I recall very clearly when rationing of sweets was removed in 1953. My mum gave my brother and I a few pennies to spend on the way home from school and of course we did. Though it wasn’t the branded items like chocolate bars and packets of sweets we bought but, to make our coppers go further we got gobstoppers, chews, liquorice, aniseed balls, etc. My song remembers those days and also the old money which meant, at school, working out sums in three columns with no calculators of course (but then we did learn out times tables by rote – a morning ritual).

‘All sorts of essential and non-essential foods were rationed, as well as clothing, furniture and petrol. Rationing of sweets and chocolate began on 26 July 1942.
The process of de-rationing began in 1948, but made slow progress until 1953. Then Food Minister Gwilym Lloyd-George made it a priority for his department.
As well as sweets, he took eggs, cream, butter, cheese, margarine and cooking fats off the ration books.
He de-rationed sugar in September 1953, partly as a result of pressure from sweet manufacturers, and finally ended rationing when meat was taken off the ration books in July1954.
The de-rationing of sweets had a dramatic effect on the confectionery market. Spending on sweets and chocolate jumped by about £100m in the first year to £250m – a year which, according to the confectionery industry, was “as dynamic as any in the industry’s history”.
Consumers in the UK now spend in excess of £5.5bn on confectionery each year.’ From the BBC website.

LOOSE CHANGE

Give us your money, give us your cash,
Ain’t no use if it all goes crash.
Bring ‘em back, pounds, shillings and pence.
Do you remember with half-a-crown,
You could have a good night out on the town,
And still have change for your bus fare home.
A packet of Woodbines, one-and-six,
And in the morning some Weetabix,
with a pint of milk delivered to your door.

Chorus:
Loose change, oh what fun,
counting the currants in a currant bun.
No more, rationing now. No rationing now

Give me your money, give me your dough,
The younger generation, well what do they know?
How many pennies were in a pound?
How many shillings, three-penny bits?
No calculators gotta use your wits.
Oh boy, those were the days.
Short pants and dirty knees,
Don’t make a fuss if you start to sneeze.
Eat your greens and be on your way.

Give me your money, your ten bob notes,
Credit cards, oh what a joke.
You’d be lucky with a two bob bit.
A penny gobstopper – some halfpenny chews,
On Saturday morning, you can’t lose,
Sherbet dips and a liquorice stick.
Sweet cigarettes and a lollipop,
We were in heaven believe it or not,
With pocket money – we made the best of it.

Daizy and the Weeds Rap it Up (now available on Amazon) is my latest novel for older teenagers and was originally called Voice of the Lobster, a title I still prefer. However, advice from agent’s website (I forget which) was to have a title that summarised or indicated the book’s content – or avoid one that could not be understood until the story had been read. I took the point, even though many books do not follow this rule. I suppose well-known authors can break the rule because readers are attracted to them and aren’t fazed by an obscure title. Anyway, my book is about a girl called Daizy from the Weed family who make music including rap so I hope this is now acceptable. Preferably, I hope an agent/publisher shows interest in forking out for the manuscript. And, of course, people will purchase the book from Amazon.

I began writing the story some years ago (maybe 10 or 15) and always intended coming back to it when the time was right. It includes contemporary issues such as racism, media bullying, dysfunctional families, etc, and focuses on the two major preoccupations of my life; music and working with young people.

The central character is Nina, a black teenager and one of a large extended family of travellers who narrowly escape being killed in an arson attack on their bus. Far-right activists harass the family, but they are protected by a mysterious friend who offers to support them in exchange for musical performances. Nina and the Weeds are successful but discover a racist group has been exploiting the band by inserting subliminal messages into their performances. Nina’s absent father, we later discover, along with the political activists behind the conspiracy, served in the army together and were involved in the massacre of a rebel group in Somalia some years previously. The crime is kept secret, but Nina uncovers it and, eventually establishes her father’s innocence.

