Corner Cupboard: I WANT A MEMORY HAT

?We've been enjoying a Book Festival in the town this week and as a small contribution from the theatre we staged a one man show 'The Squire of Gadshill,'? in which Charles Dickens reflects on his life and work.? This took place last Saturday evening and there I was all togged? up in Victoriana to serve behind the bar.? Lloyd Lee (who has taken this show all over Britain) looks the spitting image of Dickens and I am tempted to say sounds like him too, though I don't know if any of us know exactly what he sounded like.? But Dickens used to put on performances in which he read extracts from his novels, which Lloyd re-enacts in this show.

As Dickens he also talks about his working habits and recounts being asked in America whether the Muse was 'always upon him - or whether he had to coax it?'?? And as it happens this was a question that I discussed with the lovely Kath Eastman when I met her for lunch a couple of days later when she came over to Cowbridge.

Dickens replied that frequently he had no ideas at all about his writing and just sat at his desk making dots and doodles on the paper.? But, and I think this may be the crucial thing, he always sat there 'until his time was up.'? This, he elaborated, was from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon (or four if writer's block had given way to writer's inspiration).

In passing I find it strange that this phenomenon of 'writer's block' appears only in the literary world (or is this just my ignorance?)? Is there such a thing as 'painter's block?' or 'potter's block?' Did Mozart ever sit at a piano, his head empty of musical ideas? Composer's block? And what about the engineers among us?? Do they have bridge builder's block?

Anyway, I have decided, given the inspiration of winning the little Creative Writing Competition that was a part of the Book Festival, that I shall now consign the label business to the afternoons - and if necessary the evenings as well if we are busy - and so keep the mornings free for scribbling.? I have resurrected a piece of military history that I first wrote on a typewriter in 1983. It was never published then and no wonder as it is terribly clunkingly written.? But with the centenary of the central incident fast approaching I have decided to re-write it, hopefully in a shorter and rather more pacey style.? It seems a shame to let all that research go to waste and I always intended to return to it when I had time.? I am about two thirds of the way through and so this particular labour will not be a long one.

I shall then return to Boraya, the Chocolate Factory in St Petersburg novel that Kath keeps urging me to get on with and about which I think about regularly.? So it will be as well to get my writing habit well established: nine until one with a half hour break for a cup of tea and urgent emails.

The best plans, however.......for yesterday morning I wasn't at my scribbling desk in front of the laptop but instead was taking the laptop to an appointment with the Genius Bar at the futuristic Apple Store in Cardiff, where no-one looks real and where everyone seems to speak in a strange mid-oceanic dialect, though I have to say they are all ?ber helpful and ultra polite. ? Apple - the Company - have done something amazingly clever, but the result is that last week, not having the right up to date software apparently, I couldn't receive emails for three days (except in the most cumbersome manner) and the whole computer slowed up as though you had put a tablespoon of treacle in the works.

The man on the Genius Bar fiddled around helpfully and quickly and there I was: sorted. He didn't even try to sell me a new computer.? He suggested I might like to buy some more memory, which could be easily and cheaply done. Unfortunately, only for the computer, I, on the other hand, would have to make do with the ageing memory I already have.? Why can't you buy memory for the brain? You could wear a little memory hat with chips inside it. The brain seems to communicate with waves and just this week we saw film of a paralysed woman operating a robot with her brainwaves. So why not?? I might suggest it to Apple.

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