Writer’s Den

Being the successful, enigmatic, prolific sort of author that I am, a lot of people ask me, “Just what sort of environment does a successful, enigmatic, prolific sort of authors like yourself do his best work in?” Okay, so maybe nobody has ever, or will ever, ask me that, but I recently stumbled across a couple of photos I took  of my “office” over a year ago while writing the 2nd Draft of Marx and Re-Marx. Here, for your pleasure, are the pictures with annotations for aspiring scribes.

1) Letters from potential interviewees.

2) Completely unrelated university project tempting me away from the task in hand.

3) Rotten apple core in a bowl with fork.

4) Better written books on similar subjects.

5) Completely unrelated, diverting, but still better written, book by Louis Theroux.

6) Mobile Phone.

7) Annotated copy of first draft with schoolboy errors pointed out to me in big red letters.

8 ) Big file of notes, in no order what so ever.

9) Socks.

10) Cuddly Lamb (Emma)

Marx Goodies

In the build-up to the release of my book, Marx and Re-Marx, I set up a Facebook page that was intermittently updated with links to cool Marxian offerings. It seems a shame to confine them to one virtual location, so here they are!

 

Director Allan Arkush offers his opinion of  A Night at the Opera on Trailers From Hell – CLICK HERE

 

Harpo Marx in his first film role and ironically, given that this was a silent movie, his only speaking part.

 

Groucho sings Lydia. Perfection.

 

American news cameras were present when the BBC recorded their first Flyhweel recreation.

 

Bill Marx, son of Harpo, recently launched his own website which features some very cool historical curios – CLICK HERE

 

A Night at the Opera’s famous contract scene, the roots of which can be traced back to Flyhweel, Shyster and Flywheel.

 

Gummo Marx’s Patented Packing Rack – CLICK HERE

Groucho and Me on the Radio

Last night I popped over to BBC Tees in order to plug Marx and Re-Marx on The Bob Fischer Show. Bob was great as always and if you’d like to hear the interview skip to around the one hour mark when the following link begins to play. Marvel as I just about manage to hide the fact that I have forgotten almost every date, name and concept involved with the book!

LINK

Up For Grabs: Marx and Re-Marx

It’s been a long time coming, but copies of my Marx Brothers book Marx and Re-Marx are now shipping from both Amazon.co.uk for Europe and directly fromBearManorMedia for American orders. If you like it, tell your friends, and I look forward to hearing your reviews!

… I think.

 

Happy Birthday to (Illegible) Me!

Although the two-year anniversary of this blog passed without ceremony in June of this year, the site’s URL is coming up for its second yearly renewal and so now seems as good a time as any to celebrate the fact that I’ve managed to stick with it for so long. Despite the fact that updates have a tendency to be a little sporadic around these parts, what I have to show for two years work are 92 published posts and just over 27,000 hits.

The development of this blog seems to have coincided with a time of great time of change in my life. Two years have passed and in that time I have graduated university, almost had a book published, worked in television, met Peter Sallis, appeared at one international and one domestic conference, produced a radio package for the BBC, commenced work as a university lecturer and, on top of all that, I’ve moved house twice.

Please forgive the self-congratulatory nature of this particular post, but I’m actually quite amazed by the fact my easily distracted brain has been able to stick to one thing for so long. Even more amazing is the fact that I’m not completely embarrassed by some of the things that have been whacked up here, even if all anyone ever seems to want to read is one particular post on the great Grandpa Elliot.

In the immediate future I’m hoping to do a bit of a redesign of the whole site soon, and there is some exiting stuff coming up that I’m not quite ready to announce yet…

Betty

Moving house recently has turned up a lot of treasures long thought lost. A Gordon the Gopher hand puppet, old greetings cards, my Blue Peter badge – but nothing quite compares to my unearthing an old blue writing book that contains, squeezed between some rather awful pubescent fan-fiction, a homework assignment interview with my Grandmother.

I remember this piece of work fairly well; it was given either late on in primary school or early on in secondary school, and we were all asked to interview an ‘older person’ about the changes between ‘now’ and ‘the olden days.’ What follows is my transcription of a tape recorded interview I conducted with my maternal grandmother. The tape is long gone but I’ve typed the hand-written text up, pretty much the way I wrote it save for correcting some grammatical and spelling errors. Parkinson, Theroux or Murrow I was (and am) not, but in my defence I think we were all given a set of questions to ask.

 

Tell us a bit about your background.

I’m from a place called Sengenith in South Wales. I was born in 1924 – 15th of June; so that makes me seventy-seven. My mother was called Katie, my father Guillem, and brother Tommy. 

 

Tell us about the place you were born.

The place I was born was a pit village.

 

When did you go to school?

I went to school when I was three, I used to follow the other kids and my mother asked if I could stop there.

 

What were your hobbies?

