COVID COMFORTS

Autumn has arrived, thank god. So we can finally put the ghastly summer behind us and enjoy a brief blaze of glory before winter descends, and probably the end of the world with it. The portents are all there: melting ice, Mars alarmingly close to Earth, Jupiter aligned with...something....and most worrying of all, the nationwide urge to bake. Even me, and I haven't baked anything since I lived in the middle of Africa and it was a 2 hour drive to buy a bun. But here I am, not at work in my study, but down in the kitchen, making pandemic pastries, misery muffins and socially-distanced desserts.

This is largely due to to the fact that my son has a wine programme online twice a week, 5 o'clock South African time but 4 o'clock here, which is too early to start drinking, even for me. It's tough, mind you, for a wine lover to watch them sniffing, swirling, sipping and murmuring 'just a hint of aubergine' without joining in. So instead, while I watch and listen, I cook. Not just Covid cookies but all sorts of favourite, new or forgotten recipes that help connect me to my much-missed family and friends: Cape Malay bredies, Greek chicken, spicy prawns...comfort food. And that's the thing: whether we're locked down, out of a job or creative energy, juggling family and work, or just feeling old and pointless, we all need to take whatever comfort we can find. 

Alphabetically then, here are some suggestions:

1) Books. The funnier, the more entertaining, and the more hopeful, the better. You can keep your beautifully written, deeply depressing accounts of excruciating misery; give me instead books like Elinor Lipman's 'The Ladies' Man' - a sharply funny story of 3 middle-aged sisters and the Man from the Past who oozes back into their lives. Laugh out loud and utterly satisfying. Mind you, three of the books I enjoyed recently were hardly joyous, but 'Children of the Revolution' by Dinaw Mengestu, despite dealing with the sadness of life in exile for an Ethiopian refugee in Washington, is written with such dignity, charm and gentle warmth that you end up feeling better for having read it. 

The same goes for the highly original Carys Davies and 'The Mission House', which is set in modern India. And last but not least, 'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell. She's always good, but this is enthralling, and historical is a good choice right now: plague and pestilence being a lot easier to deal with when they're safely in the past. 

(NB Some of the best children's and YA books I know are historical. When a friend sent a Covid care package (I have brilliant friends - this one also makes plum gin) she included Hilary McKay's delightful 'The Skylarks War', a family saga set against a First World War backdrop - and if you think children's books aren't for adults, think again: Gloom was so entranced by this one, he didn't want it to end.) 

2) Cats. Now, I accept that there are people who don't like cats (some of you are even my friends) but I've had cats all my life, and if I lived anywhere it wasn't possible to keep one, I made friends with someone else's. When the Empress Clementina gave up the ghost in February, we were bereft, but now we have huge, gentle, Archimedes, and are deeply grateful for his purring presence. But you can substitute dogs, if you want. 

3) Food. Comfort reading, comfort food: buy the best you can afford, and the more treats the better. Indulge yourselves.

4) Friends and family. Phone them, Skype them, have Zoom get-togethers: a Saturday morning chat with fellow writers, an evening gin and tonic with your sister, whatever - you need to keep those connections open. Write letters, for pity's sake. And if you haven't spoken to your brother since 1999, now's the time.

5) Jigsaw Puzzles. Below are just some of the ones I've done in the last few months. Good to do while you listen to podcasts or the radio, or have that telephone conversation with the friend who can talk for half an hour without drawing breath. You also get a wonderful sense of achievement when you actually finish the thing - provided there aren't any pieces missing. Warning: Jigsaws don't always mix with pets. Bits tend to adhere to fluffy cats, and as happened to my friend Patsy, the dog sometimes swallows the last piece just before you can pick it up off the floor. 

6) Outdoor exercise. The more you walk, run, cycle (while keeping your distance and USING YOUR BELL in order to avoid mowing down deaf pensioners before Covid can) the better you will feel. I'm told the same is true for swimming but, in this climate, I'm not about to put it to the test. 

7) Presents. Don't wait for Christmas: it's amazing what a lift it gives you to send or receive something, no matter how small. It doesn't have to be champagne or flowers, a well-read book is as good as anything. Or just bake something and drop it round next door. Our neighbours have been providing Grade A scones for months, my efforts are confined to the occasional B grade fritter or muffin, but they're always very nice about them. 

8) Wine. Wine, wine, wine, and South African for preference.

There are lots of things I could mention that seem to make other people happy: gardening, for instance, and knitting. Right now though, I have to go: Dan Really Likes Wine is on any minute and it's my maternal duty to give it my full attention, while I whip up a little lockdown lobster en croute with burnt hollandaise sauce. Only kidding: it's pumpkin fritters.

An occupied study

LINKS WITH THE PAST

After a brief, inglorious career at Art School, I largely gave up drawing and painting, but 26 years ago in Zimbabwe, I wrote a children's picture book, The Animal Bus, which featured my youngest daughter and her friends, and was duly published, although the publishers decided (rightly) that my illustrations weren't up to much. In the end they were professionally done by my brilliant friend, Bee McGuire - illustrations which later won her a Noma Concours award - but the greatest satisfaction for me was that it was a book written for love of people and place, and done in collaboration with a friend.

