They say there is nothing like a dame, but, in cat land, there is nothing like a nice warm book to sit on, particularly when the book in question is a high quality hardback edition with a picture of another cat on the jacket. Which is why the publication of Lynne Barrett-Lee’s new novel, Able Seacat Simon, has proved to be such a landmark day for felines.

‘It’s changed my life,’ commented Kia, a bengal-cross and part-time model from Oxford. ‘Previously, I was expected to make do with day-old copies of the Nursing Times or, if I was lucky, the odd left-out kitchen table place mat. To have my own, thoughtfully-themed, sitting place has been a complete joy.’

Mr Thompkinson, a Maine Coon who lives with his partner Magic Paws in sunny Pevensey Bay, East Sussex, agrees, adding that ‘having a naval hero on which to park my ample backside has added a real filip to my day. Though, being a Maine Coon, I’d have preferred it if they’d purchased a couple.’

Another famous cat, Lola Rose, formerly of Merthyr Tydfil, disagrees. ‘This is typical of the sort of sheep-like behaviour you tend to see when a cat-book goes viral. Everyone wants a piece of it, so they feel in with the in-crowd. Which is something no self-respecting cat should ever want to be. For my money (not that I have any, being a cat) you’re always better off with a discarded cardboard box. Can get on it, get in it, and, if you feel so inclined, chew the corners.I won’t be buying into this, I’m afraid.’

It seems Lola Rose is in a minority of one, however, as felines everywhere mewl, squawk and generally harass their confounded owners to grab a copy, not least, as remarked upon by Stan, an RSCPA rescue tom from North Cardiff, because ‘it’s, like, got this cool embossed patch you can polish your whiskers on, too. Just sick, man. Total blissville.’ And so on.

Happily, you’ll find it in Sainsbury’s, ASDA, and branches of W H Smith everywhere. And of course Amazon. Which is a markedly less dangerous river than the 1949 Yangtse, on which HMS Amethyst – and, of course, brave young Simon –  were both stranded. Which is kind of …

Okay. I’ll stop now.

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I was at a small girly gathering the week before Christmas, and conversation turned, as it increasingly does, to the trials and tribulations of our lives.  And it struck me, that, good as such bonding undoubtedly is for us, also good would be to close the year with something more positive –  a summation of all the good things I’ve learned.

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The only way is down: Santa Maria, looking down on Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

 

For example,  I’ve learned that I’m braver than I realised. Despite my pedigree – former biker, driver of trucks, style-free skier – I
find going downhill on a pushbike extremely scary. But back in January, atop the highest point of Gran Canaria, knees- a-knocking, I  pushed off on my pushbike, and surprised myself greatly, by returning to sea level quite fast.

That ‘quite’ is key. I still have a long way to go. But also key  – and I think this is true for so many things – has been to realise just how far I’ve come.

I’ve learned that we’re allowed to pronounce quinoa (the gloopy grain-mutant-weirdiness formerly known as ‘keen wah’) as the prole-friendly  ‘quin – oh –ah’ after all. James Martin said so. So it must be true.

I’ve learned that if you post everything that niggles you with the hashtag #firstworldproblems it makes them funny, yes, but also acts as a reminder that, actually, you should shut up, and crack on.

I’ve learned some new French. Je Suis Charlie. Bataclan. I’ve resolved to learn more.

I’ve learned to let television go. Not so much in terms of watching, but of trouncing  television tyranny, by hearing “but you absolutely must watch”, and  “you cannot possibly miss”, then accidentally-probably-on-purpose forgetting to set the planner. It’s incredibly freeing.

I’ve learned that it’s possible to like tomatoes.

Astonishingly (for me, if not for everyone) I’ve learned that I can still be transported by fiction, after several years of beginning to accept as inevitable that I‘d be finishing barely half the books I bought.  (And, yes, I do see the irony.)  I remember my dad saying to me once that he’d outgrown his beloved Sci-Fi (saying he was too old, too jaded, too lacking, now, in wonder)and was lately beginning to suspect the same might be true of me generally.

This year, however (unashamedly on account of Aidan Turner) I bought the first Poldark  book – Ross – then the second – Demelza –  then the third, and the fourth and the fifth. A dozen later, I was reborn and back in the game. I have read an astonishing amount of brilliant books this year.

I’ve learned that an ereader with a light is a joy. And that insomnia doesn’t have to be a negative.

And that the very best way to find books which transport you is to ask friends what they’ve loved, every time.

I’ve been on a speed awareness course, and it did raise my awareness. I have been driving much more thoughtfully ever since.

