TRICK OR TREAT

After Bernie McGill's The Watch House (go and buy it NOW and if possible take it to Rathlin Island and read it there) the next book in the pile was A Card From Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp. I don't know where I got it - I buy books every week, friends and family lend or give them to me, and by the time I get round to reading them, their origins are long forgotten. (This can be helpful if you've got your eye on any of my books: all you need to do is check there's no inscription, and say 'This isn't the copy I lent you a couple of years ago is it?' I'll probably apologise profusely for not returning it.)

Anyway, to get back to Angela Carter. It was top of the heap of twenty-odd books I'm planning to read soon. There are five times as many lying around that I'm planning to read if I live long enough.
It's small (103 pages) beautifully produced (Bloomsbury) and it's a captivating portrait of a writer interspersed with the postcards and messages Carter sent over several years to Clapp, who was her friend and literary executor.

I fell in love with Angela Carter when I first read The Bloody Chamber, that fabulously lush and sinister retelling of old fairy tales. Then I read Nights at the Circus and Wise Children, but what I most admire was her glorious, fierce refusal to be anyone but herself. She was, in her own words, 'a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast...an outlandish jewel' - outspoken, political, a fearless and unfettered writer. You read Angela Carter for inspiration, provocation, and for wild, flamboyant flights of fantasy, not literary restraint.

I have a soft spot for small, beautifully produced books - preferably short, illustrated and unusual. Step forward The Emma Press. (https://theemmapress.com/) I only discovered them when I bought a copy of Jan Carson's Postcard Stories. And I was thinking about Jan the other morning because I'd seen on Facebook that she was celebrating Miracle Day - the day her lost laptop (with all her work on it) was returned intact. What a happy note on which to start my own day, I thought - who knows, perhaps a miracle would be waiting for me too? Then I turned on my laptop and found all my desktop files missing. Nothing. Even Dropbox was empty.

Professor Gloom held out little hope that they could be recovered. Still, he has access to the Great Wizard of Queens (I can't tell you his name but he has a closely-guarded office somewhere in the labyrinthine depths of the University) so he departed with my laptop, leaving me to contemplate the random cruelties of fate.

And you know what? I had a wonderfully peaceful and creative day. I sat at my desk with paper and pen and felt a Zen-like serenity. Yes, I thought about the years and years of work that had gone into my latest book, but I also realised that the chances of anyone ever publishing it were so slight that I should probably be grateful to be spared the exhausting effort required these days to hook an agent, interest a publisher and get your book noticed, talked about, talked up, sold... There are several reasons why I like short books and short stories - and I recommend the one I'm reading at the moment, by the way: David Park's 'Gods and Angels', which is beautifully written and somehow manages to be both understated and compelling at the same time. Apart from the fact that small books are easier to carry around, I've never managed to produce more than 50,000 words myself so naturally I look on them with favour. But the main thing is that I'm 69 and my stamina is diminishing. And before anyone tells me today's 69 is the new 49, no it's bloody not: it might be the new trying-to-stay-49 but that's a different matter. The plain truth is that when you're pushing 70, you get tired. You ache, you twinge, you lose concentration and patience, and occasionally you behave like a cantankerous old bat.

But even cantankerous old bats can acknowledge miracles. The Great Wizard (may he live forever) fixed my laptop and recovered my files. And a day away from the reproachful wails of unfinished manuscripts (like so many half-born children) never mind the twitter and gibber and racket of social media, gave me the breathing space I needed to work out what it was that I wanted to write next. I also practised my Greek, and went out to buy my Hallowe'en outfit. And if you're a friend or relation of one of the little trick-or-treaters who covered our door last year with something that wouldn't come off, which meant it had to be repainted, please tell them I'm very sorry we were out, and therefore unable to give them any sweets. Not that they want sweets, or so I'm told: it's only money these days - and some of them don't even bother with the outfit, they just pull their hoodies up....but don't worry, I'm ready for them this year. I've got my gashed throat transfer, my glowing eyeballs and my fangs. And at the first ring of the doorbell I'm going to erupt out of here like a fiend from Hell, howling and screeching and brandishing my broomstick as I chase the little hellions down the drive.

