SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES

Scene of the crime/ library paean

Work, in the form of writing, hurls me out of the house every morning. Home is for family, for goofing off. Only rarely will I work on a manuscript at home. Home is where I am myself. There’s an avalanche of irony waiting to fall on this ‘self’ business, but it’ll remain unsaid. What I mean is, at home I’m a husband, a father, a brother, and so forth. There are no airs at home. There’s plain talk, daily stuff that look a lot like dishes, or laundry or bills. The only illusions are the ones that keep the domestic economy going. All the letters and the phrases and the sentences, and all the teeming thoughts and notions and half-wishes and dreams and imaginings – the whole shooting gallery - they will wait. It’s not like I am ever short of that stuff.