Get Booked – Dr Robert Graham, The Former Boy Wonder 140322

You are listening to Get Booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Welcome to today's show. Today we have Northern Irish-born, predominantly Manchester-based author Dr. Robert Graham, who published his second novel called The Former Boy Wonder on the 24th of February of this year. The book follows the tale of freelance music writer Peter Duffy as he descends into a a full-blown midlife crisis. No work for freelance writers, teenage son won't speak to him— I know that one— marriage in tatters, and chasing his first love, or at least the ideal of what it possibly was. It's a very funny and frank fictional story of the time-old ideal that the grass could be greener elsewhere, especially when nostalgia and mundanity hits us, often coincidentally, for many around our midway point in life, imagining the what-ifs. You know, it's a great way to pass the time when you feel that excitement is harder to come by, and what harm could it possibly do, eh? Thank you for joining us on Get Booked today. Yeah, great book, absolutely loved it. Well, thanks very much, Hazel, for having me, and I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, I did, I absolutely loved it. There's certain parts of the book that that I need to make sure I don't ruin it for anybody, but there were so many elements to it where I was just, a lot of it rang a bell. I'm actually, I've just turned 40. A lot of my friends are kind of in their 50s, and it's interesting just how it mirrored the social scene quite similarly. So that's one of the things, I mean, there are a lot of elements that fed into it, but one of, One of the things to do with turning 50, and I think this is an observable phenomenon with men, that they look and see that the light is starting to dim and that the end is nearer than the beginning, and they wonder if things could be better. They think if they started all over again, they could have a better relationship, they could be a better person, and so on. And, uh, I think probably almost always it's a disaster. It's a disaster for the man, disaster for his woman, his partner, disaster for the children, and it's, um, largely based on a fantasy, I think. I mean, there are men who have, I suppose, troubled relationships. There are women who have troubled relationships. But that idea I wanted to explore of seeing that the end is closer than the beginning, and, uh, as it says in the book, committing ritual suicide? Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's so commonplace, isn't it? And it doesn't seem to be something that's talked about in terms of women doing it. It is the men, and they seem to go off with the younger, somebody younger out there and kind of have the time of their life, which just kind of winds everybody up, and then they move on, and then all of a sudden it's, oh, I think I've made a mistake. 'Can I come back?' Some obviously don't come back, and you know, it's interesting. I mean, we aren't confined to just being one person the rest of our lives, but there is that kind of midway point where you suddenly start reassessing what you could do with a lot of years. Yeah, it's definitely the case that women don't do it very much at all because they're probably more responsible, they're family-focused, more child-focused. Arguably, I mean, there are lots of reversals of that. I know many fathers that are perhaps more pastoral than, than the mother, but that's unusual, that's unusual. But I think for men primarily, and probably for women too, it's quite easy to look at a relationship that you've been in for 20 years or 25 or 30 years and see that it's a bit worn out and not appreciate each other fully. And thinking that, um, things could be better elsewhere. So yeah, but it's— that's not his only crisis. His crisis has to do with almost everything. It's that feeling also of getting older, of people not wanting to give you work so much as a freelancer. Um, another thing that's coming to a crisis in his life is his relationship with his father. I mean, one of the themes in the book, as well as that business of, um, looking at the end and thinking your relationship could be better, is to do with fatherhood. He has a troubled relationship with his father who abandoned the family home when Peter was 8 and went off to London, left Belfast to go to London and try and make it as a comedian. So in his childhood, he very much idolizes his father, but then as he feels more and more through his teens that his father has abandoned him, he becomes increasingly angry. So another theme in the book is the way he tries, well, grapples with that idea of abandonment and with his anger with his father. And then there's also just the troubled way in which his relationship with his son repeats that, because his father was away from home because of work, not a great father because of that. And of course, Peter's been away from home for 20 years with his freelancing career. He's been quite a high flyer, he's been used to what I call the high life, and has been on tour with bands in Europe and the States and Japan and so on. So he has been an absent father himself. So this idea of generations repeating the mistakes of our previous generations. Well, it is history repeating itself, isn't it? And what's interesting, I read a book years ago by Steve Biddleth. I don't know if you've come across it, called Raising Boys. I have it sitting on my desk. Oh, really? Well, this really does ring a bell because he does say, you know, It's the relationship with our fathers really do mold who we are. It's, I mean, obviously the times are changing and the, the roles are shifting a little bit and what's expected. But being a mother, that's kind of the relationship that you have with your mother is more expected. She's supposed to love you, she's supposed to be there, and she's supposed to be walked all over. Your dad, it's a little bit more of a, you know, historically hit and miss. As to, you know, if a dad is as good a dad as the mother is a mother, it's like, wow, he's amazing, when actually it should be expected. And it's that expectation that kind of messes with people's heads. Yeah, I mean, I'm very pro-women, you know, I quite often think if I could write like a woman novelist, I'd be writing much better, I'd have better emotional equipment. I do think there's been a tendency, and probably for good reasons, because, you know, men haven't really distinguished themselves in lots of ways to do the relationship. But there has been a tendency to undervalue, um, the importance of a man, and it very much comes out in that Steve Biddle's book in Raising Boys. That a father, for instance, um, will affirm a son. I mean, I was researching this recently for an article about fathers and sons, and Freud said that a 16-year-old boy's need for his father is stronger than his urge to mate.. And that's really