I heard something very, very ugly on the
wireless today. I was going to write about it. I started writing about it. And
then something in me died a little, and I turned away.
I did my work. At the moment, I’m beginning a
new project which has actually been requested by my agent. For the last two years I’ve been doing everything on spec, which means I write and write and write and
the agent says, well, yes, very nice, but we need more changes and a bit of
this and a bit of that and I wrangle away with version after version and then
nothing gets published and I want to go and live in a barrel.
This one is an idea which we cooked up
together and is aimed at an actual gap in the market. It is a heart project and
a commercial project. You may imagine my delight.
Part of the new project involves going back and
looking at old writing. I’m going to use some of the old writing for the new
book, which also delights me as I hate waste. As I was rummaging around in the
archives this morning, I found a conversation I had written down with my
smallest and most adored cousin. It took place two years ago, and I have
absolutely no memory of it.
Thank goodness for the blog, I think, smiling
as I read the words. Thank goodness that I listen to those lunatic voices in
the head which yell at me: write it down, write it down. Thank goodness this
little piece of loveliness has been preserved.
I heard something very ugly and it shocks me
still. I’m putting up something beautiful and sweet and funny and true against
it. Everyone fights ugliness in their own small ways. This is mine.
Here it is, from November 2014:
As always, I slightly forget the absolute
enchantment of the family life with the Beloved Cousin. For enchantment it is.
There has been a lot of cooking, picking the last vegetables from the garden,
walking, admiring the apples still on the apple trees, watching the glorious polo herd have their happy winter off, and playing with the ravishing black
dogs.
The Youngest Cousin has turned into a mine of
wisdom and information. She looks at me very seriously and says things like:
‘You know, being pretty is not important. Being kind is. And being happy.’
Grave
pause.
I
say, with interest: ‘How do you know that? Did someone tell you?’
Slightly
reproachful look.
‘I
do a lot of thinking, you know.’
She
is six years old.
Then,
gathering momentum – ‘Boasting is no good. Nobody likes a boaster.’
‘No,’
I say, chastened. I hope she is not referring to me. I think of all those blog
posts about the wonders of the red mare and all the clever things she does. Has
the Youngest Cousin been secretly reading the internet? And disapproving?
Then she moves swiftly on to information. ‘Do
you know how many dinosaur names I know?’
‘No,
I don’t.’
She
kindly lists them.
‘Do
you know that whales can hear from really far away? A thousand miles
sometimes?’
‘I
did not know that.’
She
puts her head on one side. ‘They talk to each other,’ she says, slightly
wistful.
‘What
do they say?’ I ask.
‘Oh,
I don’t know. Hello I’m lost, I expect.’
‘I
see,’ I say, trying to keep up.
‘Do
you know how the Germans started the Second World War?’
I’m
on slightly surer ground now.
‘They
invaded Poland?’ I hazard, trying to remember what would count as the
definitive starting gun. ‘Or the Sudetenland?’
Dismissive
frown. ‘I don’t know that country, but they were very, very cross with the
English.’
‘Yes,’
I say. ‘I expect that’s what it was.’
Then I get a little break while she watches
an episode of Scooby Doo.
Soon, she is back for more. She fixes me with
her basilisk stare. ‘Do you know?’ she starts. I have begun to see there is a
pattern here. ‘Do you know?’ is her newest and most regular conversational
gambit. I sit up straight and concentrate.
‘Do
you know,’ she says, ‘that King Henry put gunpowder in the holes so that when
the Spain came they blew up?’
I retire
from the field, defeated. I have no memory of the Spain being blown up.
Can she mean the Device Forts?
I know better than to ask.
Is the Youngest Cousin still a mine of beautiful statements?
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