Fingers in the Sparkle Jar Q&A | Chris Packham

thank you very much this is what we're talking about fingers in the sparkle jar Chris's book if you haven't read it I'm going to start off right away just by saying I think it's an absolutely a remarkable book and that isn't just what I think and I do read from questions it just makes it a bit easier for me so fingers in the sparkle jar which is subtitled lessons in life and death was published almost a year ago may 2016 that's gone very fast and I think it took a lot of people by surprise present certainly not a warm and fuzzy story of a celebrity's childhood its spiky intense it's a howl of anguish I've never read anything like it before and reviews have reflected that I think with for example the great nature writer Robert McFarlane saying fingers in the sparkle jar is like nothing else I know a flickering vat of life itself a brilliant and remarkable book Simon Barnes another superb writer said this book is courageous disturbing original and the times brilliant and Matt Haig of the independence that is bold and beautiful both raw and lyrical and a rather special book and that introduces the practices so yeah flattery is well thank you for everything you said joy but it's not as instructive so I'm always want for dealing criticism but I do genuinely welcome it back if people have blatantly insulting then yes I'll just let it go straight over my head but if they offer constructive criticism then I'm up for that and when I I wrote the book without a publisher I wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do in my time and although I wrote it very quickly but I was eager to work with an editor I don't think I'm a great writer I'm a zoologist you know I got a CEO level in it for English that was it didn't turn up though that wouldn't have got you a seat no no well it was a long time ago you know I subsequently read a lot and my nature means that I analyze what I read in in terms of the way that it's written so although it's sort of murdering to dissect if I read a work of fiction or I'm meeting about tyrannosaurs at the moment and it's more about the dinosaurs but then then I analyze it I see how it works you know I'm interested in how things work and so that I can learn how to make them work for me so for many years I've been writing short stories and writing a fairy tale at the moment well rewriting and we work in a fairy tale so I've always had these little projects but never published them so finally I sort of thought I wonder if I can write well enough to the point that someone might publish her publish a book and people had pursued me to write an autobiographical book and I I really didn't want to do that because I don't I don't like myself and I don't think I'm particularly interesting but not as certainly not as interesting as most of the things I get to talk about on television which is other other creatures of course whose lifestyles and ecology and behavior far more interesting than mine um even in the old days when I was a bit wild so I yeah I wrote it and then I was very keen to work with an editor to see what they could add to it I like the sort of constructed process so no although I did design the cover and choose the font and the page layout and the paper and everything else as it was part of my sort contractual agreement I had a very enjoyable working relationship with the publisher zebra and everything they brought to the project was creative and that was fantastic I was so kindly reassured by that by that process presumably they didn't choose a vocabulary though because it is raw it is poetic present me that was entirely your input in terms the editing you mean yeah knowing I mean in terms of the writing process the words have gone into the book I mean that is you isn't it no no no they took things out they didn't add anything to it there were a few things that they thought just you know overstepped the mark they were too true to be told and they weren't truth that would embarrass me because they were just absolute truths about the way I am and they you know I suppose one of the things they thought is that you know there were many parts of the book where it would be quite difficult for the reader to empathize with the way that I felt or feel and others when they might engender a degree of sympathy and it was a question of getting the balance right in my world things are black and white there's no gray so I vote some black things about some people that were there in the early part of my life yeah and to keep us to keep us out of court although they were true to keep us out of court they took about six things out I think that was it and we changed about six or eight names and that was a really so that know that the process was creative and I think it was you know yeah from that point of view was enjoyable I I think about the project and there were a number of authors who throughout the course of their life have returned to stories that they've written um it's not exactly story but they've returned to worse that they've they've done Raymond Chandler was one he published a story about six times the same story and he wrote it sixth rewrote it six times throughout the course of his life and it came out different every time nice so I think if I get the time in a few years I might rewrite Sparkle jar and see if I could make it better I mean I think there were flaws and and if I could make him make it better I've I've learned a little more about writing by that stage it might be a worth a worthwhile project rewrite Sparkle jar rather be edit it and rethink parts of it not too well known it's a self-indulgent exercise I probably won't ever happen well it but I mean it's just that I'm not satisfied with it and I think it could be better and and and and given more