COUNTRY REFLECTIONS

DAVID KAVANAGH has spent three decades working for a wide variety of local and national print titles in an assortment of roles, including news reporter, features writer, sub-editor, news editor, Editor, and columnist.

He is also the author of several books and this website is mostly dedicated to extracts from one of them, A COUNTRY PILLOW BOOK. In addition, below, are details about three other non-fiction books: THE QUICK QUIZ BOOK OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS;  LETTERS TO A U.S. PRESIDENT; and, most controversially, THE LITTLE BOOK OF SUICIDE. (Sample all these titles via: https://books.google.com/books)

 

A COUNTRY PILLOW BOOK. Review by Eifion Rees, Shooting Times and Country magazine.

SLEEPYHEADS be warned: this is more book than pillow. David Kavanagh has had a busy few years putting together this compilation speckled with comment and anecdote from its author, a journalist for whom the delights of the countryside consists in its being a million miles away from the madness of modern life.

A Country Pillow Book is the ideal read for the literary toe-dipper, the bathroom bibliophile and the heavy-lidded lethargist.

Pick your chosen specialised subject from its voluminous index, flick to the corresponding page and tuck into snippets both informative and entertaining, such as sightings near the Forest of Dean of a hairy beast that may or may not have been a black panther, sightings in various bluebell woods of a hairy beast that may or may not have been Brian Blessed, ostensibly doing PR work for The Woodland Trust; goat racing in Shropshire and the harassment of marine wildlife by surfers off Godrevy Island in Cornwall.

The weird and wonderful are merely the tip of this impressive iceberg, however.

Big enough to sink the Titanic thrice over, frozen within it is evidence of the state of the countryside at the turn of the millennium, a time capsule for the future.

 

THE QUICK QUIZ BOOK OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS.

About this book: From Greek mythology to Olde English legend, they are tales that stir the blood and set the heart racing. Now you can test your own and others' knowledge of these ancient stories with this simple quiz book. Modern day mysteries are also included in its multiple choice, question-and-answer format, perfect for any social gathering, family journey or holiday break. Alternatively, just test yourself with the 'personal score challenge' before looking up the answers at the end. A score of 400 or more correct answers confers 'god' or 'goddess' status.

Review By Judy Harris. Amazon Verified Purchase: This is a very useful little book, very good for testing knowledge of myths and legends from all sources but be aware that the questions are not segregated into Greeks, Romans etc. They are all mixed up. They are multiple choice and the answers are at the back.

 

LETTERS TO A U.S. PRESIDENT

About this book: In 1994, David Kavanagh started a journal that became a series of open letters to then U.S. President Bill Clinton.

For almost three months, up to the mid-term congressional elections, he compared their day-to-day lives, selecting snippets of poetry that seemed appropriate for the moment.

Then the journal was forgotten.

Rediscovered in 2002, 'Letters to a U.S. President' is a sideways glance at presidential life in America from a London, UK, life which grows more calamitous by the day.

Quirky and original, it offers a trans-Atlantic take on the age-old concept of parallel existence.

Embattled President and hapless citizen are not just miles apart, they have a whole ocean between them and a world of difference.

By the end, readers may wonder what the 42nd President might have made of these illuminating missives had he actually received them.

 

Article on HoldtheFrontPage website for British provincial journalism: A former regional journalist has relived his days in local newspapers in a book which has become easily available in the UK for the first time.

Letters to a U.S. President has sold well in the States, and now the author, David Kavanagh, has arranged for the title to be published in this country too.

He’s a former Sheffield Star man and has also worked at the Wrexham Leader, Knowsley Reporter and Bournemouth Evening Echo.

The book began as a journal in 1994 which eventually turned into a series of open letters to the then President Bill Clinton.

David compared their day-to-day lives for almost three months in the run-up to some mid-term congressional elections… and then the journal was forgotten.

It was “rediscovered” in 2002 and published in America, where most copies have been sold, and is now easily available in the UK.

David said: “Some of the anecdotes about working for local British newspapers might appeal to HTFP readers, taken from those lively days spent in the regional press.

“Maybe some HTFP readers might even guess the real identity of ‘Terry’, my unfortunate local journalist companion on a trip to Paris.

“This unlucky financial scribbler – once a reckless womaniser – spent good money on a lady of the night only to find out ‘she’ was a ‘he’ after the deed had been done. Not a sound investment for his crown jewels.”

David also recalls the dreadful marketing stunts dreamed up by newspaper sales teams, his wrongful unmasking as a vice girl’s “client” in court....after actually revealing her convictions in the paper...and dealing with readers convinced they’d seen aliens, who wanted to gift their world exclusive to the intrepid author.

The book reports how he exposed the Ku Klux Klan’s attempts to set up a base in Dorset, while at the Bournemouth Echo, a story he later helped the Sunday Mirror develop further.

He was also involved in a high profile case that was heard at Sheffield Crown Court, where he was obliged to give evidence after holding clandestine meetings with hooded Animal Liberation Front members in woodland in the city.

It turned out that the police thought he was in cahoots with the animal liberators while they thought he was a police stooge.

David recalled in his book: “From time to time, I had to make stilted conversation with the overbearing judge who, I noticed, sported a tiny piece of nasal debris protruding from the nearest nostril.

“During my sweaty stint in the witness box, I developed a kind of fondness for that emerald detritus.

“It provided an accidental but comforting touch of earthy familiarity in an otherwise fear-inducing scenario.”

 

THE LITTLE BOOK OF SUICIDE: 77 Reasons to Kill Yourself. In Verse.

