As a small child I thought my Welsh grandmother must have invented
people because she knew so much about them. While other people read books: my
grandmother read tea-leaves; from these strange marooned squiggles lying at the
bottom of tea cups, she seemed to discover more about people’s lives than
Charles Dickens ever did from wandering endlessly around the streets of London.
When I was ten, I plucked up the courage to ask her how she did it - she told
me she was clairvoyant. I was puzzled, wondering why she called herself Clare
Voyant when her real name was Sarah Jones. And what did her answer have to do
with my question, anyway? I never managed to pluck up the courage to ask her
again and even if I had, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity as the adults in my
family talked all the time. Welsh children from large families were taught that
silence was golden. [Or at least a faded shade of ochre.] At ten, I thought the
adults must be making up for hours of enforced childhood silence by talking
endlessly. A gathering of sometimes ten
or fifteen animated, loud Welsh voices in a small room forced me into a world
of fantasy where I could wander unnoticed for hours. There I created people who
I would use years later as an adult.
All of us have people from the past and present
walking around in our heads waiting to written about. I wonder how many people
there are in your head?
