Lest we forget

Ninety years ago at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the Armistice was signed to end the war that was meant to end all wars, but which of course sadly did no such thing. I think whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of war, it is important that we do take this time to remember and honour the dead from all wars, and particularly the ones being fought currently.

Like most people in this country, I suspect, if they dig a little into their family background, I feel a strong connection with the men who went to both world wars. Both my father and father in law fought in WW2, and my maternal grandfather was taken prisoner in WW1. Not only that my children are probably very lucky to exist at all, given that their great grandfathers on their dad's side faced each other across the Somme (when they met after WW2, they got on famously and compared gun positions).

So it is of them I think on Remembrance Day. In our immediate family we were very lucky as my father and his two brothers both came home from the war unscathed, and my grandfather probably owes his survival in WW1 to having been taken prisoner. Spouse's grandfather was also incredibly fortunate to be wounded just before the Great Push on the Somme, therefore missing the worst of it.

But scratch the surface and tragedy does lurk underneath. My maternal grandmother lost two brothers, as well as her fiance.

I am fortunate enough to have in my possession a letter from the padre to my grandmother telling her of the loss of her fiance, which moves me to tears every time I read it.

His name was Jack Towns and having been hit in the stomach in a battle (I don't know which) on 26 March 1915 he was left on the field by the captain who bound him up, as there were no stretchers to bear him from the battle field.

The padre who wrote to my grandmother later went back on the field to look for him in the dark, and despite numerous enquires couldn't find a trace of Jack. I think it's the sparseness of the prose, and the total unsentimentality of it that affects me. The padre speaks of the men he talked to "Some wanted water, others a smoke, others just a few moment's talk. So you see, I walked up and down the whole fo the field. I spoke to as far as I can make out every living soul there. Dead men I did not examine for time was valuable, and there was no light." The next day he returned to what he describes as "the continuation of the strafe"where he describes things as being "a little hot". Obviously at this point he was unable to continue searching for Jack, but when things got calmer he continued to make his enquiries and drew a blank, and so the padre concludes that Jack is dead. The letter ends: "The only chance would appear to be that he might be a wounded pensioner; but one point which I have not mentioned settles that . 1000 men were extended line upon line across a battlefield on the night of the 26th. They linked hands & walked slowly across the field picking up every living man. After they had passed only the dead remaned. And the Turks supplied us with a list of wounded prisoners. Jack was not one of them. I optimist as I am, am absolutely convinced that poor old Jack died where he fell."

My grandmother went on to marry my grandfather, who I think I am right in saying was one of Jack's friends. I'm glad for her that she found that peace and happiness, but this year more then ever, I think about Jack and honour the memory of the man who might have become my grandfather, but who like so many fell too soon and too young.

Anthem for a Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

Of course, I forgot to mention...

Barack Obama is of course, Irish....

Historic victory indeed...

Silly Money

If you are having trouble understanding the current credit crunch, who better to explain it then Bremner Bird and Fortune. Last night they hilariously turned their attention to China and the unholy financial alliance the West has made with the Chinese. Bird and Fortune did a fantastically uneasy skit on the morality of cheap goods both here and in the States being available as a result of the exploitation of people in China. I couldn't find it on You Tube this morning, but I will keep looking. But in the meantime, if you haven't seen this and didn't know what the subprime nonsense was all about, here Bird and Fortune explain it in their inimitable and brilliant style. Satire at is very very best. Enjoy

I realise I am totally behind the times...

... but have been very busy finishing off Book 3 and therefore didn't have time to blog as I'd intended to about the US election last week.

As it's all over bar lots of photo ops of Barack meeting Dubya (how weird is that? Since when has the outgoing incumbent been so friendly to the incoming one?) at the White House and whole rainforests have been cut down in the reams of copy various hacks throughout the globe have been filing about this "historic" occasion ("historic" - most overused word of the week. Discuss.), I'm not going to say too much.

Except this. While I do think it was a great day for America last week (and more importantly a FANTASTIC day for democracy. Would that people would turn out to vote in such numbers in this country. Would that we had a politician who could inspire us to turn out in those numbers), I don't think Barack Obama is the Messiah, and I also think he is possibly too inexperienced to lead the world's largest democracy. On the plus side, he's not Dubya, and he also has the opportunity to rebuild bridges that Dubya and his cronies have burnt in their squandering of the world's goodwill towards America during their two terms in office. He also represents the best of America. If a country that forty years ago was segregating its citizens because of their colour can overcome its problems sufficiently to produce a black president (though technically of course he is inconveniently half white but its more dramatic to present the black heritage of course), then that can only be a good thing. However, I doubt very much the troops are coming home from Iraq any time soon, despite what Obama would like to do, and there's a hell of a financial mess to sort out when he's got time.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the US public fall out of love with Obama when he demonstrably fails to deliver (well he'd have to be superhuman to sort all the problems out in his lifetime let alone in four years), and whether he can manage to make a difference at all. Saying "we can" and actually effecting change are after all two very different things.

Still. It was a great day for the world last week, and here's hoping things turn out better then the cynic in me imagines they will. A president who actually turns out to have as much integrity as it appears he does, and can actually bring about positive changes in his society and to the world at large. Now that would be historic.

And another little bit of news I missed...

I really picked a bad week to go away...

I suppose it wasn't totally unexpected that David Tennant was going to leave Dr Who, but, sigh... rather like Rose (and Donna for that matter) I wanted to travel with him forever. I suppose I've got a year to get used to the idea...

But on two utterly more positive notes...

Paula Radcliffe won the New York Marathon again. Hurrah. I wish she could get it together for the Olympics, but hey, at least she's back on winning form...

And double hurrah, Lewis Hamilton is the youngest formula one world champion EVER. By the skin of his teeth admittedly, but what an exciting finish... A world championship decided two corners from the end. Fantastic. (And fantastic sportsmanship from Massa who thought he'd nailed it, then realised he hadn't).

I love Lewis Hamilton. He appears to have riled lots of people in the notoriously competitive and ruthless world of F1 (that's because he's winning y'see, they HATE it), but he deals with all the stuff that comes his way good and bad with politeness and dignity and never lets any of the crap get in the way of his singlemindeness about winning. When we have so much bad press about young black men, Lewis Hamilton is a welcome relief from all that and a great role model for the young (particularly in the light of the appalling racism to which he's been subjected this season). I couldn't actually watch the race because it was so close to the wire anyway I couldn't stand the tension, but hurrah, hurrah. It was a close run thing, but this year, the right guy won.

Boys will be boys

I've been away since Wednesday and only caught the periphery of the scandal that has engulfed the Beeb and most specificially Radio 2 this week.

I am as readers of this blog are probably aware a big fan of Radio 2 (such a big fan it features rather large in Pastures New), and part of the reason I started listening to it in the first place was Jonathan Ross' Saturday show. Yes, he's rude, he's edgy and often puerile, but he does (usually) make me laugh. I generally enjoy his chat show as well, though it does sometimes appear he's just interviewing his mates, and he can appear arrogant. Despite that, I think old JR can be quite engaging when he's interviewing someone he genuinely admires. He's such a fanboy and you can almost see him pinching himself that he is actually interviewing whichever idol it is, though to be fair this tends to be more evident on Film 2008, where his love of film is genuine and his reviews (though never as good as Mark Kermode's) are always worth taking note of.

I am not, it has to be said a huge fan of Russell Brand, and I did rather groan when I heard that Lesley Douglas had hired him - someone chasing the young vote, methinks. (That being said I did actually find his turn in St Trinians rather sweet because it was so against type that he couldn't chat up the head girl).

I therefore have never listened to Russell Brand's show, but figured it wasn't for the likes of me anyway, and was reasonably happy to have it on the edges of Radio 2, as he clearly has an audience, even if I'm not it.

