The Galley Beggar Q&A: Uschi Gatward
I. THE BOOK…
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ENGLISH MAGIC: WHEN DID YOU START WRITING THE STORIES? WHY THAT TITLE? DO YOU FEEL THAT THERE ARE THEMES AND IDEAS THAT UNITE THE COLLECTION?
I began the first of these stories in 2010 and finished the last in 2020. I am quite a slow writer.
The title is borrowed from Jeremy Deller and relates glancingly to one of the stories in particular, but sums up a lot of what I was trying to say with the collection: about Englishness, about politics and collective action, about the natural world and mysticism and ritual – even the ritual of having a dinner party or a picnic (there are a few picnics), and about experiences which are numinous or transformative.
THESE ARE ALSO STORIES WITH A STRONG AND IMMERSIVE SENSE OF DIFFERENT PLACEs (AND, OFTEN, OF TRAVELLING TO THOSE PLACES). DOES THAT COME FROM MEMORY? OR DO YOU DO ACTIVE RESEARCH WHILE YOU'RE WRITING?
I think memory throws up truths that aren’t accessible otherwise, so I write from memory and then check details (e.g., by tracing a route). If the memory is at odds with the fact then sometimes I will let the memory version stand if it seems to capture something that the fact doesn’t (perception of time is very elastic, for example – how long a journey seems to take depends on so much more than concrete fact).
Obviously there are places I haven’t been to, and I just make them up.
NOW FOR THE CHARACTERS. IT FEELS LIKE IT’S ENOUGH TO SAY THAT THEY’RE JUST THE PEOPLE WHO FITTED INTO THE STORIES. BUT IT ALSO FEELS LIKE THERE COULD BE A BROADER WAY OF READING WHO THEY ARE AND THE LIVES THAT YOU’VE SET ON RECORD… ALMOST AS IF YOU’RE COMMEMORATING ALL THESE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES. IS THAT TOO MUCH OF A REACH?!
I don’t think it is too much of a reach. Commemoration and ‘memorializing’ are words I’ve used to myself in relation to my own work, so it’s interesting that those processes are evident.
The one story that I felt needed particularly to be told is the story of Talha Ahsan (in ‘My Brother is Back’). Even offered without comment or analysis it seems to me to tell us quite a lot about our society.
TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT THE COMPOSITION OF ONE OF THE STORIES IN ENGLISH MAGIC. ARE THERE IDEAS IN THERE – OR A PLOT THREAD, OR A CHARACTER – THAT YOU CAN TRACE BACK TO DEFINITE SOURCES?
I had been trying for a long time to write a story about the road protest movement of the 1990s, but I couldn’t find a narrative to hang it on. Then on Lammas weekend in 2019 I was queuing to get into the Mela at Leyton Jubilee Park and while I was stuck in the lane I noticed the inscription commemorating the land protests of 1892, and while I read it, especially with the coincidence of the date, I realized I had my story.
(At the Mela, a council official was persuading people to fill in a consultation form agreeing that they thought it was a brilliant idea to build a new ice rink there. No context was given. When I got home I looked up the history and saw that there were over 150 years of the authorities trying to sell off or develop or otherwise monetize the land and the people resisting. The ice rink didn’t make it into the story, but it makes an interesting coda.)
DO YOU HAVE A WRITING ROUTINE? WHEN AND HOW DO YOU GET THINGS DOWN ON PAPER?
I’m not sure I have an anything routine. … Things are amassed and then I work at transferring them to paper. I circle an idea for weeks or months (or years) and then at some point I know how to go about making it into a story and I pounce. It isn’t a very efficient method, and I don’t recommend it.
When I am physically writing I make a lot of handwritten notes and then gradually those notes become more longform and then one day I realize that instead of notes I’ve written two coherent pages of a story. I do this in the morning. And then I try to go back to it every morning after that until it’s finished. (There’s a good description of this method in the Olivia Manning book I’ve just read, although the character it’s attributed to is a half-dead alcoholic poet, which isn’t encouraging.)
EDITING. DO YOU EDIT AS YOU GO, OR DO YOU WAIT UNTIL YOU’VE GOT A FULL DRAFT IN FRONT OF YOU? (… HOW MUCH DO YOU CUT? OR REWRITE?)
I edit as I go, which is a bad habit. I can hardly string a sentence together without editing it.
