A Different Tune

I've just returned from Rye, where I met an old friend for a drink.

Twelve years ago he was living around the corner from my flat in Twickenham, earning a fortune in business publishing, but hating every minute of his working day. Then one day he decided he'd had enough, sold his flat for £120,000 and bought another on the Kent coast for £60,000, using the balance to pay off his mortgage.

He's never had a 'proper' job since, and seems much happier for it.

Last year he was invited to audition for a French punk-folk band (he is a violinist) and phoned to book a seat as a foot passenger on a cross-channel ferry. "I'm sorry," he was told, "but we don't accept foot passengers any more, only people with vehicles. You'll have to pay the car rate, which is £60".

My friend slammed the phone down in disgust, lit a cigarette and fumed. Then he had an idea and redialled the number:

"You said I had to pay for a vehicle. If I came by bicycle, how much would that cost?"

"£10".

Two weeks later, my friend was the sole cyclist in a slowly moving queue of cars and lorries at Dover's docks, congratulating himself for his moral victory over mindless bureaucracy. The band were apparently waiting for him in Calais, so he decided to spend the hour-long crossing relaxing in the bar.

With five minutes left until the ferry docked, my friend made his way down to the vehicle hold and unchained his bicycle. Soon, he could hear the sound of chains moving and ramps descending, followed by the hissing of hydraulic brakes as the lorries began to edge forward. He quickly phoned one of the band members to find out where he needed to go.

"'Allo Graham. You muss follow le traffique and take ze second exit on the left. Yes? We are 500 metres away".

Graham followed their directions faithfully, making sure that he took the correct exit and found himself cycling up a rather steep ramp, which left him feeling a little breathless. To his relief, the ramp became flatter and seemed to be joining a proper road, then suddenly: WOOSSSHHHHH!

A powerful gust of wind almost knocked him off his bike and to Graham's horror, he found himself on a motorway being buffeted by a succession of fast-moving lorries. There didn't seem any way to get off the motorway. Terrified, he stood on the edge of the slow lane, wondering what to do next.

Suddenly, Graham's phone rang: "'Allo Graham. Eet is me again. Do NOT take ze second exit! Comprenez-vous? It is the WRONG exit!"

After a farcical (and very dangerous) half hour spent trying to leave the motorway, Graham eventually found the band and began what turned out to be a very alcoholic weekend. He now plays gigs with them on both sides of the channel.

It's strange how people's lives can change so much, in ways that we could never predict.

In the late 1990s, Graham seemed to have it all. He was earning at least four times as much as me and always seemed to be getting promoted. Evenings were often spent in smart restaurants, dining with the leading lights of international banking, or at the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons, getting gossip from drunken MPs.

Occasionally Graham would say how depressed he was by the ease of his ascent. He'd never been particularly interested in business publishing and couldn't understand why people at the highest levels accepted him as one of their own. Success bought financial rewards and status, but also increasing levels of stress, boredom and frustration.

I don't know what finally pushed Graham to suddenly hand his notice in and he'd never expressed any interest in visiting Kent, let alone living there, but within the space of a few months he completely transformed his life.

Today, Graham plays the fiddle at folk festivals and private functions, earning just enough to pay the bills and enjoy the occasional trip to India. He lives quite frugally but is completely debt-free and doesn't miss his old life at all.

I'm sure that Graham's example partly gave me the courage and inspiration to change my life. Unlike Graham, I've never had to face the same temptations (although I was made a very attractive offer earlier this year), but it was still hard to take a leap into the unknown.

After saying goodbye to Graham, I sat on the train and looked at BBC News. In a piece about people who died in 2011, I saw these particularly apposite quotes by Steve Jobs:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

I know it's easy to make statements like that when you're the billionaire CEO of a corporation (I'm not sure what the Chinese sweatshop workers who make many of Apple's products would say), but I agree with the sentiments.

I think that next year will be all about putting these ideas into practice.

The Age of Uncertainty

This evening, as we were driving home in the dark after returning a van to a slightly menacing industrial estate, my wife turned to me and said, 'You haven't done your blog for ages.'

This came as a shock. Obviously I knew that I hadn't written any posts for over a month - the longest gap in five years of blogging - but I had no idea that my wife was aware of this. She used to claim that she never read my blog, as she was far too busy being an übermother to fritter her time away on such trifles.

I hadn't intended to stop blogging, but it seemed a rather self-indulgent thing to do while I was trying to establish an internet business. Also, I couldn't think of anything to say. However, after receiving several kind emails from people who have wondered if things are okay, I thought I'd write this brief post.

I've now been self-employed for 11 weeks and, although it hasn't been a particularly easy time, I feel liberated in so many ways. Steerforth Books didn't get off to a rip-roaring start, but thanks to the kindness and generosity of a fellow blogger (I won't embarrass them here, but I am eternally grateful), it received a huge boost and the business no longer feels like a pipe dream.

I've no idea what the future holds. I've swapped the dependable, but soul-destroying, certainty of my last job for something that makes emotional sense, but may lead to financial ruin. Have I made a terrible mistake?

