Karl Marx and Careful Driving

September in Dorset

2011-09-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

16,500 miles from the UK to Beijing – on a Bicycle

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were;

and I say, ‘Why not?’(George Bernard Shaw)

www.cycleuktochina.com

This month I'll be in Dorset to speak about the 16,500-mile bicycle ride from Worcestershire to Beijing, accompanying the talk with a selection of spectacular slides and following it with a book signing.

Saturday 24 September 7.30 pm

The White Room, Salisbury Arts Centre

Tickets £7 (£5 concessions) from

The Box Office, Bedwin Street, Salisbury SP1 3UT

01722 321744 www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk

Wednesday 28 September 7.30 pm

The Verwood Hub, Brock Way, Verwood BH31 7QE

Tickets £7.50 from The Box Office

01202 828740 www.thehubverwood.co.uk

Thursday 29 September 7 pm

The Victorian Hall, Dorset County Museum

High West Street, Dorchester DT1 1XA

Entry Free (Recommended Donation £3)

Part of the Museum's Travellers Tales Programme

www.dorsetcountymuseum.org

Friday 30 September 7.30 pm

The Marine Theatre, Church St,

Lyme Regis DT7 3QA

Tickets £10 from The Box Office

01297 442138 www.marinetheatre.com

Saturday 1 October 7.30 pm

Durweston Village Hall, Church Road, Durweston,

Blandford DT11 0QA 01258 488883

Tickets £6 (£4.50 concessions) from

The Dorset Bookshop, 69 East St,

Blandford Forum DT11 7DX 01258 452266

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‘Why don’t you fly?’ a bemused friend asked me when I stated my intention to cycle across the planet. For thirteen months my lungs and legs were to power me into headwinds, across deserts and up to mountain passes (and a wonderfully indomitable, reliable and adaptable source of power they proved to be).

How does it feel to trade domestic comfort and security for life as a nomad and to pare one’s life down to the bare necessities? What is it like to push at the frontiers of one’s physical and mental endurance? What is the effect upon the human spirit of struggling against hurricanes in the Gobi Desert by day and shivering alone in culverts at night? How does the agnostic westerner react to the religious fatalism of Islam and Hinduism in encounters with locals?

As well as attempting to answer these questions, I speak about the importance of having a dream, about connecting with one’s passions, about recognising and seizing opportunities – and about how I wore out three sets of tyres, three chains, two pairs of boots, and fell off the bike six times.

The gruelling journey served to demonstrate that the human body is a powerful, flexible and immensely sophisticated engine that thrives on hard work. Since my return from Asia in September 2001, I have more than trebled the 16,500 miles I covered during the epic ride by cycling between 125 and 150 miles a week to and from work in all weather conditions. ‘Why don’t you drive?’ ask my incredulous colleagues. The power of the ‘human engine’ continues to be underestimated by those who prefer to rely on the internal combustion engine to the detriment of their health and the environment.

For more details about journey, author and book, please visit www.cycleuktochina.com. The website includes a sample chapter of my acclaimed book ‘Why Don’t You Fly?’ and over 90 photographs. As none of the slides I show during presentations are displayed on the website there is no need to worry that prior visits to it will reduce the impact of the presentation.

TESTIMONIALS

Thank you for coming into school last week for ‘World Book Day’. The assembly, and talks you gave, were an inspiration to all who heard them, and I look forward to reading your book over the Easter Holiday .

Allan Gilhooley, Headteacher, Lacon Childe School , Cleobury Mortimer

You came to school to talk to our Lower Sixth girls last summer, and I wonder if you would like to do the same again this year? The feedback on your talk was extremely good.

Pam Rutter, King Edward VI High School for Girls, Edgbaston

Thank you for the very enjoyable, witty and informative lecture you treated us to last week.

Barbro Millward (Sutton Coldfield National Trust)

I need hardly say we were all completely in awe of your epic adventure and comments ranged from 'truly inspirational', 'very courageous', 'unbelievable' and 'brave' to 'foolhardy' and 'crazy'! I am currently reading your book and I am halfway through India so still have much excitement and many surprises to come. I wish you the best of luck for the future and at least you will always have the satisfaction of saying that you achieved your dream while the rest of us just thought about it! Thank you once again.
Brian Cash (Droitwich 97 Probus Club)

A quick note to say thank you for your presentation to MCCC at Ashwood Marina on Tuesday evening. I hope you enjoyed talking to us as much as we all enjoyed hearing about your epic bike ride. As Bob Morgan said in his introduction, you are no mere mortal and your story about your trip was truly inspirational.
(Beryl Heath (Chairman - Midlands Coastal Cruising Club)

I really enjoyed the additional touches of very detailed maps and an inspirational maxim accompanying each stunning photograph of your journey to Beijing .

Liz Allen-Back (The King's School, Worcester)

We met when you gave us Droitwich Probus '97) your ‘ UK to Beijing ’ talk. I am just coming to the end of your marvellous book, which is so much more than a travel book. I have enjoyed it so much – you have so much to say about the countries that you cycled through and the people that you met. My very best regards, and thank you again for giving ME an ‘Incredible Journey’.

Terry Peasley (Hon Sec Droitwich Probus ’97)

What a great feat of endurance your ride was. You have been an inspiration to myself and many others. Not that you will remember but I was the chap at Crewe library who asked how it was you were able to photogragh yourself on the front cover of the book. You have been an example to us all of what can be achieved. Brilliant.

Mark Pountain

Chris Smith seems to be a man of considerable talent. I lived every mile of his journey to Beijing , which included a four-month side trip around India . By the end I felt that I’d done the trip with him and enjoyed every inch. Buy this book! It’s a great read.

Cycle Magazine

Smith’s smart, honest prose is crafted superbly and peppered with wonderful moments of drama, dialogue and real humanity

Asia and Away Magazine

Every child interested in geography should have the availability to read this book, as much for its excellent descriptive English as the content.

Julia Leedham-Green

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Just to say how much I liked your talk at Eastbourne Under Ground Theatre and loved your book. All the best with whatever you decide to do next.
Jen Popkin

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Reasons To Be Cheerful?

2011-07-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, my sister Poppy (pictured above with daughter Ruby) won £3,000 after selecting five out of the six winning numbers in the National Lottery draw. She described herself as being torn between delight at receiving a £3,000 windfall and bitter disappointment at failing to choose the one extra number that would have made her an overnight millionairess. At least she got a consolation rabbit.

This morning I am experiencing something of the same emotional confusion after learning that 'Why Don't You Fly?' had been shortlisted for the 2011 International Rubery Book Award (http://ruberybookaward.com/the-short-list-and-long-list.html). Like my sister, I have just missed out on the big prize - which, in my case, is being placed first, second or third. The judges describe the book as follows:

'A travel book based on the author's experiences as he cycled from Worcestershire to Beijing, passing through places as diverse as Europe, Iran and India. The rich details about landscape, food and the people the author met during his journey give a penetrating insight into lives and worlds that are unfamiliar to most of us. It is amusing, extremely well-written and very readable. This book could well have been awarded a prize, but the judges felt that there were some problems with the presentation of the text and maps that detracted from the quality of the contents. The smallness of the text made reading challenging.'

So had the book been judged on content alone, there is a distinct possibility that it would have been awarded one of the prizes. So near, yet so far. At least this counts as more evidence (in addition to the positive reviews on Amazon and the ever-growing collection of delightful emails I receive from readers) that agents and mainstream publishers who rejected the manuscript might just have slipped up.

I've been doing talks and slideshows about the Great Bicycle Ride to clubs and societies for around four years now. At the end of last year we decided to approach libraries, museums, village and town halls and small theatres in an effort to take the presentations out to the general public. So far we are averaging audiences of around 50 people and we usually sell about 15 copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?' each time.

I don't think public speaking will ever exactly be 'comfort zone' but my horror of it has diminished considerably. The best thing about giving presentations, both to clubs and societies, and to the general public at theatres and town halls, is that during the interval and afterwards, I meet some truly delightful people who all want to shake my hand, congratulate me, ask questions about the journey and get their copy of 'Why Don't You Fly?' signed.

Naturally we'd like to reach bigger audiences, but we have been left in no doubt that those who do come out for the evening return home satisfied with their evening's entertainment, and sometimes inspired by it. Last month we went to Malvern Theatres to listen to Ed Stafford talk about his two-and-a-half-year trek from the source of the Amazon to the sea. During the interval a heard someone in the row behind say, 'Excuse me, but are you Chris?' Directly behind us was a young couple who'd come to see me speak in April at Malvern's much smaller Coach House Theatre. They informed me that not only had the presentation been 'fantastic' but that it had inspired them to plan a bike-ride to Istanbul. I left the theatre having thoroughly enjoyed Ed Stafford's account of his remarkable adventure, but without any sense that my own presentation was inferior and wishing that I too had the opportunity to inspire audiences of 600 instead of 60.

Human Delusion

2010-08-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

Working on Karl Marx and Careful Driving sometimes reminds me of cooking a curry. Take one seasoned travelogue about a journey by truck from the UK to Kazakhstan; marinate in Marxism and add four fluid ounces of Soviet history; garnish liberally with Roman Catholic tyranny and simmer, stirring frequently; serve up with lashings of Plato and Rousseau.

Photograph courtesy of Dan Burn-Forti

I have been hoping that the resulting blend of ideas and insights will lead to a delicious new philosophy but my fellow scribes at the Severn Valley Authors found the latest serving rather indigestible. Linda was concerned that the ideas might be too complex for anyone lacking an academic background. Complicated ideas will have to be expressed and laid out in a way that is lucid and entertaining. For a model I could do worse than refer to Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, a novel written for children about western philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the present day.

Subconsciously, I think, I have been searching for a single theme to draw all the separate strands together. Last week I experienced a 'Eureka Moment' while cycling into work. The Careful Driving Trilogy will be a demonstration of the incompatibility of Plato's Worlds of Ideas and of the Senses: mankind's inablity to reconcile faith and reason, letter and spirit, and to transform theory into practice, vision into reality and political philosophy into the Ideal State.

Accordingly I've amended the principle themes of the book as follows (an explanation of the colour code can be found in the entry dated December 2009):

From Plato to the Industrial and French Revolutions
Religion (Plato's World of Ideas) dominates feudal Europe (Plato's World of the Senses). Was the transformation of a prescription for human emancipation into a tyranny that enslaved a cast of millions an example of how the noblest of intentions can run aground upon the rocks of ambition and greed?

Or can the Roman Catholic dystopia be blamed upon flaws in Jesus Christ's teachings and his analysis of the essence - distinctive character - of the human species? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The emergence of humanism (World of Ideas) in the fourteenth century begins the decline of religion and culminates in the Industrial and French Revolutions in the eighteenth century.

