SOUP TO NUTS: A SONG OF LIFE

By Nigel Henson.

My apologies for having been absent for six months or so.

As there have been no public demonstrations, tipping of trash cans, or even an ANC building burned to the ground, I assume that my sojourn has not been missed.

My career as a journalist has had the odd high, but is generally one of many lows. If you can imagine driving down a dry river-bed in an old ‘Series 2’ Landrover; you grind over many stony ruts, slide into the odd mud patch… and once in a while climb over a great granite boulder and survey your surrounds.

That’s Henson.

Being a quick-witted, erudite and observant commentator on current and perhaps slightly dated events that affect us all requires an enormous amount of self-discipline, a sponge-like appetite for news and an incisive mind for arriving at the truth, plus a talent to see through all the goblledly-gook that is chucked at us every day.

Journalism means the strict adherence to deadlines, the willingness to trade blows with those who have a differing opinion to yours, and to, at all times, accept that perhaps you are not in the right… and perhaps the reader is.

Columnists and journalists can make a ton of dough-Jeremy Clarkson as an example…don’t let his shambolic turn-out or his humour fool you…Clarkson is clever, witty, insightful, empathetic, and always touches the right buttons. He also, through much heartache has learned that there is only one path to stardom; hard work and persistence.

I possess none of these qualities. Although though I am avaricious, a terrible sponge and never seem to push the right buttons (a female observation), I have great admiration for the news hounds who slavishly follow every political event. My hatred of politicians and posturers knows no bounds, for, in my view, most newsmakers are throw-away humans.

I am a crap journalist.

Unlike myself, your team at AU cover an awful lot of ground to bring their thoughts and observations to you. They offer a free service to their public at some cost to themselves.

But I love writing. Fiction…nah; reality pushes the right buttons.

That is the reason why I was forced to write my first book ‘From Soup to Nuts’. It was published in 2022 and was well received; astonishment expressed by the literary world and by myself.                                         

Having read it cover-to-cover for over three years, it’s short-comings are obvious…after you have read it 30 or 40 times, you realise that it is pretty crap.

If ‘Soup to Nuts’ was the only reading matter that you had available as a 20-year prisoner, you would have been dead after 18 months.

So, I decided to correct that. As I have written in the ‘authors note’ in the flyleaf of the re-write…’A Song of Life’…

 ‘I wrote ‘Soup to Nuts’ in six weeks.

The book had been in my head for over forty years. I felt as though I had to get the ‘Bare Bones’ down before the fairies paid me a visit, and all was lost. It was a cathartic experience.

The book was very well accepted, although some critics felt there was not enough flesh on the rib-cage. Readers would also have come across some errata, not excessive, but not acceptable.

In ‘A Song of Life’, I have used the platform of “Soup to Nuts’, paring it from 78k words to 30k, then building on what remained to expand the book to 112k words. I have tightened up the narrative, and removed the irreverence.

I believe this book is a much better product, more amusing and more than enough to satisfy even the most curious. For those who read the first edition, I think you will enjoy this volume. 

‘A Song of Life’ aims to take the reader to great heights, and plunges to great     depths…it laughs, it cries…it chuckles, it sighs. It is a ballad of lives lived in a very different time. This is your song and my song…without those who wandered in. And out of the tale, this song would not amount to a grain of sand.

This is our song…my gratitude to all those who have stood beside me…the brave young men     I walked and fought alongside…my family…my loves…my life.

This is a song of our lives’

“A Song of Life’ is inevitably more graphic, for much of its expansion comes during my time in Rhodesia’s combat zones over the period 1977-1980.  It is not an ‘easy read’… there are parts that touch on the horrific and others that deal with combat exhaustion, bravery, the will to fight and continuing to fight in a strategic vacuum. At all times, the events in this book are set against the background of increased Southern African conflict; they are ingredients in a recipe that would later engulf the continent in further conflict, poverty and strife. 

The new book has been reviewed by a number of people who are close to the subject, and their comments are overwhelmingly positive.

These stories need to be told.

The most important lesson that mankind learns from history is that mankind learns nothing from history.

The young men who give the best of their years in combat emerge from a conflict having lost everything, save their ability to draw their next breath.

Sadly, fighting men are the most vulnerable; in the rush to their next destination, the manipulators who engineered the conflict discard them … as if they were chaff in the wind.

My thanks to ‘Africa Unauthorised’ for promoting my new book.