Author & Blogger
When my writing career didn’t explode like I wanted it to (that wouldn’t happen for another two years), I headed into Ramsgate town to see what work was available. My extraordinary collection of GCSEs and one-week show-ups at Thanet College afforded me the following tree of opportunity….
“It’s Davey from Blockbuster in Ramsgate: store code 260116. I’d like to place a large stock order, please.”
It’s a Thursday morning, rain is pouring over Ramsgate and I’m on an early shift at Blockbuster Video. I’m really miserable: I’ve had a terrible night with very little sleep, and I’m on my own for the first hour of the shift. The sky is dark, people are running up and down King Street trying to get out of the rain and there’s even a few rumbles of thunder suddenly being thrown into the mix.
“Ah, there you are boys. This isn’t a great start, is it? “What time did I tell you?” I look blankly at my best friend but he doesn’t have a watch on either. “Er….nine o’clock?” “I said eight fifty-five, actually.” “I think it IS eight fifty-five.” “Not on my watch.”
This lovely photograph was taken during our first trip to Euro Disney. It’s a great picture, and I think it shows just how happy we were and what a great time we had there. If you look carefully, you can see that all three of us are seriously LOVING Mickey Mouse Land: myself, my wife and our best friend, Goodshot.
The picture for this post is very deceiving, because at first glance it appears that I’m totally spanking the five or six plebs still standing on the starting line behind me. In actual fact, those boys are waiting to START the next race….and they’ve been waiting a while. Sports Day at my primary school was usually a competitive event, but most of the bets between the parents focused mainly on whether David Stone would hold up the next race by more or less than ten minutes.
Being a parent, I’m aware of the dangers….but some parents aren’t. I was at a certain softplay centre in Thanet two weeks ago when I heard: “Excuse me…..your daughter just bit me.”
I’m actually worried that we might get kicked out of Marks & Spencer. The security here is top notch and, despite the fact that we’re not actually doing anything wrong, we are drawing a lot of unwanted attention from the other customers in the restaurant. I guess it’s because we’re being quite noisy. ‘The blonde…
This is a story about Fighting Fantasy and Me. It’s probably going to take place mostly in the 80s and 90s but I know exactly where it’s going to begin. A few years after Terry Pratchett gave me the encouragement to forge on with my writing career, I decided to contact another one of my literary heroes in order to actually get an opinion on something I was writing.
Occasionally, I call my wife in the toilet….just to see how she’s doing. In our house, Toilet Time is quite rare. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it isn’t.
‘So let me get this straight,’ I say, trying to get comfortable in the back of the van. ‘I agree to blog about you, and in return you will show me REAL magic.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Right here at Westwood Cross?’ ‘Yes.’ The year is 2014 and it’s a decent day in July. Not for the first…