Mark Pearson – AuthorsPlace

TINS OF BEANS AND CANS OF WORMS

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 +0100

TESCO - EVERY LITTLE HELPS

I am on my way into town in a moment. But am digging out my Kevlar vest first, putting on my stoutest duffel coat and girding my loins. For it may not just be heated words flying in the air on the sea-side today. Not brickbats but bricks! I am anticipating scenes reminiscent of last week’s London demonstrations - for the Capitalism debate has come charging, full steam and whistles blowing, to the coast! I am walking into a war zone.

I dwell, as the faithful reader will know only too well, in a small seaside town on the North Norfolk coast. Sheringham to be precise. I moved here from West Beckham, and if there seems to be a football connection, there honestly isn’t - I know as much about the beautiful game as Gordon Brown does about Dancing on Ice. Very thin ice. Maybe less than that come to think of it. What attracted us here was the notion of the seaside idyll, the paradise on the coast, Shangrila ici la. The cut, the thrust, the pumping hurly burly of modern life in the Metropolis was to be a long forgotten, slightly disturbing dream. Go North young man - but stop at the water. So North we went but little did we realise that were riding into a thirteen year old battle royal that is threatening to split the town in twain. Not since Oliver Cromwell decided Charles and his hippy followers needed a drastic haircut has a people been so divided. Not since Eoghan Quigg and Alexandra Burke or Mason and Dixon bisected a nation has there been such a line drawn in the sand! Well not in the sand exactly about a couple of hundred yards up the hill from the beach to be precise on the Cromer road. There are only two factions in Sheringham now, and it’s not Blue or Red, it’s not are you pro Europe or agin it. It ain’t even Manchester United versus Tottenham United, (did you see what I did there) It’s are you in favour of Tesco’s coming to town or against it! It’s a feud worthy of Rufus Hannessy and Major Terril, but while they might have duked it out in ‘The Big Country’, Sheringham is a little one horse town and there is no room to sit on the fence – especially as it has spikes on it.

The first thing you should know is - I am a huge fan of Tesco’s Finest Chicken Kiev. For my money it is quite simply the best ready-meal purchasable anywhere in the country. Bar none. Proper Kiev properly made. My only grumble, perhaps, is that they may be smaller nowadays than when I first encountered them. Maybe it is just, as Cadburys Crème eggs people claim - not entirely convincingly - that is just me that has grown bigger.

But I digress. The main problem with the proposed building which has been wrangled over for thirteen years, with secret deals being made with councillors, with approval given and repealed, with claims and counter claims and claims for smaller counters – to sell smaller products I guess – is the impact it will have on the local businesses. Sheringham’s high street for example boasts three greengrocers and two butchers and two fishmongers. The Lobster pub boasts a credit crunch lunch for just under a fiver, but I suspect they have just relabeled their childrens portions. Allegedly.

But it is a telling sign that - in these days of economic gloom and Kebab flavoured pot noodles and only Jacqui Smith’s husband providing relief from the horror of it all – that Tesco is one of the few companies declaring increased profits, taking on more staff, creating job opportunities and seemingly bucking the recession. Now the only way they can do this is by giving the people of this fair land what they want. What they really, really want. Cheap booze and really, honestly they are, believe me, tasty Finest Chicken Kievs. So if they are giving the people what they want - why is there such an uproar and fierce debate about it here? Well the consensus seems to be a good local supermarket is needed but of what size. The worry being that the essential ‘ungot at’ nature of the town will change and local specialised stores will be put out of business. Will the town be able to support three greengrocers for example? It’s a tricky one because the answer is - it would be very unlikely, but on the other hand a lot of residents would welcome, in these credit crunch times, the sort of value that Tesco offers. Particuarly the retired and elderly who are living on their pensions or interest battered savings or completely bankered share portfolios. It’s a debate and a dividing issue that has made the national news on television. Only recently I was in the local when a newscameraman and a reporter were pointing a television camera at the anti campaign lobby who were celebrating the council turning down their latest application. What bothered me most at the time was not that I couldn’t get into my usual quiet seat at the corner of the bar to do my Daily Mail crossword, but that I didn’t have a copy of my novel, HARD EVIDENCE, to hold up in shot for some free publicity - It hadn’t been published at the time.

This blog isn’t really just about an excuse to plug my book or hope for a free delivery of Tesco’s Finest Chicken Kiev. Ahem. But a look at the fact that Tesco do stock books too. In fact they sell a huge amount of them. Millions a year. But not with a huge range. They don’t for example, stock Hard Evidence, at the moment. So do I hold a grudge… I am not sure. I suppose it is a bit like the debate over celebrity book titles – covered far better than me by Sarah Murch at the BBC for the Money Programme. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7886420.stm

So like I said, armoured without by a stout duffel and fortified within with a drop of the good stuff I am on my way into the town now where Tesco are making their case in the newly refurbished Oddfellows Hall, a really good, local civic community restoration project - where they will be showing proposed new plans for a more aesthetically pleasing and smaller edifice, closer to town to encourage people in to the centre to shop there as well.

I am looking forward to hearing the pros and cons of the argument but am mainly hoping they might have some snack products at the event. Maybe some mini Finest Chicken Kievs!

