Wednesday 12 December 2018

CREATIVE BLIGHTING

A friend wrote a very funny piece about her fear of flying the other day. It made me laugh out loud but didn't surprise me: she's a writer after all, and the better the writer, the more prone they are to live in a world of imminent disaster. It's the drawback of having too much imagination. Mark Twain knew all about it: I have suffered many tragedies, he wrote, most of which never happened.

Waiting for dinner
Me too. My children's African childhoods were especially fraught. When they went off to row down the Zambezi or camp in some snake-infested jungle I waited every minute for the knock on the door that would herald the arrival of a grim-faced Headmaster - well, grimmer-faced than usual. Helen, he would say, you are going to have to be brave...

Instead they all returned with nothing worse than a few cuts and tick bites and the occasional dose of malaria. What I should have been worrying about was the state of the tarpaulin-covered truck they rattled through the night in - each child wrapped in a sleeping-bag and clutching an empty ice-cream container. To wee in. (If you got out onto the side of the road the chances were you'd be eaten.) 

Anyway, they all survived, thank god, to give me many more years of anxiety as they moved through their twenties: drink, drugs, debt, car crashes, plane crashes, axe-murderer flat-mates...I lived through them all, even if my children didn't. As far as I remember, the worst things that actually happened were concussion on the cricket field, and a case of E-coli caught from kissing a giraffe. (Don't ask.) And now they're safely into the calmer waters of serious adulthood, I worry about the grandchildren.

The thing is though, that whatever your fears, if you want your children to fulfil their potential, you have to let them fly free. They have to take risks, experiment, occasionally singe their wings. And it's the same with writing. I am deeply depressed by the way creative writing has become big business: the acres of books aimed at helping you to write - and more importantly, market - both yourself and your book; the courses, competitions, articles and interviews, never mind the relentless personal exposure demanded these days of published authors. It amazes me that anyone has time to write another word.

Anyway, why would you travel 50 miles and pay a fortune to hear Wendy Wordsmith on How She Did It when you can just turn on the radio and catch up with the peerless Kate Atkinson on Desert Island Discs? Antisocial, solitary, completely delightful, and full of good sense.  She rarely gives interviews - "You can't talk to people when you're writing" - and you won't meet her on the Celebrity circuit. She just stays home and writes amazing books.

It's true Atkinson was lucky enough to have a great success
with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. But she also had a failed doctorate, a succession of odd jobs and an apprenticeship in magazine writing behind her - and more importantly, she had faith in herself.

Good writing, like any good art, comes from the heart - from hard, lonely work and from taking the odd risk. It doesn't come from Top Tips and rules for technique. May I be spared another word about underlying themes, hooks, resolutions, plot development and the inadvisability of adverbs... If you want to use a bloody adverb, then use one. And write, just write! It's what people did back in the dark ages. They read voraciously (you can still do this for free) and they sat at their desks or their kitchen tables, or on the bus, and they wrote, sometimes for years, until they found the voice that was uniquely theirs.

It's like cooking. Anyone can produce a perfectly adequate meal from following a recipe to the
letter. But if you want to make something truly memorable you have to throw caution to the winds and add that unexpected ingredient, that extra bit of wine or garlic.

I love all Kate Atkinson's novels, from Behind the Scenes, through the Jackson Brodie detective series, to the more recent - of which Life After Life is probably my favourite. I wouldn't choose the same discs as she did for my own desert island, although I might also pick Leonard Cohen's Suzanne  - to relive my misspent youth - and I'd definitely take Beethoven's 5th because it's the music that most often unlocks my brain when I'm flagging. Which takes me to a whole new area of interest: what do writers listen to when they're working? Answers on a postcard please...

And if I was cast away myself, I wouldn't mind having Atkinson for company. She wouldn't blow her own trumpet, she'd just sit there quietly. Writing.

Thursday 8 November 2018

A FURTHER WORD FROM CLEMENTINA...

The author
I see George Saunders has published a story written by a fox. That Jan Carson thinks it's good so I suppose it must be, but the spelling's atrocious. What can you expect from a fox though? I, on the other hand, have had so many compliments regarding my addition to Mrs Gloom's blog that I've decided to help her out and do another. She's sick, and you never heard such moaning and groaning and cursing. First she had to miss the son-in-law's big match - something called Gaelic, where a lot of grown men who ought to know better run around with a football and sustain multiple injuries while they try to kill each other. Now she's having to miss the ballet tonight at the Grand Opera House. Ballet's another of those things where unnaturally thin humans with no inborn aptitude for leaping in the air and landing gracefully also sustain frequent injuries. It's beyond me. Oh god, here she comes now, croaking like a frog. 'Clementina, I've told you before, get away from my sodding laptop!' There's no gratitude is there? Just wait till I write my memoirs! She'll be sorry.

