmother in Surrey, she lived in an old two up two down cottage in the woods and there were glimpses of London in the distance, and I realised what a magic place it all was. And then I started to think about all of the emotions a teenager has at the time, and the events which occur which, looking back, seem magical in themselves. Add to these the usual teenage longings, and the inner struggle of accepting my own homosexuality, and the story just seemed to seep into my consciousness.
The Neon Yak is heavily autobiographical, but not totally. Some of the things which happen in the novel actually did happen to me. In fact, I would say that about three quarters of the ‘supernatural’ events in the novel happened. I’m not sure whether they took place in that strange realm of half dream, half awake, or in actuality, but they felt real and they still feel real now.
And what of The Neon Yak itself? This entity is something I created for my 2017 Edinburgh show, In the Glare of the Neon Yak, but it is based on the local legends and folklore which were prevalent in the area where I grew up of Herne the Hunter. If you’ve never heard of Herne, then a Google search will prove enlightening, though there are theories that he was invented by William Shakespeare for The Merry Wives of Windsor. Whatever the origins, Herne the Hunter seemed real for us kids growing up, and any visit to the woods always carried the risk of being confronted by The Hunter.
The novel takes place during the summer between middle school and secondary school, which is always a strange time when you are growing up. For me it was especially auspicious, because it meant commuting to a busy town in the suburbs of west London instead of staying in our cosy little Surrey village surrounded by woods. The secondary school felt like another world and of course, along with it came a growing sense of my own sexuality, and my own denial of that. The events which are laid out during that summer, in actuality, probably occurred over the space of a few years. If you ask me nicely one day, I might tell you which are real and which are works of imagination.
I wrote the first draft of the novel over a frenetic month in 2023, and then spent the next year refining it and editing. I am hugely grateful to Stoat Books for publishing it.
My novel The Neon Yak is published today by Stoat Books. A tale of growing up, coming of age, magic, folklore, the dark woods of Surrey, and a drag queen called Tina Afterburner.
“Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own life? The Neon Yak is a beautifully written and deeply introspective novel that explores the challenges of growing up different. Set in the heart of 1980s suburbia, it follows Daniel Cooper, a boy caught between his true self and the expectations imposed upon him. As he navigates school bullies, family tensions, and the constant backdrop of motorways and distant city lights, Daniel finds refuge in books, music, and his vivid imagination. Amidst his struggle with societal norms and self-discovery, a voice from within—embodied by the captivating and enigmatic Tina—urges him to embrace his authentic identity.”
Here’s an excerpt from the novel, a short chapter entitled ‘One Day I Levitated’.
I spent my teenage years writing comedy short stories. Eventually I would join a writers’ circle and read these out, but that’s as far as they ever got. Around the year 1999 I decided I wanted to become a serious writer, and got into some very pretentious high literature, such as James Joyce, or Juan Goytisolo, and I dreamed of literary stardom and making a difference. I conceived of a book which would be so special that it wouldn’t even have a name, that’s how pretentious I was back then. At the time, I was young, enthusiastic, newly out, with my first partner and my first flat. My hobby was travelling all over the world, and I really thought I was going to be the most famous writer who ever lived. Ha!
I wrote the book between 2000 and 2004 and then promptly never looked at it again. I never sent it anywhere, and I never let anyone read it. The only thing I did with it was to take the entire second part and make it into a play, ‘Fuselage’, which actually won a theatre writing competition and was performed / rehearse read over two nights by a professional company at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter. That was in 2008. And I hadn’t looked at it since.
Until the other day, when I found the damn thing on a memory stick. It was saved in twelve different parts, so I’ve just spent all of today gluing them together as a word document, (I didn’t use word back then), and the book is now complete for the first time. I’ve decided to give it a title, too – ‘Orbs’, after one of the main characters.
Anyway, I’m not going to do anything else with it. But I thought you might get a kick out of reading the synopsis so that you can see just what a car crash the thing was. It was written in Devon, Copenhagen, Toronto and New York, which is probably the only notable thing about it!
Orbs
Robert Garnham
Part One
Chapter One : Cassandra meets Lucas on a train. She is, apparently, recently bereaved of her boyfriend Aaron. The chapter is narrated by Mister Collins – apparently an ex-lover of Cassandra’s. On the train, the conversation between her and Lucas is overheard by Orbs who announces that Lucas can, if he wants, bring Aaron back to life through literature. Of a sudden the train grinds to a halt.
