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There Must Be Fifty Ways To Leave Your Novel

I came across this blog I wrote in 2011 and it’s every bit as relevant today – unfortunately!

My Blog

Mess about on the net, Beth

Make another cup of tea, Lee

Get naked with Gok, Jock

Take a walk by the sea

The  keyboard needs cleaning

The house is like a hovel

The garden needs weeding

There must be fifty ways

To leave your novel

And the rest. . . and I know every one, which is why my new novel is progressing backwards. When it comes to displacement activity, I am the queen. Fact, the grass outside my window grew by exactly 1/8th of an inch today.  I know, because somehow it became a matter of huge (even National ) importance that I keep my eye on it.  Which, of course, meant that I had to abandon my novel.  Later on, in the interests of research, I learnt a great deal about double-glazing and how it could transform my life.  It must be the first time ever…

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Roll out the Red Carpet – The Blue-Eyed Girl is coming home!

ImageToday is publication day for my latest novel, Blue-Eyed Girl.  It was a day that, at one stage, I thought would never happen, given how I spent a great deal of last year in the grip of depression. Looking back, there are whole swathes of 2011 that I can hardly remember but, perhaps, that’s just as well.

Sometimes, there is a trigger event that causes the depression and, in my case, that event was the death of my mother.  I can’t pretend it was totally unexpected. She had, after all, been suffering from Alzheimers for many years and, indeed, hadn’t even recognised me for some time. I was ready, or so I thought, even wished release for her, given the awful suffering she had endured for so long. And yet, when she finally passed away, I found myself swept up in such a tide of conflicting emotions that I was knocked totally off-balance. For months!

Suddenly, where my mother had been, there was a yawning gap. One, that could not and cannot ever be filled by anyone else. My relationship with her was uniquely ours and nothing to do with anyone else. It wasn’t an easy one. On the contrary, it was full of conflict and pain. She could slay me with a look or a word, and she by God did. Sometimes, I felt so miserable, so low and diminished that I wanted simply to disappear off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.

She was volatile, a creature of swingeing moods. Often, as a child, I crept home from school on tentherhooks, only daring to breathe again when I found her in a good mood. I loved those good moods, for then she would sing and laugh and tell us stories, wonderful stories of her childhood, funny stories made up on the spur of the moment, and heart-stopping ghost stories that made us creep fearfully to our beds and peer out like frightened mice from beneath the bedclothes.

Her songs – I know them still. I can hear her singing in my head. ‘If I were a blackbird, I’d whistle and sing . . .’

My father called her Birdie after the sheen of the blackbird’s wing. She had long black hair, blue-eyes, porcelain skin; she was a true Irish beauty who  capitivated him from day one and held him captive throughout their long marriage. In truth, she holds him captive still.

Indeed, we are all captive because she, more than anyone else in our lives, exerted the greatest influence. She was the barometer round whom we danced. A word of approval, and we were putty in her hands. An unkind word and we, me more than anyone, was eviscerated.

And now she is gone, yet not gone at all. For we, my brothers and sisters are of her and we carry her legacy, the good, the not so good, within.  I have questions for her that I never dared to ask and which, now, I never will get the opportunity to ask. Perhaps, I never would have been brave enough anyway.  There are loose ends flapping about, which unlike those in my novels, will never now be tied up in a neat, pretty bow.

But the depression has finally lifted and Blue-Eyed Girl has been sent out into the big wide world. My mother is mentioned in the acknowledgements, as I will acknowledge her throughout my life for, in great part, she made me what I am. Whatever the conflict between us, I know she would be proud.

So, Mum, roll out the red carpet in heaven – your own Blue-Eyed Girl done good!

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Writing is Next to Godliness!

Ever wondered what it would be like to be God, even just for a day? In my own writer’s fictitious world, I am God. I create my own world, although it takes a lot longer than seven days and there’s precious little rest at the end of it.

