Unbelievable.

Sometimes you open the newspaper and read a story that makes you gasp out loud. You can watch one of those stories here

Now it may be that I have got this all wrong and the right people to care for an elderly woman are the people who run the care home where she claimed to be unhappy, rather then the daughter who appears to have her mother's best interests at heart. I am willing to accept in a world where we get things so skewed that we hear story after story of small children killed or maimed by the people who should care for them most, that such abuse goes on at the other end of the spectrum too. It may well be that Rosalind Figg is a lying scheming woman who manipulates the system to her own advantage, but she came across in that interview as a woman who cares deeply about her mother and who has been treated appallingly.

If the social services have got it wrong, it is outrageous that an 86 year old woman should be taken from the care of a daughter who loves her back to a home which the aforementioned daughter didn't think was offering a good enough standard of care. And even more outrageous that they required police officers and several social workers to do it.

There may well be more then this story than meets the eye of course, but quite frankly having had some small experience of the care my father in law received in a local home which was praised to the heavens by all the "experts" I spoke to, if Rosalind Figg's felt she could make a better fist of looking after her mother then I don't blame her for taking her out of that home. And by what right does the state decide to intervene in a family member making a decision about the best way to care for an elderly relative anyway? Since when is it the state's business? There are plenty of elderly people who have no one to care for them, they should be grateful that Rosalind Figg's was prepared to care for her mother.

I feel extremely strongly about this issue. For the past twelve years Spouse and I have been dealing with issues attendant from having elderly parents. When fil was alive, mil looked after him (this despite her shake and her own infirmities). I defy any state system to invent a care package however good that could provide the loving support she gave him for six years.

Over the past six months, I have been looking after mil in a very loose sense: I provide most of her meals, I pop in her or speak to her daily, I do her shopping, I take her to her appointments, and I do odd bits of tidying up for her to make life easier. And do you know what? Although it is undoubtedly and extra layer of responsibility that I could sometimes do without, I don't mind doing it all because - tada! - I love her, and want to look after her. I also believe that Spouse, bil, sil and I are the people best placed to consider her needs and ensure she is cared for properly. This is WHAT FAMILIES SHOULD DO.

The amount of looking after I do is nowhere near a full time carer's role (though I was somewhat startled to be offered carer support when I organised social services to come and help look after her), and I am sensible of the massive responsibility and onus that would be should it come to that, but it has given me an insight into how demanding such a role would be. And I know anyway, because twenty five years ago I did a stint as a voluntary care worker for an 87 year old lady. It is immensely hard, and wearing and sometimes unrewarding. The carers of this country take a huge strain and get very little thanks for it from the government. And it now appears (and ok this is a one off and possibly extreme case) that on it seems, a whim, the state can decide that nanny really knows best when it comes to looking after our elderly, and that family members are no longer deemed to be fit to do so.

It may well be that we get faced with the choice of putting mil into a home at some point, (I do think, having witnessed people do it, looking after alzheimer's patients is particularly difficult and taxing and would possibly be too difficult to manage with a family as well), but I hope that we don't ever have to go there. I know that not all care homes are terrible places, I know that many people who work in them are dedicated and genuinely care for their patients, but there are still too many places where the care isn't what it should be. And I also know if we did have to put mil in a home and found she was unhappy, Spouse, bil, sil and I simply would not let that happen and would rather have her at home then being uncared for. No one should be obliged to stand by and watch their loved ones being treated badly by a system which is supposed to care for them.

I sincerely hope that Rosalind Figgs is able to prove that she acted in her mother's best interests, and that she can look after her at home, where she will be loved and cared for by the person who surely surely must love her the most. (Unless she turns out to be some kind of mad old person hater, of course...)

Fire up the Quattro!

... my favourite nonreconstructed sexy male detective is back. And it's nice to see him back being hot, hot, hot after Philip Glenister's disastrous turn as a Texan Vampire Smiter in the truly awful Demons. I still can't get over the fact that they managed to make him so unsexy...

But anyway, here he is back in Ashes to Ashes doing what he does best, being unpc, brutal, rude, uncompromising, but always with a swaggering sexual charisma which Jonas Armstrong would be well advised to study.

Not everyone seemed to like the first series of Ashes to Ashes, which after Life on Mars was always going to be a hard act to follow, but I did because I love the Gene/Alex dynamic, I've really enjoyed Chris being turned into something resembling a decent male by Shaz, and of course I love, love, LOVE the music. Well why wouldn't I? The 80s, bad hair, big shoulders notwithstanding was the decade of my youth, so anything that reminds me of that has to be good...

I'm glad to say series two has started promisingly with a ( spoiler alert), potentially murky plot involving police corruption in Soho, which looks like it's going to be a key part of the overall series arc.

Gene and Alex are sent to investigate the death of a copper in a Soho nightclub (hilariously encountering Princess Margaret on the way - her car is holding them up, which led to a new Genism "I don't stop for the sixth in line to the throne!" ), who it appeared had died in an autoerotic game that went wrong. Of course, the truth turned out to be somewhat more complex then that, and while the copper's Superintendent (Super Mac, who may or may not be the series villain) was keen to clean things up and move swiftly on, Alex and Gene soon uncover evidence that he's been murdered and fitted up.

In the meantime, just in case you thought this was a straightforward cops and robbers show, Alex is hearing voices everywhere: from an old woman, to a barking dog, telling her she's been found, and someone is leaving her flowers so she knows she's not forgotten. Her daughter even turns up in an episode of Grange Hill (a touch I rather liked given that Grange Hill was a programme I was still occasionally watching in 1982), but of course she can't get through to anyone. At one point Alex even got kidnapped by - who exactly? We're not sure, the potential murderer, a figment of her imagination, or someone else entirely? - and injected with a drug, so she was coming round at one point in 2008, only to return to 1982 when Gene pitched up to rescue her. In the last series, Keeley Hawes came in for a lot of criticism for being too shrieky (I rather liked her slightly off the wall ranting at everyone else myself), but this time around she's toned it down and is a bit more accepting of where she is, which made the pathos of the moment when she thought she'd got back and whoever was keeping her captive drew back what she thought was a hospital curtain to reveal that she was stuck in a warehouse, even more poignant.

There was pathos too, in the death of the young northern girl who dies in Gene's arms. Apparently Philip Glenister doesn't get why women fancy Gene so much. I'd say it's for scenes like that - seeing a tough guy, being so tender and so angry too, at such an unnecessary death, is very very seductive I find.

Although by the end Alex and Gene had discovered the culprit (the dead copper's best mate), and Alex had managed to talk him out of shooting half of the Met, it's clear that they've only just dipped a toe in the murk of corruption, and there is clearly more of the same to come. Which is just fine and dandy by me.

I loved it, and can't wait to see what happens next. I'm just hoping the Gene Genie isn't the fourth fictional hero to cop it this year. That would be simply too much to bear...

A whole feast of family fun...

Well of course. If it's a contest between watching Him...


Him...

Or Him (sorry Lisa)...

naturally the good Doctor won. As I mentioned on my previous post about Primeval/Robin Hood, thanks to Doctor Who Saturday nights in our house have become all about a family viewing experience, but I hadn't realised how much I'd been missing the instigator of it all, till I had the choice of watching David or Dougie. As we were at my mum's we were a little stymied on the sitting in front of the TV with a takeaway, which is normally part of the Saturday night Family Experience, so we videoed Primeval, and tried not to gobble the wonderful meal with which my mother presented us with too indecent haste. She kindly soon departed to church, it being Easter Saturday, so we could indulge our strange Sci Fi habits without her (inexplicably, my mother doesn't get: Doctor Who, Primeval, Terry Pratchett and any number of other fantasy/sf experiences which I love. I sometimes wonder if she's really my mother...)

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

So we sat down to remind ourselves what we've been missing and oh boy, it made me long for Series 5 of Doctor Who to be coming really really soon. But this was tempered with the knowledge, that Series 5 means goodbye to David, and I'm still not sure I'm ready. Particularly, as Dougie copped it in Primeval. I mean, how rotten is that. THREE weeks in and the sexiest best character in Primeval goes to join metrosexual Stephen in the great Primiverse in the sky. I feel utterly cheated. But I know it is only a pale shadow of what I am going to feel when David dies... Oh dear. 2009 to be the season for heroes dying doesn't it, given that Jonas will be off at the end of series 3 (only I don't care AT ALL about him, so that's ok.)

