Then came what friend and co author John referred to as boyish exuberance better known as enthusiasm for our product.
Yes I had in my hands a mock-up of our book on Le Paradis Massacre. And it's so good to think that we now have an almost finished product with just a few tweaks. We have the final read through to do and then we can get onto things like selling and promoting the book. Watch this space as they say. I'm so pleased to say that at last we are on the home straight.
Myself and John celebrated by having our photo taken with the mock up book. You could say we are the Little and Large of the literary world. I have used the photo that makes John look smaller and me look taller!
When we are together it does remind me of one of the great stories from the book where Bill O'Callaghan carried the injured Bert Pooley to relative safety. Bill was about my size and Bert was about John's. We aren't going to do a re-enactment though.
We will be selling the book at talks and presentations and are looking to have a launch/signing, but all these things are to be sorted out in the near future. We will of course sell further afield and post out copies.
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Please please please note that this isn't a racist remark in any way whatsoever.
I used to enjoy ringing up Sky TV every time my contract was up. I had a chat with the person at the other end who were usually based in either Edinburgh or was it Glasgow?
It usually ended with my receiving a decent offer and sometimes this was lower than the previous years.
Now the whole thing has gone to pot. Every time I phone up I speak to somebody with a thick Indian accent. Problem is I cannot understand most of what they say. They talk too fast and by the time I have finished I have no idea what I've agreed to. I end up agreeing to things just to stop the phone call - does this sound familiar?
I looked it up and Sky seems to have call centres all over the place and your call is answered by the first available person. I would phone back but again am concerned that I would just be talking to somebody else I couldn't understand.
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Received a strange set of papers in the post on Thursday. They were addressed to the other four fifths and were for insuring her van. They came from a reputable insurance company. I phoned them up just in case this was a fraud or a scam. Having been the victim of a scam in the past I am now weary of giving out any details over the phone.
The person I spoke to was thankfully British so I could understand them. They were very weary of what details they gave me and I was similarly weary. They have reported the matter to their fraud department and I have reported it to the police just in case.
Don't you just love it when you have to waste a couple of valuable hours on something like this when that time could be much better spent?
Oh and for the record, we do not and never have had a van. One of my big problems is now being suspicious of everyone and everything, never knowing what is real and what is a con.
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I kid you not but one of the would-be entrepreneurs on Dragons' Den on Thursday was called Titi Bello. I find it hard to believe that they kept a straight face when they said "Hello Titi."
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We have been watching the Netflix serial One Day which veers from the pretty good to the pretty awful but somehow drags you into the relationships between the characters.
It's an interesting concept of following two main characters on the same day each year. The problem is the action and relationships change during the year and you never see that. So for instance the headmaster of a school pays the main female character, who is a teacher, a compliment and then we flip forward a whole year where they are having a full on relationship.
Similarly the same character is living quite happily with her boyfriend. Flip forward a year and they are taking chunks out of each other.
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I'm currently reading the biography of Robert Oppenheimer ahead of seeing the film. It's a well written book and I've just got to the part where he has moved to study in Cambridge, England, having previously studied at Harvard which just happens to be in Cambridge in the USA. It's near Boston and we went there once. I must look out the photos.
Trying to put photos in order is another of my tasks. It's one that will take a long time as they are everywhere and I'm sure many have been lost, but it's something I want to do and I would love to post a few in the future as I look back.
Now the Le Paradis book is almost done and dusted I can turn my attention to finishing my autobiography. Another big task.
One of the dragons on Dragons' Den - Peter Jones- said that every year for the past 40 years he has made an annual list of things to do and achieve. In many ways we are similar in that respect although it is thought that he is a billionaire and I most certainly am not. But at least we have the same first name.
I often think about how the dragons can possibly take on bits of so many companies without spreading themselves very very thinly. Answers on a postcard as they say.
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I thought I was pretty well up on 60s music but on my Facebook feed came a song from a band I had never heard of called Grass Roots.
I know some of you will now be saying " oh goodness me and he prides himself on his knowledge of 60s and 70s music and he hasn't even heard of Grass Roots."
Anyway I listened to their song entitled "Live For Today" with it's message which you might be surprised to hear is that we shouldn't worry about tomorrow and should live for today. My counter to that is tomorrow always comes although some would argue the opposite and say tomorrow never comes. Live for Today might be a good mantra but then they go and spoil it all by putting a song on the B side of that single entitled Depressed Feelings which I feel is something of a contradiction in terms. They also have a song called "Midnight Confessions" which might involve somebody who lived for today but then found they had depressed feelings.