Debbie Young's Blog, page 45

I Dream of Dancing

A post about my strange dream to do with work, dancing and self-knowledge

What a funny dream I had the other night! No, don’t click away yet, this is interesting, honestly…

My Strange Dream

I dreamed I was in my kitchen doing chores, and as I was pottering about I noticed my reflection in the window, doing, not surprisingly, the same thing that I was.

Then I realised that a couple of feet away there was another reflection of me, but this one was having a good time, dancing about, waving her arms in the air, completely absorbed in having fun.

My Initial Interpretation

Just following my dreams

On waking, my immediate thought was “Pah! I’m so transparent! My subconscious is obviously trying to tell me to stop doing so much work and to have more fun.” I know I have a bad midnight oil habit, and being self-employed and freelance, I have the worst boss when it comes to productivity demands.

To start my morning sociably, I shared this thought with my friends on Facebook, where I’m always happy to make a joke at my own expense. “I’m such a simpleton!” I concluded.

Then I attacked my to-do list, suppressing the thought that actually I’d been really looking forward to starting back to work this week after the school holidays. Surely I couldn’t be that jaded already?

The Truth Outs

Only later, when my friend the author Nancy Freund stopped by to comment, did I realise how foolish I had been. Her view:

“I think it means your work IS your fun. I imagine you’re dancing most of the time.”

Nancy is an insightful writer, possibly as a by-product of her synesthesia, and as soon as I read her comment, I had to bow to her wisdom. Yes, my work is indeed my fun – my writing and editing and publishing projects, and all the social networking (both online and in real life) that go with it are so enjoyable. Having spent nearly 30 years as an office-based wage-slave before going solo, there are days when I cannot believe my good fortune.

I may not be a bestseller (yet), but today and every day, I have plenty of reasons to do a happy dance. Thank you, Nancy, for making me realise I’m not such a simpleton after all.

If you’d like to experience more of Nancy’s insights, check out her novels – I reviewed Rapeseed , which features a synesthete, here). 

Filed under: lifestyle, work, writing Tagged: dancing, dreams, interpretation of dreams, Nancy Freund, synaesthetes, synesthesia, work

Coloured Judgement

A post in praise of colouring

More effective than Prozac but much more addictive

One of this summer’s publishing sensations has been the adult colouring book. In this context, “adult” doesn’t have the same connotations as in “adult films”. They are simply colouring books designed to appeal to grown-ups.

Why colouring? Why now?

In a culture characterised by quick response times and a general desire for instant gratification, any activity that cannot be hurried, from colouring to crochet, from needlepoint to knitting, provides a welcome excuse to slow down and savour the moment. The regular activity of rubbing a pencil back and forth to fill in a defined space without going over the lines can no more be hurried than knitting can ever be a speed sport. Colouring relaxes the brain into a meditative state.

But what I don’t get is the need to create special colouring books for adults. I’m happy colouring children’s books, filled with mermaids, unicorns and other distractions from the stresses of daily life.

Literary colour

Just as J K Rowling’s publishers brought out special editions of Harry Potter books to facilitate unembarrassed reading on the commuter train, I think they should simply camouflage the covers of children’s colouring books for adult consumption.

So if you spot me any time soon hunched over a book covered in brown paper, wielding a blue pencil, it doesn’t mean I’m personally censoring Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I’ll just be colouring in Bob the Builder’s dungarees.

“Can we colour it? Yes, we can! “

This post was originally written for the September issue of Hawkesbury Parish News, the local community newspaper serving the village in which I have lived for nearly 25 years and for which I write a monthly column on any topic that takes my fancy as the deadline approaches. (There’s nothing like an imminent deadline for focusing the mind.) If you enjoyed this column, you might also like these recent articles: 

Britain’s Got Favourites (July column)
Like Peas in a Pod (June column)
High-Speed Hawkesbury (May column)

Filed under: Hawkesbury Parish News, lifestyle Tagged: adult colouring, Bob the Builder, colouring books, Lady Chatterley's Lover, meditation, Prozac, relaxation

Here We Are Again: Reissuing My First Ever Published Short Story

New this summer: my first published short story, rescued from print archives and revived for ereaders everywhere

Although this summer I’ve been largely offline, due to holidaying in areas without wifi (sooo restful), I haven’t been idle. In fact, I’ve been beavering away at every opportunity with old-fashioned writing technology (i.e. a pencil and paper – very enjoyable until you realise how long it takes to type it all up when you get home). While in Scotland, I finished writing my next collection of short stories, Marry In Haste, which will be published in October.