I cannot possibly do as witty a review of Planet of the Dead as Marie did here, but oh, I did love this episode. From the minute Michelle Ryan went into cat burglar mode and stole a cup from underneath the noses of the four dim but beefy security guards who were conveniently facing the wrong way (doesn't it ever occur to anyone in these films that they should have one guard facing inwards, just in case a cat burglar sneaks down from above, like, er, they always do?), I knew I was going to enjoy myself. This was a romp pure and simple. A very silly, funny, romp in the great tradition of Doctor Who. It even had aliens with fly heads for fuck's sake, you can't get sillier then that (well ok, you can. You can lassoo the world and get the Tardis and fly it home, but I liked that too). I did feel sorry for the fly aliens though, as it was immediately apparent they were totally dispensable as bringing them through the wormhole would cause no end of bother, which is pretty much what RTD said on Doctor Who Confidential...

I also really liked the sting ray things which flew round and round and gobbled things up and made the wormhole bigger and bigger and bigger.... And all the ridiculous OTT psychic stuff was also good.

I didn't really rate the Christmas Special all that highly, and I've come to the conclusion it's because the Doctor does need a female to spar with, even though I don't really want him to shag anyone in the Tardis, there does need to be some sexual tension, and the two Davids couldn't muster it. But David and Michelle did brilliantly. I loved the way she outwitted him, and took charge, and ignored him when he said don't go down there and she promptly did.

But I didn't love her nearly as much as Malcolm. Ah, Malcolm. Please, please let us have more of Malcolm. Lee Evans was brilliant as the mad genius (and brave - I loved the scene where he defied the robotic idiotic saluting when you're on the phone Unit General, though I DO wish they wouldn't keep making Unit out to be so dense and morally dubious. Bring back the Brig or a modern version of him, say I.), and we were all in pieces at the end when he told the Doctor he loved him. We do too, Malcolm, but we love you just as much...

The ending was suitably preposterous with Michelle Ryan flying off in her big red bus (oh I'd love to see that come back!), but also had a nicely chilling forecast about the end of this particular Doctor's song, and someone coming knocking four times, who has got to be the Master, simply because there's unfinished business there (and I'd have thought that even without all the internet spoilers to that effect). But oh dear god, I am sadly still not sure I want to go there. How will I survive without David Tennant saying things like, I'm going to get you home, in THAT voice...

As a child Tom Baker was always my doctor (Spouse's funnily enough is Jon Pertwee), once he left, I never really liked Doctor Who as much, and I never thought anyone could make the Doctor so real for me again. And here I am in my mid forties, and David Tennant has utterly erased any childhood memory I have of Tom Baker and made himself my doctor instead. I'm not sure how on earth Matt Smith will be able to match up to that. I do hope he can, because watching Planet of the Dead made me realise how brilliant the rejuvenated Doctor Who has been all over again, and I'd love to see it keep on and on and on....

Particularly as we went straight onto watching Robin Hood which was even sillier then normal and without the redeeming presence of Richard Armitage. Joanne Froggatt's character, Kate, has to be THE most annoying character in it now, replacing even Much as the stupidest person on the planet (they are so made for each other). The most enjoyable thing is Keith Allen's comedy villain Sheriff who becomes more ridiculous by the week, and this week managed to dupe all the stupid villagers into believing that Robin and co were heretics and had to be burnt at the stake. Yeah, right...

Moving swiftly onto Primeval, which is heaps more fun and also in the main very very silly, I realised that it was a mistake to watch this the same week as an episode of Doctor Who, because it just isnt' nearly as good. On the other hand, this was a humdinger of an episode, with Mrs Mad (Dougie's ex wife who jumps about through time anomalies cocking things up generally), on top form, having cloned Dougie to break into the Arc where the Primeval team spend all their days trying to work out wtf is going on. I had had warning from Lisa that Dougie was about to buy it, but it was still a bit of shock, as I can't really envisage the show without him. There was also a very touching scene before he died when he helped someone give birth while locked in a room with several baby dinosaur type creatures(I told you Primeval was silly) - there is something about hunky men holding new born babies that makes me go weak at the knees, and another one when he persuaded the clone who was acting under Mrs Mad's orders, that he did have a mind of his own, but I actually found the most moving bit was after Connor brought his body out and there's James Lester, the stuck up boss who hates Cutter, flapping and demanding an ambulance when everyone else can see he's dead...

Can't see how they're going to carry on without him, but then, I still can't see Doctor Who without David Tennant either... sigh.

Future Me

(David Benson as Tim, Rupert Hill as Peter)

Future Me is the title of a thought provoking play about paedophilia,by Stephen Brown, which is currently running at Only Connect, Cubitt Street London.

At first glance, the notion of going to see a play about paedophilia (0r even reading a review about one) doesn't sound all that appealing. But Future Me is not only a brave and bold bit of theatre, looking with clear sighted vision at the people who perpetrate this appalling crime, but it is also at times very funny, although, inevitably the humour has the darkest of edges.

The play focusses around Peter, a young lawyer, who at the beginning is about to settle down with his pretty girlfriend, Jenny. Their lives, and that of Peter's brother, Mike (and a father we never see) are turned upside down when "an offensive picture" is accidentally emailed to everyone on Peter's email list. He claims at first, that it's a virus, turning to Mike, a computer expert to help wipe the hard drive. But Mike knows of no virus that would do such a thing, and Peter is sent to jail.

The setting of Future Me is intimate (we sat right at the front, practically in the set), and the scene in which Peter was incarcerated, felt deeply symbolic, as he strips out of his civvies and into a drab prison tracksuit, while the other actors, fixed windows in the metal frames of the set with an ominous clang.

To begin with it seems impossible, for someone like Peter to have committed this crime. Here is a young man, a lawyer, with everything to live for. Not our usual picture of a paedophile. Surely it must be a mistake? But it is no mistake, and as the play unfolds, we are asked uncomfortable questions about the nature of forbidden desire, and about how we deal with the people who succumb to it. We are forced to look at paedophiles, not as monsters - as the media so frequently portray them - but as human beings, who have a sad bad addiction.

Human beings like Harry. A pathetic individual who befriends Peter - someone Peter wouldn't have given the time of day to in his normal life. Someone who is learning to play the guitar badly, who is desperate not end his days in prison, who wants to get out and "fight the good fight" as he calls it, someone who seems so utterly harmless, until you realise he has abused his stepdaughter. It becomes almost impossible at times to reconcile the shambolic often humorous figure of Harry with what he has done. The two don't seem to square up somehow, which is perhaps the point. It is neat and tidy and keeps dark thoughts at bay to imagine paedophiles as some kind of deviant monsters - but what if, they're just like you and me? What does that make us?

Which is the kind of argument that Tim, another inmate would use. Tim is possibly one of the most chilling and menacing characters I've ever seen on stage. He uses words to justify his actions, claiming a conspiracy against people like him, pointing out that"Half the bloody population have sex before their sixteen", in arguments so persuasive, you almost fall for them. In fact, thinking about this play over the weekend as I have been (it is the kind of play that stays for a long time in your head), it occurs to me that Tim's railing against the "programme" that the inmates are required to undergo if they stand a chance of parole, would look like an abuse of their human rights if, say a similar programme was used to deradicalise Muslim clerics. It is an uncomfortable truth that where in one situation we might cry foul, in another we would be more likely to turn a blind eye.

Future Me is a bold and brave and often shocking piece of theatre. Rupert Hill's Peter is persuasive and likeable. The moment when he says in prison "For the first time it felt it was real", you realise that here is someone, still in huge denial about what they've done. Even after all the therapy, done under the unblinking eyes of the therapist, Ellen (played by Katherine Dow Blyton) you get the sense Peter hasn't really faced up to it.