Plato's World of Ideas: Karl Marx's Solution to the Divorce of Human Essence from Existence
The immediate task is to unmask human alienation in its secular form, now that it has been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Just as an expanding merchant class (the bourgeoisie) had overwhelmed the feudal aristocracy following the storming of the Bastille, the expanding urban proletariat sapwned by the Industrial Revolution would overthrow its parasitic oppressors. The elimination of the private ownership of property would end the historical division of society into dominant and subject classes. Governed by workers purged of the avarice conferred by private ownership, communist societies would replace personal gain with collective prosperity.

Plato's World of the Senses: Soviet Communism's Failure to Reconcile Human Essence and Existence
Was the transformation of a prescription for human emancipation into a tyranny that enslaved a cast of millions an example of how the noblest of intentions can run aground upon the rocks of ambition and greed?

Or can the Soviet dystopia be blamed upon flaws in Karl Marx's economic theory and his analysis of the essence - the distinctive character - of the human species? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Twentieth-Century Capitalism: Fransen Transport (UK) Limited
Merchant capitalism has its origins in antiquity but the principle of trade in the late twentieth century remains the same: buy cheap and sell dear.

Photo courtesy of Lenny Coulson

Fransen Transport (UK) Ltd provides a haulage service to modern merchants exporting and importing temperature-sensitive commodities. Purchased cheaply from areas of surplus, these are transported to regions of scarcity where they can be sold at a profit.

A Human Becoming
The author's journey from university graduate to international truck driver is an attempt to unite essence (Plato's World of Ideas) with existence (Plato's World of the Senses). Individuals construct their destinies by using the imagination to invent a Perfect Future. Happiness depends upon the successful reconciliation of that Perfect Future (one's dream, vision or essence) with the imperfect present (existence).

Photo courtesy of Richard Breakwell

The more the dream is rooted in the shifting realities of the sensory world the more likely it is to make the transition from the imagination to reality. We think, therefore we become.

Careful Driving
The Inalienable Right of Way assumes a similarly divisive role on the road as private property in Karl Marx's analysis of capitalist society. Authoritarian traffic lights and road signs constantly divide road users into factions granted Right of Way (bourgeoisie) and deprived of Right of Way (proletariat).

Tyrannical speed limits (World of Ideas) instead of the view through the windscreen (World of the Senses) attempt to dictate how we drive; dictatorial Drivers Hours Regulations (World of Ideas) have replaced actual levels of fatigue (World of the Senses) in determining when we drive. Road users are thoroughly alienated by legislation from their human essence. Drivers who voluntarily alienate their Right of Way for the common good make the road a better place to be, but there aren't enough of them. Perhaps it will take the abolition of the Inalienable Right of Way and the Road Traffic Acts to return humanity to the road.

So Karl Marx and Careful Driving is to be the story of human delusion: the failure to reconcile concept (World of Ideas) and reality (World of the Senses). England's performance in the World Cup provided a perfect example of a vision foundering on reality. The news that we were to play Germany after a thoroughly undistinguished performance in the group stage led to an exchange of emails with Ralf, the German with whom I spent an unforgettable three weeks cycling through Iran and Baluchistan:

Windhorse,

I trust that you are now earning a respectable living as a computer salesman or repair man now that you've done the course. Or did you walk out on it halfway through like when you attempted to learn how to be an architect?

So it has come to today's three o' clock showdown. Will you be at the vicarage to watch it? I can just picture you sitting on your sofa in front of the television, surounded by a pyramid of empty lager cans and three weeks of washing-up still waiting to be done and a fly population outnumbering even Baluchistan's. Remember Munich 2001!

Nothing new to report here. Plenty of talks and slideshows booked - this year's total about 30 already and plenty more booked for next year. Work has been really shitty - just had a final written warning downgraded on appeal to a first written warning. Had a few days off last week and we did some painting, but still loads more to do. I've decided that my next literary masterpiece will consist not of one book but three, entitled

1. Karl Marx and Careful Driving

2. Cold War and Careful Driving

3. Red Sunset and Careful Driving

Hopefully I'll finish it sometime this decade - but publication might be posthumous.

Have you run out of Bombay Mix yet? Let me know and I'll send some more, along with the Sunday Times's report of England's victory against the Krauts.

Yours affectionately,

Uncle Heinrich.

This hopeless bravado was the precursor to a 4-1 thrashing by the old enemy...

and an email from an old friend...

Chris, I'm not saying the ball wasn't behind the line - the linesman of the Wembley final would have seen that (even in his current condition). But: justice works rather slow these days... At least fans in Germany and England have something to talk about for another 30 years, and like all the Africans having adopted Ghana as their team, you guys can root for Germany now (tee-hee). I didn't watch the game in the vicarage (it's 30+ in there now). I went with me mum to my former landlady, where we saw the game over some almond cake and a few cups of herb tea (when playing the English...). Argentina will be more complicated but Maradonna is a clown and some of his players are pretty old, so there is a chance!

Computer course-wise I went the distance (4 weeks) - the consequences of a no-show would have been severe. But it was easy: all I had to do was sit there 7 hours a day and since my seat was one of those facing the wall, I didn't even have to look half-awake (the lector's pace was too slow to follow anyway). About 10 of the other 15 were 35 - 50 year-old shipwerecks of people. Sleeping in and doing nothing for years seems to be most unhealthy on most people. But as far as earning a 'respectable living'... in your dreams, mate!***

3 books instead of one, publication posthumous? That don't sound good. the other day, I bought a copy of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' - isn't that the book you got the idea for 'Karl Marx and Careful Driving' from? I'll read it within the next 3 months or so, hopefully it's as good as they say.

Later,

'Ners

***Speaking of respectable livings: what did earn you that written warning - did you show up for work with your schlong hanging out? Or worse?

P.S. Do you kknow the slogan of the World Cup 2010? 'Menschheit's coming home!'

P.P.S. More Bombay Mix? Is that a threat?

A week before the start of the new football season we went to White Hart Lane with Rick to see how Harry Redknapp's vision might stand up to reality in a friendly against Fiorentina. Tellingly, I knew very little about professional football when I decided to support Spurs. My parents didn't own a television and what I did know came from my friend Rene, who lived next door and liked West Ham. When we played football in the garden, he'd be Geoff Hurst and I'd be Martin Chivers, because I liked the name. I also liked the name Tottenham Hotspur, and when we watched Spurs beat Aston Villa 2-1 I decided I liked the team's white shirts. My mother wouldn't allow me to go to matches on my own because of the hooligan element so I didn't go to White Hart Lane for the first time until 1974. I went with Rick, a family friend. Martin Chivers (I think) scored for Spurs. Abba's 'Money Money Money' was playing on the tannoy at half time, and of course we stood for the entire match.

How things have changed. I'm 49 and Rick is 63. Leicester are no longer in the top division, tickets were £30 each (even for a friendly) and White Hart Lane is an all-seater; virtually the only thing that hadn't changed, as I remarked to Rick, was the pitch.

We had an excellent, birds-eye view, high up in the West Stand. An immobile forward line of Pavlyuchenko and Crouch wasn't helped by a central midfield consisting of Jenas and Palacios, a hard tackling, hard running duo not noted for defence-splitting through balls. Aaron Lennon on the right, apart from a couple of surging runs, was largely peripheral, but Giovanni Dos Santos, on the opposite wing, was the game's revalation: great dribbling skills and an eye for the right pass saw him serve up Tottenham's first goal on a plate for Pavlyuchenko. Despite dominating possession, Spurs went in at half time losing 2-1 because of a couple of defensive lapses.

At the beginning of the second half, Huddlestone, Kranjcar and Keane came on for Jenas, Lennon and Crouch. Huddlestone immediately gave the midfield more purpose and penetration, and Keane looked like the player of two years ago - a constant blur of movement, always demanding the ball and pulling the opposition players out of position with his darting runs. It was hardly a surprise when they combined to score the second equaliser, Huddlestone's precise through ball latched onto by Keane who finished with confidence and precision.

Spurs were completely dominating possession. Kranjcar looked sharp and hit the post with a low shot. Huddlestone's free kick produced a brilliant save from the Fiorentina keeper (I was convinced it was going in) and another goal by Pavlyuchenko was disallowed, presumably for offside. More substitutions gave some of the younger players a chance to impress. Danny Rose produced an impressive cameo on the right, showing a willingness to tackle back and once skinning an opposition defender to the crowd's delight. Jake Livermore was a young midfield player who had the confidence to demand the ball from more senior colleagues, and with one minute left of normal time, he produced an exquisite through ball to set Keane free once again, and Robbie drove the ball through the keeper's legs for a late winner, the perfect finish to an absorbing match. We celebrated in the appropriate way with an excellent Biryani in Hemel Hempstead before driving home.

Harry's vision, shared by legions of deluded fans, is to re-install Spurs as champions of England's top division. They last achieved this feat in 1961 when I was too young to be aware of it. The intervening years have witnessed the indefinite postponement of a vision that has remained stubbornly incompatible with reality. The Soviet postponment of Marx's vision, 'the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat', lasted for 74 years; Tottenham's interminable period of transition or 'rebuilding' has lasted for 49 years... and counting. Against all reason, the deluded cling to their faith. Around 30,000 of us turned up at White Hart Lane to watch a pre-season friendly.

The publication of Karl Marx and Careful Driving and the book's emergence as a best-selling sensation is, of course, another vision. Will I convert concept to reality or am I, like successive Soviet leaders and umpteen Spurs managers, doomed to failure? Faith, they say, can move mountains. My conviction that the idea's potential is massive and its originality beyond question keeps me getting up at 4 every morning to reconcile immaculate concept with an imperfect manuscript. I might be as deluded as all of those Spurs and England fans, but to cling to faith and hope, however illogical, is surely preferable to surrendering to existential despair. Such is the human condition.

Parallel Journeys

2010-06-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

We are already almost halfway through 2010. On New Year's Day, Linda and I made a list of our targets for the year. In a spirit of optimism, I wrote:

By the end of 2010, Chris will...

1. ...be ready to send Part One of Karl Marx and Careful Driving to literary agents

It is unlikely that I will be contacting literary agents this year. The more I research the history of the Soviet Union and Marxism, the more I find there is to write, so instead of a single book divided into three sections, I'm now writing a trilogy. The titles will probably be as follows:

1. Karl Marx and Careful Driving
2. Cold War and Careful Driving
3. Red Sunset and Careful Driving

I have been submitting Karl Marx and Careful Driving in 2,000-word chunks for the delectation of my fellow scribes of the Severn Valley Authors. When we convened at The Arches pub on 18 May I read out an extract that resumed the description of the drive across Poland and applied Plato's conflict of the World of Ideas and the World of the Senses to the controversial matter of speeding and the more straightforward arena of vehicle design.

'I found Chris's piece a brilliant melding of high ideas with everyday detail. It seems to me that Chris is close to perfecting his experiment in blending a history of philosophy with a compelling road trip,' Tony reported on the SVA's blog (http://severnvalleyauthors.blogspot.com/).