Monday 5 November 2018

FIDDLING WHILE THE PLANET BURNS (plus a note from Clementina)


Pay attention please. If you, or anyone known to you, rides a bicycle, I’m telling you now that I’m going to buy a large horn or hooter - something very noisy anyway - and the next sodding cyclist who doesn’t use a bell and nearly knocks me off my elderly feet as they zoom past will get blasted from behind. And if he or she whips round, skids and falls off, well too bad. It’s usually a he, mind you – and please don’t bother writing in to say that picking on men is a hate crime now: so should flattening pensioners be.

Anyway, I’ve heard enough this week about hurting feelings and giving offence. You can do this in so many ways now, it’s hard to keep up, but you might not realise that asking parents the sex of a baby can be tricky because in some circles it’s considered offensive to label children before they’ve made up their own minds what they are. I think I need a drink. It’s ok to criticise Middle-Aged Drinkers, by the way - not that I care: I’m not a middle-aged drinker, I’m an old one. And at the moment I’m sick, and extra grumpy because I’ve had to miss second son-in-law’s big match in Omagh, to which second daughter and first and second husbands have gone (together).

Books bought as Christmas presents which you might not get
Can you tell I’m reading Milkman? It’s extraordinary: hypnotic, forbidding, furious and funny. At times I can hardly bear to go on reading, but Anna Burns’s prose is like a current that drags you back down every time you come up for air. And this namelessness of the characters is very catching: maybe-boyfriend, second sister, first brother-in-law…I’ve calculated that Clementina is sixteenth-cat. It also makes a nice change from last week when I was reading ‘Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine’ and started sounding even more pedantic than usual.

Milkman is just one of the pile of books I’ve bought as Christmas presents for friends and family, not that they’re likely to get them. At least not until I’ve read them myself. But I’m full of other good ideas, which I’m happy to share. In my personal crusade to curb Christmas excess and save the planet, I’m trying (yet again) to set an example to my family by putting a strict limit on expenditure. It really doesn’t take much to produce a delightfully inexpensive stocking full of surprises carefully tailored to the needs of the recipient. (Eleanor Oliphant is popping up again…) Spendthrift-daughter, for instance, will be receiving a money-saving stocking: I’ve already contributed a darning kit and several old candle stubs, husband has come up with a toothpaste-squeezer, and second son-in-law has suggested a magnifying-glass so that she can read her bank statements properly. All to be tastefully wrapped in old newspaper.

Brown paper is another answer to Christmas wrapping – and a small step in the direction of trying to do whatever we can to use recyclable material. I think we all know in our hearts that we’re hurtling to destruction: this might be why we spend so much time these days worrying about perceived offences and trivial complaints. Why we turn up the volume on our headphones and rush from one mindless distraction to another, shopping, texting, tweeting, shutting out the news of wars and droughts and famines, of seas choked with plastic. Fiddling while the planet burns. So expect your Christmas book wrapped in brown paper, and maybe don’t expect to get it until June.

(A Note From Clementina 

You may be surprised to read this but anyone who has seen the pictures of me playing Scrabble will know I’m no ordinary cat. Anyway, I’d just like to point out that a) I have been referred to as ‘sixteenth cat’ – I mean, what happened to all the others?! I feel seriously insecure - and b) all this stuff about inexpensive Christmas presents: I just happen to have seen the list she’s made for Professor Gloom. Gin, perfume, more books, chocolates…It’s enough to make a cat laugh. )



Saturday 22 September 2018

THE TALE OF A FIERCE BAD GRANNY


Omar Patrick has gone home to London, leaving few visible traces behind. Unlike his older cousins he's not yet big enough to bury vital household objects in flower-pots or post them through the cat-flaps, and there are no grubby hand-prints on the windows, or gnawed rusks down the sides of sofas. The only real sign that he was here are the piles of picture books lying everywhere. And that’s one of the great joys of having a new baby around: you can dig out and enjoy all the old favourites and discover brilliant new ones.

I haven't always been a good influence as a granny: I sometimes forget to mind my language and I like to raise the occasional bit of toddler mayhem. It follows that I love picture books that are wildly funny, imaginative and a bit subversive. You can keep the ones about caring and sharing, the thinly-disguised sermons on political correctness, and the deeply gloomy ones about saying goodbye to Gertie the Goldfish. Life’s hard enough, for god’s sake; children need cheering up, like the rest of us.

