Update

No posting for a while - I've been busy with final edits and the incorporation of a few b&w photos into the text of my book. I'm almost there - at the point when I convert the whole thing into one pdf file and upload it to the publisher. But now the Christmas holidays are going to intervene and I shall have to wait until 2008 to see the finished product.

Meanwhile, I have been preparing for the marketing 'onslaught'. I have drafted the launch press release, made up mailing and email lists of recipients, designed and printed A4 'posters' for the counters of my local bookshops - so, when I actually receive the finished book from the printers, I shall be already to go.

I've given up on the famous actress; I did eventually hear from a sidekick that she was tremendously busy and tied up until April, so I shall go ahead without her.

Don't know why I am doing this, really. I've installed an 'analyser', according to which my blog has been visited by 23 people so far (and some of those 'visits', I suspect, may have been my own) and no-one has left a single comment. It's like publishing into space. Perhaps I am missing something . . .

No answer

Still no reply from my Famous Actress. I have sent a second letter, saying that all I want is the briefest of signs from her - yea or nay, which surely shouldn't be too much trouble. But nothing. I suppose she thinks if she just ignores irritating people for long enough they will go away. I did think, however, that as I am a fellow actor, and the content of my book has strong pre-echoes of her own youth, she might at least do me the courtesy of replying - even if only to say no. But these days courtesy seems to be in short supply. . .

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A grumble

I'm in 'grumpy old man' mode, and feel like a rant. And the thing I'd like to take issue with is . . . the word 'issue'. Time was when people would write or speak of 'subjects', 'topics', 'matters', 'faults', 'questions', 'problems', 'difficulties' and so on. Now, every bloody thing - whether it's a software defect or a political crisis - is an 'issue'. It's a perfectly good word, of course; but why impoverish the language when there are so many alternatives?

While on language - why can't people say 'yes' any more? Nine times out of ten it's 'absolutely!' - which takes four times as long to say and is quite unnecessary.

Also, why has the verb 'to say' fallen into disuse? It's all "and he goes . . ." or "and I'm like . . .", neither of which seems to make any sense to me. Not that anyone is going to care what I think - or 'go'.

A final conundrum. Can anyone tell me why Clark Gable, speaking his last line in "Gone with the Wind" ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!") stressed the word 'give' instead of the 'damn'?

Etymology

Readers (if there are any . . .) may be puzzled by the title of my blog. Well, in the Middle Ages a 'chapman' was a pedlar - a travelling salesman who went from village to village with his pack of trinkets and gew-gaws. The name comes from the Old English 'cheype' - 'to sell' - which still survives in place-names such as 'Cheapside' in London - once a market near St Paul's - and Cheap Street in Sherborne. Both Chaucer and Shakespeare mention 'chapmen'.

So my surname is one of those, like 'Smith' and 'Miller', that indicate a former occupation.

I keep making tiny alterations to the text of my book - re-reading and polishing. I recently wrote to a Famous Actress in the hope that she may agree to write a foreword. Until I hear from her I can't take the next step towards publication. I plan to self-publish, on a 'print-on-demand' basis, as I am not prepared to have my manuscript sit in a traditional publisher's 'slush pile' for months, only to be rejected in the end.

First verse

Here's a little bit of nonsense that I wrote over forty years ago - but I think it is still relevant:

The Fashionable Rebel

The worst of the social diseases today,
Which the public in general condones, is
That ultimate symbol of moral decay -
The race to keep up with the Joneses.

Initiative's dead, Eccentricity too;
Conformity's Lord of the Revels.
High-seeking Ambition is limited to
These uniform Jonesian levels.

But I have burst open these bonds without fear -
To do as I please I am free now!
And the joke of it is that the Joneses, I hear,
Are trying to keep up with me now . . .

Who will read?

This whole blogging thing is so new to me - and, frankly, I am puzzled. Here I am, typing away - and who the hell is ever going to read it? How - or why - would anyone find this site? And yet one is told it is a wonderful way of communicating with thousands of other people . . . There must be something that I am missing, or not understanding. Still, I'll persevere - casting my bread upon the waters.

By the time one has finished writing a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, one has lived so close to the thing that - in my case, anyway - one has lost all critical faculty. I simply don't know whether what I have written is any good or not, let alone whether it is something others will want to read. In some ways it's like the theatre: no-one ever knows whether a new show will be a hit or a turkey.

Talking of turkeys - a happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

A cover job

Spent much of the day developing a cover design for the new book. I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted - using one of my own photos, taken in Kuala Lumpur, together with an 80-year old b&w and appropriate text - but it has been interesting and challenging fitting it all together to achieve a pleasing balance while at the same time meeting the printer's requirements.

When things are a little further advanced, I will post the final cover design on this blog.

I agreed today to play God in some rehearsed readings to be performed around Easter. As I am a confirmed atheist, it can hardly be called type-casting!

An end and a beginning

It's finished! I have just typed the last full stop (or period) in the manuscript of my first book. Oh yes, I'm sure there will be revisions and corrections before it finally goes to the printer; but it's a great feeling to have drafted the final chapter and completed the main project.

The book? It's a biography; the life of a woman who was born in 1903 and died in 2004. A woman I knew personally, both in the Far East and in the UK. Not a celebrity, but a remarkable character nonetheless. In her active years she was involved in the final decades of what used to be called the British Empire. I will reveal more in due course . . .

This is a beginning, too, in that it is my first blog. In it I will try to record the birth-pangs of my first book. Also my musings on life as an actor, photographer, writer and human being. At 75, I haven't a lot of time . . .