22 September 2016

Fact, Fiction Or Fantasy

A treatise on diagnostics

By Chin Chin

I blame Jerome K Jerome, a man who moved on from an unsuccessful career as a journalist to become one of Britain’s greatest writers; a career in two parts if ever there was one. I had been looking for a role model and he seemed to be the ideal one to choose.  After all, I was half-way there.  I had already done the unsuccessful journalist bit pretty thoroughly, so all I needed to do now was to knock off my equivalent of Three Men In A Boat.  Bingo, fame and fortune awaited!  Just one best-selling novel or play and I would have achieved that “legacy” which is seen as so desirable by clapped-out politicians.

The question of course was how best to do it. Should I, like Joanna Rowling, secure a table in a cafe and scribble away romantically in the cold? Should I dress in a doublet and hose and address everyone in the language of Elizabethan England? What about a more sophisticated approach?  Cocktails and a cigarette holder, perhaps, with a velvet dressing gown. “No darlings, I’ve changed my name. Call me Noel.”

It was rather a difficult question so I went down to my local, “The Jolly Ploughman”, and asked a few friends gathered round the bar what they thought . Actually none of my suggestions went down too well, although there was a recommendation that I try putting my head in a bin bag and sealing it up which, when I tried it, turned out to have practical difficulties. Still, the visit wasn’t entirely wasted because, as I left, I heard someone shout “Why don’t you just try writing something, you idiot?” They are not artists, these people, the name of the pub should tell you that, so I took the last two words as evidence of jealousy of my talent.  But the advice seemed quite good so I decided to try it.

The next few days were spent scribbling on pieces of paper and then crossing it all out again. When my family asked how it was going, I put on a mysterious expression and said “Aha”.  That is “Aha” as in “Aha, a new major work will be unveiled in a few weeks” rather than as in “Aha, I haven’t actually written anything yet”, which would have been far closer to the truth. I think they must have guessed that things weren’t going too well, though, because my wife brought me a present by way of inspiration.  It was a packet of three biros and each had a different word inscribed on it. On one was “Fact”, on another was “Fiction” and on the third was “Fantasy”.

It wasn’t long after that that I decided to take a rest from creating literature and return to third-rate journalism. Still the three biros sat as a rebuke on my desk and I felt that at the very least I should try to make use of them.

My first idea was to employ them in everyday correspondence according to its nature.  “Fiction”, for example, could be used to write refusals for dinners to which I did not want to go, on the grounds that I was otherwise engaged. “Fantasy” could be used for things which were unachievably optimistic: new year resolutions, summaries of proposed diets or promises of contributions to good causes which I had no intention of making. That would leave the other pen for more straightforward things. I am always punctilious about my income tax returns and to sign them with a pen labelled “fact” would nicely emphasise my superiority over many of my friends.

The trouble with all this was its complexity.  Most correspondence contains a mixture of fact, fiction and fantasy. Take a letter to your bankers requesting an extension of your overdraft facility, for example. The assertion that “business is looking up” might well be fiction and yet the statement that you need another six month’s credit is certainly fact. Whether “Yours” is fantasy might depend on the personal attributes of the manager herself. It would be too confusing to keep having to change pens mid-letter.

An alternative approach was to use the pens as a diagnostic tool to tell me whether other peoples’ statements could or could not be trusted. Suppose an incoming letter said: “the work on your boat is nearly finished”. Close both eyes and pick up a pen. If it was “Fact” I would send off the first instalment of the price. If I picked up “Fiction”, however, I would know that the work had not been started at all and they were awaiting the opportunity to decamp with my funds.

This is a useful technique and one often applied by people who have difficult decisions to make. Watch the Governor of the Bank of England next time he is speaking at the Mansion House.  At the start of his speech he probably has no idea whether interest rates will have to go up or down so he says something like “Reports that the economy is improving are.” He then pauses for a moment and pulls a pen out of his pocket. His audience will think that this is for dramatic effect but I know better.  Actually it is so that he can see what is written on it. “…..fantasy,” he continues “and so we may look forward to more quantitative easing.”

In this world of imperfect understanding it is as good a way of making a decision as any other, although it will from time to time go wrong.  Following the Chilcott report, people have been wondering how Tony Blair could have accepted the intelligence which led him to invade Iraq. Look at the pens he had in his pocket before you criticise, I say; perhaps the decision was just bad luck.

But now I have a difficult problem. “Fact” and “Fiction” have run out of ink and they are not the type of pen which can be refilled.  Is this a sign? And if so what is it a sign of? One possibility is that the world has become more deranged than usual.  That is possible but rather unlikely. Another is that I should change my career and move to a world where fantasy permeates everything I see. What is it to be, then? Reviewing and writing Hollywood scripts? No, I do not have the talent.  The world of  political propaganda? Surely there must sometimes be a grain of truth in that. I know.  I’ll give up literary endeavour altogether and take to reading and writing particulars of properties for a  firm of estate agents.

 

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