Since then, I've done others that were not intended for publication. The first was made for a family we met in newly-independent Zimbabwe. They were Canadian, with two children much the same ages as our own, and we became very good friends. But the friendship between the mother and myself was one of those instant recognitions of a kindred spirit, and by the time they left Zimbabwe a couple of years later, we had become so close that the thought of being separated by thousands of miles was so distressing that it regularly reduced us to tears - to the bemusement of both our husbands. Anyway, as a parting gift, I wrote the story of their time in Africa; I did some of the illustrations, but my two older children did the rest, and their father wrote it out in his (proper) artist's calligraphy, and made the cover.  It was a great success: they sat down and read it the moment we handed it over, and we ALL cried.

The next hand-made books were inspired by the births of grandchildren, the first anniversary of my second marriage ('Professor Gloom Meets His Match') and the weddings of both my daughters. I even did one for a dog called Stavros. And the best thing about doing this sort of book is that there's no agent or publisher to please, no appearances to make or money to gain. And no fear of rejection - just the enormous satisfaction of making something for someone you love. 

There's also particular comfort in these days of isolation and enforced distance from friends and family, in forging these links of love. So lockdown has seen me branching out into books about much-loved toys, starting with Damoda the Dragon, companion to my 2 year-old grandson in London. And there are other battered favourites lining up - it's an honourable tradition after all, from The Velveteen Rabbit to Pooh, Piglet, Dogger...

 

But making any sort of tangible record, especially in these fleeting days of Instagram and Twitter - even a scrapbook or old-fashioned album filled with poems, quotations, postcards, memories - seems all the more worth doing. 

When I finally left Zimbabwe in 2000, I brought with me a parting gift from my friend Bee. She also lives many thousands of miles away, and it's been decades since I saw her. But she gave me a framed original illustration from our book, and it's hung on my wall ever since. It never fails to take me back to the happiness of that time and place.

As for our Canadian friends, we never managed to see them again either. Five years after they went home, I had a phone call to tell me that they'd flown out one morning to ski down a mountain, and all of them - my friend, her husband and their two children, along with their pilot friend - had been killed when their helicopter crashed. 

After their deaths, copies of our book were made for members of their families, and I hope it brought them some comfort. Twenty-five years on, I can still see her face and hear her voice, and I think of them all quite often. When I wrote the last lines of that book, I was worried that they sounded too sentimental, but now I realise how true they were:

    'Besides, the sun that sets over Africa is the same sun that rises over Canada (when you can see it) and the other side of the world is only just over the horizon....

    And good friends are never very far away, if you keep them safe in your hearts.'

READING ALOUD

Long-distance bedtime stories - preferred reading in Johannesburg

Reading aloud has always been one of my great pleasures - from childhood, when I pursued the fleeing members of my family with yet another story I'd just composed myself, through years of reading to my own children, and now the grandchildren. And in a week which has been harder than most, this lovely message came through from my daughter, now reading to her 6 month old son:

'Reading to him is one of my favourite things to do, it feels as much an act of mothering as feeding or changing him, and it makes me think of you and how you read to me until I was at least 10. I hope one day I will have the strength to read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings (complete with voices) to Cian.'

To be truthful, I think it was The Hobbit I read aloud (several times) and not the whole of The Lord of the Rings. There are more than enough voices in The Hobbit to keep a reader on her toes - I still have  memories of a small, critical voice interrupting, 'That's not an orc, that's an elf!'

Good lockdown occupation - and location

Anyway, what better time for reading aloud than right now? And for doing jigsaws, and having the time to catch up with old friends? Thank god for the modern technology that keeps us connected with far-flung family and friends. Last week's highlights were a 40-strong international Zoom to celebrate Councillor Kate's birthday, and a bedtime story for two grandchildren in Johannesburg - and their parents - all tucked up in bed together.

It's also been a great time for listening (preferably while doing a jigsaw) to music, to podcasts, to radio; to the wonderful, much-missed Ulster Orchestra (#UOLetsPlayAtHome) and all the others who have been doing so much to keep us all sane. Suzy Klein's 3-part Tunes for Tyrants on the BBC is also brilliant: a master-class in how to deal with the horrors of history in a civilised, informative and endlessly entertaining way. Charlie and his Orchestra (a Nazi secret propaganda weapon) playing 'Boom! Why did my ship go boom? (Boom diddly boom...') and Irving Berlin's 'Let's Go Slumming' transformed into 'Let's Go Shelling' have to be heard to be believed.

Most of all I'm grateful for books. My darling daughter in London (the one who practises permanent social-media-distancing - you won't find her on Facebook) sent me Neil Gaiman's preferred version of Neverwhere, and nothing could have taken me away from the present more effectively. Now I'm reading Anne Patchett's The Dutch House - an engrossing take on the wicked stepmother story that has me so involved I want to climb into the pages and kill the woman, and it's beautifully written to boot. Incidentally, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People is, for me, so much better than the book: well worth watching and perfectly cast.)

