My Forty Eighth week as a Budding Author

I’m sure you are now familiar with the name Fenton. If you are not I will direct you to this Youtube video of a bunch of deer being chased round a park by Fenton the dog. The video’s gone viral mainly due to Fenton’s owners clear and public horror as to what his dog is up to. “Jesus Chris” he exclaims, as the pack of deer are loosely herded by what looks to be a black labrador.

Now this video has really pissed me off. And this has nothing to do with coming from a generation that spent Sunday evenings glued to “One Man and his Dog” in the olden days of three channels on the TV. I could definitely present a case against the “dogs of today”, their lack of patience and unwillingness to serve an apprenticeship. Plainly the dogs of today simply dive in and herd things, whereas the dogs I used to watch on TV shepherded properly with lots of lying down and “come bys”. They went through years of training before the reward of a TV appearance. Fenton simply acts like a dick in Richmond Park and millions are in awe of his antics.

But my beef is different, the reason I am pissed off is because it’s gone viral with no effort whatsoever. The owner simply uploaded it to Youtube and suddenly they’re famous. I saw them on breakfast TV on Monday, a father and son team lauded by the presenters for their fantastic ability to press “Record”, “Stop” and then “Share”.

Clearly I am bitter, and I will admit to that. I sit in this shed day in day out trying to think of ideas for self promotion and publicity. I’m going to need them if I’m ever to sell a copy of this book. I also need some help with research for my “Year Record” project and the more people that know about it, the more help I can get.

In April I had a brainwave, I’d create a Twitter account as a tribute to Tommy Godwin, from it I would tweet his daily mileage and cyclists all around the world could follow his progress. The cycling press would pick up on it and the whole thing would go viral. What could possibly go wrong?

Last Sunday the account had nine followers. I’d sent links to the cycling press, tweeted various cycling celebrities, discussed it with journalists and they had responded by emailing me pictures of tumbleweed. Nevertheless I maintained the account in the vane hope that one day somebody would see it and take an interest.

Last week I took a call from the BBC. A very nice lady asked me about my interest in Tommy Godwin as they were doing a short programme about him that would go out on Monday night. I waffled on a bit about how inspirational the year record was whilst ignoring her loud yawns down the phone. Then I mentioned the twitter account. The yawns were eclipsed by scribbles, turns out she was from BBC online and I’d said a magic word.

We finished the conversation and I thought nothing of it, maybe I’d get one extra hit on the website as she made sure I was telling the truth. But on Monday I went viral. Well, maybe viral is a bit of an exaggeration, let’s agree that on Monday my website and twitter account did more traffic in a day than they usually manage all year.

I was getting “pings” every minute as people signed up to the twitter account and all sorts of emails asking questions about Tommy and the year record. It turns out that the nice lady had written a story about it and put it up on the BBC website, you can see it here. The cycling press and journalists had read it as well and copied it to their websites (fascists, won’t listen to me..but Auntie Beeb mutters and they are slathering). People were tweeting left right and centre about the year record account and telling their friends. Cycling forums were discussing it and linking back to my site. Traffic was at an all time high.

Then I got a phonecall from Lee Stone at BBC Wiltshire Radio, would I pop down to the studio now for a quick over-the-air interview? I pretended that I had all sorts of highly important meetings, but he persisted and I agreed to wander down to their offices at 5.45pm. I told a few friends about this and one asked if I felt nervous about going on air. I nonchalantly waved him away with the information that I was joint winner of the Wootton Bassett School drama cup in 1982. Secretly I had one overriding fear, I was scared that I’d say “f**k”.

Regular readers will know that I am a little sweary. As will anyone who has passed within 500 yards of my garage. Walking down Victoria Hill I chanted a little mantra “Don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k”. But this made things worse. It was now front of mind and taking over all rational thought, I should have been preparing myself with statistics and unique insights into Tommy’s rides but the front lobe was clogged with the word I’m not allowed to say.

A few minutes later I was buzzed in the door fully expecting to be whisked into a meeting room and fully briefed on how to act and behave on air. I imagined them giving me some sort of loose script and carefully reminding me that profanities are not to be uttered within BBC premises, especially the word “f**k”. I was hoping for a green room similar to that enjoyed by the guests of Jonathan Ross, maybe with complimentary wine or a few M&Ms.

