I love people’s strange habits. Admittedly they can be annoying, but generally entertaining. Although, I’m told, my habits can be annoying, and I am a little mad. I will have a conversation in my head and then invite someone to join in half way through or even at the end. For example. I will consider going to the coast at the weekend, and weigh up the options/advantages/possibilities, maybe a long stroll on the beach, an icecream, some Fish & Chips. After due consideration I turn to my nearest and dearest and say. “It’ll depend on the tides. Not much point if high tide is in the middle of the day.”
Her response is usually. “Eh?” I then have to explain my thoughts. To which she will suggest I start a conversation at the beginning rather than the end. My other little trait is to say. “You know…” After a long pause she’ll ask me what I was going to say. But by then, I’ve either changed my mind or forgotten what it was. But it keeps her on her toes. 😂
Of course, there are good habits. Running for example, c’mon you knew I’d get there eventually😂. Three weeks to my first marathon of the year and I finally got my 20 mile or 32k (depends if you are metric or imperial) long run done yesterday. So, I’m buzzing. We have an old abandoned railway track here which is ideal for long flat runs, and guess what? Yay, the sun is shining, the daffodils are out and it’s Spring again! I wonder if you have any habits that either annoy or titillate you?
For years I’ve heard about TikTok, but to be honest I thought it was young girls prancing about, putting makeup on, or sharing photos of Dua Lipa, Raye and Harry Styles. Having no interest in any of the above I’ve always dismissed it.
A friend informed me recently this isn’t the only option, and it’s great for publicising your book. This led me to the next quandary, what do you post? The same friend recommended ChatGPT. I do not like AI, and I’ve tried to steer clear of it. Some people use it to create a book and then say.
“Look at me, I’ve written a book.”
No you bloody well haven’t! You’ve got a robot to write it for you.
But… I wasn’t writing a book, just looking for advice on marketing. So I tentatively asked the question. “How do I market my book on TikTok?”
I was surprised at the outcome, it sounded like it knew what I needed, and I now have twenty pages of ideas. None of them involve makeup, dancing or mooning over young Mr Styles, so far so good. The only downfall was when I asked it to recommend a look. Probably need to tweak that a bit.
All I have to do now is create some twenty second videos, we’ll see how it goes. Has anyone else used ChatGPT or TikTok I wonder? Personally AI scares me a little, there are already 85 million books on Amazon, and I do wonder how many are written by robots. Although you can usually tell… They lack humanity and passion, but I could be wrong they may have been written by someone who has no humanity or passion, I’ve never read Mein Kampf, so I’m no expert.
On a different matter, as the broken rib is healing I’ve managed to get up to a 24k training run, next week I need 30k and I’ll feel more confident, as I have the Boston UK Marathon in 4 weeks and was hoping for 03:40:00 time which should give me 1st in my age group 🤞
I’d had ten years living on two farms until one day it all changed. We were moving to a place called Bradford. I presume this came from mum as I later found out she hated the countryside. As for dad, he’d spent six years fighting the Germans, mostly in the desert with Montgomery and Rommel. Although I don’t think he had much of a relationship with Rommel. He just wanted a quiet life. So, off we went to a council estate in Bradford, the accommodation wasn’t quite what I had been used to.
It was all very exciting for the first week as I started exploring the council estate, but I soon discovered it was more or less the same wherever you went. During the second week I was beaten up by some other boys. After the third time I was beaten, I took some advice and joined the school boxing club. Drummond Road Boys School was a hell hole and features in the opening of my first book, The Siege of Mr Khan’s Curry Shop.
Mum and dad were working most days and nights in a Working Men’s Club at the other side of town. I became self sufficient by my twelfth birthday and I was feral 😂 I was smoking at fourteen, left school, started work and by my fifteenth birthday I was drinking regularly in Bradford city centre. I had certainly changed.
