Mermaids, Maps and Middlemarch....

The great, exhausting, November writing challenge is over. My friend (and award-winning author) Kelly McCaughrain, persuaded, encouraged, and gently bullied the writers in our local group to set ourselves goals for the month and report back on our daily progress...and at least one of us did more work in thirty days than she's done in a year. Obviously, what my life was lacking was an overseer...

The result was a finished picture book and a two-thirds-done middle grade novel (and a lot of wine drunk, either as reward or solace) but it's been more than that. We bought our house five years ago - it's too big for two old people and a cat, but it was meant to welcome the much-loved, far-flung family who come for extended visits, and for convivial get-togethers with friends and colleagues. This is a house where there is always someone dropping in for a glass of wine or a chat, or squeezing in round the table to eat, drink, argue, laugh... Or rather, it was: since Covid, there's been scarcely another soul inside. So, the feeling of companionship with fellow-writers - knowing that we were all in this together (even if occasional suffering was involved) - has been a lifeline. 

And there was another unexpected benefit, because getting down to work meant doing research on things like lighthouses, legends, how seals see under water...and because I've been collecting books all my life, the house is actually full of old friends I'd forgotten. So, looking for a book on mermaids, I come across 'The Secret Language of Symbols' and 'Tales from Ebony' and a book on decorative printed maps. I also find a forgotten story from E. Nesbitt's ‘Book of Beasts' and am immediately side-tracked. I mean, who could resist something that begins 'Lionel happened to be building a palace when the news came...' and a moment later Nurse comes in and says, 'Master Lionel, dear, they've come to fetch you to go and be King.'  

And who can resist the maps and drawings of Tolkien? Or the Diabolical Dragons devouring delicious delicacies in Graeme Base's ‘Animalia’? Literature and Language, Fiction old and new (literary or otherwise); Art, Ikons, Myths and Magic; Travel, Cookery, Circuses and Cinema - there'll be a book somewhere on our shelves - if I can find it. My study is mostly given over to children's books and modern fiction, Professor Gloom's to a mixture of Classics, Bridge and Golf. There's also one bedroom full of Crime, assorted piles beside our bed, and short stories, pamphlets and quarterlies on the landings. 'Clean and Decent', a 'fascinating history of the bathroom and the W.C.' is suitably positioned (it includes an old Sunday Express clipping, headed 'The dark night when Ben fell into the privy') and the rarer, more impressively bound or oversized books are downstairs, along with a collection of the odd, the bizarre, and the downright peculiar. But they all tend to migrate, which is what makes hunting one down such an adventure. There’s even a 2013 Guinness World Records in which Gloom's discovery of VFTS 102 (now there's a catchy name) is included, although some blighter discovered an even faster-spinning star soon after. 

Susan Hill once embarked on a year-long trawl of her books, which resulted in the delightful 'Howard's End is on the Landing' - I'm only sorry that I didn't think of the idea first! What I love most though, are children's books, and beautiful, quirky illustrations - and if there's an old, rich binding thrown in for good measure, then so much the better. 

I've spent my life with books, one way and another, and I don't know if a week has ever gone by that I haven't bought, borrowed, or been given, something to read. Some of the volumes on the shelves are old and rare, and occasionally valuable, but I've never really cared whether it was a first edition, signed by the author, in mint condition: all those things that serious collectors value. To be honest, I'd rather have a book that shows it has been read and loved, books with inscriptions, books that are a little worn and faded (much like me) or with the occasional photograph or letter tucked between the pages - even the odd spot of colouring-in, or comment in the margin. I once bought a scholarly work of history with a very forbidding picture of Queen Anne in it, alongside which some previous owner had pencilled 'looks like a nice girl'. 

I also discovered (on the third attempt) why I've never finished 'Middlemarch': I can't stand Dorothea Brooke. (Please don't write and tell me why I should admire her. I don't and I won't. My mind is made up.) On the other hand, on my second or third attempt at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's much-praised "Half of a Yellow Sun', I've fallen entirely under her spell. So, there is comfort and pleasure to be found even in Covid isolation, and if most of our family and friends are temporarily out of reach, I'm deeply grateful for all the old friends inside.

