Alex advises: "Pack a bag and do it; go out on a walkabout. You are the only person I know who can do it. And you must! For my sake, for our sakes. What else have you got right now? Do it - go on that big adventure, whatever the fuck it is, if not for you then for the rest of us." I'm still planning - stalling, and putting off - that epic adventure. The one where I’ll go and never return. Shedding all of my skin in the process and starting fresh and anew. It was influenced by a hundred books I'd adopted and tried to use as life guides. I was researching one at the time we spoke.
Laurie teaches and preaches of a certain beauty in the human experience. Though his writing is personal it is also ambiguous enough for almost anyone to relate to, especially those in their formative years, which is probably why he was studied at O-level for so many years. It is that beauty and lust for life and experience I found to be a true and pure catalyst and inspiration to even start writing myself, and in much the same vein. Our heroes must spur us on.
Everything was planned out; I’d pass the plastics factory and catch the 30 bus in the morning, ride it to the end of its twisted route, get off and sit in the library. I had research to do, and three days in which to do it. I’d treat it like a temporary nine-to-five. Along with all the commuters I’d sit and slope off into a routine. Maybe there one could find contentment unavailable by sitting idle in my room, dreaming the days away? "There's a certain sharpness that comes from absolute devotion to one single pursuit," Laurie himself wrote, like a monk.
The library was as grey as could be from the front; looming buildings, Orwellian in feel, stared back uninvitingly. Or worse: intimidatingly. The only time I’d been before I got paranoid about the bag search and didn’t go in, sitting on the courtyard steps feeling dejected and stupid instead, before leaving in self-defeat. It was raining. Not this time though; I was on a mission, and nothing was going to stop me browsing one of my favourite author’s papers. First, I had to register and get my hands on a reading pass, a much longer process than I had originally anticipated.
The reader’s registration room felt more like a border interrogation booth. Shaky, paranoid applicants turned to watch me enter from a square of chairs in the centre. All eyes prodded and poked. This was all a necessary evil, I told myself. The wheat must be sorted from the chaff. You can’t have any fool running around the airy open spaces tossing books around like confetti. This archive was indispensable, priceless and a true treasure – it deserves to be protected, by red tape if nothing else.
In every volume and every file filed away neatly lay the world itself. A library is simply a place that looks after information on your behalf. It ought to be preserved, right? Not under glass though, like a museum. Books aren’t museum pieces – they are to be kept safe and to be read. They are available to seek out, should you wish by the time my number was called out I had my whole speech ready to go.
“Purpose of research?” she asked, like a robot.
“Personal?”
“Face the camera.” And with that I was left to stew for an awkward minute or two before she returned with my pass card. She recited the rules one must adhere to in the library. “No pens. No cameras. All papers in a clear bag.” It was beginning to sound like prison, but I was rolling with it. “Clean hands, free from dirt. The locker room is down the hall - and is a pound.”
With the ordeal over the vaults really were open for me to roam, but I knew what I was looking for. At least, I thought I knew what I was looking for. Up in the manuscript room the computer archive was just so endless; folder upon folder inside other folders, all tucked further and further in, requiring more and more unpacking. It was a barrage of materials, all equally worth checking out, but I was after something specific; drafts from the very first chapter of the second book in that great trilogy. That chapter contained, for me, the most powerful evocation of leaving home that I’ve ever read. It was a transcendental take on one of life’s certainties, but sadly few cared to enjoy it; it sold the least of the three books. Maybe he was ahead of his time? I often thought that being as he was the same age as my grandparents his outlook and vision of life couldn’t have been more different. My Grandma was born the same year, and only twenty-five miles away. Perhaps I didn’t know my grandparents all that well after all? Perhaps they did share a collective outlook with the rest of their pre-war generation? A vision of the entire world in which to wander and all the time to spend. "Few have been left with anything to discover," an un-used passage of his read.
