With the verbal story already established, the story as object was coming into being. I could absorb all those stories flying around my head, but there was a specific compartment for them too. The stories became words, and the words sat on a page. They could be given to you, but as is the case with gifts, the compliment could be returned. And perhaps should be. When I first put pen to paper , it was more than likely in the classroom. Before that, I reckon I was
just fooling around with crayons. Both means are important, but there’s a difference.

I was always more a visual artist than a scribe. I don’t know why, it’s just the way I was made. Now, my memory is not so keen that I can visualise my first daubs, but they were probably of a muchness with most kids: giant parents, siblings - I was the youngest so even they towered a bit - our house and garden, and some random trees. I’m pretty sure my attempt at a tree resembled a giant broccoli, with a huge brown flared stump surmounted by a loopy green moptop head. I remember my sister telling me that the bark of a tree was grey, and that their spread of leaves was huge, apparently top heavy. Already, the dichotomy between what you see and what you know has inserted itself.

In school, it would have been High Babies or First Class, I recall drawing with chalk on a personal handheld blackboard. The teacher, Mrs McDermott, had set us the task of depicting a car driving along a roadway. I decided on a series of panels across my board, comic-book style, depicting a car passing a roadside billboard. So I drew front, side and rear elevations of the car while the billboard changed from oblong to a vertical line. The understanding of perspective had dawned. Also, people, both teacher and peers, were perplexed. What was I at?

Oh, I could do a seminar on that. I was exploring narrative in the visual form. I was subconsciously immersed in Hollywood and Americana - I don’t think there were many billboards in early 1960s Ireland - I was looking for shortcuts (probably, if you consider the shorthand of drawing a billboard as a vertical line). I was being the smart-ass. Again, very likely.

Another time, same class but maybe some weeks later, I was drawing an aeroplane, and I used hatching to show the shine on the wings and windows. A visiting student, that is, an ex-student of Mrs McDermott paying a visit from the CBS Primary across the road, was outraged. My rendering upset him, it seems. “That’s Pig-style!” he berated me. What exactly that meant, I was unsure, but now I understood the oft abusive nature of criticism. Or, having encountered it, was utterly perplexed by it.

At least Mrs McDermott kept some faith in my ability. Three of us, the best artists in the class, one presumes, were commissioned to render a particular bucolic scene: a wooden fence strung across a green field, with a farm in the distance; full colour with paper and crayons. Posterity beckoned. Most importantly, this rescued me from the sin bin where I spent a lot of my time. When the three of us were displayed for all to see, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something odd about mine, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. The other two looked the same, and the same as the model from which they were drawn.Mine did not. The proportions were askew, the colours weirdly heightened, the proportions and composition were irregular while the others were very, um, regular. I was strangely put out by this, yet the notion dawned on me that I was making some kind of point. Was I? I don’t know, but I was aware that I was standing out and that this was uncomfortable but weirdly exhilarating.

And, I realise in writing this, that I have not yet put pen to paper. But, for all that, there were already stories inside my scribblings. Some of them are just escaping now. What people do, the decisions we make, how we each see things differently. Of course, slouching down the road towards me, was that great challenge of literature: the school essay, and what you did on your summer holidays. We’ll come to that.