All I know is that the worst decisions I've ever made have all been rational ones that appeared to make perfect sense, whilst the best ones have been inspired by childhood fantasies, daydreaming, gut instincts and my adolescent sense of right and wrong. In the last two months, I feel that I have become me again, after years in exile.

Perhaps this is my mid-life crisis. All of the elements are there: an aging parent, a child entering adolescence and the sense of having possibly passed the halfway point. Some men respond by dying their hair that weird, chestnut colour and sleeping with someone in their 20s. My ambitions are hopefully less ridiculous.

I apologise for the solemn nature of this post. I have just been to Sainsbury's in Newhaven and it always has that effect on me. I've no idea why.

Travels With My Aunt

Last week, during a particularly depressing, overcast, autumnal day, I decided to clear out the loft. I say loft, but after converting most of it into a third bedroom, all we have left are some hidden eaves which look like the sorts of places where people used to hide from the Gestapo.

Getting into the eaves requires a Houdini-like dexterity, as the space is so narrow. Getting out is even harder, reminding me of the claustrophobic tunnel scenes in The Great Escape. On several occasions, when my wife has failed to hear my hysterical shouting, I've had to phone her and ask to be rescued.

Fortunately, this time I seemed to be more pliable (perhaps six weeks away from the 9 to 5 routine has relaxed my tensed muscles?) and managed to move around easily, unpacking boxes that had remained unopened since we moved here ten years ago.

Almost everything I found was of no use or value to anyone, but there was one exception: a small square box with a Super 8 cine film inside.

This is what it contained:

The woman pushing twigs into the kettle was my mother's sister, Patricia Eunice Dorothy Prior, who worked as a midwife in a small town at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, in Morocco. Officially she was a missionary, sponsored by a number of churches in Britain, but as it was against the law to promote any religion other than Islam, my aunt had to limit her activities to good works.

Pat grew up in a family of six who lived in the upstairs half of a small, terraced house. She shared a bed with her two sisters and at night she would lie awake listening to the sound of mice scuttling across the floor.

My aunt, on the left

Her parents' ambitions for her were typical for their background: at 14 she could either go into service or get a job in a shop. But Pat was bright. She passed her 11 Plus and got into Richmond Grammar School, where she sat her final exams during an air raid.

If Pat had come from another background she might have gone to university, but higher education was never an option. Fortunately, her parents didn’t object when Pat announced that she wished to train as a nurse.

My aunt during her training, on the left (above) and second row, third from left (below)

By all accounts Pat was an exceptional student and the skills she learned at West Middlesex Hospital would prove invaluable a few years later, when she decided to train to become a missionary. In Pat’s words, she had a ‘calling’ and felt compelled to pursue it. A gruelling training at Bible College followed, during which Pat had to learn to become fluent at reading and writing Arabic.

I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for Pat when she first arrived in Morocco, where a young, single woman was a second-class citizen. However, during the next 25 years, my aunt carved out a successful life for herself, respected by everyone in the community.

It helped that almost every person under the age of 20 had been delivered by my aunt, sometimes under difficult conditions. Many local families felt that they owed Pat a debt.

When I was 16, Pat invited me to stay with her. We couldn’t afford to travel as a family, so I flew alone to Casablanca and met my aunt at the airport. It was a 300km journey to her home and, as we drove south, my preconceived notions of an arid, desert-like country were replaced by vivid memories of lush pine forests, snow-capped mountains and orange-blossom scented air.

It was a culture shock. I had grown up in a dull London suburb, where evening meals alternated between fish fingers and beef burgers. Suddenly, I was plunged into an alien world of strange food, exotic landscapes and opulent souks.

I had been terrified of eating the local food (particularly when I learned that I would have to eat everything that was put in front of me), but I needn’t have worried. After two weeks of dates, artichokes, couscous, mint tea and carrot and orange salad, I learned that eating could be a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Morocco changed my life. It awakened me to a new, sensual world of smell, taste and colour. But, more importantly, for the first time in my life I learned to see my own society more objectively, realising that happiness was not related to GDP.

I was in a privileged position in many ways. As my aunt enjoyed some prestige in the local area, we were invited into several homes and I was struck by the contrast between the public and private worlds of the local people. Outside, I only saw impoverished-looking mud-brick walls and austere, veiled women. Inside, the veils came down and I found myself in colourful, comfortable rooms, full of laughter and conversation.

Using my aunt as an interpreter, I was able to have conversations with people and, perhaps because of my age, I could get away with asking direct questions.

I had arrived at the right time too. Television aerials were starting to appear on buildings, but the town was still largely cut off from the outside world. As a European, I could have encountered some hostility, but the days of French colonialism belonged to a past generation and religious enmities belonged to a future one. I was treated as an honoured guest.

When I returned home, I felt very depressed for a while. I looked out of my bedroom window at the different shades of grey, from the slate roofs of houses to the low-lying clouds, and yearned for blue skies, prickly pears and orange blossom. I could see why my aunt didn’t want to come home.

