FUN, FROLICS, FONDNESS & FRUSTRATION - BOOKS

Paperbacks available from http://www.feedaread.com/
and some Kindle versions via Amazon.

Coming soon:
Shops, Shoppers, Shopping & Shafted (2 books in 1);
The Fattier, Jollier Only Yules & Verses

THANK GOD I'M NOT A CHICKEN!

I took this photograph from an upstairs cafe window in Newquay, Cornwall, a couple of years ago.

I imagined the bird thinking: "Thank God I'm not a chicken."

BETJEMAN AT ST PANCRAS

A lot of statues are quite dull affairs but this one of Sir John Betjeman at St Pancras always brings on a smile - a complete and utter joy.

Here's the great man reciting a poem, Youth and Age on Beaulieu River:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/youth-and-age-beaulieu-river

BREAKFAST AT ALCATRAZ 1963

We visited Alcatraz in July 2009 and I took this shot. Weird old place.

I wrote down a quote from a con - "Alcatraz never did nothin' for nobody."

A guide told us that part of the punishment for prisoners on the island were the lights and noises of oh-so-close San Francisco, especially on New Year's Eve when the sound of partying drifted across the water and fireworks filled the sky.  They could see it, hear it but, in some cases, were never going to be a part of it ever again.

4 BOOKS

I have three new books and one more to come soon - actually two revisions and two new.

All books can be ordered through http://www.feedaread.com/ and, at some point, via Amazon and other major online booksellers.  Here are the details:

Stephen Boyd: From Belfast To Hollywood (Revised) - OUT NOW

By Joe Cushnan

A version of this book was published in 2013. I have made minor adjustments to the text, added some illustrations and some extra writing segments. "Stephen Boyd was one of the nicest, kindest people I have met in my lifetime, rare in this profession." - Euan Lloyd, film producer of Shalako, The Man Called Noon and The Wild Geese. "Joe Cushnan’s excellent biography of Stephen Boyd, the forgotten film star and a fellow countryman of mine, fills a disgraceful gap in cinematographic history and should be read by all who are interested in that fascinating subject." - James Ellis, actor in Z Cars, The Billy Plays, etc Stephen Boyd was one of the biggest film stars of the late 1950s and 1960s (The Man Who Never Was, Ben Hur, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Fantastic Voyage, etc), an ordinary boy from Northern Ireland who made a dream journey to Hollywood, starring alongside some of the most prestigious names in cinema including Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Gregory Peck, Brigitte Bardot, Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Gina Lollobrigida, Omar Sharif, Doris Day, Sean Connery and Raquel Welch. This is the first book to celebrate his life and work. He had a 20-year film career, sadly cut short by his sudden death, aged 45, in 1977. Joe Cushnan is a freelance writer of books, features, reviews and poetry.

ISBN: 9781786101105

Total Pages: 208

Published: 5 September 2015

Price: £6.99

Before Amnesia - OUT NOW

By Joe Cushnan

‘I’ve a grand memory for forgetting….” Alan Breck to David Balfour in Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped” Before Amnesia, Seeds of a Memoir is a blend of humour and serious reflection, there to entertain, inform and, perhaps, enlighten. It is not a conventional autobiographical project. The book contains two essays on my background (Belfast and beyond), a selection of random memories, two poetry sections and a script for a proposed radio drama about a father and a son meeting after a gap of fifty years. On a quite serious note, we are all prone to losing our memories as we get older, either through natural forgetfulness or by something more debilitating. I would like my family in the future to have some written record of me, not for personal vanity but to give them a few details about life as I experienced it. I might get round to writing my whole story but for now, with the words of Alan Jay Lerner singing in my head: ‘Ah yes! I remember it well’, these notes and observations lay some kind of a foundation. Joe Cushnan is a freelance writer of books, features, reviews and poetry.

ISBN: 9781786101655

Total Pages: 141

Published: 23 September 2015

Price: £5.99

Shaking Hands - OUT NOW

By Joe Cushnan

This play was written as a 45-minute radio drama. It is fiction, based on several facts from the author's life. A 60-year-old son tracks down his 89-year-old father to question him on why he left the family home, a wife and seven children. In the quest to find out about the 'missing years', the son finds it hard to suppress simmering anger and the father clings to hope of reconciliation. The script is adaptable for the stage and would be useful for student actors to practice their skills.

