I saw an interesting quote on facebook the other day. A quote which seemed to perfectly capture the current uncompromising mood in the face of so much global human misery.

‘Policymakers,’ it went, ‘who deny basic scientific truths, should also be denied penicillin, horseless carriages and airtime on the magic box of shadows.’

It’s attributed to a Joss Whedon, a polymath in the film industry. A screenwriter, director, producer and composer, he also co-wrote Toy Story, which is an epic piece of storytelling, so I already know I’d like him.

And, at first glance, what he says connects too. You can’t have it both ways, after all. And since I assume he’s referring to those who would seek to bamboozle us with myths over fact – your average deranged jihadist, white supremacist, and/or creationist – there’s a lot of righteous sense in what he suggests.Screen Shot 2016-07-07 at 12.01.41

Indeed, it reminds me of various wars raged via email back in my thirties, when ‘horrifying birth stories at the hands of evil medical overlords’ was a competitive sport. It ended, for me, when I was moved one day to point out that for every ‘they ripped it out of me with forceps when it was NOT in my birth plan’ there were thousands more pre-modern-medicine birthing stresses, such as ‘mostly dying’ and ‘the baby dying too’.

But to the point. On second glance (I do a lot more second glancing these days) I wonder if, in fact, that’s not the way.

Though it does sometimes seem so. We have a lot of terms for validating the idea of ‘come-uppance’, after all. With our friends in distress – be it a vile boss, cheating husband, or a slight from a supposed friend – the post-modern way is to invoke the concept of karma, which will see them rewarded for their sins by making their appearance in the next life as a headlouse.

I’ve always liked karma as a friend-soothing device. It’s kinder, more constructive, more emotionally positive, than suggesting the aggrieved arm up and go slash all their clothes.

Like Karma, the buck-passing device with a heart, there’s also the traditional robust go-to of ‘they shall reap as they sow’. You do right by the world and it’ll do right by you, but those who choose the opposite road will have their bums bitten.

And there’s a comfort in that, isn’t there? In the great ‘told you so’ again being dealt with by the future. You know the drill. Her former husband is a low-life, as everyone knows. But her children persist in loving him, even so. Even when he fails to turn up/breaks their heart by forgetting another birthday. They shall reap as they sow, once those children are grown. They’ll be seen through adult eyes and treated accordingly.

Then there’s the warrior’s chant of ‘live by the sword, die by the sword!!’. Dole out violence, expect the same in return.

I could go on. What goes around comes around. Eye for an eye. Do as you would be done by. Ultimately, they are the same. A belief in the rightness of consequences.

Which is a fine thing to teach a child, vis-a-vis their own actions; to let them take the rap for not doing their homework (rather than you doing it) is to have them learn to take responsibility for themselves.

But to champion the idea of meting it out to others – either directly, or by invoking destiny – that’s the bit I increasingly struggle with.

So, for all that Joss Whedon’s elegant words chime with my little-red-hen instinct, do I want to stand by and watch death by infection? Exclusion from the future? A voice denied free speech? No.

They should be given that rope. Not to hang themselves with, but to help THEM climb out of ignorance too.

 

In other news, I’m having a moment in the sunshine. I hesitate to crow, because I hate to appear immodest, but I share this for all theIMG_7830 talented authors in the world who believe their own day may never come. Tomorrow I am Numero Uno. You won’t see my name (I am the silent half of the author Julie Shaw) but our creation, Bad Blood, is going to be sitting pretty at the top of a certain Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller list. Hurrah!

It’s been 21 years from my first published article to this point, and almost double that number of published books. So, if you can stomach it, another homily for the young and impatient. Hard graft can have consequences too.

First published in The Western Mail Weekend magazine, July 30th 2016

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Since I’m writing this week from the glorious alps again, I had thought I’d immerse myself in nature. The natural world – winter fading, spring rapidly burgeoning – is, after all, very giving with its gifts. What were once winter trickles, often hidden beneath the snow pack, are now beginning to appear from beneath their white duvets and rush, gurgling, to join the swelling river. And all around, shocks of green join the growing brown expanses, fertile mud – be it still damp and claggy from its hibernation – from which summer’s rampant growth will soon begin.

Oh, but Glastonbury, dearest Glastonbury, how you’ve brought my mood down. Yes, it’s certainly true, since this is the world of humans, that other enervating ticketing systems are increasingly available – but this, hippest (or hippy-ist, or hipster-ish) of all events? So disappointing.

I refer, since I’m sure there will be many who are not aware of it, to the business, this week (last week, as you read this) of it being time to pay our festival-ticket balances. Yes, the reality following the excitement of paying last autumn’s deposit has finally arrived in tens of thousands of email inboxes.

And what a dispiriting process it all is. Ticket price – check. No problem with that. A slight frisson of irritation at the ubiquitous booking ‘fee’, obviously, as if being allowed to do so was some sort of privilege.