Chapter Two : Lucas insists on leaving the stranded train. They walk through the woods to a mansion house where they are expected by Mrs Ohspander. Cassandra is insistent that Lucas write Aaron into existence for her. They stay the night. Over dinner Lucas decides not to do as he is asked. Orbs arrives and takes Cassandra out to a chapel in the grounds of the house dedicated to the life of Aaron. Orbs explains that Aaron – (despite being dead) – is the narrator of the chapter.
Chapter Three : Cassandra is distraught. She wanders in the forest and returns to the house. She cannot find her way in. Instead, she spends the night in a heated greenhouse. Lucas arrives and they make love. They discuss the re-invention of Aaron and Lucas declares to her his love. Cassandra drowns Lucas into the pond and returns to the house. In the library she meets Orbs who says that Mr Collins has been watching her. Orbs hints that Cassandra is, in fact, dead, and that it is Mr Collins who has invented her for a character in a book. Aaron is very much alive.
Part Two
Chapter One : Lucas and Jakub have crashed in the desert. Jakub is injured, Lucas cares for him, and a bond of love develops which Jakub does not reciprocate. One day Orbs arrives and cures Jakub’s injured leg, finds them food and water and solves many of their problems. Lucas is convinced that Orbs is an evil spirit intent on separating them. When no-one is looking, Lucas sabotages the radio equipment.
Chapter Two : Orbs organises the makeshift camp and ensures that food and water are available, and Jakub’s leg begins to heal. Lucas is afraid that this will result in the end of his association with the older man. He remembers the cacophony of their crash-landing. A sandstorm blows in and, unnoticed by Jakub, Lucas murders Orbs.
Chapter Three : Jakub questions Orbs’ disappearance, Lucas finally admits to killing him. He walks off into the desert and is rescued, eventually, by Grainer and Shelley, who come back for Jakub and drive them to the nearest city. Grainer asks where Orbs is but Lucas remains silent. Jakub then admits to having crashed the plane on purpose.
Part Three
Chapter One : Rozetta is a curator at a museum of writers in Paris. Meek, ineffectual, she wishes she were more like Jakub, an adventurer who always gets what he wants. They are sent to the mountains in order to secure precious artefacts pertaining to the poet Michael Afff, but there is something about the small kingdom which they both find intimidating. Rozetta rests in her hotel room and hears footsteps approach, menacingly, on the veranda.
(The paragraphs of this chapter have been numbered and mixed up. The reader must choose from three possible combinations in order to read them. Only one is correct. Superfluous, ‘rogue’ paragraphs have also been inserted.)
Chapter Two : Back in the city, Rozetta feels herself changing into a confidant, brash young woman. Jakub, meanwhile, loses all his confidence. Rozetta also feels herself inundated with words and poems. A representative of the mountain kingdom, Orbs, reveals that, in an attempt to bring back Michael Afff, his DNA has been injected into them both. However, a mix-up has resulted in Rozetta being infected with Jakub’s DNA, and vice versa.
(This chapter has footnotes which explain Orbs’ motivations. The footnotes also have footnotes, which spell out a short poem. This, too, has footnotes.)
Chapter Three : (Takes place after Chapter One). In the mountain kingdom, Rozetta walks around, dazed. At the cathedral she watches the High Priest of a cult based on the work of Afff – Orbs himself. Jakub meets Orbs in the park – he explains that this was the only way to bring Afff back. It is hinted, though, that rather than being a mix-up, Rozetta actually is infected with Afff’s DNA, and the poet is taking over.
(This chapter is written entirely back to front. The reader must determine this for themselves. Also, a new mark of punctuation is used, the explanation of which is also contained within the narrative.)
Part Four
Chapter One : Deni is trapped inside a poem in ancient Greece. Rozetta is coming to his rescue armed with a copy of Micheal Afff’s poetry and a river-boat, deep in the jungles of the Amazon. The expedition comes across a statue deep in the foliage of Rozetta herself. Orbs appears in the poem and offers advice to Deni, and then he appears on the river boat as an interested observer. It is hinted, however, that it is Rozetta who is trapped in a poem and that Deni is the author.
Chapter Two : Deni, as the author of Rozetta’s adventure, is himself trapped in a cage in Vienna during a masked ball. Orbs visits him and implores him not to tamper with the narrative, it is having a negative effect on Rozetta’s existence. Meanwhile, in the jungle, Rozetta and Orbs investigate a mysterious abandoned city. Back on the river, their boat is attacked by natives and it sinks below the water.
Chapter Three : Deni is in a cabin of an ocean-going container vessel, he is also an amateur artist. Rozetta and Orbs are travelling through the jungle on an overnight train. In the restaurant car Orbs plays piano jazz, romance is a possibility. The container vessel picks up a man floating in the sea in a life-raft, it is Orbs. On the train in the jungle the brakes are applied – Orbs and Rozetta investigate and discover a container vessel, lifted out of the water and placed one hundred miles from the sea in front of them.
