Vineyard 70 : And now for the book

You might be forgiven for thinking that this blog is about our vineyard. The 70th in the series in fact. And in a way you’d be right. It actually has two parts to it. First, it is the 70^th vineyard blog but as it has been written at the time of lock-down it doesn’t have any information about what’s happening in the vineyard because we have no idea. We aren’t allowed to travel up there even though once there we would be in greater isolation than we could ever be here at home in the city suburb of Headingley.

So I wrote this initially to form the last chapter of my new book as well as the 70^th vineyard blog. I’ve added it on to the end of this blog. It’s the bit in italics. But just a minute I hear you say, what new book? Well I’m glad you asked that. You might remember in a previous retirement blog I wrote about wanting this period of my life to be about something. Nothing heroic you understand.

I tried to volunteer my services as an ex-psychologist in a counselling role, for those suffering mental distress as a result of the virus. Seems like I’m too old or just slipped through the cracks. My guess is, having whipped everybody up into a frenzy of helping out or ‘do this for your country’, they found they had bitten off more than they could chew, got too many volunteers and just quietly forgot about those of us who had plucked up considerable courage to offer our services. So I admit I’m both frustrated and relieved.

Which brings me back to the big project theme and specifically a favourite theme of mine – don’t put your well-being in the hands of others. Control what you can and avoid the rest. So on my list of big things, along with going back to work, was ‘write a book and get it published’.

But here again there’s a problem. While a person can write a book, they have no control over whether they can get it published. And, as I’ve said before, in these retirement blogs, I haven’t had a lot of success getting ‘proper’ publishers to take me on as an author. Unless it was on a professional basis and my interest in that, despite my last blog about positive reinforcement, is long gone.

So that left self-publishing, the version where you order 100 books at considerable cost in order to have them taking up space in your garage. And while it is true that our garage is nicely waterproofed now, I still wouldn’t want my precious book/s languishing in there. So that leaves Amazon. My intention was simply to publish another Ebook – my third. Title, predictably, The Vineyard Years.

This would be at least some kind of an achievement in lock-down. Not ideal but well within my control and it merits the title ‘a project’. There was a problem of course, there had to be didn’t there. Having decided that the vineyard section of my retirement blog had enough words (about 75,000) to form the basis of a proper book, I couldn’t find the Word version of all 70 blogs. I knew of course where the WordPress versions were but that wouldn’t fit on to the Amazon platform.

Long story short, I paid my IT guy £200 to turn the WordPress text back into Word. If I’d been better-organised I would have had the Word documents at my finger tip and saved myself £200. I comfort myself that, in these times, he might need the work. The real laugh is that I’ve just found all 70. Laugh? I nearly went to Bradford.

Anyway that bit done, I was free to upload my text to Kindle / Amazon KDP, whatever. It’s not quite as straightforward as I remember it from last time but I got there. Then I noticed an option that had not been there when I published my other two Ebooks 3 or 4 years ago. It said, words to the effect, turn your Ebook into a paperback using the same text and information you’ve just put together for your Ebook.

Had this part of the project required any further effort I don’t think it would have happened but, as perhaps you can see in photo above, it has. Of course this bit is not free and it costs me £4 something to have one volume printed. If you want a certain number you just order them. I think it’s called Print on Demand (POD). My son-in-law under pressure from me has ordered 5 copies, And of course you could do the same, cost of about £9. Or you could just immediately whistle up the Ebook version, £4 something. Did I tell you it was called The Vineyard Years? Now you can’t say no to that, can you, oh you can? Shame.

Vineyard 70 – not the end

I don’t want to write this blog as if it is the end of the vineyard years. It is the end of this book because, as a book, it has to have an ending. But the blog, on which it is based, doesn’t have to have an ending, it will, I hope, go on and on. More important the vineyard, our half acre of disappointment and pain, hope and ambition most certainly goes on.

I happen to be putting this blog into Ebook form at a difficult time for the human race. This is the time of the virus. Seems obvious now but in the future no doubt we’ll forget or we may even look back and laugh, although I doubt that right now. It’s really important to remember that if nature has a hand in proceedings then life most definitely goes on. It helps to remember that.

So I’m finishing the book version of the blog at a somewhat arbitrary 70 blogs. I suppose it would have been nice to get to 100, but at the current rate of writing that would take about another two and a half years. Right now that seems a long way off.

The great irony is that, having decided to finish now, I might, under more normal circumstances, have written this last blog about life beginning all over again. I have complete faith that the evidence of nature’s spring time miracle would be happening to prove it.

Unfortunately I cannot witness this new start because we aren’t allowed to visit our vineyard on account of being in lockdown. Consequently I have to write this last chapter as an imaginary event rather than an actual one. That’s a shame really because it reduces my ability, and even my inclination, to wax lyrical about our nearly seven year journey.

Perhaps it would have made more sense to wait until the end of this season. Say about October time. That might take me to 75 blogs. That’s quite a nice number, not as round as 70 but with a degree of rounding off to it. But the thing is because of this lockdown business I have the time right now. And I currently have the inclination to spend the required money on changing back into a Word document and putting it on to Amazon.

I worry if I don’t turn this blog into a book which is a long-time ambition of mine, that I might never do it. Carpe Diem, seize the day or the moment if you prefer. I think the moment is now.