But there you go. Such is modern life, and few seem to question it. As with premium rate phone lines, and a seat on a plane, these anomalies in logic have simply slipped in. And as to parking, well why NOT charge £35 to allow your guests the privilege of parking in a field? (Which, by the way, is the only option for those not going via coaches, and in possession of many kilos of camping gear.) Hell, you have the land sitting there – why not make it pay?

And there again, why not sling in – or, more accurately, have your ticketing partner sling in – a handy-dandy £5.25 per ticket ‘optional’ insurance, and ‘strongly advise’ festival goers to pay for it? Because, naturally, should you suddenly not be able to make it, it’s clearly unreasonable to expect a refund. What are the chances, after all, of selling that ticket to someone else, given that the event is so routinely under-subscribed? And so what that you can insure a fortnight in Spain for just a couple of quid more? £5.25 is such a nice-looking number.

Hey, and why not refuse to accept credit card payments? After all, those nasty, capitalist-society credit cards are just SO non-festival-ethos, with all their grubbing around, making money out of not terribly much. But of course, they offer all sorts of handy user-benefits, like travel insurance, and cancellation insurance, which means – hmm – no £5.25 extra per ticket required.

But, as I say, hey-ho, that’s life. Even festivals, green and of-the-people as they are, have to move with the times. Which is why I presume (I’m nearly done griping here, I promise) there’s the final £7.75 ‘administration fee’ per booking – which pops up, like a marmot from a hole on Mont Blanc, and apparently covers the expense of producing and posting your precious tickets, and which (to my admittedly untutored mind) seems one heck of a lot of cash.

 

Of course, this is normal in the 21st century. This is the price we pay for going out, doing stuff, having fun. This is the remit of the modern-day profitable middle-men – the unseen human army whose business it is to charge to ‘administer’ our pleasure.

And it’s unfair of me to single out a single festival. In fact, almost every event putter-on-er works to roughly the same principles. This is what it costs and, later, this is what it REALLY costs, once the various fees and oh-so-vital insurances have been figured in, and we realise that the best things in life are often not free – not when there are easy co-lateral profits to be made (signing up for PPI, anyone?).

Though it does leave something of an acrid taste in my mouth as I tick the box to sign the Glastonbury Pledge and promise ‘not to pee’ in their field, because it brings me back to my beautiful, not-for-much-longer-alpine playground. To nature and nurture and to the whole idea of Glastonbury, which I still so fondly cling to, along with the fervent hope that the best bits of the festival WILL still be free.

No charge for mud, after all.

*The author would like it recorded that since going to Glastonbury she wouldn’t hear a word said against it, its children, its pets, its wider family and/or any of its – lovely – associates. And would very much like tickets for next year. AT ANY PRICE. 🙂

First Published in The Western Mail Weekend magazine April 2016

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I think I am all angered out. This is probably only temporary (there’s no ‘probably’ about it) but, for now, I’m back to instagramming kittens.

How has it been for you, seriously? I mean, everything. This tsunami of foundation-rocking stuff, collectively. From the first wave of pre-EU Referendum shilly-shallying, to the State of Emergency that has, as I write, just been announced in Turkey.

I could see it. Well, at least some of it, way back. Regular readers will already be aware of my pointless but impassioned plea not to even HAVE this referendum. Surely this was too big, too complex, too constitutionally life-changing to be decided with a simple yes or no? Surely no-one could possibly know enough about global economics to even begin to know where to put their cross?

I fretted big-time about that, I can tell you. Whatever the outcome, about the massive ramifications for our national cohesion. About the outpourings of lies and bile already spewing from the internet. And remember, this was back when I thought we remainers would ‘win’ – and how pyrrhic a victory it might be.

And what powerfully emotive words ‘win’ and ‘lose’ have become. Because this firestorm of argument was just a rehearsal. Turns out it would become even more bitter and divisive than I could have imagined, with the orchestrators of 48% of the voting population’s current misery either betraying, being betrayed, or waving ‘bye-bye, I’m getting my life back’, while their lies were exposed even before cock-crow.

Emotions, running high, both inside and out of Westminster, like the engine on a boy racer’s Fiesta. And down on the farm – I was at Glastonbury – that sense of complete unreality. That bleary-eyed, astonished, ‘what the **** just happened?’ mumblings. What was going to happen to us all now?

And, ‘remain’ or ‘leave’, once the initial incredulity had died down on both sides, we all duly fell into step with our so-called (transient) leaders – becoming grubby, sharp, mean, aggressive, rude.

It was as if the lunatics had taken over the asylum. Whichever way you voted, didn’t you think that? Protests – of course, protests – protests about the protests, previously mild people screaming at eachother from their respective virtual terraces, as if this really was something that lent itself to a primitive ‘you lost, we won!’ rhetoric, or – to provide balance – the similarly reductionist ‘you voted ‘leave’ because you didn’t think!’ response.

