Writer D. bored his mother to death

at Hay Festival Segovia

At a dinner in the garden of a marchioness, the Scottish writer D. says he knows someone from the Netherlands: Jacqueline de Jong from the Cobra group. He used to stay with her often.

I have an obsession with ties, he says.

I have an obsession with sweaters, I say.

He’s not interested. He says he bored his mother to death because when he finally arrived at her deathbed, he started telling her stories, and suddenly she was dead. I say I also wanted to tell my mother a story on her deathbed, but she still had just enough energy to brush it off.

D. says: I didn’t tell my mother about all the men I’d fucked. Just other things.

Maybe you should’ve told her about the men, I say, and maybe she’d still be alive.

It irritates me that he keeps talking about himself and doesn’t listen, but the fact that he does historical research on female writers and artists endears him to me.