18 june 2001

19:01: A quiet evening on the heath. Is there someone here with me?


I'm reminded of an occasion twenty-five years ago when, after spending two weeks attempting a realistic fiction I went for a last walk in Criccieth, where I was. As I sat on a bench overlooking the sea I could feel the presence of the four imaginary characters I'd been trying to write about. What were their names?...

I pause to think... they were all four Welsh... there was Rhys, and then Megan, and Gwen... and yes Tom. I could almost feel them on the bench, two on each side of me... But now they are gone, the air is still, the grasses also. There is no sea here and those four people have retreated to a more distant part of memory, wherever that is. As have hundreds of other people I've known. Those four imagined ones are no more forgotten than the many living people, or dead ones, whom I can remember...

A woman walks by, a clock strikes seven-thirty, a cyclist rides past in the other direction... but neither of them is yet known to me as a character, living, dead or fictional... I know those remembered people not as clothed human animals but as personalities, as if from within.

For instance I remember my father more for his strong ideals and his quiet manner than for his appearance. And how do I remember the imaginary Rhys? I remember him as having strong ideals also, but with a less gentle manner, even aggressive. And they were both somewhat literary - likely to take equate things in books to real events... As I suppose I am also...

The clock strikes eight and I can imagine this thought continuing, perhaps for many pages or screenfulls, as the start to a novel even, or its hypertextual equivalent...


But now in my thoughts I'm back in the present, on this seat on the heath, beneath the jetplanes returning to Heathrow... there are no imagined presences, just the visible world. But I feel that some of them may return... and that this little piece of writing may have opened a door...


(thanks to someone who was with me in person and who suggested 'inventing characters')