I wasn’t a happy child but I wasn’t an unhappy child either. Once I could read I was free. I could go to libraries every day, often accompanied by my mother, and I saw reading as a way out from my immediate surroundings.
Soon I learned to cycle. Alone, I could explore the streets and fields of the countrified semi suburbs in which I grew up. It was a county called Kent which had been bombed to hell not long before I was born.
In those days parents were less police-like. They gave you a penny at the beginning of the day and didn’t expect to see you until the evening. I cycled all day, stopped where I wanted and talked to anyone who had a story for me. I am still like that.
The third element in my liberation was my discovery of my father’s book on how to type. My father himself had been a journalist and was writing fiction. His vigorous typing in his sexy shirt sleeves seemed very impressive.
One day he bought a little portable typewriter in a blue case of which he was incredibly proud. He swung it round and round, because it was light, and suddenly announced he was going to Vietnam to be a war correspondent like Hemingway or Norman Mailer.
I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I started to blindfold myself with my school tie and soon found I could write the right words in the right order without even looking.
It was exhilarating. I had been reading Crime and Punishment at the time, always a cheery go-to book for a young man, and I began to copy out pages from this great novel.
At school I had been a disaster, but now at last alone I found something that I could do. I never had the desire to write underwater stories, adventure stories or amazing stories involving giants, dwarfs, elves or mermaids.
I didn’t know much about those things, but I did know the people around me. And I guess that made me into something of a realist. One day, I called myself a writer.
And I found that it suited me like a good shirt, haircut or well cut trousers. It covered me like a cloak and I was keen for others to apply the word to me even though I hadn’t yet written anything.
After all, at school many words had already been applied to me, words like brownie, or paki, or shit-face, so I found my own word, I stuck to it, and never let it go. It is still my word.
Excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema now.
The last time a medical digit entered my back side was a few years ago and as the nurse flipped me over she asked me; “How long did it take you to write Midnight’s Children?” I replied, “If I had indeed written Midnight’s Children, don’t you think I would have gone private?”
Enema is over now. Back to reality.
Midnights Children enema story. You made me laugh out loud! Sending lots of love x
These are brilliant. Inspirational. Human.
Much love to you.