A novel idea

Dear readers, as you have not only put up with my online ramblings, but even made some comments of a positive nature about them, I wanted you to ask you a favour.

You see, as if this wasn't enough of a vanity project, I've also started on a novel. Now, it's not going to be the next Booker Prize winner. Hell, it's not even going to win the Richard and Judy Holiday Reads award, but it's mine and I like it.

But that's the problem, you see? Maybe it's only me who likes it. So, at the risk of being shot down mercilessly, I thought I might publish the first part of it here for you, my dear readers and friends, to evaluate.

So here it is. Please read and then let me know what you think of it in the comments section below.

But be gentle, eh?

Chapter 1 - Bradford

This bib, well... thing does not fit me. I look like a total twat. Like some kind of lanky dinner-lady.
‘Excuse me Sir, sorry to...’
A dirty look, bordering on the threat of violence. At least he didn’t swear at me. Since I made the decision to steer my life in what, to many of my friends, appears to be a full circle, I’ve been forced to take three new jobs. They’re all pretty low-rent but this one, well... this one might just be worth quitting.
‘Excuse me?...’
I’m a wheeling, piss soaked drunk in Bradford City centre. People are so keen to avoid my gaze they’re walking into the geranium red hanging baskets intended to lift this autumnal gloom. I’m getting paid by the hour, so really I shouldn’t give a shit, but I’m starting to think that nothing in this world is more depressing than trying to capture the interest of this cynical general public. That, and having them tell you to ‘Go fuck yourself.’
It’s been over an hour since I managed to get anyone to even stop. How does Shelley, my team mate, remain so frigging upbeat? Do happier people walk on the north side of the road? What have I got to work with? A weak, mousy woman in her early thirties. Bridget Jones without the optimism. She’ll do.
‘Hello Ma’am! Now, I know you get approached by strange men in the street on a daily basis but, bear with me here, I was wondering, what are the odds that you’ll forgo the convention of dismissing me as another besotted suitor and give me two brief minutes of your invaluable time?’ I’m talking fast, taking her arm, gently but effectively steering her out of the human traffic.
‘Thank you so much,’ no pausing, ‘I’m assuming I’ve caught you filling what we laughingly refer to as your “spare time”, and believe it or not, this is what I get up to in mine.’ Her briefest of nods turns sideways as she tries to workout what I‘m going to sell her, and how she can be free of me in the shortest time possible.
I’m on role now though, ‘It seems like there are so many people asking for, not only your time, but also your money now-a-days, it’s easy to be cynical. The most important thing to realise is that it’s not me, Rodger Dawson asking for your time here, or your money, but a bunch of people who used to be just like you, and whom I’m proud to represent today. Now... I’m sorry, I don’t know your name...’ and I’m acting as if this is out of the ordinary.
‘It’s Sarah.’
‘Sarah,’ no time for her to say anything else, I’ve got to get through this horse-shit before she makes her excuses, ‘I’m willing to bet that you’ve heard of “Help The Aged”, that you know it’s a charity for old people and also that you’ve never considered it something directly relating to your life, right?’ I’m not waiting for an answer.
‘You’ve got a trillion and one things going on; men chasing you, a job you excel in, friends and family who fill your every spare moment to the point that, in stopping for a few minutes to listen to some random bloke in the street, you’re jeopardising vital appointments, So, again, thank you for these precious moments.’ I’m a patronising bastard. I really am.
‘But really, dealing with growing old is part of everyone's life. We never notice when we become part of “The elderly” and we would almost always be too proud to ask for any kind of financial assist...’
‘Sorry, but can I stop you for one moment before you go on?’ Sarah has found her voice and it’s fuller than I was expecting, and not tinted with the beige of West Yorkshire. Now it’s her turn to not wait for an answer.
‘I’m one hundred percent in favour of charities like the one you claim to represent and am not at all of the opinion that caring for society is solely the responsibility of our elected government. However, I am against hypocrisy in all forms and, if you are asking me to be suddenly altruistic, I would want to be assured that you yourself were of a similar persuasion.’
She’s lost me.
‘If you’re asking how much I give to charity myself, I don’t want you to be offended by...’
‘No, I’m not asking about how much you donate in a financial sense, but I do wonder, are you being paid to speak to me right now?’
Is my mouth still open? Note to self, book/cover/judge, etc. Say something, you muppet!
‘Research has proven that this is the most effective way for charities to promote awareness of the excellent work they do, to gather new support. So, if paying me a tiny stipend to bring in far, far more in the way of vitally needed and ongoing funds is proven to be more successful at pricking the conscience in today’s insular world than traditional methods, the charities are happy to do so.’
‘But who has performed this research? I would be very surprised if it isn’t the very company that you are working for, the one who doubtless charges the charities you claim to represent a margin above what they pay you, the company that reports profits each year and pays directors from the money they skim from all the “good work” that you’re doing. A company that, put simply, isn’t a charity. But maybe I’m wrong. Do you work for free?’
I’m guessing this closed lip smile will be a good enough answer.
‘Okay then, do you work directly for a charity?’
That sound is pedestrians, Nissans and bass. I’m done smiling.
‘D’you know, most people just tell me to fuck off?’


