Pay Attention! This Is Complicated! I'm going to explain it as clearly as I can, for the sake of my own safety. The present text is written by me, as an introduction to another text, which I found (Note that: Found. By chance. I wasn't looking for it.) in The Boy's Book of Science in a second-hand bookshop. As you can gather from the title, it's an old book, and it no doubt appeared in the same series as The Girl's Book of Cooking, some time in the 1930's, possibly even the 1950's, at a pinch in the 1960's, but certainly not after the 1970's. Why (you may ask) do I bother to read out of date books of popular science?

Well, firstly, I like science. It interests me. I like the structures, the logical progressions. If you read my stories carefully, you'll see that's the way they work, like factoring out quadratic equations. Secondly, I'm fascinated by seeing how people explain things they don't understand. Life is full of that. With the benefit of hindsight, you can see how close people yesterday actually got to what we think of as the truth today, which may help you to work out what we'll consider true tomorrow, or even the day after that. Real science is exercising the imagination on reality. So, of course, is literature. There are people in science who leave out the imagination, and there are people in literature who leave out the reality, and both kinds do a disservice to their chosen professions. As Norman Lebrecht said so well, 'I may like a bag of crisps from time to time, but I don't kid myself it's a proper meal.'� Enough introduction. Cut to the chase. Next text (not by me).



I'm writing this text as an introduction to a text which I found in a children's book ' not printed as part of it, but hidden and interleaved. Why, you may ask, do I read children's books when I'm an adult? Isn't it a bit 'kinky'�? Not at all. As Erich Kästner said, only someone who has grown up, but also remained a child, can be a real human being. I value children's books for their emotional immediacy, for the way in which they don't allow a lot of pseudo-explanation to get in the way of experiencing reality. If it hurts, it hurts ' and the knowledge that it'll get better with time shouldn't be used as a way of denying or diminishing present pain. In children's books, imagination isn't used as an escape mechanism ' it's a part of life, with horrors as well as pleasures. Adults only want to see the pleasures, which is why the horrors can creep up on them unobserved.

When adults promote children's literature, they say it's good for the kids because it 'fosters the imagination'�. What they really mean is that it gives the kids a fantasy world to play around in, so they won't ask all the awkward questions about the real one that would naturally occur to any intelligent and unprejudiced observer. Education, of course, completes the job: the fully socialised child, totally integrated into its peer group, is ashamed of showing intelligence and doesn't recognise prejudice for what it is, because it's just what everybody else thinks. However, if you don't spend all your time creeping round other people, so as to be invited to join in their silly games, and read a book or two hundred instead, you stand a chance...

On the other hand, I'm not sure how useful imagination is in ordinary adult life. As an evolutionary quality, it may well be contra-indicated (as they say). And the text I found would seem to demonstrate as much.

Among the authors for children that I like, there's one who strikes me as particularly ruthless. She has people killed, with very little preparation, people that you like, people that don't deserve it. Chop ' and they're gone. What's more, they're real people, not just figures in a fairytale. Ordinary people, too, not grand heroes heading for posthumous immortality.

Ah, but that's not the end of it. The world in which her stories are set has an afterlife. No. A spirit-world ' there's a difference. After-lives tend to be fixed: up or down; good or bad; ordered; hierarchical; judges at the entrance, guards on the way; some kind of progression ' this Florentine with a nifty line in head-gear, strolling through, making notes (lucky the camera hadn't been invented) and his oppo in a flowing toga ' you know the kind of thing I mean.

Her spirit-world is one of those dreadful woods in Northern Oxfordshire that you find yourself in by accident when you've gone out for a country walk in the winter and couldn't be bothered to bring the OS map. You slip and slide in reddish-brown mud that stains your clothes and cakes your feet. Every path you take peters out, and when you turn round to retrace your steps, the branches have mysteriously closed behind you. In fact, there are no paths, except the ones you make. Just like life, really.

I don't read her books very often, because a little goes a long way. But a couple of weeks ago, I was in a large bookshop and I went to the children's section, to see if there were any new ones. Two charming young women were having a conversation about Pooh and Piglet, which they were happy to interrupt in order to use their computer and tell me that there were no new titles by the author I was interested in.

'I always found her too scary,'� said the blonde one with the feather earring.

'Bit too much like a bad trip, my boyfriend said,'� added the dark one with the pigtail.

'Which one?'� asked the blonde.

'Nick ' you know, the one before the one before last. It's been quite a while,'� she said to me, 'since her last book. They reprinted the early stuff ' when was it? ' ooh ' eighteen months ago ' you know, just before I had the piercing done ' when you were still working in Travel ' and they sent her round to do some signing, but it wasn't exactly queues round the block. She's well thought-of, you know, gets the prizes, but not ' popular. There might still be some signed copies on the shelves if you look ' we've got five each of the three titles, according to the computer.'�

'And computers never lie, do they?'� I said, and we smiled at each other.

'It's worse than that,'� said the blonde one. 'You know when you were off and we had stock-taking ' well, that Alicia the agency sent ' what a disaster! Just sat on the floor, day after day, with the books scattered round her ' that was where she was working, so goodness knows what it's really like.'�

'I'll have a look,'� I said. 'I'd quite like a signed one.'�

'Well,'� said the dark one, 'they could become quite rare ' not like Pratchett, where the rare ones are the ones he hasn't signed ' she's disappeared, I heard.'�

'Really?'� I said.

'Yes ' the traveller told me ' people had been asking why there wasn't anything new, and he told me that was the reason. Probably a publicity stunt.'�

'Or man trouble,'� said the blonde one, and they both giggled.

