Writers

There's an article in yesterday's Telegraph about a wine-tasting school in this country; best in the world Jonathan Ray maintained. I don't know if the wine-taster I once knew went there but he was a genuine taster who worked at Harvey's where they make sherry (or just bottle it, probably). I once went with the staff of the college I worked at on a coach trip to Bristol and Harvey's. What a day! We tasted - and swallowed - more sherry that day than I have since in a year..... I tell a lie: I'm quite fond of a glass of sherry, especially Brsitol Cream, and so have put away quite a few bottles over the years.
He, the wine-taster, told me he was a chemist. But that's all he told me about his work during the week - we met a few times at weekend writing classes where, of course, no one talked much about what they did for a living; they wanted to talk "writing" - possibly wishing they might get out of full time employment and follow the romance of writing for a living. Some hope for most! Though one woman did have a book turned down by Mills and Boon but wouldn't do what they advised her to and get it published; too much pride. I told her to swallow her pride and get on the 10 000 pound bonanza band wagon called Mills-and-Boon Money-Making Machine.
I did happen to find out what some of the writers on the course did for a living. There was one who was a designer at Royal Doulton, another was a translater - she spoke 6 languages - another a librarian who loved Gilbert and Sullivan and had written and published (himself) a book on a famous D'Oily Carte impresario, another a nurse in a mental hospital who wrote only poetry. Then there was a successful novelist, Roger Ormerod, who shouldn't have been there since successful people don't usually go to writing classes - they take them. Then there was a youngish woman who wrote erotic novels which had been published and now wanted to turn to thriller writing. Good writer. A most unerotic looking woman. Don't know if she ever made it but I think she might have since she went at her work with great intensity and seriousness as if the content didn't affect her emotionally at all.
One woman who was a regular didn't work at all; she loved bats and told one of the blokes on the course that he had no aura. Didn't worry him because he knew he didn't and didn't want one anyway, thank you very much. What can you do with an aura except wear it?