It is only when confronted by his ex girlfriend Jenny, when he's out of jail, and he finally describes to her what he's done in detail, how he started to go online and: "It was like you'd been released in the middle of the night into this enormous empty library and you can run up and down the corridors, and you know somewhere in that library, somewhere are books that offer exactly what you want.", how slowly over time, the search becomes wider, incorporating things he knows aren't strictly legal, until the day dawns that he realises he's crossed a line, but it was one he crossed long ago. Up until this point, even though I knew that Peter had raped a 12 year old girl, the power of this play had somehow kept me in sympathy with him, but when describes it to Jenny, how he ceases to see her at all, you suddenly feel the full horror of what he's done.

There is a similar moment with Harry, who after reencountering his stepdaughter, and finally understanding the damage he's done to her, tries to castrate himself. Like I say, this play leaves you under no illusions about what these men do, how appallingly evil their acts are.

And yet...

Stephen Brown's writing is so good, by the end of it I had swung round again in sympathy for Peter and Harry again - and even to an extent Tim whose violent father had given him no love, so he mistakes the sexual favours of a family friend as tenderness, and this has informed his own skewed nature of what love is.

Peter loses everything: his job, his girlfriend, his family - he meets up briefly with Mike at his father's funeral, and comments on the pictures of his baby girl, but you know that Mike won't allow Peter to meet his family. He is alone with a new career as a copyeditor - a career which requires him to have internet access (symbolically, in the scene where Peter sets up in his new home, it is Tim who hands him the ISDN line) - how on earth, in the absence of any close support is he ever going to resist the temptation?

In the end the person I was least in sympathy with turned out to be Ellen. Her optimistic hope that Harry the "long shot" might just make it while Peter the "good bet" should be fine, seems almost reckless. In a shocking scene with Jenny, she tells her that all she can do is try to make prisoners safer where they are, and she carries on "because it seems like a worthwhile thing to do." But Jenny's response that three years doesn't seem long enough for what has happened to the 12 year old girl, or the revelation that when she's with her new boyfriends she sees herself as a child, leaves us in no doubt of the long term impact on all victims of abuse. In a sense, Jenny is Peter's victim too, because she can never forget what he did.

Future Me offers no solutions to the problem - should we try to rescue paedophiles, and cure them of their addictions? It is as Ellen says, a worthwhile thing to do, and yet, I can't help feeling like Jenny, that maybe the price of the long shot and the safe bet, is just too high, however much sympathy we feel for the perpetrators.

Although I may made this play sound incredibly grim, it isn't - there are some darkly funny moments - Tim makes a joke at the end about doing a talk on Taboos at the ICA, which made me howl with laughter, Harry is often quite humorous, and there were several moments when I laughed out loud. It has a humanity about it which you don't expect to find in material like this. I'm not quite sure I'd go as far as to say I enjoyed it - enjoyment doesn't seem the right word somehow. But this is a compelling, tense play, which will have you on the edge of the seat. I'd thoroughly recommend it.

To read Rupert Hill's thoughts on going from playing Jamie Baldwin in Coronation Street to the part of Peter, you can go here

SueScott Davison Productions presents FUTURE ME By Stephen Brown

Directed by Guy Retallack

Cast includes: Rupert Hill, Katherine Dow Blyton and David Benson

Future Me can be seen at:

Only Connect, 32 Cubitt Street Lonond WC1X 0LR (Nearest tube Kings Cross), at 7.30pm, till April 26 2009

Music and Lyrics Part Two (Or how my weird mind works...)

I did say this subject was going to be one I return to. So if it bores the pants off you, feel free to walk away now...

Although I never thought consciously about being a writer till I was really quite old, I have always made up stories in my head. Of all my children, in this no 3 resembles me the most. I often find her squirrelled away in corners talking not to herself, but to all the imaginary people in the fantasy world she is inhabiting. I still do that now. I have just said goodbye to Gabe, Marianne, Cat and Noel who are the four protagonists of Last Christmas, and am currently getting to know: Doris (or possibly Dorrie as my ed thinks Doris is too old fashioned, but I have a personal reason for calling her that), Caz, Beth and Sarah. Caz and Dorrie are currently the strongest characters chundering away in there, but Beth who is the quiet one is coming out of her shell, and Sarah I know has a lot she wants to tell me. In anyone other then a writer, admitting that should probably get you sectioned, but although I have a healthy fantasy life, I fortunately have four offspring, a very down to earth husband and aged mil to keep my feet firmly on the ground.

The first time I can remember consciously thinking I wanted to put some of the stories that unfolded into my head down on paper was when I was at university. And perhaps not unsurprisingly, given my previous post on the subject, it was music that inspired me. I was in a bar in Liverpool with Spouse, one warm spring evening. I was wearing a turquoise dress I loved at the time, with black pointy boots, and he was wearing his long dark trademark 80s student coat, probably a black shirt (can't quite remember), black jeans and black pointy boots. I can remember the stools we sat on, the bar we leant against, the low lighting, the 80s glitz, and the reason I remember it so clearly is because the song that was playing: Addicted to Love by ZZTop has cemented it in my head forever. (Except, I have misremembered - ZZ Top appear NOT to have done a version of this, I must have been thinking of Robert Palmer's version. Thanks to Persephone and Political Umpire for correcting my mistake!) I came home and wrote a corny story about a girl who couldn't commit and as a result lost the love of her life. It wasn't very good. And lacking the necessary confidence to pursue writing, desperately needing to earn some money post uni, and more importantly not having any of the requisite life experience to write the kinds of stories I write now, I kept my fantasy and real worlds separate. Then I fell in to publishing and spent ten years using all my creative juices on other people's ideas, which was fun, but didn't leave me any room for creating stuff of my own. I cannot tell you the sense of liberation I got when I sat down to write my first novel and realised that from now on I could keep all my good ideas to myself.

When I started thinking about the way music inspires me, I genuinely thought that I had only started using it with Pastures New, but thinking back to my early attempts at writing, the music thing has always been there, but I just didn't realise.

The first novel I completed, White Wedding is even named after a song - again I can see a moment in time in my own life, where I sat on the floor in Spouse's room at uni listening to Billy Idol telling me it was going to be a nice day for a white wedding, while I felt utterly desolate that I was going to spend the summer away from him. I just have to hear that song now and those feelings of desolation come flooding back (not unnaturally, I have it pegged down for the soundtrack of the book I am embarking on, which is about weddings.)

The next book I started working on which I never finished, was going to be called Losing my Religion - thank you Michael Stipes. And while the second book I finished, Coming Full Circle which never got published, didn't have a musical title, there were definitely songs hovering about in my subconscious as I wrote it.

It wasn't till I got to Pastures New though, that I realised that music was part of the process for me. (Spoiler alert here if you haven't read it.)

Pastures New was originally going to be in six parts, and (thanks to discussions with some of my RNA writing chums, in particular the fabulous Elizabeth Chadwick who brilliantly soundtracks her mediaeval stories to rock) I chose a song for each part of the book. The story really began with Justin Hayward's Forever Autumn, another song from the soundtrack of my young life. At one point early in our courtship, Spouse and I split up. I was convinced it was all over and I remember listening to that song on a train feeling that my heart had broken and would never recover (which of course was arrant nonsense, but melodrama works when you're 20). It seemed the perfect song for my heroine Amy, recovering from the death of her partner. I also used: California Dreamin' by the Mamas &Papas(another soundtrack song - Spouse played it to me on our first date), Soak up the Sun by Sheryl Crowe, Here Comes the Summer Son by Texas (last two came from listening to them on long car journeys - a common source of finding inspirational songs I find), Sing by Travis and Fix You by Coldplay. I did blog about why ages ago, but I can't inconveniently find the post in my archives at the moment.

All of the songs were chosen for the mood they inspired, their part in advancing the story and for some significant line that led into the character's behaviour. Forever Autumn includes the lines my life will be forever autumn/cos you're not there, which is how Amy feels about losing Jamie (and pretty much how I'd feel if anything ever happened to Spouse, god forbid): California Dreamin' includes: All the leaves are brown /And the sky is grey /I went for a walk /On a winter's day/ If I didn't tell her /I could leave today , which fit both the wintry mood of the beginning of the book and the hero Ben's dilemma about his love life; Soak up the Sun was chosen for the lines:Its not having what you want/Its wanting what youve got which fit Amy's burgeoning reconnection with the world and acceptance of the good things in life, while Here Comes the Summer Son contains the lines: Before you take my heart, reconsider/Before you take my heart, reconsider/I've opened the door/I've opened the door, which fitted Amy's nervousnes about indulging in a new relationship. The last two songs, Sing and Fix You were chosen for the pain and anguish they engender - Fix You, particularly stayed in my head as Ben's song, as it summed up what he feels about Amy and why she keeps him out of her life. High up above or down below/When you're too in love to let it go/But if you never try you'll never know/Just what you're worth/Lights will guide you home/And ignite your bones/And I will try to fix you (ok the ignite your bones line is not Chris Martin's finest hour, but it is a song that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up).

