New Statesman -- off-putting memoir winners
 

No 4278
Set by Leonora Casement
We asked for openings for a book of memoirs that discourage you from reading on. In the 1940s, one winner began: “I am not going to begin this memoir with a pedigree of the Effsisees, or tell you the story of my great-uncle, the bishop and the buttonhook . . .”

This week’s winners
Well done. Hon menshes to Adrian Fry (“I had a dream when I was 12”), John Palmer (“. . . detailed model of St Paul’s built entirely of matchsticks”), D A Prince (“I’ve read a lot of books and know inside that I am a writer”), Brian Allgar (“I have had a stirring and eventful life”), John Griffiths-Colby (“a lifetime spent in risk management”) and Graham King (“my conception, details of my gestation, delivery and much else”). The four winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Ben Sherritt.

In the stars
I was born on 5 February 1962, a date noteworthy for the conjunction of Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn. This alignment is, as you may know, associated with a tendency to procrastinate. More of that later.
As an Aquarius, my ruling planets are, of course, Saturn and Jupiter. Top of the charts on that day was Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again”, which has always been a favourite of mine. It reflects my optimistic Aquarius philosophy.
When faced with the “stick or twist” option, I will always twist. Obviously this is not always the best strategy, since if you twist too many times you may bust. We do not always, I grant you, and if you will indulge me as I seek to extend the analogy, achieve Pontoon, but (forgive me for mixing metaphors) if you aim for the moon and miss, you may just land among the stars.
Speaking of which . . .
David Silverman

This is a life
This is a piece of life writing, perhaps a large piece, perhaps small, you will judge, life writing being that peculiar and particular genre situate, as the lawyers say, betwixt the novel proper and the outright lie, in which the author (myself perhaps, and in saying perhaps, possibly the contradiction of that, whatever that may be) divulges and divests and digresses in the interests of melding fact and fiction in an indiscriminate manner. Get off the bus now, baby, if you’re uncomfortable. Or hell, stay on, I don’t care. The memoir, as we shall discover when we inhabit it, is a bumpy and bothersome old thingamajig, but ’tis self-referential (see?!) or nothing. I’m not dead yet, although I may be when you read it – a risk we share, don’t you think? All I tell you is that I won’t begin with my BIRTHDAY. Which was 3 September 1952. Allez-oops.
Bill Greenwell

Timing is all
I am a modest man, not given to name-dropping, yet even I can’t but be impressed by the sheer number of famous, notorious, distinguished, raffish, or simply beautiful people who appear in these recollections. Without wishing to anticipate the principal matter of this book, here are a few highlights:
I once found myself in our local butcher’s to buy a leg of lamb only minutes after Margaret Thatcher had left with her usual order of pork sausages.
On another occasion, my dentist told me that just the day before, he had treated Simon Cowell for a session of teeth-whitening.
My wife even considered taking our corgi to the same grooming establishment that the Queen frequents, but unfortunately, before she could make the appointment, the poor little chap was run over.
Sylvia Smith

Follow the penguin
I have taken pains to be evenhanded to all who have played a part in my career as an inspector of schools, and to respect the anonymity of staff, both senior and junior. However, before I deal with the substantive part of my adult career – with my inspector’s memoirs per se – it may be useful, indeed essential, to examine representative details of my own early education, on the grounds – as memorably expressed by Wordsworth – that “the child is father of the man”. To this end, I will start at the very beginning, when I was five years of age and, for the first time, hung my coat on a peg designated for my use and identifiable by its accompanying picture of a penguin, and wondered, for a moment, at the illiteracy of teachers this sign suggested. A penguin indeed!
Ben Sherritt