DISASTER PARTIES AND OTHER DIVERSIONS

Many years ago, when we lived at a school in Zimbabwe, I used to throw parties for female staff and friends - soirées, to which no men were invited. The idea was to give a group of women from many different countries and backgrounds a chance to let their hair down away from domestic obligations and get to know each other better. We ate, drank, laughed, danced and generally had a much better time than our male colleagues and partners - the nearest most of them got to parties was post-match beer drinking in the school pub. And yes, there was a school pub, probably because we were 12k from the nearest town so it was safer to have staff drinking on campus than disappearing into the night and possibly not getting back at all. (In another rural setting, three Irish friends stumbling back through the night heard a car screech to a halt, a door was flung open, and a voice yelled, 'Get in you fools - lions around!')

Back in Belfast, in a small terraced house off the Ormeau Rd, I revived the soirée habit, except that now we called them Disaster Parties, the reason being that all the women I knew led lives that were full of small disasters: work and money problems, relationships, no relationships - as well as the bigger ones: serious illness, divorce, widowhood...marriage. So we cheered ourselves up with food, wine and conversation. There wasn't room to dance in that house, but our evenings always included a bit of fortune-telling with The Ladies Oracle. 

If you've never encountered this Victorian gem, it's full of questions like 'How many lovers shall I have?' 'What must I do to please him?' and 'Should I confess all?' The answers were usually unsympathetic: 'Shall I soon be courted?' once got the response 'What fool would thus waste his time?' We always fell about laughing. The only man who ever turned up at one of these events (uninvited) was a peculiar astronomer, who was allowed to stay because of my fondness for his partner. My own Oracle forecasts were rarely favourable, but in the end I married this man, and my life took a surprising turn for the better. So much better, in fact, that I now look back on those disaster party years and marvel.

These days I have parties for writers, because God knows all writers need cheering up. We pretend we're there for serious literary discussion, but the truth is that we just eat, drink and let our hair down. And in view of the current hideous state of the world - and the approach of the so-called festive season - you might like to think about throwing a disaster party too. You don't have to do a Virginia Woolf's Mrs Ramsay, a Gatsby or a Bilbo Baggins shindig - no slow-cooked boeuf en daube, no orchestras or fireworks - you just need a few kindred spirits, and if you let everyone bring something to eat or drink, it won't even be expensive. It'll be cheaper than therapy anyway.

And, it goes without saying, stock up on books that are guaranteed to cheer, even if everyone else thinks they're rubbish.  Crime (nothing like a good murder to warm the heart) romance, biographies, whatever. Kate Atkinson's Death at the Sign of the Rook is a good bet. It descends into slightly farcical mayhem at the end, but is still immensely enjoyable - I've always liked ex-detective Jackson Brodie, and Lady Milton made me laugh out loud. (And while I'm at it, I'm re-reading Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety: it didn't appeal first time round but, as so often happens, second time round is better.) 

I also enjoyed Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt - a surprise this, because everything about the look of this novel screamed 'You will hate me!' but the moment I began to read, I was trapped - much like the giant Pacific octopus at the heart of the story. Tova, the widowed aquarium cleaner, is a memorable character, but it was Marcellus the octopus whose voice really stole my heart. 

Amor Towles' Table for Two is next in line, then Begin Again by Ursula Orange, and several others: Danielle Dutton's Margaret the First (a novel about the first Englishwoman to write specifically for publication and described by the Guardian as 'luminous') and Nina Stibbe's Man at the Helm. 

And if you're looking for presents, there's a wonderful treat called At Home in a Book by Lauren O'Hara in which she illustrates the homes of various classic literary characters: Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Hook's ship, etc...guaranteed to appeal to any reader still eleven years old at heart. 

Lastly, let me recommend the genius of Edward Gorey. The Haunted Teacosy (A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas) is one of my favourites. I'm pleased to see that Gorey gets an article by Flora Neville in the winter edition of Slightly Foxed. As she writes, adults tend to underestimate children when it comes to books, and Gorey's 'speak to children as they are, not as we might wish them to be'. (PS If you really love someone who loves well-written, interesting, quirky and often forgotten books, buy them a subscription to Slightly Foxed.)

I also recommend avoiding any novels with blurbs featuring the words 'gut-wrenching' 'apocalyptic' 'toxic masculinity' 'brutality' and 'historic trauma'. But each to their own: the important thing is that when you switch off the television, put down the paper or close the latest deeply-meaningful (and infinitely depressing) novel, you have something comforting to turn to.

Of course you could just stick to drink and drugs, but by and large, books are cheaper and less harmful. So good health and happy reading to you all, and let's hope that next year is a little bit less grim. And if it isn't, try throwing a disaster party or two. 

By Hook or by Crook

When I was a child, we lived for a while in a small pink-washed villa called Owl's House. It had a living and dining room, kitchen, two and a half bedrooms, one bathroom and a verandah. It's a house I remember with great affection because it was there that I really learned to read, and there that my imagination first took flight.

Today I live in an old house on another continent, with an attic playroom and a study lined with children's books. We have seven grandchildren (so far) and although all are lucky enough to have parents who encourage reading and creative play, the outside world is now such a noisy, fast-moving, violent place that I feel the best thing we can give them is a space as far removed from it as possible, where their own imaginations will be free to roam.

