Nottingham or Shottingham? James Graham’s Sherwood or Tom Cox’s 1983, with optional cats and golf?

The new series of Sherwood is so bleak and brutal  I keep expecting Halldor Laxness or some even more obscure Scandic doom-monger to get a screen credit, along with Tobe Hooper. Coming soon: The Independent Skegness Lawnmower Massacre. And It’s filmed in such dismal murkiness I kept trying to adjust our not-very-smart TV so I could at least make out where Lincolnshire ended and Mordor began.

Sherwood is set, as you may guess from its title, mostly in Nottinghamshire, in desolate villages and the city itself, and makes the whole area seem like a post-industrial gangster-ridden hellscape with pockets of sinister, virulently-green countryside and axe-throwing rinks as everyday household amenities. Shottingham, indeed. Writer James Graham grew up here, so knows the grit and the ghosts. But his murky vision of the recent past came as something of a shock to my cultural system, as I’d just been enjoying Tom Cox’s loving (semi) fictional tribute to his post-pit Nottinghamshire upbringing. It’s a book which glows with warmth, affection and hope.

Cox’s latest is called 1983 (read or listen to some of it here) and is the story of an eight-year-old  boy called Benji, his eccentric parents, both artists, his extended family  and the lovingly liberal school he attends in inner city Nottingham. There is a cast of strange and indeed downright alien neighbours. And when I say alien…I’m not talking about the robots. Or the alpacas. Though maybe I am.

The book is funny, warm and sometimes completely, utterly and knowingly bonkers, but at its core it’s a tribute to a time when everything in Britain was on the cusp of change, not necessarily for the better. Morris Marinas were giving way to Ford Escort XR3is and RS Turbos.

Even though the decade was only three years old, the main light that eventually illuminated it…was just properly coming on, when before it had only been the 20-watt lamps beneath it. I could see it in the newly permed hair of my mum and Deborah Fennel and my aunt Sue and my aunt Sarah and my cousin Donna. I could see it in some of the new cars on the road, who had different faces from their predecessors, more suave and determined…

I loved this book – Cox’s best in a prolific output which is fascinating in its range and progression. I first encountered him through his debut memoir, the magnificent Nice Jumper, which details his adolescent obsession with  – and championship-winning talent for – golf, later abandoned for rock’n’roll, then bucolic psychofolk and full-immersion countrysiding. Though golf was  later embraced again for the wince-inducing Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia, like its predecessor Educating Peter,a  breezy, increasingly painful  journalistic exercise in pitching to publishers and then knocking out Brysonesque humour to order.

Then came the cat books, hugely successful and very charming in their own way. Unless you love dogs and birds. Personally, I’ve never recovered from the semi-feral feline we had that developed a taste for rare waterfowl like red-throated divers and would deposit them, bloodily,  at the foot of the bed. 

The Good the Bad and the Furry  and sequels are however funny, passionate and indicators of a move into something more wayward and personal. Cox abandoned journalism and traditional publishing models for the crowdfunded world of the publisher Unbound, and his work became a great deal more interesting. Initially surfing the Caught by the River ‘green cathedral’ wave of ‘new nature writing’ along with people like the (also increasingly unpredictable)  Benjamin Myers, his novel Villager came with an accompanying and excellent CD Wallflower

ostensibly by one of the book’s characters, the wandering psychedelic troubadour RJ McKendree (actually Will Twynham). Villager (named after the wonderful debut album by Matt Deighton) is an hallucinatory compendium of folk magic, environmental passion, nostalgia and glowing nature writing. Oh, and golf, which I very much doubt Cox will ever be able to leave behind completely. 

1983 is just out, but Cox is also a committed user of the subscription  newsletter Substack, offering near-weekly pieces about his countryside walks, the art and lovable eccentricities of his parents, and indeed those pesky cats.

I subscribe to Cox’s Substack – and I’m fascinated to see how his model of professional writing works. What he provides subscribers with seems genuinely generous – not just the regular online writing and pictures, but the incentives – signed and  dedicated copies of his books, art by his mum and dad. I very much doubt that his hard-print publications provide a living income – he’s forever flogging bits of his substantial record collection – but the regular support of Substack subscribers seems to at least keep his numerous felines in Whiskas.

What has always put me off the idea of charging for ‘special’ access to my own Substack is the sense of obligation –  the notion that people want value for money, maybe too much access for their cash, and so you both have to accept an online  intimacy with strangers and the need to, well, churn out stuff to their satisfaction. Cox seems to walk a line between cheery friendliness and a certain, occasionally tetchy distance, which I think is probably essential. He has abandoned all other social media, which may turn out to be unwise. But is Substacking and crowdfunded publishing really a good way to make a living? He says it’s satisfying and freeing in a way his former Guardian journalism and commercial freelance hacking never was.

Certainly, if the quality of 1983 is anything to go by, he’s succeeding in making his best work. Oh, and the sheer quality of the printed objects Unbound produce is really exemplary. In hardback, 1983 is a really beautifully-made book.

But as I said earlier, I’m betting golf isn’t done with Tom Cox yet. I’d surmise that those long bracing, and spiritually uplifting walks up hill and down dale occasionally offer vistas that beg for a just-unwrapped Titleist Pro V1 and a Taylormade Stealth pitching wedge. I would love to read about his potential adventures at the wilder outposts of Scottish golf – the Dunavertys, the Portmahomacks, the Reays, Whalsays and Shiskines. Shivas Irons needs a successor. 

Just as long as he doesn’t bring his bloody cats. Protect the birdies!

Tom Cox’s 1983 is published by Unbound and available on the main online sites – free delivery worldwide by Blackwells, though. Sherwood is on BBC1 and iPlayer, two new episodes a week, Sunday and Monday.