Arthur was a stickler for accuracy, and it was not a good day when some angry citizen came up the stairs on a Saturday to complain about some item, at least not if it truly turned out that the luckless reporter had got something wrong; if on the other hand investigation showed that the reporter was accurate, the aggrieved reader was courteously shown the door. And it wasn’t only coroner’s courts. Along with the other trainee, I travelled on a number of treacherous motorcycles to cover every possible civic event in the area, including the magistrates’ courts, where I learned a lifelong cynicism regarding the processes of the justice system. Regrettably, I also learned that elderly ladies are sometimes inexorably fond of wearing directoire knickers, the tutor in this case being a magistrate, a lady of the shires, who liked to sit with legs apart, possibly without realizing there was no modesty panel. I sometimes wonder now if she was ever puzzled why people never looked directly at her? Indeed, on occasion, it seemed that every man in the courtroom was staring at his shoes, including the lawyers.
Often I have been contacted by Internet journalists for an interview or some extended comment and the moment they say that they are a journalist I say, “Good, tell me the six defences for defamation of character?” I am slightly cheered these days that some know what I am talking about. I am still quite proud of my Pitman’s and my indenture.
I was a decent local journalist and well informed and accurate to boot, but when it came to the hurly-burly of the large regional or national newspaper, I just wasn’t in contention, I just didn’t have the killer instinct, as editor Eric Price perceived when he sacked me from the Western Daily Press in Bristol. He was not a happy man if the story as discovered was not the story he wanted, and indeed the Western Daily Press appeared on the CVs of many a young journalist that Eric had hired and fired. On the other hand he was kind enough to say much later that I had been the best writer they had. Possibly that was true because I did have, and hopefully still have, the ability to somehow apprehend a topic and write a coherent, informed, and readable column about it within half an hour, possibly with the help of one telephone call and a newspaper clipping.
Why am I telling you these disjointed anecdotes? I suppose that it shows how an author is built. Quite a lot of my history found itself scrubbed up, repainted, and part of a book. I am pretty certain, for example, that a keen, clever academic bugger could map the wizards of Unseen University to the staff of High Wycombe Technical High School from the late fifties onwards; not all of them got eaten by dragons. Indeed, some of them, including the head of history who I really liked, have been immortalized in print. In the scenery of my books I see the little village where I grew up. Characters speak who remind me of my grandmother and it seems that the mill fondly grinds up every experience, every encounter, and never, ever switches off. And sometimes I detect the influence of my tutors, even if they didn’t know who they were. Nevertheless, the grinding mill gives something back.
A few days before I wrote this piece, a friend recounted to me that she had met a brigadier who had discovered the Discworld books in Afghanistan, several in a neat pile. I know about this sort of thing; quite often a squaddie will make contact saying, “We get told to shift immediately and leave everything inessential,” and regrettably it turns out that reading matter counts as a nonessential. But the brigadier taking cover had picked up one of the books and became hooked, I’m pleased to say. Apparently he said to her, “How does he do it? He hasn’t been a soldier, and Monstrous Regiment was written by somebody with a deep knowledge of the military, stuff you don’t get out of books. So, how does he do it?”
Well, I think I know, because I believe it is the same little discovery which allowed me to win the Amelia Bloomer Award for Feminist Writing in the USA … twice. I don’t need to explain, because a little thought will bring up the answer.
For the whole of my life since I was nine years old I have enjoyed words, not necessarily words organized, simply some words all by themselves, such as conundrum and onomatopoeia and susurration, words that somehow seemed to speak back. I care for words and their meanings and sometimes stick up for them in a way that the Blessed Lynne Truss would understand, like screaming at the local news on television “If a policeman ‘said how he saw the suspect,’ then he is either describing the position he took in order to observe, or he was giving a very brief lecture on optics.” The word really wanted was “that.”
Pedantic? Well I am an academic now. And besides, the argument that such bothering about matters of usage is elitist—a view espoused by Stephen Fry, a man with elite written all over him—is a load of dingo’s kidneys. Wouldn’t you expect a lover of music to wince at a wrong note? Work it out yourself. Words turn us from monkeys into men. We make them, change them, chase them around, eat them, and live by them—they are workhorses, carrying any burden, and their usage is the skill of the author’s trade, hugely versatile. There are times when the wrong word is the right word, and times when words can be manipulated so that silence shouts. Their care, feeding, and indeed breeding is part of the craft of which I am a journeyman.
I will finish by leaving you with a word that I would like to see totally expunged from the English language. Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest you let fun out of your lives? For it is, brothers and sisters, a mongrel word, an ersatz word, a fast-food bucket of a word! What does it mean? Consider the shameful usage: “I was doing it for a bit of fun,” or “I thought it would be fun,” or “I was only having fun” and, worst of all, the little bit of white on the top of this chicken dropping, “Are we having fun yet?”
Why have fun when you could have enjoyment, amusement, entertainment, diversion, relaxation, sport, a bit of a lark, and satisfaction and probably contentment.
Fun pretends to be about enjoyment, but is merely about the attempt. In search of fun, people pull themselves towards places that advertise fun, but they are probably to be avoided, since, in my recollection, fun means trudging around a soaking wet seaside town wearing plastic raincoats that, no matter what you do, always smell of fish. All right, maybe I’m only having fun with you? But these islands of ours have the richest language in the world, mostly because we stole useful words from everybody else, besides frantically inventing new ones ourselves.
So let’s have fun with it; you never know, it might be fun!
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
SATURDAYS
“Britain in a Day: Terry Pratchett describes his typical Saturday,” Radio Times, 12 November 2011