April 2010 Archives

            I've been thinking about Christianna Brand which I concede is not something I often do. She was a large lady who affected bell tents and hung around Crime Writers' meetings when I first joined in the seventies. She seemed slightly superannuated even then and vaguely reminiscent of the woman we called "The Red-faced warbler" who enlivened church services in Fulmer when I was a child. She never seemed quite real. Rather like that large woman with the fake vowels on TV. Hyacinth Bucket aka Bouquet. I had to consult my wife over her name, a sure sign of age.

            Anyway Christianna reminded me slightly of her and she died in her eighties almost thirty years ago, However some time in the sixties she wrote three novels with a character called Nurse Matilda based on someone who had looked after her cousin, the illustrator Edward Ardizzone. These novels have now been adapted by Emma Thompson and have become a film which is getting loads of publicity.

            Very occasionally I hear the name of Christianna Brand in this context but it's nearly all about Emma Thompson who is famous and a flavour of our times whereas Christianna Brand is neither of these things. No fault, as far as I can see, of Miss Thompson who has been scrupulous about naming her source but an indictment of the times and the press. I admit to a certain self-interest, not because I remember Christianna but because I have a dreadful feeling that the same sort of thing will happen to me. A latter day Emma Thompson will "discover" someone I invented such as Dr. Tudor Cornwall.re-invent him for film and stand back to take all the credit. Meanwhile I will be dead, forgotten and ignored.

            Such, I suppose, is life but it does seem a bit unfair.

            I don't know if this confirms or denies my doctrine of "reasonable expectation" but I had some (to me) interesting examples last week after trying to catch a train from Tisbury the nearest station from my mother in Wiltshire. I booked a cab. This sounds grand but it's sensible and we've been using the same company for ever and they've always seemed incredibly reliable. This Monday they failed to show. Consternation. More "unreasonable expectation" followed. First, I encountered a neighbour driving towards me just a few hundred yards from the house as I began to walk the two or three miles to the station. Freddie very kindly told me to hop in the back and drove me to the station. There I was able to catch the next train and get back more or less on schedule. However I was technically on the "wrong" train. When I confessed to the guard he scolded me briefly but did the necessary scribbling on my ticket and didn't make the extra charge to which he was perfectly entitled.

            So three cases of "unreasonable expectation" aka surprise, in a single morning. The two goods outweighed the bad but on the other hand they should not  have occurred without the first. Oh well. Pooterish, no doubt. But of such Pooterisms is life composed.

            Simon Hoggart had an interesting piece on similar lines in the paper the other day. Basically he was saying that he understood the greed behind the apparent actions of Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt and other MPs. That didn't mean he condoned them but he did understand them. Essentially Hoggart was saying that MPs sweat blood on our behalf and are confronted by quite large numbers of people who have done infinitely less for the common good but have walked off with much greater financial rewards. It's not surprising if some of them cut corners to secure something similar for themselves.

            I know the feeling. My own instinct is to blame Thatcher and Murdoch who I tend to blame for everything. It was they more than anyone who introduced the idea into Britain that it was not only acceptable to discuss money, it was positively good. Moreover the acquisition of material goods was not only an end in itself, it was the best possible end. Life used not to be like that. I remember a telling remark of Julian Critchley's to the effect that if the Japanese had won the war all British businessmen would have been like his friend Michael Heseltine. What was rather wonderful about the good old days was that when a businessman had made what he considered enough he bought himself a Georgian rectory, and devoted himself to fly-fishing and Trollope. We, the British, had a well-defined sense of perspective and believed in "hinterland". It's like whoever it was who said that he didn't want a Prime Minister who wished to leave his name in history, make new legislation and so on. He wanted a lazy Prime Minister who was content simply to let things tick along while he read a good book and enjoyed long lunches at his club.

            There is a lot to be said for this approach but nowadays nobody seems to be listening.

            I have been looking back at my diary to see what exactly I have been doing and find that an awful lot has been dispiriting. The weather, which seems to have been uniformly ghastly, hasn't helped. Nor has work which I mustn't go on about though I found myself slightly chastened when my elder son remarked that most people of my age had given up and were enjoying their retirement. That is, if they were still alive and well enough to do so. I'm afraid I remain in a hurry with too much to fit into the time available but I sense that this is widely regarded as rather bad form. It's certainly true that if one were in conventional salaried employment one would have been pensioned off. However I am not in conventional salaried employment and never have been. This is widely regarded as "a bad thing" and there are still lots of people around who want to know what I am going to do when I grow up. Alas, it's a bit late for that.

            On the work front I can't pretend that it has been easy though there are signs that the lot of the self-employed writer generally may be improving after a more than usually bleak period. I suppose it is bad that I seem to derive as much if not more pleasure from things that don't bring financial reward.I hear Roy Jenkins, not someone who had much apparent need to be worried on that score, admonishing the Oxford Society with the words "Let us hear it for the non-acquisitive professions". I like the idea of the non-acquisitive profession even though I understand the need for food, drink and shelter. On the other hand I have just agreed to do a morning show at Radio St. Austell Bay and to natter at the local library during National Crime Fiction Week.

            Neither is going to make me rich and yet I seem to care about them in a way that I don't always care about paid employment. I suppose it's because everything nowadays seems to be about money. I remember, for instance, how, when going to a college re-union I found more university teachers than I had ever seen before in a single room. Most of them could have made more money, pursued more lucrative careers but they chose not to. When it was my children's turn I found that most of their contemporaries went on to be bankers and to try to make money because making money was all that mattered. University now seems to be measured almost exclusively in terms of whether or not a degree will lead to more money. Thank you Mrs. Thatcher. I am one of those who believes that there is such a thing as knowledge in the abstract and that it is worth pursuing for its own sake. But then I believe that there is such a thing as society as well.

            Ah well, we live in material times and perhaps it is God's punishment that we are not very good at it. Serves us right. Oh I have just had an "expression" of interest from a TV production company and have sent them a puff for my "Tudor Cornwall" trilogy. I'd love any forthcoming money; of course I would. But I have a feeling that I'd enjoy everything else about the exercise at least as much. It's a salutary thought. Money and all that it buys is important but it's not THAT important.

            And on that Pooterish thought I will sign off thinking about the meaning of life and wishing and hoping that there is more to it all than money.