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philwhiteland
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philwhiteland is offline
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23-02-2014, 05:17 PM
1

Phil's Phings

The idea behind this thread is to provide somewhere to post short written articles, either fiction or non-fiction, and obtain constructive feedback whilst, hopefully, entertaining. Let's see what you've got! I'll start the ball rolling by putting a piece from my blog about how I started writing again in the next post.
Patsy
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23-02-2014, 05:23 PM
2

Re: Phil's Phings

Good idea - 'Eccles' put some great short stories on here recently, look those up ....
Also our Robert junior - he writes good stuff too ....
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philwhiteland
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23-02-2014, 05:23 PM
3

Re: Phil's Phings

You've Got To Laugh...Haven't You?

A few weeks ago I went, with my daughter, to a stand-up comedy gig featuring Stewart Lee at Derby Assembly Rooms. I don't know if you recall who Stewart Lee is but if you do get chance to see him at some point, I would encourage you to go because it will certainly give your brain cells a work-out. There are no easy laughs in a Stewart Lee gig, you have to think! What I really found intriguing was that he would frequently pause his discussion to examine why something he had just said was 'funny' (or not, as the case may be). This is pretty daring for a stand-up comic. By and large, the received wisdom for anyone connected with humour is not to try and work out what makes it happen. Humour is seen as akin to one of those odd quantum particles which change their behaviour when observed (I may have got that wrong, but this is a piece on humour, not quantum physics). Tony Hancock famously started to analyse what made him funny in a televised interview and never really recovered from the experience.

The point of all of this is that I came across a sketch that I had written back in the mid 1980s the other day, and it reminded me of an occasion when I had to examine what was funny and what was not.

I've mentioned before that, for a long time, I considered myself a writer but this was on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. I had been an active writer in my late teens and had been quite involved in the local arts scene, but thereafter much of what I produced was simply doggerel for the birthday cards of friends and relatives and precious little else. During the 1980s, I was recommended to join a local writers' group that met just up the road from where I then lived. I went along to one of their meetings, with some trepidation, and found a really supportive and friendly group of people. There was a smattering of poets but most of the group were engaged in producing novels of some form or other. Remember, this was in those dark days before e-books when the lot of most writers was to travel hopefully, but never arrive.

When asked what sort of thing I wrote, I confidently stated that I produced short humorous articles and poems, because that is what I had done back in my teenage years. Accordingly, I promised to bring an example of my work to the next meeting - which was going to be a bit of a challenge as I didn't have anything to share. After a few beers (which was a mistake, as you'll see*) I settled down with a pen and a blank piece of paper and set about writing something funny. The end result had me chuckling (the 'few beers' effect) and I put the article in my pocket to take to the next meeting.

The day of the meeting came, and I was asked if I would like to share my writing with the group. I confidently retrieved my article from my pocket and began to read it. I don't know if you've ever been in the situation where, as you read something you've written, it begins to dawn on you what a total load of rubbish it is? Well, this was one of those occasions. My mind has thankfully blanked out the content of this article but I do vaguely remember that it concerned our local Toyota factory and was a somewhat xenophobic attack on Japanese culture and habits. I ploughed on with it, remorselessly but my heart wasn't in it. My audience sat in front of me with fixed smiles and a growing degree of discomfort. There were no laughs at all, not even a titter. I finished my reading, folded the paper up, returned it to my pocket and sat scarlet-faced with embarrassment. I think the host of the meeting thanked me for sharing and then the group moved swiftly on to something more entertaining. We had a poet who specialised in impenetrable works of deep paranoia and it is a measure of the quality of my work that he seemed like a light-hearted interlude compared to what had gone before.

I spent the rest of the meeting covered in confusion, shame and embarrassment and was glad when it was all over and I could escape. I determined that I would return the next week with something that was well-written and actually funny, or die in the attempt.

The post on my blog, 'About Time' is what I came up with and it is the point at which, to my mind, I started to write properly again. I came across the original of this whilst I was cleaning out some cupboards the other day, which prompted my memories of that fateful meeting and the awful feeling of 'dying a death' with some rubbish dreamed up in an alcoholic haze. If you get a chance to look at it, I hope you like it.

