The meaning of life, death and Nigel Molesworth
Some years ago I took part in a literary event with another writer of crime fiction. After we had both droned on we got to the usual question time and a member of the audience, who had obviously (and unusually) read books by both of us wanted to know why the main character in my colleague’s books was always so glum. “No, no” protested my friend, “He’s not glum, he’s amazingly chirpy and happy-go-lucky”. “Oh no he’s not.”persisted the reader, “He’s a real miseriguts. Not like Tim’s character who is really relaxed and happy.”
Well, not unnaturally my colleague took umbrage while I purred. The difference in perception was real and complete. My colleague was convinced he had produced one sort of character, our reader however saw it quite differently. My wife, who does not approve of blogging is always urging me to put myself in other people’s position and yet I am not so sure. For a start I am not at all sure about what that might be; I also believe that one is more use to the world as a whole maintaining one’s own position than by scratching around feverishly for those of other people. I accept that this is not necessarily a majority position. I would like to see it debated. Quite. Basically though I allow everyone the right to hold their individual position, providing also that I am accorded the same privilege.
These thoughts were prompted by the observation that “I’ve been reading your blog” by someone to whom I was quite recently a complete stranger. If a blog means anything it is I think, an expression of a point of view. As such it is necessarily quirky, sui generis and “wrong” in the sense that it is both these things. Other people will mercifully have different experiences and different points of view. Such variety makes life interesting.
A blog is also a source of information and one of the effects of the inter-net revolution is the big change in the gathering and dissemination of information. On Sunday I was at Lord’s cricket ground for the One Day International between England and Sri Lanka. My host for the day said when we met for the first time that he too had been reading my blog and knew a lot about me and my connections with cricket, the books I had written on the subject and so on. In this way we cut out a whole lot of information-gathering conversation and were able to, as they say, cut to the quick. Not everyone likes this. Some partners complain when relatively new or unknown acquaintances exhibit a disconcerting knowledge gleaned from the blog, website or social networking site of their nearest and dearest. I appreciate these concerns but on the whole I like the change and like so many recent changes there is no point in fighting. It is unavailable.
I seem to have been even more than usually busy these last few weeks and I have been up and down to London like a yo-yo. These excursions are now possible and relatively easy but they do require everyone sticking to the rules of engagement. I was completely thrown when the taxi driver on Sunday phoned in sick and his boss was not answering his phone. I don’t recall this ever happening in fifteen years of Ray and Graham in Cornwall and it doesn’t half make a mess of one’s plans. I am thrown, confused and don’t know what to do.
One London trip was mainly to contribute to a television obituary of Prince Philip, another involved cricket, a son and a dinner with an old friend, and a third was lunch with an editor and an office party. Business or pleasure? Hard to be certain and I have always been very fortunate to so often experience a blurring of the usual edges between the two.
On the work front I have now fielded page proofs for Jardine’s last tour as well as Richard Cobb’s collected letters. I have also clocked the blurb and cover for a new crime novel. All three are due later in the year and Christopher, my esteemed literary agent seems to have negotiated a deal for my back-list to be published in e-book form.
Cleverest of all he appears to have pulled the irons from the royal fire and resold a completed royal book over which there had been profound disagreement. I had better say no more but watch this space – 2012 is the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s accession and I am not being particularly prescient when I say that it is likely to prove a significant and prosperous year for the Royal Family and those of us who write about them.
I have also been, with Penny, to two days of the Beaminster Literary Festival nearby. On the first day we heard Edmund de Vaal the potter and author of the Hare with Amber Eyes; on the second we heard a local gardening whizz (a new obsession and we have already harvested the first courgettes), Anna Pavord. That evening we attended a choral evensong by the choir of Wells Cathedral . All three events were in the local parish church which I first visited a lifetime ago when I was a page at my Godma’s wedding along with Bill Dupont who still lives locally and who I saw recently in a tent at our old school. All three festival events were memorable. All very different but all remarkable.
I greatly admire writers who are able to captivate large audiences and who seem to be able to speak spontaneously and without recourse to notes. On that subject I badly need some planning and co-ordination in my own speaking career. I heard recently from Charlie Campbell at Ed Victor. He is running a new section of the Literary Agency for those authors who speak as well as write. Again, watch this space.
I am also trying to organize the welfare of my aged Mama who was ninety in November, had a stroke a year or so ago, found my brother dead on the bathroom floor and now has a malignant tumour which is being treated by radio-therapists in Poole. Everyone is being wonderfully supportive and I think we are doing as well as can be expected. Alas, however, that’s not really as well as one would like. Seems a bit hard to stagger through to ninety plus and then have breast cancer but there you go…
So basically we muddle through or not and change is inevitable. Francis King died the other day aged 88 and the actress Anna Massey was in the paper this morning. She died of cancer. I knew them both. So, what can one say?
Change is nearly always difficult and it gets more difficult as one gets older. We seem to be living through a period of often gratuitous austerity. On the whole though thank God for the internet, for blogs and email. Without them life would be even more difficult. It’s often extremely tough but on the whole and as a very general rule I think the present is an improvement on the past. We all think differently and that too is good. Change is happening, people are well-disposed. Such generalisations are , well, generalisations, and in the long run we are all dead. On which happy note I’ll sign off. More next month, keep buggering on and, by the way,Nigel Molesworth wants me to be linked in with him. Hem, hem; chiz, chiz. St. Custard’s lives and life therefore cannot be entirely bad.