In a good cause

When I write my lockdown diary entry tonight it will be for Day 41 and I’ll be starting a new notebook.

It's a very sunny day here in Edinburgh and my walk in the afternoon took me past gardens and parks filled with pink and white blossom, with trees in all shades of green, and gloriously russet acers. I’m probably walking more than when I was ‘allowed’ to go out whenever I wanted.

In the morning I did 6k on the exercise bike while listening to an old episode of A Good Read on iPlayer. Today’s guests were Sally Phillips and Julia Donaldson. (Number of k in half an hour very feeble compared to other members of my household, by the way.)

Before lunch I watched the National Theatre production of Twelfth Night on YouTube with the wonderful Tamsin Greig (available until 30 April).

So what’s not to like about lockdown?

Well, for one thing, many charities are going to lose out this year because of the cancellation of the London Marathon. To help make up that shortfall folk ran 2.6k round their gardens today, or did other sporty things involving the numbers 2 and 6, and made a donation to the charity of their choice.

I challenged myself with a writing exercise instead. I wrote a ‘story’ using words/names (selected quickly and at random) beginning with every letter of the alphabet – in their correct order. 

I know, don’t tell me, it's complete nonsense, but all in a very good cause.

Arbroath! Benny felt the Call of the east coast for his holiday away from the Delightful but Exaggerated Far south. Grim though the bus journey was, with many Halts and Ill-making fumes, he Jumped off feeling happy. After hoisting his Kaleidoscope and his Llama over his shoulder he admired the Marguerites in a nearby garden. Pinching them would be a No-no; besides it would be an Ordeal to climb the gate to pick the Petals. Coming from a Quasi Rural background he Smiled at this seaside Town – even though it was Under a Veil of fog – because the Waves made Xylophone noises like the band he saw last Year with Zena.

Still Rocking

I've published a new collection of short stories.

All except one were previously published in The People's Friend, Woman's Weekly and The Weekly News. The last story, What Prue Didn't Know, won the Woman's Short Story award, one of the competitions organised by the Scottish Association of Writers in March 2020, judged by Helen Walters and is published here for the first time.

The Spaghetti Tree

Seven-year-old Alfie plans an April Fool joke to play on his Grampa, but Alfie’s dad isn’t sure that Grampa’s in a laughing mood.

Swimming for One

Joe, middle-aged and newly single, is happily indolent – or he would be if his bossy little sister didn’t interfere.

History Lessons

Re-enacting a Jacobite battle isn’t Lucy’s idea of (every) Saturday afternoon fun, a fact she’s hiding from her new boyfriend.

To the Moon and Back

It’s July, 1969, and Apollo 11 is heading for the moon. Meanwhile, on Earth, Mike is trying to keep house while Patsy is in hospital awaiting their third baby.

Don’t Say Cheese!

Cheese hates the childish nickname she seems to be stuck with – it’s not the image she wants when she finally meets her French friend’s glamorous older brother.

A Labour of Love

George arrives home unexpectedly to find a strange man in the house with his wife. Is his complacency about his long marriage about to be shattered?

What Would Jane Think?

Is the dishy new staff member ‘in want of a wife’? Evie tries surreptitiously to find out – isn’t that what Miss Austen would do?

Still Rocking

Marnie appeals for her granny’s back-up when she wants to attend a festival, but Flora has her own musical memories which she’s not about to share.

Following Joel

Alison and Tommy have moved from Scotland to London to help their son and his wife with childcare but it’s getting rather overwhelming.

Back to the Sixties

It’s 1999. When Meg encounters a former classmate who caused her to break up with her best friend she’s at a loss to know how to behave.

Arthur and the Stone Lintel

When widowed Arthur takes up Architecture Appreciation classes, led by the obnoxious Roland, the last thing on his mind is a new relationship.

What Prue Didn’t Know

City girl Prue stays with her new friend Sarah and her family on their smallholding and makes some unexpected discoveries about herself. 

A paperback will follow. Meanwhile Still Rocking is available as an e-book from Amazon – and hey! it's up in lights!

