Making it Up

In as much as I ever make conscious decisions about anything, I think I might just have made one: despite the fact that readers are in short supply for such things, I would really like to tell a few more ‘stories’ in my blog.  Tales of my daily life are all well and good, but they begin to grate on even me after a while.

That is not to say, of course, that a certain level of fantasy does not manage to poke its nose into my standard autobiographical tripe every now and then anyway.  My recollections are truthful, but the finer details may well not hold up in court.  I don’t lie – I’m sure I tried it as a child and quickly became aware of my limitations – but I am prone to exaggeration and when it appears in something that is obviously ‘made up’ I feel less guilty about it.

On a past holiday my wife went to bed and found, under her pillow, a tarantula.  It was an actual tarantula and when my wife tells the story people look aghast and say, “Wow!  What did you do?”, but when I tell the story they say “Wow!  What did she do?” whilst thinking “Here we go again: Colin and another monster arachnid story.”  I feel like the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ (or possibly ‘Fenrir!’)  I don’t exaggerate for any kind of aggrandisement.  It is just the way I tell ‘em.  If misfortune strikes me twice, it is generally not that funny, but if it does it twenty times…  (Many years ago, a writer friend – a bona fide ‘writer’ – told me that even numbers are never funny.  “Always go for odd,” he said.  It has become my mantra.)

I think that all writers (and I include myself among them simply because I write, which is odd because I have just spent the last few weeks painting and I certainly don’t consider myself a decorator) express their own opinions through the thoughts and words of their characters.  Given the original mission statement of this blog I feel that I should hear more from Frankie & Benny and, particularly when my bile is rising, from the Meaning of Life crew.  I also have my own particular soft spot for the ever-bickering couple who are forced to spend five minutes together in the car so I will return to them and see how they feel about what will almost certainly turn out to be arthritis in the wrist.  Other Little Fictions may well have run their course for now, but will no doubt gift me with another idea when I’m not looking for one and I will run with it.  I am a slave to whim.

I would like to say that I have decided to stick more closely to my original intent of considering the implications of growing older, but there’s every chance that I will forget ever saying it by the time I write my next post, because this, for me, has become the age of enlightenment.  Think I can do everything I used to be able to do?  I’m almost certainly about to be enlightened on that score.  Life these days enlightens me in so many ways.  Can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t roll down the hill with the kids?  Life will definitely enlighten me – probably the next morning.

I constantly find myself amazed at how much I thought I knew and how much I now realize that I never did… and if I did, I’ve now forgotten.  Do you remember when you were young and people used to say “He’s forgotten more than you will ever know,” and all you could think was “Yes, but he’s still forgotten it.”  What is possibly to be gained by asking someone what they’ve forgotten, they’ve bloody forgotten it!  You now know just as much as they do – no matter how dumb you are.

My memory has a fairly unique outlook on life: It allows me to remember most of the ‘big stuff’: my name, my address, whilst becoming increasingly hazy on day of the week and what my wife said to me two minutes ago.  I find I remember almost everything I don’t need to and forget almost everything I am expressly told not to.  It is the stuff of fiction.

Now, where was I?