Hunters and Gatherers by Geoff Nicholson

Hunters and Gatherers by Geoff Nicholson

Author:Geoff Nicholson [NICHOLSON, GEOFF]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000
ISBN: 9781468303605
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2012-06-09T00:00:00+00:00


I felt the book wasn’t going very well, though since I’d never written a book before I didn’t know how a book felt when it was going well. I’d completed a fair number of interviews with collectors. The interviews were on tape and I’d then laboriously created typescripts from the recordings. I didn’t mind that it was laborious, in fact that made me feel better because it seemed that at least I was working hard.

So I had a stack of tapes, a growing pile of unprocessed manuscript and a couple of big notebooks filled with jottings, scribbles, and a few attempts at flowing prose; a collection of sorts. I felt consoled that there was some concrete evidence of the work in progress. Material was being accumulated. Things were moving forward. It ought to have been easy to summon up a little optimism, but it wasn’t.

I’d get up every morning, have a big breakfast, watch some morning television, more than was good for me, skim the morning paper; putting off as long as possible the moment when I had to climb the stairs to the spare bedroom, sit at the typewriter and try to be a writer.

Occasionally I had Victoria to distract me, but not often. And when I did see her, I asked if she’d ever heard of a Thornton McCain novel called The Bullet Leaves the Gun, but she hadn’t. Sometimes the post brought a welcome interruption; some letter that demanded instant action or a reply. On a bad day even a gas bill would do. On a cripplingly bad day I would even hope that Rachel might ring.

Once in a while things would come through the letter box that could be construed as inspiring. In the junk mail there’d be a leaflet urging me to buy ‘A Complete Self-Contained Classical Music Collection’ available on six albums for under twenty-five pounds. I would agonise for half an hour or more about the meaning of the words ‘complete’ and ‘self-contained’ when applied to a collection. Then I would bash away at the typewriter, debating whether collecting was a process of inclusion or exclusion. Then I’d read it through, decide that it was pretentious rubbish, throw it away and have lunch.

The free papers were sometimes great sources of material. They often filled an idle couple of column inches with details of somebody’s unlikely collection. I started cutting them out and sticking them in a scrapbook.

‘Phil and Lorraine Fouberts of the Druids Inn have thrown down a challenge to everyone in Sheffield.

‘With a total of 321 different miniatures they believe they have the largest collection in the area, but would like to hear from anyone who disputes that.’

Or:

‘The Castle Museum in Norwich has gone potty and snapped up the world’s largest collection of teapots. After paying £120,000 for the 2,600 exhibits they’ll need a good strong cuppa.’

Or

‘A Barnsley woman has collected more than 3,000 jelly moulds in the past decade, in every shape and size, made from pewter, copper, tin, glass, ceramic and plastic, according to Rowntrees Jelly which celebrates its 65th birthday this year.



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