I hope Angela Carter would approve.

BAPTISMS AND BROKEN BONES...

We arrived in Kalamata on July 6, just in time to celebrate the third birthday of granddaughter Erin Eleni - she of the exploding hair, whose every inch vibrates with energy, and whose smile melts stones.

Having recently killed off a character in Greece, I was hoping life wouldn’t emulate art, but luckily no fatal accident befell me. Instead I broke my wrist. This gave me the choice of finding a hospital and possibly spending the whole week in plaster (and out of the water) or strapping it up and relying on the glorious Ionian sea and copious quantities of wine to act as anaesthetics. I went for the second option and would do the same again, because to swim before sunrise in the bay of Kalamata, rocked and soothed by clear cool water – and again in the heat of the morning, and in the afternoon, restored by lunch (bread, wine, feta, olives) and a long lazy siesta – this is close to paradise. And when the sun sets, turning the sea to glass and the mountains pink, there is a little open-air restaurant above the bay where you can choose your fish from the day’s catch, to be grilled and served up with oregano-flecked potatoes and Greek salad, all washed down with carafes of cold white wine. 

The main reason for being in Kalamata was to join the family circus that gathers for celebrations, in this instance the christening of Aiden Socrates, one year-old brother to Erin Eleni, who is so entirely delectable that if the fish and olives had run out, this grandmother might well have eaten him. If you have ever attended a Greek orthodox baptism you will know that it is a long, incense-soaked, tradition-laden ceremony, in this case in the little church in the village where Erin and Aiden’s other grandparents were born and raised, and where the entire community seems to be involved in any event.

The village is up in the hills. There is one street, and the taverna looks down over the sweep of ruins that is ancient Messene. It is a magical place, even without flowers, candles, music, and the stars burning overhead. Professor Gloom, as predicted, became exceedingly merry. In the end, the dancing, eating, drinking, and long intense conversations - no less warm and delightful for being largely incomprehensible - went on until damn near dawn.

Two days later most of the party decamped to Kefalonia, but Gloom and I, along with Councillor Kate, went on a trip around the Mani. The Mani is famous for being wild and remote, and the Maniots for their feuds, their tower-houses, and their fierce independence. It also inspired Patrick Leigh Fermor to write his book about travelling around the southern Peloponnese. ‘Mani’ is a dense, beautifully-written mixture of travel, history, folk-lore and anecdote, by a man whose digressions are legendary. Who else, musing on strange communities, could mention in the space of a paragraph the Mevlevi dervishes of the Tower of Winds, the Chams of Thesprotia, the scattered Souliots of Roumeli, the wandering quacks of Eurytania, the Kravarite mendicants of Aetolia, and the phallus-wielding Bounariots of Tyrnavos?

Leigh-Fermor’s extraordinary account of his youthful journey, on foot, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople can be found in the two volumes written decades later: ‘A Time of Gifts’ and ‘Between the Woods and the Water’. The third volume was never completed, but after his death Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper put together ‘The Broken Road’ from the work he left behind.  I’d admired him as a writer for so long, and I was curious to see the place where he lived for so many years: Kardamyli, a little village down the coast from Kalamata. So we drove there first – or rather, we were driven by the peerless Dionisios Barounis, who has ferried us around on our last two trips to Greece. (We Transfer You taxi and mini van services – www.wetransferyou.gr -  if you find yourself in need of a cab in the Peloponnese, look no further.)

Kardamyli is lovely: small, peaceful and seductive. Then through Lakgada, where we stopped to look at frescoes in a tiny church, and north to Sparta which is famous but forgettable. Then up into the hills to our main objective, Mystras, a sprawling Byzantine complex of churches, palaces and courtyards, some in ruins, some restored, and all clinging to the precipitous slopes of Mount Taiyetos. We picked our way down the stony path in 40 degree heat, resting in patches of shade or ruined doorways, almost deafened by cicadas, and dazed by the stupendous view below us.

