A Slip of the Keyboard (30 page)

Of course, we published that, and Arthur Church, who as I say took local journalism very seriously, wrote an eloquent defence of reporting even the nasty things. The gist of it was this, that it was in the public interest that the truth be known and known because it has been carefully reported and published. Without it, you are relying on the man in the pub, and rumour, possibly malicious rumour. If the local paper does for some reason get it wrong, then this would be known, and an apology and clarification would be made. This was not the best of all worlds, but better than the world
of hearsay. Arthur laid this out very carefully and the coroner instantly apologized, handsomely, and honour was satisfied.

Arthur was a stickler for accuracy, and it was not a good day when some angry citizen came up the stairs on a Saturday to complain about some item, at least not if it truly turned out that the luckless reporter had got something wrong; if on the other hand investigation showed that the reporter was accurate, the aggrieved reader was courteously shown the door. And it wasn’t only coroner’s courts. Along with the other trainee, I travelled on a number of treacherous motorcycles to cover every possible civic event in the area, including the magistrates’ courts, where I learned a lifelong cynicism regarding the processes of the justice system. Regrettably, I also learned that elderly ladies are sometimes inexorably fond of wearing directoire knickers, the tutor in this case being a magistrate, a lady of the shires, who liked to sit with legs apart, possibly without realizing there was no modesty panel. I sometimes wonder now if she was ever puzzled why people never looked directly at
her
? Indeed, on occasion, it seemed that every man in the courtroom was staring at his shoes, including the lawyers.

Often I have been contacted by Internet journalists for an interview or some extended comment and the moment they say that they are a journalist I say, “Good, tell me the six defences for defamation of character?” I am slightly cheered these days that some know what I am talking about. I am still quite proud of my Pitman’s and my indenture.

I was a decent local journalist and well informed and accurate to boot, but when it came to the hurly-burly of the large regional or national newspaper, I just wasn’t in contention, I just didn’t have the killer instinct, as editor Eric Price perceived when he sacked me from the
Western Daily Press
in Bristol. He was not a happy man if the story as discovered was not the story he wanted, and indeed the
Western Daily Press
appeared on the CVs of many a young journalist that Eric had hired and fired. On the other hand he was kind
enough to say much later that I had been the best writer they had. Possibly that was true because I did have, and hopefully still have, the ability to somehow apprehend a topic and write a coherent, informed, and readable column about it within half an hour, possibly with the help of one telephone call and a newspaper clipping.

Why am I telling you these disjointed anecdotes? I suppose that it shows how an author is built. Quite a lot of my history found itself scrubbed up, repainted, and part of a book. I am pretty certain, for example, that a keen, clever academic bugger could map the wizards of Unseen University to the staff of High Wycombe Technical High School from the late fifties onwards; not all of them got eaten by dragons. Indeed, some of them, including the head of history who I really liked, have been immortalized in print. In the scenery of my books I see the little village where I grew up. Characters speak who remind me of my grandmother and it seems that the mill fondly grinds up every experience, every encounter, and never, ever switches off. And sometimes I detect the influence of my tutors, even if they didn’t know who they were. Nevertheless, the grinding mill gives something back.

A few days before I wrote this piece, a friend recounted to me that she had met a brigadier who had discovered the Discworld books in Afghanistan, several in a neat pile. I know about this sort of thing; quite often a squaddie will make contact saying, “We get told to shift immediately and leave everything inessential,” and regrettably it turns out that reading matter counts as a nonessential. But the brigadier taking cover had picked up one of the books and became hooked, I’m pleased to say. Apparently he said to her, “How does he do it? He hasn’t been a soldier, and
Monstrous Regiment
was written by somebody with a deep knowledge of the military, stuff you don’t get out of books. So, how does he do it?”

Well, I think I know, because I believe it is the same little discovery which allowed me to win the Amelia Bloomer Award for Feminist
Writing in the USA … twice. I don’t need to explain, because a little thought will bring up the answer.

For the whole of my life since I was nine years old I have enjoyed words, not necessarily words organized, simply some words all by themselves, such as
conundrum
and
onomatopoeia
and
susurration
, words that somehow seemed to speak back. I care for words and their meanings and sometimes stick up for them in a way that the Blessed Lynne Truss would understand, like screaming at the local news on television “If a policeman ‘said how he saw the suspect,’ then he is either describing the position he took in order to observe, or he was giving a very brief lecture on optics.” The word really wanted was “that.”

