19 July 2004
Play
When you sit down to write, does it feel like play? Do you work in a carefree way, without monitoring what you are doing as you do it?
Or does it feel like you are playing at being a writer? Is there another gaze looking always over your shoulder, telling you it's rubbish?
Yesterday afternoon I sat on a bench with a group of children. Our gaze drifted across the lake to a steep slope covered with pins parasols – dark green resinous umbrella pines. I asked the children:
What's going on over there?
A party.
Whose party?
Er ...
Grown ups, children, athletes, animals, fairies ...
From the other day, the French day.
Ah. Bastille day. But who is it?
A school trip having a party.
Are there any naughty children?
Um ...
Is anyone throwing pine cones at anyone else or poking them to make them think it is spiders?
No.
Have they eaten already or are they getting ready?
They've eaten already.
What happens to spoil the party?
Er ... one of the boys throws a pine cone at the teacher.
What's the teacher like?
Er ... nasty and interesting.
What does she do?
She tells him off but he grabs her bag and throws it down the slope.
What happens to it?
It goes off the rocks into the water.
How deep?
Like me. (About 1m30.)
And then?
The teacher tells him off and makes him go and get it.
Can they see the bag in the water?
Yes, but there's a big eel.
So what do they do?
The teacher says they have to get it because it has the keys to the minibus. All the children say the boy should get it because he was naughty. He is called Hamish.
Does he?
He's too scared. It's a giant eel. And he gets a stick to try and hook the bag. But the bag is hard to get and the water gets stirred up with mud and he can't see very well. So he leans over further and the giant eel bites the stick and pulls him in.
What then?
There is thrashing in the water and the mud is even more stirred up and no one can see Hamish any more ... But you can see the tail of the eel thrashing ... Then when the children are scared the teacher says not to worry because she has some spare keys and they can go. When they go they don't even look back at Hamish. When they get back to school they see his mummy and daddy waiting for him so they say he never came on the trip in the first place.
This cruel story is just play.
The Labyrinth is a good place to play.