When I was fourteen/sixteen, the war started. There wasn’t much of hobbies or things. I used to go to the park with my friend in London. I had to work, I was too young to go into the forces, so my first job was in tailoring at fourteen. I did that for two years, then I went to a place called Dunstable to work in a factory ‘till I was eighteen.

 

Where did you live as a teenager?

I lived in London, in North Kensington, and there were two flats over a shop. I lived with my friend and her mother. I lived with Mrs Dyer and they had five children.

 

What happened around Christmas?

Because of the war, the people I lived with used to keep a bantam hen, and at Christmas they thought they would kill it for Christmas Dinner. So, Christmas day we were all sitting round the table and she brought the chicken out and they all started to cry, saying, “Poor Percy!” 

Nobody would touch it.

 

What was the popular music and entertainment at the time?

Just wartime songs. You could go to the theatre but we never had the money. We used to go to the pictures a lot – to see musicals and war pictures.

 

What kind of things did you buy?

Like I said, we didn’t have money. To get clothes you had to have a ration book and if you had the points you didn’t have the money and if you had the money you didn’t have the points. Couldn’t win.

 

What were your main pastimes?

Going dancing.

 

What did you listen to on the radio?

We didn’t have it on very much ‘cause it run on a battery or an accumulator and you had to get it charged. We listened to music and comedy shows and sketches.

 

What was the difference between what girls were taught compared to boys?

Apart from arithmetic, boys did woodwork – the girls did cookery and sewing. We were in separate buildings.

 

Not exactly a riveting interview, I grant you. But there is something above that seems to capture it’s subject; she’s quiet, has some good stories, but is a little shy when confronted with a tape recorder. There has been a word processed and printed out copy of this same interview knocking about my old house for a while now, but there is something about finding my original transcription that is very special. Idiot that I am, the original audio tape is long since lost, and the notes, being only one generation removed, are the closest thing I have. 

Betty died about five or six years ago now. We were close and I still miss her. I wish I could remember the teacher who gave this homework; just to say thank you for inadvertently helping me to keep a little piece of her alive.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

Here it is then, the first re-post. This is pretty much as it was on my Myspace blog but with added notes that tell the story that has unfolded since that posting. Enjoy!

“My house … is filled with this crap
Shows up in bubble wrap
Most every day
What I bought on eBay”

– Ebay Song by Weird Al Yankovic

Ebay is my vice of choice, or at least it was until I realised that each month’s paycheck was rapidly being reduced to a pittance after my compulsive deductions. The same applies to all online shopping but in the past ebay in particular has helped to fuel my apsergers-like obsessions. For your perusal here I present.

The Top 5 Useless Thing I Bought On Ebay

5) Ticket From the Premier of ‘Take Her, She’s Mine’

Not a particularly good film by most accounts, in fact I haven’t even seen it. But this ticket was in the same room as James Stewart at one point and isn’t torn! It must be one of very few in this world and I’d wager the only one in England.

Cost: Records lost to the sands of Ebay but around £8 inc p+p

4) Winnie the Pooh Talking Record Set With Book

James Stewart + Winnie the Pooh = Classy

Please believe me when I say this is cool and is one of the many James Stewart records I have snapped from the clutches of capitalist ebay hoarders. This has been in my possession for three months. I have yet to listen to it.

Note: As this is a re-post and some time as past I can now say that I have listened to this record and yes it is cool.

Cost: About £24 including p+p

3) Roger Rabbit in 3-D, Issue One

I had wanted some 3D specs for a while as I had downloaded some videos of Disneyland that required the glasses to view correctly (Hole, Deeper, Digging) so this made sense to me. If I’m going to pay for some specs I may as well get a cool comic to go along with them.

When they arrived they barely fit my head. Honestly! You would think they were made for children or something!

Cost: £1.04 + £1.60 p+p

2) Aeroplane Monthly Magazine, OCTOBER 1979, Volume 7, No.10

This one may seem a very odd purchase but take a good look at the cover stories and you will notice that this is just another in my long list of James Stewart related purchases. There are only four pages that interest me but the photos are great. In fact this is contains the only photograph I know of showing James Stewart actually in flight. This justifies the expense, honestly.

Cost: £2 + £1 p+p

1) Vincent Price’s Face!

Look at this, an object of true beauty. I am told the cast was taken for the movie Dead Heat, one of Price’s later roles. It isn’t original or anything, in fact it is one of many casts taken from the same mould but how could I resist? It’s so cool. I could astound my family and friends with my amazing talking piece. As it turned out most people were freaked out by the cast and many thought I had stolen his death mask or something.

Edit: My Vincent Price Head was mentioned on radio some time after posting. He is still a celebrity from beyond the grave! I’ll see if I can get the permission to post the clip at some point in the future.

So there you have it. Nothing to extravagant but it all adds up, trust me on that. I don’t know why I need this stuff but I do, perhaps I have convinced myself one day it will become useful. Can you imagine the crap lying around my house by the time I hit forty? This vice is probably just going to get worse. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m just going to…err…check my email…