Having said all of that, I think his and Jonathan Ross' behaviour towards Andrew Sachs was totally inexcusable and the pair of them (particularly Jonathan Ross) showed a lamentable lack of judgement in thinking that their "prank" (which I have seen defended in terms boys will be boys type terms) was funny. It wasn't. It was crude, offensive and utterly puerile.

BUT.... apparently before the story broke, only two people actually rang in to complain. After it hit the Sundays over 30 000 did, fed and whipped up by an hysterical tabloid media who clearly can't forgive Jonathan Ross' joke about earning more then they do. (Yes he earns silly amounts of money, but more fool the BBC bosses for giving it to him). Furthermore, there does appear to be some misunderstanding as to whether Andrew Sachs had given his consent to the programme going ahead, the producer was only 25 (poor cow, I hope her career isn't stifled at birth), and Andrew Sach's granddaughter has sought the offices of Max Clifford to tell "her side of the story". Said granddaughter also appears in a band called The Satanic Sluts, which is of course her right and doesn't mean she or her grandfather should be subject to abuse, but is it cynical of me to think that this publicity can't exactly be harmful to her career? Without all of this no one would even heard of her.

My feeling now is that the whole thing has got a bit out of hand, and I cannot STAND it when politicians start pontificating in a self righteous manner about this kind of stuff - when was the last time a politician took the flak and resigned as Lesley Douglas has done? I think she showed integrity in doing so - this did, as she said, happen on her watch, and she appointed Russell Brand and apparently didn't reign him in - but by all accounts she has been a brilliant Controller of Radio 2 and responsible for most of my favourite listening over the last four years. It seems a pity she's had to go as a result of this debacle.

But the thing that sticks in my craw most has been the gleeful malicious joy with which the tabloids have greeted Wossy's fall from grace. Maybe his fault for alienating them, perhaps, but I personally find it distasteful. (I saw a headline yesterday screaming its outrage that the Disgraced Star had dared to have a Halloween Party with his Showbiz Chums. Erm - why shouldn't he???)

I don't for one minute condone what Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand did, and think their punishment is probably fair. But hell. There are far more important things to worry about right now. This could and should have been resolved with an apology by both of them to Mr Sachs and Miss Baillie. The self righteous howlers should have shut up and left well alone. And I really really hope that Terry Wogan isn't right in saying as he did yesterday, that the damage to Ross' career is terminal. He has made a very very bad error of judgement, but he is certainly paying the price. One hopes that in time the great British public might be able to forgive him.

But I also hope that the result of this isn't the Beeb playing safe with everything. Comedy should at times shock and disturb us. Maybe we've had too much of that of late on the Beeb (I like Little Britain, but am growing tired of the insatiable need to shock), but it would be a great pity if the output becomes more anodyne as a result of this show. Auntie hasn't come out of this too well, either it has to be said, having first tried to ignore the problem then (in my view) added to it by navel gazing ad nauseam (they did the same after the Dr Kelly affair). There are lots of problems with the Beeb - not being regulated by Ofcom being one of them, but it still represents broadcasting at its best, and I for one would hate that to change as a result of this nonsense.

Lord Snooty and chums

This is a subject that had my good blogging friend Political Umpire not sadly decided to retire from the blogosphere (we hope not forever), is one I'm sure he'd have tackled.

Earlier this year, Spouse and I got into watching Headcases - if you haven't seen it's a Spitting Image de nos jours. Celebrities and politicians alike are lampooned in a grotesque (and as befits satire) often cruel, but mostly very funny way.

So we have Angelina Jolie employing a basement full of orphans to make golden hair extensions to rival Jennifer Aniston (unbeknown to a dumb Brad Pitt who sits in his lounge watching TV), the geriatric heroes, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone who face their nemesis Snakehead oldman hating Heather Mills, Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren who turn into chavs when off camera, and so on.

The politicians (quite rightly) get in the neck - with Gordon Brown being depicted as a grey soulless character who lives in some kind of Dickensian version of Number 10 with Alistair Darling skipping around him saying, We're Doomed, We're Doomed.

The Tories haven't got off lightly either. David Cameron is portrayed in a caring sharing kind of way, until he gets behind the scenes and turns into a twisted version of Lord Snooty who bullies poor little fag George Osborne mercilessly.

If you haven't seen it, there's more here to give you a flavour.

I only mention this in the light of the recent "Yachtgate" affair.

I have been pleased this year to see a resurgent Tory party and watch Gordon Brown flounder. Not particularly because I'm a Tory voter (actually hand on heart I'd be Lib Dem again in a flash if only they'd vote Vince Cable in as leader) - although I do vote for our local MP who happens to be a Tory, I do so on the basis that he actually gives a damn about the community I live in. The reason I've been pleased to see the Tories rise again, though, is because I don't think it is at all good for democracy when the party in power has little or no opposition. The Tory party of the 80s became out of touch, arrogant and thought power was their right. The current Labour party are in my view in the same position. So come the next election, whoever wins I want it to be much closer run, so that our next government might actually be grateful to be there and make a better fist of running the country to benefit the people who put them in power. (Ok, ok, I know that's a pipe dream, but one can but hope.)

One thing that has troubled me from the off though with the Dave and George team is they just seem like a Tory version of Blair and Brown - all smoke and no trousers. And George Osborne whom I had difficulty taking seriously anyway thanks to the fact that he shares his name with Amelia's weak husband in Vanity Fair, just seemed like a baby to me. There's nothing wrong with being young and talented in politics (didn't do Pitt the Younger any harm), but it is quite hard to take as serious contender for running the economy someone with such a babyfaced look about him.

But dear oh dear. It's much harder to take him seriously now. What on earth was he thinking when he went on that yacht? Were they at the passing the port stage when he threw caution to the winds and decided it would be a really good idea to discuss party donations with a Russian mafioso? Or worse still, was he sober when he said it? Whichever way you cut, it showed a woeful lack of judgement, which he compounded by then making bitchy comments about Peter Mandelson. Had he not done so, no one might have found out about his idiocy. And this is a man who wants to run the economy?

Arguably, it could be said he won't make a worse fist of it then the previous and present incumbents (I can't see my bank going for it if I went along, and said ok, I know I owe you billions but don't you understand, I need to spend my way out of my overdraft) - but it doesn't actually fill me with that much confidence to think that come the next election our financial future is in the hands of someone who seriously didn't twig that it was wrong to talk about being funded by a foreigner (and a distinctly dodgy one at that) till he got found out. Makes you wonder what else he's got up his sleeve doesn't it?

Vince Cable is about the only Chancellor I could feel any confidence in. Maybe I will be voting Lib Dem after all...

Ahem.

I do believe if you look in the centre of this particular paper today, you might find me masquerading as a dancer. I'd like to find the online version, but sadly I can't so am off to buy up our local newsagents' supplies so I can send them to all the aged rellies I possess...

It gets better...

Not only have I been a radio star this week, I've also become a top model.

Well not quite.

But if you want to know what I was doing with him.



a dress like this



And shoes like this...




Dance on over to the other blog and ALL will be revealed...

Radio Gaga

As I didn't realise that Southern Counties only keep their programmes up for 24 hours, and Pierre L kindly asked if I'd report how it went, here I am, reporting how it went.

I don't know if anyone out there has ever done a radio interview, but the few times I've done it, I've always found it weirdly surreal. One of the themes of Strictly Love is that you should dance like no one is looking. Well, when I'm doing radio I always talk like no one is listening, because actually it feels as if no one is.

SCR is based in Brighton which is a bit of a schlep for me, but luckily they have a studio at Guildford University. I've been there once before talking about the marathon book a couple of years ago, so I knew where to go, which is always a bonus when you're feeling a tad nervous (as I was).

