Well, I think a lot of that comes through in your child characters, and this brings me to Colin. Now, I'll find my quote! It was in Something About the Author, which is one of those twenty volume...

I know, yes.

...and you wrote this georgeous piece about visiting your house, and falling over the dog, and falling over your son's guitarist's cousin's girlfriend's something or other...

That's right, and the rest of them playing table-tennis.

It was one of the earliest things I came across when I was researching articles on you, and I came across this comment you made in it about your son Colin, which I have highlighted... you said about Colin, "Colin is going to be a genius when he finds out what to be a genius at."

That's right, yes.

And it seems to me that there are a lot of Colins in your books, that there are many many of your characters, either consciously or unconsciously finding out what they're going to be a genius at.

That's true, but I think this is the human condition, really, you know, you've got to find out what your particular personality and gifts are aimed at, people have to find themselves. And, I mean, it's a lucky child that knows, I mean, it's a lucky child that even knows that they're a genius, unaimed and all that, and I do feel very strongly that this is one of the things which people need encouragement to sort out, because I have this very strong feeling that everybody is probably a genius at something, it's just a question of finding this.

I thought you must think that, because...

And indeed if you think you're a genius at something, you know, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere...

What you achieve is according...

If you think you're moderate, you know, you're only going to get halfway to moderate, because, you know, you get half-way to where you're aiming every time, really.

Is it also part of that condition that the children who frequently don't feel themselves to have abilities, who frequently perceive themselves to be untalented and quite different are also in some way... I've been calling it in my writing and my thinking "orphaned". Now they're not always technically orphaned...

No, I know what you mean, though, it's a good word for it, yes. What about them?

Is that part of... let me get it out...

Well, it's very much a part of it, yes, yes.

I'm feeling a connection between that sense of alienation and aloneness, and that sense of, or that lack of sense of self, of this uncertainty.

Yes, yes, that's right, I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because I mean, let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we. Actually, in the wild, we'd be the only person that we wouldn't recognize, if you think about it.

Yes, yes, that's true.

And I feel that, you know, it's terribly important to build up to children this notion that it's O.K., you know, that you are a person, and you will find it, you know, just remember that it can be done. Because I think... well one of the things is, you know, that all fantasy it seems to me works like the way your brain basically works, this is perhaps a startling concept, but I think it's true. Your brain, when it's working on a problem says "what if, what if, what if?" Fantasy is just an extension of "what if?" And if you sort of think about it, your brain is aimed to come out with a satisfactory solution jubilantly, and you want really to point children in that direction and say "there is a solution", and you should be happy, and you should be hopeful. And it may be a bit overstated, but I think this is, you know, in the right direction, because it's pointing people in the right way, and trying for sanity. Because there are so many things, all these things that crib and cab in your brain, in your imagination, are in fact things that might well in later life drive you insane, you know, you want to sort of provide little openings, so that people can say... "yeah!" you know. This is why I like happy endings, incidentally.

Yes, so does Mig!! The phrase that seems to be popular at the moment is "empowering" people, empowering the child.

It's a very... buzz word, isn't it.

It's a real buzz word, but it seems to be very much what you're doing, and it's not always in obvious ways, and in fact frequently the children don't turn out to be... don't turn out to have the talents that maybe they thought that they wanted and don't end up in the place that they thought that they wanted to be in.

No, that's true, like in Witch Week, Nan, who's made a complete mistake about what she really wants to do.

Precisely, yes.

Yes, well I think one can do this and I wanted to say, "well, it doesn't matter, there is something that you're really good at, and you go and do that, and actually it's more satisfying."

Yes, and like, Tonino at the end of Magicians of Caprona isn't quite convinced yet. Everyone's telling him, "We've discovered this wonderful new talent", because his family, while he doesn't always recognize it, are reasonably, I mean, they do love him, and they are supportive, they're just too frantic to perhaps let him know all the time, and I feel that he's not quite convinced at the end of the novel, but you know he'll get there.

That's right, he's not convinced, he's rather stunned, because he's been so used... I mean, this is the trouble, you do get in the habit of thinking yourself ... I suppose there should have been a tiny bit extra to that...

Oh, no, I don't think that's necessary.

And I suppose Cat is the same at the end of Charmed Life, too, I mean, you do get into the habit of thinking yourself as a no-hoper in a certain direction, and if somebody turns you around and says "this is the direction you should be going, and there's lots of hope", I mean, you can't take it straight away. And I suppose in a way, at some point anyway, I must remedy this and make sure that it's clear.

Oh, don't think that's... I don't actually think that's necessarily a problem, because I think it's clear that he'll get there.

If you think that's right, yes, because it does worry me, particularly, not so much Tonino, who is probably, yes, Tonino is sturdy enough, so he'll get there, but Cat for instance, who is more or less in tears right at the end.

