Francophile |
noun: one who admires France and the French. |
Namesakes |
noun: plural of namesake. A person or thing with the same name as another. |
A lot of people find turning 30 a bit traumatic. It’s a wake-up call. They take stock of their lives, realise how little they’ve achieved and decide it’s time to take life a little more seriously. Perhaps the hope is that if they take life a bit more seriously, life might take them a bit more seriously in return.
In particular this seems to afflict a lot of people in what is laughingly referred to as the entertainment ‘industry’. At the age of 30 it seems that all singers want to be actors, all actors want to play Hamlet and all comedians want to write novels. This is, of course, an act of vanity and should be abhorred.
Now, as it goes, nothing could have been further from my mind as I hit 30. I’d been making a living of sorts, treading the boards in the name of comedy since I was 19 and on my thirtieth birthday life conspired to take me to the millionaire’s ski resort of Aspen, Colorado where, having already performed a show of my own, I was then taken to a theatre where I watched one of my childhood heroes, Steve Martin, perform live. He did a routine about his singing testicles. There was a strange dignity to the performance and it brought the house down.
The lesson was clear; turning 30 didn’t mean I had to grow up. On 2 March 2001 there was not one single part of me that wanted to be taken seriously. As far as I was concerned, life was good, I was having fun and I could see no reason to change my course.
A year later, however, it hit me like a train. I woke up on my 31st birthday and was gripped by a sudden desire to be taken seriously. It was time to stop acting the fool and behave like a grown-up. (This may or may not be connected but among my presents was a novel called Shopgirl. Written by Steve Martin; childhood hero, testicular vocalist, comedian, movie star … and novelist.)
I’d often idly talked about writing a novel, but I’d never done anything about it. All of a sudden that just wasn’t good enough! Me, not yet a novelist?! At 31?! Oh, how I’d let myself down! Oh, how I’d let the world of literature down. It was time to do something about it. It was time for David James Gorman to be taken seriously.
I sat down at my computer and looked at a blank screen. Here goes, I thought, here comes the Booker Prize, let’s see what the world thinks about me when I’ve finished this. I stared at the blank screen, locked my fingers together, stretched my arms, palms out and cracked my knuckles because that’s how I’d seen writers do it in the movies. Then I put the kettle on. I wanted a cup of tea but coffee seemed more like a writer’s drink. Maybe I should start smoking? I could think about that later. Eight cups of coffee into the day and there were still no words on the screen. This whole writing-a-novel malarkey was looking a lot harder than it seemed. That night, as I stayed awake, shaking the caffeine through my system, I came up with a plan: at ten o’clock the next morning I would ring my agent, Rob.
‘Hello, Rob.’
‘Dave.’
‘I’ve been thinking ... I want to write a novel. What do you reckon?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dave. You’re very busy. I’ve got a lot of work lined up for you, things are on a roll, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’
‘Well, OK, Rob, if that’s what you think. I’ll give up on the whole crazy idea. It was a pipedream anyway.’
That was how I imagined the conversation would go, that was my plan. After all, I was very busy. My diary was full and so were the theatres. It wouldn’t last forever but the sun was shining and surely any agent worth his salt would want to make hay. If I was told not to write a novel, that was better than just failing to write a novel, wasn’t it? That way I could get drunk in a few bars and complain to strangers about how I wanted to write a novel but that circumstances just wouldn’t let me. I could be a frustrated novelist! Oh yes, I could make drunk strangers in bars take me seriously, and to be honest, wouldn’t that be enough? Admittedly this plan contained only a tiny fraction of the kudos of winning the Booker Prize but it involved absolutely none of the work.
I picked up the phone.
‘Hello, Rob.’
‘Dave.’
‘I’ve been thinking ... I want to write a novel. What do you think?’
‘Good.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll make a few calls.’
‘What?’
‘Set up a meeting.’
‘But what about the theatres?’
‘They can wait.’
‘But ...’
‘I’ll call you back.’
‘…’
*
‘I think you’re just the right kind of person to write a novel,’ said Jake.
The three of us were in Rob’s office and it seemed that everyone was taking me seriously.
Jake was in publishing, an editor working for Random House, the world’s largest publisher. He was young and very enthusiastic and he demanded the same kind of enthusiasm in others.
