I recall reading somewhere or other that, when asked to describe his ideal reader, James Joyce said he envisaged somebody spending the best part of their life devoted to the diligent study of his work, to the exclusion of all other concerns. Without for a moment comparing myself to Joyce, I must admit that his is an attitude of which I wholly approve. After all, why do we write at all, if we do not take our own work with the utmost seriousness, and expect readers – or at least some readers – to do likewise?

Laughable and hopeless it may be, but I like to think that, long after my mortal remains have been devoured by worms, there will be a small body of beetle-browed scholars poring over every word I have ever written, trying to wring from it everything that can be wrung. It is for them, as yet unborn, that I offer this tiny contribution to their important research.

In the mid-1980s I worked as a drudge and minion in a local authority office in London. One day I was given the task, who knows for what purpose?, of sorting through the personnel files of past employees – those who had left, or retired, or died. There were hundreds of these files, beige cardboard folders containing the dim dull records of long-forgotten members of staff. As I worked my way through them, two names grabbed my attention and lodged in my brain, where they have remained ever since.

Shortly afterwards, in the latter half of the decade, I had my epiphany upon reading Dallas Wiebe’s line “When you have nothing to say, you write prose”, and began to write prose. And in writing prose fiction, I learned that one of the things you have to do is to give your characters names. How to choose those names? Over the years, I have used a number of different methods. But back then, I realised I had a couple of excellent names stuck in my head. Yes, they were the identifiable names of real people, but “no resemblance to anyone living or dead blah blah blah” should cover it.

The first ex-employee of the council whose name I appropriated was B. Bewg. He became the “hero” of Mr Bewg’s Reference, a tale the register of which is clearly also indebted to my rummaging through those personnel files.

The other name that sang to me, and still does, was Nuttawood Sirinuntananon. The more diligent scholars will, I hope, work out that that must be a real name – after all, who would, could, make it up? I can’t actually recall, today, where I first deployed Mr. S., but it will have been in one of the early out of print pamphlets. He reappeared very briefly at Hooting Yard in 2004 and, with a different forename, in 2012 – where, I am pleased to note, you will also encounter a certain Krumbein, who was also a council employee, though one I actually met, as he had not yet been consigned to the beige cardboard graveyard.

Gosh, this is the kind of stuff that will have future scholars in ecstasy. I try to be helpful.

Last weekend I visited St Ives for the first time in twenty years. In the latter part of the last century I went there regularly, for holidays, when I used to take regular holidays. In spite of its popularity, I adore the town. Even when it is jam-packed with tourists at the height of summer, one does not need to wander far to avoid the throng, and out of season it is a delight. On the last weekend of September it was not too hideously crowded, and not greatly changed from how I remembered it.

One change, which, given the passing of time, I expected, was that my favourite shop would have vanished, and indeed it had. This was The Mirror And The Lamp, on St Andrew’s Street, just along from the harbour and Market Square. In truth, I had never quite understood how the shop survived as long as it did, given that it was a secondhand or antiquarian book dealer with a very limited stock, mostly of poetry, and that, I recall, of a fairly narrow range. My memory may be askew, but I seem to remember it specialised in French symbolists and surrealists – not, one would think, exactly what the casual tourist in St Ives was looking for.

The proprietrix of The Mirror And The Lamp was Gertrude Starink, who I remember as a fragile bespectacled bluestocking. In addition to books, she also sold her artworks, some paintings and collages, but more enticingly small limited-edition illustrated booklets. Of course, ninety percent of the population of St Ives consider themselves artists, and bash out seascapes and nautical daubs for the tourists. Gertrude Starink’s work, while often informed by the locality, was of a different order. Her bestseller (I presume) was the commercially-published St Ives Alphabet, twenty-six cards reminiscent of a more benign Edward Gorey. An additional pleasure of The Mirror And The Lamp was that every purchase was individually wrapped – with exquisite care – in paper printed with the shop’s emblem, reproduced above.

When I returned home, it occurred to me to discover if Gertrude Starink had left any trace on the interweb. I was saddened to learn that she had died in 2002, aged just 54. At the same time, I was intrigued to learn that she was originally from Holland, born Ruth Smulders. (Given that my own mother spoke Flemish, I was surprised I had not picked up on her accent.) She was also considered one of the finest Dutch poets of the late twentieth century, having published, over twenty years, a series of “bundles” under the collective title The Road To Egypt. Most interestingly – and somehow absolutely in keeping with the woman I remember sat behind her desk in the dark interior of that shop – she and her husband Jan (who died earlier this year) had spent fifteen years translating into Dutch The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

I still adore St Ives, but it is diminished by her absence.