When I was writing Pastures New, I tried to weave some of the song lyrics themselves into the story (quoting verbatim from songs is a very expensive thing to do, so I generally try to avoid it). So Amy remembers walking in golden fields with Jamie, Ben at one point does stop into a church, Amy hears Sheryl Crowe singing about having what you want, and wonders later on if she should go through the door of a new relationship. I didn't use Sing so much, but at the end, I did literally have Ben lighting her way home. However, I realised after I'd done it, I was trying too hard to bend the story to fit the song, plus when I came to write Strictly Love (more spoiler alerts) I wanted my characters to have a theme tune each and that rather then having one theme song for each part of the book, I also wanted to highlight certain key moments, like soundtracking a film.

So in Strictly Love I worked it slightly differently. Each part had it's own theme song: Part One had The First Cut is the Deepest, for Mark who was mourning the loss of his marriage; Part Two was The Weakness in Me for Emily who kept going back to an unsuitable boyfriend and for Katie who was being tempted by Rob: Part Three had Can't Get You Out of My Head for all my protagonist's as they attempted to control their feelings and Part Four's theme was Song for Lovers, which makes me go slightly weak at the knees.

Additionally, I used :

Abba's heartbreaking Slipping through my Fingers for Mark's relationship with his daughter Gemma (I have sobbed EVERY time I see Meryl Streep singing that in Mamma Mia!- it's also turned up as a theme for Cat in Last Christmas)
Feel for Rob, which helped me hugely give depth to his character. He started off as a happy go lucky character, who lacked commitment, but I always knew he was hiding a dark secret. Then I heard Feel on the radio one day and suddenly I knew Rob so much better. I listened to this song obsessively every time I had to write a Rob scene, and in the end he became my favourite character because of it.

I just want to feel real love
Feel the home that I live in'
Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste

I don't want to die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her
I scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

The Miracle of Love - by the Eurythmics. I love the Eurythmics and this song about the wonder of finding love again was a perfect soundtrack moment for the first time Emily and Mark get together. I had this scene in my head for months before I wrote it- it unfolded as if I were watching a film. And had I been watching a film, then this song would be what you'd hear...

Fields of Gold- Sting. Again, I had a scene in my head with Emily and Mark lying in fields of gold watching the sun rise, and this poignant song just fitted the mood perfectly. I also played Sting's Shape of my Heart alot for this particular moment, more because of the way it catches at my heart then the lyrics.

The boys also got two theme songs: The Boys are Back in Town for their attempts to get laid and Fifteen Years, which is a great song about booze and regret and lost opportunities, and perfect for anyone who has ever sat in their local, looked around and thought, shit, is this what my life's come to?

A last minute addition (thanks to watching an episode of Ashes to Ashes) was Body Talk, which worked really well both as the song that Rob and Katie danced to when they realise their true feelings for each other, but the perfect accompaniment to a rumba. I even choreographed the steps (Marie, you may remember, I was emailing you as I did it), with the use of a little handbook of dancing, myself on my own inf ront of a computer trying out both the male and female steps, while I listened to the song. Sometimes I probably should be sectioned...

For Last Christmas, I've gone less for major theme songs and more for key moments of the story, where again, if it were a film you'd have an apposite piece of music playing (I had a completely eureka moment when I went on the Being Human website - currently my favourite place in cyberspace and read about how they chose the music for each episode, a subject I think for another post - and realised this is what I aspire too).

So this time around (I am trying not to give anything away here, because of course, in October I want you all to go out and buy the book!), I had alot of songs about tension in relationships, as one hero and heroine: Cat and Noel are in a long term marriage which is fraying a bit around the edges.

Their songs include:
This is Where I Came In by the BeeGees. I belatedly realised when they brought out their last album before Maurice died, that I totally heart the Beegees. And this song is just amazing. The lines: I lie and you lie /And who would get the sharpest knife, I'm sure will resonate with anyone who's been in a longterm relationship. There are certainly days when every couple is scrabbling for the sharpest knife, but usually the wounding is with words. But I also love it for the reality of these lines: Hope rides on/But I’ll go anywhere/Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you/Time has gone/But I’ll go anywhere/Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you. The point is, however rough the ride gets, however much you sometimes are hard pushed to like each other, if you LOVE each other you will go anywhere, through thick and thin. That's why those pesky marriage vows are in there. We never imagine the worse when we get married, but boy oh boy, the better is worth the occasional pain. Well, I think so anyway, but then I do write romantic fiction.

Cat and Noel also have: Bryan Ferry's Let's Stick Together for similar reasons, but for moments when the going is tough, another song for them is the Manic Street Preacher's Your Love Alone for the lines: Your love alone - is not enough not enough not enough/When times get tough they get tough they get tough they get tough. Because despite what I said above about love making you go anywhere with your partner, it isn't enough, on its own to see you through the tough times. You also have to hang on and remember the good times. Which is why I've also given Cat and Noel Coral's Put the Sun Back. This is absolutely somewhere I've been emotionally, and I think it's brilliant:

I caught you crying
Trying to hide your tears away
And all the whileI never knew you felt this way
I've loved you from the start
How could we let this come apart ?

We've got to put
The sun back in our hearts

For my other couple Marianne and Gabriel, I have the wonderfully perky and upbeat She's Got You High by Mumm-Ra (with huge thanks to Persephone for pointing me in the right direction with that one) , which is one of the most perfect falling love songs I have ever heard, even if I mistakenly heard the lines this world has turned to seethrough as this world has turned to seafood, till I googled the lyrics.

Gabriel is in a difficult relationship with his mentally unstable wife at the start of the book, and I have two songs for key moments they have together. The first if Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, which is such a painful, sad destructive kind of song:
When the routine bites hard
and ambitions are low
And the resentment rides high
but emotions won't grow
And we're changing our ways,
taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again

And I also had the wonderful KT Tunstall's Other Side of the World, which is another song which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and also is brilliant for catching the insolubility of their problems.

Cat has a lot of me in her. She is the mother of four and has I hope a moving storyline featuring her own mother, which turned out to be a damned sight more personal then I intended when I thought of it. So she has Angels as a theme tune. Which makes me howl. Which I also hope is the reaction of my readers to this part of the storyline...

At the last minute I've brought in I Can See Clearly Now and Love Resurrection for Marianne, for two key moments for her.

And I also had a sudden wow moment and used The Streets of London for a hugely important scene for Noel.

But the heart of this book, belongs to Noel and so my favourite emotional stirring song of the last year (till I heard Johnny Cash's Hurt) is Neil Diamond's Pretty Amazing Grace, which is relevant not just for Noel, but in their own ways all the other characters too.

Pretty amazing grace is how you saved me
And with amazing grace, reclaimed my heart
Love in the midst of chaos
Calm in the heat of war
Showed with amazing grace
What love was for.

No book about Christmas would be complete without some cheese. So I've also got Wham's Last Christmas as the title song and Marianne and Gabriel's theme tune(I was always partial to those Wham boys). I've even pinched the lyrics for my part titles which are: I Gave you my heart/You gave it Away/To Save me from Tears/Someone Special.

I'm just working on the soundtrack for my next book, about weddings, and will report back in my next musings on this subject, as well, I hope posting some coherent thoughts about the Being Human soundtrack and how it's inspired me, and when I get round to listening to the four CDs Lisa has been kind enough to send me, I shall be posting on that too.... But for now I really really must get to Sainsbury's. Sometimes my real life is dead inconvenient...

