What's in a name?

The past 2 days have been spent working on Act which has romped along fairly well. But I also thought that now that Murphy had been named it was high time that the other family characters were given names.
And so I have the main players.....

NICK and KATE, and their 3 daughters - SARAH, BELLA and SCARLETT.

However, I realised that I didn't have a surname for the family - so, for convenience, I keep jotting the surname down as The Nickkates. Please read on, dear reader.......

A dog called...MURPHY

Yesterday (Sunday) we all sat down to Sunday lunch and I instigated a rather heated Refugees discussion about name of the dog at the centre of the story. Whilst we were tucking in, I instigated a SECRET ballot – I handed out little bits of paper to which everyone had to tick against.....
....dog name A,
....dog name B,
....ANOther dog name.
Unfortunately and sadly our dawgs were unable to vote.

I had instinctively gone for name A but I was interested in the Refugees’ opinions. When the secret ballot papers were returned to me – no Electoral College at Refugee Towers – we had a 4 to 1 majority for dog A being called MURPHY. (Dog B was Murdoch and Mrs R was the lone dissenting voice) And if anyone thinks that I may have nobbled the young refugees I have to say that they were not bribed by offers of strawberry laces or Green & Black’s choc or iphone!

I also have the title of the book but I can’t yet reveal it (as it will give away a lot away) so I’ll refer to the book just as ‘MURPHY’. I also have a visual of MURPHY (the dog, not the book title) as a lurcher-sheepdog-setter-mongrel, wirey but shaggy, with foxy yet floppy ears, black and charcoal and grey and cream with padded feet and twinkly eyes with a hint of steel!? But then again I do need some new glasses. But my trusted illustrator (Mrs R) may see him differently – yes, Murphy’s definitely male.

More plotting - Act 1, and into Act 2 next week

I have taken nearly 3 days to roughly sketch out the basic intricacies of the plot and characters.

If the complexities of Act 1 are important to get right, then Act 2 should be a relative romp. With the Act 1 situation set and the characters hopefully well defined and the 6th character introduced and offering a twist, we can then be propelled forward into a rollercoaster of events throughout Act 2.

At the end of Act 2 the main 2 characters will reach a stage whereby their fate is linked irrevocably and must be resolved in Act 3. At the conclusion of sketching Act 1 I was fairly clear as to how this Act 3 resolution would occur, but there are some issues around Act 2/Act 3 that need surmounting.

I need a head-clearing weekend to sort out some novel issues.

The basic plot starts to unfold - Act 1

With my small sheaf of A4 sheets with scrawled notes and my concertina paper laid out on my desk, I began to sketch out the preliminary plotline of the book.

As with previous screenplay plotting I envisage the story having 3 acts – in classic fashion. Act 1 is always the most difficult to get right; although I see the ‘situation’ clearly – London family transported to a totally different environment – there is a great deal to be set down in the matter of the various plotpoints and the secondary and extraneous characters to be introduced and explained.

Whilst the 5 family members – so far unnamed – are present in most scenes in Act 1 and can be introduced gradually, the minor characters are speedily introduced; at the same time the plot has to be pushed along when the 6th major character, the (as yet also unnamed) dog, is revealed towards the conclusion of Act 1.

As I wrote out each plot point in Act 1 I started to envisage each of the major characters in visual and verbal terms.

The novel Family

With the 15 ‘chapters’ sketched out (on pages of A4) I’ve turned to the family at the heart of the story.

For reasons of a change of work circumstances, the (so-far unnamed) family moves from inner-city London to the wilds of the North Yorkshire Moors. They move into a dilapidated house in a small village and they struggle somewhat to settle into their new environment. That would be difficult enough but they then take on a pet, which completely turns their lives upside down.

The family includes 3 daughters (ages not yet fixed but in the range of 4 to 14), each with strong and different characters. Now, eagle-eyed readers might notice that The Refugees are a family of 5 with 3 young daughters), BUT....I wish to make it very clear that the novel’s family of 5 with 3 young daughters bears MINIMAL resemblance to my Refugees.

War is Hell, War Weekend is Purgatory

I really don’t want to publicise War Weekend any more than it’s received so far, but this year’s weekend was the worst that we’ve suffered. It wasn’t just the crowds – that seemed larger than ever, and the scale of events – that not only engulfed Great Bickering but also outlying villages - and the inconvenience of being hemmed in your street – I had to dismantle a barrier to collect two of the Refugees from York but....the pure scale of invasion of privacy by preening, self-satisfied, conceited WarWeekenders.