Then we fell into Dionisios’s waiting car, to be transported back up into the mountains and through the spectacular Langadha Pass to a small taverna on the far side, where the forest enclosed us, and the music of birds and waterfalls accompanied our lunch of bread, olives, chicken souvlaki, pork in lemon – oh god, the food!

Last Friday we got home. All praise to Bangor Minor Injuries staff who x-rayed and plastered me up in no time at all. Given the number of older women I’ve run into since – all with limbs in plaster – I’m planning to take up sling and splint design. There has to be something more attractive than frayed beige cotton and neck-throttling foam. I envisage emerald silk and indigo linen, with artful little loops for attaching keys and sunglasses, or the odd pocket to hold your purse, or possibly a G+T.

‘Injuries-R-Us’ – I can see it already: I'm going to be the Dior of damaged limbs, the Armani of the accident-prone...and it has to be more profitable than writing.

FROM KILLICK-CLAW TO KALAMATA AND BEYOND...

I started The Shipping News twice, and each time gave up. Quoyle was such a hulk of misery, I didn’t want to know what happened to him, and the chopped-off prose style grated on my ear. (I never got over Mrs MacBeth telling me my own prose had a fine, poetic quality and consequently lean towards the lyrical.) Well, third time lucky, and a heartfelt vote of thanks to Councillor Kate’s reading group who chose it as one of their books.

This is a group who read novels or non-fiction about far-off places they don’t have time to actually visit. Or possibly don’t want to: no harm to Newfoundland but it sounds like somewhere I’d pay a lot to avoid. But The Shipping News sings, and once your ear is attuned, you are hooked as surely as one of those cod whose cheeks are forever stewing in the Tickle Motel.

Annie Proulx brings her characters and landscape to spare, beautiful life. A man leans in a doorframe, ‘hands draining into his pockets’ and ‘…the fiords, thousand-foot cliffs over creamy water. The same birds still flew from them like signal flares, razored the air with their cries…’ The names: Petal Bear, Nutbeam, Wavey Prowse...and shambling, spade-jawed Quoyle will steal your heart away.

I don’t know how The Shipping News ends because I haven’t finished it, and don’t quite want to, so I’m taking it with me on holiday. I’m off to Greece on Thursday for the christening of the youngest grandchild. My daughter-in-law’s family comes from a place in the hills above Kalamata, and family celebrations involve the entire village as well as the travelling circus of close friends and family that accompanies my son wherever he goes. Professor Gloom has remarked more than once that he feels as though he’s married into the Mafia, but is, I know, secretly looking forward to a bacchanalian week of eating, drinking, dancing and general mayhem.

The only worry I have (apart from Clementina savaging the cat-sitter) is that the novel I recently finished writing has a central character who bears a faint resemblance to myself and who meets an unfortunate fate in Greece. I’m hoping Life won’t imitate Art, but, if I do come to a sticky end, well what the hell - it will be fabulous publicity.

CLINGING TO THE CAROUSEL

Brexit, Trump, Manchester, Grenfell; the looming shadow of the DUP - sometimes it's hard to stay optimistic.

But for almost every roundabout, there's a swing. Taking the train down to Dublin to listen to Booker Prize-winner Arundhati Roy speaking about her new book, and her life of human rights activism, was cheering. In fact, I perked up so much I found myself in a pub with Councillor Kate, Patsy Horton of Blackstaff and writer Bernie McGill, all drinking G+Ts and laughing immoderately, as though the world were not tumbling down around our ears.

On the downside, libraries, post offices, and corner shops keep closing - those few remaining places where people can still safely, cheaply, interact with each other. Machines are busily replacing humans, and here in Northern Ireland, our children still aren't going to school with each other. On the other hand, the anniversary of the death of another passionate, principled woman - Jo Cox, whose life was ended by a man who spent all his miserable days locked in on himself with only the poisonous thoughts of far-right fanatics to fill his mind - inspired people across the land to reach out to each other.

