Reviews and Redemptions

Last lock before London?

'The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.'  Well, that Oscar Wilde fellow knew a thing or two about writing and writers, and as I watch for reviews of Grand Union, the 4mph thriller with windlass-wielding Daphne Randall as its heroine, I'm not going to disagree.  Reviews are how you know that there's anyone out there reading your 'stuff'.  It's lovely when your friends say a kind word or two, but when they are from people who don't know you and aren't afraid to be honest, they are especially valuable - even if they aren't brimming with superlative praise.

For example, there's a '3 star' on Amazon.com which gives good marks for technical merit but fewer for artistic interpretation, but that's fine - it would be dreadful to make a bad job of describing the 'boaty bits' when they are an integral part of the story and likely to be so whenever Daphne next casts off (not for a little while - maybe next NaNoWriMo).

The other independent opinions are both 4 stars, which is tremendous for a book dashed off in a month, and include some lovely and helpful comments. 'Liked the feisty main character, Daphne'.  Good news, as I suspect some readers will despise her from the moment she bids Margaret Thatcher 'good riddance'.  I have to agree that 'The plot has some implausible elements' - not least the bit where Councillor Randall quits politics on a point of principle, one might cynically suggest, having sat through the real version of that budget meeting! - but hopefully the worst of the proofing errors mentioned have now been zapped and the revised version has uploaded successfully.

The other review is also friendly and encouraging, concluding with the possibly slightly suggestive, 'I empathised with Daphne her main character and I would willingly share a lock with her anytime should our boats be travelling along the same stretch of canal!'  All the way to the pub, perchance?

Careful now...!

Close to home - Ivy House lift bridge, Caldon Canal

I remember how excited I was with the first couple of reviews of Severe Discomfort - also unsolicited - started to come in.  The first, which started, 'Have just read this, and really rather enjoyed it. It was quite difficult to get in to, but after a while the characters grew on me-at the beginning they seemed unsympathetic and dull, but now I want to know what happened to them...' is about as good a review as you could hope for, encouraging people to stick with it and give Lyn and Terry a chance to develop as characters.

Many of the original cast have reunited for another tale and Claimant Commitment is being released in monthly episodes (the third part free this Sunday).  I've been publicising it, and the earlier books, via various anti-austerity and disability support Facebook Groups.  There have been some really encouraging and supportive comments from readers on some of these too, but also some quite sobering observations.  Just recently, sharing a link for Limited Capability, two people commented that they had started reading it but had stopped because they had found it too realistic and too close to their own situations for comfort.  It was tempting to wade in with some reassurances, though how to do so without ending up in spoiler territory?

What it did make me appreciate is that, when you are writing about real situations, even through the eyes of imaginary characters, you have to be mindful that readers will include people facing the same challenges.  The laughs and the love scenes (which aren't always a hit with serious activists) are in there to lift the clouds and lighten the load for them, and for anyone who isn't a complete benefits geek and needs to take a step back from the misery for a moment.  Life is hard enough for claimants and their families, without adding to their fears by bringing too much unremitting trouble down upon people they have identified with.

So I try to stay real, without losing hope.  My heroes have to win through, at least to some extent.  Especially with an election on the horizon, we all desperately need some optimism. 

And part of that optimism might be an unexpected redemption, or at least a partial rehabilitation, for an old foe.  Gary Pike may yet get to play a somewhat Gollumesque part in the current tale, though with Garys allegedly an endangered species, I had probably better not actually kill him off!

"Are you Daphne?"

Someone had to ask.

If you're a fifty-something female writing characters of the same age, I suppose readers are going to be curious about how much of yourself is tucked away in little corners of their personalities, and how closely their experiences are based on your own.  If I'm really not a well-disguised version of the sophisticated, sexy, compassionate and slightly vain Ms Carrington, am I in fact her old university chum, the opinionated, beer-swilling skipper of The Lady Eowyn?

Well no; no more than I am Hilary.  Or to put it another way; yes, to some degree.
  
Except I really don't like beer, unless diluted with quantities of lemonade that folks serious about their real ale would find utterly heretical and, while I occasionally enjoy a Guinness, a half tends to be enough.  I've never, ever dyed my hair any colour at all, let alone candy pink or kingfisher blue, and I'm a long, long way from being a Geordie, being Hampshire born and bred.  But I do have a narrowboat and, although it's not my only home, Mr H and I did complete the very journey undertaken by Daphne in Grand Union, if in somewhat milder peril, and others that may yet turn into excellent adventures for 'wah lass'.  