‘Fiction is hard work. It’s just you, your imagination and your computer,’ he said, ‘You have to take it seriously.’
‘That’s exactly what I want. I want to take it seriously,’ I said, before offering a completely unnecessary, ‘I’m 31.’
Crikey; Rob and Jake were both giving my literary ambitions real considered thought. This plumped up my ego and made me take the idea seriously too. I was trying to convince Jake to give me the deal, and in doing so I was starting to convince myself. Maybe, if I had to write a novel it would be easier. If I had a publishing deal, most importantly, if I had a deadline to meet, I was sure I’d be able to do it. Because everyone else was taking the idea seriously, I was being seduced by it all over again.
‘Are you really serious, Dave?’
‘I am, Jake, I really am.’
And I was. But I needed to convince Jake somehow. I had to demonstrate how serious I was. I had an idea.
‘I’ll tell you how serious I am, Jake. I’m actually thinking—’ pause for effect ‘—of growing a beard.’
Jake stared at me. I stared back at him but only because I didn’t dare look at Rob. I knew what he was thinking: please don’t screw up this meeting with your stupid beard talk. I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my face. There was an awkward silence but I continued to meet Jake’s stare and refused to blink. Rob coughed but Jake and I kept on staring.
‘Really?’ Jake seemed impressed but unsure.
‘Really,’ I said with a solemn nod.
Jake sucked some air through his teeth, clearly weighing up my beardly potential. Rob coughed again.
‘OK, er ...’ Rob seemed embarrassed, ‘the beard is ... a bold offer, Dave, but I think the meeting would be best served if we concerned ourselves with the real business in hand.’
‘Rob. This is the business in hand,’ I said, Jake still fixed in my stare.
‘OK… but…’
‘Gentlemen,’ Jake interrupted, breaking out of my gaze, ‘I think we have a deal.’
Jake offered his hand and I shook it. There was a pause while we all sat and contemplated what had just occurred. As far as I could work out, the world’s largest publisher had just offered me a publishing deal on the condition that I grew a beard. Rob, as my agent, was the first to speak.
‘I’m glad we have that sorted out, but there are, of course, some details still to negotiate.’
‘Of course,’ said Jake.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Just so you know; you might not think it to look at me with my brown hair, but the beard will be ginger.’
There was a long pause.
‘I was thinking more in terms of contract details. For the book,’ said Rob, who clearly couldn’t see the important message contained within the subject of my beard.
‘Right,’ I said, trying to invest the word with great understanding.
‘Right,’ said Jake, with abundant common sense.
‘Right,’ said Rob with finality.
‘Right,’ I said because I wanted to see if we’d go round again. We didn’t.
Instead there was another pause, during which I realised there was something important we hadn’t yet discussed.
‘Oh, by the way ... I have an idea ... for a story, for a novel, if anyone would like to hear it?’
Rob looked at his watch. Jake looked slightly bemused. He was probably wondering what witchcraft we’d worked in order for him to agree a publishing deal solely on the status of my facial hair. I suspect it was the first literary deal of its kind.
‘Of course,’ he said, remembering his job, ‘I’d love to hear it. In fact, I need to hear it.’
‘Why don’t you two get a coffee and discuss it?’ said Rob, who had other business to attend to. He represented a few people, and some of them, being female, couldn’t rely on facial hair tactics to secure employment.
In the comfy leather armchairs of the café next door I explained my idea to Jake while we shared a pot of tea.
‘OK. It’s about a man who, in his mind’s eye, can see a new primary colour,’ I said. ‘It torments him because it’s impossible to describe it to anyone. If there was nothing red in the world but it existed in your imagination you couldn’t begin to describe it to me, could you? It’s the colour of tomatoes, buses, postboxes, blood and so on, but if you couldn’t refer to an example of red you couldn’t describe it.’
‘And how do we know that we both see the same red in the first place?’ asked Jake.
‘Exactly, we don’t. That’s why it’s impossible to describe. That’s why this man is going mad. Eventually he figures if he can see it, it must exist somewhere. So he decides to search for it …’
‘Travel,’ said Jake scribbling some notes down, ‘good.’
‘… so he swims the deepest oceans and penetrates the densest rain-forests in search of obscure flora and fauna hoping to discover a speck of this mysterious hue.’
‘Nice.’