Some might criticize me as a white middle-aged man for having a black teenage girl as the main character but, I believe, readers will understand when they get into the book. Also, as an author, I hope I have sufficient imagination to write about a whole range of characters who may or may not share my background or life experiences. In fact, the most important characters in the book are troubled teenagers (boys, girls, black and white) and for many years I worked with just such kids in the education system.

The following is an extract early on in the novel after Nina and her New Age traveller family have been fire-bombed out of their campsite and sought refuge at a squat in the suburbs.

She was sick and tired of the weird, wired and wacky, mad and muddy, spaced-out and tacky world of the road. The festivals, campfires, communes, raves, road rallies, tree protests and other radical scenes which, when all was said and done, made every day a bad hair day and each night fit only for dirty dogs and frozen turkeys. It also helped if you were an eco-warrior, fired up by dreams of anarchy and revolution – so full of it in fact you were blind to the squalor and lack of privacy – but she wasn’t.
       No, all Nina wanted was a bit of peace and quiet. Not the ‘chill man’ type of peace that made you cringe and feel like swatting every doped-up body-painted loon that hung around the fringes of her world like mosquitoes, but the everyday type of peace she’d only ever glimpsed at enviously from a distance through the curtains of suburban terraces. Houses, in fact, exactly like the one they were in now.

In London last week I visited the Imperial War Museum and was, of course, both amazed and appalled at man’s (and it usually is men) ingenuity in devising such terrible machines of self-destruction. But the part that was most devastating was the Holocaust section on the top floor. In fact, after a while I found the galleries depicting murder on an industrial scale, mostly in dim light, almost too much to bear and simply wanted to get out. Unfortunately, leaving was not so easy (no doubt deliberately) as it was difficult finding the exit among the maze of rooms and passages.

Of course the Nazis didn’t only murder Jews. With their warped philosophy of Aryan superiority they believed they could treat anyone deemed inferior or different as worse than animals. This included, gypsies, homosexuals, any non-white races, those with a disability or learning problem, etc. We may believe nothing like this could happen again but in fact it is, right now, in many places around the world. Autocratic regimes are discriminating against and persecuting minorities or supporting religious and other groups to cause political unrest, terrorist explosions, etc, and even sponsor revolution and war.

My song was a reaction to all this when I got home.

PROTECT THE POOR

Protect the poor and needy, from the cruel and the greedy,
And those in power who do not care.
About society now – where everyone is free now,
To live in peace with their fair share.
Some say life is a race – you better know your place,
The cards are stacked before you begin.
And so why give a damn, about the rights of man,
The strongest rat must always win – must always win.

Defend the weak and helpless, from oppressors in the darkness.
One day who knows, it could be you.
Trampled down by heavy jack boots – storm troopers all in black suits,
Too late to cry you never knew.
But some say life is a farce – all things one day must pass,
Might as well enjoy it while we may.
There is no right or wrong, so sings the tyrant’s song,
The only truth is what I say – is what I say.

Do not deny the awkward, odd-balls you may call backward,
With special needs or broken down.
Different colours, different ways, bring sunshine to our days,
Reveal the wisdom of a clown.
But with their righteous anger, and obedience for ever,
The master race broke all the rules.
That was long ago now, a goose-stepping comedy show now,
Surely, we would not be such fools?
Would we – be such fools?

Plum Crazy is my latest novel for children (9-14 years), recently uploaded to Amazon Kindle – both paperback and e-book. Ideally, however, I’d like a nice publisher to take me on for this and other titles.

Below is a bit of blurb:

‘Are you happy?’ asked the Lord of the Prunes.
‘What a question,’ replied Jim. ‘But, if you must know, life sucks. The kids are rotten. The teachers are rotten. Even the food’s rotten.’
‘I could change all that,’ said the little fruit. So saying, he grants Jim three wishes which whisk them both off to Australia, then America and finally by rocket ship to the International Space Station. Along the way the unlikely duo enlists a motley crew of kids and tame adults to help solve the mystery of Greengage Manor and defeat its resident witch.

