Inhumanity – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I hope for a world where the injustice and ill-founded education do not spawn the breeding grounds for religious dogma or political fundamentalism – where the arrogance, racism and greed, that are the basis behind fascism, are blown away on a tidal wave of tolerance and brotherhood.

21.9.01

 

My dad was seventeen when he joined up to go and fight in the war. He became a dispatch rider in Sicily and Italy.

He took a knife off a dead German soldier. That knife was passed on to me. It has my dad’s initials and the date carved into the handle. I wonder what it felt like to take that off a dead person?

18.9.01

 

Some people, mainly my wife Liz, say I am very opinionated. I don’t have an opinion on that.

18.9.01

 

The men who flew those planes into those buildings were human beings. They planned to inflict pain and suffering on others. They wanted to kill. They believed they were justified.

They were inhuman.

That is true, but they started as sweet ordinary human beings but got all twisted up with hatred along the way. The world is a harsh mistress and the fuck-ups are many. That doesn’t necessarily mean that humans are intrinsically bad. Or does it?

18.9.01

Prognosis – Extract from Farther from the Sun.

Posted on by Opher

I don’t mind being considered naïve and innocent. I don’t mind being considered idealistic and over-ambitious. As human beings increase in numbers to swamp the planet their effluent and pollution threaten the entire biosphere; as hundreds of species become extinct each day; as areas of natural habitat are destroyed daily; as millions of human beings starve; as wars and conflict rage out of control and threaten the destruction of the entire planet; as religions and nations spawn terrorists and war – surely someone has to offer a more sane answer?

Those smug rich bastards who run things, who look down their nose at do-gooders and environmental scum like me, who think that their way of life – snouts in the trough – has no end and that the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ are part of the natural way of the world, are surely not going to have the last say?

The human race is not going to be guided by such an arrogant, supercilious, ignorant, blind set of intelligent morons forever?

Is it?

That way is death.

21.9.01

 

We went to see the specialist at the hospital, just me and my dad. It was the meeting where the consultant gave us the results and told us what he was going to do about it. It was felt that dad had to have someone with him. I was that someone.

Dad had been in for the tests. They’d scanned and prodded, taken samples. Now was the day of reckoning.

Dad drove us to the hospital in his new car, his pride and joy – a blue Hillman Hunter.

I didn’t know it at the time but it was the last time that he drove me anywhere.

He was just the same as ever – driving aggressively. At one time a car pulled out to cross the road in front of us. Dad didn’t brake; he swerved around behind it and continued on as if nothing had happened. That was his way. I think it was the dispatch rider coming through.

The specialist was sombre. They’d diagnosed liver cancer. The swelling and tenderness was dad’s swollen liver. It was too advanced to treat. He was prescribing palliative treatment.

I took a minute to take that in.

They were going to let him die. How was that possible? He was my dad. How could he die? There had to be something that could be done.

There wasn’t.

Life doesn’t make much sense to me.

Death rarely seems fair.

We were both a bit stunned as we came out of that office. I don’t know if it had sunk in with dad. He chose to ignore the prognosis. He clung to the belief that they were treating it with pills. Pills could put anything right. The fact of death hovering there was not up for discussion.

Dad did not do death.

15.8.01

Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to a High School class.

Posted on by Opher

Matt sent this through. I thought it was brilliant and had to share it.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite writers!

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond – and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six-line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

The car – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Because there is no purpose to life does that preclude all purpose? Can we not stand back from it and invent our own purpose? Take control and script it ourselves?

We could elect a director! We don’t need to rely on god, ‘the director that isn’t there’ to determine our fate. We can build better tomorrows out of sad todays.

29.10.01

 

Sometimes, in a road movie, your car can take the starring role.

We didn’t have a car – couldn’t afford one, not with three kids. So we borrowed one.

It was Liz’s mum’s black automatic Morris Oxford – a bland and plodding, run-of-the-mill car.

We set off for the Lake District. We were going to camp, do a bit of walking and visit friends. A week away. Yipeee!

We arrived at the lakes and found a field to camp in. We set up the tent in the drizzle. It was beautiful. We had found a field overlooking Lake Ennerdale – the green rolling hills with rocky outcrops around the tranquil waters of the lake – nobody in sight. Apart from the rain, it seemed idyllic. We could have been in the middle of nowhere if it wasn’t for the dry stone walls and the odd curl of smoke from a farmhouse in the distance we could be all on our own.

