Cramming It All In

As we're spending two days a week at the moment helping out with the family's temporary childcare shortage in Rochester we're having to cram seven days worth of home life into five  at the moment and boy did we cram it in yesterday.

I started at seven in the morning with a trip to the college for a spinning class. After that it was a quick trip back home for a shower and a bowl of porridge before heading back with Marion to the college for a circuit training class. Duly exhausted it was back home at ten for another shower before heading to Southwold.

We were in Southwold for the excellent Ways With Words literary festival and were fortunate enough to have front row seats for talks by Shane Spall (accompanied by husband Tim), Rev Richard Coles and Melvyn Bragg.

What a great line up it was. Shane Spall was a quiet and fairly diffident presence who spoke enthusiastically about her books whilst her husband Tim exuded bonhomie and an infectious joie de vivre - the Southwold audience loved his reading of a passage about a meeting with a Sole Bay fisherman complete with unintelligible local dialect. 

By complete contrast to Shane, Richard Coles was as confident a speaker as you are likely to encounter which is not surprising given his regular TV and radio appearances and his other job as a vicar. He spoke about his childhood, his coming out and his epiphany in Edinburgh but missed out the "searingly honest" bits of his autobiography which could have shocked his mostly silver haired audience.

At the signing afterwards, Marion told Richard that if he were the vicar of Framlingham she would go to church. I simply raised my eyes and wondered how on earth we could fit that in.

The afternoon ended with a talk by Melvyn Bragg. I've always considered Melvyn to be a serious and confident interviewer but his talk showed a fragile side to him that is rarely seen. He was talking about his novel Grace And Mary which is written as an autobiographical fiction. By this Melvyn meant that he used real people, changed their identities and then wrote fiction about them. The people in this case were himself, his mother and his grandmother who was sent away from her community for bearing an illegitimate child (true, but as the author said, hard to believe today). A third of the book covers the period from when his ageing mother developed Alzheimer's to her eventual death from this ghastly disease and Melvyn was too emotional to complete the reading of each of his chosen passages. It showed a truly compassionate side to his nature and I have great admiration for his ability to share this sensitivity with a group of strangers. He was annoyed at letting his feelings get the better of him but, as the interviewer on stage with him said, if your writing doesn't move you, it won't move your readers.

Framlingham Town Council. Photo courtesy of www.nearthecoast.com/framlingham/

There was no time to dawdle after the event finished and it was back to the car and off to Framlingham in time to get to the Town Council meeting. I believe that there are usually no more than three members of the public in the audience at these meetings but, due to current development proposals which could increase the town's population by over 30% at a stroke, the hall was packed with standing room only. I felt sorry for the town councillors who explained that they were all volunteers and, effectively, asked the audience not to blame them for anything. The most important part of the meeting - the discussion of the proposed development on Fairfield Rd - drew a huge response from members of the audience who repeated the many arguments against the new houses. The outcome of the meeting was, for me, fairly unsatisfactory as, although the proposals were not approved, they were not rejected but simply pushed down the road for further consideration when more information is available.

After the meeting we were home in time to catch the final episode of The Detectorists which was filmed here. As a detector user living in Framlingham the show has been a firm favourite with me and I've really enjoyed it. It was a very gentle and fairly whimsical show which is right up my street and I'm delighted that, with 582,000 viewers last night (way above the slot average), another series has been commissioned.

I enjoyed spotting the town locations. Here's Toby Jones outside our bookshop - the only bookshop in the country stocking my novel at the moment. 

Here's a nice shot of Castle St.

And here's the excellent John Bradlaugh Electrical on Fore St where we bought our vacuum cleaner - I must pop in and try and get one of those toy detectors that MacKenzie Crook's character bought in last night's show.

So that was a pretty hectic day and a pretty lengthy blog too (sorry). This weekend we're off to a pub near Rugby to meet our friends Dave and Jane from our old life in Lancashire. 

A Real Treasure From Framlingham

As a keen metal detectorist sharing a birthday with MacKenzie Crook and living in Framlingham (where it was filmed) , I feel well qualified to comment on BBC4's latest sitcom The Detectorists which aired on Thursday night.

Starring Mackenzie alongside Toby Jones (whose performance in Marvellous last week was indeed marvellous) as a pair of hobbyists in search of their own Holy Grail ( a Saxon ship burial) it was a gentle and hugely enjoyable first episode. Did I object to its portrayal as the detecting fraternity as a slightly odd bunch of obsessives? Not at all.To be honest most of us who indulge in the hobby are fairly obsessive about it (it gets you that way) and, whilst I am sure that some will protest at taking the mickey out of detecting clubs whose members moan about others intruding on THEIR sites (ahem the farmers' sites) and listen to boring talks on buttons, most will be thick skinned enough to take it with a pinch of salt and, hopefully take a moment to reflect on the smidgeon of truth in that depiction. 

