Havant & District Writers' Circle

To explain what happened during the 24 hours before my talk to Havant & District Writers' Circle on 18 February, here is an edited version my column from the Radio Magazine Issue 881:

Don't talk to me about stations...

The plan was simple: I was going to catch the 21.12 from Bournemouth to Hove where I would be cat-sitting at my brother's place. It would also be useful to set off from there to Havant the following evening for a speaking engagement.

The first leg of the journey was fine, as smooth as, well, Smooth, but when I got to Southampton, my connecting service was cancelled due to some troubled soul throwing themselves onto the tracks at Barnham. Helpful staff put me on a train to Fareham where they were certain I could get one to Littlehampton and change for Hove... Well, with apologies to Glen Cambell, by the time I got to Fareham I'd be waiting - the service to Littlehampton was delayed. I got on it knowing I would miss the last connection to Hove and, not knowing what it would be like to spend a night on Littlehampton station, I got off at Cosham, rang my brother (who was now in Kent) from a phone with very limited battery, and he looked at timetables online and phoned hotels. There were no more trains heading Brighton way and the prices of the available hotels in the area didn't appeal so I decided to get another train - my fourth so far - to Portsmouth and spend the night waiting there until I could set off for Hove on the 04.35.

So, at the time when I should have been sitting down with a cuppa at Hove, I was standing reading a thriller in the ticket hall at Portsmouth station until some apologetic staff told me they were locking up from 1am until 3,30am so I had to wait outside. The book was a lot less scary than the next couple of hours as hundreds of drunken clubbers made their noisy way past the station (like my home town of Bournemouth, the night-time economy in Portsmouth even seems to thrive midweek). I hid around the corner behind a pillar, putting my rucksack, two carriers and laptop bag down on the ground within easy reach in case I had to flee. You can feel terribly protective towards a laptop, a bit like a baby, not that I've ever had one (and no, I'm not going to do the smirking, laddish '...As far as I know!' 'gag').

No drunks or police troubled me but boredom did. A radio would have been great, even to hear voice-tracked shows. Some presenters bring great enthusiasm to graveyard shifts, others less so. One jock I was writing for at a major station found himself stuck away in some slot in the early hours and banned from using humorous links - he was just required to say who the records were by (a style brilliantly described to me by another presenter as 'voice on a stick'). He sent me an email saying 'To find myself, after all these years as a virtual tech-op - well!' (I didn't even know what that meant back then but he wrote so plaintively that I felt his pain).

I'm no stranger to spending boring nights outside stations. I once got stranded outside Southampton Central on the way back from some gig or other with a strange man who had three topics of conversation: lighthouses, the Isle of Wight and the history of the Dr Marten boot. He had never actually been to the island, which has lighthouses, because he was convinced that it was some sort of wilderness with no shops for the locals (how do those Isle of Wight Radio jocks manage?)

That was one summer - this was winter, cold and rainy (great when there's nowhere to pee!) I have never known time drag so slowly, even when listening to Bohemian Rhapsody,  but, eventually, some cleaners opened the station (five minutes late), I bought another ticket from the machine, got on the 04.35 (which was also five minutes late), changed at Havant (knowing I'd be back there thirteen hours later for my talk), got to Hove, fed a very hungry cat then slept a couple of hours before I had to get up, vacate the house because the estate agents were bringing someone to look around, and take myself off to a cafe to write that day's radio topicals which I then couldn't send because my newly-charged Blackberry had no signal.

There were only 28 days in February 2009. It seemed like more.

Not exactly the best preparation for a speaking engagement, was it? Furthermore, on the train back to Havant that evening, the passengers were packed in like sardines due to cancellations and delays caused by two more suicides in the South East. Conditions became less crowded as we got nearer to Havant and I arrived at the Arts Centre in good time.

There were 24 there and they were a good audience for my 90-odd minutes of content and question-and-answer but, after the problems beforehand, I didn't feel that this was my best performance.

Public Speaking Tip #289: Sometimes events which are totally beyond your control in the run-up to a speaking engagement can affect your state of mind on the day. You could cancel at short notice and let everyone down - or turn up and do your best anyway. A brief, humorous explanation to your audience can help everyone!

During the interval, I gave a short, impromptu, pre-recorded radio interview to Heather James for Portsmouth's Express FM. Heather is a great character, a broadcaster, speaker, blogger and writer for the Portmouth News (their longest-running female columnist) who I first met in 1998 when she booked me to speak to a very good motivational group she was running. She also came to my last talk for Havant Writers in 2002.

This was the most rapid-fire interview I have ever given but the fact that I already knew the presenter really helped me (plus the adrenaline halfway through a talk) and I felt that it went really well.

I used this talk as an opportunity to finally try out a new anecdote about how the over-use of puns can have unfortunate consequences. I've had plenty of time to prepare it - it relates to something that happened during a speech by a teacher when I was at school! It went well and I will be keeping it.
This writers' circle is very lucky to have the successful novelist Dee Williams among its members. Here is her latest book.

Testimonial from Sue Shade, their Membership Secretary, who also arranged transport back to the station for me:
"On behalf of the Havant Writers' Circle, I'd just like to say thank you for an entertaining and informative evening last night. I thought it went well, and I hope you enjoyed it too".
Well, not as much as I could have done with less stress beforehand! And afterwards, for that matter, as there were more delays on the journey back to Hove. When I got in, I slept for twelve hours!