Why I decided to keep the dirty bits in my new book

The big news this Christmas is that I finally finished the book I told myself I wasn't good enough to write. It's coming out in February with massed fanfares and another top notch blog tour care of Rachels Random Resources (doing the hard work so I don't have to). It is called Gap Years and writing it has been like pulling my own fingernails out with my teeth.

I tried to start writing this dual first person narrative after I finished Weekend Rockstars four years ago before quickly discovering it was much harder to pull together than I had first envisaged and abandoning it to write a funny story about a grandmother on a murderous rampage. Which was much easier and has done quite nicely thanks. About halfway through writing The Craft Room, however, I realised I could write the two halves separately and glue them together later. A decision I would learn to regret, but here we are, two years later at the end of the journey and on the eve of publication.

Here's the (still open to change) blurb:-

19 year old Sean hasn't seen his father since he was twelve. His mother has never really told him why. An argument with her leads to him moving to the other side of the country to live with him.

The one thing they have in common is the friendship of a girl called Rhiannon.

Over the course of one summer Sean experiences sexual awakenings from all angles, discovers the fleeting nature of friendship and learns to cope with rejection.

Meanwhile his father, Martin, struggles to reconnect with Sean while trying delicately to turn down the increasingly inappropriate advances of a girl he sees as a surrogate daughter and keep a struggling marriage alive.

Gap Years is an exploration of what it means to be a man in the 21st Century, trying to reject the social conditioning of the past and embrace a tolerant vision of the future from two very different perspectives – neatly hidden inside a funny story about bicycles, guitars and unrequited love.

If any of my beta readers are reading this and think I need to change it, do get hold of me, there is still time.

The reason it has taken so much longer to write than intended was because of the damn characters not doing what they were told. During a radio interview (with the lovely Chee off of Phonic FM) for the launch of The Craft Room what feels like a hundred years ago, I explained how Rhiannon, the female lead of the novel, had made me rewrite her completely as she turned out to be more manipulative than I originally thought. She then revealed herself to be even more complex than that, requiring at least four complete rewrites, and I began to despair of ever finishing the book.

Once I had got to grips with her, I realised I needed to cut a 30000 word subplot and replace it with something more interlocking in order to tie it all together. And even after all that there was still something wrong that I couldn't put my finger on. Off it went to my aunt, who is the best editor I know, in hopes of a reply of heaped praise, as I wanted it done, over with, out in the world. She pointed out that my ending had become a massive Deus Ex Machina after all the changes I had wrought since first committing it to .odt file. That was the thing, finally a finger had been put on it, so off I went to rewrite the ending, again. It is now the book I wanted it to be when I first imagined it on a cold morning when I was supposed to be working on my first novel – Weekend Rockstars. Well, it isn't, it's completely different, like they always are, but it works. The characters are doing what they should, and what they want to and it feels right now. I'll leave it up to the readers to decide if it was worth all the pain.

There is, however, one scene that has been a sticking point among everybody that has helped me along the way. There's no point trying to be coy about it, there is a very graphic sex scene between two men in there. Half my readers told me it was a good thing, and to leave it in, while half of them said exactly the opposite, that it was cringeworthy and awful and needed to go. I've heavily edited it to be less smutty and slightly more tasteful and it is no worse than the heterosexual sex scenes that occur later and upset nobody. I felt that representation was more important than offending any heteronormative sensibilities though, so it stayed, for better or worse.

Because representation is important.

Diverse in species, but not really in character, when you get down to it

There is a lot of noise about representation these days. As a writer it is at the forefront of the zeitgeist, and there are very angry people on both sides. Go, join in on Twitter if you don't believe me. As a white, cis-gendered male, 40-something writer it is more important than ever to keep abreast of it.

At Christmas time, I am very well represented in the popular culture of the season. I am always well-represented in pop-culture, I can identify with Kay Harker from the Box of Delights, Bob Cratchett and Moley – even Arnie as he Jingles All The Way to buy Anakin Skywalker a cheap Iron Man knockoff. I may not be from their time, their country, or even their species, but they are written from a familiar perspective. I feel at home with them in their awkward, very familiar feeling worlds. I would, at this point, like to reel off a list of well-loved BAME, female-centred, gay and trans characters that I don't identify with, but thanks to the way our world is set up, I've never been forced to watch/read/listen to them and thus can't bring them to mind.

And that's the point. Had I not been able to identify with the characters in my childhood fiction, I would probably never have been inspired to create my own worlds, would not have felt so happy. I was an awkward, weird kid who felt happier in the company of fictional friends than real ones. What if I had not been able to see myself in them? What if they had all been from a completely unfamiliar world? The kids from Narnia and the Magic Faraway Tree may have been from a different time, but they felt like they could have existed in 1980s Guildford. Like the other children I met at Sunday School, in a world that was soon to disappear in a blur of technology and atheism.

And so, when creating new worlds and new civilisations, every type of people need to be visible. Gene Rodenberry knew that when he made Star Trek; Uhuru, Sulu and Chekov were ground-breaking. I don't think we're going backwards just yet, quite the opposite, but it's very easy to think the work has been done and get lazy.

Being from the background I am, I am un-uniquely unqualified to write the stories of BAME and LGBTQI communities, but that doesn't mean I can't ensure that my background characters reflect them and it doesn't mean that I can fail to deal with them entirely in my story lines. In Gap Years, the two main characters are dealing with changing attitudes in an ever more progressive world from two very different points of view. Sean, as a 19 year old, has no problems accepting all kinds of diverse and differing types of people, while his 50-something year old father, Martin, has to work harder to check his inbuilt prejudice.

