Incredible Kratu is published in hardback, ebook, and audiobook, on Monday 7th March 2022

What exciting things did you do during the pandemic? Well, Tess Eagle Swan and I mostly did this! Far and away one of the most unique projects I’ve ever worked on (most of it over zoom, and deploying my giant monitor to best effect, so we could myopically pore over every single word), Incredible Kratu is a barn-stormer of a memoir; one I knew I had to get involved with from the minute I met this gentle giant of a dog, and his complex, inimitable, amazing human friend. Honestly could not be prouder of what we’ve achieved together.

Here’s the blurb:

A solitary child who only really found solace in nature, Tess Eagle Swan ran away from home aged sixteen and, by her late twenties, had already survived violence and drug addiction. In the following decade, life spiralled further out of control, as substance abuse filled the hole meaningful relationships should have occupied. Something had to change.

Tess had always loved animals, so when she saw a post on Facebook about the plight of two dogs in Romania, she was moved to take action, helping find homes for both. It was the first step on the road that led her to Kratu – the Carpathian/Mioritic Shepherd cross she adopted in 2014. From his humble beginnings on a Roma camp in Transylvania, Kratu has gone on to become a canine international treasure. Now a trained assistance and therapy dog, he has brought joy to millions with his lovable antics – not least with his legendary appearances at Crufts. But the role he has played in Tess’s story is more compelling still. After a lifetime of distress, Tess and Kratu’s bond allowed Tess to finally learn to love herself and answer some of the questions behind her troubled beginnings. 

Incredible Kratu is the inspirational true story of this unlikely pair, who found in each other the love and support they needed to beat the odds and turn both their lives around.

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Notes and Queries...


If you’re an aspiring writer, I’ve recently been introduced to a cracking new website that might be of interest. Letterreview.com was set up by Oliver Adams, a young Sydneysider (is that right? I might have plucked that from nowhere…) who has pulled together a fabulous online resource for anyone with ambitions related to the written word. Be it novel writing, screenwriting, scriptwriting or poetry, you are sure to find something to help and inspire. I highly recommend.

There’s also an interview with me (you saw that coming, of course) in which I muse on writing-matters various. You can find it here. Hope there’s something of use in there!

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Yes,last April, after fourteen long years, my Western Mail Weekend Magazine column went on gardening leave, and is unlikely to be returning till the relevant magazine page reaches the top of the queue for a vaccine.(Yes, in a year more RICH IN COLUMN MATERIAL THAT AT ANY TIME IN THE HISTORY OF MY COLUMN, I did not write any columns.)

 

Instead, I have produced a lot of actual produce. 

 

 

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She made a big promise. Did she also make a big mistake?

Ten years ago, Grace made her dying sister a promise—that she would look after Hope’s baby son as her own. Now, the man whose son she is raising has turned up on Grace’s operating table, fighting for his life.

When an accusation of negligence follows, Grace is forced to confront not just the man who abandoned her sister, but also his mother, Norma—who blames Grace for taking everything she loves.

Based on what her sister told her, Grace is sure she did the right thing to keep that promise. But what if Hope didn’t tell her everything? Norma’s vicious attacks push Grace to investigate further and what she finds makes her question everything she thinks she knows, pointing to a very different past – and a devastating betrayal.

As Grace uncovers the truth, can she protect her family from the consequences of what her sister did?

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Would you know if someone was watching you?

In the dark days since the sudden death of her surgeon husband, Julia’s main worry has always been Tash. Her student daughter was broken—she worshipped her father. But six months on, Julia thinks the light is returning. She is about to find out that she’s wrong.

When she saves the life of a boy who’s been hanging around her beach cottage, the questions start. All she has to go on is the butterfly tattoo on his wrist, but who is he? What was he doing there? And why was her late husband’s watch in his bag? Julia wants to believe it’s a casual theft, but an ominous arrival in the post confirms her suspicion that there is more to it than meets the eye.