It's 9 weeks now since we went into lock-down, and what I miss most are my family, my cat, my friends and my hairdresser, in that order. By the time I get back into circulation I'm going to feel (and look) like a creature from another planet: But then, we're all going to look a bit odd, especially the ones who've been cutting their own hair...

In the meantime, I'm grateful for a house full of books, and most especially for all the good wine that Gloom had the presence of mind to stock up on for future celebrations. In view of the prevailing hazards, we can't be sure how many more books and bottles we're going to get through, but we're going to do our level best...

Another bottle gone...

DAYS OF WINE AND CORONA

Strange times. Nearly four weeks of isolation and inactivity - apart from a daily walk - but lots of time for other things: for playing card games and doing jigsaws; for sitting in the garden and watching old episodes of Star Wars in the middle of the afternoon; for listening to music and to podcasts. (And if you only listen to one, Elizabeth Day's 'How to Fail' episode with Alain de Botton is the best dose of clarity and consolation I've heard all week.)

Childhood favourites

The first few days of captivity I spent (inexpertly) recording Moon's Travelling Circus, the middle grade novel that didn't ever find a publisher, and which I now plan to make available to any child who might enjoy the adventures of a magical circus travelling through African time and space. It made me feel vaguely useful - one of the harder things about being classed as vulnerable is that you feel so useless. Anyway, I enjoyed doing it so much that I've gone back to writing the sequel.

The daily conversations and online interaction with distant family and friends is hugely cheering - as was a SCWBI meet-up with writer friends, and an online wine tasting with my son. (We may have found ourselves short of paracetamol and disinfectant, but we were never going to get caught out with an empty wine rack...) So, what with all the FaceTimes, Skypes and Zooms, it's more a question of fitting everything in than trying to fill the hours.                                                                               

And then, of course, there are the books. There's the pile of most-recently-bought adult novels, the dozens of others books I've always meant to re-read, and - greatest comfort of all -  the children's classics. Who could be unhappy in the company of William, Pippi, the Moomins and the Borrowers? Nesbit, Farjeon, Lofting, Lynch - I could go on and on - and most of them lovely old illustrated copies I've been collecting all my life.

There are some writers you can read at any age, and some you can't. Sorry, Sally Rooney (she's a good writer, the fault is mine, not hers) but I couldn't really connect with the characters in 'Normal People', so I moved on to Benjamin Black's 'The Silver Swan'. I'm a fan of Black (and his alter ego, John Banville - 'Mrs Osmond' is in the waiting pile) and I have a particularly soft spot for his weary pathologist, Quirke. And having suggested to Gloom that he might enjoy Anthony Powell's wonderfully dense and civilised 12-volume 'Dance to the Music of Time' - he is onto the second already - I'm now planning to re-read them all myself.

But first off the shelves was Patrick Leigh Fermor and 'The Violins of St Jacques'. He is my all-time favourite travel writer and this was his only novel, I think, but it's written in his usual glorious prose and deals, strangely enough, with a great natural disaster. Now I'm reading Maggie O'Farrell's  'The Distance Between Us' and from the first page her characters have grabbed me by the throat. Intriguing, complex, and hard to put down.

A Beardsley Venus

Hilary Mantel's final volume in her Cromwell trilogy, 'The Mirror and the Light', has just been beautifully read on Radio 4 by Anton Lesser, and there was a fascinating TV programme on the deeply peculiar and talented Aubrey Beardsley, which reminded me that somewhere I had a copy of 'Under the Hill', published by the Olympia Press back in the 60s. It was, when I finally located it, a genuine curiosity and every bit as bizarre as I'd remembered - but perhaps not the sort of thing you'd want to read aloud to Aunt Edna.

A long time ago, in another country, I lived through times of great upheaval and fear. Then, my greatest worry was that I would die and leave my children without their mother. Now that I'm old, and have no fear of death, I still worry about my children and my grandchildren. But one of the benefits of this enforced isolation (apart from the random acts of kindness by friends and neighbours: the unexpected present, the newspaper or plate of scones left on the doorstep) has been the chance to catch my breath, to go through books and papers, and rediscover things - like a commonplace book that I kept in that earlier, uncertain time. Quite a few entries deal with death, but I find them as apt, and as comforting, now as I did then. This from Kahlil Gibran:

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun....
....And when the earth shall claim my limbs, then shall I truly dance.

Either way, when this is all over, I intend to dance.

HOMAGE TO CLEMENTINA

To London and back to see two of the children and potter around Highgate, hand in hand with enchanting little Omi. Then back to Belfast, to a forlorn and empty house and the ghost of our Clementina - a small, white-throated, black and amber shadow, glimpsed for a moment, then gone.

As always, it's books that help me through bad times: Penelope Fitzgerald's wonderful 'The Beginning of Spring', the quirky 'Lonely Life of a Peculiar Postman' by Canadian Denis Theriault (thank you, Kelly McCaughrain) and Deirdre Madden's 'Molly Fox's Birthday'. I'd only read one other novel of hers - 'Time Present and Time Past' - now I'm looking for all the rest.

