Savour our history in the making
RMY favourite Private Eye cartoon shows two suited men sitting on a park bench, eating packed lunches. One says: “Fancy bumping into you like this, Roger! It’s been years. What are you up to?”
“I’m writing a novel.”
There is a long silence before the first man replies, gloomily: “I’m not either.”
Most writers will get the reality behind the joke – procrastination, the endless putting-off of the hard grind of creating a story from scratch. We’re all prone to it. But I’m happy to say that my fourth novel, Father’s Day, is at last stacking up some healthy wordage after months of dither.
It’s a revenge story: the opening chapter describes police making a grisly discovery in the centre of the Roman amphitheatre that still stands, wonderfully preserved, just outside modern-day Cirencester. A man (we later discover he is a profoundly unpleasant and psychotic internet troll) has been crucified, Roman-style, on an X-shaped cross. Like St Peter, he was nailed there upside-down. The killer – no spoiler this, it’s clear from the start – is the father of a teenage girl the troll groomed online into taking her own life. This is a father’s revenge.And we’re off.
I visited the amphitheatre for my research and it’s a stunning relic of Roman Britain; I can’t understand why it’s not as famous as, say, Bath’s Roman remains, or Hadrian’s Wall. I looked it up on Tripadvisor and was astonished to read some negative reviews – “boring”; “not much to see”. So I posted my own.
“When you stand in the centre of this huge auditorium it’s not hard to imagine gladiators streaming into the arena to fight, or slaves battling for their freedom (granted to the last man standing), or wild and exotic animals tearing out each other’s throats before a baying crowd of more than eight thousand – roughly the size of Cirencester’s population now.
Chariot races, too, with enthusiastic betting of denarius on the steep terraces above.You can sit there today and look down at the spot where so much blood, animal and human, was spilt.
Corinium – the Latin name for Cirencester – was second only in size to the capital Londinium. People were rich.The nearby Cotswold countryside boasted hundreds of luxurious villas with underfloor central heating, flushing toilets (really!) and intricate mosaic floors.
“Nearby Bath was to all intents and purposes a purpose-built leisure centre with its plunge pools, huge heated communal baths and spas.
These people led essentially modern lives, and yet their privileged, pampered world imploded after a few centuries and the chaos of the Dark Ages began.”
If (or rather, when) our own civilisation collapses, just as every preceding one has, our successors may look back on our achievements with the same sense of wonder and awe as we do Rome’s. If you can, do visit Cirencester’s amphitheatre and savour our past – and, in a spooky kind of way, our future, too.