Writing a Book - The Story

The thing is, right, and I mean this, the thing is it’s the most important thing there is.

Not the news. Not the match, even, and I like a good match. Not the price of a pint going up again, which it has, and it’s a disgrace, but that’s not it either.

The story. That’s the thing.

My Grandad used to sit in that chair, the one with the armrest that was held on with electrical tape for about eleven years, and he’d say did I ever tell you about the time and we’d all go yeah, Grandad, yeah you did and he’d tell it anyway.

The one about the van breaking down in Birmingham.

In the rain.

With four bags of cement in the back and a man called Bert who was afraid of heights. We never worked out why that mattered. But that wasn’t the point. 

We heard it forty times. Forty. And every time, I swear to it, every time there was something in it. Something small. The way Bert held his sandwiches. The colour of the sky before it went wrong.

My Grandad is gone for years now.

I would give anything. Anything. To hear that story one more time. Or watch him wind my Gran up on the train, by acting the fool. Pulling funny faces and making fart noises and pointing at the bloke opposite. 

See, that’s what I mean.

People think stories have to be about something massive. War. Tragedy. A fella on a horse making a speech in the rain.

They don’t.

They’re about a man afraid of heights in Birmingham.

They’re about your Gran laughing so hard at something your Grandad said that she had to sit down on the stairs and couldn’t stop, couldn’t breathe, and you stood there watching her and thought I want to remember this, I want to keep this.

They’re about the ordinary Tuesday that turned out not to be ordinary at all.

Every person you pass on the street. Every single one. Has something in them that would stop you. That would make you put down your phone and your coffee and your list of things to be annoyed about and just listen.

The woman on the bus with the good coat. You don’t know what she’s carrying.

The young fella working the checkout who looks like he’s somewhere else entirely. You don’t know where he is.

That’s not nothing. That’s everything.

I write about people. Just people. Talking, mostly. Messing. Hurting each other a bit. Loving each other badly and well. Getting it wrong. Getting it occasionally, accidentally right.

Because that’s what we are.

We’re not our opinions. We’re not our politics, though many try to be lately.

We’re the story we tell about the van in Birmingham.

We’re the laugh on the stairs.

We’re the thing that happened that one time that we never told anyone properly, not really, not the true version, and it’s still there, still waiting.

Tell it.

That’s all I’m saying.

Tell the bloody thing.

It matters more than you think.