Pedantic? Well I am an academic now. And besides, the argument that such bothering about matters of usage is elitist—a view espoused by Stephen Fry, a man with elite written all over him—is a load of dingo’s kidneys. Wouldn’t you expect a lover of music to wince at a wrong note? Work it out yourself. Words turn us from monkeys into men. We make them, change them, chase them around, eat them, and live by them—they are workhorses, carrying any burden, and their usage is the skill of the author’s trade, hugely versatile. There are times when the wrong word is the right word, and times when words can be manipulated so that silence shouts. Their care, feeding, and indeed breeding is part of the craft of which I am a journeyman.

I will finish by leaving you with a word that I would like to see totally expunged from the English language. Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest you let
fun
out of your lives? For it is, brothers and sisters, a mongrel word, an ersatz word, a fast-food bucket of a word! What does it mean? Consider the shameful usage: “I was doing it for a bit of fun,” or “I thought it would be fun,” or “I was only having fun” and, worst of all, the little bit of white on the top of this chicken dropping, “Are we having fun yet?”

Why have fun when you could have enjoyment, amusement, entertainment, diversion, relaxation, sport, a bit of a lark, and satisfaction and probably contentment.

Fun pretends to be about enjoyment, but is merely about the attempt. In search of fun, people pull themselves towards places that advertise fun, but they are probably to be avoided, since, in my recollection, fun means trudging around a soaking wet seaside town wearing plastic raincoats that, no matter what you do, always smell of fish. All right, maybe I’m only having fun with you? But these islands of ours have the richest language in the world, mostly because we stole useful words from everybody else, besides frantically inventing new ones ourselves.

So let’s have fun with it; you never know, it might be fun!

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

“Britain in a Day: Terry Pratchett describes his typical Saturday,”
Radio Times
,
12 November 2011

Wake up. This is essential. It’s a Saturday, traditionally a day of rest for many people, but for me there are only two types of day: the days when my PA, Rob Wilkins, is in; and those when he isn’t.

Generally speaking, I write every day of the week, subject to family considerations, and today I am writing a first draft of a new book, which is fun, and so I lie in bed, cheered by the click of the kettle and ready for the first cup of tea of the day. Then into the bathroom, shower, trim moustache, and sort out the morning pills, mostly concerned with blood pressure, now quite under control.

Of the other three, one copes with the occasional bout of sciatica and the other two stand between me and the inexorable progress of Alzheimer’s.

And since I am a man in his sixties, some of the mental space at this time of day is directing venom against the drug companies that hermetically package their wares in plastic and metal laminations, which require weight-lifter strengths and a safety net to
disgorge them, instead of the little pillboxes that everybody could open without resorting to scissors.

I discuss plans for the day with Lyn, my wife, then attack
The Times
while finishing a bowl of the bowel-scouring muesli that, I am assured, must be doing me some good. Then out to feed the chickens and other creatures on a beautiful late autumn day.

Apart from the vegetable garden, which is sacrosanct, we run the property for the wildlife, by and large, which means we get hedgehogs and, in our barn, barn owls. Everything’s a bit scruffy, but it’s such a wonderful day that you have to be glad to be born and don’t even mind other people having been born either.

And then, as P. G. Wodehouse might have said, it’s Ho! for the chapel, the grandiose name for the building that combines my study and library where the computers will get fired up and some writing will ensue.

Oddly enough, Saturdays and Sundays are good days for a writer like me; weekdays are so often punctuated with phone calls it’s easy to forget that you are supposed to be working on a book, and even though
Snuff
, my latest book, is out there and in the public domain, there is still some PR activity that I must attend to in the strange, postnatal world that an author slides into when the latest baby is snatched away.

Of course, the cure for this is to start writing something else, but for the sake of my health, and my eyesight, I periodically put on something warm and go outside to chop logs, which is very satisfying, with a nice little curry at lunchtime.

A walk in the afternoon, which is never predictable because here in the countryside you are bound to meet people you know, and the etiquette of the countryside means you should stop and chat.

After that, feed the chickens for the second time, do a bit of gardening while the light allows, possibly back up to the chapel to read the e-mails (and ignore them! This is the weekend, for heavens
sake!) and, eventually, back to the house for the rest of the evening.

We have a vast repository of old DVDs, so, if we’re not going out or have other plans, we pick one we haven’t played for some time. The absolute rule, however, is that I must always catch the news at ten p.m. I was a journalist once and the stain never leaves you.

The last act of the day is a kitchen full of cats clamouring to be fed and then upstairs, shower, then bed—a four-poster, sufficiently big that we both have room to stretch out. Wonderful. A quiet day this, with time to think and enjoy life. Nothing much has happened, and sometimes that’s a really good thing. I’m glad that there are days like this.

D
AYS OF
R
AGE

On Alzheimer’s, orangutans, campaigns, controversies, dignified endings, and trying to make a lot of things a little better