strong, really strong. And you can see this in, in public life. You can see celebrities in one field or another— music, film, the arts, politics even— who have lost a father early. And it's true of Obama, it's true of, I think, something like 60%. I was researching this, 60% of American presidents and a large high percentage of British prime ministers in the last couple hundred years. And it's that idea that if you become successful enough and distinguished enough, and people love you enough, that you will feel affirmed. And you won't really. And I can identify this a lot. My own dad died when I was 8, and, you know, I've definitely had a struggle through my life with wanting to be affirmed. And I've read that if your father does affirm you at that age, in your early teens, you don't even notice it. But you're kind of made to feel that you're okay and you're secure and so on. But if that's not the case, it takes you years, maybe decades, to realize what's been missing and to manage it, you know, to manage this kind of dysfunction. Well, we're only conscious of something like 10% of our actions, aren't we? Yes. And this is what, you know, this is when, as soon as you sit in a therapist's chair, that is why it's the age-old cliché of tell me about your childhood because it does matter. It kind of, it determines, well, life shapes us, doesn't it? What we're searching for, it determines how we treat other people. And it's such an in-depth topic and there's no hard and fast rule either because, you know, you can have a single mum with some fantastic male role models role models in her life, be it friends or a partner or whatever, or just, you know, fantastic female role models. And that can work, but sometimes you can have your mum and dad together and they stay together forever, but, you know, it can go horrifically wrong because it wasn't the right nurturing. Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot because of gender issues and Uh, you know, issues like non-binary. I do think that each one of us, male or female, has a range of characteristics, some of which are feminine and some of which are masculine. So it's possible that in a relationship, for instance, between two men and two women, that one of them will have more feminine characteristics and will be more maternal, and maybe the other more masculine characteristics and fulfill the role of a father. But I mean, whether it's, uh, you know, a gay couple or a straight couple Somebody masculine needs to affirm a boy particularly, and I think a girl too, but this Biddulph book that you were both talking about has to do with boys. I remember he talks about things like modeling the way to treat women, the way to behave with women. So, you know, being respectful, uh, loving their wife, their partner, and so on models this for the boy. And, uh, just spending time with the father, you know, like play fighting when you're, when you're young laughing about the things your father laughs at. I mean, your father's very much a model for you, and if that's missing, then it has— you know, I gave the example of politicians, but you can see it in celebrities too. You know, if you mind somebody like John Lennon, you can see that totally. You know, mother killed early, father abandoned him early, and you can see his longing, his yearning for affirmation through celebrity, through success. I mean, that's constantly searching for validation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, although because of things like single mothers and broken families, it's easy to underrate the value of men. And, uh, you know, because things like hashtag MeToo and all the abuses that are involved in, it's very easy to think, you know, men are great and maybe not necessarily essential in parenting. I think there are certain roles that they are. Yeah, but there's— but the roles these days aren't as assigned as they have been historically, and I think it's causing a lot of confusion because people just don't know who they're supposed to be, and it's a little bit of hit and miss. But I think The main thing is, is being there. If you get it wrong, I mean, I, do you know what, I get things wrong with my kids all the time. You know, I sometimes lose it and I shout and I turn around and say, you know, I'm just a bit tired and I lost it and I apologise. But that's modelling to them that you're there, that you're communicating with them and saying it's alright to get things wrong. Can you imagine if you were raised by parents who never got anything wrong? Well, I don't think it ever happens, because another thing I've noticed going through life is that there's this, uh, syndrome, you know, that I talked about, the syndrome of being the end and it being the dying of the light and what you want to do in the light of that. But another syndrome is that children maybe peak in their dissatisfaction with their parents when they're about 29, 30, that kind of thing. It's, you know, I'm generalizing, it's just a tendency. And then they become parents themselves, themselves, and they realize actually that there's no such thing as a perfect parent. But prior to that, they go through this thing of realizing that their parents have made mistakes and, you know, possibly being resentful about it or angry about it. And then they become parents and they get over it. Or in the case of Peter Duffy, I mean, he's, he's on top of the issues that he's kind of tackling in his midlife point. He is a bit of a victim, isn't he? And he does kind of, "Oh, I was abandoned, this happened, this happened, this happened," and you can see people kind of, the way that you write about his friends talking to him going, "Oh mate, it's always you, isn't it?" And I find it interesting how he's kind of treated a little bit like a child, and I guess maybe he's behaved that way. Yeah, I mean, Lucy, his wife, there's a scene where they go to a restaurant and he talks about being abandoned. I mean, you know, he's 49 now, and she says, 'Nobody abandoned you, nobody abandoned you.' And what he realizes in the course of the— oh yeah, I should say there are two narrative strands. There's the past around the early '80s when he's a student at what was Manchester Poly, and his friends then, and his first love then, and it traces through his, um, pretty much through his, from his teens in Belfast through in a lot of detail to the breakup of his relationship with this first love. And then the other strand is set in the early 20-teens, and that's, you know, when he's 49. But, um, where am I going with this? He, um, yeah, he, because of what he's going through he starts thinking about the past and about how he feels like this girlfriend abandoned him. He feels like his father not just abandoned him but cheated on him emotionally. And, you know, I don't want to get into that because it would give away the plot, but in a way that's pretty profound. And then in the course of