REPORT 39 MARCH 2006
I’ve had e-mails from a webmaster in Cracow . . .
TIME to blog again. This is, I think, the 39th of these “reports” and
one thing which has been dinned in to me ever since I started is the
importance of writing them regularly. I aim for one a month minimum
with additional ones if there seems a reason for it. There are now
enough for a book so that the trusty Literary Agent is toddling out to
bat with an idea for something called “Writer’s Blog”. I like the
title and think that quite apart from printing the words I’ve written
one should reflect on the whole “blog” phenomenon, how it works and
how we can make it work for us.
Tim Heald
Even over the last week or so there seems to have been a plethora of
pieces about the blogosphere in the MSM (“Mainstream media”,
apparently – an agreeably dismissive phrase for established commercial
journalism). A writer in the Times was swanking about how he’d
completed a year of blogs, an editor in the Guardian was telling us
that blogs were here to stay and conventional hacks had to take
notice. And so on. Apparently there are many millions of us out here
and we are increasing at an astonishing rate. I suppose I can only
write from anecdotal experience but John Bennett who runs my site has
sent me some stats which tell me I’ve had almost 100,000 ‘hits’ in the
past year (small beer by the standards of more strident bloggers) and,
more significantly, that my number of daily ‘hits’ has increased by
between two and three times in the same period. In the last day or so
I’ve had e-mails from a webmaster in Cracow wanting to establish a
link (sorry no); an academic at the University of Melbourne, Australia
wanting help with a biographical project (able to help and did so
happily) and a journalism student in Norway wanting thoughts on
British press freedoms (response similar to the previous message). My
verdict based on this and other evidence is that my blog is working.
The purpose of mine is primarily commercial in the sense that what I
think I’m trying to do is to create an awareness of what I’m writing,
in particular the books, and to encourage people to start reading
them. It’s a very soft sell and there is more to it than that. It’s a
bit like ‘networking’, a subject on which I have written a book. If
you go at it without any sense of fun and enjoyment it won’t work. Too
naked an ambition is repellent.
There are so many blogs that it’s effectively impossible to generalise
but there are two categories that I find interesting and into which
mine definitely don’t fall. One is the rant, usually right-wing. These
are the ultimate opinion pieces advocating draconian penalties for
lefties of every description. There are left-wing ranters too but
there seem to be fewer of them. I’m not terribly interested in these
as they seem to duplicate a lot of MSM stuff albeit in a more extreme
form. This is part of what I was droning on about to Ole, the
Norwegian journalism student. MSM, which was mainly about information
and reportage when I signed up in the 1960s, is now about comment.
Hacks used to be questioning souls who went where other people
couldn’t go and asked questions accordingly. Now they seem to be
people in suits who sit in ivory towers and tell us what to think.
Compare and contrast. The other sort of blog is based on a
special-interest site where anoraks of various sorts exchange views
and information on their pet subjects. I seem to have enrolled on one
to do with food and drink which is far more erudite than anything in
the MSM. Rugby is interesting as well. I’m particularly amused to see
that clubs in National Division One are incredibly quick to post match
reports when they win but are unaccountably silent when they lose. But
if you know where to look there is now much more information on the
net than you’ll find in old-fashioned papers and magazines. That’s a
shame in a sense and some might dispute it but I really do feel that
if I want to REALLY know what’s happening almost the last place I
should look is my daily newspaper. As one who was brought up to
worship such journalism this is a terrible shame.
Enough of this. The core of my blogs is self-reportage, the sort of
thing I’d put into say, a Spectator diary. Talking of the Spectator
the magazine printed a piece of mine in the issue of two weeks or so
ago. It was about the quick dash my wife and I made by Eurostar to
Paris’ dixieme arrondissment. I hoped Mary Wakefield, the editor i/c
travel might print it and then my wife and I were having a morning
coffee (chocolate in my case) at the Wolseley (an expensive but
affordable treat compared with a main meal!) and I saw a copy of the
magazine sticking out of the handbag of the woman at the next table.
My wife being a brash Australian asked if she could borrow it and
there it was. I’ve been published in the Spectator since I was at
university (see elsewhere on-site) but this was the first piece I’d
had in since the beginning of Boris Johnson’s reign. Seeing my name in
its pages once more gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure. Thank
you Mary and thank you MSM.
Another encounter with old-fashioned conventional hackery was an
interview with Gyles Brandreth, whom I first interviewed myself when
he was still an undergraduate at New College, Oxford. This was a TV
job for Granada to mark this year’s royal birthdays – the Queen’s
eightieth and Prince Philip’s eighty-fifth. Gyles in serious mode is
very skilful and despite the constant interruptions from traffic and
workmen in the London square outside our improvised recording studio,
he was searching, knowledgeable and – critically – kept you
permanently on your toes. I suppose the interview lasted the best part
of three hours, punctuated with expressions of approval from Gyles and
the production team which were compounded by enthusiastic thank-you
emails after I got home. Even these are terrifying (How come they seem
so pleased? Have I said something controversial? Is it Tower of London
time? I thought I was just being normal.) The terror is compounded a
million times by the realisation that those two or three hours are
going to be edited down to a few seconds or minutes at best and the
charming TV people can make you seem anything they like by clever
visual and audio-editing. When I played cricket on TV a year or so ago
I only scored a battered half dozen or so but by the time the
production team had finished with me I looked as if I had compiled a
textbook fifty or so. I know of what I speak!
