An Encounter with Ian Rankin

Having arrived rather early for an event featuring Ian Rankin, I was checking out the bookstall when a tall man in a dark suit came and stood beside me. Is that him, I wondered? Surreptitiously, I opened his latest Rebus novel – the author photo confirmed my suspicions. “Hello, Ian,” I said. He smiled and we began to chat. I said that many years ago I’d sent him, via his publisher, a poem I’d written following his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2006. He had replied, some months later, thanking me and saying it was the first time he’d had a poem dedicated to him.

“That was Sue Lawley’s last Desert Island Discs,” Ian said, rolling his eyes. I nodded, “She was rather tetchy.” Sue, the haughty presenter, had challenged Ian about his gritty depictions of crime, almost implying that he had a disturbed imagination. Ian had responded with his, now famous, riposte – “Most crime writers are actually well-balanced individuals. We get all the dark stuff out on the page. It’s the romance writers you’ve got to watch out for.”

I told Ian that these very words had stimulated my poem ‘Dear Reader, I Murdered Him’ (see below). It was one of the first poems I’d written which was directly inspired by a real-life story. I’d carried on writing poems of this type and they had just been brought together in a book called ‘True’. Taking out an advance copy of my new collection, I showed him the poem. He was nodding as he read it. I then wrote a dedication thanking Ian and signed the book for him. He smiled and shook my hand. Gathering up a copy of his new book, ‘Midnight and Blue’, Ian signed it for me. The dedication reads, ‘From one writer to another’.

Dear Reader, I Murdered Him.

                                    for Ian Rankin

Heaving bosoms…

a child abused,

the tall, dark stranger…

a fugitive from justice,

every breathless encounter... 

a padded cell

in the maximum security wing.

 

Romantic novelists,

stranglers

and machete artistes,

compose birthday-card ditties

to get phone time and snout.

No remission

for repeat offenders.

The New Greenway

I’ve been out on my bike a lot during the past couple of weeks of good weather, happily this coincided with the opening of the full greenway between Newry and Carlingford. My first challenge was to find the start of the greenway, for there are no signposts to it anywhere in Newry. You have to cross a major road and follow a narrow strip of land between the ship canal and the lough – it’s a bit industrial at first, but you soon get some fine views across open water. The surface is marble-sized gravel, doable in good road tyres if you are a confident rider. At Victoria Lock you reach the newest part of the greenway, a raised walkway that takes you down to the border where the Narrow Water Bridge is being constructed. From here the greenway twists and turns to Omeath, with good surfaces but plenty of blind corners. This is also the busiest part of the greenway, where you will likely find families on hire bikes. Then it’s mostly tarmac alongside the lough with open views of the Mournes until you reach Carlingford marina. The greenway is 12 miles long, but when combined with the existing canal towpath it gives a dedicated cyclepath of 32 miles. I’ve been exploring the many new rides that this fantastic resource enables.

The most obvious ride on offer is the tour of the lough, which means you continue for four miles to Greenore and take the Carlingford Ferry across to Greencastle (20 minutes, 7 Euro), then return on the other side to Newry. This has the disadvantage of very busy roads. A better option is to continue on little roads beside the sea to the very end of the Cooley peninsula and return via the Windy Gap (732 feet), descending with fine views to Omeath and the greenway. There are two mountain roads up to the gap, one with a steady gradient (4%), the other with steeper ramps (6%) and a long plateau in the middle. A tougher option is to take the ferry across the lough and return through the Mournes. Here the climbs are both steeper and higher. Yesterday, I went down the greenway and rode back over the highest pass in the Mournes (1362 feet, with a ramp of 11%) above Spelga dam. Today, of course, my legs are sore. But I’m hoping that the fine weather will continue and I’ll get out for some more good rides before the autumn sets in. I feel I've put my heart scare well behind me.

