AS OLD AS METHUSELAH

According to the Book of Genesis, Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, which seems a bit unlikely. But perhaps that was a recording error, and what they meant to say was ninety-six years nine months. Or else every year in Methuselah's company just felt like ten.

I am now 78 (which is more than old enough) but so far I've been one of the lucky ones: I can still walk unaided, eat, drink and enjoy the company of family and friends. What I value most of all though - like my personal role models, Miss Piney Trigger and Mehitabel - is my independence. 

Mehitabel, in case you've forgotten, is the friend of Archy the cockroach, narrator of the humorous verse of Don Maquis. She's an alley cat on her 9th life whose favourite refrain is 'wotthehell'. And John Masefield's Piney Trigger, from The Midnight Folk, is a wicked old woman in a very gay dressing-gown, reading a sprightly story, at which she was laughing. Beside her, on a table, was a bottle of champagne: she sipped a glass of the wine from time to time. In her mouth was a long cigarette-holder containing a lighted cigarette. And if you'd tried to put Piney Trigger in some ghastly Home, she'd have drawn her pistol and booted you down the stairs.

I cannot for the life of me see what the point is of keeping people alive just so that they can linger on in some deeply depressing holding-centre. And please don't tell me the answer is better palliative care. I've seen far too many of my friends and family die long drawn-out deaths, and it doesn't matter how much kindness you're treated with, it can't begin to make up for the pain, the immobility, the loss of dignity and hope. Which is why I am so angry about the Assisted Dying bill being voted down, yet again. 

There's plenty of assisted dying for the elderly in books, of course, usually of the smother-Granny-to-speed-up-the-inheritance variety, but the people in Lyse Doucet's remarkable The Finest Hotel in Kabul (winner of the Women's Non Fiction prize in 2026) are just doing their best to stay alive. Seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens who run and work in the hotel, it's a wonderful human history of modern Afghanistan, by a courageous and compassionate journalist.

The book I've enjoyed most though, in the past few weeks, is Ann Patchett's Whistler. I've read and liked all her books but this one might be my favourite. The story of Daphne's chance encounter with her former stepfather, Eddie Triplett (a dying old man, as it happens, but the most enjoyable, life-enhancing company you could hope to meet) is an absolute pleasure to read. 

Lastly, The Ballad of William Bloat. The Irish are masters of black humour and this old copy of mine, published by my own one-time publishers, Blackstaff Press, is illustrated by Hector McDonnell. For those of you who don't know it, it begins In a mean abode on the Shankhill Road lived a man called William Bloat. He had a wife, the curse of his life, who continually got his goat... So he cuts her throat and then hangs himself with her bedsheet - cursing, with his last breath, the Pope. And this is how it ends:

But the strangest turn to the whole concern is only just beginnin', 

He went to Hell but his wife got well, and she's still alive and sinnin',            

For the razor blade was foreign made, but the sheet was Irish linen.

I've been thinking about my own exit plans. You can of course get lucky: Aeschylus is said to have been killed by a tortoise dropped from on high by an eagle. Apparently the bird mistook his bald head for a rock. My own current favourite is to sit on top of a moonlit Irish mountain with a case of good wine and drink till I topple gently over the edge. Or it would be, if not for the difficulty of lugging a case of wine up a mountain, plus the near certainty of any moonlit Irish night turning before long to pouring rain and freezing temperatures. I think I might just try to read myself to death instead.

SEARED TO DEATH

My daughters once decided that I had far too many scarves and wraps, so they counted them (the ones they could find anyway) and announced that I had 52 and needed help. Why they were concerned I don't know (they make off with half my clothes anyway, and the dressing-up box and resident cats all benefit) but it's a good thing they've never counted my books. 

I haven't counted them myself, but the thing about living in a house full of books is that there's always something to read, never mind which room you find yourself in. And when you badly need something to distract you from the prevailing gloom (and the last half dozen literary best-sellers you bought were uniformly depressing) then at least you know there's always a PG Wodehouse or an old-fashioned crime novel lurking somewhere to cheer you up.

The last few months have seen the death of a friend and of a much-loved cat, as well as major illness and minor ailments, not to mention dental disasters, ocular migraines, cancelled holidays and death threats to our politician daughter. It has also been unnaturally hot and oppressive for Northern Ireland, and instead of being grateful for the endless dry weather, I've felt deeply homesick for southern Africa. So distraction has been needed, and the first book on top of my bedside pile was a novella. (I'm a big fan of novellas: at least if they're grim the pain is soon over.) 