But I’ve also been travelling in time, taking stock of short stories I wrote many years ago. I’ve been surprised at just how many I have tucked away and forgotten about.

New Outing for Old Story

One result of my trip through the archives is that I’ve decided to reissue the very first short story of mine to be published, decades ago, in a long-defunct women’s magazine, Annabel. I think I wrote The War of the Peek Freans Light Wounded, a short story set in 1939, while I was still at school. When I came across it again earlier this year, I was nervous of rereading it in case I found it embarrassingly bad.

They say that to be able to critique your own work, you should first put it away in a drawer for at three months, to give you time to forget what you’ve written in any detail. Three decades should therefore have been more than enough, especially given my middle-aged memory, but I still didn’t trust my own judgement, even though the story had the validation of being previously trade published. I sought the assurance of trusted friends and beta readers, and their encouragement and praise gave me the impetus I needed to publish it once more. It came. Thank you, my friends – you know who you are!

New Technology

This time, its publication came about via technology that I couldn’t have imagined when I first wrote the story: formatting it as an e-book on Word and rustling up a cover using Canva software, all in the comfort of my own home. The original draft was written on a manual typewriter, and only after leaving university did I acquire an electric typewriter, which was cutting edge technology in its day!

Forever Young?

How different is it from stories I write today? Firstly, its historical setting – I only write contemporary fiction now, and am in awe of historical novelists. There’s a naive and misplaced self-confidence in my writing about an era of which I had no experience beyond schooll history lessons and conversations with my grandparents. It’s also more sentimental – or maybe less jaded, as one might expect from a very young writer.

But the embryo of me as a grown-up writer is still there – the humour, the odd dark undertone, and a sense of fun, even flippancy. After all, I can’t think of any other author whose main focus in a story about war would be biscuits (cookies to you, my American friends) – or at least the biscuit tin which is home to the main character’s collection of toy soldiers. If you’d like to read The War of the Peek Freans Light Wounded, it’s now available to download from all the usual ebook outlets. Just key in the title and my name and it should pop right up. Best read with a cup of tea in hand, and, er, a biscuit…

 

My next collection of short stories will be out in October. (The draft cover pictured above is a watermarked work-in-progress.)

 

Filed under: short stories, writing Tagged: Marry in Haste, Peek Freans, short stories, writing

A Holiday from Housework

“Don’t you dare pack my favourite cushion!”

You can tell a holiday is looming in our household when the place starts to look unusually tidy. As if the effort of planning and packing for a trip away is not enough, I pile on the pressure by insisting that the house is spick and span before we go. It never looks tidier than the day we go away.

“Who are you tidying it for, burglars?” asked a friend, curious as to why I was in such a frenzy one morning.

Actually, it’s for me – so that when I walk back into the house on our return, I think “Ooh, how lovely – I’d forgotten how nice our house is!” rather than “Oh god, what a mess”.

Until now, I’d always assumed that when our cat Dorothy regards us with suspicion as we prepare for our holidays, it is because she equates the act of packing with being abandoned her for a fortnight, and she’s anxious as to whether she’ll get her daily biscuit ration. But as I cleared a longstanding collection of my husband’s shoes from the bottom of the stairs this afternoon, it occurred to me that she’s probably just bewildered by so much sudden change to her territory.

I also hit upon a simple way to keep a tidy house all year round: I just need to go on holiday more often.

(This post was originally written for the August issue of Hawkesbury Parish News.)

