Edward Hollis
Edward Hollis
1. When were you happiest?
In a dream. I peered through a wicket gate and there was a row of elm trees in front of a stone wall, and the sky was still darkened by a passing shower. The long grass was wet. I still have no idea why it made me so happy. In real life? Singing in church, or dancing in Ibiza. No elm trees or storm clouds there; just the moment.
2. What is your principal defect?
If I knew the answer to this question, the defect would not be there. Everyone I know is appalled at my dress sense, and vows to sort me out, but I resist.
3. What makes you depressed?
The prospect of a lifetime meaningless paperwork. It comes with being an academic.
4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I would like to have ‘disco tits’. It would make it easier to dance in Ibiza, or, for that matter, sing in church (High Anglican).
5. What is your favourite word?
Faience: it sounds so much more exotic than it actually is.
6. What is your most unappealing habit?
Interrupting in moments of enthusiasm and bulldozing people.
7. What is your favourite smell?
Sweat, hair, wet lichen, or bacon frying in butter.
8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Sweat and buttery bacon. At the same time. It’s a man thing. Seriously? OK magazine and a Whopper Meal at railway stations.
9. Who are your favourite writers?
EM Delafield, EF Benson or Max Beerbohm for light, unfashionable, cut-glass prose about the things that really matter. Borges or Calvino for writing so economically that one is left wanting more. Alasdair Gray, for possessing none of the above qualities.
10. What is the worst job you've done?
Being an architect; I was hopeless at getting things built. I think that’s why I’m so keen to write about ruining buildings.
11. When did you last cry, and why?
Sitting on the sofa with a white wine, watching some mobile phone advert. Despite my best intentions, Great Life Events leave me dry eyed.
12. What do you most value in your friends?
Texting, not calling. I loathe the telephone with a passion.
13. What gift would you most like to possess?
The ability to not to see into the future. I vastly undervalue the present moment.
14. What was your most embarrassing moment?
I woke up one drunken night, stumbled to the loo, and found myself locked out on the common stair with nothing but an Argos catalogue to cover my nakedness. I beat down my door with the aid of my chunky Northern Irish neighbour (with his girlfriend’s feather boa helping me hide my nakedness). I have since died of shame, and everything else that has happened to me would embarrass you more than it would me.
15. What is your most treasured possession?
Aimless time with my partner Paul, Squid the cat, and our garden. It has to be fought for.
16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
That I was thoughtless – it happens all the time, and I’m inclined to regret sins of omission more than those of commission.
17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?
My birth. I should have been a Habsburg princess at her escritoire, or a medieval monk in his cell. As it is, I am a paid up member of the modern middle class, and I have to live on my wits.
18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?
To Rome in the Middle Ages, when it was village of several hundred people perched amid ruins so enormous that everyone thought they had been built by giants. I’d like to know what they thought the future was going to hold.
19. What is your greatest fear?
Being found out
20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
That we will all be found out, and therefore that there is nothing to fear.
