As that poet of grime Lou Reed once sang, ‘they say that the city is a funny place, something like a circus or a sewer’.
What he might have said is that the country is also a funny place, something like a circus or, erm, a septic tank.
I’m writing this on a train on my way back from a writers’ course in Totleigh Barton. Don’t get me wrong. It was beautiful. Really stunning. The stuff of which picture postcards and Sunday night telly are made. But any suggestion that people who live and breathe pure country air are somehow healthier than those of us who live in the city is total nonsense.
It began with the elderly couple opposite me in the ‘quiet carriage’ on the train from Paddington to Exeter St Davids. They coughed. A lot. And they talked. A lot. And not just to each other. They also talked to the dog who was wedged between them on the seat. ‘You’ve traveled a long way, haven’t you?’, the woman spluttered to the mutt between coughing fits, ‘You’ve been on every kind of transport. You’ve been on a plane and a boat and a train...’
The dog said nothing. Who knows? Maybe the poor thing was jetlagged?
Then there was the taxi driver who drove me from Exeter to Totleigh Barton, a journey which took just over an hour and included roughly four minutes of uninterrupted hacking and coughing. Likewise the woman who drove me back to the station this morning. If I make it back to London without swine flu I’ll be very surprised.
But enough of the coughing and carping. Totleigh Barton itself was amazing. Beautiful place. Lovely people. The writers’ course was run by Stella Duffy and Paul Magrs and I was invited to read and talk about ‘The Gay Divorcee’. But first we had a glass of wine or three, followed by dinner, followed by more wine before finally we moved to the room where the talk was to take place.
There were sixteen men and women on the course, of various ages and backgrounds. One young woman later told me that her brother was gay. Another, Siobhan, had already read ‘Star People’ and brought along her copy heavily punctuated with post-it notes. She was very keen, and very sweet, asked lots of interesting questions and seemed to know my work better than I did.
The session was supposed to last for an hour. In fact it ran on for almost two and a half hours, by which time they were ready to buy books and I was ready for my bed.
I was up this morning at 7am and spent an hour in a taxi before facing a train journey of two and a half hours.
Physically, I’m exhausted. Mentally, I’m overstimulated. Emotionally, I’m happy to have been invited and sad to have left. There’s something about Totleigh Barton that really inspired me. I really hope they ask me back again.