As Tash remembers a string of strange incidents she had previously brushed off, Julia realises they are both being watched. Someone’s been toying with them, trying to frighten them, but why?

Determined to protect her daughter, Julia races to discover the boy’s identity. But what she doesn’t realise is that the truth is right in front of her. Will she see it before it’s too late?

Ebook, paperback, audiobook – Buy now or Pre-order

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This Much I Know

Lynne Barrett-Lee

 

At her laptop, she toiled away, and happily. Because that day, a bright spring day, full of birdsong and daffodils, she had a moment of divine inspiration.

‘Hold the front page!’ she sang. ‘I have thought a great thought!’ And though the singing, of necessity, was mostly to herself, she sang so merrily and finely that her cats stretched and left, clearly keen to venture out and spread the word.

Her thought was this. That there were all sorts of areas in her life where ‘a little knowledge’ was not the danger most supposed it to be, but, perhaps ironically, a Very Helpful Thing. She paused in her singing to count them off on her fingers.

Knowledge about her car, for example, which automobile, for the most part, she drove happily, instinctively, and well. About her washing machine, whose centrifugal mysteries were mostly lost on her, but which, via the accurate deployment of liquitabs and softener, rendered her husband’s noisome gym kit clean and fresh. About the smart phone and tablet that sat beside her, ever ready, and which, when she applied gentle thumb print to portal, sprang obligingly into pixelated life.

‘Why, Lola, why Harvey,’ she told the cats when they returned. ‘You know, sometimes – if you’ll forgive the somewhat over-tired metaphor – knowing a lot about a little can be an obstruction to enlightenment, because you can’t see the wood for the trees!’

Because the key thing was this. That she had, by some miracle, managed to make a living as an author, despite having NEVER heard of ‘fronted adverbials’! Lordy, she thought (beset by imposter syndrome, obviously). How could that possibly be? Because, according to the current National Curriculum for English, if you don’t know your fronted adverbials by the time you are eight, you are destined for the linguistic scrap heap.

This might seem random, but it’s not. It’s important. One of those bugbears that’s been brewing in me (I’m also a trained teacher), fermented by regular exposure to a newly qualified teacher – my Joe’s Hannah – and the astonishingly daft things she’s expected to teach. It was also sparked by a humorous piece I saw on facebook this week, in which the primary school English curriculum was skewered for its bonkersness – a piece in which not a single member of an entire family could do their child’s homework on ‘fronted adverbials’.

Straw poll. Can you define, and give examples of, a fronted adverbial? A modal verb? A determiner? Really?

If so, good on you. But I can’t. At least, I couldn’t.  But since I’m not a professor of linguistics, or teaching English as a second language, it’s my bold assertion that perhaps I don’t need to. Which makes me wonder – why are today’s seven and eight year olds expected to?

Happily, because I do like a bit of robust corroboration of a Saturday, NATE (The National Association for the Teaching of English) agree, citing, in their 2016 analysis of the curriculum, the requirement to teach ‘an extraordinary overload of metalinguistic concepts and grammatical categories’, for children who, in many cases, are still learning to read. Which, much like an overwrought fronted adverbial, they consider as completely ‘back-to-front’.  Just as you don’t to know how your carburettor works before taking your driving test (if indeed, ever), so it’s not necessary to know your adverbials from your determiners before penning a thrilling story about your trip to Barry Island, or a jaunty prose poem about your dinner.

What you do need to do, of course, is read, and be read to. We learn how to use written language by reading it. And reading it. Because the more we read, the quicker, and more intuitively, we learn.

Yes, yes, yes, I hear you cry, but why the sudden rant, Lynne? Well, to quote Edgar Rice Burroughs, who knew a bit about English, because it sometimes seems as if there’s ‘a universal pedagogical complex. To make the acquiring of knowledge a punishment rather than a pleasure’. But mostly, and crucially, because there’s a big crisis in teaching currently, with a 25% increase in unfilled posts in just two short years. Because less and less people want to do it.