I'm not the only one to worry about our children's world, judging from the responses to something I wrote recently. I'd had a rejection letter from a well-known agent. She had read and loved an earlier book I wrote about a magical journey through African time and space, and now she'd read and loved the sequel. This one has sea witches, serpents, and a mysterious lighthouse off the coast of Ireland, but however much she liked them - and she was lavish with her praise - she knew that she'd have difficulty placing them. The problem is that they're old-fashioned, in the sense of being traditional, magical adventures, and worse, they have no 'hook'. For hook read any of the fashionable issues and concerns that currently pervade so many children's books. I think the saddest response came from someone whose grandson had said he didn't want to know about these grown-up things, he just wanted to be a little boy.

Still, traditional writers shouldn't lose heart. What comes around goes around, and who knows? One day even  Enid Blyton might find herself redeemed. Parental responsibility could make a comeback too: after all, you don't have to buy your kids the latest badly written rubbish. You can even march into your local school and complain (as a writer friend did recently, more power to her elbow) when each pupil in her child's class was given a copy of a celebrity author's latest churned-out offering. Why not one of our many excellent, local writers, for goodness sake? Of course children won't always read the books you want them to, but there's nothing to stop you going into your local library or charity shop to look for alternatives: books you once enjoyed yourself, books that can be read aloud...and if it sounds good read out loud, it's probably ok. 

The autumn issue of Slightly Foxed not only features two wonderful children's writers in Maurice Sendak and Leon Garfield, it also has an article about A E Housman by David Fleming. He was converted to poetry, he writes, 'by the simple expedient of learning to read it out loud'.  In that long-ago pink house, my mother used to recite Matthew Arnold's Forsaken Merman to us at bedtime, an inspired choice for children who lived so close to the Indian Ocean - 'where great whales come sailing by, sail and sail with unshut eye, round the world for ever and aye'. But how many parents now have time to read aloud, or can compete with all the electronic devices vying for attention?

To get back to Slightly Foxed though, Hazel Woods 

added yet another title to my  endless shopping list: Dorothy Whipple's childhood memoir, The Other Day. And who knew Mary Norton of The Borrowers fame had written romantic fiction for women's magazines and led such an interesting life? There's also such an intriguing tribute to Elspeth Barker (by her daughter, Rafaella) that I bought her only novel, O Caledonia, at once. And yes, the writing is glorious, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to read it again. I found the story of the awkward, unlovable, Janet and her brief existence deeply unsettling. And no, I didn't think it bore any relation to I Capture the Castle, which is one of my all-time favourite novels. Don't take my word for it though - lots of people love it. And luckily Dorothy Whipple is now restoring my equilibrium. 

And one last story of childhood: Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise. I love his writing and this was no exception. The story of Yusuf, pawned to pay his father's debts in colonial East Africa, somehow manages to be poignant, violent, beautiful and captivating all at once. I felt that Yusuf (unlike Janet) would survive.

I'm not sure my own children have read any of my novels (the adult ones are probably a bit too autobiographical for comfort - no-one really wants to read about their mother's misspent youth) but they do remember very fondly the books I read aloud when they were young. (Including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - both still in favour, I'm glad to see.) I'll probably self-publish the two rejected middle grade stories, even if it still feels a bit like cheating, and in the mean time, the wheels of publishing will go on spinning to maximise profits - understandably, I suppose. It's just our children who are so often being short changed.

Old Friends

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and I was young, we were taught to respect our elders and listen politely when they told us some boring story for the umpteenth time. This wasn't because of their superior wisdom (by and large, they were even stupider than we were) but because it was understood that life got harder to navigate as one grew older.

Of course, when we all became obsessed with eternal youth, respect went out the window: why would you offer anyone your seat on the bus, or not trample them underfoot in the race to board a train if they're pretending to be the same age that you are? Well, let me tell you something: no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you too will one day be creaking, crotchety, hard of hearing and endlessly repeating yourself. You will also have to say, to people you know perfectly well, I'm so sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name. (Although I suppose that's slightly better than I'm sorry, I seem to have forgotten my name...)

Age does bring compensations. Doctors stop caring how much you drink (you can see the younger ones thinking, If I was that old, I'd also drink...) and there's more time to read or listen to podcasts. Professor Gloom, 77 and counting, currently enjoys The Rest is Politics with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, and I  love the Slightly Foxed podcasts, the most recent of which featured Barbara Comyns. She's a writer I always admired, but I had no idea how similar our lives had been. Comyns, like me, went to art college and worked as an artist's model in her misspent youth. My recent novel, Life Study #2, available on Amazon - sorry, I'm officially the world's most hopeless self-publicist so I have to say that - draws on my own experience as a model. (See rare, clothed, example below.) She also moved a great deal and spent 18 years in another country - in her case Spain, in mine Zimbabwe. Anyway, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths - which I've just re-read - is an extraordinary book. As Maggie O'Farrell says in the foreword, Sophia is a heroine in every sense, and one you will never forget. 

Immortalised (with clothes) in 1965

There are a lot of things you shouldn't do when you're over 65 (like run for President) but you can please yourself in so many other things - like not reading anything you don't want to. I often avoid the much-praised, most talked about, novels of the moment but I have to say that I enjoyed Yellowface by Rebecca Kuang more than I expected. And a really interesting and engaging debut novel by Tibilisi-born Leo Vardiashvili is Hard by a Great Forest. 

