“You teach, don’t you?” I ask Lucy. We’re in The Jolly Farmers. Nige and Al are talking football at the next table. Lucy is on whisky and I’m on beer.

“Yes, Personal Development through the work of Gurdjieff, mostly at retreats in the country. Which means I have to work against the holiday mentality quite a bit.”

“How did you qualify?”

“Well, I’ve actually got a teaching degree, not in Gurdjieff studies, but then there isn’t a degree in that. Why do you ask?”

“Yesterday, I emailed a woman who provides a whole range of writing workshops and yet I couldn’t see any evidence on her website that she’s had anything published. I used an alias, emailed her pretending to be looking for a teacher, said that I’d expect one to either have had published quite a bit or have some kind of teaching qualification. She wrote back to say she has an agent but her novel hasn’t yet been sold. And that’s it: the basis for her offering workshops on how to write. There seem to be quite a lot of writers like her doing the same thing.”

“What’s your concern?”

I go to the bar and think about this. What exactly is wrong with someone teaching even if they haven’t published much? There are sports coaches, after all, who don’t play. On the other hand, they’re at least dedicated professionals, qualified in coaching. Most of these writers who teach are writers, not coaches.

I hand Lucy another whisky. “When I look back,” I say, “there have been all kinds of turning points in my thinking about writing, which only came by getting rejected hundreds of times and occasionally getting stuff accepted. Also, by learning from a professional editor things I couldn’t have discovered on my own.”

“In other words, you’re saying if we don’t ever shift out of the ordinary self we all get given just by being alive, we can’t really help anyone else.”

“Did Gurdjieff say that?”

She laughs. “He was a bit more extreme. Said the vast majority of people never develop or grow. He gave the analogy of acorns – only one will become a tree, the rest are just fertilizer.”

“Wow, that’s the way to keep your students. Did he say how you become the tree?”

“Well, I suppose that’s what his work was about, taken all together.”

“Hmmm . . . reluctantly adopting his metaphor, I guess I’m concerned that a lot of these writing teachers think they’re oak trees but are really just fertilizer.”

“To become a tree, you need help, advice, the benefit of experience from someone who’s done it. But I think you need guts, too . . . are you all right; you’ve gone kind of frozen.”

“I’m trying to imagine being an acorn – feels all sort of dense and uniform.”

Lucy sips her whisky. “Do you know what,” she says, “I think growth has to be forced from within. Our parents were always trying to force us to grow, from the outside. So, when our generation rejected their help, we assumed that growth would come naturally, without any effort or resistance but it doesn’t.”

While she’s talking, I notice Al leave the pub. I wave at him, then Nige joins us.

“You two look like you’ve turned up for the pub quiz on the wrong night,” he says.

“Are you growing, Nige?” says Lucy.

He turns his glass slightly, so the handle is exactly at right angles to his beer mat.

“I used to think I was,” he says, “what with all my research into conspiracies and the such. But actually that was just stuff I liked to do. Gave me a buzz. Wasn’t really growing. Don’t we all stop doing that once we learn how to shag?”

“I’m still learning to!” says Lucy. “But you may be right. Gurdjieff said sexual energy is the most powerful kind but we tend to burn it up in physical acts instead of using it to create art and new learning.”

Nige raises an eyebrow. “Are you saying Tel should be dipping more than his quill into his ink pot?”

I resist making a joke about how a ‘pen’ ‘is’. Instead, I say, “Did Gurdjieff mean that we should use the excitement and the longing that goes before having sex to drive our creativity instead?”

Lucy shrugs. “I teach his work but to be honest, I don’t always understand it. Maybe that’s the point. Creativity is about not knowing but being desperate to find out at least a bit more of what’s real.”

Nige finishes the remaining half of his pint then stands. “My ex-wife used to say I didn’t push meself hard enough and she was probably right.”

He goes to the bar. I say to Lucy, “We always back off from the point just before we get there, don’t we?”

“So, go for it,” she says.

I force myself to think past the usual, comfortable response.

“The truth is,” I say, “we writers don’t push ourselves hard enough – not in terms of self-discipline but towards better understandings, insights and inspirations: personal development, I guess. And until we do that, we’ve got no place teaching anyone else, because all we’ll do is pass-on what we think are ‘facts’ about writing but are really just comfort buffers.”

Lucy laughs. “Great, so you have the next lesson for your group.”

“Trouble is,” I say, “a lot of readers don’t really want to go past their comfort buffers, either . . . ”

“Probably the majority don’t,” she says. “How often do you hear people say they read novels to escape, or chill out or turn off their brains?”

We fall silent for a moment, thinking about this. Nige returns from the bar.

“Now you look like the pair who turned up for the Stones gig the night after it took place,” he says.

“I’m not sure how to get past personal own comfort barriers,” I say, “or if there’s any point anyway, and I don’t have a clue how to teach my group to do the same. Or different.”

Nige shakes his head. “Just do what everyone else does.”

“Give up and watch the telly?”

“No, wing it. Fly with the cuckoos, mate. Don’t worry about the facts. By the time your students catch up, you’ll be kicking some other legitimate owners out of their nests.”

I’m about to protest that it isn’t about taking anyone else’s place; that there’s room for any writer who’s good in the publishing world. But I don’t think that’s what Nige means. I reckon he’s referring to our inner nests of what we believe and hold to and won’t leave go of. Not sure if these nests are lodged in our Gurdjieffian trees but I can worry about that later.

Lucy says, “You know, Nige, you’d be a pretty good guru.”

Nige drinks half his pint then carefully places the glass in the exact centre of his beer mat. “Well, I hear the money and the sex are good,” he says.

Back at home, I make some notes but try not to shape my thoughts too much. I understand the point about challenging one’s inner beliefs. But I’m beginning to see that the real ‘answers’ to a lot of teaching issues probably exist more in the spaces between the trees, and that it’s important to not get too distracted by – and now I know it really is time for bed – kicking the cuckoos out of our inner comfort nests.

“Ben – why don’t you ask me where my ideas come from?”

“Why the hell would I do that? You just get them don’t you?”

“I knew this wasn’t going to be easy . . . ”

We’re in the Mr Morris wine bar, pretending to be sated on olives, bread and Cheddar. Perhaps hunger is making him grumpy again.

“No, it’s just that us writers are always being asked where our ideas come from.”

“Really? How many times have you been asked that?”

Hmmm. Actually, I can’t recall the last time, if ever. What I should have said is that other writers are always saying they get asked where their ideas come from.

