 |
Bill Duncan |
|
Bill Duncan was born in the East Neuk of Fife, where he spent his childhood, before moving to Dundee. He lives there with his family and works as a Head of English in an Angus secondary school. He is the author of The Smiling School for Calvinists and his fiction, poetry and non-fiction have been widely published in books, magazines and newspapers. He divides his time between Dundee, St Madoes and Orkney.
Who or what always puts a smile on your face?
Nothing that’s guaranteed. I laugh a lot, but smile infrequently, and usually only in moments of unease where the rictus involved is hard to distinguish from a grimace. And I can’t smile to order – hence the title of my first book The Smiling School for Calvinists, an Institution for North-Easterners who need a little help. To be honest, I suspect the motives of people who smile too much.
What are you reading at the moment?
Borges: a Life by Edwin Williamson; The Book of Shadows by Don Paterson and New Collected Poems by W.S. Graham
Which author do you most admire?
Cormac McCarthy, who, sentence for sentence, writes alarmingly brilliant prose and who would never do a questionnaire like this. And Jorge Luis Borges, whose short fiction, non-fiction and poetry is better than just about everybody else’s.
What’s your earliest memory?
Cutting my neck with my dad’s Gillette safety razor when I was three. Not a depressingly precocious suicide attempt; simply an attempt to emulate his shaving.
What is your greatest fear?
Drowning while being burned alive.
How would you like to be remembered?
Once I’m the food of maggots and worms it won’t bother me too much at all.
Have you ever done something you’ve really regretted?
Yes. I couldn’t narrow it down to much less than a hundred occasions, though. And the regret, of course, usually involves a measure of guilt.
How do you spoil yourself?
Immersion in landscape / weather / walking and exercise followed by good food and alcohol.
The worse the weather the better: pain to justify pleasure. Ad infinitum.
What’s your favourite word?
‘erotic’
‘buffoon’
‘Kirriemuir’
I prefer them not to occur in the same sentence, though.
What’s your favourite book?
‘Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy.
Who (or what) do you turn to in a crisis?
Alcohol.
A dark room.
Sometimes both.
What makes you angry / guilty?
I don’t get angry very often. I’m a schoolteacher and I have to be extremely economical with my anger. Being surrounded by adolescents + hormones / teachers + menopause makes for a fairly inflammatory mix. Being angry would just lead to more stress and exhaustion than I could handle.
Did you enjoy school?
In the later years I found it a useful mechanism for arranging social interactions. I spent virtually all of my time in the art department, the area of the school frequented by the most interesting individuals; pupils and staff.
I’m glad the question wasn’t ‘Do you enjoy school?’
What’s your worst vice?
Alcohol.
Whistling.
Sometimes in combination.
What are you proudest of?
I’m deeply suspicious of that adjective.
Having said that, I’m moderately pleased with thehaar, the web-based environment that’s a work in progress with artist Andy Rice.
Where do you write?
Most of the stuff starts off in spiral-bound A4 notebooks. I virtually always have one around: at school, travelling, bedside etc. They’re totally portable, so I don’t have a ‘writing area’ that I specifically use for anything other than displacement activity. A piece is usually fairly planned out before I decide to sit at a computer.
Where’s your favourite town or city?
Stromness, Orkney.
Which is your favourite place in the North-East?
The cliffs and coastline at Yesnaby, Orkney.
When was the last time you cried?
Re-reading the poem ‘To Alexander Graham’ by W.S. Graham, where the poet meets his dead father in a dream.
One wish; what would it be?
Peace and happiness for (selfishly enough) my family
A toast; what would it be?
‘May the skin of your arse never cover a banjo’.
WC Fields said “ Best to start the day with a smile and get it over with”. What puts a grimace on your face in the morning?
Anything that interferes with my pathologically-organised morning routine, which covers the period from my radio alarm waking me to my leaving the house one and a quarter hours later. Only a tragically prescriptive routine could have seen me out the door for all these years of countless mornings.
What does heaven look like to a Calvinist?
A deserted beach in Winter.
…and Hell?
The same beach, crowded in Summer.
Which tunes are good enough to puncture the sound of silence?
Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy
Boards of Canada – Gyroscope
Teenage Fanclub – Winter
Who are the present day Calvinists?
The Brotherhood of Kelp – Me, Andy Rice and one Unnameable Other...
