I’ll never forget ….. whot’sisname?

I’ll never forget ….. whot’sisname? (…. or what did either Narcissus or Dostoyevsky ever do for me??!) along with God’s Last Burlesque, represents my attempts to put life in focus (my own life was the one I was best placed to use but it could have been anyone that I had known … if, that is, I had known someone – anyone – interesting!!).

Fortunately, it is not about me at all. Rather they contain discrete remembrances of the men (and they were largely men, as the front-line role of most women was, sadly, a bit limited in those days and places). And I try to reference what was achieved, or occurred, as a result of these comings together.

I still find it a tad strange that this ‘little lad from the coal fields can recall being present at actual happenings in the US of A, Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa; Mauritius, even. How, I ask myself, was it possible that I could recall memories of the SAS, the CIA, private jets, senior politicians, generals, big business and billion-dollar contracts (at a time when a billion was a lot)?

Posing somewhat – as ever – I have imagined myself, rather fittingly in my view, atop the dunes at Holkham (“Quis est iste qui venit” or “Whistle and I will come to you”: MR James):  from whence I propose to contemplate life (my life) and the universe (my universe) against the seductive background of the call of the gulls coupled with the strident voices of the sea. All this in the context of that most powerful (and vulnerable) of things; memories?

But memory is a fragile fabric and that is why I am cuddling, both, my sewing kit (lest the material needs repair) and my embroidery box also (lest the colours of my tale need renewal or the glory of refurbishment’ ) either, or both, by dint of hindsight.

As always, when I am in the mood to brood, or to put it more kindly, think about things; I am reminded of two of my, few, literary experiences;  “how can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”) whilst according to Ovid: “Narcissus’s mother was told by the blind seer Tiresias that he would have a long life, provided he never recognized himself”.

So then, as I sit here gazing at my navel, I ask in my best Pythonesque mode, what did either Narcissus or Dostoyevsky ever do for me?

I think it is important to set a perspective; i.e. when I write about a person and or their importance, I do not suggest that the importance that I attach to that person in any way reflects upon my importance to them. Equally, I do not have the temerity to propose that anything of merit that I may have earned, or any supposed quality that I might be trying (mostly in vain, ) to attribute to myself, actually matters to anyone else.

Rather t’is t’other way around; 180 degrees to be exact. I am writing about folks based on their particular and narrow importance to my life and the way I have lived. In most cases, the individual would (a) not know and (b) not, anyroadup, give a tinker’s cuss what I think!

It is true also that I have been blessed to have met, or otherwise come across, many wonderful people and or places that, for various reasons, mainly inadequacies on my part, probably had no lasting impact on me or my tale and thus are not mentioned herein. That said,  I have met huge numbers of clever, brilliant and wonderful folk – some being all of that but still having deep flaws and fissures in their being(s). Thus it is that, in this, and for my own reasons, I am writing about people – men and women and places and situations (the latter being embroidered tales) – who had a great influence on me and my journey. Nor, by the way, do I intend to suggest or in any way imply that of, or in myself, I am “owt speshul” Capeesh?

As I begin this very personal journey, I am in mind also of one of Zizek’s central arguments that, for me, began as a part of my rather belated MA and that came to greatly influence my thinking thereafter; “it is enjoyment that holds a community together”, going on to refer to this shared enjoyment as ‘the thing’ which is more than a collection of traditions but that it is rather the features of “the Thing” that makes us what we are”. (Of course, Lacan postulated that, in French, ‘the thing’ could be described as Jouissance which also has a sexual connotation; orgasm. Now there’s a thing!)…….

 

Chapter Extract:

I will never forget …. What’s his name? (…. or what did either Narcissus or Dostoyevsky ever do for me??!)

There is an old cliché that tells us: “If you want to make God laugh” etc. but my problem has always been that almost everything I have done and everywhere I have been, although often presented as carefully modulated plans were, in truth, the results of ‘accidents’. In most ways, over the years, people and things ‘came to me” rather than ‘me seeking them out’.

The one constant has been books – history and novels; Hemingway, Steinbeck, Gore Vidal, Dostoyevsky, Heller and I have been in love with Shakespeare and Dickens since boarding school. Speaking of love, during my time in Paris I was very taken by “O” with Pauline Réage (aka Anne Desclos), which probably influenced “Seraglio”. (But I most certainly do not mention these names to make comparisons. On the contrary, I record them in all modesty and only because these have been my abiding influences and also because this is the one time my name is likely to appear in such august company!)

The reality is that I have spent much of my life wandering around, pretending to do business, in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, America and India. In the process, I wrote a lot of bids, proposals and ‘concept papers’ setting out ideas in terms of the management of change.  Often, I was called upon to help set out and explain new approaches and opportunities to what would otherwise become: ‘the victims of change’. In some ways it was my task to help people – on both sides of the divide -,re-understand the skills and the lives that the community had lived and functioned. Thereafter, to be effective, one had to help translate all those things into a model for a future that they could better understand. That sounds pretentious, even to me, but, if you take a steelworks or a mining town and replace what was a pretty good economic model (albeit at much cost in other directions; especially environmentally and socially), it took quite a bit of understanding, and some ability in terms of communication, to be able to carry such people with you. This included setting up/editing and contributing to a broadsheet newspaper produced in full colour (it clearly did its job because the RAF flew ten tons of it around the world as it was considered to be “essential to the interests of the service” at a time when the RAF and our Armed forces were changing at every level (and there were many levels in those structures!))

I also did a fair bit of public speaking, often impromptu: e.g., after a meeting in which I had explained some ideas, I was asked by one of those present:” Would you talk to a few of my blokes”: said, yes of course and arrived, with no notice and no script, in a theatre containing 3000 people in an mix; employees from the plant and directors of the business! Also, radio and (a little) TV stuff.

I guess that it is these experiences that now drive me in my writing to try to explain, to myself and – Insha’Allah – to others, the way we live now and to question why, and then to examine, what we lose and what we gain in the context of how we live and are governed. These days I can get very intense but, in the past, it was always better when there was a fun element and it was accessible, both of which I try to inculcate in everything that I set down.

Sadly, there never was any special talent involved on my part; I was very fortunate to be asked to be in the right place(s) at a time when nations, regions, people, infrastructures, politics and money were being refashioned. As a result, I was privileged – and challenged – to work with some truly great men (only a few women, sadly, but t’was the times and not my fault Guv) in situations that were unique. Life has taken me to many places whence I have engaged with the structures that engage at this level; the UK, Europe, the US of A, India, Africa and the Gulf; I was even an officer of a company in Mauritius (well, someone had to do it!).  (That said, I accept that most people have, throughout time, entertained similar illusions as to their engagement with life and the universe as being somewhat unique).

That I now write books and stories as I do, is also the result of an accident. In 2007 a dreadful thing happened; life changing, literally. As if by demonic design, it struck us whilst we were in our special place in the Himalayas; worse, a friend died as a result. Blaming myself, I retreated to the blackest depression. Rejecting, narrowly, the idea of “topping myself”, I concluded that it was time to do a bit of re-skilling. In 2008 aged almost 70 years; I signed up to, and somehow managed to emerge with, an MA in New Media and Creative Writing entitled “New Media, the Good Citizen and the Politics of Jouissance”. (In truth, elements of A Foot in Both Camps are perhaps reflective of an attempt at a personal catharsis; but, there again, what writing is not?).