This is encouraging, but Tony continued: 'Several members of the group felt they would like to hear more from the perspective of the truck driving narrator, and I wouldn't disagree with this suggestion.'

They want more of the personal stuff, such as the practicalities of washing, shaving and going to the loo when a long-distance truck driver. These matters are indeed addressed, but spread out through the book rather than tackled at the beginning. Although Rob loves the concept of a book describing parallel journeys along roads and through history and philosophy, he found the extract 'difficult'. Helen 'struggled' and Annie pronounced it 'too highbrow'. I worry about this because I don't want to exclude less educated readers; I will therefore be devoting some time during editing to simplifying the language used and shortening sentences. I have no intention of 'dumbing down' the ideas, however. Some of the difficulties experienced by Rob, Helen and Annie are bound to arise from the separation of each submission by a period of around ten weeks owing to the fact that we meet only once a fortnight and have five members. The previous extract applied Plato's parallel worlds of ideas and senses to the Drivers' Hours Regulations:

Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast, sang Bob Dylan. The awareness of mortality gives human beings a unique perception of the value of time. For an alternative perspective on the nature of time Dylan might like to spend a few hours waiting here at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, or at Kukuryi, Waidhaus, Nadlac, or any of the previously insignificant border hamlets that have swiftly attained notoriety among drivers for the infamous bottlenecks with which they have become associated.

Time passes with excruciating slowness. Frustration mounts and tempers become frayed. In March I waited twenty-nine hours to enter Romania at Nadlac, and while waiting to enter Poland at Guben last month I heard rumours of queues over twenty miles long and rioting at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. According to Thierry a Polish customs officer had been fatally stabbed by a Russian driver.

I drive into Poland at 2.15 a.m. on a fresh tachograph chart having reasoned that ten hours of sleepless queuing on the Oder-Neisse Line is so far beyond the bounds of normality as to justify the temporary suspension of the European Union's Drivers' Hours Regulations.

Plato's observation that the material world was in a state of constant change preceded Hegel's by over two thousand years. It led him to the belief that the senses through which people experienced their environment were an unreliable sourceof truth because the truth was eternal. Everything in the World of the Senses was an imperfect ephemeral version of a perfect and eternal conceept or blueprint that resided in the World of Ideas.

In the World of the Senses living matter grew, withered and eventually reverted to dust, and inanimate objects were transformed over time by sunshine, wind, rain and tides. Absolute, immutable and eternal truths that were unaffected by relativity, time or place inhabited a separate World of Ideas that could be reached by the power of the intellect but were beyond the scope of sight, sound, smell, taste or touch. Specific examples of beauty present in the material world were transient shadowns of the eternal, perfect concept of beauty. Eternal features shared by specific trees, sunsets or people resident in the World of the Senses were combined in a perfect, immortal concept tree, sunset or person exclusive to the World of Ideas. Only the philosopher who had made the intellecutal journey from the World of the Sense to the World of Ideas could claim to possess knowledge; everyone else had to make do with opinions.

Absolute, immutable and eternal truths are confined to the hypothetical realms of mathematics, ideology, religion and the minds of the zealots who draw up the regulations by which we are expected to live.

The square on the hypoteneuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Hypothetical straight lines and perfect triangles are replicated imperfectly in the real world in Give-Way signs and slices of quiche.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Marxism was a perfect and eternal hypothesis that failed to make the transition to the imperfect and evolving human becoming.

God separated the light from the darkness and he named the light 'Day' and the darkness 'Night'. Evening passed and morning came - that was the first day. After creating the universe in six days God took a weekly rest period. We are the flawed replicas of a perfect blueprint that resides in a hypothetical world of the eternal and the absolute.

Thou shalt take a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours. This may be reduced to 9 consecutive hours on 3 days a week but thou shalt compensate for any such reduction by an equivalent period of rest being added to a daily or weekly rest period before the end of the following week. Devised by people who have never driven a truck and whose working day begins at 9 and ends at 5, the Drivers' Hours Regulations are composed of straight lines and right angles, designed for the European Union's perfect and eternal concept-being. Because I'm a flawed replica entirely devoid of straight lines and right angles, my safety depends upon whether I happen to feel tired rather than whether I have taken the statutory minimum daily rest period.

Like ideology and religion, legislation has to be applicable to the shifting realities of the sensory world if it is to be effective. 'We have to be practical about these things,' Henk is wont to remark, but whether the police or the ministry share the boss's definition of 'practicality' is open to debate. Now that I'm no longer in the European Union I doubt that the regulations apply anyway. Experience of the sensory world tells me that a three-hour drive from the border should see me to the secure parking are of the motel outside Wrzesnia, where a three-hour kip under the duvet on the Volvo's bottom bunk ought to recharge my batteries whilst still allowing me sufficient time to reach the motel at Siedlce within the maximum permitted fifteen-hour shift.

There was a good deal more about the drive across Poland, the Drivers' Hours Regulations and Plato's incompatible worlds, but having read the extract ten weeks ago, the others had clearly forgotten the finer details when the next extract applied Plato's dualism to speed limits:

Driving based on observation, experience and common sense will inevitably bring those motorists condemned to the impermanent World of the Senses into conflict with legislation that requries instinctive obedience to permanent, eternal speed limits from the hypothetical World of Ideas.

The fourth item on my list of targets for 2010 was to have at least fifty talks booked for 2011. This seems to be more realistic, although I didn't think so at the time. I have already done 15 this year, with another 14 more booked. Late bookings are bound to increase the amount for 2010. I already have 12 booked for 2011 and intend to send out more mailshots.

The purpose behind the talks is principally to promote 'Why Don't You Fly?' The Amazon ranking for 'WDYF?' on Wednesday 16 June 2010 was 7,416. Today, on 29 June, it is a depressing 107,176. The ranking fluctuates wildly - sometimes from six figures to four figures and back again within a fortnight. Usually the figure remains somewhere between 10,000 and 99,999 but today 'WDYF?' is currently the 107,176th most frequently bought book from Amazon. It sounds terrible but several books by higher profile authors with big publishers have a much lower rating. Some even have ratings of seven figures - which indicates just how much competition there is, and more books are being churned out all the time - good, bad and indifferent. My spirits rise and fall in an inverse relationship with the rising and falling ratings, but after five years on Amazon 'WDYF?'s rating hasn't shown any sign of permanent decline. Sales are steady, if unspectacular.

I can't help speculating about the reason for any sudden surge up the rankings. It might have been through word of mouth following sales of the book at one of my slideshows or the result of visits to the website, or even a belated review by a magazine. Or was it because one or more people saw the advert on the rear windscreen of the car?

Surely, I think to myself, the driver stuck behind me in this traffic jam or following me on the road home after one of my talks would make a mental note of the website and investigate? After all, this is a little different from the usual advertisement for a small business one sees on cars or vans. But people lead busy lives and many don't have time to read books any more. And I'm making the mistake, of course, in taking it for granted that the driver behind me would have similar interests in foreign lands and physical and mental challenges.

'Why Don't You Fly?' has nevertheless built up a small but dedicated fan base. People of all ages, of both sexes and from all walks of life have emailed or written to me to communicate the pleasure the book has given them. Some have even come to Bewdley to meet me. Last year in June I received the following email from Mark Brayne:

'Chris, just loved your book. I was once Beijing correspondent for the BBC (mid-80s) and you might even have read an FOOC or two of mine in that book to which you took recourse in Lanzhou waiting for the tyres. After what for me was a bit of a slow start, I so got into your book that I could scarcely put it down. Your writing, in many parts, is quite beautiful, as well as hilarious, and how you describe the encounter with Gao will stay with me for a long time. Also, my wife Sue is a budding writer and she found your thoughts on Being a Writer inspiring, and sobering. I read her chunks of your book and your website as we were canal boating around the Four Counties last week.

It was meeting a Brit cyclist atop the Khunjerab in 1986 (I so recognised what you described, although we did it in 4x4s from Kashgar to Islamabad) that inspired me, eventually, to tackle long-distance biking myself. I went to Budapest and back last year on a Thorn Raven (Rohloff, coupled) and am planning next year, to mark my 60th, to cycle to Moscow (another old posting), and after the Trans-Siberian, from Beijing to Hanoi, before carrying on around Oz, NZ and the US with my wife on our (also Thorn, coupled) tandem.

In short, it might be fun to meet up, if you were game. (I loved your description of Varkala too, which Sue and I visited last year and loved.) We live in Cirencester and I'm intending to set off at Easter next year. Some trepidation but also excitement. And I look forward to reading your new book.

PS For what it's worth, I blogged the Budapest trip at http://psychlotherapist.wordpress.com/

Mark drove to Bewdley for Sunday lunch last month, having postponed his round-the-world trip until next year. In what was a combined effort, Linda cooked a prawn curry while I occupied myself with the Saag side dish, the pilau rice and the poppadums. It was fascinating to hear Mark talk about his postings in Moscow and Beijing (where he covered the events at Tiananmen square in 1989). His fluency in five languages, including Russian and Hungarian, was instrumental in his appointment as a foreign correspondent, firstly for Reuters, and then for the BBC. He has changed career and is now working as a psychotherapist and is particularly interested in the psychology of Karl Jung. Among his other interests are cycling, navigating the UK's canal network on narrowboats, and ecology. He has fitted solar panels to his house in Cirencester and I'm looking forward next year to hearing about the epic bike ride.

Readers like Mark Brayne have indicated that 'Why Don't You Fly?' is probably a better-than-average and possibly even a very good travel book, but it isn't sufficient for your book to be better-than-average, or even excellent, if you are an unpublished or a self-published author. Rob (http://robertronsson.co.uk/) is currently undergoing the horror of submitting his latest manuscript to the 'closed shop' ruled by the literary agents and publishers. As fellow members of Severn Valley Authors we offered to read it through for him and offer any thoughts on how it might possibly be improved, so for the past couple of weeks I've swapped my customary bedtime research of politics, philosophy or history for 'The Spaniard's Wife', a fact-based-fiction tale of infidelity, socialist politics and industrial unrest set in the Glasgow of the early 1900s. It is (so far) proving to be an interesting and original idea, throroughly researched and expertly recounted by a writer with genuine ability. Rob is nevertheless confronting the problem experienced by all unpublished authors: if you have neither celebrity nor the right background or contacts, you may as well resign yourself to self-publishing - unless of course your work is judged by an editor to have strong potential to make an immediate and strong impact upon the market. It is that hope that keeps us submitting our manuscripts. For all the dissmissiveness and condescension of their rejection slips, agents and publishers depend upon the author's hope or belief; even John Grisham, Fay Weldon and J.K. Rowling started out by submitting manuscripts as unpublished authors. They hoped. They believed. They persisted. They succeeded.

