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Report Number 15
JUNE 2004
Post-publication blues are as real as the male menopause or
stage-fright . . .
THERE'S all that anticipation and then the book comes out and …nothing. Actually I can’t claim nothing as I’ve had some terrific responses to
“Death and the Visiting Fellow” and “Village Cricket” both in public and private. All the same there has, inevitably, been a fair bit of ‘Oh Tim, I didn’t know you had a new book out’. It’s inevitable. There are some excitements still to come: a signing on the first day of the West Indies Test at Lord’s (July 22nd), the Falmouth Festival on September 12th, St. Ives Festival the following day and so on. However there’s no point in pretending that you aren’t feeling anticlimactic, particularly when the bank manager keeps sending depressing letters and you find yourself in a Virgin train having to stand the whole way from Crewe to Bristol Parkway.
Actually I’d like to have a quick go at Virgin and their publicity-seeking boss. To cut a long story short I had to go to North Wales on family business and, because a family trust was paying and I had the usual work-load horror (a smashing book –
Gweilo by Martin Booth to review for Nancy Sladek at Literary Review, correction of finished MS of
“Death and the D’Urbervilles”) I ‘d reserved a First Class seat, though for some reason Sir Richard Branson calls it “Club”. Anyway when I got to Crewe and produced my ticket which said unequivocally that I was in Seat A04 on the 13.15 to Par, I was told that the train was now “terminating” at Birmingham New Street and there was only standing room. So I stood to Birmingham, caught another over-crowded train to Plymouth, waited there for the best part of an hour and picked up a train which didn’t stop at Par but got me to St. Austell a few miles (and several pounds of taxi-fare) further down the line. At least Penny had arranged for a steak and Chilean Merlot at the Royal Fowey Yacht Club but the experience was certainly calculated to bring the newly published author and TV personality down with a bump. I’ve written to the local paper, to the local MP, to Branson and Virgin Customer Services. Watch this space.
Almost the best experience of the last few weeks was a walk along the Dorset coast with my brother, James. He’s taken some funny pictures of me in Joseph the Australian bush-hat, leaning against the stone on the top of Golden Cap. James has a digital camera so I’ll try to get him to send some pix to the web-site. We did three days and went from Charmouth to Weymouth pausing at several Palmers pubs and visiting my friends Cleeves and John Palmer who run the family brewery in Bridport. There is even talk of a company history! I have turned the walk in to another of the “Letters from” pieces that Alex Finer runs in British Airways
High Life magazine. Also I had an unusual experience at dinner in Abbotsbury when I found a dead-drunk (literally) fly in a bottle of Montepulciano. I have turned that into a query for my old friend Philip Howard who does a weekly etiquette column in the
Times. “Waiter, there’s a fly in my wine”. Philip seems to be amused by it so I hope it will appear with advice on how I should have responded in a Saturday issue of the paper before too long.
Contracts have been signed and exchanged with Weidenfeld for a biography of Princess Margaret and an announcement appeared in the Bookseller and was picked up by the
Guardian of all people. It’s not officially authorised but I have…Oh, er, discretion demands, in the best British fashion that I say no more at this point!
I’ve also started on the next Tudor Cornwall novel (“A Death on the Ocean
Wave”) and have an invitation to do a speaking cruise on the QE2 next year. Good research and good fun. Chris Meakin and I continue to toss ideas back and forth for this new glossy travel monthly I’m supposed to be helping with. I hope we really are nearing the end of the Duke of Edinburgh Award history which has been consuming much of my life for as long as I care to remember. And a rather sad-sounding woman has written to complain about my obituary of Tony Babington in the
Independent. Everyone else thought it was funny and fond (as did !) so I suppose I shouldn’t worry. However it’s one of the oddities of this curious profession or trade that one always bothers about the brickbats and never really believes in the bouquets. Well,I don’t anyway.
This afternoon it’s off to charming Doctor Mawer in Lostwithiel. The blood-pressure’s up again. My fault. I can’t say I’m surprised.
Tim Heald
June 2004
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