Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

Depression

Alcohol and me: An uneasy mix

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Alcohol and me by Mo Fanning

Ten years ago, I woke in a fog, knowing that what happened the evening before was bad. I’d stumbled and cracked a rib. Broken glass littered the kitchen floor. At some point, the police came. None of this stopped me drinking again that night.

It took another year of making a total arse of myself before I grew tired of drink. I’ve enjoyed a few pints since, but the urge to lose myself at the bottom of a bottle has gone.

Do I miss being able to drink? Yes. To some extent. I miss having an easy way to turn off my brain. Some nights, I lie awake for hours, going over the tiniest detail of some conversation that (to others) likely meant little. I replay each exchange and try to understand why I failed to be a better version of me.

Hangovers

Do I miss the hangovers? Yes. I loved to eat junk food and guzzle Orange Fanta without remorse.

Do I miss opening my eyes and trying to remember what happened before I tuned out? No. I really don’t.

I became one of those drunks who lost track after one too many. I’d still talk and walk, but wake the next day with no memory of what I’d said or done. Writing about such madness now, it sounds a million years ago.

It’s tough not drinking in a society where alcohol rules. Especially during lockdown. Every Friday Zoom meeting ends with someone saying how much they can’t wait to pour a gin and switch off. I no longer allow myself that luxury. I can’t pour myself one of anything, and so make do with none.

As I wrote Rebuilding Alexandra Small, I looked back over my career as a problem drinker and tried to work out what I wanted to say about why. The answer seemed easy. A perfect life. And thanks to the fog of alcohol, I felt sure I had one. It’s only now I’m sober that I find otherwise.

Help with alcohol

If you think you have a serious drinking problem and are experiencing any of the associated symptoms of alcohol dependence, you should consult your doctor or another medical professional about it as soon as possible.

There are also a number of national alcohol support services that you can go to for advice.

Write what you know … and other myths exploded

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Write what you know - and other myths exploded

I’d like to dig into (and explode) a writing myth. It’s one of those ‘golden rules’ held in awe by many: WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. On one hand, the advice is solid: how can you tell any story if you don’t understand its setting? On the other, it’s often responsible for threadbare writing.

The Armchair Bride by Mo Fanning‘The Armchair Bride’ was my go at writing what I knew. In a past life – just like my heroine Lisa Doyle – I managed a Manchester theatre box office. Except I was in my 20s and a raging alcoholic with addiction issues and low self-esteem. 39-year-old Lisa is a far nicer person. Her only crime was that she invented a husband and was too proud to ‘fess up to the fantasy.

I spent my Manchester years stumbling from one bar and bed to another. If I’d written only of familiar things, my debut novel would have told a very different story. Not the romantic and heart-warming comedy I wanted. And if I’d written a feckless, unpleasant addict, there’s a fair bet it wouldn’t have sold its way into the bestselling lists (or earned a nomination as Arts Council ‘Book of the Year’). Not that I’m one to brag, but yay me.

Personal experience

Every crime writer doesn’t draw on personal experience as their characters slash open a body or flog their victim’s kidneys on the dark web. If they did, it would turn South of France writer’s retreats into far bloodier affairs.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo FanningA good story-teller takes a pinch of what he or she knows about the world and sprinkles in a pinch of what they don’t. Put another way: take what you know about yourself, rather than what you know about the world. Spin your story from the characters, rather than the other way around.

In ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’, I address my drinking years. These days, I drink very rarely, making me an incredibly cheap date. Allie is almost seven years sober and living what looks to the outside world like the perfect life. And then everything crumbles, shaking awake her inner demons.

Spin bigger stories

I drank because to disguise the shy, standoffish me, believing I could only make friends with a slur in my smile. Allie comes to realise the life she built isn’t one she wants.

Friends and family always try to see themselves in my stories. They couldn’t be more wrong. Every character is a little of me and a lot of my imagination.

Write what you know by all means, but spin bigger stories that go beyond the small world around your front door.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small will be published in 2021. The Armchair Bride is now available now from all good websites and bookstores. If you’d like to support my work, consider using Patreon.

Five lockdown whinges

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Lockdown

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and  that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news …  or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

Death: Don’t try this at home

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My mother has been dying for 47 days and yet everyone who visits insists she looks better. They hover by her bedside and make impossible promises about things they’ll do together when she’s back on her feet.

Sometimes she manages a smile. Sometimes I do too. We both know we’re lying.

In the early years of the 20th century, 85% of people died in their home, surrounded by their family. Today, most find death in a hospital, care home or hospice. When I learned my mother wouldn’t get better, the hope for dying well became important. I made a deal with myself. She’ll end her days with dignity and in as much comfort as her catalogue of illness allows.

Most people get money in Christmas cards. Ten years ago, my mother slipped a copy of her living will into mine. This is what she wants.

Change

She’s always hated change. The Jif to Cif transition years were hell. Despite being confined to a hired hospital bed, she keeps control of the heating. I’m living in a sauna with scatter cushions.