I have engaged, even if at all times politely. I’ve signed petitions, written to my MP, done my fair share of questioning our collective ‘wisdom’, fielded too many impassioned cries of ‘****ing grow up! Get over it!’, watched from the sidelines as wars have raged – bloody wars, taking no prisoners – down those same dark virtual alleyways I alluded to back in May.

I’ve heard and believed the warning that here be the seeds of civil war. The 52 versus the 48. The nearness of the numbers. The enormous, scary societal gulf now exposed.

Emotions, running high. Like the boilers in a racing warship. Feeling too much, about too much, a thousand times a day. Feeling the veneer of social cohesion to be worryingly fragile. Feeling the imminence – taking the lead from our imploding political parties – of naked hate. Of violence in the streets.

And into this, violence in the streets. Pre-referendum – remember those days? – it was Florida. Those exasperating, genocidal, bloody gun laws. Another swathe of young lives taken. RIP.

Then Istanbul Airport. Barely a ripple on the argument-filled post-Brexit virtual landscape, but a dagger through the hearts of another swathe of innocent humans. RIP.

And then Nice. Which left everyone stunned into virtual silence. Not in the sense that the communities stopped talking – but that, for a moment there, we were all just too stunned to know what TO say. Except RIP.

How was it for you? This too-close-to-the-bone show of terrorist ambition? How on earth do any of us process such carnage? How do you square the circle, and arrive upon some sort of helpful equilibrium between the part of you that rages, and the part that tells you (ad nauseum, it’s sometimes seemed lately) that only love can conquer hate? That to refuse to engage in hate is the only way to proceed?

Emotions running high, like an overflowing storm drain. And still, despite the sun, the storm clouds keep amassing. My MP says he’ll  meet me. I’m wondering if it’s wise. Or if, for the moment at least, I should pass, get some space. Instagram some kittens.

Quiet the anger. Don’t you feel that too?

First published in The Western Mail Saturday Magazine, July 23rd 2016

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“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

– Isaac Asimov

 

 

I did something terrifically avant garde the other day. I sat down with a piece of paper and wrote a letter. Yes, wrote it, with a pen, not a keyboard.

Some of you will find this declaration risible. People have been writing letters to each other for centuries, after all. But, for me, this development is – ahem – noteworthy.

In this case, it was in response to another hand-written letter. I’ve had a few of these in recent months, since the publication of my novel Able Seacat Simon, which, as some of you know, concerns a famous naval incident that happened almost sixty years ago. So as well as the usual tweets and emails, I also get letters, because many of the readers of a book set in the late 1940s grew up in an age when penning them was the norm.

And up to now (to my shame) I’ve been a tad slack in my responses, eschewing the traditional in favour of the modern typewritten missive, on the grounds that my writing is so creative, and so idiosyncratic, and…. Oh, alright, then. Such a scrawl.

Last week, however, finding myself on a long train journey, I decided to fill the time by catching up with correspondence and, without my laptop (left at home because of my irritatingly cronky shoulder), was compelled to go old-school.

And what a revelation the exercise turned out to be. First selecting the paper and matching envelope (I am a martyr to my stationery addiction), choosing the pen (no real choice there; I have a Silver pens in boxBic Crystal fetish) and then the biggie, as I watched the verdant pastures rolling by – selecting what to say and how best to say it.

Again, you might think this is all so much nonsense. I’m a ‘lady of letters’, albeit of narrative ones mostly, which means perfectly formed sentences ought to positively drip from my pen.

But, you know what? It’s not that simple. There is a definite rhythm to hand-writing anything, which is quite different from creating sentences on a screen – or, indeed, for any other form of ‘written’ communication.

When you handwrite, as an adult, there are standards. It’s imperative the words come out perfectly. If I make a mistake in something another person is going to cast their eye over, there’ll be no scrubbing it out and writing the correct word above it. I have to rip it up and start all over again. (Which is why I have such a huge box of unaccompanied greeting card envelopes.)

So ‘think before you speak’ is the order of the day. Think your thought, then spend time pondering how best to convey it – how it sounds in your head, how it flows on the page, how it relates to what’s gone before and is probably coming after. Only then, as with a chess piece, do you commit.

If you write letters often, this process probably happens subconsciously. But it’s a process, even so. And vital, because unlike most screen-based creative processes, there’s no handy cut and paste option.

And isn’t that what makes a hand-written letter such a thing of beauty? That it’s considered. That, assuming it’s not a rushed, ranting missive (which it would hardly ever be these days, because we have so many other tools for that purpose, don’t we?), it’s entirely what it was intended to be.