I can write from the perspective of straight white men in Devon, easily, I am a straight white man in Devon. Ironically I recently read a book set in Devon that felt a lot like it had been written by someone who had never even visited, some major geographical mistakes were made, along with the kind of misunderstandings about rural public transport that can only be assumed by a city-dweller. I would feel uncomfortable writing from the perspective of a trans-woman struggling in Uganda though. Not because I find the subject matter uncomfortable, but because it is not my experience. I can empathise, I can try to understand, but I can't really write that story. It doesn't mean that my straight, white Devon men can't encounter a Ugandan trans-woman in their travels (spoiler: they don't) and my background cast is as diverse as the story (and my as yet undiscovered built in privelige and prejudice) allows.

It certainly doesn't mean that I can't write a couple of gay scenes and trans characters. But it does mean that I need to run it past my friends and relatives with real world experience to make sure it reflects the realities of their life – which I very much did. The most important thing to do as a writer (and we all know this) is to do the research, make sure it will ring true, not only does it make you a better writer, but it also makes you a more sympathetic human being, and that can only be a good thing.

Weaponised Nostalgia – Or how my grandmother's toast may lead to Armageddon

There was something magical about my grandmother's toast. I'm not sure quite what benevolent spells she weaved over what was – to all intents and purposes – just a slice of burned flour and water smeared in congealed cow's milk, but it worked. She would hand slice some fresh white bread, toast it under her eye level grill, then – and I think this may have been where the magic happened – hit the crunchy top with the back of the knife to make little dents all the way around the edge. This meant that the real, thick, creamy butter that she then spread over it would ooze inside the crunchy exterior – creating the most delicious bread and butter experience in the known universe.

I have tried to recreate it myself, but to no avail. I am now the proud owner of those butter knives – handed over to me when I left home in a hailstorm of helpful kitchen items – and I can confirm that there is no magic in them. Bread is just bread, butter is just butter, a grill is just a source of heat. Maybe I need to eat it in the dining room of an unremarkable semi-detached house in walking distance of Guildford station with a glass of warm Ribena, preferably on a crisp late October morning at the beginning of half-term with a bald, cynical old man telling me the story of Sweeney Todd as he plays tug of war with his beloved Labrador?

Maybe it's not the toast.

Nostalgia is a powerful weapon, the right smell, a certain song, an old TV show, a glimpse of a childhood toy, these things all create certain chemical reactions in the brain. Happy fuzzy memories of a happier time, before jobs, mortgages, children, Brexit, Trump and the ever-present threat of apocalypse. I don't think I ever felt safer than on those childhood holidays to my grandparents' houses. Either to Devon – where you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a hotel as the toast came on a toast-rack and the butter was often in sachets (my grandmother was a thrifty woman who presented me with a margarine tub filled with sachets of vinegar, mustard, ketchup and tartar sauce she had 'saved' from the Wrey Arms on our many visits there), the Ribena was substituted for Lemon Barley Water, and the old man had all his hair – with barely a touch of grey – and told you golfing stories while he watched snooker. Different, but every bit as magical, or Guildford – depending on which bit of the country we were living in at the time. Either way, Mum and Dad knew how to get themselves a bit of quality child-free time.

Any excuse to post this - occasionally referred to as

the best song of all time by me - John Mellencamp classic

I come from a generation for which the most powerful of memories tend to be triggered by the TV. I recently questioned the fact that some of my most emotional reactions are for American small towns – despite having grown up in the bleak grey landscape of 1980s Guildford, and the rural idylls of Devon (if you have ever visited Bideford, you will know how much I am stretching the definition of rural idyll) either way, neither of those places bear even a passing resemblance to Kingston Falls, or Hill Valley (same town, different names fact-spotters). As the massive success of Ready Player One confirms, the films we watch as kids have a powerful place in our hearts.

Not just films but all pop culture, who among us doesn't occasionally reread a favourite book, or listen to a favourite album in the hope of glimpsing our younger selves smiling back at us? I am still so in love with the Shire that I can reread just the opening chapters of Lord of the Rings without needing to finish the book. It is like a brief weekend back in a home town that never really existed. I can be lost in happy memories of the corridors of Galactica and the rocky outcroppings of Eternia every bit as much as I can by strolling through Victoria or Stoke Parks on a sunny afternoon – more so, because they remain unchanged.

I say they have remained unchanged, but that's not entirely true. If you have ever been hit with a powerful enough nostalgia wave to watch old episodes of Thundercats, Transformers, Mask etc. etc. on Youtube, then you, like me, have probably been shocked to discover that what you remember as a perfectly crafted fantasy world of good vs evil, powerful characters and dizzying special effects (the effects have not aged well, especially not in one of my personal childhood favourites, The Box of Delights, though it has only added to its charm and I still rewatch it every Christmas) is, in fact, a thinly veiled advert for easily broken toys.

I still have no happier memory than the unbridled joy

I experienced at watching the first episode of Thundercats.

And they have stayed that way. If you spend any time at all on social media these days, you are almost certainly going to see at least one 'Like and Share if you remember this,' meme every day. They are harmless fun, images of Speak and Spells, Worzel Gummidge, Donkey Kong and Stretch Armstrong, reminding you of a simpler time. Why not like them, share them, and bring a bit of joy to your contemporaries?