Find out about my other publications, including three story anthologies, here.

The Day of Small Things

I first heard the quote that gives the blog post its title from the novel The Day of Small Things by O. Douglas (sister of John Buchan), encountered by me when I was about ten in my great-aunt’s house; it and her other titles have been on my comfort-read list ever since.

She got the quote from the Bible, Zechariah, iv. 10: ‘Who hath despised the day of small things?’

I have never been more grateful for the ‘small things’ than in these recent, unprecedented, days.

My daughter and I went out a drive on Mother’s Day (22 March) into the beautiful Border country around Peebles. We admired the scenery, including newborn lambs, without getting out of the car. A lovely memory to have – and not an experience that will be repeated anytime soon, because the day after that came the lockdown.

No going into shops for us for health reasons. So we are very fortunate that many local small businesses have stepped forward to be a lifeline in delivering food to the door – fruit and veg boxes, bread, milk, eggs, other groceries, butcher meat and fish.

One company delivered the goods and after that phoned for payment which restored my faith in human nature to quite a tearful extent.

On second thoughts keeping people fed is no small thing – it’s massive and I’m so grateful, and for:

WhatsApp – for keeping in regular touch with family and friends, whether for reassurances regarding health and well-being, doing silly little quizzes together, dress-up Friday photographs and much more

FaceTime 

phone calls

email

zoom – for enabling meetings of book group and writing class

Face Book (keeping in touch plus there have been some very funny memes and black humour and many heart-warming stories; I don’t read the negative stuff or click through to the horror/tabloid stories)

friends’ blogs showing what their daily lives are like at the moment: Anne Stenhouse and Anne Stormont

cooking something with substituted ingredients that turns out well (those food deliveries, wonderful though they are, are unable to supply plain flour or yeast; who’s got it all?)

 

Richard Osman’s House of Games – 6pm BBC2, brain-teasing fun

blossom

teddies and rainbows in windows

(and in my son’s Greater London street on Easter Sunday painted eggs for children to ‘hunt’)

I can read all day if I want to (and I do), currently the rather wonderful Where the Crawdads Sing and, alternately, a comfort read Mrs Pooter’s Diary.

 

Joe Wicks’ YouTube exercises (to help keep reader’s bottom at bay)

exercise bike (ditto)

early morning walks through deserted streets (ditto, and for fresh air, and to feel some sense of normality while marvelling at the changed, almost vehicle-less, city)

free theatre productions on YouTube

Malory Towers on iPlayer

large garden (communal, south-facing)

sleep (previously I could lie awake worrying about various things but now with these being eclipsed I’m sleeping like the proverbial log – perhaps some form of defence mechanism kicking in?)

time to put together a new anthology Still Rocking and other stories– watch this space.

(all images courtesy of Pixaby)

Twelve in March (2)

I read twelve books in March.

You don’t need me to tell you what’s been going on this month. Silver lining is more time to read. I’ve reviewed my twelve books in two posts; the first is here.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

My daughter has been pressing this on me for a while (long before the current situation) and I resisted, thinking it was going to be very depressing about the state of the NHS; however it was on the TBR pile beside my bed which I now have time to work my way through. And I loved it; the blackest of black humour is delivered in such brilliant turns of phrase eg the pregnant woman who declared she wanted to eat the placenta after her baby’s birth is described as being ‘50% goji berries and 50% Mumsnet threads’.

It would enormously help the NHS if people didn’t do mind-bogglingly stupid things to themselves (in the current situation I hope that toilet brushes and Kinder eggs are used only for their intended purposes).

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

I got this lovely American hardback edition in a charity shop. No, it’s not about someone called Noah although the reason for the title becomes clear towards the end. Liam, a rather solitary character although he has an ex-wife, three daughters and a grandson nearby, finds he has memory loss after being attacked. When trying various methods to retrieve his memories he meets Eunice, a quirky woman (to say the least) twenty years younger than him. Maybe, though, Liam’s loneliness is blinding him into thinking this could be the start of a new relationship.

Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan by Ursula Buchan

I bought this last year at the Borders Book Festival after an event by the author, a granddaughter of JB. Some reviewers commented that it shed no new light, i.e. it didn’t dish any dirt. And that’s because, although of course he had his flaws like everybody else, there is no dirt to dish. He did not have feet of clay.

I have been a little obsessed with the Buchan family since reading his sister (pen name O. Douglas) as a young girl (they are still my comfort reads) – her novels draw heavily on her immediate family history. I’ve also read other biographies of him and his own memoir.

What I find particularly fascinating about him is his capacity for work (which I don’t think would leave him any time for ‘dirt’ …). As I said in an earlier blog post:

‘Now maybe JB didn’t have to worry about what to make for dinner, nor did he have to update his Facebook page or worry about his Amazon ratings and he didn’t have the option of slumping in front of a movie. But as well as being the author of around 35 novels and 50 non-fiction titles, including single-handedly completing the 24 volumes of Nelson’s History of the War, he was in the course of his 65 years a lawyer, diplomat, WW1 propagandist, publisher, MP and Governor General of Canada.’

With all that it’s rather ironic that he is best remembered now for creating Richard Hannay and his adventures in The Thirty-Nine Steps – a book he didn’t think much of himself.

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

Ambrose Parry – aka best-selling novelist Christopher Brookmyre and his anaesthetist/medical historian wife Dr Marisa Haetzman. This is a brilliant mash-up of their talents.

It’s Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven has just become apprenticed to the renowned (real) Dr James Young Simpson in whose household is maid Sarah Fisher who would aspire to the medical profession herself were it an option for females.

When bodies of young women are found across the city Will and Sarah join forces to investigate. I loved it. Perhaps it’s not for the squeamish though …

I’d like to find out more about Dr Simpson who seems to have been a larger-than-life, generous-hearted man as well as earning the thanks of women everywhere for advocating chloroform during childbirth. I had my children in the hospital that was wonderfully named for him, the Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion. I believe in its new location it’s called something much more prosaic.

 The Foundling by Georgette Heyer

Continuing my journey through Regency England in Miss Heyer’s delightful company. Unusually, the main character here is a young man – a young Duke, in fact – who was a delicate child and feels he is still mollycoddled by his family and retainers although on his approaching 25th birthday he will fully come into his inheritance. He longs to have just a few days of being ‘Mr Dash from Nowhere in Particular’.

Along the way on his adventures he finds himself in charge of a runaway schoolboy and ‘the foundling’, a beautiful but ‘bird-witted’ girl, and comes up against some characters who would seek to get some of his wealth for themselves.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Read for book group meeting on 1 April … which went ahead virtually, courtesy of Zoom.

Set in New Jersey, there are two strands, one in the present day and one around the middle of the 19th century which features a real person, a naturalist called Mary Treat who corresponded with Darwin and other (male) scientists of the time. There’s also a high school science teacher whose headmaster does not believe in science.

The modern family, seen through the eyes of Willa, live in an old, inherited, house that is quite literally falling around them; if it turns out to have been inhabited by Mary Treat in the past they may be eligible for a restoration grant.

Willa also has to cope with a horrible and horribly ill father-in-law (her conversation with a health official telling her he’s not covered by insurance makes you weep with thankfulness for the welfare state here), an infant motherless grandson, and a daughter who thinks Willa’s generation is far too materialistic. Plus (as if that wasn’t enough) it’s 2016 and ‘the Bullhorn’ is making unexpected inroads into the race to be President … Willa does have a lovely husband though, the laid-back Iano.

I love BK’s writing; it’s so dense and yet so clear As usual all her characters leap off the page. If I have a criticism it’s that sometimes chats between characters are more polemic than a real conversation would likely be.

Her The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favourite reads ever.

Stay safe, everyone. Are you getting through your reading pile?

Twelve in March (1)

I read twelve books in March. 

You don’t need me to tell you what’s been going on this month. Silver lining is more time to read. I’ll review my twelve books in two posts rather than one huge one.

Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach

Read on Kindle for book group. Ella and Tobi live in London now but have unanswered questions about their childhood in East Berlin including the family’s failed escape attempt in 1987 and the subsequent disappearance of their little brother – ironically only two years before the wall came down. When Ella finds some of their mother’s old notebooks she goes to Berlin and the Stasi archives to find out what she can. A beautifully written mystery/family story/history.

The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis

Margaret returns to Edinburgh in 2011 after her life in London falls apart, and with no other means of support she moves back to her mother’s flat. Her mother, Barbara, has always said that she has no family and she has refused to tell Margaret who her father was.

I was attracted to the premise of this book, being a fan of the TV programme Heir Hunters which features a company who look for relatives of deceased persons who have property/money but who have died intestate and with no known family.

Margaret finds a sort of similar job (to do with what kind of funeral takes place) tracking down families of those who have died alone. Interwoven with that is the story (not in chronological order) of three sisters and their lives in London, from 1929 to 1980, encompassing, among much else, abandonment, madness, paedophilia, thievery and abortion. All this grimness is well evoked and I liked having to keep my wits about me to work out what was happening and when.

BUT <spoiler alert>It did beggar belief that the deceased in Margaret’s first case should turn out (I think) to be a relative.

I wasn’t mad on the writing style. Which tended to be a bit choppy. Like this. And like this. There was lots of repetition too. Lots of repetition, and bracketed comments. (But that was deliberate and not lack of editing. I think.) These stylistic tricks were a distraction away from the story.

It’s such a dreadful thought, dying alone, estranged from or without family, sometimes not being found for days, weeks or even years. I see that MPE’s new book has an heir hunter called Solomon Farthing – clearly the subject is very fertile ground for a novelist.

Things We Choose to Hide by Jane Riddell

‘After ending a long-term relationship, Rachel Grosvenor goes to stay with friends in Florence, where she meets the attractive Sicilian businessman, Tommaso. Despite her friends’ concerns, she marries him weeks later, only to learn at the end of their honeymoon, that he’s been less than honest with her. Gradually she stumbles upon more unpleasant secrets in his life. Set in Italy and India, this is the story of one woman’s experience of deception, jealousy and finding love in unexpected places.’

Read my interview with Jane here.

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

I’m a big fan of JW’s Maisie Dobbs character – she’s a private investigator/psychologist and this is the twelfth title in the series (currently there are 15). Here she goes to Munich in 1938 on behalf of the British Secret Service.

I’d also recommend following Jacqueline Winspear on Facebook – she’s a Brit living in the States and has a lot to say that is thoughtful and wise.

 One Shot by Lee Child

One of his best, I think, and completely page-turning. A man is apprehended after six people are shot dead; all the evidence including forensics point to his guilt. His sister however doesn’t believe he was capable of such a thing. All the man will say is ‘Get Jack Reacher’ but it turns out they weren’t exactly buddies on their previous acquaintance.

Did you see that Lee Child is going to stop writing the Reacher novels and has handed the job over to his brother? I wonder how that will work out.

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

I have just discovered children’s writer (for children of all ages) Katherine Rundell and her Rooftoppers was the very last book I read last year.

I loved this one too – a plane crashes in the Amazon jungle and four children are left to survive in it. The different personalities, talents and backgrounds of the three older ones mean they all have something useful to contribute.

What do tarantulas taste like? What does it mean when they find a cigarette box tied to a high branch? And all those stories of lost cities – could they be true?

Things we choose to hide

Today I’m delighted to have on my blog fellow Capital Writer Jane Riddell answering questions about her new novel Things We Choose To Hide.

After ending a long-term relationship, Rachel Grosvenor goes to stay with friends in Florence, where she meets the attractive Sicilian businessman, Tommaso. Despite her friends’ concerns, she marries him weeks later, only to learn at the end of their honeymoon, that he’s been less than honest with her. Gradually she stumbles upon more unpleasant secrets in his life. Set in Italy and India, this is the story of one woman’s experience of deception, jealousy and finding love in unexpected places.

1. There is a fantastic sense of place in the book, Jane. I’m guessing Italy is a country you know well? And Positano in particular?

