GET THE BOOK!

It's arrived! The copies of my book 'A Christmas Calling' from the publishers - the copies I now have to sell.

As mentioned previously, it's based on the story of Scrooge, and it's aimed at an adult readership, to light the festive fires in our hearts in the run-up to Christmas (there were Christmas things in the shops today!). I hope you'll buy a signed copy from me.
I can sell them at less than the Amazon price, at £8. Postage and packing is £3 and remains that same price for anything up to 6 copies. So, 1 copy is £11, 2 copies is £19, 3 copies is £27, and so on.
You can request copies by email (chriscottee@sky.com) or post (61 Westfield Ave, Watford, WD24 7HF). Please make sure your name is clear and tell me if you have a particular wording you'd like me to put ('My dearest and oldest friend', 'the true inspiration behind all my writing'!!)
Send a cheque or you can transfer the money by BACS: my sort code is 60-00-08 and account number is 49111841 account name REVEREND C P COTTEE)
So ... buy a copy! Buy copies! They will make great presents both for Christians and those who are not. Send me HUGE amounts of money!
By the way, if you're in Watford and you see me from time to time we can arrange delivery without postage and packing costs. If you're abroad we need to negotiate P&P!

Well, it's done! My publishers, Instant Apostle #InAp contacted me a week ago to say, 'can we have the completed manuscript for the second book in two weeks, please'. Now, on the one hand, as a writer it's lovely to be able to say those two wonderful words, 'my publishers' after, like many aspiring authors, so many years and so many manuscripts (about 15 in my case - I still have hopes for all of them!) but to find oneself staring down the barrel in quite that fashion is sobering. 
And guess what! I finished it this afternoon! Another 20,000 words or so, hitting its lowest depths and highest heights in bringing it to the intended conclusion, while still working at my 'day job', in a week! I'll try to do a preliminary review this week before sending it in. 
Which is fabulous. 
But this evening, I went out for a walk with my older son, Tom, who still lives with us. It was a bit drizzly, but really nice as we saw sheep, countryside, and the inside of a place of refreshment. And I realised - give me the choice of finishing a manuscript or being able to go out with Tom, and I'd take the time with Tom. Give me the choice of being a fabulously successful author (!) and being able to go out for walks with Tom, and I'll take the latter, any time. 
I'd have to say I'm pleased with, proud of even, my priorities.
Oh yes, I know, having to finish the second manuscript just 3 weeks before the first is published sounds suspiciously like a kind of madness.

IT'S TOM!

MY PUBLISHERS!

Oh yes, it's being published by Instant Apostle #InAp
Look them up. They're a young firm doing some exciting work.

In just over a month, my first-published book comes out. It's called, 'A Christmas Calling' and will be available on Amazon or, preferably for those that know me, direct from me, and signed. You could say it's all about getting festive. Though it isn't. But my hope in writing it is that it will stir those festive fires in adult readers - may even become a favourite to be read every December.

Children get that festive Christmas feeling quite easily. At the first real sign of its coming, something flickers to light inside them. A most glorious sense of anticipation, of rightness, of an unnameable blessing such that the very air, and every encounter, and every mention, increasingly fills them with a bright joy. 
Adults often remember that seasonal glory, but find it much harder to recreate. The story centres on a man desperately searching for the festive fizz, because his life is a lonely, soulless grind, lacking any kindness. And then a woman drops into it, seemingly offering a way out of being Scrooge, and into a bigger, brighter world. Is she an angel, or an invitation to disaster? Their hopes of joy together are doomed if he really is immune to kindness; doomed if her friends won't accept him; doomed because she starts getting him into trouble from the first day they meet. 
And what is that yearning that calls to him from afar and aches as it echoes in the hollow caverns of his heart? 

DISAPPOINTMENT

I so look forward to having grandchildren! (That isn't a subtle message to my son and daughter in law!) But the other day I was on a train – a steam train, as it happens, in the west country. And in the same carriage were some grandparents with their grandson. And the whole time it was, ‘No, sit down Kieran (his name wasn’t Kieran), no leave it alone Kieran, no why aren’t you listening to me? No don’t go out there I told you before Kieran. Come and sit by grand-dad. Well sit be me then,’ and so on, smoky mile after smoky mile.

And I commented to my travelling partner, as it struck me, that those grandparents had probably longed for grandchildren and for a nice relationship with their grandson, and what they were experiencing must have been such a disappointment.

Maybe he has better days.

Then I was at a meeting on Sunday when someone commented how many people are living with disappointment in their marriages – constant, ongoing disappointment that this wasn’t what they expected or signed up for. Mostly, it's hidden from view. But it’s hard to live with such daily destruction of your dreams.

