David Roy's Blog, page 15
October 22, 2021
TV Superstar
It's all in the book, of course, but I won my tribunal in spectacular fashion. After a weekend away, I returned home to find the press waiting for me. Not hundreds but a couple anyway.
There followed newspaper articles and TV interviews. Kate Garraway interviewed me three times for three different shows.
It took a little while for things to settle but I eventually gave up my job with St John and moved back into teaching, although just part-time.
It must have been around this time when I wrote Smoke Without Fire, which has just been published by Hobart Books, if you'd like to buy it... but we haven't quite got to that point in our story.
I felt as if a great weight had been lifted but there were difficult times ahead. Still, working part-time gave me plenty of time to write.
There followed newspaper articles and TV interviews. Kate Garraway interviewed me three times for three different shows.
It took a little while for things to settle but I eventually gave up my job with St John and moved back into teaching, although just part-time.
It must have been around this time when I wrote Smoke Without Fire, which has just been published by Hobart Books, if you'd like to buy it... but we haven't quite got to that point in our story.
I felt as if a great weight had been lifted but there were difficult times ahead. Still, working part-time gave me plenty of time to write.
October 21, 2021
Cancer
My new job consisted mainly of taking people to hospital and occasionally taking them home from hospital. The training was hard but the job itself wasn't too bad and we were given very little real emergency work to do. Most importantly for me, I had a job.
The first half of my tribunal had gone well and it seemed as if we were likely to win our case but then, when you think that things couldn't get worse, my wife was diagnosed with cancer.
It was a blow for all concerned, especially her of course and the treatment was gruelling. She stuck at it stoically and made a full recovery but we could have done without it.
Throughout, I was keeping a record of every twist and turn in my tribunal case. I kept every letter sent by my erstwhile employers and noted every act of deceit. It would be the basis of Smoke Without Fire, which would finally be published ten years later.
The first half of my tribunal had gone well and it seemed as if we were likely to win our case but then, when you think that things couldn't get worse, my wife was diagnosed with cancer.
It was a blow for all concerned, especially her of course and the treatment was gruelling. She stuck at it stoically and made a full recovery but we could have done without it.
Throughout, I was keeping a record of every twist and turn in my tribunal case. I kept every letter sent by my erstwhile employers and noted every act of deceit. It would be the basis of Smoke Without Fire, which would finally be published ten years later.
October 20, 2021
Tribunal
My appeal was carefully timed so that I would miss the chance to take my case to an employment tribunal. Unfortunately for my employers I realised what they had done and set the wheels in motion anyway.
I was jobless, disgraced and disheartened. I still wrote but I can't recall which of my tremendous back catalogue was produced at the time. I applied for all sorts of jobs, setting my sights lower and lower but no matter how modest my aspirations, it seemed I was utterly unwanted.
Then, out of the blue, I got a job with St John Ambulance. The pay wasn't great, but it was a job. Once again, I paid my taxes and had self-respect.
A few months into my new career, I attended the first half of my employment tribunal in Manchester having enlisted the help of a lady named Jenni Watson. It was she who turned my fortunes around.
Things started badly for us but there came a point, when suddenly, the presiding judge seemed to realise that a terrible wrong had been done. Unfortunately we ran out of time and the remainder of the tribunal was scheduled for a few month's time.
However, it did feel as if we had turned a corner.
I was jobless, disgraced and disheartened. I still wrote but I can't recall which of my tremendous back catalogue was produced at the time. I applied for all sorts of jobs, setting my sights lower and lower but no matter how modest my aspirations, it seemed I was utterly unwanted.
Then, out of the blue, I got a job with St John Ambulance. The pay wasn't great, but it was a job. Once again, I paid my taxes and had self-respect.
A few months into my new career, I attended the first half of my employment tribunal in Manchester having enlisted the help of a lady named Jenni Watson. It was she who turned my fortunes around.
Things started badly for us but there came a point, when suddenly, the presiding judge seemed to realise that a terrible wrong had been done. Unfortunately we ran out of time and the remainder of the tribunal was scheduled for a few month's time.
However, it did feel as if we had turned a corner.
October 19, 2021
Things get worse
At first the school had claimed it was trying to help me but as time went on that help became more like a damning indictment of me as a person and as a teacher. My union, still believing that the school was trying to make things better for me, sat on it's hands and it was only when the situation had become hopeless that they decided to act.
One alleged act had become three by this point and it was clear that matters were being investigated with a view to establishing my guilt rather than finding the facts. Shortly before the summer holiday, I was sacked.
I appealed because that was expected but it was a formality and the original decision was upheld.
I was at a low ebb but things got worse.
One alleged act had become three by this point and it was clear that matters were being investigated with a view to establishing my guilt rather than finding the facts. Shortly before the summer holiday, I was sacked.
