OVERHEARD IN HARRIS & HOOLE...

(An occasional feature)

Friday 4th August

Myself and Mary Winterbourne met up for morning coffee a little later than normal. I had an optician's appointment earlier. Alas, I have not now the 20/20 vision I once had.

The following could be overheard. And indeed was overheard! :

GENE: Well Mary, you wished to to talk to me about my writing?

MARY WINTERBOURNE: Gene your 'lockdown' novel is superb. I have now read it several times. How beautifully written. Comparisons with the work of Evelyn Waugh, F Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce come to mind immediately. You must make an effort to have it published.

GENE: Yes Mary. I will get around to it. I have been letting it mulch down as it were before a final edit. Would you help with proofreading? 

MARY WINTERBOURNE: I'd love to help Gene.

GENE: Maybe I don't think as highly of it as you do. But I will say it's a great improvement on my first attempt at a novel. That was when I was at Oxford. I wrote a novel entitled SOLOMON'S PORTICO. It was dreadful. Totally pretentious. Well I was only nineteen/twenty. 

Some years later I did start another novel, ONCE UPON A WOMAN. However I gave it up after a few chapters. That was at the time of my disastrous first marriage.

MARY WINTERBOURNE:  So we are agreed Gene? You will seek a publisher? I will start proofreading tonight.