I like to think that I saw the term“journalist” as achievement
but it’s not true. I thought journalism was not quite good enough writing and I wanted to be a writer. I never made it to the writer I wanted to be but I borrowed journalist to go with broadcaster because I got so sick of being described as an agony aunt – as it says on annalog – loved the job, hated the description. Because it devalued the intelligence, honesty and willingness to learn of the people who spoke to me on air for years.
This is all now history. We don’t make radio like that any more. There are those of whom I am proud to be one who are still in love with words but there are also those for whom word is a four letter thing. I am not sure whether they practice animal noises, bird calls or are just silent. I meet the ones that speak and I love the fact of the exchange, no matter how small.
Yesterday a handsome slightly overweight woman with tumbled black hair got on the bus with a teenage girl who had white skin, blue eyes and black brows. Mama and I grinned at each other, and I asked where she was from, observing eyes as dark as mine. “Spain” she said. I said “God love you.” They both smiled. “And she has her papa’s colouring?” I asked. “My father’s” said she proudly. “Here we would say she’s a Celt”
I said. “And you?” she asked. I gave her the brief version, adding “great neck, filthy temper.” And we all laughed. The magic of words – and age, which frees me to use them, and experience, which makes me trust what I can do with the voice that will ensure you hear what I mean.
I can’t persuade most of you to buy newspapers. You haven’t time to read them and it’s an expensive business. What I can tell you is that when I have a series of interesting well written items in whatever day of the week paper it is, I am delighted.
This is all to do with writing, not what but how it is written so there is a wonderful account by a man who has written a book about Alexander the Great in which his journey to writing it is alongside reinterpretation as history is unearthed and changed – up to and including his own bout with cancer.
I prefer not to rethink my vision and version of Alexander (I spoke at the Hay Festival years ago beginning that my inspiration was a young Greek man about whom very little is known – “and you can see something of my problem!”) but the word for the piece was “accomplished.”
I acquired The Correspondent through the local bookshop, admonished “Do try it – it’s flying out of the shop!” There is a sketch of the author Virginia Evans
interview with Laura Hackett
in today’s review and that’s about the journey to being a writer.
There was a time I my life when I read about Marilyn Monroe compulsively. I will always remember sitting beside my mother as she responded to a closeup in “Let’s Make Love” with “Oh, that poor girl, the pain …” and I was dumbstruck.
I asked at the bus stop what she meant and she explained that beauty and talent and success are not gifts from the fairies: they cost. How it made me think. Always an admirer of the power of photography, there is a new exhibit of Monroe based round who took what pictures, when – proving conclusively (in one the best pieces he has ever written) that the Sunday Times art critic gets it: that camera magic is innate, whether you are subject or photographer.
And yes, Monroe had a small surgery, probably paid for by Johnnie Hyde on the bulb of her nose and the chin, we could call it “golden plastic.” You’d never know if you didn’t know. Which is what reconstructive surgery sets out to be. And no I have never had any – though I have watched it done – and I cherish the woman who got up to come after me on a bus I was leaving, to tell me how wonderful I looked. “Thank you” I said, beaming into her face.” Just me and God!”
Annalog 