Old friends bring other benefits. Often you've forgotten so much of the story that it's like reading a new novel, and quite often you enjoy a book more on the second or third reading. (The corollary is that you sometimes re-read a book you loved in your youth and find yourself thinking, what a load of pretentious twaddle.) Of the dozen or so books I've read lately, Rose Tremain's Absolutely and Forever and Willa Cather's A Lost Lady were both new finds, and Jennifer Johnston, Molly Keane and Barbara Pym have all been re-read with pleasure. A good murder is a safe bet too, and for reliably well-written, witty crime, Elly Griffiths is hard to beat. Ruth Galloway, her overweight, untidy, forensic archeologist with a complicated private life, is a particularly endearing character.

Lastly, the book that has most impressed me recently: West, by Carys Davies. Set in American pioneering days, it's been described by critics as spell-binding, haunting, luminous. For me it is a small masterpiece.

I notice there's only one man on this list but I have Sebastian Barry, William Boyd and Adulrazak Gurnah waiting (none of them spring chickens either) as well as The Coast Road, a debut novel by Alan Murrin which looks very promising. And although I think I may have said (more than once) that I'm not going to write any more blogs (or novels, come to that) when you're as old as I am, dear reader, you get a bit forgetful and tend to repeat yourself...because you see, long, long ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth...

LIFE STUDY #2

It seems I have an affinity with the number 9. 29 years ago my first children's book, The Animal Bus, was published. 19 years later I produced The Traveller's Guide to Love, and now - only 9 years on - a new adult novel, Life Study #2, has seen the light of day. According to Prof Gloom, this geometric progression should see my next book published in 2028 or 29. (Or else 29 is the total number of people likely to buy it.)

Of course this doesn't take into account Moon's Travelling Circus, a children's book  privately published in 2016, or the dozen or so hand-made books I've made for my family over the years, or even the odd bit of journalism. Whichever way you look at it, I'm painfully slow. And old. Also, each book is different from the last, so I'm hardly a publisher's dream - which is why this new novel has been self-published.

Works of heart, if not art...

It's been a very strange experience. Even with encouragement from family and  friends, it still felt somehow fraudulent to publish it myself, but it was either that or let years of work sink without trace. And given the chances of getting a book traditionally published these days, I count myself lucky that at least it happened to me twice, with all the fun of launches, readings, interviews, etc.

Self-publication was a bit like giving birth with no-one there to welcome the baby. It wasn't that friends and family didn't offer, I just couldn't face the embarrassment of plugging my own book. And yet, when I look at fellow writers - even those published by major houses - the amount they're expected to do these days amazes me: arrange their own launches (and even provide the wine) and then waste months of good writing time dashing from one appearance to another...and all for a pittance. 

A civilised book launch

Anyway, given a first-rate guide and consultant (mine was the sainted Averill Buchanan - whom I cannot recommend highly enough) self-publishing can be a whole lot less stressful - especially if you're not expecting to make any money. Then, if you open a bottle of Cap Classique (South African champagne - but you can drink French if you absolutely have to) and share it with someone you love, it's not a bad way to launch a book. And this is one of those times when I'm deeply grateful to social media, because a single posting on Facebook has resulted in so many encouraging messages that I might even do it again one day.

But not just yet.

   

BANNED BOOKS

DECONSTRUCTING DAHL

Having failed to enjoy a run of tormented, gloomy, deeply-meaningful novels - many of them by people barely out of the cradle - I started making a list of the books I've most enjoyed that are by, and about, older people.

It starts with one of my all-time favourites - Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. Claudia, sometime war correspondent and popular historian - a law unto herself even while dying in a hospital bed in Cairo - is reviewing her turbulent life and times. Funnily enough, Penelope Lively's name, and this particular novel, came up in a Slightly Foxed literary group discussion the other day. The group, like Moon Tiger's heroine (and Slightly Foxed itself) are curious, independent-minded, and thoroughly engaging. And Lively is a wonderful writer who richly deserves to be revisited. 

Next is Embers, by Sándor Márai. This is the story of a single night in a castle at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, where, from dusk to dawn, an ageing aristocrat and the friend he hasn't seen for over forty years 'fight a duel of words, of stories, of accusations and evasions' as they rehash their own past. An extraordinary book.

My third, thought by many to be Jane Gardam's masterpiece, is Old Filth. 'Filth' - which stands for Failed In London, Try Hong Kong - is an international lawyer whose story covers the period from the days of Empire, through World War 11, to the present. The first in a trilogy; beguiling, moving - and very funny.

There are so many others, from that Gentleman in Moscow to Patrick Leigh Fermor's two-volume account of his epic walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople/Istanbul, recalled some forty and fifty years later...but at this point I got sidetracked by the latest literary kerfuffle: Puffin's sanitising of Roald Dahl. 

Perhaps I should say how deeply remorseful I myself feel for using terms like fat, or bald as an egg, in my own writing, now that I understand how hurtful this must be for enormous human beings who suffer from hair loss? (Enormous? Really? Yes, really. Apparently enormous is better than fat.) But actually, the whole thing is such arrant nonsense that I can't be bothered. I am sorry, though, for younger writers who find themselves having to negotiate today's obstacle course of sensitivity-readers, lived experience, own voices, etc. It's no wonder so many new books are tormented. 

I have a large library of original children's books to read to my grandchildren, some of which would undoubtedly fall foul of today's sensitivity censors, but I very much doubt that reading any one of my books would harm a child a fraction as much as the violence that they are permitted to see on screen any day of the week, or the vicious intolerance of so many adults towards those with whose views they disagree. How sad that civilised discussion, and agreeing to disagree, seems so difficult these days. For my money, there are worse things than hurt feelings to worry about in this world - the dire state of the planet, poverty, war - so maybe what we should be teaching our children is to think less of their own feelings and more about others, and to learn from the past, rather than waste time trying to erase it. 