Well, why not indeed. It depends entirely on how you feel about data-mining and targeted advertising, or building up fake ratings for pages that can be sold on to the highest bidder (usually some demented racist hategroup or another). If, for example, you continually like clips of 80s cartoons, arcade games, BMX bikes and Garbage Pail Kids, then it can be reasonably assumed you are somewhere in your forties, and a bit of a geek. Or, if you like pictures of sit-up-and-beg racing bikes, stuff-of-nightmares china dolls and teddy bears and Muffin the Mule then you are either racing towards your three quarters of a century, or a fucking hipster. Either way, this helps the corporations bombard you with adverts for whatever they think you should buy, and find the right cartoon to put in that advert to gently nudge you into it. No Top Cat, I don't want another mortgage you sell out bastard, and fuck you Fred Flintstone, you corporate shill. Emotional manipulation via your happiest childhood memories can never be a good thing.

This can only get worse. I confidently predict a Philip K. Dick style future in which we all access the internet directly from inside our brains via a chip – for convenience's sake. A chip which will have incorporated a feedback loop capable of accessing our fondest memories and utilising them to sell us things. A happy world where our heart's desires are transmitted straight to the people able to make them happen, where you only have to think of a thing you want and it can be yours.

A world where they can use the smell of my grandmother's toast to make me believe I want to buy a handgun and vote for a despot.

Not long to go now...

What The Fuck is a Blog Tour anyway?

If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram etc. etc. then you can't have failed to notice that for the last ten days my book, The Craft Room, has been on a blog tour.

What the fuck is a blog tour? I hear you all shouting.

Well, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The book visits a whole load of book blogs and gets reviews, or promotional posts, depending on what each individual blogger wants to do. They don't get paid to review, so it's entirely up to them and impartial. I'm almost as new to this as those of you still wondering what the hell a blog tour is and this marks yet another stage on my (oh for fuck's sake I'm going to have to use the word journey here – kill me now, Billy) journey as a writer.

When I published The Craft Room in August 2017, I had no idea how to market it. Weekend Rockstars the year before had been easy, there's a very specific niche market of middle-aged part-time musicians with a huge online community that I am already part of. Job done, it sold well, and still does. I worried that because of its broader appeal, I would not be able to market The Craft Room as an indie author with no agent/publishers to back it for me. I was right to, it sells, but not to the same extent as Rockstars has, and I had begun to doubt if it was actually any good.

I made new covers for them a couple of months ago, in the hopes it would encourage sales.

Guess what? It didn't, but they do look prettier.

My third novel should have been ready to publish in June, but my favourite editor pointed out I had included an accidental Deus Ex Machina near the end (the result of its ever-changing plot line) and it would be better if I were to change it completely and force the characters to work out their differences, rather than just killing one off. This has led to an awful lot of rewriting and it only now being ready to send out on query.

Unfortunately, having just finished those rewrites, my synopsis now looks incredibly dull. The Deus Ex Machina sounded quite exciting, and, while the new version is infinitely more satisfying in full, as a brief outline it looks a bit shit, and could instigate the following hypothetical conversation.

'So how do your protagonists resolve their differences now Dave?'

'Well, they sit down together, at a table, have a drink and talk about their feelings.'

'Really? Nobody gets killed?'

'No.'

'No alien invasion, shoot-out in the woods, eldritch demons dragging people down to hell, massive fight?'

'No.'

'That's not like you.'

'I suppose not, but it's much more interesting than it sounds, they've both just separately left the same party that they thought was a bit shit, and ended up in the same remote pub after a walk in the dark, so they realise they have more in common than the thing that's been driving them apart. Being forced together by circumstance makes them have to talk it all through and gives a more satisfying conclusion.'

'Yeah, but the last version had a really icky, grisly death, shinbones going through eye-sockets and everything, and their relationship only held together by keeping up a lie for the rest of their lives.'

'I know, I liked it too, but it wasn't right. Trust me, read it, you'll agree. This is how people should deal with their problems in real life, art needs to reflect real life, encourage us to be better people, push us gently into doing the right thing.'

'I can't be arsed to read it all you stupid fucking hippy, get out.'

Obviously my imaginary conversation with an imaginary publisher will never happen, because now it looks so dull in brief that no agent will ever touch it with a bargepole. Nevertheless, it will go out on query before I give in and do it all myself again.

(If you're an agent/publisher reading this, can I grab your attention with the headline: It's a coming of age story about a young man who goes to live with his estranged father and the difficulty with reconnecting after a decade apart when the girl you love is in love with your dad. Thanks for your time – email me, we'll do lunch, or drinks.)

All this means that there will be no new book til at least Christmas (hopefully even longer if the industry pick it up) so I thought I'd try and drum up some publicity for The Craft Room instead. But how to do that (bearing in mind I really am as lazy as I say, it's not just for comic effect).

Then Twitter came to the rescue, I started following Chris Mcrudden simply because he posts some really funny stuff. Then he turned out to be in publishing, and from his mentions and retweets I ended up following a whole bunch of other publishing types. That was when I discovered that blog tours were a thing. I had long wondered how you go about getting reviews and am much too lazy to spend hours contacting individual book bloggers and begging them to read my book. And then I found out there were blog tour operators, who do all the hard work so I don't have to.

On the recommendations of Lucy V Hay and Sam Missingham, I contacted Rachel Gilbey of Rachel's Random Resources and, for a very reasonable fee, she set up the tour. I got the schedule and the dates through back in July and spent the summer nervously awaiting my fate. Remember the bloggers don't get paid, they can be as mean as they like about my work.