And we had an engagement party in the family, which drew a wonderfully youthful, buoyant, multicultural crowd to celebrate. We were a pretty multicultural lot to start with: then the eldest married into a big, warm, Greek Orthodox family; the next one married an Indian Sikh; and now the youngest is adding Irish Catholic to the mix - which as a family makes us multicultural, multi-faith and increasingly multitudinous.

As for me - a South African with no religion, married to an English astronomer whose interest in heaven is purely practical - rewards in an afterlife are not anticipated: I think I've been rewarded enough already, here on earth. Arundhati Roy remarked that she was privileged to be alive - and possibly alive because she was privileged. The people who died in the Grenfell Tower weren't privileged -  I lived in a tower block in Belfast once, and I thought then, and think now, that it's no way for human beings to live. Most of the people who vote for the DUP or Donald Trump aren't privileged either. But slagging them off or ridiculing their ignorance won't help. We need to fight the things that drive us apart and isolate us from each other, not raise the walls higher that imprison us all.

I am privileged. Even when I was a great deal younger and a whole lot poorer, I was privileged. I had a white skin, food, shelter and education, and most of all, I was always rich beyond measure in family and friends. All of which gives me a responsibility to do what I can, and I'm going to start by promising all my future (and now entirely undeserved) winter fuel allowances to the only political party left standing in Northern Ireland that seems more interested in reconciliation than division, and that's Alliance. And I'm going to boycott that bloody machine in my local library that tries to get me to borrow and return books without ever engaging with another human being.

Finally, to cheer yourself up (because G+T is only temporarily cheering) read something wonderful. At the moment I'm re-reading the underrated Elizabeth Jane Howard whose novels about the Cazalet family span 20 turbulent years from 1937, and are utterly engrossing. But there are plenty of others for those dark days when all you really want is something big and funny and sweeping that lifts you up and carries you far, far away. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for instance, or The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Arthur Dent and Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are all swept up in events that turn their worlds upside down. Hapless, hopeful, occasionally heroic, they cling to their star-crossed carousel and somehow endure. Like so many.

BELFAST'S JOY, MANCHESTER'S SORROW

Belfast's classical concert-goers are always generous with their applause. This may be because for so long we had to be grateful for whatever came our way, but I have to say I've seen standing ovations where I wouldn't necessarily have expected them. But on Saturday night at the Waterfront we all had good reason to applaud, because the Ulster Orchestra excelled itself.

It was a gala concert celebrating 50 seasons with Beethoven's 9th symphony - and what an Ode to Joy it was. Orchestra, soloists, and the Belfast Philharmonic Choir gave it their all, spurred on by conductor Rafael Payare - a magician whose rapport with his players is tangible. The music swelled, the voices soared, Payare whirled on his podium like a musical dervish, and at the end the audience surged to its feet. (Well, not Professor Gloom: he thought it was rather good but he hasn't stood for anyone since Otto Klemperer's last Beethoven concert, back in the 60s....)

Now you may be thinking, Oh God, classical music - expensive, middle class, elitist, why would I bother? Well, I'll tell you why: good music can enrich your soul and lift your heart. It can surprise you, inspire you, move you and comfort you - and anyway, the Ulster Orchestra doesn't just do classical. There's an Abba concert next season, for pity's sake; there are evenings of dance and film music, and 'Come and Play' events, and tickets are available for no more than it would cost you for a few drinks down the pub - and for this you get to listen to professional musicians: people who practice for hours and hours every day to do the thing they love as well as they possibly can. Plus, in years to come you'll be able to say, Oh yes, I saw Rafael Payare conducting in Belfast when he was still at the beginning of his career. And you might also witness moments of unexpected poignancy, as when Payare, himself a Venezuelan, quoted Schiller's line 'All mankind will be brothers' and dedicated Saturday night's concert to the people of Venezuela.