Corporate Procedure and Artistic Expression

2010-05-04T03:19:00.000-07:00

Last month I was summoned to a 'formal interview', and two days later a letter informed me that I was to attend a 'disciplinary hearing'.

I sent a text to Linda: A chocolate has mysteriously found its way into my lunch box. I am giving it a 'formal interview' to establish why it hasn't followed 'procedures'. If I discover that the chocolate has a brain and is capable of acting upon its own initiative, it will be given a 'disciplinary hearing' and charged with 'conduct unbecoming of a lemon cream'.

The manager conducting the hearing showed all the humanity and sense of proportion I expect of a speed camera. When I reminded him that I had an exemplary record during my eight years with the company and that no-one had suffered from my 'crimes', he informed me sanctimoniously that a murderer is still a murderer, even if he (or she) has led a previously blameless life.

The night after the hearing I dreamt that I was back in the flat in Colnbrook. Concorde had just been bought by Quantas, painted bright red, and was about to make its first flight since coming out of retirement. We rushed to the windows to watch the beautiful bright red bird ascend smoothly into the stratosphere, but then something went horribly wrong. The plane went into a spin, then plummeted earthwards, disintegrating into flaming pieces. Horrified, I could only think of all those people on board, anticipating the journey of a lifetime and a happy landing on the other side of the world. I woke up at 3.30 wondering whether this dream was symbolic of the crashing and burning of my driving career, or of the more widespread crushing of the human spirit's freedom to soar by the weight of procedure and legislation. Are we in the hands of incompetent pilots or afflicted by a more general social malaise that is eliminating human essence from existence?

The divorce of essence from labour was fundamental to the antagonism Marx felt towards capitalism. In performing the dull and repetitive tasks generated by the division of labour, the factory workers spawned by the Industrial Revolution were no longer making use of the invention and imagination that distinguished human productivity from the instinctive forms of production practised by animals. 'Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, ' declared The Communist Manifesto (published in 1848), 'the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, the most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.' Because such labour separated people from the distinctive qualities that made them human, Marx contended in the mid-nineteenth century that they were scarely identifiable any more as human beings.

In the twenty-first century, management issue 'procedures' like confetti because people cannot be programmed into instinctive obedience like computers. Imposed to eliminate the requirement to think, 'procedures' - never to be questioned, overlooked or disobeyed - are the next best thing. I'd left the hearing with a 'Final Written Warning' (an odd concept considering I've never previously had a 'written warning') and questioning the manager's grip on reality. I hadn't murdered, hurt or maimed anyone. I hadn't been rude or abusive. I hadn't damaged any equipment. I hadn't stolen from anyone or attempted to defraud the company. I had committed the worst heresy of all in failing to follow 'company procedures'.

If this computer malfunctions once more it will be scrapped

For the past eight years the day job has served its purpose admirably. It demands no thought, so I have been able to perform my daily tasks on automatic pilot, pay the bills and get on with what makes me human: creating 'Why Don't You Fly?' and Karl Marx and Careful Driving. An idea is sometimes so good that I have to stop in the next lay-by or service area to write it down in my notebook before continuing, but the disciplinary hearing followed by the dream are the clearest signals that I have reached one of life's T-junctions. I can now hardly bear the prospect of going to the place I call work, where 'procedures' overrule common sense and where for the next twelve months I'll be operating under the threat of dismissal for the smallest misdemeanour or mistake.

Reuniting human essence with existence can only achieved by forging a career as author and inspirational speaker, but if I am to abandon the day job I must write one or more best-sellers and / or build a client base for my talks which means approaching more schools, colleges and universities, places where each year I'll be speaking to a different set of pupils or students.

Neither task will be easy. First of all the writing: I was simultaneously appalled and inspired by an article in the Sunday Times Magazine about the author Stephen Benatar. I had never heard of him.

'No, I never felt downhearted about the failure of any of my books. I have wondered why they haven't been taken up by readers and why does nobody know me? The thing is, I love to write. '

Stephen Benatar writes for exactly the same reason that I do: because he wants to be read. He got his first rejection slip at the age of twelve for a short story. At the age of 19 his first novel was rejected. He wrote 11 novels over the next two decades, but all were rejected by publishers. When The Man on the Bridge was published by Harvester when Benatar was 44, he dared to believe that finally, his literary career was about to take off. Despite good reviews, however, the novel failed to get good sales. Wish Her Safe At Home was then published in 1982 by The Bodley Head. The book received great reviews and was the runner-up for the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize, but like The Man on the Bridge it was unable to generate good sales figures. Bloodied but unbowed, Benatar kept on writing. By the end of the eighties he had written 15 books, only four of which were published. Cosmo Landesman, the Sunday Times interviewer, asked Benatar if he was downhearted during this period. His answer is salutary, proof to me that writing is a vocation, something one simply has to do irrespective of income.

'No, I don't feel any bitterness or envy of successful authors. Honest. People like Ian McEwan, I don't envy him because I don't rate his work. '

In 2007 Benatar attempted to get Wish Her Safe At Home republished as a Penguin Classic, but despite a fantastic review from Professor John Carey, a highly regarded reviewer for the Sunday Times, they rejected him. So did 36 other publishers. He took to republishing his novels under his own imprint - Welbeck Classics - and selling signed copies personally at bookshops. Managers have been astonished by his success - he sells on average around 50 books on each appearance. His record is 128. His secret is to approach browsers in bookshops and chat to them about his book - something that admittedly I'd find very hard to do.

Now, at the age of 73, after decades of obscurity and countless rejection slips, Stephen Benatar is finally on the verge of finding success as a writer. The New York Review of Books, having already published his novel Wish Her Safe At Home in the States, is about to launch a British edition. His lucky break came when he bumped into the managing editor of the publishing section in a bookshop and persuaded him to buy a copy. 'I read the book straight away and was knocked out . It's not every day you find a neglected classic from an Englishman who is still alive. Everyone in the office read it and was just as excited as I was,' said Franks.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6838975.ece

I hope I get my lucky break before I reach my seventies, but I may never get it at all. Like Benatar, however, I will keep writing. What started out many years ago as Driving Dorabella, a story about one man driving his truck from the United Kingdom to the oil fields in Kazakhstan has metamorphosed into Karl Marx and Careful Driving, a grand opera in three parts about European history and the ideas that shaped it. For centuries the conductor of this great opera was thought to be supernatural but the rise of humanism in the fourteenth century led to an increasing belief that human beings are the directors of their own opera. Because of the role his ideas played in the political history of the land through which the author is travelling, Karl Marx is the star. The validity of his materialist conception of human nature and his critique of nineteenth century working life is tested against the author's personal experience of working life at the end of the twentieth century. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Rousseau, Aristotle and Plato are co-stars, and Emperor Constantine, St Augustine, Tsar Nicholas II, Ronald Reagan, Bakunin, Feuerbach, Hegel and John Locke are amongst an illustrious supporting cast.

Thinking that watching someone else talk about an epic cycling adventure might give me some ideas of how to improve my own talk, we went to Malvern Theatres on 22 April to see a talk by the record-breaking long-distance cyclist Mark Beaumont. In 2008 Mark took 81 days off the previous record for the time taken to circumnavigate the world by bicycle, covering the 18,300 miles in 194 days and 17 hours, and crossing four continents and 20 countries. 16 months later he cycled 13,000 miles from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego. I would estimate that there would have been perhaps around 800 people who paid £14 each for tickets to see the talk and Mark probably sold around 200 copies of his book in a single evening.

Two years ago the Ludlow Cycle Users Group hired Ludlow Assembly Rooms and opened my own talk and slideshow up to the general public. Over a hundred people paid £5.00 per ticket, and many more were apparently turned away at the doors. The talk was well received and I sold 20 copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?' afterwards. I began to think that as well as approaching groups such as the W.I., Townswomen's Guilds and Probus Groups, I ought to be hiring theatres and directing my talks to the general public. Unlike Mark I haven't broken any world records and my journey hasn't been serialised by the BBC, but the experience in Ludlow indicates that I might reasonably expect audiences of between 100 and 200 people to turn up and pay £7.50 each to hear about another epic ride. Hopefully they might also purchase 20 - 30 copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?'.

On Saturday 24 April we went to the Symphony Hall to see a performance by the Academy of Ancient Music of the Overture to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, Mozart's Piano Concerto No 25 in C major, and Mozart's Requiem. Two of the soloists in the Requiem interested me a great deal. James Gilchrist, the tenor, used to be a doctor before turning to a full-time career in music in 1996:

'I was once accosted by someone after a concert in Aldeburgh, who told me I wouldn’t remember him (he was not quite right, but I certainly couldn’t place him), and telling me that he used to tell me off for humming during his operations when I was a student of surgery, and now look – he’s having to fork out a fortune to hear me! He was delighted to do so, of course, and it was an important lesson for me about why music is so valuable to us all. I believe the arts are in some profound way essential to all of us. Artistic expression and endeavour are what make us human, and the most visceral and basic of our modes of communication. It’s glib to call music the medicine of the soul, but I think there’s some truth in that. '

(http://www.jamesgilchrist.co.uk/)

Christopher Purves, the bass, began as a performer with the rock and roll group Harvey and the Wallbangers before embarking upon a career singing as a classical soloist:

Purves came to opera late and not by the well-trodden route of young artist programmes, prizes and talent scouts. He didn’t study music (he read English at Cambridge) and sang in a rock band, Harvey and the Wallbangers, until 1987. He also recorded the theme to the Um Bongo soft drink ads (“Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they drink it in the Congo . . .) “Not the prime way of getting into opera,” he notes drily.

(http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/)

I rather like people who don't follow established procedures. James Gilchrist and Christopher Purves are wonderful talents. Artistic expression and endeavour are what make us human.

Nodding donkeys near Atyrau, Kazakhstan (photo courtesy of Lenny Coulson)

May promises to be a busy month. Switching from one line of narrative to another in Karl Marx and Careful Driving must be achieved without derailing the reader, so points will have to be oiled. I must research the oil industry in Kazakhstan and the Crusades, and re-read Rousseau's Social Contract.

In Memoriam

2010-03-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

Linda has been worrying about her children. Hannah (31) is battling serious health problems and William (24) has just split up with his French girlfriend after six years. Although I'm not a parent myself, as an author I am able to understand that parents never really stop worrying about their offspring.

My books are my children. The way I see life and choose to express my ideas is as distinctive as my DNA so it might be argued that each of my books contains my genes. My first-born, 'Why Don't You Fly?', will be six years old in June, and I have a second, Karl Marx and Careful Driving, on the way. 'Why Don't You Fly?' is making its way out there in the unforgiving world, competing with its peers for attention on the shelves of bookshops and on the Internet. I am concerned every time the Amazon ranking drops, but the book has never failed to rally and although sales have never been spectacular there hasn't yet been any consistent downward trend. Like any doting parent I am offering as much support as I can - by attempting to attract more traffic to my website and blog, and by publicising my talks and slide shows about the ride to China.

