Category Archives: On the Internet

Anything new I’ve published online.

Tom Whalley’s Cycling Podcast: Raleigh, Sillitoe and an impressive Chopper.

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Tom Whalley’s podcast.

I think I might be the only person in Nottingham not to have been bought a Raleigh bike for Christmas. Back in the day, Raleigh was a badge of pride for Nottingham and up there with Brian Clough, the chap in green tights, and Torville and Dean for civic pride. This was handy because everything else about my 80s childhood was pretty miserable, what with a milk stealing PM, the Falklands, and the fear of imminent nuclear annihilation.

Everyone had a Raleigh, but I ended up with a Daytona. If you’ve never heard of Daytona, don’t worry. Neither had I. Neither had anyone. Consequently, I had the piss taken out of me constantly. In hindsight, this was my ‘A Boy Named Sue’ moment, teaching humility and resilience. But at the time I had a right proper strop.

My stepfather was a tight bastard. He chiselled a mark in the bath to ration out hot water, and all of our identical shoes came from Jonathan James. I could put with the DIY basin haircuts because everyone else had them. But a Daytona? Come on.

Mining communities thrive on wit and sarcasm. The more upset I got, the more imaginative the insults. But when random strangers started to point and laugh at me as I cycled by, enough was enough. I asked if I could sell it. My mum, having a good heart and all that, suggested I give it to a straggly youth at school who looked like he got fed and washed once a year. I agreed because I’d been to his house, and he had nothing. He was delighted with the offer and came home with me after school. He peddled off with a silly grin on his face and for a brief moment, the world felt like a good place.

There wasn’t much time to feel smug. A few days later he came into school covered in chocolate. ‘Sold that bike for £20 quid’, he said. ‘Want a scoff?’. I learned an important lesson that day: Don’t buy a Daytona and don’t give one away.

I mention this because I was recently a guest on Tom Whalley’s The Cycling Podcast: Service Course. The theme was Raleigh, and we had a natter about Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which features 21-year-old lathe operator Arthur Seaton. The episode also features Chris Matthews, a historian and author of Towns in Britain, and a man with a very impressive Chopper.

Tom is an award winning sound designer, audio producer and presenter. Best known as T-Bone, the producer of The Huey Show on BBC6 music, he also produces The Wire Stripped. He’s recently returned to Wollaton with a young family, and I guess this episode was partly driven by a desire to reconnect with his roots. We did our interview via zencastr.com which runs in your browser so you can record anywhere without installing anything. Being able to see each other during the interview was really helpful and helped create a natural flow of conversation.

The show is co-hosted by double Giro Rosa stage winner Lizzy Bank. Bet she wasn’t riding a Daytona…

Series 10. Episode 3: All the Rest is Propaganda. https://thecyclingpodcast.com/episodes/service-course  

Further reading

The Medium is the Message: What’s yours?

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During his keynote speech at the 2010 Writing Industries Conference, Graham Joyce warned that writers would need to be more flexible if they wanted to carve a successful (paid) career as writers. The days of a large advance to pen your magnum opus were becoming more infrequent and so it was time to consider other formats and mediums such as mobile phones, gaming platforms and podcasts.

Fundamental to his call for versatility was technology and how this is radically transforming every aspect of lived experience. Fast forward eleven years and his advice has become more prescient. Social media platforms function as mini-publishing studios that can be monetised and immersive technology, such as augmented reality and A.I, are transforming how we tell and experience stories.

It’s with this in mind that I’ve been developing new modules at Nottingham Trent University to help equip emerging writers with the skills and knowledge needed to flourish in this ever-changing digital landscape.

One such module is Digital Storytelling, currently available to 2nd year Creative Writing students. This is very much built around experimentation, with students asked to adapt their story to fit the grammar of different platforms and mediums. It quickly becomes apparent that what works well as interactive fiction on Twine does not translate well to a visual medium like Instagram. Understanding the relationship between technology, audience and story is vital if you are going to produce engaging and innovative digital work.

Another benefit of this module is the practical skills it provides. The visual essay at the top of this article was produced using the Werner Moron ‘real-imaginary’ path (you’ll have to join the module to learn more about this method). The visuals were sourced from copyright free material and produced using free online tools. In creating a visual essay for YouTube, students learn to write a script, record audio, select images that reinforce the narrative, upload, tag, publish, share and promote. This provides a broad range of skills, all of which go some way towards helping them kickstart their digital writing careers.

The appeal of digital storytelling is the challenge of having to constantly adapt your writing to fit a medium. From interactive fiction on itch.io to Twitterature, each medium has its own form of constraint. A limited word count forces you to think carefully about what you want to say whereas interactive fiction places greater emphasis on the experience of the reader (user). Constraint is fundamental to creativity which is why I love jumping between mediums and platforms. It’s what maintains my motivation to write.

To see what other types of writing are going on in Nottingham and at Nottingham Trent University see nottinghamcreativewritinghub.com

Further Reading