TELL US ABOUT ONE OF YOUR BAD WRITING HABITS. ANY TICS?
See above.
OK. OTHER WRITERS. NAME SOME FAVOURITES.
OK. But this isn’t a definitive list.
Jean Rhys, Patrick Hamilton, Muriel Spark. Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, Joyce Grenfell, Armistead Maupin, Posy Simmonds, Victoria Wood, Marina Hyde. Hawthorne, Thoreau, Mark Twain, F Scott Fitzgerald. Daniel Defoe, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Wilkie Collins. Raymond Carver, Helen Simpson, Sherman Alexie, Jhumpa Lahiri. Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Cavafy, Auden. Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner. Hans Christian Andersen, Mary Norton, Antonia Forest, Jill Murphy.
AND WHAT ARE YOU READING AT THE MOMENT?
I’ve just finished The Ready-Made Family by Antonia Forest, in the new Girls Gone By edition. Before that I read Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy back to back – they are ideal pandemic reading, and I loved them. I wish she’d written another one.
DO YOU EVER IMAGINE YOUR IDEAL READER?
Not really, although I do tend to assume that my reader will get my jokes and references without my having to explain them.
II. THE WORLD…
WHAT GETS YOU MAD?
Practically everything, if I’m honest.
WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?
Apart from family and friends, I think what truly makes me happiest is swimming in the sea.
WHAT ARE PEOPLE MISSING? IS THERE SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL KNOW ABOUT?
I’m always surprised that people don’t know that the London postal districts are ordered alphabetically rather than by proximity. (So E2 is Bethnal Green, E3 is Bow, E4 is Chingford, E5 is Clapton, and so on.)
WHAT ARE WRITERS FOR?
Most of our entertainment relies on them. I think they’re also there to help make sense of things, to keep notes, to bear witness, to offer a commentary and a critique, to add to the conversation, and to contribute to the permanent record.
ANY CAUSE FOR HOPE?
It’s always the last thing in the box. It’s heartening to see increasing numbers of young women confidently asserting their right to be heard and to take up space in the world, and increasing numbers of older women who won’t be told to shut up.
III. ON A DIFFERENT NOTE…
TELL US ABOUT SOMETHING FUN TO DO (IN ONE SENTENCE).
Roller skating.
WHAT’S THE WORST PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?
If I can generalize, I think that a lot of bad writing advice responds to some kind of Ur-text in the mind of the advisor rather than to the text on the page in front of them. So the literary equivalent of going up to a goth and telling them that they’d look so much more approachable if only they’d wear pastels and smile more. (What was it about this highly provisional, continually self-amending text that made you think its aim was ‘polish’, hm?)
YOU’RE IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING. WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU DO? AND WHAT’S THE BIG SIGNATURE PROGRAM YOU’D PUT IN PLACE TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER? (NB: NO VIOLENCE! THIS IS A PEACEFUL TAKEOVER.)
I think if we start with the principle that everyone has the right to a decent standard of living (and I acknowledge that not everyone does start with that principle) then we have to accept that a form of Universal Basic Income – whatever you decide to call it – is the way to go. Nothing else will work. The alternative is to accept a certain amount of misery, as opposed to a certain amount of financial waste, as collateral damage. I think it would be better if we were honest about this.
BORIS JOHNSON HAS JUST WALKED INTO A FRIDGE TO HIDE FROM THE PRESS. WHAT HE DOESN’T YET KNOW IS THAT YOU’RE ALREADY IN THERE. WHAT DO YOU DO? (NO VIOLENCE, AGAIN. SORRY.)
‘Ah! You’re here! Glad you could make it. Let me just switch my phone to record… there we are. Now. I thought we’d start with Grenfell and then take in food banks and this idea of yours about putting nets or fences or barbed wire in the Channel, before moving on, if we have time, to Brexit and Covid and the sub-inflationary pay rise for NHS staff in the context of a global pandemic. Up to you, though. It’s me at 4 degrees or Laura Kuenssberg at 20 degrees. Your choice.’
YOU’RE NOT A WRITER, YOU’RE A MUSICIAN. WHAT BAND WOULD YOU BE IN?
The Sugarcubes.
COFFEE OR TEA?
Lady Grey with soya milk.
ICE-CREAM OR SORBET?
Raspberry sorbet in one of those waffle cones.
HOW WILL THE UNIVERSE END?
I think it’s best I don’t tell people my ideas about these things.