The Smoking Diaries: The Year of the Jouncer

As a baby, Simon Gray discovered that he could move his carriage while still nestling inside it. "It was a complete mystery to the adult intelligences, how had he done it, if it was he who had done it, but if not he, who then and why? So the next afternoon they planted the pram in the usual spot, and stood over it, watching—the baby lay there smiling or snivelling up at them, until it struck them that they should try observing the baby when unobserved by the baby, and they withdrew behind bushes and trees; and thus witnessed the swaying of the pram, then the juddering of the pram, then its slow, unsteady progress along the path, the movement accompanied by a low humming and keening sound from within that reminded them more of a dog than a human . . . jouncing was the word they used for it. I was a jouncer therefore." In these hilarious chronicles of triumph and disaster, Gray intertwines scenes from his adult and his child self to produce a brilliant and moving counterpoint of life’s unsteady progress.