Which author would you love to have dinner with?
Before I answer the question, I just wanted to reflect on how central books have been to my life since I was a child of about 6 years old.
The books I had to read at school never really interested me, I was much more interested in comics. However, I was regarded as a non reader by my school. This irritated my parents, and as a parent myself I can understand that, so they came up with the idea of buying me a toy every time I finished one of the school books. Now it was worth my while I started to race through the boring school books, astonishing my teacher and forcing my Dad to call a halt to the reward system after about a month!
My pocket money almost always went on sweets and comics. The latter included imports from the US such as superhero stories, something I have zero interest in nowadays oddly enough, and UK favourites like The Beano, Victor and TV21 in the Primary school years of my childhood, and then magazines like Look In later on. Alongside these I read loads of books that I picked up from small bookshops where proper pocket money paperbacks were available at 25p or 30p in those days! Doctor Who books, the Chronicles of Narnia and a strange collection of weird interests such as monsters, fact books and vampires! However, my real loves were the Ladybird History books which I collected avidly. Books with brilliant pictures and superbly chosen words that forced you to think but never overwhelmed you.
As I moved into adulthood I went through a number of peaks and troughs of reading according to time and money available, but there were always books around me. When I became a parent I was able to read favourite books both old and new and bedtime reading became my favourite part of the role. I introduced the children to Paddington, Frog and Toad, Old Bear, Sleepover Club and Harry Potter amongst many others. I loved doing the voices and I would sometimes be reading for about an hour especially if I got to a good bit! I was privileged to be able to do that for about 20 years in total and I loved every minute of it.
When I started commuting I ended up reading more than ever because I had to do something to make my journey in more bearable. I would often read over a thousand pages a week and occasionally almost missed my stop when I got to a really good bit! Now that I have stopped working I don’t read as much as I used to but I almost always start the day by reading and I will dip into a particularly good book throughout the day. Books have always been and will always be an important part of life for me.
Now on to the question. I am currently reading the Maisie Dobbs novels of Jacqueline Winspear in order. They are set in the inter war years and they then move onto the second world war. The sense of place and time is amazing and the central character one of the best in any ongoing series. I would love to have dinner with Jacqueline Winspear and find out more about her writing journey.
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
A couple of months ago I had a really nasty fall, from which I am now pretty much recovered. The story of the very kind couple who helped me is here
It was a lesson that at the time I took on board wholeheartedly. Since then, the constant dripping of bad news and awful people, especially politicians, has given me cause to reflect. Why would someone help a neighbour or a stranger and then help to elect someone whose chief aim is to help himself? Why show compassion in everyday life and then vote for a rich person who shows no compassion in his? It occurred to me that they almost certainly take the same view as I do of the world, just in a different way. You see, when I see kindness and compassion I see it as learnt behaviour whereas when I see unkindness and lack of compassion I see it as real human nature.
The people whose politics I despise no doubt see things in terms of people from different backgrounds having different values and natures, and anyone from those backgrounds who are very similar are simply exceptions to the rule. Now, there are cultural and value based differences, and they can sometimes be significant, but we are all human beings and that’s something that both sides fail to remember. I was very happy to discuss politics with those who disagreed with me years ago, but now I avoid it like the plague. I was happy to have friends with very different views on politics years ago, but I wouldn’t be nowadays. I have retreated into my echo chamber on and offline and that echo chamber cannot be breached. Maybe this is why I see human beings as basically bad, because I don’t get to know them if they hold very different views. There’s a Guardian section called Dining Across the Divide where people with diametrically opposite views have dinner with each other and see the human beings on the other side. In most cases an understanding is reached although the differences remain. Perhaps I need to apply that type of approach, but I don’t have it in me at the moment. It’s a difficult situation for all of us and unless something happens to bring us together I can only see it getting worse. However kind strangers can be, they will remain strangers until someone makes the first move.
If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?
When you are a child you look 20 or 30 years into the future and it seems unknowable and ridiculously distant. I remember back in the mid 70s thinking about how old I was going to be in the year 2000 and how old my parents would be. By the time I reached the year 2000 my Dad was already dead and had been for four and a half years. I realised that the future I envisaged as a young child was wrong both personally and in terms of the world.
When you become an adult you start looking ahead in ever smaller increments and just hope that you can have some measure of control over where you might be. As I am now 61, I don’t know how long that future might be. That looks quite dark on the page, but what I mean is that I live much more in the present these days. (Apart from my blog where I am often found in the past!) I will therefore not look forward 10 years or 20 years as I would have done earlier in my life. All I would want this fictitious future self to say is
Your family are thriving and the planet is healing.
The first part is my real focus and the second part is pie in the sky wish fulfilment which is never going to happen until the human race is extinct.
What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?
In Japan the street food and the restaurant food are often out of this world. When I was there, my favourite street food was Takoyaki, which is fried octopus. However, since those days, I have come to learn more about the octopus and what an amazing creature it is, and I don’t think I would have it if I go back. So, my choice from everything I had in Japan is Okonomiyaki. It’s like a filled pancake that contains fish, vegetables or meat, depending on your taste. The really great thing about Okonomiyaki restaurants is that in front of you is a heated metal plate on which you cook your own meal. It’s the perfect combination of restaurant and homemade for me, because you have a bowl with the batter and plates or bowls with the ingredients and you make your own meal to your own requirements.
Since leaving Japan, Okonomiyaki has made semi-regular appearances on our dinner table and it’s always very well received. Below is the recipe taken from a Japan Times book with my own measurements for 6 people on the left (when all four of the children were living at home) and 3 people on the left. I use an ordinary frying pan to do the cooking, although however often I make it, the first one never comes out in one piece! Each one takes about 5 minutes to cook so everyone eats at different times, but it is definitely worth the wait! Why not give it a go? Let me know how you get on!
What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
I was discussing this on another blog yesterday after reading Paul Carney’s article.
https://paulcarneyartist.blog/2021/05/09/sequencing-learning-in-art-and-design-dont-ask-the-dfe/
We were discussing how the UK have failed, and continue to fail, their creative students. Art and music have been sidelined since the early 2010s and the situation is just getting worse. Our creative industries contributed nearly £150billion to the economy last year, according to UK government estimates, a figure that grew year on year by over 5% compared to the overall growth rate of the economy of less than 2%. Sport, which is prioritised in a way that the arts aren’t in school, contributed less than half of that, £63billion. Now, I am definitely not saying we should replace sport with art, but at Primary school level the children don’t need to be getting 5 maths and 5 English lessons every week, taking up their entire morning every day of the week (as Michael Gove the Gradgrindian Education Secretary decided and enforced). Get rid of two of each and suddenly art and sport have the room to breathe. You can have an art lesson every week like I used to, you can have a music lesson every week like I used to, you can have two extra P.E. lessons or you can combine the two and teach dance to boys as well as girls. That way, dance can once again be seen as something everyone can do and maybe, just maybe, boys who enjoy it won’t be subjected to the current level of mindless bullying by a society who refuse to see it as something only girls do. Actually, that’s never going to happen because men and boys are desperately afraid of creativity or self expression that might show another side to them.
By the way, everything I am suggesting here for state schools already happens at fee paying schools. That’s why the vast majority of our creatives and the majority of our high level sports people, apart from footballers, come from the highest strata of society. We have created a situation where a level playing field is impossible, particularly since the Thatcher government forced the sell off of the vast majority of them in the 1980s. A balanced education should not be the norm for the privileged few, it should be a right for everyone.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 