I appealed because that was expected but it was a formality and the original decision was upheld.
I was at a low ebb but things got worse.
October 18, 2021
Time
With plenty of time on my hands I decided to write a memoir based on my childhood growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Bangor, where I grew up, was one of the safest towns but it had it's share of attacks. My story therefore included just general things about growing up shot through with a Northern Irish slant: a bit of bigotry, a bit of violence and lots of bitterness.
I tried to keep it light-hearted though, because even in the midst of terrible times there is humour.
This great new work was entitled 'Made in Ulster' and upon completion I sent it off to agent after agent, each time getting the same response, that is to say, rejection.
Rejection dejection wasn't my only problem. The situation with regard to my job was getting worse and new charges against me were being created, each one a nail in my career coffin. I began to realise that this was a conspiracy but that's an emotive word which you daren't use when you are the subject of that conspiracy.
Of course, every cloud has a silver lining as you know. The problem was that I had a lot more to deal with before I got the chance to see if this saying held true.
I tried to keep it light-hearted though, because even in the midst of terrible times there is humour.
This great new work was entitled 'Made in Ulster' and upon completion I sent it off to agent after agent, each time getting the same response, that is to say, rejection.
Rejection dejection wasn't my only problem. The situation with regard to my job was getting worse and new charges against me were being created, each one a nail in my career coffin. I began to realise that this was a conspiracy but that's an emotive word which you daren't use when you are the subject of that conspiracy.
Of course, every cloud has a silver lining as you know. The problem was that I had a lot more to deal with before I got the chance to see if this saying held true.
October 17, 2021
Smoke
By now I was married, had a new house and a daughter. On paper, everything was looking good.
Behind the scenes at work, my job was becoming harder and harder, edging, in fact, towards impossibility. The lack of discipline in school was blamed on the teachers as the management and the council sought to cover their own backs. This sort of thing happens all the time in various work scenarios.
It was a miserable time for all concerned. By 2008, a second daughter had been born and we had an extension added to the house. The timing couldn't have been worse. By December of that year I had admitted that I couldn't carry on and this coincided with an allegation of assault against a pupil.
The allegation was nonsense but I was sent home on gardening leave. Christmas that year was rather sombre for the future was very unclear.
Behind the scenes at work, my job was becoming harder and harder, edging, in fact, towards impossibility. The lack of discipline in school was blamed on the teachers as the management and the council sought to cover their own backs. This sort of thing happens all the time in various work scenarios.
It was a miserable time for all concerned. By 2008, a second daughter had been born and we had an extension added to the house. The timing couldn't have been worse. By December of that year I had admitted that I couldn't carry on and this coincided with an allegation of assault against a pupil.
The allegation was nonsense but I was sent home on gardening leave. Christmas that year was rather sombre for the future was very unclear.
October 16, 2021
Storm Clouds
Metaphorical and highly cliched storm clouds were gathering. Despite ineptitude and a lack of obvious enthusiasm, I had matured into a reasonably good teacher, even if I was still a failed writer. It was reassuring to know that I was good at something. I was respected and liked - not universally - and things were going... adequately
It couldn't and didn't last.
By say, 2006, the tenuous disciplinary hold the staff had over the pupils was beginning to slip. Where previously my control and my teaching had been effective, I was now experiencing the sort of disciplinary problems normally associated with a newly qualified teacher. Things became desperate. Parents no longer wanted to send their children to the school and the staff were collectively in a state of high anxiety.
The children who wanted to learn were increasingly shut out of their education by the actions of an larger and larger group of their cohort who realised they could get away with anything. At the top of the management tree Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
I didn't know it but these events were setting the scene for a book I would write called, 'Smoke Without Fire.'
It couldn't and didn't last.
By say, 2006, the tenuous disciplinary hold the staff had over the pupils was beginning to slip. Where previously my control and my teaching had been effective, I was now experiencing the sort of disciplinary problems normally associated with a newly qualified teacher. Things became desperate. Parents no longer wanted to send their children to the school and the staff were collectively in a state of high anxiety.
The children who wanted to learn were increasingly shut out of their education by the actions of an larger and larger group of their cohort who realised they could get away with anything. At the top of the management tree Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
I didn't know it but these events were setting the scene for a book I would write called, 'Smoke Without Fire.'
October 14, 2021
1945
I had become fascinated by the end of the war in Europe and how allegiances had shifted and enemies re-aligned themselves to become friends, and friends became enemies. There was a lot of jockeying for position around this time, with Britain, the only country to have taken on the Nazis throughout, generally coming out as a loser.
Britain was bankrupted by the war. The USA came out of it wealthy and powerful. The world order had changed.
