25 mins:  https://soundcloud.com/rand-made/the-fires-of-cadiz

10 mins:  https://soundcloud.com/rand-made/the-thaw

Spending around 5 hours a day on a train to London, 3 days a week over the last however-many-years has its downsides.  The backache. The inconsiderate passengers who watch movies without headphones. The toilet doors that open magically, slowly revealing your distraught, weeing form to the queue of people in the vestibule.

But there are upsides, and my favourite is writing time.  Around fifteen glorious hours of it a week. (Before Covid-19 came along and robbed me blind)

I’ve always loved writing.  I used to do it as a job – albeit creating radio ads, which I think still counts.  In fact, it’s a rather lovely little art-form, the radio commercial. Much derided, but much underestimated. Also quite a discipline, composing a persuasive argument that gets to the crux of somebody’s consumerist needs in thirty seconds.  It makes you good at distillation.  Try being verbose in 65 words.

Anyway, that was then, this is now.  Now I write whatever I fancy, which is the upside of doing it for yourself instead of for a living.  You get to empty your brain of all the weird little thoughts/ideas/hang ups/frustrations you’ve had that day. Cheapest form of therapy. And it doesn’t matter if what you write is total bum-roll as you can be confident no one will ever read it.

And so, I had successfully convinced myself that not sharing what I write is actively a good thing.  A super-duper positive result!

I’m killing dead time! I’m working on a ‘project’. I’m honing my craft!  So what if no one ever gets to read any of it?

Recently however, I’ve become increasingly suspicious of my motives.  And have finally, gathered them all into a room like the suspects in a murder mystery and revealed the real culprit.

Fear.

Deep down the idea of someone else reading my stuff terrifies me to my core. The psychological equivalent of walking naked through the streets.

So Yeah.  I’m basically a coward.

Well screw it.  One of the only good things about getting older is that with age comes a lot less giving of shits.  So here I am, tentatively putting my stories out there. So if you’ve got between 10 and 25 minutes, and fancy a little tale… pls give these a listen, if I get a few listens I’ll keep adding more, so please keep a look out & follow / like / comment – it all helps!

Thanks!

J.