White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World

Начало книги

Like my earlier blockbuster, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It, this book is a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. What’s the difference? Well, in fiction stuff can be made up or altered. My wife, for example, is called Rebecca whereas in these pages the narrator’s wife is called Jessica. So that’s it really. You call yourself the narrator and change the names. But Jessica is there in the non-fiction too. The main point is that the book does not demand to be read according to how far from a presumed dividing line — a line separating certain forms and the expectations they engender — it is assumed to stand. In this regard ‘White Sands’ is both the figure at the centre of the carpet and a blank space on the map.

— GD, California, September 2015

Next to my primary and junior schools, in the small town where I grew up (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) was a large recreation park. During term time we played there at lunchtimes; in the summer holidays, we spent whole afternoons playing football. At one corner of the rec was something we called the Hump: a hump of compacted dirt with trees growing out of it — all that was left, presumably, of the land that had been cleared and flattened to form the rec; either that or — unlikely given the size of the trees — a place where some of the detritus from this process had been heaped up. The Hump was the focal point of all games except football and cricket. It was the first place in my personal landscape that had special significance. It was the place we made for during all sorts of games: the fortress to be stormed, the beachhead to be established (all games, back then, were war games). It was more than what it was, more than what it was called.

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