Burglar Bill, The Elephant and the Bad Baby, The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen – these are just a few old favourites, and now I have two new ones: I Really Want To Eat A Child, and The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business. As so often happens, it turns out everyone knew about this last one, except me, but it’s the ultimate book about poo. I’m also very taken with the Wonky Donkey as read on U-tube by that wonderful Scottish granny.

Occasionally the recipients of my well-intentioned gifts have been traumatised – Bye-bye Baby reduced a great-nephew to tears: I still feel guilty – but by and large the little hellions have shrieked with laughter and demanded more. And some have the excellent sense to refuse to listen to anything remotely improving. When my granddaughter was given a picture book of bible stories she listened to her father reading for 30 seconds before she took the book firmly from his hands and said, I’ll read this one. The new, improved version began ‘Once upon a time there was a princess…’ 

And I don’t know if anyone reads Saki any more, but he wrote a wonderful story (The Storyteller) about a  bachelor entertaining fractious children on a train with the tale of a little girl who was so good that she won endless medals for good behaviour. Then, covered in clanking medals, she was allowed the rare honour of walking in the King’s garden where there were ornamental pigs - and a passing hungry wolf. Alerted to the presence of the child (by the clanking) the wolf catches her and gobbles her up. The accompanying aunt in the story is outraged, but the children are delighted that it’s the good little girl who has been gobbled up rather than one of the pigs. And this is the thing: children like a bit of anarchy, and they love to be entertained. But there's been a move lately – even in picture books but particularly in middle grade and young adult books – towards stories that are so worthy, so weighted towards the socially-meaningful and politically-correct, so afraid of giving any conceivable offence, that a lot of them are deeply dreary. Come on people, in this hideously alarming and unmanageable world, don’t we all need a little escapism?

Which brings me to one last thing: I’ve complained before about the emotional-blackmail of those Facebook posts that demand you share some stuff about cancer, pollution, puppy farms, whatever - or be exposed as the heartless, uncaring creature that you really are. Well, all I want to say is that when I die, sooner rather than later - of cancer, heart disease, liver-failure (or more likely a stroke caused by reading one more pronouncement by the cretinous Trump) – if any one of you uses it as an excuse to post something on Facebook urging others to prove that they too truly care about cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc, I will come back from the dead, so help me god, and strangle you with my own winding-sheet. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Wednesday 5 September 2018

BATS AND BORROWED TIME



I like bats. They were a regular feature of my African twilights, skittering through the dusk while the most intrepid of my many cats crouched on the spine of the roof, hurling herself up into the air time and time again in the vain hope of catching one, only to crash back down, batless, onto the corrugated iron with a noise like the pots of Hell clanging.

There were bats in Fermanagh when we were there a few weeks ago, but it was a lot more peaceful. In fact, there were signs on the trees exhorting us to silence for fear of disturbing them. Bats can live for anything up to 30 years. I am an old bat myself now, having just turned 70, and now that my biblical three score years and ten have been accounted for, obviously I'm on borrowed time, so I'm planning to make the most of it.

With this in mind, we started off our 70th birthday/ 3rd anniversary celebrations with 4 days in Fermanagh, at the Lough Erne resort where Councillor Kate and Fearless Fergal got married in March. We had a 4-poster bed and a circular balcony with a splendid view; we also had a double jacuzzi in which we almost got stuck  - and imagine the shame if you had to ring down to Reception to say you couldn't haul yourselves out! Mind you, they're such nice people, they'd probably make you feel all right about it.

A bat can consume 1200 mosqitos in an hour - it's one of the reasons I like them: I had malaria only once and who knows how many bouts I might have had if not for helpful bats? They are also eaten themselves in some places. Luckily we didn't have to eat bat; we had apple and cauliflower soup and pan-fried hake, and pork and duck and Prosecco, and pear and lemon and raspberry sorbets in the Catalina Restaurant - and if I died there, I'd die happy: the food is sublime. We also had lunch in the only Greek restaurant that I know of in the north - Dollakis in Enniskillen. Lovely friendly people and wonderful chicken souvlaki and Greek potatoes. We did a tour of Castle Coole and were ferried up the lough from Castle Archdale to White Island by a lovely young man whose father had skippered the ferry before him. We were the only passengers so we had the island with it's ruined church and ancient carved stone figures all to ourselves - apart from a few cows. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful. 