Little Omi, not yet two, has a room full of books already, as do all his cousins - even 3 month-old baby Cian has a shelf. I can't bear to think of a childhood without books. I was lucky: my whole family wrote - father, mother, brother, sister - and we all read voraciously, and widely. Although I really don't think it matters what you read - I hate to hear anyone's taste in reading being mocked - so long as you have the habit, books will get you through a lot of life's disasters. And the one thing you can be certain of is that disasters will occur.

So. After a convivial evening with two good friends, in the middle of the night I sit up because I am suddenly coughing and can't breathe. This is a distressing, but not a disaster: I find my asthma inhalers, take a couple of puffs and put the kettle on for hot honey and lemon. Eventually I get back to sleep. In the morning I have an early doctor's appointment - routine but timely - so we drive down and Gloom goes in to say his wife has been through three airports in the last 10 days, none in an infected area, but she's suddenly coughing: should she come in or go home again? The receptionist sighs deeply and says she might as well come in. This is probably because 99.9 percent of all the patients currently waiting are hacking and wheezing, so one more won't make any difference.

Helping to edit

My doctor, to whom I am devoted (she is wonderfully phlegmatic: a combined case of Ebola and Leprosy might just give her cause to raise an eyebrow, but then again, possibly not) tells me I have a chest infection and sentences me to a week of antibiotics, steroids and rest. Fortunately I have, at the last count, the new Spring edition of Slightly Foxed and at least another 20-odd books, waiting to be read - including Simon Sebag Montefiore's 'Jerusalem', which is around 700 pages long. I'm reading that in stages, but every time I open it, I am swept away by this extraordinary biography of a city, and the beauty of the writing. And as soon as I've finished the medication, I'm going to finish off all the best wine in the house, just in case it turns out to be the coronavirus after all.

Listening to Mozart

Clementina's ashes were returned to us in a carved wooden box. We are now debating where to put the little casket: burying it in the garden doesn't seem right - she was far too strong a presence, a household goddess and my personal daemon, whose rightful place is here, somewhere inside the house, with us. I suspect a ghostly paw will eventually nudge us in the right direction. And she'll have another memorial, some day, because the morning after the night she died, I switched on my laptop to distract myself from the desolation that I felt, and there was a message from a writer friend concerning a Kickstart project needing backers - a proposed short film set in Belfast, about a love affair that begins with the Good Friday Agreement. I liked the premise, and thinking it would be the perfect way to honour Clementina's memory - she was, after all, a cat with artistic sensibilities: she enjoyed listening to Mozart and often helped edit my work by walking on the keyboard - I signed up.

I was surprised to get an immediate and grateful response, and when I wrote back to explain what had prompted my gesture, I was promised that when 'Another Day in '98' is made, the credits will include the name of Clementina. Our beautiful, adored, imperious cat may no longer gaze at us with her yellow eyes, or purr in my ear at the dead of night, but her name will be up there in lights. I'm pretty certain she would feel it was no more than her due.

BOOKS, BOTTLES AND ENDEARING BEARS

Seasonal cheer

Bad sister

I had a wonderful end to 2019: a visit from my sister Cathy (a great excuse for celebrations) followed by a quick trip home to see my sorely-missed Johannesburg family (and celebrate South Africa's rugby World Cup win - did I mention that before?). Then there was the birth of little grandson Cian (more celebrations, plus a flying visit from Uncle Dan to see the new arrival) and we finished up with a family Christmas. On Christmas Eve the house was full: two daughters and their husbands, two delectable little grandsons, and Cousin Emily from Istanbul in the attic. (I don't think she minded: it was the only peaceful spot in the house. Next year, when we expect our Greek family, I might just move up there myself.) We also wore masks for Christmas Eve dinner. Please don't ask why, but I think it might become a tradition.

Xmas mask - not much good against viruses

So, it was a very happy Christmas, but it's been pretty much down-hill ever since. Brexit, Australian wildfires, floods, earthquakes - never mind Dry January - and now we've got everyone being hysterical about coronavirus. I should point out that I don't actually do dry January myself: it seems to me that you have to be truly masochistic to deprive yourself of any comfort available in January (which is a hideous month at the best of times) and it was only a bottle of Thorne & Daughters Wanderer's Heart Cape Red that got me through the night of Brexit. As for the virus, far more people die each day from TB, malaria, road accidents and ordinary flu, and to be perfectly honest I've reached the age when being carried off by flu seems infinitely preferable to a lingering death from dementia, cancer, heart disease, whatever.

This could be why I was so taken with an item I heard on the radio the other day. A member of the Ache tribe in Paraguay was reminiscing about his long-ago position as official bumper-off of no-longer-useful old women. When you were too old to even cook or baby-sit, he paid you a visit with an axe and bonked you over the head. At least it was quick. (Useless old men were just told to push off into the jungle and not come back.)

I sometimes think it's about time a literary equivalent of the Ache guy came and knocked me over my creative head. I've been writing all my life. Apart from a bit of journalism, the odd short story, and the little books I draw and write for my family to mark various occasions, my literary output totals 1 picture book (published) 1 children's novel (not published but a few copies printed up for family and friends) and 2 adult novels (1 published, 1 languishing). I'm half-way though a third novel but in some ways it's harder now, because I know I'm writing only for myself. I'm 71. That's the Ache equivalent of no longer useful, because let's be honest, even if I wasn't old, white and middle-class, even if a reckless publisher decided to take a chance on me, I wouldn't have either the stamina or the inclination to turn up at libraries, readings, festivals, workshops and the hundred and one other things that authors are expected to do these days to sell their books.

