Memory, Imagination and Going Spare … by Ms Paige Turner
I’m about to do an online ‘Memory and Imagination’ course – as I need to sometimes ‘student’ and it’s with my Cambridge supervisors so that’s good. I’m wondering if ‘the most famous person on the planet’ will come up as Prince Harry does merge Memory and Imagination. ‘My memory is my memory, it does what it does, gathers and curates as it sees fit, and there is just as much truth in what I remember, and how I remember it, as in so called objective facts.’ His memoir (yet another one to add to the can) is a talking oxymoron as he is a walking contradiction in terms. (eg A confirmed bachelor who says he is desperate to marry.) I’m only halfway through so I can’t judge a book by its cover to mix my metaphors but this reader is aware of how scantily H, Haz, Harold, Hazzers (he goes by many names) explores his relationship with his elder brother – Willy. I am feeling quite sorry for Willy.
Then yesterday, during a contretemps with Mister Justin Case, my husband told me that my elder sister (by eight years – and she always maintains seven) said during one of my rare ‘outbursts’ that I had been performing this way since I was two years old. (This isn’t the way I remember it, even when I was two.) To use H’s term: I saw red mist. Went spare. (I mean Mister Justin Case just laughed – but he’s the eldest of three brothers.) I could go into why I was so enflamed but to cut a long story, I suddenly ‘got’ H’s brief narky asides in regard to his elder brother. I totally ‘got’ his angst the moment my husband revealed my elder sister’s own aside.
However, the difference is: I’m not publicly announcing my narkiness with regard to my elder sister’s untrue remark. Well … only to my three lovely blog readers …
‘Spare’ – The Duke of Sussex’s memoir written by J.R. Moehringer whom the duke acknowledges in the middle of his many, many acknowledgements, as ‘collaborator’ and friend, and sometime sparring partner’.
My novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’ published by Cranthorpe Milner is available on Amazon too. Ha ha.
Memory, Imagination and Going Spare …
16/01/2023 // by Jan Moran Neil
Sidling rivalry is the result of DNA that doesn’t get evenly distributed at conception. I was born a lively blonde with a certain ‘jeune n’est ce quoi’ – or rather a talent for mischief and mayhem. It was more than my poor mother could handle. I was for destined to be an only child. But friends and family persuaded my mother that such a ‘naughty’ child was just an unfortunate misalignment of sperm and egg. I was scrambled instead of perfectly poached. My sister, born four years later, was in every sense of the word ‘perfect’. Dark haired, quiet, entirely without malice, mischief or maladjustment. No tears, no tantrums. Benign.
The downside was to come as soon as the darling sister began to ask about her early years. There was no drama, no adventures, few photographs, no stories to tell other than – “You were perfect, you did nothing.” For entertainment my sister would have to ask, “Tell me stories about Phillip when he was little”. There were so many stories to tell … drama, daring-do, chaos, catastrophe, a catalogue of crazy antics and adventures. Experiences that almost destroyed my parents where suddenly the height of entertainment. They were were told and retold for decades over the dinner table. As a result, I know things about myself that I could not have recalled from my own ‘lived’ childhood. And my sister realised that the price for being a trouble-free child was that nobody could recall anything interesting about you worth mentioning. There simply is no storytelling without drama. If you’re an heir or a spare there is always a story to tell – but those stories are rarely the same. Or equal. We need a book from William to adjust the balance.
Hi Jan,
Whenever I comment on someone’s blog it never seems to go anywhere but here go’s as I always enjoy reading what you have to say. I couldn’t possibly read H’s book if my life depended on it – read someone’s amusing comment saying they would wait until it hit the charity shops that way he wouldn’t get the money for it.
As you probably know I have three sons and the younger two have always been jealous of the eldest where as the eldest doesn’t have a jealous bone in his delightful body !
Best wishes Jan & thanks for writing
Lois x
Ah – but here you are, Lois! I could lend you the book. That’s my intention. I bought and read – purely as academic interest – of course.
Dearest Mister Double Cream from Uxbridge. This does not surprise me in the least.
Memory: I have psp and can’t remember what I did 10 minutes ago. Why am I writing this?
Oh, yes, John. I forgot.