I’ve been listening to a podcast recently called Inside Creative Writing. It’s by an author and ‘educator’ (that always tickles my Anglo-funny box) called Brad Reed. He’s an amiable chap who has obviously been involved with the craft of writing for sometime now but, instead of pushing it down your throat, he brings guests on and listens to people who write in etc.
He’s only a small man, he came from a place just to the east of Seattle, and although that’s not important it did make a difference to his height. You see, this town where he grew up had a library at the centre of it and everyone would go there. A young Brad would go in there and read ravenously. He devoured everything; all of the classics, all of the comics, even the murder-mysteries, and yet during this period of absorption the terrible tragedy occurred.
While he was sat at the foot of the shelves familiarising himself with Mr Nickleby, a bird flew in through the open window. You know, it was one of those windows that opens from the bottom, the type you get in official buildings. Anyway, this pigeon flew in and began to panic. Young Brad was so engrossed that he didn’t even register the chaos, however the octogenarian librarian did. She lunged at the frightened bird with a full size version of the Collins World Atlas. At the time, she was not sure if she intended to flatten the bird or scare it some more, but in the end all she managed to do was collide head first into the book shelf which poor Brad was sat at the foot of.
The first indication of the pending doom to poor Brad was the top row sliding on to the floor all about him. Unfortunately, this gave him no chance to react before the whole unit came following behind and came crashing down on the top of his young, ginger head. The shelves were made of a thick mahogany and Brad’s head was made of a sturdy, yet delicate, material called bone.
Have you ever seen the coyote cartoons? Brad’s body was driven into the ground like a nail being bashed into a plank of wood. It took four hours for the firemen of that town, just to the east of Seattle, to pull him out. And this is how he now manages to walk around with the arrogance to be a whole foot shorter than he was intended.
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