THE SELFISH GIANT

When I was about seven or eight, I read a story at school about a giant who builds a wall around his garden. You might have heard it. There was something charming about it, as I remember. It moved me beyond my years in a way that I only remember as a sea of confusing feelings now.

Music does that sometimes too. It evokes and calls, through a language and a vocabulary all of its own, such strange imaginings and wonderful adventures that your own heart couldn't ever dare to dream up. That, if anything, is why I wanted to be a musician and a writer.

I thought about that old story today. I'm not wholly sure why. The sun was setting over the lake, through the broken Venetian blinds of the meeting room. I saw it turn pink and gold, and I remembered a girl who... well, it doesn't matter now.

Then, there in all its fulness was the giant's garden, swirling with winter as he sat inside it; a spindly cartoon ogre in a long-forgotten book. My manager was talking about holiday allocations and projects and HR and morale. I was half-listening, like a seven year old who had somehow ended up in the wrong room and was still pretending to fit in with the grown-ups.

In the story, the giant builds the wall to keep the children out. But without the children, there isn't any spring and he lives in perpetual winter. That is what these walls do. They disconnect us from childhood and make us live in offices with clocks and computers and pot plants. I don't think any of us like it this way, but we all find it difficult to dismantle the walls and let the sunlight in.

We should though. You'll have to read the book to find out how the story ends.