experience and I might hone it maybe they do a second edition or something I don't know maybe it's not I mean is it worthy of that probably not let's just let it go and do something else I don't know I could sit here all day and say yes it is Christian you're just going to say no it's you know I'm surprised you said there that you thought people wouldn't empathize with you I agree it can be hard to empathize with people but only if you don't really understand what they've gone through and who they aren't you read that book and you completely understand what you've gone through and who you are see you do empathize with you I did yeah I mean I think there's a wider acceptance now of some of the you know issues that I had as a kid they weren't there there wasn't the support structure at all and and there is now and and that's a really good thing and I hope that it serves a useful purpose for the people that find themselves in my you know predicament as it was but you know I don't have a germ of sort of self-pity at all nothing at all I just you know it was it was that was the way it was and and things are better now so that's it I'm actually gonna return to that in in a little bit that this thing about being the alt could a young naturalist cuz there are people I know and people you know actually let's do that now actually I mean there are people I know and that you know and the words awkward and young and naturalist do seem to fit together quite well the people to go into Natural History do you seem to be slightly awkward people and I wondered I mean that's how I felt growing up it was I certainly wasn't I didn't feel the hardships you felt and I didn't feel it with the intensity you felt but I just wondered whether part of the book was you saying to those young naturalist and obviously we're not going to name any names here but that you've met I've met I wanted the boot was aimed at them at all to say you know I know how you feel but stick at it you can achieve great things even if it all feels a long way off right now almost if it wasn't in the book it was in an email that I wrote this morning to a young man in Loughborough and it was in an email to a young woman that I wrote to yesterday in in Chesterfield and both of these kids are teenagers they're both campaigners and they've both just lost and they're both a bit down and so one of them planning dispute and the other one is lost the will of his college that he's at to to do something that he wanted them to do and these are a couple of young people that I've met on social media and I've met them once or twice in the flesh and talk to them and I just told them you know you know losing is a way of of learning that winning is even more important and that you know winning is not giving up you know they're both 18 they've just got to get on with it and the reason they typed a four-page email to me is because I hope I hope because they realized that I could empathize with their position because there was a parallel between the way that they feel they don't get any actually one of the instances don't get any parental support and the other the lad does and I know and I sat on the train and I sat down yesterday and I typed out too long hopefully inspiring and emails to say look you know okay you can cry about it for five minutes but then go and get on with it because that's what it's about and I have every confidence in both of those two doing exactly that they're driven and and and we all know and I'm inspired by them and I said to said to him in a pseudo romantic way this morning that you know he's one of the rising stars in that firmament of young people who are going to make a difference and that little constellation that I see on the horizon is reassuring and inspiring to me I need to know that there are other people out there who will you know try even harder and be even better at the things that I try to do now in terms of environmental campaigning and conservation and yeah and I'm not a gambling man but I put a pound on each of those two kids and so if I can do anything I gave them both a copy of the book where they've read it but the you know and if I can do something to support them then in any way then yeah that's that's that's an asset I mean I was very fortunate and as the book points out you know I had a number of mentors who who obviously saw some you know through some of the issues and and I appreciated the fragility and and gave me generously of their time and effort and without that I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you so it is important to mentor young people if you can I'm just not very good at giving advice because much prefer most of people but you know at the same time I I do see these I like I like both of those and there's another you know social medias brilliant and I find these young people and they are you know whether they're eighteen or twenty twenty-five you know they're there and they're doing stuff yeah I'm just going to say they're adults you did mention there that you had some mentors but adults on the whole don't come out very sympathetically in the book and you wrote that as an adult obviously so obviously the the experience has happened to you when you were younger but I just wondered whether you changed your views you know extremely raw you were let down by the falconer Philip Glass yeah yeah yeah and that was obviously a very raw memory and the feeling that your parents and perhaps I'm reading too much into this didn't really understand the loss of the Kestrel at the time no I think they understood the sort of catastrophe that was there but they had no idea how to deal with it and so their method of dealing with it was to just forget about it you know just leave it and that wasn't constructive I mean I gained you know I will