...and something rather more troubling

When I was about six or seven I can remember my mother getting very aerated. We used to back onto a little park, and just outside our back gate was a holly bush which was big enough for several people to get inside. It was also big enough for the local sexed up teens to use it as a groping ground, which was the cause of my mother's aeriation. I can distinctly remember the sight of a teenage girl wearing just a bra on top, though I think she probably still had her skirt on. Not unnaturally, my mother wasn't desperately keen for this fornication to be taking place where her children played, but at that particular period in the early seventies, the rigid rules she'd grown up with were being bust wide open, and I know she and my father did their best to protect us from what they perceived as a far too sexual society.

Lordy lord. How innocent that holly bush seems now. Thanks in part to a conversation about rape, in response to Marie's thought provoking blog about attitudes to sexual assault here, I switched onto watch Anna Johnson's deeply disturbing programme on Channel 4 last night about the pornification of our children. I had suggested (and Rob pointed me Anna's way) that teenage boys were getting far too much access to pornography via the internet and mobile phones, mainly based on anecdotal playground conversations. I worry this is going to lead to a generation having a really distorted view of sex, and in particular boys having a very demeaning view of girls.

Let us be quite clear here. Though I was brought up catholic and therefore have a strong prudish streak which is hard to shake, I do like to think of myself as openminded. I know the sort of stuff my husband looked at when he was thirteen, I also know that I had steady access to erotic literature via a friend with a useful older sister. It is inevitable, and natural for children to be curious about these things as they move into adulthood. I have no problem with that.

However, where it was reasonably difficult for a boy to get hold of Razzle when he was fourteen, nowadays, he just needs to click on porn (or Jordan Porn as one boy I know did) to find a feast of stuff, a lot of it free, and the majority of it really hardcore. If you don't believe me, go to the Sex Education website here. It makes for very depressing and worrying reading.

On the evidence of the kids interviewed on the programme last night a worrying number of them (especially the boys) viewed watching porn as a normal activity. One of them depressingly claimed that if a girl he was sleeping with wasn't prepared to shave, he'd "make" her - quite how wasn't made clear, but to hear a fifteen/sixteen year old speak in such terms was horrific. The girls all felt under huge pressure to conform to some ridiculous vision of beauty as embodied by porn stars, and were clearly relieved to be shown five "real" women naked, and discover that normal means different, and normal means no one is perfect, and normal means you shouldn't actually be worrying about having a Brazilian while you're still at school.

So horrified was I by this programme, I had a total panicky moment this morning thinking about the kinds of things my children might be exposed to online. I like to think I am fairly savvy about these things: they've been warned about the dangers of chat rooms, I reserve the right to see who they are talking to (having explained I am not trying to breech their privacy, but protect them), and of course we have parental controls. But I know of cases where parental controls haven't worked, where an inadvertent click has led to downloading of unsuitable material, where teenage boys get stuff they shouldn't on their mobile phones. It seems to me, though I didn't particularly want to introduce the subject of porn to no 1, important that she hear about this stuff before she finds it by accident. Although, for all I knew it might have been too late. She is nearly 13, and I have no idea what she might have picked up from her peers.

As it happened today she was on an academic tutoring day, and a long discussion about the sexual revolution (she wanted to know why women had such a rotten deal in the past) segued neatly into attitudes towards sex. Turns out she knew what porn was, she is also disturbed by topshelf magazines (phew), and was happy to discuss the situation with me. So for now, I feel relieved that she hasn't seen anything unsuitable. I am also relieved that we've got a dialogue going and she knows she can come to me if she does inadvertently stumble across something she shouldn't have (thanks to the Sex Education website for that useful parenting tip).

But, jeez. As if modern parenting wasn't difficult enough without this crap thrown into the mix. It remains to be seen whether Anna Johnson's vigorous and vital campaigning actually makes a difference (her campaign bus features a shocking picture of a young girl in a sex shop, and asks why, if you wouldn't let her in a shop like this, you aren't taking more care of what she looks at online.) , but I hope she can persuade the people who police the internet to clamp down much harder on this stuff.

Ultimately we cannot police our children every day, and we have no control over what they watch at other peoples' houses, but maybe this campaign will raise awareness to the point that we are all more vigilant about what comes into our homes. I really fear for the future if we don't.

The Horns of a Dilemma...

What do you know?

You wait all winter for the spring TV family Saturday night viewing to improve (spending a not inconsiderable part of it mourning that David Tennant won't be sitting in your living room for thirteen weeks this year), and then not one, but two Family Favourites show up on the same night on different channels. Yes. We had a huge dilemma this weekend. Did we watch him (my doesn't he look pretty with eyeliner?):

or him?

They have quite a lot in common: both unlucky in love (though Nick so far hasn't done the sensible thing and murdered Mrs Mad), both tortured with grief, both spending their not inconsiderable acting talents running around (for the most part) in stupid plots, and they're both what no 2 would refer to as hotties. The hottest of hotties in fact...

So, it was quite a dilemma choosing which one to watch and which one to video. If it was up to me, Primeval would have won hands down (sorry Richard, even your charms aren't enough to raise Robin Hood to Must Watch TV) Up until this series, the kids would have definitely chosen Robin and his merry men over Nick Cutter and his SWAT team. However, they are all most irritated by Marian being bumped off at the end of the last series - and finally (yay!) have cottoned on to quite how far this version of Robin Hood has deviated from the actual myth, so were much more prepared to go for the monsters. However as Robin Hood started half an hour before Primeval, we ended up watching the first bit of Robin, then videoing the end while we watched Primeval, then going back to Robin. (But given how daft the Robin Hood plots are, this didn't matter too much...)

Actually despite my cynicism (I cannot forgive the makers of Robin Hood for any amount of sacrilege, for eg: turning Allan a Dale, who wasn't even one of the merry men into a traitor, for making Eleanor of Aquitaine, the most accomplished woman of her time into a fat and lusty madam, and for making Guy of Gisborne more attractive then Robin Hood), this episode did turn out to be rather fun. Leaving aside the quite preposterous notion that there would have been a black friar wandering Sherwood Forest in the 12th century (I KNOW. It is a myth, but the time it is written in can surely be presented in an historically accurate way? My children are growing up thinking that mediaeval Muslim women commonly dressed as men and ran around shooting arrows at people...), actually David Harewood has done a fabulous job of reinterpreting the character of Friar Tuck so he is actually quite noble. Thanks to him, Robin's misery-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-because-your-wife-copped-it fest turned into a Robin Hood is reborn moment, which I rather liked. But pity poor old Jonas Armstrong. There he was, getting the job of Robin Hood, the ultimate folk hero, and first off they cast someone ten times as charismatic as him for Guy of Gisborne. In fact, I'd pretty much say everyone in it is more charismatic then wet old Jonas, including Keith Allen's ludicrously OTT performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham. And now, to make matters worse, even Friar Tuck is sexier, and more dynamic then Robin. No wonder (if rumour is true) he's leaving... If rumour is true, my betting is by the end of the series, we'll see Sexy David managing to bring Guy round to the outlaws side, and there will be a huge redemptive moment when Guy will see the error of his ways and turn his back on the Sheriff etc. In fact, he'll probably do what Robin has singularly failed to do so far, which is kill the Sheriff (who is also leaving, so I gather)...

We switched over at the moment when all seemed lost, Robin was alone, his merry men about to face the death penalty, yawn, yawn, to find Nick and co facing a new threat from an anomaly which had popped up in an Egyptian artefact in the British Museum. Now I know. Primeval is very very silly. There is far too much running around to no good purpose (this week a crocodile type creature escaped into the Thames, killed a few people, got shot and then limped back home, and, er, that was it really), but a) it doesn't take itself too seriously b) while I find Connor an irritating little eejit, the kids love him c) I can stand looking at Dougie quite easily for an hour and d) Mrs Mad is so much fun. Sadly we only got to see her at the end of the episode, but I am very much looking forward to finding out what nutty things she and her clones have been up to over the past year. And find out whether she's cloned metrosexual Stephen yet. I'm sure it's only a matter of time...

So that's us sorted for the next few weeks. Robin will be videoed, or missed if we don't get round to it, and Primeval will be our family viewing. Saturday nights have just become fun again...

On the other hand...

