Fortune Favours the Fortunate

Bang!

No lights, no fans, no TV, washing machine mid-way through a cycle and computers all went blank.

We had water and gas.

Nothing else. Nothing.

That was around eleven-thirty last night. The Electricity people came and fixed a burnt out wire but said they could do nothing about the circuit breaker that was flapping uselessly inside the house.

They gave us the number of a ‘wireman’ (domestic electrician) that we could call in the morning.

The Electricity people left around three o’clock in the morning. From then it became gradually more and more sticky. We were loath to open the fridge in case we let the cold out and the heat in. My lovely prawns from Sabah were in there to defrost.

These prawns are more like baby lobsters; they are delicious. We successfully consumed them later when the power came back on. There was no need to have electricity for cooking but it is much nicer to shower and clean the teeth first, is it not?

At midday the electrician came. Young man called Annan, he seemed a bit inexperienced but we watched him at his task and saw that he was very quick and efficient.

At last, the power comes back on. What a relief. Over thirteen hours without electricity. We suffered.

Then we thought about it.

What about all those people, all over the World, that have no electricity or cannot afford to pay for it or have it installed.

No mobile ‘phones because they cannot charge them up. No computers or digital cameras; no fans or air conditioning; no microwave or blenders or coffee machines; no electric light or satellite TV.

How spoilt are we? We who live in luxurious comfort when there are those about us who cannot even choose what to eat. People who are grateful to get anything at all to eat—anything. At all.

After filling my inner man with prawns, long beans and rice I went up to my office to start work. After opening up all the relevant files I realised how much I take this machine for granted.

Accessing information then indexing and arranging the notes are so simple. At a stroke it is possible to communicate with so many lovely people all over the World. The computer is such a blessing—how I wish I knew how to use it!

Ah! I think I hear the dishwasher starting. Must go down and see if the tea is brewed now that the kettle works again.

How fortunate we are. Sometimes it takes a small disaster to nudge us into remembering it.

Don’t Take ALL the Clothes Off!

Went on a bit in the last ‘Blog’, didn’t I? Sorry about that.

There was yet still more to write about Sudan but every story has to come to a close somewhere. Sometimes the things that are left unsaid are the things that are the most important.

I do try, when writing novels, not to be too graphic. Some things need describing in detail either to make a point or for effect. There are other things that should be left with just a suggestion or not at all.

The reason for that is that the reader has an imagination. If a reader has no imagination then that person would not be a reader of books, they would turn to films and role-playing games for their entertainment.

Before you get up on your hobbyhorse and start chanting voodoo mantras at me I should point out that there is nothing wrong with either films or role-playing games. My point was trying to reflect on the possibility of someone ignoring books altogether and focussing entirely and exclusively on those other options.

There are such people. I know several people who have said, “Oh, I don’t read books,” with that fleeting look of ineffable boredom sweeping across their face at the very thought of doing something so incomprehensibly, mind-numbingly, stupefying as opening a book

A book, for heaven’s sake. They are so ‘yesterday’; so old-fashioned! Why, they even smell old-fashioned.

Except e-books.

Now we have people arguing about what is best. Is it more satisfying to read an e-book or turn the pages of an actual, real book?

White eggs or brown eggs?

Here, in Malaysia where I live a life of utter bliss away from the snows and bland food of Europe (there will be, no doubt, objections to that in due course), we are able to purchase, at certain locations, fried chicken

This is not, I hear you say, a big deal. Fried chicken is a staple of the Deep South in the US as it is in many places Worldwide where it goes by the name of ‘KFC’.

But.

Here there is a very slight difference.

Here you can purchase fried ‘Virgin Chicken’.

Yes. Precisely what I thought. It took, possibly, several milliseconds for the idea to flash through my head on sighting the banner that hung over the roadside food stall.

Can you imagine roadside food stalls in Europe? The EU Committees would send police around to shut it down in the blink of an eye—unhygienic, don’t you know!

Back to the ‘Virgin Chicken’.

What I want to know, and this is something that, it appears, nobody wishes to tell me, is what is the difference between the flavour of a ‘normal’ chicken and one that has yet to be... er... deflowered?

I strongly suspect that there is no difference. It is a marketing ploy. Men prefer virgins, they tell me—I have no idea why, but that is just me. So why not carry this idea through to food.

