REPORT 37 JANUARY 2006
The news has tended to be pretty bloody. . .
CHRISTMAS for Goodwill and New Year for stock-taking seems to be the
convention so after my latest greeting message this is a sort of State
of the Union bulletin coupled with a general good luck to everyone for
2006.
Tim Heald
PS Look out for news in my next Report of a book auction in London in
aid of Books for Africa sometime in February.
Looking back on this time last year I see that I was surprisingly
bullish and in a personal sense I suppose I was more or less right.
Coming through a year without serious injury, illness or loss must be
accounted some sort of success and as it contained a new grandson, a
son’s marriage, publication of a new novel, some stunning foreign
trips and the Ashes you can’t really knock it. However I can’t help
agreeing with the Queen (ahem!) that the news has tended to be pretty
bloody from natural disasters to man-made ditto. Am I the only person
who has a sinking feeling even when confronted with trivial nonsenses
such as the news that Bob Geldof has been appointed advisor to the
Conservative Party on global poverty? Almost every day I seem to
accumulate new reasons for thinking that I’m going mad. I suppose this
is an inevitable consequence of age.
For the second year running a major speculative project stalled. Last
year it was a projected new magazine on which I devoted a lot of time
and energy only to find that the optimistic publisher couldn’t raise
the financial support for which he’d hoped. This year it was a
collaborative fiction idea which seemed to have everything going for
it but which has signally failed to attract either a publisher or
agent. Maybe it’s not quite dead. Maybe there is still life in both
but I’m not optimistic.
An essential part of being a self-employed freelance is nothing
venture nothing gain and one obviously expects to embark on schemes
which carry no guarantees. All the same the strike rate seems to be
depressingly low and even when things work out the financial rewards
seem to be diminishing. Inevitably I think one finds oneself asking if
this is a general trend or something particular to oneself. That way
lies paranoia which is, I suppose, an occupational hazard of self-employment..There
are, thank heaven, plenty of compensations but it would be a nice
change if a calculated risk or two came off in 2006.
One of the challenges of prediction and stock-taking is the balancing
of personal and public. Newspaper pundits are understandably dreadful
about this, seeming to make out that only public things matter whereas
for most of us personal circumstances are more important. For example
it seems to be accepted that as far as Avian flu and terrorist attacks
in Britain are concerned it is not a question of “if” but “when”. On
the other hand the brutal truth is that if we survive these hazards
neither will make a huge difference to us. Living with these sorts of
threat is not pleasant but,statistically, they’re not as
life-threatening as driving a car or even minding one’s business at
home. The realities of life seem to me to humdrum not epic.
The old year ended in a flurry of personal activity with completion of
a revised edition of my 1994 biography of Denis Compton, the original
Brylcreem Boy and star cricketer and footballer of the mid-twentieth
century. It came in at just over 86,000 words which I think is a good
length though I suspect Aurum, the publishers, want 100,000 (too long
in my estimation). I anticipate some problems because although the
book is an extensively revised and updated version of the original it
certainly isn’t a completely new book. It can’t be; half the people -
including Denis, whom I interviewed for the original - are now dead so
I can’t go back to them for more quotes. Besides I’m happy with my
accounts of his miraculous summer in 1947 and his 1950 Cup Final
playing for Arsenal. No need for more than tiny changes. The
publishers, however, show ominous signs of thinking it’s an entirely
new book. Watch this space.
Betty and Jonathan, old friends from Hong Kong, have been with us over
the New Year holiday; Jonathan and I went with Brigadier Bob to see
the Cornish Pirates beat Doncaster 43-26; Edward Mortimer, my old
university friend and now Kofi Annan’s communication director phoned
from Kate’s (his sister) near Okehampton, we are planning a short
break in Paris via Eurostar (a Christmas Present from me to Penny;) I
am supposed to be talking at a Fowey Ladies’ lunch; and being
interviewed by a TV company for the Queen’s birthday; Richard Cobb
letters continue to flow in from Turin, Dublin and points nearer home;
oh and the computer says it’s infected with a virus. Carl, my trusty
expert, has twice tried e-mailing me some sort of clever cleaning
programme but the computer keeps blocking them on the grounds that
they are suspect files and they are trying to protect me from them.
Gosh, the internet is a Kafka-esque thing.
My definite agenda is to complete the Princess Margaret biography;
finish my current whodunit A Death on the Ocean Wave and complete the
editing of the Richard Cobb letters. More than enough for one year but
there will be other things to do. The Village Cricket book is
scheduled for an April paperback publication and the Denis book is
supposed to be out at about the same time. So there should be some
publications. Also both daughters - Emma in Miami and Lucy in Auckland
- are talking of coming over to the UK for weddings and the World Cup
so with any luck I shall see all four children in 2006. My mother was
supposed to be coming for Christmas but developed a heavy cold and
cancelled. Time passes which, perhaps, is the only lesson of New Year
and as it passes plus ca change et plus c’est la meme chose.
We shall see. 2006 is now well under way. The last vestiges,
to paraphrase someone in today’s paper, of celebration have given way
to a mild melancholy; there is a grey mist over the harbour; my agent
has just phoned to acknowledge receipt of the Compton manuscripts and
to say that he is sending one straight on to the publishers; his
catchphrase ’What can one say?’ adds to my mild melancholy; the
thriller writer Ted Allbeury whom I vaguely knew and used to review
with regrettably faint praise has died aged 88. He gets a large photo
in the Guardian plus a eulogy from Len Deighton; my accountant has
just rung asking for some bank statements and telling me about the
latest VAT cheque; we still have no mirror in the bathroom; a little
box saying ‘Your computer is infected’ keeps popping up in the bottom
right hand corner of my screen. In other words it looks like business
as usual.
Happy New Year!
Report Number
37 JANUARY 2006
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