Which is precisely why it’s so singular and worthwhile. Because, oratory and CVs and suchlike aside, we mostly don’t give our personal thoughts such careful buffing and polishing before sending them out into the world, do we? We ‘fire off’ angry emails, we ‘bash out’ skeins of texts, we tweet (or, rather, dance to someone else’s tedious linguistic tune), and our face-to-face encounters are, by their very nature, often impulsive/reactive in the extreme.

A handwritten letter neatly avoids all those communication complications, which is why psychologists often suggest it as therapy. It reaches its recipient fully-formed, fit for purpose, and, at a time when the click-sharing of ‘facts’ is such a blunt and divisive global instrument, doesn’t lend itself to casual dissemination either.

A hand-written letter has integrity. It is timeless. It is precious. It is sensual. And better still, because it requires effort, it makes you smarter as well.

Better with words. Better at thinking. Fleeter of thought. More creative. And it’s definitely a corresponding workout for the wrist.

Best of all, though, is that receiving one such an unrivalled pleasure, don’t you think?

Answers on a sheet of pristine aqua vellum.

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We’re having a football-themed magazine, they said. We’d like you to write your column about football, they said.

A football column? Me? Don’t I get enough of that at home? And at a time when there is so much else requiring my attention. The ongoing soap opera that is the state of British politics. The ongoing stress that is the disaffection of our precious junior doctors. The ongoing destruction of our NHS.

But I’ll try to, because, if nothing else, I’m always keen to please. Plus it’s not like I don’t know a little bit about the beautiful game, is it? Though, as I’ve often been moved to comment down the long-suffering decades, what’s beautiful about it, I don’t know.

So, having established my credentials as someone amply equipped to say nothing of any note or expertise about football, I shall endeavour to deliver.

But what’s to say? It’s often mooted, disparagingly, that football is nothing more than a bunch of grown men kicking a ball around a patch of grass and that there is little in the way of fun in that. It’s not like there’s any particular point to it, is there? It’s also said (in some quarters – I’ll keep mum to protect the innocent) that a slavish devotion to a football team (yes, that’s you, men) is one of the key precursors to relationship disharmony. And don’t we know it? Women everywhere (well, bar that curious minority who would be watching football even if they were all alone in the house and Sewing Bee/Brian Cox/Downton Abbey was on the other channel) will know precisely what it’s like to get growled at for standing in front of a television set during a goal. (Like – durrrr – we could actually predict such a random event? Seems the teams can’t even do that half the time.) They will also know – this is a cert once you’ve reached a certain age, ladies – the extent of the opprobrium that can be heaped on a fellow human for arranging a wedding, a birthday party, or – heaven forbid – your anniversary, during a key footballing date.

But there’s nothing big and clever about coming over all big and clever. As a gender, we women like decorative cushions, after all. And if you do count a football fan in your circle of loved ones, you will understand that there is no point in even thinking about making changes. As with puppies, a fan’s for life, not just for Christmas.

Unless the fan is made of plastic, that is. This is a new one on me, learned just this very week, and refers, as you’d expect, to the fair-weather fan. To the lightweight. The one who wouldn’t dream of owning a season ticket, much less endure the privations of true football-fandom, such as twenty-seven hour coach journeys, lubricated only by blind faith and Doritos and lager, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous football fortune. The one – oh, the shameless affrontery of such people – who supports a team that’s based a LONG WAY AWAY. Manchester United, for example, when you live in Tunbridge Wells. Or Liverpool, from a small gite in Deauville. The one who pops up, like an opportunistic weed beside a motorway, when conditions look reliably set fair.

Such fans, I’ve observed lately, are currently in abundance. Appearing right, left and centre. Wearing red, clearing diaries, and rearranging their entire schedules, in their zeal to get involved in the action.

Involved in this, the Most Amazing Welsh Moment of Enormous Sporting Historical Significance and General Wonderfulness (or something) in which a modest team of men from a small unassuming country have just proven – so emphatically – that certain things we mostly doubt, given the events of the past fortnight, might still just be true.

That team work, and commitment, and kinship, and courtesy, and hard slog, and talent, and self-belief and respect, have the power to not only prevail and inspire, but to transform the mood of an entire society.

So if you are a true fan, and you’re niggled by all us Johnny-come-latelies (with our pub-clogging, name-muddling, tickets-to-the–capital’s-Fan-Zone-gobbling ways) consider this.

That to unite an entire country, to have strangers hugging one another in the street, to invoke a pride that is national, without being destructive or aggressive, to inspire patriotism in such a way that it’s our hearts, rather than our chests, that have been beating – now THAT’S something to be cherished.

Well done our Wales Team. You have made everyone so proud.

And you have made football beautiful after all.

 

First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine, 9th July 2016

 

 

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Given the above title, You’re probably expecting me to talk about the referendum. Let’s face it, it’s pretty gloopy, and who isn’t?

