crabbit curmudgeon

It is a sad day. We learnt that Iain Banks - a brilliant writer - is dying from cancer. We are told he has less than a year to live and that the book he has just finished will be his last. This is a man for whom I have felt some sort of kiinship - his sense of humour, some of his ideas, his beliefs resonated for me. Compounded by the small chance meeting in a small town on the Fife coast. An early morning wandering aorund taking photos of this and that when I fell into conversation with a man and his wee terrier (a Westie I think). We talked of this and that - some ideas of images to benefit from the crystal clear light and the contrasts of the painted boats and the black stone of the harbour walls. So off I wandered without a backward glance to see if I could do justice to the image. In truth, I don't suppose I did - maybe the image wasn't really there that day. A few weeks later, reading The Crow Road for the second time, I looked at the photo on the fly sheet and saw the same face I saw that day in Fife. Ever since there has been the possibility that I could just wander around the Fife coastal villages and I would bump into Iain Banks - who knows, we might have found enough to talk about for a few hours, maybe over a pint or two. But no, that dream is gone - much worse I suppose for all the dreams Iain Banks would surely have held - and I suppose I am not alone in feeling a keen sense of lost potential. One last book to be published in the summer, one last glimpse of a wonderful imagination, an ability to play with words, to paint fantastical pictures of worlds and societies, and the capacity to weave truths that mainlined directly to the gut. Another light will go out in the world and I will miss him.