Monthly Archives: November 2008

Super trouper lights are going to find me….

In some areas, I am very non-culturally-snobby. (What is the word for the opposite of snobby?) I love Kinky Freidman’s detective stories. I love the Harry Potter films. I love Rachel Hale’s photos very much, buy her kitten calendars religiously, and have the little chap on the left on my fridge in magnet form.

Musically, however, I have issues. I always stay off the dancefloor at weddings, looking and feeling slightly superior. If music is popular, or mainstream, I’m much less likely to like it.

Yesterday a mainstream radio DJ did a guest spot on a usually-quirky radio show. He played Abba. Abba! The music-snob in me started turning up its nose.

I caught myself. I turned the radio up instead. I sang along, loudly and out of tune.

PS I heard yesterday that my new novel will be at the front of the WHSmith travel shops (ie in airports and train stations) when it comes out in paperback in March, how exciting is that? Hurray for Snowbooks. Oh, and you can buy the hardback for your mum for Christmas from this Monday…£13.19 down from £20 on Amazon here…

Gratitude to whiskey river

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Here’s my small offering of gratitude to the author of whiskey river, who is a supremely talented commonplacer and who has brought me much sustenance over the years.

Read words whiskey has chosen about gratitude here.

The only pain that can be avoided

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There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. R. D. Laing

I found this Laing quote last night in a book I’d tried and failed to read ten years ago but that is now speaking to me as if it was written for me and me only (funny how that happens).

I first read Laing when I was about thirteen (I must have been an odd child) – Sanity, Madness and The Family. My memory of it is that it took case studies of schizophrenics and looked at their symptoms and their families. When their ‘mad’ symptoms were seen in the context of the madness of their families, they were suddenly seen as perfectly understandable and ‘sane’.

This made a great deal of intuitive sense to me at the time, and I still hold to it in my work-as-a-therapist now. Some of our thoughts or behaviour patterns might seem crazy, but they have their own intrinsic logic – even if it might take a while to find it. It was once necessary for us to be this way, in order to survive in the world (i.e. to survive our families).

Laing’s quote reminds me of the Zen teaching that we must try not to add anything ‘extra’ to our experience. If we are hungry, we are hungry – it’s only when we try to avoid this suffering that it becomes a problem. This doesn’t mean that we don’t get food as soon as we can, but until we can, we are just hungry. No problem.

A song I love has just come onto the radio. I’m going to finish there so I can listen to it properly. Have wonderful Thursdays.

My joke repertoire increases by an incredible 50%!

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I’ve only ever been able to remember two jokes: (drumroll…..)

What do you call a fly with no wings?
A walk.

What do you call a fly with no wings and no legs?
A sit.

When you’ve picked yourself up from the floor having recovered from your uncontrollable laughter, get ready for my new one, which I heard on the wonderful BBC Radio 6 this morning….

What goes ‘aaaaah’?
A sheep with no lips.

I really hope I remember it, wish me luck!

: )

Now selling rather gorgeous handmade cards at Folksy for the Brits…

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I’ve now set up shop at Folksy selling my handmade cards – here I am.

Visit to buy these cards or to look at my other designs – they’re all £8 for six including p&p, a steal. Or I’m still at Etsy if you’re a non-Brit.

Good for Christmas presents, but even better to buy for yourself.

Shameful self-promotion over ; )

Why I’d make a terrible critic

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I made a mistake a few weeks ago. I agreed to review a book for a publisher, despite a niggling feeling that I was making a bad decision.

The book was brilliantly written, original, and intriguing. But I didn’t love it. I couldn’t form a relationship with it.

I started wondering what I would write in my piece. I could lie, and give it a rave review. I could list the things I did like, and leave out the rest. Or I could be honest, and say I found it difficult to engage with. I didn’t like any of these options and so I went back to the publisher, who was (luckily) very understanding and happy for me to pull out.

I think I’d make a terrible critic for lots of reasons, including:

a) I’m very contrary in my reading habits and if I’m REQUIRED to read a book then I’m unlikely to properly enjoy it. A bit like being stuck in a lift with someone – they might be very nice, but I’d rather decide if I want to get to know them better over a coffee.
b) I tend to either fall in love with books in a silly fan-like way, or to think they’re so-so. I stop reading before I really hate them. Gushing or indifferent reviews would get very boring.
c) I’m not very good at saying clever things about other people’s writing.

What about other people’s critiques – do I find them helpful? Hmm – I don’t think I do. Reading the first sentence of a book tells me more about whether I’d enjoy it than a full page review. Maybe I do agree with Mark Twain, who said:

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value–certainly no large value…

But then he went on to say:

However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.

I know he’s being funny, but are they always a burden? I do listen to my friend’s recommendations when it comes to new music, or new fiction, or new films. Maybe a good critic does attempt to give us their honest opinion of a work of art, so we can decide whether we want to directly engage with it or not. And we all have a bad critic inside us, one that would take a nasty kind of pleasure in ripping someone else’s work to shreds. Or is that just me?

Maybe that’s the final reason why I’d make a terrible critic. I secretly enjoy thinking a book or a film is god-awful, I enjoy hating it, in the same way I enjoy falling in love with other books/films.

From now on I’m going to keep my relationship with my books strictly personal. I want to say ‘I think this book is…’, not ‘this book is…’. I’ll leave the rest to the critics.

Poem – It Was Like This: You Were Happy

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It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent – what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness –
between you, there is nothing to forgive –
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Jane Hirschfield

Hischfield’s collection, After, is rather wonderful. Don’t forget to taste your roasted chestnuts, and I hope your Monday gets off to a good start.

The Clamour King finished, on to The Elegance of the Hedgehog

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I’ve just finished reading The Clamour King, and jolly good it was too. Those people at Snowbooks seem to have pretty good taste…

Next on my novels-to-read list is Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which comes highly recommended by my friend Susan, and then maybe Ray Robinson’s Electricity or Emma Darwin’s The Mathetmatics of Love.

It’s very unlike me to have so much fiction lined up – I don’t read very much fiction, especially when I’m novel-writing. Especially if it’s really good, as it makes me think I’m a fool to ever presume I could write anything even a tiny fraction as good. Re-reading Catcher in the Rye put me off for a whole month.

What has been your favourite novel this year?