Sunny Summary

A lot of you have written to ask what the fuck all the little bits of fiction add up to, in slightly less polite terms.

I don't want to explain myself too much, obviously, because it would destroy the aura of mystery that surrounds everything I do.

But I guess a quarterly summary wouldn't do any harm.

Here goes.

Our narrator, a semi-retired musician/songwriter, just divorced, has returned to England after a period of several years spent living and working in the States of United America. One day, in his inbox, he gets an invite to a school reunion, which is to take place at a holiday complex in France owned by one of his former school acquaintances.

The email circulation list includes the name of his ex-best friend's ex-girlfriend, Lucy. There is history between the narrator and Lucy. He'd previously treated her extremely badly, due to jealousy, and now wants to take the opportunity to put things right.

Actually I quite enjoy explaining myself.

This morning on the way into work, I listened to "Woody Allen - Standup Comic." God. Has there ever been anything funnier than this? What's beautiful about it, it's not angry humour. It's relaxed, apparently effortless, pure genius that anyone can enjoy.

I got a job on Madison Avenue in New york, a real dyed-in-the-wool advertising agency on Madison Avenue, wanted a man to come in, and they pay him ninetyfive dollars a week, and to sit in their office -- and to look jewish.

They wanted to prove to the outside world, that they would hire minority groups...

So I was the one they hired... I was the show jew at the agency. I tried to look jewish desperately... I used to read my memos from right to left all the time. They fired me finally, because I took off too many jewish holidays.

Anyway.

So the narrator tentatively "replies all" to the circulation list, and (as he hoped) Lucy replies and accepts a lift to the reunion in his car. So they have a chance to talk about their shared past, and what went wrong with it. Lucy is working as a University teacher/researcher, with a speciality in soil erosion and land reclamation. There's a great deal of emotional baggage between them, Lucy deeply hurt (not to say betrayed) by the narrator. Underneath it all, they used to love each other, but the question is, can the narrator redeem himself enough in her eyes to make it possible again?

So her interest is piqued by the location of the reunion, which is in the Vendée region of France, large parts of which have been reclaimed from the sea.

So they go to the reunion and meet up with some people. This is part I haven't spent too much time on yet. On a day out, they discover a little village called "St Guthlac Sur Mer," which used to be a fishing port, but is now several kilometres inland. Lucy is fascinated, because St Guthlac was a Lincolnshire hermit who lived on the fells, in around the 9th century. So she starts to wonder how a French fishing port has adopted his name.

That's basically the story so far. Lucy and the narrator are spending more and more time together. For the narrator, the Guthlac investigation is an excuse to spend more time with Lucy. For Lucy, it's something more. She tried to explain that, because Guthlac lived on the fens, and made them holy, he reclaimed them as worthwhile land. Before Guthlac, the fens were seen as wasteland, badlands, not worth anything because they couldn't be farmed or built upon. But once Guthlac makes the land holy, people see it as something worth rescuing.

You see there's a really heavy-handed metaphor going on here.

So now we're at the stage where they're back in England, and Lucy wants to visit Lincolnshire and find out the connection between Guthlac and the small village in France.

I suspect it will have something to do with saintly relics.

Next month, I'll post a summary of this summary.