This one was The Ferryman and his Wife, by Frode Grytten, the lyrical, dreamlike story of the last day of a Norwegian ferryman's life. It was an undeniably beautiful and unusual little book, but given the subject matter  not what I needed at the time. So I turned to Sarah Moss. 

I've enjoyed her books before and The Tidal Zone is a thought-provoking novel about a father's bedside vigil as his teenage daughter's life hangs in the balance following an anaphylactic attack. I've survived anaphylaxis myself on a couple of occasions, so it interested me all the more, but unfortunately I started reading on the same day that my sister in South Africa went into hospital for a routine operation which turned into an 8-week life-and-death nightmare. So in the end it was a bit too close to the bone for comfort.

Next I tried Maggie O'Farrell. I always look forward to reading her books and Land has a beautiful, vibrant cover. Inside though, I found it so utterly searing that despite the fact that she's such a wonderful writer, I had to give up. The terrible suffering of Irish famine victims, workhouse misery, child cruelty...oh god! To be fair though, in a better frame of mind I might have felt differently, and the reports I hear from other people have been good. Perhaps I'll try again another day.

My sister, I'm glad to report, is making progress at last, and luckily there have been things to celebrate.  But I suspect I'm not alone in longing for books that will take me away from the miserable realities of life, not drown me in even more! I want to be cheered, for pity's sake, not seared! 

So grateful thanks to the Slightly Foxed friend who mentioned Miss Read. I used to work in libraries full of her books, which were mostly borrowed by women I then saw as very old and old-fashioned (and who were probably a lot younger than I am now) so I dismissed them out of hand. And yes, Farther Afield is hardly cutting-edge, but it's gentle warmth and humour, and beautiful descriptions of both the English countryside and of Crete, were as comforting as being tucked up in bed with a glass of warm milk and honey. 

Rachel Joyce also did the trick with The Homemade God. In fact, I couldn't put it down. She writes well, her characters enthral you, and the wit and warmth perfectly balance the darker shadows. This one is the story of a famous artist, his adult children and his unexpected marriage to an unknown woman decades younger. There's also a sudden death, and an Italian villa on an island in a lake. What more could you possibly want? Well, a slightly happier ending perhaps, but you can't have everything, and it certainly took my mind off my troubles.

And finally, Arundhati Roy and Mother Mary Comes to Me. I don't read many memoirs or biographies (least of all about writers whose books I admire - authors aren't always as likeable as their books) but I picked this one up in the wonderfully quirky Little Acorns Bookstore in Derry, where we stopped on our way up to Donegal for a few soul-restoring days, and I'm so glad I did.

'

Jaw-dropping', 'inspiring', 'a tribute to thorny love and savage grace - a memoir like no other': for once all the praise is merited. And despite the hideous violence, poverty and political upheavals of modern India that she so movingly chronicles, it is a wonderfully funny, captivating and absorbing read. 

A remarkable woman and writer, and a truly remarkable story. Go out and get yourself a copy now.

SIGNS OF THINGS TO COME

Professor Gloom never fails to surprise me. In between the hours spent deciphering the mysteries of the universe (and those of bridge and golf) he reads murder mysteries and Georgette Heyer historical romances. These I am accustomed to, but last week's book was Just Another Dead Boy by Kelly McCaughrain. It's a Romeo and Juliet-style Young Adult novel full of 'that heady cocktail of hormones, life force and jaded ennui' so typical of youth. And so untypical of septuagenarians. Apart from the ennui, that is.

Now, Kelly is an exceptional writer, who regards Gloom as her own tame astrophysicist when she needs scientific advice, but I wouldn't have expected him to give her book more than a passing glance. Instead of which, he was hooked. He even came along to a Belfast Book Festival event, chaired by Children's Writing Fellow Shirley Anne McMillan, which featured four YA writers with new books: Kelly, Sue Divin (Runaway Road) Jenny Ireland (French Kisses) - all of them award-winning writers - and Stephen Daly, whose first novel The Last Death Poet I also enjoyed - to my own great surprise.