So why do I bother? Because I might just as well try to stop talking. You see the problem. And every so often, someone is kind enough to tell you that they like something you've written. Step forward the great-nephew (a boy of extraordinary intelligence and taste) who face-timed me from Cape Town to tell me that Moon's Travelling Circus was - and I quote - 'one of the best books I have EVER read'!! And this from a 12 year-old bookworm. Excuse me while I take a moment to compose myself.

And speaking of books, I'm currently reading the 5th of Anne Zouroudi's Greek detective novels, The Feast of Artemis. There's only one more after this (The Gifts of Poseidon: I had to get it through World of Books, because she's out of print already) and I'm having to steel myself against the prospect of a world without Hermes Diaktoros. Luckily I still have several Christmas books waiting to console me...not to mention the Oldie subscription given to me by Gloom. Oh the joy of reading the rants of other unrepentant old reactionaries! And there's a paean of praise to Rupert Bear in this month's Oldie. He's even older than I am - 100 this year.

Described by Giles Brandreth as 'decent, heroic and endearing' in a world ' both bizarre and wonderfully reassuring' Rupert's adventures were never short of extraordinary characters and encounters; there was drama and danger and fantastic adventure, but, as Brandreth says, they were never frightening.

Other seasonal reading included Jo Baker's 'A Country Road, A Tree' (based on Beckett's wartime years in France) Maggie O'Farrell's inspirational 'I am I am I am' and John le Carre's 'Agent Running in the Field'. You can rarely go wrong with le Carre. And Lee Langley. I first read her novel 'Persistent Rumours' decades ago. I loved it, but somehow didn't read any others until I picked up two of her books in a charity shop the other day. 'Changes of Address', a child's eye view of a precarious life in India in the 40's with a shocker of a mother, reminded me why I liked her so much. She is a wonderfully evocative writer. 'Distant Music' is next.

There have been a few movies too, to distract us from impending doom: The Irishman (greatly enjoyed over 2 nights - I had mild concussion at the time and the whole three hours at once might have done for me) The Two Popes (highly recommended) and Frozen 2 (don't ask - I'm  probably the only person on the planet who was glad when the snowman melted. Unfortunately he reconstituted himself. And while I'm on the subject, when did Disney start getting all dark and heavy? For pity's sake, isn't real life quite bad enough for children already? Disney should take a lesson from Rupert.) We also went to see Little Women (Gloom loved it, I was less enchanted - great acting, but the sugary coating set my teeth on edge) and The Personal History of David Copperfield, which I loved. A brilliant, exuberant affair, with some stunning performances, and absolutely true to the spirit of Dickens, if not to the original version.

Storm Ciara is now showing signs of departing, but the ground is still covered in snow and ice, and Denis is waiting in the wings. A good excuse, along with a stuffy head, to stay inside, read, finish a Christmas jigsaw - and write. But wait a minute, there's someone downstairs, knocking at the door. Funny, he's got a vaguely South American look, and he seems to be hiding some sort of long-handled implement behind his back.... I think it might be safer to keep the door locked after all, and open another bottle of Wanderer's Heart instead...

HEROES, HADEDAS AND HOME AGAIN

This is the 40th Losing the Plot blog, which means I'm over the hump of 39 - always my least lucky number. I learned the 13 times table early on, so as never to close a book on an unlucky page, but for some reason 3 times 13 has always seemed particularly ill-starred. Apart from that, I'm not really superstitious, although one magpie is never a good sign, and of course I always touch all four sides of our house before I go on a journey, just to be sure of coming home...

Stavros the Not-So-Terrible

This last one definitely works because once again I'm safely back from the other side of the world, despite losing passport, tickets, boarding passes AND luggage, and slipping in the shower and cracking my head. And no, it wasn't the result of too much celebration. My son and daughter-in-law were away for the night and the two grannies were baby-sitting with exemplary diligence and sobriety. Also, the wine cellar is outside the house and there was such a spectacular electrical storm raging that I was too scared to venture out.

Apart from that, and the odd domestic disaster (an over-adventurous small person crashing through a top drawer and a dash to hospital with an agonised adult - gall bladder, fortunately, not an exploded appendix) it was magic. Beautiful weather, my children and delectable, inexhaustible, small grandchildren - and their equally delightful and inexhaustible Greek family - and food and wine to die for. It's always an emotional reunion but this year was extraordinary because I arrived in Johannesburg at half-time in the England-South Africa final of the rugby World Cup. In Dan and Dimitra's house there were flags, Springbok shirts, a green ribbon on Stavros the Terrible (who isn't really terrible at all, unless he suspects you're up to no good...) and tears and champagne when South Africa won.

The South African flag

It's hard to explain to non-South Africans just what that victory meant. Until now, most South Africans had as much interest in rugby as they have in Patagonian potholes, but by the time I got to O R Tambo, the airport was a sea of Springbok rugby jerseys and the entire nation was glued to a screen. And when the final whistle blew, they exploded with pride and joy.