Chapter 2 - Australia

I know the idea of living the rest of my life in Australia came to me about 3 years ago, but it took me so long to get round to doing something about it, I thought I’d left it too late.
I come from a bottom rung, middle class family in Newcastle for whom having a rockery was more important than international travel. We holidayed in Scotland, in places like Air, Hawick and Girvan. My mother spoke to me about an ambition to travel, to truly indulge in her love affair with all things North American. I encouraged her to bring it up with Dad but the reality was that she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her precious dogs in kennels, so we went to pet friendly caravan sites instead. All 5 of us.
My eldest sister, Janet, once managed to convince the “Olds” to pay her way on to the school ski trip. Twenty seven hours on a cramped and sweaty coach followed by twenty minutes skiing, five hours in a French emergency room and 6 weeks in plaster. Not my idea of fun. My dad is trying, to this day, to get a refund on her lift pass.
I also didn’t do the whole “year out travelling” thing after limping through my A levels, I was to busy trying to find a University that would take me with the grades I’d managed to scrape. After spending 4 years at Bradford University studying chemical engineering, I was so deep into debt that getting a job and being able to eat seemed a better idea than “finding myself” on a beach in Thailand with three thousand other graduates.
It’s not that I’m one of those insular characters from a small town who can’t see the point in travelling abroad, unable to explain their pronounced xenophobia. I just never really got around to it.
So the first time I went to Australia was as an old fashioned, hotel hopping, excursion taking tourist. I think we did it just to show off to our friends that we could afford to.
I went with Sally, who was the least adventurous woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to date. We travelled through the outback to the soundtrack of her abject terror, including such smash hits as “What was that noise?”, “Look at the size of that bird! I swear, it’s giving me the evil eye!” and the classic, “What if a crocodile finds it’s way into the hotel pool?”
Despite the barrage of negative commentary, I quickly fell in love with the place. I used to wander off on my own in the daytime, while Sally sunned herself by the chlorinated croc trap, and would invariably meet some of the nicest people on earth.
In the UK, if you go into a bar on your own, you’re likely to be labelled an alcoholic, freak, or both. For women, it’s a sure sign they make a living through prostitution. Yet in Sydney, I made more friends in one day, in a bar on my own after a cricket match turned out, than I’d managed in the entire four years of my higher education.
I also discovered a fondness for the Australian woman. They tend to be taller and more robust than their British counterparts and without any of the misplaced sense of self importance. You can talk to these fresh faced hoydens without being tagged as a sex pest. And while you’re talking, you can cover the topics that really matter, such as cricket and meat pies and beer. Sally and I had a little chat when we got back. She still owes me her half of the security deposit.
The biggest problem with returning from Australia wasn’t trying to afford eight hundred pounds a calendar month in rent on my own, or even the fact that I was going to have to repurchase about a third of my music library after it was “liberated”, but returning to work in a culture that refuses to think the best of people before proven otherwise.
Day one back at work and the Waterloo and City line. Hundreds of sweating suits, wandering. Cursing London Underground's decision to furnace blast the heating on a day so cold outside that we were all wearing overcoats. I jostled patiently for a place on the third train to pull in since I had descended into the trench. I was tutted and kicked at by strangers. As the doors closed I wondered which idiot had designed the Tube to have curving ceilings, thus eliminating the possibility of standing without developing a neck complaint.
‘Stop pushing into me, you pervert’ said the plain female office drone wedged tight to my right. I wanted to try and explain spacial dynamics to her but offered a meek smile instead and tried to push myself through the steel door on my left.
‘I know what you’re doing, you pervert.’ She wasn’t done yet. Everyone else in the carriage was now craning against each other in a often forlorn bid to see for themselves what I was “doing”. I was at a loss.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t go any further to the left, I’m afraid. Maybe the people behind you could give a little if you’re feeling crushed?’
‘You’re not sorry. You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ Her tone was one of not only anger and disgust, but laced with a shot of pity.
‘You’ve lost me there, I’m afraid. Being squashed into a bread bin with a thousand other perspiring wage slaves, inhaling the thick fog of the previous night’s curry and previous decade’s cologne is, I can assure you, nothing I could ever “love”. Further more, I’m unable to understand what is is about me, as I stand here in this CIA sanctioned stress position, that has convinced you otherwise.’
‘I’m not talking about the enjoying the ride. You’re one of those “Train Perverts” I’ve read about. You’re using this confinement as an excuse to feel my breasts.’
That got the rest of the carriage to shut up.
‘Sorry, you’re accusing me of fondling you with my right elbow?’ She was wearing a thick two piece and I had a wool overcoat, Hugo Boss suit and Lewin's shirt wrapped around my far from tactile elbow. It could have been touching a hot plate and the first I would have known about it would have been when I inhaled the smoke.
The doors to the carriage slid open and commuters spilled onto the platform. I didn’t have the fingers to count the dirty looks I got. I grinned like a sociopath and screwed the anger and embarrassment into a small knot in my neck.
As I ascended the escalator, still rocking gently with reserved fury, I passed a huge poster depicting the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was fate, I figured.