Anyway the week in London and North Wales was typically hectic. We
stayed at the Army and Navy Club of which I’m a member because my
father was one before me and acted unwittingly as a posthumous
sponsor. It’s central (St. James’ Square) and average by London
standards during the week (£120 for a double) with a relative bargain
at weekends when the cost is cut in half. We travelled up in the
afternoon and had a Chinese meal in Soho – the Gallery Rendezvous in
Beak street, full of echoes and ghosts from a Hong Kong past. The
following day I had an interview with a former Princess Margaret
‘walker’ who had sat next to her at dinner when he had a market stall
in the Portobello Road in which she expressed (genuine) interest. Then
lunch in a North London gastro-pub with an old friend and colleague
from Telegraph days and then, after some computer-time in the club, an
amazingly lavish party given by Orion books of whom Weidenfeld, the
Princess Margaret publishers, are a component part. I wondered, as I
used to when I shared an accountant with the Rolling Stones, whether
it was tactful; for publishers to invite their authors to quite such
lavish parties – champagne and smoked salmon for several hundred at
the Wallace Connection, followed by smart supper with even smarter
fellow authors. Still, it was thoroughly enjoyable, and made one feel
briefly…well not exactly important, but perhaps ‘wanted’.
Next day was picking up a book from Nancy Sladek at the Literary
Review (a retake on Ronald Blythe’s ‘Akenfield’ by a young Canadian,
see future edition of magazine for considered opinion!) followed by a
fascinating session at Kensington Palace going through the papers
relating to the refurbishment of the Snowdons’ old apartment, 1A. Then
on to “Honour” with Martin Jarvis and Diana Rigg which was enjoyable
and mercifully short. We had supper afterwards at that funny old Greek
restaurant at the top of St. Martin’s Lane where I used to go
sometimes with John Thomson from the Daily Express. There was a Lord’s
Taverners dinner going on downstairs and the head waiter whose hair
had turned grey but who was otherwise just as he was in the late 1960s
talked nostalgia. Next day Chinese New year lunch with the “Friends of
the Hong Kong branch of the Royal Asiatic Society”. Lots of old
acquaintance for Penny though a poor meal which took hours and hours
to serve. The following day we went to a PEN special showing of George
Clooney’s evocative Ed Murrow black-and-white movie “Good Night and
Good Luck”. More nostalgia for me with all sorts of PENfriends from
the past including Josephine Pullein-Thompson,, Elizabeth Paterson,
Lee Langley and Theo Richmond. We are all significantly older, though
some us wear worse than others!
Immediately afterwards we struggled with our bags to Euston and on a
mega-expensive Virgin train to Llandudno junction. I must write and
complain. We could have travelled to New York and back for the money
and they didn’t even open the ‘shop’ till after Bletchley. Llandudno
was bitterly cold but David my disabled cousin who was comatose in
hospital a few weeks ago and not expected to live seemed to have made
an amazing recovery. Spoke to his carer and the boss of his home and
then back – in just over three Virginal hours for Gyles Brandreth and
a hugely successful (over £60,000) auction on behalf of Books for
Africa fronted by Jeremy Paxman.
The early morning taxi to Paddington next morning was late so we
barely made it to the train. When we got home we found that the boiler
was still kaput and we had no heating or hot water.. Eventually the
crucial spare part turned up but not until we had been without heat
for over two weeks, and this during two of the coldest weeks of the
winter. Serves me right I think for having so much fun away from home.
Fun here too though. We went to Padstow for a jolly lunch at Margot’s
given by David McWilliam the Wykhamist oarsman who runs BinTwo the
excellent local wine merchant; we entertained the Brigadier and Jill
Bullock to a farewell lunch; I saw the Cornish Pirates beat Bedford in
an absolute cracker; I did an early morning chat at the experimental
Radio St. Austell Bay; the du Maurier Festival brochure came out with
the announcement that Bishop Bill and will be droning on about village
cricket and Denis Compton on May 16 (mark your diaries); we will
launch the cricket books and the Festival and an oratorio by Tony
Cottrell and Peter Skellern on April 28th at the Marina Hotel; I have
spent time editing Denis Compton after a visitation to Fowey by the
Aurum editor, Graham Coster, who came on the sleeper; and I’ve been
beavering away on editing a company history for the Palmer brothers,
brewers of West Dorset – more journalism than real book work,
interesting though time consuming.
Josephine and Elizabeth, at the PEN screening, said they got exhausted
just reading my ‘reports’ and I know what they mean. Sometimes in the
morning there doesn’t even seem to be time to get dressed. It is now
10.30 am and I am still in my dressing gown, typing this and watching
England play cricket against India in Nagpur. The marvels of modern
communications! Now I shall shave and go for my morning conference
along the cliffs. Oh dear, India have just got a crucial sixth
wicket. England, says the truculent (Indian) commentator, are ‘losing
wickets at regular intervals’!
So that is the blog for this month. As I say, although the evidence is
anecdotal, I sort of feel that they work. Certainly there are friendly
voices out there in the ether and the idea is agreeably challenging.
It’s still bitterly cold here but, so far, the boiler is working and
spring is in the air. Keep sending the messages and book up for me and
Bishop Bill on May 16th. A snip at £6 a head!.
Report Number
39 MARCH 2006
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