I had been bordering on obsessed with his books since I had read the first. At college I mentioned to an older mentor that I'd just finished a book by a certain beat, and had been inspired, captured, engrossed, whatever, by the rolling vagabond idea; the vagrant American hobo. "Forget that book," he advised, "you should read..." He gave the long title, stumbling as even I do over it still. "It's similar. But British. And on foot!" I borrowed a first edition from the college library and finished it between the bus ride and going to bed that evening. He was right - that book was much cooler; much more daring, written better with a clearer train of thought, containing numerous passages with stunning poetic descriptions of unknown lands, unfamiliar friends-to-be and the sheer excitement of being young and alive, before anything clouds that golden age in one’s life. Being armed with the strength of innocence. Something that seems to dwindle as the mind turns and works faster, pumping doubts and door-stops into your blood.
You had to choose which papers you wanted to view, put them on order, and wait an hour for them all to be brought down to you. Only three items at a time. I spent the hour sat on one of an endless line of neatly arranged tables in the foyer, writing away the time. I was the only one of all the tables using a pen instead of a laptop. Like Laurie I still used my hands - though he wrote by pencil and I write by pen. It may seem trivial, but anyone writing knows that these are the things that matter. I imagined him sat a few tables over, but forty years previously, scribbling away as I approached and told him: "I'm afraid I may have to trouble you in a moment."
Back upstairs the papers were ready. Over the counter I was handed a velvet-lined tray containing three numbered folders. Carefully I carried it to the nearest empty table, pulled up a chair and sat down. Excitement built as I gently unravelled the string tie holding the first folder together. A deep breath was essential. And there they were – Laurie’s own pages. Hundreds of them, thousands even, of scrawled (but legible) notes in pencil, which started off sharp and got more and more blunt as I read on. Here was my holy grail.
I devoured page after page, stacking each neatly on the last, looking over the words crossed out, trying to work backwards through his drafts in total opposite to what he had done. I got lost and found, slowly making more sense of it all as each draft revealed something different and told another story. In an early draft he gave away the whole plot in the first two paragraphs. He laid it all out before doubling back and starting from the top.
It's awkward trying to convey the impact of the few days browsing these folders. I'd spent a considerable amount of time reading and re-reading his select few books. And I loved every word, every turn-of-phrase, and every paragraph. Not only had his writing influenced me but we both wrote, and wrote about writing - we had that as a connection too. He wrote better, by far, but differently. I always thought he was a better editor than I am, and here was the proof of that, tucked away at the library. A million loose leaves in pencil – plenty of lines crossed out and re-worked in the margins.
I’d even been to Slad once to visit his home, find his grave and pay my own respects. I found him buried halfway between the church and the local pub, right where he had wanted to be laid down. ‘He lies here in the valley he loved’ read the inscription on his headstone. It was heart-warming. I sat in the Woolpack, nursing half a cider, wishing he was there also so we could get drunk together and talk about pretty country girls. Amazingly, his local pub had sold more of his books than any other bookshop in the country.
“Excuse me sir,” people used to ask him, “Do you know where Laurie Lee is buried?”
“Yes I do. He’s usually got his nose buried in a pint of ale,” he would answer, ever-witty. 'We die, of course, many times in our lives,' was a stand-out line of his, and ever buoyant but resilient in its sentiment. I'm sure he meant it in a negative way, but that was not my reading and understanding of it.
One of the very few places you could be safe and warm if you were a hobo was the public library. It is there you can create your own education. Here I was, practically hoboing my way through each day, tucked away in the library of libraries. Though I didn't look like a hobo, but I'd read enough books to start thinking like one. I'd spent some considerable time shuffling papers at corner library desks, educating myself slowly but surely, making use of free information and mining it for all its worth. Fiddling around in my bag for another pen, leaving a trail of paper scraps with scribbled quotes. But this library was special - truly memorable and essential. Now I thought I knew more about Laurie than even he did!
In true British fashion it was raining when it came time to leave the library for the last time that week. Water sloshed up into the bus stop, causing people to jump with a start and splash out of the way. I had to smile. What would Laurie write? How would he see this scene? Even beyond this world he plagues me (in a good way) with a critical writerly thought process. It's been a blessing and a curse, and will continue to straddle bot.