thinking about the past, because he really relives that story of the past in the course of the book he starts to think and begin to see that maybe his father loved him, that maybe his father was a better father, doing as good a job as he could in the circumstances, than Peter thought he was. Do you know what, the point in the book where he suddenly realizes is that, and I don't want to say too much, I don't want to give it away, but when he realizes that he has got something very, very wrong towards the end, which kind of changes his outlook, I mean, my heart just sunk because a main thread all the way through this book was very much, you know, his perspective of what he thinks has happened to him. And we all, we can have the same situation, we can have the same scenario with a couple of friends and they all see it completely differently. A bit like, have you seen The Affair? Where it tells a story and it does it from the bloke's point of view or the ex-wife's point of view, and then the lady who's having an affair with her point of view, and how things happen, the intonation of the same words, what people are actually wearing, we remember things differently, and it's so problematic and can be quite earth-shattering. Yeah, there's quite— I mean, again, this would be a plot spoiler, but there is an occasion, a party, when he realizes that he's remembering something very differently. Not about his father, this is about something else, that he's remembering it very differently from— from— his first love. Yeah. And, um, yeah, he's, you know, he's a needy character, and this whole idea of abandonment and all the rest. I think the reader— I can't tell what readers think, but I'm hoping the readers, um, identify with him and empathize with him even though he's as flawed as he is. And I think he goes on this journey where he realizes actually that he wasn't abandoned, uh, and that he has, um, a whole different— he has lived a whole different life than what he's been thinking about during the summer of the present of the book. You know, it's just a couple of months when he's going through all this and reliving the past and coming to terms with the past. And actually, I'm reminded of a friend of mine who, like most of us, has various challenges in parenting, quite extreme challenges really. And I remember when she was talking about it once, she said somebody— she was discussing things with one of her friends was saying, 'Why me?' And my friend said, 'Well, why not you?' Yeah, yeah. And that's a way of looking at things, because things go wrong for all of us. We have challenges, we have difficulties. So, you know, they do happen to everyone. So don't be thinking, 'Why me?' Just be accepting that it's a case of, 'Why not you?' I must say though, I mean, I do this quite regularly. I don't I don't go literally back down memory lane, but, you know, with Facebook and Instagram, we can search our boyfriend from when we were 12, 15, 21, the fiancé that got away, or maybe, you know, we can search and Google up anybody, and most people put on social media the best versions of their life, and I think it's not uncommon. I'm pretty certain I could put 10 of my best friends in a room and all of them would say that probably in the last 2 weeks they've searched up an ex. It's just, you know, something happens and you like to just— we can be a little bit nosy. But, you know, there are times when people just go that little bit further. Or there's that age-old thing, isn't it, where you're looking on someone's social media and you accidentally like the picture, which means it was blatantly obvious you were having your own trip down memory lane. But you know, it is predominantly a male thing where they, instead of just fantasizing about it over a glass of wine and going, 'Oh, look what they're doing, oh wow, they lived there, it wasn't like that,' it's that extra step, it's that midlife crisis step, isn't it? Yeah, to be fair to Peter, he doesn't cave in and, you know, indulge in this journey of yearning and longing for the past. Straight away. He is struggling to get close to his wife. He's trying to get her to work for a meal with him or go out and have a drink with him. He's trying really hard with his son. And then something happens where his wife is really angry with him. Lucy, his wife, is really angry with him. And he says, all right, that's enough. And he has been thinking about Sancha, the first love, a lot. And then because of this He's as angry as Lucy is, and he thinks, right, I'm going to go and look for Sancho. And I think the reader— well, as I say, I don't know what the reader thinks, but possibly the reader thinks that this is going to be a disaster. He's heading towards destruction. That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, in many ways he is. In many ways, you know, it does lead to all kinds of bother for him. This, you know, heading off— he goes to London, he goes to Notting Hill, where Sancho lived and where he used to gone stay with her and so on when he was a young man, and he's searching desperately for this illusion of the past. And you know it's going to end in tears, uh, and it does. But I saw it slightly differently because, oh yes, it does end in tears temporarily, but sometimes there are certain people that need to go down that road to actually appreciate what they've got and what they've lost or could lose. And unfortunately, this is the thing where sometimes people just, they can't turn the clock back. They can't go back and redo what they did wrong. Or when they finally do realize that the person they've been with for 20 years and they possibly haven't treated them the way they should, some people can't turn it around. No, they can't. And one of the things I tried to do with Peter and that longing for the past and that heading towards disaster and potentially not being able to turn it around is for him to reflect in the present day of the novel about what he's thinking about, wondering whether it's true or not. And one way that there's a focus on that in the novel is that there are, there are three images that he, well, that I suppose use to I don't know, tease out these feelings. So one is he sees what looks like Sansha, a woman who looks like Sansha, on a projection on the side of what was the Corn Exchange in Manchester, a large Victorian building, and there was a screen there at one stage, I think for football matches, and I used that as a means of creating this fantasy of Sansha. He sees a young woman that looks like this, and he imagined the woman— it's an art installation— he imagines that she's coming towards him and saying, I love you. So, you know, clearly a fantasy. Another one is, um, uh, he has, um, a photograph of her towards the end of their relationship, which at the end of the relationship he tore into pieces and then the next day stuck back together again. Well, petulant child, isn't he? Yeah, because