"Subtitles by MemoryOnSmells" "We've just come back from Spain, where I had my first exhibition." "It's the first exhibition I've had in my life, actually." "And it's been a very strange experience." "I went to a psychiatrist as I wanted to see if I was normal." "That's what I wanted to find out." "As soon as he looked at me, he said," ""You're normal." "Your mother did a wonderful job."" "I must say I was quite pleased to hear that." "That was like a red rag to a bull in a film for me, that remark that he made." "I said, "Well, he didn't look that shocked."" "He went, "No, no, no." "You can take that as a compliment." ""You're normal." "That's great."" "In retrospect, that was the most inappropriate thing" "I could have said to him because my mother hated me for being normal." "So anyway, we were walking along this street." "I had just been at this bar, this bar in Barcelona, and we were walking along this street and a man said, "Hello," to me and I said, "Hello," to him." "As I did, he stabbed me in the stomach with a large knife." "As I went into a sort of swoon," "I thought, "Oh, I don't believe it!"" "He must have been carrying the knife in his pocket and he saw the opportunity to do it and he took it." "I just looked down and it was like water in a bath and I thought, "This is it."" "I thought, "Oh, no." "This is it."" "The end." "I would have liked it to have ended with one little more flourish where I went," ""I've got a knife in me." "That's all right, isn't it?" ""But you haven't got a gun in you."" "A man with a knife or a knife with a man." "It's all the same." "But I thought, "This is it." "The end."" "The end of my life as I know it." "So, I was taken to the hospital and they put a drip in me." "I couldn't talk because I was in shock." "It wasn't me who said, "Oh, get on with it." ""I'm all right." "You carry on." I wasn't able to say anything." "They stitched me up and I went back to Spain." "By then I was able to talk again and I had another exhibition." "So, that was that." "I'd been on a ship and got off the ship with a knife in my stomach and I thought," ""Well, I'll see what happens next." So, that was that." "And I don't think that anything of mine is going to kill me." "But it would be a lot less upsetting if it did." "Not like that, though." "I suppose there is a certain fascination in thinking of things going wrong but I don't think I would ever let them go wrong." "I'm too afraid of them to let them go wrong." "They should all be right." "That's what I think about things." "Everything should be right, and that is when it's right." "And when it's wrong, it's wrong, so you won't be able to know about it because you won't know what was wrong and what was right because it will be wrong." "Anyway." "I got married, quite soon after that." "My first husband was an artist, as it happens." "I met him, I think, at this exhibition of mine." "And we got married quite soon after and we went to India." "I started to write a book then, which is about to come out called" "J. It's about how I can't understand men." "I didn't want to be there when I did it." "And I felt that I had to be in Scotland because this was a thing that I wanted to do, this sort of book that I wanted to do." "I had to be near the mountains." "So, we moved to Scotland and I started to write." "And we stayed at this guest house and I started to write in a room with a fire in it." "And I looked at this fire, which was on a grate on a metal surround and there were four metal bars." "And as I looked at it," "I thought, "I should like to be burnt on a grate like that."" "And then I thought," ""Well, that's the sort of thing that I could write about."" "I don't know what I'm saying." "I don't even think it's me saying it." "Well, I hope it's me saying it." "I've just been talking away." "It's quite nice talking away when it's someone who's listening and you don't have to explain what it is you're talking about." "So, I thought, "That would be a nice thing to write."" "Because it's the last thing that one would do." "I was quite pleased to do it and I thought," ""Well, I'm glad I won't be burnt like that."" "But I think if I thought it would be better for me to be burnt like that," "I wouldn't mind very much at all." "But it would be better not to be burnt like that because there would be more pain and it would be more unpleasant." "But I don't think either way would be better for me." "I'd prefer not to be burnt like that." "But I didn't know how to describe how it was for me to be burnt like that." "Because then I thought," ""Well, it was nice to feel comfortable in a room like that."" "It was nice to think that I was going to have a fire like that one day." "And I'm never going to have a fire like that one day." "But, anyway, I thought it was quite nice to think about it and then it's sort of true that I am thinking about it." "But that's not what I'm saying." "I'm not saying I'm thinking about being burnt like that." "I'm just saying that that's what I'm thinking about." "And there's a difference, isn't there?" "This is the trouble when you write, as I do, about how you think about things and not how you think about them, but how you feel about things." "It is quite difficult because you're making it up as you go along." "And the thing that you're making up, which is real, is the bit that you make up." "But it's quite good because that bit is that you're making it up." "And then you keep on making up bits that go along with the other bits." "And sometimes you can make up a good bit, too, that sort of combines the two." "So, I'd really rather people thought of me as an idiot or as somebody who was completely mad than to think of me as a writer who didn't actually write anything." "Because, then you have to find out what the hell they're thinking about anyway." "But at least it would be interesting to find out if somebody is thinking of me as a writer who didn't write anything." "But that doesn't happen, unfortunately." "And it would be even more boring than being thought of as somebody who was completely mad because you could probably work it out in a much more interesting way and make it rather exciting, perhaps, to find out what somebody was thinking." "And there's a much bigger chance that you would be able to work it out." "But, unfortunately, it's very rare that anyone does think of you as a writer who didn't write anything." "It's very rare indeed." "It's the other way round, really, is what it is." "When I'm at these sort of events, which are great fun because I like talking to lots of people, if there's somebody who I can't find anybody to talk to," "I'm always terribly tempted, even if they're complete strangers," "I'm always tempted to think that they must be thinking," ""Gosh, I wish I knew the man who wrote the book with the subtitle," ""'A Book About Nothing."'" "And I'd really rather that they were thinking about me that way." "Because I think it would be interesting." "And I think it would be exciting to find out that they were thinking of me as somebody who wrote a book that I didn't write at all." "Which, of course, I have written." "Which is a great pity because that isn't what anybody thinks about me." "But that doesn't matter because that's not how I was thinking about them." "Which is nice, in a way, because it's all true." "And it's interesting that I'm so well thought of." "I think that is a nice thing." "I'm very pleased." "And that's really why I wrote the book, is to have found out what people are thinking about me." "So that I could make sure that when I do anything again, it's for their benefit." "Because it's very nice to think you're on the right track." "And there's something awful about making mistakes because mistakes are so horrible, somehow." "Not like things, which can always be mended." "That's not bad, to go round and say," ""Look, here's