In reply to UKC Articles:
A belated thanks to all those who’ve read/commented. Belated because, some weeks ago, the proverbial Council man with the digger (literally) severed my connection to these august forums. Life has become… interesting.
Thanks most of all to Natalie without whom this article wouldn’t have appeared. It must be tempting for an editor to avoid stuff that’s different and may not resonate with readers. The best editors have always been those who take chances and seem to get it right most of the time. But it’s still a delicate balancing act.
Jim Perrin says he’s amenable for a return to ‘Enigma’ on the basis he gets a tight rope on the crux. I think I’ll have one too.
I’d thought the gestation period was a mere 24 years of dithering and re-writing. But there were another 24 years before I discovered those grit guides in the private library in Ireland. And it was five years earlier that I chanced upon ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’ (The Lost Domain). There was never any conscious intent to imitate but I realise now that ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’ influenced me in a similar manner to John Fowles with ‘The Magus’. Fifty-three years wending its way to fruition.
I imagine the lost outcrop as somewhere not far from the Chew. When I lived in Sheffield, I loved driving over the Snake Pass. As you start down on the Manchester side, you can see what appear to be scattered bits of crag far away across the valley. Are they what remains of Yellowslacks? I’ve never known. But when the sun shone off the stone, it would always give me a feeling of the lost outcrop. Once Sandy Denny’s haunting ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ came on the radio. There was a sense of timelessness, of being lost in moments you wished would last forever.
Mick