Need some light reading for your own summer holiday? My collection of very short stories is perfect for whiling away time in airports and on the beach. Available to order from all good bookshops, and from the usual online stores.

 

Filed under: housework, travel, writing Tagged: cats, holiday reading, holidays, packing, tidiness

Britain’s Got Favourites

A post about Britain’s favourite birds, originally written for the July issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News      

Britain’s top bird, apparently

On first hearing that the robin had been voted Britain’s favourite bird, I felt indignant on behalf of the blackbird who sings so beautifully from the apple tree outside my study window. Robins may be cute garden birds, hopping companionably close as we dig the garden, but I know that’s only cupboard love: they’re just waiting to grab a juicy worm.

“I was robbed!”

Then it dawned on me that perhaps the real reason for the robin’s triumph in the poll is that it has to be the most easily recognised bird in the country. It’s probably the first bird people would think of if asked to name a British garden bird.

I suspect the same principle would apply to any similar competition designed to identify other popular native wildlife. Most popular tree? Most likely the conker or the apple tree, whose fruit make it so easy to identify, at least in the autumn.

Best butterfly? The peacock butterfly would have to be in with a good chance, the clue to its looks being in its name. I remember once as a small child I remarked while playing in the garden “Oh look, that butterfly looks like a peacock” and being puzzled when someone congratulated me on identifying it correctly. I had no idea there was such a thing as a “peacock butterfly”, it’s just that the creature’s pattern had reminded me of that showy bird with fancy tailfeathers.

(That’s fish sticks to you, my North American friends)

So, continuing in the same vein, what might be the nation’s favourite native flower? In England, the rose, in Wales the daffodil. Scotland? Why, bluebells, of course.

What about aquatic life? Working on the principle that it’s whatever is easiest to recognise, there’s an obvious choice for Britain’s favourite fish – let’s hear it for the finger!

PS What’s your favourite bird? I’d love to know!

If you enjoyed this post, you might like these other bird-inspired posts from my archive:

The Blackbird Diet: How to Lose Weight by Feeding the Birds
Garden Birds: the Perfect Pets
Watch the Birdie! – Our Experience of the Big Garden Bird Count

And this extract from Hawkesbury Tales :

Recharging Battery Chickens

Filed under: Hawkesbury Parish News Tagged: birds, Britain, butterflies, favourites, fish, flowers, surveys

Writing in the Library

A post about writing fiction and finding inspiration in public libraries

In the blue corner, my business desk

For the first time today, I decided to take a mini writing retreat in my local public library, and I’m jolly glad I did.

I’m lucky enough to have my own study at home, in which I’ve squeezed both a business desk for my freelance work and, for my fiction writing, a tiny upright bureau that used to be my grandfather’s. Even though it’s currently in a relatively tidy state, I needed some cooler air in which to write. My study’s upstairs, and all the heat in the house seems to gravitate towards it and stay there.

In the red corner, my fiction writing desk

As I had to go into our nearest town anyway to run an errand, I decided to take my notebook with me and sit in the calm, open-plan space of the Yate Public Library, where it might not be much cooler, but at least the air would circulate better.

Like a human thermometer, I roved around our large, single-story modern library, trying to decide the best place to settle. It’s a new, light and airy building, thanks to a National Lottery grant a few years ago. Easily the coolest spot was the children’s section. This was also one of the quietest, as I was there during school hours.

Always inspiring: a new spiral-bound notebook

After I’d been scribbling away happily in my new notebook for half an hour, a small girl aged about 3 arrived with her mum. She made a beeline for the open boxes of picture books and quickly made her choice.  “But you’ve had that one before!” complained her mum.  Undeterred, the little girl curled up in a chair to read it, or at least, to read the pictures – a great way to develop future reading skills, by the way, as is enjoying the same books over and over again.