The book festival took place at the Crescent Art Centre (which never fails to deliver extremely well-run programmes of events) and Belfast's much-loved No Alibis bookshop ran a pop-up bookstore in the foyer. Of course, the island of Ireland has always been famous for literary talent, but Northern Ireland punches above it's weight, and there were an encouraging number of local authors on display. Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, Louise Kennedy, Bernie McGill: they're all wonderful short story writers as well as novelists. But it's the YA writers who seem to be stealing the show right now, and there are others like Sheena Wilkinson and Angeline King whose books I've also enjoyed - again, to my surprise.

The book I've most enjoyed recently though, is Donal Ryan's wonderful 'Heart, be at Peace', and I have Maggie O'Farrell's 'Land' waiting. I also recently discovered someone entirely new: Sofka Zinovieff. I'd heard her interviewed on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions, Michael Berkeley's music programme that regularly throws up memorable guests, and I was so engaged by her (and her Greek connections) that I got hold of her novel Putney. It turned out to be an engrossing, and in many ways surprising, read. I'm very much looking forward to reading The House on Paradise Street next.

I'm also looking forward to Gabriel's Moon. Like me, William Boyd is in his seventies, and has African connections. And it just so happens that the title of the  adult novel I'm publishing this year is Gabriel's Angel. And my two new middle-grade children's books are Moon's Travelling Circus and The Voyage of the Molly Moon, so all these Gabriels and Moons I take to be a promising sign. (Probably of the sort of straws that writers clutch at.)

If only...

Being a writer is bad enough; having to plug your own books is  a nightmare. Especially if, like me, you loath the whole marketing /publicity business. But this time I've had a brilliant idea, because the one thing I always enjoy is having all my friends round for a party. They're warned each time, on pain of death, not to bring any gifts, and they never pay the slightest attention. But this year  marks our 11th wedding anniversary. It will also be my 78th birthday and Gloom's 79th, so what I plan to do is throw a great big launch /anniversary/ birthday party at home, and instead of bringing the usual wine, flowers, chocolates, etc, every guest will be obliged to buy a book. Or possibly two.

But to get back to Gloom's surprising enjoyment of a YA novel (and mine). I've always been ambivalent about the whole YA category: in my day you went straight from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie, Sci Fi or Mills and Boon, depending on your tastes. But now I think the publishers might be on to an even better thing than they realised. Let me explain: I've never in my whole life had a stye in my eye, but in the last month I've had two nasty, oozing little lumps in rapid succession. My optician confirms that it's age related - much like adolescent acne. So it seems pretty obvious that both Gloom and I are now entering second adolescence, and it's therefore only a matter of time before second childhood kicks in. 

It'll be Winnie the Who? and The Grumpalo next.

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

There are two full moons this month: the Flower Moon on May 1st and a Blue Moon this coming Sunday, on the 31st. And because I have two moons of my own in mind this month, it seems a good time to mention the children's novels I'll be publishing later this year: Moon's Travelling Circus, and the sequel, The Voyage of the Molly Moon.

As a child growing up in Owl's House, that place on the southern tip of Africa that I remember with such affection, the stories I loved most were always about magic and enchantment. Princesses, goblins and deep, dark forests; witches, mermaids and dragons. (I still have shelves full of them, to share with the  grandchildren and to re-read myself.) 

Old favourites

Somehow though, I never managed to find a really magical story set in the part of the world I lived in. We had folk tales, animal and school stories, safari adventures, and books about ordinary, everyday things - many of which I loved - but no Faraway Trees, or ships that flew. They all seemed to belong to children in other far-off countries, and it didn't seem fair. 

My childhood ocean. Whales and sharks
often spotted, but no sea serpents

Which is why I wrote Moon's Travelling Circus, in which a girl with an African  mother and Irish father finds herself on a magical journey through African time and  space. An ancient amulet, a travelling circus, a sorcerer, a time-traveller, dragons and cats all play their parts. And I enjoyed writing it so much that I wrote a sequel - The Voyage of the Molly Moon - in which the main characters are reunited on a voyage around the northern coast of Ireland in search of something lost long ago. In this one there are sea-witches and a sea monster, mysterious lighthouses, and yes, a ship that flies. 

Sadly, both languished with my agent, who loved but couldn't place them. This is hardly surprising because my children's books are undeniably traditional. There are no major traumas or adult issues in them; in fact there are hardly any adults, apart from retired circus people and hotel proprietors whose guests rarely come in through the doors. But the handful of children who have read these stories have given me some wonderful responses. I still treasure the message from a book-loving great-nephew, beginning 'Great-Aunt Helen, this is the best book I have ever read in my LIFE!'  (And no, he wasn't in line for an inheritance.)