About this book: FROM the death of a distraught puppy owner, to the demise of a depressed cat lover, this collection of short poems shines a light on the dark subject of suicide in all its randomness and variety, its tragedy and its sometimes accidental farce...

 

A background article by David Kavanagh appeared on the Sabotage Times website: First my brother totalled my brand new Austin Mini, then he went and killed himself. Now all I'm left with is a book of poetry that my wife wishes I'd never written...

I remember battering my younger brother Philip on a number of occasions but one in particular still stands out.

I’d just acquired my first car – a two-tone green Austin Mini – for the then huge sum of £135.

Despite numerous threats of what I’d do to him if he laid a finger on this prized possession, the little prat snaffled the keys and attempted to make off up the driveway in it while I was out.

Predictably, as he was four years younger than me and aged just 14, he managed to smash the Mini’s side into the concrete posts separating our parents’ Lancashire property from the neighbour’s.

When I returned from college in the evening, Philip actually greeted me in the street en route from the bus stop (I hadn’t passed my driving test yet so couldn’t swank around in the damn thing).

‘I’ve crashed your car!,’ he giggled, his blue eyes flashing with merriment.

I didn’t believe him at first.

I think I laughed.

‘No, I really have,’ he insisted, twitching lank hair off his pale forehead in that way he did when he was nervous.  'I've crashed your car.’

Philip’s false mask of levity drained from his reddening face and I quickly realised he might be telling me the appalling truth.

By the time I’d jogged the rest of the way home and seen one side of my beloved vehicle stoved in, with its driver’s door hanging off and its windscreen cracked, he had miraculously disappeared.

I caught up with him later skulking by our back door and I remember my fist pummelling into his bony chest and thick head as he squirmed and wriggled away from me on the floor.

But I soon gave up.

What was the point?

The damage was done.

What was I going to do? Kill him?

Fast forward about a decade and by this time I’d been working all over the country for various newspapers.

I’m finally shacked up with a girlfriend in Hemel Hempstead, Herts, working as a poorly paid freelance stringer for several news outlets, including the Press Association and tabloids.

It was a particularly stressful time, not least because the said girlfriend and I were no longer exactly lovey-dovey and our split was in the wind.

The call came through from Dad.

Philip had killed himself – thrown himself in front of a train near Chorley railway station.

Decapitated.

Died instantly.

The words were like broken teeth in Dad’s mouth.

He spat them out, one by one, in a hoarse whisper.

It was the end of a long nightmare for him; the second youngest of his five sons sent mad from drug-induced schizophrenia; the window in Philip’s bedroom still nailed shut to stop him vanishing on one of his crazy village walkabouts in the middle of the night.

For some reason, as Dad spoke, I was catapulted back to that day, the day I’d felt like killing Philip, when I’d had him on the ground at my mercy, when my fists were thudding into the side of his head – that bloody head now on some cold mortuary slab with the rest of his mutilated body.

That body I would never see again or touch.

So this is how it ended for him, I thought, still in his fucking early twenties. ‘Shit,’ I muttered, putting the receiver down.

I hadn’t had a proper conversation with Philip in years because of his increasing mental illness.

But the last time I spoke to him before his death, he was upbeat, almost cheerful.

As we chatted on the telephone, I hoped the demons tormenting him had been vanquished. (God knows, he’d had enough ‘good’ drugs pumped into him to counteract all the ‘bad’ drugs he’d apparently swallowed like sweeties down the years.)

Yet he paused and announced that Scottish comedian Billy Connolly was talking to him from the television.

‘What ? Does he do that often?,’ I groaned, stomach sinking.

‘Oh yeah and I talk back,’ he said.

Billy Connolly has never failed so dismally to raise a smile.

But talking to comedians on the TV was not the worst manifestation of Philip’s illness.

By now, following years working as a fitter and mechanic, he had grown physically powerful, a brawler, nothing like the skinny kid I had once been able to thrash.

And the schizophrenia had made him reckless.

In the midst of his delusions, he once climbed out of the emergency door of a coach racing down the M1, clambered over the roof, and dropped down at the driver’s door, cheerfully hammering to be let back in.

It’s a wonder the driver didn’t die of a heart attack.

Other incidents were less humorous – like the time Philip, once an award-winning trainee, failed to return after being sent out on some simple job by his increasingly exasperated boss.

He was eventually found sitting on the bonnet of his car, weeping, not sure who he was anymore, his mind besieged by horrific psychotic images.

The darkness was closing in.

At his funeral ‘Whole of The Moon’ by The Waterboys rang out in the chilly church from a crackly cassette recorder.

It was a favourite track Philip had played over and over as a sort of comfort blanket against his troubles.

The song itself seems to be a philosophical take on the meaning of life, about how some people keep searching for that meaning while others give up. It’s the only song that’s ever made me cry.

Now, over 20 years since all this happened, I’ve had a long time to think about Philip, and about suicide.

Various articles and books I’ve previously tried to write about it have remained unfinished.

But a couple of years ago, I turned to poetry.

This is odd because I am certainly not a very good poet, nor am I even a very serious one.

For some reason, though, I found short, light, limerick-type rhyme a good way to explore this taboo subject, looking not really at Philip’s suicide alone but more at suicide in general.

The result was ‘The Little Book of Suicide: 77 Reasons to Kill Yourself. In Verse,’ published last year.

Needless to say, most people who have even heard the title have been outraged.

There were howls of dismay when it was featured as a competition prize on angling website Fishing Magic.

There was also a minor campaign launched in the States to get the book dropped by sellers.

But it is still on sale and that produces mixed feelings in me, not least because my own wife hates the subject matter and would have much preferred the book not to be published at all.

Even so, it has been and it is dedicated to Philip.