‘Oh … and his name,’ I said, leaning forward, thinking on my feet, ‘is Hugh! Hugh Brown! So when he eventually finds the colour in a … in a … in a … butterfly, he’s really frustrated because he can’t …’
‘… name it after himself?’ guessed Jake.
‘Exactly!’ I squealed, ‘You can’t call a colour “brown” because the name’s been taken and you can’t call it “hugh” because that’s like calling it … “colour”.’
‘But he’s found it?’
‘Yeah. So he isolates it as a chemical compound and then all hell breaks loose.’
I sat back in my chair, proud of myself. Jake looked at me with big eyes, clearly expecting me to tell him more about the hell that was going to break loose.
‘So … for example,’ I started, ‘some people are so freaked by the sight of this new colour, they descend into madness. Hugh Brown will have that on his conscience for the rest of his life. TVs, computer monitors, all electronic media need to be completely redesigned in order to display the new colour and the world’s cereal manufacturers are fighting to own the colour just so that their boxes stand out on the shelves.’
I was sure that was enough. I sat back. Jake said nothing.
‘Well?’ I said, ‘Do you like it?’
‘How long will it take you to grow a beard?’
*
Later that day Rob and Jake set about the process of negotiating the contract details while I started my side of the bargain and gave up shaving. I expect they finished before me, but in any case, four weeks later, the deal was on. We met again, this time in Jake’s office, I signed a contract, and we popped open a bottle of ceremonial champagne to mark the occasion.
To demonstrate just how committed people were I even got given a big cheque. I find it impossible to explain this sort of thing; it makes far more sense to pay someone after they’ve done some work than before and yet here I was being given an advance. I wasn’t sure if this demonstrated that I was with a stupid publisher or a brilliant agent (or both) but I did know that I now had no choice; I would have to write a novel and there would no longer be any room for excuses. And because everyone else had taken the idea so seriously, I was convinced too.
‘I’ll need the first couple of chapters by the end of the year,’ said Jake.
‘No problem.’ I said, scratching at my neck. I was brimming with confidence.
*
You’ve probably gathered by now that the book you’re reading isn’t the book I was supposed to write. This isn’t a novel. This isn’t a work of fiction; this is a true story. This is the story of what happened to me while I was supposed to be writing a novel. What can I say? We don’t always get what we want in life, it’s as simple as that. My parents always wanted a girl.
I started off with good intentions. I stared at the blank screen for at least 40 minutes before putting the kettle on, but making coffee was only the simplest form of displacement activity in which I indulged. It wasn’t long before my CD collection was alphabetised, my wardrobe colour co-ordinated and my fridge defrosted, but the worst distraction of all was the computer.
Jake had said it would be just me, my imagination and my computer. He was wrong. My computer is connected to the internet and the internet contains everything in the whole wide world ever. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find everything in the whole wide world ever to be a bit distracting. Surely it’s the curse of the modern world that so many people now work at a computer while the computer also provides the biggest distraction from work ever devised by man.
Even when I sat down at my desk with the best of intentions I would find myself thinking: I’ll crack on with Chapter 1 of the novel … just as soon as I’ve checked my emails. Well, that’s a day wiped out right there. After three weeks I had written one page. It read as follows:
Hugh’s Hue.
A novel
by Dave Gorman
Having written one whole page I reckoned I’d earned myself a proper break, so I thought I’d have a cup of coffee and quickly check my emails. For the seventh time that day. Amongst the mail from strangers offering me pornography, human growth hormones, generic viagra, cheap inkjet cartridges, get-rich-quick schemes, get-rich-even-quicker schemes and get-rich-really-quick-no-honestly-we-mean-it schemes, there was one particular email that caught my attention and pricked my curiosity.
The subject of the email was ‘Googlewhack’, which meant nothing to me but seemed a curious enough word. The sender was a stranger but his email address revealed that he was called Steven. I guessed that Steven was Australian. I didn’t know this for sure because obviously he didn’t start the email by saying Hello, I’m Australian, but he might as well have:
G’day Davo
You see what I mean? There was a certain antipodean flavour there. It went on:
Did you know that you’re a googlewhack?