Maybe the way forward is for Tesco to show Sheringham it really does care about the local community and their own produce and stop denying the loyal Tesco customer the chance for a really good read of a crime novel featuring, you know just for example, tough talking maverick cop DI Jack Delaney.

Come on Tesco – Every little helps!

Important update. I went to the exhibition but before that to The Lobster for their credit crunch lunch as there were no snack products at all within sight at the Tesco do. I had the Fish and Chips and my lunching companion, local EastEnders writer and internet poker addict plumped for similar with two rounds of bread and butter each at sixty pence a pop. Extremely nice it was too and not a niggardly portion at all!

*Picture of Sheringham Station during the 40's week-end courtesty of my talented neighbour - artist Brian Lewis. http://www.art-e-mail.com/

SHEDLESS IN PARADISE

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 +0100

SHEDLESS IN PARADISE

by Mark Pearson

Isn’t it ever the way? When you have the one thing you invariably don’t have the other. And I am not talking about marriage. I am talking about sheds.

These last few weeks have seen me on the rollercoaster of having a book published. Hard Evidence, Arrow Paperback. A novel was something I always planned to do, but never seemed to get round to doing. Too many distractions, not all of them work based. Perhaps I liked the friendly collaborative nature of writing for television too much. Yes that must be it. Can’t think what else. But I am reminded of an article I wrote for the Telegraph a few years back about a garden shed I was planning for my garden…

‘Was it Rousseau who said that a garden without a shed is like a Sunday roast beef dinner without the Yorkshire pudding and a bottle of claret? In any case, he might have done, if he had been born in Bradford. For it is true: a shedless garden is a Martini without an olive, a Gibson without a pearl onion . . .

I bought my property a year ago and spent last summer equipping it with all the really essential items: enormous TV with surround sound, Clavinova - so I could learn the piano - a well-stocked bar so I could make the necessary cocktail while I contemplated playing the piano, portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, of course, a hi-fi with digital radio, top-notch CD and studio-quality speakers, a capacious fridge to store Champagne, vodka, lemons and the bare essentials for when you have moved into a new apartment and it needs decorating from top to bottom.

And when autumn did its thing with the leaves and the wind and the rain, the garden was as it ever was - bare, barren and shedless. I knew that this sad state could not continue and over the winter months, as I took an early-evening refreshener or two at the bar, I talked the matter over with my friends Michael and Marion, the local landscape gardeners.

We agreed I needed a shed, but what sort? There was the rub. So, with a glass close to hand, I did some detailed research. George Bernard Shaw used to write in a shed in his garden; Dylan Thomas did likewise - and refreshed himself in an old bicycle hut. Children's author Philip Pullman, I am led to believe, scribbles his prize-winning books in a shed in the bottom of his garden, as did, ahem, Jeffrey Archer.

Clearly, any writer worth his briny stuff must have one, and so, after many, many warming glasses over the cold winter months, we finally agreed on the manner of the commission. Taking into account the leafy, and tranquil, suburban genteelness of Northwood, there was only one solution: a log cabin. Obvious, really.

So, as I gazed about looking at my Clavinova, and tinkling the ice in my glass, and thought about opening up the lid and playing the thing, I figured that what I really needed was a banjo, maybe one of these six-string jobbies as I can play House of the Rising Sun on the guitar. Pondering matters musical, I gave Michael the nod, or rather we spat, touched hands and sealed the deal with a large glass or two of the barley product.

The neighbours were a bit surprised as the edifice started emerging - rough-hewn logs of pine skilfully shaped and moulded, not by me, you understand, but I was close at hand with a pitcher or two of the cooling stuff with mint and cucumber, should the hard-working artisans have needed refreshment. And finally, magically, the shed was complete. Oklahoma had finally come home to Middlesex.

Wooden within, and without, it may have been, but it was not without electricity to run the fridge so I wouldn't have to trudge all the way back to the apartment to recharge the ice bucket. Oh, and to power the laptop so I could do some writing, which was, after all, the very serious business behind the project.

But summer is upon us, and the barbecue season is nigh: maybe the writing can wait until more important matters are taken care of. Like what to serve at a hillbilly barbecue? Happily, I believe Uncle Jack Daniel's may be of assistance in the research here.

As I plan the big Kentucky clambake to officially open the cabin, I am reminded of the great bearded one himself saying, strangely enough, about himself: "I don't believe in morality, I'm a disciple of Bernard Shaw."

And a disciple I am, too, with my own garden shed now.’

Well that was a few summers ago now: and two Log Cabins since I find myself with a book published but no garden shed! I moved twice and live now a stones throw from the silky, almost Mediterranean, blue waters of the North Norfolk sea near Cromer, with a small beck that flows through my courtyard garden down to the sun kissed, silver sanded beaches that snake along that coast like a ribbon from paradise – but no shed, and nature abhors a vacuum. Maybe when the sequel, BLOOD WORK, published this summer, is out, it might be time to bang on the estate agents doors again – and this time measure the back garden properly! Meanwhile the sun is over the yard arm and those final pesky edits can wait a while, after all as Raymond Chandler once said… "Any man who can make a decent Martini cocktail adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love. " Well he almost said it, and luckily I know just the barperson!