But I’m not. Couldn’t begin to. If I started, I wouldn’t stop. And I’m not going to drone on about Glastonbury either. All that over-excited ‘I was THERE!’ stuff people yell, while you had to make do with watching it on the telly, despite the fact that your view from the sofa was probably considerably better than theirs, given that they were standing on a small hillock three quarters of a mile from the stage.

No, this week I’m going to talk to you about my new fitness regime – which is called Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud.antique mud

I’m an expert at Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud now, having started Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud at 6.30 am a week ago last Wednesday, and continuing to do so till roughly 3 am last Monday morning, apart from the odd mud-scented slumber.

That’s a great deal of Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud, by anyone’s standards. Indeed, a fellow TAIALOMer (I’ll have to work on the acronym for the DVD, obviously) has been on facebook to share his impressive Trudger stats, and in the four days he was Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud, like we were, he walked a cool 102 miles.

I don’t want to crow (I was that woman on the small hillock, after all), but since we were at that place that I’m not going to bore on about for FIVE days, I reckon we’ve topped even that.

Ah, I hear you say. But so what? Of what possible interest can your Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud be to me?

Well, I’ll tell you. Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud turns out to be one of the most life-changing experiences a person can have, particularly when done in tandem with a selection of enhancements, in the same way that you might use weights doing aerobics, say, or those giant elastic band things during yoga.

Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud while dragging a weighty trolley that contains an imperfectly balanced, poorly bungeed cache of everything you need in order to survive for five days, for instance. It burns fat. Engages glutes. Achieves thighs of burning steel! And if you do this as a warm up, in the rain, through a haze of astonishment and consternation, the benefits can be enormous. No matter that the road to nirvana is paved with exploded flagons of cider, disintegrated wine boxes, and the mire-splattered shards of a million broken promises – you are at finally at one with your inner-dream-catcher. Booooooyah!

Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud in the company of forty seven million other people all trying to go the other way is also particularly effective, bringing into play muscle groups you never even knew you had, let alone ever considered planning a workout regime for. And for extra effectiveness, try doing this while carrying a brimming cardboard cup of warm wine, while all about you are smoking the mood-enhancing substance of their choice.

People often underestimate the many benefits of Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud in order to get to a distant bank of long-drop toilets which already have a queue of thirty seven people. One of my personal favourites (ladies! Work that pelvic floor!), this singular form of Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud has much to commend it, not least (assuming you ARE wearing wellies – and, frankly, if you aren’t, you are probably still buried somewhere on Worthy Farm), that, if nature calls, you can just let your wee run down your leg, because the air already hums to such an extent that not a soul will even realise.

The best kind of Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud, however, is that which you do when it’s dark. Trudging Around In A Lot Of Mud in the pitch black is especially thrilling, adding a little extra frisson of excitement to the already clear and present danger of finding yourself unexpectedly sans boot. No, it’s obviously not for the fainthearted or feeble, but, trust me, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And remember – a mud pack is one of the finest beauty treatments there is.

So there you have it. And yes, I know, it might not SOUND especially pleasing. And, yes, other ways to spend five days of precious time are available.

But would I do it again? In. A. Heartbeat.

First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine July 2nd 2016

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I thought I might become a hippy.

I know that, as you read, I am already attempting that, pretty much. But as I write – still in list-making, weather-watching, excited-anticipation mode – it occurs to me, particularly given the shocking murder of MP Jo Cox, that, in our currently over-wrought society, it’s probably basic human nature to want to run away from modern life and put flowers in your hair.

Of course, like many a ‘normal’ person before me, I think ‘hippy’, and then I immediately think ‘yes, but’. Yes, it’s a lovely idea, but a tad naïve, surely? Yes, it’s all well and good to dream of dropping out of society, but, surely, we modern women (and, though they’re ahead of us, men) should make like Sheryl Sandberg, and lean in? Yes, it would be nice to spend all day dancing around barefoot, spreading peace and love, but how will the world progress if we’re all away with the fairies?FullSizeRender-12

Wikipedia seems to agree. A hippy (or ‘hippie’ – there is some predictably first-world pickiness about the spelling) is ‘a member of a liberal counterculture; originally a youth movement that started in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world’.

The terms say it all, really. Liberal. Counterculture. 1960s. All concepts we equate with a certain state of mind. It wasn’t hippies who got us on the moon, created the internet, wiped out smallpox. It really does have a powerful whiff of well-intentioned lassitude about it, doesn’t it?

And my personal experience would seem to confirm it. I last encountered hippies in any number back in 2011, on an ill-conceived day out to the fabled ‘hippy market’ in Ibiza. After a tedious boat trip (we’d boarded the wrong one, and found ourselves using the local hop-on hop-off round-the-whole-frigging-island service) we found ourselves in an initially like-minded, but increasingly sweaty and irritable throng, shuffling round a down-at-heel, Disneyesque encampment – which smelled of cynicism – and where mostly off-their-face or raddled people sold a variety of ‘must-have’ souvenirs – really lovely, really innovative, really artistic, creative items, such as batik wall-hangings, dream-catchers, handcrafted thong-and-bead-based jewellery, incense burners, basketware, and intricately painted glass – that NO WAY IN THE WORLD you could get anywhere else.

