I've had this blog a long time without really knowing what to do with it. The trouble is I write three columns a week for my newspaper and always have a book on the go as well. This leaves little spare time to write anything else about world events or the price of fish. Or anything that needs an extra creative urge. The latest book I'm writing is Pilgrim, which sort of involves time travel.  Which made me think why not use time travel here? So I shall. I shall delve into the past and tell my life story. It's the sort of project I've often considered and then dismissed. But everyone is unique and everyone has a story to tell. So I shall tell mine, in bits and bats and as the mood takes me, and if anyone finds it interesting, I shall be pleased. If they don't, it doesn't matter, for it will serve as an extra wedge of information in my family tree and history. I may, of course, get bored with it and stop and do the honourable thing and fall upon my keyboard. Which is a lot less painful than a sword.
Are you ready? Then I'll begin.
I was born on May 8, 1941, in the front room of number 5 Cheapside in Wakefield. Actually it was the only ground floor room in a tall terraced house just off Westgate in the city centre. The house had no electricity, and only had gas light in that one room, which also contained sink and oven.
Candles were needed at night to go either into the cellar for coal or upstairs. The first floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom with a bath with a wooden lid. The house was rented by my grandmother and was home for her bachelor son Eric and her married son Austin and his wife Doris. During the war, while my father was in the RAF, my mother also lived there. 
There was a third floor to which no one ever ascended. When I was about five I was told: 'Timmy died up there' and became convinced the third floor was haunted. Timmy, I later discovered, was a pet dog that died whilst having a fit. Maybe it was his feet I could hear at night. Maybe it was mice. Or rats. The building was old enough and could be described as Dickensian. Very picturesuqe unless you had to live there.
But for grandma it was step up. She had previously lived in nearby Scot's Yard, which the family had nicknamed Paradise Alley with a touch of irony.  This was one of the city centre yards to which immigrant Irish families were drawn at the turn of the 20th century. It was poverty and survival. In fact, I come from a long line of poverty stretching back on both maternal and paternal sides. My ancestors escaped the famine in Galway to become coal miners in Yorkshire. Frying pan, fire comes to mind.
So I was Yorkshire-born in the middle of a city in the middle of the Second World War. Everyone had a gas mask. Babies were issued with full sized chambers into which they were supposed to be fastened during air raids. Mothers could view their infants through a small window.  Few used them as they looked too much like coffins. Our family took refuge under the table whenever the sirens sounded.
My earliest memory is when I was four and I was carried on the shoulders of an uncle to the VE celebrations in the Bull Ring. It was my birthday, 1945. Crowds thronged the city centre. They drank, danced, laughed, cheered and burnt effigies of Hitler and his cronies on bonfires.
After the war, my father returned from the green fields of Lincolnshire where he had been ground crew for bomber command, and we moved to Leeds.
If I am ever in Wakefield, I always drive down Cheapside to look at the place where I was born. The street was appropriately named at the time of its construction. But in later years, after my grandmother moved out to the luxury of a council house in Lupset, I was pleased with what happened to the old place. That solitary front room became an Indian take away for a while. Later, it became the rear extension of a wine bar on Westgate. The very spot where I was born was now occupied by drinkers enjoying a tipple. Better than a blue plaque any day.

I have just had a Thermopylae day.
When I'm in writing mode, my target is 2,000 words a session. But today I only managed 300 before someone sneaked the Persian hordes in behind my back and annihilated my resolve.
Or maybe it was a combination of women's boxing at the Olympics and a new author I've discovered.
Have you read A L Berridge? Honour And The Sword and In The Name Of The King are novels of swashbuckling heroism set in 17th century France that are quite breathtaking in their scope and literary execution.
Women's boxing I didn't take seriously until I saw young Irish girl Katie Taylor knock seven bells out of her opponent to move into the semi finals. She is a four times world champion and there is nothing sissy about the way she slings her hook.
As for my writing, I'm in the last furlong of completing Redemption, the final part of my post-apocalyptic trilogy (see also Reaper and Angel elsewhere on this site). Only about six thousand words to go and I'm suffering battle fatigue for the final conflict; who goes where and does what, who dies and who survives.