This is a country so badly in need of anything that can bring its diverse people together and help to heal the fractured past. Of course, sticking it to the English has always had a cheering effect on other nations (sorry Gloom, but it's true) but this was entirely different.The South African rugby team - which was for so long an all-white affair - is now under the inspirational captaincy of Siya Kolisi, and for the first time in its history properly reflects the whole rainbow nation. It might be a little unrealistic to expect the next grandchild (Councillor Kate's baby, due any minute) to  be named after all the Springbok heroes -  and we don't actually know what sex this child is (although I did see 3 magpies this morning) - but I have to say, Siya sounds like a pretty good choice to me.

Flying out from one fractured society to another, I was reading Maggie O'Farrell's 'Instructions for a Heatwave'. She is brilliant on fractured families, and this particular family, the Riordans, are so maddening and entertaining that I almost enjoyed the 11-hr flight. On the return trip I read 'The Whispers of Nemesis' by Anne Zouroudi. She's new to me, so it was my first encounter with her detective, Hermes Diaktoros. Here's what the Guardian said about him: 'Diaktoros is a delight. Half Poirot, half deus ex machina, but far more earth-bound than his first name suggests, the portly detective has an other worldly, Marlowesque incorruptibility as he waddles through the mean olive groves.' Couldn't have put it better myself.

A hadeda conversation

I woke yesterday morning at 5.30 to a frosty moon still high in the sky and Clementina purring in my ear. In Johannesburg it was the hadedas that woke me. They're the noisiest birds in Africa - their raucous shrieks could wake the dead - and for reasons best known to themselves, they start screeching overhead at 4am - but it's a sound that takes me straight back to childhood, and I miss it, along with all my much-loved family. The time went far too quickly, as it always does. I'll be back, of course,  but just to be sure, I touched all 4 walls before I left.

CHANGING CLIMATES

Recycled capitals

Professor Gloom and I were in Palma de Mallorca recently, sipping wine in shady squares and enjoying a bit of respite from the rest of the world. We were in the old quarter, surrounded by ancient stones, winding streets and constant reminders of civilisations that have come and gone. The Arab Baths, close to our hotel, were built by the Moors, who, I'm pleased to say, were early recyclers. They may have knocked down a few Byzantine and Roman buildings, but they re-used the materials to great effect - a good example of things enduring, even if not quite in the way originally envisaged.

The other thing that struck me again and again, was just how courteous most Spaniards are. Our hotel bedroom looked down onto a square where children of all ages arrived every morning for school, and they were cheerful and lively, but well-behaved in a way we don't often see. As Gloom remarked the other day (when we were mown down by a group of teenagers boarding the train) he seemed to spend his youth getting out of the way of old people, and now he spends his old age getting out of the way of the young.

A shady square

Children might no longer be as well-behaved as I would like (and given the behaviour of so many of their elders, who can blame them?) but they were out in their thousands recently, protesting about the damage being done to the world they stand to inherit - and those of us who are leaving them this broken planet should do our best to support them, and help to keep their hopes alive, because in the end, hope is all there is.

Do you remember the cellist of Sarajevo? The lone musician who sat, day after day in the ruins of Sarajevo, playing his cello in a one-man protest against the madness that had engulfed his city? So many other protests come to mind: the unknown man in Tiananmen Square, standing alone in the path of Chinese tanks; Civil and Human Rights marchers in Ireland and America: anti-apartheid and anti-war protesters; the streets of Hong Kong today - I could list dozens, but the thing is that although it so often seems there is no hope that things will ever change - and the danger, of course is that peaceful protests become more violent, because more and more people have less and less to lose - still, the very fact that someone was brave enough to stand up and be counted gave hope to others when it was most needed.

As for those who have started criticising Greta Thunberg, she's 16 years old, for pity's sake, and trying to get the world to wake up and do something about the dangers we now face, even though it's probably too late. Which is better than sitting at home sneering.

LEONARD LASTS LONGER THAN LOVE

I went to QFT to see 'Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love' yesterday, along with a horde of excited pensioners, and Councillor Kate. (Susceptible elderly persons revisiting the scenes of their youth should always be accompanied by a responsible adult.)

Back in the day, I fell in love time and time again to the background music of Leonard Cohen. I can't remember the men, but I remember every word of the songs - so there you have it, friends: Leonard lasts longer than love.

And what songs they are: So Long Marianne, Halleluja, Bird on the Wire... The first one I heard was Suzanne, and I heard it up at the top of a tall, thin, canal-side house in Amsterdam, in the laid-back, smokey atmosphere so redolent of the time. (Note to my children: please don't bother telling me I shouldn't mention things like that because the grandchildren might read them. It was 1970, for crying in a bucket, and even Aunt Emmeline had smoked a joint by then.)

