A BLYTED CHILDHOOD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMFORT READING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?

    How habitable is perfected form

    And how inhabited the windy light?

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

A wonderful book.

JOURNEYS' ENDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                *

RIP Milko

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

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

ISHIGURO, ISTANBUL AND INSECTS FOR TEA

Sunday morning, up early and down the stairs to feed Archimedes, switch on the kettle and the radio - and there's Mark Tully with Something Understood. There aren't many good reasons for getting out of bed at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning, but Mark Tully is one of them. This week the subject was living with regret: lines of poetry, snatches of song (Edith Piaf, of course - no regrets there) and an extraordinary exchange with a man who went to prison for murder and will live with regret for the rest of his life. 

And then, On Your Farm, which is usually when I switch off and take my tea back upstairs, but this week we were in Zimbabwe, farming insects. Crickets, to be precise. Now, I'll listen to anything coming from Zimbabwe - I spent 18 incredibly happy years in that country, my youngest child was born in Harare, and I still have dearly-loved family and friends there - but this was one of those BBC gems. Off we went with a woman who, with the help of a charity, travelled to Costa Rica to study and then came back to set up a cricket farm in her village. Just the sound of those crickets churring away took me back...  This lot had mountains of empty egg cartons to hide in, they are very low maintenance, and as far as I know, produce no methane. If chirping is anything to judge by, they were perfectly happy. In the end, of course, they find themselves in hot water. Literally. They are despatched (the actual term used was 'harvesting') by dunking them in hot water. Apparently it only takes a few seconds and then they are dead and ready to fry. They are packed full of protein and taste, so we are told, like fried chicken skin. The reporter ate a whole plateful but she said it helped not to look at her plate.

It was also the BBC that recently serialised Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, Klara and the Sun. I'd listened to a couple of episodes while I waited for the copy I'd ordered to arrive, and it was one of those satisfying occasions when you enjoy reading the book even more than you'd hoped to. A lovely, poignant, thought-provoking and beautifully written novel. 

Then, in my never-ending quest for books to lighten the prevailing gloom, I re-read Cluny Brown, and if you want to cheer yourself up, then Margery Sharp's 1940s parlour maid who doesn't know her place is the answer to your prayers. I defy anyone not to laugh out loud. I also enjoyed Jan Carson's new book of linked short stories, The Last Resort, set in a surreal Ballycastle caravan park. I always like her writing, but this format was especially pleasing: maybe it's just age that has fragmented my brain lately (although I suspect Covid is also to blame: people a lot younger than I am are reporting the same lack of concentration) but it's a bit like having a mental ulcer - right now I need small, regular, nourishing dollops of stories, not indigestible 500 page novels.

Staying local, I have Sue Divin's highly-praised Guard Your Heart to look forward to, as well as The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (my title of the year) by Louise Kennedy. Having read her brilliant short story, Hunger, earlier in the year, I've been dying to get my hands on this one.

And one more link with Zimbabwe to end my week: I have a young relative from Harare who now teaches English in Istanbul, and because I love her (and loved Istanbul when I went there some years ago) I agreed to do a reading and question & answer session with a group of 60 Turkish 10-11 year-olds. You know how you agree to something because it's still 2 weeks away and if you're lucky, the end of the world or an alien invasion might come first, or you might lose your voice? Well, none of those things happened and I duly found myself talking about my writing life, and reading from Moon's Travelling Circus, the book that found an agent but never a publisher, but which has still managed to reach quite a few children. And these particular children were enchanting (as were their teachers). Articulate (in a second language), interested, curious, appreciative. I enjoyed the whole thing so much that I think I may have invited all 60 of them, and their teachers, to visit me in Ireland. I can only hope they don't all come at once.

Istanbul's covered market

A post script. I wrote this before news reached me of the terrible fire on Table Mountain that destroyed the restaurant at Rhodes Memorial and badly damaged Cape Town University. Apart from fears for the safety of all those affected, my family connections with UCT are very strong and so many of my memories are linked to the surrounding areas, that it was hard to watch: the pictures of the burnt-out Jagger Library would break your heart. But South Africans are extraordinarily resilient and at least the mountain will recover, in time. A reminder though, that in the end all our zeal for building up and tearing down, all our sound and fury, are no match for natural forces. Even Rhodes will fall in time, with no human help at all.