Just as in the Bible, my world is peopled with  seducers and lovers (Adam and Eve), with  murderers and victims ( Cain and Abel). There are patriarchs, (Abraham), matriarchs, (Sarah), power-hungry death-mongers,(Herod), heroes, (Jesus), traitors, (Judas), arch-villains, (Satan and his legions), and snakes galore, (David Cameron! Just put that in to annoy my Tory-voting husband!). I get to perform miracles too, although  for the following reasons, I have never parted the Red Sea:

A.   I live nowhere near it

and

B.   I was  never quite sure from whom it needed parting.

On many an occasion, however, I have parted red wine from a bottle and made it disappear like water down my throat. A very neat trick also known as my party-piece.

As creator of my world, I am judge, jury and Terminator. I get to mete out the kind of justice of which the judiciary in the real world seem quite incapable.  Baddies always get their comeuppance, plus a long stay at one of HM’s splendid custodial establishments to reflect upon  their Strangeways. Life in my world, means  life! There is no get-out-early clause for good behavior, that  good behaviour in my book, literally, coming far too late!

In Tara-world, the hero always gets the girl.  She might not be the girl he wanted but, by golly, she’ll be the girl he needed!  Good inevitably triumphs over evil. (You can take the girl from the convent, but you can’t take the nuns-beat-it-into-me Catholic doctrine from the girl). Mysteries never go unsolved (unless a sequel is in the offing) and, best of all, the reader gets to say  ‘huh! I knew it was the one with the squint all along’, thus destroying hours of complex plotting and back-breaking, red-herring scattering in the space of a caustic breath.

Yeah, verily, I say unto you, in my world the author is God! And that’s the way, I like it, uh, huh, uh, huh. Apologies to KC and the Sunshine Band if I have just infringed copyright. Actually, scrap that. I’m God – so, sue me!

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For the want of a screw – don’t let a marriage be lost!

At a recent girly evening with two friends my heart sank when one, fuelled by too much Sauvignon Blanc, disappeared to the loo, and the other leaned across with that confidential look you know is going to land you in the brown stuff draped across her face.  Please, I begged mentally, please don’t make me the recipient of secrets that should never be told. Too late, her mouth was already flapping!  ‘I,’ she announced brazenly, ‘am in love with Loo Friend’s husband.’  My jaw dropped. It’s one of the expressions I use to express disbelief.  When really staggered, I blink furiously too and make mad mewling noises. In this case I did all three. Try it; it’s harder than you think. Anyway, the reason for this breadth of staggeredness is that Loo Friend’s husband could easily pass for the lovechild of Les Dawson and a pot-bellied pig, whilst she of the adulterous heart is married to nothing less than a Clooney clone. As my jaw reached the point of dislocation, she took pity on me and wafted a casual hand. ‘Oh, I don’t mean like that! What I mean is that I am in love with his manual dexterity.’ What on earth had she and Pot-belly been up to? I could feel the sweat start to bead my brow.  ‘His DIY skills, idiot,’ she clarified and it all began to make sense.  This woman, you see, has lived minus a staircase for, oh, something approaching five years now.  Since her house is on three floors, this presents something of a problem and the rope rigged up by the Clooney Clone, whilst doing wonders for her bingo wings and inner thighs as she shimmies up and down, is not entirely practical. The children and her eighty-year-old mother ascend and descend in a wicker basket, and the Zimmer frame is a very tight fit. The Clooney Clone has every intention of getting round to it, just as he has every intention of getting round to plumbing in the bath, at present in the garden and serving as a herb garden, as well as finishing the 101 other DIY jobs commenced with great enthusiasm and abandoned with even greater enthusiasm.

I began to feel the first stirrings of envy in my own heart and, you know, there’s something endearing about pot-bellied pigs, though nothing will convince me of the merits of Les Dawson.  I too am married to a man to whom DIY is a foreign body. Oh, he can walk the walk, especially up and down the tool aisles of Homebase and Wickes but, when you come down to it, he doesn’t torque the torque. His interest is more in the acquisition of said tools, than in the usage and all too often they lie abandoned and rusting, through failure to PUT THEM AWAY. Even though he has a toolbox. Several, in fact. On the other hand, if you want to know the in’s and out’s of the Hadron Collider, the strategies used in every naval or military battle since God was in nappies, or obscure facts generally known only to eggheads in top-secret Russian laboratories, he’s your man.  But DIY? I write this whilst balanced precariously on a chair, the seat of which has long since parted company with the frame. The three matching chairs match, alas, in every way. The 1930s front door acquired recently and which I hoped might lend a semi-respectable appearance to the exterior of the house, has been painted with royal blue metal paint and is a right royal mess.  A neighbour, giving it the once over, was reminded of the fact that she had forgotten to buy bubbles for her son’s birthday party.  In our living room, the wallpaper folds gently across where the walls intersect, a magnet for small fingers feeling the urge to poke their way through and create a nice big hole. A tap bought three years ago to replace the leaky kitchen model has not yet been unwrapped. The leaky tap, in the meantime, now gushes from several places like the Trevi fountain, making me thank God that water meters are not yet compulsory.