It is just the name, for certain.

Thus we come back to the ‘real book’ versus ‘e-book’ argument.

Why is there an argument at all?

Both books have their purpose. Both book systems are equally valid.

If someone wants to read lots of books stored in a compact tablet while they are, for example, travelling, then that is fine.

What is equally fine is that somebody should wish to turn the pages of a physical book and derive satisfaction from the feel and smell of it along with the words in it.

People argue over really stupid things, do they not?

Films, role-playing games, books and e-books all have a place in our personal entertainment world as does ‘Ludo’, ‘Monopoly’ and TV series.

I just believe that people who read books like to imagine some of the story, they do not like every detail pressed into their heads.

Sometimes it is best to leave a little left unsaid to add to the mystery.

Like the time I went to look for something for beloved in Khartoum and found a loofah plant instead!

In the Midst of Visual Riches...

So endeth another trip away from home.

It is always a wrench having to pack up and go away for a while. Even short trips seem endless until that magical moment when, upon arrival at the airport, you come out of ‘Arrivals’ and there is beloved waiting to drive you home.

It is a part of the job. You think that it is something that you get accustomed to over the years but that never happens.

Many years ago we fulfilled a contract in Sudan that required each of us to go there, to Khartoum, for a month at a time. I went twice.

The country around us was interesting so boredom was never a problem but being away from loved ones was a bad thing on several levels.

While I was in Sudan I received a card from my son, Zakwan. He wrote, “Miss you, Dad,” on it. Makes you feel very sad and very, very homesick.

Just a short digression; several expert writers and people who teach others how to write suggest that the word ‘very’ should be stricken from your vocabulary when it comes to story telling. They are right.

But.

There is always a ‘but’.

Perhaps I should tell you a little about Sudan. At least, my impression of it.

We dubbed ‘Sudan Airways’ ‘Insya’Allah (If God wills it) Airlines’ because everything they did was suffixed with ‘insya’Allah’ thus preparing the way for a failure to carry something out. Should something they said would happen not occur then, clearly, God was not willing for it to happen.

They would routinely depart from any airport seven or eight hours late. If it were the same day then they would regard the flight as leaving ‘on time’.

First Class passengers were afforded a similar level of comfort to that which Economy Class would be on any other International Airline but Economy Class passengers on Sudan Airways had to beware that they weren’t sitting next to the goat!

(Not really but that was the impression we got from looking back into the Economy Class area).

We were told of a fire that was lit in one of the aisles on the aircraft—an Airbus A330. Seems the occupants of the adjacent seats became a little impatient for the in-flight rations!

It would be a rare event for the Airline to actually come and pick you up from the airport as promised and as contracted to do so. It seems that the transport was provided by a different part of the Airline to the Training School; the two divisions rarely spoke to each other, apparently.

We arrived there shortly after the American military decided to deliver a cruise missile to a baby food factory in Khartoum. This had several effects.

Firstly, the baby food factory was no more. This threw lots of people out of work. Why anyone would wish to destroy a baby food factory is completely beyond me. Anybody who has been to Khartoum would know that the manufacture of anything more complex than baby food in a baby food factory would be utterly beyond the average Sudanese concept of things. If they were going to make chemical weapons they would build a ‘Chemical Weapons Factory’.

The American Embassy was not permitted to stock or provide alcohol to their guests. Sudan is a ‘dry’ country. The British High Commission had a guest night every week at which it was possible to partake of beer and spirits. These were not actually for sale. You would buy tickets and exchange them for drinks—including ‘Cok-uck-Ola’. The Americans were displeased at this but, then, it was their cruise missile...

The trade embargo by Western Nations that followed the demolition of the baby food factory created a storm of poverty in Sudan that did not affect, in the slightest, the hierarchy. Construction stopped almost immediately so there were many abandoned buildings in various states of completion and, of course, the roads were filling with sand and holes. When it rained heavily the holes filled up so nobody wanted to drive; Khartoum lurched from dead slow to stop.

Most of the drinks stalls were run by Algerians, oddly enough. Most of them spoke only Arabic and French whereas most Sudanese speak Arabic and English. This was all right for them!

We had occasional sandstorms. These are colossal walls of sand that approach quite quickly. They stretch from horizon to horizon so one wonders what the ‘end’ of a sandstorm looks like.