Would you? Having to stand and drone at little ones about metalinguistic concepts, before they have a hope in hell of even spelling it? Of testing them on their understanding of modal verbs, when you could be reading them The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?

As quickly as she could, Miss Brodie ripped up her teaching post application and applied to work in banking instead.

And, yup, that’s a fronted adverbial.

 

 

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This Much I Know

Lynne Barrett-Lee

 

My friend died last week. Her name was Debbie, wife of Nick, mum to Richard, Jack and Olivia, and she died of cancer, too early, as too many still do. She wasn’t even fifty.

This week my principal responsibility, and honour, is to compose something to read at her funeral.

I’ve never written a eulogy before. Despite being fifty seven. Which I take to mean that, in many ways, I’m lucky. I’ve had one profound brush with death – when my nephew Stevie was killed eleven years back – but in the grand scheme of things I have dodged another bullet. That particular cup, once again, isn’t mine to drink from.

You will probably be familiar with that uniquely discombobulating feeling. It wasn’t me. For which, thanks. But it was my friend, who I loved. But why did it have to be anyone, for ****’s sake? Because this is life. Which ends in death. Because it does.

But not her. Not our Debs. It’s not FAIR.

I should tell you about my friend, since you might not be there to say farewell.

Yet it’s proving much harder than I anticipated.  I have a full thousand words of first draft at my disposal – the distillation of lots of half-awake thought-rushes in the wee hours, hastily emailed to self on my iPad.

But they are uncorralled, gambolling wildly across the screen. Here ‘scallops!’ (she loved scallops), there ‘that time at that party!’, over there a paragraph about the night on the campsite where she fell off her bike into a hedge. I can see her, and hear her, and in remembering,  feel her.  But there’s no elegance. No eulogising going on.

By Monday, another looming deadline on my calendar, my hope is that I will have relocated my facility with words. ‘Can you have a look at this, Lynne?’ Deb would say. ‘You’re good with words.’

But what strikes me, as I reach for ways to describe Deb, is that our words around death need an overhaul. Never in my life has the sewing box I normally turn to in order to stitch my thoughts together felt so inadequate, so full of bargain bin, two-for-one, blowsy remnants.  So full of adjectives, and clichés, and truisms, and idioms, and turns of phrase that at such times come flying at you wholesale but, by their very ubiquity, feel so bland.

Which is why I have striven not to use many here, because to do so would take something away from Deb’s essence.  D’you sometimes feel that too?

Deb was beautiful, inside and out, she was kind, she was joyful. She had that way – she really did – of lighting up a room. She was generous in thought and deed. She was one hell of a wife and mother. She put Nick and the kids first and last and everything in between. She was a loyal and loving friend. She had a love of prawn cocktails. She was innocent. She was funny. She was quick witted. She was capable.  She was strong and courageous, and never complained, even when the ravages of the treatment to try and cure her conspired with the cancer which had set out to kill her to make her life pretty bloody unbearable.

All of this is true, and every word of it is heartfelt. But it feels like a suit of clothes bought from a cheap mail order catalogue. Fit for eulogising purpose, but no more.

So, a story about Deb. She loved to go running. And, to pass the time, she would often listen to the audio version of whichever book we were reading at book club that month. Fast forward to book club, and the serious business of analysing what Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Woodlanders’, was all about. Question after question was posed.  Deb was uncharacteristically silent. She didn’t get this. She didn’t get that. She begged to differ on the other. She really didn’t get why X happened to Y. Indeed, she found the whole thing so impenetrable that she hadn’t managed to finish it.

Fast (ahem) forward to the next day and a fiddle with her iPhone. She’d accidentally read – or, rather, listened to – a full three quarters of ‘The Woodlanders’ on shuffle.

She’d persevered though, because that was the essence of our Deb.  Far too modest, too humble, to question Thomas Hardy.

It was also hilarious. To both her and us. But you probably had to be there.

And perhaps that’s the point. That you probably had to be there.