After the fire

WATERLOGGED AND SLIGHTLY FOXED

I was sent a copy of Roger Deakin's Waterlog by my elder daughter recently. She's a swimmer herself, who'd be only too happy to emulate Deakin's wild-swim around the British Isles. I'm not so brave: I prefer warm Mediterranean or Southern African seas - or outdoor swimming pools, at a pinch. What I do not like is swimming in cold dark water where all sorts of not necessarily well-intentioned things might be lurking in the depths (a dislike reinforced by spending much of my life in places with too many crocodiles for comfort) but I love this book for the charm of the author and the beauty of his writing. And the wonderful humour.

Here he is, quoting a drinking companion in the Three Tuns at Welney, who said 'they were all salt of the earth in the Fens and would give you a sack of potatoes as soon as look at you...' Beyond Cambridge, however, 'They wouldn't give you the drippings off the end of their nose.' And a wonderful account of a wildlife training session when small tubs of otter and mink poo were passed around, in the manner of a wine tasting, to be sniffed and described as 'fragrant', with something of the quality of jasmine tea (otter spraint) or a smell like burnt rubber and rotten fish (mink scat). And I bet you didn't know about spraint and scats either.

I've also been reading, for the first time, a Peter Temple thriller, The Broken Shore. Temple, like me, was South African by birth, but ended up living in Australia, and he brings the people and place to almost startlingly vivid life. He doesn't shy away from racism and bigotry, but he fleshes out his characters with great humanity and humour, and his combination of crackling dialogue, plot and pace add up to a master class in crime writing. I can see exactly why he won so many awards - I couldn't put him down. Nor can Professor Gloom - I just looked into his study, where he is meant to be taking part in an online Hot Star workshop (don't get excited: it's the astronomical rather than Hollywood sort) and there, out of sight on his knees, was an open book, Peter Temple's Truth, in which he was a lot more interested.

Another treat arrived last week: the Winter edition of Slightly Foxed. I love Slightly Foxed for so many reasons: it's full of (short) well-written pieces on old, forgotten, quirky, much loved books, as well as ones I've never encountered, and it entirely lives up to its billing as a 'lively, quarterly review for the independent-minded'. They also send you notes on their delightful cards, which then make charming bookmarks - my  favourite bookmarks (see some below) being one of the many things that add to the pleasure of reading actual physical books.

I go through back numbers of SF regularly (my set is almost complete, only a dozen or so missing from the 69 published so far) and there is always something worth reading again. I needed to do some research on Nancy Mitford recently, and in doing so rediscovered a hilarious piece by Michele Hanson on The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, and Mitford's absolute freedom, at the time, from the constraints of political correctness. Not many writers these days would dare to invent Uncle Matthew, but as Hanson says, Mitford 'observes pitilessly, and then she forgives. If only more of us could do that, the world would be a better place.' 

Slightly Foxed (both of us)

There is also, in this winter issue, wise advice from Barbara Hepworth in her Pictorial Autobiography that many writers might consider. Hepworth, an artist with a family of four (three of them triplets) wrote that '...it formed my ideas that a woman artist is not deprived by cooking and having children, nor by nursing children with measles (even in triplicate) - one is in fact nourished by this rich life, provided one always does some work each day; even a single half hour, so that the images grow in one's mind.' Slightly Foxed have an excellent podcast too: I urge you to do yourself a favour and listen in.

Fashions in novels (and novelists) change almost as fast as Covid  variants, and having recently had to complete my Census details  and admit to being elderly, white, middle-class and straight - a  combination for which, as a writer, I find myself feeling faintly  apologetic - I don't expect to be published again. On the  other hand, I'm deeply grateful to Slightly Foxed for regularly  reminding me of the books that have changed some of us for life, and the many, many more that have simply given pleasure - and will go on doing so, no matter who wrote them.

