Thu, 23 Feb 2023 08:15:57 -0800WeeblyMon, 14 Sep 2020 17:03:26 GMThttp://www.chicobuarquetranslated.com/blog/the-genesis-of-pilot-errorAn idea for writing a novel comes along in many different ways. I am currently 38,000 words into the first draft of a novel about a homeless man, a subject which came out of the blue and about which I know very little. Of the novels I've already completed, by far the biggest seller is Pilot error, about an aeroplane crash during WW2 and its impact 20 years later on the lives of the men and women concerned. Although only 10% of it is 'true', certain physical features of the plot are still in existence.

For anyone who is interested I try to summarise below the real story of the crash, as opposed to the story told in the novel. In September 1946 a telegram was sent to our London home announcing the death of our father in a flying accident as he was training an Australian air crew. It was a tragedy for our mother, whose husband had survived five years piloting Liberators only to fall at at the very end of the war. For my brother Ted and myself the tragedy was muted. Children accept situations as they find them and we had scarcely known our father, who was away most of the time. Subsequently, normal life was Ted and me and our mother. Not having a man in the house was natural. Above my bed was a head-and-shoulders photo of a man looking very handsome in uniform. I knew it represented my father but the word carried no real significance. Later on I used to try and imagine his last moments in the cockpit. In fact we knew little about the crash. My grandfather 'wouldn't let' our mother see the body, and in those days women did what they were told. She was informed that there was only one survivor and he 'wasn't right in the head'.

When people are involved in a cataclysmic event they tend to shove it to the back of their memory, returning to the scene – if at all – many years later. It turned out there wasn't just one damaged survivor of the accident, as my mother had been led to believe. The first I knew of this was when, working in India, I received an amazing letter from Ted, who'd discovered where the plane crashed and visited the site with our mother. He described the appealing little church of Cockayne Hatley village in the Bedfordshire countryside and opposite it, Potton Wood, where our father had died. Even more gob-smacking, Ted went into a hall next to the church and found communications from two Australian airmen who'd revisited the UK 20 years after surviving the accident: Noel Gilmour from New South Wales, and Frank Doak from a town near Melbourne. What did my brother do next? Obviously – because he's like a bulldog once he gets hold of something – he wrote to the two Aussies.

Almost by return post he received two long letters that described the last hour of our father's life. Under his direction, the crew had set off on a training flight 'without parachutes and with an intercom system that we couldn't use'. To demonstrate flying on three engines our father had 'feathered the starboard outer engine halfway down the runway,' whereupon the aircraft 'lumbered into the air'. At about a thousand feet he'd also feathered the starboard inner engine so the trainee pilots could handle a craft with two engines stalled. Now things began to go wrong. As the plane lost height and Potton Wood loomed in the distance they tried to restart the engines, but the fuel mixture controls were still in 'idle cut-off setting' and wouldn't start. The Liberator continued to lose height and it became clear they were going to crash. Doak wrote: 'Noel and I glanced at each other in alarm but did not speak. In fact nobody in the cockpit said a word.'
In the crash our father was killed instantly, along with three other men. Frank Doak, though quite seriously hurt, managed to walk away. Noel Gilmour was thrown clear badly injured, and not found until a second search was conducted, and only then through the whimpering of the dead Aussie pilot's scotch terrier 'Bitsa', which of course shouldn't have been on the flight at all, but was, and which had slept during the flight and now stayed by Gilmour's wounded body.

Ted was nowhere near done. He had a memorial stone put into the Cockayne Hatley churchyard that named the dead and the survivors – 'and Bitsa the dog'. A designer carved the elegant slate head-stone in the form of a Liberator wing. With the help of the local vicar – who happened to be a flying nut – Ted arranged a service in the church. It was attended by a surprising number of people, including the extended Spiller family, a farm labourer who'd been first on the scene of the crash, other local residents, researchers who'd investigated the incident – and, another surprise, our father's flight engineer Roy Carling, who'd been grievously injured in the crash but survived and was tracked down by Ted.

During the service the vicar sprang a further surprise: he moved his congregation outside, where he'd privately arranged for a Spitfire from Duxbury airfield to fly over the church. Not a dry eye to be seen. More tears welled up when he asked the company to gaze towards Potton Wood as he intoned the famous words: 'They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.'

It sometimes seems as if this story will run for ever. After retiring I wrote the first draft of a novel called Pilot error. It was nine-tenths fiction but included an aeroplane crash and a memorial service in the Cockayne Hatley churchyard. While researching it I revisited Potton Wood, looking for scarred tree trunks and picking up bits of fuselage that had lain there for 20 years. The act of walking through the peaceful, deserted forest made a deep impression on me. I sent the draft novel to Ted, who made a lot of helpful comments, and several years later extensively revised the text and got my son Ben to put it up for sale on Kindle. At the time of writing it is much the most successful thing I've written. We're told that some of those who read it drive out to see the headstone in the churchyard. It is a decent book, I think, but its success is perhaps down to the spark of personal experience that informs the story – that and the passion for flying felt by our father and by generations of men before and since.]]>Mon, 14 Sep 2020 16:59:22 GMThttp://www.chicobuarquetranslated.com/blog/rachael-bland-nee-hodgesThe date of September 5 marks the death of broadcaster Rachael Bland, two years ago at the age 40. For many listeners to BBC radio she is associated with the podcast 'You, me and the big C', in which Rachael, Deborah James and Lauren Mahon discussed the effect of cancer diagnoses on their lives. These sessions tackled a deadly subject with spirit, humour and a frankness that made them a watershed in talk radio. Rachael's dispassionate last message to followers acknowledged that her time was up. She died two days later leaving behind a husband and a young son.