Part Five
Chapter One : Deni and Robert are lovers, living in a caravan at a seaside town. They are conducting a theatrical experiment in which members of the public, unwittingly, are participants in a secret play. Deni’s ex-lover, Orbs, arrives, and they reminisce – Robert feels jealous. After a night of partying in which Orbs’ intentions are frustrated, they wake to find the caravan – and themselves – hundreds of miles away.
Chapter Two : Deni and Robert have been transported to a sand dune and a wide beach, a desolate landscape. Deni bemoans the loss of his desk and his project. Orbs helps reconvene the project in their new location. Robert sees Eeon, a deck-hand on a pleasure boat. Wandering in the sand dunes, he discovers Deni’s desk. Later, on the same pleasure boat, Robert tells Deni that he has seen the desk and Deni reacts angrily, forces the boat back and runs off into the dunes, never to be seen again.
Chapter Three : Robert, Eeon and Orbs are staying at a lighthouse. Robert continues Deni’s project. Eeon picks up foreign stations on his radio, incomprehensible speeches. Robert falls in love with Eeon. Orbs is worried about his place in the universe and his ever-decreasing sense of youth. During a thunderstorm Eeon and Robert listen to the radio – the speaker hints at religious and cultural conflict. Eeon feels lost and uneasy. The foreign speaker then starts mentioning aspects of their private lives, their deepest fears. Running to tell Orbs of this, they discover that it is he who is the speaker.
Part Six
Chapter One : Ostensibly a meditation on my own childhood, the autobiographical sections give way to a narrative based on the imaginings of Eeon’s own childhood in tandem with my own. A kindly relative, Orbs, has spotted the doubt in myself and proclaims to know of a solution – that life should just be lived.
Chapter Two : A comedy tracing the career of Cassandra, a modern artist working in New York, and Robert, a poet, each of whom has run out of inspiration. To advance Cassandra’s career, Robert spends a night in her studio and concocts works of art on her behalf, aided by the janitor, Orbs. On realising the futility of art in life, Robert decides to kill himself by jumping off a crane into the river, but Orbs saves him. Arcs is revealed to be a manifestation of Orbs’ imagination. Examples of Arcs’ work as an artist are placed within the chapter as visual representations.
Chapter Three : Robert is a poet in New York, seemingly without friends or success. His sister, Cassandra, is the subject of a retrospective at the modern art facility. Robert feels left out. At the launch party, he feels distinctly out of sorts, until he sees Cassandra slumped in the corner, depressed by fame. The next day he goes back to the gallery with the help of the janitor, Orbs, and he replaces the works of art in Cassandra’s exhibition with posters of his own poetry. Lost in the gallery, he meets Stefan and they fall in love. Robert becomes successful and he and Stefan host a magnificent party.
I’ve always loved using ink cartridge pens. Indeed, I’ve been using the same Parker pen since 1995. Yes, you read that right. The same Parker Vector stainless steel pen, which I’ve written with almost every day on poems, short stories, you name it. However lately I’ve been branching out and trying other pens, such as a Lamy, a Waterman pen, and recently, a Pilot pen. They’re all very good, though bizarrely the best pen, and certainly the most robust, has been the Jinhao Chinese pen with its chunky design and its metal shaft.
But the pen I’d always wanted was a Kaweco Sport, in particular, the grass version. It looked beautiful and there are plenty of videos on YouTube of people eulogising their Kaweco brass pens and saying how beautiful they looked. So last week I ordered one, paying much more than I normally would have done just for a pen.
And yes, it’s a thing of beauty. It arrives in a tin which reminds me of a sweet tin, or a tobacco tin. And when you first get your hands on them, they’re brassy and shiny and new looking. However within a few days of using them they become wonderfully tarnished and start to look both personal and antique, staining on the parts of the shaft where your fingers go most often.
How does it write? Well, this is where I made a slight error and accidentally ordered the extra wide nib version. It worked perfectly, but as a writer, the thick nib spread the ink too widely for my liking. So I paid ten pounds extra and ordered a medium nib. It was very easy to swap over as the metal casing allows the plastic nib to unscrew easily. And now it writes very well indeed.
The pen is short so that it fits easily into a pocket. You can buy an extra clip to attach it to one’s pocket, which I’ve done, though I admit that I rather like the aesthetic purity of the pen without the clip. It feels excellent to hold and to write with, and I’ve had no problems with ink flow.
So in short, it’s a remarkable pen, sturdy and good to look at!
Robert Garnham 