* Anything seems funny after a 'few beers', which is why comedy acts always do better in the second half, after the intermission. By and large, they could probably get a standing ovation by banging two tin trays together if the intermission was sufficiently long. Speaking of which, do you remember an act on 'Opportunity Knocks' some years ago which consisted of a bloke bashing himself over the head with a tin tray whilst singing 'Mule Train'? And they say variety is dead!
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philwhiteland
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23-02-2014, 05:23 PM
4

Re: Phil's Phings

Originally Posted by Patsy ->
Good idea - 'Eccles' put some great short stories on here recently, look those up ....
Also our Robert junior - he writes good stuff too ....
I'll check both of those out, Patsy, thanks.
Patsy
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23-02-2014, 05:34 PM
5

Re: Phil's Phings

I loved your analysis of your work and comparing it to the guy with paranoia
I felt for your embarrassment, but I hope like me - you can look back and laugh.
Its true, things are so much better, once a drink is taken, the band at my wedding, just awful, after a couple of drinks - wonderful 'hic'
I love variety and I do remember 'mule train' it was hideous !
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philwhiteland
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23-02-2014, 05:43 PM
6

Re: Phil's Phings

Originally Posted by Patsy ->
I loved your analysis of your work and comparing it to the guy with paranoia
I felt for your embarrassment, but I hope like me - you can look back and laugh.
Its true, things are so much better, once a drink is taken, the band at my wedding, just awful, after a couple of drinks - wonderful 'hic'
I love variety and I do remember 'mule train' it was hideous !
I look back and cringe mostly, Patsy, but it was a useful 'wake-up' call.
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philwhiteland
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24-02-2014, 12:02 PM
7

Re: Phil's Phings

We're not exactly being trampled in the rush here, are we
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philwhiteland
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24-02-2014, 01:35 PM
8

Re: Phil's Phings

Ok, I'll try again. This is a piece about whether we British are really suited to happiness

If you're happy and you know it...

I'm on a cruise at the time of writing? Sitting in the buffet restaurant today, I was struck by the difference in attitude of the various nationalities.

This is an American-owned ship, and I have always held the view that our transatlantic cousins really know a thing or two about the concept of customer service. All of the staff, of whatever nationality (and they are many and varied) are unfailingly polite, cheerful and helpful. I know various U.S. companies have tried to transfer this mindset to their U.K. outlets, with predictably mixed results. As far as the British are concerned, customer service means finding new and imaginative ways of saying 'sorry' for not delivering the expected service, without actually doing anything about it.

In this restaurant, hordes of Brits (and it is mostly Brits on this trip) were, I noticed, marching morosely around the various buffet bars. Here they were, surrounded by a mind-boggling variety of high quality foods, with no restriction on how much or how many they could have, and yet, from their expressions, you would have thought they were queuing for ECT without the aid of anaesthesia.

All of this led me to consider whether happiness really suits the British people. It seems to me that we do everything we can to avoid it. We certainly won't admit to it. Even that meaningless but now ubiquitous phrase 'have a nice weekend' is likely to evince a host of reasons, including jobs, duties or dutiful visits, that the recipient has lined up to ensure that he/she does nothing of the sort. If we own up to going on holiday, we tend to say "We're only going for a week" as if to admit to anything more would be the equivalent of being addicted to selfish pleasures. Ask people about any, supposedly, pleasurable experience and they will first tell you about everything that went wrong.

"Our holiday? Well, yes, pretty good really. Of course you heard about us losing half the luggage from the roof rack on the M6? Closed two carriageways and had traffic backed up to Wilmslow at one point, apparently. Good job it wasn't raining then, well certainly not as hard as it did for our first week. Not that we bother about a bit of rain, well you've got to expect it in our country haven't you? We always take a few games to play. It was a pity that little Saffron hurt her eye in that freak dominoes accident and we had to spend 12 hours in the local A&E, not that I'll hear a word said against the NHS, even if we did have a hard time to make ourselves understood to the on-duty doctor…"