The scales pinged from my eyes (not properly screwed in, you see). ‘I fancy Pot-belly Lawson too,’ I blurted. ‘And, when you think of it, Mary the mother of God was married to a carpenter. And, if it’s good enough for her . . .’  She of the adulterous heart nodded shrewdly. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Now that’s what I call a stable relationship.’

The conversation tapered off as Loo Friend returned, beaming smugness as only a woman who lives in a house where everything works can beam smug. ‘Why are you two looking so miserable?’ she asked.  ‘Gimme a pen,’ she of the adulterous heart snapped, ‘or a carpenter’s pencil and I’ll write it all down for you.’

Yesterday, I stood in admiration watching an artist at work, or rather an elderly gent lovingly painting the front door of his house.  Smooth, even strokes, not a bubble in sight, no paint splashed on the stained-glass window or confetti-ing the pavement.  He stopped to take a breath and I found myself dusting off the flirtatious smile I’d long-since stowed away with my wedding dress and nights on the tiles. Just then, his granddaughter came out, except she wasn’t his granddaughter, but a nubile nymph with top-shelf attributes and a possessive expression. And his wedding ring! Just a fleeting glance was enough to convince her of my nefarious intentions. She let me have both barrels of her baby-blues and dragged Picasso away indoors. Later, as I passed the house, I heard the harmonious sound of hammering, sawing and chiselling. In the pauses between came the sweet singing of a contented wife. ‘You – oo – oo – oo drill me. Darling you do, darling you do, darling you do.’

To any man reading this who may be suffering from qualms regarding his appearance, fear not. Simply take up your arm & hammer and prepare for a deluge of DIY-deprived/botched desperate women.

As for me, I’m signing on for evening classes in carpentry, plastering, building, plumbing . . .

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Goodbye Old Friend!

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my old friend, Jago, who ‘fell asleep’ in the middle of the road recently as my husband was driving back from Birchington. Just round that dangerous corner near Quex, it was. Distraught, he phoned the emergency services, who arrived an hour and a half later, by which time Jago was no longer asleep, but had completely flatlined.

   Arriving on the scene, the knight-of-the-road errant took one look and shook his head in that sorry-for-your-trouble-mate fashion reserved for grieving relatives. ‘Knackered,’ he pronounced after a cursory examination, following it up with ‘Banjaxed,’ in case he had failed to make his diagnosis abundantly clear. ‘How old?’ he asked, head still in sorrowful metronome mode.

‘Er, nineteen,’ my husband confessed, manfully trying to hold back the tears, which resulted in his voice skidding into the girlish register and making him look, and sound, very silly indeed. A bit like Dolly Parton.

‘Yer ‘avin a larf!’ came the response, although it was clear from the machinations of said husband’s face that his funny bone was not at that precise moment tuned to comedy.  Belatedly observing this, the knight tried for sensitivity. ‘Hovis!’ he said in a voice sonorous with empathy. ‘Brown bread! You wuz lucky you ‘ad ‘im so long. These days yer lucky if they survive the first frost. I blame China!’

‘Is . . . is there anything . . .’ the husband asked hesitantly?

The knight made so bold as to scratch his head. A long groan issued from between his lips. ‘Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Told ya. Ee’s a gonner. As gone as me granny’s teeth and they went back in nineteen-undred-and-frozen-to-death.’

‘So there’s nothing you can do? Nothing at all?’

‘Do I look like Jesus, mate?’ The knight sighed? ‘Does that sign on me truck read worker of miracles? The best I can do is chuck him up back and drop him off at your friendly local mechanic. ’

Which he did and maybe the mechanic there really was Jesus because, in a few days, Jago had staged a Lazarus-like resurrection and was back on the road again.  ‘Timer-belt,’ Jesus aka the mechanic  said. ‘Lucky it didn’t knacker the pistons’.