“Well,” I say, “the point is, ideas don’t come from the Ideas Shop in Lewisham.”

I’m paraphrasing several writers here, like Neil Gaiman who I think said ‘Bognor Regis’.

He spits out an olive pip which bounces off his plate on to the floor. “I know they don’t come from the fecking Ideas Shop. They come out of your head.”

This isn’t going well. I’d intended for us to have a conversation that I could then repeat to my writing group, so they could get the point that . . . well, I’m no longer sure what the point is.

“Look, Terry,” Ben says. “Writers are always coming out with this kind of crap. They bullshit about everything, like saying they sit down at nine a.m. and don’t stop writing till 5 p.m., yet most of them only produce a novel every three years or so. Which works out at about 80 words a day, or ten words an hour. My cat can write fiction faster than that. Writers can’t help it – they’re story-tellers, after all, so they exaggerate everything, including themselves.”

“Okay, but there still must be something different about the head of a writer, to get those ideas coming in.”

He takes a large gulp of wine. “So, why don’t you tell me where you really get your ideas from.”

And something in his expression makes me pause, not reach for the easy answer I had ready to deliver. I frown, strongly. He turns his head quizzically. I look at the ceiling fan: no ideas there. I glance at the other customers. Nope. Just chat and cheese there.

I pick up the empty wine bottle and take it the bar.

“What’ll it be, Terry?” says Robert.

Normally, I’d say ‘house white’, but instead I say, “Got a nice English red?”

“Yup but it’s pricey.”

“Hit me.”

Back at our table, Ben raises an eyebrow at the bottle of red.

“I think,” I say, filling our glasses, “that it’s not so much a case of where do ideas come from as making the effort to push through the obvious, easy ones that anyone can get.”

“That sounds better. Go on.”

“It’s like when you’re having a conversation with five or six people, and you’re talking about religion.”

“Isn’t that one of the subjects you’re supposed to never talk about?”

“In pubs, yes; but let’s pretend we’re having a nice dinner party at Lucy’s place. So, as soon as you open the subject, everyone in the room will try to finish it, close it down, have it neutralised, even finish your sentences for you.”

“Because brains like to complete things, not leave them open?”

“Yes,” I say, “which is maybe why crosswords are so popular: because they’re completeable. Anyway, I think the same thing goes on with our own brains. As soon as we think of a theme or vision or concept, our brains want to complete it.”

“And the problem there is that anything real actually can’t be finished or explained.”

“I think the best ideas are the ones that are open to mystery and wonder. Which means to get to them, you have to fight off all the obvious, known and over-explored ideas that want to get into your head and finish off the thought for you.”

“But isn’t a story a finished thing, with a satisfying ending and all that?”

He’s got a point. You’d lose a lot of readers if you didn’t complete your stories, and offer some kind of resolution. Hmmm.

“So,” I say, “maybe the trick is to come up with an idea that’s open then you explore it within a story that’s got a completeable structure.”

“Example?”

“‘Close Encounters of a Third Kind’? There’s a definite ending: the Earth people go into the alien ship, which has been the plot drive for the film. But what exactly was driving them there – at least the non-selected people – is left open. It might be a religious or spiritual impulse, or the need for a different life; it doesn’t matter: it’s fundamental enough for everyone watching to understand.”

“And what about the opposite: where the idea is closed and therefore mutes the ending? ‘Star Wars’?”

“Now you’re being controversial. Millions love those films.”

“Yes but is the ending really that satisfactory? Isn’t it just a straightforward completion of the good guys winning out over the bad guys?”

“Well, there is the ‘force’ too.”

Ben snorts. “And what exactly is the force?”

“Search me. Something to do with us being luminous beings, I think. Or is that Carlos Castaneda?”

He pours more wine. “Sounds like you need to think about this a bit more.”

He’s right. As is often the case when I’m trying to unravel a lesson for the writing group, I find there’s a lot more I don’t know than I do.

For example, is the ending of Close Encounters better than Star Wars because the idea that’s driving the story is kept open? I haven’t heard many people besides Ben claim the end of Star Wars as disappointing. Then again, I can’t actually remember it now. Something about small furry bear-things dancing in the firelight and the guy getting the girl, and the force being with them, rather than with the bloke with the smoker’s voice?

Ben lets me think it through. While he’s understandably irritated that publishing has turned into a rush for the money pot and therefore small shops like his can’t compete with bigger stores and Amazon, he’s still a lover of good stories.

So, I begin to see that, as with any kind of real learning, training, struggle to improve, it’s necessary for a writer to work with contradictions like the one we’re discussing. To ‘complete’ them is just to become a slave to them, in effect.

“I understand the need for certainty,” I say, “especially when people are still new to learning how to write. But I’m beginning to see that I also have to encourage those of my group that are serious about it, to learn to work with apparent contradictions.”

“Open and closed?” he says. “Maybe the answer isn’t that the plot is closed and the characters open, or vice versa, but that they’re both closed and open at the same time.”

“Like your book shop?”

“Very funny. If you hadn’t bought this rather nice red, I’d rescind your 10% discount.”

“Do you think you have your own style, Nige?”

“Yeah, people look at one of my plaster board ceilings and know straight away it’s a fecking Perkins.”

We’re in the Tavern, talking during a pub quiz drinks break. Nige doesn’t ever officially take part in the quiz, preferring to snipe in from the side when he knows the answer to a question and stick to slurping lager when he doesn’t.

This can lead to somewhat bizarre conversations, like earlier:

Me: “Seen the latest Fringe yet?”

Nige: “Elton John!”

Me: “The one where they break out of the amber.”

Nige: “Great White fecking shark!”

Me: “We could just form a team, you know.”

Nige: “Piers Brosnan!”

Now, I get in two more drinks and say, “It’s just that I’ve been writing this story for a magazine that for one issue wants stories written in the way of Ray Bradbury.”

“Now, there was a proper writer,” he says. “Fahrenheit 451 was a brilliant book. Mind you, the Establishment don’t really need to burn fecking books anymore, do they, because the internet’s turned everyone illiterate anyway.”

“I thought it would kind of stifle my individuality, to write like someone else. But it’s actually made me work harder on aspects of my writing that I didn’t realise were missing or kind of weak.”

“I think it’s the same with anything, Tel. Take football. You start out copying all the top players; picking up their tricks – we all do that as kids. But the kid who gets noticed by the scouts is the one who’s doing his own thing. The one who spends hours every day just kicking a ball against a wall and controlling it.”

“And were you that kid, Nige?”

