Authors' Dilemmas On Death

Proust began his book Time Remembered with a moment in the present leading to recalling the past. His work of fiction is interspersed with factual events of his day. Historical novels do this matching of fiction with real events. So do modern novels. Authors sometimes start with one incident, and move onto an all-encompassing book, covering centuries (like A Brief History of Time) but with a happy end. A novel often starts with birth and ends with death. You can start with the funeral and do a whole book as a flashback, ending the funeral as a frame at the end, now the reader knows so much more. An author has to have some light moments, alternating mood and pace, despite some dips into the despair of death. One way is to show two characters with different, contrasting reactions to death or terminal illness. Two ladies, men, people in adjoining hospital beds, a sister and sister-in-law, or father and son, can ‘rage' against death in different ways. Raging against death refers to Dylan Thomas’s poem, best remembered by one of its lines, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. As authors, hoping to write immortal books, we have a different worry, not just the vivid colour of chairs at our funeral, and suitable quotations from our own poems and books, but not to leave the unfinished novel. Instead of worrying about practical things, we abandon all hope of washing up, and race to finish the novel. I think authors, to guard against loss, should always write the synopsis, chapter headings and first and last lines before when over the age of 70 and embarking on a year long project.) I do not want my last words to be unfinished, “The last line of my novel is - ah - ah - ah ….!”. Angela Lansbury, author and speaker. Author of The Tailor and The Spy.

To be a chicken keeper or not to keep chickens? Which came first the desire for the chicken or eggs?

As a child I won goldfish at the funfair but the fish died. I kept tropical fish. They died. (When I was away in India.) No it was not the cat. I did not have a cat. Unfortunately I was allergic to cat and dog hair as a child.

Every now and then we discuss how nice it would be to keep a cat or dog. My first desire was to keep a cat or a dog, only later did I want to keep chicken which laid eggs. Why keep a cat or dog? My late father's family had a working cat to catch mice - also a working dog to patrol the local church and catch or better still deter would-be thieves.

I like cats, or at least pictures of cats, For five minutes. I have no desire to keep a cat in the house to catch mice because we have no mice, as far as I know.

My relatives had a cat. They moved house and spent days hunting for their cat which went missing. It turned up in their old garden.

What about a dog? First there is house training. The cost of the food.  Finding somewhere to park your dog, or pay for kennels, every time you want to travel has never been an option for my family who are frequent flyers.

We started buying farm eggs. We went to a talk at a Science fair about breeding chickens to lay eggs.

Then I thought, why not keep a chicken and get fresh newly-laid eggs every day? it surely won't be miserable without me if I have to go away for the weekend.

I thought I'd research it. The knowledge might be useful for my novel starting in 1880.

I quickly went off the idea. To keep birds outdoors you have to register with the government. Government websites tell you what to do if your birds get bird flu and what to do about it. How do you recognise bird flu? Bits of your chicken turn swell up and or turn blue. They stop laying eggs and die.

Meanwhile, back in the supermarket, those half a dozen eggs no longer seem so exorbitantly priced. Quite a bargain really. Saves me such a lot of trouble looking after hens.