COVID COMFORTS

Autumn has arrived, thank god. So we can finally put the ghastly summer behind us and enjoy a brief blaze of glory before winter descends, and probably the end of the world with it. The portents are all there: melting ice, Mars alarmingly close to Earth, Jupiter aligned with...something....and most worrying of all, the nationwide urge to bake. Even me, and I haven't baked anything since I lived in the middle of Africa and it was a 2 hour drive to buy a bun. But here I am, not at work in my study, but down in the kitchen, making pandemic pastries, misery muffins and socially-distanced desserts.

This is largely due to to the fact that my son has a wine programme online twice a week, 5 o'clock South African time but 4 o'clock here, which is too early to start drinking, even for me. It's tough, mind you, for a wine lover to watch them sniffing, swirling, sipping and murmuring 'just a hint of aubergine' without joining in. So instead, while I watch and listen, I cook. Not just Covid cookies but all sorts of favourite, new or forgotten recipes that help connect me to my much-missed family and friends: Cape Malay bredies, Greek chicken, spicy prawns...comfort food. And that's the thing: whether we're locked down, out of a job or creative energy, juggling family and work, or just feeling old and pointless, we all need to take whatever comfort we can find. 

Alphabetically then, here are some suggestions:

1) Books. The funnier, the more entertaining, and the more hopeful, the better. You can keep your beautifully written, deeply depressing accounts of excruciating misery; give me instead books like Elinor Lipman's 'The Ladies' Man' - a sharply funny story of 3 middle-aged sisters and the Man from the Past who oozes back into their lives. Laugh out loud and utterly satisfying. Mind you, three of the books I enjoyed recently were hardly joyous, but 'Children of the Revolution' by Dinaw Mengestu, despite dealing with the sadness of life in exile for an Ethiopian refugee in Washington, is written with such dignity, charm and gentle warmth that you end up feeling better for having read it. 

The same goes for the highly original Carys Davies and 'The Mission House', which is set in modern India. And last but not least, 'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell. She's always good, but this is enthralling, and historical is a good choice right now: plague and pestilence being a lot easier to deal with when they're safely in the past. 

(NB Some of the best children's and YA books I know are historical. When a friend sent a Covid care package (I have brilliant friends - this one also makes plum gin) she included Hilary McKay's delightful 'The Skylarks War', a family saga set against a First World War backdrop - and if you think children's books aren't for adults, think again: Gloom was so entranced by this one, he didn't want it to end.) 

2) Cats. Now, I accept that there are people who don't like cats (some of you are even my friends) but I've had cats all my life, and if I lived anywhere it wasn't possible to keep one, I made friends with someone else's. When the Empress Clementina gave up the ghost in February, we were bereft, but now we have huge, gentle, Archimedes, and are deeply grateful for his purring presence. But you can substitute dogs, if you want. 

3) Food. Comfort reading, comfort food: buy the best you can afford, and the more treats the better. Indulge yourselves.

4) Friends and family. Phone them, Skype them, have Zoom get-togethers: a Saturday morning chat with fellow writers, an evening gin and tonic with your sister, whatever - you need to keep those connections open. Write letters, for pity's sake. And if you haven't spoken to your brother since 1999, now's the time.

5) Jigsaw Puzzles. Below are just some of the ones I've done in the last few months. Good to do while you listen to podcasts or the radio, or have that telephone conversation with the friend who can talk for half an hour without drawing breath. You also get a wonderful sense of achievement when you actually finish the thing - provided there aren't any pieces missing. Warning: Jigsaws don't always mix with pets. Bits tend to adhere to fluffy cats, and as happened to my friend Patsy, the dog sometimes swallows the last piece just before you can pick it up off the floor. 

6) Outdoor exercise. The more you walk, run, cycle (while keeping your distance and USING YOUR BELL in order to avoid mowing down deaf pensioners before Covid can) the better you will feel. I'm told the same is true for swimming but, in this climate, I'm not about to put it to the test. 