I did four such presentations in March - to Hindlip Ladies and Age Concern Over Sixties (both in Worcester), to an Agricultural Discussion Group (at a pub in Grimley), and to a group of around 25 people at the Village Hall in Heightington. After each presentation I answered questions, sold signed copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?' and sometimes found myself unable to pack up my gear because so many delightful people wanted come up to chat and shake my hand. One member of the audience at Heightington who had read 'Why Don't You Fly?' twice announced that he felt privileged to have met its author.

I am alway thrilled when my presentations are well received but opportunities to speak to a Women's Institute or a Cycling club only occur once. If I am to achieve my ambition of abandoning the day job in the near future I will have to build up a client base conisisting of venues that I can visit year after year, inspiring a different group of people on each occasion. This means approaching more schools, colleges and universities. In the longer term, of course, I hope to achieve my ambition by writing one or more bestsellers.

I also went for a 25-mile walk and attended a performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto (soloist Joshua Bell) and the Eroica Symphony at Symphony Hall last month, but all of these events were overshadowed by the death of my father after a long illness on the 22nd at the age of 80.

On Friday 26 March the following obituary appeared in The Times:

ASTON SMITH Anthony, passed peacefully away on 22nd March 2010, at Michael Sobell House, Oxford. Much loved father of Chris, Piers, Ben and Poppy and loving grandfather. Dear husband of Julia. Good friend to his five stepchildren and their families. A great enabler who asked us to smile in his memory.

'Anthony was a great friend, a loving husband, a kind stepfather and a gentle grandfather. Along with Piers, Ben and Poppy, I am immensely privileged to have been able to call him Dad.

Even after the tragic death of our mother he never failed to find time for us. After coming home from work he’d cook our supper.

I retain fond memories of his delicious curries, never ending supply of rissoles, blackberry ice cream, vast 4-tier alcohol-laden chocolate cakes, and those exploding bottles of home-made ginger-beer. He was always available to help us with homework, and later on we would curl up on his bed and he would read us stories. I remember the different voices he used for Piglet, Roo and Eeyore; and for Gandalf, Gollum and Wormtongue.

He rearranged pieces of Mozart for our family quintet, wrote us ghost stories and built us fabulous scale models of battleships out of cardboard. For Poppy he built a scale model of the house we lived in to serve as a doll’s house.

He chased us around the garden with the watering can and introduced us to the enduring beauty of the Shropshire Hills.

Although he surely questioned the wisdom of some of our decisions he was always supportive of whatever we decided to do. When I told him that I wanted to drive Volvos, Scanias and DAFs all over Europe, he might have told me that university graduates don't become truck drivers.

Instead, he pointed out that I had spent four years studying at university in order to widen my choice of career, not restrict it, and that the very last thing my degree should do was prevent me from following the path of my choice. Those were the words of a great father. They were also the words of a wonderful human being.

It is with a sense of great loss that I refer to him in the past tense. During a short speech at a lunch held in honour of his 80th birthday, he thanked everyone present for having given him so much more than he could ever hope to give back. I speak on behalf of us, his four children, and we want to shout it from the roof tops that he gave us more than he could ever have known, that we loved him more than words can say, and that we are deeply proud to be his children.

We will miss him terribly.'

My father will be immortalised in the memories of his children and grand children and the many others whose lives he has touched and influenced.

I will smile in his memory.

16,500 miles. No support crew, no engine, and no ghost writer

2010-03-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

I began March by tentatively embarking upon my first run since the fall and the injury sustained to my hip put me out of action on 7th January. Cycling and walking have built up my fitness but I was a little apprehensive about how I was going to feel after around eight run-free weeks.

Rose, who has has appointed herself as my personal trainer, insisted on coming with me. We ran along the river, the frost having helpfully hardened the muddy, slippery parts of the path, and then into the forest. I was wearing gloves but my hands, always the most vulnerable to the cold, were freezing.

Rose - small but deadly

It didn't take long for me to warm up, however, and the crisp air and dazzling sunshine made the running a joy. Once in the forest, Rose becomes a hunter, her ears alive to the sounds and her nose to the scents made by the wildlife inhabiting the forest. 'Nature commands all animals and the beast obeys,' wrote Jean-Jacques. 'Man receives the same impulsion, but he recognises himself as being free to acquiesce or resist; and it is above all in this consciousness of his freedom that the spirituality of his soul reveals itself.' During a circuit of around six miles that even included a sprint, Rose was consistently beastly to the local wildlife and I wondered whether life dicates consciousness (Marx) or whether consciousness dictates life (Hegel). This is a debate that will recur throughout Karl Marx and Careful Driving.

I arrived back home less exhausted than I expected. Rose reclined on the sofa listening to a phone-in on Radio Five and ruminatively licking her nether regions while I peeled off my muddy running gear, showered and got changed. Assuming that there are no ill-effects I'll add twice-weekly runs to the cycling commuting I do four times a week. I run and cycle not only to keep fit, but also because I tend to get some of my best ideas for the book when out running or cycling to work. The physical activity seems to clear the mind and the seratonin released by vigorous exercise stimulates the grey matter. Inspiration is fleeting, precious and so fragile. Like the body, the mind thrives on regular exercise.

This morning someone was talking on the radio about the determination, drive and focus necessary to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. If determination, drive and focus was all one needed to become a best-selling author then 'Why Don't You Fly?' would be somewhere near the top of the best-sellers lists. Reviews in the media and the feedback I receive from readers (http://www.cycleuktochina.com/) reassure me that I possess talent too. Unfortunately you also need to find a mainstream publisher prepared to invest in your talent, and I've come to the conclusion that attracting a publisher requires more than just determination, drive, focus and even talent.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman rode their powerful BMW motorbikes from John O'Groats to Cape Town, a 15,000 mile journey that took them twelve weeks. The BBC sent along a camera crew and made their adventure into a television series. Their ghost-written travelogue was written in about six weeks and almost instantly made it into the best-seller lists.

For the past three years I have been entertaining members of cycling clubs, the W.I., photographic societies, the National Trust, groups of businessmen, and audiences at festivals, bookshops and schools with a talk and slideshow about what it takes to cover 16,500 miles in thirteen months without an engine. My book took me eighteen months to write, and a further eighteen months, after countless rejections from agents and publishers, to get into print.

'These areas are often labelled "God-forsaken" for no better reason than that they are uninhabitable by humans, but I love deserts. Deserts are human-being-forsaken and the result is a natural perfection that is the most compelling evidence I've ever come across that perhaps, after all, there is a God out there somewhere. The constantly changing landscape of Baluchistan, from flat plains covered in shingle through rolling sand dunes to mountains, was a source of fascination. These are the last outposts of creation as it was meant to be before human interference. The silence that reigns in a desert is so overwhelming that it compels you to contemplate the nature of being and even enables you to tune in to the all but imperceptible music played by your soul, which I assure you is there but most of us are too distractied by other noises to pay any heed to it - and it is always worth listening to.' (Slide 25 of '16,500 Miles Without An Engine.')

Instead of a 1100 c. c. motorcycle engine my lungs and my legs powered me into headwinds, across deserts and up to mountain passes, and a wonderfully indomitable and reliable source of energy they proved to be. I set off without accomplice, satellite navigation or support crew. I wore out three sets of tyres, three chains, two pairs of boots and fell off the bike six times. It took a great deal of determination, drive and focus - and some of you would doubtless suggest considerable stupidity too.

'The cool mountain air of the Southern HIll Stations of Kodaikanal and Ooty provided much-needed relief from the tropical stickiness of the plains below, but only at the cost of brutal ascents to heights of over 8,000 feet. I think brute strength and physical fitness will only take you so far on this kind of journey. I spoke of my body being my engine; as well as fuel (which was excellent here in India), the engine needs a spark to the plugs. That spark was provided by passion. Passion drove me into headwinds and up to mountain passes wehn my feet were smarting, my crotch was sore, and my back was aching. When my strength and energy deserted me through illness in Pakistan and China, passion was all that drove me on. I think that everything one does in life should be motivated by passion. With suffiecient passion you can overcome any obstacle.('Slide 33 of '16,500 Miles Without An Engine.')

Last week I spoke to an audience of sixth-formers at a school in Blackpool and this evening I'll be speaking to a women's group in Worcester about my stupidity. How does it feel to trade domestic comfort and security for life as a nomad and to pare one’s life down to the bare necessities? What is it like to push at the frontiers of one’s physical and mental endurance? What is the effect upon the human spirit of struggling against hurricanes in the Gobi Desert by day and shivering alone in culverts at night? How does the agnostic westerner react to the religious fatalism of Islam and Hinduism in encounters with locals? As well as attempting to answer these questions, I speak about the importance of having a dream, about connecting with one’s passions, and about recognising and seizing opportunities.

'Isolated from the north, west and south by mighty mountain ranges, and from the east by the world's second-largest desert, Xinxiang, the westernmost and largest province of China, is one of the most inaccessible places in the world. Although I'm not religious, I felt that the sheer perfection of this scenery is a far more telling tribute to the Creator (whoever he, she or it might be) than any man-made church, mosque or temple. The only imperfection in the scene is the road, but thankfully there are no vehicles on it to break the silence, for that too is perfect as soon as I dismount and my breathing quietens and my heartbeat slows. Cycling at these altitudes was lung-heaving work because of the lack of oxygen. (Slide 43 of '16,500 Miles Without An Engine.')

After each presentation I stay for as long as necessary to answer questions, and I usually manage to sell a few signed copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?' We unrecognised, uncelebrated authors have to draw upon every drop of our determination, drive, focus - and talent - to sell our books.

Audiences seem to enjoy the presentations:

On behalf of Hagley Wives I’m writing to say a huge thank you for coming and telling us about your amazing achievement. We all had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. I can fully understand the personal satisfaction that you gained from your trip. I am very much looking forward to reading your book and seeing the pictures on your website. It was hard to believe that that relatively small bicycle had taken you across so many miles. If ever you do another journey, please let us know and we’ll have you back in Hagley to share it with us. Again, many many thanks for your visit. Ann Pagett (Programme Secretary)

Readers and reviewers alike have been enthused by the book:

Chris Smith seems to be a man of considerable talent. I lived every mile of his journey to Beijing, which included a four-month side trip around India. By the end I felt that I’d done the trip with him and enjoyed every inch. Buy this book! It’s a great read. Cycle Magazine

Smith’s smart, honest prose is crafted superbly and peppered with wonderful moments of drama, dialogue and real humanity. Asia and Away Magazine

For eighteen months I wrote, proof-read, edited and agonised over every word, sentence and paragraph of 'Why Don't You Fly?' myself. Tributes like the above therefore mean a great deal more to me than they would to celebrities whose memoirs are ghostwritten for them.