ISBN: 9781786101631

Total Pages: 67

Published: 23 September 2015

Price: £3.99

And coming soon The Fatter, Jollier Only Yules & Verses, an updated and expanded version of my Christmas book of funny poems and silly jokes.

LIFE. SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST

Hey, life. Slow down, you move too fast.  I live not too far from this scene and I always stop to stand and stare.

POEM BY WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

OLD FLEET STREET - WHAT A BRILLIANT LETTER!

I am in the early chapters of this book and loving it.  Here's the cover and the blurb, but scroll down for a quite brilliant letter from Hugh Cudlipp to a journalist from First Circle Films requesting an interview about Viscount Rothermere.



THE BLURB

They were 'Cudlipp' and 'Mr King' when they met in 1935. At 21, gregarious, extrovert and irreverent Hugh Cudlipp had many years of journalistic experience: at 34, shy, introspective and solemn Cecil Harmsworth King, haunted by the ghost of Uncle Alfred, Lord Northcliffe, the great press magnate, and bitter towards Uncle Harold, Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail, was fighting his way up in the family business.

Opposites in most respects, they were complementary in talents and had in common a deep concern for the underdog. Cudlipp, the journalistic genius, and King, the formidable intellect, were to become, in Cudlipp's words, 'the Barnum and Bailey' of Fleet Street. Together, on the foundation of the populist Daily Mirror, they created the biggest publishing empire in the world.

Yet their relationship foundered sensationally in 1968, when - as King tried to topple the Prime Minister - Cudlipp toppled King. Through the story of two extraordinary men, Ruth Dudley Edwards gives us a riveting portrait of Fleet Street in its heyday.

The letter -

"Thank you for your letter of 19 May asking me to agree to doing a profile interview about (presumably the First) Viscount Rothermere.
I enjoyed the enormous pleasure of never meeting him, and even greater privilege of never working near him as an editor. In my last few years I honestly cannot be persuaded by a fat cheque or share-option in First Circle Films to waste time working on a TV profile for BBC2 of the lascivious, gluttonous, Hitler-grovelling, penny-pinching, power mad, boring old sod."

Before Amnesia

By Joe Cushnan

‘I’ve a grand memory for forgetting….” Alan Breck to David Balfour in Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped” Before Amnesia, Seeds of a Memoir is a blend of humour and serious reflection, there to entertain, inform and, perhaps, enlighten. It is not a conventional autobiographical project. The book contains two essays on my background (Belfast and beyond), a selection of random memories, two poetry sections and a script for a proposed radio drama about a father and a son meeting after a gap of fifty years. On a quite serious note, we are all prone to losing our memories as we get older, either through natural forgetfulness or by something more debilitating. I would like my family in the future to have some written record of me, not for personal vanity but to give them a few details about life as I experienced it. I might get round to writing my whole story but for now, with the words of Alan Jay Lerner singing in my head: ‘Ah yes! I remember it well’, these notes and observations lay some kind of a foundation. Joe Cushnan is a freelance writer of books, features, reviews and poetry.

ISBN: 9781786101655

Total Pages: 141

Published: 23 September 2015

Price: £5.99

Buy now via this link: http://www.feedaread.com/books/Before-Amnesia.aspx

ARDGLASS OR STRANGFORD ROPE

Here's a lovely shot of a pile of rope at Ardglass or Strangford, August 2015.

It's hard to remember but it probably doesn't matter. Turner Prize?

A BRIDGE

I have walked across this bridge many times and every time,
down an uneven path, at the edge of the lake, I stop
to look back, getting a little poetic, a little idealistic,
a little dreamy about the millions of small examples of peace,
of beauty, of the possible, of simplicity in an increasingly complicated world.

It is a bridge, a bridge admiring itself in the water,
if only we could do likewise, to study our reflections
and see peace, beauty, the possible, simplicity
and admire ourselves for the right reasons.




The bridge is in Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire

12 DAYS OF COURTING - BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID

A sort of tale of the unexpected................

On the FIRST day of courting,

My true love sent to me

A gift box

With a small lock of her hair.

On the SECOND day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the THIRD day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the FOURTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the FIFTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the SIXTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the SEVENTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the EIGHTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Eight olive pips,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the NINTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Nine blobs of earwax,

Eight olive pips,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the TENTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Ten empty beer cans,

Nine blobs of earwax,

Eight olive pips,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the ELEVENTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Eleven ultimatums,

Ten empty beer cans,

Nine blobs of earwax,

Eight olive pips,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair. 