he's honor right but I understand you know my parents had grown up through the war they'd seen you know my mum was in an Anderson shelter that took a direct hit half of her family was blown all over her face you know me crying about a Kestrel age 14 must have been pretty unimportant really so when she was 11 that happened to her and I think they would you know they'd have to grow up and be tough and they didn't really understand why I didn't get on with people and I loved animals more than I should so when things went wrong I don't think that they were prepared and you know not prepared in the sense that they didn't want to manifest the energy but they weren't mentally prepared to be able to deal with that and they probably as lesser importance to some of the you know the horrors that they grown up with being blown to pieces in the Blitz so that's the way it was but then you know it's the same at school went to a huge comprehensive and beating people up was part of every it was something you did at book break you know and you either got beaten up we beat people up and that's just the way it was and there was no talk of bullying or anything like that that was a fact of life and if you I don't know I never did but if anyone complained to the teachers about the fact that someone had beaten you senseless in the playground they tell him tell you to fight him back that was about the extent of their you know advice and and when it came to understanding autism it wasn't even on the scale I mean it was there in in in in sort of scientific circles but it wasn't in the public domain and that it didn't really get there and really until the 1990s nine mid 90s you know and now things are very different and again there's a couple of young people with Asperger's who I correspond with on social media never met them but and as a young man who has made an extraordinary film from Viton University and and they found a means of communicating to an audience that sympathetic and a lot more understanding of what it means and that's I think this is great and I on I do everything I can to to normalize for them their situation because it it's not you know people call it syndrome it's not a syndrome makes it so much some sort of disease I mean I think it's an enormous asset you know I can tell you when pretty much every battle in English history was yeah it could be a long morning afternoon but I mean you know it's so there's a great benefit for from my point of view if you have an interest in Natural History and you need to remember detail and you need to understand process and you can achieve that by its what is essentially pattern formation in ideas then it's it's a great asset I mean I won't be going to the Unicorn party tomorrow night because the last thing he needs a sober autist in the corner so you know there are downsides to it but at the same time you know I you know have a job where it's a benefit to me yeah I wanted to ask you whether you know that there passages in the book and you've just referred to their being beaten up I mean it is so graphic and so incredibly real it's almost like it's happening now is it is that how your life is it's just so immediate and you see everything with such clarity its detail I think it's um I think a lot of that its ability to absorb more detail more quickly in some in some ways for me it's a visual thing it's not a mathematical thing I can't remember PI to a hundred places there are people who can but it's a visual thing so when I wrote that the clarity is is there because I remember implicitly and in in in well you know as I say it's crystal clear and my memory is good so it's like it happened yesterday so it wasn't difficult to transcribe it in that way I mean I think one of the problems I've faced with the book is that one of the objectives was to try and convey to the reader that difference in the visual texture of the world and how much more intense it can be and so two of the passage in passages in particular are very deliberately and massively and almost unpalatable overwritten because I'm trying to get the reader to think I can't take all this in which is exactly probably the difference between myself and them and so a few people have said oh yeah this book's is you know it's overwritten at times and yeah I mean it it went through the editor we discussed this it was deliberately so because I wanted them to say you know what I wanted to say is that this is what happens in your two seconds and this is what happens in my two seconds expand and it's it's yeah I'm not saying the intensity or the poignancy or the importance is any different but the picture is different that's what it comes down to it's different in in the sense that there is far much more in that picture there's far much more happening in those two seconds yeah my partner says it's a bit like looking out the window when you drive timing along the road and she look out and she'll see a field with some cows in it and I look out and I see a field with three oak trees - ash trees a birch tree six cows father which are facing left and one of them you know and I can tell you how many spots they got it's just that that's not necessary I need it like that all the time she who has know how she moves things in the food cupboards you know and then and we have this occasionally you know I don't like to be a sort of a circus trick or a freak or anything but you know so Christmas they sat in the front room and they said right here's a piece of paper draw you know on this piece of paper everything in the food cupboard on the five shelves in the right place and I've got a couple of things wrong and that's cuz they move them you know so that's my world it's just like that it's just it's just structured and detailed and every one thing is connected to the