Since I last wrote – which I know was a while ago – I have tussled gently with the labyrinthitis Glasgow now seems happy to provide every summer. Yes, it is going around and, yes, that joke did stop being funny quite a while ago. I have praised and – in as far as this is possible – rewarded my immune system for shaking off any severe difficulties; promised it I won't drink too much caffeine any more, fed it vitamins and then proceeded, as planned, to put my belongings into a series of increasingly large boxes. All my non-portable possessions are now in one final huge box with a padlock on it, quite near Heathrow. It's like an ugly Russian doll full of books and unused crockery. (Why do I have so much crockery? I don't recall ever having bought crockery. Does someone break in and leave it?) I have sold my place in Glasgow and am, my solicitor claims, almost close to nearly buying perhaps somewhere in London. After 20 years of mainly being on the road, I am mutilating my life savings in order to have a base I might manage to see for something unheard-of like 20% of the time.
At present I am living out of a holdall in a house loaned to me by a couple who have no desire to see anything Olympic this year yet live unfortunately close to the planned sites for many of its poorly guarded and garishly coloured activities. This means I am operating pretty much according to my standard procedure: I appear with the big bag, I set up some kind of internet connection, I find a suitable typing area, clatter away as deadlines require and maybe take in a movie if I want a break.
There's actually a kitchen here – I'm not constructing a sad buffet of supermarket snacks across another hotel coverlet, or submitting myself to the pricey Russian roulette which is an average room service Healthy Option. Things could be worse. On the other hand, I haven't moved house in nearly 20 years and I've just spent weeks hauling surplus clothes, books and stuff to a variety of Oxfam's outlets (I considered breaking into strangers' houses and leaving them crockery) while trying to weather the emotional onslaught unleashed by hordes of family snaps, gifts from dead relatives, touring souvenirs from the days when touring was exciting and letters relating to books long gone and excitements long past.
Almost half my life has just passed before my eyes. It was dusty. And creased. Plus, I'm not living in Scotland any more. I have done this before, but never in a manner that suggested I might not be going back as anything other than a dirty rotten sell-out visitor. This has caused me to weepingly explain my geographical dissonance to a series of bemused but sympathetic strangers. I am calmer now and my London chums have done what London chums always do and wondered loudly why I didn't come down years ago.
My bewilderment and regular fiscal haemorrhages will be familiar to anyone who has moved house. The effects this kind of turmoil can have on a typist are part of a larger tension that runs through most writers' lives: we need a degree of peace to work, and yet life is not peaceful. Of course, definitions of peace vary and different stages in one's career can also modify how much disturbance is tolerated or even invited. Some writers I know thrive on emotional cataclysms and can barely wait for their next divorce, plummet into infatuation, flirtation with ridiculously violent criminals or encounter with rabid shrews. Some authors can only work when surrounded by inspiring volumes, delicate prints and a selection of antique spinets. Their perfect house with kind prospects must be miles from the irritating coughs of barrow boys, or the dreadful possibility that someone socially unsuitable might drive past playing something urban on a chip-scented stereo or simply loiter while looking dowdy. Most of us bounce along in the fatter section of the bell curve.
When I first started to write, I got into the habit of playing music as a background. If my bedsit was too quiet then the hyper-critical interior of my head would simply yell so loudly that I couldn't focus. And then there were the days – and nights – when I had to drown out noisily arguing/partying/shagging neighbours. The music helped in either case. Borrowing a summerhouse from someone heavily into what was referred to as shabby chic allowed me to learn that, however much I make fun of my more sensitive keyboard brethren and their need for tranquil environments, I don't exactly prosper myself when I'm hemmed in by leopard prints, rococo mirrors, fat angels, candy stripes, a plague of cushions and endless sodding knick-knacks. My desire to start bonfires conflicts badly with my desire to start sentences.
It's harder to type if you're somehow always waiting to be interrupted by people who also live in your house and who will eventually interrupt. Unless you train them not to, or yourself not to care. What if you have kids and they may be harpooned by ornaments, electrocuted, poisoned or drowned while you're pondering syllables? Do you have a wife who can deal with that? Do you have a husband who can? What about a babysitter who's there for when you're there-but-not-there? Is that a legitimate or possible expense? Are you in a relationship that makes emotional demands on you when your words can seem equally needy?
Do you want to be in a relationship with someone who makes no emotional demands? Is that a relationship? When you emerge from your study/nook/corner cafe/special shed/fugue state and try to explain how your paragraphs are getting on to your significant other will they be interested, bored, hungry, dismissive, supportive, delighted, alarmed?
Would you rather be alone? Are you ill? Are you going to be ill? Is someone else ill? Is your cat ill? Do you have a cat? A rabid shrew? Have you fed it? Should you? Is there a list of things you haven't done as long as a gibbon's arm and getting longer? In short, how do you identify, tame and cope with the everyday in order to do the mildly extraordinary thing which is writing? And, then again, the everyday can be extraordinary and you wouldn't want to miss it.
Having looked over all those old photos, I remember how unpeaceful I was when I began to be a writer. My circumstances were stressful and badly arranged and I had an apparently infinite capacity for fretting: would I ever be any good, would I ever be published, was this worth the effort, was this or that a good idea, would I ever have a good idea, would I run out of even bad ideas, would I run out of money for heating, would readers come and find me and make me hurt? And, way back then, when I had the gift of desperation and when I wanted more than anything to write and it felt so good when I actually tried to … I made a point of shutting my head up. I would exorcise my worries into written lists, I would go for walks, I would breathe, I would soak in the bath, I would stare at candles, I would do whatever might work to at least make my head a place of peace, to clear the interior desk and start fresh. It was a good discipline and I've let it slip while life has been smooth. But now – as leases and stamp duty threaten – I have to find it again. I have to sit and be grateful that I have a job I love. I have to ignore the bunting – I have a bunting allergy – and be happy I'm still hitting the keyboard after all these years. I still get to do this. Wherever I am. Onwards.
