Last week I made some decisions. I decided not to spend time growing my Substack audience, the writing platform I use every week. Right now, for me, it would do little more than flatter to deceive. If you’re new here and sensing a cold shoulder, that’s not the intention. I’d love more followers, please stay, I’m just not prepared to play the games needed to grow my audience. Not at this time anyway. It distracts from the real job, the much bigger task of writing a memoir. If I want to progress and still enjoy the freedom to enjoy my passion for golf and the wonderful company of Mrs H, then it’s an easy decision. I’ll return to the art of growing more followers when I have a first draft and three publishers clambering for the rights.
Time management is one thing but it’s a bit of an excuse that masks a much bigger deep-seated issue. What has stopped me in my tracks for over a year? I’ve been looking for the right threads to make sense of what is bouncing around in my head. My daydreaming had me playing with different beginnings only to discover that none were right but not really understanding why.
Now I feel more connected, there’s a lot less risk of writing a journeyman’s tale which excites few apart from my children, being polite before it’s forgotten on a shelf to gather dust.
First, a few observations about writing a memoir. If you’re not celebratory status, writing one that publishers want to publish is tough. I might be at risk of sounding a little obsessed with a book deal. I’m not. But I do think it’s a good yardstick to judge work by. I’m looking for a little recognition, not a publishing deal. I’m expecting to self-publish but still have a book worthy of being read, even without a friendly Penguin on the cover.
A recent best-selling memoir (2018) is Tara Westover’s educated, and her escape from a strict Mormon household in Idaho. Another is Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Her impact statement after being raped was read by 11 million people in less than four days. Her memoir followed. Less sensational perhaps on this side of the water, On Chapel Sands, Laura Cummings and Inheritance, Dani Shapiro tell equally engaging stories of family mystery, one about her mother being kidnapped, the other finding out her father wasn’t her biological one after he’d died.
The common thread with all of these apart from homework for me is that they’re ordinary people writing about extraordinary lives and doing it rather well. It seems that every successful memoir must offer an incredible ripping yarn. That’s too sweeping a statement. Memoirs can also give hope and knowledge, but as I’m not laden with too much of either, a well-observed story with laughs thrown in seems to be the ticket.
How to frame my tale has been the roadblock I’ve been trying to overcome. I still reserve the right to make changes because I might impart something beyond a laugh, but I’m not counting on it. Whatever I do with Andy, I’m making sure it’s unforgettable and funny.
Having had the unfortunate realisation that my first 18 years weren’t all that funny I came up with a working title - The Life of an Andy, the all-important an suggested by Mrs H. god bless her. I don’t have a sub-title or an introduction but it needs to invite the reader into a world of ordinary and the fun of being there to watch it play out.
One of the all-important questions - why will the reader hang around if I haven’t been raped, kidnapped or shagged around too much? The closest I’ve come to a misguided religious sect must have been playing out with the Breakalls at #5, Jehovah’s Witnesses who I liked. My Mum’s first Maths teaching job was at Polam Hall, Darlington, a Quaker boarding school. It was a desperate attempt to get away from home, Liverpool and her parents. You also had to wait politely until someone offered you the salt at meal times. Hopefully, the cook didn’t forget the spuds. I/we didn’t become Quakers.
Being called Andrew, which I much prefer to Andy is a godsend for a comical romp beginning in the Sixties. My name is annoyingly common thanks to the Queen, who was finally forced to strip Mummy’s boy of his royal and military titles in 2022.
Such a privileged Andrew is such a juicy tidbit which has me asking the question, how many Andrews or Andys did/do I know and did they all break the law? Perhaps this could tick along in the background as I bump into many A’s as life unfolds.
There’s a splash of Sue Townshend lurking in here somewhere with her 1982 creation The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. Did you know she originally called him Nigel in his first incarnation on the radio - much better?
Making light of the mundane is where I must sharpen my pencil and hone my practice.
I laughed a lot more when I turned 18. I can’t remember laughing much before but memory plays tricks, more miserable times are framed in sharper relief than the funnier moments which fade faster for some reason making them easier to forget.
It was as if life flicked a switch the minute I stepped off the train in Newcastle to start my first term at university. I struggled out of the station with my bright over-filled orange nylon rucksack on a cheap aluminium frame digging uncomfortably into my back, Dad’s grip in one hand, a shopping bag in the other with the remnants of a homemade lunch and half of Mum’s fruit cake wrapped in greaseproof paper secured by a dull brown elastic band from the drawer. I wasn’t at all sure about leaving Oxton, Birkenhead, the place I called home.
I’m trying hard to find fun and laughter from those earlier school years. Not just a whim for today or this week, but for years, ever since I started writing. Before Covid even.
The first moment of joy must have been the summer of my third birthday, not that I remember anything about that. I was digging under the garden fence in Ickenham using an ice lolly stick. Michele, my neighbour and closest human to a friend was on the other side helping to build our ant road which they stubbornly refused to use.
I do remember my 12th birthday in July 1973. We’d moved twice by then, the most significant being the last one, up north to Merseyside. My best friend is now Andrew Cox and we’re sitting on a coach together on a school trip to Conwy castle.
I'm wearing a wired earpiece, no Walkman yet, attached to my main and probably only present, a Phillips pocket radio with a neat black leatherette cover. Radio 1 crackles and hisses, poor reception getting worse as we enter Wales. It’s disappointing because the radio sounds broken not that I’m a pop music fan yet but the blemish of bright orange wax from Cox's ear from when he was wearing it is worse.
I wanted to have a laugh and enjoy the coach banter, so I wiped the earpiece on the seat and put the radio back in my bag.