I’ve also learned that as soon as you say ‘I’ve been on a speed awareness course’ it turns out all sorts of other people have too,  but had  previously neglected to mention it.  Which says a lot about how, increasingly, we feel about speeding. Which would appear to be ‘ashamed’. Which is good.

Sadly, I’ve also learned that in every speed awareness course you go on, there will be one person – invariably a man – who is a dick.

I wrote a novel this year from the viewpoint of a cat, so I’ve learned that adult anthropomorphism can be surprisingly joyful.

I’ve learned that it pays to keep an open mind. I thought I’d learned that, while a fan of adult anthropomorphism (obviously) I wasn’t one of adult ‘stress-relieving’ colouring books. That, as an ‘artist’ (how tragic) I could get nothing from them. That they were a niche idea (REALLY?), which I wasn’t buying into, chiefly because I saw it as a piece of cynical, greedy marketeering – peddled as a must-have for the stressed (and the gullible),  so the CEOs of various publishers could upgrade their yachts.

I was wrong. At that same girly gathering I was bought one. By a dear friend. Very thoughtfully. With love.

And it’s a thing of great beauty.  And I will do some colouring. Because, a thing bought with love is a thing to be treasured.

My bad, then. Which is surely what learning is all about.

Happy Twixtmas. (Or Christween, or Christwix,  as Pete has it.)

See you all in the New Year. xx

First published in The Western Mail Weekend magazine, 26th Dec 2015

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According to Jo March, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without any presents. And to some extent, the heroine of Little Women is right. But for the CEO of Festive Catering Services Plc (not so much ‘little women’ as ‘women with way too little time’) it’s not so much the presents, but the presence, from early December, of a robust and comprehensive to-do list.
Or is it? I’m at the Xmas Epicenter once again this year and you know what? It occurs to me that I’ve been doing it all wrong all these years – experience has finally taught me that what I really need is a to-don’t list.
I must not, for example, buy any comestible that will still be knocking around the living room come February. String bags of mixed unshelled nuts. Tins of Quality Street, Cadbury’s Heroes or Celebrations. Trays of crystallised fruit. Piccalilli. Pickled red cabbage. Eat-Me dates. In fact anything bought whimsically, while in some weird seasonal fugue, that suggests whatever we ate for Christmas in the late 1960s is essential, but that, bar me, no-one in my family actually eats.
By the same token I will not buy an enormous Christmas pudding, just for the opportunity of topping it with a holly sprig and creating an instagram-friendly conflagration. Because, bar me again, no-one in my family eats them either.
I will not be seduced by the promises of the batch-bake-and-freeze lobby. A long-time folly of mine, the whole business of BBAF (which should be re-labelled FAFF) is much over-rated way to spend time. Sure, it’s great if you a) have time and b) wish to spend it in a cloud of flour in your kitchen, listening to ‘Now That’s What I Call Christmas’, all alone. And for what? So you can spend more time relaxing with friends and family, as in countless twinkling photographs in lifestyle magazines, showing immaculately groomed women in knee-length velvet frocks, clutching sherry and looking smug, having BBAFed. Newsflash. These women do not exist. In reality, you will still be in a fug, cooking lunch, no matter how many dozen mince pies you’ve knocked out. (Also see ‘come February’ above.)
I will not assume that, after a couple of swift ones in the pub, an array of pre-prepared ‘festive nibbles’, and a carb-heavy four course late afternoon lunch, that my house-guests are going to require a full cheeseboard, six types of pate, three slices of thick-cut Wiltshire ham, home-made chutney, a bunch of grapes, some oaty biscuits, a head of celery, and a warm mince pie apiece, topped with brandy cream. Unless they wish/I wish them (it’s been known) to go to an early grave, that is. Which they can do just as easily via the ingestion of chocolate that will otherwise still be knocking around come February.
I will not see Harvey’s Bristol Cream either as essential or essentially non-alcoholic any more.
I shall redefine brunch. Because it’s all in the designation, isn’t it? Previously, in our house, brunch was the festive spread designed to a) fill the gap between dawn selection boxes and my frankly slovenly 5 pm Christmas lunch, and b) my once-a-year opportunity to introduce bonkers foodstuffs into the boring breakfast menu, such as cranberry and walnut bread, artisan chipolatas, pomegranate champagne cocktails, mini pain au chocolates, kumquat preserve, and rillettes du porc. This year, brunch will comprise toast, eaten late, standing up. Which was what everyone was hoping for in the first place.
I shall not buy sprouts on frigging stalks.
I shall not do anything whatsoever with giblets. We’ve all got the one friend who blanches at the word ‘Bisto’. And we love them, we do, despite this odd thing women have of accepting the myth that it’s somehow morally reprehensible not to at least make a stab at it. However, this year, despite decades of being told just how INCREDIBLY EASY it is to make VASTLY SUPERIOR homemade gravy, I won’t. End of.
I shall rein in my impulse to over-cater. The phrase ‘I’ll get a bigger (whatever it is) so we have enough left for Boxing Day’, will have no further place in my life.
By the same token, the phrase ‘no, really, no need, I think I have everything sorted’ will not pass my lips from this day forth. It will be replaced (yes it will) by ‘yes, thanks, yes, we DO need, any help/victuals/trifles would be massively appreciated’.
Though if I manage to tick that one, it will be a bloody miracle.