I love Italy, both the northern lakes and parts further south.  When our son was little, we had several holidays in Positano which is a particularly charming old town on the Amalfi Coast, near Naples.

2. It looks wonderful! The sights and sounds and smells of India and Kashmir jumped off the page too and were a great contrast to coastal Italy. Are these countries you have travelled in?

Yes.  After living in New Zealand and Australia for several years, my friend and I travelled back through SE Asia and India. One of the highlights was Kashmir where we stayed in a houseboat on Lake Dal for four days. The thing I remember most clearly was the fantastic purply light in Srinagar. My memories of other parts of India during that trip are vivid but more mixed. On the one hand there were wonderful buildings and landscapes and a sensual magic everywhere.  On the other, was the brutal poverty confronting us. 

3. What came first – the location(s) or the character of Rachel?

The location.  I did what I’ve never done before when writing books.  One afternoon in Positano, I decided to locate my next novel here and sat on the beach, determined to think of a storyline. This was many years ago, and for a long time this novel was my “go to” one whenever my current work in progress was being read by friends. On many occasions, just as I was easing myself into writing it again, I’d receive feedback on the WIP and return the Italian book to the back burner.  I’ve always been determined to finish it, but the final version is markedly different to the original draft.

 4. Rachel rushes into marriage with Tommaso despite her friends’ misgivings – and she manages to distance her own doubts too. There are other times throughout the book too when she ignores signs that everything is not as it should be.

Do you think the traumas she suffered in her teenage years made her hope, despite the evidence to the contrary, that things would turn out well?

Having seen how close her parents were, Rachel was keen to find someone who could make her equally happy and I think she would have felt like this even if she hadn’t lost them at a relatively young age.  A bigger influence in her choice of partner, however, was her frustration at the limitated relationship with a steady but perhaps rather dull man. After this experience, she was amenable to falling in love with a more exciting and less predictable man.

5. Apart from Tommaso, there is someone else in the book who is keeping a huge, life-changing secret. Is that lack of communication between couples something you like exploring (fictionally!)?

Very much so.  In general, I am intrigued by the communication in romantic relationships: the surface interactions and what underlying tensions and secrets may be bubbling away underneath. 

6. There is a feeling, I think, in the first-person narrative almost as if Rachel knows she is a heroine in a book and so is writing rather dispassionately about the events in her life. Did you ever consider writing her in the third person?

No, I always planned to tell the story in first-person because of the immediacy this can bring to it.  In wanting to guard against having a protagonist who bemoans her situation too often, I may have ended up with one who appears to be dispassionate about what has happened to her.  However, this wasn’t my intention!  One thing I’ve learned about characterisation is that readers will have varied reactions to the degree of emotion displayed by key characters.  What one reader considers to be overly emotional, another will view as being lacking in feeling.

7. Following on from the above, your lovely writing, the character of Rachel and the perfidy of some of the men around her, remind me of Anita Brookner’s novels. Would you go along with that?

Probably not.  I don't regard Rachel as being similar to an Anita Brookner female protagonist who has settled for a relationship where her love is returned with indifference.  The men she becomes involved with do love her and in the case of the one she marries, keep their secrets through fear of losing her.  Not that I’m justifying such behaviour!  In terms of style, there’s a delightful quiescence in Anita Brookner’s writing which she carries off this due to her rich and descriptive language.  I suspect I couldn’t be so successful, but thanks for the comparison!

8. The book covers about ten years in Rachel’s life and that of her friends and family. Did that time span take some working out or flow naturally? In other words are you a plotter or a pantser?

Essentially I’m a plotter but sometimes find that characters take off somewhere without having checked with me that this is okay…  As long as they return to the “main road” I am fine with this.   The time span did cause some headaches from time to time.

9. What are you working on now?

 

I am writing a humorous story about a group of people who come to a retreat which offers original therapies for their unusual problems.  It began as a longish short story, is now at novella length and may end up being a novel as more ideas come to me.

Thank you for answering my questions, Jane.

Things We Choose to Hide is available from Amazon – and here is another gorgeous view of Positano.

Six in February

I read six books in February.

