ON A POSITIVE NOTE

Okay, let's have some HOPE in this blog. I gave up a reasonably paid staff-salaried BBC job yonks ago to do something I had always wanted to do, and started doing at the age of 5 (YES FIVE YEARS OLD I WROTE AND DIRECTED AND PERFORMED, WITH MY THEN TWO SISTERS, MY FIRST PLAY --- THANK GOD VIDEO CAMERAS HAD NOT BEEN INVENTED) - so, why do I remember I was 5? Cos I asked Mum, after the play, to give me a boy for my next cast. Mum was "With Child". We were washing clothes at the time and pulling them through the two rollers that squashed out the water. Mum was beside the sink, facing the window, and I was standing in the middle of the room. One thing a writer has, which is often more of a curse than a blessing, is a perfect visual imagination. Also, sometimes, you can recall whole conversations. Back to the pregnancy and the wording: "With Child". Remember, Dad was a doctor, Mum was a nurse. Both had been through the Second World War and seen things that were so horrible they never let on until I was in my mid-twenties. So, why do I use that phrase? Well, when my eldest sister was preggie with first baby the rector said: "Congratulations on being pregnant." My Mum and Dad were FURIOUS. "PREGNANT, he said." The word was taboo. Me, so what, I thought. At least she's married! Back to my original point. Writers should reflect the world in which they live. The older I get the more I realise that absolutely nothing has changed since the days of Dostoyevsky and Kafka. So -- what about I ghost a great new novel by David Beckham?