other and and so it's it's not that things don't exist in isolation it although they're in a matrix and that's what makes it easier to understand and process because the trees are connected to the cows and the cows are connected to the number of spots and so pattern in between the spots of the cows so I noticed in Konya I was just thinking Chris there are other authors who were trying to write books they would kill for that kind of that kind of recall that kind of clarity of vision and you somehow don't see it as as making turning you into a really skilled writer well I mean I okay so here's the thing I can buy a cookery book and I'm a sort of scientist by training and I've got some scales and I can measure out all of the ingredients and I can go through the process as described you know like it's a Heinz manioc and then I can put it in the oven when it takes it comes out it it's probably okay but it's not brilliant but someone else can take all of those ingredients probably in the same amount and put it in the oven when it comes out it's delicious so it's not just about knowing how words work or knowing how I structured I think there is a sort of I think spiritual about it whatsoever and I think metaphysical about me but I think that you know there is a all that you net to need to get to in terms of your aptitude before you can make the ingredients magical hmm and you know it's not all about analysis it's not all about process you know that's what they say isn't it you can break down a poem you can murder to dissect it and then you dissect it you can analyze how it's made but that doesn't intrinsically explain its beauty you know sometimes the beauty is just that the you know that inspiration which has led the writer the author the poet whatever to put those words in that order and that's beyond analysis and explore explanation I think so I don't I don't know we you also have that innate understanding of for example the bird that you're describing I mean it brings it to life so beautifully I mean this is a book people really should be reading well I like animals and I watch them intently and and that's what we do you know and and and and I'm interested in how things work and I like to see the connectedness and and the beauty for me is that connectedness it's how one creature relates to another and interacts with it and it's not about things in isolation they can be stunning you know but they're not complete until they're in mixed in in that web that complex with everything else and so you know understanding that complex in observing it is immensely joyous you know that's a constant revelation and it will continue all of my life because the complexity is far beyond the scope of any one of us grappling with it you know in any stage so there's always more things to see and learn and absorb that's what that's what keeps a naturalist zoologist wherever it happens to be a scientist but you move you have any kind I'm active throughout their lives is that you know your curiosity is never going to be exhaustive and so yeah there are a few things I know reasonably well because I've been watching them for a long time and I have a great passion for them so I suppose it's relatively easy to be enthusiastic and effusive about it with too many adjectives you still have to have the skill to to put that over in whether it's verbally or written oh I'll move of praising you Chris because it's yes you do explain where the title came from the sparkle jar that was a jam jar full of fish that you caught that catch the light as they swim around it also refers to two toys that kids with autism sometimes given to calm them down that's alright I just wondered was was there a third meaning I wondered whether you sometimes think of your own mind as something of a sparkle job no no it's not too many full of dark thoughts that are going on in my mind for me the vibrancy of life you know and when you when you're young and you're discovering that life there was nothing more exciting than finding something new and what was you know I found new things on the lawn and then I found them in the bushes and then I jumped over the fence and then I got on my bike and then I've got a car and I've continued to and now I'll get so you know get on a plane I can go and discover new things and that to me is it's just always immensely rewarding and I and I think the intensity of that when I was young when I was putting all those minnows way too many minnows in one jar and standing it in the sunshine just near the the Masons Arms pub which is still there in sweetling a little stream there is exactly it's one of the few things in the story which hasn't changed that that loss dream and and understanding there it was just looking at those fish you know glimmering in that water and and and they were so alive you know they were just so alive and I mean of course everything that that respires and metabolizes and you know as a heartbeat is alive but they were like more than alive in that sparkling jar it was just so exhilarating you know it was just that's that's it it was like the Kestrel in the book it was so alive and there seems sometimes it's the way that we perceive things obviously it's entirely subjective but you know you encounter those people perhaps I don't know many but but animals certainly that are just they seem to transcend what is normal existence and that's what that sparkle jar was all about you know it was just that it wasn't just the minnows it was all of these creatures that I was capturing and encountering well you know they were like I was getting a dilithium crystal pushed up my ass and I was going into warp factor five you know because it was just explosively exciting you know I just switch wheel you were talking there about this 18 year old and the 20 year