Stevo
Hmmm? I’d never heard the term ‘googlewhack’ before and I didn’t know who Stevo was. But it seemed to me there was a distinct possibility he was sending me some kind of Australian insult. After all, there was only one part of my anatomy I could imagine the folk down under calling a ‘google’ and Stevo seemed to be accusing me of whacking mine.
Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried writing a novel when you suspect a stranger on the other side of the world is sending you a random insult but let me tell you it just isn’t possible. My mind just couldn’t focus on anything else. Until I knew what a googlewhack was, there was simply no way I could concentrate elsewhere. So I hit the ‘reply’ button and fired off an email to Stevo:
Stevo,
What the hell is a googlewhack?
Dave
That seemed to be more than enough work for one day. Besides, I’m sure I’d read somewhere that it was unwise to write on an empty stomach, and I was certain it was foolhardy to write on an empty head. Right now, I had to fill my belly and my mind. I told myself that I would begin work, proper, the next morning and like a fool I believed me. Right now there was a restaurant to visit, friends to meet, food to eat, drink to drink and some thoughts to think.
*
I’d arranged to meet three mates, Geoff, Chris and Chris, in a little restaurant tucked away on a Soho side street, a simple little place that serves simple food. They serve cheap plonk too but they don’t mind if you bring your own wine so we brought a couple of bottles of even cheaper, plonkier plonk.
The conversation meandered, as good conversation so often does, but it returned time and again to the possible meaning of ‘googlewhack’. No-one at the table was at all sure, but most had a theory. Most of the theories agreed that it was probably some kind of Australian slang but no-one had a convincing explanation as to what it could mean.
‘Maybe he’s calling you a nutter? A headcase? Whacko?’ offered one of the Chrises.
‘Or maybe he means you’re ugly?’ suggested the other Chris. ‘Maybe looking at you is like being whacked in the goggles?’
‘That would make me a gogglewhack,’ I said, ‘and according to Stevo I’m a googlewhack.’
‘I reckon you were probably right first time. He’s calling you a wanker,’ said our waiter, who had joined the conversation and clearly wasn’t overly concerned with tips.
‘You’re clearly not overly concerned with tips, are you?’ I said, smiling.
‘All right!’ he said, full of mock offence. ‘No need to be such a googlewhack about it!’
It seemed that everyone who heard the phrase wanted to know what it meant. No-one was able to shrug it off and move the conversation on, so perhaps it’s not surprising that when I got up the next morning and turned my computer on, ready to get to work (honest, guv) the first thing I did was check my emails in the hope that Stevo had provided the answer. I wasn’t disappointed.
Essentially, it seemed ‘googlewhacking’ was a kind of internet word game that you played using the search engine www.google.com. Anyone who’s used the site before (and in recent years it has become the search engine of choice for most internet users) will have a head start here. I’ll try to explain as best I can.
The internet contains lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of information. All human life is there: there are great truths, there are whopping lies and there is plenty of sex and videotape. In essence, anyone can put anything on to the world wide web. And for the large part it isn’t organised.
This disorganisation makes it impossible to have a Dewey Decimal System taking you to the subject you’re looking for. Instead, people use search engines. Google’s job is to look through the internet on your behalf. It tries to read whatever it can find and while it doesn’t find absolutely everything it currently indexes more than three billion pages. And it actually reads them. It takes in their content. So, let’s say you want to know about balloons. You type in the word balloon and then ask Google to go to work. In a split second Google will show you every single one of the three billion pages that contain the word balloon. Be warned: it will involve some bizarre pornography. But, say you typed in the word animal instead? Well, then Google will come back showing you a list of every page that contains the word animal. Be warned: it will involve some very bizarre pornography. But maybe you want to know about balloon animals? In which case you type in both the words and this time Google comes racing back with every page on the web that contains both the word balloon and the word animal. This will involve some very, very bizarre pornography. This is in part because it has searched for both the words rather than the phrase. It will come back with pages that include the phrase ‘balloon animal’, as well as pages that include the phrase ‘animal balloon’ and, for that matter, it will also come back with all the pages that include sentences such as ‘I inserted the balloon into the animal …’, in fact every page that contains the two words whether they share a sentence or not.
Try it with any two words of your choice and you will probably find that Google points you at quite a lot of different sites. I just tried it with custard and fandango and, at the time of writing, Google can find over 500 pages that use both those words.