Seeing how much pleasure this little girl was gaining from her favourite story gave me a real filip. It reminded me that writing stories isn’t really about the author getting words on the paper, to satisfy his or her own compulsion to write, but about filling the reader with pleasure. What better incentive could there be to any writer? I carried on writing…

Further Encouragement

On arriving home, satisfiedwith my morning’s work, I was torn between whether to close my eyes for a few minutes (gosh, this heat is enervating!) or  to plough on with writing my story. While deliberating, I had the urge to check whether I’d received any new reviews lately. (Yes, authors do this a LOT.) To my delight, there was a new one against my Christmas collection of short stories, Stocking Fillers. Though the review was brief, it said enough to make me happy:

Gentle but worldly. Light sometimes outwardly fluffy stories, but within is a gentle spike of irony. Very easy and digestible. A true story teller.“

Well, now I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the day: smiling.

With thanks to Yate Library and its wonderful staff for providing such a wonderful resource to our local community. 

If you love public libraries, you may also enjoy these previous posts: 

In Praise of Public Libraries

Sharing My Stories about Public Libraries

Another Story Inspired by Libraries

Both of the two short stories in the above posts are also available in the new paperback edition of Quick Change , my flash fiction collection.

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Filed under: writing Tagged: fiction writing, librarians, Libraries, public libraries, short stories, where I write, why I write, Yate

What To Do When There Aren’t Enough Hours in the Day

Confronting the fact that our time is limited

As a compulsive writer, I sometimes find it stressful that I never have enough time to write everything I want, either on paper (where my fiction writing first takes shape) or on my blogs.

Besides this Young By Name blog, I have a new(ish) book blog at www.debbieyoungsbookblog.com and a book marketing advice blog for authors, www.otsbp.com, not to be confused with the author advice blog that I edit for the Alliance of Independent Authors at www.selfpublishingadvice.org.

This morning, for example, I’ve been staring at a list of topics and events I need to write up while they’re still fresh in my mind, including recent writers’ festivals that I’ve attended and some social occasions. I know that another day will go by before I manage to make a start on them thanks to some pressing deadlines for some paid freelance work.

On the other side of my study lies a pile of ring-binders of half-finished short story collections, novels and non-fiction books. My notional deadline for all of these keeps getting pushed further down my 2015 calendar, which today reaches its halfway point and the beginning of the slide down into 2016.

Life is for Living

Is this why I have some of my best ideas in the shower?

To worry about living life faster than I can write it down is of course vain and ridiculous. Much better to be in this position than to lead a life too dull to have anything interesting to write about. But that doesn’t stop me feeling the pressure.

Until someone invents a way of making the world stand still while I catch up with myself, I’ll just have to get on with it, and take comfort from quoting pretentiously to myself from either Keats’ Intimiations of Mortality (“When I have fears that I will cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain”) or more light-heartedly (but still fairly pretentiously) from Laurence Sterne’s comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, in which the narrator digresses so much while supposedly writing his autobiography that he reaches volume III before he manages to complete the story of his own birth.

Another way of pulling myself together is to tell myself #FirstWorldProblem – a great way to shut up anyone being inappropriately self-pitying.

Internet Analogy

I have a similar dilemma with the internet as a whole: there is so much I want to do online, and I never have enough hours to do it. I’ve learned over the years that the best thing to do at the greatest point of stress is simply to walk away from it, at least for a little while, to allow myself some mental space and respite.

Knowing that this is a common problem, I’ve just written a post on the topic for the ALLi blog, which you can read here:

Why Authors Need to Step Away from the Internet

Bizarrely, just as I finished writing that post, my PC decided to agree with me. My internet connection immediately went dead, leaving me with no choice but to take a short offline break. Did it read my mind, does it have a sense of humour, or is that a chance that I can train it to meet other needs as they arise? I’m going to put it to the test – it’s just coming up to elevenses time now.

“Computer – coffee, please!”

Let’s see whether that yields similar results…

If you enjoyed this post you might also like:

The Power of the Shower – about finding inspiration in unusual places

You Can Call Me Al(ice) – about finding inspiration while “Running in Wonderland”

 

Filed under: creativity, lifestyle, writing Tagged: blogging, creativity, First World problem, ideas, inspiration, internet, Laurence Sterne, time management, Tristram Shandy, writing

Celebrating National Flash Fiction Day 2015

Happy National Flash Fiction Day!

