When a member of the public turned up at a nuclear power station and was found to be too radioactive to go near the reactor, they advised me. When I had to deal with the news story about the pixie that shut down a nuclear power station, they advised me again. Scientists with a twisted sense of humour can do wonders for your education, provided you believe only 50 percent of what they tell you. (Er … perhaps 30 percent, come to think of it—I never did actually use the phrase “The amount of radiation released was so small that you could hardly see it.”)
They’d produce figures to show that the sun was an illegal emitter of laser light and under Health and Safety regulations no one should be allowed outdoors, or that the natural background radiation in granite areas meant that registered nuclear workers should only be allowed to go on holiday in Cornwall if they wore protective clothing. And I can no longer hear the words “three completely independent fail-safe systems” without laughing.
The job was also my introduction to the Civil Service. Yes, there really was the man who came round every six months to check that I still had the ancient four-function calculator that I’d signed for on joining, and was probably worth 10p. Yes, some of the Langfords upstairs brought in their own word processors to write their reports and then, because of the regulations, sighed, and sent the printouts down to the typing pool to be retyped. And then there was the guy who actually went into a nuclear reactor and … but I’ll save that one, because you’d never believe it. Or the one about the lavatory.
It’s no wonder that this clash of mind-sets produced something like The Leaky Establishment (which of course deals with an entirely different kind of nuclear establishment to the ones I worked in, where things were not actually intended to blow up). The book is practically a documentary. I read it in horror, in between laughing. This man had sat in at exactly the same kind of meetings! He’d dealt with the same kind of people! He’d been at the same Open Days! The sheer reality of it all leaked from every page! It was just like the book I’d been planning to write one day! How could I ever write my book now?
And then I got to the end and … well, Dave Langford’s garden would probably bear examination by the Health and Safety Executive, that’s all I’ll say.
I’d rank this book alongside Michael Frayn’s The Tin Men, another neglected classic. I’ve wanted for years to see it back in print. It is one of those books you end up buying several copies of, because you just have to lend it to friends. It’s very funny. It’s very real.
I hope it’s as successful as hell, and will happily give up any plans to write my own nuclear book. After all, I’ll always have my memories to keep me warm: and, come to think of it, the large, silvery, and curiously heavy mug they presented to me when I left.…
THE MEANING OF MY CHRISTMAS
Western Daily Press (Bristol), 24 December 1997
Exactly twenty-seven years after my search for frankincense in Bristol, I tackled Christmas for the Western Daily Press. Again.
I am not a member of any religion and I don’t believe in any metaphysical Santa Clauses of any description, and yet, for all that, I like Christmas.
But it’s become confusing. Now it looks as if everyone’s hell-bent on getting hold of Tinky Winky Spice even though in February you’ll be able to pick one up for a fiver.
I’ve a theory that parents who tramp from shop to shop in search of the right Teletubby or Action Man are really going through the old hunter/gatherer ritual again. It calls to something ancient in their bones.
In my latest paperback, Hogfather, I looked at the traditions of a midwinter festival. You have to be a blindly fundamentalist Christian not to understand that there’s been a very old tradition of celebrating the rebirth of the sun.
Even now, in our centrally heated homes, where we’re separated from the “great cycle of nature,” we still moan about the “nights drawing in.” We need Christmas.
I’m forty-nine now, and when I was a child Christmas was the time of the big blowout. It was when you got what you couldn’t normally afford, but these days so many people can afford some luxuries through the year that Christmas doesn’t figure in quite the same way.
But the Christmas holiday still has a lot going for it. When you’re self-employed, like me, for example, it’s often hard to stop working. When your office is next to your living space it’s so easy to wander over and start writing. Saturdays and Sundays become the easiest days of all to work because the phone doesn’t ring as much.
One of the reasons I like Christmas is because it’s perfectly socially acceptable not to work for a week. It’s a time to take stock.
In some ways, I’d agree that Christmas is too commercialized. It can’t be good for the country when stuff starts piling up in the shops in early October.
Some retailers stand or fall by Christmas. Take bookshops. They live for Christmas. If they only opened on 1 December and closed on 24 December, it would probably still be worth their while existing. They become shrines to those bookshop saints, St. Michael and St. Delia.
But the good points outweigh the bad. Charities do very well at this time of year and, even if you only drop a couple of coins in a collection box in December, surely it’s better than never giving at all. And I like the Christmas story. It’s a positive one and it isn’t shoved down children’s throats anymore. Schools tend to be very politically correct and teachers can’t assume that pupils’ parents are Christians.
The fact is that our secular society doesn’t offer any alternative celebration or occasion we can enjoy in the depth of winter. Somehow Blair’s Day or something similar doesn’t give you quite the same gut feeling.
This Christmas our family will do all the usual things—light a huge log fire, cook a turkey, and offer a vegetarian option—and I’ll enjoy it.
I used to be conned into not enjoying it because it was cool to say that it’s overcommercialized and then I thought: “But it’s fun as well.” Now I think, what the hell, I don’t have to be cool anymore. Anyway, there’s always been overindulgence at the traditional midwinter festival, whether it’s been feasting on a hog or an oven-ready turkey.
You can do Christmas your own way if you want to badly enough. And a little bit of commercialism doesn’t do anyone any harm. After all, the Wise Men made certain they brought presents, even though the shops were crowded and they had to get hold of some myrrh spice.
Under all the hype people do tend to be a little bit nicer to each other for a while. They lower their defences and get on with people a little bit more. So what if it’s only for Christmas? Better once a year than never.