Yes, yes. But then he's in tears in the centre of a family, and that's OK, it's alright to perhaps be in tears in...

Yes, I suppose that's true, I mean, they're tears of relief to some extent.

Oh, and it's mingled, it's bittersweet, but your resolutions, while yes, they are happy and positive, aren't necessarily saying that everything's going to work out exactly perfectly, and exactly the way you want, there might be things that you'd rather differently. I personally don't think that's a problem, I actually think it adds interest and so on. Also leading on from that is the unconventionality of the talents that the children invariably find themselves to have, and ultimately it appears that the adult world that they have been in is going to have to modify itself in some way or another to accept those new talents.

That's right, yes, and I think that's a very important thing, not that in reality the adult world modifies itself very much, but they're going to have to as soon as that child is older, and yes, what I really often seem to want to say is that, OK, maybe there isn't the sort of job description yet made which fits you...

But that's not your fault...

But that's not your fault, it's just means your going to have to go out there and do the job, and then they'll describe it, and this is the way change, and change for the better, that it really happens, after all. People suddenly get this idea which is aside from where everything seems to be going, and in fact it takes everything on a new stage.

Well, obviously, they're a lot of the things I've been looking at, I think a lot of my work is going to focus very much on that central child character, and the processes. I actually started, because, I just loved all the things you did with time and history, because that was what I loved to read as a child. The book I read and read and re-read so many times when I was a child was A Traveller in Time, Alison Uttley, because it was my fascination with the possibility of, a. going back into all those romantic periods in history where everything was much nicer and more interesting than now...

Which is a bit of a, actually, a bit of a sham...

Oh, completely!

It was one of the things I was talking about in Cart and Cwidder, there is this boy in the middle of the biggest, the most epoch making, most romantic adventure that his particular history has had for many hundreds of years, and he doesn't recognize it, because it's just normal life to him, and you do have to watch that a bit.

But the other thing about that book was the question she raised about "can you change the past?", can you alter things.

Ah, yes, that's a difficult one, isn't it.

And so the convolutions you come up with on those points just really intrigue me.

I love convolutions, I really do, I can't resist them, that's the trouble.

I also see that, I mean, with your related worlds and, I think, that concept of the alternatives in history and they actually happened and created something new, is just really fascinating, and again I do think that that- and I don't know if this was conscious on your part, or if it was just that all your various interests just mesh together, but it seems that all those possibilities are very pertinent to that child who is in some ways exploring possibilities in their own life.

Yes, if you think about anybody growing up, I mean, at a certain stage everything is open to him or her, there are all these avenues, and unfortunately you have to narrow it down by going in, I mean, you just can't do all of it.

Making choices.

But I mean, there is this lovely bit, you know, when you were just adolescent, as it were, or even just pre-adolescent, when the whole world is your oyster, the whole universe, you know, you can go and do anything there, and it's a lovely moment, and of course, you're usually too mixed up to notice it. Unfortunately! And then it gets depressing as it narrows down inevitably, because it has to, but I do hope, and this is where we go back to the sense of responsibility, that I might once or twice pointed out to some children, "look, you really can do anything at this stage", and I think this is a very good thing if it can be got over.

It's interesting, because I did some reading, some sort of educational development stuff that I'd done when I was doing education at uni, and I dragged it all out, and I found that... and I don't know if you have any background in that yourself, but in fact the age of the children in your characters who are basically all just pre-pubescent, they're just sort of 11, 12...

Yes, on the whole they are.

...at least in the ones I'm looking at, I'm sorry, I'm generalizing here about the books I'm specifically looking at.

Yes, younger and older I do do, but basically that's what it centres on, because that's the point where everything is possible.

That's right. And having had a look at this educational development, Piaget and all those people who had these theories of development, in fact at that point in time, children's understanding of time is not set in stone.

No, it isn't, no that's right.

And that's an actual sort of... fact! if you like.

To go back to Colin again, at exactly this age he came and announced to us after having thought profoundly for a whole evening that he didn't think that time actually existed, that it probably was a human construct, and we said, "Yes, Colin!"

It just fascinated me, and I didn't know whether or not you'd had that background, or whatever, but that in fact developmentally, as well as emotionally and psychologically the children of that age are still very much, I mean, intellectually open to lots of things, because their intellect and their abilities are still firming up and so on, and so it seemed a really appropriate age for you to choose, those 11, 12 year olds that are "on the verge"...

That's right, yes, because I think actually at that stage the intellect is at it's sharpest, really, your intellect is really up to adult standard, and you don't have all the emotional mess of puberty actually mucking you up, and so in a way it's a very good point to choose, from every point of view.

Page 4==>

©Judith Ridge 1992