If you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s the nutshell summary:

flash fiction is another term for the very short story (typically 500 words or fewer)
National Flash Fiction Day was founded by author Calum Kerr to celebrate this story format on or around the shortest night of the year (see what he did there?)
this year we’re marking it on Saturday 27th June with events in real life and online around the world

Here are four ways that I’ll be celebrating:

reducing the price of the ebook of my first flash fiction collection, Quick Change , to 99p for the weekend, on all the digital distribution platforms (it’s also available in paperback for £5.99, featuring two bonus stories)
publishing one of the stories in the book, The Comfort of Neighbours, in the online FlashFlood journal that pops up today like a rarely blooming exotic flower
reading the many excellent fiction stories that will appear every few minutes in FlashFlood 
writing some new stories for my next collection, Marry In Haste

The paperback includes two bonus stories set in public libraries

How will you be marking National Flash Fiction Day? I’d love to know!

Filed under: flash fiction, reading, writing Tagged: Calum Kerr, Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day, Quick Change

My 20 Top Tips on Self-Publishing at Winchester Writers’ Festival

Yesterday I was glad to have the excuse to return to the University of Winchester. After my guest lecture about self-publishing there in January, I was invited to give a quick-fire talk on the same subject as part of its prestigious Winchester Writers’ Festival. I was also available to offer one-to-one advice to delegates afterwards – a great opportunity to get know and help aspiring writers in different genres.

For my lecture, I rattled off 20 Top Tips about how to self-publish to a professional standard. To save delegates having to write them down, so they could listen instead, I promised I’d share the points on my author website here today, so here goes. I’ll be adding a further report about the Writers’ Festival later this week, once I’ve unpacked my notes and caught up on my sleep!

Thanks to Lorna Fergusson for snapping me in action here – I returned the favour at one of her talks later in the day