Venezuela is a country in turmoil, as this country has been, and my own, and as so many still are; as Manchester is today after another concert, one which should have been an occasion for joy, but ended instead in tragedy and horror. The hope that one day all mankind will be brothers and sisters seems momentarily fainter than ever - but then you hear about the kindness of strangers, the immediate Mancunian response of resilience and generosity, and it gives you hope.

Troubled places bleed people. There have been exiles and refugees since time began, and all too often we respond to them with fear and mistrust, but those never-ending waves of the dispossessed and wretched are just ordinary people like you and me, fleeing from war, from hunger, from the violence of madmen who do not care that children will be maimed and mangled by their pursuit of power, or lunatic ideology; who do not care about the parents whose children will never now come home. And who knows how many Picassos, Prousts, Payares, have been lost to the world in the process?

Well, in the end we all have to do what we can to make this a better place, to uphold our belief - in spite of everything - in the ideals of peace and brotherhood. So support your local orchestra if you can, be kind to refugees, and let's help beauty and artistry to work their healing magic wherever there's a chance.

PROFESSOR GLOOM'S FINEST HOUR

I went to my first undergraduate lecture since my misspent youth the other day. It was the very last one of Professor Gloom's illustrious career and as I'd never heard him deliver a lecture to other people (he frequently lectures me, which is an unrewarding exercise for all concerned) I thought I'd tag along.

The lecture theatre was full of students, which surprised me, given that the subject was a branch of Physics so obscure that only three people on the planet understand it. But the bigger surprise was Professor Gloom himself. I knew he was clever, witty, grumpy and kind (an irresistible combination as far as I'm concerned) but I had no idea how good he was as a lecturer.

As Councillor Kate, who's very fond of her stepfather and tagged along with me, later said, he was his typically humble, intelligent and good-natured self. He also shelled out the last quid ever to a student who proved him wrong about something. He's been doing this for years, apparently, and so far it hasn't bankrupted him. If he extended the practice to paying me when I prove him wrong - not about Physics, obviously, but ordinary things like where he left the car, or the use of 'fewer' rather than 'less', it would be a lot more expensive...

Anyway, it was all amazingly entertaining, if entirely incomprehensible - apart from the bits about Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Thomas Wyatt. What? You didn't know they came into Advanced Physics, along with bosons and quarks? Well, that just shows how little you know.

He didn't tell anyone it was his last-ever lecture, and there was no-one there from the administration with a bottle of wine or bunch of flowers to say thank-you for 37 years of lectures (Queens doesn't go in for that sort of namby-pamby nonsense) but at the end there was prolonged applause from the students. They recognise a good thing when they see it, and good for them.

There'll be prolonged applause for Sinead Morrissey too, I shouldn't wonder, when she launches her 6th collection - On Balance - at Queens tonight.  I'm sorry I can't be there because Sinead is the woman who changed my mind about contemporary poetry. Until I met her I would have said I preferred my poets dead and consequently unable to pop out from behind a tree and inflict their latest offerings on me. (I have a searing memory of someone pursuing me round a park while reading something called 'When Will The Anguish End?' When indeed.)

Sinead is not only an extraordinary poet, she is also, like Professor Gloom, extraordinarily nice. Queens was lucky to have them both.

DAYS WITHOUT END

When our local vet described a cat in need of a home as ‘middle-aged, grumpy and likes her food’ I knew at once she was the one for us because she sounded so like Professor Gloom. So Clementina moved in and brought joy and beauty into our lives - despite the fact that she’s an unusually manipulative and demanding creature, even for a cat. Lately though, her behaviour, which was always slightly odd, has been getting odder.

She wanders from room to room, wailing like a soul in torment, then leaps onto my lap in a frenzy of affectionate purring. And 2 seconds later she bites me because I’ve answered the phone or shifted my leg. Our ankles are scarred from her mistaking our passing slippers for dangerous foes, but in calmer moments she follows me about the house like a little dog.