7) Presents. Don't wait for Christmas: it's amazing what a lift it gives you to send or receive something, no matter how small. It doesn't have to be champagne or flowers, a well-read book is as good as anything. Or just bake something and drop it round next door. Our neighbours have been providing Grade A scones for months, my efforts are confined to the occasional B grade fritter or muffin, but they're always very nice about them. 

8) Wine. Wine, wine, wine, and South African for preference.

There are lots of things I could mention that seem to make other people happy: gardening, for instance, and knitting. Right now though, I have to go: Dan Really Likes Wine is on any minute and it's my maternal duty to give it my full attention, while I whip up a little lockdown lobster en croute with burnt hollandaise sauce. Only kidding: it's pumpkin fritters.

An occupied study

LINKS WITH THE PAST

After a brief, inglorious career at Art School, I largely gave up drawing and painting, but 26 years ago in Zimbabwe, I wrote a children's picture book, The Animal Bus, which featured my youngest daughter and her friends, and was duly published, although the publishers decided (rightly) that my illustrations weren't up to much. In the end they were professionally done by my brilliant friend, Bee McGuire - illustrations which later won her a Noma Concours award - but the greatest satisfaction for me was that it was a book written for love of people and place, and done in collaboration with a friend.

Since then, I've done others that were not intended for publication. The first was made for a family we met in newly-independent Zimbabwe. They were Canadian, with two children much the same ages as our own, and we became very good friends. But the friendship between the mother and myself was one of those instant recognitions of a kindred spirit, and by the time they left Zimbabwe a couple of years later, we had become so close that the thought of being separated by thousands of miles was so distressing that it regularly reduced us to tears - to the bemusement of both our husbands. Anyway, as a parting gift, I wrote the story of their time in Africa; I did some of the illustrations, but my two older children did the rest, and their father wrote it out in his (proper) artist's calligraphy, and made the cover.  It was a great success: they sat down and read it the moment we handed it over, and we ALL cried.

The next hand-made books were inspired by the births of grandchildren, the first anniversary of my second marriage ('Professor Gloom Meets His Match') and the weddings of both my daughters. I even did one for a dog called Stavros. And the best thing about doing this sort of book is that there's no agent or publisher to please, no appearances to make or money to gain. And no fear of rejection - just the enormous satisfaction of making something for someone you love. 

There's also particular comfort in these days of isolation and enforced distance from friends and family, in forging these links of love. So lockdown has seen me branching out into books about much-loved toys, starting with Damoda the Dragon, companion to my 2 year-old grandson in London. And there are other battered favourites lining up - it's an honourable tradition after all, from The Velveteen Rabbit to Pooh, Piglet, Dogger...

 

But making any sort of tangible record, especially in these fleeting days of Instagram and Twitter - even a scrapbook or old-fashioned album filled with poems, quotations, postcards, memories - seems all the more worth doing. 

When I finally left Zimbabwe in 2000, I brought with me a parting gift from my friend Bee. She also lives many thousands of miles away, and it's been decades since I saw her. But she gave me a framed original illustration from our book, and it's hung on my wall ever since. It never fails to take me back to the happiness of that time and place.

As for our Canadian friends, we never managed to see them again either. Five years after they went home, I had a phone call to tell me that they'd flown out one morning to ski down a mountain, and all of them - my friend, her husband and their two children, along with their pilot friend - had been killed when their helicopter crashed. 

After their deaths, copies of our book were made for members of their families, and I hope it brought them some comfort. Twenty-five years on, I can still see her face and hear her voice, and I think of them all quite often. When I wrote the last lines of that book, I was worried that they sounded too sentimental, but now I realise how true they were:

    'Besides, the sun that sets over Africa is the same sun that rises over Canada (when you can see it) and the other side of the world is only just over the horizon....

    And good friends are never very far away, if you keep them safe in your hearts.'