Lock 92, Rochdale Canal, Manchester

I turned some of the photos into a little slideshow with music and 'Grand Union - The Movie' (which is too big a file to share in a blog, apparently) has been quietly doing the rounds of Facebook, clocking up over 3,000 views and attracting perhaps - er - 2 downloads of the ebook.

You can understand why none of my 'strong female characters' are marketing executives...

'Uppie' at Little Venice, London

I need to find a way to promote Grand Union and, despite previously slating them in much the same terms the entirely fictional Daphne Randall slates the entirely fictional Six Towns Gazette, my best bet is almost certainly to drop a copy of the book with a suitably up-beat, eye-catching press release in to the local newspaper office.  There's at least one local journo who's championed another local writer and also been a sympathetic voice covering 'welfare reform' issues, so that's seems as good a place to start as any.

I probably do need to reassure him that I won't be dragging him off to the pub, or back to my boat afterwards, though - just in case he thinks I might be Daphne too!

You can read the first few chapters of Daphne's adventures here: completelynovel or here: amazon

Absolutely No Shades of "That Sort of Thing"

You have to hand it to B&Q.  If there was an award for the most creative leap onto the bandwagon of that film they surely win it for the 'leaked email' supposedly sent to staff advising them how to deal sensitively with customers asking for (ahem) supplies not required for conventional DIY.  Having grabbed headlines across the entire media spectrum, they've 'fessed up to it being a spoof.

Cynical, wicked - and sheer bloody marketing genius.

Arguably, I'm missing a trick here myself.  There are 'shady' jokes and references I could be using to push my own work, not least the old anti-austerity line about being the only novelist writing about being screwed by sadistic millionaires who can't make any money from it.  I considered a short story tie-in (tie-up?): a serious tale, perhaps with our Daphne the lone placard-wielding protestor at her local multiplex, watching a lass she knows to be a victim of serial domestic abuse going to see it with her latest unsuitable boyfriend: a funny one, inspired by the B&Q story, with Sally Archer trying to buy cable ties for her electrician and getting the nudge, nudge, wink, wink from the guy behind the counter: or a 'really rather saucy' one with Hilary perusing the wares in her local Ann Summers but concluding that nothing on offer improved on nature - at least as far as her man was concerned!

In the event, one of my colleagues (you know who you are, SJ!) got there first with a splendid little snippet of Grand Union 'fan fiction'

Daphne exclaimed “at last an internet connection.”  She hastily searched for the nearest B & Q; to her delight there was one a short walk away, 
She called out to Harry.  “Just nipping out to pick up some supplies pet”
“Do you need some company duck?”
“No, you carrying on thinking, I will be back in about 20 minutes”
Daphne walked along the clarty tow path and then cut through the factories to B & Q
“Can I help you madam?” asked the sales assistant.
“Yes please, I need some cable ties and gaffa tape”…

Mercifully, she left it with the reader wondering how this little escapade would end - perhaps arguing the merits of a running bowline over a clove hitch while six pints west of sober, waking up the next morning both tied up in positively Gordian knots, neither able to reach the scissors to set them free and one of the villains on the prowl close by?  (Damnation!  Wish I'd thought of that sooner.  Note to self - remember for next Daphne Randall adventure!)  

But no.  For all the joking about, a big part of me stands beside Daphne with her placard, deeply concerned about this romanticising of a creepily unequal and unhealthy relationship, and yet another 'flawed hero' who we're supposed to drool over for being insanely rich and powerful.  Like their author, 'my girls' don't go for Mr Grey.  Daphne would gladly hand him down a lecture on respect, Hilary would have a few very sharp words on consent and as for Sally, she'd be investigating just how kinky his company's accounts were, especially that deal with HSBC... 

And she'd tell him that his skyscraper was 'crap' too.

We are not alone!

On Tuesday I was in reflective mood, looking back at two years of increasingly polarised debate on Social Security and the infinitesimally small part Severe Discomfort and its successors had played in that debate, something of a lone voice in danger of being drowned out by the baying of 'reality TV'.


Yesterday, something changed.  I saw this:  http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/04/jobcentre-adviser-play-benefit-sanctions-angela-neville   A former Jobcentre adviser, disgusted with the persecutory culture in her former department, has written a play exposing the cruelty of the sanctions system.


It's a funny coincidence that the latest Solent Welfare Rights Project story includes (minor spoiler) dissenting workers within a Jobcentre trying to spare their vulnerable customers from the wrath of a Social Justice Ambassador, though we have always known that there are 'good guys' within the DWP - just ask Hilary Carrington!


And, after a brief, unworthy gnashing of teeth that Ms Neville's play had earned a front page slot on the Guardian website while the copy of Severe Discomfort I had sent them two years ago might as well have been hung on a nail in a privy (and may have been, for all I know), the positives started sinking in.

