The End Of The Pier Show

In these unprecedented times, shouldn’t we be having a conversation about how the use of cliche is on the rise?

As a thought leader, I am shocked and appalled – fed up to the back teeth, even. I’m passionate about pushing back against such poverty of expression. It’s no longer fit for purpose and should have gone out with the dinosaur.

We should reach out to our halo groups and give them a heads-up, incentivising them to leverage cutting-edge pedagogy and ramp up language from the Shakespearean playbook, even though it might be out of their comfort zone, so we need to show them that it’s on the table.

Whatever we do, we should tick all the boxes and touch base to ensure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We need to deep dive into the issues until we can get it over the line. People will need to pivot to avoid getting thrown under the bus. Let’s cascade this, roll it out, and drill it down.

This wake-up call could be a game-changer, going forward.

Remember: the clock is ticking.

I expect you’ll both recall that I have been busily writing a book, and have been doing so for some time. I had, in fact, finished it, and the manuscript got well into Version 2.0, which is when my wonderful agent Jill Grinberg gave it a good working-over.

Jill has represented me for more than twenty years. She signed me on the strength of my one academic book, and a very rough synopsis called Thirty Ghosts, and worked with me to get it into a saleable proposition. The result was Deep Time.

She has worked her magic yet again, and following a lot of late-night conversations, email exchanges and a great deal of thought, the draft turned from a long and rambling grimoire into A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth, in which I tell our planet’s history as a narrative, with heroes, and villains, anters vast and deserts idle, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which, hair-breadth ‘scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach, and so on, and so forth, in like fashion. Under Jill’s guidance I boiled down the concept into a killer synopsis.

And, what do you know? We’ve found a publisher who likes it as much as we do. I am thrilled to say that the UK and Commonwealth rights  have been taken up by Picador – an excellent fit, as A (Very) Short History fits their mission statement, that ‘we believe the way a story is told is just as important as the story itself’. And, as the editor of Deep Time told me, what you must do, above all else, is tell the story. Good advice to say, and to hear, but harder to achieve.

Quite a lot of the story had been written, in the sense that I had a large pile of words, not all of which were in the right order. While I was putting the synopsis together under Jill’s direction, I was pulling these words apart, rejecting many of them, recycling others, but mostly casting the whole thing anew, and editing it, and editing it again. And then editing it a bit more. 

I am now more than half done. The book is due by the end of September, and, with luck and a following wind, will be published in the Spring of 2022, which, as coincidence would have it, is when I turn 60. 

Now, I’ve been writing books since my twenties, but take heart from the fact that The Lord Of The Rings wasn’t published until its author was over 60, so I’ll be in good company. But I wouldn’t have gotten far as an author without my agent to offer a sympathetic but critical eye; offer good advice on what will sell; and, let us not forget, fight my corner in the business department.

It has worked out well for me. People sometimes ask me for advice on writing books. My first advice is to get an agent. That’s also my last advice. And, indeed, all the advice in the middle.

This is Miss Posy Fossil, she of the Chronicles of Pupperino, who is a little over 5 months old, and a cross between a loveable teddy bear and a waste disposal unit.

A few nights ago, at around midnight, she sicked up a pile of vomit the size of a loaf and with a smell that one struggles to describe.

Luckily she cleared it all up herself. She is helpful, like that.

At 4am Posy and her friend Lulu woke up and asked to be let out.

When they came back in we all kipped on the sofa. Posy lay down with her muzzle close to my ear.

Crunch crunch crunch.

As one never knows what she has in her mouth and whether it might precipitate an emergency trip to the vet, I woke up, plunged fist down throat and pulled out a piece of foil from a sweet wrapper. Washed hands. Kipped down. Posy lay down with her muzzle close to my ear.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Oh no – what is it this time? Plunged fist down throat and pulled out piece of fabric with button attached. Where on Earth…? Washed hands. Kipped down.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Not AGAIN?

Plunged fist down throat and pulled out a coat button in a small plastic bag. Washed hands.

That’s when I spotted it.

Posy’s friend Elvis the cat had knocked over and smashed an earthenware pot in which had accumulated all sorts of bits and pieces, and this was where Posy was getting her choice morsels.

Swept up mess. Washed hands. Kipped down.

This time Posy slept with her bottom in my face.

And farted.

It was a long night. Golden Retrievers. Don’t you just love ’em?

As you both know, I am busily engaged writing my next book. I had actually written the entire manuscript, but in consultation with my agent I decided to take a different tack, and the project moved in a new (but related) direction. Thanks to a new and improved synopsis – providing a secure roadmap – I am now well on the way to completing the new text. More on this at another time.

However, in the meantime, I have found that regular working hours really drive things along – and they don’t have to be too arduous.