Take unsolicited sales phone calls, for instance. It's standard practice to moan about these, and with good reason. They always strike at the most inconvenient time (although I'm not sure there ever would be a convenient time to talk about double glazing or cavity wall insulation). For some years now there has been the option of barring these calls by registering with the Telephone Preference Service. It's a very effective method of stopping this particular nuisance at source and has left us free to eat our tea in peace. However, mention this to anyone in mid-complaint and I guarantee that the reaction you won't get is "Oh really? No, I didn't know that. I'll get on to that tomorrow". They are far more likely to come up with a string of reasons why they shouldn't do it. "Well, they'll get round it some way, won't they?" (No), "It doesn't stop them from calling from overseas, does it?" (No, but these are so few in number, it really doesn't matter) If pressed, they might admit to "not wanting to block something that might be useful" However, the fact is that they don't want a solution, they want to be keep moaning about the problem.

Our transatlantic cousins actually have 'the pursuit of happiness' enshrined in their Constitution. Not the achievement of it, you note, just the pursuit. Still, I can't see that working in the U.K., we don't so much pursue happiness as pretend we're out when it calls.

Look at our newspaper headlines. Every report of some positive development will be quickly followed by some example of why it will bring misery and suffering to countless others. We don't celebrate with lottery winners, we wait for the inevitable tales of family strife, marital breakdown and bankruptcy that we have come to expect will follow this good news.

If you really don't believe that we enjoy misery, then just take a look at our popular soap operas. Even the previously innocuous ones like Emmerdale, and even The Archers for goodness sake, have storylines containing adultery, murder, rape and every sin that flesh is heir to. This, remember, is supposed to be early evening family entertainment.

The difference between us and the Americans is that they aspire to happiness, even if they don't actually achieve it, whereas we're just about prepared to tolerate happiness if we must, but would ideally like to stamp it out. Anyway, any country that is prepared to admit being responsible for Simon Cowell deserves everything it gets.

P.S. There are times when I wonder if my quest for comic effect sometimes leads me to be a little unfair on my fellow countrymen. "Whiteland" I scold myself (I tend to address myself like a recalcitrant 1950s public schoolboy)"you are too harsh", and then something like this happens.


We were having breakfast (on our cruise, remember?) It was a buffet arrangement, and I've mentioned before my weakness for buffets. Two ladies of a certain age came and sat next to us, each with a small bowl of fruit. One looked as if she sucked lemons for a pastime, the other as if she nursed a secret sorrow. I feared that the bowl of fruit indicated that a 'healthy breakfast' was to be had, so, imagine my surprise when one said to the other "Well, shall we go and see what is on offer in the cooked breakfast items?" My heart leapt (despite all of the cholesterol it was undoubtedly having to contend with). Clearly I had misjudged them, they were trencherwomen after all. Reason regained its throne, however, when they returned. The 'secret sorrow' had a plate on which rested three slices of cucumber and two of tomato, accompanied by a small spoonful of scrambled egg. "Well", she explained to her friend, "we have to make the most of it, this is the last of our big breakfasts" When the other let it be known that she loved water in the morning, but usually took it hot with a slice of lemon, it only confirmed my worst fears.

This article can be found in 'A Kick at the Pantry Door' http://getbook.at/AKickatthePantryDoor
Patsy
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24-02-2014, 01:46 PM
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Re: Phil's Phings


Absolutely loved reading that !
Give me observant humour any day and the yanks are very good at that !
The yanks have their good points and the bad, just like us, but I agree we do seem to like a good moan !
Because I'm surrounded by - shall we say, the less 'clued up' and me, not a very patient person, I - unfortunately, have become one of the moaners meself ! I hate to admit that, but its 'now' true !
The only thing going for me is I've still got me sense of humour - this time next year - who knows
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philwhiteland
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24-02-2014, 02:09 PM
10

Re: Phil's Phings

Originally Posted by Patsy ->

Absolutely loved reading that !
Give me observant humour any day and the yanks are very good at that !
The yanks have their good points and the bad, just like us, but I agree we do seem to like a good moan !
Because I'm surrounded by - shall we say, the less 'clued up' and me, not a very patient person, I - unfortunately, have become one of the moaners meself ! I hate to admit that, but its 'now' true !
The only thing going for me is I've still got me sense of humour - this time next year - who knows
Hang in there, Patsy. We're a dying breed
 
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