My monthly article for the local magazine I write for:

Things have been fairly manic of late.  I always thought that life would calm down as I got older. I’m not sure what made me think that this would be the case but I know why it isn’t happening. You see I’ve fallen in love with a very seductive and tempting mistress. Her name is ‘Maybe’ and she is the ultimate forbidden fruit.

‘Maybe’ is a divisive mistress. She revels in being non-committal and teases me into thinking that I still retain some vestige of decision-making authority.  But she is a cheap, two-faced charlatan who so easily, against my deepest desires, transforms into her alter ego – ‘Yes’. The solution to this wicked lady is to court and marry her brutal sister ‘No’ – but being wed to ‘No’ would make life so much more confrontational.

Take the following example as proof of my dilemma

Mother that is a friend of a friend – ‘Do you want to come to see my baby daughter in a five hour singing and dancing extravaganza of mind numbing blandness and non-existent talent on the same night that Scotland are playing in the deciding qualifier match for Euro 2012 – to which I believe you have a VIP ticket?’

Me – ‘No!’

Same mother, but now indignant – ‘Sorry but did you say no? This is my daughter we are discussing. The shining apple in my basket of life. What is wrong with her? Why would you insult her, my family, all my ancestors, and myself by declining such a rare and generous opportunity.  Even though I understand that the said game of football is being played out in the wonderful city of Prague and that you have been offered both a complimentary flight and hotel room, along with free alcohol and food. So I will ask you again. Do you wish to accept my invitation?’

Me – ‘Maybe.’

You see the problem.  I think that by saying ‘Maybe’ I can postpone the moment of pain involved in using the word ‘No’ knowing I’m going to say ‘Yes’ anyway. I have tried many times to break my relationship with ‘Maybe’ but she draws me back time and time again. So I have developed a cunning plan. It came to me after watching the Jim Carey movie ‘The Yes Man’ in which Mr Carey discovers that life can be far more interesting if he says yes to everything he is asked to do.  Following this theme I think we should declare a ‘National Day of No’. For one day in the year we should say ‘No’ to every request – just to prove we can live without that vixen ‘Maybe.’

‘Do you want another slice of cake?’ – ‘No!’

Easy.

‘Do you want a complimentary ticket to see the ‘Best of the Eighties’ tour that is town?’ – ‘No!’

Still easy.

‘Do you fancy a free round of golf at Gleneagles?’ – ‘No!’

Harder but I’ll live.

‘Do you want a gratis, all inclusive four week holiday in a five star resort in the south Pacific with a thousand pounds spending money thrown in?’  – ‘Maybe!’

My ‘National Day of No’ is doomed from the start.

I’m a judge on the Glasgow UNICEF Children’s Story Competition and the launch is on Saturday March the 20th at

Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
200 Woodhead Road
South Nitshill Industrial Estate
Glasgow, G53 7NN
Phone: 0141 276 9300

The competition is open to all children aged 5 to 16yrs.
Winners will be awarded prizes and invited to a special celebration
tea with our authors. (deadline for entries, 20th May. For more
details, email glasgowunicefstories.com). So if you know any budding authors pass on the details.

I am part of the East Renfrewshire Storytelling Festival (see http://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/storytelling). I’m at the Clarkston Library on Thursday the 11th of March at 7:30pm – details are on the link.

My monthly article for the local magazine I write for:

4. ‘Them’

I was invited to take part in a blog debate on the way that modern technology is invading our lives. A colleague of mine posted the following on the site:

“Starting from our very email address, a hidden host of psychological manipulators will profile us and every digital movement we make. They will track us around the web and they’ll know every sordid little thing we are up to. Every weakness, every failing, every hidden desire.

They’ll analyse every purchase we make, every specialist interest website we visit and each specific page or even word we dwell on. They’ll track us around every dating website we join and every naughty photo we look at. And then they’ll pounce. But not in our faces. Behind our backs.

Yes, they’ll sneak up on us by delivering covert and clandestine digital messages that will get to the very heart of our secret fears, hopes and dreams. And by Christ will they make us part with our money? And we won’t even know they are doing it.”

Paranoia is a dangerous thing and If I had a penny for every time someone told me that ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ are) were watching our every move, listening to our every conversation or controlling our every desire I’d have a couple of quid. 
 I bet good money that the first person to send a letter was scared that ‘they’ would read it. (More likely the first tablet sent in Egyptian times – or before) 
But there are two things that occur to me that give me hope for a future where I’m not a victim of Big Brother:

a) There are 6.5 billion people on this planet to track – a number growing at a rate of knots.

b) There is a wealth of communication channels – Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Myspace, this blog, e-mail, MSN, other blog’s, websites, forums, live chat, video conferencing, mobile phones, landlines, broadcast radio, local radio, internet radio, You Tube, web TV, snail mail, conversations in the street, debating societies, rock god’s pronouncing on the world, film etc etc etc – and the number of options is also growing at a rate of knots.