As I am not a full-time writer (by day I work for the Submerged Log Company) the time I have to write is limited. I spend no more than 12 hours a week at the book – between 7pm and 9pm each day, except Friday, when Gardeners’ World is on the TV. This is quite enough to rough out 1000 words or so, which is as much as I can do in one go without losing focus. So, at 7pm sharp, I shut myself away in the home orifice, shut the door, pipe some loud instrumental rock music into my headphones, and write.

I find it essential to have a place where one can work undisturbed. Having a home office is great, especially one in which you can shut yourself away – but it’s not essential.

The Home Orifice. Recently.

More important is the cooperation of one’s family or housemates, with whom you can agree that these hours are sacred. That’s why relatively short, intense bursts work. It might be too much to ask one’s family for one to absent oneself for too long. This is also why I’ve found that regular long-distance commuting by train is a gift: when I regularly traveled between Norwich and London, a journey of two hours, this was enough for me to draft, in two-hour bursts, an entire novel.

Blasts of loud noise into my headphones is also helpful, to minimise distraction from outside sauces tzores sources. I have invested in recording-studio-quality, over-the-ear headphones, and play instrumental rock – loud and noisy to get the adrenaline pumping, but with no distracting vocals. My playlist includes lots of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Focus and Jeff Beck, and more obscure and jazzier artists such as Scott Henderson and Shaun Baxter.

I expect that most professional writers, of which I am not one, will keep regular office hours, and will sit down and write, whether they feel the muse is with them or not. At times, when I have a lot of writing to do, I have taken two weeks off, commuted to an office or library, and worked from 9:30 to 5:30 with an hour for lunch. But it is hard to justify this when one has familial responsibilities. Even less suitable is taking oneself off to write, as a vacation – I tried this once and it was a disaster.

Equally important is that one does not work on one’s book outside these hours. The time must be strictly circumscribed. One should avoid the temptation to go into the office and scribble a few lines whenever the fancy takes you, apart from, perhaps, making the odd note. This makes the time spent writing more important, and helps minimise feelings of guilt at not writing, outside these hours, and also allows one to spend more time within the family circle and doing other important things such as walking the dogs, doing the garden and being sociable.

It’s important to spend time with members of your family.

But whatever works, works. Each writer will have a different way of working. I’ve found that two-hour bursts in the evening, after dinner, but before the good stuff on TV, works best for me.

What works best for you?

Hello. My name is Miss Posy Fossil. I am a Golden Retriever. I was born under a wandering star / in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello Idaho on 2 December 2019. On 26 January I said goodbye to my mother, brother and sisters and moved to my new home. Here is what happened next.

Day 3. Dad works at home. I’ve worked out that I should lie across one of his feet, in case he has to get up — to feed me.

Day 5. Today I visited this great place. It’s called the ‘vet’. I got a lot of cuddles. Here is my new fren Louise.

Day 6. At the end of a busy day spent running around, playing, and eating, all one can do is wrap oneself in a scarf and go flomp. It’s exhausting being this adorable.

Day 7. I think the natives are beginning to accept me as one of their own.

Day 7 (continued). Today I am two months old. My plan for world domination is taking shape. One day soon any object placed on this coffee table will fall victim to my swishy tail.

Day 8. Already I have proven my worth. Today I saved the house from invasion by large pink aliens.

Day 9. Tried to launch myself onto Dad’s lap but bounced off. I have however managed to climb six steps up the staircase, which is more than the Daleks achieved. Galactic domination can only be days away.

Day 14. Mid-morning. After running around madly for the past four hours, it’s all finally caught up with me.

Day 15. These tiny golden retriever puppy teeth are the sharpest teeth in the world. They could rip the strap of this croc clean off. So I have just one question. Do you feel lucky?

Day 16. I’m now big enough to climb onto the sofa and therefore onto Dad’s tummy while he’s having a shluf. No corner of the house will be spared my adorableness! Except that Dad’s put a gate in the hall so I can’t go upstairs. I’m too tiny, they say. TOO TINY. Harumph. We’ll soon see about that.

Day 17. I can has my Mummy where I want her.

Day 21. It is a fact universally acknowledged that all human footwear must be chewed/gnawed/thrown around/hidden/combinations of the above. But sometimes one has to admit de feet.

Day 22. I found this spoon. I feel strangely stirred.

Day 24. I have a new fren! OffSpring#1 is visiting. He obviously needs a cuddle.

Day 31. Celebrity Personal Appearance at the Vet, which I enjoyed. Here I am again with my fren Louise. Also, first day on a leash – not so much.

Day 32. Elvis says I’m not allowed to put my paws on the table. Er… hang on…

Day 35. I’m three months old today! Where has the time gone? Time for a comfy snooze.