And then it began, and the reviews have been uniformly good. Most of them great, they love my book. For the last year, I have worried that its slow sales have been because it is not good enough, but people who read hundreds of books a year have said it is very much good enough. Here's a selection of quotes that are currently making me very happy.

'light hearted, witty, full of chaos, it's dramatic, yet addictive!.. The plot is crazy, pacy and cleverly written.'

'I ended up finishing this book in one evening as I became quite attached to both the characters and the story!
If you enjoy a story that is a little quirky with humour slightly on the darker side then I'm sure you will enjoy The Craft Room!'

'The Craft Room is a completely original and addictive read that I fell in love with. I raced through this book as I couldn’t wait to find out what the hell was going on in it. I laughed my way through and I gasped in shock and delight as events unfolded.'

'Dave Holwill has put together a fabulous cast of characters, an increasingly wild plot and some laugh out loud one-liners to create a very entertaining, you-didn’t-know-you-needed-it-until-it-was-here, combination of Serial Mom, Rambo and Blue Peter'

'A brilliantly engaging read from start to finish which I found difficult to put down... This is a dark comedy which had me smiling right to the end.'

'It’s a breath of fresh air, and quickly added itself to my list of favorite reads this year.'

'This is a story that is dark, funny and completely unexpected – four stars from me – a very enjoyable story – highly recommended!'

'I was so glad I had given this book a chance, it truly was hard to put down… A little naughty, a little inappropriate, and a whole lotta fun!'

'Dave Holwill manages to combine Hyacinth Bucket with The Purge in The Craft Room, which is a chillingly funny look at a post mid-life crisis from a woman who has a lifetime’s worth of suppressed anger to take out on everyone around her.'

'Anyone who enjoys the comedy of the likes of The League of Gentleman will be in sync with this book. Those of a squeamish or prudish nature should probably give it a pass, but they will be missing a treat of a read...'

'I really, really loved this book. It completely appealed to my macabre sense of humour and my delight in any book that goes off at a bit of a tangent from well-worn literary tropes.'

Being new to this, I have retweeted and shared every single post, retweeted link and shared promo. I have no idea of the etiquette for this, but it seems polite to make sure the bloggers get publicity for their blogs as much as I get it for my book, even if it looks like endless self-promotion and narcissistic back-slapping. I got so excited I put The Craft Room on a free ebook amazon promotion. I suddenly felt validated, and that the last four years of constantly writing, rewriting, editing, formatting and cover designing (along with the endless self-promotion online) has been worth it. Before this I had almost hit a point of wanting to stop and get my spare time back again.

As it is, I will carry on. Book number three is done, ready to be rejected by the industry and thrown into the world anyway. I will launch it with a blog tour, and this time I will prepare more content, interviews, promotional materials etc. to make sure the promo posts are more than just blurb and bio. I've learned a few things from this experience. Book number four is a jumble of about 100,000 words ready to edit down to something comprehensible and readable, and I am about to spend the next month and a bit knocking out the rough draft of book number five (which a lot of you will be pleased to know is a sequel to Weekend Rockstars set ten years later).

I am resigned to the fact that writing is unlikely to ever fulfil me financially, but this acceptance from the blogging community means that my soul overfloweth with joy. I shall continue, and sacrifice whatever spare time I once had to the Gods of words. I have no idea if it has had any significant effect on sales or not yet (the free promotion at the same time kind of skews all the figures for the last week) but I feel that sales are not as important as my self-esteem, on which the effects have been very significant. My heartfelt thanks go out to all those who participated, particularly Rachel for organising the whole thing, and who I will now happily recommend to anybody wanting to do similar.

Here's the full list of stops on the blog tour, in case you wanted to read the reviews in full.

Reviews

https://alittlebookproblem.co.uk/2018/09/06/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-bookreview-blogtour-daveholwill-rararesources-thecraftroom/

https://redsmidnightreaders.blogspot.com/2018/09/blog-tour-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html?zx=562e91ddd574c3db

https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/blog-tour-the-craft-room-dave-holwill/

https://dogsmomvisits.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

https://audiokilledthebookmark.com/2018/09/08/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-daveholwill-rararesources-bookreview/

https://donnasbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/blogtour-bookreview-for-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-rararesources/

https://jessicarachow.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/blog-tour-the-craft-room-david-holwill/

http://againsttheflowpress.blogspot.com/2018/09/review-craft-room.html?spref=tw

https://katiesbookcave.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/blogtour-review-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-daveholwill-rararesources/

https://juliapalooza.com/2018/09/11/blogtour-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill/

http://cancersuckscouk.ipage.com/blogtour-review-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-daveholwill-rararesources/#.W5jKIBwyiQQ.twitter

http://booksandbindings.com/2018/09/12/book-review-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill/

http://www.booksarecool.com/2018/holwill-wickedly-funny/

http://raereads1.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

https://snazzybooks.com/2018/09/15/the-craft-room-by-daveholwill-blog-tour-review-rararesources/

https://dashfan81.blogspot.com/2018/09/blog-tour-craft-room.html

Promos

https://chataboutbooks.wordpress.com/2018/09/06/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-daveholwill-blogtour-bookpromo-rararesources/

https://bginareview.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/blog-tour-stop-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill/

https://nemesisbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill/

http://litflits.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

http://bookreviewsbyjasmine.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-book-tour.html

http://norwayellesea.blogspot.com/2018/09/spotlight-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

https://booksaremycwtches.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/blog-tour-promo-post-the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill/

http://cheekypeereadsandreviews.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-blog-tour.html?spref=tw

https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/writing-garnet-14929231/blogtour-craft-room-by-dave-holwill-daveholwill-6532701229

https://jessbookishlife.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/promo-post-the-craft-room/

http://jessicasreadingroom.com/blog-tour-the-craft-room/

http://asoccermomsbookblog.blogspot.com/2018/09/promo-post-of-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

https://rainnes.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-craft-room-by-dave-holwill.html

http://nickislifeofcrime.blogspot.com/2018/09/blog-tour-book-spotlight-craft-room-by.html