Disappointment. There have been times when I’ve looked at a bunch of lively, attractive, intelligent, friendly teenagers and thought, ‘most of you will experience real disappointment in your lives, one way or another’. I’ve thought that because I’ve seen it, with earlier generations of wonderful young people seemingly full of such potential and seemingly deserving of such happy and fulfilling lives.

But life isn’t like that, is it?

I guess there must be people who find just what they were looking for, and live in untroubled contentment. But U2 didn’t, as they sang so beautifully (though I think they had a further message to convey in that song). I suspect most of us live with hidden or at least non-publicised disappointments. I’m amazed at the number of children I know with serious health conditions, much to the anguish of their loving parents. At the people now in their late forties whom I knew as teenagers back in the day before their first marriages failed. And there is no judgement in that truth.

The one compelling reason I’ve heard why school sports days should be fully competitive is because children have to learn to deal with disappointment. When they throw a fit because they can’t have what they desperately (in that moment) wanted in the shop, the wise parent continues to say ‘no’ having said it once, because that’s life (and because giving in teaches the deadly lesson that whining works because it's rewarded eventually – though I suppose that teaches another lesson - persistence - ‘if at first you don’t succeed… whine, whine and whine again!)

But my point is, disappointment, small and large, is part of life. The prevailing (and, I am pleased to see, now much more criticised) message in our culture that you deserve happiness and you deserve getting all you hope for and ‘follow your dreams’ because they will be fulfilled, just sets generations of young people up for selfishness and sadness.

Maybe we, the older generation, need to convey a message of ‘Embrace your Disappointments’. And point them to whatever we’ve discovered that enables us to live and cope and thrive.

I know where my help lies.

IT'S FUNNY THE THINGS THAT PLEASE US

So, on turning 63. Or three times 21, exactly, as I told people all day. A friend said his dad made a thing of being four times 21. When he was 85. Actually that heartened me - the thought that I could have 21 more years. Before I lost the ability to multiply!And as well as some nice presents of DVDs, a make-it-yourself radio and fruity cider, some unexpected things happened. I took a trip out on my bike, as I often do on a Friday morning, and a particular pen I'd been searching every pen - selling shop for, for 6 weeks since I lost it, suddenly appeared and I bought it quite cheaply. But then on my way cycling home from my health - retaining trip to Hemel Hempstead I noticed some 2p coins on the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway. Now, I'll normally stop for anything over a 10p piece. But when I saw maybe eight or so of these, I was intrigued and stopped. And started collecting. And ended up with 70 2p coins. They're sitting in a little heap on my study chair as I write. 70!The third unexpected thing that pleased me was that as my wife, son and myself headed out for a meal to celebrate yesterday evening, we passed the sweet - faced girl who often serves me in Greggs, and we smiled at each other. And my question is this: should I be, at such an age, just a year less than the age my dad died, be thinking thoughts of purpose, achievement, and destination, rather than celebrating such jolly trivia as a pen, £1.40 and a sweet girl's smile? Or should I, as some would advise, live each day as it comes and be thankful for every small 'gift' just for itself? 
While you're thinking, here's a poem about cycling, just in case the latter option is the right one. And no, I'm not actually a menace on the road. And at least I'm ON the road!

When I’m out on my bike
I can do what I like!
Though the traffic lights change
(they can go through the range!)
well, it’s nothing to me
‘cos I’m out there and free.

When I’m changing my lane,
to the cars I’m a pain,
but I really don’t care
cos I’m happy out there.

Though the cars hoot and blast
while I just whistle past,
It is so not my fault
that they’re jammed at a halt!

They sit in their boxins
all coughing out toxins
I’m "exhausted" but fit - 
O the wonder of it!

While I ride it might shine,
and the world is all mine.
When I ride in the rain,
I’ll just come home again!

BOG MAN

They pass by a deathly and gruesome horror every day, and never notice. The pic is of a bun, about 2 feet across, right by where people queue in Greggs, Watford. Look closely. It has the shape of a face. It has two eyes, one closed, the other squashed down. A nose. An ear. A mouth. It looks just like one of those bodies recovered from peat bogs, murdered and hidden there centuries ago, preserved by the peat. It looks long dead and slightly squashed, just like they do. It's exactly right, down to the fine detail, even the jowls and the shape of the side of the nose. The shape of the lips is perfect. It is the squashed head of a dead person. And people stand for a few minutes right next to it, day by day, and notice nothing. 
What are you standing right next to, and never seeing?