Castaway or Cast Adrift?

Robinson Crusoe: the only man ever to get all his work done by Friday.

A departure from ‘The Norm’ this time. This time I have added one of my magnificent cartoons.

Magnificent?

From my perspective, yes. It is.

I have always been known for drawing cartoons. I have not always been known for writing stories and yet, there’s a little known fact about to spring out here, my first effort at writing was when I was six years old.

Yes. Six. It was at Sunday School.

There’s another surprise for those that know me; yes, I went to Sunday School.

It was at that time I ended up at odds with the Vicar in our village. We had a theological argument. This was based on the idea that my pet cat had died.

Another alarming fact! I used to like cats!

Anyway, my pet cat had died. In a state of extreme upsetness I approached the Vicar and asked him if I would meet my cat when I went to heaven.

Showing great restraint he declined to give voice to the opinion that I was unlikely to go to heaven but he did inform me that cats do not go to heaven because they have, like all other animals, no souls.

I believe I uttered an oath of some sort at that point that was generally aimed at religion but specifically at him.

I never forgave him for that. In truth I was ever at odds with organised religion from that point on.

However, the writing.

We, the pupils at the Sunday School were requested (at gunpoint) to write a story. The subject was to be ‘The Nativity’.

I immediately lapsed into a state of total boredom and decided to play their game my way.

I pretended to be reporter and wrote the whole thing like a newspaper article.

It was acclaimed. I had utterly failed in my attempt to be facetious and bring down the establishment in the village.

They loved it. The Vicar loved it.

The shame, the embarrassment.

A few years later we, of our age group, all took the eleven-plus exam. I was ten, a fact that seemed to escape even the most dedicated bureaucrat. It had something to do with the idea that my birthday is in August. The rules for this escape me—it was, you understand, a very, very long time ago.

Here we were in the mid-1800’s sitting an exam that would establish whether we qualified to go to the Grammar School and have a Classical Education or whether we would go to the Secondary School and have barely any education at all.

That is a wild and false generalisation but that is how it was viewed by the intellectual glitterati of the day.

Part of the exam was to write a story. Easy. Did that.

I passed.

Nobody else in my age group passed in the village. I was alone. How unpopular does that make someone?

All through the school I excelled at art. I loved English Literature as a subject but failed the exam miserably. Too fond of reading it rather than analysing the stories.

Failed Latin, too. Interesting subject but I was too young to appreciate it and too intent on appearing dumb in order to be sociably acceptable to my peers.

All the way through school and the Royal Air Force I drew cartoons. I drew cartoons at the drop of a hat. For Station Magazines and some civilian magazines, too. A few were printed in the newspapers for which I earnt a few shillings in old money.

Writing took a back seat. Why? Maybe because we were always writing. Reports and lesson preparations and assessments; a constant stream of writing—all official documentation.

I yearned to break loose and write fiction. Every now and then I would jot down a short story, just the bare bones of it, until about a year after I left the Royal Air Force.

In my mind was a story of novel length. It had lurked there for years. There had been several scratchy starts made on it but it had come to nothing. No time to sit and focus on it.

Then I made a start. Hand written on scraps of paper, the outline came out and the first chapter or two was scrawled. But then there was a major life change; again, no time to do more to the story.

Frustration after frustration.

Then I came to live here. My wife found the hand written notes and outline and asked what it was. I explained about the story, she told me to write it—to finish it.

In the meantime she suggested I write a few short stories to enter competitions. This was in order to practice the craft, to get me to understand that writing a story was not like having a chat with friends.

‘Silicon Ballet’ was short-listed in AC Black’s Short Story Competition—I was in the top twelve of thousands of entries. I felt like a winner. It gave me confidence and credibility; now I knew I could do it.

I write lots more short stories and some longer ones. I even finished the novel and wrote a sequel to it.

It’s better now. I have more experience; I’ve had more practice. Writing is easier now than it was but it is still hard work.

Drawing cartoons is something I still do but it’s more for fun. Just for me, my own pleasure.

Sometimes, just for fun, I’ll draw a cartoon for a friend—perhaps to cheer them up. Sometimes I draw a cartoon to illustrate a point; I filled my book about jet engines with cartoons.

The publishers sneered. ‘We don’t have cartoons in text books’ they told me. One publisher had faith and now that book sells well because it is different, it is easier to read, easier to learn because there is humour in it.

I like to draw cartoons but I also like to draw word pictures.

Now I’m tired. I need to start thinking about the next story and finishing a couple of stories that are already started.

Goodnight, my friends.