I’m afraid I’ve just discovered this belatedly…

“Michael Moorcock on July 19th, 2008 at 6:06 am:

“Tom did in fact visit Ballard first in 1966 and Ballard remembers him at this and other times with great affection. A bungalow is a style in the US and doesn’t mean the same thing. Tom used to meet Ballard at Kingston as, in fact, I did. He misremembered such things as anyone might.”

Well, no one disputes that Tom (i.e. Thomas M. Disch) did visit Ballard at his home in Shepperton, probably on a number of occasions, in the 1960s. I just pointed out, in my review in _Interzone_ of Disch’s book _The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of_, that Tom had got a number of small details wrong — including the sort of house JGB lived in, the number of children he had, the geographical location of Shepperton, etc.

I take Mike’s point about the “bungalow.” Since writing my review in 1998, I’ve discovered that what Americans mean by a bungalow is not the same as what we British mean (and presumably Indians — the word comes from there). For Americans, it seems that bungalow just means a small, pokey house; whereas for us it strictly means a one-storey house, so that there’s no way a three-up, two-down semi-detached can be described as a bungalow.

It’s the same, I think, with Disch’s use of the word “sports-car.” For us, it means a low-slung two-door car with a powerful engine; whereas for Americans it seems to mean any car with a powerful engine — thus, for Tom, a four-door saloon can be a “sports-car” if the engine is big enough.

Small misunderstandings caused by Tom’s Americanness.

However, Mike Moorcock gives us one tiny, interesting new datum: “Tom used to meet Ballard at Kingston as, in fact, I did.”

What MM is saying there is that Tom, and others, would sometimes take the train to Kingston, in Surrey, rather than to Shepperton, and that JGB would drive over and meet them there and presumably then drive them back to Shepperton. This small explanation suddenly makes several things about Tom’s account click into place. _That’s_ why it was necessary for JGB to give Tom a lift in his “sports-car” (when Shepperton station is just a couple of minutes’ walk away). _That’s_ why Tom remembered Shepperton being “south” of London (when in fact it’s more west) — because Kingston lies south of the river!

I would guess Tom and others took the train from central London to Kingston because it was a quicker, shorter, cheaper ride than to go all the way to Shepperton by train. JGB evidently didn’t mind driving over to Kingston — it must have been an easy drive for him in those days, avoiding central London.

– David Pringle.