I hold the power of life and death, of happiness and great sex, of prosperity and starvation. Maybe God is a novelist? In which case, he could have given me a better storyline, one where I win the Euro lottery when it reaches £150 million.
Still, mustn't grumble. No good if you do.
I doubt whether King Leonidas grumbled at the pass of Thermopylae when he was told a renegade had guided the Persians along a secret track so that he would soon be surrounded.
'Bugger,' he probably said. 'Looks like I won't be down the pub on Saturday night. Tell my wife I love her and kiss the kids for me. And tell her to buy a Lottery ticket this week – I'm feeling lucky.'
Then he mustered his 300 Spartans around him and they held the pass to give the armies of Greece time to gather and mount a proper defence against invasion.
Everybody knows this classic story of heroism, but I only just found out, courtesy of Wikipedia (where would we be without it?) that Leonidas also had 700 Thespians with him.

I have a Buddhist philosophy when it comes to other creatures. I respect them all. A slug in the garden has nothing to fear from me. I will step over him. A frog can hop away into the long grass. He has his life and I have mine.
If a spider wanders into my domain, I endeavour to capture him painlessly in a glass and release him into the wild.
“Where am I?” he probably says, as he tries to get his bearings in the garden. “Will the wife and kids be able to cope without me?”
The wife and kids, of course, then come looking for him out of the plughole in the bath and I reunite them outside.
And I have a special affinity for the cow as I must, at my advanced age, have eaten a herd or two of steak with chips.
There are those Buddhists who believe that if you indulge in bad behaviour you will be reincarnated as an animal. Which might not be good if you come back as a dung beetle. Particularly if, just before you died, you stamped on a dung beetle.
“Oi. Aren’t you the bloke who killed my cousin?”
Could be nasty.
I am even a friend to flies, thinking, one day, that could be me. I particularly feel for them when they keep banging their heads against the window – which is almost an allegory of life – and have been known to open it wide, even on a cold night, to usher them from the bedroom and to the safety of the great outdoors.
Although I have to confess that this is not wholly altruistic as there is nothing so annoying as a dive-bombing fly in the dark when you are trying to get to sleep.
So point made. My feelings of goodwill to the animal kingdom are constant and not in question. Unless it involves my lunch.
There I was, the other day, preparing a delectable salad of sliced tomato, cucumber and onion, covered in my wife Maria’s home-made Italian dressing, a chunk of ciabatta bread ready to dip. All it needed was the addition of a small tin of tuna.
The tin was opened, the tuna deposited, I turned to get my fork and … buzz!
A very large fly came from on high with the determination of a kamikaze, hurtled past my ear with the velocity of a bullet, and slammed straight into the middle of the chunks of fish. He was making a right pig of himself.
My Buddhist principles were abandoned. I screamed a battle cry from a previous incarnation – possibly that of a berserker Viking – threw a tea towel over the plate to trap the beast and deposited the lot in the bin.
Death by tuna. For a fly, possibly, not a bad way to go. But that was my lunch gone, too, and I didn’t have the heart to prepare another. Not because I was already regretting killing a fellow creature, but because I was too angry.
For a while I stomped around the house, but other flies and spiders were in hiding from my wrath, the cat went to the loft and it was a while before the berserker eased back into the past.
And if, at some time in the future, I am reincarnated as a fly and a bluebottle approaches me and says: “Oi. Aren’t you the bloke who killed my cousin?”
I shall say: “That’s me,” thump him on the nose and give him a good kicking with all my six feet. Goodwill to all creatures has its limits

AMAZING. I have only five followers on Twitter and one of them is Death.
It is not often I get a notification to say I have a new follower. This is no surprise as I never Tweet. Well, once in a blue moon.
But the email that dropped into my box giving me the glad tidings that I had increased by 20 per cent those people waiting to read my every word, left me both pleased and uneasy. Because it was an organisation called Dying Matters.
Still, beggars can't be choosers, not if I want to rival the great and good of British Twitterdom, such as Stephen Fry, who has 4,598,156 followers (or thereabout), including me. Well, he is the funniest man in Britain.
