Category: Reading

Furiously forty and more settled than ever

I don’t want to work my way up the ladder. I don’t want to be a millionaire. I don’t want to be famous or stay looking twenty forever.

When I wrote this, I was sitting in bed at ten to five in the evening. The light was fading to dirty rust colours outside and I had a cat snoring next to me. It was a Friday, I was considering a glass of wine and whether it would embolden me to hit go on the payment for a large amount of pounds worth of books that were in my online basket. MOTH was playing guitar in the room next door. I had a hot water bottle. Apart from the intense pain in my legs (a by-product of cancer treatment) it was quite a lovely moment. I had been given some money as a Christmas present, I could by the books…

After having lost it for some time (it happens occasionally), I have recently regained my reading mojo. I have found that deleting any social media apps on the phone adds greatly to the recovery. It helps that I have also hit upon a seam of fantastic authors and titles and am feeling like a kid in a sweet shop. All these new discoveries seem to have come into my life at a time I feel I am finally settling into ‘me’ and they speak to me about things I find myself attuning to. I turned forty recently and I wonder if that has something to do with it. 

With average life-spans in general getting longer, forty really shouldn’t be quite the epic milestone it was once viewed to be. Having reached it, I certainly don’t see it as anything but, quite young still, really. But whether it’s psychological, societal or actually physiological, I do feel a change – and it’s a good one. 

I give both less and also more of a damn about things. These sentiments may have been propelled by going through cancer twice by this age. Priorities become much more obvious when you have to have a chat with Mr Death especially when he turns up uninvited more than once! I have at one and the same time become someone who can throw off the trivial more easily and yet break harder and further at the things that really matter. I have a much more focused view of what is important: my loved ones, health, the natural world; and a rather refreshing laissez fair attitude towards a lot of other things: been walking around with mascara smudged under my eyes – oh well, I am but human. 

I have much more peace about who I am. Instead of agonising over my flaws, physical, mental or emotional, I am kinder and try to understand and comfort myself. But I also have much more anger – righteous anger at that. When I see what we are doing to the planet and the way we are fracturing as a species and the cruelty we impose on each other and the world, I can barely contain the pain of it.

I have always envied people who have known ‘what they want to do with their lives.’ It is a horrible imperative we have thrust on us at an early age to pin down and work towards. I have never known and I’m pretty sure I still couldn’t articulate exactly. But, I am closer to feeling what I am about and it is my intention to follow such inklings and enjoy the things that feel like me and see where they lead.

I don’t want to work my way up the ladder. I don’t want to be a millionaire. I don’t want to be famous or stay looking twenty forever. I want the joys of what’s really important; small life, family, love, nature, laughter, quiet. If you see me with mud on my face and bits of garden in my hair, scribbling in a notebook with a pocket full of wonders like conkers, interesting stones and a sundried stag-beetle, then know that I am happy. And if there’s a glass of wine in it too, there may well be a fair few new books as well. 

If you’re interested in books on life and nature, this is my basket of temptations. (There are more, but even I had to stop somewhere.) You may enjoy them too:

‘Earthed’ Rebecca Schiller

‘Light Rains Sometimes Fall’ Lev Parikian

‘Wintering’ Katherine May

‘The Woodcock’ Richard Smyth

‘The Eternal Season’ Stephen Rutt

‘Rhapsody in Green; A Writer, an Obsession, a Laughably Small Excuse for a Vegetable Garden’ Charlotte Mendelson

‘On Gallows Down’ Nicola Chester

P.S. I had a glass of wine.

P.P.S. There may be books on the way…

Book review: ‘Unreliable Memoirs,’ Clive James

Clive James is a man I knew very little of when I set about reading his book, ‘Unreliable Memoirs.’ I had vague memories of him hosting a late-night TV chat show but that was about  the extent of my knowledge of the man.

The blurb on the back looked promising: espousing much laughter to be had and so I started with a positive feeling. The forward was a little off-putting, the writer of which seemed to be so infatuated with James that you felt awkward, as if intruding on a zealous intimacy for which you were not a part of and the term, over-egging it, would certainly not seem strong enough. 

The concept of the book, as far as I understand, was that it was a spur-of-the-moment recollection of his childhood, intended to imbue a feeling of the place and time of his early years. He seems to imply that it was not, perhaps, even intended for publication, and yet I don’t believe this. However, after reading it I can’t understand why anyone would want this documentation public about themselves, or even why anyone would want to read it. It does not leave the reader with a pleasant perception of the author.

In its essence, the account could be summed up by saying that it was a list of rather unpleasant thoughts, deeds and actions undertaken by the young James for which he seemed to have no remorse, either then or now. The phrase, ‘psychopathic tendencies’ cropped up in our book club discussion on more than one occasion.

A large portion of the storytelling seemed to involved, shall we say politely, an awful lot of intimate self, and shared with his peers, gratification. There was a lot of it. Growing up as one of four girls, I wondered if this was perhaps a male tendency, ‘normal’ in the developing years of boys: I was assured by a male member of the book club that this was not the case.

Destructive behaviour and self-aggrandisement was the other over-arching theme of the book and it was his poor mother who seemed to take the brunt of it. His father died when he was young and the only other male role-models in his life, also passed away in his early years. Whether this had an impact on his behaviour (and you can only imagine that it did), James did not actually address in his memoire. He grew up, just him and his mother at home, which you would think would have made him close to and considerate of the woman who did everything she could for him. But no. He flagrantly broke, destroyed, rebelled, wilfully deceived and derided his way through life.

The book followed James through his early years to the moment he left for England as a young adult. Throughout this time he was part of various clubs and groups, jobs and military service. In all, he portrayed himself as the great storyteller, admitting to the reader that much of what he told was outright lies to bolster his popularity. It is because of this, I can’t help but wonder, whether this book itself is just another of his tall-tales, fabricated to cover insecurities or boost his self-esteem: it is called Unreliable Memoirs after all.

I’m sorry to say that overall, the book left me very disappointed and somewhat ill-at-ease. I wasn’t sure whether we were reading about a real person at all and if so, was it one who was so desperately hurt and unsure of themselves they created a whole hideous persona to cover their deep insecurities, or was it someone who genuinely needed/needs some mental health help.

It was a shame, because I was under the impression that Clive James was a skilful man with words and there were fleeting and rare moments in this book where this could be glimpsed. But if you took those far-too-few beautiful and exciting descriptions and put them all together, they would possibly have made three pages.

I asked all the members of the book club, out of five stars, what they would give Unreliable Memoirs, each gave it two.

‘Unreliable Memoirs,’ by Clive James: two out of five stars. Sadly, not recommended.