On the other side of Lough Erne, the Lough Navar Forest Drive will take you up to what must be the most spectacular view in all of Fermanagh. From the Magho Viewpoint you can see the whole of lower Lough Erne spread out before you, from Donegal Bay and the Bluestack and Sperrin mountains all the way down to the eastern islands. I urge you to go and see for yourself, only don't rely on sat-nav: the shortest route is not the easiest, in fact we gave up on the first attempt after landing up in someone's back yard at the end of a rutted track half-way up a mountain. There were baying dogs and looming trees and it was all a bit Deliverance. Follow the signs on the road and you'll be fine.

Professor Gloom inspecting map
I took a pile of novels and opened none of them. Instead I read  the Irish Times and the Guardian, and an old paperback copy of The Children of Green Knowe. I don't know if any modern child would read it but Tolly and the ghostly children he plays with in his grandmother's old house took me straight back to long-ago childhood holidays. And set as the story is in flooded fenland country, it was perfectly suited to Fermanagh.

Now I'm back in Holywood and the youngest of my grandchildren has come to visit. He is only 3 months old, but he has dozens of books already and his mother and father read to him several times a day. In fact, this could just turn out to be the first child to be read to too much. I'm pretty sure I saw his eyes glaze over as The Very Hungry Caterpillar was opened for the umpteenth time, and I had a sudden vision of him in a few years time pulling up his little hoodie and fleeing down the garden path as his parents pursue him crying, "Omar Patrick! Wait! You have to listen to this one more time..."


Monday 6 August 2018

WHAT? NO STUFFED VINE LEAVES?!


I was standing in Tesco not long ago bewailing the absence of stuffed vine leaves. What? No stuffed vine leaves?! What would the avocado toast classes do now? Eke things out with a few artichokes or truffles, perhaps. Actually, stuffed vine leaves are delicious, digestible - and cheap. They are also excellent for offering to those of your friends and relatives who are currently vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free or in any other way digestively-challenged.
Carnivorous and entirely gluten and conscience-free

There was none of this when I grew up. You ate what was put in front of you and if liver made you feel sick, you surreptitiously fed it to the cat. As for the majority of the impoverished population, they ate whatever they could get their hands on in order to stay alive. Including, I regret to say, the odd cat.

Jan Carson had a short story on Radio 4 this week about a family whose groceries had to come from the local food-bank but who had a magical, unending tin of beans in the fridge. I didn't like beans before and I like them less now. It was a poignant little story that stuck in your head like a bean in the throat. And now I read that 400,000 UK children don't even have a bed of their own to sleep in - and this in a part of the world where so many of us can afford to be picky about our food and complain about stuffed vine leaves being in short supply.

People without food, children without beds, families fleeing from fires or war, no government in Northern Ireland for - how long now? (And more power to Dylan Quinn who posted a video on the subject.) Sometimes it all feels a little hopeless, and if you were listening to Radio 4 the other day and heard some institution's failings being attributed, not to stupidity, incompetence or bad management, but to 'their own poor decision-making' you too might have banged your head against the wall. Mind you, it does explain some of our politicians. They're not a venal, intransigent, self-serving shower, they're just victims of poor decision-making - on the part of anyone who was stupid enough to vote them into power in the first place. But enough of that. As my mother used to say, when things are bad, all you can do is the next right thing. So I'll do what I can, when I can, and I'll put some treats in the food-bank collections along with the tins of fruit and fish. But definitely no beans.

Someone did us a good turn this week. I had remarked to Professor Gloom as we walked by the shore that the only thing wrong with our house was that we couldn't see the sea. And the very next day someone cut down a large fir tree, thereby revealing - a view of the sea!! I can now distract myself endlessly by sitting at my desk and watching the changing light on the water and all the little boats and ferries passing by. I haven't worked out whose garden the tree was in but when I do I'll be round with a bottle of wine. And maybe a few stuffed vine leaves.










Wednesday 20 June 2018

LAUGH UNTIL YOU CRY

Hospitals and consulting rooms are not my favourite places, so I probably wouldn't have picked up 'This Is Going To Hurt' by Adam Kay, if my sister-in-law hadn't recommended it. Well, let me now spread the word: it's an extraordinarily funny account of his 6 years as a junior doctor. I finished it in a hospital waiting room: I was the only person there crying with laughter; the other patients probably thought I'd missed my way to Psychiatry. It is also deeply sad, and it makes you want to go out and buy champagne and flowers for every last person who's ever worked in our beleaguered health service.