Aww, Deb. We’re going to miss you so much.

 

First published in the Western Mail Saturday Magazine 8th July 17

 

 

 

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Something a little different on my blog this week – a break from my endless wittering, as I’ve given it over to a rather special boy called Guillermo. Guille is just eleven and lives in Santiago Compostela, in Galicia, Spain, and has been a fan of Able Seacat Simon for quite a while now – so much so that his parents brought him my book for Christmas.

Grille’s first language is Spanish, of course, but he’s pretty good at English as well; so much so that his teacher, Dominika, got in touch with me last month to ask is he could share his own Simon story with me, about which I was very touched.

I was also thrilled to learn things about Simon that I hadn’t previously known, and to see pictures of him that, in all my months of research, I hadn’t come across either. (I’ve popped them up now, on my Pinterest page.)

Anyway, whether Guille plans a career as a writer, or, perhaps, as an intrepid cat researcher, I thought I’d share his lovely story with you here. Gracias, Guille!

 

Guille's cover art

SIMON THE CAT

A HERO FOR GREAT BRITAIN

BY GUILLERMO

Able Seacat Simon was an orphan who grew up on the dockyards Simonof Hong Kong before finding work aboard a British ship. There, he protected the crew and raised morale till his ship was attacked.

The injured were evacuated, but Simon stayed onboard even though he was badly hurt. Upon recovering, he returned to his duties for which he received awards and the gratitude of Britain.

Simon’s origin is a very intriguing mystery. Numerous scientific studies have tried to investigate his parentship. From recent genetic studies we are able to deduce that his progenitors were a Turkish Angora male, who had escaped from a house, and a street cat female, a vagabond. It’s believed that Simon was born on Stonecutter’s Island (now part of Kowloon), some time in 1947. That’s where Ordinary Seaman George Hickinbottom noticed him, near a small rice field from a private property, in March of the following year.

Hickinbottom was a 17-year-old who had joined the Navy the previous year and felt sorry for the homeless orphan, and brought him aboard the ship he served on. Unfortunately, the sailor’s rank didn’t entitle him to private quarters, but to bunk right beside the captain’s cabin.

Stationed aboard the British frigate HMS Amethyst, it was Hickinbottom’s job to make sure the ship was kept clean and that everything was in order. The sailor smuggled Simon aboard by hiding the poor waif in his shirt.

Fortunately, Lieutenant Commander Ian Griffiths liked cats. He also understood the value of keeping the ship’s rat population under control, but the Ordinary Seaman was not off the hook. Griffiths threatened to have the sailor up on charges if he saw any cat pooh onboard.

Thankfully, Simon was very likeable. The ship’s crew saw to it that whenever the new recruit made a mess, it didn’t stay visible for long, greatly easing Hickinbottom’s job and stress levels.

Besides catching rats on a daily basis, Simon developed a deep bond with Griffith. All the captain had to do was whistle, and Simon would come running. Then the two would make their rounds of the ship, making sure everything was in order.
crew plus pie

Simon and his fellow crew members admiring a giant pie

The cat even gave his captain daily gifts – dumping dead and bloody rats at the man’s feet and even on his bed. And whenever the captain wasn’t wearing his cap, Simon would sleep in it.

But he never forgot his debt to George and the other men, spending time with the lower rank whenever possible. He even entertained them by fishing ice cubes from jugs of water with his paws on command.

In December, however, P/O Griffith was given a new command and felt it best to leave Simon behind. As luck would have it the new captain, Lieutenant Commander Bernard Skinner was also a big fan of cats, even though Simon never responded to his whistles nor followed his new master around the ship.

Everything was idyllic till April 1949 when the Amethyst, that was docked in Shanghai under the protection of Colonel Jonathan Jones and his troops, was ordered to Nanking to relieve the HMS Consort. The Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists had broken out, so the Consort had to protect the British Embassy and residents, bring the necessary supplies and be ready to evacuate the personnel if necessary.