Jim Skelly, an overweight twelve-year-old, finds a talking prune in his pudding on an adventure centre holiday at Greengage Manor. Bullied by both children and staff, Jim accepts magical help from the prune. There follow adventures in which Jim learns to assert himself and carry out dangerous missions. His main adversary is Penelope Blackthorn, the centre manager, who is suspected of having dark powers but turns out to be a scientist using children as guinea pigs and accidentally turning them into animated prunes. A toxic waste chemical company holding a conference at the hall is also implicated but, after a battle between the children and executives, a truce is negotiated and the company help Jim and his friends in their mission to win a trip to NASA’s space centre in Florida. Having been turned into a prune himself and not able to reverse the spell, Jim is smuggled into luggage for America and eventually aboard a rocket in an astronaut’s kit bound for the International Space Station. Before being discovered Jim manages to fix an air leak and is proclaimed a fruit-sized hero.

Note – no live prunes were harmed in the making of this book.

There’s been a lot in the media about WW1 as we’ve just had the centenary of the war’s end in 1918. Most striking for me was Peter Jackson’s film using old black and white clips of soldiers lives, mostly during trench warfare.  At the folk club we sang mostly anti-war songs – but, as I often wonder, would I have had the courage to voice such sentiments at the time had I been around? Probably not. My Uncle Ralph (father’s older brother) was a conscientious objector and was first imprisoned and then sent to an asylum where he ended his days nearly fifty years later. The war may have been a case of mass insanity but individuals are likely to be sent insane standing up to the millions bent on destruction.

My song isn’t so original but a worth a go anyway.

WORLD WAR III IS OVER

World War Three is over, now I’m the last one here,
Everything’s radioactive and there’s a funny taste in the beer.
We’ve only got Pot Noodles to last for evermore,
Me and this one lousy cockroach – are fighting it out on the floor.

World War Three is over, like the Planet of the Apes,
Now could they do a better job? Why not for goodness sakes?
They may not use a knife and fork, or drink from a china cup,
But at least they won’t go and build a bomb to blow the whole lot up.

World War Three is over, and there’s no sign of a mate,
So the human race cannot start again, I guess we left it too late.
To talk of love and the Lord above while threatening nuclear war,
But at least over-population – will be a problem no more.

World War Three is over, there’s no one left here but me,
I guess with everybody gone, I may claim the victory.
From here in my concrete bunker, far from our green and pleasant land,
Never to view the sky so blue deep in my coffin so grand.

World War Three is over, it didn’t take very long,
One push of a little red button and the whole wide world was gone.
Gone all civilisation, and life as we know it today,
No more David Attenborough to remind us what we’ve thrown away.

World War Three is over, it’s the ending of all our dreams,
Or could it just be a nightmare and not the way it seems?
I guess I’ll never know for sure, it’s for all of us to decide,
Do we choose to live in peace or keep fighting till everyone’s died?

Not Just a Silly Hat, is a spin-off album that includes many songs written about at some length in my book,  The Key to a Happy Life. The title comes from the song about Richard Thompson, which is an affectionate piss-take. All the songs are inspired by great song writers, including Woody Guthrie (the archetypal singer-songwriter), Lead Belly (a powerful performer who was much copied), Bobby Darin (mostly a crooner but also a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter), Bob Dylan (probably the most successful songwriter ever), The Rolling Stones (probably the best rock band ever), John Newton (who wrote Amazing Grace), Lonnie Donegan (who mainly popularised American blues numbers) and Davey Graham (best known as a guitarist).

All these artists, and many more, have been great influences on me and many other singer-songwriters. This CD is my tribute to them (original songs – not covers). It was very ably recorded in Neil Tinning’s studio at Seaton Sluice, North Tyneside.