The 'Big C' broadcasts were a breakthrough all right, but followers of Rachael's career will know that she broke the mould on radio not once but twice. For most of her early radio years she was a newsreader on BBC Radio 5 Live. In those days the readers would materialise at half-hour intervals and deliver prepared script in clear, measured tones before departing without fuss, leaving the limelight to presenters. Regular listeners would hear their voices without necessarily identifying them. Except that... For the period 2007 to 2013, 5 Live's late evening show (10.30pm-1am) was presented by two speculative characters – first Richard Bacon, then Tony Livesey – who instead of chaperoning listeners gently towards slumber made a point of keeping them awake. At the same time the pair allowed newsreaders to step from the shade into the light. They were encouraged to improvise. They conversed with the presenter, speaking their own words. They sifted incoming texts and emails and read them out extempore. They undertook unusual tasks designed by their devilish presenters, like giving a weather forecast from the roof or planting something in the Blue Peter garden. They became on-air personalities whom listeners could recognise, and did their careers no harm in the process – and the programmes benefited from the change of role.

Amongst the handful of newsreaders who emerged in this way was the as yet unmarried Rachael Hodges, sometimes known by Bacon's nickname for her of 'The Hodge'. She sounded different from many women on radio. Not for Hodges the quicksilver laughter of an Aasmah Mir; for her, amusement triggered a machine-gun cackle. Her intonation resembled that of an old-style landlady telling a guest to take his shoes off the bedspread. Such individual qualities, added to her intelligence, hard work and professionalism, established her personality to charming effect.

All good things must come to an end. In May 2013 Phil Williams replaced Livesey and the team approach fell by the wayside. The programme lost its zest and one wondered why a producer did not intervene. But thanks to Bacon, Livesey and Rachael Hodges (plus other readers like Kate Williams and Faye Ruscoe) a precedent had been set that gave newsreaders the scope to reveal their talents. May their example be followed again one day soon.

'The Hodge' left the late evening slot in October 2011, the manner of it befitting her time there. A surprise goodbye party was arranged by Livesey. 'You know we had a row yesterday because you didn't want to make the tea,' Livesey reminded her. Hodges muttered something about 'sending a minion'. At once, two beefy young men entered the studio clad in bow ties and the briefest of briefs, carrying trays of tea and cake. 'Perhaps Rachael could describe what's going on,' Livesey suggested. Hodges gave vent to one more on-air cackle. 'Two semi-naked men have just walked in,' she explained. 'Um...very fine-looking semi-naked men. Are they staying for the night?' 'Do you want them to?' asked Livesey. Let us draw a veil.]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 16:55:48 GMThttp://www.chicobuarquetranslated.com/blog/headlinesA headline in The Observer of 30 August 2020 ran: 'Teachers' anger over No 10's last-minute guidelines on coping with local outbreaks'. Another said 'Troubled times see millions embrace stark beauty of Yorkshire farming idyll'. You can find similar examples in any of today's newspapers. These are not headlines – they're essays. Where are the brevity and wit of yesterday's headlines, such as 'FREDDY STARR ATE MY HAMSTER', or 'SWEDES 2 TURNIPS 1' (England's World Cup exit).
The first headline to make an impression on me (I was five) proclaimed 'HITLER DEAD'. This had brevity all right, plus a dramatic content that was hard to match.
Some of the least impressive headlines appear in local papers, because they lack the dramatic sweep of national and international news. My son Ben swears that a front-page headline in our local rag ran 'WOMAN TOLD TO TAKE HAT OFF IN PUB'. Better efforts have appeared elsewhere. I feel affection for 'PSYCHIC JOINS HUNT FOR MISSING PARROT' (an Islington paper), and for 'HUSBAND JAILED FOR SPROUT ASSAULT' (Blackpool).

I have two all-time favourites. Holidaying in Nepal during the 1980s we bought a copy of the only English-language paper available. Its one constant feature was a daily section describing the activities of King Birendra, the then ruler. Otherwise the paper's slim contents were culled from the rest of the world's press on an entirely haphazard basis. The headlines were equally unpredictable. A colleague who'd been based in Kathmandu for two years said his favourite during that time had been 'SQUEEZED SCROTUM PROVES FATAL'.