I’m not really against people dressing up in clothes for ‘fun’ but dressing up in military and quasi-military uniforms and pretending they’re clearly someone that they’re not, but.....some of the people who parade and flaunt themselves over this bizarre weekend are ripe for psychological evaluation. For example, why would anyone transform himself into a WW2 squaddie – with guns/grenades/ribbons/medals – or even a Nazi stormtrooper in FULL regalia? Rifles, grenades, Nazi insignia, ribbons, medals and more? This year the nearby town of Levisham was transformed into the French village of Le Visham and was then ‘captured’ by Nazis. What next year – a hospital full of amputees, the Luftwaffe strafing the railway station or even concentration camp victims!?

As a wonderful neighbour of ours – aged 94 – said to me yesterday, with great insight, “If there were a war this week, most of the people in this extravaganza would NOT want to be conscripted!”
I didn’t really want to include any photos but here are 3 examples....


On Saturday we were gridlocked for 4-5 hours as the ‘grand parade’ slowly snaked its way slowly through the town. Although the economy of the area is given a great financial fix by the influx of WW BUT the majority of Great Pickeringites dread the weekend, dislike the incomers and their gross behaviour and cannot wait for Monday...when the town returns to normal.

Now what do we do next year for War Weekend? Get out of town!!!

The horrors of War Weekend

Mayday! Mayday!
Our little town of GB is under siege from an army of GI’s, Tommys, Home Guard, Land Girls, Spivs, Coppers and Nazis! Great Bickering has a population in the region of 7000 but the hordes our pouring in to quadruple the number to about 30,000. If only there was someone, somewhere – of the stature of Mr Churchill – who could save us from the horrors of War Weekend!

Every year that we’ve lived in Great Bickering we have wishes that we were anywhere else but Great Bickering. This year we’ve failed again and we’ll have to tolerate the vehicles, the armoury and large number of people in a variety of uniforms completely taking over our town.

This morning whilst taking our girls to school I noticed a couple – man in army uniform, woman as a nurse – and their 2 children about 7 and 10 also in 40’s clothing. Why weren’t their children at school? And the main question.....just how bad will this year’s event be?

I love concertina computer paper

I am a literary luddite, and fairly happily so.

From my first sketch for Newsrevue in 1983, through sketches for radio and TV, via stand-up material for a couple of stand-up comedians, through episodes for a radio sit-com to a script doctor job on a screenplay, my physical act of writing method has not changed.

My desk contains.......
An A4 pencil – HB or H – which is regularly sharpened by my invaluable Westcott iPoint electric pencil sharpener. The pencil is always topped off with a perfectly weighted waving Jesus. When the pencil is sharpened down to about 3 inches it is then discarded. Definitely NOT biro or gel-pen and never straight into a computer!
A rubber eraser – preferable long and thin, which is now difficult to find. Definitely NOT a plastic eraser!
A stack of (used/scrap) A4 paper. And NEVER prisitine double-sided blank A4 paper.
A smaller stack of A4 concertina computer paper.

For me, born in the 50’s, there is something very early-years about writing in PENCIL on PAPER.
I started using concertina computer paper when I wrote my first, optioned screenplay: as the story unfolds so the story unfolds chronologically unfolds on concertina paper to reveal a wavy flow charting plot, characters and some snippets of dialogue. As the days and weeks stretch out a very ‘rough’ draft of concertina paper is replaced by a more ordered draft of concertina paper. And so it goes until I might have discarded 3 or 4 drafts. The final draft will then be used as a template from which to write the script.

Whereas the plotting stage may take 6-10 weeks, the first written draft of the script may take only 4-6 weeks. This may go through 3 or 4 improved drafts before transposing the script to computer using the best screenplay software - Movie Magic Screenwriter; though, in this case, for the novel, I’ll be using Microsoft Word software.

Simple!

Précising the chapters

The perceived literary wisdom is to...’write from experience’. Over the past 25 years that has not always been my experience. Whether writing stand-up material or satirising material for sketches I can recall that this was often a matter of extrapolating or inverting situations and stereotypes to make the comedy work.

This book throws up a couple of problems:
1. A great deal of the novel will come directly from my/our personal experience.
2. As I mentioned in last Friday’s blog I was never enthusiastic and confident about novel-writing, so I’m not sure how I can and will handle writing narrative.
These factors will become evident in the weeks ahead.

For now, I have 5 main (human) characters, I have a location, I have 15 chapter treatments and a nameless dog. This was followed by expanding upon the situations into a plotline for each chapter. This takes the form of staring at blank sheets of A4 along with intense thought whereby images and some dialogue formulate and then play like a film in my mind. Once an image or idea is transfixed and therefore feels right I go over it again and start to write sketchily and very fast – appending each idea or plotpoint with character notes and/or snippets of dialogue.

