Early Memories

I am reading a book on creative writing.  At the end of each chapter it insists upon written assignments. What the...?  I just wanted to read about writing, not actually write about anything.  Well, the first assignment is to "brainstorm as many early memories as you can, writing them out in as much detail as possible, dedicating at least a paragraph to each."

The author of this book provides some "prompts to get you started" under headings such as "People" (your favorite or worst teacher is one example); "Places" (the inside of your house is another); and "Things" (an old photograph that sticks out in your mind is yet another).  With the assurance that I should not feel restricted by the suggested categories, I now have to brainstorm for two hours. My alarm is set!

If we are talking about the absolute earliest memories I have, how about warmth, light and sound? That might seem odd but I occasionally get transported back to early childhood (like baby in a pram childhood) when I experience one of those sensations--if that is the right word for warmth, light or sound.  Just the other day after lunch, I lay down on our big red leather sofa in the family room.  I put a woolen blanket over myself (it was 26F outside) and a handkerchief over my eyes because sun was pouring through the French windows behind me.

With a cushion under my legs and another cushion by the side of my head, I lay there and started to go to sleep.  But before I dozed off I had this acute and almost euphoric sense that I was lying in my pram in the dining room of my childhood home in South Wales, with patches of light penetrating the darkness now and again.

This "memory" might have been induced by my mother telling me many years later that after "lunch" (the mind boggles) she always put me in my pram in the dining room by the glass doors that led to a sunny verandah at the front of our house in the little village of Nottage.  But that sense of warmth and dappled light was my very own "memory" which I have retained these 71 years.  Can you have a memory or a remembered sensation from when you were about four months old?  I don't know.  All I know is that I was not lying there on my red sofa and I was not 71 years old any more.  I was in my pram, totally content, enveloped in warmth and sensing the shifting light.  That is my first "memory."

Latin Lessons and Life Lessons

Courtesy amazon.com

At the tender age of eleven, I was locked up in boarding school and exposed, among other things, to an odd combination of Roman History, Latin and Divinity classes twice a week under the tutelage of a demanding Latin master.   In a perverse way, I enjoyed those classes because they contained many surprising life lessons.

Roman History was definitely a good introduction to life in general and its vicissitudes in particular.  We got to read about wars, slave revolts, murder, incest, religious intolerance, corruption, and other outrageous happenings which inflamed our young minds.  It also seemed that Christians should stay well away from lions. Admittedly, we did all yawn when we first started reading an early chapter about Augustus in De Vita Caesarum (better known as "The Twelve Caesars” by Suetonius) but thanks to Blakely, the class swat, we were soon informed that some of the later chapters were “really dirty”.

Ultimately, a dog-eared copy of said book (in translation, thank goodness) was passed around and read under the bed covers at night.  Suetonius was more or less our primer on sex, violence, various forms of perversion and other delights.  The weird antics of Nero, Caligula and Tiberius were hungrily devoured and discussed at great length by an excitable group of increasingly depraved eleven-year olds who had little knowledge of the real world.  Of course, we later learned that some of this stuff was still going on long after the Romans had left Britain.  Roman History was, therefore, a welcome distraction from the dull slog of 6 lessons a day, soccer and rugby (winter), cricket (summer) and endless hours of homework, not to mention “recreational” woodwork after Chapel on Sundays.

Math Problems

I have never been able to do math.  It has always been a closed book.  My dear mother used to say: “Ian is just like me.  He is hopeless with figures”.  That oft-repeated statement to family, friends and even casual acquaintances became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Indeed, it became a point of pride.  At least one of my qualities was worth talking about.

My father was an industrial chemist by training and could work out complex math problems in his head or on the back of an envelope.  My brother became an electrical engineer and, ultimately, designed oil rigs.  Anyone who can keep an oil rig floating around in the North Sea must have some grasp of mathematics.

Unfortunately, my "figures" were always mixed up.  I could never count my bus money correctly or get my pounds, shillings and pence in order.  Twenty shillings in a pound, 12 pence in a shilling; what a weird system.  (Much later in life, I was paid in guineas--21 shillings.  It just got worse).

Hot Cross Buns

There were five of us.  Jacquie, Owen, Nellie, Tommy and me.  We were about seven or eight years old and we absolutely ruled the whole length of Beach Road in our tiny village near Porthcawl, in South Wales.

Our village consisted of the Dotted Duck pub by the bus stop on the "big road" to Porthcawl.  Right opposite was Howard's Farm where we brought the cows down from the fields for milking.  Further along Beach Road, in the center of the village, was Bardolph's General Store where endless supplies of Tizer pop and Cadbury's chocs were to be found.  Next door was Mrs. Craggert's riding stable at the top of Rope Lane.  We went to school in Porthcawl but that was a foreign land as far as we were concerned.

Beach Road was about a quarter of a mile long.  It was our home base and our respective houses were strategically stationed along its whole length.  For the last one hundred yards or so it became a steep slope down to the village and turned sharp right towards the Dotted Duck.  We had hair-raising races on our bikes and roller skates that always ended in front of or, in case of miscalculation, just inside, Mr. Bardolph's shop.  The wild screams of the victorious and violent protestations of the vanquished were usually mixed with Mr. Bardolph's own cries of outrage and alarm.  A stand full of bottles was once knocked over and they all smashed.  We were duly reported to unduly concerned parents and our bikes and roller skates were taken away for a whole week.

Write What You Know?

Courtesy miratelinc.com

I recently had lunch with a good friend whom I had not seen for many years.  We discussed all the usual things: family, friends, the world going to hell, memories of our work together in the "old days" and, finally, what we were really doing.  I told him that I had been trying to write a novel for some time but had become a bit bogged down in recent months.

These words seemed to strike a chord.  Without any hint of irony, he told me that he was also trying to write a novel--about a British regiment fighting in France during the First World War--and that he had come to a grinding halt after four chapters.  I was secretly thinking that getting bogged down in a novel about the First World War would be a real asset.  You would definitely be channeling the conditions that your characters confronted.

We ruminated on how and why we had chosen the stories we were trying to tell and, in particular, whether we had chosen our subjects wisely.  We were definitely not writing about things that we had experienced.  My friend asked whether we might be encountering difficulties because we had ignored that familiar admonition to aspiring writers: "Write what you know”.

A Novel Approach

For the last two years--on and off, but mostly off--I have been trying to write a novel.  No big deal, you may think.  People write novels all the time.  They've been doing it since Thomas Malory penned (quilled?) Morte d'Arthur some time in the 15th century.

There are libraries full of novels so it can't be too difficult, right?  I mean, Newt Gingrich has written several novels and he's not exactly Tolstoy.  Stephen King seems to churn them out all the time like they're the Yellow Pages being dropped in your driveway.  Small children are writing novels.  Prisoners in Egypt are writing novels.  People who are dying are writing novels.  Hell, there are even ghost writers out there.

If writing a novel is such a relatively simple task, can anyone please explain why I am having such difficulty putting pen to paper and coming up with some Pulitzer Prize-winning novel?  OK, maybe not the Pulitzer but certainly the Man Booker or the National Book Award or even the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.  I have all the prizes figured out.  I am successfully envisioning the awards ceremonies.  It is the writing part of the whole process that seems to be eluding me.