The simplest science book is over my head.

But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.

And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five.

Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.