Despite having the capacity to drive me nearly insane more then any other person I know, I realised anew one of the reasons I absolutely adore my mother in law. She has a most sunny personality and is capable of extracting positives out of the most dire situations. Which is why she spent the journey back in the car telling the children how lucky we were that were able to leave rather then waiting an hour for shoddy service, and how fortunate it was that Sainsbury's was open...

And we did get breakfast in bed yesterday, and three out of four (no 1 was at a sleepover) sitting on the edge of the bed tickling our feet. As I said to Spouse, they might not want to do that for much longer. And in the late afternoon we took them to the park where for the first time we sat down and watched all four of our children cycling around on their bikes without having to get back ache trying to teach them how to ride them. (Well, the two big ones didn't do much riding as they found some friends and embarked on some hilarious prepubescent kind of mating rituals, where they huddled in a mixed group and giggled a lot and then the boys rode around the circle for a bit, then they huddled some more and did more giggling.)

Best we take a leaf out of mil's book and enjoy these moments while we can, cos they sure as hell ain't going to last much longer...

A Bad Tempered Blog

I wouldn't normally do this. But I am. Very.Very. Cross.

Yesterday we took mil out for lunch for Mother's Day. Well. We tried to. She wanted to go here.

It's a lovely pub right by the race course and offers you lovely views.

If you're lucky enough to get a seat there on Derby Day, you can even get to see this.

Although the rest of the year it looks more or less like this.

Given that mil is now pretty infirm, she can't get up here to enjoy the views unless we take her. And going to the aforementioned pub which has wide windows allowing you fabulous views of the downs, is a great way of her giving her a different perspective from her flat where she's been more or less imprisoned all winter.

As it was Mother's Day and I knew it was going to be busy, I rang in the week to book a table. We don't do bookings, I was informed. Eek, I thought, that's a pain. However, being assured that as long as we arrived by 12pm we should get a table, I thought it was worth a shot.

As we were going out with bil and sil, we suggested to them (given that they are unhampered by small people), that they aim to get there for 11.45 and grab us a table, so if we were delayed either by the children or mil it wouldn't be a problem.

Well, it seemed like a good plan...

Spouse decided as it was a nice day he'd take the Caterham, so I went to pick up mil with three offspring. Mil of course wasn't quite ready, apart from the fact anything physical takes forever because of her shake, she also has no concept of time anymore, so will happily stand there and yack the whole morning without realising that actually, we are in a huge hurry.

Just as I was about to leave the phone rang and bil was asking in a very restrained manner if we were on our way. Yes, I said. Is there a problem?

There was, it transpired, indeed a problem. The woman sorting tables out refused to find them one until The WHOLE party was there. Even when Spouse arrived with a child five minutes later, and bil was able to say that I was also on my way.

By the time we arrived, at 12.10 it was clear there was going to be a big problem. The narrow road leading to the pub was blocked with parked cars, and I had to pull into a verge to allow some cars to pass me. There was by now a huge traffic jam as people were clearly driving into the pub car park and then turning around as there was no room. This kind of thing always brings me out in a sweat because a) I hate driving at the best of times b) we have a very big car which doesn't squeeze into small gaps very well and c) I have all the spatial awareness of a gnat so am highly likely to hit something in moments of high stress.

I couldn't stay where we were, because it was too far for mil to walk even with her zimmer (and dangerous - three kids+one aged zimmer walking lady+lots of cross drivers = disaster), so I sent no 1 up to find Spouse to let the helpful lady at the door know we were there, if not in the actual car park. This mattered not one jot to helpful lady. Even when we eventually found our way to the car park, and Spouse manouevred the car (I totally wimped out at that point) into a horribly tight gap and we all made our way to the door.

So. Now we are all here, said Sil. Good. You can find us a table now, right?

Wrong...

Sorry, we're full, was the self satisfied response,.

Sil who is the most mild mannered of people was furious, at the intransigence, the stupidity, the lack of consideration.

I'm not mild mannered and I was furious for all those things, but also because of the way the wretched woman was being extremely unhelpful and masquerading all the time as someone who was apparently offering a service.

We sat down outside wondering whether or not we could stick the cold - it was sunny but the air gets a bit breezy up there - and then decided it was ridiculous. I went back and pointed out that mil is 84 and disabled, and did they think it was reasonable that she sat outside? To which I had an unhelpful shrugging kind of response. By now of course it was too sodding late to go anywhere else, thanks to Ms Helpful. Luckily, bil and sil had the bright idea of getting a ready made lunch from Sainsbury's (thank you Mr JS for your ready made roast potatoes, Bessie Wotsit's yorkshire puds and roast chicken).

I was so cross, I told everyone in the queue waiting for non existent tables, how crap Ms Helpful and head honcho Smarmy Waiter had been, and left by telling her we wouldn't be darkening their doors again. No 1 was most amused that even though I had been ahem, rather forceful in telling Ms Helpful how unhelpful she'd been, Ms H smiled at me sweetly and said thank you. No 1 also has just learnt what a jobsworth is...

We probably, truth be told, had a much nicer time at home, given that with that number of people (they must have turned away hundreds more) we were never going to get brilliant service.

What makes me mad as hell is the unreasonableness of it, and the fact that sil explained patiently that while we had arrived it would take mil at least ten minutes to get out of the car and make it to the entrance, because she's disabled. It's also a classic example of how badly the elderly and infirm get treated in this country. By dint of taking reservations, they could quite easily have accommodated us later in the lunchtime session. As it was I saw dozens of cars with bewildered looking old ladies in them being turned away, which strikes me as very bad business sense. How I longed for Gordon Ramsay to pitch up and shout at them all.

But in the absence of Gordon, I'm being shouty instead. Because I think the concept of service here was completely abused, and the idea that you might actually want to treat potential customers with some respect is something they clearly have a problem with.

And to think I suggested taking her there, because mil liked the place!

Guess who, nice views and all, won't be going there again...

Music and Lyrics Part One

A while back I was mentioning here, as I do periodically, the way I use music to get the old creative juices going, and Marie asked me to explain how I do it. As I've been a bit busy finishing the rewrites to Last Christmas and generally playing catch up from having had too many children at home too often of late, I've only just got round to it. So thank you, Marie for being so patient. You've probably forgotten you even said it by now...

I think I may have rather a lot to say on this subject, so I probably need to write more then one post about it. You are very welcome to skip these posts entirely if you don't find the way my creative synapses work that fascinating. (And let's face it why would you really?)

At the risk of being a tad self indulgent, I'd like to start by giving you some background to my interest in music and why it's so important to me when I'm writing.

In some ways it's highly amusing that I do now find music so important in my writing . As a child, coming from a vast family (there are eight of us. Yes, I know. I did say eight.), and being a twin to boot, I was always desperate to find my own identity. I was also incredibly pig headed. So as all my siblings bar one took up a musical instrument, I went my own way and decided not to. I even went out of my way not to learn music properly. So while I recognise what a double clef is to look at, I can't read a note of music, because, though I found it relatively easy to learn, I just mentally switched off. Much to the disgust of my music teacher who awarded me the only D of my academic career.

I regret this of course now. Particularly now the sprogs are all learning the piano and no 1 is also having singing and guitar lessons. I so wish I could join in with them. I did go through a phase of wanting to learn the guitar when I was fifteen (mainly inspired by a boy I fancied), and my fantasy life would involve me being a rock chick a la Chrissie Hynde (in fact, I have that all lined up for a book some time in the future), but sadly I never pursued it, and while I can reasonably hold a tune, I cannot count musical talent among my accomplishments.

Having said that of course, you don't have to be any good at music to appreciate it.

My parents were never keen on pop music, but loved classical, and while I couldn't claim expertise in this area, I do recognise Beethoven, Bach, Mozart et al, and have some firm favourites from the classical canon (Pachabell's Canon in D, Vaughn Williams Theme from Thomas Tallis, The Carmina Burana to name but a few). Thinking about it the Theme from Thomas Tallis, is probably the first music that inspired me creatively. I used to listen to it obsessively when I was revising for my A levels, as I found it incredibly soothing. Try it if you're stressed, it's very calming. But it also makes me think of green rolling hills, and English countryside, and probably because I was revising it at the time, Far From the Madding Crowd. I can remember "seeing" images in my head very clearly as I listened to it, of grand sweeping landscapes rolling out before me like the opening credits of a film that could be adventurous, heartbreaking, romantic , stirring. It was the sense of incredible yearning that that music still engenders, which somewhere taps into the creative part of my soul. I haven't used that music for any writing yet, but I will one day.