• Someone else thought that a work of fiction had the potential to change the debate, so wrote it.
• A national newspaper has picked up the story and promoted it heavily.
• The comments (987 at the time of writing) are overwhelmingly support of the ex-Jobcentre worker's efforts and evidence.
• The article is flying round social media and getting lots more support for the cause of a fair and humane Social Security system.

So good for you, Angela Neville!  I have my fingers crossed that Can this be England does get made into a short film or radio play and, in the great tradition of Cathy Come Home and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, inspires the change its writer dreams of.
 
It doesn't matter whose trumpet hits the note that brings down the walls of Iain Duncan Smith's citadel - only that someone's does.

Two Years On...

Tomorrow, it will be two years to the day since Severe Discomfort was published.  It seems a good time to re-read the preface and see whether there has been any progress.  After all, I claimed that: 

I wrote this tale to challenge the popular ‘cheats’ and ‘scroungers’ view of benefit claimants that, as I write this introduction, is leading to some particularly barbed rhetoric and unhealthy competition between politicians to look ‘tough’ on ‘welfare’.  Although all the characters and events in ‘Severe Discomfort’ are fictional, their dealings with the Department for Work and Pensions and Tribunals Service are firmly rooted in reality.  The Walkers’ predicament is exactly that faced by many supposed ‘benefit cheats’.  That isn’t to say there aren’t cheats out there, but they are neither numerous nor typical, despite what certain politicians and papers might have us believe.

Since that was written, the rhetoric has got nastier and the policies crueler, with worse promised from the Tories and only the demise of the Bedroom Tax offered in redress from Labour, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary famously promising to be 'tougher' on 'welfare' than the Tories and just this week attacking the Government for not doing enough to reduce 'fraud and error'.  Not a word about the continuing underclaiming of benefits, especially by vulnerable people, pensioners and increasingly young people ashamed or afraid to attend the Jobcentre.  No pledge to review Personal Independence Payment with its open agenda of cutting the cost of disability benefits.  No word on fixing the Work Capability Assessment so sick people aren't told to get up and walk by incompetent assessors and a flawed points system.  No promise to roll back the draconian sanctions regime.  Indeed, at conference last year the Shadow Chancellor promised to keep the Benefit Cap and to freeze Child Benefit.

If in May I end up putting a cross in the box next to my Labour candidate's name, it will be with gritted teeth and the knowledge that the Tories have already promised to cut the Benefit Cap still further (effectively allowing poor families one less child than at present - that's what a cut of £3,000 means in Child Tax Credit terms after all) and prevent young people under 21 from claiming Housing Benefit.  That they believe both policies are not just acceptable to the public but vote-winners means we are still losing this fight.

Without a major political party on our side, it can only be a grossly unequal fight - a handful of principled MPs, a few public figures, a network of bloggers and Facebook pages up against the majority of the political establishment, strident voices at the heart of the media, a mass of anti-claimant hate-speech on social networks, and the broadcast vomit known as 'Reality TV' - Too Fat to Work, On Benefits and Proud, My Big Benefits Family, Saints and Scroungers and, most notoriously and back for a new series just in time for the General Election, Benefits Street.

Are you not entertained?

As if that's not depressing enough Citizens Advice published their ideas for an alternative 'welfare' system last week.  It looked not at all like the system [minor spoiler] Hilary Carrington describes to her friend Daphne in Continual Supervision, suggesting instead a fragmented system with local variations in benefit rates, more discretion in administration and the following illustration of how it might work:

Greater Manchester would have a simple statutory responsibility for using this funding to promote core social objectives.  Within a fixed budget they could use the framework of existing benefits, or they could adjust the design of those benefits. They could reduce unemployment benefits for young people, for example, in order to strengthen incentives to work or stay in education, as part of a wider skills and labour market strategy.

Yes, you did read this correctly - the Citizens Advice Bureau advocating reducing benefits for young job-seekers, who are already expected to survive on only three-quarters of the adult rate.

It would be easy to lose all hope, were it not for the rise of the Green Party with their policy of a Citizens Income.  Okay, Hilary or any of her colleagues might have made a better job of explaining and defending it than Natalie Bennett, but at least the idea is out there, very publicly, and being advocated by a party whose star is in the ascent.  When the promise of greater social justice - the real sort, not IDS's fake tears and cuts disguised as tough love - was put at the heart of the 'Yes' campaign for Scottish independence, it came closer than anyone expected to success by bringing people out to vote who had given up on politics and politicians.  The rise of anti-austerity parties Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain is proof that people want better than kick-the-poor-to-save-the-rich policies and parties that differ only in the number of hobnails in their boots.  

