In an earlier blog entry I mentioned my interest in John
Pudney and having come across references to his autobiography Thank Goodness
for Cake (TGFC), I ordered it sight unseen. It was published in 1978 the
year after he died. I anticipated finding out more about his wartime service in
the RAF, his writing, his marriage, his children and his poems. Well as I
discovered TGFC is an altogether different book from the ‘I did this and then I
did that’ memoir. He dismisses his previous autobiographical gambit – Home
and Away in the opening paragraph as a ‘well mannered, urbane account of
the accepted and acceptable. No offence, no compelling interest’. So instead
TGFC deals with the reality of his life. That is what he means by cake – cake
is the reality and drink is the illusion. Drink blurs; Cake substantiates.
He was an alcoholic and the book deals with his decision to
give up alcohol and all that entailed – ‘I was never recklessly drunk, I was
never sober. The intake had been craftily and disastrously spread out over
twenty-four hours – with such organised items as the brandy miniature in the
pyjama pocket for shaving time.’
But he doesn’t just write about alcohol. TGFC is a beguiling
book with glimpses of his childhood, his parents and their respective families,
growing up, work, relationships and his poetry. It is all characterised by
honesty. He must have been dying from cancer as he wrote it and so there was no
need to pretend anymore.
It is also a celebratory account of the people and places
that were important to him whilst being unsparing in its analysis of his owns
shortcomings. I found myself liking him more and more as I read on.
And his wartime experience? At the start of the seventh
chapter, The Square peg he writes “I have no wish now to recall or write about
the war. I can only remember episodes and have to search my diaries to see if
they existed or if there are bits of personal embroidery…. In my later life
I’ve taken to constructive amnesia, deliberately de-memorising events and the people
that went with them. This is not the same as forgetting. It is rather clearing
the past into a limbo nearly out of mind, in order to leave more room and
capacity for the present”. So instead of the war he writes about the poems that
came out of it and a discussion with Benjamin Britten at the Albert Hall. Was I
disappointed? Not at all – I was entranced with the book by this stage.
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