I see that Puffin has now promised to re-release the unexpurgated works of Dahl, so obviously I'm not alone in thinking they're idiots. And yes, I know Dahl had some deeply offensive views, but a great many unpleasant people have produced extraordinary art, and I've always thought this cult of the personality rather than the work was a mistake. In fact, the less we know about the writer, the better. The thing about Dahl is that his writing has introduced the joy of reading to countless children, and given pleasure to millions.

Children aren't interested in our adult obsessions - or ordinary, boring adults for that matter. They prefer wizards, witches and nasty, incompetent criminals they can easily outwit. And I make no apology for posting, once again, this picture of one of my own favourite older characters in children's literature (and my personal role model) - Quentin Blake's glorious illustration of 'a wicked old woman' propped up in bed and laughing, with a bottle of champagne beside her. John Masefield's Miss Piney Trigger of Trigger Hall. I don't think she'd have been too worried about hurting your feelings. She'd have told you to get a grip and then booted you down the stairs.

OF CATS AND QUEENS...

 

Ailurophobes look away now: this one is about cats. And queens...

You don't have to be a monarchist to admire a woman who took on a job she didn't ask for and did it with such extraordinary diligence, dignity and warmth for over 70 years - and without, so far as I know, ever once thumping some infuriating politician, minor royal or head of state. I like to think of Queen Elizabeth now, feet up, glass in hand and ghostly corgis by her side, enjoying her well-earned rest while previous wearers of the crown queue up to congratulate her on doing the job a damn sight better and longer than anyone else.

I can't say I ever saw a picture of the Queen with a cat, but then, we all have our failings - not that I dislike dogs and horses, but for me the cat has always been the ideal writer's companion: beautiful, mysterious, comforting and silent (unless hungry) and they don't have to be taken for walks. Nor do I go out of my way to collect cat books, but much like the animals themselves (and with a little help from my friends) they tend to accumulate. 

I can't remember now who gave me this cat diary, but in it I've recorded the lives of all the cats I remember, from long-ago South African childhood pets to the most recently-deceased. Cats quite often use up their nine lives sooner than expected, and the deaths of some of mine still haunt me, but they brought me comfort in the worst of times, and drawing and writing about them has always been therapeutic.

Ptolemy, who came to us 3 months ago, is curious, gentle, a friend to all; and a regular visitor to a nearby house that's home to members of the Camphill Community, who would love a cat of their own. The other day one of the residents knocked at our door. She cannot speak in words that we can understand, but she can paint, and it seems that Tolly had been sitting for his portrait, because she handed me the picture, framed and ready to hang - an unexpected, deeply moving gift, proving that one small cat can spread a lot of joy.

There's some terribly sad writing about cats (Paul Gallico and Colette both traumatised me in my youth) but there's so much more that is gloriously funny - Wodehouse, Thurber, Lear, Twain and Eliot - as well as a wealth of wonderful children's books: Mog, Orlando, The Cat in the Hat. And then there are poems, like Yeats's Cat and the Moon...

    'Minnaloushe creeps through the grass, alone, important and wise,

    And lifts to the changing moon his changing eyes.' 

But my all-time favourite, and ultimate role model, has to be that great survivor, the immortal Mehitabel, creation of Don Marquis, and friend of Archy the typing cockroach...

i was several 

Tolly and portrait

ladies my little

insect says she

being cleopatra was

only an incident

in my career...

but wotthehell

little archy wot

thehell

its cheerio 

my deario

that pulls a

lady through

exclamation point...

...always my luck

yesterday an empress

and today too

emaciated to interest

a vivisectionist but

toujours gai archy

toujours gai and always

a lady in spite of hell

and transmigration

once a queen

always a queen

archy

period

He ends with this: 'her morals may have been mislaid somewhere in the centuries boss but i admire her spirit'.  Me too, Archy, me too.

A SNOWMAN IN HARARE

Thirty-something years ago in Harare, Zimbabwe, the pupils in my son Daniel's class put on a performance of The Snowman. Dan was the narrator, and my de facto other son, his best friend Maruza,  mimed the part of the snowman. It is one of the abiding memories of my life- - even in the school hall of a government primary school in the middle of Africa and the heat of summer, the magic of Raymond Briggs enchanted the audience, most of whom had never seen snow and ice. The Snowman, Fungus the Bogeyman, The Bear, the terrifying When the Wind Blows, Ethel and Ernest: wonderful books, and a glorious antidote to all things saccharine and sentimental.

Briggs died on the 9th of August. Two days later, French illustrator Jean Jacques Sempé also died. I always loved his work, so I'm re-reading my old copy of Marcellin Caillou, which is about the right level for my French, and it's giving me great pleasure. Le petit Marcellin has an embarrassing malady: he blushes all the time, for no reason at all. Luckily he makes friends with René Rateau - 'un enfant délicieux' - who suffers from his own unusual problem: he sneezes constantly. The drawings of these two beleaguered but kind and  philosophical little people supporting each other through daily life are hopeful, captivating, funny - and again, in no way sentimental.