“No, I was the kid who wanted to do everything – football, cricket, cycling, even fecking Meccano. I never had that single-mindedness you need to succeed. Anyway – so that lone kid gets taken on by some big club, along with a load of other apprentices. But only about one in ten will make it.”

“Is that one in ten the kid who works the hardest at his technique?” I say.

He grins. “How the feck should I know. I wasn’t that kid, remember? But I do have a theory.”

There is a loud buzz and crackle as the quizmaster’s microphone fires up.

“Once you get past that first stage,” says Nige, “you have to kind of turn it all on its head. Instead of doing your own thing, you have to learn by copying everyone around you who’s better than you. Absorb what they do into your own thing.”

“I think I see that. Good theory.”

“Doris Day!”

#

Back home, I take a glass of whisky into the conservatory and sit with it in the dark. Or the semi-dark, I should say, since light from my neighbour’s safety beam is helpfully flitting over his high fence to illuminate the suspicious undersides of the leaves on our various bushes and small trees.

I think about what Nige said. Although he’d claimed it was just a theory, I think he might have been on to something.

The Bradbury-inspired story I’ve been working on has been a new experience for me. Normally, I get a vision or a feeling or a theme, then work out form it, into the plot. But now, there is another presence working on the story. It isn’t Ray Bradbury himself, of course, since I never met him. But I have been reading a very good biography about him called, ‘On Becoming Ray Bradbury’. It was published in 2011, the year before he died, and the author, Jonathan R. Eller, had full cooperation from his subject, including access to papers, letters, early drafts, unpublished stories, etc.

I’ve been moved by how much I identify with Bradbury’s approach to writing. I learned the same lesson as he, for example, about how my work was never going to really resonate until I accessed my deeper emotions. And I fully chime with his determination to walk what he called a ‘lonely, but a fine path’ between the two imposter: the hacks, as he called them, on the one hand, and the literary intellectuals on the other.

So, while I don’t know Ray personally, I feel a strong kinship with why he wrote.

Writing this story feels like stepping to one side of oneself, almost like collaborating with someone else, to steer myself in a new direction. Or perhaps it’s more like stepping to one side of one’s old self and collaborating with one’s future self.

Whatever, it’s made me more aware than normal of every word choice. Not exactly, “What would Ray do?”, but more like checking with that presence if the story is staying true to the combination of theme, emotion and prose choice that was agreed at the outset.

And within that, I’ve felt the story take on its own life, different to the way my stories have gone in the past.

I switch on my laptop and email Shedders in California about all this. It’s around 5 pm there.

Within minutes he emails back to say:

I wonder if by writing in the style of another writer you can evacuate something about yourself that then lets some other weight or talent come through?Could it be that an aspect of how ‘you’ write (almost imagine Bradbury had to copy your style, what would he have to observe that is quintessentially you?) stops other aspects coming through?An example, for me: in trying less hard to be convincing about coaching / training, the part of me that was convinced came through – which in itself was convincing . . . Just a thought, old bean – maybe ‘being Ray’ made you more yourself in some way.

#

Postscript: I sent ‘Guy’ to Penumbra magazine for their Bradbury-themed issue and on 9th December they emailed me to say it had been accepted.

It’s around two in the morning and I can’t sleep. I go to my study and think about switching on the computer, but instead raise the blinds and look out at the night garden.

Lately, I’ve felt that the fictional stories I write and my real life stories are running together. It’s not that I don’t know which is which, but more that I’m not sure where the most truth lies.

For example, at the moment I’m writing a chapter of “Subbuteo for the Soul”, set in September 1977. Shedders and I were in Ireland, for the first time. He spent a week exploring his family routes while I spent some time in Dublin before hitching west to meet up with him in Killarney.

I know the bones of what happened because I have a diary from 1977, and this particular scene took place in Cork, after Sheds and I had parted again, to make our respective ways home.

I’d taken over seven hours to hitch-hike 40 miles, and realised I’d have to spend the night there. Up till then, I’d been mostly camping but it was late and I didn’t know if there was even a campsite around.

Things of course were different in the 70s, and things are different when you’re in your early twenties. So it was that in my green boots, beard, long hair and lumberjack shirt, I went into a little pub and started talking to the regulars there.

I can’t of course remember, and probably didn’t know anyway, what they really thought of me. But I think they liked something in my sense of adventure. Perhaps they could tell I was genuinely open to Irish culture, even if I couldn’t possibly understand it in a two week visit. I might even have told them about the Irishman who gave me a lift and who’d talked passionately about the Potato Famine. In my ignorance, I’d assumed it must have happened during his lifetime, so vividly did he recall the injustice of what the English had done to the Irish. But of course, it took place in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Cork locals bought me drinks but when I said I had nowhere to stay the night, no one offered to take me home with them. But they did have another suggestion to make . . .

I sit here now, watching the swaying trees in the London night, and my thoughts try to arc back, bypassing 35 years of jobs and relationships and movies watched and holidays and dozens of novels written . . .

“You could stay at the old school,” says one of the locals. I’m feeling a little unsteady from the Guinness but I swear his mates are smiling oddly, like they do at the start of a horror movie.

But instead of grabbing my rucksack and taking my chances on the streets of Cork, I do exactly what the outsider dupe in the movies does and say, “Sounds great. Where is it?”

Then the pub’s closed and I’m walking up an unlit lane in the midnight dark. The road curves around to the right then opens up into a wide expanse of tarmac in front of a huge Gothic-looking building that’s utterly dark.

I go to the front door of the school and knock but really don’t expect anyone to respond.

Yet the door opens, weak yellow light falling out into the yard.

“Hello,” says a tiny girl, maybe eight years old. Dimly, I wonder why she isn’t in bed.

“Sorry to bother you,” I say. “But is there anywhere for me to stay around here?”

She points behind me. “The old school room’s open. You can sleep there.”

I thank her and head over to a one-room building, its windows sheening faint silver in the moonlight. It’s not locked and I go inside. I can’t find a light switch but can see enough by the moon to appreciate that I’m in a Victorian kind of room: long wooden benches, a standalone blackboard, high teacher’s desk at the front.

I get out my sleeping bag and lay it on one of the benches. I’m tired so despite the strangeness of my surroundings, I fall asleep quickly. I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or half-awake and hearing reality but for some time there are strange muffled sounds from outside, soft scratchings, faint cooings . . .

I don’t know what time it is, but a couple of hours later, I fully wake and sit up.

Just inside the doorway stands a man in a glowing white suit. He doesn’t have a coat or any luggage with him.