This reminded me so much of my mother in her final years (the following-about, not the purring or biting) that I looked up dementia in cats, and what do you know, it’s quite common. There’s nothing much to be done about Clementina, other than be kind and patient; anyway, quite apart from the fact that we love her, for better or worse, I’m hoping someone will be kind to us when our last marbles go rattling down the drain.

It’s different with people; there are things you can do, and 3 in particular that I wish I’d known earlier in my own mother’s decline:

1)   Don’t argue. When the person suffering from dementia says someone cut up all their underwear, or the DUP stole their pension, just say ‘Oh dear, what a nuisance!’ Or ‘Oh well, what can you expect from the DUP?’

2)   Don’t ask questions – give information. You don’t say ‘Do you remember Betty?’ You say, ‘Here is Betty, your sister/daughter/friend/whatever.’

3)   Give comforting answers. ‘Where is my husband?’ should not elicit the response ‘He died 5 years ago’ but rather ‘He’s at work/just gone out to walk the dog’ even if the dog also died a long time ago.

I’m sure there’s a lot more advice to be had but that’s mine for what it’s worth, and if anyone’s got any about cats, I’d be glad to hear it.

Professor Gloom, being an astro-physicist, is naturally a little strange himself, but he has an extremely kind heart and is easily persuaded to accompany me on what are often wild-goose chases. The last was a trip to Portadown to track down an item said to be only available at the local branch of Dunnes. We got on the train in Holywood, got off at Portadown an hour and 10 minutes later, and found the item was no longer in the store. So we armed ourselves with coffee and chocolate, got back on the train, and read peacefully all the way home. It's the sort of thing you can do when you're a pensioner, and it was quite a soothing way to spend the morning, even though the 

book I was reading was Days Without End by Sebastian

Barry. This is not soothing. It is extraordinary, heart-

breaking, sometimes unbearably beautiful, and at times 

just plain unbearable.

A bit like Clementina.

LITERARY SHENANIGANS...

A year ago I was persuaded, against my better judgement, to take part in the first Women Aloud NI event at No Alibis bookshop. A whole clatter (a quire?) of women writers were going to celebrate International Women's Day by reading short extracts from their work (well at least they'd be short) but then we were all going to have to read together. That's bits of fiction, poetry, travel, biography, you-name-it, read ALOUD, at the same time, in a confined space.

It was obvious to me that the organiser, Jane Talbot, was a lunatic, but she was a persuasive lunatic, and I'd already agreed, so I turned up. I took the other two members of the Literary Ladies Get Slightly Drunk Society along with me for moral support, but in the end we all enjoyed ourselves hugely and I had to take back everything I'd said.

I didn't take part in this year's events, mainly because I was reading in three branch libraries on three successive evenings last week, and that seemed like enough excitement. Also, this year's shenanigans took place in public places - in Belfast and in Dublin - and I don't think I'm that brave. Not without dark glasses and a false moustache, which might have looked slightly out of place... But I take off my hat to all who took part (and to the indefatigable Jane) for their enthusiasm, and their dedication to making women's voices heard.

The library events were a pleasure. Lesley Allen, Angeline King and I read from our novels and answered questions at Newtownbreda, Banbridge and Larne libraries, and at all three we were made enormously welcome. The number of people who turned out to hear us was surprising - to me, anyway. I don't usually expect much of an audience - Professor Gloom, the Literary Ladies (suitably bribed), two drunks and a passing dog would be average. Mind you, the Literary Ladies provide a certain arty glamour, and Professor Gloom's furrowed brow and downcast eyes are generally taken for evidence of deep literary thought, when he is, in fact, playing Solitaire on his phone.

The other great pleasure of public readings is that you get to know your fellow-writers, discover the

things you have in common, and the books you've recently enjoyed.
Lesley, Angeline and I all loved Sarah Winman's When God was a Rabbit, and if you liked it too, then you might try The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen: both books are whimsical, funny and touching. And we all three of us read, at least once, from the start of our own novels - which is hardly surprising: if your first few sentences don't grab the reader's attention, you're probably in trouble.