Sadly, our joy didn’t last for long. Jago is due for his MOT next month and there are not enough donor organs in the world to get him through. So, we have taken the decision to retire him to that great scrap yard in the sky or somewhere nearer if we can find one.   And, silly though it sounds, my heart is broken because Jago was more than just a car. He was emblematic of great changes in my life.  I bought him when I took the decision to move from London to Thanet. He was my first ‘fun’ car, a two-seater rag-top, kept purely for the joy of meandering up and down country-lanes with the roof down. I drove him down to the beach and sat, sun streaming in, roof down, stereo playing gently, whilst I worked on a novel one blissful summer a few years ago.  He was with me when I met my husband, a confirmed Jag man. He is now a reformed MX5 man.

So, goodbye my lovely, little, British racing-green friend. Thank you for the good times.  And even though I am replacing you with a slightly younger model – yes, exactly like you, only in black – I want you to know I still love you and always will.  Toot! Toot!

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Hot tempers, Cooling Towers – Richborough Towers – should they stay or should they go!

I remember my first walk on the West Cliff of Ramsgate, gazing across Pegwell and, shock, horror, seeing three ugly cooling towers looming like squat ogres in the distance. But, it wasn’t long before I came to regard them with great affection.  True, they won’t win any beauty contests – they are what they are – 1960s industrial architecture. Nevertheless, there is a pleasing symmetry to them. They have grown into their surroundings and give scale to an otherwise flat and featureless landscape. I love to watch the play of light as the sky changes above them or see them gently enshrouded in early morning mist. They are affectionately known in our family as The Three Fat Sisters (the chimney is the anorexic!). When returning from our travels somewhere, there is a contest to see who can spot the towers first, and a sigh of contentment goes up that we are almost home.

Now, of course, this is all sentiment and progress isn’t built on sentiment. If, as has been suggested the towers are unsafe then, of course, there is an argument for tearing them down. If they can be replaced by an industry that will bring employment into the area, then I can see the logic in that too.  However, I wonder if the full potential of the towers has been explored, if, for example they could be turned into a museum, art gallery or restaurant, the land roundabout landscaped into a pleasant park or designated an official nature reserve. There are, I believe, some plans to build a recycling plant, including an incinerator which, presumably, will require chimneys with ensuing blasts of pollution. Is this likely to be any less a blot on the landscape than the towers?  Surely not.

My position is plain. I like them and, ideally, I’d like them to be given a new lease of life, long to reign over us.  On the other hand, the devil on my shoulder tells me that I am not an engineer, I have no knowledge of what is entailed in such a venture, the feasibility or the expense. I just hope that whatever decision is made, it will be the right one for the area and that we will all be happy. But, what are the chances of that?

Have your say. Write to Thanet District council on planningservices@thanet.gov.uk

PS.  A page on Facebook has been also been set up, Save the Richborough Towers,

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-the-Richborough-Towers/233694336688325?sk=wall&filter=1

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Charity Begins At Tome – Bringing Charity Shops to Book!

 

My husband and I are both book worms, as a result of which our house often resembles the local library. Book shelves overflow onto the floor, then rise in volcanic stacks, the summit growing ever higher.  Elsewhere, ruthlessly culled boxes, full to the brim, await transportation down to the local charity shops.  Not any more!  Having recently spoken to a number of disgruntled elderly friends and acquaintances, many subsisting on a state pension, I have discovered that they are being priced out of the charity shops. The £3.00 and £4.00 price tag for a second-hand book is, quite simply, beyond their meagre resources. And, whilst I accept that the charities’ aim is to raise money for their particular cause, I would also contend that by pitching their prices beyond the affordability of the majority of their customers, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Okay, so we all know there are also well-off canny people who trawl the charity shops for vintage or designer items they can sell on Ebay for a nice big  profit. Others, more worthy souls, flash their green credentials at the drop of a pre-loved hat in a bid to save the world’s resources by choosing to re-use what is already in existence.  But, the majority of charity shop users are elderly people on a pension and low-income families whose needs are basic and nothing whatsoever to do with profiteering, moralising or saving the world.

