Jan Needle

Most  people use blogs on the Authors Electric site more or less non-politically, which is probably a good idea. However, there comes a time when politics seems impossible to avoid – such as now. Having been invited to do a guest post I thought I’d let myself go. Restraint? Tact? Good taste?

Bollocks!

The way I see it, Britain, and possibly the whole world, is moving towards a pre-fascistic state. In America we have Donald Trump, of whom the least said the better, but England, rather than Britain,  seems hell bent on catching up. My father would probably have disagreed, but I always assumed we were a pretty moral nation. Or as Tony Blair once put it (cue hollow laugh) ‘pretty straight’.

But what can  one make of a government that appears to be run by a man who does not apparently know the difference between truth and lies? Who has as his ’Sidekick’ a person who expects us to believe the way to get an eye test is to drive three dozen miles with a baby in his car. Presumably, if all goes well, his eyes are fine. If not – so what?

A government filled with placemen and incompetents who make even Chris Grayling seem reasonably sensible. A government so stupid they can promote said Grayling into another job that even his hapless peers recognise is beyond him.

Even as a novelist, you’d be hard pressed  to write it. Which is why  I wrote Lying Doggo.  It’s a scurrilous sort of cry of rage  and pain. I love England. I don’t want to see us going down the tubes. My parents, who were dirt poor, wanted me to grow up with standards. They made me sit a common entrance exam for grammar school, and when I just scraped in, spent all their money to keep me there. Just on the ‘extras’.

My mother sat up night after night sewing a fancy cord all around the edges of a Woolworths blazer into an approximation of the uniform  coat. My sister (reluctantly) let me use her best white jumper for playing cricket in. Cricket! Another country… she swore she’d kill me if I got it dirty from that silly egg-shaped ball.

When I thought of writing Lying Doggo I had long known that our Prime Minister had gone to Eton. As had half of his predecessors, some of whom had talent, as well as parents who could cough up 30 grand or more  a year.  I even knew that the Duke of Wellington (whom I had been taught was the archetypal English hero despite the fact that he was Irish) had said the school ’stuck a poker up my arse for four long years.’

So I researched a little more. I was a crap student at grammar school, and was thrown out after two terms in the sixth form, but I knew how to find things out. And what things. Fagging, homosexuality, world class snobbery, you name it. The secret society called Pop, which you could only join by invitation, a horde of servants at your beck and call, a uniform that any normal person would find ridiculous, and the Eton wall game. The  Eton wall game.  Look it up. I swear you won’t believe it.

Need to go on, is there? It’s another world, and it’s the world that has provided our ruling classes for about 400 years. It’s a disgrace, and the main motor of the disgrace which our country has become.

And we exported it. Giants of morality like Nigel Farage at home, schools that have modelled themselves on it slavishly all over the world.  Need I mention Rupert Murdoch?

So my little book, if it has a theme at all, is about the destruction of morality.

I found it quite amusing that when I tried to advertise it (both as an e-book and a paperback) Facebook rejected first one and then the second version that I tried. To find out why one is required to fill in a vast array of detail about pretty private things, which are not guaranteed to get the ad accepted if you agree to reveal them anyway. I did not. The final nail in the coffin of algorithms was surely driven in by Boris and his yes-men over this year’s education fiasco.

Can you imagine waking up to a midnight knock to find Dominic – fresh from Specsavers – standing on your doorstep for a little chat? The mind boggles.

So my book is a little raw, a little violent, and certainly not the sort of thing you’d want your auntie Nelly to be seen with in Waitrose.  It may not even be much cop for all I know, although Brendan Gisby suggests it’s up there with some of Dean Swift’s bitter squibs, and I know my mother would have loved it. She taught me all I know about such things.

I wrote it as part of a proposed small series called Covid Capers, designed to bring a bit of jollity in these troubled times. The first one was a merry micky take about the  beloved Swan of Avon, our Bill Shakespode, recast as a hack reporter for Ye Globe in Fleet Street, but this one ran away with me, perhaps.

