I am What I am
Sunday night, children and hound finally asleep, pilot is away in sunny Greece. I was just trying to work (not dancing to Gloria Gaynor in case you were wondering from the post title, or writing sadly - but necessary, pay the bills and keep the bank manager happy work - wouldn't it be wonderful for writing to do that), when Rose Tremain came on the Roberts advertising Orange mobile phones. 'I am what I am' - pilfered from Gloria or was it Walt Whitman (see above)? Her entire works are on my 'to read' list, and her latest 'The Road Home' (the Orange winner) is on my wish list for the title alone. I think there is a difference - my 'to read' list is vast and worthy (Proust ... have tried so hard. Made it through the first few volumes and yet my life and mind are too busy and Monkeyish for madeleines at this time ...). The 'to reads' are a lifetime's work set out ahead. I added all of Tremain's work when I spent an afternoon with Mick Jackson some years ago in Brighton. He had recently been nominated for the Booker for The Underground Man, and recommended her work as they had both done the Creative Writing MA at UEA. This was the course that was meant to be my trade off to the pilot training, my reward for giving up everything. Hasn't quite worked out like that, but I hope over the years I have caught up what I would have learned in Norwich with Bradbury or Motion.
I know I would enjoy Tremain's work, so why have I not got around to it? As with the entire works of various others (Ellis, Lively, Oates, Trapido), I have only dipped in to their books. What is not to be fascinated by about someone who has photos framed for love and lovelessness - see the link above. What started me on all this (I should after all be doing tax returns, not having fun with you), was that Rose Tremain defined herself by 'white boots' worn in the 70's and an English teacher who wore a 'ragged fur coat'. It was a 'me too!' moment. Mine were not white (black suede thigh high, those were the days), but perhaps you too owe a huge debt of gratitude to your eccentric English teachers?
We have been so lucky with our daughter's Year One teacher this year - I would quite happily put all plans for living overseas on hold to allow our little man to benefit from her magic too. Our daughter's imagination has leapt and grown, she is practically inhaling any book she can lay her hands on and is writing her own books including pithy back cover 'blurbs'. Her teacher is truly one of those vocational angels that changes children's lives. Not so much a case of 'those who can do, those who can't teach' as those who could do everything, could move mountains or make black white in fact choose to help children to become the best people they can possibly be. In fact you sense you would rather benefit even now from being taught by her yourself.
Who were your special teachers? I have two that leap to mind - and they are both English teachers. The first (at girls' school, Exeter), was Mrs Gillespie - she was pretty formidable but I loved her to bits, she encouraged me, did not mind me writing on multicoloured paper and there was a rumour she also wrote bestsellers for Mills & Boon on the side. The second was Mr Swarbrick - he was my English teacher and moral tutor for sixth form, nicknamed me Claude (which stuck from day one, along with Twiggy and Miss Vogue - oh god how that makes me smile wistfully now). Mr Swarbrick was everything you could want in a teacher - wore his gown constantly, had a rakish grin like Alfred E Neumann, made us read around the syllabus and take brisk walks around the quad between lessons to refresh our minds. He was the first adult who made me realise that youthful brilliance and energy is something to be cherished and nurtured - (every time I hear Baz Luhrmann's 'Sunscreen' I think of him - 'enjoy the power and beauty of your youth'.) He told us he looked back on his Oxbridge dissertations and wondered how he was capable of that. Until that point I had not realised that intellectual strength could atrophy just like muscles if it was not stretched and used.
I know I would enjoy Tremain's work, so why have I not got around to it? As with the entire works of various others (Ellis, Lively, Oates, Trapido), I have only dipped in to their books. What is not to be fascinated by about someone who has photos framed for love and lovelessness - see the link above. What started me on all this (I should after all be doing tax returns, not having fun with you), was that Rose Tremain defined herself by 'white boots' worn in the 70's and an English teacher who wore a 'ragged fur coat'. It was a 'me too!' moment. Mine were not white (black suede thigh high, those were the days), but perhaps you too owe a huge debt of gratitude to your eccentric English teachers?
We have been so lucky with our daughter's Year One teacher this year - I would quite happily put all plans for living overseas on hold to allow our little man to benefit from her magic too. Our daughter's imagination has leapt and grown, she is practically inhaling any book she can lay her hands on and is writing her own books including pithy back cover 'blurbs'. Her teacher is truly one of those vocational angels that changes children's lives. Not so much a case of 'those who can do, those who can't teach' as those who could do everything, could move mountains or make black white in fact choose to help children to become the best people they can possibly be. In fact you sense you would rather benefit even now from being taught by her yourself.
Who were your special teachers? I have two that leap to mind - and they are both English teachers. The first (at girls' school, Exeter), was Mrs Gillespie - she was pretty formidable but I loved her to bits, she encouraged me, did not mind me writing on multicoloured paper and there was a rumour she also wrote bestsellers for Mills & Boon on the side. The second was Mr Swarbrick - he was my English teacher and moral tutor for sixth form, nicknamed me Claude (which stuck from day one, along with Twiggy and Miss Vogue - oh god how that makes me smile wistfully now). Mr Swarbrick was everything you could want in a teacher - wore his gown constantly, had a rakish grin like Alfred E Neumann, made us read around the syllabus and take brisk walks around the quad between lessons to refresh our minds. He was the first adult who made me realise that youthful brilliance and energy is something to be cherished and nurtured - (every time I hear Baz Luhrmann's 'Sunscreen' I think of him - 'enjoy the power and beauty of your youth'.) He told us he looked back on his Oxbridge dissertations and wondered how he was capable of that. Until that point I had not realised that intellectual strength could atrophy just like muscles if it was not stretched and used.
A couple of years before, when my headmistress called me into her office to warn me that if I took up my art scholarship to (shock horror), a boys' public school for sixth form I would never be Head Girl or get to Cambridge, it turns out she was absolutely right. I enjoyed it far too much, made friends I thought would last a lifetime, fell in and out of love, had my heart broken and learnt about life. May not have got the straight As, but enough to get to Durham, Philosophy and the pilot. Everything happens for a reason. When I recently sold my entire much loved collection of vinyl records, the only one I kept was an original recording of Edith Piaf's 'No Regrets', with the intention to frame it. I think it was Katherine Mansfield who wrote that regret is a useless emotion for a writer.
The boy's school I went to was endowed with a fantastic theatre by Christopher Ondaatje while I was there. One of our final acts was to sit as a group and place our predictions for ourselves and our friends into sealed envelopes in that theatre - who knows whether the school still has these - they have not sent them on to the OBs though that would be interesting. That he was the brother of Michael Ondaatje (English Patient etc), had according to school legend been expelled (as so many of the best are), and still had the magnanimity to come back and bestow this gift on the old school made me smile in recognition even then. There are many routes to education, enlightenment and knowledge - and the best teachers make you realise that you must never, never stop learning. However, school days really are the most vivid if not the best of your life. The new headmaster of my old school is now advertising in increasingly glossy brochures with the tag line: 'Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends. WB Yeats'. Summers are long, everything is new, there are no tax returns to think about. I can honestly say I faced the worst and best at school, and it set me up for life. Amazing to think all this lies ahead for the little ones. All the plaudits and recommendations in the world have put a fabulous writer on my 'to read list', and a pair of white boots and a ragged fur coat have sent me back to school and moved her to the longed for 'wish list'. What's on yours?
