Patrick Powell's cake moment (er, he's not French but half Kraut, half English)

As usual down her in sunny Cornwall when it is not pissing with rain or the chilly side of ‘mild’, I sit outside in the garden with a glass of something or other, these days just read wine of cheap port, and read. But I also fall to thinking, and as I believe that 90% of writing is actually thinking (and planning, though planning is essentially thought), I often find myself mulling over what I am going to write.

That now includes what — I hope will become a longer piece for which I only have an outline of the first line and the essence of what it will be. I have now forgotten the original first line as I worded it — and it was perfect, just what I wanted — but that doesn’t matter as I believe if you can’t play the same tune again, that tune wasn’t too good to start with. It was something along the lines of ‘It was just after I turned 40 that I realised that I smelled/smelt’ (NB The ‘smelled/smelt’ is now giving me problems: which spelling will or should it be. Discuss.)

I can’t remember whether or not that was my ‘perfect’ line, the one I thought of yesterday’ but since then I have come up with an alternative which has the advantage of being more than a tad ambiguous and will probably be the one I shall go with: ‘It was just after I turned 40 that I realised I stank.’ See what I mean?

What I mean about going outside and having a drink in the fresh garden air is that I think of all kinds of stuff — stories, first lines, themes for this Hemingway bollocks — but I never rush in to ‘get it down’. I don’t even ‘take notes’. My reasoning is that if it is any good and worthwhile and not a load of crap, it will occur to me again. And also it will have lodged itself somewhere in my brain. And if it hasn’t and if I forget it, well, who give a bloody toss. I’m sure you don’t.

Pip, pip.

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