First published in the Western Mail Weekend magazine 5th December 2015

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I know it’s still only November but where’s your Christmas Spirit? I got asked that five times last week, and I’m no nearer knowing. Though, being a scientist, I have conducted some research, and can tell you it’s not that straightforward. When it comes to Christmas Spirit, it’s all about embracing the whole kit and caboodle. Which some of us clearly don’t. And in myriad damning ways.

For example…

Not having the remotest interest in coffee. Research has shown that ‘not having the remotest interest in coffee’ is a major obstacle to achieving a measurable degree of Christmas Spirit as it renders the sufferer unable to access some of the key olfactory triggers. Happily, you can address this. If your usual response on hearing the term ‘gingerbread latte’, is to run screaming down the high street, now is the moment to man up. Take heart (and a Rennie) and step over the threshold. For extra peace and joy, tell them your name is Holly.

Being Festive Advert Averse. Technology is a wonderful thing, allowing us to streamline our lives in such a way that irritants such as television advertising can be expunged at the push of a remote, leaving us free to enjoy all the other forms of advertising available to us, such as those on the internet, for clothing items we ordered online just seven seconds ago, and Viagra.

But step away from that remote. Feast instead on a diet of unfiltered commercial television, and you’ll soon find yourself at the epicentre of zeitgeisty conversation, on account of having an opinion on the John Lewis advert and an up-to-date knowledge of the whereabouts of the Coca-Cola truck. Feel the glow.

Thinking Black Friday is something to do with the plague. If this is you, fear not. (See also ‘thinking Black Friday is something to do with Margaret Thatcher’, and ‘thinking Black Friday is part of your recycling bin routine’.) Black Friday is actually a post-modern retail phenomenon during which people fight each other in pursuit of food mixers, enormous televisions, and ‘Occasion Wear’, all at ‘knockdown’ prices (which is obviously why they are so-called), so that desperate, impoverished retailers can scrape together enough money to buy very tiny chickens for their starving families to eat on Christmas day. In their hovels.

Mathematical difficulties. There are 365 days in a year, so at any given point in any given (non-leap) year there will be a given number of shopping days before Christmas, that could be equal to but never exceeding 364, and equal to but never less than one. Armed with this important knowledge, you need never again express a negative comment when faced with the question ‘do you know how many shopping days are left until Christmas?’, but instead smile and say ‘where x equals three hundred and sixty four to the power of Greystoke…’ and so on. And so on. Very Zen.

Not being the recipient of any office party invitations. Don’t go out to workwork? Universally unpopular? Simply organise a party of your own. I’m inviting both cats, plus the house spider who lives under the beer fridge. I’ve even upgraded my photocopier for the purpose.

I’ve also purchased four novelty shot glasses and some Advocaat, all the better to facilitate the traditional ‘sexy festive faux pas’ – in my case, most likely an intemperate email to my agent to tell him how much he rocks a Christmas jumper, employing seven emoticons and 362 kisses.

Christmas Catalogue Ennui. Most catalogues already have a built-in frustration-inducing quality, in that, while belonging in the category of ‘recyclable paper products’, they come cleverly wrapped in plastic, so you can’t toss them into the green sack without first de-bagging them. But here’s your chance to turn a negative into a Christmas Spirit positive! Opening your Christmas catalogues opens up a whole world of personalization opportunities. And remember, there’s not a person on the PLANET who doesn’t go into raptures at the sight of a set of six monogrammed hankerchiefs, or a bath sheet thoughtfully inscribed with the timeless epithet ‘Pete’s towel’. Really.

You have an unshakeable and deeply held belief that the fundamental purpose of Christmas, widely held to be a celebration of the Christian religion and/or an opportunity to embrace altruistic notions of family and kinship, is being cynically eroded by shameless commercial adherents of a consumerist economic model which places profit over both personal and societal emotional health.

