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.

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.

A TALE OF TWO PUZZLES

The Reading Room

On Christmas morning Professor Gloom found a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle in his stocking. It was called The Reading Room and featured a lot of books and, appropriately, a telescope. I got one too: The Fantasy Bookshop.

I usually limit myself to doing jigsaws while I'm talking on the phone, waiting for food to cook, or listening to something on the radio, and I like to do them downstairs on the dining-room table. But Gloom got to the table first this time, so I decided to do mine upstairs, in my study. Big mistake: every time I went up to my desk to work I ended up doing the puzzle instead.

Fantasy Bookshop (This might be the one that was finished first.)

But there was another problem - almost immediately an unfortunate element of competition crept in: who was going to finish theirs first? We pretended there wasn't a race going on at all, but of course we were both hell-bent on winning. So someone would casually remark that they were going to work on their novel/ paper/ Greek revision - and then sneak off to their jigsaw. Words were exchanged and feelings ran high, there was even an accusation made that someone had UNDONE a bit of the other's in the middle of the night...

Modesty forbids that I say who won but I don't think we'll be doing any more for a while, not at the same time anyway. We won't be eating any turkey either. Professor Gloom won our Christmas turkey at golf. I don't even like the things - give me a goose or a duck any day - and this one weighed in at almost 9kg. (And given the secrecy surrounding its collection - at the dead of night, from the back of white van in a carpark - I strongly suspect it fell off the back of a lorry.) With 500g of butter under the skin and stuffed with onions, garlic and lemons, it wasn't too bad, but there's still an awful lot of it in the freezer, so if anyone missed out on turkey this year, you know where to come.

In between the eating, drinking, puzzle-mania and old movies on TV, I managed to read a few books. 'Crooked Heart' by Lissa Evans had been recommended on Radio 4's 'A Good Read' and turned out to be a funny, touching story about an orphaned war-time evacuee and his profitable (and criminal) business partnership with a crooked foster-mother.

Before that I read 'Grief Is The Thing With Feathers'. I had to read it quickly because it was intended as Kelly McCaughrain's Christmas present but luckily it's a slim book, a beautiful, haunting - and funny - poem to loss, partly related by Crow, who will stick in your mind forever. I also bought Myra Zepf's wonderful picture book 'Don't Go To School!' for the various grandchildren. (It's the first of her books to be translated into English; the others are all in Irish.)


My own Christmas presents included Stephen Fry's 'Heroes' - a witty re-telling of the stories of the likes of Theseus and Jason - and  Madeline Miller's 'Circe'. (I'd bought this one some months earlier: what I do is I buy presents throughout the year, and give them to Professor Gloom to hide until Christmas. I'm so old now that by the time I open them - assuming he remembers where he put them - I've forgotten all about them, so he doesn't have to rack his brains about what to buy me and I get delightful surprises that I actually want. A win-win situation.)

Anyway, I greatly enjoyed 'Circe'. Even before my son had the good sense to marry a Greek wife, I was in love with all things Greek. I soaked up mythology as a child - I even had a cat called Circe. In Miller's book she's a remarkably honourable immortal, and well-disposed towards humans - apart from the ones she turns into pigs. But the rest of the gods are an absolute shower: arrogant, touchy, dangerous, and continually at each other's throats. I was frequently reminded of our politicians... and I'm not sure a bunch of Greek gods wouldn't do a better job.

And now I see Jan Carson is compiling a fantasy literary government. This could turn into a good game. I'm still working on my own list but it will probably include Mary Poppins and Gandalf. And possibly Charlotte the spider from Charlotte's Webb - a creature of infinite patience and attention to detail. Which is exactly what you need for jigsaw puzzles.