Martin likes animals. He'll watch animal documentaries, reads animal books, supports animal charities. He'll cry about the plight of polar bears. He's not anthropomorhic about them either. He doesn't attribute human characteristics to our furry friends. He respects animals in all their bloody, fierce, primal, instinctive, essence.
Me, however, there's only so much wildlife I can watch. I like people. I watch documentaries about people, read about people and support people charities. And like Martin, I don't really expect people to be any different from the way they are. I accept people's petty vanities, prejudices, idolatries, their brutality and their potential to be sublime.
And for that reason I am fascinated by the twin issues of memory and identity. I only mention that because that's what my novel is about. And because I'm so fascinated by memory and identity I'm getting carried away on stuff which isn't strictly plot-driven. But as I'm not writing a screenplay this time it's okay!
How much of our identity is dependent on memory; from our earliest days to what we chose to eat at our last meal (in my case a prawn sandwich, even though I'd promised myself I'd take the time to make a salad - and then I beat myself up for being overweight...)? I would argue that all of our identity is based on memory; those we remember but also those which through choice or overburden, we have elected to forget.
Memory is interesting on so many levels. Not long ago I sat with a friend in a group and we shared memories of a holiday we took together some fifteen years ago. She was telling anecdotes which were hilarious, but which featured incidents that I didn't remember. When I told stories, I could see her wrinkling her forehead in an effort to recall. Sometimes people recount things that happened and I was there and I don't remember it at all like that! But who's to say my memory is right and theirs is wrong...?
And sometimes when I'm sharing a little story with my friends or family, I wonder even as I'm recounting it whether what I remember actually happened. I'm not beyond embroidering a story for effect, and I think that my memory has become entirely untrustworthy.
So when all these noteworthy (and supremely un-noteworthy) people pen their memoirs years after the event, how much of their memories are reliable? Clive James recognised this when he wrote his "Unreliable Memoirs", and a terrific read it was. How much of what happened to me exists in my memories, fragile, malleable things that they are, and how much in what actually happened, even if I can't, or don't want to, remember it?
Which leads me onto the subject of identity. Traditionally, and I can't quote the source, your identity is supposed to be made up of how you see yourself, how others see you and how you think others see you. Well, by that token I'm a different person every day of my life. Yesterday, for the very first time in my life, I was alarmed by a very fleeting, but quite intense, suicidal thought. Now that's a big thing, but I can't say that I'm a suicidal person. As soon as this thought flitted into my head I immediately rationalised it, and within a couple of paces had about five reasons sorted out why I shouldn't do what had popped into my head. Some days I think I'm the life and soul of the party; somedays something approaching a hermit. Some days people would describe me as friendly and approachable; some days a bitch on wheels.
I think memory and identity are so fluid as to be intangible. That thing about never stepping in the same river twice? Same thing with who I am or who you are. To try and pin people down is to diminish them and render them in their simplest possible likeness - a walking waxwork. Never trust one of them. And never trust those studies which try to categorise us... I am not just middle class, nor middle aged nor an AB1, nor an INFP, nor a auditory learner. I am me.
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