he, you know, it was one of his favorite photographs. Or again, another image is, um, to do with his father He has this framed photograph, his father has this framed photograph of the Tonic Cinema, an Art Deco 1930s cinema in Bangor in Northern Ireland, and this framed photograph is a representation of his love for his father, and kind of a fantasy of his father, that his father was an ideal father when he was at home, and you know, he won't have been. So these three images, uh, of tried to use as an expression of his longing, his yearning, and really his illusions. And that whole idea as well that sometimes we want people to be something to us that they're not capable of doing, and that anger can just boil up. I mean, I had similar with my own father, um, and when there was the kind of heart drop moment in the book. I was kind of— I put the book down for a bit and kind of thought about my own relationship with my father and how, you know, I may have wanted him to be something, but maybe my kids are wanting me to be something slightly different as well. And it's just life just never goes the way we completely want it. We just need to be a little bit more open-minded, well, and communicative as well. And I think One of the key themes here is, as with yourself, you lost your father when you were young, you know, how can you be a father when you weren't fathered yourself? Yeah, it's a challenge. Yeah. And, um, actually, I think he missed out on something. I think Peter missed out on something as a child and as a young man, because I think going back to that Steve Bedolf book about bringing up boys Up to about the age of 9, a child idolizes— a boy idolizes his father. He seems like a god. And from that point onward, I believe, the boy turns his attentions to a role model outside of the family. And this is what's happened with, um, Jack, his son. You know, there was a stage when they were really close, and Peter's remembering this and remembering all kinds of things, like the Batman outfit he gave to his son when he was 6 and how excited his son was. But then once you get into the teens, uh, your son is going to scoff at you, send you up, um, think you're a bit of an idiot in a good-natured way, and so on. So that's, that's healthy. That's part of the son growing up and becoming independent. And it's not a bad thing for the father either, you know, it gives you a little bit of humility. But Peter missed out on that because his dad left, uh, at the phase when Peter saw him as some kind of god. So he wasn't ever at home. The father wasn't ever at home. For him to realize that actually he was flawed and to send him up and tease him and be critical of him. Well, let's be honest, though, Robert. I mean, teenagers don't need much of an excuse to think that you are a pain in the arse and the worst adult ever. I mean, that's just part of them creating their identity and that they're moody little so-and-so's anyway, aren't they? I mean, you are— you have two daughters. And a son, all grown up now. Was their behaviour in any way, did it fuel some of the interactions that you describe in the former Boy Wonder? Well, I've definitely, I'm allowed to say this because my son's never going to listen to this. Rude. In places, well, there's going to be a launch party on Friday night which you'll be at, and I definitely won't mention anything to do with the son, we've discussed this. But, um, what I've done with Jack in the book is I've made him, uh, kind of an evil version of my son. You know, he's really nasty to his dad. The most my son's ever done with me is, you know, tease me about being a bit silly at times and, uh, be annoyed, even if it's playfully annoyed, about stories, about anecdotes I tell them. You know, when I finished the first sentence, he'd be saying, uh, 'You've already told me this story 150 times.' It's probably true, I probably have told all my anecdotes. So yeah, with my own son, uh, and with my children, you know, I think it's, it's probably normal in a family for children to— that's where dad jokes come from, isn't it? The whole idea of dad jokes. It's normal for kids to tease their fathers and think they're a bit silly. Oh yeah, here's another thing, there's that, uh, I'm not sure I can get the line art correctly. But there's that thing, some, you know, an anecdote, a joke I suppose, about a kid saying, "When I was 18, my dad knew nothing, but it was amazing how much he learned by the time I was 21." You know, you grow out of not appreciating your father. So yeah, I mean, Jack in the book is nothing like my son, because my son's very good-natured, and it's true of my daughters too. They never give me a really hard time. But Jack does really give his father a hard time, and Peter, when he's young, really gives his father a hard time. He's surly and he's resentful, right through his teens. Well, right through to his mid-20s as well, and it is history repeating itself. Yeah, and at one point, Jack, one point towards the end, when Peter's talking to Jack, they're in a Pizza Hut, and he's talking to Jack about his own father, And Jack says, "He sounds just like you," which is, you know, hopefully a poignant moment because it's true. History has repeated itself. Well, sometimes we don't have time to sit down and reflect. We're so busy all the time. And I did find that this happened to me with this book. As I said, there was things that were happening and they just felt quite poignant. And I was just thinking, yeah, we've got to remember that it's not always about us and that people come from different angles all the time and just possibly be open to different perspectives. And we can get so wrapped up in ourselves. This is why books like this, although it's fiction, I think they're great for mental health and mental well-being. Yes, it's funny. I think you're extremely quick-witted. I loved a lot of the kind of the metaphors as well. And I just, you know, and the descriptions, and you really felt like you were there. But I think it's books like this that entertain you but at the same time get you thinking. Yeah, well, I mean, one, I mean, you know, I teach fiction writing in university, well, I'm on my third university now, but over the last 20 years I've taught them in 3 universities. And one of the things to say to students is you need to engage the writer's, the reader's emotions. You know, nobody wants a thought-provoking experience. They don't want to have their thoughts provoked, especially You know, it's a useful thing to do, and I hope we've done it in this, but primarily in any scene that you're writing, you want to engage the reader's emotions, and you want to make them laugh or make them feel sad, etc. And I think that's your number one priority as a writer. Yeah, completely. And you've got quite— you do write short stories, plays, creative writing handbooks. You've actually got, just to point out to our listeners, they can