Kodacolor Summers
Idea for a Podcast: Episode #1
I’m Mark Howitt. I used to be an accountant, now I’m a writer.
Last piece I wrote on my website - “piece”, get me - I said I wasn’t going to mention that again, the having been an accountant thing. But it’s a useful introduction. In fact, it’s the only introduction you’re getting. Might make a badge “Was an accountant, now a writer”. Granted that wouldn’t work on a podcast.
A.N. Wilson is a prolific writer, author of over fifty books, and as a journalist he’s penned millions of words in newspapers. He’s written critically applauded biographies of Charles Darwin, Dante, John Betjeman. He’s also written loads of novels, many of them - or least the ones I’ve read - about delinquent English vicars. In his autobiography, Confessions, published a couple of years back, he recalls an episode from his days as a journalist:
A young sub on an English newspaper once guilelessly asked his legendarily terrifying editor, ‘Why are we giving so much money to that A.N. Wilson for something he’s obviously dashed off in half an hour?’ The reply, flattering to me [ie Wilson, not me], was ‘Because he CAN dash off the fucking article in half an hour something that would take others the whole fucking day.’
I’m no A.N. Wilson, wish I was but I never will be. I don’t write very quickly or, I don’t usually write very quickly. When I was working as an accountant I sometimes had to write very quickly. A report with an urgent deadline to meet, documents to forge in connection with registering offshore companies, that sort of thing. But now, now that I’m just writing for myself, for fun, for pleasure, for kicks. Well, first of all, there’s no pressure to get anything down on paper at all. I’m not kidding myself that there’s a whole load of people out there on tenterhooks waiting to read my next article.
Sometimes if the Muse calls me, I can write quicky. Earlier this year, after watching Sofia Coppola’s excellent biopic of Priscilla Presley, I became obsessed by Elvis - previously I’d bever been a fan - and I dashed off three articles about the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Or sort of about the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll - one of the pieces was about my Elvis obsessed postman. Then - just as quickly - I ran out of steam.
But my main problem is that I’m a perfectionist. Ex clients, indeed my current readership also, may be surprised by this. I can literally spend two hours re-working a short paragraph - 2 or 3 sentences - until I’m happy with it. And then the following day re-work it again or simply ditch it altogether. I also have an annoying habit of adding a few sentences, then going back to the beginning of whatever it is I’m writing and reading it over to see if the sentences I’ve added are a good fit. It makes for painstakingly slow work.
I’ve often wondered if this is how professional writers go about their business? E.M. Forster started writing A Room With A View during the winter of 1901-02 during his first visit to Italy, finishing the novel towards the end of 1907. A six year gestation period, although during that time he also wrote Where Angels Fear To Tread. (“Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today” - how true Edward, how true.) But I doubt that professional authors in the 21st century can afford to write at that snail’s pace, otherwise they’d never get anything published.
Last summer I went on a 10 week non-fiction writing course at Edinburgh University. One of the first things our tutor said was that writing was hard work. He wasn’t trying to make out that it was akin to a job that entails physical labour nor did he mean it as a joke. I think all he was trying to say was, look, if you’re wanting to produce something that other people are going to want to read then you’ll need to put in some effort. What I will say is that, for me, being an accountant was a piece of piss compared to trying to be a writer.
The piece I’m going to read to you today is called From North Berwick With Love. I started writing it in January 2022 and eventually finished it in July 2023. 18 months. Word for word that’s slower than E.M. Forster. And to be honest, I’ve tinkered with it on-&-off during the 15 months since then. Perhaps I’ll never truly finish it.
The original title I had in mind was Sometimes I Remember. It started off as a piecemeal memoir comprising random events that had taken place over the years in North Berwick. Vague, I know. For example, there was the time when I’d been on a boat trip to the Bass Rock and another passenger, a South African woman, had expressed disappointment at the puffins. She had expected them to be as big as ostriches. 14 years later that still brings a smile to my face, but it’s hardly the stuff of memoir.