I was supposed to be doing some work before I went, but couldn't settle to it. Spouse then rang me to ask me to bring in his digital radio as the one in his surgery was broken. Thinking I had plenty of time, I said, yes of course, then somehow it was five to eleven and I had to be in Guildford at eleven twenty. So I did a mad dash to the surgery, dropped off the radio and drove like a lunatic to Guildford, managing to arrive about ten minutes before I was due on. Nothing like cutting it fine...

Now here's where it got seriously wierd. I rang the doorbell and someone came out, and I suddenly realised that of course the production person who'd set it up was also in Brighton so no one here probably knew I was coming. After establishing which show I was on, I was shown into a little box, where there was a desk with two mics set up and a telephone. Damn I was in one of these ghastly self operating studios. Like I said in my previous post, my last experience of such a studio involved me being cut off in mid flow and missing the end of the programme.

I was told to put on the headphones and wait for further instructions. Feeling a little like I was about to face the firing squad, I did so, extremely grateful that I had been so late. It would have been horrendous to sit there for twenty minutes...

Eventually the friendly production lady said hello to me through my earphones and told me to wait till the end of the next song when Gordon Astley would speak to me.

What? That was it? I still had no idea what questions I was going to be asked, and I was panicking about how far I should sit from the mic - it said your mouth should be four to six inches away, but spatial awareness have I none, so I just hazarded a guess.

The next song was Love of the Common People by Paul Young. Have you any idea how long that song is? Nope, me neither. It went on, and on, an on....

When it finally finished, they played the theme tune for Strictly Come Dancing (big thumbs up from me in Guildford. Great great pr, linking my book indelibly with SCD in the minds of the viewers. Thank you Gordon Astley!)

I was expecting some questions about SCD, but instead Gordon asked me about what inspired the book - going to salsa classes initially, but thanks to my canny editor I changed it to ballroom dancing. I realised later I never got round to telling him the other inspiration which was Spouse's miserable experience with the nutty patient who complained about him (probably just as well, really with Spouse listening).

I got a fair amount of ribbing about my suggestion that if you're a single bloke going dancing is a great way to meet women as Gordon felt this suggested a predatory kind of behaviour, which I don't think it necessarily is. He clearly wanted me to say that Rob who starts off as a bit of a lothario gets his comeuppance, but as Rob is my favourite character I wasn't going to do that to him. In fact I'd say he goes on a bit of a journey - well I hope so anyway.

We talked about the research I'd done (missed a trick there because I forgot to say I've blogged all that on the strictly blog), and Gordon was curious as to whether anyone could learn to dance from reading the book (which was a GREAT opportunity to say if you're in Tesco's you can pick up a copy with a free learn to dance book). I don't think I could possibly claim that, but I hope the enthusiasm and love I have of dance has worked its way into the story, and that if you like dancing it will encourage you to go out there and dance like no one's looking yourself (though I can't guarantee it will bring you success in the romantic field, I do write fiction after all...)

After that Gordon wrapped it up with another mention of SCD and Strictly Love (oh how we love Gordon), and that was er - it. Friendly production lady said thank you, I said thank you, I put my coat on and in half an hour I was home.

I do know at least three people who did in fact listen, but for all I know they were the only three...

Still all grist to the mill, and it can't do any harm.

But rather a funny way to spend a morning nonetheless.

With many thanks to Gordon Astley and the team at SCR

Video Killed The Radio Star

I like doing radio interviews. No one can see me and I always imagine that there's no one out there listening...

If perchance you want to hear me prattling on about Strictly Come Dancing and booky type of things, you can by tuning into Southern Counties Radio at 11.40. (104.0–104.8 & 95.0–95.3 FM and 1161, 1368 & 1485 AM, if you're interested) I hope I will have something to say and don't say um too much. In fact I'd better not say um too much otherwise Spouse will never let me forget it. Very tempted not to take the digital radio he's requested so he can hear it, round to the surgery when I do go out...

Still charging towards the finish line, but slightly disrupted this week by the radio interview today and another very exciting development on Thursday which I will be blogging about over at the other place. Hoping I will be typing the End on Friday. Otherwise I will be in big trouble...

One of my characters is morphing into John Sergeant because I love him so much on Strictly and I love this character too. No 2 and I cheered when he got through last night.

My hero is still stalwartly remaining Richard Armitagish, though David Tennant has popped up distractingly at times, so it's probably just as well I'll have finished this BEFORE I see Hamlet. Much as I'd like to, I can't have ALL my heroes being David Tennantlike.

I was pretty braindead at the end of last week thanks to the effort of flinging so many words on the page. I was figuring they must be all rubbish, but then I got a brochure through the post from The Globe and there's an article about the way Elizabethan playwrights did that, so I felt much better. I am unfortunately a Leave It To the Last Minute kind of writer. But that doesn't matter. Because as it turns out, so was Shakespeare, and it hasn't done him any harm...

An interview with me...

For anyone interested, the lovely people at Trashionista asked me a few questions...

You can find it here

Galloping to the finish

Am a little bit time poor to say the least at the moment as a combination of pr opportunities (expect to find me all over the internet opining about Strictly Come Dancing shortly), and a fast approaching deadline means blogging is falling by the wayside.

If anyone is remotely interested I shall also be waffling on about same on BBC Southern Counties Radio on Monday at 11.40. You can tune in at: 104.0–104.8 & 95.0–95.3 FM and 1161, 1368 & 1485 AM, and their website is here. I'll be in their Guildford Studio on the other end of the line, and hoping not to have a repeat of my very first radio experience when I was in a self operating studio at BBC's Portland Place studios, trying to defend why I was promoting horror novels to teenagers to a bunch of Christian Fundamentalists. Someone pulled the plug when I was in full flow, and by the time we got reconnected it was the end of the programme. Most disconcerting. Generally speaking though, apart from a slight concern that I might ramble onto much (chatty, qui moi?)I really enjoy doing radio as it is nearly impossible to imagine that anyone is actually listening to you, which makes the whole thing quite liberating.

As a result of all this I haven't got round to mentioning the financial crisis, but I'm finding it's worming its way into the wip instead, which means my book will be dated before it's even come out. Hmm. Some heavy pruning needed there at some stage, I'd say.

All I would say though vis a vis Icelandic banks (and due sympathy to those who invested in good faith), is that it seems to be the common consensus among my friends in the Know (and I would hastily say here I know nowt whatsoever about how the city works) is that the interest rates they were offering were Too Good To Be True. Since I learnt that all I can think of is The Real Hustle, a programme much beloved by self, Spouse and the sprogs. If you don't watch it, they end every episode with this salutary warning, If it seems to good to be true, it probably is. Quite. Wish someone had mentioned that to the powers that be at Surrey County Council...

Anyway to keep you cheerful amidst all the gloom and doom, I thought I'd post here something which according to a friend in Singapore is doing the rounds on Wall Street.

If anyone has difficulty understanding the current world financial situation, the following should help....

Once upon a time in a village in India , a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10.The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts.


The man further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.


The offer rate increased to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it! The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer, on his behalf.


In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50.'


The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Welcome to WALL STREET.

For Persephone (mainly)

And anyone else who wanted a glimpse of David Tennant in doublet and hose...

Reviews that I've read of LLL have been (rightly) positive. Came across one which described DT as "mercurial" - yup, that's a word I'd use. I also wanted to compare him to quicksilver but couldn't find the right sentence - and noticed a reviewer of Hamlet saying the same. Definitely definitely more then just a Time Lord (if indeed that was all he ever was...)

And then I found this...




I have to say DT sitting in that tree was one of the highlights of the play. Be still my beating heart...

Competiton winners...