We've all spent dreary hours sitting in crowded waiting-rooms (often meant for emergencies but full of people who couldn't get a doctor's appointment for 3 weeks and didn't know what else to do) and I've met the odd nurse or doctor who did worry me: top of the list the elderly surgeon who lent over me just as drowsiness was taking hold and said, Remind me - which breast was it? I've never been sure whether I lost consciousness at that point because of the anaesthetic or from terror. Anyway, the point is that they are few and far between, and when you think what a horrible experience a few hours in a hospital can be, it makes you wonder how the staff get through it, day after day after day. And almost always with kindness, courtesy, competence and good humour, despite their inhuman workloads, terrifying responsibility, poor pay and bizarre requirements. I met a breast-feeding assistant the other day who has to schlep around London carrying a baby-sized doll and a knitted breast.

το κραση - wine
In order to avoid doctors in general, Professor Gloom and I started a new health regime a few months ago. It's very simple: I haul him out of bed and route march him round Holywood for half an hour before breakfast every day except Saturday. He's allowed Saturday off because he plays golf, which he insists is exercise. At first he groaned and cursed and had to be stopped from sloping off into coffee shops, but slowly the muttering has died away - and been replaced with the recitation of Greek verbs. This is because we are learning Greek in order to jog our ageing brain cells and communicate with Greek relatives. To increase our vocabulary we also have labels stuck to various household objects.

The casual visitor could be  forgiven for thinking it was a home for Greek dementia sufferers.

η καρεκλα and το τραπεζι - where you sit to have your κραση

Adam Kay is no longer a doctor, which is a terrible loss to medicine: that mix of black, skewering humour and human empathy is exactly what I'd like to meet next time I end up in A&E, or wherever.  The NHS is a wonderful institution but it's on its knees and so are its staff. We need to pay more tax for it, take better care of our own health, and value our doctors, nurses and health care workers a great deal more than we do. And if you don't believe me, read "This Is Going To Hurt'.






Sunday 10 June 2018

TARTS, TOMBSTONES AND TAKING A STAND


Airbnb
We've been celebrating the arrival of a new baby in the family - which is all I'm going to tell you because his parents are intensely private (in marked contrast to the rest of the family) - but it was for this reason that Professor Gloom and I were in London a couple of weeks ago, in Highgate, which is one of the parts of the city I like most, even though it's murder on the legs. We stayed in an Airbnb with lovely people, a fabulous garden and a literary cat called Huxley.

It was a stone's throw from Highgate station, so there was a steep climb up to the village for breakfast, but once there, it was food heaven. Coffee in little bowls, croissants to die for and fresh fruit salad at Le Pain Quotidien (or eggs and crispy prosciutto for those who like eggs) versus equally delicious coffee in cups at Gail's, and the most seductive spread of cakes I've ever seen. Choosing between them was impossible, so we alternated. In the space of 10 days I sampled plain and almond croissants, madeleines, muffins, and custard brioches. I ate pain au chocolat and blueberry tartlets (Kelly McCaughrain eat your heart out) not to mention lemon polenta cake, pancakes and scones. One morning in a fit of guilt I ordered a penitential bowl of porridge, but even that came swimming in cream and honey. It was all I could do not to lick the plates.
                               
Douglas Adams
Highgate also has a lovely bookshop. The woman on duty at the till most days was reading Circe by Madeline Miller - she said it was even better than Song of Achilles, which I loved, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I agree with her. Of course, the trouble with London - and Highgate in particular - is that it's all very well if you can afford to sit around eating cake for a few days, but for every well-heeled resident discussing a bathroom makeover with her decorator over avocado toast, there are hundreds of others working all the hours of the day to afford the rent on a miserable shared flat, or room, and not much cash left over for books, or cake. That said, Hampstead Heath is free and not far off, and there's Highgate Wood and Waterlow Park to wander through, as well as the gardens at Kenwood. And last but not least, there's glorious Highgate Cemetery.

Now who would ever think that a cemetery could be delightful? Gloom had never been there and accompanied me without enthusiasm, but even he was bowled over. It helped that we were having one of those golden summer weeks when even the most overgrown and forgotten sections of the graveyard were speckled with sun, and the roar and rush of London was masked by whispering leaves and insects. Highgate is a non-denominational garden cemetery, and there is something about it that is so deeply peaceful that it can restore the most worn-out soul. Apart from there being no sound of lapping water (unless it's dripping rain) you could be in Innisfree.

As to the actual graves, they range from sentimental, brutal,
touching or imposing, to the outrageously funny and downright peculiar. I was keeping an eye out for writers. Amongst others, we found Douglas Adams, with his jar full of pens, George Eliot, Jeremy Beadle, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, and of course, Karl Marx. His fairly hideous monument, as opposed to the original simple gravestone, is opposite the grave of Paul Foot, and all around him lie a motley collection of Marxist theorists, political activists and socialist commentators. It's the only section of the cemetery that feels turbulent: I imagine a lot of furious ghostly argument going on after dark.