What I Go To Pride For

What I Go To Pride For

A lot of my life these days involves trying very hard to be a decent person in the wake of a very expensive education that taught me to be an entitled prick. Mostly. I still vividly remember the assembly during my first year of school, where a visiting priest told us about the magical lake that God created to reward people for being good. Its waters gave them beautiful pale, white, skin. But the lazy people, the layabouts who got there last, only managed to get the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet in, hence the dark skin on the rest of their bodies. Because they were lazy. I was taught this at five, in a Church of England Infant School in Surrey in 1982.

I found this image on a US website helping LGBTQI christians to find acceptance in the Church

I like to think that means the world is a little less shitty then it was in 1982

I had shit like this drip-fed to me daily throughout my education, rarely as blatant as that, but it was there, that vague undercurrent that different means bad, that people 'like us' were inherently better. That femininity is something to be ashamed of, that various things that all people do, whether male, female or something inbetween are feminine (therefore bad), and weak – like crying, or being kind to strangers (you know, like Jesus did). Above all, that men are supposed to act in a certain way, no deviation, no deviants. Well fuck that, if there's one thing you can call me that I will always agree with, it's a deviant. Since a fair chunk of this education was given to me by the generation that gave you thalidomide and eugenics, I am happy to disregard all the many distasteful bits.

I realise that this is also the generation that fought and died for us in at least one World War (two in a lot of cases) but it's worth remembering that some of them must have been responsible for all of that being necessary by starting the fucking things.

For the sake of clarity, let me say here that I am a man, always have been male, very happy to be male, and a heterosexual man to boot. A man who fancies women (well, just the one woman, my wife.) So, a white, cishet, monogamous, public-school educated man. You can refer to me as him and he and I won't bat an eyelid. Nicely privileged, thank you very much world, I do not need to make any effort and everything is tilted in my favour.

That's becoming an easy thing to forget in a world of shrinking wages and spam-faced propaganda ranting that it is all being taken away from my kind. Difficult to remember that 'my kind' are still very heavily in control of pretty much everything, we're just having to share now, like the angry red-faced boy from my class back at Cranleigh First School who would punch you to the stony ground before letting you have a go on one of his many Yo-Yos. I expect he writes angry letters to the Daily Mail now about not wanting to share his universal health care.

Oh my god, I found this picture and it's a real thing and not ironic and of course it's American

What the fuck?

Toxic Masculinity is a phrase being thrown about a lot at the moment. And it's a good thing it's finally being talked about. One day, we will all just be allowed to be referred to as 'people' without any need for labels, worried questions or fear of accidentally fancying the 'wrong' gender. And on that day I will finally stop using the phrase 'Gender as a social construct,' in nearly every argument I have with a bigot in the pub. That day is not today however.

Take, for instance, the simple phrase, 'Get Fucked.' Why on earth is this used as an insult? Surely the one thing most of us are trying to do all the time in our day to day lives is to get fucked? What better prize than consensual intercourse with some other willing human being? To be honest, my current reply of 'Thank you, you too,' has not caught on yet, but I'm hoping it does soon, and that 'Get Fucked,' will replace 'Have a Nice Day,' as the pleasantry of choice.

We are hung up on the idea that having something enter you (a cock usually) is an act of submission, that it implies the cock-wielder has some power over you.

I would suggest, that allowing somebody else to entirely engulf one of the most sensitive parts of your anatomy is a little more submissive. We need to change the narrative. Using two people having sex as a punchline is ludicrous, particularly when we always, but always, portray the fuckee as having been beaten by the fucker. The recent Putin/Trump/Piers Morgan gay jokes are but the tip of the iceberg in dehumanising 'humour' that leaves many of your fellow humans very much unamused.

Justin Myers (author of the utterly brilliant Last Romeo) had this to say about it on Twitter the other day.

'When so-called “woke” people give homophobia a free pass because the effect on the target is more valuable than the effect on LITERALLY EVERY OTHER LGBTQ PERSON I want to take a bath with my toaster.
When I see things like this, it reminds me – like I‘d ever forget – that my status as a citizen can be downgraded or revoked at any time if the use of my sexuality as a punchline requires it. If you’re LGBTQ and don’t see the issue, jam your eyes open with matches and look again.'

I heartily endorse this, and would add, if you're not a total bellend and can't see the issue, do likewise.

I recently spent a day in a hot sweaty car with some proper blokey blokes, and had to make small talk about sport and cars. I can just about blag it now, but I'd rather not, and there's always that look they get that I am not a proper bloke because I don't want to talk about that, or laugh along at their snide jokes about women and gays not being able to drive.

I am by no means a manly man, I never have been. I've always been a bit of an outsider, I liked playing with dolls (managed to bypass the worst of that by using Action Force, Mask and Transformers, but I also had a big thing for Wuzzles, and a brief obsession with Care Bears) and cared not one jot for sport in any way. Still don't. On the first day of school, any school (I went to quite a few different ones), I would always be asked what football team I supported, eventually I learned not to say, 'I don't like football' as it would be met with incomprehension and banishment. I remembered that my father and brother are avid Chelsea supporters, and proudly said 'I support Chelsea,' and subsequently spent four years of school banished by a class full of Manchester United supporters.