However, rather than just moralise, myself, for the past few months I have been on a scouting mission around the local charity shops of Thanet and Canterbury.  The results were mixed but, overall, the picture emerging tallies with the experiences of my elderly friends.  Books, in particular, have been hiked up to a ridiculous degree, the price structure seemingly plucked out of thin air. An anorexic book of no more than a couple of hundred pages is often priced the same as a massive tome, and a book by a well-known author regularly priced at two thirds (and more) of the original cost. Bearing in mind, (and as an author I know this all too well, to my own cost), that brand new books are often discounted to an enormous degree, pitching used books at the higher end of the scale begins to look less like shrewd business and a damn sight more like greed. Let me make it plain, I am talking about ordinary paperbacks and hardbacks and not rare, out of print, first edition, signed by some great, now-dead, literary giant.

Often, it is the big chain charities that are the more culpable in this regard. In Canterbury, one very well known outlet, had priced its books to such a degree that it was cheaper for the customers to visit the discount book store a few metres up the road and get three brand-new, current books, for less than the cost of two used ones (in various states of disintegration) at that store. That is not just bad business. It’s sheer stupidity.

As a donor, it’s important to me that the books that I paid good money for and which I am donating free gratis, be priced reasonably and placed within the grasp of those in most need. The same goes for clothing and bric-a-brac, both of which seem also to have suffered a seismic rise in pricing. For example, I saw items of used clothing priced HIGHER than their original selling price. What’s all that about!  With stores such as Primark, the supermarket clothing brands and street markets, it is becoming a toss-up as to which is cheaper to buy – used or new.  Given the choice, I think I know which the majority would plump for.

In Ramsgate, one charity shop has a number of pictures for sale. There is nothing special about them. They are pretty, but pretty ordinary. Prints. Not originals. Not limited edition. Not particularly desirable. Not new! All carry price tags in the upper twenties and more.  Six weeks on, not one has sold. I’m not a gambler,  but I would lay good money on it that six weeks further on, six months further on, they were still be there and the charity will have profited not one whit. Greed and stupidity again! Lower the prices, make the sale.  ‘Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny’, was the mantra used by Michael Marks when he opened his first bazaar in Leeds in 1884. He later teamed up with Tom Spencer and the rest, as they say, is history. The charity shops might do well to revisit that particular school of thought. Pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap. Obviously, I am not advocating that everything be reduced to a penny, but a judicious lowering of prices will bring in more punters and result in more sales. Better the heel off the loaf than no bread at all!

And, before someone comes back and hits me with the cost-of-administration card,  let us not forget that charity shops benefit from exemption from corporation tax on profits, a zero VAT rating on the sale of donated goods and 80% mandatory non-domestic rate relief. This 80% relief is funded by central Government.  A further 20% rate relief is available at the discretion of local authorities. They are also staffed, in the main, by a wonderful army of civic-minded, unpaid volunteers, so a little latitude price-wise would not go amiss. After all, we are in the grip of an economic recession.  There is a real danger that charity shops run the risk of donors finding alternative methods of disposing of their unwanted goods and disheartened buyers dwindling away.

I have also noticed an attempt by a number of outlets to make their store look more attractive, more boutique-like. Fine. Nice. We all like attractive surroundings. But a change of decor, an artistically arranged shelf, better quality air freshener, does not confer the right to charge boutique prices.  Second-hand is second-hand, dress it up how you may!

As I type, I can see two large boxes of books gazing forlornly at me from the floor of my living room. A further hunt will, I have no doubt, result in as many more, all on the lookout for an appreciative new home.  I will invite my friends to come plunder, and whatever is left I will distribute direct to hospitals and care homes, and to the few charity outlets I found where reality still holds sway.  Sometimes, the cost of charity is not to be borne.

 

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The Non-Domestic Goddess – If I knew you were coming, I’d have bought a cake!