So they'll both be published under the Owl's House Press imprint created by Averill Buchanan, with beautiful cover illustrations by the wonderful Rebecca Elliot. (Detail from The Voyage of the Molly Moon on the left.)

And if you're going to publish two books, why not three for luck? Because Gabriel's Angel (completed last year) is my third adult novel. It's about a girl, a garden, a grieving artist, a grumpy old woman, a second-hand bookshop and a ghost. There are links, as always, to Africa and Ireland, and there is also, inevitably, a cat, but unlike my other two adult novels - The Traveller's Guide to Love and Life Study #2 - this one is not autobiographical. (Note to my family: you'll be quite safe reading it.)

It goes without saying that I'm lucky to be able to do this - and it will almost certainly cost me more than I'll ever make back - but for me the five books now under the Owl's House imprint will be tangible proof of years of work, and will, I hope, give pleasure to the occasional reader who borrows one from a local library, or - once in a blue moon  - actually buys one!

OWL'S HOUSE PRESS

I have a great affection for The Secret Bookshelf in Carrickfergus, not just because of my admiration for the owners, Jo and Chris, and the way they've turned this little bookshop into what it is - Best Indie Bookstore (Ireland) 2024 and 2026 - but because it's by the sea. A bookshop by the sea is my idea of heaven. What's more, I always come away with something unexpected. Jan Carson and Horowitz were safe bets, but I've never read anything by T J Klune. The House in the Cerulean Sea caught my eye because of the title. A combination of house and sea - much like bookshop and sea - is hard for me to resist. 

Even more unexpected was The Last Death Poet by Stephen Daly. A book billed as a Young Adult LGBTQ+ novel with a supernatural twist is about as likely to attract me as J D Vance's upcoming memoir about his conversion to Catholicism. Some of my best friends write YA novels (very well, as it happens) but I'm ambivalent about the category and I really don't like the supernatural. Still, I'd met Stephen Daly and I liked him very much. Plus he's local, and the book is set in Belfast, so I bought it. I fully expected to skip through it, or give up after a chapter or two, instead of which I'm half-way through, and I'm hooked. And if you can hook a 77-year-old pedant with limited patience for modern trends, then good for you!

It's also a relief to find that a book which has been widely praised is actually well-written. There's so much rubbish out there, and so many good books that never see the light of day, because getting traditionally published is becoming harder and harder. Which is why, like so many others, I've  turned to self-publishing. Either way, it's a bumpy road, with rather more downs than ups. There's nothing quite as exciting as that first book launch, or seeing your novel in bookshop windows, but then there's the library reading with a turn-out of four, including your husband. Although to be fair, your granny might also have been there. She's been dead for decades, of course, but there was a familiar sighing noise, and a faint smell of wintergreen. (This is what reading Stephen Daly does for you.)

Fortunately, I do have an up of my own to report, and it's connected to a small, rented house called Owl's House in the village of Fish Hoek, near the southern tip of Africa, where I lived for a time as a child. (See detail in autobiographic-art on the right.) On one side of the valley was the Indian Ocean, on the other the Atlantic, and of all the houses I've lived in, this is the one that I remember with the greatest affection and nostalgia. It had a verandah where swallows nested in the summer, a garden where I played with my brother, and a shadowy pond full of frogs and tadpoles. Inside, like all our houses, it was full of books, and it was where I first discovered the world of my imagination.

I've lived in many different flats and houses since then, and every so often I find myself back in some town or country and am tempted to revisit the places I once knew. I've thought about doing this in Northern Ireland, a country I first came to in 1970, but Professor Gloom thinks this is a bad idea. He's probably right. Although, once in Zimbabwe, a man rang our doorbell and explained that his wife, who was with him, had lived in our house many years before. The man's name was Dan Jacobson and he seemed quite surprised when I told him how delighted I was to meet him, a fellow South African whose writing I admired. They stayed for tea and later he sent a signed copy of his autobiographical Time and Time Again, which I still have. 

But to get back to the up I mentioned earlier: with the help of my wonderful editor and publishing director (thank you, Averill Buchanan!) I have a new creative venture. My two previously published adult novels, The Traveller's Guide to Love and Life Study #2, along with two middle-grade children's fantasies, Moon's Travelling Circus and The Voyage of the Molly Moon, are all going to be brought together under the roof of my own imprint. And they'll be joined by my third adult novel, which will be published later this year. 