I'm a fan of clever, quirky novels myself, and three of my favourites (all by women, as it happens) have some of the most memorable opening lines in fiction.,

Dodie Smith's beguiling I Capture the Castle  - one of my all-time favourite books - begins 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.' 

Kate Atkinson kicks off Behind the Scenes at the Museum with 'I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight...'

And then there is The Towers of Trebizond by the wonderful, witty Rose Macaulay, with her deathless opening lines:

'"Take me camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.' 

I defy anyone to do better.

And the week ended with Jan Carson's short story Egg being read aloud on Radio 4. All in all, a good week here for women's voices.

GREAT VARIATIONS

Northern Ireland went to the polls on Thursday, and I went to cast my vote for Alliance. I believe passionately in the non-sectarian, shared-future aims of Alliance. I've also got a soft spot for the Greens, and I applaud anyone who tries to put their views across in an unaggressive, dignified manner. (Why can't more people be like Stephen Farry?) Unfortunately confrontation is still the order of the day, and there have been times in the last week when I felt I would vote for anyone who didn't try to shout the opposition down. Couldn't we start a movement to  have politicians lined up for discussion with their mouths taped shut, the tape to be removed for an agreed time - one minute? two? - before the next question is asked?

The opposite of listening to our politicians badmouthing each other is to listen to the @UlsterOrchestra. They have two wonderful conductors at present: the glorious Rafael Payare (think Johnny Depp meets Groucho Marx meets Fred Astaire) whose rapport with the orchestra is tangible and whose movements are so mesmerising I'd watch him conduct an empty stage; and there is Jac van Steen. I have a natural affinity with Jac - I've got Dutch blood in my veins - and there is a warmth and honesty about him that allows you to settle back, secure in the knowledge that what you are going to hear will be worth hearing. (Unlike most of our politicians.)

Friday's performance was definitely worth hearing. A young Spanish oboist, Ramon Ortega Quero, was deservedly cheered, but it was Elgar's Enigma Variations that raised the roof. Nimrod is the best-known - it was my father's favourite, we played it at his memorial service, and I can never hear it without thinking of him - but this performance was especially memorable. As Jac van Steen urged them on, the separate voices of the orchestra - strings, woodwind, brass, percussion - combined and soared together to produce a wonderful, powerful and soul-restoring end result.

I just wish our politicians were more like the Ulster Orchestra.

GOODBYE TO SELF-IMPROVEMENT

I

I'm a big fan of people who reclaim, recycle and generally put old things to new use. (Pity someone can't do the same for me...) Top favourite this week is ON THE SQUARE, Unit A3, 17 Heron Road, Sydenham Business Park. It's tucked away and there aren't any signs up yet, but it's worth hunting for, believe me.

Where do I start? If you need a row of lovely old wooden bum-friendly chairs, a stuffed weasel or a boar's head (and who doesn't?) a pin-ball machine, a Persian carpet, a mirror, a painting, a billboard - or just a funky light fitting and some fabulous reclaimed furniture, then On The Square is the place to go.

I'm also a fan of a Danish psychologist called Svend Brinkmann. I heard him on Radio 4 talking about his new book 'Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze' and if I understood him correctly, he thinks the modern obsession with navel-gazing, right-to-happiness, find-your-inner-self stuff is a load of self-indulgent rubbish. Hooray for Svend! As far as I'm concerned, he's up there with Marcus Aurelius, another hero of mine, whose philosophy can be briefly summarised as 'Get a grip.'

Prof Brinkmann and Marcus Aurelius think you'll be happier if you look life firmly in the eye, accept that both you and it will never be perfect, and then do the best you can with what you've got. Knocking yourself out to achieve some perfect state of existence is a waste of time.

He's not in favour of too much empathy either, at least not when it clouds your judgement. My own youthful experience with my mother tells me he's right: all I had to do was look sad and wan (not every child can do pallor on demand - I was one of the lucky ones) and whisper, in a droopy little voice, 'I don't feel very well' and my poor mother would instantly begin to cluck. 'Oh dear! Why don't you jump back into bed and I'll ring the school.' Whereupon I would snuggle back down with the ten books I was hoping to read that week. I calculate I managed to miss at least 6 weeks out of every term for my entire school career.