olds and some of the experiences you had that allowed you to become so close to nature including raising a young Kestrel you were collecting and bringing home vast amounts of toad spawn and frog spawn and newts and these are things now that are kind of either illegal explicitly the egg collecting or somehow they frowned upon as a naturalist and someone passionate about conservation yeah you concern that those same experiences that you had just are not available to kids these days and how are kids going to get those hands-on experiences that shape their view of nature into the future I am very much with the exception of the egg collecting which is it was illegal then it's still illegal now and it's even more unacceptable now than it was then because there are a lot fewer birds so you know I can't you know I'm honest about the egg thing is what we did Bill Oddie did it David Attenborough did it y'all know Williams did it I can't think of any other naturalist that might be known to you that that didn't do it was part of part of growing up but it's not something that I would you know it I would encourage in any way I felt persecuted but the rest of the stuff is about bit as you say it's about being in touch and it's a it's a considerable worry you know there are many young people who are able geologists and ecologists and whatever and they've gone through an education system and my stepdaughters at university at the moment and it's always she was home for a couple of months over Christmas and sat at my front room and and kept asking me questions and and I'd have about 50% of my sorting near the answer and the other 50% I didn't and that you know the quality of education is was greater than mine was so no it was I was a learning experience for me which is fantastic that's great when your kids come back and start telling you stuff she goodness for that um so that was brilliant but I hate to say it and I'm not demeaning my you know my stepdaughter but her knowledge if I took her into the garden and said what's this what's that and it would be no justice to be nothing and I've tried hard you know and and there is that and it comes through a lack of contact and it's because you know people have you know learned or have been bullied into perceiving the countryside the outside world has a dark dirty and dangerous place so you see cool school kids they go out and you know says they touch something they're being squirted with intercepted hand Joe what's the message the message is that's dirty it's dangerous it's not as a newt right no one ever died of Newt you know they're wearing high vis jackets they're not on a building site they're walking through a woodland you know this is again another message those kids saying it's dangerous it's this is a horror show and then this is in a trusted environment I'm talking about school trips that you know your parties that I see and schools are trusted environment staffs on so forth parents send their kids there they know they're secure and safe and they've gone to learn things but the parents don't let their kids out mean you know I jumped over the fence my parents weren't neglectful the world was in those days that kids went to play football and we went fishing I did the same and that's the way the world is but now the press would have it that the countryside is populated with pedophiles and and you know and other miscreants and and I've got to say that I've lived in the house where I that I rent at the moment and I wander in the woods every day when I'm at home and in the whole time I've been there ten years I've never seen a single pedophile in the woods and I've never seen a single child exploring that woodland making a camp starring a fire shooting an air rifle looking for a bird's nest you know and and it's it's it's so disappointing because you know it is an enormous repository of riches which be accessed by young people and it can ignite a spark that will last a lifetime and burn brightly for them you know but they're denied that because of paranoia and laziness and and this preoccupation with security and safety we're by accidents can't happen anymore I mean I fell out of trees I've got skull the way up here where I fell onto a barbed wire fence trying to get to a you know collar doves nest and you know obviously people get injured but that's the way the world you know and I don't know it's just so disappointing and I don't think that unless you touch it feel it get slimed stung scratched and bit more by Gunnar loving yeah you know kids have got to tickle be tickled by tadpoles that's the bottom line it's very hard to find what the answer is I mean I stepping aside from from the author's side of thing to you being a presenter presumably you feel almost a responsibility to try and get kids out there but it is very difficult well it's very difficult to get all kids out there and that's why schools do play an important role because when I attend events for young people organized by NGOs that the kids that turn up or might middle class and they win four before Volvos you don't get an ethnic mix and you don't get much of a what should we say a class mix you know and that's and that's not good enough because I was a working-class kid my dad had a Vauxhall Viva you know and I developed my interest and others would have done too because I had the free access to it but you know that that's why schools are important because everyone goes to school no matter who they are and we have an opportunity we should take that opportunity there's a website up and running as a petition running at the moment is to do it to introduce a GCSE in in Natural History yeah through Mary Cole well yeah yeah I mean and I'm broadly supported for that I don't think it's the whole answer but I think again you know if it would