So farewell and thank you, Jean Jacques and Raymond, and thank you Bernie McGill for your new collection of short stories, This Train is For. The title story broke my heart. I rarely cry, but this one did for me. I've only read the first three but they were so good that I'm going to sip the rest slowly - like the finest wine. (Note to self: is this the beginning of a whole new career - matching books to wine?)

The other two novels that have stayed in my mind lately are The Tortoise and the Hare, by Elizabeth Jenkins, and Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna. The former I had read some years ago, but someone mentioned Hilary Mantel's admiration for the book, so I read it again, with more attention. I'd forgotten what a beautiful writer she is, and I love this book for her insight and language, rather than the characters. They are the products - and casualties - of their time: Imogen is the decorative, gentle, placatory wife and solid, tweedy Blanche the older, assertive countrywoman. Both are in competition for the affections of Evelyn - although why anyone would want him remains a mystery. 

Lacuna, on the other hand, has a central character for whom I felt such affection that despite an initial disinclination to read a 600-page novel, even by Barbara Kingsolver, that featured Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Trotsky (intriguing characters, unquestionably, but all in one book sounded like cultural overload) once I had started, I couldn't put it down. It's also a reminder that books sometimes deserve a second chance: this book has been on my shelf for years but I gave up on the first attempt because of its length.

I began with Zimbabwe - the country that gave me 18 wonderful years and so many lasting friendships - so let me end there. Blind Ambition, a documentary film about four young black Zimbabwean migrants who endure extraordinary hardships to reach South Africa and turn themselves, against all the odds, into award-winning sommeliers. That's the second time this week that I've found myself in tears: heart-breaking, joyous and utterly inspiring - do yourselves a favour and go and see it.

The answer to Wordle earlier this week was 'gecko' - a small hardy lizard for which I have a particular fondness. They flickered across my childhood walls and occasionally dropped from the rafters onto an unsuspecting head or lap. I got the word quickly, which is always partly due to luck, but cheered me up because it seemed to prove I was finally shaking off the COVID caught while visiting our family in South Africa. 

We weren’t surprised when we tested positive: we’d been travelling for the first time since it all began and we did more socialising in Johannesburg in 3 weeks than we’d done in the previous 2 years. Still, we’d had the vaccines and boosters and although the first few days brought all the expected symptoms - hacking cough, brain-fog, pain, fatigue, plus a few more – I wasn't expecting what happened on day 8, when I suddenly found myself barely able to move or talk. Be warned, friends, this thing can turn extremely nasty.

So, while the vote was being counted in Northern Ireland, I was being cared for in A+E. My youngest child was standing for election, and it seemed a terrible dereliction of  maternal duty to abandon my watch, but then it occurred to me that if I actually died, it might cast even more of a blight on proceedings. Anyway, she got in and I got out, and here I am again, a tad more battered but extremely proud that my little daughter (in reality 34 years old, inches taller than her mother and expecting her second child any minute) has been elected a Member of the Legislative Assembly for the cross-community Alliance Party. 

Alliance, and I quote, ‘was founded in 1970 with the objective of healing the bitter divisions in our community. We believe in a shared society, free from intimidation, discrimination and fear, where everyone is safe, can play their part and is treated fairly and with respect.’ Well, for my money, you can’t say fairer than that. I came here myself for the first time in 1970, a period vividly recalled for me by Louise Kennedy’s new novel, Trespasses. I was so painfully reminded of those days – the fear, the bigotry, the violence, and the shocking attitudes to women – that I wasn’t sure I could go on. But once you start reading Kennedy, you can never stop; she breaks your heart but she gives you hope, and I think she is extraordinary.  And 50 years on, we have proof that even in the most bitterly divided of societies, a few good people banding together can eventually bring about change. Alliance is also a party notable for being both led by a woman and represented by an unusual number of brave, principled, and inspiring women. My daughter is in excellent company.

Enough of that. This blog is supposed to be about books, and I’ve been trying to think of a memorable novel about a woman in politics – there are any number about men - but Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife apart, I’ve drawn a blank. Suggestions, as always, will be welcome. My holiday reading was mainly escapist. A Discovery of Witches (witches, vampires and demons living undercover in Oxford - and where better?) was fun at first but 600+ pages of delayed gratification, in every sense, was far too much. The Word is Murder came next, the first in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne-Horowitz series. I'd already enjoyed A Line to Kill, where the action takes place at a literary festival in Alderney (and what writer hasn’t been moved from time to time by literary festivals to thoughts of murder?) and now I'm looking forward to The Sentence is Death. Horowitz sets out to entertain you, and he does it with consummate ease. I also read the third of Amor Towles’ novels, The Lincoln Highway. His second, A Gentleman in Moscow, is still my most enjoyable book of the year; Rules of Civility, his first, was also highly readable, if not in the same class. And perhaps it was partly due to COVID but for me The Lincoln Highway, despite some memorable characters, was in the end too sprawling and unfocused. A pity. 

As so often happens, my back-up book proved best of all. In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, was hardly escapist, but such a moving, lyrical account of the strange lives and loves of the immigrants, workers and dreamers who were building Toronto in the 1920s, that I couldn’t put it down.

Like so many others, my own family have travelled far from their beginnings. I sometimes think we'd all have been better off if humans had just stayed home and quietly tended whatever corner of the planet they'd been born in, but it's a bit late for that now. All we can really do is remind ourselves that although we are threatened by so much - not least, the older, power-hungry men and women who continue to send the terrified young to fight their battles for them - there is always hope. And cling on for dear life when the walls start closing in. A bit like geckos. 

