David Sedaris, the witty American comic writer, with his killer wit and offbeat whiney voice, collects rubbish from the country lanes near his British home. And I salute him. Where would I start though, in my ‘not werry pretty village’? ….
Plus jeep
We had a sofa and an abandoned jeep welcoming us into the upper level of the village late last year. The sofa decomposed quickly. Put to use in someone’s fireplace one winter’s day I’m thinking. Cars? They’re everywhere, stripped of their number plates and gently rusting into the verges.
People hang on to stuff to the bitter end. Then they chuck the leavings out. Not everyone of course, but it’s enough of a common trait to merit comment. The rest of the environment is so stunning you can afford to skirt round it, edit it from your view, but I think I will be doing a Sedaris with the less bulky stuff quite soon.
I’ve been truffling around some Edna O’Brien material today. She seems to have quoted the famous notion that there are only two stories: a man (ok – a person) goes on a journey; a stranger comes to town. Attributed to Tolstoy. Actually no – John Gardner’s Art of Fiction, published long ago, had an exercise in it with those two gnarly ideas. It’s now become an apocryphal canon of writing rules.
A couple of things I didn’t know about the genius, ‘naughty lady’ (as Harry Birtwistle used to call her) before today – she got herself a job reading MSs for Hutchinson and the quality of her reports were what made someone there suggest she write a novel. The Country Girls, written in 3 weeks, followed. Acclaim, notoriety and all. And – she was involved with the lovely lamented comedian John Fortune.
Izzy Brown 
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