The books were in alphabetical order. The ones I wanted were on the bottom shelf. I grovelled accordingly. I don't go down on my knees for many things, but books are definitely one of them. The signed copies were there, as foretold by the digital oracle, but the books were in a bit of a mess, with odd ones hidden behind the ones at the front of the shelf. I'm not exactly obsessed with order ' except where books are concerned. I fished them out, and began putting them in the right groups. And that was when I found the piece of paper with the thin, jagged writing on. It was slipped into the back of one of the signed ones that had been hidden. It wasn't easy to read ' the paper was really tissue paper, and the ballpoint had been running out ' but there was a nice bold signature at the bottom. Strange to tell, it was identical with the signature of the author in the front of the book. I slipped the paper into my pocket and took my intended purchase to the till.

As she turned it over to scan in the price code, the dark one with the pigtail noticed the picture of the author on the back. 'It's a good likeness,'� she said, 'those haunted eyes ' she didn't need mascara, you know.'�

'That's Alicia!'� said the blonde one, peering over her shoulder.

'Checking up on us!'� said the dark one, as she bagged the book.

'You can never trust authors!'� I said over my shoulder.

That's enough introduction. I just hope I haven't wasted too much time. Here's the text:



Why was I so lazy? I should have done the research, and not just made it all up. Then I'd have known what to put in and what to leave out. Of course I have respect for mysteries! Of course I don't blab out secrets to all and sundry! I'm a writer, for God's sake! But I couldn't persuade them of that. They probably can't be persuaded of anything. They know what they know and they know that they know it. They don't need to imagine anything. No. That's not true. In essence, they imagine everything ' and that's why it exists. If they didn't imagine it, it wouldn't. It's just unfortunate for me that my imaginings coincided with theirs. But how could I have known?



As far as I was concerned, I invented Iron Wood, and the drums and the chants and the spells and the rules of witch-combat and all the rest of it. Of course I got hints from the Kalevala, and I read Joseph Campbell at university and I've known this fairy-tale and that since I was a kid, but all I did was follow it through logically with my imagination.



And then they came for me. I saw them through the glass of the front door and because there was a pair of them, I thought they must be Jehovah's Witnesses. I wish they had been. That way I'd only have been stuck on the doorstep for half an hour, not ' whatever it is I am now. Quite a shock seeing them with the feathers and the drums and that funny yellow skin with the tattoos of power on ' I don't know if I invented that or not. I certainly couldn't have invented the ceremony they performed. Just as well the cat got out of the flap in time and the budgie feigned sleep.



They said they valued my spirit and didn't wish to harm it and that when I was reborn (reborn! if only! if only I could believe it!) I would be a Woman of Power, provided I was looked after in the right way, but that for the moment they had to punish me for Revealing the Secrets and they had to prevent from revealing any more. And then it all went dark. And then I woke up and found myself looking out through someone else's eyes.



It was ever so odd, looking down and seeing a pair of hands and watching them doing things and knowing I couldn't control them. They'd imprisoned me. They'd imprisoned me in someone else's body. I tried to work out where I was. The surroundings all seemed terribly familiar. Then I suddenly realised: I was in my own home. Not long after that, the person whose body I was in went to the bathroom, and I caught a glimpse of their face in the mirror. It was me. Quite a shock. I'd have needed to sit down if I could have done.



It's taken me a long time to get any kind of control, but they were right when they said I had a strong mind and could have become a shaman with the right training. It's probably easier than winning the Carnegie Medal, and certainly fairer than the Booker Prize.



When Alicia (that's her name ' I wonder if shamans have a wicked literary sense of humour? ' Probably!) ' when Alicia goes to sleep, or lets her mind wander (vacuuming, dusting, washing-up, knitting, watching telly ' all that mindless stuff) then I have a tiny 'window of opportunity'�.



I tried writing things on the window ' the real kitchen window, that is ' in detergent-foam, or knitting words into the sweater, but it didn't work ' she didn't notice, it ran down in big drips, or she unpicked it as a mistake. To tell the truth, I don't think she has any imagination.



So all I can do is write this down ' I don't know why, because no one's going to rescue me. But I'm a writer, and writing's what I do. Then I'll try nudging Alicia to get somewhere where I can leave it so that someone will pick it up who understands. (So I obviously won't be sending it to my publishers ' especially not now they've been taken over by a subsidiary of Newscorp.) That's all I really want. For someone to understand.



Well. I understand too now ' for all the good it does me. And what worries me is that my understanding may have become too evident. I'm afraid that sooner or later the Jehovah's Witnesses will call. And what they bring me won't be Good News. I'm not as tough as 'Alicia'�.



So, I'm writing all this down. Not that it'll help me, but I'm a writer, and writing's what I do. And then I'll hide it somewhere unlikely. So they won't find it, when they come.



Right. You're back with me now. And of course, by having read this, you, too, are in danger. Take precautions.



Don't open the door to the Jehovah's Witnesses, or anybody that looks like them (that probably includes the Mormons, meter-readers and market-researchers).



Count the number of terraced houses in the street, in case one of them turns out to be a hut on chicken's legs.



If anybody asks you about the unusual ideas you've got, say you had a dream. (That line didn't particularly help the last person who used it as a catchphrase, but you never know.)



I don't know why I'm writing all this down. It isn't really a sensible response. But I'm a writer, and writing's what I do.



Finally, then: try to blend in, just be like everybody else, and use your imagination as little as possible.







9.40-12.30 29.iii.2002

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