In the meantime, my small counter-propaganda campaign rumbles on, with free ebooks whenever possible and a new 'exclusive to Completelynovel and cheaper than Amazon' paperback version of the original story and its sequel out soon.  And yes, when my volunteer proof readers have finished fine-tuning Limited Capability there's a paperback of that to publish too (before the Election please, ladies!!) with Daphne's thriller Grand Union hopefully acting as bait to draw in some unsuspecting new readers.

Let's see who blinks first, Channel 5!


 

They're back!

The original 'welfare rights lit' stories

A couple of days ago I saw a photograph of an alleged UKIP leaflet on Facebook which read:

"We could likely remove six million cars from the road if benefits claimants were not driving.  Why do they have the privilege to spend the tax payers hard earned money on a car, when those in work are struggling to keep their own car on the road?  These people really could catch a bus!"


That had to be a hoax - didn't it?  Well no, actually - it really had been put out by Leicestershire UKIP Councillor and prospective parliamentary candidate Lynton Yates!

That's just the latest and most extreme sign of how 'benefits bashing' is seen to be a vote winner.  While it has been encouraging to see some good articles and proper debate around the impact of 'welfare reform' on income inequality and the misery of sanctions, especially in the good old Guardian (who can consider themselves forgiven for overlooking Severe Discomfort as a potential 'self-published book of the month' last autumn - though it would have helped the cause mightily), on the other side of the propaganda war Channel 5 are churning out ever more outlandish 'Big Fat Benefits...' freak-shows and advertising for benefit fraud tip-offs for a new show, while Channel 4 are lining up a new series of Benefits Street for the spring.

It must therefore be time for the Walker family and their allies at the Solent Welfare Rights Project to step forward to do battle again.  The first part of a new serial - 'Claimant Commitment' - is out now and free to download this weekend.  You should find it here


It's a coincidence - and not a happy one - that as the focus of this story shifts to the Project's local Jobcentre and the reign of terror instigated by a ferocious new manager, in reality Southampton finds itself named as a sanctions hot-spot second only to Derby, with over 9% of JSA claimants having their benefits cut.

Spooky!

The team also brace themselves for the Bedroom Tax, get involved with their local Foodbank and face up to life after Legal Aid. How will it all end?

I wish I knew! 

The Spirit of '84

 

