Here it is, the speech for the defense - of the drivel that is to follow. I dreamed a dream once of being a great writer. Having some random samplings put on display in minor publications only served to fuel the fire, so to speak. Unfortunately, someone bunged an icicle in it when I wasn’t looking and now I have nothing but steam and haze, and gas, but that’s because I don’t eat properly. Before you close the window in a hurry let me assure you that is the last you shall hear of my internal machinations. Not the last I will hear unfortunately but lest I go back on my word, enfin on that topic.
So where were we ? Ah yes, I was on the brink of greatness and then the icicle and poof. So now, I invite you to join me in my ‘journey (back) to greatness (that I never had, but that I like to convince myself I was on the brink of)….
'Grow old along with me,
The Best is yet to Be'
Whoever wrote that must have been a supreme mentalist. I mean, what ?
I am an engineer. Haven’t the first bloody clue what that is supposed to mean but my best guess is that it means I will try to bullet point and sequence everything, mostly because people think bull shit can never be served up in that form. Poor souls, if only they knew that is the most exquisitely elegant and convincing form of bullshit, well, they would be engineers too, I suppose. But, before I am distracted and go off on a tangent, which happens once every half a second or so, the point I am trying to make is that I did not actually just sit around waiting for the great fire to be lit once again. No indeed, I had, a cunning plan. A plan so cunning the fox that thought of it would be appointed the professor of cunning at Oxford.
- And it was thus - I shall begin, to read.
Elegance in simplicity of course. Much research on the great writing birds revealed that they all read a lot. So I would do so too. Hence I picked up this book I had bought ages ago on someone’s recommendation called ‘Snow’, by Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel prize winner for literature. You, being of sound mind and excellent constitution have by now of course, quite cleverly spotted the glaring flaw in my plan, the fact that no Nobel prize winner has ever written a book that wasn’t entirely incomprehensible to human beings. In my euphoria at finally being on the road to getting my greatness fire thing lighted again, I completely omitted to consider this simple fact. Result, two weeks of unimaginable tedium during which I grit my teeth and kept reading even though it felt like I was trying to balance an elephant on my head.
I will not even attempt to encapsulate the subject matter of the book as I have very little idea of what it was. Something about a mental chap going to a town where everyone is seemingly mental as well. By seemingly I mean to myself of course. As anyone who has undertaken the impossible task of trying to squeeze meaning from a book of this nature will know, it will soon pull the rug from under your feet and you will begin to lose sight of the fundamental truths about your own sanity. At this point (about 25 pages in) the experienced reader will toss the book to the furthest corner of the cupboard and mutter darkly about the lunacy of the person who recommended it.
I however, am made of sterner stuff. Actually I’m not, I just didn’t know any better. And fire – icicle- greatness and all that. Hence I did not repine. Before picking up the book each time I had to play various motivational speeches in my head, Once more ! Once more into the breach dear friends, or close the walls up with our English dead. I’m not English. But you get the idea.
Anyway, beyond a point it started to take a toll on my health, I knew that unless I found some way of escaping this enslavement soon, grave consequences would result. I had got past halfway and was contemplating the idea of sticking my head through my computer screen (the fact that I wasn’t even reading the book at the time will convey the gravity of my depravity) when inspiration suddenly struck and I ‘accidentally’ chanced upon the Wikipedia description of the book which naturally I only intended to read for background on the book itself. However I ‘unwittingly’ happened to glance at the plot and alas, that was the end. I knew all. I could no longer read the book, for Wikipedia had callously omitted to include a spoiler alert. Of course, only once I regained full sanity and re-read the Wikipedia page, did I grasp the full horror of what awaited me, had I not chanced upon that page when I did. For surely, another few pages and all would have been lost. I should soon have been blubbering and claiming to be a loaf of bread.
Happily though, I have made a full recovery and as I sit here writing this, my thoughts turn once again to the fire of greatness thingummy. Perhaps I will soon embark once again on my quest ! For….umm… the proverbial lighter I suppose. Or matches really, I’m not fussed. Electric coil, sure, I suppose that could work…