The thing that you don’t see on films about sandstorms is that they are preceded by flocks of small eagles—Harriers, no doubt. Each one trying to grab the small birds that are flushed along by the approaching wall of sand. The other thing that you don’t see is that when it rains the whole thing comes down as dollops of mud. The Hilton Hotel was plastered with mud after one such sand/rain storm. The staff were out there for a long time hosing down the walls and windows to clean it up!

I did have a flock of goats follow me into the hotel. On my return from a visit to Omdurman I alighted from the bus and these goats chose to follow me along the road. They happily trotted along and some of them followed me through the doors into the lobby, the rest stayed behind to munch on the flowers in the hotel forecourt.

The staff were occupied for some time trying to round them up and usher them out and then try to prevent them from joining their colleagues in destroying the garden.

No, I have no idea to whom they belonged or from whence they came.

Along the banks of the Nile there are thorn bushes. The thorns are about an inch and a half long and like steel nails. They make short work of tyres. One of the workers in the hotel informed me that these were the very thorns that were used to make the ‘Crown’ that Jesus (pbuh) wore on the cross. That being the case they would have been extraordinarily painful. I brought a ‘sprig’ home for my son to take to school to show the class in Scotland.

Also along the banks of the Nile and in various locations around the towns were sellers of ‘karkadil’. This is a drink that tastes rather like blackcurrant. It is made from the petals of a Hibiscus flower. They sell it here, in Malaysia, under the name of ‘Roselle’. Tasty.

It is usually made by an old lady at the roadside. She will offer it hot or cold, sweetened or unsweetened, in a small glass for just a few small coins. She will heat up the water and brew it over a small charcoal burner. It is delicious; I believe I was almost addicted to it.

When you order and drink it you will sit on a small circular seat made from ‘rebar’. They will cut off three lengths of ‘rebar’ to make the legs and then form the rest into a circle. The three legs are wleded onto the circle. Plastic tape is woven around the circular part to form a seat. Quite comfortable, cheap and efficient.

In Omdurmnan there is a museum that traces the British occupation and the demise of Colonel Gordon who sailed up the Nile to quell the natives and got himself quelled instead.

The bow gun from his boat is still there. Interesting.

The problem with Omdurman and many other places is that the poverty is rife.

This is real poverty. This is not people who are merely ‘poor’; these are people who have absolutely nothing.

Not for them a choice between ‘Corn Flakes’ and toast in the morning; their prayer is that they will get something—anything, that day.

It is utterly impossible to give a few coins to one of them because you will be immediately deluged in outstretched, stick-like, arms. All around you there are large, luxury, cars rushing past and the contrast is too much. These cars are often owned by ‘friends of the Government’.

It is pathetic. In the literal sense. By that I mean it is full of pathos. I took a friend into Omdurman to visit the museum and the soukh (bazaar) but I had to get him straight back to the hotel because he was in tears. This big, strapping rugby player, a really tough character, was overwhelmed by the poverty he saw there. He said he felt helpless, inadequate.

I could tell you about the bridge, that crossed the confluence of the White and Blue Nile, that the British built and is now a military secret but I am overcome by the memories of those people and my failure to be able to do anything about it.

Sudan is not alone. Poverty on this scale is endemic.

Just look around you.

‘Kenanga Wholesale City’

“Let’s go,” she said, “To Kenanga Wholesale City.”

The words ‘oh, yes. Let’s do that’ were just about to form in my mind when she added, “To look for baby clothes.”

You cannot imagine the number of exclamation marks that appeared, unbidden, in my head at that precise point.

Oh, well, ours is not to reason why...

It turns out that this Kenanga Wholesale City is a large block of several (17?) floors set in the middle of a district in which, except for a few places like Banks and a couple of Mini-Supermarkets, there exists only wholesale fashion establishments.

We parked on the tenth floor and then waited patiently in the crowd for the lift. Ultimately we arrived at the ‘Ground Floor’ with the intention of working our way up through the floors until we arrived at the car parking level (8) from whence we should get the lift up to our car.

Then one person in our party noticed that there was a ‘Lower Ground Floor’.

Joy of joys. Another floor.

At this point I went to the ‘Old Town White Coffee’ restaurant to have a snack and let them rummage around amongst all the clothes.