The drizzle was a nuisance but we had a perfect spot up on one of the hills. The whole lake was spread out below us with the hills as a backdrop. Gorgeous!

The kids were alright, but the tent was a little cramped. It wasn’t really designed for five. But this was an adventure. It was a bit weird in the tent, particularly when you were trying to get to sleep because the ground sloped, but what the hell. We’d sleep with our heads facing up the hill.

We woke up for our first day and it was still raining. It looked as if the rain was set in for the day but we were not going to allow that to deflate our spirits and decided on a walk. No rain was going to spoil our holiday. We set off around the lake, grumbling kids in tow. It was quite a long walk and we were pretty wet and exhausted by the time we got back.

We crammed in the tent and tried to dry ourselves off. By now the drizzle had turned to hard rain and the little tent was leaking. Every time someone brushed against the canvas, water came through, and it wasn’t possible to keep the kids from brushing against the walls. The tent was much too small.

We had something to eat as the rain teemed down. We tried heating coffee on the primus stove. We tried keeping the kids entertained. It rained harder. Everything was getting damp. The kids were bored.

After a couple more hours we decided to modify our itinerary. Perhaps it was best to go and visit friends first? The weather might clear up later in the week.

Once thought of, the idea rapidly became more and more appealing. Stuck here in this tent we were becoming wetter and more miserable by the minute. Adventure was fast giving way to misery.

It was decided.

We started packing up. Everything in the tent was put in boxes. I went to load them into the car.

There was no car.

I stood and stared at the place the car had been. It wasn’t there.

It had to be there. Nobody could have driven it off without us hearing. I was sure it was there when we got back from our walk.

I stood in the rain clutching a box of cooking utensils and stared at the space where the car had been.

I convinced myself I had left it in the lane. It wasn’t there either.

Bewildered and with a deep gnawing panic, I went back to the tent and asked Liz to help. She came out and looked around but agreed that there was no car.

I looked down the hill to the lake and there in the distance, I could just make out a tiny model car up against a dry stone wall that separated the field from the lakeshore.

‘SHIIT!!’

‘SHHHHIIIIIIIITTTT!!!’ I shrieked as I began to gallop down the hill and career madly in the direction of the tiny model car. This could not be happening. That minute thing in the distance could not be the car – not Liz’s Mum’s car.

The hill was steep and my galloping run soon became an out of control series of leaps.

‘SHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTT!!!!’ I was screaming, my mind shrieking.

I should have broken my neck but somehow I stayed on my feet and didn’t crash over on the wet grass or on to the rocks.

The nearer I got to the vehicle the more certain it was that it was the car – our car, Liz’s mum’s car. No matter how much I willed it not to be, it insisted on being.

I arrived and stared at it. Surely it was not.

It was.

At the bottom of the hill, the ground levelled off and became a series of rocky outcrops. The car was up on top of these rocky outcrops. All four wheels were off the ground. It had come to a stop on top of a pile of big boulders, right up against the dry stone wall.

I came to a dead halt, hands up in the air, mouth open – my mind frozen.

I was stricken.  I stared at it in disbelief. This could not be happening. I slowly walked around it, inspecting it from all sides. I noticed that the headlights were actually touching the stone wall but hey were not broken. I opened the door and looked in. You could see the floor all dented up where the rocks had smashed it up but apart from that, it looked OK. The bodywork was unmarked. The car looked fine – but it was up on the rocks with all four wheels in the air. How was this possible?

I checked the hand brake. It was on. It just could not have been on quite enough. It was an automatic. I hadn’t put it in gear. Somehow it had rolled.

I did not know what to do.

We had wrecked Liz’s mum’s car.

Liz and the kids caught up with me. Together, equally aghast, we surveyed the car. It was up on the rocks, wrecked, but, yet, strangely, it looked perfectly alright. What could we do?

‘I’ll get the farmer to bring a tractor,’ I ventured.

Liz nodded.

I ran up the hill and along the lane to the farm.

The farmer must have seen the panic I was in. He came straight away and thoughtfully surveyed the car. He went and got his powerful tractor and chains. He prepared to drag the car straight off the rocks. I had to prevail on him to first use some planks and jack it up so that we could get it off the rocks without ripping it to bits.

He looked at me as if I was an idiot. The idea of the car being salvageable was beyond belief. It had crashed down the hill and on to the mass of rocks. How was it going to be alright? But he shook his head and went along with us.

