17 December 2007
Dear Gill,
Whenever I attend someone's memorial service, and people make witty, anecdotal, tearful, movingly comic speeches by the great and the good in memory of the late departed, I am always struck by one notable absence among the great and the good.
The late lamented himself.
Or herself.
Wouldn't it be great, I think, to have a short contribution from the person in whose honour we are all gathered, so that we could hear him once again telling one or two of his favourite stories, making caustic remarks about the other speakers and generally reminding us of why we all miss him so much?
Or her?
They do it at awards ceremonies. If someone gets a top award and can't be there for the actual ceremony, they very often manage to get the winner to do a brief video or film clip, shot on location in Mozambique, lamenting their absence and very often saying something wittier and more cogent than if they had been up on the podium in person.
So why can't they do it at memorial services? Or even at funerals? Instead of the clergyman who obviously never knew the late lamented, would it not be possible to have the lamented doing a brief last appearance instead?
For the last two or three years I have been daydreaming off and on about how I could contrive to be present at my own service.
The answer is quite simple.
Make a video in advance of my farewell speech, to be shown on a monitor from the pulpit, or on a screen behind the stage, or wherever the best place would be.
I have already visualised the opening shot.
It is of me, smiling ruefully, and saying to camera: "Hello. I'm sorry I couldn't be here in person with you today..."
That much is definite. The rest of the script remains vague. I always swore I would get down to it one day, and I still haven't, which sums up the life of the freelance writer pretty well. "When he died, he was still working on his farewell speech..."
I once touched on this idea when I was having lunch with Douglas Adams. I didn't know Douglas very well, but I liked him a lot. We were having an argument about gravestones, which he said were a waste of time and a useless Victorian survival, and should not be continued with.
I said they didn't have to be useless. It was merely the fault of the lazy masons and undertakers that they had never kept up with the times.
"What do you mean by that?" he said.
"Well," I said, "gravestones still give out the same ludicrously rudimentary information that they did 200 years ago. Date of birth. Date of death. First names. Name of loved ones left behind. A pious message, perhaps. That was it. Obituaries have moved on. It's about time headstones did."
"Yes, but how...?"
"Easy," I said. "What you should install in a headstone is a small screen and and a ten-minute video of the guy's life. The stone itself gives the basic details, but if you want more than that, you push the little button which says 'Press Here For Life Highlights', and the screen lights up and you find yourself watching a ten-minute résumé of the man's life. Maybe it wouldn't be free. Maybe you would have to put a £1 coin in, to go towards grave upkeep."
Douglas thought this would be a very good idea, and that it might even give a new meaning to the word "grave-robber", meaning someone who broke into an ObitView device and took the cash.
ObitView? Gravestone News? AdieuView? Well, whatever the name, I can see a fortune waiting to be made from the idea and whoever makes it, it won't be me, and it won't be Douglas.
I wonder, as a matter of interest, how Douglas finally decided he himself wanted to be memorialised, and what sort of memorial stone guards his resting place. And what it says on it.
You have got more time than I have to find out, Gill, and better contacts too.
Love, Miles
15 January 2008
Dear Gill,
I went to see my oncologist in hospital earlier this week, and we talked about this and that, and the importance of catching cancer early, which I found a bit annoying as they had not caught my cancer early, but it turned out he was just filling in time and wanted to talk to me about something quite different.
"Miles," he said, which he only calls me when we have moved on to safe topics, "tell me, are you still writing your book? The book about cancer you mentioned before?"
"Yes," I said. "Well, I am still firing some ideas at my agent..."
"Ah!" he said. "So you have an agent, then?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good," he said, and then stopped.
"Is that all?" I said.
"Yes," he said.
Then he shook his head.
"No," he said. "Look, the thing is, I have been writing this book of mine on cancer for several years now, looking at all the new treatments that have come along, because I know a lot about cancer and I think I have got the material for a really good book about it. But I am not good about publishing books, and I don't know how to set about it."
"Well," I said, "it's the same for everyone, really. You get a good idea. You do some writing. You get an agent interested, and the agent then gets some publisher interested. . . "
"Hold on there!" said the oncologist. "You've missed out a vital bit of information there!"
"Have I?"
"Yes. You haven't mentioned the name of the agent."
"Oh. Sorry. What is the name of the agent?"
"I don't know," said the oncologist. "I only know about cancer. You're the one that knows about books and agents."
Slowly, a kind of greeny, dim light began to dawn. What was happening was that my oncologist was appealing to me for help with his book. He seemed to think that I might be able to help him get his book published. A diabolical sort of bargain was in the offing whereby he would advise me about cancer while in return I would...
"Look, Dr Benton," I said, "..."
"Call me David," he said.
"Is David your name?" I said, surprised.
He didn't seem like a David to me. He seemed a little doubtful himself.
"I'll just check," he said.
He turned to his desk and tapped away at his computer. This is one thing I have discovered this year about the NHS and, indeed, all hospital-based medicine nowadays: that the doctor feels he has to check everything with his computer and his database before he quite dare say or do anything. That little screen in the corner is the key to all he needs to know, as long as he can remember how to access it.
"Oh, dear," he said. "I think I've forgotten my password again. I had to change it before I went on holiday last time, and I keep forgetting what the new one is."
"David," I said.
"Yes?" he said.
"No," I said. "I am wondering if your new password might not be David."
"Oh, of course. Yes, it is," he said. "How on earth did you know that?"
"People quite often choose their own name for their password," I said. "It's very unsafe, but they do."
Having established that his name was David, Dr Benton now turned his attention back to the missing agent, and to try to establish a name for them as well, which he thought I had the key to.
"You see," he said, "if only I had the right agent, I think this book on cancer would be a winner."
There then followed five minutes of close fencing, in the course of which he as good as suggested that I put him in touch with you, and I as good as suggested that my doing so would endanger our relationship for all time.
"Have you not heard of the Euroclitic Oath?" I said, improvising desperately.
"Euroclitic? What's that?"
"It's the sacred oath which all writers have to sign with their agents."
"Like the Hippocratic Oath?"
"Oh, much more serious than that," I said. "It involves... "
I was about to tell him that it involved cutting your wrist slightly and then mingling your life bloods, until I realised that he would not find this at all impressive as doctors did that kind of thing all day long, often merely by accident.
"It involves swapping bank account numbers and exchanging vital financial fluids, and things like that," I said.
He looked revolted.
"Well," he said," do you think that if you consulted your agent, he might put me on to the right person?"
"She."
"What?"
"Not a he. A she."
"Your agent is a woman?"
I had an overwhelming temptation to say, "I'll check", turn to a computer in the corner and access a database to make sure you were a woman, but unfortunately I hadn't got a computer with me.
"Yes," I said.
"I see," he said.
I don't know what he meant by that.
That is how things stand at the moment. If you don't mind, I would rather not put him in touch with you. I am happy for you to get a bestseller on cancer published, but I would much rather it were by me than by my oncologist. Tell me you agree. And remember the old Euroclitic Oath which binds us so closely.
Love, Miles
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