No doubt there'll be plenty of downs to come, but for the time being it gives me great pleasure to unveil the logo. This, as you can see, is a delightful little owl, because the imprint itself is called Owl's House Press - as a grateful tribute to that long-ago, far-off house where my love of words first began.

STRANGER THAN FICTION

In my second adult novel, a woman living in Ireland is sent a nude portrait of herself, painted decades earlier in South Africa, with no indication of who, or where, it has come from. Then, a year after that novel (Life Study #2) was published, a portrait painted of me in Cape Town when I was about 18 years old, arrived, with no letter or explanation, in Northern Ireland. 

In this case I knew who the sender was: a friend and neighbour from my years in Zimbabwe who had gone back to Nebraska with her American husband. We'd never seen each other again after we left Zimbabwe, but we'd had occasional online contact, which was how I discovered she'd been diagnosed with cancer. She also wrote to say that she took my first novel, The Traveller's Guide to Love, to all her chemo sessions because it made her laugh. Then her husband asked for my address because there was something she wanted him to send me, and the painting duly arrived.

 

I have no memory of how that painting left South Africa, and by then my friend was in a hospice and could no longer speak. A few days later she died. So I will never know for certain how this particular portrait went half way round the world to end up here in County Down, but it now hangs on the wall, a constant reminder of someone dear to me, and a link to both my past and my books.

I'm a very slow writer: I've only written 6 books - 3 for children and 3 for adults - and by any reasonable reckoning (and certainly in monetary terms) I am deeply unsuccessful. But there are other books I've made, hand-written and illustrated, for people in my life who have meant a great deal to me: to commemorate births and weddings (my own second marriage is recorded in Professor Gloom Meets His Match) and once for a dog. But it was one I wrote in 1988 that started it off - which brings me to the next strange link between fiction and truth ...

My third novel, as yet unpublished, begins in Zimbabwe (where I lived and worked for 18 years) and ends with a young African visitor picking up a children's book in London and wondering whether the author could possibly be the childhood friend her mother had so often told her about. 

Now, in 1985 in Harare, I made one of the closest friends of my life. Her name was Linda Buchfink. She and her husband, Gary, had come out from Canada on a 3-year contract; their two children were the same ages as ours, and all of us got on so well that we spent a great deal of time together. We shared holidays and weekend trips, meals and books and bottles of wine; and in 1987 we all went to the races to celebrate my son's 9th birthday. (It was his request and I thought that if we gave each of the four children a sum of money which - when they inevitably lost it - it would be a good life lesson about the dangers of betting. In the event, they won.) 

When their contract was up, the Buchfinks went back to Canada, and we were bereft. But before they left we gave them a book about their time in Zimbabwe. It was called The Buchfinks in Africa. I wrote it, our two older children helped me illustrate it, and my then husband designed the cover and wrote it out in beautiful calligraphy. And we all cried.

But Linda and I never lost touch. For the next few years we wrote regularly to each other, sent cards and photographs and family updates, and looked forward to the day when we would visit them in Canada. Then, in January 1994, they flew up in a helicopter to go skiing, hit the side of a mountain, and were all killed. 

Friends and neighbours kindly let me know that copies of our book had been made for all the family, and sent letters and information about their funeral and memorials, but after that we somehow lost touch. A few years later I left Zimbabwe myself, returning to Northern Ireland with my youngest child. But I'd kept all my friend's letters and photos, as well as a smudged black and white photocopy of the book we'd made, and in all the years since, she and her family have never been far from my mind. 

Then, just before Christmas, my daughter (who has a public profile) received an email from a woman in Canada asking if she was any relation to the Nicholl family who had been in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, and whom she'd been trying to contact for a very long time. Many emails, text messages and an hour-long telephone conversation later, I not only find myself in touch with two of Linda's best friends, but for the first time in more than 30 years I can see our book again in colour! 

So there you are: not just two totally unexpected connections to the past, but a reminder that what you write can be rewarded in ways you could never have imagined. It is 32 years this week since our friends died, but as the last lines of that first book read, 'The sun that sets over Africa is the same sun that rises over Canada... and good friends are never very far away if you keep them safe in your hearts.'