The first in a series of answers
A good friend of mine, Mary Nixon, has posed a number of questions which I will attempt to answer. They are in response to her reading of Boy on a Wire. Mary expects that I will not, when answering, move a foot back. I’ll try not to.
Here is the first.
1. Opposite the contents page you say that you “have cobbled a life together”. Can you expand on this?
It has become clear to me over the course of my life that there is a large group of people who are very clear about what they are doing, when they are doing it, and why they are doing it. Then there are others, more like me, who seem to do things at random because something smacks them in the mouth, they are stationary at the time, they are looking for something else to do, or the police are knocking on the door and this is a smart time to move house.
In my time so far I have worked in a bank, as a retailer, a child minder, journalist, farm worker, comedian, cool-room attendant, joke writer and at other tasks that have slipped from memory. The only bit planned was the bit I seem to be in now – writer. And maybe that’s something many writers have in common - they find an income however they can, doing almost anything, all the while making notes.
In addition, I married twice without meaning to and helped one wife get pregnant without either of us knowing what we were up to.
Add to all this the inner self-doubt I constantly grapple with and the outer extraverted attitude that reeks of overconfidence and you have a life that can only be cobbled together despite the conflicting streams, meandering interests, rampant passions and a body heavily poisoned with insecticides and heavy metals that is forever driven by its owner to run, climb, lift and surf.
The book, Boy on a Wire, is published by Fremantle Press