He speaks to me but I can’t quite make out his words.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t catch what you said.”

“Do you know how I can get to the bus station?” I think he says.

Absurdly, I tell him I’m not sure but I he could try going back to the main road then turn left and keep walking.

He thanks me and leaves. I go back to sleep.

When I wake up in the morning to normal sunlight showing me just how dusty and neglected this room is, I ask myself some questions, like, what was he doing here in the middle of the night? How did he even find it? Why would he be looking for the bus station at an hour when no buses are running? And why didn’t he have any luggage with him?

I pack away my sleeping bag and go across to the main building, intending to thank the little girl for letting me stay here. But although I knock on the door again, it’s clear that the building is deserted, derelict even. No one lives here.

And now I realise the guys in the pub knew that.

This is what I wrote in my diary that day:

“Saturday, 10th September, 1977: Seven and a half hours to hitch 40 miles. Irish must know I’m English and haven’t forgotten the Potato Famine. End up trundling down to Cork where locals buy me a pint or two. Then stagger into some kind of old school where nice little girl shows me where to sleep. Crash out on old classroom benches. Weird noises all night and mysterious man in white suit appears about 2 a.m., mumbles a few things then takes off.”

Here and now in my London street, I feel in my mind and heart and spirit that strange but utterly natural confluence of myth and event and perception.

What is the truth? I don’t think it’s just the description of an event, or even the mythical interpretation of it. A ghost? A real man in a white suit that just happened to seem to glow in the moonlight, who really was looking for a bus station? A little girl who was actually a folk archetype? Or a real girl who lived in the back of the building where her family had made a home despite the main school being decrepit?

The real truth is story. The reason it has lost some of its grasp on our minds today is because we’ve become polarised between, for instance, Evolutionary Theory on the one hand and Creationism on the other.

As I sit here tonight, weighing the value of my memories and searching them for stories that others may enjoy, I feel comfortable in not accepting either pole. Happy to just not know.

I don’t believe in ghosts but I think that man in Cork in 1977 really was one.

It’s a November Sunday morning and I’m sitting in the local park. The cool but bright sun flares gold on the autumn leaves of the plane trees. Kids play on the climbing frames nearby, and people walk their dogs, no doubt reminding themselves how impressive it is that the Mayor ordered the river to be diverted so it now winds through the middle of the park, meaning no more ad hoc football matches; instead we have an ‘ecology pond’ with a sign next to it showing all the wildlife you might see, but which the absence of David Attenborough peering through the bushes indicates is more likely to be wishful Lewisham Council thinking.

I’m sitting on a cold steel chair outside the little cafe, a mug of coffee next to my notebook, the top page of which is empty at the moment. I’m bothered by something to do with writing but not sure what exactly. Which is a familiar state to be in, similar to before I begin writing an actual story.

Something . . .

I can almost feel it, like trying to recall a dream upon waking, grabbing at wisps of scenes and feelings, forcing meaning back in to them, like blowing air into the lungs of a dying man.

I’m relieved when Ben unexpectedly appears, smiles and asks if I want company. I nod and he gets himself a coffee, sits.

“There can’t be much money,” he says, “in making notebooks for writers.”

“I think I’m thinking about how to start.”

“What, a story?”

“No, how to start being a writer.”

He squints into the sky, then yelps, lurches forward, grabs both hands around his mug to stop it flying, as a streak of hurtling dog bumps into him on its way to recover something its owner has just thrown.

“Sorry, mate,” says a man behind us. “I meant to chuck it the other way.”

The dog returns with a yellow plastic miniature rugby ball between its teeth, that squeaks. He drops it at the man’s feet, who picks it up and this time manages to throw it away from me and Ben.

“The problem is,” says Ben, “that very few writers choose where to start. The ones who get taken on by a publisher are dropped half way down the road before they’re even aware there are roads to be half way down. I have a theory . . . ”

The dog keeps running after that ball as if it’s the first time. I’m glad Ben has a theory.

“Back in the 70s,” he says, “when we opened our book shop, publishing was very different. Take children’s books – ”

I know he says this because I was/am a children’s author. And while I know what he’s going to start with at least, I’m happy to hear it – a story about stories, really.

“Publishers were smaller than today and the children’s department would be run by the senior editor. She’d decide which books to buy, commission an artist to do the cover then the book was sent out. No damn marketing men.”

“They didn’t need a sales team,” I say, “because they already had places that were guaranteed to buy enough books to keep the authors developing.”

“Yes, book shops and libraries,” he says. “Not huge sales, as you say, but it allowed the model to work, which back then was to discover good writers and give them several novels to find their audience. Then, extra sales were icing on the cake. But tasty icing, not the synthetic sugary shit publishers put out these days.”

I sip my coffee, noting I’m slightly tense, half-expecting a squeaking rugby ball to land in my lap when it and my bollocks will disappear into a nasty set of canine canines.

“Thing was,” he says, “those buyambienmed.com children’s editors only cared about quality, about good writing. So much so, they not only didn’t look for mass-market bestsellers, they actually banned them; at least the libraries did. Like Enid Blyton.”

“When I was at college in Swansea in the 70s,” I say, “I spent a few hours with a local librarian, and she told me about the Blyton ban. Said it was because the writing was so bad. She handed me a Famous Five book, opened it to a random page and told me to read a paragraph. It went something like, ‘Dick got in the boat and got out the oars. Anne got out the sandwiches and made sure that everyone got their fair share . . . ‘”

Ben smiles as if hearing a distant symphony. “I know what all the liberal idiots would say to that: it doesn’t matter, as long as children are reading. But it does matter. Blyton was too lazy to think of better words, so just used ‘got’ all the time. And that would subconsciously programme her readers into thinking that’s the way to use language.”

“You were going to talk about starting,” I remind him.

“I’m getting to that  . . . So two things changed: first, publishers amalgamated, got bought up by big multi-national companies who only saw books as products to be sold. Which meant they weren’t going to let a writer find her audience: either she sold right from the word go or she was out. Second, the new sales teams which had final say on acquisitions realised there was a Blyton-sized hole in the children’s market. But they didn’t know how to fill it. Children’s books weren’t segmented like adult literature: genre, literary, mass-market, etc. They were all pretty much in one block, left over from the days when it was all good quality so it didn’t matter how you marketed it.”

I know what’s coming next but let him say it.

“Then Harry Potter happened.” He laughs. “And you know the greatest irony of all? All those mass market sales meant nothing to small shops like me. The discounts we were offered were so small, I actually ended up buying Potter books off Amazon to sell in our shop; and then it was just to keep faith with our customers; we didn’t make any money on them.”