 

Despite well-documented evidence to the contrary, I occasionally have delusions of domestic competency. This is when I picture myself in perfect housewife 1950s mode, gingham apron’d, flushed of cheek, a blob of flour on the end of my adorable retrousee nose, whisking up all sorts of culinary delights in my shiny, chromey kitchen. In her basket, in a corner of the kitchen, the cat purrs contentedly. On the wall, the clock ticks a mellifluous countdown till my husband arrives ‘hi-honey-I’m-home’ from a hard day at the office.  I greet him, smiley, adoringly, a perfectly cooked apple-pie with a pastry-leafed motif, cradled my hands. His name is Darren. (Look, this is my 1950s fantasy – all the men are called Darren! Some even wear a pilot’s uniform.)

‘Hi durlin,’ he says. (They all say ‘durlin’ too!) ‘Mm, that sure looks good.’ He kisses the smudge of flour from my nose.

‘Shucks, honey-bun.’ I say with a nonchalant shrug. ‘That ain’t nuthin. Just wait till you see the meatloaf yer little ol’ wifey threw together earlier. Six kinds of sausage meat, I do declare,  a large pinch of fydelity and a whole fistful of lovin.’

Meantime, back in the real world, my kitchen has taken on that Ground Zero look that was so fashionable back in King Tut’s time.  The surfaces lie hidden beneath so much dust I am expecting Tony Robinson and the mob from Time Team to arrive, spades in hand, any minute.  Should they happen to stumble (stumble being the operative word) upon my saucepan cupboard, they may well discover an artefact or two amongst the proto-type juicers, mincers and sprockety gadgets acquired in other delusional moments for their ‘handiness’.

The cat, far from purring contentedly in the corner, has just hawked up a gigantic fur ball.  I am afraid to look too closely in case it has legs and a head too. The fur ball, I mean.

The clock, bought on Ebay, is not ticking. The clock has not ticked since 19-hundred-and-frozen-to-death, when the ship it once adorned was enticed onto some rather unwelcoming rocks. Ebay has mugged me before. (A certain miniature barrel also comes to mind, reputed to have been carved by Nelson, himself. Turns out it was carved by a crim in the prison workshop. Nielsen, I think he was called.)

Moving swiftly on. I do have a husband, but he is called David. He is not the type to kiss flour from anyone’s nose, neither does he wax lyrical over apple pies and meatloaf, except when the latter is big and hairy and belts out ‘I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won’t Do That’.

Regardless, this morning my 1950s delusion was in full swing. Faced with a mountain of runner beans, I decided to search the internet for inspirational recipes for what is, in effect, a fairly uninspiring vegetable.  In fact, I have a theory as to why they are called runner beans – when faced with them, turn and leg it away, as fast as you can. Unfortunately, like my 22 inch waist and crush on David Cassidy, my days of running are but a distant memory.  So there I stood, beans before me, mouse in hand, (not the one the cat hawked up) and Googled till I hit chutney. Runner bean chutney. Okay, so it’s not exactly up there with Nigella’s finger-sucking, hair-flicking, hourglass-shaped, Haricot en Vin D’Extraordinarily Expensive, but it’s a way of getting rid of the rotten little blighters.

And lo it came to pass that I embarked upon my first foray into the secretive world of runner bean chutney. I de-stringed, and chopped, and boiled and minced. I chucked in onions and vat-loads of vinegar, sugar, mustard, turmeric  and cornflower. I stirred and coaxed and crooned words of encouragement a la three witches in Macbeth.  Double. Double. Toil and Trouble. And, verily, it all began to look quite encouraging and chutney-like, if a rather bilious and unappetising shade of green.  Then, the phone rang and, by the pricking of my thumbs, whilst I was busy discussing my friend, Jenny’s umbilical hernia and the state of the NHS, some vandal snuck in and replaced my lovely chutney with a load of sticky, foul smelling tar.

Alas, it’s true what they say, fantasies are best kept as fantasy, even 1950s housewifey ones. I rub a porthole in my dusty mirror, look deep into my own eyes and realise that, just as at the age of 37 I never drove through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair, neither will I ever be a domestic goddess.

Ah well, I guess, I’ll just have to content myself with being a Non-domestic  goddess instead! Still, I might just hold on to the Darren fantasy, all the same.  Oh, Darren . . . cooee, Darren . . . don’t forget your uniform . . .

PS. If anyone would like the recipe for Runner Bean Encroute de Tarmacadam, please report immediately to your nearest psychiatric unit.