Having nothing worthwhile to write about is a good reason to keep away from the page, though it’s a rule of thumb ignored by many, including most newspaper columnists. Another reason for writing paralysis, and the one that applies to me, is the opposite — a mumble mountain so high that any attempted expedition seems doomed to end in failure. It’s like staring at that forest of six-foot weeds on the allotment you’ve been allocated after years on the waiting list. You know that if you start digging it over at one end, by the time you reach the far boundary, your initial efforts will have vanished beneath another carpet of weeds.
There was a heap of Swiss compost to turn over even before the last, distant entry, and another ton or two was dumped after it, but before we finally left Switzerland on the final day of June 2022. The almost-to-the-day year that’s passed since has yielded a further mass of blogworthy experiences that have only deepened my frustration at not recording them.
Another part of the problem is that I’m annoyingly happy. Cheerfulness is no help at all to a writer. Last weekend I passed through Birthday #66, the official UK retirement barrier. This would tip some into a quagmire of regret. Not me. More like creaking painfully across the marathon finishing line at long last, but already looking forward to the revitalising beer and bath. Instead of a medal and handshake, I’ve been handed a bus pass and the promise of a monthly payment from His Majesty’s Government. It didn’t feel like a major milestone. My unofficial retreat from full-time work began in early 2018 when I left my Swiss corporate job, though a succession of exasperated managers might opine that my retirement began several decades before that.
So far, sixty-six seems a pretty good age to be. I’d recommend it. Free of work commitments, but with a body and mind in reasonable working order, I’m hoping this is the start of a golden decade, that bit of the Venn diagram where all necessary bits overlap — reasonable health, opportunity, enthusiasm, and just enough disposable income.
The landmark has helped focus my mind. Only “helped” because my ADHD personality means I bound like a mountain goat from one minor enthusiasm to another. I can rarely stay focused on anything for very long. That said, it’s time I either got on with my writing project or threw it away for good. I think an RC revival will help.
Through 2018 I wrote around 80,000 words of a memoir about work. The idea came from a chat I’d had over a few beers with a friend in Zürich, when I casually mentioned that I’d had nearly 50 jobs in my time (including casual and temporary positions), covering a wide range of occupations. I’m of that generation whose working life spanned the transition from pen and paper to digital. James seemed fascinated by some of the stories I had, and suggested I write about it. I did. Or started to. I got a long way but couldn’t complete it, partly because I was reluctant to talk about my overall relationship with employment when I was still dabbling in it as a freelance, and partly because I was faced with that problem that most memoirists have: the truth.
Let me tell you a story.
Thirteen years ago this week, in early July 2010, I sat in the Crown pub in Theale — a village in Berkshire about 45 miles west of London — waiting for the Argentina vs Germany World Cup quarter final to start. As expected, the tournament in South Africa had proved too much for the England team, and they’d been sent packing in the previous round. At least with them out of the reckoning, I could enjoy the rest of it without carrying that painful burden of hope.
I was waiting for my old friend Russ Wood to arrive. We had watched most of the big games together in the tournament up to that point, and I knew he’d be along shortly for this one. But where was he? I needed another beer but I didn’t like to get more more than one pint ahead or there would be cranial consequences later. While silently cursing Russ and his uncharacteristic lateness, I stared idly at the big screen as the camera scanned the Cape Town crowd and the rows of expectant spectators. It picked out Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and her equivalents from Argentina and the host nation, South Africa. Someone behind me muttered something about the perks that came with the job.
As the camera narrowed the angle again and continued to sweep slowly along the rows, I suddenly spotted something that shocked me so much, I nearly dropped the empty glass I’d just waved at Warren, the affable landlord. WHAT? I pointed limply at the screen like a toddler, and tried to utter something, but no words emerged. Because there, in the middle of the flag-waving, vuvuzela-droning Cape Town crowd, wearing not just his unmistakeable grin but the unmistakeable yellow jacket he always wore to the pub, was none other than Russ Wood, the bloke I’d been impatiently waiting to see walk through the door of this pub, 10,000 kilometres away from the stadium.
With my fingers still pointing at the screen, I looked round, wildly. “Did you see….?” But the crowd of regulars behind me were chatting animatedly, the way that people do on their first or second drink. It couldn’t have been him, could it?
A couple of days later I was sitting in the same bar when in walked a grinning Russ Wood. He marched over to my table and triumphantly placed the Argentina – Germany football programme on the table in front of me. “Guess where I’ve been?”
***
How I wish that story was true.
The annoying thing is not that it’s untrue but that it so nearly is true. In fact it’s entirely true with the exception of one crucial detail: I didn’t actually see Russ in the crowd. As he gleefully related the story of being at the match I remembered that he’d casually mentioned, some weeks earlier, that he might have to travel to South Africa during the tournament. His company, and he in particular, had written some of the software that powered the electronic scoreboards, and there was a chance that some last minute changes might be required.
With understandable relish, he explained how he’d been summoned to Cape Town at very short notice, and as a perk, been offered a good seat for the game. “I were sitting just along from the VIP box,” he explained in his rich Bradford accent. “Guess who I saw?” He was grinning like a kid. “Angela Merkel! Waved to her like, but she weren’t feeling too friendly.” They’d showed Merkel just before the match started, I told him. He was tickled by the thought. “Well if you saw her you should have seen me,” he said. “I were that close.”
***
I’ve thought about this a lot in the intervening years, not least because my friend Russ died in 2015 at far too young an age. But it’s also made me dwell on the wafer-thin distance between that which is true and that which is so very nearly true — and the massive difference it makes to the potency of a narrative.
Writing about real people and real events is problematic. I came up against this challenge time and again while writing the work memoir, and it was part of the reason I ground to a halt. But in thinking about it some more, the best way to negotiate these obstacles might be to follow the example of the great Vietnam memoirist, Tim O’Brien. In the introduction to his masterpiece, The Things They Carried he concedes the story is ‘lightly fictionalised’. In war, he said, ‘Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.’ And that’s what I think of most memoirs. He was simply being more honest about it than most.
I’ll give it another go.