But to get back to Marianne and Leonard. By all accounts she was a lovely, generous woman and I'm glad they put her name first because she spent a lot of her life playing second fiddle to everyone else. It's a sad truth that women have been falling in love with charismatic, tortured geniuses since time began, only realising too late that what they're mostly tortured about is the idea of commitment. And Leonard Cohen was certainly a man who liked to have his cake and eat it. His songs are in a class of their own - and he did send a beautiful message to  her when she lay dying - but if I could turn back the clock and give Marianne Ihlen the happiness she deserved, and save her son from his own damaged destiny, I have to say I'd count Cohen's music well lost. Anyway, it's a fascinating documentary about a hedonistic and self-indulgent time - and one that should send a cold trickle down the spine of anyone who survived.

GOING BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM

I've been more grateful than usual lately for anything that's taken me away from the world of Boris, Trump and impending doom. It's been a dreary patch, what with holidays cancelled, Gloom being hospitalised, and the current novel progressing more slowly than a DUP policy on climate change - never mind the various sequels and short stories lying around unfinished. There are days when I feel like burning the lot. Not Gloom, obviously: his return home, one kidney lighter but remarkably upbeat, was one of the more cheering events of the last weeks.

So thanks to Penelope Lively, yet again. Heat Wave was written in 1996 but for some reason I'd never read it, I can't think why. If I was going to take one woman's books with me to a desert island, they'd probably be hers. (And that would include her wonderfully funny children's book about a poltergeist, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe.) Moon Tiger is my all-time favourite, but I love all her work for the sheer beauty of the writing - even when she's talking about the weather. In a Lively novel it doesn't cloud over, instead:
'A grey pall has come tilting up from behind the hill, intensifying the green of fields and trees and hedges. The landscape is vivid. And the first drops of rain begin to fall.'

Wimbledon was another distraction. It's one of the few sporting events I like, although  I'd be happier if there were more Federers and fewer Smasher-Grunts around. Roger (who has a South African mother, by the by) was beaten in the end by Novak Djokovic the Serb, but I like him too, and it was a great match. There have been a few beautiful new players this year - notably the glorious American Coco Gauff - and Simona Halep (Roumanian) who took the women's title from Serena Williams, is a delight, both on court and off.

We also went to see 3 movies in 7 days. (QFT is the perfect venue for a recuperating pensioner nursing a 9 inch curved scar that looks like a shark bite.) Sometimes, Always, Never was a poignant, off-beat, Bill Nighy vehicle that appealed to us both (it was filmed in Lancashire, where Professor Gloom grew up) and Kind Hearts and Coronets is still blackly brilliant after 70 years. Our third film, The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, was a documentary about the garden designs of Dutchman Oudolf. It was like watching a stream of beautiful, restful, abstract paintings interspersed with trenchant Dutch observations. Lovely.

A wild (looking) Oudolf garden

One thing Oudolf said - about non-indigenous plants: 'Why not use them, if they behave?' - struck a chord with me. I'm not indigenous: I was born a South African and spent more than half my life in South Africa and Zimbabwe, but my roots are now firmly in Northern Irish soil. I write about all these places, and although I can't claim to be a Northern Irish writer (which is an interesting condition in itself) this is now my home. Luckily for me, no-one has yet told me to go back where I came from, (no doubt because I'm white) but if the hideous Trump has started using the expression, perhaps someone should remind him that his own forebears came from Germany and his wife is Slovene-born.

The whole question of identity is a minefield: so many people these days are displaced - born on one continent, raised on another; blown from country to country on the winds of war, work, necessity, choice - but in the end your nationality, ethnicity, age, sex or creed shouldn't matter. You either contribute what you can to society, or you don't, and we are all members of the human race - apart from Roger Federer, obviously, who is a God.

And the only country we will all wash up in in the end (if we're lucky) is the Country of the Old, although for the time being I'm pretending not to be here.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

Holywood, Costa del Down

We should have spent Easter in South Africa, with the children and grandchildren in a luxury game park (I'm talking tented accommodation with sunken baths and air conditioning here) followed by Orthodox Easter with family, friends and glorious Greek food, and after that a spectacular train trip down to Cape Town - instead of which, illness struck and our plans were scuppered. Still, as someone pointed out, at least we no longer had to worry about being eaten by lions. And there were other compensations (friends, family, chocolate) and best of all we were here to cheer on Alliance in general and Councillor Kate in particular as they won an unprecedented 53 Council seats in the local elections. Also, now that global warming is kicking in, instead of April showers and spring gales we had days of sunshine.

But April was a cruel month: journalist Lyra McKee shot dead; Mozambique, still reeling, hit by a second cyclone; Notre Dame charred and broken; floods in Zimbabwe and South Africa; Easter celebrants in Sri Lanka blown to bits; the latest dire warnings about the future of our planet...and here's something to put you off your dinner: if human children were given the same growth hormones used on chickens, they'd weigh 26 stone by the time they were 3 years old. If that doesn't stop you buying non organic/free-range, nothing will.

The Writer's Friend

The other statistic that caught my eye recently was from the most recent Royal Literary Society report, which states that the average writer's yearly income has fallen from £18,000 in 2005 to £10,500 in 2018. (I have personal proof of this: my last quarterly royalties statement from one of my two publishers was 54p. If I depended on my writing to pay the bills, I'd be living in a cardboard box down by the Lagan, never mind planning holidays in South Africa.) I'm amazed so many keep going. It's a terrible job really - solitary, largely unpaid, fraught with rejection, and even when you do manage to get something published, the chances are high these days that someone will take offence at what you've written. The things you may or may not write about these days, depending on your class, gender, race, etc, are bizarre. Come on guys, Wind in the Willows wasn't written by a mole or a rat, but it's still worth reading!