Celebrity memoirs guarantee sales, however, and that is all the justification the publishers need. A passion for writing, a love of the English language, determination, drive, focus and even literary talent aren't enough to earn a publishing contract because they don't guarantee sales.

Reasons to be cheerful

2010-02-01T20:36:00.001-08:00

January 2010 has been a strange month. The strangeness began on the seventh when my bicycle hit black ice and dumped me upon the unyielding road at around 7.30 a.m. on the way to work. I remember being frogmarched into a house at the roadside, mumbling 'Don't worry, I'll be fine...' An ambulance took me to hospital where the doctor was more concerned about the bang to my head than the pain in my right hip, which had taken the brunt of the impact. She told me to get 'a responsible adult' to keep an eye on me for the next 24 hours and to rest for a couple of days. In the absence of 'a responsible adult' Linda came to collect me and we drove home along the road where I'd had my accident in order to collect the bike but I was unable to find the address given to me by the ambulance man. The problem was solved the next day by an unexpected email:

Hi Chris. I was the girl with the dog from this morning. I really hope you are ok after your nasty fall. I know you were a little confused (naturally) and was worried you might not have remembered where your bike was. (I imagine it to be your prized possession!) It is at my sisters house, safely in the shed.

There followed details of her sister's address, directions, phone number and 'best wishes for a speedy recovery'.

Dear Victoria, (I wrote back) Many thanks for your concern and for having the initiative to note the website address. I'm basically OK - just a little sore. I've been told by the hospital doctor to take things easy for a couple of days. You are right - I have been worrying about the bike and wondering just how I'm going to collect it when I have only the vaguest recollection as to where I fell. I think I must have blacked out for a few seconds because I have no memory at all of a girl with a dog! My partner came to collect me from Worcester Hospital yesterday morning and we drove up the road but couldn't locate the Cottage. I'll phone you later today on your mobile. We may try to collect the bike if road conditions permit. Thanks again.

We duly recovered the bike but I was experiencing the kind of excruciating pains in my badly swollen hip that I associate with fractures. Linda drove me to Kidderminster Hospital where the X-ray failed to show the expected fracture but the doctor told me that the swelling was a haematoma. The stabbing pain I was experiencing was the mass of clotted blood pressing on a nerve.

I'd like to thank Victoria Lacks again for scraping me off the road and her sister Caroline for looking after my bike and for welcoming a dazed, incoherent and - as she confided in me when I collected the bike - a rather 'scary' figure into the warmth of her cottage to await the ambulance. At the beginning of February the swelling on my hip has almost disappeared but I'm still getting isolated stabs of pain and I haven't yet gone back to work. I am more mobile but don't feel up to walking the dog for more than around twenty minutes, let alone do any running or cycling and I still can't lie on my right side when in bed.

In other respects January has been a good month. The haematoma hasn't affected my fingers and the head injury I sustained merely left me a little woozy for a couple of days, so I've had sorely needed time with the manuscript of Karl Marx and Careful Driving and it has benefitted accordingly.

'During the first few weeks at Fransen the gap between essence and existence appeared to be unbridgeable and at times I teetered on the brink of despair. I'd stumbled entirely by accident upon one of the most coveted driving jobs to be had. Fransen's drivers saw themselves as an elite and were the most demanding and ruthless of critics. Any failure to match the standards they set or to pull one's weight wouldn't be tolerated and inexperience wasn't an alibi that I'd be able to use for long.'

Other reasons to be cheerful came in the form of three more emails from readers of 'Why Don't You Fly?' The indifference shown by mainstream publishers to the book means that, like so many other people who love writing, I haven't been able to give up the day job. Fortunately that indifference doesn't seem to extend to the book's readers:

Chris,
I look forward to being able to buy your next book; Marx/Driving. I wish you good luck in finding a publisher because I have just been enthralled by 'Why Don't You Fly?'. I can empathise with your efforts just a fraction. After the collapse of my parents' health I decided to cycle from 'new' home to 'old' home, Isle of Wight to Blackpool. It turned out to be a brief Odyssey plagued by a deluge of biblical proportions for its second half. At 422 miles cross-country in 3 days it pales in to insignificance with your own achievements but just allows me a tiny insight into the stimulation of the human spirit that challenge, difficulty and adventure can engender. Having also travelled in some of the countries that you wrote about, I also thank you for your reflection on their precious contrasts before globalisation rapidly shrinks too many of them. You write very well.
Again, Good luck.
Paul Lyon

Hi Chris,
My husband got me your book for Christmas, and as he's a really keen cyclist (and I'm not) I suspected it might be more of a present for him to borrow! I couldn't have been more wrong -- it is a wonderful book and makes a refreshing change from other cycling/travel books I've dipped into. I've just visited your website to see the photos, and came across your essay about writing and being published. I am a writer too and I find your views very realistic about the real way publishing works, something that hardly anyone seems to acknowledge. Well done for hanging in there and getting the book out to readers. I look forward to your new book coming out. Best wishes,
Josie Aston

Dear Chris,
Your book ' Why Don't you Fly' was fascinating. I have been reading travel books for years, always looking for the 'wow factor'. More recently and more specifically my interest has turned towards cycling adventures. Whilst your story started slowly I soon found myself endulging in your next adventure and imagining what it must feel like, the frustration and relief, the isolation, the incredible people and landscapes. I am sure that you have many people writing to you and saying what I am about to say, but I do not mean it to be a cliche, rather my honest account. My personal interest is in some ways similar to yours, the daily grind of working in London is getting in the way of what I really want from my life. So the ending of your book coincides nicely with the handing in of my resignation. Destination London to Australia by bicycle. Of course I am not as brave as you and without my fiance I am sad to say I would never have thought it possible. But here we both are, counting down the last weeks before we leave. So thankyou for keeping me motivated and proving that it is possible. The number of times I have been asked 'Why Don't You just Fly' made the title of your book so fitting.
Cheers, Kelli

This is why I write - and what better reason could one possibly have? Many people dream of winning the lottery but the knowledge that my writing has brought pleasure to complete strangers makes me far richer than any amount of money. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Paul, Josie and Kelli for getting in touch, and I'm deeply grateful to the many other wonderful people who have taken the trouble to email or write to me. Your letters and emails have made all the countless hours spent in front of the computer and poring over the manuscript infinitely worthwhile. They have vindicated my decision to dedicate my life to writing...

'Intoxicating highs were followed by subterranean lows. The exhilaration of crossing the Alps in bright sunshine in a giant DAF pulling a tri-axle trailer loaded with twenty tonnes of peaches from sun-drenched Ravenna was the stuff of dreams but it would be counterbalanced by the horror of a delivery at 3 a.m. in the insanely congested streets of Spitalfields market.'

...and are a source of encouragement during those inevitable periods of self-doubt when I suspect that what I'm writing is garbage and wonder if anyone will bother to read it. A selection of readers' comments can be found by clicking on the following link: http://www.cycleuktochina.com/Readers.htm.

On the penultimate day of the month Linda drove us into Birmingham to see Daniel Barenboim conduct Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht and perform Beethoven's majestic Emperor piano concerto. I think friends can be defined as 'those people without whom the world would be a poorer place' but there is also a handful of people whom I've never met without whom the world would also be a poorer place. Daniel Barenboim comes into the latter category. I was brought up with his early recordings of Mozart's piano concertos and a packed Symphony Hall audience was enraptured by his virtuosity and brio at the keyboard. When announcing the encore (a dreamy Chopin Nocturne) he displayed a nice sense of humour in wagging an admonishing finger at us for preferring the Beethoven to the Schoenberg.

'Daniel Barenboim is a great man,' commented my father when I told him about the concert. Brilliant people perform a service to humankind by showing the rest of us what is possible but Barenboim's greatness doesn't lie just in his legendary status as a performer and a recording artist; he is a visionary who believes in the potential of music to bridge political divides. In 1999 he collaborated with the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said to found the West-East Divan Workshop, a project designed to bring together young Palestinian and Israeli musicians.

Barenboim's long-term vision contrasts starkly with the paucity of genuine vision that exists within Westminster. The months leading up to a general election ought to offer us an opportunity to witness a series of exciting debates about the long-term destiny of the United Kingdom. Nobody in either the party of government or the opposition appears to have a vision that extends beyond offering the electorate a series of short-term bribes intended to persuade it to vote them into office for the next five years. Three months of sterile and unprincipled bickering is a deeply depressing prospect. None of our politicians will achieve greatness until their vision extends to serving others before themselves. Their presence in the world might in that case make it a better place for millions of people who have never met them.

Just like Daniel Barenboim's. (http://www.danielbarenboim.com/)

Aiming High

2010-01-03T13:38:00.001-08:00

Bill Nicholson, the Tottenham manager, said, 'It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.'

I set out to cycle from the UK to Vladivostok but I had to terminate my journey after 16,500 miles at Beijing. I was distraught and the disappointment lasted for several weeks after I returned home but I have since consoled myself with the thought that I failed aiming high, and I like to think that the failure had in it an echo of glory.

The greater the challenge you set yourself, of course, the more likely you are to fail in your endeavour. Karl Marx and Careful Driving is even more ambitious a project than cycling to Vladivostok. The idea for the book goes back to 1993 when I was allocated a brand-new Volvo truck specifically designed for the ultra-long-haul journeys to Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. As a University-educated lorry driver I felt that I was almost uniquely qualified to chronicle adventures involving potholes and blistering heat in the summer...

'A series of ripples in the tarmac regularly threaten to wrench the steering wheel from my grasp. All the authorities have to do to prevent speeding is to stop repairing road surfaces; frequently I am obliged to reduce speed to a crawl, my attention completely focused upon the area of worn tarmac immediately ahead. People break the law because national speed limits have remained static in the face of improvements to both roads and vehicles. From time to time my thoughts stray to the bottles inside the trailer and I wonder uneasily if they’ll all be empty by the time we eventually reach Aktyubinsk.' (Photograph courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

...sheet ice a foot thick in the winter...

'Whereas in the summer I lamented the lack of mountain ranges to add topographical and meteorological diversity to the immense plains of the east, I now bless the fact that if the earth were flat one would probably be able to stand on the top of Shropshire’s Clee Hill and see right across to the Urals. One drive axle and a single steering axle out of six don’t make either for effective traction or directional control and the fewer the bends and gradients to be negotiated the better. Mountain passes I can do without.' (Photo courtesy of Jeff Spencer)

...and an armed policeman riding in the passenger seat to discourage bandits – all at a time of great political and social upheaval in the former Soviet Empire...