I  blame Horus de Peperpott Paste-Shippam and the evil brain behind him, Gregor Goinn.

I’m flogging it at 99p in the hope enough people will share my pain. I’m not looking to be rich, I promise you. That’s not what writing’s for. 

 When Gregor Goinn and Horus Nicholae de Peperpott meet on their first day at Eton, they know they are made for each other. Horus is rich, conceited and utterly amoral, while Gregor is so twisted that he is known to everybody (including his own mother) as the Cockroach.

Within minutes they are in bed together – girls will come later – and soon they are planning a glittering future. Horus is going to be King of the World, while Gregor determines to be the hidden power behind the throne.

As true public schoolboys they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal – up to and including bloody murder…Any connection with a real public school or real people is clearly absurd! 

I started writing ‘Covid Capers’ to bring a bit of amusement to people (mainly myself) while Boris and Co proved what a world-beating country we are under his careful husbandry. Then it occurred to me pdq that husbandry was probably not a very apt word to bandy about in regard to Britain’s most famous marital disaster. He’s about to have another go soon if he’s to be believed. (Answers on a postcard, please.} Pity poor old Dildo, eh? It’s a dog’s life.

Anyway, the first Caper was a spoof of the life of Shakespeare that’s been sculling around inside my skull for years, on and off, It sees him as a junior hack on a paper let’s call Ye Globe, who has run off from Stratford to Fleet Street (an open sewer at the time, unlike now you understand) to get away from a local Stratford gel called Anne Hathaway. A rather pushy piece of business who has already had his ring upon her finger, so to speak.

I used to be a junior reporter myself, although none of the local lovelies would sink so low to even give me the time of day, so I felt Will Shagsper’s pain. (He was no great speller, young Will; perhaps it was a Midlands thing. He became Shakespeare later as the result of an early Elizabethan racist joke of the kind much loved by reporters, then as now). The way he fell into covering the love-contest dreamed up by King Lear was similar to the way I got my early stories.

Shakespeare, as well as being no speller, was also pretty shaky on anachronism. Although I’m the proud owner of a degree in drama from Manchester University I can’t remember the many and varied examples in his works, but suffice to say I had no hesitation in dreaming up some of my own. As a junior reporter, for example, he needed transport. I had only buses to get me around Portsea Island, and a lot of trouble getting back my expenses from the news editor, who disapproved of juniors who felt the need to eat and drink.

Will Shakespeare was luckier. He got a Norton Dominator, top of the range, and unlimited virtual gasoline. He also had the use of public telephones, all over the south of England. Otherwise, I can’t imagine how he would have interviewed all those famous and infamous men. Women too. Juliet, Desdemona, and of course dear Cordelia.

But after Covid Caper number one – Shakespeare, the Truth – things got a little darker in this country. ‘World beating,’ to the Prime Minister, obviously meant doubling up on everything, good or bad. How we English smirked as the others raced ahead of us. Under the tutelage of Boris and his murky little helper, we shot up the international league. Great Britain? Yes, yes, yes! Nobody is going to touch us!

And sadly, as so often, us British lapped it up. And I fell to wondering if Eton School might have had a hand in it. Read it up on Wikipedia and prepare to weep. It’s produced more prime ministers, and more world-beating weirdos, than all the other public schools put together. And all of them at a yearly entrance price that a family of five could live on very comfortably, year on year on year. Great, great men. David Cameron, who had a way with pigs, Nigel Farridge, who had a way with truth, Boris Johnson himself, who was President of Pop (look it up). And the Bullingdon Club.

It seems to me, although Lockdown may have made me jaded, that Britain (or let’s say England – one doesn’t want to be rude to our more stable neighbours) has pretty rapidly become the most corrupt democracy in the western world. I’ve sailed to the Isle of Man many times, but I sure as hell don’t qualify to live there. British Virgin Islands? I’m not a virgin, and probably never have been.

