I’m trying to help three people at the moment. Let’s call
them A, B and C. At the same time I have been working on my second novel ‘Stopping
Time’. I say working, but in fact it
is thinking which takes up much of a
writer’s time. A recent visit to a timeless and uplifting place on Dartmoor
called Brentor, led me to want to post a photograph on this blog. So the photo
which you see here is the view from the doorway of the small church which
is perched on top of Brentor.
If you have read my first novel, ‘Losing Time’, you will
know that doors are important to me. In the book doors can be portals across
time and sometimes across dimensions. I often
look at doors and wonder where they lead to, whether they might in some strange
way prove a physical entrance to a life-changing experience, or instead a
mental change in crossing the threshold of a memory or thought. So the minute I
saw this doorway into – and out from – such an unusual place, I knew that it
might be somewhere I could use in my writing.
When I started thinking along these lines, I was worried
about B. B is suffering from depression and going through a very bad patch at
the moment. Many members of our family suffer and have suffered from this
terrible illness, and I am well aware of the dark-induced chemical change which
the brain suffers. An attack of depression is almost like the onset of a cold,
because the minute you recognise it, you know that there is absolutely nothing
you can do about it. It will creep insidiously upon you, whispering softly into
your mind: I’m back…
November is a bad month for depression. The low autumn light
and the dying trees, together with the acrid smell of bonfires all conspire
against the greatest of optimists. I am drawn, in the late afternoon, to make
tea and hot toast, draw the curtains against the failing light and switch on
cheerful lamps. B is not so lucky. B is probably still at work, struggling to
maintain the status quo and the everlasting pretence which accompanies this
condition. B won’t be able to leave the desk and make a quick mug of some hot
beverage, without being observed by everyone else. B, in a sudden onset of
paranoia, daren’t go home until everyone else has gone. By then it will be dark
and the glare of streetlamps and
flashing car lights will have replaced natural light.
I don’t have any wonderful remedy for depression. I can only
listen on the end of a phone and tentatively suggest optimistic things:
daylight lamps, good food, and plans to look forward to. I must include visits
to – or if this is impossible, pictures and memories of – some of the best
places where someone depressed has felt happy and uplifted. Brentor is
certainly one of these for me. There are a few others, usually high places
where the sun shines and the air is like champagne.
In the current book, I have a character in a very dark place
indeed. I hope to rescue him before long. Perhaps a door will open into his
miserable world and invite him back on to the top of a moor, in Summer, when
all is green.