Another time, maybe only two years ago, after cycling to North Berwick, I’d stopped off at Steampunk, opposite St Andrew’s churchyard for a coffee and a bun. It was late morning. It might have been a bank holiday or a local holiday or just any Monday in Scotland during the month of May but, whatever the reason, the café was rammed and there wasn’t a free table. So, amid the happy chatter of caffeine addicts, I’m standing there looking like a berk in my cycling gear, holding a tray containing a flat white and an almond croissant, silently willing a table to divest itself of its occupants. A young woman sitting by herself in the corner flashes me a smile and, in that instant, I think I recognise her. In fact, I had only recognised a young woman sitting by herself in the corner whom I had never met before and who had smiled at me. A subtle but noteworthy difference.
But I was drop dead tired, desperate to rest my legs before the return cycle, so I ask if I can share her table. She’s fine with that but, once I’m seated, rather surprises me by asking if I would take her photograph. I thought that this might be some new protocol of which I was unaware - although for what purpose I can’t imagine - but at that point I’m not bothered. All I want to do is to get stuck into my almond croissant.
Stupidly, my initial reaction is to reach for my own phone but, wordlessly and with a faint pitying smile, she hands me hers. As I start taking a few headshots, she explains that she needs a photograph to demonstrate - to person or persons unspecified - that she has completed a pilgrimage. I don’t like to say, but because of the way she’s sat with her back against the brick wall of the café, only she will know where they are taken, they won’t prove anything to anyone. The specifics of the pilgrimage remain vague. She talks about a barefoot walk - although I clock her black leather boots - and witchcraft is mentioned but I don’t want to push her on detail. Apart from anything else my flat white is getting cold. The conversation then takes an unfortunate turn. A self-inflicted, unfortunate turn.
She asked me what I did. I said I was an author. Now, at that point, that wasn’t entirely inaccurate, at least, I could imagine what being an author might feel like. But unfortunately, it turned out she actually was an author, or perhaps like me, could imagine what being an author might feel like. Or could imagine what an author who could name the titles of two of her published books might feel like.
It’s difficult to imagine that an actual (unimagined) author would deny their profession and pretend to be an accountant. Sally Green - author of the hugely successful Half Bad Trilogy - was an accountant before she turned to writing in her late 40s, but that’s not quite the same. She’s comfortable with her former life.
That meeting in the café reminds me of another time, a much earlier time, one Sunday afternoon sitting on my doorstep - the stoop as I would later come to refer to it influenced by my Canadian wife Andrea - enjoying the sunshine. An older woman, don’t know why I said “older”, although she was - or might have been, I’ve no idea really - older than me. A woman then, who lived further up the street had stopped to speak. She asked what I did - what is it with women asking me what I do? - and I said I was an actor. Yeah, I said I was an actor. Naturally the woman didn’t leave it there and asked if I was appearing in anything at the moment. (Thankfully she didn’t ask what she might have seen me in - I suppose I would have said The Bill or Casualty.) And, as if waiting all my life to say these words, I said that I was “currently resting”. To this she nodded sympathetically: her nephew was an actor, she knew how tough it was, she hoped something came up soon.
Unlike the two metre tall puffins that I didn’t see on the Bass Rock, memories of these parallel non-careers - the unpublished author, the out of work actor - don’t bring a smile to my face, simply a feeling of resignation, of what might have been. What is it with me inventing vocations for myself? Again, neither of them is worthy of being recorded in a memoir about North Berwick. The one about not being an out of work actor didn’t even take place in North Berwick.
When I started writing this “piecemeal memoir” it was in the depths of a Scottish winter in front of a blazing fire, a counterpoint to the Kodacolor summers of childhood that had sparked the memories. And the words had come easily. But then I faltered, wondering what it was I was actually writing about. And the words began to dry up.
As the months dragged on, it slowly dawned upon me that I wasn’t writing about North Berwick. Granted, some of the events I was describing took place there, but it was far more about my father, the love I had had, still had, and always would have for him. And, with this realisation the words started to appear at a rate slightly faster than before. And after many rewrites and revisions I have something that I’m happy with. No, more than that, something that I’m proud of.
So here it is: From North Berwick With Love …