A DANGEROUS PROFESSION

I’m sorry if this comes across as being flippant. I really didn’t intend it that way but, perhaps because the announcement came as such a shock, my mind went into overdrive, and a whole load of inappropriate thinking kind of poured out of it into a whole load of flippancy which tends to be my default position when I get upset about things.

You see. Slap bang in the middle of all my own little personal crises, about which you’ll already be fully aware if you’ve been paying attention (Although why would you want to do that…? Discuss…), the writer Iain Banks (or “Iain M Banks” if you prefer to read his “other” works) came out and announced with great dignity and eloquence to the world that he was very likely to be on the brink of dying of terminal cancer and didn’t expect to live out the year, which came as something of a shock, even though I’ve not personally read anything of his since “Dead Air” and have always had a largely hit and miss relationship with his books.

“The Wasp Factory”, “Whit”, “Espedair Street” and “The Crow Road” are amongst my very favourite books ever written, but some of the others did rather leave me feeling either nonplussed or stone cold baffled.

But this is not the place to discuss the merits or otherwise of his lifetime’s work (I’m sure we’ll see plenty enough of that over the coming months) but merely to lament all of those other books which will now never be written.

Many, many years ago I read an article about his life in a Sunday supplement which told of his life spent enjoying himself for nine months of the year whilst writing for the other three and I remember thinking “Lucky bast…” before intercepting that thought with a more selfish “Oi, write some more books for me to read instead of doing all that dicking about with kites, you bas…” which, of course, is now something I’m terribly, terribly ashamed of.

Carpe diem and all that… Seize those days, people…

It’s not been a good last few years for anyone who happens to be a writer who’s works I actually admire. Terry Pratchett seems to be battling on against his early onset Alzheimer’s, Clive James has already shocked the literary world by announcing his own battle against the inevitable, James Herbert has already slipped across the great divide, and it’s already over a decade since Douglas Adams had that fatal ride on an exercise bike at an age not six months older than I currently am.

I’m starting to get the impression that writing for a living is, perhaps, very bad for you.

Oh I know that, as the Doors once famously put it “No-one gets out of here alive” and so every profession and pastime is ultimately fatal, but I am starting to feel personally got at when it come to my literary heroes.

Perhaps it’s just an age thing…?

But if you compare and contrast this trend to the “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” lifestyle of the rock stars of the sixties and seventies you do begin to wonder whether sitting at a keyboard knocking out novels is a far more dangerous thing than the “Live fast, die young” principles that they used to live by.

I’ve wondered for years whether there must have been some kind of preservative in all the stuff those rock legends used to abuse their bodies with, because so many of those that made it through that phase of their lives (because there were the obvious casualties along the way) still seem to have rather fabulous hair at an age long after the time when the rest of us mere mortals seem to be bidding it farewell in huge clumps, but now that the Rolling Stones have hit fifty, meaning that they must all be pushing their way into their seventies, they announce yet more concerts.

Nobody gets out of here alive, eh…? Although, unlike those quiet-living writers, it looks as if some of the rock stars might yet manage to live forever after all…

Which gives the average teenager yet another thing to think about as they consider their career choice… Perhaps they really ought to put down the books and pick up the that ol’ guitar.

I wish I had…