“Is that why you’re thinking of giving up?”

“No, I’m thinking of giving up because most of the books we sell are crap. Blame the publishing model. Anyway, what I’m saying is that writers think they’ve already started when they get that publishing deal, but in fact they haven’t. When that book comes out, it’s only the publisher who’s started.”

“Not sure you’d sell many copies of this if you put it in a how to write book.”

“Writers always underestimate the power of the commercial concerns who are hiring them. I’m telling you, it’s the publisher who’s started that writer, not the writer.”

“So, what can the serious writer do?”

“Make sure that he’s started, on his terms, before he sends anything out to publishers.”

“Or self-publish?”

“Maybe but then the publishers haven’t just brainwashed the writers, they’ve done it to the readers, too.”

“But why wouldn’t they want writers to really express themselves?”

“The same reason any corporation doesn’t really want its employees to express themselves: control.”

I know he’s right. But he isn’t finished. “The worst thing of all is that it isn’t the publishers’ control that’s the most damaging. It’s the control the author exerts over his own creativity, because he’s frightened of functioning without it.”

I think about the blank page of my notebook. I haven’t started it yet. But, Ben’s right: I actually started a long time ago; the question is, did I really choose where from?

Nige and I are in the Ladywell Tavern. Because he hurt his back falling off a step ladder the other day, we’re actually sitting down at a table for once. It’s November, quite a way on from the 5th but there are still fizzes and cracks and flashes of fireworks outside. A log fire throbs cosily in the hearth. It’s not a quiz, music, open mic or art exhibition launch night so things are relatively quiet.

“This writing class of yours,” says Nige. “Are you taking on new members?”

I quickly raise my glass to my lips, buying a bit of thinking time, because generally speaking, there’s nothing worse than passing professional comment on one’s family or friends’ writing work.

“Er, who did you have in mind?” I say, still trying to buy time.

“J K fecking Rowling, who do you think?”

I mean, I’m sure he doesn’t lack the skills and intelligence to be a writer. It’s just that –

“You’ve never shown much interest before,” I say.

“That’s because I didn’t think there was any money in it. But I’ve been reading about these self-publishing dudes who’re making a fortune, and no greedy publishers or weasely agents to take a cut.”

“The vast majority of self-publishers actually don’t make much money, Nige.”

“That’s because they’re not thinking commercially enough. I’ve got an idea for a whole new genre: Sex-Fi.”

“I don’t – ”

“Look, what do Sci-Fi nerds most miss out on?”

I take another long swallow of my pint, letting him carry on with the obvious.

“Sex!” he says. “So, if you combine the two, you’re going to get millions of horny but hopeless boffins throwing their cash at you.”

“But sex isn’t exactly absent from Science Fiction already, you know.”

“Yeah, but it’s all so coy most of the time: Kirk pecks Uhura on the lips instead of giving her the ol’ warp drive at full thrust. So, the competition isn’t exactly stiff, is it? Ho ho. Anyway, I’ve been working on the blurby thing that goes on the back of the book. What do you think?”

He takes a sheet of folded A4 from his jacket pocket, smoothes it out and pushes it across the table to me. I read:

Starship Shaggers

by

Vas D. Eferens

In space no one can hear you come!

Donny Ozone signs on with the Salt Lake City Starship Mission to save alien souls. But he’s barely left the Solar System when he’s captured by a Pirate Propagation ship. To his eternal shame he’s hired out to do the one thing Earth men are good at: shagging!

After servicing the beautiful pirate leader, Vulvo Orificano, he becomes co-leader. Together, they build an empire based on sperm exchange.

Then Donny hears the Earth is under attack from a rival pirate gang.

Can he persuade Vulvo to help him save the Earth and become a Minister of souls once again?

Or is he doomed to spend his life seeding hot alien chicks who are more interested in his semen than his sermon?

“Well,” I say, “at least it seems to have a plot. Which puts it ahead of most of the books my writing group are working on.”

“And I’ve heard it said that writing a good blurb is harder than writing the book itself.”

“You’ll need a promotional website and a blog too,” I say. “And some sort of angle.”

“How about the fact I hate poetry?”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s wise to use negativity to – ”

“Have a read of this,” he says, passing me another sheet of paper.

I like to write them poems

Though I ain’t got much to say

But everyone else is at it

So I’ll write them anyway.

My life is pretty boring

Nearly all the time

But that sure won’t stop me

Putting it all in rhyme.

When one day I fall in love

And I hope it’ll be real soon

I’ll probably poemify that too

And get it to rhyme with moon.

My favourite flower of all

Must surely be the rose

It’s got symbolicy thorns

And rhymes with loads and loa(d)s.

I like to write them poems

They’re easier than novels

I can write them in the adverts

And never miss, um, hang on

… I can do it in my hovel?

I can write them in the adverts

They’re easier than novels …

No, wait a minute …

Okay, here we go –

I like to write them poems

They make my brain grov-el

For words but at least you don’t need

So many as for a nov-el.

I laugh. “That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, but do you think I should join your fecking group?”

“Sure,” I say, knowing now that he won’t. “Come along next Wednesday. Bring a laptop or pad and pen, or in your case a dildo full of ink.”

The reason I know he won’t join the group is because Nige is too bright for the long haul of writing a novel, or even a short story. Writing requires a lot of boring discipline, application and regularity – stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in an insurance salesman.

The great challenge of being a writer is, therefore, on the one hand to develop dogged persistence while on the other to unleash passion to order.

“What time do you finish?” he says, mind already outside the mental classroom.

“In your case, about three pints before last orders,” I say.

We’re in a bar in Dingle, West Ireland. There’s a band playing, which is not of course unusual here, in a town where the main income is tourism – bars, Guinness, Fungi the Dingle Dolphin and Irish diddly-diddly music.

The band comprises fiddle, guitar, accordion and tin whistle. They are playing traditional songs and some Folk favourites like ‘Foggy Dew’. They’re good. They’re competent.

But . . .

Something doesn’t quite grip, or uplift, or go ‘oomph!’. Each player performs well enough and they interlock with each other efficiently.

But . . .

We move on to another bar, the Bridge House. It’s crowded and noisy, friendly. The barman seems to move slowly, yet he’s handling six or seven orders simultaneously. They’re trained to do this in Ireland, unlike in Britain where six or seven bar staff manage to avoid eye contact with their one customer, mainly by texting on their phones or swapping tips on looking cool.