MacKenzie had certainly done his research on detecting and the hauls of ring pulls and shotgun cartridges will have been immediately recognisable to anyone who has spent a day on an unproductive site. A scene where both characters pored over a Google Earth map on a laptop and Lance found an iron age settlement which turned out to be the Google Watermark certainly struck a chord with me.Less recognisable was the arrival on the field of a beautiful young female student asking to look in their finds bags which, I imagine, will now be the new Holy Grail for detectorists.

I loved MacKenzie's character Andy's cleaning the floor in his job as a cleaner all the while daydreaming of his hobby and sweeping across the flooring with his vacuum as he would a detector and picking up a stray button. 

The Show Features On The Cover Of The Latest The Searcher

I was slightly disappointed at Toby's character Lance being shown as money driven (he even sells the ring pulls he finds on eBay) and a pilferer ( he pinches veg from the farm where he works). I am biased on this as I and many detector owners have never sold a thing we have found and, far more importantly, Marion and I once suffered a major five figure loss from a staff member stealing from us. A few carrots and a cabbage may look like a bit of a perk but multiply that out over a year and twenty staff and it's not a laughing matter (only one staff member was involved in our case I hasten to add).

Shooting Here In Framlingham Earlier This Year

That very minor grumble apart, it was great fun spotting the Framlingham locations and I noticed Lance's home in Double St, Maggie's Shop (the lovely Panorama), Fram Bookshop (which still has a few signed copies of my novel), The Castle Inn and St Michael's rooms. I am sure that others will have seen more.

The comedy involved far more than detecting and there were a number of romantic threads running through the episode. Will Andy's head be turned by the beautiful student despite his fabulous long term partner (who appears to be out of his league) and will Lance ever give up on trying to win back his ex (Maggie) who runs the shop and ran off with a pizza shop manager? I am sure that all will be revealed as the series unfolds and I guess that what they eventually find may well be an influence on those relationships

This first episode had 655,000 viewers which was a 3.9% share of the total audience (in these days of multi channels that's a very hefty slice and 146.8% up on the average for that BBC4 slot). So it looks like MacKenzie Crook has already found treasure here in Framlingham.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Give Me Your Tomorrow

by John Brassey

Giveaway ends October 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

What Do Horatio Nelson, Silvio Berlusconi, MacKenzie Crook And I All Have In Common?

If you're thinking Bunga Bunga you're on the wrong track although I know that Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton had more than a bit of a jiggy thing going on. And if it's rugged good looks then, of course, I will forgive you but you are wide of the mark. And I will forgive you too if you go for intelligence, creativity or writers of great novels but you would still be wrong. No, what each of these fine specimens has in common is today - 29th September - be it 1758, 1936, 1953 or 1971 as we all share the same birthday.

According to the internet we share a friendly fair temperament that aims to be respectful of the opinions of others. Our creative imagination and sharply observant and perceptive minds are likely to have a real appreciation for beauty and the wonders of nature. Cooperative and usually rather good at negotiating we make great and understanding listeners. Intelligent, idealistic and practical we like to stay busy and organised but emotionally we tend to be quite fragile and seem to constantly seek stability. Individuals with a September 29th birthday are just as charismatic and stylish as most of their zodiac group yet ordinarily not as confident.We possess an unselfish caring attitude but can sometimes be intolerant moody or pessimistic too. I think that the words highlighted in red sum up Horatio, Mackenzie and me but I am not too sure about Sylvio who perhaps falls into the blue category. 

But hang on a minute. Young Mackenzie and I share far more than our birth date. We've also got detecting. I go metal detecting and, at ten o'clock on Thursday night, MacKenzie's new comedy series The Detectorists airs on BBC4. It's not only about detecting and starring MacKenzie but it also stars the wonderful Toby Jones who had us spellbound earlier this week in the outstanding Marvellous which was just as good as its title suggests. And the comparisons with my soul brother MacKenzie don't end there or with our handsome looks. Where was The Detectorists shot?

Why, our home town of Framlingham no less. Here's the crew obscuring the Fram Bookshop window during filming (no doubt decimating my book sales for a day).

Happy Birthday MacKenzie. See you in The Crown later? And if you want to make an old man happy on his birthday please download my book or buy a paperback copy on Amazon by clicking here.
andonThurs
More: http://www.gotohoroscope.com/birthday-horoscopes/september-29th.html

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Give Me Your Tomorrow

by John Brassey

Giveaway ends October 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win