On the Up by Alice O’Keefe

The first but probably not the last book I’ll read on how difficult it is for young (and not so young) people to afford to buy, or even rent, somewhere decent to live in the UK in the 21st century.

Sylvia rents a flat on a council estate in London with her laid-back, minimum-waged, ‘not-quite-husband’, Ove, their toddler and baby. She’s the main breadwinner but while she is on maternity leave she finds out the quango she’s worked for is to be wound up. Sylvia yearns for a house like the one she was brought up in but all she and Ove could possibly afford (if she finds another job) is one that is virtually uninhabitable and only a minute’s walk from a motorway junction.

However, shockingly, compared to others on the estate, Sylvia is lucky in that she has choices, although they may not involve house ownership. When her block is scheduled for ‘redevelopment’ (ie into properties none of the current occupants could aspire to buying) the council tenants are told they will ‘probably’ be re-housed in the Greater London area, or failing that, Birmingham.

The estate occupants come together to protest the development, aided by a lawyer friend of Alice’s, knowing though that the eventual outcome is inevitable and they will all go their separate ways.

Number 1 Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Read on Kindle for book group.

‘The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life.’

Family businesses are a great subject for novels (and TV dramas). This is the first one I’ve read set in the world of Chinese restaurants and it was a fascinating glimpse into the fiercely hot and noisy kitchens and the people who own them and the people who work in them. Well-written, touching, funny and sad.

Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce

Inspired by agony-aunt columns in women’s wartime magazines. Mrs Henrietta Bird is agony aunt for a failing magazine called Woman’s Friend – but she’s not much help to anyone in these troubled times. For one thing she’d rather be out of the office lording it on various war-effort committees and for another she refuses to answer any questions that involve what she calls Unpleasantness; this includes: marital relations, pre-marital relations, extra-marital relations … you get the drift.

Her new assistant, sparky Emmeline, seeing the genuine dilemmas and unhappiness of some of the letter-writers, decides to write back herself. Alongside this, there is Emmeline’s life outside the office with her friend Marigold, known as Bunty, and her other job in the evenings on the fire-brigade switchboard.

I thought the ending took a bit of swallowing but I loved the idea and the characters, and the tone which was rather reminiscent of girls’ school stories.

PS don’t look at Amazon reviews before you read this; some of them have a big spoiler.

PPS here’s a blog post of mine which has snippets of bracing advice from yesteryear.

The Holiday by T M Logan

From a charity shop to whence it was speedily returned.

Four women go on holiday to an Italian villa to celebrate their fortieth birthdays; one is on her own and the other three are with their husbands and children. Kate suspects that her husband is having affair with one of her friends. We learn from the tagline that one of the party is a murderer.

I thought I was going to read a tense psychological thriller with lots of build-up, but absolutely nothing happened until three-quarters of the way through this 496-page book. Until then you have to plough through banal interactions between characters who were all, whether grown-ups or offspring, unpleasant/obnoxious/spoilt/terminally boring*. A pity, because the reason for Kate’s husband’s suspicious behaviour turned out to be unexpected and original.

*other opinions are available – the book was a Richard and Judy best-seller.

The Hiding Places by Katherine Webb

I am a fan of KW, especially of her first book The Legacy.

I got totally into this one. She beautifully conjures up rural Wiltshire in the early 1920s and the heartbreak of Pudding whose beloved elder brother Donald has come back badly damaged by the war. When Donald is accused of the murder of a very popular member of the community, Pudding and a newcomer to the village try to prove his innocence.

And then – then I began a new chapter and was totally baffled, could not work out what was going on, even wondered momentarily if the binder had got pages mixed in from another book. I read on but nary a glimmer of light did I see. Only after I looked at reviews from others who had a similar reaction did I understand that this wasn’t the promised twisty ending but that there had been a sleight of hand all the way through. Was it very clever or was it cheating? The jury is out.

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill

The last, sadly, in the Dalziel and Pascoe police procedural series and it’s a corker.

It was a relief after the disappointments of the two books above to read one that did exactly what it said on the tin.