You can run but you can't hide

Catching up with the past
Despite the lack of blog entries, I'm not dead, simply mired in the past trying to get some material out on the next adult book based on aspects of my own childhood. I have to say it's not easy- sifting through your memories for literary relevant events. It's not that there aren't enough, but there are too many. It reminds me of my Uncle Edward who declared with confidence that America was all desert. He took a bus ride across the country and all he saw was desert. He could have easily taken another bus and seen forests, wheat fields, cities and pastures. In writing about your own life you are taking people on a specific bus tour. You can't include your whole life, you have to be selective and give people the desert or the forest tour. Unfortunately that bus tour will then define your life for some people. They'll say "your life was very..." because that's all they've seen but they only see a fraction.

And the past catching up with me
As if that wasn't past focussed enough I got an email from the boy at my school whose name I borrowed for the hero in The Trouble with Sauce, Jonty Townsend. I've had no contact with him since school but someone from my school who keeps tabs on what I do dobbed me in. Fortunately he seems quite amused and has been bragging about it to his sons. I've now got to send a copy of it to him. All I need now is an email from Mr Croxall, the draconian teacher in the book and from my primary school.

Can anyone get away with anything any more?