Not.

So it’s clear to me that ‘being a hippy’ has, in the intervening decades, become the antithesis of cool and aspirational.

But then I thought a little more about what ‘counterculture’ really means, particularly as it pertains to performing arts festivals such as Glastonbury, beyond the usual tropes of muddy excess and composting loos.

And, you know what? I find it’s actually all rather lovely. And since I’m busy prepping for it, I even made a list.

It means simple pleasures. Not overcomplicating anything – and I mean anything. Simple food. Simple living-space. Simple clothing. Simple rituals. Simple comforts, like laughter and hugs.

It means accepting a degree of hardship can be good for the soul. Putting a five-person tent up – and down. In the rain. As a rookie. As a team. I hear businesses pay good money to have their executives do that.

It means novelty. (As opposed to novelties, such as dream-catcher earrings.) The rejuvenating business of doing and trying things you haven’t done or tried before.

It means singing. Lots of that. But not just random, thoughtless singing. Thoughtful singing, with other people, sharing words you all know.

It means appreciating natural rhythms like sunrise and sunset.

It means fire – that thing that gave humans the winning ticket. Both making it – at Glastonbury, incredibly, you can do that – and sitting round it till dawn, fully appreciative of our collective good fortune.

It means strangers. But in the sense that they’re not seen as strangers. Expecting the overwhelming majority of your fellow humans to be a) decent and b) just like you.

It means stoicism. Equanimity in the face of minor inconveniences. Of which I don’t doubt there will be many.

It does mean peace and love. The first in your soul, as you sit in your wellies, saying, ‘wow, isn’t this amazing!’ for the zillionth time that day. And the second for the mass of unwashed humanity around you. Because, in life, isn’t that (hypothetically, at least) the best way to proceed?

And if that’s how I’m feeling about it all before I’ve even GOT there, goodness only knows what kind of person you’ll find here next week. A better, more thoughtful, more appreciative one, I hope.

Mind you, we haven’t unwrapped that tent yet…

 

First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine June 25th 2016

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*I delivered the following column to The Western Mail at 9.30 last Thursday morning, thinking how I’d said my sixpence-worth, and could now take my headspace somewhere nicer. To writing fiction, and planning for Glastonbury. That same afternoon, as I sat editing some page proofs, came the news of MP Jo Cox’s murder.How horrible to have my sad, frustrated thoughts reflected back at me so tragically. RIP Jo Cox.

 

Someone once said to me – I forget who it was – that two topics to avoid in polite society were the terrible twins of politics and religion. (He also suggested feminism, as if it was a matter for actual debate, but, being a feminist, I punched him in the face.)

But back to the big two – society’s twin peaks. The sibling behemoths of impassioned altercation. On the big stage, the big divider, throwing communities into conflict. And on the smaller, the grit in the oyster of any peaceful family get-together, guaranteed to create a pearler of a row, and your auntie Mabel not speaking to you for a month.

I’ve tried to avoid politics and religion all my life. The first because I studied economics when I was young, and found it both hard and pretty boring. All those conflicting theories, all that micro and macro. And, of anything I’d studied that could be considered analytical, the most open to interpretation.

I also, in my early twenties, had a major revelation. That I don’t know a fraction of the clever stuff I need to if I’m to defend my political position unto death.

It’s the sort of revelation that doesn’t seem to trouble everyone, more’s the pity, but, seriously, how can most of us know enough? That’s why, historically, we’ve always embraced democratic governance. So we can elect a bunch of people who DO know.

The second’s easier. I have no need to defend or argue anything. I don’t discuss religion because there’s nothing to discuss – some believe in a deity. I don’t. And though I could write a sermon about the baffling business of religion’s continued post-Darwin existence, I don’t, because, while in this case I COULD defend my position, why would I want to? Lots of people of faith are my friends, and, unless it affects me, yours is none of my business.

Politics, however, is everyone’s business, which is why any discussion of it proceeds at one’s peril. Blue or red, left or right, green or monetarist Marxist nihilist (I made that up), politics affects all of us because we all live together, in a society which is governed by the presiding party’s laws. I can walk by your church, or your mosque, or your synagogue, but we’re all obliged to pay the same taxes.

Which is why, from the time when I was old enough to see beyond the end of my nose, I realised that politics was also best largely avoided because it invariably got everyone so shouty and entrenched.

