Got it for a Song

We came up with a nice – silly – line in Bristol. We were walking around, thinking about the leading characters of our proposed detective series and wondering how they would be able to afford anywhere nice to live in Clifton. But then we remembered my new character was an eighties pop star, and we said, near simultaneously, “He picked it up for a song.”

This morning I was thinking it would make a good title. Not as it is. Amended. I was thinking “Got it for a Song”. It gives us the joke, the character set-up and a nice play on words in the direction we're heading.

It's also guaranteed to make any old English teachers from my Grammar school froth at the mouth. For, according to them, “got” is not a real word. It's common, or something. Their mission was to beat the word out of us. And imagination generally.

When I was 14, one of them actually gave me 0 for a short story. I'm not sure out of how many – but let's say 100. Nought, zero, nada. And he made the rest of the class read it, pour encourager les autres. I'd be surprised if that wasn't illegal these days.

The story was about a boy sitting on an old park bench and thinking of all the other people who may have sat on it in the past. Imagining their doings, channelling them. OK, Max Beerbohm it wasn't. But it was quite imaginative, for kids taught in straight lines. And it didn't stop The Beautiful South from pinching the words for one of their lyrics, “Just like that murder in '73/Just like that robbery in '62.”

So now I'm imagining a retired English teacher in Reigate, sat on my bench in the park, catching sight of the title on the cover of a book, and spontaneously combusting with rage. Got to love that.