READING ALOUD

Long-distance bedtime stories - preferred reading in Johannesburg

Reading aloud has always been one of my great pleasures - from childhood, when I pursued the fleeing members of my family with yet another story I'd just composed myself, through years of reading to my own children, and now the grandchildren. And in a week which has been harder than most, this lovely message came through from my daughter, now reading to her 6 month old son:

'Reading to him is one of my favourite things to do, it feels as much an act of mothering as feeding or changing him, and it makes me think of you and how you read to me until I was at least 10. I hope one day I will have the strength to read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings (complete with voices) to Cian.'

To be truthful, I think it was The Hobbit I read aloud (several times) and not the whole of The Lord of the Rings. There are more than enough voices in The Hobbit to keep a reader on her toes - I still have  memories of a small, critical voice interrupting, 'That's not an orc, that's an elf!'

Good lockdown occupation - and location

Anyway, what better time for reading aloud than right now? And for doing jigsaws, and having the time to catch up with old friends? Thank god for the modern technology that keeps us connected with far-flung family and friends. Last week's highlights were a 40-strong international Zoom to celebrate Councillor Kate's birthday, and a bedtime story for two grandchildren in Johannesburg - and their parents - all tucked up in bed together.

It's also been a great time for listening (preferably while doing a jigsaw) to music, to podcasts, to radio; to the wonderful, much-missed Ulster Orchestra (#UOLetsPlayAtHome) and all the others who have been doing so much to keep us all sane. Suzy Klein's 3-part Tunes for Tyrants on the BBC is also brilliant: a master-class in how to deal with the horrors of history in a civilised, informative and endlessly entertaining way. Charlie and his Orchestra (a Nazi secret propaganda weapon) playing 'Boom! Why did my ship go boom? (Boom diddly boom...') and Irving Berlin's 'Let's Go Slumming' transformed into 'Let's Go Shelling' have to be heard to be believed.

Most of all I'm grateful for books. My darling daughter in London (the one who practises permanent social-media-distancing - you won't find her on Facebook) sent me Neil Gaiman's preferred version of Neverwhere, and nothing could have taken me away from the present more effectively. Now I'm reading Anne Patchett's The Dutch House - an engrossing take on the wicked stepmother story that has me so involved I want to climb into the pages and kill the woman, and it's beautifully written to boot. Incidentally, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People is, for me, so much better than the book: well worth watching and perfectly cast.)

It's 9 weeks now since we went into lock-down, and what I miss most are my family, my cat, my friends and my hairdresser, in that order. By the time I get back into circulation I'm going to feel (and look) like a creature from another planet: But then, we're all going to look a bit odd, especially the ones who've been cutting their own hair...

In the meantime, I'm grateful for a house full of books, and most especially for all the good wine that Gloom had the presence of mind to stock up on for future celebrations. In view of the prevailing hazards, we can't be sure how many more books and bottles we're going to get through, but we're going to do our level best...

Another bottle gone...

DAYS OF WINE AND CORONA

Strange times. Nearly four weeks of isolation and inactivity - apart from a daily walk - but lots of time for other things: for playing card games and doing jigsaws; for sitting in the garden and watching old episodes of Star Wars in the middle of the afternoon; for listening to music and to podcasts. (And if you only listen to one, Elizabeth Day's 'How to Fail' episode with Alain de Botton is the best dose of clarity and consolation I've heard all week.)

Childhood favourites

The first few days of captivity I spent (inexpertly) recording Moon's Travelling Circus, the middle grade novel that didn't ever find a publisher, and which I now plan to make available to any child who might enjoy the adventures of a magical circus travelling through African time and space. It made me feel vaguely useful - one of the harder things about being classed as vulnerable is that you feel so useless. Anyway, I enjoyed doing it so much that I've gone back to writing the sequel.