I've been that over excited about seeing DT in the flesh I shamefully neglected to mention that over at Rob's blog the competition winners have been announced. My thanks to everyone who entered, and especially to Rob for hosting. If you haven't gone trundling to his blog before and are interested in all things tv, I can thoroughly recommend it as a diverting way of passing the time and (in my case) a big big reason to procrastinate on a daily basis.

Talking of which, had better stop doing the same. My characters need me!


http://www.the-word-is-not-enough.com/blog/rob/2008/10/strictly_love_competition_winners.php

Love's Labour's Lost

We've just had an incredible weekend. Thanks to the offices of a very good friend Spouse and I went away without the children (a treat enough in itself) to Stratford to see Love's Labour's Lost. LLL isn't a play I'm familiar with, and it could easily feel like not going to the main event, namely to see the wonderful Mr Tennant in Hamlet (which fortuitously we're also going to do in December). But it wasn't at all. If anything, I think on Saturday I had one of the best theatre experiences of my life.

It's a long long time since I've been to live theatre (apart from taking the sprogs to musicals the last couple of years, which is an entirely different experience.) This is mainly because theatre going and small children aren't very conducive, but also because living just outside London as we do, your lovely theatre experience can often end up utterly miserable thanks to the stress of getting home late at night. (I can remember one miserable trip to the Barbican with my parents many years ago, which involved us arriving at the theatre by the skin of our teeth and having a mad dash across London to get the last train home. Any enjoyment of the play had completely dissipated by the time we got home.)

However, having visited the Globe twice in the last year my latent interest in seeing Shakespeare live has been revived, and now the sprogs are old enough to see plays like A Midsummer's Night Dream, I was determined I was going to get us all there this summer. For a variety of reasons (ok, one, I didn't realise how quickly it would sell out) I failed dismally, but the two big ones are coming to Hamlet, and next year I am going to get to the Globe if it kills me. Particularly after having my appetite for the Bard whetted in such a wonderful way.

The RSC are currently treading the boards at The Courtyard Theatre, as their main theatres are under redevelopment. As this is a temporary venue, from the outside it looks like one of those corrugated iron warehouse where they store lockups with dead bodies in them. Anything less like a venue for seeing great theatre couldn't be imagined. But once inside all such worries are put to rest, because it is a wonderful fabulous, intimate space for theatre. It's also in the round, so you have people appearing from your left shoulder (DT did exit stage left of us at one point, sigh.), which I always enjoy. There's something about Shakespeare who frequently teases the audience about the artifice of it all, which lends itself well to be being shown in a small intimate setting like this. You feel almost as though they're doing a private show just for you.

And what a show it was.

I didn't know this play at all and toyed with reading it before I went, but a) I ran out of time and b) I thought it would be more interesting to go and see something where I didn't know the end, which it was.

Love's Labour's Lost isn't performed very often, and I can see why, because in a way it feels like a work in progress, as if our Will was in a hurry and said, Here, haven't quite finished it, but put it on tonight boys and I'll tidy it up for tomorrow. Without giving away the ending, it almost feels as if there's an act missing, though Berowne does make a joke about a year (which is the deadline the men get given) being too long to fit in a play. And the subplot though very funny feels as if it's tacked on, and could quite easily not be there.

The joy of this play though, to me was in the language, which is dazzling and brilliant and you wonder how on earth the actors all manage to say the lines without tripping over the words. The great thing about this performance as well was that it was incredibly accessible. It is very easy to watch Shakespeare and glaze over from the effort of trying to understand what is going on. I don't usually have that problem with plays I know, but I certainly have done with ones I'm less familiar with, and Spouse was sure he'd miss half of the references. We needn't have worried though, because without exception the cast delivered the lines so clearly and concisely it was impossible to miss the meaning.

I did find it rather distracting to watch lovely Mr Tennant at first, not just because he is just as lovely in the flesh as he is on Dr Who, but mainly because it is quite disconcerting to see someone you know so well in one role doing something so completely different. However, he is such a consummate actor, after a bit I stopped thinking I was watching Dr Who acting with a Scottish voice, but seeing Berowne. I was actually a little worried that he might not pull it off, but I needn't have been, because he was brilliant, funny, sexy, quixotic, and for the rare serious speeches he had to give he held the audience in the palm of his hand. Without a doubt he is one of the finest actors of his generation and it was an absolute joy and privilege to watch him in this.

Having said that, Love's Labour's Lost is not the David Tennant show. It really feels like a group effort. Nina Sosanya who played Rosaline really lit up the stage every time she was on it. You genuinely felt she and Berowne were meant for each other and the rather odd ending left me deeply frustrated for them. Kathryn Drysdale better known (by me anyway) as Louise in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and a hilarious turn as a chav in St Trinians, was a huge revelation as she was funny (expected) but showed a depth I wasn't expecting. Definitely a talent to watch that one. The funniest character was undoubtedly Joe Dixon as the Spanish count, Armado, who preened and pranced his way across the stage and brought the house down when he came on playing a guitar, but Oliver Ford Davies was also hilarious as the pompous schoolmaster, Holofernes, and Ricky Champ was a memorable Costard.

The cast all seemed to be really enjoying themselves and the whole thing felt like a glorious joyous romp (well it did till you get to the odd ending, but that's Shakespeare's fault not theirs.) Time was when you went to the theatre, you used to only clap at the interval and at the end, but this felt like an audience participation event, in that the funniest moments were applauded wildly, without the thing becoming a riot.

LLL is a gloriously rude play and the sight of the milkmaid churning the butter, to Armado saying, "But I loooo-ooof her" will stay with me for a very long time. I also really enjoyed the masque where the men pitch up disguised as Russians (no I don't quite know why either!) and the women all pretended to be one another to test their love - David Tennant in a red beard doing a cossack dance was one of the highlights of the show, particularly when he put on a Borat accent.

We sat outside in the interval even though it was raining - but as I said to Spouse it was such fine rain, it felt like theatre rain, so wasn't real. It just felt magical and wonderful to be there.

Afterwards we tottered round the corner to an Indian (surreally called Thespians) and ten minutes later the whole cast walked past, though Spouse neglected to tell me he'd seen David Tennant till he'd gone by, so I only glimpsed the back of his head. You wouldn't really see that in London. Nor would you be able as we were, to totter back to our hotel and be home in ten minutes. As a theatre going experience, whatever you go to see, I'd recommend seeing it in Stratford, and am just trying to work out how I can wangle another trip...

And as an experience of seeing Shakespeare, I'd have to say that Love's Labour's Lost has to rate as one of the funniest plays I've ever seen, and my most magical theatre experience. Ever.

With grateful thanks to lovely friend who bought us tickets and looked after the children. No greater love doth a friend have etc etc. You've restored my faith in human nature.

Strictly Love Competition

Just a reminder that the Strictly Love Competition ends tomorrow!!

You've got to be in it, to win it!


Details are here

Normblog writer's choice

I was very flattered and honoured to be asked by Norm to do a piece for his Writer's Choice series.

You can see it: here

Like I said in my previous post To Kill A Mocking Bird is my favourite book and always will be. For many many years if I have ever been asked if I have a life philosophy, I have always said, yes, I follow Candide's dictum that you should cultivate your garden, ie you do what you can for the people around you. I suddenly realised writing this piece I also follow one of Atticus' which is that you only truly know someone if you try and put yourself in their position and "walk around in their skin".

Is it too much to say this book changed my life? In a way I don't think so, because it really opened my eyes to the cruelty and prejudice which exists in all walks of life, but also the humanity, the courage, the optimism of people.

If there's one book you should read before you die, I'd say To Kill a Mocking Bird should be it.

Dux Michael

I've just travelled in time.

Well ok, no I haven't, but yesterday I went back to my old school for the first time in fifteen years, and I did rather feel like I'd gone into a time warp.

