Dream or reality? By Jan Needle
Reading Julia Jones's lovely post a few days ago led me to wondering (for no very good reason) why or how one decides to become a writer. Her evocation of sitting on Peter Duck, all alone, with the river water rushing past her, did all sorts of things to me. Firstly it reminded me of one of my recurring childhood dreams - being alone on a boat, conjuring up whole new worlds. Which led me to Arthur Ransome, and then to Secret Water and the stranded barge with a focsle stove and splendid isolation on which a young boy could order his own universe. Flat calm dreams of piracy, off the Llyn Peninsula I come from Portsmouth, and in the upper reaches of the harbour in those days there were many abandoned and rotting hulls, some of which had once been barges. Great rusty, open-bellied steel masses, with only the tiniest area for men to live, surrounded at high water by the impassable sea, and at low water by even more impassable acres of gleaming, treacherous mud. God, how long I use...