The daily conversations and online interaction with distant family and friends is hugely cheering - as was a SCWBI meet-up with writer friends, and an online wine tasting with my son. (We may have found ourselves short of paracetamol and disinfectant, but we were never going to get caught out with an empty wine rack...) So, what with all the FaceTimes, Skypes and Zooms, it's more a question of fitting everything in than trying to fill the hours.                                                                               

And then, of course, there are the books. There's the pile of most-recently-bought adult novels, the dozens of others books I've always meant to re-read, and - greatest comfort of all -  the children's classics. Who could be unhappy in the company of William, Pippi, the Moomins and the Borrowers? Nesbit, Farjeon, Lofting, Lynch - I could go on and on - and most of them lovely old illustrated copies I've been collecting all my life.

There are some writers you can read at any age, and some you can't. Sorry, Sally Rooney (she's a good writer, the fault is mine, not hers) but I couldn't really connect with the characters in 'Normal People', so I moved on to Benjamin Black's 'The Silver Swan'. I'm a fan of Black (and his alter ego, John Banville - 'Mrs Osmond' is in the waiting pile) and I have a particularly soft spot for his weary pathologist, Quirke. And having suggested to Gloom that he might enjoy Anthony Powell's wonderfully dense and civilised 12-volume 'Dance to the Music of Time' - he is onto the second already - I'm now planning to re-read them all myself.

But first off the shelves was Patrick Leigh Fermor and 'The Violins of St Jacques'. He is my all-time favourite travel writer and this was his only novel, I think, but it's written in his usual glorious prose and deals, strangely enough, with a great natural disaster. Now I'm reading Maggie O'Farrell's  'The Distance Between Us' and from the first page her characters have grabbed me by the throat. Intriguing, complex, and hard to put down.

A Beardsley Venus

Hilary Mantel's final volume in her Cromwell trilogy, 'The Mirror and the Light', has just been beautifully read on Radio 4 by Anton Lesser, and there was a fascinating TV programme on the deeply peculiar and talented Aubrey Beardsley, which reminded me that somewhere I had a copy of 'Under the Hill', published by the Olympia Press back in the 60s. It was, when I finally located it, a genuine curiosity and every bit as bizarre as I'd remembered - but perhaps not the sort of thing you'd want to read aloud to Aunt Edna.

A long time ago, in another country, I lived through times of great upheaval and fear. Then, my greatest worry was that I would die and leave my children without their mother. Now that I'm old, and have no fear of death, I still worry about my children and my grandchildren. But one of the benefits of this enforced isolation (apart from the random acts of kindness by friends and neighbours: the unexpected present, the newspaper or plate of scones left on the doorstep) has been the chance to catch my breath, to go through books and papers, and rediscover things - like a commonplace book that I kept in that earlier, uncertain time. Quite a few entries deal with death, but I find them as apt, and as comforting, now as I did then. This from Kahlil Gibran:

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun....
....And when the earth shall claim my limbs, then shall I truly dance.

Either way, when this is all over, I intend to dance.

HOMAGE TO CLEMENTINA

To London and back to see two of the children and potter around Highgate, hand in hand with enchanting little Omi. Then back to Belfast, to a forlorn and empty house and the ghost of our Clementina - a small, white-throated, black and amber shadow, glimpsed for a moment, then gone.

As always, it's books that help me through bad times: Penelope Fitzgerald's wonderful 'The Beginning of Spring', the quirky 'Lonely Life of a Peculiar Postman' by Canadian Denis Theriault (thank you, Kelly McCaughrain) and Deirdre Madden's 'Molly Fox's Birthday'. I'd only read one other novel of hers - 'Time Present and Time Past' - now I'm looking for all the rest.

Little Omi, not yet two, has a room full of books already, as do all his cousins - even 3 month-old baby Cian has a shelf. I can't bear to think of a childhood without books. I was lucky: my whole family wrote - father, mother, brother, sister - and we all read voraciously, and widely. Although I really don't think it matters what you read - I hate to hear anyone's taste in reading being mocked - so long as you have the habit, books will get you through a lot of life's disasters. And the one thing you can be certain of is that disasters will occur.