Every so often I decide to call time on this blog. There are already so many voices out there competing for attention, and in the face of a pandemic, a worldwide climate emergency and a war so senseless and barbaric that it beggars belief, my thoughts on literature and life seem a bit pointless. Then I come across yet another book so intriguing, moving, or just downright cheering, that I just can't help myself...

When I finished A Gentleman in Moscow I wasn't expecting to find anything as enjoyable for a long time to come. But Nobel prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel, By the Sea, is extraordinary. I knew nothing about Gurnah and very little about the history of Zanzibar, and a story of exile and old wrongs wasn't necessarily what I wanted to read right then, but a friend had lent it to me, so I did. And what an extraordinary book it turned out to be: beautifully written, at times almost unbearably moving, but always measured, fascinating, thoughtful, wise.

After that came the pleasures of Silverview, the late great John le Carre's last book; Alan Garner's quirky Treacle Walker; and Claire Keegan's wonderful Small Things Like These - a small Irish masterpiece dealing with other historic wrongs, in this case the Magdelene laundries. Like the Gurnah novel, it's beautifully written, unsentimental, haunting and humane.

Then there was Damon Galgut's The Promise. It's always a great pleasure when a fellow South African is acclaimed for a novel, and this book deserves every word of praise. A wonderfully readable story about the crumbling Swart family and their broken promise to Salome, the Black woman who has worked for them all her life. Powerful, funny, poignant and truthful - I can't recommend it highly enough.

I started reading The Promise - as I do any novel by a compatriot, or a writer I know and like - thinking that loyalty would probably keep me going to the end, even if it turned out not to be one of their best, but both Damon Galgut and Jan Carson were a pleasure from start to finish. In fact I can honestly say that The Raptures had me so enraptured from the start that I could hardly bear to finish. Utterly original, gloriously funny and heartbreaking to boot. And while I accept that magic realism isn't everyone's cup of tea, I'm beginning to think that it's the obvious way to write about Northern Ireland - a place simultaneously so beautiful, warm-hearted, bigoted and mad that you can be forgiven for sometimes thinking you're living in a peculiar parallel universe.

As if all that wasn't more than enough, Rules of Civility - the elegant first novel from Amor Towles - was nearly as enjoyable as his Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway is waiting. I've also got the Spring edition of my regular fix, Slightly Foxed, to enjoy, and I'm currently on Page 117 of A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee. This is turning out to be an exceptionally entertaining murder mystery set in Calcutta in 1919. I'm starting to run out of adjectives here, but really and truly, my literary cup runneth over...

Which is a good thing, considering the current state of the outside world. I suppose it's no surprise that so many recent novels deal with old hurts and historic wrongs, but at least the above all do so without bitterness or despair. And sometimes exile and displacement bring unexpected benefits. 40 years ago, I met a Ugandan doctor, newly-arrived in Zimbabwe with his teacher wife (who was in hospital, awaiting the birth of their third child) to begin a new life for their family. We were newly-arrived from troubled Belfast, with two small children of our own, and our four little ones took as instant a liking to each other as I had to their father. They came to play a few days later and when I met their mother, I knew at once that we'd be friends for life. And so we have been, despite the geographical distances between us, and our too-rare times together. Then, a week ago, we were stricken by the news of the death in Uganda of our dear friend. His wife and four daughters must now learn to live without this gentle, lovely man, but I can only be grateful for the disruptive currents of fate that once brought us all together, and so enriched our lives.

And one more happy ending - just to lighten the prevailing gloom: a few years ago a young Egyptian engineer walked into the Belfast bookshop I was running, to volunteer his services. He was in exile and alone over the Christmas holidays so I persuaded him to come and join our South African Irish English Indian family party. He duly arrived at our door with a rucksack strapped to his back and his most precious belonging, an Egyptian stringed Oud, strapped to his front. This instrument he played for us one evening that I will never forget. The desperate longing for home that welled up with the music could have broken your heart. But he and his lovely Greek girlfriend later made a new home in Scotland; they celebrated their Muslim wedding in Cairo a while back, and later this year they'll have an Orthodox ceremony in Greece - two people of different faiths and cultures happily brought together by the upheavals of our times.

Sadly, the Four Horsemen of conquest, famine, war and death continue to ride, as they have done for centuries. Like the rest of the world I am currently holding my breath and hoping against hope that somehow Peace will return to Europe, and that all those recently displaced people will regain some sort of life. We also very much hope that later in the year we'll be in Greece to celebrate our young friends' marriage, and to enjoy a reunion with our Greek family. For now though, it's back to Calcutta for me, and the immeasurable comfort of a good book...

A BLYTED CHILDHOOD

Someone famous admitted the other day that she still had her old Enid Blyton children's books, but hid her shameful secret in the garage, away from the eyes of the world. Well, I have mine too, in plain view - along with many other out-of-favour authors - and I'll be damned if I ever apologise for the pleasure they gave me. The Magic Faraway Tree, The Famous Five, The Island of Adventure  - just listing them, decades later, takes me back to a place of warmth and safety.

I'm reminded of my long-ago days as a conscientious school librarian, when I devoted a great deal of time to finding books that my Zimbabwean students could relate to. One particular morning I directed the attention of two 13 year-old boys to the possible contenders on the counter. No, they said, what we really want is some more of those Barbara Cartland books. (We had a slightly strange collection at the time, mostly donations from local well-wishers.) Why these two children of the new Zimbabwe wanted to read this entirely white, English, upper-class, romantic froth still flummoxes me, but possibly they just rolled around laughing.