And aren’t you done with it all now? All the mud-slinging and ranting? Aren’t you sick of all the shoutiness now, really? You can’t turn around without finding someone shouting at someone, be it on a debate on the telly, or a rant in the papers, or – worst of all – and the main reason I’m now so referendum-averse, on the highways and by-ways and alleyways of social media – particularly the dark, rancid alleys of the comment threads. Trust me, gentle reader. There be bile-spewing dragons.

So what? You might say. This is good, all this stuff. We’re all engaging, finding out facts and voicing opinions. This is the very opposite of post-modern apathy. So much better than the 10% turnout, or whatever, when whoshisname – bloody him! – got elected.

Yes, in theory, of course ‘robust’ debate is A Good Thing. But you know what? I hate it. I hate that we are having a referendum on this at ALL. Because while I accept that politicians are not made of spun silk and fairy dust (and that we’re credulous fools to believe all we’re told) I would rather them, in conjunction with the sane souls behind the scenes, to use their education, their experience, their general know-a-bit-more-than-us thing and guide us into the future with at least a half-competent hand, based on extensive research and boring old economics.

Rather that than leave this decision, perhaps the most important in a generation, to us – the great washed-but-unqualified. And, worse, to a population that shows itself, at least in part, to be ill-informed, over-emotional, angry, hysterical, mean-spirited, aggressive, and easily misled.

And divided. That’s the worst of it.

Or soon could be. So, since the lunatics have temporarily taken over the asylum, please treat your fellow citizen just as you might your lunatic auntie Mabel – with generosity of spirit, politeness and restraint.

Because goodness only knows how we’re going to manage it, but we’ve GOT to get on the next day.

First published in The Western Mail 18th June 2016

 

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I like boats. Boats are a brilliant invention. Be it a coracle or a frigate, a schooner or a yacht, boats are just so fabulously useful.

There’s a boat in the news currently. You might have seen the pictures. I say boat, but I think you’d probably call this a liner.  The biggest cruise ship that’s ever been afloat.

It’s called the Harmony of the Seas, which is a cumbersome enough name, and the stats about this behemoth are really something. I won’t list them (see Boat Fancier Quarterly for all that stuff) but suffice to say this is a ship you’d be hard pushed to miss  – it weighs just over 225,000 tonnes.

And of course, being new, this is a boat that’s being talked about – as journalists, lured aboard for the usual PR purposes, wax lyrical or otherwise about its assets.

But as usual the real meat isn’t the journalism itself, but the comments such pieces attract.  And the realisation, as I dab off the bingo card of predictable viewpoints and lazy Titanic references, of just how strongly we seem to feel about other people’s holidays.

Well, actually, I probably already knew this. That was why Holidays From Hell (in which the Diddlysquats from Epping were pitted against the Windsor-based Forbes-Dingle-Flibberts) was such a successful television series.  And that’s largely because our class prejudices endure so well. Cut a stick of Blackpool rock and we all know (or like to think we do) exactly what kind of person is going to be running right through it.

But what never ceases to amaze me is the degree of spleen some people feel inspired to vent as a consequence. Why?  What’s that all about?

Ecological concerns, obviously. The ‘Harmony’ of the Seas (really? Did you not think to run that by someone?) turns out to be an extremely thirsty vessel. So I do have some sympathy for the person who commented that, since the ship’s so big (1400-seater theatre, ice rink,  spa, hospital,  Jamie’s Italian) that you barely even realise you’re at sea, then why not locate it to, say, Bognor?

But beyond that it’s derision and spite, pure and simple. Because perhaps more than any other kind of holiday, cruising attracts a veritable tsunami of opprobrium. As a vacation choice, it is a victim of its own success.

First up it was hated because rich people did it, and what rich people do is just SO very annoying. Only, in this case, rich AND OLD, which was worse. All those bath chairs and heart attacks, and going ‘what ho!’ to the captain. And all that with a nasty whiff of Brash American.

But they regrouped, as forward-thinking multi-nationals are wont to do. And gave us an alternative concept in cruising. The concept being Center Parcs on sea. None of that top-table snobbery. No ten meals a day stress.  No crew-versus-guests rounds of deck quoits.

Just round the clock sport-n-family-friendly fun. And a food court.  And shops. And no standing on ceremony. (Because everyone knows only children who’ve been to Stowe, say, or Eton, know how to stand on ceremony anyway.)

So nowadays, since everyone is catered for, what’s not to like?  Sorry, did I say like? I meant hate.

Rich people, old people (as already mentioned), young people, commoners, people who like their holidays  ‘chavvie’ and ‘plastic’ (someone  – a brave soul – said, yes, thanks, she did), people who would be doing us all a favour if they were ‘sent out to sea and sunk’, people with the cultural imagination of gnats, thick people, poor people (I believe the latter can apply to work there, for a berth in the bowels and an array of sub-human rights), morons, those after a ‘correction facility for those who want to smoke and eat fat’ (eh?), half-wits who choose to vacation on a ‘ floating metal council estate’, those ‘rich people who want to visit poor countries, without the inconvenience of actually having to meet any poor people’, ‘big-headed, over-dressed, pompous loud mouths’ (lots of those, of course – turn left for stereotype), the kind of ‘useless people’ who another correspondent suggests would be perfectly suited to being sent off to sea in their thousands with only eighteen lifeboats – toodle-oo! Oh, and my personal favourite –  ‘lab mice with money’.