My alma mater is a school in North London called St Michael's (as an old girl I am charmingly known as a SMOG) and today it is 100 years old.

St Micks was a funny old place when I was there. It's a catholic (very very catholic) grammar school and the order of nuns who founded it were still teaching (just) when I started, though they handed over control to the diocese in 1980. The ethos was therefore a mixture of Christianity and doing good works, and working your socks off to achieve the best you could. You were expected to become a good wife and mother at some point, but the hope I think was that you'd do something intellectual and academic first.

In my time these ambitions weren't always achieved. There were six pregnancies in the sixth form alone (mind you as someone I knew there once said, that's because catholic girls are so naive they have sex, feel guilty, don't take contraception and then accept the inevitable event as punishment. It's a funny old religion, catholicism, for making you feel so guilty about everything and yet it can also be incredibly inspiring and bring the best out of people.)

I'd also say that in my day the teaching could be patchy. My father who taught in a rough East London comp used to be very frustrated with some of the teachers (particularly on the science side) whom he felt had the cream of the crop but didn't always appreciate it.

Luckily for me, I suppose, I was rubbish at science so that wasn't an issue for me. And the arts teaching was in the main very good. Actually what am I talking about? In places it was brilliant.

I have to say I have pretty mixed memories from my time at St Mick's. Being a geeky kid with national health specs did nothing for my self confidence, and looking back, rather assuming I wasn't going to be popular I just skulked around at the edges of the class. I did make friends, but there were a lot of people I didn't even bother to get to know because bizarrely I assumed (on little or no evidence) that they wouldn't like me. This I regret now, as most of the people in the class were really great, very funny, quirky and interesting. And I'd love to see them again and find out what they're up to.

My fondest memories from school are of our English lessons, where thanks to a brilliantly inspirational teacher we were encouraged to think, discuss, analyse in a way that has stood me in good stead all my life.

That English teacher has a lot to answer for actually. Books was always my thing, but he drew out the best of me, and introduced me to stuff I'd probably never otherwise have read. He had us studying (and enjoying) Shakespeare at 12/13 - I can still remember the wonderful Macbeth starring Ian McKellern and Judi Dench which he showed us on the school's brand new state of the art VHS recorder.

We also read poetry - Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, neither of which I appreciated at the time, but I now have Heaney's translations of The Burial at Thebes/Beowulf by my bedside, as well as Hughes' translation of Ovid, and his fantastically moving love letters to Sylvia Plath.

My teacher was very different to the middle class, (and in the main, conservative)teachers at the school, coming as he did from a northern working class background. It was like a breath of fresh air, being taught by him. He made me look at things in a completely different way, and question the values I was being taught. I didn't always agree with him, mind... But that didn't matter either, as he wanted us to think for ourselves, and encouraged us to have our own opinions about things.

The other poetry which he brought me too was the First World War poets. Again, he introduced them to us when we were quite young, but he wanted us to know and understand the "pity of war" - Wilfred Owen's marvellous Strange Meeting and Dulce et Decorum Est remain firm favourites.

I've just written a piece on a favourite book for Norman Geras' Writer's Choice, and it took me a heartbeat to decide which book to write about. It's To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. I studied it for O level and it will be my favourite book till the day I die (I'll post the link here when Norm puts it up so you can find out why then). Along with Lord of the Flies, which my teacher also made us read, it remains a seminal book.

To top it all, I wouldn't have gone into publishing at all without my teacher. When I went back to see him while I was a student, he begged me not to become a teacher (my dad was saying the same thing), and suggested I try publishing instead. So I did. And here I am.

In the sixth form I was disappointed that he didn't teach me for A Level, but I needn't have been because I then had the privilege of being taught by another fantastic teacher who introduced me to Hardy, Eliot, Anthony and Cleopatra, Ben Jonson, Tennyson (see previous post vis a vis the Arthurian legend). She too was inspirational and gave me a much needed boost when I was wavering about studying English. I'd got a better grade for History and was panicking I wasn't good enough to study my favourite subject. At the time I was going back to school to sit Oxbridge, and she persuaded me that I should stick with my heart, which I did. Again, she brought me to writers I wouldn't have otherwise found: Sylvia Plath, Matthew Arnold (one of my favourite poems is Dover Beach), more Shakespeare - including Hamlet which I didn't understand for years until I saw it. She was funny, tolerant and wise and treated me like a grown up when I certainly didn't feel like one. Her influence over my life has been enormous.

As readers of this blog are no doubt boringly aware, History is a bit of a passion of mine. The seeds were sown when I was young thanks to reading the incomparable RJ Unstead, but History O level hadn't exactly set me alight, and I gave it up at A level. But my chosen subject of Biology bored me rigid and after half a term I found myself giving it up and going back to History. My teacher wasn't exactly encouraging to begin with, stressing that I'd missed a lot of work and it was going to take some time to catch up, but within a week of being in her class I knew I'd made the right decision. She was right, it took me till Christmas to catch up, and I have to confess my knowledge of The Italian Wars and Henry VII was never very sound, but once she took us into 16th Century European History I was completely enthralled. I'd gleaned some knowledge of the period from Jean Plaidy, but my teacher brought the courts of Charles V and Francis I, and later Philip II and Catherine de Medici alive. Many many years later I found myself in the Alhambra and was thrilled to be in the place that Charles V retired to, and in so many places in Germany I've been delighted to find a connection with Martin Luther (who remains one of my all time historical heroes).

It isn't possible necessarily to see the effect that a teacher has had on you at the time, but I recognise that my lifelong love of history was fostered 27 years ago at St Michael's, and it's a wonderful gift to have been given. (Mind you no 1 doesn't think so, as she wouldn't have to go to so many castles if I didn't like history so much. )

Going back yesterday was actually rather emotional. The school is thriving under the inspirational management of my old history teacher who's now the head teacher - I suspect it's a much better school then it was in my time. The girls seemed enthusiastic and rather charming, the school buildings hadn't changed at all, and I heard the school song and it sent shivers up my spine. And I was immensely struck seeing a group of the older teachers behind me at the celebration mass, how many dedicated single women taught us. They gave everything to that school, and they're still there in their seventies and eighties, devoted to it.

I was delighted to meet two out of three of my inspirational teachers again, and have the chance to tell them how much they did for me.

But more then anything, I realised that actually(for all my sneering about it at the time) it was rather a privilege having gone to the school.

And I'm pretty damned proud of being a SMOG.

PS

O heros invincibilis,

Dux Michael.

Adesto nostris praeliis, ora pro nobis.

Pugna pro nobis, pugna pro nobis,

Dux Michael

That's the first verse of our school song - can't remember what it all means but it's along the lines of St Michael being an invicible hero and fighting for us (more then he prays for us apparently). You probably had to be there, but I do find it immensely stirring. Though it was quite funny singing it with nos 1&4 who accompanied me, no 1 not learning Latin at her school and no 4 having never come across it before...

Rocket Man

Don't know if you caught this on the news last night. As one with a huge flying phobia I cannot IMAGINE what would possess anyone to do this, but on the other hand it was pretty cool. Ironman eat your heart out...

STOP PRESS!!

Bit late in the day I know (sorry da-aa-rlings I've turned into a bit of a meeja star this week and been doing lots of pr and haven't had time), but tomorrow I am hosting a Strictly Come Dancing event over at the other blog. It's also by way of a Strictly Love online launch party, so do come and say hello otherwise I'll feel like billy no mates playing on my own....

Strictly Love Competition

My very good blogging friend Medium Rob has generously offered to host a competition to win copies of Strictly Love.

Details are here

So dance on over there and get entering!

Merlin, myth and reality...

I am a big fan of the Arthurian legend. DId I say big fan? I mean huge huge HUGE fan. It's the courtly love. It's the fighting. It's the nobility. It's Lancelot and Guinevere, and Gawain and the Green Knight, and the search for the Holy Grail and the tragedy of Mordred, and... well I could go on, but you've probably got the picture by now.

