It's been raining for a couple of days. Not constantly, but intermittently. Still had opportunities to sit in the sun and turn pink and it's still very warm, but just telling you so you've got something to feel superior about in what must be quite an annoying and smug two weeks of entries.
This morning, at breakfast, we were all trapped in the open sided restaurant as torrential rain poured down and sprayed diners foolish enough to take a window seat. I was glad about this. Only a couple of days ago I had been commenting that we hadn't had one of those torrential days that you always get when you're on holiday, which mean you have to sit in the bar or the games room (in the days of my youth), trapped like animals in a cage made of air with bars made of moisture (wtf?), slowly going crazy. I like those days. They mean you have no excuse but to drink or read or chat up Dutch girls by the pinball machine (in the days of my youth). You eat strange foreign versions of Wotsits and look wistfully at the rain splattered sea and maybe play a game of Scrabble with a battered set with no Z in it.
Anyway it passed soon enough and there was time enough for sun bathing and reading and writing. I am uber-relaxed now (we've really done nothing at all while we've been here - it's ace) and of course that means that my brain is teeming with ideas for stories and jokes and Warming Up entries. A writer can never truly get away from his job. In fact it's only when you're stressed and trapped in your house, unable to concentrate on anything at all and watching TV all day that you get to escape the job. The more relaxed you become, the more ideas will come to you. So the writer can never have a holiday.
But I don't mind and it's been fun just writing some stuff for leisure, rather than work. And it's nice to have some thoughts to examine more thoroughly on that fast approaching day when I am back in a country where the rain is cold and I can't jump in the sea first thing every morning.
I am wondering whether it might be an idea to do a bit of an Ian Fleming and actually come away to somewhere like this with the express purpose of writing. There are less distractions and more inspirations and it does seem conducive to sitting on a balcony overlooking the sea and tapping away on a keyboard or scribbling in a notebook. I am trying it on a mini scale when I get back home, as I have nothing in the diary next week and have booked a cottage on Oxfordshire in the hope that I can make some progress on my new book. Usually with something like this I do all the work in a hectic and horrible last week where I manage to get half the thing written, so it'll be interesting if I can invest that time nearer the beginning and hopefully come out with a chapter or two under my belt with five months til the deadline.
We'll see.
Although the sea is pretty calm and safe here, every time I am swimming I do worry about drowning. Not really because I am scared of dying, but because given my fishy surname, such a demise would give the headliners something amusing to write - "Herring Drowns". My death would become a joke. Although I imagine only Steve Bennett at
Chortle would report such a thing. But I know he would definitely take delight in writing a similar ironic headline. Similarly I fear being taken by a shark, not because of the pain and panic and teeth crushing my ribcage, but because Steve Bennett will hear the news, rub his hands and type, "Herring Eaten By Shark", chuckling to himself as he does so.
When you have a stupid surname you do have to be careful not to die an ironic death. I also have to make sure that I never fall into a gigantic frying pan on top of a massive hob or the headlines will read, "Herring Kippered" and suddenly my death isn't the tragic event that I was hoping it would be, but a cause of mirth and laughter, creating a clipping that could be read out by Cyril Fletcher on That's Life, if only he hadn't died himself. It didn't matter how he died he was always going to get "That's Death!" as his headline. If he got eaten by a squirrel it would just have confused matters. His only 100% chance to get away from any "That's Life" reference was to be felched to death by a squirrel and then everyone would have had to lead with "Squirrel Felchered". But Cyril didn't think of that and sadly his death went largely unreported as a result.
Those are pretty much the three death scenarios I have to avoid. If I die of AIDS then I suppose a headline writer could put "HERRING dies of AIDS" with the "dies of" in really small writing. But I think they'd still have to put "Hearing Aids" in brackets afterwards to clarify the gag. And dying of AIDS is not a cause of levity, where of course, being eaten by a shark or felched by a squirrel apparently is. Ah the hypocrisy of the press.
I suppose that if I die of some none fish related incident then Steve Bennett (and maybe the Night and Day column at the Daily Express - the only other media outlet aware of my existence) can always write "Dead Herring". So I am never going to be able to escape it. If I was writing the headlines it would read, "Genius comedian and expert lover dies. Women of all nations mourn and decide to lez up in his honour." But I doubt Chortle will go with that.
Still it's annoying to be in paradise, swimming in the Caribbean Sea and still to be thinking about Steve Bennett. I can never escape my job.