20 Top Tips for Aspiring Self-Publishers

Recognise the status of self-publishing. It has had a long and respectable heritage ever since Caxton’s day, with the likes of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf all publishing their own work at some point. You’re in good company! In any case, readers don’t care who your publisher is, as long as you’ve written a good book!
Decide your goals before you begin – and then plan your self-publishing journey accordingly. What do you want to get out of it? posterity, a family heirloom, a useful “business card” in book form to help with your career, profit, or just a bit of fun? Then do it your way! You’re the boss!
First, write your book! Yes, it’s fine and advisable to start planning how you’re going to market your book once you’ve published it, but always keep your writing front of mind, and protect your writing time. Without decent writing, and without finished manuscripts, the rest of the process counts for nothing.
Test-drive your manuscript with beta readers. This is a great way to get constructive feedback, for free, before you start paying out for editors and production. In case you’re not familiar with this term or process, I’ve given links at the end of this article for a couple of posts on the subject that you’ll find helpful.
Understand the different types of editing and identify which you need: structural, line editing, copy editing and proofreading. Find a good editor via the Alliance of Independent Authors’ partner members, or via the Society of Editors and Proofreaders. (This is a UK organisation, and you’ll be able to use their services wherever you live, but if you’re writing in non-British English, you should check out the equivalent organisation for your own region.)
Be aware of the formatting differences required for print and ebooks. In summary, print books are formatted similar to Word documents, but ebooks are completely different, with flexible margins, no page breaks, and no fancy characters. You can learn to format yourself, but if subcontracting, shop around for best prices and services, get references from satisfied customers, and make sure you know what you’re committing yourself too.
Name that book! Choose your title carefully, to be suitable for its genre, memorable, easy to spell and original (search Google and Amazon to make sure there aren’t dozens of books out there to play “snap” with). If it’s non-fiction, incorporate the most likely keywords and use a subtitle to give your more scope. Be ready to ditch your working title if need be.
Respect the specialism of book cover design. Use a specialist to devise your cover, someone who understands book  cover conventions and essential such as being effective at thumbnail size in online retail platforms. Keep an open mind about changing your book covers as you go along to keep it looking in keeping with other books in its genre as fashions change. Even if you start out with a free cover, for budgetary reasons, consider reinvest your royalties in a more effective and professional cover later on.
Write the blurb to lure in readers who will love your book. The first thing readers look at in bookshops after the cover is the blurb on the back – “the 100 hardest words you’ll ever write”, according to Ben Cameron, Director of Cameron PR. They should prepare your readers’ expectations precisely for the content of your book – and reel them in to buy it!
Know your limits. For points 5-9 above, be realistic about what you can and can’t do. Treat your self-publishing like you would a domestic DIY project. Would you really install a new bathroom without having any plumbing skills? Nope, it would be a false economy – the kind that makes Kevin McCloud raise his eyebrows every time a “Grand Designs” couple declare they’ll lay their own bricks/install their own fireplace/fit their own electrics to keep costs down of their house restoration. If you can’t supply a professional finish yourself, call in the professionals.
Make sure your book passes the identity parade. In a line-up of books, make sure yours isn’t the one that screams “I’m self-published” in an identity parade. A growing number of self-published books are published to traditional, big publishing house standards – make sure yours is too.
Press the “publish” button at the right time. My friend and mentor Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, always says that many authors publish too soon, because it’s so easy to, using digital and print-on-demand technology. Only publish your book when you’re sure it is the best it can possibly be – and then stop tinkering with it. If you need to keep changing it, maybe you published too soon?
Write another book. That’s the best piece of marketing advice an author can get – write another, and another, and another… The most books you have out there, the more visible your work will be. And if readers enjoy your first book, they’ll be ripe to be sold another. Better still, write a series – get them hooked on book 1 (at a specially low price, if you like), and watch the sequel sales grow.
Ring the changes. Although you shouldn’t keep messing about with the content of the book after publication, do play around with the keywords and categories in online retail listings till you find the right ones that help you shift the most sales. As with cover designs, the metadata needs will change with fashion over time, too, so keep an eye on them.
Spread your risk of success online. Don’t put all your eggs in one retail basket. Don’t focus solely on ebook or only on print – you’ll sell more books overall if you have both. Equally, put them into all the main retail outlets online – Nook, Kobo, iBooks, etc, rather than just Amazon. Although early adopters often went with only Amazon, the others are fast seizing market share, so don’t miss out.
Market yourself, not just your book. Marketing is a huge topic that falls outside the scope of this talk, and for more on that score, read my handbook, Sell Your Books! – but apart from point 13 above, the key take-away point about marketing that I’d like to share is that when planning your marketing, include your own back story. Too many authors don’t realise that their own lives and personalities are part of their pitch – readers love to hear about authors, especially in the modern digital age, so don’t be shy! Otherwise when it comes to marketing, stick with what you’re comfortable with, and don’t try to do too much at once, or you’ll quickly get overwhelmed.
Respect the real estate of bookshops and libraries. Contrary to rumour, bricks-and-mortar bookshops are happy to stock self-published books, provided they’re of professional standard and you can convince the bookseller that you’ll drive sales through their store (for libraries, drive loans). Think of their shelves as rental accommodation – each book needs to pay its rent by being sold on a regular basis. For more advice about how to sell your books through bookshops, read the guide I co-authored for ALLi, Opening Up To Indie Authors .
Set up your own shop window online i.e. create an author website. This should be the hub of all your marketing, and the authoritative guide to your authorly pursuits. This needn’t cost the earth – a great entry point is to use the free WordPress.com software (I use it for mine) – you only start paying if you want to add extras such as a URL without the .wordpress.com suffix (which I do).
A writer’s website is never done! Unlike your published books, the development of a website has not deadline, nor should it. Instead, it should evolve as your writing career evolves. Build followers with an e-newsletter sign-up form, consider a blog to keep it current and lively, and keep it up to date with your book news. It’s great for fine-tuning your voice and building your writing confidence and fluency too.
Associate with other successful self-published authors. Success breeds success, and the community of indie authors is extremely generous, readily sharing best practice and advice. The best way to run with the pack and to learn by osmosis is to join the Alliance of Independent Authors, whose author advice blog I edit, and which, not surprisingly, I heartily endorse! It brings together the most professional, cutting-edge self-publishers around, as well as welcoming those still starting out on their writing journey. More about how to do that here: www.allianceindependentauthors.org.