However, on very rare occasions, instead of showing you 548 possible web pages, Google can only find one. It looks through three billion pages and only finds one that delivers. A site that, in its own way, is special and unique.
This is a googlewhack and there are people out there who like to find them for fun.
Aspiring googlewhackers should be aware that there are also a few supplementary rules, as follows.
Stevo, my Australian correspondent, had been amusing himself by trying to find a googlewhack and he’d succeeded, with the words Francophile Namesakes.
There was only one page in the whole world wide web that contained both those two words and it was part of my website: www.davegorman.com. So, as far as Stevo was concerned I was a googlewhack! He’d had a look around my site, found my email address and decided to let me know. So now I knew.
So, that put my mind at rest. It wasn’t a random insult, it was just a strange email from down under, letting me know that my website contained a little bit of uniqueness; a one in three billion bit of uniqueness. Now that I knew it wasn’t an insult to my sanity or face it didn’t bother me. Now that my curiosity was satisfied and I knew what a googlewhack was, surely I’d be able to crack on with Chapter 1 of my literary masterpiece?
Only life isn’t that simple, is it? Because now a whole new curiosity had been pricked. Because now I knew what a googlewhack was, I wanted to know if I could find one. I felt sure that I could, after all I had a pretty good vocabulary. Maybe it would be a good exercise to get my brain in gear. Yes, I’d find myself a googlewhack and then I would crack on with Chapter 1 of the novel.
I got online and another day of my life soon disappeared. My first attempts were very wide of the mark. No matter how obscure the words were, they always seemed to be shared by thousands of pages on the Web. (Why on earth were there 3000 hits for Hedgehog Bazooka? Could 1190 websites really contain Alfalfa and Beefsteak?) Slowly, my technique started improving. Karaoke Hubcap: 429; Quiche Gorgon: 75; Prosthetic Vassal: 41; Haphazard Frugivore: 15.
Best yet. I should hold on to one of those:
Haphazard Applejacks: 7. Come on!
Haphazard Cockboat: 3. Oof.
And then … then it happened: Haphazard Hatstands: 1 hit!
I stared at the screen. The space which would normally be filled up with hits two, three and four was instead a strange white emptiness, an emptiness that filled me with an inexplicable pride. I punched the air with my fist and a small, half-whispered ‘yes’ fell from my mouth. I’d finally done it.
I went to the kettle to make a celebratory cup of tea and prepared myself to begin work. I sat back down at the computer and looked at my lovely googlewhack again. But hold on, something was wrong. There was the page with my search results. In the familiar blue stripe across the page I read the words:
Searched the web for Haphazard Hatstands.
Results: 1-1 of 1. Search took 0.2 seconds
But yes, something was wrong: haphazard was underlined, but hatstands wasn’t. I knew what this meant because Stevo had explained it in his email. The underlining shows you that there is a link to dictionary.com. If it’s underlined it means that the word is found there and if it isn’t, then it isn’t. So that meant that hatstands couldn’t be found in dictionary.com!
I started to fume at the injustice of it all.
I mean, obviously hatstands is a word; what kind of dictionary is it that doesn’t include hatstands! Then I looked at the page again and realised it was worse than that. The one page out of three billion to contain both haphazard and hatstands was a wordlist. A page full of words beginning with H. This wasn’t a googlewhack at all and for two separate reasons. It seemed my celebration was premature. I sipped at my tea but all of a sudden it tasted sour. Hugh’s Hue, it seemed, would have to wait a little longer …
*
… another hour passed in which I must have tried hundreds of different pairs to no avail. Pork Turncoat? 381 hits. Useless. Porky Turncoat? 43. Getting better. Dork Turncoat? 78. Damn. Dork Turnspit?
BINGO! I had it. Dork Turnspit delivered one hit and one hit only. I hurriedly took in the details, not wanting to be fooled again. It passed all the tests. Oh yes, my Google had been well and truly whacked! A few hours ago I was a mere ’whackee; a chance discovery by a mysterious Aussie, but now I too was a proper googlewhacker.
At last my tea tasted sweet. I’d done it. I’d found one. But what exactly had I found? I took in the address of the website and found myself shocked once more. It was a site with an alarming address: www.WomenAndDogsUK.co.uk.
A site, as you’ll have guessed by now, that was based in the UK and concerned with women … and dogs!