Faithful Dog
I have several favourite graves, including the one with the faithful dog, Emperor, the memorial to a dead pianist, and Patrick Caulfield's 'DEAD'. What more do you need to say, really?

That particular day there were very few tourists apart from ourselves, and although no animals are allowed we met a black cat who obviously hadn't read the notice. Or possibly he was a reincarnated communist, and didn't hold with property being private. The other thing that happened was that I kept misreading things, so that 'dearly beloved' became 'nearly beloved'. (A bit like the subtitles for the hard-of-hearing on the BBC: last week's news said that Jeffrey Donaldson was given a 'warm Malcolm' at Queens. I think they meant 'welcome' but 'Malcolm' opens up so many more interesting possibilities.) Anyway, Highgate is the only cemetery I wouldn't mind being buried in. My preference has always been to go up in smoke (if not out with a bang) but who could object to the surroundings, and the company, at Highgate?

Pianist Harry Thornton
Back home I've been lying low, and missed a lot of things I'd planned to attend, but I did get to a rally with Councillor Kate, to press the case for change in the north now that the rest of Ireland has voted to repeal the 8th amendment - to their everlasting credit. Gloom is never happy when we're off protesting: he thinks he will be called upon to bail us out, but I keep telling him the world has changed. Protests are sedate affairs these days, not a Molotov cocktail in sight, just a bit of chanting and cheering and banner-waving. I particularly liked the placard that read 'The DUP - disappointing us since 1971'.

Patrick Caulfield

There weren't an
awful lot of people there - it was the tail end of a hot bank holiday Monday -
but there was a great
feeling of cheerful determination that sooner, rather than later, Northern Ireland's shameful abortion laws will be overturned. In the mean time, we still have a bunch of backward, bigoted dinosaurs to deal with, so those of us who hope to see a fairer, juster, day need to get out there and make our voices heard. To which end I am now off to join Alliance for Choice at the Processions 2018 march. You're never too old for a demo.


















Friday 27 April 2018

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE WITH THE FINZI-CONTINIS

I don't know why Enid Blyton didn't ever write 'The Lighthouse of Adventure'. She managed a Circus, a Ship, an Island and several others, but not a Lighthouse. Missed a trick there, Enid. She also did a lot of Five Go To Smuggler's Cove sort of thing, and although in these enlightened times we're supposed to avert our eyes from her pedestrian prose and suspect attitudes, I have to say I owe her a great debt of gratitude for removing me, so regularly, from the real and often terrifying world. And so did countless other children.

Years ago, when I was a school librarian in newly-independent Zimbabwe, Enid Blyton was in just as much demand among rural, Black pupils as she'd been in my all-White South African girls' school, which just goes to show that a good adventure story has universal appeal. (I did once have two Form 1 boys who read every Barbara Cartland on the shelves - the books had been donated by an elderly benefactor with romantic tastes - and I'm still trying to work that one out. Possibly they just fell about laughing.) Anyway, I'm grateful for all the hours I spent in the company of her plucky children as they stiffened their spines and their upper lips, and easily outwitted hordes of villains. And I've retained a nostalgic yearning for her picnics. I can't think why: they were mostly potted meat, ginger beer and fruit cake, all of which I can easily live without, but at the time they sounded wonderful. (This could have had something to do with my own mother thinking that a hard-boiled egg and a flask of tea were the height of picnic luxury.)

So, ever since we went one Heritage Day to view the Irish Landmark Trust's Blackhead Lightkeeper's Houses (confusingly located above Whitehead) I have nursed a secret desire to go back and indulge in a proper Enid Blyton adventure, with lots of picnics. And last weekend that's exactly what we did. Professor Gloom, Councillor Kate, Fearless Fergal and myself, accompanied by hampers of food and bags of bottles, set off on our grand adventure. 'Four On A Jolly Jaunt' - and every meal a picnic. Only this time there wasn't a potted meat sandwich or a hard-boiled egg in sight.

There were sticky ribs, pizzas and oven-ready chips, washed down with gin and tonic; there were cold meats, salads, cheese and fruit; tarts and crumbles, pancakes, chocolate and hot cross buns. We drank Prosecco on the sunny, windswept terrace and played backgammon in front of the open fire. We drank far too much wine and managed not to fall off the cliffs. And at night we fell asleep to the sound of the sea.

Blackhead is a working lighthouse. All night long the beams revolve: if you stand on the walkway below, it's like being on a carousel, spools of light swirling by like the ribbons of a Maypole. The rooms are lovely: lived-in, slightly shabby, full of books and character, with little bunches of fresh flowers dotted around. It was altogether enchanting.