Ah. Sorry, but I’m afraid you’re on your own.

First published in the Western Mail Magazine 21/11/15

*threw those in for my new (and charming) no 1 ‘fan’. You know who you are…;)

 

 

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I’ve always rather loved the term ‘critical mass’. In physics, as I’m quite sure you all knew already, it refers to the minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction.

And in science, so in my life.

I got home from holiday last Monday, in the wee hours, and despite the word ‘holiday’ meaning ‘doing work, somewhere else’, I awoke to the gloom of a damp November morning, with my deadlines still looming, my work pile still teetering, and – there is no more polite way of putting this – the realisation that serious s**t needed doing round the house.

Pretty much everything in my domestic life is currently on the slide. I know this to be true, because I see the word ‘Christmas’ and I actually come out in hives.

It started with the washing, as it so often does. That particularly dispiriting washing husbandry malfunction that sees a seasonal bulge throw the whole thing out of kilter. I washed furiously, frenetically, for the best part of Monday – because that’s what you do, right? You get home from holiday and you sort it all out. But because I’d failed to sort the stuff I’d hung up just before we left for holiday, there was no room in the airing cupboard (which is where I dry my washing), which meant the pile on the landing (which is where I stack my ironing) grew so big that the whole lot went whumping over the bannister, down to the hall floor, taking out a table lamp en route.

So I regrouped. Cleared the glass up. Relocated the ironing pile. To the room off the kitchen, which is where I do my ironing, and where, as luck would have it, one of my filthy, sodden cats tramped across (and around and all over) said pile, which, as luck would again have it, was topped off (why, of course) with the (white) bedding that I’d only just stripped off the bed, on account of the same filthy, sodden (sodding) cat having made merry there for the duration of our holiday. (You know that phrase? No point in shutting the gate when the horse has bolted? Yup.)

Back upstairs (bed unmade, landing steaming, like stew) I still faced the result of my extreme laundry moment and the second realisation – that I was all out of hangers, on account of my being TOO BUSY just lately to practice my ‘best-practice wardrobe rationalization’ and replace all my summer clothes with my neatly stored winter clothes, preferring instead to ‘dip into’ the winter clothes storage, with the result that my wardrobe was stuffed full to bursting, with not a single hanger to be found. (Bar those daft ones they always put on knickers.)

Hey ho, I thought. I am at least good at draping. So I draped stuff all over, up to and including the odd sconce and newel post, bringing the relative humidity throughout the whole house to ‘sub-tropical not-at-all-paradise’.

Upon which, being menopausal, I went out. Hell, I had to, because, as has been revealed by mathematics, there is a reliable inverse post-vacation correlation between the quantity of washing and the amount of food in the house. So I shopped. I bought all sorts. I stocked up like a prepper. Sudden apocalypse? Hey, no flies on me.

Well, at least till I got home and it soon became apparent that I had absolutely no space in my freezer. Well, I say ‘soon’. What I meant was it EVENTUALLY became apparent, when I went to get an ice-cube, some sixteen hours later, to find the entire contents (up to and including a late 2014 homemade massaman curry) covered in that other kind of less-useful ice – the kind that gets conjured by wicked witches in fairytales and whose message (over and above ‘I shall kick ass in this kingdom’) means JEEZ, WILL YOU SORT YOUR BLOODY FREEZER OUT?

So I did that, and as I write, I am sitting in a flooded kitchen, with half a dozen bulging compost bags, that won’t fit in my caddy, and which will doubtless by tonight be weeping all over the garage floor.

So we might eat the curry. Except we didn’t like the curry. And the bedding’s still filthy. And the ironing’s not started. And I’ve words to be written and deadlines to meet. And I’m sitting here wondering – why on earth do they call it ‘husbandry’?

Clearly what I need is a wife.

Originally published in the Western Mail Magazine, 14/11/15

 

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So I had this plan to make a Christmas pudding. As you do. This was about three hours ago as I write, and several days since you started reading, and what strikes me is the curious genetic glitch I seem to have inherited, which, for purposes of scientific rigour, I shall apply an appropriate name. Namely SCAD.

Lynne_newYou might not recognize the acronym, but I’m hoping I’m not alone in this mutation – that of being afflicted with Seasonal Cookery Affective Disorder, or, to use the colloquial term ‘serial stockpiler of crud’.

I’ve been in denial about this, clearly, for many years. Which is easy because, along with many other forms of embarrassing human malfunction, it’s not hard to keep it to myself. I simply shut the doors on my kitchen cabinets and walk away.