My other favourite comes surprisingly from The Guardian, which can be quite likeable when it parodies itself. The story in question concerned a Tibetan cave where dozens of sloths used to hang out and deposit large quantities of sloth dung. Improbably, the dung had qualities that were valuable in medical research, and the cave was intermittently raided for the stuff. Then, disaster!: the cave caught fire and flames began to consume everything in their path. The Guardian headline ran 'SLOTH DUNG IN DANGER'. But what happened to the sloths? An eminent colleague spent time imagining new items for a restaurant menu, like 'SLOTH TOASTED OVER ITS OWN DUNG'.
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Sadly, many of the best headlines are not true. When Tony Livesey edited Sunday Sport in the 1990s one of his duties was inventing fake headlines. Amongst his better efforts were 'MYSTIC TOASTER PREDICTS FA CUP RESULTS', 'MAN FIGHTS SHARK WITH WIFE'S FALSE TEETH' and 'WOMAN WITH 4-INCH WAIST CAN'T EAT SPROUTS'. In January 2004 I noticed that the standard had been maintained with 'DOG EATS ONE-LEGGED PENSIONER'.]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:56:34 GMThttp://www.chicobuarquetranslated.com/blog/e-booksE-books
All the books I have on the Amazon database (put there by my son) are self-published and originally went on as electronic books, to be accessed via Kindle readers. In recent years Amazon have also provided self-publishers with the facility for very respectable paperback editions.
Electronic books have been around for decades,, but they took off commercially in 2007 when Amazon launched its Kindle reader for use with the firm's online database. These days E-books are read on a variety of additional platforms. Now that use has settled down from the post-2007 splurge we might speculate further about the traditional trade's response, or lack of it, and the contribution of agents to literature, or lack of it.
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E-books have enlarged the notion of authorship for the general public. Before them writers had to get their stuff into print to reach an audience, which is a job of work. At present most publishers will only accept submissions via literary agents, which places two barriers between those who write and those who read. Even then some agents decline what they call 'unsolicited material'. If the trend continues we may be heading for a much reduced pool of published authors, with an emphasis on celebrities and TV spin-offs, and some of today's original writers who started as unknowns may struggle to get into print.

Agents exist to identify the most saleable material but their record is mixed. Some of the most famous works in literature have attracted rejection slips, from Animal farm to the first Harry Potter (which was turned down by nine publishers, most of whom have topped themselves – not really). Marina Lewycka's first novel (A history of the traction engine), now an international best-seller, was rejected 50 times before it found a publisher. These things shouldn't come as a surprise; if agents could write like Orwell or Rowling or Lewycka, that's what they'd be doing. That doesn't excuse the offhand manner of some agents, which may deter writers from trying their luck at all.

If originality is deemed to be a suspect quality, some of the stuff that passes through agents' hands into print may be somewhat stereotyped. Note the samey quality of crime/thriller sections on booksellers' shelves today: the same type of presentation, the same length (always 400-odd pages),
the same type of marketing spiel on the covers, the similar tricks of narrative and style – and, if the writer is a woman (sorry, Sisterhood!), the unvarying use of the present tense.

There are some obvious advantages to self-publishing. Publication through the traditional book trade may take up to a year, whereas self-publishers can put E-books onto the Amazon database free-of-charge the moment they've completed them. They can monitor sales on a daily basis and collect royalties that compare favourably with those for printed books. Works can be shorter than the 70,000-word package often required of printed books, and new writing opportunities have opened up, with erotic fiction for women a well-publicised example. Of course the sales of self-published books are modest – with some impressive exceptions – and their quality is variable, though that is nothing new for anyone accustomed to the Internet. Users find books to read via the Amazon system of keywords, and get free previews of opening chapters before making a purchase. Reviews, by ordinary readers, are more down-to-earth than those by paid reviewers in the broadsheet press.

The printed book is a brilliant piece of technology, but E-books have a few inherent advantages. Kindle users face no problems with small print because they choose their own print size, and they are not plagued by book bindings that need to be forcibly held open. Print publishers haven't noticeably responded to these developments.

One thing is clear. Amazon and Co. have demonstrated that the general public is amenable to more varieties of content and presentation than those offered by the trade's more traditional minders. More than ever these days it's the public that decides what gets read. The straitjackets are off and the whole territory is up for grabs.]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:39:52 GMThttp://www.chicobuarquetranslated.com/blog/blog-1-the-starting-pointThe starting point of a novel is often full of surprises. Out of Burma, though one of my most successful, is case in point. I originally had in mind a short story about Vera Lynn – yes, that superb lady – when she travelled to Burma to entertain the troops (a trip that half-killed her). Knowing almost nothing about the subject I read Julian Thompson's book Forgotten voices of Burma, which records testimony about the war from all ranks.

There were three entries by a military wife, Mrs Margaret Bootland, about her hair-raising escape from Mandalay into India, and the moment I set eyes on these it became clear what should be written – not a short story, but a novel on that same theme.

The clinching factor was the extraordinary situation in which half a million members of the unpopular Indian community in Burma, deprived of protection as the British army retreated, upped sticks and tried to walk a thousand miles through desperate terrain into India.
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I'm surprised this amazing story has not been picked up by the film industry. And also surprised that few of today's observers have drawn comparisons with the flight of Burma's Rohinga communities into Bangladesh.]]>