SHORT AND SWEET

So here we are, nearing the end of February, and apart from the birth of a new grandson, the handover of power in America and the roll-out of COVID vaccines, I can't say the year started well. There were even some hideous weeks when the Wine Society stopped delivering to Northern Ireland and Call My Agent ended - not that it wasn't a great ending, and maybe they were right not to let it go on too long. Still, it left a gap, so I'm open to suggestions. Fortunately, wine deliveries have been resumed and at least the supply of jigsaw puzzles hasn't dried up - God knows we need whatever distractions we can find to lighten these dreary days. I just wish I could get hold of some cheerful books. Why do publishers seem to think that miserable times call for miserable books? I've never seen so many described as 'searing' 'heart-rending' 'tragic'. After almost a year of isolation, I just want to be cheered up! 

         

What really upsets me, though, is the  current trend in children's books for really bad celebrity authors (hang your head, whoever is publishing David Walliams!) and for grim, politically-correct subjects. I read a picture book review the other day that praised the choice of 'difficult' subjects. In picture books? Come on, people, does no-one remember how important those beautifully-written, imaginative childhood books were that took you away from the miseries of daily life?

Anyway, I bought The Art of the Glimpse, not because I thought it would be cheerful - it's not, particularly, but it contains work by local writers I know and like: Jan Carson, Ian Sansom and Louise Kennedy, whose story Hunger I particularly liked - but because short stories are ideal when concentration is harder than usual, and doom, gloom, isolation and Brexit are all taking their toll. The other great advantage of the genre, of course, is that even if you hit a dud, at least you know it's going to be a short-lived dud. In fact, the only real danger you run with this book is that you might fracture a bone if you dropped it on your foot. It's huge.

When it comes to novels, these days I'm in favour of slimmer books. Let me be honest: I'm nearly always in favour of shorter novels - it's rare for me to wish one had been longer - and Anne Tyler's Redhead by the Side of the Road not only comes in at under 200 pages, so far it's my favourite book this year. The moment you meet Micah Mortimer, you know he's going to be one of those odd, endearing characters that Tyler does so brilliantly. Micah is a free-lance tech advisor - Tech Hermit - and supervisor of his apartment block. His life is as orderly as a calendar: a cleaning routine set in stone, a daily run and excellent driving skills (watched over in his head by Traffic God, who makes approving comments as he executes perfect turns and braking). Plus regular undemanding evenings with Cass, his woman friend. Wouldn't you just know it's all going to fall apart? But you also know that it will do so with such wit and  humanity that whatever happens, you'll enjoy the ride. 

 

Mary Gaitskill's Lost Cat is also very short, but unfortunately, it's the opposite of cheering. She's a fine writer, but I'm a cat lover, and why anyone would uproot an Italian cat (no matter how deprived) cart him all the way back to a home in the USA with three other cats already in residence (and then lose him there) is beyond me. (For an un-deprived cat, see picture on the right. The caption should probably read 'And don't even think of opening a bottle before the cat food...')

Little Red (Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's new volume of short stories, published by Blackstaff) is also waiting for me. I finished reading The Dancers Dancing just before Christmas - a lovely, wry story of a group of teenagers, sent to the Donegal Gaeltacht in the 1970s, whose lives and voices shift and change and captivate, like the light that dances on the river running through the novel. But Ni Dhuibhne isn't just a lovely writer: she has things to say about writing that strike a chord with me:

'A novel is a complex thing. Sometimes I think of it as a building, a house...and the challenge is to design, construct and decorate it as well as one can. But...when it comes to the crunch, the writer knows that even if there is a flaw in the design, even if something goes badly wrong, no one is going to die. Some readers might be bored, or the artist disappointed. But that is it. Writing a novel that fails is not a hanging offence. The world will get over it. This gives the novel writer a wonderful freedom. Although art is demanding and the artist needs to take pains, it is a sense of irresponsibility that is the writer's greatest gift.' 

There are many rivers in books that have stayed in my mind  down the years, from Wind in the Willows to V.S.Naipaul's A Bend in the River and I'm reading another right now: Diane Setterfield's Once Upon a River which is mysterious, lyrical and engrossing, and exactly what I need right now. 500 pages, but I'm prepared to make an exception for this one...

And I'll leave you with the best advice I've had so far this year, courtesy of Rangan Chatterjee, the Radio Times resident doctor: don't watch the News more than once a day and whatever you do, don't watch it at bedtime. Very wise. Your dreams are probably bad enough already. 

A belated Happy New Year, my friends, and may 2021 and the Year of the Ox be kinder to us all.