Yet, as a result of my modest festive ambitions, here it is (again) all laid before me. The hard evidence – and, yes, much of it IS extremely hard – of my absolute failure in the cupboard husbandry stakes.

I can’t organise a kitchen cupboard to save my life. That’s the truth of it. Yes there are small pockets of efficiency – the cat food is mostly well stored, and my crisp drawer (doesn’t everyone have a dedicated crisp drawer?) has even garnered the odd plaudit. And, in my defence, I keep a tight rein on the saucepan lid situation, and have an admirably well-ordered set of tea towels.

But beyond that, it’s chaos – behind pretty much any door you care to name.

Which is galling, because I’m an organised person. In fact, I’d go further. I’m An Organised Person. The sort of person you tend to come to if you want anything organised, particularly if you want it organised to within an inch of its life.

Except in the kitchen, which is my organising nemesis.

As I say, it’s all before me. Or rather, they are. All the trusty foot soldiers of the Store Cupboard Essentials Army – and almost all of them in need of de-commissioning.

I start well. At the front, I positively bristle with efficiency. Here a tall Tupperware container full of basmati rice. There a standby drum of still-in-date peppercorns. To the side, the friendly face of my pot of ceramic baking beans, which have served me well though several major buffet catering campaigns, and topped off (because the top happens to be the perfect size for it) with the equally stalwart bicarb of soda.

But it’s simply a veneer. A wicked falsehood. Because to push them aside is to part those metaphorical Narnian coats, and enter a world time forgot.

Half-packets and third-packets – they are clearly my trademark. A half packet of sunflower seeds, one of walnuts, one of lentils. Two of pearl barley, jostling for supremacy. A tower of elderly cake cases, like a prim Victorian mistress. A tin of Golden Syrup, welded to the shelf. Here some pasta. So much pasta. Of all hues and varieties. Enough penne rigatte to make tea for a band of visiting faerie minstrels, sufficient black macaroni to prepare a pasta bake for a gnat.

Onwards then, to the fruit. And there is always much fruit. A sticky pot of glace cherries. (Six in all. I count them.) A large bag of sultanas. (almost fully full – good grief). Smatteirngs of cranberries and currents, of candied peel and angelica. And a lonely plastic tube in which sits a single vanilla pod – all squished and broken, when it had hoped for so much better.

I am cheered, momentarily, nevertheless. You know those clips you can buy to seal things and which are always disappearing? Fret no more. I have them all here.

I also have dry goods. A lot of very, very dry goods. Very dry, and in very tiny quantities. I have eight kinds of sugar, all of which will make serviceable pixie house bricks, and five types of flour, including rice. I have food colourings aplenty, both extracts and essences.   And, if I take my reading glasses off and my life in my hands, it’s both difficult to see and equally easy to convince myself that I’m not reading (over and over) ‘best before March 2005’.

But then it strikes me. That’s the whole point about Christmas puddings, isn’t it? Alcohol. Sugar. And pretty much anything else you fancy. They exist PRECISELY to be the SCAD afflicted’s friend.

Or perhaps I’ll just shut the cupboard and go to Lidl.

First Published in the Western Mail magazine, 31.10.15

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I’m always reticent about blathering on about my day job in this space. There are better places to do so, after all. Victorian pubs. Urban coffee bars. Into a glass, darkly. But for this I am prepared to make an exception, because, to my mind, it matters to you too.

I refer to the culling of the Creative Writing A Level, after what appeared to be a reprieve last spring. Of course, if you already know this, I’m preaching to the converted. If you teach it, or study it, you understand. As for the rest of us (and I’m very much one of the rest of us) I suspect there is a great deal less passion. Given the news from Mars last week, you might not care a jot, seeing the loss of a single A Level (given that there are already two other English A levels) as just the way things progress in education.

And my knee-jerk reaction would be to agree with you. And then, last week, I read something in the Society of Author’s journal which caused me, unexpectedly, to think again. And it’s this. That the total global book market is worth 151 billion dollars – three times the size of the global music industry. Publishing, as an industry, is HUGE.

Moreover, fiction matters to almost all of us. You might not read books for pleasure (some four million Brits don’t) but it’s almost a no-brainer that you will encounter fiction regularly, because stories are the raw material of films, plays, television dramas and computer games too.

And here’s this, by the ever-wise Mariella Frostrup, counselling a troubled girl seeking solace in psychology text books, and exhorting her to instead find truth in fiction. ‘The best fiction strikes at our heart,’ she points out, ‘reminding us that we are flawed and fabulous, unique and much the same as everyone else.’ Which I reckon pretty much nails it.