Gradually, amazingly, we coaxed it off the rocks without further damage and towed it up the hill.

As soon as we got to the top I crawled underneath to have a look. The floor was all staved in and one of the steering arms was bent, the sump had taken a big bang that had knocked the engine up six inches to put a dent in the bonnet but it did not appear to be broken. I lifted the bonnet and had a look but I couldn’t see any other damage. I walked all around the car and could not find a single dent or scratch. It was miraculous.

I did not dare to hope that it might be alright.

With a great deal of trepidation, I put the key in the lock and started it up. It fired first time, gave a shrill whine and then settled into its normal idling. I waited for it to blow up. It sounded sweet. I put it in gear and inched it forward. It seemed fine. Even the bent steering arm didn’t appear to affect it. I drove down the lane and back. The lights worked. The steering worked. Nothing dropped off. There were no other strange noises. The only thing I could detect, apart from the floor being dented up, was that the horn did not work.

We thanked the farmer profusely, forgot to tip him for his trouble, we were in such a state, piled into the car and drove to a garage. They beat the floor down with wooden mallets, rewired the horn and replaced the bent steering arm.

The car looked, apart from a small dent on the bonnet, as good as when we had started out. It worked fine.

We could not believe it but were so shaken up by the experience that we curtailed the holiday.

We drove home, rather gingerly, and delivered it back to Liz’s mum.

I still cannot believe how that could possibly have happened.

29.10.01

 

A decision can kill. Some decisions kill a million or two. I wonder how much thought goes into that – killing a million or two? And who the beneficiaries of such decisions really are?

Published! – Extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Life is not a novel but a road movie. There is no script. We make it up as we go. No director. The audience is ourselves. The galaxy swirls. We curtsy and bow. We make up rules and try to live by them. This road movie is heading off into new dimensions.

29.10.01

 

My fiction writing is going crap. I am not getting published. I need to evaluate my style. I need to re-evaluate what I am doing.

I have a thousand handouts from my Rock course. It is obvious. I need a break from fiction to do something different. The obvious thing is to bring my Rock Music notes together into one huge definitive history of Rock. There are hundreds of histories out there but they are all crap. There needs to be a definitive version. I have the bones of it!

I set to work. It is easy. All the graft has been done. I trace the history and evolution through from 1900 to 1984, Country Blues and Irish Jigs to Punk and Toasting. I include little pen pictures of all the major exponents, seminal influences, precursors, obscure stuff, political and social issues. I illustrate it with flow diagrams. Finally, it is complete. I have the whole thing complete in 1500 pages making up four volumes. I am happy. It does the job and allows me the room to develop my own pet ideas, vent my spleen and do justice to unsung heroes like Roy Harper and Captain Beefheart. I even bring in my Beat poetry and literature. It’s all there. I call it ‘Rock Strata’.

I send it off.

A Literary Agent writes back – ‘This is good – I have someone interested! Come up to London to meet him.’

I rush up to London and we meet. The publisher is impressed. He wants to go ahead. He will be in touch.

29.10.01

He gets in touch. Yeah. It is brilliant. He will publish.

There is only one snag. It is too long. It is not viable as a publishing project. The finances, blah, blah, blah. Costs. Return. Expense. No profit. Blah, blah, blah. I really know my stuff.

In short, it needs to be cut down. He suggests 120 pages is about right. The publisher really loves the flow diagrams. Could I base it around that?

I am confused. We are obviously talking about a different book here. Do I want to do that?

I decide I do.

The summer holidays are on the horizon. I lock myself away, after all, I am going to be published. I have to devote myself to my art. Liz has to look after the kids and manage the house. She agrees.

I work feverishly to get it all down to 150 pages based entirely around the flow diagrams. I call this one ‘Rock Streams’. It is very different from the first one but I am satisfied with it. I send it off.

He is delighted. 150 pages is not ideal but it will do. He thinks that the flow diagrams are great and the writing is excellent. I need to go down to Devon to finalise, sign and discuss details.

I set off. On the way an old nutter pulls out in front of me from a side road and runs me off the road. I career up on to the pavement at 60 MPH and nearly smash through a wall. He doesn’t even stop. I give chase. The fucker nearly killed me! I catch him up and he pulls over. We have an animated discussion until my heart rate slows a little.