On the TWELFTH day of courting,

My true love sent to me,

Twelve effigies,

Eleven ultimatums,

Ten empty beer cans,

Nine blobs of earwax,

Eight olive pips,

Seven toothpicks chewed,

Six bitten toffees,

Five laddered stockings,

Four eyelash trimmings,

Three tear-stained tissues,

Two nail clippings

And a gift box

With a small lock of her hair.

On the THIRTEENTH day of courting,

I don’t know what she sent,

'Cos the strain and the stress

Made me change my address

And in answer to the choice –

Man or mouse? Mouse.

But at least a mouse

In a police safe house!

ROBERT MORLEY, GENGHIS KHAN & STEPHEN BOYD

I have a number of letters in my research file on Stephen Boyd.  I am particularly fond of this one written by actor Robert Morley in 1982. I can hear his plummy voice as I read it.

Stephen Boyd: From Belfast To Hollywood

(Revised Edition)

by Joe Cushnan

Paperback available to buy now via the link below

A version of this book was published in 2013. I have made minor adjustments to the text, added some illustrations and some extra writing segments. "Stephen Boyd was one of the nicest, kindest people I have met in my lifetime, rare in this profession." - Euan Lloyd, film producer of Shalako, The Man Called Noon and The Wild Geese. "Joe Cushnan’s excellent biography of Stephen Boyd, the forgotten film star and a fellow countryman of mine, fills a disgraceful gap in cinematographic history and should be read by all who are interested in that fascinating subject." - James Ellis, actor in Z Cars, The Billy Plays, etc Stephen Boyd was one of the biggest film stars of the late 1950s and 1960s (The Man Who Never Was, Ben Hur, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Fantastic Voyage, etc), an ordinary boy from Northern Ireland who made a dream journey to Hollywood, starring alongside some of the most prestigious names in cinema including Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Gregory Peck, Brigitte Bardot, Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Gina Lollobrigida, Omar Sharif, Doris Day, Sean Connery and Raquel Welch. This is the first book to celebrate his life and work. He had a 20-year film career, sadly cut short by his sudden death, aged 45, in 1977. Joe Cushnan is a freelance writer of books, features, reviews and poetry.

ISBN: 9781786101105

Total Pages: 208

Published: 5 September 2015

Price: £6.99
http://www.feedaread.com/books/Stephen-Boyd-From-Belfast-To-Hollywood-Revised-9781786101105.aspx

P.I. STICKY MILLER & SIDEKICK LIMP DONNELLY IN BELFAST BACKLASH

I'm getting back into my two heroes but just to whet appetites, this is the first chapter of my crime caper starring Private Investigator Sticky Miller and his sidekick Limp Donnelly -

BELFAST BACKLASH
Chapter One

“Belfast is a shit hole.  If the world had piles, that’s where they’d be.”  The man who spat these words in my face ended up in hospital with a broken jaw and two black eyes.  My bruised hand was purely a coincidence.  Nobody runs down my city.  That’s my job.  On a particularly dull and boring Belfast day in my first floor flat overlooking the river, with a couple of empty warehouses shimmering in the foggy smog, I tried to find a position where the eyes of the toy leprechaun on top of the bookshelf did not follow me around the room.  It was impossible to hide from the damn thing.  It sat there between James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, essential to impress the ladies, and Seamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’, just essential for mind, heart and soul. 

Here I was, a private investigator, outwitted by a little green lucky charm, which had been given to me as a fun gift by an old ex-friend who seemed to enjoy taking the piss out of the Irish.  I remember thanking him from the heart of my bottom as I poured, nay wasted, a perfectly decent pint of Guinness over his head.  We have not spoken since but his spirit and spite haunts the leprechaun who in turn haunts me with static but deadly eyeballs.   Some self-imposed threat of a lifelong curse stops me from disposing of it, so we have a silent pact just to get through each day without unnecessary rancour. Over the years, I have assigned a very important task to the green chap.  He carries my front door key in a slot between his buttocks and to save my legs I throw him out of the window to whomsoever I authorise to come up and see me.  It is an arrangement that works and we just get on with the job of being a key-minding leprechaun and a private investigator.