The year is 1982, the scene is the Jacquard Club in Norwich. On the bill for the evening’s entertainment are Serious Drinking, a band composed of middle class university graduates who do a reasonably convincing job of pretending to be working class oiks. Their songs are mostly about beer and foopball. Their EP Love On The Terraces is a collector’s item these days. Also taking to the stage is a post-punk performance poet. Incapable of memorising his verses, he has them scribbled on pieces of paper which, as he finishes reading each one, he scrunches up in his fist and chucks into the audience. Nobody knows – indeed nobody cares – that this will be his one and only performance as a poet, and he will not reappear on stage until the new century has dawned. He shouts (among other things):

I spent ten days in a shed
The shed was made of wood
I smoked a pack of Number 6
And drank a bottle of stout
I didn’t eat a fucking crumb
After a while my legs went numb
Then I went and had my bath
Now I’m so clean it almost hurts

That youthful performer was Frank Key The Poet. I am not sure what brought that memory flooding back.

ADDENDUM : I recall only one other piece I shouted at the crowd that night, and only the opening three lines come back to me:

He pushed a boy scout into a lake
Went to a snackbar and stole some cake
He’s a snackbar hooligan!

All the verses followed the same pattern, a rhyming couplet followed by the one-line “chorus”, after each bellowing of which I urged the audience to shout “Yeah!” or “Oi!”, which I am pleased to say they did, with a certain mocking enthusiasm.

In correspondence with one of my correspondents the other day, the subject of golf was raised. (There was a Herman Melville connection, with which I will not tax you.) This led me to recall a childhood memory, and I fired off an email as follows:

The only time in my life I ever played a round of golf was when I was eight years old. I was with a friend and his Scottish grandfather. My abiding memory of the adventure is that the grandfather whacked me on the elbow – hard – with his golf club. He insisted it was an accident. Hmm.

To which my correspondent replied:

Thanks for that piece of information – I am wondering whether the disclosure of the grandfather’s nationality is a mere embellishment, or actually a key detail of the tale.

Without giving the matter much, or indeed any, thought, I replied immediately to say that I thought the detail highly significant. I have never played golf again.

The recent death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez reminded me of the circumstances that led me to read One Hundred Years Of Solitude, thirty-odd years ago – so long ago that, with my puny memory, I have forgotten the book entirely.

I was at university at the time. I had a friend, a fellow student, Stephen, who lived in a house bought for him by his wealthy parents, and I rented a room in it one summer. Stephen, being a good leftie, was somewhat ashamed of his economic privilege and always referred to the “landlord”, without divulging that this was his father.

One day he found me reading a J. P. Donleavy novel, I can’t recall which one, and hectored me for wasting my time on trash. I should read, he said, only great works of literature, such as, to pluck a title at random, One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I was touched that he had my intellectual improvement at heart and, shortly afterwards, I did indeed read Marquez’s novel. I have to admit that, all these years later, I have fonder memories of Donleavy.

Stephen and I lost touch after university, but it has always amused me that this keen upholder of cultural standards went on to become the television producer who created such intellectually stimulating fare as Wife Swap. Stephen Lambert – for it is he – may have cared deeply that I did not waste my time on trash, but it seems not to have bothered him that he besmirched the cultural life of the entire nation.

For reasons which I cannot fathom, I feel impelled to repost this potsage [sic] stamp design, depicting men with whisks and celery.

Sag’ mir, wo die Blumen sind? I can scarcely credit that over a quarter of a century has passed since I wrote, illustrated, photocopied, folded, collated, stapled, signed and numbered fifty copies of The Churn In The Muck. Now, this spineless out of print pamphlet will set you back £93. That’s how much a copy is selling for on eBay.

What do you get for your cash? “Vintage Frank Key surrealist writing, in a booklet that contains 4 pages of wallpaper sample and 4 pages of tracing paper. There is a murderous rivalry over an Icelandic fontoon buried at the bottom of a lake. Indefatigable Hungarian detective Bulent Hellbag arrives on the scene to solve the case”, according to Serendipity Bookstore in the far Antipodes. I should point out that, in addition to the wallpaper and tracing paper, there are actually pages of text, too. (I am not sure the blurb makes that quite clear.)

As the clock tocks towards midnight at the end of the passing year, Miss Dimity Cashew is swept away, she is swept away …

My sister, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother.

I hesitate to post this, but what the hell. A second extract from my teenage notebook, this time a terrible poem. Contains owls.