Nine years later, my aunt was reluctantly contemplating retirement in Britain. She would have to swap social status and a large house for the genteel poverty of a state pension and a pokey flat. I think she dreaded it.

Pat came home for a short visit to sort out her affairs and work out where she was going to live. On the last day, I said goodbye to my aunt and wanted to hug her, but Pat wasn’t a physically demonstrative person and I was afraid that I might unnerve her, as if we were saying goodbye for the last time.

The next day Pat arrived at Tangiers Airport and was planning to get a lift home from a friend, but a Moroccan lawyer was waiting for her and insisted that she travelled with him instead. He was interested in buying her house and wanted to get her signature on some of the legal documents. They argued for a few minutes until Pat finally agreed.

During the journey from the airport, a lorry crashed into the side of the lawyer’s car. My aunt died a few hours later. The lawyer escaped with a few scratches.

Most of my aunt’s friends were Christians and their attempts to find some meaning in her death only increased my sense of the utter futility of it. I couldn’t accept the argument that some crude form of divine intervention had spared my aunt the horrors of retired life in England. I know that she would have made a successful new life for herself and been a doting great-aunt to my sons.

My aunt’s death was tragic and pointless, however her life certainly wasn’t, because I know that in a small town 2000 miles away, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives that wouldn’t have been lived without her.

Chair Way To Devon

According to my wife I am impulsive, frequently making rash, reckless decisions that I later regret. I'm not sure how true this is. My most impulsive act - spontaneously booking a flight to Chile because the weather in February was depressing me - made perfect sense.

I would also argue that it was due to my impulsiveness that we got on the property ladder, during a brief lull in the housing market.

However, the case for the prosecution has become much stronger recently, thanks to a moment of madness on eBay a couple of weeks ago, when I made a winning bid (in fact the only bid) for four Edwardian chairs.

It seemed too good to be true: £40 for the lot. Surely I could sell them for at least £200?

It was only after I'd congratulated myself for winning the chairs that I realised that collecting them would involve a 350-mile round trip to Devon.

I don't mind driving long distances in the Nevada desert, but in Britain it's an endurance course of roundabouts, roadworks, caravans and geriatric drivers. I was very tempted to pull out and tell the seller that they could keep the money.

However, this morning I began the long drive along the coast of southern England. To make the journey bearable, I had several CDs of Radio Four podcasts: a recent Start the Week, from Sydney, with Thomas Keneally, Kate Grenville and Deborah Cheetham; the first episode of a dramatisation of 'Life and Fate'; a documentary about Elgar during the First World War and two episodes of 'Desert Island Discs', with Diana Athill and Ann Leslie.

When 'Life and Fate' was first broadcast as a BBC radio drama, two months ago, I considered listening to it as an alternative to tackling the dauntingly thick book. But in another edition of Start the Week, Linda Grant was so persuasive about Life and Fate's status as one of the great 20th century novels, I felt I had to read the book.

I'm really glad I did.The radio adaptation is perfectly fine, but it's very different from the book and barely scratches the surface of Grossman's complex, profound masterpiece.

Sadly, just as the episode really started to take off, I hit a succession of roundabouts and every other minute the Satnav lady bellowed instructions at me, which was rather distracting:

"Ludymila, we are returning to Moscow! We must TAKE THE SECOND EXIT AT THE NEXT ROUNDABOUT."

I arrived at the house just before 11.00. Luckily, I remembered the Remembrance Sunday two minutes' silence in time to avoid any faux pas.

In the window of the front door, there was a slightly intimidating notice warning that the owners possessed a ferocious, possibly illegal dog. I wondered what I was letting myself in for. Fortunately, the seller was a really nice man who seemed genuinely concerned that I had made such a ridiculously long journey (I'm not sure if it was my physical or mental health that he was worried about).

On the way back I decided to make a detour to one of my favourite places - Lyme Regis:

The Cobb hasn't changed very much since Jane Austen described it in 'Persuasion'. Today it wasn't quite as dramatic as the opening scene in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' (when Meryl Streep's stunt double was nearly washed into the sea) and people confidently ambled along the occasionally treacherous stones:

I've lost count of how many times I've been to Lyme. I used to dream of running the bookshop there and imagined walking along the seafront during winter storms, searching for fossils that had been loosened from the crumbling, slate cliffs.

During the journey home, I discovered that 300,000 Londoners used the Underground to shelter from air raids in the First World War, compared to 150,000 during the Blitz. I also learned about the enforced separation of Australian Aboriginal babies from their mothers, Diana Athill's first kiss and Ann Leslie's bizarre meeting with Indira Gandhi.

It might have been a long drive, but there are worse ways of spending a day than driving through pleasant countryside, listening to intelligent conversation.

I now have four chairs to sell (which I may end up keeping) and I'm relieved to say that my rather pathetic inventory of 42 books has now increased to 437. Only 7563 books to go.

One other piece of good news: I now also have a 'Steerforth Books' header, which has subtle echoes of the Downs and 1940s book jackets. I shall be using this on my website when it's launched next year:

I can't wait to get started.