AND FINALLY

Be proud of what you’ve achieved

I WAS having lunch with an old friend when unexpectedly she asked: ‘Are you ever sorry you didn’t write your biography of George Eliot?’

I opened my mouth to reply, but she carried on: ‘Because I am! I think it would have been marvellous.’

I assured her I have never regretted not finishing the tome, commissioned by a leading publisher in 1980, because I’ve done so much since then.

To be honest, when I thought about it later I felt rather hurt. Because during the years when I wasn’t slaving in libraries I wrote six novels, more than 30 children’s books, some nonfiction, and thousands of words of journalism. I also presented many interview series for Radio 4 and TV. But my friend’s odd question — and her own reply to it — made me realise she didn’t really value all of that.

Something had locked her into the idea that (yet another) literary biography was somehow more prestigious than any other achievement. When I said (with some spirit) that I value my work for this paper more than everything else, I could see she just doesn’t ‘get’ it.

It made me reflect (sadly) how easy it is to write scripts for other people’s lives. I never realised she would have valued me more for academic work, and yet she’s hardly the only one to over-rate certain sorts of prestige.

Sometimes after divorce, a woman will find she is dropped by old friends because she no longer has the status of ‘wife’. A man made redundant may feel a friendless failure. What happens if your hitherto successful chum has a breakdown?

I’ve received problem letters from parents who feel let down because their children haven’t done what Mum and Dad felt they should have done.

Ambitious parents put far too much pressure on their kids. But what happens when John doesn’t make the team? Or Jenny drops out? Or Chris finds fulfilment digging soil?

Expect — and be disappointed. Accept — and be surprised.