(I do NOT recommend this particular restaurant. Other ‘Old Towns’ may be fine but THIS one...)

This massive edifice exists solely for the purpose of selling clothes at low prices. It is, in fact, cheap. The quality is quite good since they supply everyone else in the Country.

It was, as you might expect, packed.

There were several other men looking bored and lots of young ladies in small packs roaming around; some looked excited and others looked appropriately ‘casual’ as befits the teenage psyche.

The fashions sported by these young ladies—and some not quite so young, were remarkable. There is a section of the female community here that likes to wear very short skirts or shorts. They leave the legs naked from the (cropped) pubic hair downwards until you get to heavy shoes, often black, that makes them look like two sink plungers walking around.

Then there is the make-up.

The idea for make-up is that the eyes and lips are slightly darkened to indicate a degree of sexual arousal. This is intended to turn men on and make them attracted to the female sporting this make-up. It mimics the rush of blood to the eyelids and lips during foreplay.

I don’t think these youngsters have quite grasped this concept. ‘Raccoon’ or ‘Panda’ is going overboard; most of them look too much like the ‘Lone Ranger’ to be alluring in any way.

Oh, well, perhaps if I were a teenager I might have a different perspective on it.

At last the ladies in the contingent scrutinising the wares for sale completed their self-imposed task and we headed back to the car.

Then we did battle with the traffic. Everybody else, it seems, was leaving at the same time. The long, steep, circular ramp down from the tenth floor took an eternity to negotiate. Fortunately there was a gang of lads at the exit who were controlling traffic so joining the queue up to the main road was a shade easier than expected.

At this point I heard a voice in the back say, “Well, we shall have to come back tomorrow...”

My funeral will be held at...

‘Facebook’

For a few days, a week, really, I have been away from the ‘Blog’ because of work.

There are times when our working life tends to take over from recreational pastimes and this was one of them.

I have two areas of work.

One is that I write stories that are for sale on ‘Amazon’ as e-books.

The other is that I wander around the country teaching people various things that I am instructed to do by my boss. My boss is a really nice guy – no, no! I am not saying that because he might read this. I am saying that because it is true.

I have no shame; if he was less than a nice fellow I should either say so or just not mention it.

The thing here is that I enjoy what I do. Sometimes it is excruciatingly exhausting because I am extremely old but it is, overall, enjoyable.

Why?

Because, as the old saying goes, if you enjoy what you do then you will never have to work another day in your life.

I like to write stories. There is much pleasure to be had in writing fiction. It is an area where you can let your mind stroll around the universe and fantasise about all manner of things large and small, probable and improbable.

Of course, there is labour involved. Grammar, punctuation, syntax and comprehension all have to be studied and ordered. Repetitive use of words has to be avoided and alliteration, as well as other grammatical foibles has to be minimised and only used, as appropriately, for effect.

Recently a young gentleman tried to tell me that both ‘effect’ and ‘affect’ might be used as a noun or a verb. Such is the power of suggestion and the Internet coupled with a poor education and a failure to use ‘Google’!

Writing is called ‘work’ but is, usually, a pleasure.

Teaching is the same. Writing courses requires greater precision than writing fiction by a very long chalk but it is still pleasure. While writing courses on various subjects it is an opportunity to learn. Every time I write a new course I find out something that I did not know beforehand.

Then there are the classes.

My job requires me to go to different places to teach different people. Some of those people I have known for many years, some are ex-students of mine from a long time ago.

Many participants in my courses are new to me and they mix in with people I have met, briefly, before and my long-term friends.

Thus these trips are a chance to meet up with good people. They are all good people.

I have yet to meet someone on these visits that is not a good person—whether they are participants in the classes or whether they are support staff or just going about their routine.

Some are local people, some are local people who are attached to a base away from home. A great many are expatriates from all over the World.

We have workers from France, Sweden, Australia, America, Canada, UK and other places that make our task here so much more interesting and brighter.

What does this have to do with ‘Facebook’, I hear you ask?

Ah, well.

I have a ‘Facebook’ page, as do so many other people. ‘Facebook’ is ubiquitous, is it not?