I suspect Roger Lancelyn Green had a lot to do with my original interest in Arthur (he certainly was the reason I love Robin Hood), but the fascination was cemented when I read TH White's classic The Once and Future King. It's got all the classic ingredients of Arthurian legend: Merlin takes the baby Arthur to be brought up by Sir Ector so that no one knows who he is. England is thus without a king until Arthur accidentally pulls a sword out of a stone and discovers his true inheritance. He then goes about setting up his famous round table, marries Guinevere, spends most of the story ignoring the fact that Guinevere is shagging his best mate Lancelot, and eventually faces up to the fact he's got it all wrong just before his last battle, where he dies defeating Mordred.

There was a lot I didn't understand when I read it as a kid (the whole Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur love triangle I found quite baffling frankly), I was fired up by the stories (particularly the ones of Arthur's youth when Merlin teaches him politics by making him visit various parts of the animal kingdom), and I particularly loved Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast.

My love affair with Arthur was cemented when I studied Tennyson for A level...

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Those lines from Morte d'Arthur still make my spine tingle.

It was further enhanced by reading Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur at university - on which TH White based his version of the tale. In fact it's probably fair to say that the majority of modern interpretations come to us via Malory.

As a result I am always keen to read/watch new interpretations of the story.

I think my favourite film version is probably John Boorman's Excalibur, which is nightmarish and mesmerising, with powerful performances from all the cast, but though it was a very different take on it, I also enjoyed the recent version with Clive Owen.

The trouble of course with anyone doing any version of the Arthurian tale it has been so done to death, it's almost impossible to give it a different twist.

So I was really intrigued by the new version the BBC are putting out on Saturday nights for the next few weeks. The adverts looked good, it's a teenage Merlin which is interesting and yet...

I have to say I approached this with some trepidation. The Beeb have done fantastically well with Dr Who in the teatime slot and Merlin is produced by Julie Gardner, which is good news, but Robin Hood, another mythological character has been (in my view) utterly ruined by the absolutely dire modern version which has seen Maid Marian killed (twice), Alan a Dale turn traitor and Richard Armitage's Guy of Gisborne to be far more sexy then Robin himself, who seems a bit of a wuss to me.

I was further put off by reading Richard Wilson being quoted as saying this is a hip version of the Arthurian tale. Good god. Does it haveto be hip? I'm all for it appealing to modern children and firing them up the way TH White did me, but hip? For fuck's sake. The Arthurian legend is part of the fabric of our cultural history. It doesn't need to be hip.

Another negative was the discovery that in this version Merlin and Arthur are the same age, and that Uther is still alive. Sorry? Part of the story surely is the orphan brought up without his parents. And how can Merlin who rescued Arthur as a baby be the same age as teenage Arthur?

I'm not such a purist that I mind the story being reintepreted, if by doing so you throw an interesting light on something we all know, or you have something new to say. But surely in myth there are some givens about how the story goes. And in this instance the story goes: Uther used magic to pretend he was Igraine's husband, seduced her, begot Arthur on her, and then was later killed in battle, so Merlin spirited Arthur away to keep him safe. You can go to Tintagel if you don't believe me. One of the things that really irritates the fuck out of me about modern interpretations of stories we know and love, is that the writers always seem to think they KNOW better. (You only need to watch the Tudors to realize that actually, no they don't).

So... Merlin with Uther alive in. No. Does not compute.

However, I DO think it is quite an interesting idea to bring Merlin and Arthur together as young boys, particularly as this Arthur is so extremely unlikeable, which is quite a neat subversion of the myth. I'm tickled to see that Morgana is Uther's ward (presumably to water down the incestuous side of the story - though it is his half sister Morgause who's the mother of Mordred, not Morgan le Fay as if often thought), and it was also a neat twist to have Guinevere as the servant (though technically she is King Leodegrance's daughter). Of course it's a bit of a sop to our go getting times - wanna be famous? You can be! - that Guinevere says she'll never be queen and Merlin tells her she can be, she just has to change her destiny.

Despite my reservations vis a vis Uther, I did actually really enjoy this. The main characters were all pretty good, though I found Anthony Head's Uther a little lacklustre, and I enjoyed Richard Wilson no end. Not sure I was all that wowed by the dragon (again WHERE in Arthurian legend is there a prophesying dragon, hmm?), but I liked the tussling between Arthur and Merlin, and there was one incredibly chilling scene at the end which really raised this above the norm.

So I'll certainly be giving it another look, and hoping that in their quest to make it different the makers of Merlin don't forget the core of the story.

Legends and myths have a purpose, to remind us where we've come from and who we are. The Arthurian myth, with it's nobility and sense of purpose, is aspirational in the sense that it shows us who we can be, and is also very human in the sense that Arthur's weaknesses are ultimately his undoing. When I reread TH White recently I was struck (as I hadn't been as a child) how completely of its time it was - White was writing during much of the book during World War II, so a lot of notions about fighting (Might versus Right) make their way into the book, and Arthur experiences the full horrors of communism in his time in the ant kingdom. TH White used the Arthurian myth to hold up a candle to his own world and expose its frailties. I rather hope the makers of Merlin, have done the same.

It's all go go go....

... from hereon in.

Strictly Love will be in the shops as off tomorrow. Hurrah.

Today I had my first interview with a national newspaper (which was very exciting) - article will be in the Express soon I hope.

And I also had my first online article published.

http://www.allaboutyou.com/diet-wellbeing/strictly-ballroom-dancing/v1

Am planning something over at the Other Place shortly, will keep you all posted.

School Daze

I'm going to a school reunion in a week or so. And I've only just seen St Trinian's, so I thought I'd post this. Sadly my school was nothing like it...

Here's something I prepared earlier.

But no sticky back plastic in sight...

An irresistible Meme

I was tagged for this by Persephone before I went on holiday, and blow me down with a feather I STILL haven't got to it yet. Am still very very badly behind because though the kids are now back at school, Spouse has been off work for three days with a vile cold and no 2 was also off yesterday. Between visits to the GP, phone calls to the GP (on mil's behalf) and trips to the chemist I am beginning to feel like Florence Nightingale, so this meme should help me refocus...