At 8:31 AM on April 20, they were on the Yangtze River when they came under fire. Not sure who was doing the firing (probably one of the communist shore batteries at the north bank of the river), they hoisted the White Ensign and the Union Jack. Fundamental people for the ship’s company were killed during the incident: Doctor Alderton, the boat’s doctor, the First Lieutenant, and even Captain Skinner. Fortunately, the shooting stopped, and they sailed on.

Just after that, Simon disappeared from the main cabin, and was thought to be dead, to have succumbed below the Communist guns. He was found the following month lying totally unconscious in the petty officer’s quarters. His scars were very deep, his palatine bone was broken, along with his tarsus and femur, and he had a bad eye. The ship’s veterinary, sir Edmund Roberts, cured most of his injuries, ending his terrible ordeal.

After his incredible recovery, he was back on duty at the ship. During his tribulation, the ship had been infested by rats again.

The most voracious, monstrous, hideous, filthy, and atrocious rat of all, referred to as Mao-Tse Tung by the frigate’s crew members, was the head of all the rodents. During his abominable reign, he caused the most unimaginable damages in the ship’s few provisions, obtained from nationalist merchant ships, until one day he and his vassals met face to face with the rat’s worst nightmare- Simon the cat. He killed the horrible rodent and all his companions in a single strike, in a question of seconds.

After his memorable deed, he was awarded with the honourable title of sergeant and Able Sea cat, which is the feline equivalent for Able Seaman.

For relief and stabilization, the Amethyst was given a new man in charge: Lieutenant Commander John Kerans, who was considered as one of the biggest and most representative naval heroes of the British Empire. On April 1949, they were detained by Commander Kang’s men, and were anchored on the river, with the complete vigilance of a nearby sea stronghold. The days dragged on, more than two months after the original incident, with fierce heat and humidity, no relief in sight, and dwindling supplies of everything, including fuel. At times the boilers had to be shut down to conserve fuel, so there was no ventilation and no refrigeration. Even Simon started to wilt, although he continued with his duties and his rounds, helping, with the ship’s terrier dog Peggy, to keep up the crew’s flagging spirits. The ship’s telegraphist, Jack French, along with Lieutenant Rein, was trying to send messages to the citadel that had control of the river, residence of Lieutenant General Simon Bell; but there was no response. Then there was a typhoon; Simon was kept shut to avoid the possibility of losing him, and slept through it all in the captain’s cabin. Amethyst survived again, but rations and fuel were becoming desperately scarce. Kerans decided he had to make a dash for it while it was still possible.

So, on the night of 30 July 1949, Amethyst left under cover of darkness and after a further series of adventures and more damage from Communist guns on shore, made it to the open sea, to be met by HMS Concord. The ordeal was over, after 101 days.

Upon arrival at Hong Kong, Simon was out of sight, yet again. Lt Cdr Kerans sent Able Seaman John Persephone and Lt Sgt Richard Herbert Scott to find the precious cat, but with no luck. Subsequently, Simon strolled back on board.

The cat was withered in his left paw and back. A few days later, he had an awfully elevated temperature and severe gastroenteritis. He was stationed in an undersized and scruffy cabin, belonging previously to the old ship’s captain ,P/O Skinner and rested there until their return to England, where he was going to be presented with the Dickn’ medal.

The medal presentation was set for 11 December, but regrettably it did not occur.

Simon was immediately sheltered in the PDSA’S veterinary clinic, where he was examined by professional veterinary Bernard Timothy Johnson, who qualified him as sick kitten.

 

Cards, letters and flowers began to arrive at the quarantine shelter by the truckload. In November 1950, he was visited by Admiral Sir Robert Buxton in the Animal Clinic. He was awarded with the Royal Navy’s Medal of Honour, and given a special uniform, with an officer’s cap and frills. The following day he was found by Timothy lying lifeless on his canopy. Soon, his death was announced in all England, and letters from the duke of Wellington, the count of Baltimore, the duke of Clarence and even from His Majesty King George VII were sent to the poor Timothy and captain Kerans.