The doorbell rang, just a normal ding-dong, although I had promised myself a new chime of the Black Velvet Band as soon as I could afford the luxury of it.  I looked out of the window to see Limp Donnelly’s bald spot.  I opened the window, shouted down for him to get ready to catch the leprechaun and then threw it down towards him.  In true tradition, he raised his hands above his head and waited for the key to succumb to gravity.  When it missed Limp’s hands and banged into his forehead, he shouted an expletive that seemed to echo across the river, bouncing between the warehouses before evaporating into the stillness of the afternoon.

I had hoped that Donnelly had brought a fresh bottle of Bushmills with him to warm us up. The flat was as cold as a solicitor’s heart, only because I was too tight to turn on the heating on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  I looked forward to the other days but as this was Wednesday, I was wearing several layers of clothing and waiting for liquid refreshment as a necessary remedy for my blue nose and shivering limbs.

Donnelly had indeed delivered the goods.  He had a plastic carrier bag containing two bottles of booze, which he presented to me with glee, unaware of the demon bag’s singular threat to the planet.  He took the view, supported by me incidentally, that plastic bags are made from products of the Earth, so there is nothing strange in their manufacture to frighten the Earth, just, it would seem, Earthlings who get off on gloom, doom and despondency.  He put the bottles on the kitchen table and incarcerated the plastic bag with all the others accumulated under the sink in a cupboard akin to Alcatraz for bad, bad things.  There were a couple of tax demands in there too. He poured generous drinks and sat down.

Donnelly and I had a long history of friendship, moral support, pub-crawls and love of poetry.  We would write and perform poetry every Thursday night at The Stanza, a venue for writers to meet, share verse, get drunk and put the world to rights.  It was the perfect antidote for a private investigator used to crime with all its nasty traits and evil outcomes.  It was certainly a welcome sideline as business had been a little slow of late.  In practical terms, Limp was expert at finding his way around Internet search engines and he seemed to know enough people to gouge out information when I needed it most.

“Have you written anything new for tomorrow night?” I asked.

“No,” said Limp, “remember Eddie Hennessy is doing a rare performance.”  Hennessy was a world famous poet, with global poetry sales in respectable numbers.  He was a Belfast man in his late sixties and wrote some of the most wonderful words in literature.  He had never forgotten his roots, his upbringing, the locality that had shaped him and his friends and supporters.  I had forgotten his appearance at The Stanza because the gig was a last minute arrangement.  But I was looking forward to it because I loved him and his canon.  The phone rang.

“This is me, is that you?” I enquired.

“Yeah.  Sticky, it’s Barney at The Stanza.” Barney was manager, caretaker, chief cook and bottle smasher at the venue and a friend of mine who had fed me in the hard times and made sure I got home when I was mugged by alcohol.  He had one tooth in his mouth, but ironically a great warm smile.  I detected nothing but anguish in his voice.

“What is it Barney?” I asked. 

“I’ve got a problem over here,” he said, his voice a little higher pitched than normal.

“What is it? Booze sales down and you need me to bump up your income?”

“I wish it was that simple Stick.  It’s Eddie Hennessy.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.  “Don’t tell me, he needs a killer limerick to open the show and he knew he could rely on me?”

“Shut up, will you?” Barney was in no mood for unwise cracks.

“Barney, what’s going on? What’s wrong with Hennessy?” I said with my hand clenched around the receiver and with tight ripples forming on my brow.

”Hennessy’s dead.”

Belfast Backlash

By Joe Cushnan

“I was checking off the names of various characters in my head, ticking and crossing as I went through the litany of all those with whom I had come in contact in the previous ten days; Eddie Hennessy, genius and murder victim; John Devlin, rogue, living out his last days in peace; Bog O’Byrne, thug and now motorway bridge support; Brendan Bertram, sweet old man with enough to say and more to tell; Bingo and P.J., idiots on crutches; Joan Jones, a tragic, lost opportunity to be the love of my life; Steffi Ellerbrock, a beautiful surprise out of the blue; Jackie Strong, infamous piece of scum and still to account for his risible life; Dave Robinson and Billy Strong, dead men walking…………” Introducing Private Investigator Sticky Miller and his resourceful sidekick Limp Donnelly as they investigate the death of a poet. In the process, they get involved with gangsters and other shady characters in Belfast and beyond. With little fear of action, no fear whatsoever of puns and a penchant for pontificating, bullets, one-liners and words of wisdom fly in equal measure in this hard-boiled, explosive crime story.

ISBN: 9781782990130

Total Pages: 223

Published: 7 December 2012

Price: £6.99

Buy now:

http://www.feedaread.com/books/Belfast-Backlash-9781782990130.aspx