I met him a couple of years before he died.
My agent mentioned that he knew him and, as I'd always been a great admirer of his work, I asked if he could arrange for us to meet.
It was a few weeks after this when I walked into the slightly-up-market pub where we had agreed to have lunch.
I recognised him immediately. His hair was white and slightly thinning on the top compared to the full dark head he had in the photos on his dust jackets but it was him alright.
He was immaculately turned out in a perfectly suit, in fact I'd go as far to say he looked dapper.
I filled my lungs slowly as I prepared to meet him...
Now, no matter how old I get or how many people I admire I meet I have to withhold the instinct to embarrass myself with over the top gushing admiration for these people, especially after a drink or to. The technical term for this is to be a "fan boy". The term itself is, I suppose, unrefined and I always wish to impress my heroes - or at the very least not act like a complete idiot.
With this in mind I approached his table. On seeing me he got up, greeted me by name and shook my hand. I have to admit I was thrilled.
We exchanged some pleasantries, talked about my agent and commented on the weather, laughing how it's the English cliche that we talk about the weather and that we talk about the fact we talk about the weather and wondered if we now reached a third stage of Englishness were we talk about the fact we talk about the fact we talk about the weather.
I felt as if I'd sufficiently broken the ice and as I'd shared a few gin and tonics with him I decided to tell him how much I admired him,
"You know you've always been hero of mine, a huge, huge influence. I suppose I just wanted to say "thank you!". You could always, always make me laugh"
He looked at me, slightly downcast.
Sighing, he said
"humour, yes I suppose I could always do humour"
I nervously laughed,
"Come on, you're selling yourself a bit short there. I think your one of the finest comic writers that's ever lived."
"Well, I could always make them laugh, but I could never make hem cry."
"Still," I replied. I looked down at my drink, the bubbles in the tonic had settled around a piece of lime.
He took his drink and sipped it slowly. I noticed how old his hands looked, papery almost translucent, the veins bulging out from underneath.
"You're still a relatively young man - so I suppose that might be enough but I look at my life and all I see is failure."
Again he sighed, a defeated hmmmppph, coming from his nose.
"Yes I could do comic prose but I could never make a character real. Early on I figured that they don't have to BE real I could just make them seem real and that would be enough. Plink, plonk, ploof and 'Hey Presto' a character is born."
He sipped at his drink again.
"Well I thought that was enough then but as I grew older it began to gnaw on me and eat at me and I eventually realised that I have been no more than a charlatan, dazzling people with words. I could never conjure up a world, I could never make something solid and concrete.
"I reread my old words and I see through the tricks to the hollowness that lies with in. I can't see the places I describe, I can't smell them."
I swallowed my increasing embarrassment and decided that he was a maudlin drunk,
"But you're just to close to your own work, you could never possibly see it through the eyes of others..."
I tried,
"Even so, all I can see is my failures I look at the writers I admired when I was a young man. I have never written Little Women, never written Hamlet, never written the Catcher in the Rye. Failure. Failure. Failure"
I can't clearly recall how the rest of the conversation went but I now that it wasn't too long before I made my excuses and said I had a prior appointment and had to leave. I slipped into the gents on the way out and as I was urinating considered, a tad blurrily I must admit, that it was sad and perhaps a little pathetic that this person who had given me and so many others so much pleasure was sulking because he wasn't every writer who ever lived, wasn't a master of every possible style of writing - that he wasn't essentially God.
As I returned to the bar and went to leave I saw him laughing with the barman.He looked over and I swear there was a twinkle in his eye.
I walked into the day and couldn't be sure that the joke wasn't on me. I've tried to avoid meeting my heroes ever since.