I’d also venture that fiction is a safe space for the marginalized, to explore and share political and polarizing opinions in such a way that they wield real moral power. To live in a society where freedom of expression is a legal right is a freedom in itself.

So, to my mind, creative writing is of interest to almost all of us, including the teaching of it, or otherwise, in schools.

So where do I stand on the validity of this threatened A Level? Well, in truth, if you’d asked me before they opted to axe it, I’d have said ‘on the fence, gazing elsewhere’. It’s no secret that I feel a degree of caution should be exercised before embarking on an expensive MA in Creative Writing, simply because I once heard of a very experienced editor saying they could always spot submissions from MACW students because they read as if ‘written by committee.’ From personal experience, I believe she had a point.

I also wonder if something as subjective as a piece of fiction’s success or otherwise can be objectively assessed out in the real world – not in a world of literature that is able to confer success on everyone from Tolstoy to E.L. James.

And I’m really not sure the A Level will be able to prove its worth, where worth is measured in ticks on charts in career surveys, as it could, say, with Chemistry or Maths.

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I couldn’t even say, had it existed in my day, that if I’d taken it alongside or instead of English Lit (which, boy, I would), it would have changed my career path a jot.

But do I agree that we should dump it? No, I don’t.

We educate our youth to the age of eighteen now, so we must provide courses that inspire and enrich them.

We need to stop trying to fit arts into a science-applicable framework. A Physics A Level will never test the same things as one in Art or Drama and we should stop trying to ‘academic-ise’ the course content of arts A Levels in a vain attempt to pretend that they can.

We should allow young people to enjoy study and self-improvement for its own sake. It might not lead directly to a ‘job’ as a ‘creative writer’ (oxymoron?) but it will be an education in truth and beauty, and what the hell is wrong with that?

And, no, I don’t know how to make all this happen.

But that’s surely the job of the bodies charged with doing it. It’s NOT rocket science. They just need to get more creative.

First published in the Western Mail Saturday Magazine 3/10/15

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We’re doing an awful lot of gadding about lately. I only realised how much when prompted by my mum’s chippy comment  recently that she’d not ‘seen us properly’ for weeks.  I huffed a bit, obviously, because that’s what daughters do, citing trips to Sainsbury’s various, plus a day trip to Oxford, but the damning evidence of our neglect was laid there before me –  in the four copies of the Mail On Sunday’s Event magazine, which she always saves to give to Pete on Sundays.

Most, but not all Sundays. Because we’re so often away now. C’est la 21st century vie.

And so it goes. This is modern life for the modern ageing parent. (Me, in this case. Not my disgruntled mother.)  Gadding about. Hither and thither.  Seeing our own kids.

I know some would say (and you know who you are, so I won’t name you) that we’ve been gadding about for most of our lives. And, to an extent, they would be right.  We have indeed, because we’ve always lived by a simple philosophy – one rooted in Pete’s toiling at the sobering coal-face of serious illness, and which can loosely be described as the instinctive prioritizing of ‘doing’ rather than ‘owning’. Of making memories rather than improvements to the house.

Yes, we have a house, but, as had been said here more than once, if it’s a straight choice between a mini break and a new appliance, the mini-break wins. And that’s not just because a childhood is gone in an instant. On a more serious note, so is a life.

But life has stages and this is definitely one such.  A stepping back from the pit marked ‘job done, slide to sloth now’ and a stepping up of miles on the vehicular clock, as our kids spread their wings ever further. And, more broadly, for society, this is something quite new.  Something attributable to greater wealth and mobility, yes, but much more, to my mind, to the very modern phenomenon of one in two kids (give or take) now finishing their education with a stint away from home, in university.

Time was (1960) when it was a miniscule 4% of people, rising to a still modest 14% in the seventies.  Since then, for all sorts of complex anthropological reasons, higher education has gone through the, ahem, roof.

These days, almost half our children attend university, which has meant parents, en masse, being released into the wild. But while you might imagine ‘gadding about’ as a vaguely dissolute middle-years activity, involving cruise wear, escorted tours, and spending the kids’ inheritance, it’s actually (if you enjoy your kids’ company, which we do) more of a post-modern necessity.

And I’m not complaining. If I had the means, I’d have a PA dedicated to the logistics. As it is, I spend much time on apps. Booking.com. Easyjet. Trainline and Tubemap. Tripadvisor. Travel news. BBC weather. (I keep track of all sorts of locations for weather. Cardiff, the Gower, plus Birmingham, plus Oxford, plus ‘wherever in the world Georgie currently happens to be working’, which has been half a dozen places just since finishing her degree.)