My hope lies in the fact that there is a simple equation that will protect me from ‘Them’.

The ‘Them’ equation:

(The growing number of people on the planet) multiplied by (The growing number of channels available for communication) =  (An inability for technology to track everything we do and say).

In essence people AND technology will defeat people WITH technology.

Now I’m off for a quiet lie down in a lead-lined cell – underground – but then again I hear the CIA have attached detectors to worms that can translate my thought waves at a distance of one hundred miles and through a mile of granite rock.

My monthly article for the local magazine:

“I’m a bit of a freak when it comes to reference books. Take this Christmas – among my stocking fillers were titles such as ‘How to Make a Tornado – the strange and wonderful things that happen when scientists break free!’, ‘The Lucky Bugger’s Casebook – tales of serendipity and outrageous fortune.’ and ‘A Mess of Iguanas, A Whoop of Gorillas… an Amazement of Animal Facts.’ I love the things. Can’t get enough of them. Our house is full of books that are crammed with trivia.

I can bore the world in nonsense. Trust me – my friends and family will happily back me up on this. For instance do you know that the FBI can identify an individual by the jeans they are wearing. It seems that if they get a good enough quality photo from a CCTV that shows a close-up of a pair of jeans they can identify and match the weave – just like finger prints. Or that bats almost always turn left when they leave a cave. Or did you know that the period before the Credit Crunch was known as the Credit Binge?

I’ve no idea what the attraction is in such inane gibberish. I can waste hours reading titles such as ‘Why Don’t Penguin’s Feet Freeze.’ or ‘How to Avoid a Wombat’s Bum. – (the former is to do with the blood vessels in the legs and the latter doesn’t tell you to how to avoid it only that the animal has a habit of running flat out and then stopping dead letting any pursuing predator smash into its bum bone).

Do I really have to know that Jeremy Clarkson’s mother made her fortune from Paddington Bear merchandise. Why would I need to be aware of the fact that an average metal coat hanger is 112cm long when straightened? Would anyone care that the British Associations of Toy Retailers Toy of the Year in 1965 was the James Bond Aston Martin die-cast car?

In what part of the world will I ever find use for the fact that there is no single English word for the back of the knee or that it is quicker to say ‘world wide web’ than ‘www’ (three syllables versus nine – try it).

I’m sure that my kids were once fascinated to know that your skin weighs twice as much as your brain or that some snails have their reproductive organs located on their head. But it all gets a bit much unless you are careful. And it’s dangerous. Very dangerous.   You can look a king sized wally if you quote something that is wrong.

It is not true that a duck’s quack has no echo. Running in a zig zag will not help you escape a crocodile. Coca-cola will not dissolve a tooth if you leave it overnight. Bob Holness of Blockbuster fame did not play the saxophone on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker St (although if life were fair it should be true).

Stephen Fry and QI have even turned ‘fact bashing’ into a hit TV show but will I stop reading this rubbish? Absolutely not. Why would I? I might be reading the world’s most erroneous statements but come on – be honest – how could you live not knowing that Billie Piper made her TV debut impersonating Posh Spice or that rubber bands last longer when they are refrigerated or … well you get the idea.”

I turns out that the submission I made to the Scottish Book Trust’s ‘Books That Changed My Life.’ competition has been selected to be included in the final book – to be published in March – see http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/thebook/story/gordon-browns-story-about-the-fog.

Having just put the full stop on the third novel (and now working on my fourth) I’ve added a section for my second novel – ‘59 Minutes’ to the website. Have a read an let me know what you think?

I put the full stop on the first draft of the third novel the other night. The second is with some people to look at and I thought I’d keep my foot down on the old accelerator and keep writing. So on that basis – it is onto the fourth.

At the moment the second novel is entitled ‘59 Minutes’ and when I get a chance I’ll pop up a chapter and the synopsis – probably over Christmas.

It seems all signings are cancelled  - no more Borders.

Sad news about Borders. They have been extremely helpful to myself and I hope they find a buyer. As a result of the news my signing that was due for tomorrow at the Fort Kinnaird branch has been cancelled. At the moment the two due in the Glasgow branches are still on.