The Consideration Of Change Over The Century

Language Tethers Us To The World; Without It We Spin Like Atoms.

The Present Hardly Exists, After All-it Becomes The Past Even As It Happens. A Tricky Medium, Time - And Central To The Concerns Of Fiction.

The Place Didn't Look The Same But It Felt The Same; Sensations Clutched And Transformed Me. I Stood Outside Some Concrete And Plate-glass Tower-block, Picked A Handful Of Eucalyptus Leaves From A Branch, Crushed Them In My Hand, Smelt, And Tears Came To My Eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, On A Pavement Awash With Packaged American Matrons, Crying Not In Grief But In Wonder That Nothing Is Ever Lost, That Everything Can Be Retrieved, That A Lifetime Is Not Linear But Instant. That, Inside The Head, Everything Happens At Once.

But Who Knows Their Own Child? You Know Bits - Certain Predictable Reactions, A Handful Of Familiar Qualities. The Rest Is Impenetrable. And Quite Right Too. You Give Birth To Them. You Do Not Design Them.

I Didn't Think I Had Anything Particular To Say, But I Thought I Might Have Something To Say To Children.