My diary might be light on orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings these days, but it fairly bristles with pencilled-in potential family gatherings, plus alerts, pre-alerts and pre-alert alerts, to arrange kitty-care and/or restaurants and/or bike hire and or tickets. Or to find time to buy ingredients for some celebratory cake or other, offering cake being the one madly maternal act I have left to me, now no-one wants me to do their washing any more.

And we’re not alone in our newly peripatetic lifestyles. Far from it.  Almost all our friends, give or take, have offspring far-flung now, which means a get together among mates has a markedly new tone, as, instead of comparing notes re our last communal family beach trip we now exchange run-downs of absentee weekends. We’re not so much ‘like’ ships that pass in the night, as actual ships that literally DO pass in the night. Or in trains, planes and automobiles, whizzing past one another on the M4, en route to or returning from bonding with our children – and with just a sliver of late-weekend time still available to pop on a wash and eat sardines on toast, because our cupboards, bar cake mix, are bare.

Just as they were when we were our own children’s age.

We are Jack Kerouac’s generation. On the road.

 

First published in the Western Mail Saturday Magazine 29/9/15

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There is a singular beauty to an autumn daybreak on a river, which is why I suppose boating types tend to rise with the sun. The banks, previously emerald, are now bruised with gold and ochre, and IMG_3298the last heads of bullrush stand defiant, like soldiers, even as the teasels taunt and harry them.

But it’s the mist that makes the magic, resting palely on the water’s surface – its wisps weaving blankets for the pond skaters to shelter under, and reaching upwards to sheath the surrounding trees in lemon gauze.

A cow lows and, in the distance, a heron takes noisy flight, its wings beating the heavy air into submission. And everywhere, a lapping, as the boats bob and chunter.  The sound of tin kettles whistling. The sweet smell of toast.

One of the great joys of getting older (or so I’ve found, anyway) is the perspective shift that widens the vision. Wisdom, of a kind.  An ability to empathise. The relative ease with which you can see the bigger picture.

And one of the greater joys of ageing – and this is well documented nowadays – is the cheerfully unconscious application of selective memory. Rose-tinted glasses are why we prefix ‘old days’ with ‘good’, and much more often (given mangles and child labour and ducking stools) than is probably warranted.IMG_3413

As you might have deduced, I’m currently writing from aboard a boat. A narrowboat, more specifically, currently moored against a reedy bank somewhere in Wiltshire,  where a few off-road blackberries, tangled prettily among the spikes, are literally within plucking distance of my hand.

As you might also have deduced, given the tone of those opening paragraphs, the application of selective memory vis a vis my mood when I wrote them showed it not to be terribly selective after all. Narrowboating seemed – still seems – every bit as otherworldly and pleasing as I remember.

And I remember it fondly. 1976, it was, along the Grand Union Canal. A trip in which the teenage party girl (this being a boat full of Venture Scouts) even then vied – and, in large part, won the battle for supremacy – with the romantic poet I half-saw myself to be.

Not so now. It’s precisely two forty two in the morning and all romantic notions have long since jumped ship.  I know this because, praise be to Triton and Neptune, I have my trusty kindle, the only light in the thicketty blackness.

Pete is beside me. Way, way, WAY too close beside me, having taken eighty one and a quarter percent of the scant available space, an admittedly unwitting but still irritating  manoeuvre I’m informed by my sister is known as ‘man-spreading’.

On the outside edge of the double bed (where for ‘bed’ read ‘raised platform just under four feet across’) I have no such option. I can spread inwards  (both inflammatory and potentially risky, since I shotgunned the escape zone on spurious menopausal grounds) or spread outwards, where I would land on floor.

Pete, meanwhile sleeps, seeing patients in his dreams, and intermittently snoring, as per.

In the other ‘bed’ room (where for room read ‘compartment, separated by plywood’) similar privations are being borne by my sister and brother-in-law To be fair, Sherrill doesn’t sleep terribly well at the best of times, but, on the assumption that, as the tiny one,  and being tired from an hour’s run, she could accept the wall-zone (where for wall read ‘edge of the boat’) curl up and be out like the proverbial light, already high on engine fumes and joy de vivre.

Sadly not. Being teeny she was soon wedged (see earlier curt note on ‘manspreading’) beneath the ridge that on the outside of the boat forms a deck rail, bound on three sides  by an 1970s style antique-pine coffin, and, on the fourth, by a slumbering bear.