As my parents weren't that keen on pop music, I was a bit of a johnny come lately in that regard, and whereas most of my peers were probably buying their first singles in their early teens, I didn't actually buy much music till I was much older. I was also very wary of stating my preferences, because at that time in my life you always had to be "for" a particular kind of music - you couldn't like ska and disco for example, if you were into heavy metal as I was, you couldn't possibly like pop, and you dared not mention anything as naff as enjoying a Cliff Richard record. If you opened your mouth and said the wrong thing you faced endless ridicule. So I spent a lot of my teens piggybacking other people's choices and passing them off as my own. The result I think is that I have a hodge podge of different kinds of music that I now like, so I'm fond of the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud, but I also like Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs. I love Bon Jovi so much I used to play it to no 1 when she was a baby, but I also love the pathos of Gary Jules' version of Mad World.

Spouse's influence has also been incredibly important. Growing up in the 80s when there was a big nostalgia for sixties stuff, I was of course familiar with the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but Spouse got me into the Animals, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Zombies and most importantly, the Kinks. As he has fairly eclectic tastes, I can also thank him for Lords of the New Church, Sisters of Mercy, Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division and New Order.

There aren't many types of music I won't listen too, although rap has never done much for me, and I can't claim to be all that keen on country, but generally speaking I am always keen to find new stuff where I can. My current new obsession is a band called Fleet Foxes, whose Mykonos I absolutely adore.

I do know the exact moment when I got turned onto pop music. I was thirteen, it was a youth club disco, and a boy asked me to dance for the first time in my life, to Roxanne by the Police. Being incredibly naive of course, I didn't really understand what it was about, but something about Sting's plaintive wailing lodged in my psyche and I was hooked.

As I suspect is the case for many of us, so many of the songs I heard growing up had significance at the time, and I hear them now and am instantly transported back. I listened to Ultravox's Vienna for the first time while doing my art O level a claywork project which took three weeks over lunchtimes. We'd sit in the art hut with our lunches, working on our pieces of art, listening the radio. Vienna was number one for weeks, and I cannot hear it now and not see my fifteen year old self, getting frustrated because my fingers weren't producing the grand vision in my brain. One of the reasons Ashes to Ashes worked so well for me was because they played Vienna as Alex wakes up in 1981. I was there instantly...

Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits album reminds me of the sixth form and my best friends then, and all of the various traumas we had with the boys we fancied ourselves in love with. Careless Whisper is the summer before I left home. Like a Virgin is my first term at university, and don't get me started on the numerous songs which formed the soundtrack to the time Spouse and I got together.

I'm sure everyone has similar experiences with music. Because music above all other mediums, it seems to me, has the power to evoke emotions, inspire, reduce us to tears in a way no other medium can. It is pure and primal and rips out our souls.

And THAT is what I try and tap into when I'm writing. It isn't a structured kind of process. More an organic kind of thing. Sometimes I hear a song and it inspires me to a particular plot line, for example, ever since I heard Keane's Somewhere Only We Know, it's spoken to me of starcrossed lovers for some reason, and it's down on the list for the parallel universe story I plan to write some day.

Other times, a song takes me into the heart of a character. In Strictly Love, Rob, who started off as a jack the lad when I first envisaged him, suddenly turned into something else entirely and it became obvious that his theme song was Robbie Williams Feel, which seems to me to be all about wanting to be better then you are and not being able to escape your nature. You have to hand it to Robbie, he does know how to turn out gutwrenching stuff, I've used him again in Last Christmas, which is a lot about mothers and daughters and the moment when you start mothering your mother. Angel was perfect for that, and as it happens has turned out to be particularly poignant.

The way I write seems to be that I always have a pivotal scene at the latter half of the book, already worked out in my head before I even have a whole story. I don't know why that is, but it's the way the process works for me. So in Pastures New (if you've read it) it's the rainy scene in the allotments, and in Strictly Love it's the picnic scene on the downs. Both scenes had a song at the heart of them.

In the PN scene it's Travis' Sing, which seems to me to be a painful acknowledgement of the impossibility of ever truly reaching another human being, however much you love them: For the love you bring won't mean a thing/unless you sing, sing, sing. It was just perfect for the situation in which my characters found themselves, and I tried to capture something of the pain of the situation. That is the most frustrating part of the process for me. I know how a song makes me feel. Try to put that into words? Eek.


Mind you I don't think I'd have felt the same way about this song if I'd seen this video first. Sometimes it's better to have the song without pictures...



In Strictly Love, the song was Fields of Gold by Sting, which makes me think of long lazy summer days, and falling in love, and wanting to be together, with just a hint that maybe the love won't last: You'll remember me when the west wind moves/upon the fields of barley/You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky/As we walk in the fields of gold. That's so beautiful it makes the hairs on my back stand up every time I hear it, but it also has a poignancy to it, which again was perfect for the scene.



For Last Christmas (coming out this Christmas) I have another pivotal scene which I won't reveal because it would give too much away, but again I had had it in my head for months before I wrote it. I didn't have a song for it for a long long time. Then I heard Neil Diamond's Pretty Amazing Grace and it totally blew my mind, and I knew I had my song. This book is a little bit (I hope without sounding preachy) about the claims of the spiritual versus the material, and these lines encapsulated the heart of dilemma of one of my characters.
Stumbled inside the doorway of your chapel/Humbled and awed by everything I found/Beauty and love surround me/Freed me from what I feared/Asked for amazing grace /And you appeared.



I'm just about to start book 4, and already have my pivotal scene. This book is going to be as much about the love of friends as it is about romantic love (though as it's about weddings, it's going to be about that too). I have already alluded in an earlier post to some of the emotions I find myself tapping into for this story. And when I heard Hurt by Johnny Cash for the first time (having entirely missed my twin sister's attempts to introduce it to me) I knew I had my pivotal song.
I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel/I focus on the pain/The only thing that's real


When I saw how they used the song to great effect in Being Human, I knew I'd chosen the right one.

There is like I say, an awful lot more I want to write about this process, so I'm going to leave it there for now, but in the meantime I'll leave you with my favourite song of the moment. I have no idea what the video is all about. Like I say, sometimes it's better just to hear the song and let your imagination do the rest...

Please sir, I want some more...

Here, rather belatedly is my review of Oliver! which we saw the Friday before last.

One of the difficulties of theatre going in London is always how the hell you manage to feed yourself (and in this case four hungry offspring). As most shows start around 7.30, grazing with the young has to take place around 6pm, which is a bit of a bugger when you've got a train to catch. If not circumscribed by small people you then have to go hungry throughout the evening (and hope your rumbling stomach doesn't annoy your neighbours too much), and THEN leg it for the last train with a very full stomach. Neither option is exactly enticing, but it trying to work out the food thing often makes a night at the theatre a right pain in the butt.

Happily, I went to see Dirty Dancing in January, and a friend of mine and I stumbled on this place.

It is hidden behind the Theatre Royal where Oliver! is showing which was handy, and by dint of having everyone ready, the minute Spouse walked through the door we were able to leg it up to London and get there for 6.15pm, allowing us enough time to have a main course and a drink each.

The food itself - a bit of a mediterrenean/Turkish combo wasn't (I didn't think) that much to right home about. I had beef bourginon and Spouse had stir fry and we both felt a bit short changed to be spending a tenner on something we cook for a couple of quid at home. However, you don't visit Sarastro simply for the food. The place itself offers a positively magical and unique experience all its own. It is billed as The Show After The Show, and it's not hard to see why.

As you walk into the restaurant you will see a line of tables in the middle, and on either side little alcoves, with tables in. So far, so normal. But then your eye is drawn to the ladders at the side, and you realise that above each of the alcoves is a balcony, with a set of tables and chairs in it. Although it's clearly meant to represent the boxes in a theatre, it also rather reminded me of the poop deck of a pirate ship, particularly as the decor is a combination of the gaudy and ornate. We were lucky enough to get a balcony table, and I kept expecting to see Johnny Depp swing above our heads.

