But first let me do the adverts. I'm often asked to mention coming events in my blog and am only too happy to do so. There's a couple coming up.
Woodcote Sheltered Housing complex in Firs Road is holding a coffee morning in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support on Wednesday 27th September from 10 am until midday. All welcome.
The ice house at Ladybelt Country Park will be open as part of the Norfolk Heritage Events. This will be from 11 am until 4 pm on Sunday 10th September. If you've never been to the park, it's well worth a visit and I'm assured that there will be cake! Parking can be a problem there but on this day there will be additional spaces available.
Apologies to my readers who don't live in Norfolk as the above will mean nothing to you.
As DJs say that's the shout outs sorted. So on with the blog. Let's talk about Ken Dodd (and why not?) I never got to see Dodd on stage but I have watched a few of his shows on television and You Tube and I chuckled uncontrollably. The man was so so funny.
We mentioned him to our American friends on a Skype call and they have never heard of him. I told them to look him up on You Tube. Doddy was legendary for "ending his shows early" - usually about 1 am. His shows were often so long that it had been known for a theatre to turn the lights out on him and he still continued.
So why am I mentioning Ken Dodd who died a few years ago? Well he left hundreds of notebooks full of comments and jokes and facts about his life. Before he died he asked his wife Ann to destroy all of them. She couldn't bring herself to do this and now they are going on display along with other memorabilia in the Museum of Liverpool.
So I've added that as a place to go on our next visit to Scouseland along with Strawberry Fields (or Strawberry Field as it is called in some places) which has been turned into a park and gardens. For those not aware, Strawberry Fields was formerly a Salvation Army Children's Home and was where John Lennon went to cause a bit of mischief. Lennon wrote one of his best loved songs about the place "Strawberry Fields Forever." There's a lovely line in that song when Lennon sings "And nothing to get hung about." This was a reference to his Aunt Mimi who brought him up. She was the sister of his mother Julia. She told him that if he kept making a nuisance of himself by climbing the gates to get into the place he would end up getting "hung." Lennon's retort in the song was simple "Mimi it's nothing to get hung about," although technically he could become a victim of the grammar police as it should be hanged and not hung, but that's splitting hairs and the line "And nothing to get hanged about" just wouldn't work.
Yesterday I mentioned the play "Call Me John" and the discussions that took place afterwards and the fact that I stood with two friends in a car park thinking about how and why we record our lives.
One of the themes of the play was how people returning from the Second World War kept their memories locked inside them. I know this only too well from speaking to families during my research for our book on the Le Paradis Massacre. The number of times families came across artefacts after a war veteran had passed on. "We had no idea that he had served there/we had no idea he had been killed there," were common comments.
So the three of us discussed whether if we had World War Three those serving would keep their memories locked up inside and I think the answer to that is absolutely no. Today we share virtually every aspect of our lives somewhere. If we don't put our entire existence on social media, we write a diary or just chat to people.
I think my writing comes somewhere into the obsessional now. Fifty years of a daily diary, over three years of a daily blog, thousands of articles, almost 100 e magazines etc etc. I never get tired of putting virtually my every thought down on paper. I love sourcing information as well.
Every day I write this blog, which I hope gives an insight into my life and the kind of person I am. If it doesn't I'm not achieving what I set out to do.
And as Ann Dodd has found, we just shouldn't destroy memories. I have no idea why I decide to put everything down on paper or on computers but sometimes we just do things without thinking about them. Maybe it's a reaction to things around us or maybe its just a wish to communicate.
I must admit that last night I allowed myself a beer and a touch of celebration because at 5.15 pm I finished the book on the Le Paradis Massacre. It's co-written by my mate John and I think we've done a pretty good job with it. In fact I would go as far as to say I'm proud of it and I hope that somewhere the 97 killed in the massacre will be looking down on us and will share our pride and sense of achievement. The book and our website are our way of remembering them
I won't pretend that writing the book has been easy. Indeed at times I despaired and it would have been easy to give up. When we came up with the idea of turning the website into a book it was a tough decision deciding what to put in and what to leave out. Then we managed to get a publisher interested. I won't name them but just think of a saying where one item is mightier than another and you will probably know who I am talking about. At first they said they were excited by the project (their words and not mine), then they said it would dovetail beautifully in with their existing portfolio. I subsequently had long telephone chats with one of their commissioning editors and discussed deadlines and photographs and other things and even a monetary advance.
Then I received an e-mail stating that they had changed their mind and wouldn't be able to publish the book. Apparently all of a sudden it didn't fit in. I just fell short of sending them a very rude reply. Let's just say I wasn't amused. We had rejections from a number of other publishers which left me feeling even more angry. Here was a story that needed to be told. Other books have been written about the massacre but ours was more about the people rather than the technicalities. It's a damn good story and I hope it's well written and it annoys me when I go round book shops (and here I'm going to be a bit blunt) and see the heap of crap that is churned out under the name of literature.
We decided to keep going with the book and it has gone through a number of different versions with lots of re-writes. Now apart from a final read through to iron out any final mistakes, it's ready to go. We will be self financing the project initially and getting it printed locally. We will be working out a cost for each book. Watch this space as they say.
Today is going to be another busy one. Firstly we will be going over to Wymondham for the 50 plays in 500 minutes event which I have mentioned before and then popping over to Great Ellingham to see a display of local history put together by one of our volunteers at the Norfolk Family History Society. I love this kind of event and admire the amount of work put in to make them possible. I also always learn things that I never knew before and sometimes get some very good ideas.
Enough for today.