Hamlet might say,
'Seems,' madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.'
but he is either wrong, dissembling or trying to convince himself.
Does anybody ever know what really 'is' or are we all prisoners of what it 'seems' like to us.
Yesterday, among a welter burden of books arriving here, all ordered to turn up while I was here but I was out so some of my very kindly neighbours took them in for me, was the nearly three-inch thick biography of Harold Wilson. Having enjoyed so much two books on the skullduggery of Jeremy Thorpe, flamboyant bon vivant, I thought that for 1p plus £2.80 p&p, I'd see if the fascination could be extended into the life of another wily operator from 1970's politics.
But the book, the Ben Pimlott in hardback, represents something a weightlifter might be expected to pick up and hold above their head in the qualifying rounds of the local championships. It's not possible to tell from the label how much it cost the dealer to post but, once you've factored in the jiffy bag, it must have been more businesslike for them to throw it away than charge me £2.81 for it. And yet it seemed to them they were doing some business.
I can't imagine I'm going to read all of that, with Byron's Women ahead of it on the waiting list. But such is business, such is commerce. Something was seen to happen. It kept people in work and the world was kept busy. Which makes me wonder why my work keeps awarding me shopping vouchers for perceived 'successes'. I am honestly no good at the job but, like some character in a film blessed with serendipity, I recently keep finding myself in the right place at the right time.
It's not always easy to spend £20 on something you really need because you'd have bought it already but I did once buy some cat repellant to keep them from doing what I didn't want them to do on the frront of my house, a pair of trousers that said Jasper Conran on the label (imagine that), I got the book about Barney Curley's betting coup and this summer made maroon the colour to follow, augmenting a pair of soft shoes with shorts and t-shirt to not quite match. But I don't think I ever did quite as well as this week when finding exactly the sort of new hat I had in mind in TK Maxx and could afford an English-German dictionary into the bargain. What a pretty picture they make.It would seem like I'm doing a marvellous job but, really, I'm not.
And it seems like I have no alternative but to read any new novel by Ian McEwan. You just have to, don't you. But, having ordered it, I saw a few reviews and thought, No, I'm not having that. But what seems in this case becomes what is. Not reading a new McEwan novel now would be like not buying the Sex Pistols' album in 1977, or not buying the next instalment of Danny Baker's memoirs.
I thought I'd have finished it by now, it is only a day's worth of reading if you don't watch Doncaster races, but I'll finish it tomorrow and maybe review it soon.
And it seems that I can actually read one novel while, somewhere else in my busy head, I can be planning another.
Heaven knows how many times I've struck out with ill-advised intent on producing a novel. About five or six times, at least. There were Private Dancer, Midtagspause and a few that never had titles, none of them interesting enough to sustain my interest in writing them never mind expecting anybody else to read them.
But maybe this time, with a plan in place, writing about something I know something about, let's see if we can nail it this time, with Time After Time, no literary masterpiece but a story about amateur cycling in those dark days of 1969 when the public weren't very much aware that such a sport even happened. I don't care if it's rubbish and I certainly don't expect anybody to read it but I'd just love it if I could print off 50 thousand words and say, there it is, I wrote a novel.
It seems as if I have an idea I'm excited about enough to see it through. But I don't know if it is.
