When I was six, my mother took me to see Doctor Woods, an opthamologist. His rooms were on the third floor of a creaky old building on Wickham Terrace. From the vestibule, a staircase wound around an iron lift well, the old-fashioned type with every working part exposed. The lift itself was a cage of metal lace, rattling like a skeleton on a chain. It terrified me. I raced up the stairs while my mother took her chances in the lift. Gasping for breath, I almost reached the third floor ahead of her.
Dr Woods’ surgery was an inquisitor’s lair crammed with bizarre equipment. Machines designed to fit the contours of your face, to restrain you, to probe deep into your eyes. These devices worried me. I spent the entire visit asking how they worked. He covered my left eye with a blind. I asked him why. He placed a heavy frame on my face, and reached for a tray of lenses. I asked him what the different lenses did. He told me to look at the ceiling while he pricked my right eye with a searing light. Why, why, why? I’m sure I drove him spare.
When I visited Dr Woods as an adult—again spurning the fin de siècle elevator—he remarked on my curiosity as a six-year-old. Perhaps it struck him as unusual. But isn’t that our job as children? To soak up as much knowledge as we can, as quickly as possible? To find out what makes people tick?
I came away from that first consultation with a prescription to correct my astigmatism. My mother took me down to OPSM, and ordered a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, just like my dad’s. You can say I looked like a nerd; I consider myself to be an early adopter! But my curiosity about the world—how things work, and why we humans behave as we do—remains my greatest strength as a writer. The day I stop asking myself how and why is the day I will pack away my keyboard for good.
For a more conventional explanation of who I am, and what I have achieved in my career to date, please download my CV.