My point is that there's no knowing what childhood books will contribute to our happier memories, but every book that gives you pleasure leads to your reading others, and sooner or later, with any luck, the pattern of your reading grows wider, richer, more sustaining. I grew up in a very different and more dangerous society than the English villages of Blyton, and many of my friends come from deprived or marginalised backgrounds, but it is precisely because those books took us away from our worlds that we enjoyed the stories - as I loved the worlds of Narnia, of E. Nesbit, of George MacDonald's Princess Irene. Places full of magic, where fear and evil could be vanquished by a stout heart; and even if the little, twinkling light in a cottage in the woods led to a witch or ogre, luck and pluck would keep you safe. 

We were lucky enough to have parents who read to us every night: our father opted for Just William, Dr Dolittle, The Jungle Book; our mother for Eleanor Farjeon and The Wind in the Willows. She didn't really approve of Blyton but she respected our choices, and tried to raise the standard with reams of poetry. Years later I read to my own children. Tolkien was a particular favourite for long African car journeys, and I prided myself on doing all the voices, not always easy with his sprawling cast: I can still hear a little voice from the back seat, objecting, 'That's not an orc, that's an elf.'

My own children now read to theirs, and long may this tradition continue. But it saddens me that people are made to feel ashamed of what they used to love. So many children's books, now shunned, are guilty of nothing worse than being of their time; while so many of the new - also of their time - reflect our bleak obsessions with political correctness and the world's wrongs. Even grown-ups (I use the term loosely) seem to be suffering: 'Why does every detective have to be in emotional turmoil these days?' Gloom demands. 'Why does everything have to be so grim?' And he goes back with relief to Moomin Valley, where the worst that ever happens is a temporary chill cast by the Groke. 

Fortunately, there are still plenty of wonderful books to be found, even for adults. The ever-blessed Slightly Foxed put me onto A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, the story of a Russian aristocrat sentenced to indefinite house-arrest (in a hotel attic room) by a Bolshevik tribunal. Now there is a book that celebrates the human spirit, as our hero confronts the world's tumultuous turning with courage, humour, charm and wit. Not to mention the beauty of the language and the occasional glorious description of food. I'm only half-way through but that's because I'm reading it very slowly to make it last.

It's been a horrible year in so many ways, and has ended for us with the death of a much-loved cat and the cancellation of all our Christmas plans. But we have a house full of books, plenty of wine, and the example of the philosophical Count Alexander Rostov to sustain us. I wish you all a safe and happy season, and the comfort of good books.

COMFORT READING

Flashback to mid September: 6.00am and a small insistent voice begins a dawn chorus outside my bedroom door, 'Guggy...Guggy...wake UP, Guggy.!'

I fall out of bed, crawl to the bathroom, then totter out onto the landing where the most beautiful 3 year-old in the world is waiting for me to accompany him downstairs to release Archimedes (imprisoned in the kitchen in case he jumps on anyone's head in the night) and begin the day. As we go, we sing.

'Always hold onto the bannister, when you go down the stairs. Always hold onto the bannister, and don't fall down on your ears!' (An original composition which I am beginning to regret as we have now sung it at least a hundred times...) 

So, what shall we do first? Build a castle? Set up the Fire Station? Play shop? While emptying the dish-washer, peeling fruit, mixing baby-porridge, making life-saving coffee... I'm the early-riser in the house so this part of the day falls to me. The beautiful 3 year-old's equally beautiful 8 month-old brother is also up but he is being changed by Papa, while Mama tries to stretch the dodgy back that put her in hospital for 6 days when they were one week into their first holiday in Ireland in two years. The original 2 week visit is now nearing a month... 

Medical emergencies, round-the-clock childcare, malfunctioning washing machines, a hoover that started leaving a mysterious cat-like odour behind it...the stars have not been perfectly aligned recently, but when daily life turns tough, for me the best medicine is a glass of good wine and a good book. Luckily, I had both. 

The first book was sent to me by my sister. At first glance I wasn't sure I'd like it (the words 'International Bestseller' on a cover tend to put me off) but a few pages into The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, I found myself soothed, amused and blessedly transported from the trials of daily life by this very enjoyable debut novel based on the making of the first Oxford English Dictionary. The Guardian reviewer called it 'a gentle, hopeful book...balm for nerves frazzled by the pandemic' and I can only agree.

And then I had D.E. Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book. When I worked in Edenbridge and Southborough libraries a million years ago, I dismissed the rows of Stevensons as middle-aged, middle-class, comfort reading of the dullest sort. Certainly of no interest to my young, cutting-edge self. (At the time I was reading Lessing, Lawrence, Garcia Marquez, and anyone Russian.) But now, older and less concerned with the world's opinions, I read and write for my own pleasure. My only requirements are that the writing pleases me and that I care about the characters, although I can also be seduced by a lovely cover, and this is a beautiful Persephone Books edition.

Miss Buncle is an impoverished, dowdy spinster, condescended to or ignored by most of her acquaintance until she writes a best-seller (under the pseudonym of John Smith) that skewers her self-important and often unpleasant neighbours... It is extraordinarily funny and I recommend it to anyone in need of cheering up. And who isn't, these days? 

