That Bloody Tear!
I have been away ‘working’. Five different ships, three cruise lines, seven flights, 13 different countries, a bunch of hotels, seven nights with Lyn, 11 shows, 27 laughs and one bloody tear.
A couple of months ago a taster pack for the book I have been writing about Dad and me was finally printed off. Thank you Lew. It was bound and sent to a handful of people to read: five people who I knew would be both honest yet tactful and whose opinion I greatly respect; two are old friends of my Dad, so they are guys I have known for most of my life; the others are people I have worked with over the years. I was fully prepared to wait for as long as it took for them to read and get back to me.
As it happens I got replies within days giving me pages of notes to go through, ideas to implement and thoughts to consider. One comment really hit home:
‘I’ve never been one for regrets but one, like everyone else who reads this, will be that I never met your Dad.’
That comment from Kevin blew me away.
While we are on the subject of these comments Richard Lewis, who produced a few TV shows my Dad was involved in, read the book and offered not only great advice but he included this line when describing my Dad:
‘The Mozart of the one liner.’
I was encouraged by this and decided this trip would see me read That Bloody Book. That is the working title for the book. I wrote it but I haven’t read it, not completely. I write a chapter or a vignette and send it over to Keith who offers me his usual encouragement and criticism, with the end goal of improving my writing. But still I have yet to sit down and read it all the way through.
This run of gigs was five weeks long which was plenty of time. It’s not like I’m busy.
It’s my book, just read it. What’s the worst that could happen?
Today as I type draft one of this week’s Classic Adams blog on the train back to Lyn’s I can sheepishly reveal that I finally read it this morning and started to make my changes at the airport, finishing them during the flight. I smile realising my homework ethic hasn’t changed from that of the mid to late eighties.
It was true what I wrote seventy one words ago, ‘it’s not like I am busy.’ But boy, do I know how to procrastinate. I am an avid reader, of anything, I’ll pack plenty of books for every trip and it’s true I won’t need all them but I never know what I might fancy reading next.
Read That Bloody Book.
During the first two cruises I got through Uncut and Rugby World magazines, a few articles cut out of the most recent The Week as well as Mark Radcliffe’s Thank You For The Days, Tishomingo Blues from Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block’s Burglar In The Rye. So we’ve established I am an avid reader but evidently not avid enough to peruse anything written by me.
Lyn joined me on cruise number three. She bought me Bob Mortimer’s latest novel, The Hotel Avocado, on her way through the airport but it would be just plain rude to read while she was with me. So as I headed to cruise number four on HollandAmerica Line’s Oosterdam I was halfway through a Lawrence Block Scudder mystery, Even The Wicked. Once finished with Block I moved on to Warren Zanes’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, a wonderfully insightful account of Springsteen’s Nebraska album.
It was while I sailed towards Malta on Oosterdam that I noticed I would be returning to this ship in a month’s time for its crossing of the Atlantic and I seized upon the chance to leave a dozen books in the Entertainment Directors’s office for future reading. To be fair that included ten copies of my first book Diary Of A Locked Down comedian which I hoped to sell onboard (or online, you can buy it here!).
When I landed in Stockholm I was forty pages shy of finishing the Nebraska book and panicked. I would have nothing left to read after this, what would I do?
I could just read That Bloody Book! READ THAT BLOODY BOOK!
Not yet! There is a wonderful library onboard all of Oceania’s vessels so that was my first stop and my arms were soon full with possibilities for my next choice. Would it be from James Lee Burke, Elly Griffiths, David Baldacci or Robert Crais? As is my way, I would read a chapter from each and a decision would be made. I started with The Wanted from Mr Crais. I didn’t make it to the others. As usual any story featuring Crais’s recurring character, Elvis Cole, is a page turner. I was hooked.
I finished that book in the tech booth as I waited to start my second show night of the cruise!
I woke up in the morning with a day of travel ahead of me and a choice: finish the Nebraska book or start That Bloody Book. I finished Zanes’s.
Now I was left with no choice. I’d yet another self imposed deadline so I rooted through my backpack and finally pulled out That Bloody Book. Plus one of my trusty four colour pens.
I turned to the first page and read the first paragraph. I hated it. I saw what needed to be changed to improve it and notes were made. But that was not my job. I was not reading it to make wholesale changes. I just had to read it. It has taken me a decade to write this book and during those years I have become a better writer, but it’s hard to tell when this may have happened. I just needed to read it. The timeline is all over the place and the tenses meander however there is a charm to these. I found myself laughing when you should laugh, thinking where appropriate and emotional, for two reasons.
Obviously, the first reason is I miss my Dad. But his influences have been flooding me recently. The books I read were all from authors my Dad introduced me to. The last book I read was about an musician my Dad first clued me in on. And that album the book was about was released just before Born In The USA which was the first album that Dad bought for me. So, yes, there was a bloody tear.
Oh, reason number two? The worst did happen. Not only did I like That Bloody Book…I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I know!
Comments 1
Yet another great one my friend