At this stage I’m fairly amazed, and quite heartened, that so much of the story is coalescing easily and quickly. My little grey cells seem to be in good physical shape.

A change of literary plan

Having thought extensively and made copious notes I’ve realised that the plotline is pregnant with further possibilities in the way of characters, scenes and dialogue.

So....much as I’d like to hand over lots of IOU’s to Mrs R for her possible full-colour and full-page illustrations, I’ve decided to alter and expand the form of the book. I now see that I have the fragments of a story that would be more suited to a children’s novella. In fact, I’ve now written out 15 thin sketches that would equate to 15 chapters – along with one or two illustrations per chapter. After all, one needs to feed a few of one's financial crumbs to one’s illustrator.

One of Mrs R’s recent works.....

And the title of my book is...

...Undecided. No, ‘Undecided’ is NOT the book title. I just haven’t decided the title from 3 or 4 provisionals, especially as one of the titles would be a dead giveaway.

Initially, I imagined that the book would be in the form similar to Shirley Hughes’s excellent books – e.g. Dogger, the Alfie series. Hughes’s books have intricate and colourful illustrations along with a fairly simple narrative.

My book has a simple plot that revolves around a family in North Yorkshire whose life is dramatically changed when they rescue a rather unique dog.

What, me, write a book!? With my literary reputation?

I’ve been a fully paid-up member of the Writer’s Guild for 25 years now but the ‘Yorkshire years’ haven’t quite covered my membership fees and literary lunches at The Groucho Club. So, I can’t really write that I’ve been a proper writer for a while now. All things must change.

For my 12 years writing comedy sketches for stand-up, theatre, radio and TV I was often asked if I wrote books. To which a reply might be...”What me, write a book!? Not so jolly likely!” It’s a mantra I’ve continued to repeat....until recently. And now......

Having mentioned at the beginning of the summer that I intended to write 'Murphy the ******' today is the day to put pencil to paper in earnest.

So, I’ll begin to blog the progress of 'Murphy', whilst also reflecting upon my southerner-up-north posts.

Midsummer Day....more like Midwinter's Day!

It is Saturday the 21st June and it is officially Midsummer’s Day. Mrs R’s folks arrived for lunch and, with some disbelief, Mrs R laid a fire for which she has a marvellous talent.

By the time lunch was completed we retired to the sitting-room where the fire was roaring. We all sat around the fire warming ourselves....and wondering if and when global warming would reach North Yorkshire.

The stork has delivered...16 (or 19) swallow babies

Despite the lousy weather and marauding pigeons we seem to have a bumper crop of swallow babies at Refugee Towers.
In the main (Swallow) Barn, there are 10 young.
In the garage, there are 6 young.
In the shed attached to the garage, there are 3 young.

Sadly, 3 young seem to have fallen from their nests and we are left with 16.

Well, Dr Johnson, I am not tired of London

Sadly, my penultimate uncle, Vic, died last week. This was a relief both to him and to my aunt Audrey who had suffered to see him rapidly deteriorate in the past few months.

As a result, I made the journey back to London for the day for Vic’s funeral. Though we’d kept in touch by phone and, ironically we’d arranged to visit them this summer, I hadn’t seen them since I’d help them move into sheltered accommodation just before we moved up to Yorkshire. It seemed that I was the only family member to attend the funeral.

It was a delight to see Audrey; she may be incapacitated by leg problems and poor sight but she remains mentally sharp with a wicked sense of humour. The service, both in English and Hebrew, at Golders Green was conducted well and there was much support for Audrey from her wide circle of good and warm friends. And it made me realise just how much ‘Londoners’ are a sociable and cohesive tribe.

The first thing I said to Mrs R when I returned to Refugee Towers was, “I’d really like to go back to live in London”.

Unbridled sex at Refugee Towers

After a delayed arrival of our batch of swallows – probably weather-related – I‘ve made a rough body count of birds nesting happily at Refugee Towers.
In the main (Swallow) Barn, there are 3 pairs.
In the garage, there are 2 pairs.
In the shed attached to the garage, there is 1 pair.

Amidst unbridled ‘activity’ from the swallows we await to see just how many young these 6 pairs produce. Now, if anyone would provide us with closed-circuit cameras!? Oh, that may be a bit voyeuristic!

An unexpected addition to the family!

Last week, after IS’s Birthday, Mrs R decided to take the young Refugees to groovy York to the RSPCA to see if they could replace our much-loved but departed rat sisters (Crystal and Pearl) with a new pair of young rescue rats. I should have known better when I wished them, 'bon voyage and happy rat hunting'.