And yet even he is way down the list of world popularity.
Chief Twit (if that is the correct term) is Lady Gaga who has 27,669,594 people around the globe gasping on her every thought and action. Which is terrifying when you think of it's marketing potential.
“Went to the shop. Bought a Mars Bar.”
And the shelves would be empty of the snack in an hour.
Being followed by Death is quite appropriate as my latest book is called REAPER and is about a chap in post-apocalyptic Britain who goes around dealing out death. What do you mean you haven't read it? Buy a copy immediately - it's available in paperback or ebook.
I actually know why Dying Matters has joined my small but happy throng and it's nothing to do with the book. It's because I wrote a piece about undertakers in my column in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner. I said they not only did a crucial job with great professionalism, but they also had a sense of humour.
Dying Matters is, and I quote: “A growing coalition that aims to change public knowledge, attitudes and behaviour towards death, dying and bereavement.” They obviously also have a sense of humour.
Bereavement professionals will, in fact, be handing out their own Oscars at the first ever Good Funeral Guide Awards in Bournemouth in September. Categories include Embalmer of the Year, Gravedigger of the Year and Best Alternative To A Hearse.
Charles Cowling, editor of the Good Funeral Guide, said the awards were for “unsung heroes of astonishing brilliance whom the public deserves to know about.”
The ceremony will be part of the Joy of Death Festival held in the seaside town, which could make an unusual weekend away with which to surprise the wife. Bournemouth, of course, is a also a retirement centre but, as yet, no one has reported what its elderly citizens think of the event.
"Shall we go to Benidorm this year? Or go choose a casket?"
There have, of course, been many famous gravediggers who went on to other careers – Rod Stewart, Joe Strummer from The Clash and Dave Vanian from The Damned.
I wonder if they could persuade Mr Stewart to present one of the awards?
Funeral directors I have known have generally been a warm and generous group with a pleasant sense of humour.
They tell tales to which I can testify. When my Uncle Frank died while on holiday his daughter viewed the body and commented: “Ooh, doesn’t he look well. He always did suit a tan.”
They acknowledge, of course, that things can go wrong on occasions. Like the stonemason who was engaged by a grieving widower in Bolton, Lancashire, to carve appropriate words upon the gravestone of his wife.
Alice was 94 when she died and had attended church every Sunday. Husband Joe instructed that the headstone should bear the message: “Lord, she was thine.”
But the stonemason made a mistake and wrote: “Lord, she was thin.”
Joe said: “You’ve missed off the e. You’ll have to do it again,” and the shamefaced stonemason set about his task.
Weeks later, Joe went to see the stone on the grave. It now read: “Ee Lord, she was thin.”
Read More http://www.examiner.co.uk/views-and-blogs/columnists/denis-kilcommons
Dying Matters can be found at ://www.dyingmatters.org.

It's nice to get a stack of books with your name on. Even when it isn't your name. The other day I was asked, again, why did I use a pseudonym on Reaper. Actually, I didn't. My agent told me she had sold the book and added: By the way, you're Jon Grahame. The only problem is trying to market it and having to explain that I've had books published under my own name.
It was difficult, even in Huddersfield, where I'm known because I write three columns a week in the daily paper. At least Waterstone's made the effort, put a local author sign on it and told customers who I really was. Which is nice. At my advanced age, I sometimes don't know who I am, myself.
The second book in the trilogy was completed some time ago and I am stuttering through the third. This is because I lack a sense of urgency. It's all sorted out in my mind and only needs bashing out on a keyboard but the deadline is ages away and I work best against the clock. I have 60,000 words written, a vague plot outline for the rest and I guess it will turn out at about 90,000 words when complete. If the publisher said he needed it in a month's time, I would get beavering and it would be ready. Make that two weeks. No, I can do better than that, I could have it finished by a week on Friday. I just need the incentive of a deadline.
It's the same reason why I am so lax in keeping up to date with this blog. My chum Donkin has a brilliant blog that he maintains on a regular basis. He makes me want to spit. He is a writer, author, journalist, round the world yachtsman and angler. The last may seem a bit tame for someone with his attributes except that he usually goes fishing in Alaska or hunts sharks off the Florida keys. His pieces are superbly crafted and often deceptively simple. Click the link and try him.
