The article below was written over the past few days, over which I have been ingesting large amounts of pain medication for a frozen back. This may have added or detracted from the quality. Feel free to let me know which...
When I think back on my childhood, it often strikes me that
I was potentially a little bit… strange. Quite delusional, in fact. I was once so jealous of a neighbour’s holiday
to Italy (I had spent three weeks eating midge sandwiches and falling off
roadside cliffs near a rainy loch in Scotland), that, in order to ‘glam up’ the
situation somewhat, I convinced his entire family that the trip had been as a
result of a rare genetic disease which could only be treated in a remote area
of the Highlands. My rave reviews of the Scottish NHS proved so credible that
his poor mother came over bearing gifts and sympathy, to the total bemusement
of my own family.
Scottish summer: you can see why I lied...
I am sure, however, that the lies I told were never malicious.
I lived half in / half out of an extraordinary world of children’s literature –
and it seemed to me that my suburban English life just didn’t match up. It was
all very unfair.
My parents steadfastly refused to become anything other than
what they were. Although they displayed a level of eccentricity, this was
somewhat limited to my dad playing the recorder and developing an unfortunate
taste for socks with sandals. My mother seemed more promising. She had a Gallic temper prone to wild tantrums, a
belief that all products with the word ‘conditioner’ were interchangeable and laboured
under the misapprehension that sending me to school with a bowl haircut somehow
didn’t constitute child cruelty. In the end, though, they remained quintessentially
embarrassing rather than mysterious.
Ever walked in to find your mum happily pouring shampoo into the washing machine? I have!
When a nanny arrived at my house, I had just finished
reading the Mary Poppins series. I
eyed the new arrival with hopefulness and suspicion. Sadly, she spent less time
taking me on fantastical adventures through a London I never knew existed and
rather more time running up exorbitant phone bills and patiently ignoring my
attempts to produce lampshades from her knock-off Louis Vuitton handbag.
Perhaps my metropolitan upbringing was the problem, then?
According to Enid Blyton, the countryside was dotted with ne’er-do-wells, just
waiting for a small pudgy child like me to foil their plans. Conveniently, one
of my grandmothers lived in an inhospitable part of the North Yorkshire Moors.
After several summers spent fruitlessly searching for adventure, however, I
sadly concluded that the countryside, in Yorkshire at least, was as full with
sheep and their droppings, craft fairs and old people who mysteriously knew my
name as it was devoid of menacing pirate-type figures.
I don't know, maybe they're just very well disguised smugglers?
It is because of this, I think, that I started to lie to
myself and to those around me regarding the finer details of my life. I once
gave a school presentation about my side-line job as a lion-tamer. I may have
fooled precisely no one, but my classmates and teachers were nice enough to
play along, at least to my face.
It may only have lasted a couple of years, but thinking of
my career as an extraordinarily inept fibber makes me squirm with embarrassment.
It is with some degree of relief, therefore, that I have just discovered that
one of the major sources of my self-delusion was, in fact, somewhat inaccurate.
My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald
Durrell, was, is and will remain one of my favourite books of all. An autobiographical
account of the great zoologist’s childhood spent roaming in a semi-feral state
around Corfu, it cheerfully makes no distinction between its human and animal
cast of characters. All are treated with a sort of wry amusement, deep
affection and a meticulous dissemination of their strengths and foibles.
One
character with more foibles to exploit than any other is his eldest brother,
Larry. A character of enormous self-importance, he stalks in a grandiose manner
through the pages, doling out unwanted advice, taking almost hysterical exception
to any perceived offence or challenge and displaying an attitude more commonly
associated with maiden aunts in Richmal Crompton books when confronted with any of Gerry’s vast array of
pets.
Having principally read this book as a child, Larry took a
back seat in my affections. He was too adult a character, patronising and
aloof. I preferred reading about the bird and mammal life which Gerry scooped
up on his travels and inflicted upon his long-suffering family. Amongst these were
Quasimodo the Pigeon, Alecko the gull, Widdle, Puke and Roger the dogs, and the
magenpies. All of these served to infuriate Larry, and I sided with them
wholeheartedly. I was a little sceptical when reading about Gerry’s attempts to
smuggle in a family of scorpions, but when they turned on the older brother in
question, I cheered them on quite happily.
In short, Larry was, if not an antagonist (he was presented
with far too much humour and affection to assume that role), then certainly a
model of an older brother I was so glad not to have. I couldn’t fathom how
difficult it must have been to live with him. Until a few days ago.
I recently picked up The
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. A few pages in, I realised that instead of taking
in the details of the story, I was instead being nagged by a feeling that I had
missed a connection. Finally, it hit me.
The author, Lawrence Durrell, was Larry.
Tada!
At first, this delighted me. How much better would the world
be if all giants of the literary scene were presented to us as flawed
personalities, bathed in the harsh-spotlight of a child’s -eye-view? Instead of the awed tones of literary
biographies, how much more fun would it be to discover that Hilary Mantel once threw
a tantrum whilst riding a donkey on Blackpool beach? Or that Will Self collected Beanie Babies until an embarrassingly advanced age? If I owned a
publishing company, those would be the authors I’d seek to recruit.
That's pretty impressive, Will. But you know they're not worth anything if you cut the tags off, right?
But perhaps it’s best that I don’t. On doing a little
research, I discovered that it wasn’t quite that simple. Like me, (and this is
a bit of a stretch, comparison-wise), Gerald Durrell was a bit of a fibber. The
Durrells did live in Corfu, and Larry did live with them. For a while. But
firstly, he was married. Secondly, he only lived with the rest of his family
immediately after their arrival. Shortly afterwards, he and his wife (who is
never mentioned in MFaOA) moved out –
and who can blame them, in an environment where a little boy was not unknown to
hoard vicious and/or venomous creatures inside the house?
Should we be disappointed by this? I don’t think so. Authors
(and small children) often exaggerate scenarios for comic effect, and the
reading experience is all the more pleasurable for it. It may be more
fashionable these days to advertise embellishments ‘on the tin’ so to speak;
Jenny Lawson calls her autobiographical collection of blog posts a ‘mostly true
memoir’ and Miles Kington hinted at it in the title of his book ‘Someone Like Me: Stories From a Borrowed Childhood’,
but the tactic is exactly the same: enhancing comic scenarios for the benefit
of the reader. Furthermore, the only potential loser from the situation would
have been Lawrence himself, but he was clear-eyed enough about it all to see
that, at its heart, his brother’s book captured family life with the Durrells
pretty well, saying:
"This is a very wicked, very funny, and I'm afraid
rather truthful book — the best argument I know for keeping thirteen-year-olds
at boarding-schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to
conversations of their elders and betters."
In other news: vampires don’t sparkle, Hogwarts doesn't exist,
owls aren't scared of the dark, inviting tigers round to tea leads to rather
more than being eaten out of house and home - and I never required specialist Scottish surgery...
