Making A Living As A Writer

I have tried to be terribly well behaved on this blog, but once in a while the strain is too great and I simply have to sound off. Here's an edited version of an email I just sent to a pal in the US of A. I post it at the risk of offending many of my readers; but I cannot not post it. I find the huge enrichment of those in positions of power these last thirty years nothing short of disgusting. I should add that I am not envious; I am very happy to have food in my pantry and a roof over my head, a few quid for a beer now and then; but I am horrified that so many ordinary working people are struggling to provide those bare essentials for themselves and their families when so much wealth is sloshing around.  So here we go: a 'modest proposal' 

My friend...  I'm very tied up just now with deadlines, etc etc., but took 24 hours off yesterday/today to visit G and have him take some photos of me for my new website (due about Xmas time). I also drove on to Chainsaw Phil's place where we threw wood on the fire, supped ale, and ranted about the bastards in positions of privilege and power who these days pay themselves vast sums for 'doing well for the shareholders' and equally vast sums for consenting to go quietly when they screw up. After a second pint of Hobgoblin I found myself propounding the notion that we could get at these people by the simple expedient of listing their names in a public (cyber) space and requesting all service providers - I mean garbage disposal men, postmen, gardeners, launderers, chauffeurs, sanitation engineers, restaurant proprietors, dentists, motor mechanics, grocers, milkmen, child-minders, bank tellers... whores but not tax-gatherers - to refuse to serve their needs/requests, on the basis that they are a low, despicable kind, so deeply contaminated by their own obsessive greed as to represent a health hazard to anybody coming into contact with them. We could make them the new untouchables, their isolation better ensured by the picketing of their premises, private or public, the obstructing of their huge vehicles on the public highways. These people need to know that they are depraved and in need of cleansing. I am becoming quite serious about this. I can think of no easier or cheaper way of isolating them, educating them as to the error of their ways, and persuading them that a change of tack might be beneficial to their spiritual health; no better way, that is, short of exterminating a few of their number 'pour encourager les autres'.

However, I have a living to earn, deadlines to meet, a grandson to coddle.