The Big Read (whatever that is) reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or for whatever reason loathe.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen And yes, though purists might hate it, I am loving Lost in Austen.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. Read and reread many times, not sure it counts as a loved but one I'm very fond of.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte. Read and totally misunderstood aged ten, but was freaked out by the red room. Reread it last year and fell in love all over again.
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling Love love love them. Wish I'd been her editor (and I so nearly was, sigh...)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee . Still my no 1 read after all these years. Am just about to explain why on Normblog's Writer's Choice series. THIS is my seminal life changing book, which I read first aged 14 and have never ever stopped loving.
6 The Bible Well no one can have read the whole thing, can they? But with a catholic background I've read alot. But wouldn't go for the wishy washy modern version they foisted on us, The King James Version is the one to read. And Song of Songs is probably one of the most beautiful (and erotic) love poems ever written...
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Not as much a fan of this as JE. Mad Twin and I have decided you go for one or the other. She's gone for the other...
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell. Not sure I could love such a dark book, but I think it's essential reading for anyone with a soul.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. Fell in love with this when I was at Scholastic. I was lucky enough to read an early version in ms form, and Spouse had to tell me to stop reading and come to bed I was so hooked. We all knew then it was a classic. Great, fabulous, brilliant read.The man's a genius.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens. I pretty much love all of Dickens,, and this is no exception. Such a wonderful story, so gothic and scary. And ultimately a brilliant dissection of greed, and avarice and how it can all go awry.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott We used to joke about this as children calling Mama, Marmalade for some reason. In honour of no1 having just discovered it, my WiiMii is called Marmalade. Little things etc..
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy. Completely ott as this book is (but then which Hardy isn't?) and much as I can't stand Angel Clare, Tess's tragedy is just so brilliantly conveyed, and the cruelty of the fate of so many women in 19th century England. I love it for its wonderful descriptions of English countryside, for the characterisation of Tess, and the starkness and brilliance of the lines, And she returned a maiden no more.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller When I was a student, one of my lecturers told me that the staff had a joke about books you should have read and haven't. This is one of mine. Haven't seen the film either. Will do one day...
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - don't be daft no one's read ALL of them, have they? I just did a quick count and reckon I've probably read about 25. My favourites are Macbeth (read at the ridiculously precocious age of 8 simply because I liked the cover. I only understood and liked the witches then), Hamlet, Othello, Midsummer Night's Dream, A Merchant of Venice, and most of all Antony and Cleopatra. Just read Bill Bryson's brilliant book on Shakespeare as well. If you're a fan of the Bard, that's a must read too..
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. Oh god yes, how I love this book. I write romantic fiction, what do you expect? The first line, Last night I dreamed of Manderley again... always sends shivers up my spine. It's gothic, scary, romantic, thrilling. She was a genius. I also love some of her lesser known stuff - The House on the Strand, a wonderfully spooky time slip still haunts me though I read it years ago. If I ever get to write my parallel universe story that will definitely have had an influence.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien. Read a lot and enjoyed, but not sure I love it. And not sure why....
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks - er this is one I want to strike out but I can't quite work out how to do that. Have tried Mr Faulks and we don't get along. So have no desire to read this.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - This is another of my embarrassments. Everyone's supposed to have read this in their teens, right? Wrong in my case. And I'm not quite sure why.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger I absolutely adored this book. The pathos of Clare and Henry's situation, the bizarreness of it, the love story, the tragedy. And a time travelling hero to boot. It was always going to press my buttons and is the reason I got fired up by the idea of writing a parallel universe story of my very own. If I could create even a tenth of the reaction I had to this in anyone who is good enough to read any of my stuff, I'd be ecstatic.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot This is a book I studied at uni. Final year at Liverpool went something like this. Here's a 700+pp book to read by next week, AND write a 5000 word essay on. It could have killed my interest stone dead, and I remember sitting up at night and really grappling with bonkers Dorothea and the insane self sacrificing impulse that leads her marry Casaubon,but oh by the end I was completely hooked in. The world of Middlemarch is so compelling and real, the social history aspects of the book alone make it worth reading. But Dorothea's journey of discovery, and Lydgate's fall from grace are brilliantly realised, while Eliot has the ability to engage our sympathies in the unlikeliest of places , I even feel sorry for Bulstrode at the end.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell Seen and love the film, never got to this though. Don't really know why!
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald I came to Scott Fitzgerald quite late, and enjoyed this without loving it.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens Fog on the river.... Oh the beginning of this book is sublime - the description of fog weaving its way to the heart of Chancery. Like a lot of nineteenth century fiction, this is concerned with the wisdom or otherwise of seeking to resolve disputes through the law - the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce destroying whole generations of a family as it remains unsolved. I loved the recent adaptation of this too, and though the characterisation of Esther is sometimes wincemakingly nauseous, the social conscience that drove Dickens is hear in full cry , particularly in the scene when Joe dies, and he berates his society for allowing such things to happen - as the poor are "dying thus around us every day". Always sends a shiver up my spine,t that...
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy. Eek. Another not read. Must be the size which puts me off. And the fact that my mother read it while I was in utero in the six weeks she was forced to have bedrest before I was born. I think it's had a subliminal effect.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Wish I could write like that.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh Like I am sure many women of my age, BR first came to my mind as a result of the TV show which was entirely responsible for my misplaced desire to go to Oxford. It didn't help that my brother was actually at Christchurch at the time, so I completely fell in love with the place (and still am). Read the book after seeing the TV and still love it. Am going to boycott the new film thoug, even though it's got Emma Thomson in it, because it looks as though they've mucked about with the story shockingly. And there is no bloody need to. They should have gone and watched the TV series again. Then they'd see perfection...
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read this and struggled. So I can't say I love it.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Not a huge Steinbeck fan, but did enjoy this.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll was part of the fabric of my childhood. Definite love here.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame Ditto. Can still remember my mother reading it to me. Her voice was so soothing I didn't realise till I was ever so old how deeply scary and unsavoury the Wild Wood was.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy Eek another non read. Must be the length again. And I'm sure I'll love it.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - Saw this first on TV as a kid and was totally hooked, though I never got the tragedy of Emily till much later.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis What do you think? Course I love this. And yes, I was disappointed not to find Narnia in my cupboard too. Still am actually...
34 Emma - Jane Austen I love this for the journey that Emma takes, for Mr Knightley being so damned Mr Knightleyish and for the wonderful and sometimes wickedly accurate characterisations. The great thing about Austen is her characters still exist today.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen Not my favourite Austen, though I have to say Rupert Penry Jones in the TV adaptation last year certainly helped.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis My favourite by a long chalk.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini Not sure that love is the right word to apply to this book, it is so brutal in places and utterly heartbreaking. But I was completely swept away with it and loved especially the scenes when the boys were young and kite running. The betrayal of Hassan by Amir is too much to take at times, but ultimately this is a book about redemption and I found the end incredibly uplifting.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres This should be struck out. I tried. I really tried. But this is one of those rare books I couldn't finish.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Strike out too. Don't know why but it doesn't interest me at all.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Ah how can you not?
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell Another must read. When I first read this aged 12, the fate of Boxer had me sobbing into my pillow. A brilliant briliant expose of dictatorship and totalitarian government.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown otherwise known as the biggest literary con trick of the last decade. Great page turner I grant, and I did enjoy it, but oh dear. What a lot of piffle... And if you try any of his other stuff, he really does write the same book over and over.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Another book I should have read, and somehow have never got round to.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving Not always a fan of John Irving, but dear god do I love this book (Mad Twin loves it so much she gave it to me twice). It is also the most real and true depiction of coming to terms with bereavment I have ever read. "we don't lose people all at once, we lose them in bits and pieces" - I think that is utterly brilliant. As is the character of Owen Meany himself, who somehow shouldn't be likeable and yet is.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - otherwise known as the first detective novel in the language. This book is probably single handedly responsible for making me love crime and horror fiction - especially gothic horror.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery As a ten year old I couldn't get enough of this book. Unlike her fictional contemporary Pollyanna ('I'm so glad, glad, glad to be here' - yuk), Anne is a great character to love for children, far from perfect, always in trouble. Boy I could relate. (Much like Katy in What Katy Did). I read all of the books and was cheering when she eventually married her childhood sweetheart. Maybe she's responsbile for my career...
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy I love this book, for the images of sunshine and haymaking, the pictures of an English summer, for Bathsheba's wilfulness and Gabriel's steadfastedness. It is not entirely unrelated that my current hero is a shepherd named Gabriel...
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood A bleak dark dystopic vision of the future. Margaret Atwood is my favourite living author (along with Terry Pratchett). This book is harrowing in the extreme, but like 1984, everyone should read it.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding I was introduced to this book by a very brilliant English teacher. I had never read anything like it, and was distraught when Piggy died. No 1 has just read it too and reported the same reaction.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan. I've seen the film. Enough said.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel Not read and not sure why. Must do better.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert Oh god I loved this book when I first read it. All that stuff about the sandworms and prophecies and the evil Bene Gesserat or whatever they were called. Later books lost there way, but Dune is fabulous.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons Never read this. Probably should
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen I love this for Elinor's stoicism, and Marianne's totally ott reactions to everything.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth Don't know why but have no desire to read this.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon Never heard of it.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens Oh I love this - "Tis a far better thing etc" - that kind of noble talk (especially from a previous ignoble character) is always going to get me...
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley LIke 1984 not sure I could say I love it, but a must read certainly, and so incredibly prescient.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Like Northern Lights, this was edited by my ex boss, and I absolutely love it. Apart from anything it was a bold move to put a child with learning difficulties at the centre of a novel and depict his take on the world so brilliantly.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Nope but I should
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Yes but not a huge Steinbeck fan, so probably wouldn't again.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Love the original version of the film should read it.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt This blew my mind when I read it. Was totally gripped by the story and shocked and disturbed by turns. Her follow up book The Little Friend wasn#t nearly as good.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Despite the bleak subject matter, I found this an incredibly uplifting and wise book. I loved it.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas No I should. I know I'd like it.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac. Tried and failed. Too self indulgent for me.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy My least favourite Hardy. Such unredeeming awful gloom. How can he treat his characters so badly? No wonder he gave up writing novels after this one...
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding The book that launched chick lit. Of course I love it.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie I love Rushdie when he binds myth and reality and for his lyrical style. Much much better then a lot of his later stuff.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville. I know the plot. I don't much care for whales.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens. It's Dickens. It's brutal. It's got Fagin and the Artful Dodger. What more do you want?
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker Another reason for liking gothic horror. I certainly got my liking of all things vampiric from this book. The scenes in Whitby are still hair-raising, as is the race to beat the sunset at the end.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Another favourite from childhood. I just loved the whole idea of a secret garden that no one knew about. It's a beautiful brilliant book, which captures the loneliness of childhood and the inability of some adults to communicate wtih children.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson This book still makes me laugh out loud. I know he's a Yank, but Bill Bryson is fast becoming a National Treasure.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce. Never never. Ever. Tried this at uni and thought it the biggest load of twaddle ever.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Whereas this will always make my top ten. Sylvia Plath is one of my literary heroines and this fictional account of dealing with madness and depression still has the power to shock. When I was a student I came across a little book by her flatmate at uni which described the real events that led to Plath writing The Bell Jar. It was quite hearbreaking and made the book resonate with me even more. It's not all doom and gloom though. I still think her description of men's genitalia being like " a turkey between two gizzards" one of the funniest things I've ever read (sorry boys).
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Read but never got on with for some reason.
78 Germinal - Emile Zola Probably should read this sometime.
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray You can probably detect that I am a big fan of nineteenth century novels. I love this book so much on so many levels. Becky Sharp is possibly one of the greatest anti heroines ever, Rawdon Crawley become an unlikely hero, Dobbin is just bloody wonderful and Amelia is such a wussy wet she gets exactly what she deserves by the end.
80 Possession - AS Byatt No great desire to read this.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Have you got a heart? Everyone has to love this don't they?
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell Enjoyed it as an interesting concept, but not sure I love it.
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker I do love this though, but haven't read it for years.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Oops another to go on the tbr pile.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert And this.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Never heard of it.
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White I fell in love with the tale of Wilbur the pig who escapes the knacker's yard with the help of Charlotte the spider who saves him by writing messages in her web. I am still heartbroken when Charlotte dies. It's a great heartwarming tale and a very good way of teaching children about life and death.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom I loved this. Quirky and unusual and very moving.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Can't say I've read them all, but am a big fan.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Have never read this. My childen have made up for it though, they read it endlessly...
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad Read but don't like it as much as The Secret Agent. But amazing to think he wrote it in English.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery Find it a bit nauseating to be honest. But was rather put of St Exupery doing Vol de Nuits for French A Level.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks This is a book like marmite. You either love it or hate it. It is not possible to be indifferent. I love it, but can understand why others don't.
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Possibly the most overrrated children's book of all time (is it really a children's book? Discuss). I hate it. Can't stand those bleeding rabbits.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole I was leant this by a friend who reads this blog. Sorry, but I hated it. Couldn't get on with the narrator at all.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute Probably should read this I suppose...
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Again haven't read, but I know I'll like it. All that derring do.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Hamlet shouldn't be read, but seen. I only got it when I'd seen Mel Gibson play him. And soon I shall see David Tennant do the same. Be still my beating heart... (sorry Persephone)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl I can remember my brother being given this one Christmas and loving the descriptions of Charlie eating/smelling chocolate. So mouthwatering. Roald Dahl is still the best children's writer ever. No contest. Not even from JKR.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo oops. Ended on one I should read. So many books, so little time...

