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.