give staff teachers who don't have a lot of sort of creative freedom in terms of building their curriculum these days if it gave them some scope to do that then that would be a good thing yeah word I'm gonna run out of time here Chris there's a couple of things I did want to ask you I'm switching back to talking about autism I know you've said in the past you've said no but did you feel it was brave to talk about mental health when you're stuck in heated heated debates about for example shooting with people who are they're happy to take potshots at anything they might think might be a weakness you stuck your head above the parapet you always have no III don't if we if we look at the the shooting fraternity or not the shooting fraternity but the vocal part of this shooting fraternity that seems to turn its interest upon what I have to say anything you know they're just scrambling around looking for anything because they're desperate because the things that we're campaigning about there's no ambiguity about the wrong so you know I'm not promoting an anti shooting agenda because you know it's not all illegal what I've been campaigning against is a legal shooting or unsustainable shooting and as a consequence I feel secure in my argument I have the data if you like I good I can back it up with facts hen houses are few and far between in England because they were legally persecuted that's not an opinion it's a measured fact shooting declining wading birds when we don't know you know the impact of shooter shooting has on the population not that they're declining because of it but it could be the cherry on the cake yeah until that's properly assessed then it would make sense from my perspective to stop it until we measure it independently and then see whether it can or should continue but these people yeah they'll never go anything but fine just goes right over my head in fact it doesn't go over my head it just makes me get up earlier and work harder and as I said to some students that were speaking to it crystal University last night you know the more hate that they manifest and you know the earlier I will set my alarm I will make sure that I'm awake when they're asleep that I'm standing when they're sitting and I'm running when they're walking because it just makes me try harder so let them pour on the fuel that's what I can say and it doesn't set me back it would do if I if they we need generated any um you know mistrust within me of my person my my argument but calling me a nutjob or I mean that's not you know that's not gonna undermine what you know Mike my sort of firm my ambitions in terms of campaigning is it I just think that you know the fact that a Tory MP called me a nutjob in mental health awareness week when his grandfather was famous for being equally candid about his own depression is a shameful indictment of the bunch of politicians that we've currently got in this country you know a buffoon is one other question about the language in the book as I said it's poetic is roar it's beautifully written but it does include what I guess might call EB called as we're on the film here some language is that a better way I always said some having to be so careful about this you know with a some dated language there's a good few F words and the C word and we use it it's one C word there is there's one C where there's a few FS but I think the other thing is that there's language of the time so I mean when you went the school slang of the 60s it was not politically correct now by contemporary standards the things that I was called at school you know you know I would hope that you know you you wouldn't call children that school any longer there's different types of insult and they though but those are outdated but for my point of view you know that you can't I don't think we should change history to suit you know contemporary mores we have to accept that we did things incorrectly then I mean when you think of the racism for instance which isn't that part of the book but you know whether when I think of the programs that my parents would have been watching when I was doing you know tadpoles and everything else and us death us do part I mean my god it was just awful so so but but it's in there I mean you know if till death us do part is not in happened to be in the book but every that is in there and I you know it's like the sanitizing of history you know we should be learning by our mistakes and and and and and we shouldn't try and sort of you know plaster over paper over the horrors of yesterday because that's what informs today so all and then really bite with it I just wonder whether you'd had to think that there might be parents who would read the book and who would say to their twelve-year-old naturalist fan of Chris Packham you're gonna read this book and that would be a real shame well I've seen I've seen enough to think about not really I think I mean number of kids have bought it and they've signed it for them and I don't feel uncomfortable about that language as I say it's it's every word is chosen specifically it's not when I was said to max you know when she was younger there's no such thing as bad language there's only language badly used you know you can don't say the f-word if you drop a sweet but if you drop an anvil on your tone you can say you know so indeed that's what I always said to her and it's about you know cash it's the casual abuse of language there's a there's a book called um I think it's called filthy English and it deals I read it it's a it's a book about you know swear words basically it's written by an academic and it's about how we use them and how we abuse them and how they change and how some become popular there were oh Jesus yes pretty much a book about filthy English really and yeah and I learned