‘Just for fun’ book excites ‘old academic’
I AM MORE excited than is good for an old academic.
In the past few weeks I have completed the writing of my first just-forfun book. It has been a long time coming! Very little of the stuff that academics write would normally be describable as “just for fun”. By and large we are usually too obsessed with our own insights to allow trivia like “just for fun”…….
There are the countless, the uncountable academic books, papers, conference presentations and discussion groups that inevitably emerge to clutter up one’s thinking towards the end of a long stint on the outer reaches of academia.
Hopefully, what I have written over the years has hints of useful ideas as we plough our way towards competency in a work place that is ever more challenged by the power of computing (and the need to play football…..)
This latest book is not at all like that!
It’s called My Little Acorns and tells the story of a working class London family containing two twin sons with formally uneducated parents who cared about them more than was ever possible to describe.
I began writing the book in the mid ’eighties, got bored with it in the late ‘eighties and forgot all about it for the next 10 years or so. I then got all excited about it again and completed it in the last six months.
Between you and me, I can tell you that it is very good, very Swannellish! It is written with love for a family that never had a lot of prospects, and not much money!
It is going to be printed and published by the excellent Cracker Print and Paper Pty Ltd of Ruthven St Toowoomba and will be available for purchase in the near future.
My mum used to teach shorthand and typing to anyone who thought that was necessary. My dad could mend any engine that wasn’t working properly and even more that were.
My twin brother played in goal more than 60 times for England in those days when some got paid to play and some didn’t. In my view he was the best goalkeeper ever to play for his country but I am probably biased.
My maternal grandparents stood about four feet high in their thickest socks.
They lived in the London suburbs and grandad spent his entire life knocking s**t out of the famous Hampton Court Palace wrought iron gates for a startlingly frugal living lifestyle and as-yet-unknown visiting Japanese tourists.
Their name was Nightingale but I don’t know whether or not they sang in Berkeley Square.
My paternal grandparents were slightly bigger.
I never actually worked out what this grandfather ever did for a living, but he spent a fair proportion of his life sitting in a wooden armchair, staring at the open fireplace and knocking the ash from his pipe.
A combination of having very poor eyesight, a patently weak bladder and an outside loo meant that his daylight hours were very significantly spent on locating his cap, adjusting his flies and avoiding treading on his en route flower bed.
Putting on a cap was a indispensable part of urinating in his world where outside loos required the urinator to be well rugged up against the winter chill.
So, should you be curious to the extent of wanting a copy of the book, I anticipate its appearance within about three weeks and I am currently working on the best way to get some sales!
I expect it to cost about $25 plus, where necessary, postage and packing. It runs to about 190 pages, soft cover beautifully presented by Cracker.
Gees! I’ve enjoyed writing it and I hope it gives a lot of people at least some pleasure in reading it.