CHAPTER FIFTEEN POSTSCRIPT (SPELT RIGHT

Chapter Fifteen -

Postscript or is it prologue?

So, there you have it, and I have written my first book and because of my great mate Martyn who is a pretty good proof-reader (and is also a star and features in this book) you won’t find any spelling or grandma mistakes.

The only one thing I am not sure about is whether he ever managed to get through the whole script and make sure I had spelt ‘Foreword’ correctly and consistently.

For people like me, the other word ‘forward’ is a huge, hairy-arsed and hefty rugby player who loves charging into similar specimens and afterwards carouses a lot of beer while cuddling the same now showered and tidied up chunks of men.

I am used to writing about that use of the word ‘forward’, and hence I had this preconception that forward was also the spelling of any written preamble to a book.

By the way there is another type of rugby player called a ‘back’, sorry I know this isn’t wholly relevant or possibly the right time, but they are generally nimbler and swifter and have more interest in fashion, hair products and personal hygiene. They might be seen drinking a white wine spritzer or similar while trying to keep their distance from the noisy forwards and their boisterous, beer driven behaviour.

I am noticing an outbreak of alliteration here.

So, when I wrote the foreword as an introductory section to my book, I wrote it (proudly, as you will remember I had always wanted to have one of my own) as ‘Forward’.

I have to say that it didn’t seem right at the time, but it wasn’t until I had typed it a few times that I thought I should google it. Up until then I had just been having a feeling of unease about its spelling, but I guessed it was due to the fact that I had never had to write the word before. I looked it up and there it was; that weird extra ‘e’ in the middle.

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In a very fleeting ‘Ah yes, that’s it’ moment, probably with no glasses on as usual, I saw my error and immediately set about adding the extra ‘e’ on the handful of pages that I had written by then. While doing this, I probably missed a few.

More importantly, in my haste I had somehow failed to notice while googling all this, that the second half of the new word I had found was WORD. How did I not notice this? It’s so obvious, it’s a FORE WORD, a word at the fore.

This brings me to Martyn Best, and he must despair with me sometimes. He is the magical proof-reader that I mentioned, and his assistance has been invaluable with loads of lucid advice and commentary and also that all important encouragement.

I did think at one stage that it wasn’t worth completing the book but when he read the draft that was going to be sent around to the main stars, he gave me some inspiring words and said he loved it. Since then, he has been a great help putting the final touches to it as well as the occasional bike ride and more than occasional, socially distanced glass (glass, did I say bottle?) of wine. Oh, and those million steps. Thank you, Martyn.

Anyway, Martyn proof-read it.

He wittily remarked that he actually didn’t know there were that many ways of spelling foreword and it was while he was telling me that I realised how daft I had been.

‘It’s a …fore.. word’, said Martyn, ‘a word before’.

Yes, the fog had cleared, and I imagined myself flitting through Google, seeing the extra ‘E’ and then changing (nearly all) the forwards to forewards, not knowing they should be forewords.

Right, I am so glad that I cleared that up.

Do you know, I would bet that there is at least still one of them misspelt in there somewhere but Martyn nearly always has some type of computer thingy to check things so he should have covered that possibility. He is very keyed up on all that stuff for a man of his age, very slightly older than me that is.

He also suggested the extra chapter herein now being written, as I was going to leave it at:

‘Monsieur, your friend, he is still in zee cupboard’.

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It seemed a good last line, and I thought that if I didn’t use that, I’d just have to find another, which as it turns out I did.

‘No, you’ve got to have a last chapter,’ Martyn had admonished, ‘you need to sum things up, tie all the loose ends up and so on’.

He was beginning to sound like my original publisher and I realised that if Martyn hadn’t told me this, then he, Bob the original one, probably would have done.

So, what were the themes and messages?

What did I write at the start in the foreword, forward, foreward when Bob had bullied me into planning ahead, after I thought that I had finished the bloody book!

Well, I have talked in the book about a number of Liverpool businesspeople and characters, all of whom I am very proud to call my friends, and I sincerely hope I haven’t upset any of them in the process.

I don’t believe I have because I came up with what I thought was a moment of genius and I sent them all an early draft to look through and censor, add to and edit. This has led to a bit more material which by implication they should be happy with as they largely created it.

They are all in their latter years now (apart of course from Andy P) but I hope that, while they read this, they look back on what they have achieved with a sense of pride.

One of my themes is how they have done business with a network of trusted colleagues and when they have shaken hands on something then that is it, sealed and guaranteed. I have found folk like that in my life eventually, but it took me a long time.

I sort of ‘kissed a lot of frogs’ as they say.

I know I have interrupted the stories and harped on about the dishonesty that I have encountered but my overall tone is meant be bullish and optimistic. I wanted to celebrate these guys and their era. Maybe I have just had a bad run and, if I had done things on my first gut instinct, I don’t think any of the things that happened to me would have come to fruition.

Yes, I hope I have celebrated these men, their success and their way of doing it. They have generated so much business in their time, so much employment and so much fun. They have truly touched so many lives positively. Their businesses have

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given so much to the area and of course they and their businesses have given endlessly to charity as well.

Their era is coming to an end as they retire but I hope it is not forgotten.

Is it a bad world now? I don’t know? I hope not.

Is the constant stream of attempted scams arriving at my computer daily indicative of a decaying morality in the world or is it just that the world wide web has made it easier for all the baddies in the world to get to everyone at the press of a button.

Their target market is, after all, the whole world so maybe we get the feeling that everyone is after us as a result. Maybe the world is just smaller.

The boys in this book did it right. They were honest with people and they generated a family feel in their business life.

I wish them many happy years retired as a reward!

While I am on the subjects of the book there are quite a few people who might not have made it into it but feel they maybe should and for that I genuinely apologise.

In fact, one, my old mucker Vin Staniforth from my Ernst Young days, did finally become the very kind, and much put-upon illustrator and dotted throughout the book you will see amusing examples of his fine work.

But really, I must stop soon.

It was so hard to find the cut-off point, and I was in a rush at the end to get it out there and published so it could hopefully provide some funds for the charity and I could write my second and third books, which are busy fermenting in my head as I write.

So yes, there will be another. And by the way I know I spelt grammar wrong somewhere - did you spot that?

‘This wallpaper is terrible - one of us will have to go’.

Oscar Wilde’s alleged last words. And now mine.

THE END

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