So. After a convivial evening with two good friends, in the middle of the night I sit up because I am suddenly coughing and can't breathe. This is a distressing, but not a disaster: I find my asthma inhalers, take a couple of puffs and put the kettle on for hot honey and lemon. Eventually I get back to sleep. In the morning I have an early doctor's appointment - routine but timely - so we drive down and Gloom goes in to say his wife has been through three airports in the last 10 days, none in an infected area, but she's suddenly coughing: should she come in or go home again? The receptionist sighs deeply and says she might as well come in. This is probably because 99.9 percent of all the patients currently waiting are hacking and wheezing, so one more won't make any difference.

Helping to edit

My doctor, to whom I am devoted (she is wonderfully phlegmatic: a combined case of Ebola and Leprosy might just give her cause to raise an eyebrow, but then again, possibly not) tells me I have a chest infection and sentences me to a week of antibiotics, steroids and rest. Fortunately I have, at the last count, the new Spring edition of Slightly Foxed and at least another 20-odd books, waiting to be read - including Simon Sebag Montefiore's 'Jerusalem', which is around 700 pages long. I'm reading that in stages, but every time I open it, I am swept away by this extraordinary biography of a city, and the beauty of the writing. And as soon as I've finished the medication, I'm going to finish off all the best wine in the house, just in case it turns out to be the coronavirus after all.

Listening to Mozart

Clementina's ashes were returned to us in a carved wooden box. We are now debating where to put the little casket: burying it in the garden doesn't seem right - she was far too strong a presence, a household goddess and my personal daemon, whose rightful place is here, somewhere inside the house, with us. I suspect a ghostly paw will eventually nudge us in the right direction. And she'll have another memorial, some day, because the morning after the night she died, I switched on my laptop to distract myself from the desolation that I felt, and there was a message from a writer friend concerning a Kickstart project needing backers - a proposed short film set in Belfast, about a love affair that begins with the Good Friday Agreement. I liked the premise, and thinking it would be the perfect way to honour Clementina's memory - she was, after all, a cat with artistic sensibilities: she enjoyed listening to Mozart and often helped edit my work by walking on the keyboard - I signed up.

I was surprised to get an immediate and grateful response, and when I wrote back to explain what had prompted my gesture, I was promised that when 'Another Day in '98' is made, the credits will include the name of Clementina. Our beautiful, adored, imperious cat may no longer gaze at us with her yellow eyes, or purr in my ear at the dead of night, but her name will be up there in lights. I'm pretty certain she would feel it was no more than her due.

BOOKS, BOTTLES AND ENDEARING BEARS

Seasonal cheer

Bad sister

I had a wonderful end to 2019: a visit from my sister Cathy (a great excuse for celebrations) followed by a quick trip home to see my sorely-missed Johannesburg family (and celebrate South Africa's rugby World Cup win - did I mention that before?). Then there was the birth of little grandson Cian (more celebrations, plus a flying visit from Uncle Dan to see the new arrival) and we finished up with a family Christmas. On Christmas Eve the house was full: two daughters and their husbands, two delectable little grandsons, and Cousin Emily from Istanbul in the attic. (I don't think she minded: it was the only peaceful spot in the house. Next year, when we expect our Greek family, I might just move up there myself.) We also wore masks for Christmas Eve dinner. Please don't ask why, but I think it might become a tradition.

Xmas mask - not much good against viruses

So, it was a very happy Christmas, but it's been pretty much down-hill ever since. Brexit, Australian wildfires, floods, earthquakes - never mind Dry January - and now we've got everyone being hysterical about coronavirus. I should point out that I don't actually do dry January myself: it seems to me that you have to be truly masochistic to deprive yourself of any comfort available in January (which is a hideous month at the best of times) and it was only a bottle of Thorne & Daughters Wanderer's Heart Cape Red that got me through the night of Brexit. As for the virus, far more people die each day from TB, malaria, road accidents and ordinary flu, and to be perfectly honest I've reached the age when being carried off by flu seems infinitely preferable to a lingering death from dementia, cancer, heart disease, whatever.

This could be why I was so taken with an item I heard on the radio the other day. A member of the Ache tribe in Paraguay was reminiscing about his long-ago position as official bumper-off of no-longer-useful old women. When you were too old to even cook or baby-sit, he paid you a visit with an axe and bonked you over the head. At least it was quick. (Useless old men were just told to push off into the jungle and not come back.)