'It is the complications that have made my driving career memorable. Collecting the guard who was to accompany Tony and me on the trip to Tengiz in October was aggravated by the attempted coup d’etat mounted by Rutskoi and his fellow hardliners in the Kremlin. The parliamentary buildings had been shelled by tanks under the command of Boris Yeltsin and the city centre was in turmoil. A couple of months later the damage done to the ‘White House’ by the shelling is still evident in the scorched and blackened upper storeys.' (Photo courtesy of Richard Breakwell)

I kept an A4 page-a-day diary and made entries every day for a year before swapping life on the road...

'Through this immense and seemingly uninhabited land runs this unforgiving road, an endless black ribbon stretching away to the shimmering horizon. The desert must be further south; at Uralsk the Tengiz-bound cargoes would have followed the Ural River due south towards Atirau and the shores of the Caspian Sea, but our destination lies to the east.' (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

...for a job in the office in order to have more time to write. The book's first incarnation as Driving Dorabella failed to make an impression with publishers, and I gave up when I was made redundant after five years working in the office.

If at first you don't succeed... Redundancy was the catalyst for the ride to China and a second, more successful effort at writing a travel book. Writing is like any other skill: you improve with practise. 'Why Don't You Fly?' was published in August 2005. Driving Dorabella didn't succeed because ten years ago I was still a beginner in the art of writing. I know that I am a far more accomplished writer now than I was then and I have high hopes that the book's second, very different, incarnation as Karl Marx and Careful Driving will fare better.

I feel that it is my destiny to write this book. The following extracts from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions strike a chord: 'Of the various works I had on the stocks there was one on which I had long meditated and to which I was more attracted than the others. To it I was anxious to devote the whole of my life, for it would, in my opinion, put the seal on my reputation. This was my Political Institutions. It was thirteen or fourteen years since I had conceived the original idea for it... Although I had been engaged in this work for five or six years I had not got very far with it. Books of this kind require reflection, leisure and quiet. Besides, I was working on it, as they say, behind closed doors, and I had preferred not to communicate my plan to anyone, even Diderot. I was afraid that it would seem too bold for the age and the country in which I was writing, and my friends' alarm might hinder me in the execution.'

It has been several years since the book's original conception and I am similarly secretive about the manuscript. Books of this kind require reflection, leisure and quiet. The only people to have seen any of the manuscript are my partner, a couple of close friends and my fellow members of Severn Valley Authors (http://severnvalleyauthors.blogspot.com/).

Far from hindering me in the execution, Robert Ronsson, author of Olympic Mind Games, was moved to write the following letter to a literary agent after reading a couple of early chapters:

'I'm taking the unusual (and, I admit, impertinent) step of suggesting you look at the work of somebody else. His name is Chris Smith. Chris lives in the same town as me and asked me to critique the opening ofhis book. I've read three chapters and I am really excited about it. Chris drives articulated trucks for a living and his book describes three trips to Kazakhstan in the early nineties shortly after the break up of the Soviet Union. What makes the book unique and compelling is that Chris intersperses his travel writing with musings, sometimes serious, sometimes humourous, on philosophy, life and the human condition with particular reference to the writings of Karl Marx. The book's title is Karl Marx and Careful Driving. Chris, who graduated from Nottingham University with a degree in French, has a nearly complete manuscript but, because he's working full-time (and he's a bit of a perfectionist), he reckons he needs another two years to complete the intricate job of shuffling the parts together to make a cohesive piece. If he had an advance he could take a break from driving and finish it in months rather than years. You may like to look at Chris's first book, which he published himself. It's called 'Why don't you fly?' and is an account of his solo bike ride from Worcestershire to Beijing. You can look it up on Amazon. I know you are inundated with submissions but I bet not many come from third parties who have no interest in the manuscript or the writer other than the thrill generated by reading something innovative and exciting. Would you be interested in seeing a submission?'

Nothing came of the enquiry but Rob's reaction has given me a great deal of encouragement. At the beginning of 2010 I am pondering whether to divide the book into two or three separate volumes (one volume per trip), firstly to reduce its size to something more manageable for the average reader, and secondly to get at least part of it off to publishers within the next couple of years; I don't want to repeat the experience of Rousseau, who never completed his Political Institutions. The only section published was The Social Contract, but it sufficed to establish him as one of the greatest and most original thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Karl Marx and Careful Driving won't have the impact of Rousseau's A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality or Marx's Communist Manifesto but it might establish my reputation as an 'innovative and exciting writer.' At any rate I believe the book has the potential to end up as a cult best-seller along the lines of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

No-one finds real success by aiming low. I am aiming so high that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.

Inhabiting a different planet

2009-12-15T22:19:00.001-08:00

'The journey from university graduate to pilot of a Volvo F12 on its way to Kazakhstan hasn't been accomplished by avoiding pain. I wanted to make these journeys because the human spirit yearns to be tested. Only by subjecting myself to a series of such tests and only by rising to these challenges will I discover who I am, or rather what I can become.'

When I wake up I tend to talk to my long-suffering partner about whatever happens to be on my mind. This morning I spoke to her about a dream in which I was back driving the Volvo truck that stars in Karl Marx and Careful Driving. K123 YOF was stolen while I was in a cafe somewhere in northern Italy and my boss, who improbably happened to be wobbling around northern Italy on his bicycle, was so furious with me he could hardly speak.

More usually I talk to her about a great idea I've just had about Karl Marx and Careful Driving, or one of the frequent problems I encounter in the book's construction. It helps of course that Linda is writing her own novel, intriguingly entitled A Head Full of Budgerigars and subtitled The Memories of No-one in Particular.

'It was nice that Charlotte couldn't bring herself to believe that I'm a truck driver,' I said, abandoning that disturbing dream and moving on to last night's meeting of the Severn Valley Authors (http://severnvalleyauthors.blogspot.com/)
'In the mind of a seventeen-year-old all truck drivers are hairy arsed blokes covered in tatoos and they don't generally wake up their partners at four in the morning to discuss Plato's Ideal State or Karl Marx's theories of alienation,' Linda pointed out.
'That's a preconception held by virtually everyone, not just seventeen-year-olds. I inhabit a different planet to most of the guys at work.'
'I don't think its just the guys at work. You inhabit a different planet to most people.'
'Most writers do. We create a separate world with our imaginations and then we write about it.'
'You're probably right. I know I live in a different world to most people.'

Yesterday evening's meeting, held at our place, was the last before Christmas so Linda and I provided wine and mince pies instead of the usual coffee and biscuits. We critiqued the re-written first chapter of A Head Full of Budgerigars. The chances of a work of fiction written by 'no-one in particular' being accepted in a market in which publishers and the media are in thrall to the cult of celebrity are minute, but Linda's descriptive writing is superb. Take the following:

The garden was a jungle. A machete and a pioneering spirit were needed to thwart the enthusiasm of the brambles, nettles and waist-high grasses. During the summer months little pockets had been conquered, neat little handkerchiefs of lettuce, radishes and beans, patches of indomitable courgettes and blotchy tomatoes. The gardens that ran the length of the old miners' cottages had manicured lawns and bird baths, dahlias and garden furniture with sun shades. Some had immaculate vegetable plots that made her feel ashamed of her efforts.

The cottage gardens germinated gossip. The rumours spread like weeds along the terrace, through the runner beans and over the rhubarb, gathering momentum and spice as they brushed past the aubergines and lollo rosso. No doubt they whispered about the garden at Number Eight which was a graveyard for broken mowers, clapped-out strimmers and handle-less spades.

I suspect that the description and the imagery contained within the quoted passage is way beyond many established authors, let alone the ghost-writers of celebrity 'autobiographies' and 'novels'. Sometimes I wonder if publishers publish the books the public wants to read, or if the public is obliged to read whatever rubbish they decide to publish. Answers on a postcard, please.

After the meeting we investigated a recently opened bar down by the river. Annie asked me about my background. I told her and Tony about the fascination with trucks and faraway places that began in early childhood and led, despite an honours degree in French, to what I saw as the entirely logical decision to combine these two passions in a career as an international truck driver. Six years of adventures on the road with Fransen Transport were followed by five years working in their office as a traffic clerk and transport manager. I reacted to redundancy in 1999 by cycling 16,500 miles from Bewdley to Beijing. When I returned home I was faced by a choice: either I could attempt to resume a career in transport management or I could get a less demanding job back on the road in order to be able to indulge more fully my passion for writing. The decision to take the second option was rewarded by the eventual publication in 2005 of my first book, 'Why Don't You Fly?' (http://www.cycleuktochina.com/)

Signing copies of 'Why Don't You Fly?' at Waterstones

A single letter or email from a reader who has been enthralled by 'Why Don't You Fly?' is worth far more to me than winning the lottery because anyone is capable of winning the lottery. Those letters and emails are the reward for hours, days, weeks, months and years of isolation, dedication, obsession and perfectionism - and, thank goodness, the occasional flash of inspiration - in front of a computer. There is no greater feeling than the knowledge that one has succeeded in bringing joy to others. It is that fabulous high that motivates any true writer or artist, not the thought of sales or royalty cheques. Only the hope that Karl Marx and Careful Driving will bring similar joy to many more readers is keeping me going.

Perhaps I do inhabit a different planet, but it's not a bad place to be.

Work-in-Progress

2009-12-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

'A three-axle Volvo F12 tractor unit fitted with the deluxe high-roof 'Globetrotter' cab and left-hand drive, K123 YOF was purchased specifically for the ultra long-haul work to the former Soviet Union and is the first brand-new vehicle I have ever driven.'

Last night's meeting of the Severn Valley Authors (http://severnvalleyauthors.blogspot.com/) brought some interesting comments about Karl Marx and Careful Driving. After I'd read out the latest 2,000-word extract the others took it in turns to make their observations. All were agreed that Karl Marx and Careful Driving was a terrific idea that had the makings of a unique book. Tony, Annie and Linda remarked that the various layers of the narrative were beginning to gel more effectively, so my hard work over the past year hasn't been entirely wasted.

'Owing to Germany's weekend ban on freight I was hoping to find Kukuryki relatively free on a Monday morning, but the trickle of trucks that used to wait at the "freight-only" border that ineffectively divided Poland from the Soviet Union prior to its implosion has become a flow. I find myself joining the end of a line of becalmed juggernauts that stretches a mile or so back from the border.' (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

One point was repeated from the last time it was my turn to be critiqued: that there wasn't enough about the truck driving or the person driving the truck. I think that one of the problems here is that during the crossing of Western Europe the Marxism and the history is a little top-heavy, partly because there is a great deal to fit in but also because the driver / narrator is bored by the autobahns and therefore spends a great deal of his time in contemplation of other matters. Tony pointed out that unlike the narrator, it will be the first time the majority of readers have ever travelled in a big truck and also the first time many of them will have crossed Western Europe - so despite his boredom the narrator must allocate a more substantial part of the narrative to satisfying their curiosity about the truck, its driver and the landscapes of Belgium and Germany. Many of the questions raised about what it is like to drive a 38-tonne artic are actually dealt with in later sections of the book, but I'll work on transferring some of them to an earlier point in the narrative.