I really can't get a fucking break. There's a reason a lot of my best friends at school were girls. I was not just trying to get into their pants.

Seriously, I loved these, I had an Eleroo, and finished the Panini sticker album

despite nobody else at school having any swaps.

I did spend a few years faking it to get acceptance, I like pubs, I like drinking, and I like camaraderie and shouting. I went to watch football in the pub (it was a good way to spend time with my dad) until I could take it no more. If the game went the wrong way, nobody wanted to stay out drinking, or if they did they were miserable as sin. I can't live like that, my happiness is dependent on things I have done, not 11 strangers in their underwear. I even spent four years watching cricket, out of a vague intellectual interest. It took me that long to figure out the rules, at which point I was bored of that too. I do like the idea of a game that lasts so long you won't miss much if you nip to the shops for an hour or two though.

But I like LGBTQI Pride events. I like hanging out with people who feel that outside otherness on a completely different level. I'm often dismissed as a bit weird, but I don't get abuse thrown at me on a regular basis that makes me feel less than human. These people do, from people like me, yet if I come down to party with them they accept me – a straight white male – and it's all good. I am not in any way claiming that my struggle as a long-haired, flamboyant dresser with a new-found penchant for nail varnish equates with theirs – I don't want a letter added to the end or my own stripe on the flag. I have it pretty damn good thanks, remember I'm male, stale and pale baby.

But it is a safe space for me, so my reasons for attending are not entirely altruistic.

Safe spaces are getting a bad rap these days, from people who like to call everybody snowflakes. These are the same people who burst every cholesterol-engorged blood vessel in their body if you don't wear a poppy, or if a chocolate egg doesn't have the word Easter on it, or if a brown person wins a TV talent show. People so threatened by having to share that they will almost certainly punch you to the gravelly ground, where you will cut your knee and have to endure the agony of having iodine poured over it by your mum, before letting you have a go on their Yo-Yo. Even though they have a massive box full of Yo-Yos at home, and the means to get as many more as they like.

There are people who are scared that a man might hit on them if they go to a gay club. But to them I say, what do you do when a woman you don't fancy hits on you in a nightclub? Take it as the compliment it is, say 'Sorry, no thanks,' and carry on dancing – easy. If you're worried that he's bigger than you and you might get attacked, then congratulations, you just learned a little bit of what it's like for actual women EVERY FUCKING TIME THEY GO OUT.

I admit, when I first started going to LGBTQI events, I clung to my wife, terrified people might think I was gay.

Before I realised how dumb that was.

It doesn't matter.

I used to say 'Sorry, I'm straight,' to turn down prospective suitors – in case it wasn't obvious, but now I just wave my wedding ring, and say, 'Sorry, I'm taken,' because my sexuality is not an issue. My monogamy is.

Masculinity is a long complex, thing with no rules, no conditions that need to be met in order to be allowed in the man club. If you aren't secure enough in your own to go to an awesome parade and march with your fellow human beings to help ensure they feel validated for once then piss off home snowflake*.

I shall be being fabulous at Brighton Pride this weekend if anyone is about and fancies a good time (in the non-sexy version of the phrase) see you there.

*I do not for one minute endorse the use of the term snowflake, although being told that you are a special, unique, beautiful construct with an incredibly finite lifetime in an increasingly dangerous universe is, of course, quite the compliment. Remember that next time a large joint of meat refers to you as such.

Funerals, Friendship, Death and Birthdays

I recently spent my 41^st birthday at the funeral of a very dear friend, it got me thinking, how good does a friend have to be to make you change your planned pulled-the-day-off-work-for-my-birthday activities of lying about in the garden drinking cider and reading old Peanuts cartoons? Friendship is a difficult thing to measure at the best of times, and I think those who try to measure it, and gauge which friends are better than other friends can probably all fuck off.

I am now convinced that the people who post all those, 'Get rid of all the negative needy, selfish people around you, shake them off, you are a beautiful butterfly,' memes on facebook are almost certainly the very selfish, needy, fuckawful dickheads they are talking about. On the other hand, many of them are my friends, and I would most certainly go to their funerals over my own selfish drunken plans.

This chap comes to us all eventually, don't miss the party

A person who will remain anonymous was perplexed that I would willingly choose to spend my birthday at a funeral, saying it wouldn't be much fun. Now, there are two very important points here, one, my friend will only ever have one funeral – I should have plenty more birthdays, I get one a year after all (not like that birthday hoarding, two a year selfish monarch of ours, does that make her 157 now?) and I've already had about fifteen more than I planned on. And secondly, I put the fun in funerals. Seriously, I've never been to one I haven't enjoyed (apart from that one where the wake only had tea and cake, what is wrong with you? Who doesn't have booze at a funeral? Note to all my relatives, there must be a bar at mine.)

My anonymous acquaintance also claims to share my legendary misanthropy. The difference being that I hate people in general – the abstract concept of having to share my space with others – but I very rarely meet any specific people I don't like. My acquaintance, on the other hand, has trouble being alone, and wants to be around other people, but finds the actual, specific people problematic and not quite malleable enough for their needs. I have had 'oh but you like everybody!' thrown at me as if it's an insult before. Frankly, I'm pretty proud of it, I do like everybody I meet. It takes a good deal of effort to make me not like you, so if you've managed it, well done, that's quite the achievement.