A couple sees us look at the two musicians in the window seat and waves us into two empty stools next to them.

The guitarist is in his mid-thirties, long face, frizzy black hair, wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. The squeeze-box player is in her late twenties; blonde, also dressed casually. They’re talking about what to play next. Then she starts a run of notes that he picks up, putting together a chord sequence to provide the rhythm.

Then they’re off. The reel starts slow, as they normally do. His left hand seems to feel out the chord shapes as if giving form to some inner beat. She squeezes out runs of notes that glide on the surface tension of his chords. They hold each other’s gaze; smile; she throws back her head, rocking with the increasing pace of the piece.

It gets louder and faster and their sounds seem to push against each other, giving the music –

– something extra; more than the sum of its parts; a kind of natural transcendence, not in some nebulous, ‘spiritual’ way, but with the sheer joy of two people communicating with intent.

The first band we saw tonight were talking to each other. This band is having a conversation.

#

I decide to explore the notion of  ‘conversation’ where writing is concerned. I’m sure it’s something that could help the writers in my class, but I’m having trouble working out just how a writer can have a conversation with himself. At least, not without the neighbours sending in a shrink.

So here I am in number 32. Lucy’s house. She has one long room downstairs, airy, clean white walls, one or two paintings of landscapes; no clutter. Not really proper guru stuff but then I guess Lucy wouldn’t class herself as such anyway.

She’s in her early sixties, short grey hair, strong face, gaze that’s quietly watchful – not the full-on stare of the Hollywood guru, who sees-into-your-very-soul. Lucy isn’t even sure we have souls.

We’re sitting at her oak table, near the kitchen area, drinking tea out of Batman and Spiderman mugs. I wonder if she’s consciously mixing superhero belief systems. Outside the night-black rear windows, her apple trees sway gently in the breeze.

“I don’t know,” she says, after I’ve explained how I’m trying to work out what a conversation is for a writer. But then she nearly always says this. “Why’s it important to you?”

Lucy has studied with all sorts of teachers. She’s probably a Gurdjieffian at heart, but she knows a lot about Buddhism too; and can quote from most spiritual paths, including Lucasian (when the force is with her).

“Well, Mrs Yoda,” I say, “I feel that a problem maybe unique to writers is that we don’t get to have a conversation around our work, because there isn’t anyone else to talk to.”

“Don’t you talk to your readers?”

“Not really. I mean, they get a finished product that they may later comment on, which can be useful. But I’m talking more about a conversation that builds the work as it’s happening.”

She sips tea from the top of Batman’s head, thinking.

“Do you believe most writers don’t try hard enough?” she says.

“Yes, because most of the time, they don’t have anything to push against.”

“They show their work to other writers, though, don’t they?”

“Well, yes. Some use just one trusted reader friend; others put endless drafts through their writers’ group. But I’m not sure that’s a conversation.”

Then she does that irritating thing guru-ish types do, of turning the question back on me.

“So, what’s a conversation for you?” she says.

I watch the trees outside, and the mysterious night, and think about what actually happens during the writing process.

“It’s as if,” I say, “there’s all this treasure, just out of reach. You can get close to it, just a few inches away, by using existing maps and guides. But to actually get hold of it, you have to dig much deeper than you expected to, and you have to use tools no one has ever told you exist; and you have to close your mind to all the advice about ‘enough’s enough’. And keep on digging until you hit something solid.”

“Like real emotion?”

“Yes, but then you have the next step to negotiate and that’s to turn the treasure into something the rest of the world can use; and in the process you have to give it up.”

“So, the conversation isn’t actually between you and another person.”

“No. It’s between you and, well, the real you, I think.”

“You wouldn’t make much at the box office with a pirate movie based on that concept.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it. That a writer’s treasure is always different to a reader’s.”

We stop the conversation. It isn’t finished but it doesn’t need to go any further. Emotional treasure, pirates of the Seven Cs (Creativity, Content, um, Cash, etc), conversations with one’s real self . . . it all needs mulching down into a usable feeling, rather than becoming a contrived analogy.

I stand, thank Lucy for the tea and say, “So what faith are you: Marvel or DC?”

“Oh, come on, Terry,” she says, “you should know by now that I’m a Dark Horse girl.”

1.

A few years back, I spent a month getting up every day just before dawn and sitting with my back to a particular tree, out of the way in the corner of the park by the railway. I wasn’t meditating, exactly, but just trying to feel something about the dawn and the trees and the park before anyone else was up and about. One morning around five-thirty, a man and a dog entered at the far side of the park. It was a big black beast, and as the man bent to take off its lead he looked up and saw me in the distance. He hesitated, then unclipped the lead anyway. The dog rocketed straight for me barking loudly. My non-meditative meditation was shattered. The man strolled over and unhurriedly pulled the dog off me.

“Dogs are supposed to be on leads in this park,” I said, wiping slobber off my trousers and aware that my heart was pounding.

The man snarled. “What are you doing, sitting in a fecking park anyway?”

They left me to wonder about this strange situation. I figured that at one level what he really meant was, What are you doing in my fecking park. And perhaps at another, it was an example of the British people’s strange attitude towards their pets, that they will put them before people. After all, he saw me, thought about it and then unleashed his dog on me. And maybe another level still is people’s deep suspicion of anyone who isn’t doing what’s expected. Parks are for taking the dog for a walk in; putting the kids on slides, playing football, maybe shagging in the bushes. But everyone knows they’re not just for sitting in, especially at five fecking thirty in the morning.

2.

I’ve been to parts of Britain where after one visit to the local pub, the landlord is calling you by name and pulling your usual pint before you even enter the building, and you’ve been invited to dinner with half the locals and your marriage arranged to the greengrocer’s daughter. However, in my London local, it took more than a year before anyone knew my name, despite the majority there being regulars. On the other hand – and this may explain something about the character of the area – no one ever intruded on my nightly routine of drinking while writing or reading. And gradually, I got to know Harry (‘H’), Alistair, Roy and the others. I knew I’d been accepted when I went to the bar for another pint and H, who has his own stool at its corner, said, “Look at ‘im, Tel, look at ‘im!” nodding in the direction of a stranger sitting by the door.

“What’s the matter with him, Harry?”

“He’s reading a bloody book.”

This was in the 1980s when certain activities or presences in a pub were regarded as strictly suspicious (and to an extent still are): drinking coffee; a woman on her own, not a prostitute; and, perhaps worst of all, anyone reading anything other than a newspaper or the list of ingredients on a packet of dry-roasted peanuts.