As his biographer Lord Ronald Duncan wrote:
. . . the spirit of Simon slipped quietly away to sea.

Lt Cdr Kerans and the crew were devastated; and Father Henry Ross, rector of St.Augustine’s church, held a long and elaborate ceremony and procession, after which Simon was buried with naval honours, Following the burial, a marble marker was placed, with the inscription:

 

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‘Even if you are in a minority of one, the truth is the truth.’ Mahatma Gandhi. 

We live in a post-truth society. Did you know? Well, if you didn’t, you should do because so established is the phenomenon that Oxford Dictionaries have chosen it as International Word of the Year for 2016.

For those not intimately acquainted with the term’s precise meaning, here’s how the OD defines it. “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

They go on to add some examples. “In this era of post-truth politics, it’s easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire” and “some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age”.

I think you can see where I am going with this. Well, I say ‘am’, but, in truth – as opposed to post-truth, which is an adjective – it’s more a ‘was’ because I have already been derailed from my task. Time is short, the art long, as I believe Hippocrates said, and I’ve been too busy amassing evidence for my initial sweeping assertion to have sufficient time available in which to write about it.

Time flies. Ain’t that the truth? (Even though, actually, it doesn’t. It has no aeronautical qualities whatsoever.) Checking facts in order to construct a reasoned, evidence-based argument is not only time-consuming – it’s also a little bit last century. And, according to one source (Claire Fox, in the Spectator) something about we should all be more wary, because doing everything by numbers (especially politics) risks ‘patronizing’ those who ‘vote with their hearts’, and also of coming ‘dangerously close to advocacy’.

And yet, and yet. Are we to conclude that telling lies for political gain is henceforth acceptable? The other night, my friend Rachel’s son Nathan showed me some images. We were talking about social media, and how much rubbish can be found there, and he showed me a pair of images, one of which had originated from Forbes news site, and one which had originated from NASA.

Both images were identical but the captions were not. One said “Mysterious space debris hits Earth on Friday 13th”, the other “ WT1190F safely reenters Earth’s atmosphere.”

Exactly. By the same token, there isn’t a shred of evidence that David Cameron ever got up close and personal with a pig’s head. Nor an atom of truth in the recently reported story that the Christmas lights in some parts of Sweden were cancelled to avoid angering Muslim refugees. (In reality, an electricity company had taken over responsibility for providing power in some districts, and wouldn’t sanction the lights due to cost implications and because their new lampposts weren’t designed to take the weight.)

In all these cases, there is a common denominator. Before their legitimacy had been questioned to a level sufficient to make them go away, they were shared on social media in eye-watering numbers.

But if you loathe David Cameron, feel vexed about refugees or, indeed, have a strong suspicion that there’s something out there, then being made aware of these falsehoods is unlikely to trouble you, because the addition to your stock of prejudice has already been bolted on. And that’s if the facts even reach you.

I know this to be true because I’ve been duped also. Like many of my friends on facebook, deep in the mire of a situation set to out-Brexit Brexit, I liked and shared an image of one Donald Trump, the caption beneath which purported that he’d once said some pretty scathing things about the intellect and credulity of republican voters, and that, as a consequence, should he ever run for president (cue hollow laughter) that would be the party he would opt for – the dastardly ****!

I knew something else, too. That I wasn’t going to allow a little detail like the truth to get in the way of a nice robust loathing. Heck, he’d certainly said enough other stuff that really annoyed me, hadn’t he? And it was still the sort of thing he COULD have said, wasn’t it? Might even HAVE said at some point, truth be known. He wants to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, for heaven’s sake!

Sound familiar? This sort of thing rolls off the tongue so easily, doesn’t it? Which is why post-truth is an adjective we should take care can never be applied to ourselves, because it allows people with immense power to lie to us every day.

We swallow it and share it at our peril.

First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine Nov 26th 2016

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