Last but not least, here’s a bonus point #21 – CELEBRATE! Be proud of your achievements as a self-published author, you’ve done what many only talk of doing but never achieve. You are right to be excited about your future, so stay optimistic, open-minded and opportunistic, and enjoy this heady ride.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to read:

An afternoon with Virginia Woolf, my self-publishing hero
Why Beta Readers Makes Book Better
How to Find Beta Readers

For more information about Winchester Writers’ Festival, here’s their website: www.writersfestival.co.uk.

For more information about joining the Alliance of Independent Authors, visit our membership website. 

Filed under: self-publishing, writing Tagged: indie authors, self-publishing, Winchester Writers' Festival

What’s in a Car Name?

Bye bye, Ka

Last month, the law of unintended consequences dictated that I should acquire a new car. Dropping in to a local garage to chivvy progress on my dad’s car’s MOT, I found myself wandering around its used car lot and falling in love at first sight with a Fiat Panda. If only actual pandas had the same impact on each other, there’d be a lot more pandas in this world.

For some time, I’d been meaning to replace my aging Ford Ka. It had a lot in common with the proverbial spade that the old man claims was his grandfather’s before him – except the handle and the metal part have each been replaced several times.

Laura on our Edinburgh Zoo themed float at last year’s village show

Sublime & Ridiculous

Although I loved my Ford Ka, I’d been constantly irritated by its name. I could never decide whether to pronounce it to rhyme with “car” or as the initials K A. The only redeeming feature was the suffix “Sublime”, in honour of its leather seats and air-conditioning.

In the same way that you get “Friday afternoon cars”, haphazardly assembled by demob-happy workers, the Ford Ka brand name must be a Friday afternoon marketing job. It’s about as sensible as Mr Kipling launching a new product called “Kayke”, hard to differentiate from the rest of his exceedingly good cakes. (He hasn’t done this yet, by the way – but, Mr Kipling, if you’re reading this, please don’t go there.)

But what’s not to love about a car named after an iconic and lovable animal? Not to mention its endless potential for jokes.

“There’s a panda in my front garden,” I’m able to say to anyone gullible enough to listen to me speculating as to whether Waitrose stocks bamboo. Or “I’m thinking of taking my panda to the zoo at the weekend.” You get the picture.

Breakfast with a panda at Edinburgh Zoo last autumn

Faster than a Speeding Panda

Other cars named after animals are usually associated with speed: Jaguar, Cougar, Impala. Even a beetle moves fast in relation to its size.  Pandas are famously inert, as our visit to Edinburgh Zoo two summers ago hammered home: the crowd jumped the first time Tian Tian moved.

Optimistically, the Zoo has installed a “panda cam” so you can watch live action footage around the clock. Most of the time, there’s not much difference between the video and the still photo at the top of the webpage. If it’s action you’re after, click on “penguin cam” or “squirrel monkey cam”. It must have been a close call in Fiat’s marketing department one Friday between the Fiat Panda and the Fiat Sloth.

Still, it could have been worse: I could have opted for a Vauxhall Nova, which may sound fine and shiny-new till you drive to Spain, when it morphs into the Vauxhall Doesn’t Go. Which is where I came in with my Ford Ka.

(As the BBC likes to say, in the interests of fairness, other makes of car and cake are available.)

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

The Joy of a Tidy Car
The Collective Noun for Camping Cars (that’s what the French call motorhomes or camper vans)
Flummoxed by a Flute Exam – the tale of how I lost my car

This post first appeared in the Hawkesbury Parish News, June 2015.

Filed under: Hawkesbury Parish News, humour, lifestyle Tagged: