How do we disagree?

We’re rational adults. We’re educated. We have the facts. If we want more facts, we have the internet. We’ve got everything we need to agree – and yet we disagree. How do we manage it?

You’d think it would be much easier to agree than to disagree. Look at this liberal democracy of ours. We share a culture of inclusivity; we ban prejudice; we embrace difference; we congratulate ourselves on being–

“Any chance you could hurry this up? He’s polishing the lamp.”

“I know you think this is just my waffly bit, but–”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“–it’s an integral part of what I’m trying to–“

“I said I’m sorry.”

“–achieve here. To have a platform and not to use it is to–”

“Too late.”

Pipsqueak had used his sleeve to bring the side of the lamp to a shine. In the brightly polished oval shape he could see his own face and, behind him, the roof of the tent.

He could still hear the two voices in the lamp.

If there were two genies, one could look after Myrtille – but perhaps he had to polish the whole thing before they'd appear.

He rummaged in his rucksack and brought out his spare long-johns. He wrapped the lamp in them and polished furiously with both hands, reminded of how sometimes he would dry Myrtille’s hair after she’d done her thing with that week’s newly launched shampoo and the strategically placed leaves in the forest glade with the sparkly sunlit waterfall and that weird music they always insisted on having.

Pipsqueak stopped polishing. Sometimes, after the sitar players and the choral singers and the shampoo promoters had left, he and Myrtille would have wild animal sex in the undergrowth before washing off in the waterfall and letting the sunlight dry them off – except for Myrtille’s hair, which always needed extra rinsing and then furious drying with a towel to get rid of (first) the itch of the shampoo and then (secondly) the lustrous sheen.

Pipsqueak held up the lamp and inspected it. Perhaps a little fine work in the difficult-to-get-at bits around the handle, but overall – yes, he’d done a good job. He stared into his own eyes.

And then – pouf! There was a sudden – pouf! – in the air and–

“You’re not alone. You’d be surprised how many authors don’t know how to describe that sound.”

–a sudden release in the air, a release of pressure, like a bubble popping, ears clearing, a pulse, a heartbeat, a kind of–

“Eek!” said Pipsqueak.

He was staring into eyes not his own.

The eyes stared back.

And then – something else happened.

One moment, Pipsqueak was staring into an unfamiliar pair of eyes – green eyes with hazel flecks, big pupils, slightly bloodshot whites, small framed windows somehow fixed over them – and that was bad enough.

But the next moment, a large rectangular panel had been ripped out of the fabric of reality, right in front of him, and he was staring through the gap at a bearded figure, strangely dressed, same windows on his eyes, seated on a horse.

"Aaaargh!" said Pipsqueak.

“Sorry we’re late,” said the figure. “But good job on the lamp.”

“Oh genie,” said Pipsqueak, because he wasn’t stupid.

How can I help?" said the genie.

Pipsqueak listened to his own heartbeat returning to normal. He stared at the genie and the genie stared at him.

"I thought the Queen getting ahead of you was a nice touch," said the genie. "Bit spur of the moment, but hey, that's the way I write."

"I know that road," said Pipsqueak.

“Yes, we’re right behind you. Wouldn’t do to catch up, though.”

The genie made a complicated series of gestures with both his hands, said something that sounded a lot like “Whoo, whoo, shazzang!” and all of a sudden Pipsqueak was looking through the gap in reality at a tropical beach.

The sun was setting. Twangy music played in the background. A woman knelt in the shallow water and worked shampoo into her hair. There were no leaves. Pipsqueak watched her for a long moment, then glanced at Myrtille, who was still asleep.

While he’d been distracted, an argument had started up on the other side of the gap in reality.

“Think about the debate they’ll be having tomorrow morning! That’s the refusal of the call. This is the meeting with the mentor – and that’s supposed to be me.”

“But he’s got the lamp and I’ve got to–”

“Edgalcius?” said Pipsqueak, leaning forward. “What are you doing there?”

The genie – and with him, to Pipsqueak's astonishment, Edgalcius – had been standing to one side of the gap in reality. The horse – two horses, if Edgalcius had had one – had gone, and they were leaning against a makeshift bar made of washed-up planks.

Like the genie, Edgalcius was wearing a brightly coloured, short-sleeved shirt decorated with odd-shaped trees and sunsets over water.

Like the genie, Edgalcius held in his hand a drink in a straight-sided glass out of which a tropical forest seemed to have grown. Over it all loomed a yellow umbrella.

Pipsqueak had never seen The Mage look sheepish before.

“You’re still the Chosen One,” said Edgalcius. “One of them, anyway. I think.” He shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

Pipsqueak's brain clicked into gear. "What did you mean, spur of the moment?" he said.

"Oh, I had no idea she'd get ahead of you," said the genie. "But that's how this is done, you see."

He looked like he was about to launch into an explanation. But Pipsqueak spoke first.

“You’ve sent us on this quest,” said Pipsqueak, “and you don’t know where we’re going?”

As he said it, he knew that it was true.

“I’ve got a life!” he said, feeling a sudden surge of anger. “I was happy where I was!”

“Look, kid” – and Pipsqueak realised that Edgalcius couldn’t even remember his name – “this is a very unusual situation.”

“But you’re supposed to know what’s going on! You’re supposed to be looking out for us!”

“Ah, but this is the true nature of storytelling, you see,” the genie began. "It's like life in that respect, because–"

But Pipsqueak rounded on him before he could get started.

“I don’t care about storytelling! I had a grocery business!”

“There’s a happy ending!” said Edgalcius, stepping away from the bar. “You get to live happily ever after! You’ll be rich!”

“I don’t care about rich. I just want to go on delivering–”

“How rich?”

Myrtille was awake. She was leaning up on one elbow. Her hair was – let’s keep this simple – a mess. A bird could have nested – never mind. She spoke quietly, but the simple question stopped them.

“Tell us about the happy ending,” she said. “Maybe we can work something out.”

Continued after the picture.

Some distance away, the kitten pushed its head out from between two of its sisters.

The entire litter was packed into a box next to a stove, and the kitten was the only one not fast asleep in the warmth.

The kitten was annoyed. The old witch was losing her touch.

She’d thought she was rescuing him after he’d strayed and been picked up by strangers.

If she’d had any sense of who he was, she would have realised that he had found – no, chosen – his Forever Family in that group of four young people setting off on a Hero’s Journey at the direction of a Mage summoned by a first-time fantasy author working from a how-to-write-fantasy book about heroes and the stages of their journeys.

The kitten struggled loose from the press of bigger kittens. This was ridiculous! He’d been rescued – the young princess had picked him out of the tree – and he had been properly gifted – the young princess had handed him to the young Deliverer of Perishables as they’d approached the Queen’s camp – and now his kitten-farmer of an original owner had messed up the whole story.

The kitten stood motionless in front of the stove, watching the interplay of ghosts and never-born spirits and sunlit dust-motes in the oak-beamed kitchen of the witch’s cottage.

Could he let them rescue him again? Or would that stretch the story?

The kitten reached a decision. All the how-to books went on about rescuing a kitten, but they didn’t say to do it multiple times. He was on his own.

He picked his way carefully and silently across the flagstones to the rough wooden door, which unlatched itself as he approached. It creaked open.

The old witch was in her rocking chair, watching through a[nother] gap in reality as Myrtille, Pipsqueak, Edgalcius and, er, the genie negotiated the terms of this story’s hero’s journey.

“Come to me, Pretty,” she said, lowering her hand in invitation, and the kitten hissed. He didn’t want to get stuck with the name Pretty.

The witch realised her mistake. “Come to me, kitten,” she said, and the as-yet-unnamed kitten wound himself around her feet before reaching up and sinking his claws into her knee.

“This is fascinating,” the old witch said, not feeling the pain. “They’re calling it a risk assessment; did I hear that right? All of the foreseeable risks quantified, but none of what’s actually going to happen? A strange process.”

The kitten pounced up onto the witch’s lap.

“They’ll need you for that magic,” the witch said softly. “You have a strange destiny, kitten, truly you do.”

The kitten washed its paws as the spirits moved in the air.

“We could come with you,” they whispered. “Jump through. Jump through the gap in reality. Jump through, and we’ll follow.”

The kitten braced itself, and jumped.

Previously on williamessex.com. Pipsqueak, Myrtille and Roland were at the back, holding bottles … wassailing with the best of them … onto the floor rolled – a lamp … the kitten looked back with an expression that seemed to say: there’s about to be a major plot twist – and slipped out into the night.

“You can’t signal your plot twists in advance.”

“I can. I just did.”

“Not if you don’t know what they’re going to be.”

“But I do. It’s perfectly simple. The kitten–”

“Anyway, you’re supposed to write your waffly bit first.”

“My what?”

“We shouldn’t be talking like this. Your waffly bit. Where you start by rabbiting on about something completely irrelevant.”

“My waffly bit? Edgalcius the Mage, I’ll have you know–”

“Hang on, what’s this?”

Pipsqueak was woken by a noise. His head – no, it wasn’t his head; Pipsqueak lay very still and the room stopped moving.

If he lay like this for the rest of his life, he quite possibly wouldn’t throw up.

But his head. Yes, it was his head.

Pipsqueak groaned. His head felt– And his mouth– Pipsqueak lay very still. His mouth needed a good metaphor.

But this was one of those situations, Pipsqueak knew, where any good metaphor instantly sounds like it’s been used before.

“Careful. That’s you thinking. Pipsqueak’s a character. And that’s not a thought he’d have.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t think of a way to describe the inside of his mouth. Have you ever cleaned out a parrot cage? But more leathery.”

“When you can’t describe something, maybe the message is: don’t describe it. Basic rule.”

“I thought I was writing this.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been in stories like this so many times before. By so many authors. The Old Guy with a Thousand Faces, wasn’t that your working title? So many stories. So many heroes to help on their way. Can you imagine the number of ominous storm-clouds I’ve had to ride under?”

“It only rains at night in fantasy novels.”

“Stair-rods, though. And the old guy – the wizard, the mage, the whatever – is always being called out of bed for some late-night intervention.”

“But you must have seen some beautiful–”

“Yeah, but when the descriptions really don’t work? And you have to tell a young woman that she looks like that because some pretentious git of an amateur author fell in love with his own ridiculously over-written description of how her face could launch– hold it! Look.”

Pipsqueak’s mouth, which was a perfectly ordinary mouth, with teeth and everything, slight overbite, some thinning of the enamel, discoloration, possible fracture in Upper Left Seven, periodontitis, very dry just at this moment, parched actually, bits of food stuck between – Pipsqueak felt very bad. But very bad in a normal way that he recognised.

He felt like he felt when he’d been drinking and eating to excess. Which is what he’d been doing. So he felt like that.

He lay very still.

“You’ve said that.”

He continued to lay very still.

That sound; what was it?

“That’s Pipsqueak thinking about the sound, isn’t it? You need to make it clear.”

“Yes. Shh.”

Pipsqueak rolled onto his side and – well, he felt a bit better afterwards and managed to get it cleared up without waking Myrtille. He got to his feet. The room had stopped swaying. It was a tent. He was in a tent. There was Myrtille and there was – who let him in? Still asleep, anyway – and there was his rucksack. 

That noise… It had sounded like conversation. Very faint, kind of tinny, but definitely two voices.

The contents of his rucksack had spilled out onto the carpet.

“Carpet now? Very fancy.”

“Shh!”

“Sorry.”

“Shhhh!”

There were his spare – Pipsqueak shuffled his spare long-johns back into the rucksack – and there was … yeah, this thing.

Using just his finger and thumb on the handle, Pipsqueak picked up the lamp and put it to his ear.

There was a sound like – Pipsqueak frowned – it was the sound that a massive, heavily salted body of water would make if there was a lot of wind making it surge against a sloping surface made of pebbles or sand.

What a weird idea, Pipsqueak thought.

“He’s never seen the sea, you idiot!”

“Shhhh!”

Pipsqueak jerked back, dropping the lamp. He was right: the voices were coming from the lamp!

“And that’s seashells, anyway.”

He scrambled to his feet and backed away from the lamp.

He could hear his heart beating. His breath was short. He felt a powerful urge to fight or – his feet rose two inches off the carpet and then bumped down again.

“Not that kind of flight!”

“I said – shhhh!” 

All of a sudden Pipsqueak’s hangover was completely cured.

It’s magic, he thought. I’d forgotten about the lamp. I’d forgotten that it was magic.

But – two voices?

Pipsqueak brought his breathing under control. He waited for his heartbeat to subside.

The genie was on his side. If the genie had a friend…

Pipsqueak glanced at Myrtille. Then he reached for the lamp.

Outside the tent, the kitten crouched in the darkness. It had watched, through a very small tear in the fabric of the tent, as Pipsqueak had woken up and – the kitten wrinkled its nose at the memory.

The kitten had watched until Pipsqueak had picked up the lamp, dropped the lamp, and then reached for the lamp again.

Now there would be magic not of its making.

Fascinated, the kitten reached out a claw to enlarge the tear in the fabric of the tent. Perhaps it would learn more magic from what it was about to see; perhaps some of the secrets of this strange, fantastical world would be revealed.

And then, behind the kitten, darkness formed out of darkness. The stars were blacked out and a dark shape leaned forward over the kitten.

“There you are, my little one,” said a voice as rusty and creaky as – as the voice of an elderly cat-breeding witch who didn’t use her voice very much and hardly ever thought about dental hygiene. “I knew there were seven in the litter.”

Before the kitten could get a proper stare going, it had been snatched up and was held close in the old witch’s black cloak.

“What kind of a familiar will you be, if you’re always running off?” said the witch, turning away. “If I don’t get you properly trained, I won’t be able to sell you to anybody.”

Then the darkness was darkness again. There were stars, and a distance away, the last embers of a camp fire. An owl hooted. Wolves howled. Across the camp, faint snoring could be heard.

Inside the tent, Pipsqueak began to polish the lamp.

Bought a hat the other day. A beanie, I think you might call it. A bobble hat without a bobble.

I didn’t need a new hat, but I’d come to the supermarket without a hat, and it was cold outside, and there was a rack of hats, gloves, scarves, all roughly the price of an overpriced cup of coffee.

My new hat has a turn-up. You know what I mean. Actually, it’s called a fold-over, and the small amount of research I’ve done for this post suggests that a fold-over is intended to double up the cold-protection over the ears and the neck.

Or to extend the cold-protection down, of course.  

Except that the fold-over on my new hat is sewn into place. You can’t pull it down if there’s a wind off the Urals biting into the back of your neck, and you can’t fold it further up if, er, the hair around the top of your head is not as, um, cold-proof as it used to be.

I’ve bought a hat that has to look the same in all conditions. To the extent that it’s just ever so slightly impractical for its ostensible purpose.

I bought a bag recently. The leaflet went on about the brass buckles and the leather straps and how all-round sturdy and important the bag was – except that the buckles and straps were sewn together, and the bag actually opened with the poppers concealed underneath.

Why have a big brass buckle if it’s just a big brass decoration? I suppose I’ve answered my own question.

Why do we take ourselves so puffed-up seriously these days, if we’re not even prepared to unfasten a buckle?

We've all got cold brains. Is that it?

Imagine an organisation where the faces change.

Where the opportunities open up because people move on.

I’m not thinking about media organisations in particular, but imagine a news broadcast that wasn’t presented by the same tired old faces repeating the question to each other at length and then replying that yes, the issue is complicated and no, nobody knows what’s going to happen next.

“Grumpy again today, aren’t we?”

“Ed! You don’t come in until further down.”

“Sorry.”

Is it just me, or are universities and colleges packed with young people studying the creativities up to and including reading off an autocue in a gloss-painted plyboard studio? Most of them could do a half-decent job, and all of them have access to the technology.

“It’s just that–”

“Not yet!”

At times, you could think that the right to interview politicians seems to be held within families and passed down through the generations. I mean, yes, there’s–

“You’re just in a bad mood.”

“Have you seen the news recently?”

–there’s YouTube, and there are podcasts, and blogs, and vlogs, and all that, and the future is full of young people talking at us through our screens.

But there isn’t a bridge between “trad” TV and “indie” TV. Same as in publishing. Think of all those young, idealistic, cheap-to-hire students who won’t get the job they’re training to do. The best of them will make their own futures, but–

“Oh, I get it. You’re talking about barriers to entry.”

–the “trad” industry, in its present form, will just wither into irrelevance. If I flick through Freeview, for example, I don’t come across an entry-level TV station populated by recent graduates doing a half-decent job of gaining experience for their CVs while standing outside in the dark holding furry microphones to their faces and telling us that nobody knows what’s coming next.

“A really bad mood.”

Universities are expanding, so where’s the joined-up thinking? There are so many trained young people available to the creative industries. They’re a resource; why not use them?

All I can find on Freeview, some nights, is re-runs of shows from my childhood back in the Cretaceous Era. Not a single entry-level–

“You were enjoying Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).”

“I was, but–”

“That was worth finding, wasn’t it? Black-and-white classic from the sixties?”

“Ed, I just wanted to say–”

“Something about the old ways dying. Organisations closing themselves to the new. Not regenerating.”

“And the false promises of education.”

“Don’t get your knickers in any more of a twist, ha ha.”

Ed and I are riding horses along the northbound road out of the walled town. They’re slow old horses, with copious manes and plate-sized hooves. Ed’s relaxed in the saddle but I haven’t yet, er, found my rhythm. It’s so long since I rode a horse that I don’t know how to describe the experience, let alone live it.

“Do some research,” he murmurs.

“Shh! That’s my omniscient-narrator voice. You don’t hear that.”

“Unreliable narrator, more like.”

“Besides, I’d fall off.”

We’ve agreed that we need to be nearer to the action. If there is any action. We’re both a bit worried about the magic kitten.

“You shouldn’t write things into the story if you don’t know what they're going to do,” Ed had said, and we’d argued for a while, good-naturedly, about spontaneity in writing. You know – about relaxing enough to allow spur-of-the-moment ideas – even kittens – into the flow. Not resisting what comes.

Then we’d made our way down the mountain – doesn’t matter how – and hired two horses at the farrier’s in the village.

I can see from Ed’s profile now that he’s laughing at me.

“You had to write that we’re on horses, didn’t you?” he says, reading my mind.

“It just came to me.”

“And we need to be nearer the action because?”

“That just came to me too. But Pipsqueak’s forgotten all about the lamp.”

“The one that summons you.”

“Yeah. Not sure about that. Maybe I should go back and delete it.”

“Leave it for now. They’re all asleep anyway.”

“They’re my friends, Mother!” Stace had said forcefully, and the guards hadn’t dragged Pipsqueak and Myrtille out of the Royal Presence.

But there had been an argument, conducted mainly in not-quite-inaudible hissing between Mother and Daughter, at the end of which a compromise had been reached: Stace would sit with the Queen at the banquet, while Pipsqueak and Myrtille would sit at a secondary table – with Roland.

“I should be up there!” Roland had hissed. “This is an insult!”

“Have another drink,” Myrtille had said. “Far more fun down here.”

It was true. The Queen and Stace – Princess Eustacia – hadn’t been able to eat yet.

Every time one of them raised a fork, another gaudily fancy-dressed fool, in cap and bells and tights and pointed slippers, would prance out onto the open space in front of their long table, and start another long, boring, rhyming-doggerel, interminable series of couplets about the glories of the Royal House.

Two more long tables had been set, one along either side of the performance space, and the guests there hadn’t been able to eat, either. They were equipped with foaming tankards that they crashed down at the end of every couplet. Sometimes, the foam slipped off a tankard, and had to be fixed on again.

Whereas Pipsqueak, Myrtille and Roland were at a round table towards the back, holding bottles of the soft drink so that the label could be seen from over there – they’d been coached in this – and faking a laugh – this, too – when the man over there – beside that screen, see him waving? – held up the board with LAUGH written on it.

And the soft-drink bottles had turned out to contain something stronger. Pipsqueak had been reluctant to co-operate at first, turning his bottle so that the label couldn’t be seen from over there, but after several long swigs, he’d been wassailing away with the best of them.

Even the people at the side tables, facing in towards the entertainment, who had been swigging furtively from soft-drink bottles concealed in their breeches and – Pipsqueak now saw – munching on sandwiches concealed beneath their plates piled high with varnished-for-the-camera traditional fayre were beginning to smile.

But the Queen remained stony-faced. As did Stace – Princess Eustacia.

“Iss hopelesh,” Roland was saying. “Ai luff hurr.” He straightened up, and enunciated “I Love Her, yes, that’s right, I Lovvvve Her. But I can’t–”

“Why don’t you–” Pipsqueak began, but Myrtille shushed him with her hand.

“Does she know how you feel?” Myrtille asked, leaning forward.

“Don’ you unnerstann? Her murther’s ther Queen. How can I–?” Roland slumped forward onto the table.

“I thought you said they were asleep.”

“Yes, sorry, that was just scene-setting.”

Everybody in the camp was asleep.

“Except the kitten.”

Except the kitten, which stepped lightly across Pipsqueak’s face and made for the flap of the tent. Myrtille was flat on her back, snoring, and Roland – he’d followed them into their tent – was face down mumbling to himself.

The kitten nudged a paw at Pipsqueak’s backpack and instantly recoiled, as if expecting it to retaliate. For a long time kitten stared at backpack and backpack didn’t move, and then the kitten extended a paw again and touched the knot in the cord holding the backpack closed.

As the kitten watched, the knot untied itself.

The backpack fell open, spilling its contents.

Onto the floor in front of the kitten rolled – a lamp.

“Oh, too easy.”

The kitten looked up at me, and its expression seemed to say: there's your lamp.

Then the kitten darted across the floor to the flap of the tent, stopped, looked back at you – yes, you – with an expression that seemed to say: there’s about to be a major plot twist – and slipped out into the night.

There is a patch of woodland in Cornwall, and through that patch of woodland runs a stream. Further down the valley, the stream runs through a village.

When the rains come the stream swells. In the past, the stream has contributed to flooding in the village.

But a few years ago, a farmer introduced two beavers into the patch of woodland, and they began to build dams in the stream.

For a while, those two beavers were the only beavers in Cornwall. But then they built a comfortable lodge in the middle of one of their newly formed lakes, and now there are four beavers in Cornwall.

They build dams. They wake up in the evening (they’re nocturnal) with a single thought: tonight would be a good night to build a dam. They go to bed thinking: tomorrow night would be a good night to build a dam.

Except for a brief window in the early part of the year when their thoughts turn to making baby beavers (kits).

You are interested in this story for two reasons.

One: since the beavers started to regulate the flow of water by building dams, the stream hasn’t contributed to the flooding problem in the village.

Two: in the wet ground and shallow water curated by the beavers, there’s a lot of biodiversity wriggling around and eventually turning into butterflies, et cetera. Beavers kick-start the food-chain. Beavers know the recipe for primordial soup.

We’re all in favour of biodiversity, aren’t we? And flooding is a climate-change issue, so you can’t not be interested in that.

You might also like watching wildlife at night. Wear your wellies.

There’s a website. Look for the Cornwall Beaver Project. They do guided walks to visit the beavers and watch them at work. Wrap up warm.

[Post rating: 45ER. Mild, age-related grumbling; some pretentious conversation; fantasy; class tension. Adults under 45 should be accompanied by an elderly relative.]

My guess would be, I’m about to fall out of love with technology.

As I sit here waiting for Windows to configure its updates, with the rain hammering on the plastic roof above me, wondering whether I have enough battery left to write this post, I don’t wonder what updates Windows could possibly need, so soon after the last lot.

They’re for my own good. I know that.

People younger than me will patronise me, just ever so slightly, as they explain that updates make my laptop more secure, improve its performance, et cetera, blah.

Yes. I’ve heard all that before.

But won’t you at least let me complain?

As for Artificial Intelligence – could somebody hurry up and invent Artificial Common Sense?

[Younger readers. The term “Common Sense” was widely used, a few generations back, to describe “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”. Thanks, internet. It has somewhat fallen out of use, not least because, er, the people who rant on about using common sense tend to be, ah, out of sync with the zeitgeist.]

What I think about as I sit here – just enough battery, I think – is my phone.

I think about the other day, and the app I was using to get from the place near York to the place near Edinburgh.

My phone – my app – knew the way, so I had it in my pocket with the earphones in. The youngish-sounding woman knew exactly where I was, and intervened every time I came anywhere near a junction.

She never actually said “Oh, well done, William!” or “You’re such a good driver!” but I could hear in her voice that she was impressed.

Our relationship lasted until she said “There’s congestion near Gateshead. If you don’t want to take my alternative route, hit no thanks.”

Hit no thanks? On my phone? While I’m driving? She must have known what speed I was doing.

Reader, we went via Gateshead. No congestion. No illegal fiddling with the phone either. I just went via Gateshead.

She still talks to me, but – it’s not the same.

Ed’s making tea. He has a fireplace right at the back of his cave – a recess with a naturally occurring chimney right above it – and he’s set up a big kettle on a hook above a log fire. There’s a stack of logs to one side; I guess they must have been hauled up the mountain by somebody.

“We’re civilised because we smile,” he says, continuing a conversation we started earlier. “Not education. Certainly not politics. We have civilisation because we have facial expressions.”

“You don’t think animals understand each other?”

“Of course they do. But the fine nuance of a facial expression enables a much wider range of interpretation. Understanding. Prompts more thought. Scope for empathy.”

“I like ‘fine nuance’. I’m going to use that in my blog.”

“You know what I mean. Facial expressions lead to a much deeper recognition of the other. Thus, civilisation.”

“No four-letter word beginning with S, Sherlock. Not in my blog.”

“My name’s – oh, I see what you mean. But don’t you see–”

“Ed, what do we do about the magical cat?”

He’s quiet for a moment, shovelling tea leaves into a big teapot. “We do need to talk about the cat,” he says, using a stick to tip the kettle to pour boiling water into the teapot.

Then he pulls on a gauntlet to lift the kettle off the hook over the fire and set it down on a big log – more a slice of tree-trunk, really – turned on its end to serve as a low table.

“You just wanted a cat up a tree, didn’t you?” he says, passing me my mug of tea.

“It just came out magical. You know that thing – the character took over.”

Ed sits down on the other throne facing the fire – the back of Ed’s cave is where he keeps the plunder, junk and architectural salvage that might come in useful in a future story – and gestures at the iron tray of muffins on the slightly larger low table – slice of tree trunk – between us.

I shake my head. “I was trying to be funny, I suppose. They’re off on a quest, and ahead of them there’s a cat needing to be rescued. I would have deleted it later.”

“I wouldn’t do that just yet. Look.”

The four riders have come up over a rise in the road and now they’re looking down at the source of all the noise.

Stace is still hissing with embarrassment.

“I told Mother I’d be perfectly warm in a sleeping bag!” she hisses at Pipsqueak, using one hand to shade her face from the scene ahead. “I know how to put up a tent on my own!”

Ahead of them is an encampment – more a festival, really. Tents, marquees, musicians on a stage, groups of cool-looking young people all drinking the same soft drink, all holding the label so that Pipsqueak can see the brand, laughing uproariously, raising glasses – bottles and cans, sorry; different flavours of the same basic drink – and all of them talking to their other hands – their free hands.

“What’s with the hand thing?”

“I wanted it to be authentic for a modern audience. But this is fantasy. No mobile phones. So there’s a lot of palmistry going on.”

“Oh, look,” says Roland. “Queen Overcaria must have taken the bypass. She got ahead of us.”

Roland pushes his horse forward, then reins it – him – back; he’s waiting for Stace to go ahead of him.

Which she does, spurring her horse forward. “Mother! I can take care of myself!” Pipsqueak hears her say, and then she’s gone on ahead of them, Roland following.

“Looks like we’ve got an easy bed for the night,” says Myrtille. “Come on.”

Pipsqueak and Myrtille spur their yaks into movement. An honour guard has formed ahead of them; Stace and Roland have already passed between the two ranks of men in tights. Beyond them, Pipsqueak sees Stace jump down from her horse and stride up to a woman wearing – well, she’s obviously the Queen, even at this distance.

But then an odd thing happens. The honour guard merges into a single line, now diagonally blocking the road. It’s as if Pipsqueak and Myrtille, on their yaks, are to be directed round to the back of the encampment.

Pipsqueak sighs. But then he feels the kitten push its head out of his jacket.

The kitten stares at the honour guard.

The honour guard reforms into two lines, as before.

Pipsqueak and Myrtille ride their yaks along the road and into the presence of the Queen, who is saying, “But darling, I thought it would be fun! Just you and me and–”

“Mother!”

Stace is standing right in front of the Queen with her fists on her hips. Roland is kneeling in front of both of them. He looks back over his shoulder, clearly surprised to see Pipsqueak and Myrtille coming into the Royal Presence.

“Can’t you let me do anything on my own?” Stace is saying, in a loud furious whisper.

“Oh, this is going to be interesting.” Ed’s leaning forward to watch, elbows on his knees. “That honour guard was a nice touch, and now you’ve got a class system. How’s the Queen going to react to Pipsqueak and Myrtille?”

“Hang on,” I tell him. “We may have to wait until next week. I don’t think I’ve got enough batt

Automation kills authenticity.

And spontaneity.

Automation is the opposite of familiarity, and yet it breeds contempt just as effectively.

It was a good idea, once, to send me an email asking me about my recent visit to your bank. Or my stay at your hotel, et cetera.

Now, though, it’s hard to believe that there’s a group of customer-service people gathered breathless around the inbox, waiting for my reply.

My friend asked for mayo the other day, and was told that the person empowered to add mayo to the menu wasn’t in the building.

Not quite in those words, but we went off into a conversation about how difficult it is, these days, to talk to anybody who’s got the agency to do anything.

I checked out of a hotel recently, and the youngster on reception said, “If you do the questionnaire, make it nine or ten. They don’t register anything else.”

He gets a ten for being real.

Week off.

I've been driving around in a vast rented motorhome, stopping off overnight at campsites on the way.

Long story.

The driving's been easy, and the evenings peaceful, but the opportunities to unfold the table and sit at the laptop haven't come as frequently as would be conducive, etc., so I'm going to sit here watching the trees in the wind and the evening sun, for as long as it takes this thought to unwind, and then I'm going to take a wander round, listen to the trees some more, eat something, award myself another early night, and be off home in the morning.

No post this week, is what I'm saying. Just whatever thoughts come to mind.

Last week I went to the cinema twice, after months of not going to the cinema, and it struck me that if you ignore the thing being advertised, cinema advertising is transcendent.

There’s one at the moment, for example. We stare down at a kaleidoscopic, shifting, moving, apparently hand-drawn landscape, flying above a road as it scribbles itself into being, the landscape around it changing from city to country to sea to land again, our eyes full of authentic, bright, spontaneous artistry, so very hand-drawn…

…all the while listening to a voice-track packed with affirmations and resolve. We’re individuals! We’re brave and strong! We’re going to face those challenges and win!

It's a lovely advertisement. A work of art.

I genuinely didn't catch the brand of hatchback we're supposed to buy, to make it all happen. But I felt great.

The hatchback was on a road, I think it was a bridge, from yesterday to tomorrow I guess, and there was no other traffic. Just steady progress from the past to the future.

Nothing like the A1 the other day, that stretch from Peterborough to Blyth. Don't think that was symbolic of very much, but the advertisement was very definitely an exercise in meaningfulness.

There's probably some ponderous conclusion to be drawn here, but I'm not really in the mood.

I did wonder how different the world would be, if the self-help industry, and those people promoting meditation on Facebook, got hold of the advertising budgets of the car industry.

What if all the welfare, spirituality, mental health people started promoting wellness with visions of landscapes drawing themselves and voice-tracks full of affirmations? With such music.

We'd all feel very much better? For a while, at least?

Instead of the message being "You'll feel fantastic if you buy a small hatchback," it would be "You'll feel fantastic if you believe in yourself."

That could work.

Ed's gone back to his cave on the mountain, for a post-lunch snooze, and the Heroes' Journey is passing through one of those patches best covered by a short phrase, so...

They rode on.

But we can't leave it there. We don't exactly need a cliff-hanger ending, but it's always worth encouraging a little curiosity about what comes next, so...

Pipsqueak jerked upright. He realised that he had fallen asleep in the saddle. But what had woken him?

"For fah's sake!"

She had. Princess Eustacia - Stace - was staring ahead and swearing. There was a glow in the fog, over the rise in the road ahead, and what sounded like - music?

"I don't believe it!"

Stace - Pipsqueak couldn't quite get used to the name - started swearing under her breath. As Pipsqueak watched, she started smoothing down her hair and patting at her clothes. She looked panic-stricken.

"Mother!" she hissed. "For fah's sake!"

"What's the matter?" Pipsqueak pulled his yak alongside her horse.

Suddenly - as if she had just remembered it was there in front of here - Stace grabbed the kitten and passed it to Pipsqueak.

"Take this! I'm not allowed pets."

"What is it? What's up ahead?"

She looked at him, and there were almost tears in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

Let me tell you about my idea.

I went to a conference recently. London. Serious-minded and (mostly) suit-wearing people from around the world. Public transport morning and evening (for me, anyway), and a small hotel.

Four days of sitting in audiences watching panels of serious-looking (and minded) people discuss serious subjects that interested them. Lots of security.

Then I came back to Falmouth and went for lunch at the extremely healthy café, Nude Canteen, up Killigrew Street from the Moor. I like it and I’m not alone in that opinion. Lunch for two.

Nude Canteen was launched in April “to make the most of Falmouth’s vibrant, creative population,” which is convenient because it saves me having to describe any of the other regulars. Vibrant. Creative. They fit in.

[I checked the name, because I always do, and I came across the original press release, in the Falmouth Packet.]

Nude Canteen offers flatbreads, Hawaiian poke bowls, sushi burritos, dahl bowls and salads; all completely made-to-order with freshly shredded organic vegetables. Just thought I’d mention that.

[The Falmouth Packet is probably not where E Annie Proulx got the idea for The Shipping News (1993), but, yeah, could have been. There’s also a weekly print edition. Shipping news? Yes, that too.]

My idea isn’t a particularly good idea, and I don’t suppose it’s all that original, either.

But it’s mine this time. I had it, and I got excited about it, and I kind of roughly worked out how to do it, and then – as you do – I explained to myself – as I do, anyway – all the reasons why it wouldn’t work.

Which is fine. I remember my idea, a while back, for waste-plastic road surfaces embedded with wifi to talk to (carry road-sign information to) self-driving cars. There was a definite release of tension in deciding to write about it rather than start a new career in road-building.

And my new idea is so close to what I’m doing already that – hang on, I haven’t told you about it yet.

Okay.

Last week. I was in an audience waiting for a conference session to start.

The lights went down. The big thumpy music started up. The title of the session – and a collage of images – flashed up on the cinema-sized screen backing the stage.

The subject for the session was interesting enough, and the people due up on stage were well-known enough, and – well, high production values. They were trying to get our attention.

I looked around.

I was the only one not transfixed by the screen of my smartphone.

Cut to the following Tuesday – two days ago.

I looked up from my flatbread-full of freshly shredded organic vegetables.

You guessed it.

Now, I realise that we all look at our smartphones a lot.

I realise that there are times when the only available gadget is a smartphone.

But I hadn’t really thought this through.

Flashback. I remember, back in the late nineties, getting my head around the idea that the internet meant direct access to audiences. Thus, to readers.

I was writing a book at the time, and (I’ve just checked) you can still find it online. It was called E-Commerce in Retail Banking, and no, it wasn’t a fantasy novel about a group of young people heading off on a quest that seems to involve a cat up a tree.

“The cat’s just a diversion, surely?”

“Ed. I haven’t explained my idea yet.”

“Sorry.”

My idea – look, I didn’t say it was a good idea – was to develop fiction for the small screen. Tiny chapters in tiny novels. We have short attention spans, and if we’re attending conferences in London, short journeys to work.

So an app on your phone offering a menu of novels, none of which is more than ten chapters long (five-day week, to and from work). Short chapters to cut down on the scrolling. Bonsai novels, you might say.

And if you didn’t, you might come up with Phone Fiction, or perhaps Pocket Novels. Remember pocket cartoons on the front pages of broadsheet newspapers?

Okay. Pocket cartoon: “an editorial cartoon consisting of a topical single-panel single-column drawing”.

Really?

Okay. Broadsheet newspaper: “a newspaper with a large format, regarded as more serious and less sensationalist than tabloids”.

I had the idea of telling coherent, attention-holding micro-novels that smartphone users could read via a dedicated app, as an alternative to flicking through Facebook or checking their emails. Stories with beginnings, middles, ends, et cetera – characters, plots, twists, goodies, baddies, spies, detectives, romantic encounters and occasional shoot-outs. Always the same length. Consistent.

Anyway.

“What if the cat’s magical?”

Ed looks up from his newly delivered flatbread.

“Is it me now?”

“Yes. What if the cat’s magical?”

“You mean – one of them rescues it and then it’s helpful somehow?”

“Something like that.”

Ed doesn’t reply. He’s unfolded his flatbread and now he’s holding up a fork-full of freshly shredded red cabbage as though he’s never seen a vegetable before.

“How do they decide what to put in these things?” he says softly, asking himself.

“Ed?”

“Sorry. What?”

“The cat?”

Pipsqueak has moved his yak close to the tree. He’s about to stand up in his saddle and reach up to the cat.

“You could try it. But which of them gets it? Because it wouldn’t be loyal to all of them.”

“Ah – hold on.”

Pipsqueak’s yak won’t hold still. Something about the tree is bothering it. Pipsqueak stands at its head, holding the bridle.

“Is that bit a bridle? I thought it would be a snaffle, or actually a bit, or something.”

“I’ll look it up later.”

Stace is down off her horse in a second and scrambling up onto Pipsqueak’s yak.

“Hold my legs!” she says to Myrtille, and to Pipsqueak’s surprise, Myrtille comes scrambling down off her yak and does exactly that.

Both women are staring up at the cat – kitten. It’s mewling piteously and staring down at Stace with occasional glances at Myrtille.

It’s almost as though they’re hypnotised, Pipsqueak thinks.

“That’s a bit obvious!”

“Ed! This is a first draft. Maybe they both like cats. I haven’t decided.”

A movement further up the tree catches Pipsqueak’s eye. The upper branches seem to be curling down towards Stace, almost as if they’re trying to grab her.

“Come on, Kitty, come to mummy, come to Stace, come on now, mew, miaow, sweetie, oh, you’re adorable, you sweet little thing, you.”

Pipsqueak can’t work out whether he’s embarrassed for Stace, for the sounds she’s making, or just embarrassed generally. He looks away as she stretches up, doesn’t watch as she stretches up her body to reach the kitten, revealing her tummy and her hips as her clothes part at the middle, and then realises that Myrtille isn’t watching him.

Pipsqueak watches Stace take the kitten in her hands and hold it to her chest. She’d fall down if it wasn’t for Myrtille, who steadies her as she sits down on Pipsqueak’s yak.

Stace curls herself round the kitten and Myrtille holds onto both of them. The tree seems to wilt. It’s as if it wants the kitten back, Pipsqueak thinks, watching the branches curl down towards the two women on the yak. And then he realises – it really is reaching down!

Before he can do anything, the kitten – its tiny face visible on Stace’s shoulder, close in against her neck, half-hidden by her hair – the kitten hisses at the tree, and the branches spring back into place.

“Did you see that?” Pipsqueak shouts. “The tree’s alive!”

And the kitten – wait, what did the kitten do?

The kitten stares at him.

What just happened? Suddenly, Pipsqueak can't remember.

Both Stace and Myrtille look at him as though they’ve just woken up. Pipsqueak’s yak pulls her head free and steps decisively away from the tree – he has to catch it. The two women scramble down, the kitten between them. Pipsqueak, his yak safely held, sees it snarl at the tree, showing its teeth.

The kitten just snarled at the tree!

The kitten turns its head and stares at him.

Pipsqueak frowns.  There was something… something he’s forgotten… about the kitten...

“Eh?” Throughout all this, Roland has been sitting on his horse staring down at his–

“He can’t have a smartphone. This is a fantasy world.”

–staring down at the lines on his hand. He’s missed the whole scene.

Myrtille’s back on her yak and Stace is back on her horse with the kitten tucked in front of her.

“Wake up, Roly!” shouts Stace.

Roly looks up. “I went to a palm reader once,” he says. “She told me to wake up.”

Pipsqueak can see that he wants to say more, but Stace is set on leaving. Roland shuts up and pulls his horse round, ready to follow her.

Pipsqueak mounts his yak. Something just happened, but – what?

“Let’s get going!” he shouts, more to clear his head than because they won’t hear him say it quietly.

And then because he looks that way, just at the right moment, he sees that when Stace spurs her horse, the kitten reaches out and lays a paw on the horse’s neck – and the horse doesn’t race off ahead.

Okay, thinks Pipsqueak. That’s going to be handy.

The kitten smiles, in the expressionless way that kittens smile, and thinks to itself: let him understand gradually.

The four of them ride together, close together, as the forest gathers around them.

The trees rustle, as though they’re talking to each other.

But every time the noise gets loud enough to drown out their conversation, Stace’s kitten – he’s already Stace’s kitten – hisses once, loudly, and our hero and her companions ride on in silence, untouched by any of the sharp, black branches.

“I like that. Very nice.”

“Did you catch the thing with the palm-reading?”

“Telling him to wake up? Yes, very clever. He wakes up to his heroic side.”

“Maybe I should have added a golf bag to his luggage earlier. So he can pull out a sword unexpectedly, at a crucial moment.”

“What’s that behind his saddle?”

“Oh, you’ve done it for me. Thanks.”

“Roland’s heroic moment set up. I like the way you’re making it an inner journey, by the way.”

“Isn’t everything an inner journey, if it’s worth making?”

“But you’ve blown the punchline. You were going to end with those branches, weren’t you?”

“Ed. A little faith. You want a good ending – have you seen the puddings here?”

“Ah…”

In a change to our scheduled programming, here’s a poem by Maya Stein.

I subscribe to her Ten-Line Tuesday poems – one arrives every Tuesday (strictly, Wednesday; she’s in another time zone) and it’s a certain length.

I can’t quite say that I don’t know Maya Stein, because I’ve been reading her poetry for quite some number of years now, but we’ve never met and only exchanged perhaps half-a-dozen emails in more-than-that years.

More about Maya Stein at www.mayastein.com. This poem is a good example of what you could get by going there.
 
Train will not whistle at crossing
It would be nice to have signs. A cloud parting in two, say, and an arrow of sun
pointing. It would be lovely, at the fork of any unbearable decision, that a path
with equidistant, perfectly round stones would unwrap at your feet. Haven’t you waited
at certain corners, squinting at maps? Haven’t you held a damp finger to the sky,
gauging the wind? Haven’t you searched the bottoms of tea cups, scattered feathers,
tipped your ear against gravel, shaken dice, placed hands palm-up on a table
at a county fair, made bargains with a stop light, a sidewalk crack, a dime, a daisy?
Haven’t you held a deerskin pouch against your chest and counted to 10?
It would be nice to have signs, but mostly, the train will not whistle at the crossing.
You must stand at the empty tracks and decide. You must be that arrow, and point.
                                                                                    Maya Stein

At any given moment, the world is completely crazy by the standards of any time but that moment.

If you’re in the present, the past is a crazy place. They did things weirdly differently there. If you’re reading this in 2029, or 2039, well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t see further than 2019.

The moment – I mean the big moment, this point in history, not just 11.09 this sunny morning on Church Street, Falmouth, heading for The Moor – defines acceptable behaviour.

Our forefathers and foremothers would think us insane for doing things the way we do, and chances are, the next generation will look back on us as sadly unenlightened about what was happening in the world around us.

But we’d think them totally out of order if they turned up and told us how to behave, just as the Edwardians would have had difficulties with, I don’t know, the third week (say) of a modern gender-studies course. Today, at worst (old guy speaking here), we’d just go pink and sit at the back.

Boy, we believe in our own way of doing things. Girl, we do. Same down through history. The prevailing belief system is correct in its own time, incorrect twenty years later.

More than that – in its own time, the prevailing belief system can get to be nigh-on compulsory.

For example, whether or not the science is correct and we’re all gonna die, I’d say the social pressure (around here, at least) is now enough to ensure that a lot happens to tackle climate change. After all, only an outcast or the wrong kind of rebel would drink through a plastic straw these days.

I’d also have to say that the psychology of climate-change denial is probably no longer “I’ve looked at the science and I disagree with you” but instead “I’m a contrarian and I will disagree with anything you say.”

Which brings me to Extinction Rebellion. I have friends who went off and demonstrated recently, and that prompted me to find out enough to defend myself in the inevitable after-protest conversation.

Not that I’m a contrarian or anything, you understand, but with these friends, “You should have been there” can shade very quickly into “Why weren’t you there?” and then just possibly (if they’re tired after their exertions) “Don’t you care enough to be there?”

“I was busy” doesn’t work as an excuse. What’s more important than … et cetera.

“With friends like those, you need other friends.”

“Yeah, but I’m fond of them.”

“So why weren’t you there? Don’t you care enough?”

“Come on, Ed. Don’t you start.”

Edgalcius and I have come to Espressini on Killigrew Street for a coffee. He’s picked himself a pair of square tortoiseshell spectacle frames, and while I write he’s amusing himself by taking them off and putting them on again. Bifocals don’t exist in his world, and (I’m beginning to realise) nor does crystal-clear vision.

“Look at the grain in this table-top.”

“I’m trying to write about Extinction Rebellion. It’s a serious subject.”

“That tree out there. I can see the leaves, the branches.”

“Their demands.”

“It’s all so clear!”

Extinction Rebellion want the UK government to create and be led by a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice (my bold type). Which is why I want to write about them. Think about recent UK-government efforts to decide anything. This isn’t a “declare that it’s horrible” demand, but “create a body that can make a decision,” which is a rare kind of realism these days.

“Yes, but what’s different about a Citizen’s Assembly?”

“As I was about to say.”

If you sort the population into quotas according to demographics, and then you select randomly from those quotas, you end up with an Assembly of Citizens that is more directly representative than, you know, at least one other body I could name.

“Ah, yes. And then - create and be led by. In bold. I get that part.”

“Citizens don’t have a political agenda. They can do the bit that politicians can’t.”

“Like holding a referendum, really.”

“Not quite. Citizens’ Assemblies have been used before, successfully.”

“So have–”

“They’re handy for sorting out controversial issues. A Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland dealt with same-sex marriage, and another achieved the repeal of the ban on abortion. There are other examples.”

“And that’s it?”

Extinction Rebellion also want the UK government to “tell the truth” by “declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change” (although imagine a UK government that was competent enough to hold together a lie), and they want the UK government to “act now” to “halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.”

This is Extinction Rebellion and not It’s All Fine Really, Honest Rebellion, so the truth is going to have to be pretty dire – see above re social pressure – although I think the manifesto does add somewhere (can’t find it now) that if the scientifically verified, openly disclosed truth does turn out to be less ghastly than expected, Extinction Rebellion – may I call you ER? – wouldn’t object.

I think I’ll join these people.

“Not like you, to get into politics.”

He’s reading over my shoulder again.

“It’s not politics, though, is it? ER wants a decision-making body capable of making decisions. That’s actually progress. Evolution, even.”

Edgalcius is tipping his head back to see my laptop screen through the lower part of his bifocals.

“So it’s not just the looming extinction of the planet.”

“Well, that too.”

“But really, you’re joining ER because they’ve come up with today’s equivalent of the coalition government that took over in 1940. A decision-making body capable of making decisions.”

“If we can’t move forward, by deciding what to do, we’re going to lose big-time anyway.”

“Speaking of moving forward…”

“That’s my line.”

“They’re loading up.”

A caravan of yaks and camels is forming just outside the (open) North Gate of the walled town. Princess Eustacia’s voice can be heard over the hubbub – “No, Mummy, I don’t need the Praetorian Guard! I’m going with my friends!” – and in the background, Roland’s voice too – “Of course I’ll wash my hands! Mother! Of course I’ll make conversation with her!”

Pipsqueak is defending his yak against servants trying to load it (her) with bundles of Princess Eustacia’s luggage. Myrtille has ridden a short distance up the road. They’ve been exchanging glances, sharing the joke of all this preparation, but Pipsqueak can tell that Myrtille is getting impatient.

[Ed is too. “Have you seen her tent? It’s going to take hours to pitch. And all those monogrammed bundles. They need to leave now if they’re going to unpack before dark, or they might as well wait for morning.”

“Ed. You’re imaginary. Don’t be difficult.”

“I’m imaginary. Ha!”]

Princess Eustacia comes galloping out of the crowd to where Myrtille is sitting on her yak.

“Can’t we just go?” she says. “Leave it all behind? Do I really need all this stuff?”

Myrtille eyes Princess Eustacia’s horse.

“Sunflower,” Eustacia snaps. “I didn’t name him. And call me Stace, okay?”

[“Ah, plot twist,” says Ed. “She’s feisty now.”]

Roland comes trotting up. “Princess–” he begins.

“Can it, Roly! We’re leaving. We can, right?” Stace turns to Eustacia.

“You’ve got–”

Stace grabs the strap of her rucksack. “Everything I need. Packed it myself this morning. All this” – she sweeps her hand around at all her other luggage, the yaks, the servants – “just anxious parents.”

Myrtille glances across to Pipsqueak. He’s heard. Their eyes meet as he slides a bag of thermal vests off the back of his yak and onto the ground. “Ready?” she says. It’s a challenge.

He grins. “Yeah.”

Stace has caught all this. She spurs her horse, taking them both by surprise, and disappears over the horizon.

“Go!” cries Myrtille, and her yak lumbers into motion.

“Yee-haaah!” shouts Pipsqueak, and his yak raises her head from the grass verge.

“I say! Hold on!” Roland, who has dismounted to pick a posy of wild flowers for the Princess, scrambles back into his saddle.

Together, the three of them ride slowly northwards in pursuit of the Princess formerly known as Eustacia.

And behind them, at the gate, the Queen raises her arm and points. “After them!” she shouts.

Digital identity. Defined online as “an online or networked identity adopted or claimed in cyberspace by an individual, organization or electronic device”.

Further down the same page of search results you find “A digital identity is information stored online that relates to a single individual. We generate our own with every on-line interaction and the data that we leave behind builds a profile of us – which may not be an accurate representation.”

Which is – thanks for those definitions to techopedia.com and shu.ac.uk – not the only problem. All parents sooner or later realise that their children are learning more from what they do than from what they say. In the same way, all users of networked technology sooner or later realise that the entities to which they submit –

– it’s always submit isn’t it? You’re always submitting online, never commanding or controlling or just ordering people about –

– to which they submit their information are learning from what they do, not from what they write in their online profiles.

I went to a presentation recently, by a high-up retail person in a well-known business (and consumer) software company. The subject was how to combine a “seamless” customer experience with effective security.

How they can make sure that you’re you, without getting in the way of whatever you’re trying to do. [Nice idea, huh? They should try it.]

And I learned for the first time that companies can track your competence with the keyboard and the mouse. [Okay, I’m slow.]

I’ve given over a certain amount of information to my, ah, online suppliers. I buy vegetables from companies that know my date of birth, et cetera.

I know that those companies have access to a lot more data about me. I’ve signed user agreements that allow social-media companies to analyse how I behave and (for example) work out how I’m likely to vote. I don’t like it, but I realise that if I want to post pictures of cats, they need to know what I bought last Summer.

I didn’t realise that those same companies are now collecting data on how competent I am at typing, how slow I am to work out which button to click, et cetera.

They know that I’m a fast but not always accurate typist; that I sometimes hit the mouse pad with the heel of my hand when I’m going for numbers; that I always use the number [Redacted] and the symbol [Redacted] when I’m setting a new password.

And if they know how I get around my keyboard, it follows that they’re on the other side of the little inbuilt camera above the screen of my laptop. Cooee! I’m waving.

I’m not surprised by any of this. Nor am I outraged. But I do wonder.

Why isn’t my life perfect?

These people, they know my wants, needs and desires. Their whole preoccupation is with putting exactly the right thing in front of me, just at the moment when I want to buy it.

They’ve spent billions on knowing me.

Why don’t they know me?

Let us go, then, you and I, to take a photograph of diggers.

There’s a building site in Falmouth, half-way up the walk back to my place from Tesco’s. Stop, lean on the wall, and look down.

When the builders have finished, you’ll be looking at the roof of a house (one of two being built), but what you’re seeing today is flat, not-quite-cleared ground – and diggers.

There was also a skip lorry yesterday, for the removal of dumpy bags full of waste, and then there was a tipper truck delivering more ground – or so it seemed; a load the same colour as the surface onto which it was being tipped.

I stopped for long enough to be – impressed, actually.

The big digger flattened the surface onto which the skip lorry would drive, and then parked between the skip lorry and the dumpy bags. One man hooked dumpy bags onto the digger’s arm, and then the digger swung them round onto the skip, where another man unhooked them.

Then the man in the blue plastic hat roped a net over the skip, and reversed the skip lorry out to make space for the tipper truck. While that was happening, the hooking-up man and the unhooking man went and moved other diggers, and presently it came to pass that the tipper truck was able to dump its load of ground into a newly cleared space.

I’ve left out the tiny diggers and their drivers, and the smaller skip full of rubbish that had to be compressed, and the container that was clearly being used as an office, because this is complicated enough to describe already.

But what I want to get across is that there were multiple vehicles, mostly big with caterpillar tracks, moving in a co-ordinated way to enable a lot of things to happen all at once. And men walking about between them, not being run over.

I’ve never worked in construction, but it seems to me that a lot of co-ordination must have gone into the half-hour that I watched. Big vehicles moving out of each other’s way just in time; other big vehicles moving just in time to where they needed to be. If you’d speeded it all up, there would have been a symmetry.

There seemed to be no one person whose job was to tell all the others what to do. But – maybe I’m just not observant. Maybe the planning had been done earlier. A corps de ballet doesn’t need a bloke on stage blowing a whistle, so why should these guys?

That was my first time watching a building site for half an hour, and I’m not sure what I would have expected to see if I’d thought about it in advance. Men (and women?) rushing about at random? Stopping to discuss each move before making it?

If I was to tell the internet about this, or share it on Facebook, I suppose modern practice would be to declare outrage at some prejudice I was revealing in myself. Not to share my interest. You see, I’m clearly -ist about building sites and should be consigned to outer darkness.

“I really don’t get that.”

“That we use the technology to vilify each other?”

“That you’re so vigilant against each other.”

Edgalcius has borrowed an old suit of mine and we’re down at Specsavers on Church Street waiting for his check-up. I offered him a pair of denims and a hoodie, but he wanted the suit. With the braided hair and the beard, and the tan, he looks … distinctive. But I still say the beads in the hair were a mistake.

“We’re a competitive species, I suppose.”

“Predators. You’re always forming into packs. Left, right, colour, gender, nimby, trolls…”

“Nimby?”

“That rare thing, an expression of contempt coined by a politician to attack voters. If a developer wants to build student accommodation – Not In My Back Yard. By opposing builders in your back yard, you’re against progress.”

“Or homeless centres. Or refugee accommodation.”

“Maybe the guy had a point. Human nature again. No wonder so many young people these days turn to fantasy.”

“Speaking of which…”

“Cinema, games, books; it’s the dominant – oh, they’re all fine. Against his mother’s–”

“Mr Mage? If you’d like to come with me?”

“Take a look for yourself. Below the picture.”

“Oh yes, I see. Against his mother’s wishes, et cetera.”

“That’s it. Am I over sixty, by the way?”

“Of course you are, Ed. You’ve been doing this for–”

“So this check-up is free.”

“It’s just this way, sir.”

“Call me Ed, why don’t you?”

Against his mother’s wishes, but somewhat at Myrtille’s urging, Pipsqueak has accepted Roland’s invitation to a Frappuccino at a coffee bar in the centre of the walled town, by the fountain.

Actually replying had been a bit of a problem, until a talking bird had dropped out of the sky, having collided with some levitating plastic waste, and Pipsqueak had nursed it back to health.

Out of gratitude, the talking bird had asked Pipsqueak if he needed any help with anything, and together, man and bird had worded the reply.

They’re all drinking Frappuccinos, because Pipsqueak had just said “Oh, I’ll have what you’re having” when Roland had offered to buy, and Myrtille had said “That sounds great!” and smiled at Pipsqueak in a way that made him feel both comforted and a little bit suspicious that she was finding him funny.

Princess Eustacia – yes, she’s here – had said “Hey, cool, Roly!” in a way that had made Roland look embarrassed and Pipsqueak feel just a little bit sorry for Roland.

The two yaks are outside drinking from the fountain, the two horses are parked in their bays, and a court painter is crouched next to the table, working up a selfie for Eustacia with this amusing company.

It had been a shaky start.

But now, Myrtille and Eustacia are deep in conversation. Pipsqueak has heard the words “socks” and “precautions”, and he’s eyeing the court painter uneasily, wondering what parts of his private life will be going into the selfie’s caption.

Roland is telling him all about what a drag his life in the palace is, and Pipsqueak is regretting asking Roland where exactly in the palace he lives – round the back, to the side, in one of the hangers-on apartments in the annexe; you can’t even see his window in the postcard.

But he braces himself. There’s some scene-setting dialogue to be got through before they can continue the conversation.

“We’ve decided that we’re going together,” he interrupts.

“Eh?” After a second, Roland gets it. “Yes, and now we’re discussing the route and the timing. The Mage has told us that it’s urgent. But we can’t leave until after the party on Saturday. So we’ll have to travel fast when we do go.”

“Eustacia and Myrtille are insisting on coming with us. We’ve told them that it’s– we’ve told them that we can– we’ve accepted their kind offer to lead the expedition.”

They both relax. That’s done. Eustacia and Myrtille are still talking. Without missing a beat, Myrtille reaches out and retrieves the cake-fork that has somehow become embedded in the table-top in front of Pipsqueak. Around the coffee bar, conversations resume. The court painter comes out from under the next table and gets back to work.

“That was clumsy, wasn’t it?”

“We need a writer skilled enough to get that kind of background information across without clunking it out in dialogue.”

“With this guy, imagine if we were on a stake-out.”

“And now it’s not even clear which one of us is speaking!”

Pipsqueak eyes Roland. “Maybe I should be the hero and you should be the sidekick,” he says.

Pipsqueak says. To Roland. Pipsqueak said that to Roland.

The other two are off in their own conversation and didn't hear anything. They're not in this bit..

Roland looks shocked. By what Pipsqueak has just said to him.

“Aheh…hum…ah…” Roland begins. In his mind, there’s an obvious reason why Roland should be the hero and Pipsqueak the sidekick, but he can’t quite put it into words.

He lives at the palace – okay, but it’s still the palace. And Pipsqueak is a – is a – he wouldn’t even get in through the front door of the palace!

Roland, who has his own side-door key to the palace, can’t quite meet Pipsqueak’s eye.

Pipsqueak pushes his Frappuccino aside and stands up. “I need a strong black coffee,” he says. “Anyone?”

“Some more of that cake?” says Myrtille. “For all of us to share,” she adds. She pushes away the plate in front of her, which is empty but for a few crumbs. And a twisted cake-fork.

Pipsqueak, who likes the curve of Myrtille’s hips and her sexy little tummy – but who isn’t an idiot – says softly “I’ll share it with you.”

Eustacia says “Ooh, could I have one of those? With warmed oat milk and sprinkles?”

Pipsqueak looks at Roland. Their eyes meet. The two young men share a moment of perfect understanding.

Meanwhile, two hundred miles up the Frozen Trail that lies ahead of our Hero and her friends, far North of the walled town in which they’re drinking all that coffee and sharing all that cake...

...a teeny weeny little adorably cute fluffy little kitten, recently born, really adorable, tiniest and cuddliest of its (his) litter, who will be looking for an owner soon, somebody to love and be loved by, gazes up at a tall tree with lots of twisty branches and thinks: “I could climb that.”

It's the relentless conversation, isn't it? The endless, endless, endless discussion.

Waking up this morning to a panel debate on the radio about immigration and racism in the USA, my immediate reaction was: these have become such comfort-zone subjects for you, haven't they?

You know what gets said in discussions on these subjects, and you know how to say it. You're at home in this flow of voices expressing safe opinions that we've all heard before.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But did you go out in the world, with a fresh mind, and research these subjects as though it was the first time? What's new?

Or did you invite people you've heard before, people whose opinions you know, to give a balanced discussion that won't offend?

How often, when we think we're at the cutting edge, are we really fighting for a cause that's already been won?

Some days, I just sit here and watch the weather.

I like the easy back-and-forth of the trees, the movement of the clouds, the clear Autumn light.

Today, I also like the occasional sweeps of rain that make the wind visible – sorry, but I’m aiming for a slightly more pretentious tone this week – and if we have to mention it, the wet-look magpie that’s problem-solved my “Small Bird Feeding Station”. Scruffy bird.

He’s too big to land on it, so he knocks seeds from the seed-feeder and takes them from the ground. If I now say “clever bird,” it’s not because I’ve got him/her typecast as stupid – he worked it out just as I was deciding that I’d have to take out a dish of seeds and put it on the wall for him.

Cleverer than I am. Maybe we’re surrounded by clever animals (cue ominous electronic music) and we just don’t realise it because they don’t use facial expressions that we can recognise.

Did I mention the duckling? I think I did, but at this age I’m pretty much expected to repeat myself. Month or two back. Little tiny fluffy ball of duckling, swimming along and grubbing around for things to eat like he/she had just completed the How To Be A Duck training course.

Maybe that was instinct, but does it matter? Functional intelligence. At that age, I had the startle reflex and an instinct to cry if I wanted attention. If you’d dropped me in a pond, I wouldn’t have floated.

Let alone found breakfast.

And what happened to bird tables, anyway? “Small Bird Feeding Station” – ha! You hang things from it rather than put things on it. I suppose the clue is in the word “Small”. Big birds can’t get a foothold, so they can’t steal the seeds, etc., left out for the small birds.

Inclusion by exclusion; human nature.

Except that, in the grand tradition of unintended consequences, we’re training a generation of bigger birds – that magpie, crows, seagulls, escaped parakeets – to problem-solve. Their brains are getting bigger. They’re evolving.

Ah – there’s the other magpie. I read somewhere [It was on Quora – Ed.] that one defining characteristic of an English person is that he/she (this is exhausting) reacts to single magpies.

I remember being told, right around the age I learned to swim and pour out my own Rice Krispies, not at the same time, that if I ever saw a magpie alone, I should say, “Good morning, Mr Magpie, I hope your wife and family are well.” It was always morning in my childhood, and everything was masculine unless it obviously wasn’t.

Magpies pair up for life, so a lone magpie might be a bereaved magpie – and they’re creatures of myth and legend, so you don’t want to be impolite to an unhappy magpie.

But two magpies – remember the rhyme? I saw seven once, all picking up seeds on a lawn. I didn’t notice a Small Bird Feeding Station in the tree above them, but now I understand. Clever birds.

I’ve just looked up magpies in Country Life. If you’re not following any of this, here’s the link. And no, I’m not talking about the television programme. I was a Blue Peter man, myself.

Memories. Once, although this might not have been a morning, I stood on the edge of a field looking up at a tree that was noisy with crows, and the person holding my hand said, “That’s a parliament of crows.”

If that’s too topical for you, An Unkindness of Ravens is a 1985 book by Ruth Rendell, a 2009 book by Lucas Scott, a 2014 collection of collective nouns by Chloe Rhodes, a rock band and a song. So far.

Wikipedia also tells me that you can have a charm of magpies, or a murder of magpies – but you probably won’t. I came across a magpie trap once. You had to start by trapping a magpie. Other magpies would be so curious that they’d join it in the trap.

Not that I wanted to trap magpies. And no, I never came across a first-magpie trap. Although curiously enough, I do know a way to–

“What about the book?”

“Aaah… Oh… My heart! Give me a second…”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that – the post’s getting long again, and…”

“Ed. I’d forgotten you were there.”

Edgalcius the Mage is sitting on my sofa, still decently wrapped in the enormous multi-coloured dressing-gown. He’s platted his hair and his beard. His feet are up on the low table and his (multi-coloured, did I say) carpet slippers and hanging off his toes. This isn’t a story in which podiatrists make housecalls, although I might revise that in a future draft. Edgalcius’ feet–

“I told you it was Quora.”

“You spotted that from over there?”

He holds up a pair of opera glasses.

“Sorry.”

He isn’t. He thinks it’s funny. Smug, arrogant, old – person.

“Yeah, okay, you got me. But did you spot that reference to seven magpies?”

“Story yet to be told? Sure. Cute. But you haven't even explained–”

“Wouldn’t that have killed the momentum? You and I know that they spent another whole hour on the mountain-top. A whole hour! Most of it spent making tea and cutting the crusts off cucumber sandwiches. You're saying take them through that and make it interesting…”

“You haven't worked it out yet, have you? Your own story?”

“I’ve only just started! But I know the shape of the story. It’s a quest, it’s character-led, and increasingly, I like The Old Guy With A Thousand Faces as a title, if that tells you anything.”

Edgalcius is still fixed on what he wants me to understand; he’s not hearing what I’m telling him. I don’t know how long I can spin this out, but he’s still convinced that either Pipsqueak or Roland is the hero in a book with Old Guy in the title. For a Mage, he’s quite thick, actually.

“Yes, but your readers need to know–”

“Look what’s happening now! Pipsqueak is explaining what happened on the mountain to Myrtille. The scene fits exactly where it’s needed, and it serves the purpose of establishing their relationship.”

“How can he explain what you haven’t worked out yet?”

The argument continues. Meanwhile, below the picture…

Pipsqueak and Myrtille have sneaked round to the back of the yak shed to smoke a couple of cigarettes and talk over what’s been happening.

“So your dad killed that dragon?”

“Yeah – hang on, of course he did. How do you think its head got to be hanging over our fireplace?”

“I thought – maybe it was a tourist thing? Some kind of interior-design quirky conversation-piece thing?”

“He killed it.” Pipspeak takes a long drag of his cigarette and blows a smoke ring that morphs into the shape of a dragon and then a three-masted tea clipper (which he doesn’t recognise; he’s never even seen the sea). The smoke sails off into the distance.

He’s thinking back, in improbable detail, over the hour-long argument he and Roland had with Edgalcius the Mage after the genie had vanished back into its – Pipsqueak frowned. There had been something odd about that genie.

Quickly, in no more than a paragraph, he summarises to himself the details of the Hero’s Journey that he and Roland have so firmly refused to undertake.

He thinks: but I haven’t really refused it, have I? He had realised, as he told his family about his encounter with the Mage and then answered their questions, that he’d actually just rejected Edgalcius’ ridiculous idea that he might be the hero in this story.

Roland had done the same – for different reasons; Pipsqueak smiles faintly at the idea of either of them as hero.

Roland! Likeable guy, but really? For a Mage, Edgalcius had struck Pipsqueak as quite thick, actually.

Myrtille stubs out her cigarette. “Where’s Tobeya Nounced anyway?” she asks.

“He killed it in the mountains here,” said Pipsqeak. “What? Oh – it’s beyond the town, apparently. Way off in the fog.” Actually, it’s The Fog, he corrected himself. Not just any old fog.

“Can I come with you?” says Myrtille.

“What?” Pipsqueak’s astonished. He hadn’t thought for a moment – but a much bigger smile spreads itself across his face. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” Myrtille nudges herself closer to Pipsqueak and puts her hand on his chest. “You need somebody to…” He turns his face and his lips find hers and they – look, we needn’t get into this. They’re healthy young adults, they’ve known each other since childhood and they’re behind the yak shed, where they’ve made a comfortable nest of straw bales.

Myrtille slides her hand down Pipsqueak’s – and Edgalcius is doing something with a small pair of scissors and a nail-file, yeuch, we can’t go there, and Roland is telling his friends, again, about this really cool guy he met with the silly name, and they’re bored out of their skulls, so not there either – and Pipsqueak feels the warmth rising through – no, no, NO! This is none of our business!

Myrtille moves her body forward over his, and Pipsqueak feels the soft pressure of – and there’s a knocking on the door! A hammering! On the lintel above the main entrance! To the hut complex!

That was close. There’s a horseman. On his horse. He’s exactly the horseman you’d find in a story like this. Phew! Arrogant, impatient, but doing what he’s told. With bad grace. A caption shows briefly along the bottom edge of however you’re visualising this: Here is a messenger from Roland, bringing an invitation.

Myrtille helps Pipsqueak struggle back into his several layers of thermal underwear, and his jerkin, and his Authentic Peasant accessories, and after ten minutes of effort, Pipsqueak is ready to join his family.

He bursts out onto the street, still tucking something into something because that’s dramatically necessary in a scene like this, to find his family standing around the messenger (on his horse) like the other actors on stage when the main character misses his cue.

Pipsqueak’s father hands Pipsqueak a parchment. It’s roughly A4-sized, torn around the edges, and the colour a plain white parchment would be if you soaked it overnight in tea. On one side, a treasure map has been scribbled out. On the other, in really curly writing, we can read the word Invitation.

Pipsqueak’s father stares at Pipsqueak with an expression that suggests (a) he’s trying to suppress his irritation at being kept waiting, and (b) he’s a humble peasant dad impressed that his son is receiving invitations delivered by men on horseback. The rest of the family stand around looking variously humble, impressed, impatient, envious, annoyed.

A voice from nowhere hisses: “This is for you!”

“This is for you,” says Pipsqueak’s father, handing the invitation to Pipsqueak.

The messenger wheels his horse round and gallops off up the road towards the top of the map and the walled town beyond.

Pipsqueak stares down at the invitation for a long moment and then looks up.

“What’s a Frappuccino?” he asks.

So this is what I suggest we do now.

I write blog posts in the usual way. You read them (or not) in the usual way.

Every now and then, we pause for a digression while I check on progress with the fantasy novel that I inadvertently started last week. I was intending to write about the difficulty of starting something – and then I went and did it. I started something.

So we’ll have it in the background. The occasional paragraph. Although this week you get more than that. This week is for pure (sic) self-indulgence. Normal service resumed next week.

If you’d asked me, at around the time I wrote last week’s opening sentence – “Okay, so today we’re going to start the novel.” – whether I was about to start a fantasy novel, or any other kind of novel, I would have said no.

I would have told you that I was going to write about – and then I would have done a lot of telling. About opening scenes, structure, blah blah. There might have been diagrams. I like to think that I would have been quite convincing.

But it occurs to me now that what I actually did – starting something – was showing rather than telling. If I really want to talk myself up, I’d tell you that I acted out the moves I suggest you make, rather than standing behind you and telling you what to do.

That’s a good thing. If you can enable your reader to see what your characters are doing, as she reads, that’s a lot better than just telling her they did it. If you can show (demonstrate) what you want to tell about starting a novel…

The sentence “William started a fantasy novel” is no substitute for the experience of reading last week’s post, however dreadful that experience might be.

Actually, I’m extremely modest and unassuming, thank you very much. Embarrassed, too. A fantasy novel? Really?

I just think that if I’m going to write about how to do something, I should have a crack at doing it as well. The chef who taught me how to fillet a fish, all those years ago, did it by filleting a fish.

Other analogies are available: ride a motorcycle (I followed him); fire a gun (we each had a single-shot target rifle); do joined-up writing (Mrs Thompson did it first on the blackboard); break the siege of a walled city (sorry, that just crept in).

You can pick up learning from people who don’t (can’t?) do what they teach, but it’s never quite as useful as it would be if they were writing from experience rather than from examples of what other people have done in the past. Discuss. Or just get on with it.

Ahem! Anyway. This week’s blog post – the one from which I’m digressing to check on the novel – is all about politics, as you’d expect. It’s perceptive, incisive, and it makes a number of very cogent points about the current situation in the UK. It’s very nuanced and the prose is richly coruscating as well as spare.

That said, my imaginary reader this week is a former Kremlin-watcher who has just started an Eng. Lit. degree at a fashionable university. Out of respect for his old skills and to help him hone his new skills, as he embarks on his first Eng. Lit. Crit. essay, I have contained the entire blog post in the subtext of this paragraph. Read between the lines, Yevgeny.

Back to the digression. I’m mostly happy with last week’s work on The Old Guy With A Thousand Faces (which we might as well use for now as a working title). Provisionally, it gets us past the opening-sentence thing – “You are the chosen one!” et cetera – and provisionally, it gets us past the opening-scene thing. That whole conversation outside the cave.

Provisionally, because we might delete it all later. But for now, it gives us characters to work with, and the makings of a story. A Mage. Two possible heroes with (so far, only lightly shaded in) back-stories. Yak trains, mountains, a monastery with a library. A father, a mother, lots of uncles and brothers, Princess Eustacia and her party on Saturday.

We could take any of them, any of that, anywhere. We could delete all of it in favour of something we haven’t written yet. But at least we’ve started. If there’s anything to be learned from last week’s post, it is: you’ve got to start somewhere. Even in the middle of a blog post if you have to.

Then, just write what comes. I don’t write fantasy novels. I can say that because I know what I do write. I’m a traditionally published and independently published author of books ranging from children’s stories to tax guides (I found a tax guide the other day, that I’d forgotten, with my name on the cover; strange moment).

I’m also an obscure blogger who has only recently grasped the point about specialising in something – writing – and I write elsewhere as well. But I can say with confidence that I don’t–

“I do have one question.”

“Yerk!” William jerks back from the laptop. His coffee mug (empty now) goes flying.

Edgalcius the Mage is standing behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“Yee! What? How? What – you doing here?”

William’s heart is beating so fast you can see the pulse of it in his face. He’s white as a blank sheet of paper and breathless. He puts his hand to his chest. “What? How?”

Edgalcius the Mage shrugs.

“Cut! Do we have to put ‘the Mage’ after my name every time?”

“Action!”

Edgalcius shrugs.

“You wrote me. I’m here. Look, do you mind if I use your shower? Living in a cave, you know? Keep writing; it’s different. I’m interested.”

“What’s the question?” William is getting over the shock.

“It’ll keep. Won’t be long.”

“There’s a towel on the rack.”

I don’t write fantasy. But I do say: write what comes. Said that twice now. Even if it’s fantasy. Don’t edit while writing, and plan whenever you feel like it. But any inspiration that wants to get onto the page, should be allowed to get onto the page. Tidy it up later.

“How do I–?”

“There’s a switch just outside the bathroom door. A red light comes on.”

“Got it.”

The shower starts.

So all of a sudden, I do write fantasy. It’s derivative, I suppose, and the “Mage in search of an author” thing isn’t as original as I believe it is.

But I think I can say the story is alive. That’s what matters. I’m interested enough to be writing this while all the sensible bloggers are rabbiting on about Brexurrghzzz (but see below the picture). I want to know what happens next.

Anyway. Opening scene completed, it’s time to drop in some information.

Come with me for a moment. Stand where Pipsqueak was standing last week and look down.

See his village down there?

Yes, I see the bird. Yes, isn’t it odd to be looking down at a bird in flight? Yes, nice bird, but look. The village.

See how the road – no, he lives in the hut complex to the left of the market square, see? – the road goes – very small, yes, tiny, like ants – the road goes up through that valley, past the lake – wouldn’t it, yes? But cold – and then into – this is Summer; we’re in the mountains – the fog? That fog is where I haven’t built my world–

No, you’re still looking at the track up the mountain. I mean that road over there. Yes, through the valley – no, not that road.

Okay, step back from the edge. You can let go of my arm now. We’ll do this the hard way.

Pipsqueak lives in the hut complex that is to the left of the market square as you look down at his village from the ledge outside Edgalcius the Mage’s cave. It’s a hut complex rather than just a hut because Pipsqueak comes of a large family that’s lived in the same spot for generations – they just build on an extra hut when necessary. Nobody in Pipsqueak’s family ever goes anywhere, and if you want me to lay it on thick, there’s an inbuilt bias against shopping trips into town, let alone heroic quests.

Got that? We have some family tension coming up.

Below us, we can see the track – the yak-trail – winding down the mountain to the market square. There’s a road that goes through the market square, from left to right if we switch to map view, but the one I’m talking about is the twisty one that goes up through the valley into the – oh, there’s less fog now. You can just make out the spires and the towers of the faraway walled town that’s just come into my head.

Yes, I suppose it is the continuation of the winding track, if you start from here, and, yes, I suppose it does lead to adventure, if you want to be overtly symbolic.

The shower stops. There’s a moving-about noise, and then a bolt-sliding-back noise, and then Edgalcius – “Didn’t expect to like the name Ed,” he says indistinctly – appears on the stairs. He’s wearing the enormous multi-coloured towelling dressing-gown that William wrote onto the hook on the back of the bathroom door just in time, and he’s using both hands to rub at his hair with the white towel that he would have been wearing round his waist if William hadn’t suddenly remembered this post’s Universal rating.

I know. Clumsy switches to third person. This is an early draft.

The enormous multi-coloured towelling dressing gown is belted securely around Ed’s waist. It covers him down to his ankles. His feet – ugh! – he’s wearing carpet slippers. That was close.

“You put your clothes on to wash?”

We can hear the faint thrum of the washing machine.

“I love your shower!” Ed lowers the towel from his head. His grey hair flies out in all directions. William imagines a shaggy dog photographed in the moment of shaking the water out of its coat.

“It’s just that you’ll have to do the whole first chapter in that dressing gown, while they dry.”

Ed holds his arms out from his body and looks down. The message is clear: Ed likes the dressing gown.

William hands him a hairbrush. “What was your question?”

“Oh yes. It’s a plot point. You’ve set up Pipsqueak as the Chosen One, obviously, with Roland as some kind of comic relief, or whatever he might turn out to be.”

“Some kind of sidekick, I think. Casting against type.”

“What’s Pipsqueak doing now? You’ve established the character, set up the idea of a quest, and dumped all that–”

“–dropped–”

“–dropped all that information about the scenery.”

“With the hint about the direction–”

“–the walled town–”

“Faraway walled town, yeah.”

“But what’s he doing? Is he refusing the call to adventure? Going back to his ordinary world? I need to know.”

“You’ve been reading that book by Christopher Vogler, haven’t you? The Writer’s Journey?”

“Third edition, published in 2007 by Michael Wiese Productions? Yes, I have. Had it out of the monastery’s library so long I might as well keep it.”

“I like The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, 1949, which of course is where I got the working title.”

“Yes, lately published by New World Library. But didn’t you say something about a kitten…”

The conversation continues. Meanwhile, Pipsqueak is sitting at the family table in the big hut, listening to his mother tell him not to be so silly. His father hasn’t spoken yet, but his brothers’ teasing has stopped and they’re beginning to glance up the table. There’s an atmosphere that you could almost cut with a lot of talk about keeping warm and wearing socks and not going off on silly adventures.

Myrtille, the girl from next door who comes round whenever there aren’t enough women in the story, is leaning in the doorway. Whenever Pipsqueak glances across at her, he finds she’s looking at him. He’s known her since childhood; she’s his closest friend.

“That’s a bit obvious isn’t it?”

“Why are we speaking in italics?”

Finally, Pipsqueak’s mother stops talking. She looks at her husband, opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again. She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Well, I think it’s ridiculous,” she says. She stands up and hurries out of the room.

Myrtille comes away from the door, raising her arms as if to hug Pipsqueak’s mother, and goes with her.

There is silence except for the muffled sound from the next room of Myrtille comforting Pipsqueak’s mother.

Pipsqueak’s father stands up from the table. He looks at each of his seven sons in turn. Then he goes to stand behind Pipsqueak and lays his hands on Pipsqueak’s shoulders.

“This is my son,” he says. “Like me, he's a seventh son. He has been chosen. But the decision is his, and his alone. If he goes, he goes with my blessing. I hope that he will have yours, as well.”

Pipsqueak’s father leaves the room. In the silence, the seven sons hear their mother and father argue, urgently but quietly, and then Pipsqueak’s father reappears. He places on the table in front of Pipsqueak a small brass lamp.

“This was very useful to me,” he said. “When I–” He stops and turns away.

Pipsqueak looks up and meets the glass eyes of the dragon’s head mounted above the fireplace.

As he listens to his mother opening and slamming cupboards next door, he thinks to himself: how many genies are there going to be, in this story of mine?”

Somewhere in the future is a history book in which all of this is past.

All of this week’s political shenanigans in the UK, the whole B– Br– no, still can’t say the word – reduced to a line, or a paragraph, or a page, or just possibly a chapter, in a book about the early twenty-first century. Or the pre-modern era.

What will be remembered, if anything, is the outcome, and that will colour everything that went before. The bit that hasn’t happened yet will give meaning to the bit that we’re in at the moment. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the future history-book reader to understand that we didn’t know how it ended.

Last Sunday, there were ceremonies to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Nobody knew, back then, how big that was going to be, nor how it was going to end. It wasn’t even “the Second World War” until later on in the conflict.

History normalises the past. Until [insert your own catastrophe] happened, we lived in a world where that couldn’t happen. Then it was one more item in the index.

There’ll be an ending to whatever’s happening now – and we have to wait for that history book even to know what is happening now. There’ll be an ending to membership of the EU, the revolt against membership of the EU, the two-party system, representative democracy, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party…

…and I don’t have the faintest idea where I stand on any of it.

There does seem to be a mismatch between the decision-making apparatus we have, and the problem we face. There doesn’t seem to be much scope for a comfortable two-thirds majority on anything. So maybe this is a bigger change than a tussle over – whatever it is we’re all arguing about today.

Perhaps the role of the media will come under scrutiny. I wonder. Perhaps some enterprising young historian will come up with The End of Liberal Democracy as a riposte to Francis Fukuyama.

Perhaps this is the end of the post-war settlement, or the end of the long century of hot, cold, proxy and trade wars – not to mention the end of wars by other means.

Perhaps we’re reverting to a historical norm whereby the EU takes the role of the Holy Roman Empire, with some version of the Ottoman Empire on one side, and maybe something on the other to fill in for one of the other European empires. Maybe we’re just leaving the century of nation states.

Jillian Becker wrote a book called H*tl**’s Children (my asterisks) about the Red Army Faction, although it was pointed out that Andreas, Gudrun, Ulrike and the rest were grandchildren-aged, relative to him. Maybe Thatcher’s – no, because she did have children. Sorry.

What I would like to try to remember is that we didn’t try to understand each other. We imputed motives to each other, accused each other of lying, labelled each other – “Brexiter” was more enduringly adhesive than “Remoaner”, I think – and each side ranted about how mistaken the other side was. How deluded, delusional, misinformed, et cetera.

We were all confident that we could see the future that we didn't want.

How easy it was to take sides; how difficult it’s turning out to be, to move on.

Okay, so today we’re going to start the novel.

Today’s the day. Pencils sharpened, blank sheets of paper stacked, laptop dusted, interruptions cancelled, social media written out of reality, coffee hot.

Come on, inspiration, we’re all ready for you.

Any time now would be good.

[Hours pass. William sits motionless, fingers poised over the keyboard. Somebody hits the fast-forward button, and as the hours pass, we see William droop like an un-watered houseplant. As the sun sets and an unscheduled power-cut blankets the whole neighbourhood in darkness, William gets up from his laptop and shuffles off into the come-early night.

In his despair he’s left behind anything with which he could conceivably write. He roams the dark streets, muttering under his breath. Suddenly – at the furthest possible point of his walk, in pitch darkness – his eyes light up, bathing the street in the glow of inspiration.

“Yes!” he exclaims, searching his pockets for something, anything, with which to write down the idea that’s just come to him.

In the end, he kneels down and starts scratching at the pavement with his fingernails, shuffling backwards as the idea unfurls in front of him, line after line of idea that flows into him as the Muse whispers in his ear.]
   
It’s going to be – Yes! – a sprawling epic of many worlds and many dimensions, telling the stories of – Yes! I mean, seriously? – heroes, villains, lovers, haters, quite-likers, beautiful people, average-looking people with something about them, scribes, pharisees and dark-hearted schemers.

A fantasy novel, then?

There will be rings and amulets – Yes! Go with what comes! – and swords, and quests – oh, and at least one old guy, bearded, to start the whole thing off.

I’ll build my world with politics and economics, but with magic and dragons as well. There’ll be technology, but it will have evolved from clockwork and kettles – Yes! Go with it! You’ll lose it if you question it! – rather than electricity and c-prompts. People will ride around on horses.

Yes, that’s it, a fantasy novel.

[William races back to his laptop. Which tells him to wait while it installs urgent upgrades. He grabs a blank sheet of paper, snaps the first pencil in his haste, forces himself to calm down, and starts writing.]

If the beard and the long cloak printed with stars and sigils don’t tip you off, you’ll know my significant old guy by the hat. He’ll live in a mountain-top cave on a mountain top so remote that he has to pay extra for his online-shopping deliveries.

No, that’s not right. Dang! I had the tone of voice just right there. But there are no supermarkets in fantasy novels. Not in mine, anyway.

He lives in a cave on a mountain top so remote that the birds – the eagles? No, been done – have to deliver his groceries – have to deliver the ancient scrolls that he orders by some kind of magic from the library of the ancient monastery on the neighbouring mountain top.

Either that, or he has to wait for the weekly yak-train that brings his other supplies. He picks up his post once a month from the general stores down in the village.

No, he doesn’t. Rats! I’ve lost it.

Okay, relax, no pressure, deep breath, that’s it, screw that one up; now feed yet another sheet of blank A4 paper into this steampunk version of an upgraded laptop, and let’s start again.

“You are the chosen one!” shouted Edgalcius the Mage, his voice echoing around the peaks and crags of his mountain-top home.

“M-me?” said Pipsqueak, scrambling to his feet after the long climb, cringing even further into the extra thermal vest his mother had insisted he wear under his jerkin. “I’m just delivering your perishables.”

“Perishables?”

Pipsqueak had climbed two hundred feet up a vertical cliff face to reach the ledge outside the Mage’s cave. In a hurry. In two layers of thermal underwear beneath his typical peasant garb. He was feeling unsteady.

“Yes, the yak-train’s delayed and–”

“Hang on! Hang on!” Clambering into view came a young man, clad in silver armour, his long fair hair caught in a clasp at the nape of his neck, red-faced and puffing. “Sorry I’m late. Couldn’t get the horse past the rockfall.”

“Yes, the yak-train–” Pipsqueak began, but the young man was still talking.

“There was a whole train of yaks there as well. They couldn’t get past the rockfall either. I got past them and realised what the problem was. Had to climb. Hope I’m not late. Apparently, there’s a place in the village that takes in horses.” He stopped, and looked at Pipsqueak.

“A boarding stable,” said Pipsqueak, because that seemed expected of him. The young man nodded and then looked down at his armour, brushing at it and then leaning forward to inspect his knees.

“Excuse me,” said the Mage, in a tone that Pipsqueak hadn’t heard before. The Mage was the Mage, not a tetchy old man with a voice like that. He was in time to see the irritation that Edgalcius wiped from his face, and then the Mage was the Mage again.

“You,” said Edgalcius, drawing himself up to his full height and raising his staff into the air so that it caught the first sunlight of the day. He stood facing the young man, who was still inspecting his armour. “You!” Edgalcius repeated, more loudly. The young man looked up.

Pipsqueak could guess what came next. He unslung the pack from his shoulders and carried it across the ledge to the cave-mouth. He’d unpack the perishables into the cold store while the wizard went about his business with the bloke in silver.

“Not a scratch on it!” he heard the bloke say.

Typical, thought Pipsqueak. Just typical that I’d blunder into something like this. His six older brothers would laugh at him again. His father’s six older brothers would probably laugh at him too, all crammed together in the small hut complex that the family called home.

He’d ripped his leggings again, on that scramble up the last stretch of the mountain.

His father would smile kindly at him, as he always did, and ruffle his hair as though he forgave his seventh son yet another clumsiness. His mother would come to him later and tuck a small parcel into his hands. It would turn out to contain another pair of socks.

Despite himself, Pipsqueak was comforted. Inside the cave he stepped past the treasure chest and over the glowing sword lying on the floor, steadied the small brass lamp on the shelf that his shoulder brushed as he went by, narrowly avoided the helmet and breastplate stacked next to the mage’s desk, and unloaded the pack into the recess in the cave-wall that the mage had enchanted to remain cold.

As always, he looked around for the source of the illumination in the cave, and as always, he couldn’t find it. Pipsqueak stood briefly at the mage’s desk, looking down at the parchments unrolled there. His fingers traced an illuminated P that began a passage of illuminated handwriting that he could not read. The heading at the top of the page was printed in block capitals. “How to recognise the Chosen One,” Pipsqueak read out loud. He shook his head. Mage business indeed. Then he remembered himself and went back outside.

Edgalcius was still standing with his back to the cave-mouth. The ledge – did I mention this? – was deceptively spacious, 10m by 9m at its widest point (there are estate agents in my fantasy world), with shrubs in pots around the edge and a round pine garden table off to one side, with matching chairs.

“Me?” said the young man in silver, who was still standing where he’d first appeared, facing Edgalcius across the ledge. Pipsqueak was surprised to see that he looked embarrassed.

“I think there must have been some–” The young man looked at his wrist and then at the sundial, which I would have mentioned earlier if I’d thought of it. “I couldn’t possibly–” he faltered.

In the silence that followed, Pipsqueak tiptoed back to the point on the ledge at which he’d first scrambled up. He stood, stooped forward, making himself as silent and insignificant as he could manage, easing himself half-behind a ficus Benjamin (in a pot) that was almost as tall as he was.

He had been ordered by his eldest brother to reassure Edgalcius that the rest of his supplies would be arriving at the turning circle as usual shortly – there were men and women coming up from the village to clear the rockfall – but now was not the moment.

Pipsqueak could tell that something was wrong. The young man – oh, heck, let’s give him a name – Roland was saying, “I thought I was here because you wanted to give me something. I didn’t realise I might have to– Glad to help of course, but just at the moment, pressure of revision. And anyway, I’ve got Princess Eustacia’s party on Sat–”

Pipsqueak made himself very small. He could feel a dense heaviness in the air, like the build-up to a thunderstorm. But it had come all at once. The sky was – clear, but it felt black.

“You are–” Edgalcius stopped. The broken sentence echoed around the mountains. In the monastery on top of the adjoining mountain, a window slammed shut, like punctuation.

“She invited me specially,” said Roland, in a voice both apologetic and stubborn.

Lightning flashed out of a blue sky.

Edgalcius stared at Roland. Then at Pipsqueak. He muttered something under his breath.

Then he turned and glared up at me. “What are you looking at?” he demanded.

“Me?” [William snatches his hands back from the laptop.]

“Yes, you, sunshine. It’s not so easy, is it, writing fantasy? Oh, I know where you’re going with this, but have you thought it through?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I get it, I really do. Hero’s journey, right? But think about it. Roland’s got all the connections, the resources; his parents probably know everybody who could possibly buy him out of trouble. If he could even find trouble. But this little tyke.” Edgalcius gestures at Pipsqueak. “Really?”

“He doesn’t start with all the advantages, but that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Yada, yada, and a hero has to be capable of spiritual growth, yeah, yeah, heard it all before. You wouldn’t believe how often I get people – and what kind of a name is Edgalcius, anyway?”

“I thought – I could call you – Ed?”

“Give me strength.”

“We could talk. You know, discuss progress. Just occasionally, as a kind of digression from–”

“You think you’re so original, don’t you? A fantasy novel with training wheels, just running along in the background. You’re going to work through all the stages of the hero’s journey, aren’t you?”

“Yes, just occasionally, not to interrupt – actually, to interrupt – my usual posts, and there was something on Facebook about saving the kitten. Nine stages, and – hold on.”

“Oh, not the picture! You don’t have to put in a picture every time!”

“I like to. Hang on, I’ll just–”

“–there.”

“Ouch! Okay, but you don’t have to start a separate, totally different post–”

Read something the other day about birth-rates. They’re rising in Africa, apparently, and falling in Europe. If large-scale migrations are going to be caused by global heating in future, it would be ironic if the indigenous Europeans vacated large tracts of “their” continent to make space for–

“Sorry. Force of habit. Stopped now.”

“[Expletive deleted] authors!”

“I prefer wri–”

“And now that you’ve started this clever-dick, post-modern, broken-fourth-wall tarradiddle of a shaggy-dog–”

“You started it! You broke the fourth wall!”

“And you could have deleted that! Now that you’ve got this far, mister must-have-a-picture-but-don’t-mind-tearing-the-fabric-of-reality, what are you going to tell them? Eh?”

Pipsqueak and Roland are staring up at the sky with matching expressions of – I don’t know, let’s call it existential dread – on their faces.

Luckily, there’s also an enchanted pool on Edgalcius’ ledge. About three feet across, full of deep, clear water, it reflects – well, the sky usually, but at other times, whatever Edgalcius wants to see in it. Right now, it’s reflecting me.

My head, and the wall behind me. Must do something about my background.

This is ridiculous. I’m video-conferencing with the characters in my fantasy novel.

But I do look a little bit like – Ed has the same idea.

“It’s a genie!” Edgalcius snaps at Pipsqueak and Roland. “Deal with it.”

“Pipsqueak!” I say. “You didn’t just brush against the shelf. You brushed against my lamp when you went to unload the perishables!”

Pipsqueak didn’t sign on for this. He’s sweating, although that may just be all the thermal underwear he’s wearing. He gets even more up-close and personal with the ficus Benjamin.

But I can see that he also relaxes, very slightly. A genie in a lamp makes sense to him in a way that an authorial intervention doesn’t.

“Oh genie,” says Edgalcius (and we both ignore the muffled “Hey!” from inside the cave), “Have you considered sending both of them together?”

I have, actually, but it’s also part of the story that Edgalcius has that idea. He realises that Pipsqueak is the chosen one, but recognises Roland’s qualities (stubbornness, social connections, rich parents and others that I haven’t invented yet) and decrees that the two of them should set off together.

“What, two heroes? That’s a bit cumbersome, surely?”

“You’re the one who wrote them. But think about it. Nice bit of contrast there. Class tensions. That one learns humility; the other one – spiritual growth, I suppose. You came to me, and that’s what I think.”

“Will you talk to them? I don’t think Roland wants to go.”

“Neither does the other one. They’ll both refuse at first because that’s how these stories always go. But this is what I do. Leave it to me.”

“Okay. I’ll just–”

“You go off and catch the end of that thing about migration. No, go on, that’s fine. We’ll thrash out the details later.”

So much for controlling our own destinies. As Pliny the Elder is widely supposed to have written, “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi,” although I’ve always understood that to be a reference to elephants, not to innovation, nor to migration, nor indeed to the “Western Civilisations” of the future.

There was a story idea floating around earlier.

Story idea floating around here earlier, I mean.

I didn’t like the sort-of-rhyme made by “idea/here” so I deleted “here” from my opening sentence.

By “here”, I meant Falmouth. Would have meant. “Earlier” is yesterday. Was yesterday.

Perhaps I’ve had enough coffee already today.

So, yes, right. I had just come down the steps from Berkeley Hill (I was next to the Yoga Hut, you know?), and I saw a woman ahead of me, striding along Kimberley Park Road towards the park.

Thanks. Can I put it on the tab with the other three? Yes, perhaps a glass of water as well would be a good idea.

She was on the opposite pavement, and from where I was standing, she was going from left to right. From Berkeley Vale. Towards the park. Park.

No, this is not going to be the post in which I talk about writing only the essentials and trusting the reader to fill in the gaps.

So. Anyway. I saw the woman.

By “striding”, I mean: tall woman wearing a calf-length, Summer-weight white dress with flowers on it. She was walking – striding – like she was happy about where she was going and wanted to get there soonest.

She had a white-ish sunhat pushed back. Light-green cardigan, peach-coloured flat shoes that reminded me of the word “espadrilles”. Age? No idea. Could have been my age, perhaps a decade or two younger.

No dog, and she wasn’t carrying a bouquet of roses down by her side. Probably would have had both, if I’d been making her up.

What I thought was: is she real?

She was very brightly lit by the sunshine, very high-definition against the stone-coloured background. To me, she seemed entirely distinct from her surroundings.

It was as if – I remember thinking, and you’ll have to excuse the arrogance, but I had a vacancy for a daydream – she’d been put there for me to see.

And that got me going.

By the time I started up Kimberly Road, I was well into a daydream around the idea that she hadn’t been real at all. But if she hadn't been real...?

Hallucination brought on by a brain injury? No. Ghost? Yawn.

I was up towards Budock Terrace by the time I realised that we were dealing with time travel here. She was from (cue music) the future.

In the imaginary novel I wrote on that walk, dear (real) reader (and if you were walking up Kimberley Park Road yesterday, wearing a dress as described earlier, I apologise), time travel is/was/will be a thing of the past. It was invented, a dozen years from now, and it became the next big thing.

Specifically, time-travelling for the fun of it, posting selfies at historic events, interviewing historic figures, collecting artefacts from the past, watching battles, dropping litter, chugging soda out of plastic bottles (and leaving the empties behind), attempting to change history (oh, the debates about the morality of killing you-know-who before he came to power), and then inevitably, attempting to fix the past after all the tampering, arguing about our responsibility to keep the past as it was – all became the next big things.

And then it was all over. Those irresponsible visitors from the future had messed with the timeline so much that our own present – that’s our present, 2019 – had become so twisted up that the time-travellers’ present – shall we say, circa 2035? – was beginning to disintegrate. Friends turning out never to have been born, historically important events not, er, having happened, cultural milestones – Allen V Cheesman’s Phazed World series, for example – never having been launched.

So – my imaginary novel starts here – the time-travellers from the future are now trying to fix the past. For reasons that I’ll just have to invent later, they’ve decided that their biggest priority is to fix 2015-2020.

By the time I reached Western Avenue on my walk – and turned left – I had decided: the novel starts after the major work has been done.

Of course, there’s still work to be done on the US presidential election of 2016, but the accidental destabilisation of the UK political system, in the same year, is being allowed to work itself back to normal.

What’s left is tweaking. Fixing minor events in 2019 that have/had a disproportionately big effect on the future.

One of those events was my walk yesterday morning (I decided as I turned right onto Pennance Road). It was important that I saw that woman walking on that street, as I did, because I had to be inspired (sic; see above re: arrogance) to write this post.

BUT the original woman had been arrested before I’d seen her. She was … let me see … a renegade time traveller who wanted a selfie in front of the new Park Live Stage before it became famous for [REDACTED].

If you don’t read this post – and they’re still working on how to get you to read this far; every time I leave the room, a person in futuristic clothing appears in front of my laptop and tinkers with the opening paragraphs; lucky I never covered the camera – where was I?

Oh yes – if you don’t read this post, you won’t be inspired to [REDACTED] and if you don’t do that, you won’t [REDACTED; apologies from the future, but I really can’t let him warn you in advance] and if [REDACTED; and I haven’t got time to delete all this before he comes back into the room] before [REDACTED] with your [REDACTED] lemon-scented [REDACTED] flaps its wings and [REDACTED] the eruption. [Sorry. Good luck.]

So the woman I saw, in the patched-up and mended and mostly fixed 2019, was a hologram of an actress hired in 2035 for her resemblance to the original activist…

…who is now imprisoned in 2035…

…and probably needs rescuing…

…and I walked down Spernen Wyn Road, through St Mary Gardens, onto Gyllyngvase Beach, and what did I find?

How convenient!

In the bag with my swimming things, I found a mobile – no, it wasn’t a phone. Three buttons on it and a screen. And there was a letter too. Handwritten.

Dear William. To go to 2035 and rescue the activist, press the red button. To come back to 2019 and write the blog post, green. To delete all this rubbish and start again, blue. William.

That was some trip.

There was an all-female shortlist for the Best Novel category of the Hugo Awards 2019.

I know this because a person posted about it on Facebook, and was promptly dumped on by another person on Facebook.
 
That first indignant comment was followed by fifty more, and if we’re making this visual, the person who started it quickly disappeared under a collapsed scrum of brawling persons sounding off about gender. The word “patriarchy” was thrown, as was the word “sisterhood”.

I’m not (quite) stupid enough to join in. Either those six novels are the best science-fiction novels around at the moment, or there is a surprising lack of diversity, blah, blah, et cetera, blah, blah, in literary prizes focused on sci-fi.

Non-female persons were shortlisted in other categories.
 
The prizes were announced on 18th August, and just for the record, the winner in the novel category was Mary Robinette Kowal for her novel The Calculating Stars (Tor). I used to read a lot more sci-fi when I was young than I do now, but I’ll look it up.
 
There used to be a convention that the first person to mention [a certain Austrian-born dictator, whom I’ve decided never to mention here by name] in an argument on Facebook, lost the argument. These days, the convention is that all arguments turn into the same slanging match.

The comment that I turned around in my head for a while, after reading that spat on Facebook, was this. “If all your male ancestors would stop oppressing all my female ancestors, and vice-versa, we could get along.”

I didn’t post it. Obviously. But at any point before the present generation, aren’t we on both sides of that particular argument-of-first-resort? We could share it and possibly resolve it, if we weren't all so immediate in our attacks.
 
We can’t rewrite history. History shouldn’t write the present (discuss). But history does seem to insert passages into our working draft of the present that really should be cut out.
 
“Kill your darlings,” said William Faulkner. Elsewhere on the internet, we find Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch saying this (in a lecture, a hundred-plus years ago). “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
 
Stephen King (among others) writes about the importance of leaving a manuscript alone for a while before going back and editing it. Such distance tends to reveal that the coolest bits – the passages of which you are most proud – are actually quite embarrassing. They’re your “darlings”, or they were when you wrote them. Kill them. It’s for the best.
 
We can’t leave the present alone for a while before going back and editing it, but if we did, I suspect that we’d be surprised at (1) the amount of time we spend arguing, and (2) the short list of arguments available for us to join.
 
So many of those arguments are remarkably binary, without nuance or subtlety or even much real content beneath the headlines and the soundbites. We’re not analytic or reflective creatures after all. You’re either with us or against us, left or right, good or bad. There’s no opportunity to get together and talk.
 
We’ve all got challenges in our lives, and if you want to argue the point, I’d accept that you’ve got more challenges than I have. Okay. How about lunch?

You may wish to ignore this post.