Anyway, I've conducted a survey into what other writers do when the going gets tough and despair sets in. Some people scrub their kitchen floors or tidy cupboards; many of us go walking (which is cheap and healthy) and Kelly McCaughrain gardens - and makes plum gin for her friends. (I think more of you should do this.) I do jigsaws and play Scrabble. And it pains me to report that even here you're not safe from the censorious. I play online with my sister in Cape Town, and we are fiendishly competitive. So when she made a world-beating, 7-letter, triple-word score, I responded - in the private comment space, with 'Holy f...!' This was instantly translated into 'Hm, I don't think we'll send that word...' Censored on Scrabble, would you believe it? Well, all I can say is 'Holy ....'

Of course, the best way to cheer yourself up is to read a good book, and Jan Carson's new novel 'The Fire Starters' is extremely funny and very good. She has a wicked unflinching eye and writes wonderfully to boot - an apt phrase, now that I think of it, for someone who describes the people of East Belfast as being 'particularly fond of football because it is a game of two sides and involves kicking'. And I don't think I liked this book so much just because I've been here so long that I no longer feel like a blow-in -  even if you knew or cared nothing for this city and its past, I don't see how you could fail to be moved and beguiled by the writing.

I'm also indebted to the friend who sent me an article from last month's London Review of Books: Diana Stone's 'Nightmares in Harare'. Beautiful, heartbreaking, writing, and a timely reminder that there is always someone, somewhere, whose troubles are infinitely worse than yours. But we all have to keep going somehow, to remember that things do change, and believe that they will change again, even here. And last weekend they did, and brought us all a glimmer of hope for the future.

FLAMING PYRES AND FIREWORKS

Jeremy Bentham, preserved as
an auto-icon. Great idea

Councillor Kate rings us every morning to check we're still alive. Prof Gloom's favourite thing is to get to the phone first and put on his recorded message voice: 'You have reached the Dufton residence. To ascertain if either of us is dead, please press 1...' She used to get quite cross but now she's resigned to our cheerful morbidity. She even mentioned to an official at the crematorium the other day my own wish to be pushed out onto Belfast Lough on a flaming pyre, but he seemed to think there might be a problem with the regulations. My other idea (involving a large display cabinet and a taxidermist) wasn't well-received either. I can't think why: the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham has been sitting around decoratively at UCL for many years. But the man at the crematorium did say I could have my ashes fired from a canon or attached to a firework. I am now torn between this and being made into a paperweight or piece of jewellery.

George Saunders' brilliant novel 'Lincoln in the Bardo' is entirely set in a Georgetown cemetery, where a motley company of ghosts bear witness to Abraham Lincoln mourning his young son. It is witty, macabre and profoundly human - my favourite book of the year. I've also just finished reading Maggie O'Farrell's 'This Must Be The Place' - why have I not read her before? And why did I know so little about Ruth Bader Ginsburg until I went to see RBG, the documentary about her life? This quiet, courteous, infinitely steely US Supreme Court justice has spent most of her legal life fighting for women's rights, and, now in her eighties, is still fighting.

It's a good thing there are these antidotes to the prevailing gloom and doom, because life often feels like a party that's gone on too long: good fun to start with but less appealing as everyone around you gets drunker. Not that I'd blame anyone for drinking themselves into oblivion: the news is so hideous, it frequently seems like the trailer for a disaster movie, or a particularly nasty reality TV programme. A bizarre mish-mash of shock, horror and impending doom, all mixed up with celebrity scandal, political skulduggery, sporting melt-downs and - the bane of my life - Public Opinion. (And here we have Sadie Sanction who witnessed last Tuesday's tragic events: 'Yes, I saw it all with my own eyes, so I did. She just reversed into the driveway and smashed straight into him. She didn't even stop, just drove off as fast as she could. The whole community is devastated. He was just the loveliest wee garden gnome...')

The other thing I find strangely cheering (although I know this won't be to everyone's taste) is reading about impending cataclysms. I'm indebted to Kelly McCaughrain for directing me to a New Yorker article about the Cascadia subduction zone. No, I bet you didn't know about it either. It's even more terrifying than California's San Andreas fault, and like that one, it's not a question of whether there'll be a giant earthquake one of these days, but when. (Scientists estimate 13000 dead, 27000 injured and a million displaced in the next major rupture.) Add to that the fact that a large chunk of La Palma is scheduled to collapse into the sea one day, sending tsunamis racing across the ocean to drown the east coast of America - and imagine if both these events happened at once! - and it does make worrying about Brexit, Trump and global warming seem a little pointless.

The Cascadia subduction zone was only recently discovered. So who's to say there isn't a major fault-line lurking somewhere under County Down, just waiting to blow us all to kingdom come? If nothing else, it would definitely beat flaming pyres and fireworks for providing a dramatic exit.

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.