pop on to robertgraham.life for a little bit more information about you and your work, but if you can tell us a little bit more about your writing work. Well, my first novel was way too long ago, 2006, and then after that I published a couple of short story collections, a novella, you know, a very short novel, and then wrote or co-wrote 3 creative writing textbooks. And all through this, I was involved with the Youth Arts Group and would write— well, would collaborate with kids to make plays and films. They would improvise things, and then I would turn them into film scripts or play scripts. So very much collaboration between the kids and me. And that's something I really like. I really like working with kids. Because they're fun, you know, they really are. And they like you when you're not their dad. But yes, I suppose my writing has been fiction, has been writing, creative writing textbooks, and working with children to produce films, short films and plays. Well, it's nice to actually be around children before they learn to be Cynics! Yeah, it really is, yeah, innocence is a wonderful thing, but I mean the kids I've worked with, you know, some of them stay on in this youth arts group, I'm thinking of, through the age of 15 or 16, so they're certainly becoming young adults there, and they're great, you know, young people are fantastic, they see the world morally in a way that We don't, because, you know, our thoughts, our opinions can be very gray, you know, and compromise. Well, a good example of compromise is none of us want to use Amazon because it's an evil empire, but, you know, it's quite hard to escape, and you do use Amazon a little bit, you know. Maybe it's just your Kindle. So there's that kind of gray area compromise. Kids just don't compromise. Everything is black or white, and that's quite refreshing. Wow, yeah, although my kids do use Amazon a lot. Yeah, me too, now and again. I've tried hard to give it up, but there's still occasions when you want something fast. And you say that you like to work with children, but you do work at Lancaster University as well— oh no, you have degrees, sorry, from there. You do actually teach creative writing at the Liverpool School The Screen School, is that still— Yeah, well, the Screen School is a department in Liverpool John Moores University, and with the department there are creative— there's creative writing, there's film production, there's journalism, and so on. So it's a creative place to be, and I love Liverpool, much as I feel Mancunian. You know, I worked out recently that I've been living in Manchester more than twice as long as I lived in Northern Ireland, although, you know, your childhood and youth forms you. But much as I love Manchester, working in Liverpool over the last 8 years, I've just fallen in love with the place. But that's, that's by the by. The, um, yeah, the department is very creative. I work with terrific writers who are inspiring. I'll not name names, but I will, you know, there's Horatio Clare, who recently wrote a memoir about bipolar, which got a lot of attention. There's Geoff Young, whose memoir was Costa Prize, Costa Award shortlisted, and others too. Working with writers who are more distinguished than you, as I see it, is very inspiring. And working with students doing creative writing is great because I think a lot of what I've learned about fiction writing hasn't just come from what I've taught the, the students, it also comes from what they write and from assessing what they write and seeing what's good and what could be better. And that makes you kind of develop your, um, what a friend of mine, Robert Shepherd, calls your philosophy of composition. Oh right. Your manifesto develops from working with students, from seeing what you think is good writing, what you think could be better writing, and that forms your view of what fiction writing is. So yeah, working with creative writing students, working with creative people, keeps me going. Well, do you know what, it is that creative element, isn't it? And it is exciting, which helps with the aforementioned mundanity in the intro, um, to today's show, that, you know, you're doing something where the days are different and you're engaging and finding out new things all the time. I mean, a little bit of an interesting question, but did that help with your midlife crisis, if you had one? I don't know. I mean, you were talking about, you know, passing the age of 40. The way I remember, I remember thinking, um, that at 40 you look back and take stock and you reflect on what your life's been so far. And then when you get 50, I think a lot of us do, and I did, you, you look towards the end and you think, is this what I want to do? And it's not just to do with relationships because, you know, I'm happily married and my wife and I have a great relationship. It's also to do with how you're spending your time, you know. Are you working too much? Could you be spending more time with friends? And I remember, yeah, somebody I worked with when I was at MMU spoke about passing 50 as being like your life so far has been the body of a wine bottle, but at the point we get to 50, things are narrowing down and you're doing just the things you really want to do as you head towards the end, as the bottle's emptying. And you're forgetting about the things that you might have done when you were passing through the body of the wine bottle. Well, our priorities change, but we— I think people forget that we are— it's a constant evolution, you know. We don't have to just go down a particular path, stick to it, and kind of just repeat each day. These days it is acceptable to kind of shake things up on a regular basis. You know, people don't stay in the same job for 30, 40 years, they can start new careers, it's quite easy to do so, and constantly kind of rejigging your life and kind of making sure it fits in with everybody around you, we're not static anymore, so hopefully there might be less of the kind of age-old midlife crisis. Yeah, I think so, and You know, students who do creative writing, they very often go on to have kind of portfolio careers where they're doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. They might be writing text for a website, might be doing a bit of freelance journalism on the side, you might be doing some social media marketing. So there's that. But yeah, there's also the way in which people change careers, which I think was the case in America more, more so until things started to be that way here. I mean, one example in my life, which is not a massive change, but I was teaching for 15 or 16 in high schools. And, you know, for the last 10 years of that in high schools in quite a deprived area, Wythenshawe, the outskirts of Manchester. And it was tough. And I, you know, I wanted, um, I wanted to move on. And what happened was I went to Edge Hill University and I did an MA in writing. And that