And what did I read? Giorgio Bassani's 'The Garden of the Finzi-Continis' which I'd always meant to read but somehow hadn't. A beautiful, poignant, haunting novel that skims above the surface of the unbearable, touching down just often enough to let the waiting darkness of theHolocaust brush against the characters who will so soon be swallowed up. You know where this is going to end, but for now the beam of the narrator's memory lights up the loves and lives of this small, doomed community in Ferrara, and enriches your own life in the process. A lighthouse of a book.


Saturday 7 April 2018

A WEDDING IN CLONES


On Saturday 3 March Kate married Fergal in a little church in Clones, and even the unbelievers, the unobservant, and the deeply unsentimental (disproportionately present on the bride's side) were reduced to a quivering mush. Outside the snow (which had prevented quite a lot of people, including one of the two bridesmaids, from getting there at all) lay thick and white; inside, the congregation let out a collective sigh as the bride, attended by the one original bridesmaid, plus a heavily-pregnant sister (co-opted at the last minute) and a tiny, exquisite flower-girl, drifted down the aisle towards the groom. There was a fiddle, a flute, and a girl with one of those Irish singing voices that floats you up to the ceiling.

Which is probably enough of the wedding fervour. But what I will say is that I was never at a happier wedding, and the reception that followed at the Lough Erne resort was the best of all possible parties. Put any of our Irish, South African, Greek and Indian families in one room - not to mention the several other nationalities present - and you're bound to end up having a party, but this one was brilliant. Professor Gloom and I faded away before the dancing got properly going, but at a certain age there comes a point when a warm bed and a long sleep in the deep silence of the snowbound countryside trumps every other prospect.

Now it's 5 weeks since the wedding, and 4 since the last of the guests flew back home - after which Gloom and I lay down for 2 days with cold compresses on our heads. When we got up again, the house was eerily quiet. Apart from small hand-prints on the windows and a few plastic toys carefully buried in the houseplants, it was as though they'd never been here...

It's a good thing there was Kelly McCaughrain's book launch to cheer us up: I defy anyone not to be cheered by the Belfast Ukulele Jam - out in force to support one of their own -  and if you haven't read 'Flying Tips for Flightless Birds' yet, go and buy it NOW. You don't have to be a Young Adult to enjoy it; you can be a grumpy old person and still be seduced.

There was also lots of work waiting to distract us: scientific papers, novels at various stages of composition (or possibly decomposition) never mind the disordered house, disgruntled cat and neglected garden. And sadly, the endless, inescapable and polarising coverage of a local trial. Too many people have talked and written about this already, but I'm starting to think that hurling abuse via social media is the modern equivalent of putting people in the stocks. And that maybe actually throwing rotten vegetables and the contents of your chamber-pot is a bit braver than flinging dirt from the safety of your laptop.

So, what with one thing and another, we decided we needed another holiday, which is why we went back to Lough Erne. And what a good decision that was: the snow had gone, but the days were still sharp and bright as knives, and all that peace and space restored us.


We ate, drank, walked, slept, explored the countryside and were wonderfully well looked after by the hotel staff. And we had plenty of time to read. I finished the - to me - surprisingly enjoyable 'Essex Serpent' then started on Tea Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' - which I'd been meaning to read for years and am glad that I finally did. The tiger of the title assumes strange supernatural powers, in the minds of the locals; Sarah Perry's novel features an ancient winged serpent supposedly lurking in the marshes. Which might be why, very early one morning, I was almost certain I saw a long, dark, coiling shape breaking the surface of Lough Erne...

I also packed the most recent edition of Slightly Foxed. I love Slightly Foxed. It bills itself as the 'independent quarterly that introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. A bit like myself, really.

Unfortunately, there's been a shameless amount of eating and drinking since Christmas, and in my case the wages of over-indulgence are gastritis, so I'm currently living on green tea and rice cakes, which is much the same as eating lightly-salted polystyrene. I even had to shun the Easter eggs. Still, the honeymooners came home on Easter Monday - Gloom was torn between joy at their return and disappointment that his vicarious travels had come to an end: he much prefers getting endless photos of foreign lands to all the bother of going there himself - and in May there'll be a new grandchild to look forward to. Plus, the days are getting longer, and I think I might have found a way forward, at long last, with the book that's been haunting me for months.

And one last reason to be cheerful: this weekend it's Greek Easter! I think I might treat myself to a little bit of chocolate, and  a glass or two of champagne. Not exactly what the doctor ordered, but what the hell: it's not how long you live that matters, but how well you live.

