Scotch and Soda at 9 am

School Pick Up

When J G Ballard's wife died of pneumonia in 1964, single fathering was rare. Acquaintances and family offered to take on his three children, told him that he was risking damaging them by insisting on 'playing mother'. But he ignored them. Each morning he would get Jim (9), Fay (7) and Bea (5) dressed, make breakfast, drop them at school, then, just after nine o'clock, would pour his first, stiff Scotch and soda of the day, light a cigarette and settle down at his desk to write his strange and excellent brand of dystopian fiction. (The inhabitants of a luxury high rise go feral, warring with each other and eating pet dogs; a group of fetishists stage and participate part in car crashes; a man makes his home on the median strip of the motorway, feeding himself on litter thrown away by passing drivers.)

 

A few hours and later, by now somewhat drunk, Ballard would drive through the suburbs of Shepperton to pick up his children, then help with their homework and make sausages and mash, which he ate with them in front of Blue Peter or Top of the Pops. 'My children were at the centre of my life, circled at a distance by my writing,' he wrote later. 'I am certain that my fiction is all the better for that. My greatest ally was the pram in the hall.'

 

There's something so refreshing in hearing from a great, celebrated – and male – writer that creativity and domesticity can go harmoniously hand in hand. That early-years parenting, brimming with chores, short days bracketed by the school drop off and pick up, was 'the richest and most fulfilling period' of Ballard's life. His relish for home-making was no doubt helped by his idiosyncratic approach: cigarette permanently in one hand, drink in the other, and minimal to no cleaning. (Conveniently, he saw careful cleaning as pathological, a sign that people were attempting to erase repressed emotions.)