Things were rather different though. I was taken straight upstairs into a room full of recording machines and computers. A guy called Mark was twiddling knobs, talking to callers on the phone, typing into a computer and waving through a glass window at somebody. It was almost as if I’d walked into a multi-tasking seminar for men. Mark put me at ease, offered me a drink, told me I’d be on in ten minutes whilst simultaneously answering the door, programming two idle computers and writing the script for next week’s show. I pretended to look busy by writing my name fifteen times into my notebook.

All too quickly I was ushered into an empty studio and sat near a microphone. The door was shut and I was left to my thoughts. “Don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k”. these were interrupted by a ball of energy that erupted into the air from nowhere and morphed into a Radio DJ. Like Mark, Lee had clearly taken multi-tasking to a new art form. He shook my hand, welcomed me, went on air, queued the news, asked me a few questions, queued a desperately bad record from the seventies, introduced it, played it, gave the listeners a nice introduction to my story, smiled very broadly and then turned in my direction.

“Don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k, don’t say f**k”, was thumping in my ears as his first question came forth. I felt a mixture of mild panic mixed with curiosity. “What would happen if I did say f**k?”. Would I get even more twitter followers? Would this elevate me up to Fenton level?

This made things ten times worse as I’d moved from a quest to be polite, into a rude social experiment. But the temptation was there, nobody had told me not to say it, they only had themselves to blame. I paused momentarily, analysed his question, leaned forward towards the microphone and answered with “f**k”.

No of course I didn’t. I gave a relatively lucid performance and managed to keep the “umm” to words ratio in the low fifteen percent. I wanted to say it though and it is only now that I can reveal to Lee that whilst he was showing an interest in my turgid blatherings about cycling, all I really wanted to say was “f**k”.

I’m sure a few people heard my interview, If you are terminally bored, it can be heard at this link, fast forward to 1:48, but Radio Four have not been in touch. So it was back to the grindstone for the rest of the week, bashing my head against chapters of the book and trying to understand the mad bloke on the Dictafone waffling on about sheep.

I went through my ride notes and realised that a set were missing. I’d ridden a route round the Isle of Wight before working out my book writing methodology. No notes, no photos, no GPS traces, only distant memories. I really needed all of these to stay on track, thus made the decision to ride it on Wednesday regardless of the weather. Wednesday was set to be a national strike, we’ll come to that in a bit.

Leaving the ferry at Yarmouth I noticed the wind. It was hard to ignore due to the lycra enema I was receiving from the unusually violent westerly gale. Stoically I threw myself onto my steed and bravely set off into the wind. The “don’t say f**k” rule does not apply in these conditions. I said it a lot as the wind delivered a meteorological condition known in the trade as schizophrenia. Simplistically, the weather cannot decide what it wants to be, so it tries everything in an attempt to settle on a suitable personality. Rain, sun, cloud, hail of frogs, mist, monsoon and calm all passed over in a single hour.

Turning to get the wind on my back was a mild relief, but the hilly coastline of the Isle of Wight negated that. Photos were difficult as the camera kept getting blown over and my lunchtime sandwiches had decided not to make the journey with me, the fridge at home seemed far too cosy.

After a well fought fifty five miles I arrived at Cowes eagerly looking forward to a brief rest on the floating bridge. It was shut. “f**k, f**k, f**kity, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k it”. the bridge operators were out in solidarity with the workers. I sat forlornly and pondered my lack of pension. They were stood around braziers, eating chestnuts and shouting slogans to get theirs. Me, I had to ride an additional ten miles in this wind in order to have a hope of earning something towards mine.

The “f**k” rule was again disregarded as I desperately time trialled back to Yarmouth cruelly chased by the fading light. Three quarters of the job done, but a return trip to the Isle of Wight still required.

This setback left me determined to rescue the week, which I’ve done in a flurry of words. Two more book chapters ready for final editing and I’ve also done a commission for a magazine. There was a mild amount of stress attached to that though as it concerned a trip I undertook in 2005. I struggle to remember my name, so casting the mind back six years has required a lot of pacing around the shed.

Next week is in the hands of the Countryfile weekly forecast. Three rides and twelve sets of photos outstanding means every weather window counts. Unfortunately one of the locations is Inverness, not looking good as we speak.

Dave

2nd December 2011

WEEK 49>>>>>>>>>