She took the only route available – a borderline hysterical but of necessity,silent shuffle (slumbering bears can be cranky when woken) to the end of the ‘bed’, through the door to the ‘salon’, there to curl up on the ‘sofa’, corralled by my bike. And here she slept, fitfully, till the sun rose an hour later, with just the automatic bilge pump for company.

And so we’ve reconvened, on another bright, perfect morning, swans gliding past, their cygnets big as gulls now, and once again feeling blissed-out in our bucolic idyll.  But I thought, and I said, what I’d so conveniently forgotten.

THAT’S why boaters get up at frigging dawn.

 

First published in the Western Mail Weekend Magazine 12th September 2015

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Two photographs recently grabbed my attention. The first was upsetting.  You might have seen it too. A desperate-looking father,  a Syrian called Laith Majid, who is crying with relief as he clutches his distressed children, having finally reached the island of Kos – another step on their grim refugee journey.

Needless to say, the picture went viral. And predictably, and rightly, helped recalibrate feelings about the nameless ‘swarm’ of migrants who are currently  ‘flooding’ Europe, in reminding us that they, too, are human.

The same didn’t apply with the other viral image – that of a mother and daughter, Georgina and Kayla Clarke from Rugby, who, according to the caption, had ‘splash[ed] out £56,000 on surgery to look like Katie Price’.

As in both of them, that is. And, perhaps equally predictably, having been named and shamed by the press, they have received  a great deal of both ridicule and opprobrium. Little milk of human kindness here.

Fair enough, you might say. They put themselves out there. This wasn’t current affairs reportage but a planned tabloid photoshoot. They must have known the response to expect.

I don’t doubt they did, and they were not disappointed. Where Laith’s image saw waves of compassion flood the ether, this contrasting photo – of faces bent out of the shapes nature intended – was an opportunity for trolls to have their traditional field-day. But not just trolls.  There were plenty of others throwing linguistic stones – they were a pair of freaks, shame on them, what a selfish, selfish mother, how deluded, how sick, how obscene.

They must be mad. That was the main thrust. What on earth were they thinking? And, on one level, I suppose that’s a point. Though the daughter apparently earned every penny of it, £56,000 is a great deal of money, and to my mind it has not been well spent. It’s a fraught business, after all, aspiring to look like someone else. And when that someone has spent thousands altering her own face and body, also risky – like lining up your cross-hairs on a moving target.

But to be judged so harshly, and so readily, feels not only cruel,  but  hypocritical. Because, increasingly, there seems to be a growing acceptance of such wholesale re-modelling. Of celebrities being deified for being bronzed, bleached and botoxed, with no thought for the long-tail of impact on our children, the results of which we’re seeing more and more.

And we do love our women to look a certain way now, don’t we? Interchangeable. Barbie-like. Porn dolly. Stick thin. (Well, bar all the right implants in all the right places.) No, not in all worlds, thank goodness, but if we think our daughters are immune from the pressure to be passively pneumatic, we should wise up a little and think again.  Better still, try watching TOWIE, or Geordie Shore, or Made in Chelsea or, if you’re really strong of stomach, Celebrity Big Brother.

And if that’s not your bag (i.e. you’re well into your twenties) just type ‘celebrity plastic surgery’ into any convenient search engine, and clock the wide Sargasso sea of photographic evidence that our obsession with an impossible vision of youthful perfection is making monkeys out of all of us.

And, it appears, willingly. Because altering your face isn’t news, per se, any more. No-one seems to question a woman’s sanity in such matters, particularly if they’re in the public eye and older.  Increasingly, in many walks of life, such women report feeling freaks if they DON’T have ‘work’ done. No, ‘interventions’ are only deemed worthy of our attention when they’re evidence of fandom that goes beyond reason, and/or disfiguring to a degree that we can gawp at.

Yet many of us gawp disingenuously. Because, when done ‘well’, as in ‘no trace of alien ancestry or incipient lunacy’, many of us secretly aspire to it too. Though we disparage all the saps who overdo it and get ‘botched’, the statistics about ‘procedures’ put the lie to that disapproval, the most chilling being the sharp increase in the numbers of young women (and 90% of cosmetic procedures are done on women)who have already committed to a life under the knife. And it’s not because they’re empowered, or liberated, or independent. It’s because they’re being TAUGHT to be unhappy in the skin they were born in. For which someone  – maybe most of us – must shoulder some blame. And take some responsibility to act.

So, for me, that second image was almost as sad as the first.

Because the truth is we’re fiddling while Rome burns.

First published in the Western Mail Saturday Magazine 5.9.15 

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