Well that was really enjoyable. Not sure if I am supposed to tag people or not. But Mad Twin, do hop in and tell me where you diagree with me... I'm sure you do.

And anyone else - feel free to comment here or pick it up for your own blogs. It is after all, an irresistible meme...

Another Reason to Celebrate

Apparently my husband has now been a dentist for 20 years. He thinks yesterday was his first day working, which is remarkable for him as he is generally useless with dates.

His first year of working life ended up rather fraught as within three months of being qualified he was accused by a nutty patient (and he was truly truly bonkers) of having crowned the wrong tooth. Said patient bombarded the local healthcare trust with letters talking about Spouse's "rouged lips" and the way he "comes at me from behind wearing a buff coloured mask". He also roundly abused the good constabulary of the Weybridge area where Spouse was working at the time, all of whom were apparently gay. Despite the obvious timewasting crap of his letters, the healthcare were obliged to investigate and Spouse ended up going to a tribunal where Loony Tunes discovered that yes, in fact, he had had the right tooth crowned. It was a total waste of time for all concerned, and caused Spouse a considerable degree of stress at the time.

I was of course a loving supportive wife, etc, etc (oh actually we weren't quite married then,but you know what I mean). But the writing bit of me never goes to sleep apparently, and the genesis of Strictly Love was formed then. I really loathe the litigation culture we have here now, which Spouse had a first dismal taster of twenty years ago, and so I wanted to write about it. While undoubtedly, there are people who do things wrong in all areas of the medical profession, it is my belief that the majority of them are trying to do the right thing, and the threat of being sued does no one (least of all the patient) much good.

So my hero dentist, Mark, gets sued by one of his zedlebrity patients for breach of trust, and I hope I've shown the devastation that an action which she takes relatively lightly can cause. As this is romantic fiction, I hope it's not too heavy and message laden - you do get lots of dancing thrown in, I promise - but I also don't see why you can't mix serious stuff into popular culture too.

And as Spouse has spent twenty years at the coalface (how the fuck did that happen anyway? Yesterday we were twenty), I'd just like to raise a metaphorical glass to him and all the teeth he has drilled, filled, cleaned and extracted over the last two decades. Someone's got to do it...

Squee! Squee!!

I am not yet quite back in the living after my hols, as I have been away again and had visitors for the last few days. But I hope normal service resumes shortly.

Just dropped by though to say Squee!!! very loudly as my advance copies of Strictly Love arrived on Saturday and it looks absolutely fantastic. I am as ever indebted to my wonderful editor and the fabulous team at Avon who have done a fantastic job. The book will be available in the shops on 18 September (two days before the next series of Strictly Come Dancing about which I hope to be blogging periodically).

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to my blogging friends Political Umpire, who was immensely helpful about the legal stuff in the book and Marie Phillips, who was brilliant on the dancing, as well as making me laugh out loud when she was blogging about SCD last year.

Amazingly second time round it feels just as exciting holding a book wot I wrote in my little sticky paws. Am hoping to do some publicity stuff here when I get my head back into gear (the kids go back on Thursday. That should help).

And I will be at some point blogging here about my holiday, and over there about (among other things) dancing in the rain and fending off dancing cows in Derbyshire.