Anyway, I was sitting in the funeral parlour, contemplating my own mortality, as you do at a funeral, and suddenly the voice of the deceased came into my head. I quite distinctly heard him chuckling 'Fuck's sake Dave, it's my funeral, you could at least have worn shoes!' Which would have been fair. His son, who contacted me about it, told me we had to go for bright colours. I had forgotten the unwritten rule about the 'celebration of life, bright colours' funerals that states you must still wear a suit, shirt and tie, nothing stronger than a pale blue and still mainly black, and rolled up in my multi-coloured patchwork shirt, purple Prince trousers and that hat. And I don't wear shoes between May and September usually, so sandals it was. I could hear him laughing all the way to his coffin, he'd have loved it.

This hat here – which has become much too regular a feature of this blog

It was a good funeral, I saw some very dear people that I have all but lost contact with over the last few years that I was very glad to see again. You could tell it would be fun when the first thing the grieving widow did on seeing me was grab me and whisper, 'I'm free and single now Dave,' in my ear with a raucous laugh. It continued, with this singular family who I used to see so much of all heckling each other's eulogies, clapping the readings and talking over the contemplative music. I have not cry-laughed so much since This is Us finished.

I do draw the line at talking over the music though. When I finally pop off you're going to have to listen. I've been working on the funeral setlist for years, I would like some well-meaning member of my family to turn to the crowd and say 'shut the fuck up and listen to the song, this bit's really good', as we near the 28 minute mark of 'Thick as a Brick'. Heckling is fine, and to be encouraged, indeed, please shout 'Stop making me listen to Jethro fucking Tull again you dead bastard!' rather than muttering amongst yourselves guiltily.

I do advise everyone to sort out your funeral songs, if you're not careful somebody else will pick them, and they'll get them wrong. You don't want to end up with people sitting in quiet reminiscence of you to the St Winifred's School Choir. This is your chance to get your own back, as my friend did by making me listen to Don fucking Mclean for one last time. Bastard, well played.

Things go wrong in planning, I remember another funeral for another friend a long time ago where the order of service was to have guitars on it, as he was a guitarist. This friend had, in our last conversation about a month before he died – a conversation that at that point I had no inkling would be our last – royally ripped the piss out of me for gigging exclusively on bass, saying I was a guitar player, not a shitty bassist. I had to stifle a laugh as I entered the service and found his grieving relatives had accidentally put two Fender Jazz Basses on the front. I could hear his voice shouting 'Fuck's sake Dave, I'm a guitar player, not a bassist! What are they doing to me?'

Tell people what you want, I'm not revealing my set list here, but my wife and a couple of back up friends have it for when the inevitable happens. It's good, and I might add a few more for the service. The wake will be even better, you're all invited, it shall be a rave in a field, you can pick the tunes for that, as you'll want to be dancing – in my fevered imagination I see people begging to have my songs played as loud as possible, in reality I am still very much aware of how bad they are, and you really can't dance to them. I will be there in spirit, as I have ordered an effigy of me dressed in my finery be burned atop a huge fire – like an old school Guy Fawkes night – to keep the revellers warm.

It's going to be fun, and well worth missing a boring old normal 41^st Birthday for. You'll see a load of people you haven't for years, make a few new friends and remember someone you (hopefully) liked.

Here's an artist's impression of what my funeral might look like

Obviously that guy in the hat will be a model on the fire

and only dancing in spirit

I'm terrified the new Doctor Who is going to be shit

I have honestly not been as nervous for a new series of Dr Who since the announcement it was coming back ten years ago.

Last year I was utterly overjoyed to hear Jodie Whittaker was going to be the next Doctor, a woman. Not just a woman, but one who I'd been watching in some drama where she was pretending to be a doctor, and she was good. She's got chops, I've seen her doing all the emotions. I've heard her being really funny and entertaining on the Shaun Keaveny Breakfast show on 6 music and couldn't be more pleased. The best person got the gig, there can be no complaints.

I'm still a bit scared though.

Especially after her first appearance on the Christmas special.

Don't misunderstand me. It's not because of her, and it's not because she's a woman.

It's because of the (still overwhelmingly male) writing team that chose to lead with a woman driver gag which I pray will prove to be a knowing nod and an excellent set-up to a proper good first story arc.

Except that I've been watching Doctor Who for long enough (very nearly 41 years and counting) to know that the first story line for any Doctor always gets chucked under the bus so as to weather the inevitable onslaught of vitriol given to anyone brave/stupid enough to take the role on. Peter Capaldi spent most of his career as the Doctor acting his very arse off in the face of utterly dire plots and cock-awful scripts until they finally worked out how to write for him in his last series (even if it did all turn to shit at the end there).

I'm not normally the type of drooling fanboy to get nervous about something as unimportant as a TV show (Star Trek: Enterprise kicked that out of me a long time ago) but I have spent the last three and a half Doctors in defensive mode – half the time not even believing my own bullshit – and am painfully aware that I am in for even more of it this time around. Capaldi, Matt Smith, and even the sainted David Tennent got short thrift from my family in their first few shows (pretty much all of Smith and Capaldi's runs got a good deal of – admittedly quite deserved – snark) as both wife and children declared how much they missed the sainted Tennent and untouchable Ecclestone: who got a free pass just for there being a Doctor again after so long. I still say Paul McGann deserved a better, bigger shot at it. If you haven't seen his USA TV movie, it is fucking brilliant.