Britain stinks in the eyes of many, and it stinks of money. They say Putin’s going to buy it to retire to. He’d surely fit in well. Might even make a good prime minister.

So Eton, then. Where it all began. Where, in my fevered imagination, Horus de Peperpott Paste-Shippam (or something) met Gregor Goinn (not Coming, that might be libellous) and set out on a journey of corruption that the toffs of Eton might even recognise; and surely approve of…)

My friend Jean Hobson, an artist, volunteered to do a cover for me, and my son Matti pitched in with all the techie stuff. If I go to prison, they can come with me, for the company.

A fair few people have read it, and some think it really hits the spot. Others, like Matti’s mum for instance, think it’s too raw and vile to even want to finish it.

I’m not so sure. It was written in anger, and a sort of shame at being British at this moment in our island history. I really think that democracy is living on the edge, and not just here. Look around you, as the TV show used to say. Look at Trump, and Erdogan, and Putin, look at Poland, look at Israel. Need I go on?

Covid Capers was a nice idea, and I’m not planning to stop. Bill Shagsper’s off the Scotland as soon as I’ve got my quill pen sharpened up, and there’s more fun to be had, both sweet and bitter. They’re all pitched at the bottom end of Kindle pricing, and will appear in paperback as well.

One critic compared me with Swift, which was very nice of him. My favourite Swift novella is The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders, in which an arsehole comes to London town.

Cool.

My idea of rewriting the life of the sainted Bard has already met a few glitches. The Kindle, at 99p, looks fine, and the paperback, costing a hardly extortionate £4.25, looks even better. But on the Amazon page, I failed to point out it is a comedy – featuring Will Shakespeare as a lowly junior reporter on Ye Globe!

I’ve already had some letters saying that he was not like that at all! Judging from his later writing he was not a hapless drunken hack, but the greatest playwright of all time, despite the odd fact that he couldn’t even spell his own name.

I called Anne Hathaway Anne Hathadose as well, which didn’t help at all. Some people thought it bordered on the rude, though God knows how they would have survived Elizabeth England. Hathaway, Hathadose, Shagsper, Shaksper, Shaxpur, who gave a flying fart?

I could say that the pace of modern publishing is no great help, but I doubt that it would get me off the hook. When I recall that my first book – Albeson and the Germans – did not fall into my hot little hands until a year or more after Andre Deutsch bought it, and ‘Shakespeare – the Truth’ was turned around in three to four weeks from finishing typing to having it in paperback and in Kindle version, it’s mind-boggling.

It’s madly efficient, but it also means days off from writing are a thing of the past. I finished the first Covid Caper (Shakespeare) about a month ago, and I’ve already had to start his second adventure as an intrepid reporter on Ye Daily Globe. Momentum is the name of the game, so there’ll be at least one more (non Shakespeare) book before Will goes to Scotland to clash with bloody King Macbeth.

I can’t tell you too much about Scotch on the Rocks yet, except that it’s equally mad. And after that, I’ve got more adventures for poor Will.

Enough of whining. Here’s a bit of Chapter 2 of the first book, in which young Bill meets King Lear – and gets a very sore arse. Driving a motorbike, you see. He always was a great one for anachronisms was our William…

Chapter 2   

A married man, Will Shagsper quickly learned, had to have a trade. No good at gloving, as Mr H told everyone in the neighbourhood, not good at anything at all if you asked his wife – within the sheets or out.

            ‘He’s like an octopus that’s lost an arm or two,’ she told her best friend, Gossip Gertrude. ‘How many does an octopus have anyway?’

            ‘Just the none, but good long legs,’ said Gertrude. ‘And their eggs! Would feed an army an ostrich egg would. Oh, octopus. What’s one of those when it’s at home?’

            ‘I suppose we could ask Will,’ said Anne, resentfully, patting her growing belly. ‘If he knows nothing else he knows things no other bugger knows nothing about, Gertrude.’