It is addictive. It is, therefore, time consuming. I like to set the timer on my telephone (one of these peculiar, small, hand-held devices that is named after a fruit!) to twenty minutes. When it ‘ping-pings’ I switch off ‘Facebook’ and do something else.

We have many friends on ‘Facebook’. Some time ago I wrote one of these ‘Blogs’ about one such person called Stephan Curry. A gifted young man whose path I observe with great interest.

Some of these friends engage in intelligent conversation. They come from all creeds, races and colours—not to mention Nationality.

They are interesting people. They have interesting ideas. Some of them I shamelessly feed from to write these ‘Blogs’!

Some are just figures in the mists. They appear from time to time but, mostly, they are in the background. They are there but not actively engaged.

Each to his or her own. Everybody enjoys the contacts in their own way.

Last week I was in Sabah. At Kota Kinabalu.

I have never been there before so this was an interesting experience.

Before leaving from my home base, it occurred to me that I know a couple of ‘Facebook’ people that live there, this could be an opportunity to actually meet!

No sooner said than done, a personal message winged its way across the sea to Insular Malaysia to the ‘Facebook’ friend. The message was received and a meeting was agreed.

What a wonderful surprise to meet these fellows. Both were bright, intelligent and enthusiastic. We had (I had, at least!) a great evening’s company with terrific food; we had barbecued fish, huge prawns and calamari.

These were people that I should never have known, much less met, were it not for this modern contrivance of the computer/’Facebook’ combination.

Such a huge pleasure.

So it is that my ‘work’ is more enjoyment than it is labour.

As a postscript to this story. When I reported for duty with my class the next morning they asked me how I had got on in their strange, to me, city? Did I eat anything last night? Where and what did I eat?

I told them about the two chaps I had met and with whom I had partaken dinner. There was, for a moment, a stunned silence and then there was uproar.

At first I was a little nonplussed and then it dawned on me that every one of the local people there knew the two that I had been with. It seems they are local celebrities!

Of course, they all wanted to know how it had come about that I knew these great men.

That’s easy, I said.

‘Facebook’.

Feel It

“You are the last of your kind,” he chuckled at her.

They watched the great red orb of the sun dip its toes into an oily Pacific.

“I shall not become extinct,” she grinned up at him, her eyes sparkling mischievously.

“You are the last of your kind,” he snarled at her.

She watched the rivulets of water run down the grimy windowpane that failed to hide the grey misery of a wet Chicago.

“I shall not become extinct,” she hissed into the telephone, her eyes glistening with hate.

Same conversation, different emotions.

We could, reasonably, introduce another version that evokes fear; we could, reasonably, write different versions that hold out other emotional qualities. These two will suffice lest we plunge into a string of examples that will, ultimately, become boring.

I have mentioned, in a previous ‘Blog’, that it is important to feel the emotion when we write. So it was when I wrote the two examples that I started with here.

The problem arises when we bump into our own lives.

Even writers have personal lives. We still, at some point, have to go shopping, go to the bank and, for some of us, we still have a job to do.

That personal life will clash with the lives of our characters. We cannot always arrange to feel angry, frustrated, irritated, happy or sexy at the same time as the people that we are writing about.

Life is just not that simple!

There will be times when we are not at our best for one reason or another but our characters are pursuing some humorous part of the plot.

It is difficult to ‘switch off’ the private life and ‘switch on’ our vicarious life. Sometimes we need help.

There are times when I get so lost in the lives that are in my head that it comes as quite a shock to discover that, in the real world, it is lunchtime or that my beloved has brewed a splendid (and large) mug of tea for me.

What a jewel the lady of my life is; how fortunate I am.

But I digress.

How can we switch from one emotion to another in order to fill the needs of the world in our head?

Sometimes with difficulty. I find that there have been occasions in my life, which has been a full one—full of experiences both good and bad, when something has happened to make me feel a certain way.

Grief is easy. We have all had times when we have been overwhelmed by sadness; the tearstains on the keyboard will attest to mine! There will, equally, be times when you have been in fear of your life. Perhaps a car crash from which you unexpectedly survived. Happy times, too and, without doubt, times when you were wrapped up in lust!

These are the experiences that you write about. You do not, ever, unless it is an autobiography, write about the actual, real life, experiences but you write about your character’s experiences while soaking up your own memories.

