Mark Haddon has been volunteering as a Samaritans “listener” for six years. The novelist compares the experience to that of “a power hose cleaning the inside of his head”. During his weekly four-hour telephone shifts speaking with people who are having a difficult time, perhaps feeling suicidal, Haddon is focused firmly on the other person. “Not being able to think about yourself for four hours is great. It’s certainly wrong to say you enjoy it, given what a dreadful time many callers are having. But it is a positive experience. I always call it a holiday from myself.”
Most people would do better to dwell on themselves less; those who delve inwardly to make a living face an even greater challenge. “Thinking about yourself too much is of course a perennial professional problem of writers,” Haddon said over video call from his home in Oxford, where he sat in front of overflowing bookshelves in what an estate agent would call “the lower ground floor” – it’s not quite a basement as it gets plenty of natural light, he explained. He turned his camera around to show a long, colourful room full of paraphernalia: more books; paintings; a low table hosting half-finished sculptures and the artistic materials required to finish them.
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