“But I’m reading, H.”

He looked at me incredulously. “Yeah, but you’re one of us.”

It’s Monday. Ben and I are in the Mr Morris wine bar again.

“My students want me to talk about procrastination this week,” I say.

“Been putting it off?”

“Very funny. Basically, most of them have trouble just getting their bum in the chair and writing something. Got any ideas?”

“Maybe they should look at it like a business. I mean, if I don’t open the book shop at nine every morning, I’m not going to make any money.”

“Sounds like you don’t make any money anyway these days, what with Amazon bagging all your sales.”

“Fine, so tell your students that they don’t need to get up in the morning, or go to work, or even switch on their computers. If they wish hard enough, the writing fairies will deposit a novel at Random House with their name on it and they can just sit back and let the royalties come tumbling in.”

“If only.”

“The problem you have, Terry, is that you need to tell them that they can’t dodge the hard work and the sheer number of hours needed to produce a novel. At the end of which, there’s only the slightest chance in hell that a publisher will buy it from them; and even if they do, they aren’t going to make any money from it.”

“And you think that’s the reason for procrastination?”

He shrugs. “At least if you’re putting off failure, you haven’t actually failed yet.”

At which stage, I decide to change the subject, since he’s clearly still fretting about how publishers’ falling sales are threatening his livelihood.

I decide to get the views of someone not involved in the business.

#

So, now it’s Tuesday, and I’m in The Ladywell Tavern with Nige. We’re standing at the bar and I think I’ve hit the right moment. He’s just taken a large dunk of lager and can’t speak until it’s fully swallowed.

“What are builders like at putting off things they need to do?”

He finishes gulping and nods. “We’re experts,” he says. “We do it by prioritising and bullshitting. The two pillars of a successful one-man business.”

I sense that what he’s about to tell me won’t necessarily be useful for my group but I know from experience that I’m powerless to divert him once his mental masonry drill is spinning.

“Think about it, Tel. Jobs never turn up nice and consecutive; they always overlap. But you can’t tell the punters that. They want to know that you’re going to start tomorrow. So you do. Start, at least. But you might not actually finish until a lot later than they expect.”

“So, what do you tell the people you’ve made low priority?”

“Anything: you’re ill, someone’s roof collapsed in the baby’s bedroom, you broke your ankle playing footy. But make sure you don’t ever have more than two dead grandmothers though. That can be a bit of a giveaway.”

Then I remember something from several years back. We’d hired Nige to re-decorate our house. We were going on holiday for two weeks, the idea being he’d have it all finished by the time we returned. But when we came back, the house was exactly as we’d left it apart from a pair of rickety stepladders with a note attached to the effect Nige had been called away on urgent family business.

I tell him this. He has the decency to blush slightly, hiding it behind his lager glass.

“Shit,” he says, “I should remember that you should never tell anyone a builder’s secrets.”

#

So now I’m back home, sitting in my study with the lights off, looking at the trees out back with their leaves flitting silver in our neighbour’s irritating decking light that stays on all night.

I’ve talked to people in the street about priorities, and I’ve learned that builders can have more than two dead grandmothers, if they don’t use a calculator. But now I have to work out what priorities mean to me, in such a way I can put it to the group next week.

I find myself thinking about the system of SIMPLICITY-COMPLEXITY-SIMPLICITY, which can be applied to just about any human pursuit.

Take writing.

As a child, you love to write stories. You do it without thinking and you have some natural talent for it. Your parents love your stories. Your teacher gets you to read them out to the class. Hey – you decide to be a writer.

You write a novel. It’s sort of about your friends, doing the sort of stuff people really do. They have long conversations that are just how you’ve heard them. Something nags at the back of your mind about plot and purpose, but you ignore it. You have talent. Everyone’s told you so.

You send out your novel to some publishers and agents. You wait for the offers to flood in. But no one replies for a long time. And when they do, it’s just a standard rejection. You can’t believe it: have they actually read your book?

One editor writes a few comments in her rejection letter. She says that your writing shows promise but that you need to work on plot, show more than tell and learn to make every word count.

This, of course, can be a turning point for you. It probably won’t be; you’ll probably carry on writing, submitting, getting rejected and deciding that publishers know nothing, for some years to come. But let’s assume you get the point quickly. Under your burning indignation at the editor telling you your writing isn’t up to scratch, you have the uncomfortable feeling that she might be right.

What you then face are the complications and difficulties of a) having to learn a craft you thought you already knew but didn’t and, worse still, b) having to re-learn, to make conscious, the things that you’re naturally good at.

Many of course don’t want to go through this complexity stage. They fear it will destroy their natural talent. They may be right. But you aren’t likely to ever sell a story if you can’t structure one properly, and know when enough is enough.

And so you begin the long journey of learning the craft. Of complicating your talent. Of taking the risk you may smother it.

What will keep it alive, however, is passion, desire, love of what you do and discipline to learn and see it through.

Finally, you come out of the complexity, back into simplicity. Now, you can write free again, like you did to begin with. Only now, you’re throwing words on to a robust and instinctive structure, both at plot level and prose level. And when it works, the exhilaration is ten times greater than it was when you wrote as a child, because now you know what you’re doing. You’re not thinking about what you’re doing but if anyone asks you how you do it, you’ll be able to stop and think and explain in detail. And if they are still in their first simplicity stage, they will wonder how on earth you can produce anything creative when you’ve got all that going on in your head at the same time.

But I think there is another variation to this equation that writers need to bear in mind, which is:

PERSONAL – NON-PERSONAL – PERSONAL

Most writers tend to start with material that’s personal to them. Many never move on from there; some make a good living from it: magazine columnists, bloggers, etc. But if you’re going to be a good fiction writer, you have to learn to write from a non-personal standpoint.

You need to create your main character with detachment, and use the plot to torture him dispassionately. And if you can, you may build a very good career for yourself. You could write Thrillers, or Fantasy, or Romance, or Crime, or Literary, and the ability to take a non-personal view, to keep your own emotions, will be a big advantage.

But then . . .

Special writers go back into the personal. Only now they know how to use a little of it to maximum effect. Now, every character they write is built upon an aspect of themselves. Every scene is derived from an event in their own life. They know that using oneself is the key to injecting emotion into their work. Their own life is their story-telling base camp.

Now their work has character, quality, style . . . a specific resonance that readers will love, as opposed to simply liking a non-personal novel.