They returned 3 hours later leaping and squealing about a trio of 6 month-old puppy brothers – Quibble, Quarrel and Quaker - that they had fallen for. My partial enthusiasm was doused when they explained that the puppies were Chihuahua-Patterdale crosses.
Me, with a Chihuahua – no, never, EVER!

However, a week of unquenched enthusiasm saw us travel into York on Sunday and check out the vertebrates on show at the RSPCA. I must admit that it’s a choking experience seeing so many animals unwanted, abandoned or under court orders; but the staff at York are fantastic – caring, hard-working, patient and helpful. Eventually, we came to the 3 puppies....except that there was now only 1. And what a little cracker he turned out to be. Mrs R had her heart set on Quibble but she came round to liking the remaining pup, Quaker.

So we went for a lunchtime pow-wow at our favourite York bistro, Café No 8, and ruminated over Quaker. Of course, being the inveterate softie that I am, I soon found myself lobbying for the addition to our menagerie whilst Mrs R remained dubious.

After lunch we returned to the RSPCA took Quaker for a ‘trial’ walk with our hound, Poppy....and that went remarkably well. The decision was unanimously made! We had ourselves a new addition to the family....a Chatterdale.

As I filled out the paperwork and collected the RSPCA voucher for Quaker to be de-nutted, the girls started thinking of a new name – the list started with Pip, Smudge, Dex, Carlos, Archie, Rocky, Mohammed until we finally anointed him...Woody!

By Jove, it’s good to have some more testosterone at Refugee Towers. So, here is Woody the Chatterdale with his step-sisters........

The SATS scrap...or...Scrap the SATS

2 days of English testing, 2 days of Maths testing and 1 day of Science testing.
IS didn’t shed any tears – as children in her class did – and IS didn’t have any sleepless nights – as some children did: however we did have FIVE difficult months.
What’s gone on?
SATS!
SATS finished this week.
SATS are over for this year.
SATS are over forever for IS.
Phew!

It seems that a chasm has developed between this government’s education ministers – Ed Balls, Jim Knight and Beverley Hughes – and this country’s educationalists. Jim Knight proclaims, “SATs are there to give pupils an understanding of how they're doing nationally, to give parents the opportunity to see how well their child is doing and how well the school is doing, and for the public to see how well schools generally and how the school system as a whole is performing." SATs results are part of the targets that the Government expects schools to meet, and which are published, and then ranked, by the media, into "league tables". Government-speak clearly translates into the government being driven by the misguided and obsessive ‘target’ culture.

But the tide is turning.

The tests have been slammed by everyone from politicians to children’s authors such as Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Jacqueline Wilson.

An influential teaching body, The General Teaching Council, attacked the government's policy of rolling out national testing of children from the age of seven - it says “the stress from over-testing is tainting perceptions of education” and it is calling for all national exams to be abolished for children under 16. The council says exams not only fail to improve standards, but also leave pupils demotivated and stressed.

Leaders of the National Association of Head Teachers are calling on the Government to scrap the tests on the grounds that the pressure of league tables is forcing schools and teachers to stay at the top of league tables by routinely "drilling" pupils to pass exams and is consequently putting children off learning.

The Cambridge-based academic Professor Robin Alexander has been studying the testing regime in England's state primary schools, the most exhaustive in the Western world. He says, “People do not like ‘high stakes testing’, with its league tables in the press and all the pressure that goes with that . . . I think there is a pretty clear consensus that change is needed...the evidence is so strong . . . it points in the direction of radical reform.”
And if tests are scrapped, how will parents know how well their children are doing, or which are the best schools? “There are Ofsted school inspection reports,” says Alexander, “Parents can read those.” Alexander’s final report is due out at the end of the year.

Scotland never introduced Sats.
In Wales SATs were scrapped in 2004.
When will England follow?

Our daughters go to a terrific local state school with great teachers and support staff and a marvellous Head Teacher, GB. Yet the constraints of the system mean that IS's class has seemingly done little since January beyond preparing for these narrow tests.
Compelled to regurgitate much of the English, maths and science they have been force fed in the past three years, these little automatons musn’t let the side down; yet they will gain no marks for sharing how much they enjoyed the few books they were able to read for fun, nor their delight at discovering a germinated sunflower seed, nor the sense of achievement from learning the importance of angles in a triangle.

