Monk Quixote

These are some of the things that I learnt dur­ing a mag­i­cal week in Totleigh Bar­ton. (My eter­nal grat­i­tude goes out to Chris at Salt Pub­lish­ing for rec­om­mend­ing I go on an Arvon course. Go buy amaz­ing short sto­ries and poetry col­lec­tions from him now. )

Seri­ous things
• Writ­ing involves a lot of talk­ing. And laughing.
• Each writer has a voice, like an instru­ment, that can still be heard and tuned, even when in a noisy orches­tra. Or in our case, a walk­ing, talk­ing, eat­ing, wasing-upping, rota-following band of mis­fits and fel­low travellers.
• There is no ‘dif­fi­cult sec­ond album’ syn­drome once you’re pub­lished. All good writ­ing is dif­fi­cult. And all good writ­ing is about con­trol­ling the voices in your head, and not let­ting them con­trol you.
• Every­one has sto­ries to tell. Every­one has issues to resolve. Not all of these should be writ­ten down. Accept this and move on. Some are for shar­ing and some are not.
• Peo­ple will add their own mean­ing to any­thing you say or write. You can guide them, but it is your skill as a story-teller that unites them in under­stand­ing. Although even the most skil­ful writer can­not account for everyone’s his­tory. For everyone’s bias. How­ever clever, or inci­sive, or sen­si­tive you are, there is always a dis­tance between your expe­ri­ence and that of oth­ers. You are not a fail­ure because of this. But you will fail if you do not acknowl­edge this… dif­fer­ence. Bring them to you.
• Men seem to need to trick them­selves — to write about dreams or drink­ing or drugs — to allow them­selves to talk about feel­ings and their inner demons. Women appear to feel guilty they’re not doing some­thing more pro­duc­tive. This is a gen­er­al­i­sa­tion. And while it is easy to offend peo­ple with gen­er­al­i­sa­tions, it is some­what more civilised than telling them to get ther­apy. Your­self included.

Silly things
• You can lead a blind per­son to water.
• As Larkin didn’t say — “Par­ents, who’d have ‘em?”. Or to man­gle that wise old tomato Alex Fer­gu­son… “Reli­gion, bloody hell!”
• Sociopaths need hugs, too.
• Authen­tic­ity is not a brand of per­fume. Nor is it a place in Texas.
• Cows can lick their nether regions if they try hard enough. And they can sneeze.
• Even steamed net­tles are prefer­able to celery.
• Drug deal­ing offers lim­ited career pro­gres­sion. Or maybe this should be in the seri­ous things bit.
• Lenin’s mous­tache is a trout dish with fennel.
• You can’t beat a bit of diver­sity. Although diver­sity can often lead to arguments.
• Never under esti­mate the clash of cul­tures. Some­thing as sim­ple as a stock cube can be as mys­ti­fy­ing as some­one else’s abil­ity to jump into bed with a com­plete stranger.

But mostly, I learnt to stop wor­ry­ing and enjoy myself.

So, thank you — to Olly, Clare, Julia, Noel, Mr ‘Silly me I missed one,’ Gar­dener and Mr Jack­les the naughty dog. To Court­tia, Lynne and Esther for their words, their patience and for shar­ing. And the class — who I hope I won’t offend here:- to ‘Archers’ Ali­son; Chris and his play for today deliv­ery; Lin­nea and her gen­tle other-wordliness; Kirsten and her lizard peo­ple; the two Louises — ‘spec­ta­cles boy’ and softly spo­ken inclu­siv­ity; lyri­cal, brave, Heman with his sub­tle humour and per­ma­nently sur­prised expres­sion; wee Marky with his plans and tal­ent (and humour in the face of pish stereo­typ­ing); noisy Eliz­a­beth, always in a hurry to get on with things; Nick, true to his guns and his wrist­band; Kay, del­i­cate and lost in pic­tures; Phil, and his — well, his Philoc­ity; Zuzana, the marx­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ary duck­ling we all took under our wing.

And lastly, me. Inse­cure and self-absorbed. Eager to please yet not good at join­ing in. At let­ting things go with the flow. With thoughts so quick they defeat my lips and come out in a mmmm­r­ble and a doesn’t mat­ter gib­ber gibber.

But we’re miss­ing some­thing. We’re miss­ing lots of peo­ple. Geeky girls with suit­cases, old friends who have drifted apart, soap stars and lust­ful taxi dri­vers. Witchfinder gen­er­als and syphillitic dying swans. A whole cabal of priests of vary­ing degrees of moral turpi­tude. Female explor­ers of inner and outer land­scapes. Lit­tle lost chil­dren and Amer­i­can shits in flat-caps. Peo­ple who crawl like lizards and men who dream of mur­der and Italy. Flower buds in spi­der webs. Apa and his cashew nuts. Street clean­ers box­ing away their memories.

Thank you. One and all. And now, per­haps this place will be my morn­ing pages.

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