I mentioned my book Hanford previously. It's pretext was that an atom bomb was given to Germany to halt the Soviet advance in 1945. The bomb had arrived in kit form and they had been unable to assemble it.
I also wrote Operation Blackball in which a party of soldiers are sent ahead of the advancing troops to collect artwork before it was spirited away to hiding places or smuggled out of Germany.
I wrote Pitchblende which concerned the division of the spoils after the war's end, particularly how the Russians and Americans slugged it out to get the best scientists from the defeated regime.
My writing had improved by this time and these stories had good characters, good plots and, I thought, all the ingredients required for a successful career on the bookshelves of Waterstones et al.
You already know that didn't happen, of course. I was falling at the second hurdle - getting an agent. Slowly, I was discovering that writing the book was, in some ways, the easy part - it got you to the foot of the mountain that you had to climb and no further.
Britain was bankrupted by the war. The USA came out of it wealthy and powerful. The world order had changed.
I mentioned my book Hanford previously. It's pretext was that an atom bomb was given to Germany to halt the Soviet advance in 1945. The bomb had arrived in kit form and they had been unable to assemble it.
I also wrote Operation Blackball in which a party of soldiers are sent ahead of the advancing troops to collect artwork before it was spirited away to hiding places or smuggled out of Germany.
I wrote Pitchblende which concerned the division of the spoils after the war's end, particularly how the Russians and Americans slugged it out to get the best scientists from the defeated regime.
My writing had improved by this time and these stories had good characters, good plots and, I thought, all the ingredients required for a successful career on the bookshelves of Waterstones et al.
You already know that didn't happen, of course. I was falling at the second hurdle - getting an agent. Slowly, I was discovering that writing the book was, in some ways, the easy part - it got you to the foot of the mountain that you had to climb and no further.
Cool Runnings
Have you seen the film, 'Cool Runnings' about the Jamaican bobsleigh team? Well, it inspired me to write a book which became 'Racing Orange' and concerned the Northern Irish Formula One team. If you have never heard of the team, that's the point really; I was trying to write about something as unlikely as a Jamaican bobsleigh team.
By this time, I was shifting genres in an attempt to find my personal writing niche. I knew nothing about F1 and about how the teams were funded and who designed the cars, so I just made it up, and I think I did a pretty good job. Naturally, being set in Northern Ireland the book had plenty of political intrigue and even had a visit from Bill Clinton, a man revered in that tiny country.
Do you need me to tell you it was yet another flop? I mean, Have you seen it in the shops? Do you own a copy?
The thing is that calling it a flop isn't quite accurate. For it to have been a proper, certified flop it would have been published, marketed and then trashed by the critics and packed off to remainder bookshops. I was nowhere near that stage, Racing Orange was just a flop in my head. For the reading public it hadn't even achieved that status.
But, if you haven't seen the film which inspired it, you're missing out...
By this time, I was shifting genres in an attempt to find my personal writing niche. I knew nothing about F1 and about how the teams were funded and who designed the cars, so I just made it up, and I think I did a pretty good job. Naturally, being set in Northern Ireland the book had plenty of political intrigue and even had a visit from Bill Clinton, a man revered in that tiny country.
Do you need me to tell you it was yet another flop? I mean, Have you seen it in the shops? Do you own a copy?
The thing is that calling it a flop isn't quite accurate. For it to have been a proper, certified flop it would have been published, marketed and then trashed by the critics and packed off to remainder bookshops. I was nowhere near that stage, Racing Orange was just a flop in my head. For the reading public it hadn't even achieved that status.
But, if you haven't seen the film which inspired it, you're missing out...
October 13, 2021
Mr Lastic
The new book was called, 'Where is Mr Lastic?', after the chap whose chalet we rented in the mountains. Did I mention that it was a classic? In any event it was met with a tidal wave of indifference from publishers and agents who obviously couldn't see a money-spinner when it landed on their desk. The fools et cetera.
I kept writing.
I kept sending manuscripts off in manila envelopes.
It was clear that one day I'd get my break. Just look at how many rejections JK Rowling received before finding success with her Henry Porter series. My time would come if I persevered.
Strangely enough I never lost hope when all the indications were that I should just give up. Meanwhile, Colin Bateman's career had really taken off. He even had films being made of his books. There was only one difference between his books and mine, but it was an important difference; his were good.
I kept writing.
I kept sending manuscripts off in manila envelopes.
It was clear that one day I'd get my break. Just look at how many rejections JK Rowling received before finding success with her Henry Porter series. My time would come if I persevered.
Strangely enough I never lost hope when all the indications were that I should just give up. Meanwhile, Colin Bateman's career had really taken off. He even had films being made of his books. There was only one difference between his books and mine, but it was an important difference; his were good.