Nice. But, you know what? If it wasn’t for the seasickness (I’m a martyr to my seasickness) reading all those comments has actually inspired me to WANT to take a cruise.

Because the people who write that kind of stuff definitely won’t be there.

 First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine, May 28th 2016

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And so, this week, I’m once again thinking about nature. Human nature, this time (as opposed to hydrozoan) about which I ponder a LOT.

You might remember that a couple of weeks ago, while searching for ways to dissuade a local tomcat from terrorizing our kitties, I stumbled upon the virtual behemoth that is Mumsnet. In the event, the advice proved unnecessary, because the tom has disappeared from our garden. Oh, but Mumsnet itself was a garden of delights.

I’m too old for Mumsnet to be useful to me, obviously. Back when my children were small, the concept of an interactive website was still very much in its infancy. Not to everyone, perhaps, but certainly to me, isolated as I was in my little work-cubby under the stairs. I can report with complete accuracy that I got online as late as 1999, and can do so because one of the first lines of my second novel was the (not) timeless “my story starts with a modem”. How quaint is that? Even the word sounds old-fashioned now.

Anyway, the main point is that I am not a mother of that vintage. If I had a maternal/family/relationship problem that needed solving, I would tend to discuss it at the school gate. Or, better still, at any one of a number of fellow mums’ kitchens – over tea or wine, dependent upon hour and/or degree of stress. And if I had an issue that required something more learned or academic, I simply reached for Miriam Stoppard. As one did.

For me, then, the whole Mumsnet-subscriber-as-advice-dispenser concept feels novel. But while I wait to be inducted into the Gransnet fraternity, it is one thing at least – a guilty pleasure.

Have you dabbled? Proceed with caution. It’s terribly distracting. Specially (I know, I should have paid more attention) if you inadvertently sign up for their daily email newsletter. But what psychological riches are to be found therein!

And chief among the gems is an almost Jeremy-Kylesque forum, which goes by the handle ‘AIBU’. (Mumsnet loves shorthand for words common to most of us – DD, DS, DP, and so on, are the Mumsnet equivalent of picking up a poem by Donne, say, or Tennyson, and finding yourself in a linguistically different universe.)

AIBU, if you haven’t already guessed it, is shorthand for ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’, a question we must all ask ourselves repeatedly over a lifetime, with the peak period, I reckon, given the thread’s popularity, being the one in which motherhood combines with work combines with fractious wider family relationships, and needs various and multitudinous have to be reconciled. (As opposed to the bit I’m in now, where the wisdom of decades has made ‘whatever makes you happy’ my blood-pressure-friendly family go-to.)

Anyway, back to the business of AIBU?, which, when followed by ‘to….’, is the digital portal to a densely populated and excitable community. Here, the poser of such thorny questions can access the fabled ‘wisdom of crowds’. And I do mean crowds, recorded views often topping five figures, and, often, several hundred responses. Some are short, as you’d expect. Just as simple YABU or YANBU. Ah, but others – and here the joy lies – do vicarious fury with all the commitment of – well, hmmm, let me see. Oh yes. Of stuck-at-home with little ones, often on-the-laptop mothers, presumably re-channeling all the energies they’d have once applied to arranging a PTA bring and buy sale.

And, since these tend to be issues of the multi-viewpoint, emotionally complex, walk a mile-in-my-shoes variety (AIBU to be absolutely furious with my MIL vis-à-vis my wedding guest list? AIBU to expect my teacher sister to ask for time of in term time for my wedding in Crete? ) the responses, though invariably as diverse as the posters, seem to share some basic attributes – Impassioned. Indignant. Highly emotional. Verbose.

And what strikes me, as I scroll, sipping tea, taking a work-break, is how the wisdom of crowds so often doesn’t confer wisdom, just muddies the already murky, fast-flowing waters of problems that, if you don’t know the wider emotional landscape, aren’t readily identifiable as black or white.

And time. So much time. So many people, spending time. Sitting at their keyboards. Busy pontificating. Alone.

And I wonder. Is this time really well spent? Wouldn’t all of us, when life throws up complex personal problems, be best served by the wisdom of a Bel Mooney? A Mariella Frostrup? The late, great Claire Rayner? Or by actually sitting down and TALKING to the people involved?

Or AIBU about human nature?

YP.

First published in The Western Mail Weekend Magazine, 14th May 2016

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