It Was Like Being Given A Maths

I Have The Feeling Of This Completely Alternative Person I Should Have Become. There Was Another Life That I Might Have Had, But I’m Having This One.

But I Really Wanted To Find It For You. And When It Looked In The End Like It Wasn't Going To Turn Up, I Just Said To Myself, One Day I'll Go To Norfolk And I'll Find It There For Her.' 'the Lost Corner Of England,' I Said.

I Actually Dislike, More Than Many People, Working Through Literary Allusion. I Just Feel That There's Something A Bit Snobbish Or Elitist About That. I Don't Like It As A Reader, When I'm Reading Something. It's Not Just The Elitism Of It; It Jolts Me Out Of The Mode In Which I'm Reading. I've Immersed Myself In The World And Then When The Light Goes On I'm Supposed To Be Making Some Kind Of Literary Comparison To Another Text. I Find I'm Pulled Out Of My Kind Of Fictional World, I'm Asked To Use My Brain In A Different Kind Of Way. I Don't Like That.

After All, What Can We Ever Gain In Forever Looking Back And Blaming Ourselves If Our Lives Have Not Turned Out Quite As We Might Have Wished?

I Don't Have A Deep Link With England Like, Say, Jonathan Coe Or Hanif Kureishi Might Demonstrate. For Me It Is Like A Mythical Place.