I'm not at all sure I can do justice to the decor, but the table cloths were a red velvety material - even the napkins were velvet, while the lampshades varied from the sort you see in Spanish bars, to those funny little tasselly things I always associate with old ladies. The walls were painted in gold, and red and decorated with ornate carvings. It is one of the most bizarre and fascinating restaurants I've ever been in. The kids thought it was fabulous, and I'd certainly recommend going there, although next time, I'd like to experience after theatre dining, as pre theatre meals are always a bit fast food for my liking.

Still because of the proximity to the theatre we were in our seats by 7.10pm, which felt nice and relaxing (we had a rather stressful yomp from the bottom of Shaftesbury Avenue to The Palladium to see the Sound of Music last year, so this was quite a nice change).

As I mentioned, we chose to go to see Oliver! the same night that Jacko did, which was rather weird, as for everyone was hanging over the edge of the balcony for ten minutes before the show started, and again at the interval. At one point I thought some of them weren't even going to sit down. I'm glad they did as I wouldn't have liked to have started a punch up at the theatre...

As a family we're big fans of Oliver! Spouse is particularly fond of the Mark Lester version and his favourite song in that is Who Will Buy?, which I'm also rather partial too.

So we were never going to not like this really.

However, I have to say, of the three West End musicals we've seen in the last couple of years, Oliver! does knock the spots of the other two (and I thought nothing could beat the brilliant dancing in Mary Poppins).

From the minute we met the workhouse boys singing Food Glorious Food, we were dazzled by a a fantastic set, which moved steps, bridges, houses up down and sideways, some incredible choreography (there must have been FIFTY kids in that first number) and the sheer exuberance of the cast, who were all uniformly good.

The kids were disappointed of course that we didn't get Jodie, having voted for her in I'll Do Anything, but sneakily I thought the understudy, whose name I don't know because we lost our programme was better.

They also wanted Oliver to be either Gwion (little Welsh boy who they favoured on the TV show) or the boy who plays the mute in the Roman Mysteries , but instead we got the Other One, whose name I also don't know. Didn't matter again, because he was quite brilliant. His rendition of Where is Love? was heartrending.

We also really enjoyed the song That's Your Funeral with the Sowerberrys, which isn't in the film (though I couldn't stop myself from fretting about Oliver being stuck in the coffin while the Sowerberry's sat on him), and Oliver's spirited self defence.

Getting to London, the fabulous sets changed again, and a London street seemed to appear from nowhere. The kid playing the Artful Dodger was great, and his exchange with Oliver very funny. The children were all enthralled as the rest of Fagin's gang appeared one by one from the back of a statue to sing Consider Yourself.

Of course, what everyone was waiting for was the appearance of Rowan Atkinson as Fagin (now I would have been disappointed if he hadn't been in it!). I'd forgotten what a relatively long time it is till he pitches up, but they teased us with a glimpse of him, high on a gantry, before he finally stepped from behind a curtain in his den to rapturous applause.

What can I say about Rowan Atkinson's Fagin? He does play it for laughs more then pathos, but oh he is sooooo good. I was entranced by his every move, and mesmerised by his presence. And he is so bendy! I realise watching him on tv he has the ability to be very supple and flexible, but watching him on stage was a real eyeopener. He contorts himself into the most impossible positions. My favourite moments were his version of You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two, during which he was hilariously shadowed by Nipper - the smallest of small boys who tried to steal his hankie, and even better was the way he sang (well ok, sing might be a bit generous, think of the way he sings in the Lion King and you'll get the picture) I'm Reviewing the Situation had me crying with laughter. The kids loved the moment where he took out his jewels and was speaking to them as to old friends, and concluded that he was part Fagin/part Mr Bean which was probably a fair assessment of it. But brilliant anyway.

The revelation of the show for Spouse and I was Burn Gorman's Bill Sykes. (If you watch Torchwood you'll know him as Owen). Burn Gorman is hardly a beefy type, and we had our doubts as to whether he could pull it off, but he surprised us by oozing menace, and being so thoroughly unpleasant we felt like cheering when he fell off the roof. The violence with which he killed Nancy (carefully choreographed so you didn't see anything, but you felt the power of it) was terrifying. And given that I am not a dog lover the presence of Bill Sykes' dog on stage added to the effect (amazingly they even got the animal to run across stage without jumping out into the audience).

Overall it was one of the best musicals I've ever seen on stage, and after thinking it was going to be impossible to top the film version of Who Will Buy? they triumphed there too.

Very definitely well worth seeing. Though if you want to catch Rowan, you'd better be quick as I think he's out of it in April.

In the meantime, let me leave you with this. Quite simply one of the most breathtaking and beautiful musical scenes going.

RND 2009

I'm not ACTUALLY doing anything funny for money, but I have supported RND, and the kids have all gone to school sporting funny hairstyles. Unfortunately, as they bought the red hair dye weeks ago, there was only enough to dye no 1's hair. Useful being the oldest, sometimes. As they'd all got up ridiculously early, for once we were ready at a sensible time, so I did drive to Sainsbury's to see if I could get some more hair dye, only to realise I'd doltishly left my purse behind. Doh. However it then turned out no 3's hair was a bit pinkish because some of the hair dye had transferred from the hairbrush no 1 had been using and no 2 didn't care. So all was well. Have just been informed I have to turn up in the playground early to hear the school singing some RND song, which I don't really have time to do, but given it's the first time in living memory the school have even supported RND, I feel dutybound to go along.

In the meantime, I know it's credit crunch time, and we all have lots of pressures on our purse, and it's easy to be cynical about what RND achieves etc etc, but I do think it's an amazing thing and Richard Curtis is a genius, and I think it's worth supporting even in some small way.

Plus am also really looking forward to seeing Ness and Bryn singing Islands in the Stream with Tom Jones (OK, have already seen it on Medium Rob's blog, but I can stand another look...)

Show time!

So last night we went to see this

Which meant we saw him

And him.

Bad sadly not her....

Amazing isn't it? Not only are we the family who can bring rain to every holiday destination we ever visit, but now it appears we are also responsible for bringing plague and pestilence to West End stars as soon as we decide to go and watch them in a starring role.

But never mind.

We did pick the night that he was in the audience...

We only realised that Wacko had arrived because suddenly all the people in the front rows of the Upper Circle where we were sitting rushed forward and started leaning over the balcony. I thought the show had started, but then someone said Michael Jackson had just turned up. Cue much amusement from the audience when the stage manager announced the show was about to begin and the taking of photographs was strictly forbidden...

I did wonder why so many paparazzi seemed to be hanging around the stage door...

We didn't get to see the Legend himself, though the two big ones tried to catch a glimpse during the interval, and no 2 swears she saw his profile because she recognised the oddity of his nose...

What was more amusing was watching the antics of the people leaning over the balcony trying to get a look at him as if he were some kind of interesting zoo specimen. There was a near riot because no one would sit down when asked to, and the poor harrassed door girls were threatening to call security unless people did as they were told. It's probably the oddest thing I've ever seen in a theatre.

As we left, photographers were hanging from the scaffolding opposite the theatre, and the road was jampacked with rickshaws and taxis, and it looked like the big silver Jackomobile waiting outside was going nowhere fast. I suspect he was still inside being inflicted on the poor undeserving of such an honour cast, so we decided we wouldn't waste the rest of our evening hanging round waiting for a glimpse of the Nose.

All I can think is, what ON EARTH did Rowan Atkinson find to say to him? I wonder if Jacko gets British sarcasm? I suspect not, which probably means Rowan got to say exactly what he liked. I do hope so...

I will review the show properly but no time today or tomorrow. But suffice to say Rowan Atkinson was an hilarious Fagin, if perhaps missing alot of the pathos of the role, Burn Gorman was surprisingly menacing as Bill Sikes, poor understudy who shall have to remain nameless as I have no idea who she was, was a great Nancy (and I'd better whisper this as the kids will kill me) BETTER then Jodie, our Oliver (not Gwion who the kids wanted, or the boy who's in Roman Mysteries, but the Other One who shall also remain nameless as I lost our programme) was wonderful, as was the Artful Dodger.

Definitely a must see London production if you're into musicals.

And you never know WHO is going to be in the audience...