Writerings

I went and saw my GP the other day. It was a fairly routine appointment, I’m not dying. That shouldn’t need clarifying, but I always feel the need to add it any time I tell someone I’ve been to the doctors. Anyway, as a writing exercise, I’ve been trying to take a mental note of people’s appearance when I first meet them. This way I can cheat and use their face and body for a character. The Amazon delivery man with a widow’s peak and crow’s feet? He can become the villain’s bodyguard in my next short story I abandon after 500 words.

So the GP had, and I don’t think there is a better way of describing it, mousy hair. But it feels odd to describe a grown-up person with mousy hair. Particularly one with a proper adult job, like a GP. Mousy being used to describe hair feels very a very literary thing in the first place. I must have picked this up at a young age, as in primary school, whenever we were set a writing task, all my main characters had mousy hair. At a guess I’d say I got this from Roald Dahl. Also, a startling number of my main characters were named Colin. I’m not sure why, but I think even then I was so sure that it was a name purely for fictional characters. I had never met someone in real life called Colin and even in the intervening years I haven’t either.

I’m not 100% disputing that Colins do exist in the real world as I don’t want to start a conspiracy theory movement. Yet, there is reason to think so. On the surface of it, it seems mad, you’re thinking, “I know a Colin”. But, do you? Of course, you’ve seen the name on things, newspaper articles, TV credits, adverts for ready-meals. But these are faceless individuals. Colin is the HR rep who emails you to complete the mandatory how-to-sit-in-a-chair training. Colin is the person whose Amazon review of the humidifier (Five paragraphs, 4 stars, would have been 5 but Colin never gives out 5s) convinced you to buy it.

There are so-called famous Colins but they exist on the fringes of fame, where anyone can knock up a Wikipedia profile with little evidence. Consider the sporting Colins: Montgomery, Hendrie, McRae. Very visible, but only in the secondary sports (golf, snooker, motor racing) that no-one actually watches.

In entertainment, Colin Treverrow was due to direct Star Wars Episode 9, but after realising that this might require some publicity, he was stepped down. There is supposedly a Colin Hanks, but really Tom Hanks (a published author) made up any old name to keep us going. Although any actors (Farrell, Firth) are paid liars anyway.

The creators of the TV show What We Do In The Shadows must be aware of this when they chose to name Colin Robinson for the energy vampire in the show.

I thought my theory had hit a wall when I remembered the radio presenter and Countdown host Colin Murray. I’ve been a big fan for many years, since he started on Fighting Talk. However, further investigation on Wikipedia reveals his birth name is actually Luke.

I haven’t yet cracked the female equivalent of Colin. Barbara is my best guess so far, but my mum assures me that I have a Great Aunt named Barbara and I’m not willing to face the fact that my mum is part of this conspiracy.

The logic hole at the centre of most conspiracy theories is that there isn’t a motivation for any of them. And it is currently true of this one. I’m yet to find why the name Colin has been planted into our subconsciousness. But when a political party (let’s be honest, it will be the Tories) names a Colin as their leader, I’ll be there, like Homer Simpson in that Treehouse of Horror episode, ripping their face off to reveal the alien underneath.