At seventeen-years-old, I’d had enough. There were several reasons for this. Looking around me I could see my future, and it was grim, but then one day I was chatting to an old bloke at work. I was an apprentice engineer in a factory. He told me I had a job for life, and he had been coming through those gates for fifty years. My first thought was, Ronnie Biggs only got thirty years, and he’d robbed a train. What had I done wrong?! The way it was back then is where I got the original idea for my first novel. The racsim especially from the skinheads was rife, and as ‘rockers’ we were firmly against it. There were often tussles (polite description 😂)
Dad died when I was sixteen-years-old and a year later mum wanted to go and live with one of my elder sisters. I decided to travel the world, and started to save for a Landrover. Sadly I was an impatient seventeen-year-old and so, with the few pounds I’d saved, I bought a cheap Austin 1800. I met a man at the back of some garages, who said I couldn’t test drive it. “It ain’t taxed, mate, and I still own it until the papers go through. You can drive it away though, if you give me the dosh.”
I paid him and drove away only to find it jumped out of third gear, of course, he’d gone when I returned to the lockups 😂. A mechanic friend informed me it was going to cost more than the car was worth to fix it.
Plan ‘B’ it was then! I decided to purchase a one way ticket to an island called Jersey. I was seventeen, had £70 in my pocket and I wasn’t coming back!
I wonder how many of you good people set out to do one thing and then ended up doing something completely different?
The countryside and nature was in my blood, but this was the 60’s and I had been introduced to the world of Superheroes. Batman was on the TV every week and for a while I was hooked. I still have the soundtrack and the annual. 😂
I’ve never been a watcher, I always want to be involved, to be doing something. So, maybe it was time I tried my hand at this superhero business, naturally my first choice was Batman.
Don’t get me wrong being Batman was okay, and I felt inspired, but I was an impostor. I began to search for a yet to be discovered superhero. Difficult without Google🤔. Saturday shopping days meant I was dropped at the library in Wetherby while mum and dad did what ever they did in town. In 1240, King Henry VIII issued a Royal Charter granting the Knights Templar the right to hold a market in Wetherby every Thursday and so Wetherby was a Market Town.
But I was more interested in the wonders of the library. I approached the elderly lady who ran the library and enquired if she knew of the existence of a Hawkboy. She retrieved a copy of A&C Black’s Who’s Who and began to search, to no avail. Eventually I had to infrom her that he was a superhero. She looked puzzled for a moment and then explained it was unlikely a superhero would be listed as they have to submit the biography themselves, which may jepordise their anonymity. I think she took pity on me and added.
“There is a chap in Kirk Deighton who keeps hawks but he doesn’t have a son. So, if someone wanted to take on the role, I think it would be such an adventure.”
That was all I needed, I was over the moon and I began to create my alter-ego. From my base (a tiny cubbyhole under the stairs) I started work. I used my Wolverhampton Wanderers football shirt (yellow), an old pair of mum’s tights, my old trunks (yeah, I know, a therapist would love that!) The batman cloak, utility belt and mask was handy. My utility belt was stuffed with things like my pen knife, laser gun and some baler twine. All I had to do now was hide somewhere and wait for trouble.
When you’re the only kid on the farm there isn’t a lot of crime, but one hot summer’s day mum asked me to go blackberry picking. Would there be blackberry rustlers? I couldn’t take the chance. I wore my costume beneath my ordinary clothes, it was imperative to keep my identity secret. Mum was surprised I was wearing my long farmwork trousers but I won the debate. I was quite an insistent ten-year-old. “You’ll be too hot,” she sighed and we set off.
The sun got higher, burnt off the few meagre clouds, and the heat intensified. I began to pray for a villain, any villain, a naughty sparrow would have sufficed, I was Hawkboy afterall! I began to feel a little sick, my skin felt clammy and I was so thirsty. When I began to feel faint, mum took a good look at me and began to wrench my outer clothes off. I tried to repel her, but eventually I had no option but to reveal my identity. After calling me a, “Silly little bugger,” but promising to keep my alter ego secret, we agreed that Hawkboy could have a day off and I removed the supersuit. There were raised eyebrows when she saw her tights, but I explained how sacrifices have to be made for the safety of the planet. She replied, “Aye, that may be, but not today. Drink some water!”
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