As I think I’ve mentioned before, Thomas and Ruth Deck Roy have invented 80 ‘Special Days’. These are spoof commemorations which are intended to amuse and entertain. I found them very useful as a fun question when I used to run quizzes. I particularly like:
January 8 - Show & Tell Day at Work
January 22 - Answer Your Cat’s Question Day
February 26 - For Pete's Sake Day
May 17 - Day the Queen of all things was born
July 27 - Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day
December 15 - Cat Herders' Day
But today, I’m going to focus on February 17 - Who Shall I Be Day?
I spent the first five years of my working life in Nottingham, England. I settled in very quickly and it became like home. But then I got a job in Somerset. I’d never been to the west country before so it was going to be a great adventure. I thought I’d live there for three of four years. In the event, I lived there for 28.
The night before I moved, I suddenly had what I thought was a great idea. I should invent a new personality for myself. No longer the boring old, habitual me but someone more fascinating. It didn’t take me long to realise the futility of the idea. I realised I wouldn’t remember to play the new part and would inevitably slip back into my old personality. Like putting on my most comfy shoes instead of the most stylish.
I guess I was stuck with good old me.
I was reminded of this a few months ago when a woman in my town came up to say she’d really enjoyed reading my novel ‘Cry of the Heart.’ But then she added. ‘It was really good; I’m surprised that it was you who wrote it.’
Amused by this, I asked why she was surprised.
‘Because I thought you were just a jovial man who did quizzes,’ she said. ‘Not someone who could write such a marvellous book.’
This is the most intriguing and back-handed compliment I’ve ever received.
But it got me thinking that, as I well know, I don’t look like some people think an author should look like, particularly one who lives on the French Riviera. I’m not tall, not dapper, don’t wear cream linen suits nor a Panama Hat. (Although I have one.)
Nor do I act like the popular image of an author. I don’t suffer from writers’ block, nor complain how hard it is to write, I don’t take myself too seriously (at least I don’t think I do) and would rather laugh than frown. So, just like on the night before I moved to Somerset, I know I could never slip into the stylish shoes of a literary dandy. I’d almost certainly fall over.
Yet the whole question of who I am has a painful focus for me now. It is over two years since my wife passed away. We met on a bus going to college when we were eighteen and became very close and special friends, She had a boyfriend, however, (who looked like Aubrey Beardsley and acted like a poet wafting in a rarefied atmosphere far above us mere mortals) and we were too naïve to acknowledge what we meant to each other. Our friendship drifted and we lost touch for 26 years. And then, thanks to the internet, we found each other again. We met the following week and, although Janine lived in London and I lived in Somerset, from that day on, we only spent one weekend apart.
Until now.
The years of grief since she passed have been a maelstrom. Loss, obsession, self-reproach, heartache and despair. Despite lots of very good friends, people I like and love, I felt alone and bereft. In a way, I’m glad of it. For what else should I feel when my great love was taken from me? It’s particularly hard this week as her birthday would have been on Tuesday.
Yet now I begin to feel something new, some stirring which is both exciting and unnerving. How will I spend the rest of my life? What will I do? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be?
I am lost and without a map or my lovely travelling companion. My comfy shoes are no longer comfy. Perhaps I should buy a cream linen suit and start to wear my Panama.
Only time will tell.