  'This is where it all started, you know.'
  Daphne Randall slipped the centre rope through a metal hoop on the quayside and held it fast as Hilary Carrington stepped gingerly from the stern onto the frosty flagstones.  Her friend was still recovering her boat legs, but remembered enough of the routine to secure the stern rope as Daphne tied off the bowline.
  'So this was the actual pottery that your mother's coach party came to?' asked Hilary.  She had heard the story many times of how old Mrs Randall stowing away on a coach at a motorway service station had brought Daphne to the Potteries, but this was her first visit to the place where the old lady was safely retrieved.
  Daphne rested her arms on the roof of her boat as her glance swept back along the canal.  There had been no ice on the water that day, only glinting sunlight and a scattering of litter as the boat she now called home had putted past and she had waved to its cheeky-faced skipper.
  'Fancy a brew, Hils?'  She had planned to show her friend the restored Victorian offices and the bottle kiln first, but the trip up from Etruria had been bitterly cold and she needed something to thaw her out.
  'Rather!'  Hilary agreed.
  Tea and snacks were no longer served in a corner of the Seconds Shop.  Instead, the glass doors of a smart new cafe overlooked the canal, facing across the water to a mural that mirrored the chintzy china for which Burleigh was famous.
  'Grab a seat by the stove, Hils and I'll get the drinks.'
  'My treat - I insist!'
  Daphne settled herself onto a leather sofa and relaxed in luxury beside a glowing stove.  Moments later, her friend landed a tray with two generous cream-crested mugs of hot chocolate and two rich chocolate brownies on the table before her.
  'I see you're not cutting down after Christmas!'
  Hilary cast herself onto the leather sofa.  'There's plenty of time for that once we get back home,' she said.  'And actually, we didn't go mad over Christmas or New Year - we were on edge waiting for the news from Skipton...'
  'So do I have to call you Grandma now?' 
  'I'd really rather you didn't!'
  Daphne chuckled.  Advancing age was always a sensitive point with Hilary.
  'There's something else to remind us we're getting old,' said Daphne, raising her eyes to the heavens and the background music.  'I well remember the first time they released Do They Know It's Christmas, and this has to be the third or fourth version now.'
  Hilary smiled thoughtfully.  'We were talking about Christmas songs and our memories of them when we had our Christmas Eve drink at work.  The others told some funny and touching stories - I did laugh at Paula's, as I know her father-in-law and he is a bit of a character.  But this was my tune, thanks to the Christmas Party you organised for the Miners' children during the strike.  I could remember it playing at the end and...'  She dabbed her eyes with her napkin.
  'Aw pet!  Don't get all upset!  I always think of it as one of the happiest memories of that year.  There wasn't a lot a bunch of students could do to help but giving the kiddies a party with jelly and ice-cream, balloons, cakes and all the other things that they'd usually take for granted at Christmas was something we could do.'
  'Except we didn't know how much work it would involve - Sandra and I must have spent days making butterfly cakes and I'd never cut up so many sandwiches in my life!'  Hilary cut her brownie into dainty squares.  'I thought we'd have a lot more helpers.'
  'We always thought everyone was on our side, didn't we?' Daphne slurped her chocolate and wiped cream from the tip of her nose.  'Mind you, a lot of the others had started going home for Christmas so we shouldn't have been surprised to find it was just the die-hards left - or should that be die-hard lefties?'
  'Buttering bread and grating cheese for the cause!' Hilary laughed.  'Hardly the stuff of proletarian revolution.'
  'I don't know.  We could have built proper barricades out of Morag's scones!'
  'Don't be unkind!'  Hilary looked pensive again.  'They all got eaten.'
  'I'm not surprised at that.  The kiddies didn't stop tearing about from the moment they arrived, except for that first twenty minutes of furious feasting, and we were run ragged keeping them entertained after that.' 
  'Where did that bouncy castle come from?  I don't think I'd ever seen one until then.  I certainly hadn't been on one before.'
  'I don't remember, Hils, but I think you trying it out was the high point of the evening for a quite few of the lads!'
  Hilary was sipping her hot chocolate and her laugher blew a few bubbles of whipped cream onto the table.  'It was your speech before the children arrived that impressed me,' she said.
  'I don't remember any speech,' said Daphne. 
  'Well, perhaps it wasn't really a speech - more of a briefing.  You told all of us helpers that we were to remember that it was a party for the children, and that while we were there for political reasons, because we wanted to support the Miners and encourage them to carry on, the children weren't coming for a lesson in political science and lectures on Socialism, but to have fun and forget the strike for a couple of hours.  "I don't wanna hear any political shit from any of yous," you said.  And then you opened the doors...'
  'And all hell broke, with a horde of bairns bearing down on the food tables as if they hadn't seen scran like it for months...'
  'Which they hadn't,' Hilary recalled.  'That's what brings a tear to my eye - that when it was time to go home, they were loading all the left-over sandwiches and cakes, and even Morag's scones, onto paper party plates and in plastic bags so they could take it away.  I'll never forget that.  I'd never seen children so desperate for food.  I never thought I would again.'
  'But we have lately, haven't we?' Daphne said. 
  'I know.  There are families without enough money for food everywhere, only this time it's sanctions, benefit cuts and zero-hours contracts to blame.  And of course the poor little children don't understand...'
  'I think you'll find those poor little children sometimes understand better than you think.'  Unexpectedly, Daphne smiled.  'You mentioning my pep-talk and the wee'uns gathering up the spare food at the end reminded me of something.  I was helping a couple of little lads, about nine or ten I suppose, to make a parcel of sandwiches, when one says to me, "I hate that Maggie Thatcher, Miss!  Do you?"  And I said, "I certainly do, boys.  But one day she'll be dead and gone and people will stop believing in her way of doing things, and we'll be here to see it, and we'll have won."  And they cheered, and carried on stacking their plates with sandwiches, until their mams came to take them home.'
  'Only it feels like she's never gone away,' Hilary sighed.  'And if anything, more people than ever seem to believe in Thatcherism.  After all, we have the two main parties squaring up for the election commited to making much the same cuts over slightly different timescales, and the ghastly UKIP, who are essentially turbo-charged Thatcherites, supposedly offering an alternative.  That doesn't feel like a victory to me.'
  'I believed what I said then Hills, and I believe it still,' Daphne asserted.  'Mark my words, pet; we'll see a change in our lifetimes.'
  'What makes you so sure?'
  'These things go in cycles, don't they?  And it's time for the tide to turn.'
  'I do hope you're right.'  Hilary gazed out of the window and across the canal.  'For the sake of the next generation.' 
  'And the one after that to.  Here's to baby Freya, Grandma!'  Daphne raised her mug in salute. 
  'Don't call me that!'
  Hilary sounded fierce, but her eyes were smiling.