I arrive a bit stressed out and exhausted. My newfound editor shows me around. We talk contract and negotiate the deal. I sign. I drive back four hundred miles home. The deal’s not much –  £300 advance and 9% of all copies over the first 1000. It is not going to make me a millionaire. It is not even going to give me a return on the time put in. I might claw back maybe 10p per hour. But that is not the point.

I am going to be published.

November trundles into December and no cheque arrives. We have spent the advance that hasn’t yet arrived on the kids’ Christmas presents. We are desperate for the cash. I ring, I write. ‘Yes it’s in the post should be there in the next day or so.’

Christmas comes and New Year and no cheque.

Eventually, I get a sheepish letter. ‘Sorry. Project cancelled. Board reject idea. First time this has ever happened.’

I chuck the book in the bottom drawer and never look at it again.

29.10.01

 

Some are good decisions.

29.10.01

 

I have a good script for life. I have an idea that might work. It doesn’t hang around supernatural creatures that poke around with human destiny. It does involve freedom and difference. It does work through politics. It has some good outcomes to work towards. It is based around fairness and justice. It’s a very human plot that does not need tarting up with dogma and superstition. It is based on intelligence. It does revolve around empathy, respect, responsibility, tolerance and the right to be crazy and get pissed. There are no wars and cruelty in this plot. There’s plenty of love and argument and plenty of things to make and improve.

I like it lots.

Nobody goes hungry in my plot. Nobody is tortured. No animals become extinct. It’s very positive.

29.10.01

 

Brush with death – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Life is extravagantly coloured by death. Death gives it life. Life is at its brightest when we flirt with brother death.

With very little money and stranded on the L.A to San Francisco coast road, we hitched a ride. Our thumbs were quick to get a response or could that have had anything to do with Liz’s young frame? Anyway this black army lieutenant pulled up and picked us up in his huge Cadillac. He then picked up this other pretty young thing who was hitching further along the road. It was the perfect lift. We cruised in the back, luxuriously lolling into the plush upholstery, and she cruised in the front smiling and talking to the dude.

The roof was down. It was summer, hot with blue skies. The sea lapped and sparkled below us. The wind pulled at our hair and whipped it out trailing behind us.

The coast road was a long and windy two laner. It hugged the shoreline. On our left, a sheer cliff rose up to the heights of the Sam Madres. On our right, a sheer cliff fell away to the rocks of the shore hundreds of feet below. Between the drop and us was a six-foot-wide strip of sand and a red and white crash barrier.

The lieutenant was obviously quite keen on the young lady. She was obviously equally attracted to him. They smiled at each other and looked into each other’s eyes – which was a little worrying as we were driving at speed along a difficult stretch of road. We had a two hundred mile journey ahead of us to L.A. and he seemed to want to get there quickly. They talked about going to a drive-in movie. He negotiated some gas fare with us to finance their movie-going. They were undoubtedly both very keen moviegoers.

We roared along the road at a hundred plus. It was exhilarating going round the bends as the cliff and sea slid past. We did some bends on the wrong side of the road. He seemed a good driver, well in control, even if he was showing off a lot.

Then the inevitable happened. We negotiated a curve and there in front of us was a big truck overtaking another monster truck – all polished chrome grills and headlights. The trucks were right alongside each other and they took up all of the road. There was no road left for us. We were hurtling towards them and they were hurtling towards us far too close to us for either of us to stop. It was apparent that we were going to go straight into the front of one or the other of the trucks. It looked like a straight choice as to which one we’d hit. Of course, we could try and go between them and hit both.

As cool as William Burroughs, the lieutenant turned the wheel and pulled the car over on to the strip of land at the side. We didn’t slow at all. The sand was much more uneven than it looked and we bucked and bounced our way along, being thrown hither and thither.

The two trucks roared towards us horns blazing. Ahead, on the sandy strip, a big signpost loomed. Right to our side, the cliff fell away to the distant sea. Somehow we stayed on course. We bounced and crashed along. The car kept going airborne and crashing back to land, throwing us about, bouncing out of our seats. A huge cloud of dust obliterated the road behind us. Still, our lieutenant didn’t touch the brakes. The trucks careered past and their horns changed in pitch with the Doppler effect. The sign was almost upon us. We bounced up out of our seats and thudded back down with bone-rattling intensity eyes fixed on the signpost.