At the Australian Embassy they had all been as helpful as I expected, after all, they were natives themselves and in my eyes at this point, could do no wrong. They were very apologetic as they explained the biggest hurdle to my ambition. It’s no longer the case that you can pay ten pounds to get in to the country. If you want to live and work there, you’re going to need points.
The “points system” was created as a reaction to the flood of people looking to emigrate in the last twenty years. Depending on certain factors such as age, profession, relation to existing Australians and ability to surf, your suitability as a new Aussie can easily and less subjectively be decided.
The real sickener about the points system is that, after your thirtieth birthday, it becomes almost mathematically impossible to score enough to get in. I went over all of the available scoring areas in fine detail. I searched my family tree in the vain hope that somewhere, a great aunt had perhaps abandoned Perth for a cosy council house in Newcastle. I even considered having blood tests to confirm my paternity, however, as there were no antipodean salesmen in the North East in the early seventies, I figured that could cause more harm than good.
So what were the alternatives to direct entry?
‘We have a scheme arranged at the moment which could be just what you’re looking for,’ Tamara, the sparky redhead embassy staffer chirped as we sat at her desk in Australia House.
‘We, as a nation, have recently become very concerned about the lack of people living in the traditional Outback areas.
‘You see, as more of today’s youth head for the big cities, or even abroad, Outback towns find themselves with declining and ageing populations. What we’re looking to do is to encourage Brits to go over, especially those of you who are about the right age to be starting a family...’ She raised me one eyebrow. Did I look that old?
‘...and get them to live there for a while. Maybe they'll settle down, maybe they won’t, but you get to claim your citizenship after only four years.’
Wow. Four years sounded like a long time to be living in the Bungle-Bungles. I could imagine the introduction to a one horse, Outback town that a “Pom” might get. Now that really would be something, especially from an ageing, Australian population.
‘Okay, er, what sort of work is there to do over there?’
‘Ah yeah, we help out with all of that to, you know. Probably be something like a mechanic, maybe working in one of the hotels. Hey, we’ve even got a few Poms out there working as hands on a sheep ranch. Fun, huh?’
She seemed about as convinced as I was.
‘And that’s my only option?’
‘Look, I like you Rodger,’ she didn’t even know me, ‘and I’d love to help you out on this one, but we just don’t need any more chemical engineers in Australia. Now, if you’d been a doctor, or a nurse, or a pharmacist or something, we could have been in business, but as it is...’
I interrupted her.
‘Sorry, did you say “pharmacist”?’
‘Err, yeah. We have a list of specifically skilled people who we’re always short of in Aus. Pharmacists make that list every time. You’re not a pharmacist as well, are you?’

