Bilge.

I get barraged with questions about my writing. People want to know why I do it. It's such crap they say, why do you bother? Well it’s something to do basically and I find it therapeutic. If people like to read it so much the better. Also I don’t so much write as narrate.

I haven’t always been a narrator. In fact if you had told me 50 odd years ago that one day I would be narrating I would have given you a funny look. Tell the truth I don’t think I even knew what narrating was.

I met a real writer, Anonymous, in the British Virgin Islands. Place called Foxy’s Beach Bar. We got chatting and Anonymous asked me if I fancied doing a bit of narrating. I said why not? I’ll give it a go. I warned him it may get a bit politically incorrect but he said that’s OK. Just be yourself.

Anonymous has written a few books and he’s lead an interesting life….lots of changes. He’s met lots of people, lived in different places and he feels like writing about it. But he doesn’t want to write straight autobiography so he fictionalizes it. He doesn’t like talking about himself. He’s been interviewed a few times and finds the process painful. Some childhood trauma maybe? I don’t like to ask.

The truth is all relative anyway. We all have our own versions. Facts and fiction get mixed up over time so why not just write and see what happens. Truth is in the fiction. I think Kingsley Amis said that. Or maybe it was Martin.

So what am I working on? Today it’s the bloody bilge pump. It’s a used one I picked up cheap in Jamaica and it’s been nothing but trouble.

My narrating process is nothing special. The author gives me a basic outline and I add my own tone to it. Then the editor has a look through it and Bob’s your uncle. It’s not that difficult actually. My head is full of memories so I just let them out. Hopefully it all makes some kind of sense.

How does my narration differ from others of its genre? Good question. Somebody once called it Faction. I like to think of it as a post-modern exploration into the nature of reality. I’m no James Joyce or Vladimir Nabokov or David Foster Wallace but I do my best.