I, on the other hand, have struggled because I think a blog needs a Big Topic and I have never gone fishing in Alaska and never will. For one, I hate the sea, for two, I hate the cold, and for three, the only fish I like comes with chips. But I have realised it doesn't have to be a Big Topic. A little topic will do.  Such as me quite often forgetting who I am.
I was at a gathering the other day and was introduced to the sister of an old school friend. Remembering first names in busy circumstances can be difficult and, when the lady heard I had just had a book out, confusion set in. For me rather than her. She took a note of the title and author and from thenceforth called me Jon. After a while, I gave up trying to say who I was and responded to it.
Hah, she said. You're answering to it now.
So I really am Jon Grahame. I can only hope he'll be better at writing blogs than that bloke Kilcommons.

I saw an interview on Sky News about a couple who were top of the best selling Kindle charts at Amazon. Nobody had ever heard of them and they were never going to rival J K Rowling for sales or wealth. They had never, in fact, had a book published properly, but had opted for self-publishing on the internet. They were pleasantly open about their joint venture - they co-write crime novels - but admitted that to attract sales and readers they had deliberately priced their two books extremely low at under £1 each. 
This made me take a new hard look at Kindle and investigate the self-publishing aspect.
My daughters bought me a Kindle device for Christmas but I was initially unimpressed because I like the feel of a book. Besides, what else do you put on your bookshelves if your library is contained in an electronic machine? 
I was also wary about writers being ripped off. Ebay had offers for 5,000 modern novels on a disc for a few pounds and I challenged one of the sellers, asking if he was breaking copyright laws, but he didn't bother to reply. 
Amazon itself has a load of books that are available to download for free, but these are classics that are outside  the copyright period which, in the UK, is 70 years after the death of the author. Charles Dickens and the Brontes are available for nothing.
Many books are now published in both paper and e-book formats as a matter of course, and a writer's royalties do not suffer. My next book, Reaper, whose publication from Myrmidon has been delayed until September, will be out in both.
What Amazon and Kindle have done is open up the market for writers who have never before been published, like the couple who write crime novels. They have made it easy to self-publish and also provide the market place at the Amazon sites, both here and in America. And it's free.Now I know how difficult it is to get published. I also know there are probably some very good writers who have never quite made it who now have the opportunity to at least offer their wares. Whether anyone buys them or not, is a different matter. 
It also inevitably means that there will be a fair percentage of rubbish on offer. Many hopefuls have put their work out free of charge, although I cannot understand the reasoning. When I got my Kindle at Christmas, I checked out what was available at Amazon and, like everybody else, looked for a bargain rather than pay the average of about £5 for a popular paperback writer. I tried a couple that were free; I tried a couple that were about 50p. But sorry. They were poor. Of course, if they are free it doesn't matter. All you lose is the time it takes to realise they are not worth the effort. And there is always the chance you might find an undiscovered gem of a writer. Unlikely, but you never know.
Amazon already sell more Kindle editions on-line than do they do paperbacks so it obvious that e-books are here to stay. They will continue to increase in popularity and more and more people will buy Kindles. They are, after all, quite an amazing device for the money and easier to handle than a thousand page C J Sansom novel. 
So I decided to see how easy it was to publish on Kindle. 
I am technologically useless. Could I do it? Well, it took me a few hours to work it out but yes, it is simple. You just have to prepare your manuscript a different way to how you would send it to an agent or publisher. Basically you don't use margins, headers or footers (or page numbers), and you set it single space. Then save it as an html document. That's it. Log onto Kindle Publishing and follow the instructions. 
The only other thing that needs a good bit of thought is the cover. You can't just Google a load of images and steal one: they have copyright, too. But you can use photographs you have taken and there are sites that offer royalty free pics. It can be a load of fun. And, as I said, the whole process is free.I have put three of my thrillers out on Kindle at a reasonable price, considering they range from 80,000 words to 100,000.  Plus a historical novel, The Flood, in the bargain basement, as an experiment to see if cheap really does sell.