Καλο Πασχα everyone!











Wednesday 14 February 2018

PANCAKES, PARTIES AND PASSING ON...


Pancake day yesterday. I had Ormeau pancakes with an inch of butter and lashings of maple syrup. It’s what I have for breakfast every day of my life but this is the one day my husband can’t mutter about my arteries. He has to watch his weight himself; lucky for me I come from a long line of women who get thinner and thinner as they grow older. We end up like little brittle stick people and have to be saved from going down the drain with the bath water.

Anyway, I need to eat to keep my strength up: it’s going to be a busy year. There’s Daughter 2’s wedding in March, Daughter 1’s baby due in May, and several major birthday celebrations, all accompanied by invasions of relatives. We’ve had two hen parties already; the first a family affair for a dozen or so - the second, last weekend, for twice as many. There were pre-party drinks at one venue, cocktail-making and dinner at another, and dancing and god knows what at a third. I wouldn’t know: Professor Gloom came and dragged me home, along with the other two older members of the party, before we had a chance to behave unsuitably.


I’ve been very rude about hen parties in my time – about weddings in general, really. I’ve been married twice in registry offices and I’ve always considered big weddings a tremendous waste of money. But I have to say, this was a classy hen. We didn’t just have Anna Lo, Naomi Long and the Lord Mayor there, we also had Claire and Helen, the Bridesmaids from Heaven, as well as various local stars of stage and public life, and – for one night only - the Lutalo Sisters. (In case you move in less exalted circles, or don’t know all of my extended family, they’re Uganda’s gift to the world, and for a combination of brains, beauty, and joie de vivre, will never be surpassed.)

Anyway, it was a good party. But hen nights are not for sissies, and certainly not for old ladies. And before anyone says ‘you’re not old’ let me tell you something: I’m sick to death of this 70-is-the-new-50 and you can’t be old until you’re 90 rubbish. 70 might be the new trying-to-be-50, but it’s been hard work getting this far, and now that my three score years and ten are nearly up, I’m going to be as old as I want. I’m going to eat, drink, wear and do whatever takes my fancy, and I’m never ever going to read another word of any book that hasn’t got my full attention by the time I get to page 3.

I don’t sit through films I’m not enjoying either, which is why I go to QFT. If you walk out of a movie there, you can sit in comfort in the foyer with a glass of wine, and wait for your friends who sat through the whole thing until they come out holding their heads. I went to see Phantom Thread last night. If the end had been at the beginning, I might not have lasted, but I liked the clothes, and both Daniel Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps (apt, that name, considering her character) were sufficiently watchable to keep me interested - and there’s a bit where she first prepares some mushrooms for him that probably sent a collective ripple of sympathetic glee through half the women in the audience – but in the end I have to say I thought it was a load of twaddle.

I’d like to see a few more films where younger men got involved with older women, just as I’d like to read a few more books written by, and for, older people. That’s the other thing about age-denial: if you’re not allowed to be old then you also miss out on the traditional benefits of deference, respect, and allowances made, or credit given, for a lifetime’s accumulated wisdom. (Ok, maybe not wisdom, but at least experience.) The end result is that most of my generation go around desperately trying to keep up, and terrified that their memory lapses and tendency to repeat themselves will be seen as signs of incipient dementia. My granny didn’t apologise for forgetting peoples' names or losing her keys. “Oh well,’ she’d say, ‘that’s what happens when you get old. Why don’t you pour us another little gin, dear?’

And while on this cheery subject, one last thought: Advance Decisions. This is the Advance Decision to Refuse Treatment should you lose the capacity to make decisions for yourself. This applies to all you younger people out there too: in fact, you’re far more likely to be kept alive with ventilators and feeding tubes after some catastrophic accident. I was spurred on by a Radio 4 programme about Polly Kitzinger, daughter of natural childbirth campaigner Sheila Kitzinger, who was kept alive after terrible brain injuries despite her family knowing it was the very last thing she would have wanted. Compassion In Dying have a free, simple and easy to download form: you just fill it in, sign it and get someone to witness your signature.

Myself, I’m hoping to keel over mid-G+T, after which I won’t mind what happens, although I’d like all my friends and family to have a party.  What I’d really like would be a send-off on a burning raft, pushed out into Belfast lough at night, but apparently that’s not permitted. Still, with any luck my Advance Decision will ensure that I die with as much grace, dignity and speed as possible, and without any unnecessary medical interference. And until then, I’m going to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of life that I can, starting with a celebratory dinner at my favourite restaurant tonight.

 
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, and many more.






What! Who's going to open the cat food?