Books, bab. This is a substack about writing and reading but sometimes stories pop up in my life fully formed and three dimensional. I’ve had some interesting experiences this summer. My movements have been very slightly adventurous and mainly free from social media and wifi. Part way through my escape to Pembrokeshire (which sounds like a Jane Austen spy novel) I was interviewed on zoom for BBC Woman’s Hour which was very exciting especially due to the Wifi situation. If you want to listen go right to the end at about 45 mins in. I’m talking about Couch To Comedy the course on stand up comedy I run.
My family holiday (me, husband and dog) was in a shepherd’s hut on a campsite with sporadic wifi. Everyone’s movements became the new news. Why is that man on his own with two huge flags and a tent to sleep 10? We (both introverts) wondered about it, quietly, whispering ‘the man’s watching a film without headphones’ or ‘the man has been facetiming, perhaps he has a wife that he leaves all summer’.
Then a confident Newcomer arrived in a fabulous campervan, red, VW, awning, Dutch. Happy, confident man asked flag man straight out - Hallo! You have a big tent! You expecting someone? The flag man said ‘Just me.’ He was watching his phone and ignoring the newcomer, boundaried by windbreaks and a utility tent which probably contained a camping bog.
I had some sympathy. A solo traveller is more exposed on a place full of families and couples with dogs. He didn’t even have a dog, and the rebellion of being alone makes you a target. The Newcomer moved on and the confident brightness grew quiet, his smiling face sliding into neutral as he slipped by the land that belonged to Flagman. As a quiet campsite person myself, I wasn’t much help to the Newcomer. I could have been friendly to him and Flagman but I was too busy reading and walking the coastline. They left a couple of days later. Flagman stayed all summer. The fascination with him was about his lack of need to be social, I think. It was only when a whole group of his friends turned up that I was less interested.
Then I moved into a Shepherd’s Hut on my own for a few days to write. It was glorious. I wrote, slept and hung out with friends but mainly enjoyed the solitude. All I had to do was figure out cooking and walking to the toilet, the rest was cosy sleeping and early morning writing. I put up bunting. I don’t think it counted as flags as it had no nationality on there, only strawberries.
When I got home some dodgy geezers started putting up St George flags along the main road, half mast on the lampposts. I think not a metaphorical comment on the death of England but more about how high the ladder went. Outside the local Tesco up the road in Reform country, they added a second one higher up so probably got a lift from a small crane. I’d like to be pithy about it but in truth I feel hounded out and not part of it. The diverse demographic we have in Birmingham is something I’m used to celebrating instead of being divided. When I read Facebook comments on the local groups that the flags ‘look pretty’ and ‘bring a tear to my eye’. I worry. When I read someone saying it made their soul rise up, then I really worry. It’s not what it seems. It’s territory grabbing, it’s saying ‘we occupy here and if you don’t agree then get out.’ I’m not prepared to be a keyboard warrior and inflame that argument because that’s what the far-right want. So I’m being a quiet camper. Contemplating if I can hoist a pirate flag and how tall my ladder is.
John Agard’s poem Flag.
Hope you had a lovely summer, bab! xx R
What are you reading?
Read - The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary, Hope Street by Mike Gayle and The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly all fun, cracking reads. I’m now revisiting The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to reinvigorate my writing mojo.
Writing - a terrible first draft of a novel that spans the last four decades. It’s fairly slow going because I keep stopping to process the Nineties.
