Fast Fiction: Contrasts
There's a chap, sitting on a stile, jotting things down in a notebook. A writer? A poet perhaps? A novelist?
Richard Mallinson tells a creative tale.
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I saw an elderly man sitting on a stile. He was writing in a notebook.
'Excuse me,' I said, 'may I pass?'
'Eh? What? Oh, sorry . . . yes.'
He let me climb over. Then he sat down again.
'Are you writing the great English novel?' I asked.
He turned, with difficulty, to face me. 'Goodness, no. I am a poet.'
'A nature poet?'
'Oh, no, my themes are urban.' He closed his notebook.
'So does being in the countryside help, by contrast?'
'Yes, perhaps it does,' he said . . . 'When I'm out here in the fields, in the sun, under a blue sky, with all the birds singing, I find that I can evoke the gloomy townscape of my youth . . . Yes, by jove, you're right - it's the contrast that does it.'
'And you write about the past, mainly? I assume the present doesn't really interest you, does it?'
'By jove, you're right again. You ought to be a critic - you'd be very good at it. At least you'd understand, wouldn't you, unlike some of the dimwits I have to contend with in the weeklies.'
'Oh,' I laughed, 'I doubt if I'd be any better than the rest of them. Anyway, I have my hands full with my present occupation.'
'And what might that be, then?' he asked.
I didn't know whether to tell him or not. After all -
'Writing the great English novel,' I blurted out.
He stood up and stared at me. Then he sat down again.
'Hm,' he said, opening his notebook, 'each to his own.'
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