Day 38. A big day today. I went to the beach. I had never been to the beach before. If you’ve never been to the beach, you should go. It’s AMAZING. At first it seemed awfully big. But then I met some new frens and ran around and paddled in a tide pool. Then I went to Henry’s Cafe and was very spoiled . Then I went to sleep. Zzz. I hope I go to the beach again, it was GREAT.

Day 40. Here I am at Henry’s café, my favourite place to be for aprés-plage. If I’m especially good I get treats and some of Dad’s sausage roll.

Day 41. Playing on the beach with my new fren Spud.

Day 44. This is me having a well-earned snooze at 8:30 this morning after chasing Dad around for 3 hours. Honestly. He was terrible. Stopping me doing things I wanted like going outdoors, coming in again, going outdoors five minutes later, coming in again, snarfling the cat food, barking a lot, disemboweling the sofa and stealing Mum’s shoes.

Day 45. Here I am with my good fren Elvis. He’s a very chilled doggo. He doesn’t mind it if I chew his ears or suck his head.

Day 46. So, we’re on the beach, and Dad throws this blue thing called a ‘ball’. ‘Fetch!’ he says. I chase it, because, you know, that’s what I do. I’m a dog. But when I get there I don’t know what to do with it. Do I pick it up? Do I bury it? What? Dad picks it up again and throws it into the sea. Does he think I’m going in there? I don’t mind the water — but the sea is just so big. You know, noisy, with waves, and everything. ‘Call yourself a Retriever?’ says Dad. ‘I want my money back!’ But he doesn’t mean it because I’m so adorable, and, anyway, we went to Henry’s Cafe for treats.

Day 51 (or thereabouts. What do you expect? I’m a dog). I love going to the beach. The best thing about the beach is finding new frens to play with. The other best thing is digging holes. As you see I now have this very fashionable harness that Mum and Dad bought me in Coastal Pets in Cromer. A nice lady at the shop gave me a special fitting. Mum and Dad are staying at home a lot and looking worried. I cheer them up by inventing new games for them to play. The best one is Find-The-Footwear. I am very good at hiding Mum’s new expensive shoes. I hid Dad’s nice boots. He has found one of them but has no idea where I have hidden the other. Now he has to go around in his hiking boots. The laces are a bit chewed. I can’t imagine how that happened.

Day 54. Went to Trimingham Beach with my frens Lulu and Ronnie. Lulu is teaching me how to play ball, but she won’t always let me have a go. But I don’t mind cos I’m a Golden Retriever Pup running around in the sunshine and that’s the BEST.

Day 55. Mum and Dad went to the shops to get some new engraved pet collar tags for me and my frens. And probably loo rolls. They came back with this brand new secondhand sofa from Sue Ryder specially for me. If I stay very still I just merge into the background.

Day 56. Here I am relaxing with my fren Elvis who is also a very good doggo. I don’t know what sort of doggo he is. I have asked him but he won’t say. He just purrs.

Day 57. I found this spoon. It’s my spoon. It’s the best spoon. Okay, so now it’s just a very chewed piece of wood. But it’s still my spoon. I love my spoon.

Day 58. I think I might have overdosed on shoes.

Day 59. Gosh I have been busy. I have spent all morning in the garden chewing sticks, and helping Dad plant potatoes. Now I am helping my Mum doing some baking, and hoping she’ll drop nice things on the floor. Edible or not, it’s all the same to me, as long as I can get it down the bone chute.

Day 60. Mum has been trying to do her degree course at home. She says I am a ‘pickle’. So Dad has just taken me for a long walk (‘my ration of one daily exercise’, he calls it.) We went with my frens Ronnie and Lulu. Dad wouldn’t let us talk to the other dogs because ‘social distancing’. But now I am pooped.

Day 62. Phew. What a day. I helped Mum take an online Nursing Practice exam. This involved a lot of running around barking. After that I helped Mum sort out her revision notes. I might have eaten some of them. I can’t remember. It’s all a blur.

Day 63. The family has been spending lots of time watching box sets. First we had The Lord of the Rings. Now we are well in to The Hobbit. I’m not really interested in these so Mum gave me this wooden spatula. It’s mine. My own. My precioussss…

Day 64. I am on the sofa cleaning one of Dad’s shoes. My special fren Elvis, the purring doggo, has come to see what I am doing. I might let him help clean Dad’s shoe with me. Jobs like this are much more fun with two.

Day 66. Dad is working from home – I love to help. He lets me do useful things like shred envelopes and bank statements.

