As a child
When I was little, my father worked in Africa and only came home about once a year, so those were big occasions for my brother and me. He used to read us lots of fairy tales from the Andrew Lang collection (which must still be about the best there is). My granny also used to tell me lots of real-life stories about the farm where she used to live. By the time I was seven, our granny had died and my cats, Misty, Felix and Sky-Blue, had wandered off forever, but our father had come back to live in Britain. He had got a job in London, so we had to leave Scotland to go and live in the south of England. In the 1950s, it was a very dreary place, where it always rained and everyone grumbled. We had a cat called Bilbo Baggins, and our father read us The Hobbit. In the following year, we had The Lord of The Rings read to us for the first time. We also had a stepmother by now, and she was very keen on me reading lots of books as she thought I was lazy (true). My father had been used to open spaces in Africa and he was pretty miserable commuting to London, and I think that affected us too. Starting with the Narnia Chronicles (Narnia felt like going back to our old life in Scotland), I began a five-year reading marathon and more or less forgot about the outside world. Finally, we moved to Scotland again. What with one thing and another, I felt like a foreigner wherever I lived. I think I decided it was better just being a citizen of Middle Earth, and I had read The Lord of The Rings another ten times before I was seventeen, and it was time to go to university.
As an adult
I spent nine years at university in Edinburgh, mostly studying poetry (mainly German poetry), and misbehaving. I Xerox-ed my fifty poems and sold them around the campus at half a crown a set (12 ½ p). That was the first time I realized it might be difficult to earn a living as a writer. The great thing about being at university for so long, was that it meant I didn’t have to get a job. I was writing quite a bit, practically all poetry, and by the time I was finished with university, I was living and doing a bit of work on farms, still trying to avoid getting into what my elders and betters called a Real Job. I liked hill farms best, working with sheep and cattle, first in the south-west of Scotland, then in the north-east. I got married, started having children, keeping goats and hens and growing vegetables, doing more odd jobs on farms, a bit of translating for scientific researchers, some building work, got divorced, got married again, worked on local newspapers and also as a gardener (but I kept falling out with my customers because they wanted me to use weed-killers and pesticides). All this time, I was also writing and performing poetry (once on BBC Radio 3) and I also got a little published, though not much. I wrote a couple of plays, too. I was also telling my children lots of stories, but those were mostly traditional ones. It wasn’t really until about 1990 that I started writing stories of my own, which is what I’ve been concentrating on ever since.
As an artist
My first published story was Jet Smoke and Dragon Fire, which is considered as fantasy. Most of the stories I write are magical, because I think that’s the best way of writing about the real world. In fact, I can’t really understand why people write real-life stories; it seems to me we spend all our time living in a real-life story, and the whole point of stories is to step out of real life for a while. Many of my real-life stories, like Ruth and the Blue Horse, The Giant’s Boot and Time Ghost, involve encounters with beings from the realm of Magic. That’s because I think magic is part of real life, and real life is full of magic. I’ve written lots of stories but only some of them have got published. When I write I need absolute silence, though sometimes I can work in a café or a pub, as long as there isn’t a TV or radio on. I can’t work in libraries because I get distracted by all the books, and the thought of how ignorant I am. When I’m making a story I cheer myself on inside my head (It’s brilliant! It’s incredible! It’s a goal! It’s a hit, the whole world will love it!), but afterwards I go right off it. That can be very depressing and the only remedy is to start another story.
Things you didn't know about Charles Ashton
- I’d like to live in a cave.
- I make my own bread, pizza, pasta, beer and wine.
- I believe the true path of happiness is the apple-wine I make from my own apple trees.
- As a student, I wandered the streets of Edinburgh in bare feet and flares with rabbit-skin insets, playing the flute.
- In student halls, the only one of my next-door neighbours who didn’t complain about my rowdiness was Gordon Brown, now Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- I am halfway through building my second home-made staircase.
- Reggae music always makes me dance.
- I spend hours designing compost toilets.
- I am frequently caught playing solitaire on my PC instead of writing.
- I fall asleep whenever I sit down, so mostly I’m on my feet.