On days when a nurse comes to change her dressings, my mother moans in pain. Afterwards, her mind melts, and sends her to wander through a mumbling, muttering maze as it mends.

Living out of a suitcase in a box room has taken its toll. Most mornings, the person staring back from the mirror looks like something the dog slept on. On the plus side, she’s now blind, and no longer knows for sure when I put on weight. It doesn’t stop the jibes.

My mother won’t get better. These are her final days and weeks. Each day, someone else dressed in blue arrives to remind us of this and hand over death-themed permission slips. When the time comes, a trained medical professional gets to dip into a stash of powerful drugs with a street value twice that of our car. Another signed document lets the same person pronounce her dead, freeing us of the need to ring around for a rare-as-hens-teeth out-of-hours doctor.

The unspoken rules of death

As this grim circus plays out , we ignore the elephant that’s not such in the room, as juggling balls and doing tricks for money.

An unspoken rule insists the living avoid saying the wrong thing to the dying. Like her visiting friends with their cards and flowers, those closet to my mother speak in positive terms, and never dare show frustration or exhaustion.

I sit next to her bed and drink tea, listening for any change in her breathing and trying to make sense of the words she cries as she drifts in and out of sleep. Late into the night, I watch TV and marvel at the self-confidence of the young and chiselled gods who populate reality shows.

Death forces you to reflect on what matters. I think it might be sex with 25-year-olds.

My mother how she should be remembered in death
Riding a camel in the 1980s, as you do

Testicular cancer: Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation

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Last year, around 2,300 British men were told they had testicular cancer. That’s more than six every day. The number of cases diagnosed has doubled since the mid-1970s with 70 men dying each year from the disease. 1 in 250 men will get testicular cancer. With those numbers, it’s only a matter of time before Moonpig does a card.

Despite being one of the most treatable cancers, there remain many misconceptions around testicular cancer.

As a notorious homosexual and a big fan of manscaping, I was no stranger to self-examination and judged myself low risk. Testicular cancer mainly affects men aged between 15 and 49, with those aged under 35 the most vulnerable. I was 52: a time for allotments and escorted cruises down the Rhine.

Instead, I sat through a scrotal ultrasound (as much fun as it sounds), trying to read the expression on my consultant’s face. She sent me to sit in a different part of the hospital where another doctor came to tell me I had cancer. He explained the operation (in and out within the day, literally) and what might happen afterwards. I may be anxious, suffer mood swings and feel tired. I joked about how this suggested I must have had cancer since the age of fifteen. He didn’t laugh.

Have a feel

A study by cancer charity, Orchid discovered that 67% of British men don’t know how to check their balls. Once a month, have a feel. Ideally after a bath or shower. The most typical symptom is a painless swelling or small pea-sized lump in one ball. If one of your balls seems firmer, or looks different to the other, if there’s a dull ache or sharp pain or a sense of heaviness–even if not constant–you need to get yourself checked out. Most lumps or swellings are not a sign of cancer, but they should never be ignored.

And if it is cancer, trust me, the fear of becoming a uniballer is more daunting than the reality. Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation. 80% of cases are cured completely, that rises to 98% if caught early.

Fast forward, and I’m about to mark two cancer-free years. Unless Mooonpig gets its act into gear, I won’t celebrate, but it’s a milestone I’m relieved to reach. Losing one ball is no big deal. I’ve been with the same bloke for over twenty years, so it was largely decorative. Most men of my age don’t so much have a scrotum as a windsock, so the nip and tuck of surgery has given me that much-sought-after youthful look.

Under surveillance

Men who’ve had testicular cancer once are 12 times more likely to get it again. The NHS has me covered. For ten years, I’ll be ‘under surveillance’ and not just by Cambridge Analytica. For the first few years, every three months, there’s a blood test, every six a scan. It sounds intrusive, but I see this as insurance. The rest of you bounce from one credit card bill to the next, not knowing what’s going on inside your bodies. I get a regular MoT.

My life changed after cancer. In a good way. As soon as I knew I wasn’t going to die right away, I returned to writing – after years of putting it off ‘until tomorrow’. I went from knowing next to nothing about the subject, to talking about testicular cancer to everyone. Online and in the office … anyone willing to listen. I summoned up the nerve to try stand-up comedy – turns out that’s even scarier than losing a ball.

Most people suffer poor mental health post-trauma and I can’t deny there are days when anxiety wins. I no longer drink and that leaves me with little in the way of release when the world grows big and scary. I’ve reached the age when the people from Saga Insurance stalk me with junk mail and Facebook suggests male incontinence pants. But last year, I got married to a man I met 22 years earlier. I told jokes on stage in front of 200 people and finished work on my next book.

Cancer doesn’t need to be an end. In almost every case, it’s the beginning.

How to check for Testicular Cancer
How to check for Testicular Cancer