At the last minute, the lieutenant eased the wheel over to take us back on to the road. The wheels on the offside gripped the tarmac and instantly threw the car into a spin. Instead of a cloud of dust, we were now throwing out a cloud of smoke as we whirled around completely out of control, at close to a hundred miles an hour. He fought with the wheel as we spun and the car threatened to roll, as we clung on to whatever we could. Then all the wheels gripped and we shot forward. Except we were not now facing down the road, we were facing directly towards the crash barrier and the sheer drop to the sea.

We hit the sand. The nose ploughed into a sand dune and the car stopped dead. The rear of the car went up in the air until we were vertical, threatening to pitch us out over the barrier, and for a moment we were poised looking out over space to the rocks that seemed a million miles below. Time stood still. We teetered. The car fell back with a thud. We sat there stunned as the dust storm of our trip along the sand strip and the smoke of our spin along the tarmac enveloped us. The engine stalled and we sat in the silence as the hot engine ticked.

Somehow, we had lost enough momentum not to go end over end. Somehow, we hadn’t been catapulted out of the car. Somehow, we had not rolled over. We had been lucky enough to hit a flattish stretch of sand. We had been lucky enough to hit the only big sand dune we could see along this stretch of the sandy strip.

The trucks had roared off into the distance and disappeared around the bend. They hadn’t stopped to come back and see if we were still alive. The dust settled. The smoke drifted into the distance. Silence engulfed us. We sat in that silence completely stunned – amazed that we were alive.

The lieutenant looked around at us and grinned. Then we all climbed gingerly out of the car, not quite believing that we were still here, still breathing, not crushed, torn or splattered. The day was the same. Same sun. Same sky. Same sea. We were the same. Even the car was the same. Well the bumper was dented by a big rock buried in the dune but the engine started up first time and we helped push it out of the sand. The road was deserted. We examined the car. The bodywork had a few minor scratches and dents. Nothing much. We all laughed, euphoric with relief.

We got back in and drove off

26.10.01

 

Vive le Difference!

29.10.01

 

Life is not a novel but a road movie. There is no script. We make it up as we go. No director. The audience is ourselves. The galaxy swirls. We curtsy and bow. We make up rules and try to live by them. This road movie is heading off into new dimensions.

29.10.01

Roy Harper and my Dad – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I’m lying on my bed in my tiny bedroom listening to Roy Harper’s second album. I’m eighteen and full of angst and rebellion. My dad’s pottering about outside my window, scraping paint off the frame and repainting the window. Roy is singing ‘Circle’ and I’m listening intently to the lyrics:

“I had to pass all of my exams

The old man said I had to be the best one.

I had to do this and I had to do that

They really kept me under constant pressure.

And why aren’t you the captain of the cricket team?

Why aren’t you the genius of the class?

It’s about time you pulled your socks up me boy

Otherwise you’ll get a rude awakening….’

It was all very appropriate for someone taking A Levels and trying to break away and discover some identity and individuality.

It didn’t occur to me that my dad would actually be listening to the lyrics as well, but later he came and talked to me. He had listened to the words and taken them all in. I think they had hurt him. He seemed genuinely concerned that I was identifying with all this social rebellion and was feeling aggrieved at the way I was being treated. Did I feel that they had pushed me? Were they making undue pressure on me?

I reassured him that they hadn’t. Indeed quite the opposite, I would most probably have benefited from a lot more pressure from them. He seemed reassured. But I hadn’t been completely honest; I still felt the weight of expectation that was coming from my parents. They were desperate for me to excel and make something of my life. That was what I reacting to. My mum in particular saw me as a budding little genius. I was destined for big things.

These things were largely unspoken but I felt the pressure. In hindsight I can see that they gave me a remarkable amount of freedom and there was very little stress – but that was not what I was feeling at the time.

We did not have many heart-to-hearts, my dad and I. He was a quiet man who kept himself very private. It might equally have been my fault though. I don’t think I was in too receptive a mood for the best part of thirty years – by then it was really too late. I had my own life and it was very different to his. I had different ideas on what I wanted to do with my time. I have different expectations, values and ideas. He had to stand back and let me go my own way. It must have been very difficult. I’m finding it impossible to do the same. Watching your children making, what you consider to be, mistakes, is not easy.

5.9.01

Themes that pervade my Sci-Fi novels.

Posted on by Opher

Themes that pervade my Sci-Fi novels.

  Conexion 

All my writing has purpose. I like to base my work on sound science, social and environmental reality, human psychology and philosophy.

I am intrigued by the concept of infinity, by quantum theory, string theory, black holes and quasars.