Let the children have a more relaxed environment to learn and enjoy their subjects and plough the cost of SATs into supporting learning and teaching and trust teachers to assess their children regularly


A couple of months ago Mrs R was standing outside school and happened to talk to Head GB about the ongoing preparation for SATS. Mrs R thought that it might be a good idea that IS went ill over the week of SATS and very symnpathetically GB replied that that was our right if we so felt.
Then Mrs R turned to GB, “, G, what do you really think of SATS?”
G thought carefully, looked Mrs R dead in the eye and lowered his strong Welsh voice, “Bollocks!"

If you feel inclined please sign this parent-led petition on the Downing Street website: PETITION

Roll up Roll up for....The Great Bickering Game Show

Last year The Refugees spent oodles of dosh and baked our winter-whitened bodies with our first visit to the Great Bickering Game and Country Show (GBGCS). As this event coincides with IS’s Birthday – 11 this year – we dipped into the Credit Crunch bank account and lathered on the sun-screen. If we excitedly expected that the GBGCS 2008 would be spectacularly different from GBGCS 2007, then we were as deluded as Gordon Brown’s fabled listening abilities.

By the time we arrived at 11 the temperature was rising gradually to the early 70°’s and the Great Bickering Showground was teeming. There are 2 activities that the young Refugees are on the lookout to do – speak to as many dogs as possible and spend money at the most interesting stalls (usually, animal- and food-related). I have never seen a Show such as this one for the amount and variety of dogs to remark about. Because of the heat, most of the dogs lounge around or sashay slowly with their owners and Poppy, our 7½ year-old Whitby Dog rescue hound, behaved impeccably. The vast majority of the dogs are labs, spaniels, terriers and lurchers as these are the dogs of choice locally but we also talked to and stroked poodles, staffies, peeks and Bedlingtons etc. Whenever we are unsure as to the breed of dog we turn to Is who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of dogs.

A great deal of my time is spent people-watching.

To the left is a Yorkshire or Geordie hog: on the hotplate is a poor pig. Hmmmm! The Refugees have forsaken piggies on our plate for the past few months.

Every home should have a pig out back and lots of piglets.

This is Alice from Doncaster. Alice is the matriarch of a gorgeous quintet of donkeys who, she told me with some wry truth, received more attention from her husband than she did.

Here is a man of some cultural rectitude.
He was lucky to escape HS shoving a Mister Whippy cone (less flake) down the back of his red neck. Ho-ho-hum!

And whilst the stalls with...50 different rifles, army fatigues from around the globe and hunting aids attracted vast numbers, this was our favourite stall – The Retired Greyhound Trust. There were 5 greyhounds selling their wares and Karen and Nick were a delight to talk with.

Please check out their website.......Retired Greyhound Trust.
Greyhounds are the most gorgeous of dogs – they have lovely faces, beautiful eyes and ideal temperaments.
I want a greyhound for Christmas!

If you haven’t visited the GBGCS then I would entreat you to make a visit – especially for those Southerners amongst you. It’s packed with a cast full of characters and animals and the odd celebrity now treads the Show’s boards – Worrall-Thompson showing off this year. It seems to be growing in ambition so 2009 promises to be even better.

Oh, and it’ll set you back a hundred quid.

Nowhere I'd rather be at 5 in the morning....

Dawn in early May in distant Balham would never have been much different from any city suburb at nay time of the year. A revving engine, a bin upturned, the odd congested sparrow but mainly a general dull hum.

But here in rural North Yorks dawn in the cool, still air of May is an auditory spectacle. We are lucky to have a bedroom that collects sounds from front - tall trees and grass verges – and back hedges, bushes and lawns – and from 4 to 5 in the morning the Dawn Chorus begins. Invariably the chorus seems to start with a blackbird or two singing out their territorial song; this will most likely be followed by a gang of hedge-sparrows and the odd discordant rook or pigeon. Occasionally I may be able to decipher a tit, finch or wren amongst the throng and as the summer rolls out the swifts rise earlier and wheel the skies screeching wildly. At its crescendo this symphony must consist of 40 or 50 musical maestros in concert.

If I’ve had sufficient sleep I’ll be serenaded for several minutes before getting up and enjoy the sounds and sights of ‘our’ birds By the time I reach my workroom at the back of the house I’ll be lucky to hear a thrush singing beautifully on a high tree or in our ‘secret garden’ cracking open a snail shell. Just about the only bird that doesn’t rise for the dawn chorus is....the swallow. The swallow tends to remain a’bed in the early morning though I often hear ours chattering in the their nests until ready for their mid-morning aerobatics.

So....would I swap one of the natural musical wonders of nature at 5o/c in North Yorks for 5o/c in London? As they say round these parts, ‘Would I ‘eck!?’