Why I wrote 'When the ONE Laughs'

When The ONE Laughs ...

...came from hearing Terry Pratchett say that he never expected his readers to believe in what he wrote. I knew what he meant, since he wrote magic based fantasy books, but hearing him say it killed my interest in reading them, and instead made me want to write my own magical book which people could believe in - if they wanted to.

This wish went alongside a number of other things that frustrated me about most of the books I read: the fact that when characters died they left the story; that all the action and events took place in this single physical dimension; and that there was no other world or worlds having any part or affect on this one. I wanted more.

The underlying structure of 'ONE', and point of it, is that it's a story where all the events are inter-dependent with, and often created by, events on other levels of life. Like a metaphysical domino effect that works both ways. And because I also wanted to write a book people could believe in, if they chose, I drew only from known human belief systems - everything in the book is believed by someone, somewhere, and in some cases, by many people. I don't personally have any fixed beliefs at all about how life is. It is as much a mystery to me as anyone - if only because as soon as we say the answer is this or that, we have inadvertently claimed it is not something else. And in an infinite universe, I doubt we can say that with any real certainty. (At least, not if the tenth dimension of String Theory turns out to be real).

Anyway, I hope those who read it enjoy it. And I hope too that it offers some alternative views of what life might be all about, and how it works—and why sometimes it goes a bit wrong. And within that, somehow, that it helps people find life a bit more fun.

About me

Like most of us, I am just muddling through, so here are some random facts about me and some odd things that have happened to me:-

 

GENERAL

I was born in the UK in 1965.

I am dyslexic.

I travelled in India, the Middle East, most of Europe and have lived in Spain and the US.

I’m scared of people, in town and city centres.

I’ve lived in numerous places (including two other countries). I moved around a huge amount. Even in my late forties, I still had an average of moving where I lived every 7-9 months.

I have had over 40 jobs, most of them completely different to each other and some pretty weird. Best one, in some ways, was as a children's advocate. A lot of it was battling professional incompetence, disinterest, systemic back-covering and stats-faking corruption, but I loved it because I got to spend most days talking to 10+ year-olds about whatever they wanted to talk about. I've heard hundreds of kids talk about their lives.

CHILDHOOD

When I was 4, I asked my grandmother for a bottle of wine for my birthday (and got it).

Last of the Summer Wine was my favourite TV show when I was 9. I thought it was unbearably sad and philosophical. 

Whenever I dreamed at night, I was always flying and could never touch the ground. When I woke up, I could never believe I couldn’t fly and kept trying to by jumping off things.

When I was 10 I had a strong feeling of wanting to leave life (die) and 'go home' – this eventually turned into wanting get a car and just keep driving.

I was at boarding school from 11 to 16. It messed me up a lot and left me with Complex-PTSD.

When I was 13, I got followed around Liverpool St Station by a scary looking man in a combat jacket. After being followed from one end of the station to the other and back, to check I was not imagining it, I decided to lose him in the double-back trick on the London underground - and was pleased to find it actually works. It was the first time I felt some sense of empowerment and that I might be able to look after myself. 

When I was 14, I had to push a twenty-foot boat off a sandbank in Holland, on my own, at 3am, wearing a plastic mac over my pyjamas in a rain storm, due to dropping tides.

I also spent the night in a Dutch police station cell with a friend and his brother, for the sake of shelter, after his mum accidently left us in Holland with no money.

When I was 17, I jumped a ditch with my motorcycle, twice – the first time successfully. I still smile at the expression on my friends' faces, I as slid passed them on the grass. 

Although I am dyslexic, I love writing. However, I left school with no qualifications, and didn't get any until I was 30 (I'm now qualified to teach in Community College and have a BA and MA in Creative Writing).

 

DUMB STUFF

I've done many many dumb things, but the most was running over myself with my own car on the verge of the M25 South Mimms roundabout (I was trying to push it off the road after I'd run out of petrol). I got pinned underneath it and a lorry driver to push it back off me.

I've nearly drowned 10 metres underwater while scuba diving because I tried to be clever and manually fill the air in my ABLJ. If that doesn't mean anything, don't worry, it just = dumb.

I ran aground a £13,000 (cica 1987) competition water-skiing boat (because I was watching the 10-year-old skier on the back too much) and did £2,000 worth of damage. 

While working on a ridiculously chaotic beach in Mallorca, I one time had to go looking for a lost sailing boat in an inflatable rescue boat that was sinking so much I had to keep stopping to pump it up.

I once had a job performing and commentating Spanish parrot shows - when I didn’t speak Spanish.

I've spoken out, blown the whistle, or refused to follow an instruction in jobs where people are endangering others (usually children) seven times. I've put it in the dumb stuff section because it led to me losing my job in four of them. I did it twice while I was still at school, but unfortunately it's much harder to get chucked out of school.       

WEIRD STUFF

I've stopped a couple of people from dying.

I've failed to stop someone from dying.

I wrote a book about someone who kills themselves, to stop myself from dying. (https://viewbook.at/UndiscoveredCountries )

I’ve barefoot water-skied - for about a second.

I once had a dolphin hold my foot in her mouth and have no idea why (it took her ages to get me to stop pulling my foot away).

I’ve slept in the Sinai desert, in the open. 

I've taken a party of nine people up Mt Sinai, on camels, at night, to see the sunrise.

I last got asked for ID, to buy alcohol, when I was 36 (it was in a restaurant in the USA and okay, yes, it was dark).

I once missed a flight to the USA and got bumped up to First Class. I then found a sewing kit in the freebee gift package, so asked the stewardess to get me my tatty old coat back from where they had hung it up, so I could spend the next half hour or so sewing up the hole in it. I did it really just to be ironic and also to be the only one in the cabin not looking at a personal screen of some kind or another as a way to avoid noticing the people around them – it was a truly weird experience.

The weirdest night I ever had was with a bunch of small-town Americans, at their Wednesday night karaoke, in a small country town in Oregon I'd wandered into. During the evening, in which I drank quite a bit, I got personally introduced to the whole bar as ‘the foreigner’. I also got told my voice was 'cute' by a pretty young girl, which was nice but meant I had to quickly come up with a strategy to avoid getting beaten up by her suddenly jealous boyfriend 'Tiny' - who was anything but).

Most I've ever cried was when watching the Italian film Life is Beautiful (I totally and utterly sobbed - in the cinema).

Most I've ever laughed was playing an indoor golf putting pub game, with a very competitive Geordie work colleague, who was getting so pissed off that he was losing that he eventually kicked my putter just as I was lining up my last shot - and unintentionally made me get a Hole in One. I laughed so much, so hard, and for so long that I couldn’t breathe, see, or even stand and had to crawl across the pub floor and pull myself up on the bar and wipe my face with a beer towel. He didn’t laugh - at all.

One of my most bizarre but happiest moments was when the actress Susan Hampshire fussed over me when I had a cold.

While standing alone on top of a Red Wood Forest in California, I had that weird sensation travellers get of feeling extremely sad and extremely happy at the same time. Which is brilliantly explained in the film Paris, je t'aime - see: https://youtu.be/mJG0lqukJTQ).

My favourite song is A Case of You, by Joni Mitchel, and has been since I first heard it when I was 17. This was the version I heard - A Case Of You (Live London 1983)

My oddest achieved ambition was: 'Going to Night Club in pyjamas and a dressing gown'. (It was a superheroes fancy dress night, and I went as Arther Dent from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).