Grave Goods – Cal Flynn.

Grave Goods Cal Flynn

Tools of the Trade – a tool/implement without which you’d be lost, whether it’s a pen, trowel, notepad, bottle-opener or scanning electron microscope.

I’ve always been a bit sniffy about people who make a big deal about using ‘the right’ stationery—on the basis that you can footer around with fancy pens and paper all you like, and still never get anything done—but I do seem to have settled to a regular type of notepad: it’s hardback, lined and A5, with an elastic loop attached to keep it closed while knocking around in your bag. You can get lovely versions from Moleskine or Leuchtturm, but I have to be honest—the more expensive the notepad, the more nervous I am about writing in it. So I get mine from any old shop; you can find generic notebooks like these for a few pounds, and then that takes the pressure off. Though writing in longhand can occasionally be helpful—breaking an impasse—I tend to resent the time I then spend typing it up, so I do almost all my Writing-with-a-capital-W directly onto my laptop. But it’s always based on the extremely scrappy notes, diagrams, lists and shorthand transcripts in my identikit notepads. I hate to be without pen and paper, because you never know when you’ll make a breakthrough.

Food for the Journey – a favourite portable snack, or a portion of something from your funeral feast.

I eat cucumbers like apples: big bites. I snap long sections off with my bare hands, or slice them into fingers and eat them at my desk while I’m working. So crisp!  So refreshing! I get very nervous if we don’t have any cucumber in the house; if there isn’t I find myself chewing mindlessly on whatever else I can find—chocolate, biscuits, whatever—so I suspect they are the only thing standing between me and obesity. I can chew through three or four in a day or so. But they’re good for me (or, at the very least, nutritionally neutral), so I don’t see the need to break the habit. I’d better take at least one with me lest I’m tempted by the pomegranates of the Underworld. Oh, and a pen knife to slice it.

Memento Vivere – a memento of a companion/event to bring you cheer (can be an image).

I have a favourite photo of me, my partner Richard, and three horses at the highest point of the Colorado Trail, from the time we spent riding the 500-mile trail through the Rockies end-to-end. I’ve never felt satisfaction like those six weeks, when all our belongings could fit inside our pack saddle, and we fell asleep before nightfall every evening, exhausted but happy. Rich had just left his job, I’d just had a book proposal fail to sell; everything in our lives was up in the air. There was nothing for it but to disappear into the mountains for a summer and come home tanned and lean, with rope-burned hands. 

Ex Libris – the book or text you are least likely to tire of reading.

I could happily read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy over and over again, indefinitely. It contains so much within its pages that it’s impossible to appreciate all at once; it’s like the painting of the Forth Bridge—by the time you reach the bloody end, it’s time to refresh your memory of the beginning. If I have to choose only one of the books, it would be Bring Up the Bodies, but I beg you, please allow me a very, very heavy collected edition.

Lucky Deposition – a bonus selection chosen by the guest – can include transport.

My dog. She’s a former sled dog, who I met the winter I spent working at Hetta Huskies in Finnish Lapland. When she retired I offered her a comfortable home to see out the rest of her days. She’s twelve now and not always in the best of health; even writing that down makes me misty. She doesn’t like to be alone so it would be a comfort if we might walk together through the dark.

A Message from Beyond the Grave – an entirely discretionary option – leave a note for a future generation to find.

Talking is all well and good but you’d better get on with it.

BIO – Cal Flyn is a writer from the Highlands of Scotland. She writes long-form journalism and literary nonfiction. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, was selected by The Times as one of the best books of 2016. Her acclaimed second book, Islands of Abandonment, is out now in the UK, and is shortly to be released in the US, Netherlands, Italy and China. She was made a Macdowell fellow in 2019.