It's an unstructured reverie that began around the question "What does technology do for us?" with a vague intention of being predictably critical about today's technology. I'm old enough to be comfortable with my own predictability.

I started with this observation.

I wear spectacles, which makes me a "cyborg" by at least one definition. They make the horizon easier to see. But the horizon doesn't change.

And where I thought I was going - perhaps this is obvious - was into a self-conscious little play-around with that idea of the horizon getting clearer but not changing. But I couldn't make it work.

I suppose talking about "technology" is a bit like talking about "transport". My blue Honda Jazz (pre-owned, pre-loved, but we don't talk about past relationships) takes me around, gets me to wherever I need to go, and is an all-round good thing.

At times, my jump leads are better things, and every now and then, the bright red Portable Power Pack Jump Starter that I carry in the boot is the best thing of all.

I like my little blue car. If only I could remember to switch off the headlights.

But under the heading of "transport", there are also tanks, jet fighters, bombers, crop sprayers, roads scarring the landscape, bicycles swerving out into the traffic, drivers not leaving enough space as they pass bicycles, advertising for car insurance ... ambulances, fire engines, stretch limousines ... what has transport done for us? It's complicated.

Under "technology" ...

I use Google Calendar, and if it's an international call coming up, which it sometimes is, I don't have to worry about time-zone calculations any more.

If we use Google Meet, we can see each other, and that's a little like time travel (no, I've never time-travelled). That's what tonight looks like, I might think. Or perhaps: there's somebody who hasn't yet experienced this morning.

And yes, I think there is a responsibility at both ends to set up an interesting background.

Making a phonecall is just making a phonecall, but video-calling done properly (I don't think it counts as "conferencing" if there are only two of you) offers a slice of another life.

I remember fax machines as a minor miracle - here's a duplicate of a document that still exists somewhere else. And way back further, hearing the voice in my tin can, conveyed by the taut string to the other tin can.

When we got our first toy telephones, we went to great lengths to make sure that we couldn't hear each other except via the telephones. The wires were never long enough, but we did at least achieve real-time bedroom-to-bedroom communication.

The technology I miss most is my Psion Organiser Series 3, which fitted into my inside jacket pocket along with my wallet. A little clamshell thing, screen and keyboard, which I could hold in my hands while typing with my thumbs. I got quite good at that, wrote 10,000 words of an 80,000-word book while standing up on commuter trains.

We're all living much longer and there are more of us, in part thanks to technology. We have the internet and social media, which give us at least the opportunity to debate and discuss and thereby gain wisdom.

Technology goes past too quickly. But it's given us so many visions. A better Psion Organiser. A more stable video-conferencing tool. Fibre-optic cable rather than can-connecting string. An internet of wisdom - which come to think of it was Al Gore's (and others') vision of the Information Superhighway, remember that?

What's the dream, now?

Robots, I suppose. We've had fake news; now we're working on fake people.

But the other thing about technology is that it's all about means. Enabling people to do things, or saving them the trouble of doing them. Working for us rather than alongside us. Not innovating, or inventing, or taking on and doing stuff.

I wonder how different the world would be, if we could just set up a technology around an objective, give it autonomy, and leave it alone to get on with it. Fly me to the moon, algorithm, and let me play among the stars. Or why don't you go yourself? Set up our habitations on Mars, before we even work out how to arrive.

No, wait a second.

Technology's inspired a lot of apocalyptic fiction, hasn't it?

Not much of it optimistic.

Like I said, ignore this post.

For an insight into human nature, consider my friend's bird table.

She found it in the garden when she moved into a house. Before then, my friend had never owned or had access to a bird table. She'd never thought about bird tables.

But now, she told me, she was enthusiastic about feeding birds.

So we spoke at length about how to prevent birds from feeding. She didn't want seagulls, magpies, crows invading her bird table. She wanted to leave out food for the robin and the wren.

Then we realised what we were doing.

And that led us into an even more interesting conversation.

For those of us who don’t meditate, washing up is the most sublime form of meditation.

I don’t practise mindfulness either, but there’s something so very in-the-moment about plates stacked so high in the sink that you can’t get the kettle under the tap.

Today, now, this minute, I think that there are two kinds of people in the world.

There are people who stack the plates so high in the sink (bringing them in and dumping them down with a sense of a task triumphantly achieved) that there’s no way to start washing up without taking some of them out again (sometimes – pointedly – all the way back to the dining table), and there are people who clear what’s there already before bringing in another lot.

There are people who don’t rinse the suds off before putting a plate to dry, and there are people so twitchy about their own kitchens that they notice these distinctions.

I find that my washing-up practice is best conducted very early on the morning after, to the sound of meditation music – rushing streams, women wailing (tunefully), occasional single notes plucked from guitars.

A very slight not-quite-hangover helps, in that it imparts an urge to get everything precisely just-so.

No, Spellcheck, we need that hyphen.

If the rain is hitting the skylight hard, and everybody else is asleep, and the embers in the fire are still showing a few sparks, and there are leftovers for a quiet pre-breakfast self-indulgence, so much the better.

No, CCleaner, I still don’t want that update. You showed me that pop-up five minutes ago.

If there’s a still-wrapped present under the tree, that everybody missed yesterday, and it turns out to have your name on it–

What am I talking about? It’s the middle of August.

That’s the trouble with unreliable narrators. You just can’t rely on them.

[Important detail I left out: today, I’m planning to write about unreliable narrators.]

We did hold something of a celebration yesterday, and the day was so drenchingly wet that we did light the fire. That was a good idea. But no. There isn’t a tree, and I’m imagining the still-wrapped present.

And yes. Everything else about this moment triggers associations with a December morning after. There’s discarded wrapping paper. The fire isn’t quite out. It was necessary, you understand, to do something with the couple of left-over roast potatoes.

No, Spellcheck. ‘Roast’ is correct.

In that sense, the intended post-festive atmosphere – perhaps you felt it? – has a kind of truth to it, while not being true. Kind of. Discuss.

Much of what makes a story is atmosphere. Which is built up of [I don’t know what] incidental detail, style, voice, crashingly intrusive statements of the obvious. There is an atmosphere of post-festive, slightly tetchy, would-eat-comfort-food-will-settle-for-cold-potatoes-ness hanging over this blog post.

Thank you, CCleaner. No.

Snow is drifting against the dry-stone walls marking out the fields, and down in the valley, I can see a gritting lorry moving slowly along the main road to Alverton. The light is grey with the promise of more snow. [Alverton? What? I'm in Falmouth.]

That is not true, but it should be. The snow only started yesterday evening, but already this morning, when I went out with the dog, I had to push against the front door to get it open. [That’s absolute nonsense. We’re in the middle of August.]

There are children tobogganing down the access road towards our house. Later, we’ll serve them cocoa, and their parents will walk down to join us for coffee. I can see their cars parked along the top road – they won’t risk driving down.

I wonder if Johanna will come.

All that – the tobogganing, the cocoa, the parents joining us – it’s all a Winter tradition [and totally made up]. I’ll leave fitting the snow plough to the tractor for tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. I moved the Land Rover up to the top road last night. Chains? Yep.

I feel a tightness in my chest. Marko will be with her, and the twins. We must avoid eye contact.

Behind me, the log fire is blazing and the house is warm. We hung those tapestries back in ’79, the Professor and I. He brought them back from – well, yes. You know about that. You read his book, of course. It was all true.

The rug in front of the fire. I should remove it, in case she does come.

The bookshelves? Oh, they’ve been there forever. Oak, I think. Help yourself, if you’re looking for something to read. No, not – not that book.

But know what? I don’t feel like writing about unreliable narrators today. Maybe we’ll leave them for another week.

I’ve got that high-definition caffeinated feeling that you get on mornings after, you know?

And anyway, unreliable narrators aren’t people who babble on about snowdrifts and children tobogganing – and they certainly don’t do that on damp grey August mornings that are just possibly warm enough for a swim later.

They’re narrators who are part of the story. At some level. You realise, as you read, that they don’t know themselves, or that they’re emotionally involved, or that they have some kind of agenda. Even when they’re telling, they’re showing themselves.

I don’t think the narrative voice – the voice of the narrator, the voice telling the story – necessarily has to be an “I”, and I don't think that "I" has to be the "I" who sits behind the laptop. Typewriter. Who holds the pen.

I do think that one of the pitfalls of storytelling is that you reveal yourself. That’s not necessarily a pitfall, but it’s a shame if it’s unintended. [You caught that tendency towards irritability, didn't you? I know you did. I'm not really like that. Really. But every time I clear my mind of thoughts, somebody adds a pile of dirty dishes.]

Which is another reason – No, CCleaner! – to be just ever so slightly aware of the narrator. Maybe it’s just you, telling your story. But maybe there’s scope for “you” to be just subtly a character as well as everybody else in the story. [I'm really a nice person.]

Did you see them ride out, that morning, on their quest? That rose-red sunrise, do you remember? I was up on the plateau, waiting to light the signal fire.

Tell me how it was, for you, watching them leave. No, don’t tell me at length; just a couple of lines in passing. You said your goodbyes, didn't you, last night?

As you tell a story, or read one, maybe pause every now and then to ask your narrator a couple of questions. This doesn’t happen every time, but in some stories, you can find – detect, even – a story behind the story.

Read Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) or Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).

What? Questions? No, certainly not. There’s no Q&A today. Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, William Essex has left the website.

Hurriedly.

Some days, I think I should just sit here waving back at the trees.

The morning is uniformly grey, there’s a lot of silence around, and the trees are waving at me. Stillness. Except for the trees. It’s about 6.15 in the morning, which is – ah! Sudden flurry of wind, sudden scuffle among the trees. They shouldn’t be fighting, this early in the morning.

It’s 6.15 in the morning, I said that already, which is … some other time in Seattle, Washington. I was speaking to somebody there, video chat, and she had a big mug of coffee while I was winding down at the end of the day.

Now I’ve got the big mug of coffee and – anyway, it’s not morning in America at the moment.

I was going to write about something. Yes. I came across a rant the other day. On the obvious social-media platform. A rant posted to a group dedicated to creative writing.

A woman – young, I think, although I’m not sure – had written a story – a fantasy novel, I think – and failed to convince an agent to take it. I could add another “I think” here, but that would be repetitive: implied in the rant was that she’d tried several agents and they’d all turned her down. She was facing a brick wall.

Except that she wasn’t.

The woman who ranted began by declaring her intention to rant. Then she ranted. She was good at ranting, and while I can’t say anything about her novel, I can say that she is a forceful writer. Ranter. But writer as well, obviously.

Most of the comments on her rant (there were lots of them) suggested that she should persevere. Archetypes were evoked: struggling artist; years of rejection slips; final vindication. But a few of them asked the question that occurred to me. Why did this matter?

Back in the day – no, that day – the publishing industry consisted of small-ish firms (that were about to be taken over by conglomerates) in which editors spoke disparagingly of slush piles and would-be novel-writers without access to social media grumbled into their sock drawers about the impossibility of ever getting published.

These days … we have social media. The phrase “getting published” is still a kind of mantra, as though it’s an end-point rather than a beginning, but the act of getting published is comparatively easy.

Dangerously so, if you’re old enough to believe that manuscripts should be left in a drawer for a while and then run through the typewriter again – not that I’m deliberately showing my age or anything.

But “getting published” isn’t a portal in the way that it used to be, and it isn’t guarded by “gatekeepers” (remember how we used that word?) in the way that it used to be.

Yes, there’s still a “trad” publishing industry – been there, done that – and yes, they’re still as dedicated as ever to not publishing would-be novelists. Now, there’s also an “indie” publishing industry, but no, they can’t lavish their attention on everybody, so yes, they’re becoming much the same (although there was a phase where they bought the rights to out-of-print authors to give an impression of scale).

It’s a human instinct to close ranks around the chosen few.

Now, there’s the free-for-all that is the internet. Where there was once pulp fiction – cheap paperbacks, pamphlets, A5-sized sci-fi/fantasy “magazines” packed with short fiction in tiny print (I have a couple) – now there are e-books and POD paperbacks. [Print On Demand.]

If you remember even further back, to the early printing presses churning out tracts that were nailed to the dooors of churches, famously or not, you might agree with me that today's over-accessible publishing "industry" has a longer tradition than the tightly clenched publishing industry of the late twentieth century. Not that it matters any more, but.

One way to give an impression of high-mindedness is to decry the quality of some of the fiction available on e-readers these days. Fine. But you don’t have to read it. And who are you to deny those people their chance to reach an audience?

This is not going to turn into a rant. This is NOT!

But I’ve been entertaining myself with Kindle Unlimited recently (alternatives are available, etc.). This is not a plug, and I’m not taking money.

I’ve just been enjoying downloading and reading ebooks for free. I’ve discovered authors I would never have tried (and sent some of them back after the first paragraph). I’ve strayed into genres, ditto (and ditto).

In the process, I’ve tolerated writing that hasn’t been as accomplished as it could be, and I’ve been entertained by stories that haven’t necessarily followed a conventional narrative logic. Or any logic at all, sometimes.

To put this as tactfully as I can, I’ve adjusted some of my tolerance levels, and been rewarded for doing so. [There are life-lessons everywhere, right?]

I’m left happy with the idea that anybody interested in “getting published” can do it. Even if what they first decide to publish is a rant about not getting published.

If you’re reading this – I have, after all, published it, so that’s possible – I just want to say: good luck, best wishes, and I’m looking forward to reading your book.

Characters in books tend to know their own back-stories.

We can extend that to characters in films, games, box sets, blog posts and just about anything else that you might care to invent. You understand that I’m talking mainly but not exclusively about fiction, right?

Characters also tend to know what they look like. I’m the character here - because somebody needs to act as the example - and I’m not going to spend any of my third paragraph glancing across at that handily placed mirror and describing what I see there.

Any more than I’m going to sit here reflecting – in detail – on the lifetime’s experience that has brought me to this moment. Not even the relevant bits.

Which is a problem if you’re trying to write a novel that starts with a bloke sitting on a sofa writing a blog post (who is feeling a bit dishonest because the only mirror he can see is actually showing him the ceiling). You’ve written your opening scene, let’s say, and now you need to fill out your character a bit more before he sets off on his quest.

Or doesn't, given that I'm quite busy today. Maybe we could pencil in the quest for tomorrow?

You could do an “info dump” – there’s even a term for it – but like I said, I know all that stuff. I’m just not – sorry – going to sit back on this slightly saggy old sofa, in this cluttered but comfortable room with its view of the harbour through the two front windows and the glass panel on the front door, and tell myself my own back story.

Even if it does add depth to my character.

The harpoon gun and the framed photograph of me with [REDACTED] are going to remain unmentioned. I’m not suddenly going to think back over that time I saved [REDACTED] from [REDACTED] with a spanner and a chisel. When I write a blog post, I think about the blog post, not about my past.

Sorry.

Info-dumping kills any narrative momentum you might have built up, and the worst thing is, it’s incongruous. Like I said, characters just don’t do that.

But you have to get the biographical information across to the reader somehow. If you’re trying to write a fantasy novel, you also have to convey the world you’ve built.

But how do you do that, if you don’t want to stun your readers with all the “necessary” verbiage?

Okay. Yes. You do have to drop bits of information into the narrative. You’re right. But look at this another way. Info-drops (not dumps) can be useful. For one thing, they can be used to change the pace of the narrative.

For example, I’ve just single-handedly fought off a dragon with a frying pan and a domestic fire extinguisher. That scene was so nail-bitingly fast that I think we could all do with a leisurely description of the editorial office I once shared in Holborn, which had a view out over a medieval plague pit. That was a green rectangle of grass among the office blocks. The plague pit where I once found a ring…

What does it say about my character – as a character – that I can remember that green space more clearly than the magazine I was editing back then? What does it say about London, that the ancient dead are left undisturbed? Those ancient dead, anyway. I wonder…

But look! There! On the horizon flying towards us! More dragons! Back to the story and let’s pick up the pace.

Ouch! Sorry. Just caught the ring I’m wearing on the arrow rest of my longbow. It’s an old ring, very old, with an inscription…

Find your own answer to the “How do I tell the reader what she needs to know?” question. There are no rules except the ones you can work out from your best friend telling you “The beginning was good, but I just haven’t had time since then…” and then changing the subject.

Characters know stuff. They don’t feel the need to explain it. But they might mention it in passing.

Be careful not to repeat yourself.

And trust your reader. They – she, if we’re talking about my imaginary reader, who is currently grinning at me from her perch just above my laptop screen – will pick up the slightest clue. Possibly fall asleep if you over-explain, but hang around for more if you under-explain subtly enough. And if all else fails, you can arrange–

“Where did you get that scar?”

–for a convenient interruption by a secondary character you’ve intro–

“Secondary? Excuse me!”

–very important character, crucial to the plot, whom you’ve introduced because the whole book would fall apart without her. Not just because you need somebody to ask a question.

Real reader, I'd like you to meet my imaginary reader. She's the one doing the interrupting (avoid superfluous stage directions). And now excuse me while I answer her question.

“That scar? I was running. The alarm was sounding. The bulkhead door was open, but without thinking, I put my foot on the bottom sill of the bulkhead. That lifted me enough to hit my head on the top sill of the bulkhead.”