Day 67. Today I am 4 months old. As I am now a big grown up doggo Mum and Dad let me stay up to watch the News at Ten. So many people are isolated and on their own. I wish I could go visit them and be their fren. I’d cheer them up with entertaining games like ‘hide-the-shoe’ and ‘guess-what-disgusting-thing-I-have-in-my-mouth’.

Sad to report the death of Professor Jenny Clack, FRS, after a long illness, on March 26th.

Jenny was a leading palaeontologist who specialised in the earliest tetrapods (land vertebrates), and made many important and lasting contributions to her field (see this documentary here) . Perhaps the most famous was her discovery in Greenland of many fossils of the early tetrapod Acanthostega gunnari, reporting that the creature had no fewer than eight not five not six not seven but eight yes eight count ‘em eight digits on its forelimbs.

Quiet and reserved, she bore her last illness with characteristic stoicism. She was, however, not above a sly sense of humour such as when she sent a paper to Nature describing a tetrapod from the Carboniferous of what is now Central Scotland. Back then the region was dark, swampy, volcanic and very smelly, probably much as it is today. Jenny insisted on naming the creature (against my advice) Eucritta melanolimnetes – the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I shall remember Jenny from when I knew her best, when I was a graduate student at Cambridge, where she was very kind to me during a sticky patch in my life (I used to be a fly) — and when, clad in figure-hugging leathers, she would roar into the quad astride a powerful motorcycle.

Despite being a biker she was profoundly averse to rock music, so when her student Per Erik Ahlberg and I (graduates together) were going to see a Motörhead concert, Per described the group to her as ‘a chamber ensemble playing contemporary music’. She is survived by her husband Rob and no doubt a number of cats and motorbikes.

We shall miss you Jenny.

I know you’ll both be agog to learn that I have been enticed roped in corralled invited to take part in a festival called How The Light Gets In, which takes place in Hay-on-Wye between 22 and 25 May. This festival, which is distinct from the better known Hay Festival, is a grand conglomeration of music, comedy and ideas. This year’s festival theme is Uncharted Territories, which is very much my kind of thing.

I’ll be giving a solo talk entitled The Limits of Knowledge:

The more we discover, the more we realise we have yet to learn. So says Nature editor, Henry Gee, as he explores the limits of knowledge, and dares us to look over the edge.

I’ll also taking part in a more intimate Inner Circle seminar:

What makes humans special? According to senior editor of Nature and author of The Accidental Species Henry Gee: absolutely nothing. Join him to discuss humankind’s place in the world.

 … and featuring in three debates as follows:

The Key To Progress (Saturday 23rd at 12:00) It was the vehicle of progress and the solution to the world’s ills. The core philosophy of the West and our time. But the halo has slipped. Science is now seen by some as a potentially malevolent force. A key element of the industrial military complex, challenging the environment and supporting a damaging raid on world resources. While many doubt the idea that science is the single objective version of the truth. Should we welcome this shift in our perception of science as the end of an unquestioned belief in a false god? Or is it a dangerous and potentially disastrous slide into prejudice and superstition, that will leave us poorer, less safe, and less in control of our lives? Senior editor of Nature Henry Gee; Professor of Cosmology at Manchester Sarah Bridle and philosopher and author of Galileo’s Error Philip Goff evaluate the scientific establishment.

Extinction and Renewal (Saturday 23rd at 13:15) Citing evidence that species are becoming extinct at a thousand times faster than the background rate, many argue the Sixth Great Mass Extinction is already upon us. And for the first time caused by a single species, humankind. Others contend that at current rates – 100 species a year – it would take a 1000 years to lose just 1% of current species. In the meantime the number of new species is continuing to grow – exceeding the number of species lost. Are we facing a profound crisis? Do we need to radically change our behaviour and way of life to save the planet’s animal life? Or are our conservation efforts proving effective and nature stronger than we suppose and capable of creating entirely new life forms without our help? Producer and director of Blue Planet 2, Frozen Planet and Planet Earth Kathryn Jeffs; director of the International Centre for Birds of Prey Jemima Parry-Jones; senior editor of Nature Henry Gee and co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association David Pearce get to the bottom of the apparent extinction crisis.

Language, Animals and Us (Monday 25th at 10:30) Many think language makes us uniquely human.  Yet bees communicate precisely how to reach a source of pollen from the hive. Birds warn of a predator. Dogs call to each other with their barks and understand our verbal commands. And new studies show that baboons’ grunts align with human speech patterns and even plants send signals to each other through their roots. Is language just one type of communication, and have we wildly overestimated its importance? Are humans no different in principle from other animals and plants? Or is language profoundly different from all other forms of communication and the enabler of consciousness itself?

The Festival website has all the details and is constantly being updated, so visit it often. You can also follow it on Twitter at @HTLGIFestival, just as you can follow me at @EndOfThePier.