My Heart MOT

After getting some erratic readings on the heart rate monitor I wore when cycling, I went for a series of cardiac tests. The first of these was a cardiac treadmill test. Sensors were attached to my chest, linked to an ECG machine, then the treadmill started to roll. It was easy at first, but the speed and the incline steadily increased until I was running up a steep hill. The tester told me to keep going until I could do no more; I managed a little over ten minutes in total. Next I had a cardiac CT scan, where dye was injected into my arm to highlight the coronary arteries. This was followed by a Holter ECG monitor, which I wore for 24 hours, to record my heart rhythms whilst awake and sleeping. Finally, I had an Echocardiogram, an ultrasound scan which checked my heart muscle and valves to assess how well my heart was functioning. After all of these, I returned to the hospital to meet the cardiologist and hear the verdict. I was very anxious, I felt sure the erratic readings I’d got whilst cycling indicated some serious underlying heart problem. So I'd been taking it easy.

The cardiologist began with the CT scan results. My coronary arteries were in very good shape for a man of my age. I had minimal narrowing and the plaque was calcified, so I was at low risk of a coronary heart attack. My echocardiogram was normal and my treadmill test score put me in the top 2% of my age group. My heart was working well for someone of my age. I beamed. Despite my wild youth, the subsequent years of healthy living and plenty of exercise had stood me in good stead.

‘But you do have an ectopic heartbeat’, he said.

‘Oh’, I said, my poor heart sinking. ‘What’s that?’

‘Your heart puts in an extra beat’, he said, ‘between the normal beats. The ECG monitor recorded it happening for 10% of the time.’

‘Oh dear... Is it serious?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not when your heart is healthy. Ectopic beats are common and nothing to worry about.’

‘Why does it happen?’

‘Different parts of your heart muscle can create a beat’, he said. ‘The extra beat can be caused by stress, or stimulants like coffee, or even by exercise itself. The extra beats often confuse a heart rate monitor.’

So that’s where the erratic readings came from. My pulse racing, I asked him the big question. “Can I restart cycling?’

He nodded. ‘That would be good for your heart.’

‘Up and down hills as well?’

‘There is a risk in everything’, he said. ‘But I can see no reason why you should not engage in moderately strenuous exercise.’

I grinned and thanked him. I might have plenty of miles on the clock, but I’d passed my cardiac MOT.

My First Fiction Publication

The opening of a novel is difficult to get right. The first page must set the tone, voice and location of the story, but it must also encourage the reader to turn the page and read on. This challenge informed an international competition which invited writers to submit the first 250 words of a crime novel. I submitted two pieces: the actual opening page of my crime novel, and the alternative opening page of the novel, which I ended up not using. I’m delighted to say that both my entries were selected for publication by none other than Val McDermid, and will appear in the anthology ‘Crimebits2’ this August, along with her introduction.

I’ve been writing and publishing poetry for over twenty years, but these first publications in an entirely new arena are very special to me. I began to write a novel to see if I could do it, and soon discovered that writing poetry and writing fiction are very different endeavours. Most obviously, a poem is often a series of lines on a single page, while a novel is around 100,000 words. But it’s not only about scale. It is how you unfold those 100,000 words in terms of narration, dialogue and plot. How you create a fictional world which is populated by characters that are authentic, engaging and who develop over the course of the story. How you encourage expectations in the reader and how you take those expectations forward into twists and turns that surprise them. And so on… I’ve been writing and rewriting my novel for three years now. I’ve learned a lot and I’m still learning.

https://blackspringpressgroup.com/pages/crimebits-2

A Date with an Agent

I spent the weekend at the International Festival of Literature in Dublin. This took place in a large marquee in Merrion Square Park, a verdant space in the heart of Georgian Dublin. It had been the private garden of the well-heeled residents of the square, among whom were Oscar Wilde and WB Yeats. The Insider’s Guide to Publishing, for as yet unpublished novelists, was an all-day event hosted by the dynamic Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, novelist, agent, founder of Writing.ie and Chair of the Society of Authors. It consisted of a very informative series of panels with top literary agents, leading editors and debut authors, all of whom shared their insight and invaluable tips on how to navigate the complex world of fiction publishing. But, despite all of this, the main draw for me was my ‘Date with an Agent’. Several months previously I had sent the opening of my novel, the synopsis and my bio into the competition run by Writing.ie, along with 500 other aspiring novelists. Amazingly I was one of those selected to meet an agent. I was very nervous, for I’d never met a literary agent before. I’d only received rejections from them. I waited outside the small office space that had been created for the meetings and went over my notes again. Then the curtain was opened and I was ushered in.