Expectations for this series are weighted like never before. On one side are a swathe of people expecting unreasonably good things from a slightly tired TV franchise. Excited feminists who have never bothered watching will be turned off by its intrinsic daftness. Dyed in the wool Whovians will endlessly whosplain to each other why she can/can't possibly do the job (I expect they already are, I've stayed out of it).

To pull this off, she needs to be exceptional. As so many women do when thrust into jobs that a man like myself would be perfectly able to get away with doing half-arsedly (see Colin Baker for more on this). It's a sad truth of modern life that we claim to be thoroughly open-minded and equal, but if an aesthetically unpleasing female gets a traditional male role she can not be any good. If she is anything less than exceptional it proves (to some) that women can't do it. This means in the boardrooms, in legal chambers, gaming, music, comedy, every single job you can think of. She also needs to be able to do it while answering questions about what it's like to do this job as a woman, and how her children are coping without her. A question I don't think Tom Baker ever had to contend with.

I like to think I'm above all that but there's an inbuilt and conditioned discrimination that sits inside me from my privileged position as middle-class, middle-aged, privately educated white man. I'm bright enough to know it's there, but plenty aren't. Every time I see a literature award/prize/bursary aimed at minorities/women (honestly if you think women are a minority you need to learn maths (ok, yes China, but that's not here)) my inner gammon screams that I am not being given the chance for that big break I so desperately deserve. Luckily the rest of me, which is not a total bellend, reminds me that I am statistically more likely to make it in literary circles (any circles frankly) anyway due to my background. Unfortunately, my (un)professional background is mostly in drinking and fucking about with guitars rather than publishing/journalism/hereditary peerage. Also Devon not London (do see my last ramblings about why I'm also not a rockstar).

The conditioning is the hardest thing to break, it's a theme I've become increasingly aware of over the last few years and have tried to raise in my third novel (which I currently hate the title of, and it's getting a bit close to being finished for me to be wanking about with the title now). I am still always surprised when I see a woman being good on guitar/bass/drums and very nearly say something dumb like 'wow, she's good for a girl!' and then want to punch myself in the dick because I know that I shouldn't be surprised – in the same way as nobody should have been surprised by Susan Boyle's voice, it isn't just the really really good looking people that get talent. I hang around on a lot of musician forums where the 'good for a girl' thing comes up a lot. Along with 'and she's pretty hot too, I would' or something equally delightful.

There are a lot more male musicians on shockingly misogynist forums, it might colour your views slightly.

This very strong contender wasn't even shortlisted

Interestingly, I personally know at least two people who I am sure are only homosexual because they hate women so much they don't think they can even do sex right. No names here, but if you're reading this and think it might be you, it is. Hi, we'll talk about it later.

My inner Guardian reader knows full well that abstract women are intrinsically competent and as good as men at everything. But the second I see a real one being competent I am conditioned to be as surprised as the next pork-faced fuckwit. Being a do-gooding, leftie, pinko Nancy I at least have the manners to try and stop myself. Plenty of others aren't, and don't get me started on the LGBTQRSTUV community (it's alright, I checked this joke with a couple of them and it's okay. Unless throwing this much diversity into one category is a bad idea that might end with outraged Transphobic Lesbians being stuck in a meeting with their phobias?) Again, in theory I'm good, in practice, yes I stare a bit and ask the wrong questions, and probably call the wrong people mate/sweetheart/darling.

I'm trying, the world has changed since I first got called Shirley for having impeccable dress sense. See also being a bit deaf and having trouble understanding foreign accents (Devon not London is relevant again here). For some reason I have never been surprised by BAME men being competent/better than me in my chosen fields, but then I work in entertainment/IT and thus expect to be out-minstreled by the black community and my IT skills can never live up to those of Asian stereotypes. (These are jokes, please don't get outraged because I mentioned minstrels).

I do, however, fully expect women to be better writers – not just good, better.

Probably because of my childhood Enid Blyton addiction.

Equality is not preprogrammed in you, you need to work at it.

To get back to my original point, the huge well of hatred ready to be thrown at Jodie Whittaker as she sets forth to play the most anticipated Doctor since the impeccable Ecclestone doesn't need any help from weak plotting, identikit supporting cast or 'having to bring in the fucking Daleks again'. The full-misogynist contingent won't be swayed even if she stars in the greatest thing since Tom Baker didn't finish off Davros.

I sincerely hope that the well of hope and anticipation that has been building in my chest since last year (honestly, she looked so good in that teaser, and not in a oh-look-a-pretty-girl-on-a-tv-show-I-love way, in an I-Love-Doctor-Who-and-this-is-genuinely-exciting way) won't end in a damp squib of meandering subplot and knowingly-ironic-chauvinist jokes that go so far round and up their own arse that the irony it is cloaked in ends up just being awful and sexist anyway.

I'm depressingly prepared for the usual shitty first season, probably containing a load of in-jokes. Suggestions from me include the male companion mansplaining stuff, a completely meta character who has been a fan (there's precedent) telling her she can't be the Doctor because she's a woman, plenty of makeup/boob/menstrual cycle gags and a multi-tasking one-liner at the TARDIS console.

Cue sudden uproar and the producers getting scared enough to end the experiment and just cast Toby Bloody Jones or Rory Kinnear as the Doctor to keep the fuckwits happy.

But for gods sake prove me wrong, and be the brilliant, clever, inclusive spectacular of my dreams. I don't want the whole world to keep going backwards.