So, the serious work has started. I’m five thousand words into a story that will probably take 180,000 to tell, encouraged by a positive reaction to the lengthy synopsis from Martin Fletcher, my editor at Headline. I’ve never worked to such a detailed, self-created brief before and it certainly helps, though other stuff happens along the way. My only concern at the moment is to do with health.
My PSA is still being checked on a three-monthly basis and I’m waiting to hear the results of the latest. And just to help matters, I fell out of a sailing dinghy a few weeks ago and got whacked across the side of the head by the boom as the boat turned over. At first the injury seemed restricted to a deep gash on my right ear, but then I began to experience black blobs floating across the vision of my right eye. This grew worse after a long drive, so now I’m having that investigated too. Something to do with vitreous gel, the jelly-like fluid that fills the inside of the eye, pulling away from the back wall of the eye and casting shadows, an age thing but possibly worsened by the thump to the nut. I keep thinking the blobs are flies. When some actually turn out to be flies it’s confusing. But perhaps the most worrying moment came when the specialist asked: ‘ Have you had a blow to the head recently?’ Christ, you, think, he’s taking this seriously.
It’s been quite a year; a big crash at Silverstone, towed in from Rye Bay by the lifeboat and now a slapstick moment in a dinghy that could turn out to have more serious results than any motor-racing shunt I ever experienced. Amazing, when I pause to think about it, that I’ve reached 71.
On the positive side, the writing is as absorbing as ever and when I’m back in 1940, as I am at present, and preparing to take off from Manston to meet the Luftwaffe bomber fleets, what’s a few black blobs between friends? As long as they don’t turn out to be Messerschmitt Bf 109s…
Monthly Archive for September, 2009
The Barnard family doesn’t seem to have been blessed with an abundance of imagination when it comes to naming male offspring. My grandfather was Frank Barnard, my father is Frank Barnard and, well, you get the picture. In the past this has led to a certain confusion, notably when Dad wrote irate letters to MPs and the press demanding the return of the death penalty, the compulsory registration of dogs, withdrawal from the EEC and other contentious matters. Friends would ‘phone up asking if I’d gone mad…
Band of EaglesThe most recent example of what can happen came last week at the care home where my father now resides. One of the other residents is an ex-RAF man, Keith, and as Dad had a couple of my novels in his bookshelf I thought Keith might like a copy of Band Of Eagles as it deals with Malta, where he served during the war.
When I presented it to him he tapped the name on the cover, in rather large type it must be admitted, and said: ‘So your father wrote this, did he?’ ‘Uh, no, I did actually.’ He didn’t hear me, however, and turned to my photograph inside the dust-jacket. ‘ You look just like him,’ he said. ’ An amazing resemblance.’
Trouble is, I’ve bought this 1967 Citroen 2CV dubbed Growler, and the nickname fits, because growl it certainly does. Its growl is more fearsome than its grunt however, because the AZAM model can only muster 425cc and a top speed, on the level*, of about 55 mph. On hills? First gear at about 10 mph, depending on the severity of the incline.citroen-1967-new-car
Growler in action at Spa-Francorchamps racing circuit, Belgium, 2008
This didn’t prevent a previous owner competing in the Liege-Brescia-Liege road rally for so-called microcars that covered over 2,000-miles including Alpine passes (he came third in class by the way). Now, having given up circuit racing (adding the statutory ‘maybe’) I’m thinking of running said Growler in the 2010 event. But it (he?) certainly reminds you how spoiled modern motorists are, taking for granted such huge technical advances over the last fifty years. Driving Growler is more akin to sailing, all the time maintaining momentum, conscious of every corner, every slope, every junction that requires brakes, even every gust of wind or shower of rain.
Enormous fun, of course…
* As a tenuous postscript to the above it reminds me of a court case some years ago in which a police constable gave evidence against a motorist accused of having, amongst other things, a faulty handbrake. He told the maqistrate: ‘ When I pushed the vehicle with the handbrake applied it moved.’ ‘ On the level, constable?’ said the magistrate. ‘ Straight up, your honour,’ said the constable.