It is a trick. Of course it is. It is a trick used by entertainers of all kinds. Actors have to emote, even sports people are emotional and writers are no different.

Feel what you are writing. Live it.

These are not just words strung together in a fine academic prose. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, syntax—all these things are important but, on their own, they are just words.

Your job, as a writer, is to put the humanity into those words. You can reinforce it by the supporting words.

Notice, in the examples above, that I have used ‘orb’ and ‘oily’ together in one sentence and then ‘grey’ and ‘grimy’ also in one sentence.

‘Orb’ and ‘oily’ are neutral to ‘sexy’ (the ‘oily’ is anyway!) but ‘grey’ and ‘grimy’ are definitely sad or threatening.

Think about what you are building; bring on the emotions. This is why, as a writer, you are a ‘wordsmith’ because you are creating a picture with words.

Let yourself go, let it flow and then go back and work on it.

Start at the End

Writing a story of any length, and I write a lot of short stories and novelettes, or writing these ‘Blogs’ that average out at something less than a thousand words each, has, at its core, a similar problem.

We can, all of us, start a ‘Blog’ or story with ease but the trick is to end it.

Wars are the same. It is very easy for a government to get into a war but the difficult part is deciding when it is over. When is it won? How do we get out?

I view taking drugs with a similar mindset. Everyone starts out taking recreational drugs with the idea that it is harmless fun. There can be no damage done since we can, after all, control it. We are the masters of this habit.

Oh, it has become a habit, an addiction. Suddenly things are not quite so rosy.

On a visit to a morgue with a policeman friend of mine (No. No names or countries) to view a deceased person. My friend took out a photograph to compare with the corpse. The body that was on the slab was a skeleton with skin stretched over it. The photograph showed a stunning model; she was eighteen in the photograph, vibrant, shapely and very much alive. She was nineteen on the slab.

One year. She started smoking cannabis because it was ‘harmless’ and non-addictive. Then, at a party after a few drinks, she took a couple of ‘lines’ of cocaine.

The plunge downhill from that was rapid. All her money went on drugs and nothing on food.

She had no exit strategy. The drugs took that option away from her. They took her life away, too.

One day another friend of mine asked me if I should care to go to a football match in Moenchen-Gladbach. Of course I said that I should love to go.

He was called Michael and was an avid Moenchen-Gladbach supporter. Something I should have thought about more deeply.

Within the week he appeared with three tickets to the UEFA Cup match where Moenchen were to play against Dundee United.

Once again, not thinking too deeply here, I asked a Scottish colleague at work, whom I knew to be an ardent Dundee supporter, if he was going to need his favours for the match. He was pretty glum. He had, he said, no tickets so, yes, I could borrow the woolly hat and scarf.

Surprise, surprise. There I was standing in the middle of thousands of Moenchen-Gladbach supporters waving my black and tangerine scarf and shouting “Dundee... Dundee...” to, at first, somewhat hostile looks.

By now I had realised that I was about to die so I was going to go out with something of a flourish.

Happily, everyone around me started to laugh and then they tried to drown me out—successfully, I might add!

Dundee won 2-0 and I was escorted out to the nearest bar and treated to all the orange juice I could drink.

[Michael had realised that I was teetotal and so bought me a ticket on the grounds that I drove them home! Plus, of course, the in-match entertainment.]

Exit strategy. Fight or flight. Faced with thousands to one there is only a vague idea of survival. Make the most of the time left and hope that something turns up.

We can’t always plan our lives in the way that we should like.

Sometimes we are overtaken by events, we need to be flexible. We need to think on our feet to make the most of whatever opportunity presents itself even if that opportunity is ‘Get out! Now!’

Writing is like that. We can have a great story in our minds. It is something that we really need to write, to get it out of our heads. Until we get to the end of the story and find that we have nothing to say. It all just peters out.

Depressing. Frustrating. What a waste of a great story.

I have said before and now I say it again. The only way to write is to practice. Keep writing until your fingers bleed. Write anything. Write ‘Blogs’, write letters to friends, write posts on ‘Facebook’.

When it comes to your story, your hard won piece of flowing prose, you need an end.

It is vital to have an end to your story.

Now you can write that magnificent beginning that will ‘hook’ the reader, now you can weave the tale magically through the whole story while you are aiming at that ‘end’.

If you don’t have that... well...