The date began well. The agent quickly put me at my ease. We spoke about my writing career and moved on to discuss my novel. Time seemed to pass extremely quickly. Then she told me she’d like to see my full manuscript. I left with a beaming smile on my face. In fact, it’s still here.

VE Day

My father spent VE Day, 8 May 1945, in Brussels. He had walked there, alongside thousands of refugees, after being liberated from his POW camp in the Black Forest by the US Third Army. He remembered General Patton standing on a jeep, with two ivory-handled revolvers at his waist, giving the prisoners a speech. Afterwards they were given plenty of food by the Americans. Many of the prisoners were sick after wolfing it down. They had been living on thin soup and scraps of bread for many months. My father had been a POW since 1942. He’d been captured at the battle of El Alamein in North Africa and had then been incarcerated at other camps in Italy and Germany. After liberation, he set off for home with only an old blanket for a coat. He lived like a refugee, sleeping under trees at the roadside, until he reached Brussels. He described VE day as completely wild. The city centre was crammed with people celebrating madly. To cross the street he had to walk over the bonnets of cars. After Brussels he got some army transport back to England. My father was the third eldest of nine children. His father had been badly wounded in the First World War and could only do light work. He became a village milkman, delivering milk from a horse and cart. Customers brought their pail and this was filled with milk from one of the churns that were carried on the cart. Like the other children, my father left school at 14 to earn money to support the family. He got a job as a draper’s assistant, delivering orders to customers by bicycle. He hated it and ran away to join the army when he was 15. He told them he was 16, the minimum age to enlist, but he always sent his army pay home to his mother. After basic training on horses, my father was posted to Cairo. There he joined a unit that patrolled the Western Sahara in armoured cars and made maps. In the late 1930’s there was a clear sense that the world was building up to a war.

With the rise of neo-fascism and dictatorships, many commentators are drawing parallels between the late 1930’s and the present day. The similarities are indeed too great to ignore. But let us hope against hope that wisdom prevails and we do not again descend into those dark days of widespread war. Like many brave men and women who fought in the Second World War, my father would be turning in his grave at the thought of it. 

The Nutshell

The house where I was born was featured on Countryfile (BBC1) yesterday. The programme was concerned with the restoration of the Stroudwater Canal that runs beside the house. The Nutshell was built in 1778, at the same time as the canal. It was originally a warehouse for the cloth mill at the bottom of the lane. When my parents first saw it, the house was for sale cheaply because it was so run down. My newly-married parents snapped it up, for it was all they could afford. I loved its many rooms and winding stairs. The top floor had bare floorboards and sash windows without curtains, it was only used for storage. Attached to the house was a large orchard with apple and plum trees. The disused canal next door was the marvellous territory of wild plants, water birds and fish. Just down the towpath was an estate of pre-fabs that were later demolished. I lived there until I was nine and have many happy memories. Indeed I’m still in touch with one of my childhood friends from those days, who now lives in Orkney. Exhausted from all the work they had to do on the house and from raising three small children, my parents moved to smaller house on an estate some 25 miles away. But I never liked it there and always pined for the wild environs of The Nutshell.

Do any of us ever forget the house where we were raised? Our early environment shapes us, for good or for ill. Those days have been a significant influence on my writing. I'll leave you with an old poem which features some of my early (mis)adventures with my younger brother Robert, who passed away in 2010. 

Swimming Lessons

Horse, Dog, Donkey, Cat.

I'm chanting animals that swim.

Cats can't swim, howls Rob.

We squabble.

To settle the matter, I nab our Pinky

and stride up the lane to the bridge.

Claws scrape the parapet,

she tumbles then twists

to hit the canal paws first.

She’s under.
The ripples spread.
Hell, could he be right?
A bedraggled head bobs
and she starts to paddle.
Triumphant, I turn to Rob
but he's already trotting to tell.
 
Tired of chucking sticks,
we perch on the canal bank

dipping our wellies into the dark water.

Rob splashes me, then me him.

Soon we're kicking up a mighty froth. 

At the height of the fun
he begins to dance on the water.
I clap and shriek, but his wellies fill.
I fling out my arm – he can't reach.
Struggling, he slides under.

I bash the kitchen window, yelling.

Mam leaps in and hauls him to the surface.

We lay his quiet body on the towpath.

Rob coughs, then howls.