changed my life. You know, I ended up getting bits of teaching in, in universities and then moved on from there. So I think for a lot of people, further study changes their life. And the idea that you just study when you're 18 to 21 and that's it, that's gone. People study in their 30s, in their 40s, even in their 50s, and it can often change your life and send you off in a different direction. Yeah, I've always had quite a different outlook towards life and what I'm capable of and whatnot, and I didn't go to university in the traditional way. I didn't go when I was 18. I was very lucky that I was doing a lot of acting and modeling and moved to London. I decided to do my university degree when I hit 21, when I knew a bit more, I'd had a bit more life experience, and I knew what I wanted to do, and I remember going to a residential as it was part of a cognitive element of my psychology degree, and one of the women that was on the residential course doing the course with me was in her late 70s, and she suddenly decided in the late 70s to get a psychology degree. And that's what I saw in my early 20s, and I was like, yeah, that kind of formed what I thought. And I was like, yeah, you know what, you can You can do what you want when you want, you've just got to have the will to do it. Yeah, and I think what you did is really smart. You know, I look at first-year students, particularly boys who are 19, and really they'd be better off coming to university in a couple of years' time. I mean, my own son went to do mechanical engineering and it wasn't right for him. He passed his first year and then thought, 'This isn't what I want to do.' So then he had a gap year, and by the time he started his ancient history degree which he loved. He was 20, 20 and a half. And you just get so much more out of universities when you're not wet behind the ears, when you've been in the workplace for a few years. It changes you. But you're talking also about, um, you were saying about people doing degrees in their 70s. Um, I had a head injury in the summer when I fell downstairs, and I read up on, um, neuroscientist books. And I'm really not scientific, and I'm not capable of reading demanding texts about science, but I read one that was very accessible called The Changing Brain. And in it, well, perhaps the dominant theme in it is just the whole idea that your brain carries on changing, you know, as you're going through your 60s, your 70s, your 80s, your 90s. And he cites so many people that are functioning at a very high level in their 80s and 90s. So I think that's that we're having that change in society now. People are no longer thinking of you retire at 65 and you put your feet up. People are now thinking, well, actually, I like doing this, I'll keep on working if my employer will let me. Well, that's the thing, it's been, been allowed to as well. I think what has worked in terms of us thinking outside the box is the latest series with Richard Osman, the Thursday Night Murder Club, where he talks about all these people in retirement villages where sometimes they're just there because they're supporting their rather unwell spouse, and they're talking about, especially the likes of Elizabeth, and, and I can't remember the other one as well, where they're doing things that still keep on using their brain. They're making sure that, you know, every other day they have to read a paragraph and they have to go back 2 days later to make sure that they've remembered it, just because they want to keep on utilizing their brain. And I love the whole idea of how Richard Osman brings all that to life, where unfortunately quite a lot of us can just think, well, once somebody's in a retirement home, that's it, that's end of life, and, you know, what could they possibly contribute to society? And he completely turns that ideal on its head with his books, and I think it's brilliant. I must say, I can't wait until it is televised. Yeah, they're incredibly popular and successful, though, you know, acclaimed and read by millions, aren't they? Have you read them? No, I haven't. I'm not— I very rarely read crime, although I've just finished The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which is superb, but I don't read crime very often, so I haven't got to Richard Osman yet. Well, I've read them both, actually. I read the first one, the second one I had on Audible because I do like the person person who narrates it. I think she's absolutely fantastic and it really brought it to life. But I kind of, I like to mix things up a bit, especially with my role here at GetBooked for Women's and Men's radio station. There's lots of different books I get to read and I like to have fiction, then something that's a little bit more, say, memoir or self-help, and then there's got to be something hilarious. And I mix it up. Constantly because— and I do love a thriller, I do love a bit of crime. In fact, what was the one that you just said? Um, yeah, I read it when I was in my 20s. I mean, they used to talk about Raymond Chandler as being the father of the hard-boiled detective novel. He was writing in the '40s, 1940s, and his first novel was The Big Sleep. Oh, I just got it. Yeah, yeah. And it's, um, You know, well, in the introduction it says that he was— he is celebrated as a great prose stylist, and he really is. It's just such superb writing, you know, bringing every situation to life, uh, terrific plot and so on. So that is, if you like, classic crime. But I do every so often read contemporary crime because, like, George Pelacanis— is it Pelacanis?— springs to mind. My brother's big on crime, so he recommends things. But my trouble is I get in a groove and You know, I studied American literature when I was at university first, back in the mid-'70s, and I've stuck with American fiction. So I like American fiction better than any other. And when I was teaching at Edge Hill, I inherited a module from a colleague who moved on, which is called American Women's Fiction. And, you know, it was a bit ironic, me, a man of about 40, teaching a course on American women's fiction, but I loved it. And ever since, my favorites— it's almost like a subgenre, isn't it? It's almost like a subgenre in itself, and that is contemporary American women's fiction. Well, all you need is passion to get people involved in it, though. You don't necessarily need to be a particular gender or a particular age, you know, throw things on its head. Yeah, yeah, but it's just such good writing. I mean, everybody sees Anne Tyler as the doyenne of that kind of writing. And I think, you know, she's been seen as, um, like a Jane Austen of her era. I mean, Nick Hornby said at one point that line for line she's the best writer around. And there are lots of others that are great too. I've just finished Sue Miller, um, Sigrid Nunez that I read last year, The Friend, fantastic novel about an academic who inherits a Great Dane. Yeah, I read far too much American women's fiction, but possibly because it's so strong. Well, we like what we like. I know I was looking through, um, because obviously I got sent through some bits and pieces on you, and it's a strong list, isn't it, of, um, female and American authors that you're, uh, very passionate about, I must say. Do you have a favourite? Do you know what, actually, because you talk about reading a lot in your book as well, The Former Boy Wonder, and there is some definite love of American fiction in there as well. Well, I don't just read women. I'm a big fan of Richard Ford. I mean, I've seen him read a few times, and I'm sure he's not the most sympathetic person in the world, but I love his prose, I love his novels. And just in the last couple of years, I mentioned The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, which was the best novel I read that particular year. Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, another favorite. Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, another favorite. And then more recently, I've got— last few years I've got into Elizabeth Strout, who is having a golden era, really, isn't she? She's now extremely acclaimed and way up there at the top the tree in terms of critical approval. There's so many books out there though, isn't there? There's something for absolutely everybody, and I just think, I mean, in the pandemic reading just went through the roof. Everybody got back into it. People who couldn't normally read because they didn't have time suddenly had time to do it, and it was— and people who thought they had a book in them suddenly decided that was the time to bash a book out as well. So I think reading has definitely— and well, a love of literature has increased over the last 2 years. Would you agree? Yeah, I would. I mean, I haven't done many interviews yet for this book, but I did one of the Belfast Telegraph about 2 weeks ago, and one of the questions was, did the pandemic, did lockdown help your writing? And I don't think it made any difference in my writing, but what I said was it affected my reading. I read much more, and you know Stephen King said there's no writing without reading, so reading a lot is what every writer should do, and the lockdown, as you say, gave us an opportunity to do that. And I think as well there's a lot of people out there that they struggle to read for one reason or another, or whether to concentrate, and the emergence and popularity of of Audible, I think is fantastic, especially when people were either on their own or they had to, well, they had their 1-hour allowed walk every day in lockdown, you know, things like Audible, they were great for that and it's really opened things up. And do you know what? I'm one of these people where I love a bit of multitasking and to make sure that I never get frustrated if I'm stuck in traffic or waiting for public transport, but I always have an Audible ready because it means you're doing something. Yeah, and, um, I mean, I've got a friend, um, Julie, who's an absolutely passionate reader. She reads a lot, uh, and she also has an Audible on the go all the time. You know, for instance, uh, if she's out running, if she's doing the housework, so she gets through a lot. And then Poppy, my oldest daughter, who's just turned 27, um, she's in New Zealand these days, but when she was here, she was working in Oldham Hospital, and she was driving there from South Manchester, and she signed up for Audible. And it meant, you know, with the journey there, 45 minutes to an hour each way, she would get one extra book read in the course of a week or two. Um, and yeah, that's a big bonus. As you say, you're obviously a great advocate of Audible, and anybody I know who who's got into it would be the same. Well, do you know what I do? I quite often have all three on the go. I've always got an Audible on the go, I've always got a paperback on the go, because just the idea of holding a book and not being distracted by your notifications on your phone or your iPad, or having that availability to just quickly check your emails to see if something's come in that you were waiting for, you know, the paperback stops that. But also I like the fact that you can read on your Kindle, so if you want to travel a little bit lighter. So I always have pretty much 3 books, and it's, you know, my friends kind of take the mickey out of me a little bit, but I do absolutely love it. Just completely lose yourself. I have just added, I've just downloaded a sample while we're chatting of The Friend by Sigrid Núñez as well, so thank you for that suggestion. Yeah, well, I hope you like it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's so many, I'm sure there are far more readers nowadays than there were 30 years years ago, just because there are so many opportunities to read. And as you say, the lockdown experience was great for reading, and probably a lot of people had the same experience of Rachel, my wife, and myself, that, you know, rather than be reading for half an hour or 40 minutes at bedtime, you would also have half an hour or 40 minutes during the course of the evening on your sofa. You know, we talk about sofa book on the go, um, because, you know, it was an alternative to too much TV. I mean, there's definitely a risk of watching too much TV for all of us in lockdown. Did you not complete Netflix then in lockdown? I watched a lot of it, yeah. Um, yeah, I did, yeah. But, um, yeah, just that was a bit of a revelation because, you know, the time I read the most in life was when I was an undergraduate, uh, you know, around the age of 1920 and so on. And I read a lot then in the daytime as well as, you know, on the way to going to sleep. But yeah, lockdown was great for just the idea that you could be reading in the evening and then you could go to bed and you could be reading again. So doubled your reading time and meant that you read a lot more. So this was one of the ups of lockdown, wasn't it? Well, it was, and because also it really did bring to the mentioned before, the kind of prominence of mental health issues, well-being issues. And I think reading and writing, they're a good way to either entertain us, to distract us, especially learning about other people and having a bit more of perspective and understanding each other more means that that does help with our well-being. But also it's harder to sleep when you're watching the likes of Netflix books. I always find I fall asleep a lot quicker if I go to bed with a book rather than if I put on Murderball on Netflix or whatnot. I think it does, it does help in so many different ways. Not just, you know, the content of what you're reading, it's what you're understanding and how it's kind of affecting our brain. Less so than, you know, scrolling through social media, which is never going to help us have a better sleep. But, you know, learning, reading