'As always it is a relief to be on the move again after the delays and tensions of a border crossing, the Volvo bouncing and lurching gamely over the potholed and scarred dual carriageway in the evening sunshine as, wary of radar traps but eager to regain some of the time lost in the queue, I put my foot down.' (Photo courtesy of Richard Breakwell)

Rob expressed concern the lack of human interaction thus far - but truck driving is by nature a solitary occupation. It is precisely this aspect of the job that gives the driver so much time to reflect upon history, human nature and philosophy. Furthermore Karl Marx and Careful Driving is a travel book like few others in that the narrator is at work and has a schedule to maintain. He isn't therefore at liberty to stop to interview that interesting looking chap bent over the bonnet of his broken-down Lada or to make a 200-mile detour to take in a war memorial or a church. Indeed it is the fact that the narrator is working for his living that gives him the opportunity to compare Marx's observations about nineteenth-century capitalism to the capitalism of the present day. To what extent have working conditions evolved? Which of Marx's ideas and theories retain their relevance and which have been proved wrong or rendered obsolete? I reassured my fellow authors that there is a great deal more interaction after the narrator has collected Vladimir, the short-sighted, Abba-loving Russian policeman who is to share the cab to provide armed protection for several days after he leaves Moscow. Part of the winter journey, the second section of the book, is made in convoy with two other drivers.

'When you're living the life of which you've dreamed since early childhood you care little about either the hours you work or the size of your pay packet. I am truly fortunate because what I 'do' is truly who I am: the means by which I have chosen to put food on the table and pay the bills defines me because it is the culmination of my dreams and apirations. I cannot in any way be said to be alienated by my occupation because existence has become inseparable from essence and that, I think, is the definition of fulfilment.' (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

I left the meeting feeling both reassured and worried. Presumably these are familiar feelings for authors contemplating a work-in-progress.

Key Themes

2009-11-24T22:52:00.000-08:00

'Although the market places a higher value on Henk's labour than mine I don't envy him his salary; I'd rather be chained to an F12's steering wheel and the open road than to a desk, the balance sheets and the responsibilities that accompany a position in senior management.'

Karl Marx and Careful Driving describes an external journey at the wheel of an articulated lorry and a parallel, internal voyage of exploration, presented as a stream of consciousness. The external and internal journeys must mingle seamlessly. It helps me sometimes to think in musical terms. Like the classical concerto, the book is divided into three vertical ‘movements’ or sections. Although each journey dominates its section just as the solo instrument dominates the three movements of a concerto, it will be enriched and harmonised by contrapuntal layers of narrative – the orchestra. Just as musical themes are exchanged between the solo instrument and the various sections of the orchestra, certain common ideas will emerge from each horizontal section of the narrative to form key themes. I have colour-coded the various layers of the manuscript in order to identify them more easily:

The External Journeys
Western thought from Plato to the French Revolution
Marx’s Critique of Nineteenth-Century Capitalism and Vision of Communism
European History 1789 - 1989: from the French Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Twentieth Century Capitalism as Demonstrated by Fransen Transport (UK) Ltd
The Pursuit of Happiness
Key Themes

I began the project with the idea that roughly 75% of the narrative would be allocated to the journeys themselves and remaining 25% would be concerned with the stream of consciousness but as I research political history and philosophy I find these subjects so compelling and fascinating that Karl Marx and Careful Driving is threatening to become 75% 'Karl Marx etc' and 25% 'Careful Driving'. An extract that I read out at a recent meeting of Severn Valley Authors (http://severnvalleyauthors.blogspot.com/) was criticised by my fellow scribes for containing too much history and philosophy and not enough travel but I don’t believe the change in emphasis is necessarily a bad thing – assuming the reader’s interest can be retained. The idea invites comparison with Robert M Pirsig’s cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but I didn’t find the way Pirsig linked his motorcycle journey to his philosophical meanderings very satisfactory. I hope to do better.

I have scribbled the following instructions in my notebook:

Weave personal experiences, history and philosophy into a tapestry.

Use links to and from the main narrative to introduce personal and political history. If you can't link it, don't use it.

Imbue book with same sense of fun that underpins 'Why Don’t You Fly?' (I’m hoping that this is intrinsic to my writing style and I won’t have to work too hard at it)

Make history, geography and politics of each region come alive.

Be careful with politics, philosophy and history: research them properly and make sure they are relevant and that what you write is your own ‘take' and not somebody else's.

Above all the book must be about human nature. Contrast the inhumanity of Soviet Communism with the humanity of the characters described in the journeys.

The key to success is to get readers to see something of themselves in the narrator.

That last point is crucial. Unless the author is honest about his experiences and his reactions he is unlikely to gain the reader’s empathy.

The Unfinished Jig-saw Puzzle

2009-09-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

Writing a book (if you are serious about it) is a huge commitment. I have been getting up at four o’clock every morning to get in a couple of precious hours with the computer. A rich seam of inspiration all too often has to be abandoned when I break off at 6.30 to cycle into work, and by the time I get back home in the evening I’m too mentally drained by the day job to return to the manuscript. A couple of years ago I sought permission from my boss to reduce my working week from five days to four. I’ve had to tighten my belt financially but I’ve gained an extra day every week to spend on writing.

Writing a book is also an act of faith. Unless you happen to be J.K. Rowling, Bill Bryson or John Grisham the dread that the countless lonely hours you spend shut away with the computer might ultimately count for nothing is the author’s lot. In ‘Why Don’t You Fly?’ (http://www.cycleuktochina.com/) I compared the procedure to starting out with a great, shapeless lump of clay and attempting to fashion something useful or beautiful (or both) out of it. It is a constant process of adding bits here, taking bits off there, transferring pieces, and moulding and reshaping the whole, but instead of clay my raw materials are words, sentences, paragraphs and blocks of prose. They have to be the right words, sentences, paragraphs and blocks of prose and they must be assembled in the right order. ‘Why Don’t You Fly?’ was nevertheless a comparatively straightforward book to write. It relates the story of a single journey with a beginning, a middle and an end.

A Careful Driver

The manuscript of my second book bears more resemblance to an unfinished jig-saw puzzle than a lump of clay – with the added complication that I don’t yet have a picture of the completed jigsaw to use as a guide. Although I have already spent three years working on Karl Marx and Careful Driving I am still assembling the pieces and there is a great deal of time-consuming trial and error involved as I discover which ones fit and which ones don’t. On bad days I am reminded of a sketch involving Eric Morecambe, who is playing the piano (very badly), and the concert pianist Andre Previn:

PREVIN: You’re playing the wrong notes.

MORECAMBE: I think you’ll find I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

Intended to provide an examination of Marxism that is not only comprehensible but fun, Karl Marx and Careful Driving describes no less than three return journeys, all of which were made by truck f rom the United Kingdom to the territories of the former Soviet Union in 1993-4. By charting the rise and fall of communism and the adventures of the author and his colleagues as they cover extraordinary distances in their immense vehicles over some of the most inhospitable terrain and climatic conditions imaginable, the book will show that ideas are more powerful than tanks and guns; that capitalism survived communism because the latter failed both to adapt to change and to recognise the passion and the capacity to dream latent in the human soul; that Marxism-Leninism failed to acknowledge that human beings are aspirational rather than egalitarian by nature; and that Marx’s radical theories (many of which remain relevant today) might have worked in a modified form but in the hands of zealots and opportunists who ruthlessly exploited and perverted his theories to retain power their social and economic consequences were disastrous. The humorous application of Marx’s ideas on alienation and freedom to late twentieth-century working life in international haulage will, I think, make the book unique.

Each trip corresponds to a period in European history.

The Heat (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

The title of the first section of the book, ‘The Heat’, alludes not only to the blistering summer temperatures of Central Asia encountered during a first trip to Kazakhstan (made in July 1993) but also to the rise in political heat generated by friction between quarrelling European powers that culminated in the Russian Revolution, two World Wars and the Soviet Union’s transformation from inter-war isolation to a post-war colossus that defeated Nazi Germany. Karl Marx’s critique of nineteenth-century capitalism is compared and contrasted with late twentieth-century capitalism as demonstrated by the ups and downs of life as a long-distance truck driver.

The Freeze (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

The second section, ‘The Freeze’, will parallel a winter expedition to Kazakhstan in December 1993 on roads covered in snow and ice with the Cold War stand-off between western democracy (in which consciousness was meant to dictate life) and Soviet despotism (in which life was intended to dictate consciousness). Marx’s vision of communist abundance and emancipation is juxtaposed with the post-war repression of Soviet and Eastern Europe populations by Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.

The Thaw (Photo Courtesy of Lenny Coulson)

Spring in Russia is a time of melting snow and ice and flooded roads. The third and final section, ‘The Thaw’, will describe a journey made to Moscow and the Baltic States in April 1994. It will also examine the political thaw instigated by Gorbachev’s reforms and the velvet revolutions that subsequently took place in Eastern Europe in 1989 before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War.

Snow and ice, the ineptitude of local drivers, armed robbery and mechanical failure were all dangers in these journeys to the former republics of the Soviet Union. Ultimately Karl Marx and Careful Driving is intended to be an examination of human nature itself. What is it to be human? And what is it to be inhuman? The book that perhaps comes closest to the concept I have in mind is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which Robert M. Pirsig uses a motorcycle journey across the United States to expound his philosophical theories.

Russian Transport (Photo Courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

Sometimes I get a brief glimpse of what Karl Marx and Careful Driving could be like if all the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place, but such moments of euphoria are fleeting. There remains a yawning gulf between the complex vision of a book blending travelogue, history and philosophy and the current messy and fragmentary state of the manuscript. Contrapuntal layers of narrative have to be deployed to uphold or to refute Karl Marx’s claims about the human condition and freedom. I alternate between belief that it will all come together and crippling doubt that I possess either the intellectual capacity or the writing skills to make a fantastic idea work; Lenin and his successors demonstrated all too clearly what a dreadful mess can be made of a fantastic idea, and I can only hope that my efforts to translate concept into reality will be more successful than theirs.

Assembling the many pieces of the puzzle and finding a way to fit them all together is nevertheless a challenge that I relish, for this is surely what writing is all about. I don’t like to set myself time limits; it may well be another two years before I feel ready to start sending synopses and sample chapters out to literary agents and publishers. In the meantime I’ll keep you informed of progress on Karl Marx and Careful Driving by providing periodic updates on this blog, a process that will continue when the manuscript is completed to my satisfaction and I approach agents and / or publishers.

A cuppa at the Kremlin (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnston)

If you’d like to be advised when Karl Marx and Careful Driving becomes avalable, please leave your contact details by emailing me on the contact the author section of http://www.cycleuktochina.com/.

Right! Now let’s get back to that jigsaw puzzle…