There are some fabulous hypochondriacs and malingerers in fiction, incidentally. Jane Austen probably wins (Mr Woodhouse, Mary Musgrove - whose sore-throats are always so much worse than anybody's - and Lady Catherine de Bourgh's dismal daughter) but my personal best of the rest is the sublimely languid and health-obsessed Uncle Davey in The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.

I can't say malingering did a lot for me academically: I ended up well-read and totally unfitted for any proper job. So I was tougher with my own children: hot honey and lemon, with a Disprin in dire emergency, but unless you had an actual broken leg, off to school you went. I admit I got it wrong once or twice (the child who was rushed to sick-bay with malaria is still inclined to bring it up) but by and large it worked.

So read Marcus Aurelius (Meditations - 167AD) and Svend Brinkmann, because real life is tough and getting tougher, and anyone who preaches common sense is worth reading. But if you take my advice, you'll give up self-help books and buy more novels instead; then when reality finally overwhelms you, at least you'll be able to lose yourself in someone else's world.

And if you were reading this last week, no, the ceiling didn't hold. There are builders overhead, grit underfoot, piled-up furniture looms through clouds of dust... and it's beginning to sleet. I think I'll go back to bed with a book.

THINGS FALL APART, THE CEILING CANNOT HOLD...

Professor Gloom has trouble getting out of bed - well, he would have if I didn't yank the duvet off while simultaneously yelling GOOD Morning! in his ear. This is usually enough; there are harsher methods, involving iced water, cattle prods, etc, but one doesn't want to use them unnecessarily.
The other morning, I had no sooner whipped off the covers than there was a horrendous crashing noise and a large section of our ceiling fell down. I've never seen a man get out of bed faster.

The amazing thing was that once the dust cleared enough for us to start sifting through the rubble and plaster, we discovered - grimy but intact - my phone, as well as a still-functioning radio and hair-dryer, and three bottles of perfume whose combined cost suggests that perfume manufacturing is a good line to be in. All the framed photos were smashed to smithereens and the chest of drawers that took the direct hit looks a bit distressed, but what's really worrying is what's been exposed. I know this is an old house, but wattle and daub?

Still, it could have been worse. We could have been dead: some of those chunks of plaster were jagged and heavier than bricks. Clementina could have been dead: she was sharpening her claws on the carpet at the time but used up one of her nine lives to leg it a split second before the avalanche engulfed her. (If there is ever an earthquake in Holywood, or a tidal wave or hurricane, Professor Gloom and I will disappear down a chasm or be washed out to sea,
while Clementina will be found clinging to a branch, looking

misleadingly sweet and helpless, and be rescued by some other sucker. Take my word for it.)

Anyway, this particular mishap reminded me of the incident in J.P.Donleavy's The Ginger Man when the appalling Sebastian Dangerfield's wife goes crashing through the ceiling of the room below while sitting on the lavatory. I remember laughing like a drain. And there was an incident in my childhood when a friend of my brother's was dared to walk the attic beams and crashed through the ceiling to land beside my surprised mother who was having an afternoon nap on her bed.

For true, clutch-your-ribs, uproarious anarchy though, you need to turn to children's books. Roald Dahl, Pippi Longstocking, Kay Thompson's glorious Eloise who lives, and creates havoc, at the Plaza Hotel. But for me, scruffy head and shoulders above them all is William Brown: the best-intentioned, blithest and most lawless child that ever caused mayhem in the adult world.

Richmal Crompton created William between the wars, in the gap between the clouds of horror building on the horizon; William cheered my father up, he cheered my children, he cheered me as a child, and he cheers me now. He even cheers Professor Gloom. So when the roof caves in or the future looks too grim to contemplate - which is seems to do quite a lot these days - you could do worse than spend an hour or two with William Brown.