First appeared in the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society.
I'm driving the mini-bus on the longest runway in Europe; the concrete beneath drumming tyres is twenty feet thick and, in theory, nuke proof. Standing at one end of the runway, you can't see the other end due to the curvature of the Earth. In the seat behind me John on sound is checking the levels of the radio mics; Keith hoists the camera to his shoulder and tells me that this is the only designated emergency landing strip for the Space Shuttle this side of the Atlantic.
I take the mini-bus up to seventy. Visions of seeing the Shuttle gliding in to land behind me sidle into my brain even though I'm mentally rehearsing what I'm going to say next. The director says, "OK, is everyone ready? Let's try and do this in one take. Ready when you are, Simon..."
It's December, 1997. The location is Elvington Air Museum, near York. And this is the third film of the Winter Chills series I made for BBC Look North.
Now, basically I'm a shy person, prone to being tongue tied with even the hint of a stammer thrown in occasionally for good measure, so more than once during filming I wondered how – and why – did I become prised from the safety of that corner of the dining room I call my study and wind up talking to 800,000 people. Well...
Writing is my day job. It's something I've wanted (well, craved might be a better word) to do since I was eleven years old. Writing professionally is tough to break into in the first place and even tougher to turn into a career that will pay you a living wage. So, if you want to stay a full-time writer you really need to develop a mental antenna that constantly scans for new opportunities which will not only bring in those additional welcome cheques, but will also, ideally, net experiences for the mental fermentation vat from which we draw our inspiration.
Winter Chills came about after a local BBC TV station shot a news item about my novel, Darker. The director suggested we get together and talk over the possibility of making some short films. These would be shown on a TV magazine programme aired across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. I thought he was just being polite so it was something of a surprise when I answered the phone some weeks later to hear the words, "Hello, Simon, it's the BBC here. Have you got any ideas for that series yet?"
After a few twists and turns over the next few months Winter Chills was born. OK, so it wasn't going to be big budget, it wouldn't be seen outside Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, but it would have a ready-made audience of over 800,000, and I was buckled in there as script writer and consultant. At least so I thought.
Meanwhile, the director had been having thoughts of his own.
The phone rings. I answer. It's the director phoning from his home. "Simon," he says loudly over his dogs barking giddily in the background. "Simon, I've been thinking. You should be in the films as well."
"As some kind of extra?"
"No, as co-presenter."
Oh, Gabriel blow your horn... I know in my heart of hearts, God intended me to sit quietly in the corner of this room, staring into a blue PC screen, while my fingers rattle at the keyboard – not to speak eruditely on camera.
In the planning stage Winter Chills, like some mutant embryo, went through several more rapid changes. But at last it crystallised into its final form: a series of 'factual' films investigating haunted locations in the region.
Finding those locations was easy on the one hand, bloody difficult on the other. We came up with some wonderful locations: a haunted coal mine; great, we were going to film underground. Then, just days before filming, the coal mine's owners switched off the pumps and the tunnels flooded. All I could do was tear up the script then spend the day on the telephone hunting down a substitute location; one that wouldn't be just another haunted manor house.
At least this whirlwind of activity took my mind off the fact I'd be there in front of the camera.
Before shooting began the director and cameraman spent a day in the studio creating the title sequence, filming candles either burning brightly, guttering in a breeze or being snuffed out. There were shots of glasses of wine falling over in slow motion, shadowy hands and single staring eyes. These, the director told me, would be edited into the material we would shoot on location to give the films that extra frission of eeriness.
Meanwhile, somehow, I'd managed to suppress even thinking about the first day's filming.
But suddenly it was there. I was driving the mini-bus to Bolton Castle in North Yorkshire and describing, on camera, to the co-presenter what manner of supernatural entities stalked the castle and the surrounding country-side.
And despite my own initial terrors of being front of camera I enjoyed every minute of it. The film crew were good company. What interviewees revealed about their own encounters with the supernatural was thought provoking, including one off-the-record account of a haunted room which gave even me some bad dreams. Then there were the memorable locations which have gone into my 'ideas' file for future stories: ruined castles, a mediaeval hall, a World War 2 airfield and (my favourite) a disused jail, complete with its own 'death row' of cells for condemned murderers. One inmate had scratched onto the wall in a fit of grim humour the line 'Smile if you're happy.'
There were cherishable memories aplenty. In Leeds City Hall we took a break in the now redundant but still magisterial courtroom, eating sandwiches at tables where the barristers for the defence and prosecution sat. In the dock, its rail stained by a hundred years' worth of nervously sweaty palms, men, women and children had been sentenced for anything from knocking off a policemen's helmet to one Charles Peace who blasted a man's eyes out with a pistol. They hanged him at Armley Jail.
The trickiest part of TV work I found was walking, talking, and arriving at a particular spot as I hit the climax of what I was saying.
Now, if you can pull that off, and if you are considering a little moon-lighting, whether for fun, profit, or even a touch of fame, then you might give local television a try. Believe me, those tea-time regional magazine programmes have such a voracious appetite for material they make Velociraptors look like a bunch of faddy nibblers.