All Posts by admin

Consider this. Having grown a moustache for Movember (which I haven’t, but this is all hypothetical), I trim it into a typical walrus shape, buy a striped Breton jersey, put on a black beret, get some strings of onions from the cheapest supermarket, sling them round my shoulder, get out my bike, sling more strings of onions over the handlebars, and spend an afternoon cycling round a housing estate speaking in an outrageously camp French accent and trying to sell the onions at a huge profit. Whether or not I’m successful, if I’ve brought a bit of nostalgia and fun into an otherwise unremarkable day, injected some (albeit false and outmoded) exoticism into a drab Scottish Tuesday, is that an unethical way to spend an afternoon?

Or how about scenario number two? I keep the Breton jersey, lose the beret, bike and onions, put on a black eye-mask, stencil SWAG on a sack, sling it over my shoulder, carry it into the local nick and say to the duty sergeant ‘You’ve got me bang to rights, guv. It’s a fair cop’. Would he a) arrest me? b) tell me to stop wasting police time? or c) say ‘bugger off’. And, as a supplementary question, how about if the bag actually contained items I’d borrowed but not returned?

Third and final conundrum: I scribble out a quick novel. It’s riddled with mistakes and either highly entertaining in its own right or so bad that it’s funny. I put it on Amazon, write several 5 star reviews of it under various names which convince some people to buy it. They, in turn, write 1 star reviews pointing out its flaws and identifying me as an illiterate charlatan, whereupon I slag them off in tweets and Facebook comments and threaten them with various forms of retribution. What crime(s), if any, am I committing?

The questions posed, of course, are all about ‘ethical’ issues. Ethics are fundamental to a culture and yet attitudes to them are sometimes surprisingly flexible. They’re about how we behave, whether our actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which in turn depends upon why we’re performing them. Several years ago there was a joke going round based precisely on an interpretation of the notion of ethics. Briefly, it posed a dilemma for a photographer who came across George W Bush clinging to a branch over a raging torrent and beginning to lose his grip. The photographer could save Bush or get a picture which would make him a fortune when it was syndicated world-wide. The agonising choice for him was whether to use colour or black and white.

Defining what ethics are is more difficult than it seems on the surface. At its most basic, behaving ethically means not doing things which may hurt other people. So is the winner of a race behaving unethically towards the other competitors? And what about if the ‘hurt’ is designed to prevent a greater ‘hurt’, as when an injection is given to forestall some debilitating disease? Are ethics negotiable or scalable? All very good debating points and open to interesting intellectual games.

Fortunately, most of us agree most of the time on the general perception of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices, and all of this blog is simply to call attention to a campaign being run by the Alliance of Independent Authors. Since the market place has been so easy to penetrate, many offences to good taste and literary and linguistic standards have been perpetrated and some unscrupulous people have exploited the system to the hilt. No doubt this campaign itself will be exploited in similar ways as some ‘writers’ pin the campaign’s badges to their sites and works to give themselves an air of respectability. The hope, though, is that by identifying themselves in such a way, they may invite scrutiny and, as a consequence, have to conform or be found wanting. In the end, in most spheres, unethical behaviour leads to corrosion and collapse, but it does lots of harm before it reaches the point of implosion. There are enough threats to the industry already without writers and readers adding to them.

Coincidences happen so often that it’s surprising we still find them a bit weird. I like the fact that they happen; they give a teasing idea that there might, after all, be meaning, purpose, direction. I don’t believe there is but when seemingly separate events mirror one another or disconnected phenomena assume identical shapes or sequences, we like the idea that there’s a sort of pattern involved and we start looking for it. It’s a small step from that to claiming that there’s a controlling, organising mind or essence behind it. The mysterious ways in which God moves become more so if He has to resort to what G.K.,Chesteron called ‘spiritual puns’.

In a previous blog, I listed the coincidences which cropped up in writing The Figurehead. What I like about them is that they fire up the imagination. When one occurs, the immediate response is to ask ‘why?’ and to start using the elements involved to provide your own answer. So I’d welcome Freudian, Jungian, Christian or any-other-ian suggestions as to the significance of the one which I’m about to describe.

I’ve written before about Richard Wood’s ever-fascinating and entertaining Word Count Podcast. I’ve made several online friends as a result of contributing short stories and flash fiction to it. In fact, I’ve interviewed and been interviewed by one such friend, Eden Baylee, who lives in Canada, and we’ve even spoken of contributing a joint effort at some point. Collaborative writing is demanding but great fun.

Anyway, the latest of Richard’s podcasts which was first broadcast yesterday, had an extra personal edge to it for one particular reason. It only has three stories, by Eden, another friend Kimberley Gould, and me. These were all submitted independently to Richard, the only common ground between them being that they all had to contain the words ‘Woman’, ‘Book’ and ‘Fall’. None of us knew what sort of story the others were writing.

Eden’s came first – a tongue in cheek tale of a woman passionate about reading. The book absorbing her as the story starts (and ends) was written by a famous crime writer in Scotland called Bill Kirton. No, no, that’s not the coincidence; despite the striking similarities, the character isn’t me, because he’s internationally renowned, fans are desperate for his latest novel and sales suggest he must be immensely rich. Eden’s story ends with the (relevant) revelation that the Bill Kirton book the woman is reading is called The Fall.

Next up in the show is me, with a tale about brand names and a woodpecker. But here’s the spooky bit. The title of my story, about which Eden knew nothing as she was writing hers was… The Fall.

What are the chances?

I was listening to the radio this morning when, at 11, all the talking stopped, Big Ben struck the quarters then the hour and there was that strange semi-silence you get when thousands of people are there but none of them is making a sound. Two minutes of silence in which to remember and reflect that it’s:

100 years since ‘the war to end all wars’ began.
100 years regularly punctuated by more wars.
100 years developing more efficient weapons.
100 years and we still resort to armed conflict to resolve social and political issues.

Here’s a flash fiction story I wrote a while ago.

 

LAMPLIGHTERS

Dusk.

She leaned on her window sill, waiting for the lamplighter’s nightly visit. Already, she could hear his whistle as his boots tapped along the street towards her. Slow steps, the steps of an old man. Most of the younger ones had gone and those who still lived were sitting in their trenches, probably hoping the night would stay dark, dreading the flares and flashes of the guns. She’d only heard stories and the truths they told were unimaginable.

As he arrived beneath her window, the lamplighter gave her his usual smile and wave and reached his long pole up to the fragile glass cage that protected the delicate mantle. With slow, gentle care he eased it up into the chamber, moving it softly back and forth, seeking the tap. The tip of his pole caught it, turned on the flow of gas and held it close to the mantle until the pop and slow illumination told him all was well. He withdrew the pole and the warm yellow light spilled down to flow in a circle around the base of the lamppost.

The man turned and walked on towards the next lamp, fifty yards down the street. She watched him until he became part of the shadows, leaving only his whistle hanging in the air. She looked at the patterns the lamp threw on the wall of her house, sensed the life which the light had brought to the cobbles and bricks around it.

There was only her and the low hiss and flicker of the gas. But no light crept into the folds of darkness within her. The night was empty. It needed more of this radiance, more light everywhere.

But the lamplighters had all gone.