The first time I attended university, I wished I’d had a tad more information about what course to do. I know hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but it’s not really until you’re graduating that you get a flavour for what is truly important from a degree. It’s not that it should enable you to do what you’ve always wanted, as this will invariably change at least once before you complete your studies. No the most important thing to look for a degree course when choosing one is it’s potential to provide you with an absolute stack of money straight from graduation.
Getting an extremely well paid job fresh from college allows you all the freedoms you need in your mid-twenties. Money to pay off your gargantuan student debts, whilst still holidaying, driving and living somewhere trendy. Having a job you actually like doing just isn’t that important. It really isn’t. I knew plenty of people who were living their dreams. from working as trainee barristers to being involved with the forestry commission, but who was the happiest of all? The ones who whored themselves out for the most disposable income.
‘If I had my time over,’ I used to moan, ‘I’d have studied “Ophthalmic Science”. Vision Masters, or someone like that, would have given me fifty grand, a car and a flat above the shop in the trendy part of Manchester. I’d have done 35 eye tests a day and drank a shot of tequila for each of them every evening.”
I used to look down on the ophthalmic science students, most of whom seemed to be geeks or imported on scholarships from Greece and the Far East; usually both. All that time, they were laughing at me.
‘Ha ha! How funny! He believes his degree will allow him a starting salary with which he can even afford rent. Oh, my sides.’
One other class of students from ninety-seven’s alumni caught my eye as high earners, mainly as I’d shared so many classes with them. The pupils from Bradford’s School of Pharmacy had a very similar choice to the “eye freaks” upon graduation. They could take a rewarding yet hideously underpaid role working in a hospital or a drug research company, or they could sell their souls to the gods of retail and work as shop pharmacists.
The work of a shop pharmacist is about as boring and monotonous as that of a ticket inspector. That’s because they’re really glorified versions of the same. The spend all day doling out prescriptions and hardly ever using any of the wealth of knowledge accumulated from the days they were sober enough to go to university. Those shared classes I sat through with them on “Organic Chemistry” were a total waste. You don’t need to know a damn thing about carboxylic acids to hand out methadone to local junkies or cream for varicose veins. But you do get paid an inordinate amount of money for someone your age.
Straight from university, people with whom I had spent about a sixth of my higher education, were walking into jobs paying well in excess of forty thousand pounds. They got company cars, for what reason, I never fathomed. They never had to drive them anywhere for their work, and were invariably offered free accommodation above the shops in which they toiled.
Many were so well paid, they chose to turn down the offer of lodgings, instead choosing to fork out rent to live somewhere without the constant nuisance of drug addicts breaking in downstairs.
Pharmacy was number two on my list of “Degrees I wished I did”.
Of course, all of the pharmacist students who I had known were no longer working in shops. The job is just too spirit crushing after a while, but they had all made so much money while they were young that, far from making an annual attempt to alter their payslips in order to qualify for another years deferred student loan repayments, they owned a couple of properties each, drove nice cars and had “investment portfolios”. They could afford to do more rewarding research or hospital work.
Would I be happy working in a shop, handing out drugs to anyone with a green slip that asked for them day after day? If it was in Sydney, I felt sure I could manage.

I finally responded to Tamara’s question.
‘I’m not one yet.’