these self-help or these kind of crossover hybrid self-help books that are kind of slightly funny and helping us just to understand a little bit more about ourselves, about other people. And it's, um, and there are a lot of books out there now that are actually helping us to appreciate the power of actually writing a little bit more, because a lot of our, the mental well-being issues, a lot are based about around our heads just being so full with worry and anxiety. And if we can write that down and order our thoughts somewhat more, you know, 15 minutes of writing. It doesn't have to be for anybody. Nobody has to see it. But there's a lot of books out there that are really talking about just writing down your thoughts. And I think it's good for people to just experience and understand other people's methodology. Yeah, I think, you know, there's I can't remember what the percentage is, how much happier it makes you to read. And self-expression, creativity is great too. So as you say, 15 minutes, you can write quite a lot in 15 minutes. But the thing is, you're talking there that maybe an aspect of why reading and writing makes you happier is it gives you the opportunity to live elsewhere. You know, when you're reading, yeah, you're entering a different world. And when you're writing, you've got this different world that you've created. So to go and visit there every day or 3 times a week or whatever, it's not just escapism, it's like experiencing a second life, whether that's as a reader or as a writer. And that, I don't know how you feel, but that might be one of the reasons that reading and writing make us feel happier. Yeah, completely. There is actually some science behind it, and I never quite get the science right, but there is something in regards to how your brain works with engaging with your hand to actually write something down instead of actually typing. And it's a good old Ctrl+Alt+Delete and kind of fires up the synapses, and it's just a positive experience. And we are running out of time, unfortunately, so I'm gonna have to quickly just run through some of the things that I love to ask all the guests here for Get Booked Women's and Men's radio station. But I mean, we're already pretty much talking about it now, so we've probably already covered it. But I'd like to ask the 3 top tips on how you like to achieve a good level of mental well-being. Well, one is that I pray. I find prayer, which, you know, some people would see as meditation, yeah, that's definitely a way of stilling yourself. And stilling yourself, I think, is, you know, way of, um, feeling more at peace. But connected to that, I mentioned the head injury, you know, when I fell down the stairs and banged my head in the summer. Um, one of the symptoms of— it was, it was called a traumatic brain injury— one of the symptoms of it was massive fatigue. You know, you had no energy and you would feel almost like a weight pressing down on your chest. And I read up a lot about it and discovered this thing called psychic rest. And, um, um, is that right? I think psychic rest, yeah. And it's just this idea that, you know, 15-20 minutes could recharge you after you— because I was finding that I could do half an hour of something and then I'd be exhausted. But, um, this, um— sorry, cognitive rest, not something— cognitive rest. Okay, yeah. Um, so that was a great discovery because, you know, I'm back to normal whatever normal is now. And I still do this. I still use cognitive rest just as a means of, um, just making my faculties sharper for whatever's coming next. You know, like 15 minutes. I did it yesterday. I was feeling tired and I had something I needed to do. It was a bit of a hurdle. So I, um, went out and sat in the garden in the sunshine, uh, and did nothing. So I mean, cognitive rest is very much— this is from reading up on it— it's very much about doing literally nothing, having no phone, no book, no conversation, just nothing for 15 or 20 minutes. And it's great. So yeah, cognitive rest, I recommend. There's actually a fantastic article about that in the sportshealth.com, uh, brain rest and concussion recovery. There you go. Yeah, well, it was, it was like a stronger form of concussion. So yeah, it works. Uh, and another thing I mentioned this book, The Changing Brain, by the neurologist, one of the things that he recommends is not just exercise, but exercise in nature. And this, this was something that was in all the headlines and in many features that during lockdown, being out in nature amongst trees and plants and grass and under the sky. Forest bathing, Robert. It's called forest bathing. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good for your mental health too. And you mentioned, something you mentioned was the idea of reflection. I think reflection and getting perspective on things is good for your health. So yeah, I'd say cognitive rest, exercise in nature, and reflection, and just getting a distance on things in your life so that you get a sense of perspective. Well, I'm completely sold. I've actually, they're up on my iPad now, so I've downloaded I've downloaded The Friend and I've got a couple of articles to read now on cognitive rest. So I love that. And we've just got a minute left, so unfortunately I'm just gonna have to quickly squeeze an answer from you in terms of who out there do you think is a valuable person in the public eye that's doing great things for us? Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister. He wasn't a great Prime Minister, he didn't have the skill set for it, but he's a great humanitarian. And he's always writing about people in need and poverty in the developing world, if that's the right word for it. The other— I don't know what the right term for it is these days, but what used to be called the developing world. He's always writing about poverty. He was writing in The Guardian yesterday about the level of poverty in this country at the moment, which is— he says is the most extreme he's ever, ever seen. You know, you're talking 4 million people in poverty, 4 million people unable to heat their homes or have enough food, you know, the whole business about food banks, this revolution. It's appalling, isn't it? It's appalling. So Gordon Brown, he stands up for the poor and the needy, and I think that's just so admirable. That's brilliant. Thank you so much. It's definitely some food for thought there. And just a quick reminder to all of our listeners listeners to go and check out robertgraham.life and to go and get the new novel, The Former Boy Wonder, which was released just at the end of February. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Get Booked for Women's and Men's radio station. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I know I have. I have indeed, Hazel. It was really good of you to invite me on, and yeah, it's been a very stimulating conversation. Thank you. Thank you.