Slightly Foxed (the Autumn edition) and The Oldie both helped too - and I know I bang on about SF but where else are you going to find Margaret Drabble on Doris Lessing, or Anita Brookner and Mary Wesley rubbing shoulders with Sir John Squire's hymn to British cheese, Cheddar Gorge? Or indeed, an article on the diaries of Charles Ritchie, lover of novelist Elizabeth Bowen and a Canadian diplomat with a singularly memorable turn of phrase? (He described the Duchess of Windsor in later years as looking 'ravaged but unsated...engagingly full of curiosity and with a nose tilted for scandal.') 

Lastly, two works of non-fiction: Selina Hastings' Sybille Bedford, An Appetite for Life - the biography of a wonderful writer and a fascinating, if perhaps not entirely likeable, woman - and The Seabird's Cry, a book I picked up in a local second-hand shop the day after our own visitors had finally flown home to London. This for Adam Nicolson's extraordinary prose, whether or not you are interested in seabirds and their rapidly disappearing world.

He writes, 'Seabirds somehow cross the boundary between the matter-of-fact and the imagined. Theirs is the realm both of enlargement and of uncertainty, in which the nature of things is unreliable and in doubt.'  And he quotes Seamus Heaney: 

    What came first, the seabird's cry or the soul

    Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?

    How habitable is perfected form

    And how inhabited the windy light?

'Heaney's imagined soul-seabird is not only the great boundary-crosser,' says Nicolson, 'but linked to the emergence and genesis of things. The seabird's cry comes from the beginning of the world.' 

A wonderful book.

JOURNEYS' ENDS

A postcard of those Belfast landmarks, Samson and Goliath, came through my letterbox a couple of weeks ago. It informed me of the successful completion of a short film, and thanked me for being one of the backers. The film in question is a love story set in Belfast against the background of the Good Friday agreement, with the name of our adored Clementina in the credits, because, the day after she died I happened to read that the young filmmakers needed funding, and it seemed a suitable way to honour her. (She was the sort of cat who would have enjoyed seeing her name in lights.) And on the same day that this card arrived (with its charming hand-written message: 'I cannot really describe how happy I am to deliver this card to you! Thank you for believing in our project...') I had news of a very different kind. One of my closest friends had suffered a sudden, catastrophic brain haemorrhage. So here was one journey at its start and another at its end...

When I moved from Belfast to Holywood 14 years ago, I was a single woman with a cat, and upstairs lived another single woman with a cat. It was friendship at first sight: a bond which quickly grew to include my numerous friends and far-flung family. She even gave up her own bed for my visitors and slept on her sofa when space was needed, and no celebration was complete without her: Christmas, birthdays, weddings, Disaster Parties (for women only, and so called because most women of a certain age have disasters to contend with: divorce, widowhood, loneliness, badly-paid jobs, delinquent children... marriage) She was the kindest and most generous of women, with a wide circle of friends and a great zest for life; she was Auntie G&T to all my children, until the day that, for no particular reason, she decided to give up drink, whereupon she became Auntie TT.

Oddly enough, on the day that she hovered between life and death, I was in the tunnel of an MRI machine - an experience I usually hate - but this time it didn't feel so bad because she seemed to be there with me. Each in our separate tunnels, like two tube trains, going in different directions but lighting each other's darkness briefly as they pass. As we lit each other's lives. Afterwards, I went to see her with my daughter, but she was no longer really there, and I'm grateful she never regained consciousness: she would have faced a life of damage or dependency, which she would have hated. 

And if all this sounds very solemn, it's not meant to be. Grief is all-consuming, often selfish, and always intensely personal. With the best of intentions, people say 'I know how you feel'. No, they don't. No-one can ever know exactly how another person feels, and to say that you do can sometimes feel like an intrusion. But the older I get, the easier the acceptance that death comes for us all, and the more I value the saving grace of humour - The Oldie magazine being a favourite, deeply-unsentimental, and bracing source. (The cartoon on the left is one of my favourites.)

As for books on death and dying, there are some wonderfully funny novels (George Saunders' unforgettable Lincoln in the Bardo, Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, Waugh's The Loved One) and others that are deeply moving without being in any way sentimental. Grief is the Thing with Feathers springs to mind. And then there's Goodbye Mog, for children, which being written by the sainted Judith Kerr, is poignant, wise and funny, and the best book I know about the death of a much-loved pet. For many, of course, poetry is the greatest solace. I may have written before that one of my favourites is by Kahlil Gibran and contains the line 'For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind, and to melt into the sun?' But people who are grieving often find it hard to read at all, and must come back to it in stages. 

My friend's attitude to death was very matter-of-fact. She once said to me - after a visit to the dentist - that if she ever found herself face to face with some deity in the Afterlife, she would have several bones to pick, starting with the poor design of teeth. The name of the Belfast film, by the way, is Another Day in '98 and I greatly look forward to seeing it. In the mean time, I will think of my departed friend, now keeping company with the ever-growing collection of those whose lives I remember with gratitude, with love and laughter (including 18 cats) and I will derive great pleasure from the idea of her confronting the Almighty, and giving off about teeth...

                                                                *

RIP Milko

There is a postscript to this: two weeks to the day after her death, her much-loved cat - the one that moved with me to Holywood all those years ago but who moved upstairs (with alacrity) when I moved out - was judged too infirm and elderly, at nearly 20, to withstand any further changes. So our lovely local vet came to the house to put her to sleep, so gently, kindly and peacefully that we could not have asked for a better journey's end. 

If only we could ask her to do the same for us one day.