            And rude Gert smirked, ‘Like putting things in holes. Babies don’t grow on trees do they?’

            ‘He thinks they do,’ said Anne. ‘First time I gave him a hand in bed he thought that I was milking him to feed the baby! He’s a jackanapes.’

            ‘Gross,’ said Gertie. ‘But you’re Mrs Shagsper now, ain’t you? Your salad days are over, duck.’

            ‘Don’t call me duck, it’s low.’

‘We’re in the Midlands, though, get used to it. You’re Mrs S that’s all there is about it. Sorry.’

‘You bloody will be, duck. I’m Hathaway, and that’s an end to it.’

            ‘But you’re married to him! Ain’t you?’

            ‘Yeah, okay, alright, I must admit it. But a Shagsper I will never be, my friend. Shagsper. Shagsper! What sort of effin name is that?’

            ‘But—’

            ‘And he hasn’t got a job, and he hasn’t got no prospects, and he’s almost young enough to be my bleedin’ son. If it hadn’t been for them three witches I wouldn’t have touched him with a ten foot pole.’

            ‘Three witches? What three witches?’

            ‘That week in Scotland on the charabang. I got pissed one night and I met them at the crossroads. They said they’d tell me fortune for a groat.’

            ‘Bloody Ada, you were drunk, weren’t you? What did they say?’

            ‘I asked them where the lads hung out, up Scotland way. Where I could get a crafty peep behind the sporran. They went on and on and on.’

My first ever use of Facebook ads finished a short time ago. I can’t be sure exactly when, because they time them in some American West Coast Time and I couldn’t really work out when the ad would appear in any given zone. I went to grammar school, see = I can’t do sums, only French.

Anyway, I hope lots of people saw it, and lots of people downloaded the freebie of The Blood Hound. If you missed it it’ll cost you a gigantic 99p (or cents) and I really think it’s worth it. Some people love it, and some find it too bleak and horrible for words.

Be interested to read your review on Amazon…
amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WFC956Z

It took the Covid lockdown to wake me up, it seems. I realised I hadn’t written on this page for so long I’d forgotten I had it. Written plenty of other things in the meantime – novels, novellas, scripts, even the odd letter – but my old mother always used to say I was a lazy sod. She was a woman though, and they have a different attitude to work. They do it, we think about it…

She’d probably be quite pleased that I was moved to do this because I had something to give away, however. Generous was Dot. And she was not cynical enough to realise the freebie was just a way of getting people to remember my existence. (Oh yes she was!)

It’s a novella called The Blood Hound, and it’s free on Amazon for a couple more days. Not much of a gift, you might think, because it’s only 99p for the rest of the time. I priced it so low because a few of my normal prepub readers think it’s too unpleasant to inflict on Joe Public. It recounts, in fictional form, the true story of a barber in Blackburn, Lancs, who raped and murdered a seven-year-old neighbour called Emily Holland, whose grave and memorial still exist in the local cemetery. It is a gruesome tale, and a weirdly troubling one. The governor of the jail where William Fish was hanged described him as the gentlest prisoner he had ever known.

I, obviously, think the unpleasantness is a vital part of the book. I’ve always found it worrying how black and white murders come out in the wash of fiction, and I wanted to contrast the genuine vileness of Fish’s act with the fact that he was a loved and loving father and husband. He said himself he did no know why he had done it – he had ‘not intended to’ – and his wife said she had forgiven him, whatever that might mean.

But the fact remains it is unpleasant. And maybe the people who hate it are right. It has many vociferous supporters, however, and maybe they are right as well. What? Is this possible? Who knows.

Anyway it’s up on Kindle, it’s free if you get your finger out, and it’s also available in paperback from the same Amazon site. The Scottish writer Brendan Gisby described it as ‘the finest piece of reportage since Capote’s In Cold Blood.’ I hope he’s right.

amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WFC956Z