Reading other writers
Twenty years ago I read 40/ 50 books a year. All kinds of literature and mostly short stories. My great auntie gave me a few cookbooks when I moved out of home. The money I made as a dishwasher barely covered rent and bills but I ate breakfast and lunch at work and at home ate peanut butter sandwiches and discount apple doughnuts from the CO-OP around the corner. The price of the doughnuts dropped an hour before the shop closed. From one pound to thirty pence. Five soft sugar covered fried rounds of dough. From the age of twelve I worked as a paperboy and on Sundays after finishing my round I went to the car boot sale in a school playground and bought five warm jam doughnuts. Sugar coated. If it was before or after buying pirate movies depended on the day and weather. Sometimes I didn’t buy any videos.
To this day many of the details mentioned above are present in my life. This morning I was reading from Jim Harrisons’ The Raw and The Cooked and I urge you to do the same. Read a writer where you don’t know much about them other than what they wrote or their auto/biography. Read MFK Fisher, Simon Hopkinson, Richard Olney, Elizabeth David, Colman Andrews, Rachel Roddy, Paula Wolfert, Anthony Bourdain. Reading those who’s words have been worked at, edited and accepted should not be daunting for us that strive but inspiring. The daily feed is not the same. The daily feed are those doughnuts. Some on discount.
On Saturdays after my paper round I would ride to a Kebab shop and order a doner my way: red cabbage, lettuce, a lot of onion, chilli sauce. Sitting in the shop taking huge bites and slurping Coke I stared out the window as people walked towards the city centre to buy something to fill a hole in their life. Some days before school when I had a spare pound I’d go to Littlewoods Cafe basement and eat another breakfast. Weekday Breakfast - any five times for 99 pence. Two hash browns, two fried eggs and one sausage. Brown sauce from little squeezable packets. It was these meals that made me notice what mattered. What gave me more than school could. One day I was late- I took too long eating my breakfast at the cafe and instead of rushing to school with my schoolbag slapping against my back I went to the library and then the cinema and my life started.