from that book that you know as I said there's this is this is also used the language correctly then I think it's part and parcel of it so I'm not uncomfortable that a few 12-year olds would have read the F and C word if they haven't heard it by the time they're 12 then they would have been you know even more removed from society but some just on this language again right at the end of the book in the penile / penultimate chapter it ends the last sentences F of fuf it all and I just wondered could you talk in the book about intense rage I mean was that last sentence a very deliberate way of saying screw you look at me now I've achieved despite you lot I've done it no no very definitely not that was still written very much in the time that was was exactly how I felt in 1976 and 77 you know it was it was then all of the confusion and the angst of being separated or separate had come to be anger and you know and it was focused through that lens of punk rock that enormous amount of energy you explode at that time you know you were at the time you are at a clash concert or the the chapters entitled clash and I remember them and the first album was came out then and I think all of us wanted to say I thought what was going on around I meant it I mean I I just you know I was an extremely angry young man at that time and I suppose the principal thought there were a number numerous sources of that anger man it was 1976 the country was in a mess we had just gone through three day week strikes rubbish on the streets there was no job opportunity you know I told that Korea's our advice officer that I wanted to be an astronaut and he said have you ever considered joining the army I mean that was the that was the limit of it our comprehensive if you know if you didn't get a small percentage of people went to university from there but that was that was it so it was pretty bleak it was it was crap and and and yeah and then I was sort of just been totally excluded throwing everyone that I thought I'd want it to be a part of and so I was pretty crossed and so no no that was certainly not of affect I certainly don't feel that I've achieved anything well I could offer any you know sort of conceit was smugness to at all I don't feel any sense of success like that that comment was very much rooted in that time and I suppose you know what his isn't within that comment is that very rapidly I realized and it took a few years so maybe it wasn't that rapid but it that I had to use all that anger sometimes it was hatred you know and I had to make it positive it wasn't gonna do any good you know I you know I needed to do something creative with it in order to over in order to make it better and so that from certainly my late teens you know 18 19 23 my mid-twenties that was when I had that sort of thought every time I got angry I thought wow okay how how can I make something positive out of this energy I mustn't waste it it's so powerful and initially it was you know buying a car a guitar and a writing punk songs and and it was I think quite a few of us tried that and they're like yes I seem to remember going through a phase I rented a garage I wanted to become a sculptor and I made three huge sculptors sculptures out of broken glass so I made a teddy bear out of broken glass so I made these things which were you know meant to be cuddly but I made them out of broken glass it sorts it must explains my state of mind perfectly I made a frisbee out of broken glass and I made them in this lock up garage and and of course it was a what was going to do with them I couldn't even move them that was the thing I'd made them to that and then you know I went round there years later to empty the garage and the guy that I took with me to help me said have you gonna get that into a skip you can't even pick it up so it was yeah so it was that I mean it was sort of desperate of painting and drawing and I'm writing and taking photos I just had to turn all of that negativity anger into something creative very positive final question Chris I run out of time and I do apologize anybody you had questions we call it say um I just want to know Chris putting all those experiences down now have you managed to put them into a kind of sealed them away somewhere else are you able to move on from those experiences now that you put them in a book or they still you know I never forget I just remember less often and that's that's it I suppose I don't forgive any of those people that did unspeakable things I just don't dwell on it it's gone it was yesterday there was people doing unspeakable things today that concern me more and so you know I use my energy to combat that so now I don't see the need to sort of heal and that the process of writing the book wasn't in any way cathartic or therapeutic it was a you know it was an exercise in trying to write a book with elements of beauty with a complete truth with an underlying thesis that you know we to explore how we develop an appreciation for life and yet how we fail to develop an ability to deal with death that was the lessons in life and death sometimes I think you know where our greatest handicap is that we don't know when we're going to die and as a consequence we don't deal with our own mortality and therefore we think that life will go on forever and therefore we waste it and you know I'm since that Kestrel died I've counted every rainbow that's that's the bottom line curse I could talk with you forever um if you haven't read Sparkle Joe I really hope you get an understanding what the book is like and then thank you very much indeed Chris welcome thank you thank you [Applause]

Channel: LUSH

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Id: 9QZhlBdVqHs

Length: 42min 53sec (2573 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020