“Ugh! Did you get blood in your eyes? Were you on a warship or a submarine? You were on a mission, obviously?”

Good questions, but let’s not answer them. Real readers (let’s hope) will be interested enough to wait around for more detail. If you were writing this, just suppose, I would suggest that you wait until later to reveal that I was recruited – then – and trained – there – in martial arts among other skills.

You’ve said enough already to leave the rest of it until I kick-box my way out of a tight spot.

But really, make up your own rules. What matters is keeping people reading your book. Nothing else matters, not even what your creative-writing teacher says about characterisation. You can invent characters who interrupt–

“Your imaginary reader is a girl?”

“Most people are.”

“I’m a woman, thank you!”

“Most people are female, I meant.”

–as and when you need them. If you have an Invisible Friend as a character, as well as an Imaginary Reader, and let’s give them capitals, your Invisible Friend can interrupt as well, and you can use all the interruptions from both of them to get–

“Don’t tell me you’re bringing him into this! He's invisible!”

–some quite intricate stretches of dialogue, but–

“I’m needed. We’re about to do the he said/she said thing.”

“Go away! This is the one about info dumps.”

[Said my Imaginary Reader. I’m losing the plot here.]

“But if there are three of us–“

[Said my Invisible Friend.]

“Trying to write a blog post here, people.”

[That was me.]

–you need to keep track of who’s speaking at any given moment. Putting in he said/she said can seem cumbersome, but when it’s necessary, it’s absolutely necessary.

“Told you. It’s he said/she said this week. We can do it with three people.”

“You don’t need me, then.”

“You're not listening! Read that last bit again. We’re doing he said/she said, and you’re the only she.”

“Said the Invisible Friend who’s turned up in a ballgown.”

“It’s not a ballgown! It’s a cape.”

“It’s a cloak,” said the person who’s actually writing this. Me. “Black. Heavy-duty cotton. Mostly. I dreamed you up, so I can dress you how I like. I thought about giving you a scythe, but–”

“I like your ring. Haven’t seen that before.”

“She said! Put in she said! People are going to think I said that!”

“Oh, thank you. I dreamed it up a few paragraphs back and started wearing it straight away.”

“Nobody’s going to think you said–“ she said. Began to say. Was interrupted while saying. My Imaginary Reader, I mean. She said that. To my Invisible Friend. Because she didn’t think that you would think that my Invisible Friend would say – sorry, I’m over-explaining. He seems to be Visible now, anyway.

“What does the inscription say?” said my Invisible Friend, politely ignoring the over-explanation. Visible friend.

“Oh, just some stuff about, don’t wear this, blah, blah, if you do, I’ll come and get you, et cetera. I think it’s a prop
from another story.”

“Is this my Easter Egg? I love chocolate! Oh, thank you!”

“What’s that odd scratching noise? Is there somebody at the door?”

“More like slithering. That musty smell. Who’s that moaning? There’s definitely somebody at the door.”

“Talk about an obvious stage direction!” [I’m not sure who said that. I just added it in the read-through.]

“Oh look – suddenly the inconveniently glass panel in the front door, which you specified earlier, is opaque. We can’t see through it.”

“Gosh! There’s a shadow behind it.”

“Hang on, I’ll just see who it is. No – on second thoughts–”

“You've given me a scythe! Thank you!”

“–maybe you should get the door.”

There’s something in the human mind that invites catastrophe.

We grow up with it, entertain ourselves with it, and throughout history, we’ve believed it to be close to us. I had Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as my childhood companion; I’ve enjoyed planning for the Zombie Apocalypse; these days, I’m as convinced as I need to be that Global Warming is really happening.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. But this is an odd kind of panic. Celebrities, activists and others are still trying to convince us that we have a problem. They’re not exactly facing resistance, and whole organisations are now dumping single-use plastic, but down here at “ordinary people” level there’s still a degree of inertia. How do We, capital W, shift that?

[If you’d prefer to replace Zombie Apocalypse in that list above, by the way, I could go with Plague – we were worried, weren’t we, that air travel would spread Ebola to the parts of the world where health insurance is rife?]

Life’s boring without an existential threat – discuss.

Maybe we just don’t know what to do.

There’s a quiet movement gathering up waste plastic, taking milk cartons to the recycling centre, et cetera, but there’s a noisier, less organised movement dropping litter and eating/drinking out of non-recyclable plastic containers. Smoking roll-ups and dropping the filters.

I’ve seen panic. It doesn’t look like this. Felt it, too. Doesn’t feel like this.

Maybe we do know what to do, but we don’t think our own contribution is significant enough to matter. What’s one plastic bottle in the scheme of things?

I don’t know how to answer that, except to say that as the years go by, I become increasingly convinced that we have more of a collective consciousness than we realise. We’re all against certain things that we weren’t against a generation (or two) ago, and no leader, no government, no single influencer caused that change.

We were nudged, yes, but what really happened was: we just changed our minds – our mind. And they – it – stayed changed.

One day, perhaps, dropping a plastic bottle, or a cigarette butt, will be as unacceptable as downing a final double whisky before climbing back into the muscle car and hitting the road at pedestrian-killing speed. But not yet.

We’re not quite ready to stop teetering on the brink of climate change. I suspect that might be it. There’s something in the human mind, et cetera.

There’ll come a day when – I don’t know – food prices go through the roof. The global tobacco crop fails. Whole states, whole countries (and not just small ones) disappear under rising sea levels. I don’t know what it will take.

But on that day, we’ll fix it. Try to fix it. Perhaps fail. Definitely fail.

On that day, we’ll be too late. We need to act now. But how do we shrug off the inertia? Get past that something in the human mind?

Perhaps – I’m more than half serious about this – we need to find the next existential threat before we can move on from this one. If we could buy into the next imminent catastrophe, we’d no longer need to teeter on the brink of this one.

Maybe government agencies could tell us a different scary story. Maybe then – about two-thirds serious, given that after all the official talk and target-setting, there’s still plastic blowing in the hedgerows – messing up the planet would become as boringly distasteful as drink-driving. [Yeah, dangerous too, but my whole point is, that doesn’t seem to work as a primary concern.]

Hey, NASA, we need you now! Isn’t there anything heading towards us on a collision course? Are you sure? Check again. Centres – sorry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doesn’t anybody contagious ever get on an aeroplane anymore?

And you in the global food industry – yes, you! Enough with the healthy alternatives! We need comfort food, now!

Oh. Wait.

Words to avoid, at the start of a short piece of writing, are “The” and “I”.

They’re not strong words. “The” was described to me, at the very beginning of my career, as “a deeply boring word” and I’ve stuck with that. I was eventually fired by the man who told me about “The”, but never mind. The company settled. I left by mutual consent. And bought myself a car to replace my company car.

No, there’s nothing actually wrong with starting your post, or your review, or your opinion piece with “The”, but if you want to give yourself an edge – don’t.

Get into the habit of thinking about strong words, action verbs, attention-getting starts, rhythm, active, yada yada, blah blah, droning on, dozing off – Boo!

Surprise is good.

Don’t introduce yourself, either, or explain what you’re writing. “Start in the middle,” somebody once said. If your readers are caught by the start, they’ll pick up the rest as you go along.

“I” is a more recent problem.

It’s typically coupled with “think” or “believe” or “really believe”, and the only difference between those three is that “I really believe” implies “I state this as fact” whereas the other two stop at “I know better, so here beginneth the lecture.”

“I” starts a piece in which the writer is thinking about – do we say “themself” nowadays? I’m not sure – thinking about himself, given that I can see him in my mind’s eye and he’s definitely a “himself” with that moustache and – ugh! – those rippling muscles; how does he do that? – rather than thinking about you, the reader, and what you might want to read.

I lost a comma somewhere in there. Maybe I should go back and count the dashes – nah. It makes enough sense as it is.

If you’re going to start a piece with “I”, remember the reader, and bear in mind that you’re writing a confessional rather than a lecture. “I love you” is good, as is “I will pay you double what you’re getting now to come and work for me.” But any variation on “I believe what we should do about Brexit is…” should be avoided.

The problem with opinions is that nobody wants to know what you think. There are people who like to debate “The Issues”, but that’s a matter for consenting adults and most of them are just waiting for their turn to talk, rather than listening.

Telling us what you think isn’t going to change what we think. Not these days.

But enough about that. “I” is self-reflection while writing is communication. There’s a mirror in “I” that can interrupt your view of the reader.

Use “The” and use “I”. You can’t avoid them. They’re useful. Necessary.

But if you start a piece with either of them, be aware of what you’re doing.

In the recent past, I’ve been told that my paragraphs should be shorter (tick), and that the background image makes – made; it’s gone now – this page look old-fashioned (reluctant tick).

Now it turns out that I’m interesting when I write about writing.

I’m not asking for all this advice – except that last bit: see Obvious enough for you? below – but I’m getting it. Oh, and I’ve also received a fair amount of unsolicited guidance recently on my profile pic, personal appearance and – never mind. What is "brand identity" anyway?

If I start writing about writing, though, I’m going to forget to write about everything else. So here’s just a quick summary of my views on all the major issues of today except writing. I may revise them, go back to them, et cetera, but just in case I don’t, here’s what I think about…

Brexit. You are absolutely right. Thank you for explaining your views at such length. Yes. No, I do understand; no need to explain again. Oh – is that the time? Sorry, I must have dozed off; I really have to go.

The President of the United States of America. Uh huh. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, sure, exactly, it’s – look, I really must go. Yes, you said that. Look, I agree with you. He is, yes, absolutely, but I have to go.

The Weather. Weird, isn’t it? We shouldn’t complain, but.

Global Warming. Look, I’m not arguing with you. I agree. I agree! I said I’m not disagreeing with you. But surely the question isn’t whether it’s happening, but what do we do about it?

Strong Leadership. Yeah, right, absolutely; we do need strong leadership to sort out all our problems. But have you seen the news recently?

British Politics. Really? Really? I thought it was a satire. You’re not serious.

Strong Leadership. Or studied history?

Weak Leadership. Ditto?

Baked Beans. Do you remember, a few months back, people talked about stocking up on cans, in case Brexit or some other catastrophe disrupted food supplies? They’ve gone quiet, haven’t they? Thinking it through, perhaps. I'd keep quiet if - but I haven't! There's nothing in that big cupboard! I keep it padlocked because - it's empty! That's why!

Climate Change. Yeah, but could we do something about it? No, I’m agreeing that they’re to blame. Absolutely. They’re the guilty ones. Yes! They're going to feel really bad! Ha! So there! But could we do something about it now?

Liberal Democracy. No-platform the lot of them, frankly. We must defend our values. Uh, could you just run through your definition of “liberal” again, maybe? And yes, that referendum was such a bad idea that we definitely need another one to bring us to peace and harmony, ha ha. Oh, you're serious.

Beach Cleaning. Happens a lot around here. In the absence of strong leadership, and in defiance of weak leadership, maybe people taking their own steps to clean up the planet is a good idea, yes?

Greenhouse Gases. Alternatively, we could book the town hall for a meeting, and agree a declaration that we’ve agreed targets to reduce the town’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025?

Artificial Intelligence. Artificial stupidity, don’t you mean? Maybe we could harness the power of technology to solve all our problems? Or spend all that money on feeding, educating and housing actual people? Children, even? Build a human future?

When you set out to write a blog post about absolutely nothing, the important thing is to get the opening sentence right.

It should be arresting, or at least attention-getting, and it should deliver the reader quickly to the second sentence, which can include lots of commas and subordinate clauses. Third sentence can be short. The fourth, if there is one, rounds off the paragraph so that we can move on to the next.

There’s a thing about rhythm, too. Long sentences, short sentences, maybe a rhythm that flows with the logic of what you’re saying.

It’s a speech rhythm, I suppose, and I’ve heard writers talk about finding the tone of voice that goes with what they’re trying to say. That, I suspect, has to do with the idea that you’re always writing (speaking) to one person.

If you’ve got your ideal reader perched above your laptop screen, or settled in your head somewhere, you can work out – intuit, maybe – the tone of voice that goes with speaking to that individual. Same principle as if you’re bouncing a toddler on your knee, or facing an interview panel for a senior post with a high security clearance. Save the baby talk for the – shall we dispense with the predictable joke here?

I said “that individual”; I could have said “that representative of your audience”. I’ve heard it said that when you make a speech, you should pick out members of the audience, one at a time, and speak directly to them, in turn. Reduce the whole thing to a human scale by addressing your remarks to representative members of the audience, rather than the whole mass of faces all at once.

Of course, you don’t want to deliver your entire speech to the increasingly unnerved-looking woman in the third row, which is why I suggest eye contact successively with him over there, her over there, him up there … and so on. You’re talking to another human being, and with any luck, they’ll respond with an appropriate facial expression.

But this is a complete digression from the idea of writing to one person. I can see you there, smiling slightly, one eyebrow raised (now try the other one; bet you can’t), shifting slightly in an effort to make that big chair more comfortable. Is it some kind of throne? Is it resin? Never mind – I’ve got you in my mind’s eye, and I’m writing this for you.

Put down that mug. You’ve had quite enough coffee for one day.

If you’re writing something big, start anywhere and think about the step rather than the mountain. But start. Put the map down, stop discussing routes and start walking. If you’re writing something short – well, you’re nowhere until you’ve got your opening sentence.

Oh, well done. I wasn’t sure if you’d seen him creeping up behind you. All that martial-arts training finally paid off.

Sketch it out and plan it and make notes, et cetera, if you must, before and after finding the simple, declarative statement that is your opening sentence, but don’t think you’ve achieved anything by covering sheets of paper (screens, files, docs; I’m showing my age) with writing about what you’re going to write. Planning is a way of not starting.

Oh, it’s you now. Actually, it’s been you all along, hasn’t it?

What? My usual thing about not starting with the intro? I was going to abbreviate it. You know how, when people write to tell you about something, they sometimes start “I am writing to tell you about something”? My old mentor used to talk about “throat-clearing”; if he got something that didn’t strike him as quite good enough, his first move was to delete the first three paragraphs.

Surprisingly often, that worked.

Have I written a blog post about absolutely nothing? Perhaps not. But at least you and I are back together. I like the cloak, by the way.

And yes, you’re right. It’s a very individual thing. But if a piece of writing is a one-to-one communication, you have to write it as a one-to-one communication. Yeah, yeah, writing for yourself, all that. Been told it, know it. But if you’re only writing for yourself, why not stand in front of the mirror and talk it out?

What’s that? Global catastrophe? Planet becoming uninhabitable? Change of government in the UK? Brexit? Collapse of civilisation? Yes, I know about all that. It’s just – well, you see, there was a sudden spike in my numbers the other week. Numbers of people who read this blog.

I’m far too high-minded to think about such things, of course. But I consulted somebody whose opinion I respect, and she said that I am interesting when I write about writing.

No, I didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question. I reserve the right to be – whatever – by writing about subjects other than writing. But if this is my (huh!) “obvious niche”, then I suppose I should come back to it every now and then.

Yes, I’ll write about all those other subjects, although my opinions are as predictable as anybody else’s – what?

You have a go? Good idea, why don’t you?

No, there’s no tech store, but most of the antique shops along the old High Street have typewriters in the window. There’s even a letterpress printer – a shop, Juniper Bespoke – so you can start in the future, if you like – the past, I mean, the past; we’re still bathed in the white heat of the information superhighway, aren’t we, still relying on tapping screens for everything? Our analogue future is still a few degrees away.

You’ve got a pencil and paper? Oh. Okay.

Yeah, just write. Get started. That’s the trick of it. Express yourself.

What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not a teacher at all! I’m writing this, aren’t I?

Even my ideal reader doesn’t take me seriously.

So my other thought was, how many influential people of the past would still be influential today?

They wouldn’t be solemn and serious and looking at us out of black and white photographs. They wouldn’t have time to write those fat old books that none of us have read.

Einstein would comb his hair. Nietszche would trim his moustache for breakfast television. Karl Marx would be making it big on Facebook and Marcel Proust would have signed up for a Twitter account.

All of them would be wearing pancake make-up and sitting in studio discussions, arguing with people who – for balance – disagreed with them. We’d learn about the Theory of Evolution from a screened argument between Charles Darwin and, say, a comedian-politician who disagreed with him (and made it funny). The presenter would have ended that discussion with “One thing is certain. This argument will run and run.”

Or perhaps a joke with the punchline “God knows.”

Imagine Leonardo da Vinci walking towards us across landscapes, advancing on the camera crew backing away from him, waving his hands expressively and switching from one location to another in the blink of an edit.

Or Karl Marx at the New York Stock Exchange and then at the Alte Borse in Frankfurt. Jane Austen at the Hay Festival and then back in the studio for the week’s round-up of the latest crime fiction.

The books would have been printed on glossy paper, full of photographs; they would have been books of the series. Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (1913) would have included flashbacks, for clarity. [Actually, William…] For Einstein’s TV debut, researchers would have found somebody prepared to argue that E doesn’t equal mc squared.

The big career move, in fact, would be to get on the other side of the argument from somebody big. Property is ownership. E is just E, Albert, actually. Bees can fly.

All this - yes, even that - was designed by somebody intelligent.

And then where would the rest of us find our beliefs?