So perhaps the priorities for a writer who’s serious are not so much about making time to sit in the chair and write – even though that’s important – but are more to do with intention: first, to learn the craft and second, whether to aim for being a good writer or a special one.

It’s very easy, of course, to see my street as packed with a convenient cast of characters I can steal at any time for writing purposes. Here we are, for example, on Saturday night in the Ladywell Tavern, celebrating Mandy’s birthday. Nige is for once on a proper chair at a proper table, and Tom and Kath are here too. Mandy (no. 3) is American, married to a stand-up comedian who is usually on tour. Around another ten of us have turned up. The tables are spread with different coloured stars, and there is bunting and balloons, and a three-piece jazz combo playing nearby.

As if reading my thoughts, Al (no. 18), says, “So, have you put me in a story yet, Tel?”

“Do something interesting and I might,” I say.

“My life isn’t that interesting,” he says, “but it’s enjoyable.”

“I enjoy my life, too. I think.”

He laughs. “Okay, so where did you go for your last holiday?”

“We spent four days on the Isle of Tiree and four on the Isle of Coll.”

“Come again.”

“Inner Hebrides; way up north. Takes a couple of days to get there; car to Oban, stopping one night on the way; then a four hour ferry ride to Tiree.”

“And what did you do there?” he says, smirking slightly since he can already guess the answer.

“Well, there are a couple of pubs, lots of empty beaches, some basking sharks and Tiree even has a Co-op.” I don’t bother telling him that I wrote a lot, too.

“There are three Co-ops within walking distance of here, Tel. Why would you want to spend half a week travelling to one near the North Pole?”

“Ah, but it’s so peaceful there,” I say. “Besides, we wanted to escape the Olympics.”

We’ve had similar conversations before. Al doesn’t understand why anyone would want to take their holidays in wet and windy UK rather than somewhere hot like the Caribbean, especially when it’s usually more expensive here.

“Why, because they don’t have TVs up there?”

“I know you’re kidding but it’s okay. And if you must know, it was sunny most days.”

“So, you did some sun bathing?”

“Well, I’m not really the beach-lying type – ”

“You don’t say.”

” – but it was too windy for sunbathing most of the time, anyway. And when it wasn’t windy, the midges got you.”

“But at least you missed the Olympics.”

“Not entirely. We went to this pub on Tiree which was packed with locals. They had a big screen on the wall showing the closing ceremony but with the sound turned off. All night, under the screen, accordion players went through loads of reels and folk songs.”

“And you prefer all that diddly-diddly-dee stuff to the Spice Girls? Come on: they were fantastic. Real performers.”

“Name one Spice Girls song,” I say.

“Um . . . Give Me, Give Me, Give Me, Lottsa Lottsa Dosh?”

I think about the Spice Girls and how difficult it is to see anything in their music with genuine passion, and without the straining sound of voices trying just a bit too hard to be marketable, to be names, brands, ‘icons’, to not cross the line into art that makes the audience work a bit to get it.

Maybe I have a subject for the next writing class. That the danger with writing is that the pressure of wanting to get published can, before you know it, steer you towards just enough. Just enough passion; just enough pain; just enough beauty.

My children’s publishers were always telling me to tone down what they called the ‘mystical’ elements in my fiction. My characters shouldn’t be so fascinated by chasing the meaning of life, they said, which of course has become a joke to the less mystically interested.

I did what they asked but maybe instead I should have gone even further into what at the time was my main passion.

The mystical as it appears in successful fiction is always just enough. Yoda nicks a bit of Carlos Castaneda for a short section in one out of six Star Wars films, and the rest of the time sticks to mangling his syntax to sound ‘wise’.

“Hey, Al,” I say, “do you think we’re luminous beings like Yoda says?”

He peers into my glass. “I’ll answer that if you tell me what you’ve been adding to your Guinness.”

Nige, who’s been listening, turns his chair round to join us. “So, give us a story,” he says to me, “about a Scottish island.”

I think for a moment. “A few years back, we were on the Isle of Harris, stayed in a little B&B which was also a croft run by this old couple. There wasn’t anywhere to eat out nearby, so we had a meal in the evening cooked by the Mrs. Nice cosy front room they let us have to ourselves, peat fire and so on.”

“Doesn’t sound like there are any bikinis coming,” says Al.

“Anyway,” I say. “It got to nine o’clock. I was reading a great book when the man comes in from the kitchen, clears his throat and says, ‘Well, you’ll be wanting to go to bed now’, and it definitely wasn’t a question. So for the first time since I was in short trousers I went to bed at nine o’clock.”

Nige looks genuinely shocked by this. Reflexively, his hand reaches out to grasp his lager glass, as if the ghost of an old Scots crofter man might suddenly take it away and tell him to go home to bed.

“In Grenada,” says Al, “we’re not even out for the night by nine.”

The next morning we’d woken to utter silence in the croft. Then, eating breakfast of porridge and honey and bacon; putting on our walking boots and heading up the mountain behind the house. To one side, a great sweeping expanse of pure sand and the blue black sea beyond. Snow fell, and then the sun came out, and there was a rainbow, and rain and the sun again; four seasons in one day; four variations on a theme of vast natural beauty.

The next night, we stayed at a hotel in Tarbet. In the evening, we went to a local bar, thinking we might find some live music. But the place was empty. The barman gave us directions to the community hall, suggesting we might take a look inside. We went there but the front door was closed and no sounds came from within. But then we spotted a slip of light at the bottom of the door and tentatively pushed it open.

Most of the village was inside, at that moment completely hushed. Even the man at the bar had the till permanently open so as not to make a noise. We went in just as a woman on the small stage at the far end began to sing, unaccompanied, in Gaelic. Her voice was both strong and gentle, as if she feeling her way around the shapes of the land outside, bringing back to the song hints of faeries and will o’wisps and the remembered dead.

Later, after her set, the local band turned the night into a ceilidh and soon people were on their feet, swinging each other around by the arms, moving smartly through the formal dance steps. Six year olds danced with seventy year olds; boys with women; girls with men; boys with boys . . . the fun was in the dance, not the brooding undercurrents that inform the largely crimped and narcissistic shuffling that passed for dance in my college days.

I don’t tell Al and Nige any of this. And I’m not sure where exactly the story is in all these memories. Somewhere between the mystical and the mundane, I guess, which is maybe the place a writer needs to choose to live. No one else will really understand why he’s never quite in one world or the other. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he produces the goods.

“Al,” I say, “I’ll put you in a story one day. But you might not recognise yourself.”

Nige says, “He’ll be happy as long as his missus doesn’t recognise him.”