From Symi to the Marsh
I was interviewed by a local radio station in Kent on Tuesday evening, and I think, for someone who hates using the phone, I did rather well. Neil was listening from out in the porch and told me I was okay, apart from too many ums and ers. The interviewer, Craig Avery, is an old school friend from the marsh, so I didn’t feel too nervous, and his questioning was so well put that I didn’t feel panicked. (I had no idea what he was going to ask, except it would be about my books.) You can listen to it on the station’s website, but I haven’t done that because I don’t like the sound of my voice. The interview was at 17:30 GMT on Tuesday. Here’s the link to the site and the ‘listen again’ page where it will be for one week. http://www.channelradio.co.uk/shows-craig-avery-show/ I start about a quarter of the way through – just after Connie Francis and ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ Interesting.
Actually, what is interesting (and I should have picked up on it) is that the song before that was by Morcheeba. We’re friends with Morcheeba’s mum who visits Symi every year. The boys went to a school near mine in Folkestone, and our schools used to have rumbles on the 259 bus as it journeyed along the seafront road. They are younger than me, so I never actually got into trouble with them, but it’s another connection – and we met Ross when he was on Symi once; a group of us ended up at Rhodes airport with him playing the guitar as we sat on the floor. But now I am name dropping. The point is, later in the show Craig talked about ‘a small world’, and that’s where I could have mentioned something, but my brain doesn’t work like that without notes.
Another connection is that another old friend from my childhood on the marsh is visiting Rhodes next week and hopes to get here for a day. If so, it will be the first time in about 37 years that we have seen each other.
On the show, Craig was very good at getting me to plug the books, and I mentioned ‘The Saddling’ and ‘Remotely’ as they are set in the area local to the radio station, the Romney marshes. I had hoped to mention ‘The 13th‘ too, but forgot about that and wanted to thanks the people of the marsh who helped the Symi football boys recently, but there was no place I could slip that in. I did, though, manage to talk about Symi and say how wonderful it was, so at least the island got some publicity from it. I have no idea what else I said, except to praise my best friend from school, now a composer and musician working in India and London (and Albania and Istanbul, I think). Andrew had mentioned me on Craig’s show a year or two back, and Craig very kindly brought that up so that I had an ‘in’ to repay the compliments. All of which were meant.
Anyway, that was my Tuesday evening, and maybe there will be a few more book sales and good reviews coming from it. I know the images today don’t go with the story, but there isn’t much to take photos of when you’re staring at your piano and wondering if you are making any sense at all. So, off with me now. Do listen if you want to, link above, and… well, have a good day.