As a biologist, I studied genetics and have kept up with the developments in genetic engineering. I am intrigued with the idea of how this could impact on human development and that of all other living creatures and plants. We now have the power to change, improve or create both ourselves and the plants and animals we share this planet with. We can create different human beings, different species and a different world.

I studied psychology as part of my degree and found this incredibly useful in education. I also apply it to my writing. It is useful to build characters around psychological traits and personality types.

Living through the twentieth century has provided me with a great perspective on social change. I doubt any other century has seen such a degree of transformation. Science propelled a social revolution that changed the world. That is a useful element to draw into my writing. What changes are going to shape our progress? What will a future world look like?

As a biologist I have been greatly distressed by the impact mankind has been having on the environment. Extinction rates have soared as humans destroy habitat and pollute ecosystems. Our sheer numbers are swamping nature. Once the world was considered infinite and nature something to be exploited without thought. We now realize this is not the case. Even our primitive hunter/gatherer ancestors greatly impacted on the environment. Now we have the capacity to destroy it to a far greater extent. If our numbers and activities are not regulated we may well ruin the very life-support system that sustains us. It is a theme that occurs in most of my work.

What is the purpose of life? It is a question most of us ask at some point and it is one that has a basis in my writing. Whether it be spirituality or creativity, accruing material wealth or power, or seeking truth, wisdom, happiness or fulfilment, it is one of the factors that drive human beings. It is a theme worth developing. It brings people into conflict.

Whether setting the action in the future, in a different dimension or an alien world, these are themes that I tend to enjoy exploring.

You kids got it right – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

We were walking down the street in downtown New York when this guy comes across to us. He was really old, certainly over forty, and a very smart businessman.

“I just wanted to say to you kids that I think you got it right.”

He shook me by the hand. Got what right, I wondered?

“I’ve worked for twenty years and I grind my ass into the ground. I’ve got a beautiful house, a wife and two lovely children but I never see them.”

He shook his head. “Some American dream, huh? I get up in the dark, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, drive to work in my flash car and work my butt off all day. I drive home in the dark and eat, watch a bit of telly and go to bed. I tell you I never see the house. I hardly see my wife and kids. I don’t do anything with my life other than work and earn money to spend on things I never see or use.”

“Something wrong, huh?” He shook his head.

“You kids got it right. At least you have fun, see something of the world. You do things. You’re not obsessed with money and status. I envy you. I wish I was young right now. I’d do it different!”

He shook my hand again and was gone.

21.9.01

 

You have the right to scream?

15.9.01

Writing

Posted on by Opher

Writing.

 

I have always enjoyed reading, right from an early age, and writing seemed a natural progression.

In Primary school, Friday afternoon was my favourite time. We were given the whole afternoon to write ‘a composition’. Back then we wrote with a pen and ink. You dipped your nib in an inkwell. My index finger and thumb were always stained with ink. I was not the tidiest boy. My pages were a mass of blots and smudges. But I wrote reams. It flowed out of me. I struggled to keep up.

It has been that way ever since.

I loved it. I allowed my imagination to run down whatever path it chose. I wrote about anything that came into my head – mostly nature; I was besotted with nature.

I think my love of Sci-fi was nurtured by the old comics we used to read – Adventure and Wizard. They always had a Sci-fi story or two which I greatly enjoyed.

As I grew into a teenager I moved on to Sci-fi novels. John Wyndham was my favourite.

I started writing novels when I was in college.

I had no desire for wealth or fame. I merely had a headful of ideas and enjoyed writing. The ideas came and I wrote them down. It was a natural progression. At college, my friends and I would stay up all night gabbing about life, death and the universe. My mind was lit up. So I wrote it all down. Some were Sci-fi, some philosophy, some nature and some spiritual. It was incoherent, adolescent but fun.

I suppose back then I had a vague notion of living the poor writer’s life, eking a living in some garret and devoting myself to my art. I was transfixed by writers like Kerouac, Henry Miller, Robert Sheckley and Isaac Asimov. They inspired me to write.

Life intruded.

But the writing still continued. After the kids were asleep and the wife had gone to bed I would be at my typewriter tapping away into the early morning – completely absorbed – just me and a stream of ideas. It took me over.

I accumulated great wadges of novels, bored friends, drove the wife to distraction, and yet still carved out a career in education.

But I always told myself that, when I retired, I would rewrite all my scribblings, knock them into shape, and get them published.

What I now have is the result of fifty-years work.