The Eminent Author

I was clearing out the shelves of the house the other day, not getting very far as there are a large number of books occupying a considerable number of shelves, and the piles of volumes I keep on the floor or in boxes hardly needed adding to.
My parents had brought out half a ton of books with them when they left the UK for Mojácar in 1966. We had built on these modest beginnings enthusiastically ever since - usually by incorporating a visit to the nearest second hand bookshop as the crow flies, fortuitously located in Torremolinos: a nine hour journey in the late sixties which certainly merited a few drinks once we got there.
There has never been much in the way of English book-stalls in Spain, there simply isn't the market. An old librería in our local city had a modest shelf of English books, imported, as I remember, by 'Atheneum'.  The usual treasures: Part II of 'Don Quixote', 'Amsterdam on Five Guilder a Day' and the notorious 'English as She is Spoke'. Fine books all. These days, the second-hand shelves at the charity shops (at the miracle price of six for a euro) or the English chap at the market with his crates of thrillers keep me in yarns.
As a young'un, I had operated a library of sorts, which entailed the other English-speaking residents of Mojácar coming by the house for a gin and a gossip with my parents and to pass through to my corner of paperbacks to stock up on a clutch of Ian Fleming or Desmond Bagley novels. Nothing too taxing, which is why today I remain a voracious reader of thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries and what my old schoolmaster would have described as assorted escapist tripe.
Among the dusty harvest of my top shelf, before I had to go and lie down, I found a couple of travel diaries of mine: indeed I've got them here.
The first was an early trip to South Africa, beginning on February 4th 1975 when I sailed from Barcelona on the MV Europa. Several of our books at home were from H Rider Haggard ('Allan Quartermain' and 'King Solomon's Mines' etc) and our old place in Norfolk had once belonged to him before he took off for his adventures and sold the property to my great grandparents. In short, at 21, I also wanted to go and hunt elephant and meet a Zulu.
The diary, looking at it now, is in disappointingly tiny fading lines of prose. I wonder now about how I did with the pachyderm. I think there's a photo-album somewhere.
The second is a rather easier to read journal from 1979 through 1980, which took me from Spain to the USA and later to the Dominican Republic - a jolly place full of whores. Ah, Memories.
I had been briefly in print in a collection at the tender age of fourteen, the sensation of my circle of friends (Dobberman, Jackson and Mosely Jr) and was even a founder member of the International Society of Poets. Good, huh?  To join, you simply set them a poem and a postal order for £10.
Much later in Mojácar, I found myself at 34 to be in the newspaper business, writing 'stories' (never has the euphemism for 'news' been better applied) for 'The Entertainer', a weekly free-sheet which lasted under my stewardship for fourteen years. I also wrote sketches and articles in Spanish in 'Entertainer en Español', a monthly which ran for five or six years.  Later, too, I edited various other titles, some in Spanish and wrote for a few more. A number of the pieces are here in 'Spanish Shilling', while others can be mined by the patient researcher on the 'Wayback Machine' (a useful site which saves the stuff which others would rather see lost, heh). I also have material published on a six-pack of blogs.
Why don't you write a book, they ask me. Well, a few of them do.
A handful of my friends have done just that. The normal print run for a local amateur author is recommended to not exceed 1,000 copies, and even then, there'll be four or five hundred left in boxes in the garage to be quietly thrown out several years later. The people who make a fortune off of authors expect more than one slim volume, and they want someone with a name, or the opportunity of making one.
At my level, a book which would be for sale in the local PAWS shop and a few other outlets, or free to anyone i knew with an upcoming birthday, would mean I would be full circle back to sending a postal order for the 2020 equivalent of £10 (per copy) to the local printer.


The mash-up comes from The Penguin Classics Cover Generator here.