I sometimes think it's about time a literary equivalent of the Ache guy came and knocked me over my creative head. I've been writing all my life. Apart from a bit of journalism, the odd short story, and the little books I draw and write for my family to mark various occasions, my literary output totals 1 picture book (published) 1 children's novel (not published but a few copies printed up for family and friends) and 2 adult novels (1 published, 1 languishing). I'm half-way though a third novel but in some ways it's harder now, because I know I'm writing only for myself. I'm 71. That's the Ache equivalent of no longer useful, because let's be honest, even if I wasn't old, white and middle-class, even if a reckless publisher decided to take a chance on me, I wouldn't have either the stamina or the inclination to turn up at libraries, readings, festivals, workshops and the hundred and one other things that authors are expected to do these days to sell their books.

So why do I bother? Because I might just as well try to stop talking. You see the problem. And every so often, someone is kind enough to tell you that they like something you've written. Step forward the great-nephew (a boy of extraordinary intelligence and taste) who face-timed me from Cape Town to tell me that Moon's Travelling Circus was - and I quote - 'one of the best books I have EVER read'!! And this from a 12 year-old bookworm. Excuse me while I take a moment to compose myself.

And speaking of books, I'm currently reading the 5th of Anne Zouroudi's Greek detective novels, The Feast of Artemis. There's only one more after this (The Gifts of Poseidon: I had to get it through World of Books, because she's out of print already) and I'm having to steel myself against the prospect of a world without Hermes Diaktoros. Luckily I still have several Christmas books waiting to console me...not to mention the Oldie subscription given to me by Gloom. Oh the joy of reading the rants of other unrepentant old reactionaries! And there's a paean of praise to Rupert Bear in this month's Oldie. He's even older than I am - 100 this year.

Described by Giles Brandreth as 'decent, heroic and endearing' in a world ' both bizarre and wonderfully reassuring' Rupert's adventures were never short of extraordinary characters and encounters; there was drama and danger and fantastic adventure, but, as Brandreth says, they were never frightening.

Other seasonal reading included Jo Baker's 'A Country Road, A Tree' (based on Beckett's wartime years in France) Maggie O'Farrell's inspirational 'I am I am I am' and John le Carre's 'Agent Running in the Field'. You can rarely go wrong with le Carre. And Lee Langley. I first read her novel 'Persistent Rumours' decades ago. I loved it, but somehow didn't read any others until I picked up two of her books in a charity shop the other day. 'Changes of Address', a child's eye view of a precarious life in India in the 40's with a shocker of a mother, reminded me why I liked her so much. She is a wonderfully evocative writer. 'Distant Music' is next.

There have been a few movies too, to distract us from impending doom: The Irishman (greatly enjoyed over 2 nights - I had mild concussion at the time and the whole three hours at once might have done for me) The Two Popes (highly recommended) and Frozen 2 (don't ask - I'm  probably the only person on the planet who was glad when the snowman melted. Unfortunately he reconstituted himself. And while I'm on the subject, when did Disney start getting all dark and heavy? For pity's sake, isn't real life quite bad enough for children already? Disney should take a lesson from Rupert.) We also went to see Little Women (Gloom loved it, I was less enchanted - great acting, but the sugary coating set my teeth on edge) and The Personal History of David Copperfield, which I loved. A brilliant, exuberant affair, with some stunning performances, and absolutely true to the spirit of Dickens, if not to the original version.

Storm Ciara is now showing signs of departing, but the ground is still covered in snow and ice, and Denis is waiting in the wings. A good excuse, along with a stuffy head, to stay inside, read, finish a Christmas jigsaw - and write. But wait a minute, there's someone downstairs, knocking at the door. Funny, he's got a vaguely South American look, and he seems to be hiding some sort of long-handled implement behind his back.... I think it might be safer to keep the door locked after all, and open another bottle of Wanderer's Heart instead...