I've not done this before, and I am not about to make a habit of it, but I really really wanted to post this fab story Mad Twin has written on a subject very dear to our hearts, namely what it's like to be a twin. Though I hasten to add in this story of twinniness gone awry there are no similarities whatsoever to our own relationship. But when I read it I instantly recognised (as idents the world over probably do) that slightly odd feeling that you get when you see your twin and see yourself in a mirror, ever so slightly askew.
So here it is. The only time I'm going to hand over my blog to someone else. I hope you agree with me, she deserves it....
MirrorMirror
In the throes of an ecstatic embrace, a small egg travels down a fallopian tube. The time being right and the millions of sperm being strong and willing, within 3 days it is surrounded by the thousands that have survived the harsh acidic jelly. Each jockeys for position, until at last one makes the breakthrough and invades. The new union of egg and sperm brings with it a fervour of division. The ball of cells moves down into the womb doubling all the way till it suddenly splits into two identical spheres that bury themselves in the comfort of the rapidly thickening walls. The multiplying and dividing continues apace whilst the host of all this activity (soon to be known as mother) continues life unaware of this miracle occurring within her body. It is not until she misses her period, that she thinks something might be afoot, by which time the cells are differentiating too, into areas that will soon form head, heart and limbs. As the woman begins to make sense of this life changing event, as her body starts altering; breast swelling; constant nausea; unbelievable weariness, the small spheres continue to develop. Brains, eyes, mouths, ears, noses, hearts, bones, limbs form with increasing rapidity. By the time she attends her 12 week antenatal appointment, 2 tiny but perfectly formed little girl babies are floating in the watery darkness. Two children linked by their cords to a shared placenta, dance an embryonic dance, mirroring each others movements as they touch, wave, hug, suck thumbs, kick, burp, urinate and sleep.
The pregnancy progresses, the babies, grow and grow. Their mother moves beyond blooming to elephantine and complains of back ache and swollen feet. The babies begin to fill up their environment till a month to go they face each other across the tightened womb. A week to go and by some invisible sign, the first child turns and dives downwards as if inviting her sister to play a special game of tag. The game involves hours of painstaking struggle through the dark canal that causes their mother unspeakable pain. At last with a large rush and a push, the elder child is out in a world of bright lights and confusing noises. She is removed quickly, and cries an obligatory cry, not for the pain of separation from her mother, but from a deep primeval loss of her sister. The younger child follows 5 minutes later and she too cries inconsolably until, when both babies have been Apgar checked and weighed, they are returned to their mother’s chest. To the amazement of the adults watching, they turn immediately towards each other; hands almost touching, movements almost mirroring each other; as if to say, “there you are then, now everything is alright”
Thus do Celia and Delia Appleby arrive in the world and grow into it. Twins are obviously hard work, but, their mother tells her friends, at least they entertain each other. From the earliest age, they are happiest lying side by side. When they learn to sit, they love to sit opposite each other. They touch and cuddle, laugh at each others faces, gurgle noises only they understand. It is two and half years before they speak to another human being; and although their first words come out in perfect sentences, they seem more entranced with their own secret language. They are politely responsive to their parents and kindly enough when in the company of other children; but in all honesty, their mother admits, by the time they are 5 they appear to want for nothing in the world except each other. Their favourite occupation at this age is to sit opposite each other and copy each others movements, as if recreating their first days in the watery womb.
“Ceely,”Delia says.
“Deely,” her sister replies.
“CeelyDeely.”
“DeelyCeely.”
CeelyDeelyDeelyCeely who can tell which is which and who is who? Their parents have difficulty, their few friends struggle, strangers have no chance. When they sit like this looking into the mirror of the other, even they sometimes pause and wonder.
They are bright girls and do well at school, though this is not without problems. Their answers are so similar sometimes, and they seem to often achieve the same mark in tests, that every now and then a new teacher queries whether they have been cheating. But the school is proud of their clever twins and it is quickly explained how their congruence in looks seems matched by a congruence of thought. Concerns are raised from time to time that the twins seem somewhat set apart. They join in games with the other children but only as if they are one. On the rare occasions when one child is off sick, the other sits alone wistfully waiting for her sister’s return. But since they are polite, hardworking and a credit to their school, these worries usually fade away.
To most observers, the twins seem to be in equal control of their relationship, but to their mother’s eye, it seems as if Celia, the older twin, is always in charge. When the girls are eight she is entranced to hear they are mirror image twins. She redesigns their bedroom accordingly, so that each half reflects the other. At ten, she is fascinated when they visit a hall of mirrors. Leading her sister into the centre, she stands them so that they look beyond each other to the mirror behind to see a chain of twin,mirror,reflection that reaches into eternity. And at twelve when they go to secondary school it is Celia who decides that they cannot be separated, even though Delia expresses a half thought that maybe it might be interesting to try it for a change.
The mother who observes this also observes Delia’s occasional forays into independence. Once when Celia is ill for a week, Delia makes a new friend at school. But on Celia’s return, the friendship withers in the older sister’s disapproval. On another occasion, Delia goes swimming with a different girl and does not invite her twin. When she comes home, she finds Celia sobbing inconsolably and so she cannot bring herself to try this again.
These are minor incidents, however. At eighteen, it is inevitable that they will take their three identical A levels ( Chemistry B, Biology A, Maths C) and start a Biochemistry degree in London. They enter the big city with the excitement of any teenagers on their first trip away from home. They enjoy setting up their double room in the image of the one they left behind, the furniture arranged to reflect each other, photographs reproduced in reverse on the other wall.
At first all is well. They settle into their course with satisfactory marks. But London is not their small town and the double life that makes them so quirky at home soon gives them the reputation of being oddities. After a while, a small crack appears between them. Celia begins to find that the roaring traffic, the hustling crowds and the late night parties make her long for that small town. Whereas Delia, thinks this hubbub is full of unexplored possibility and wants them to use this opportunity to look beyond their noses. It is Celia’s will that prevails,however, and Delia finds herself confined more and more to their double room, poring over course work together. Occasionally she voices the opinion that it would be interesting to go out to a show or a nightclub, but Celia is never keen. The younger twin is left wondering in the darkness at bedtime, whether this is all that life has to offer.
Their first year passes quickly. When they return after the summer holidays it is to a small bedsit in the home of an elderly widow who lives in the suburbs. Now their journey to University is twice as long and must be shared with hundreds of sweaty commuters.
“If it wasn’t for the course,” Celia sighs after a long and compressed journey back, “I’d be inclined to move to a smaller city”
Delia sighs for a different reason, if it wasn’t for Celia, she’d be inclined to live here permanently. And that sigh causes the crack to become a small fissure. Autumn passes. The mellow mists being followed by torrential rainfall and leaves on the line. In icy November Celia succumbs to a godawful flu virus, leaving Delia to make the long journey to town alone. Each day she rushes back full of concern, to nurse her sister. But when the initial fever has subsided and Celia is sitting up eating soup and watching daytime TV, Delia relaxes a little. She chats a bit to fellow students after class and finds them warm and friendly. One night she even joins them for a quick drink in the bar. Her conscience does not allow her this treat for long, and she soon makes her excuses and runs for the train.
Celia’s sickness has a strange effect on her for a while. Although she seems better within a week, she complains that she is “too exhausted” to go in to lectures. It takes another fortnight of Delia’s gentle needling before she can be persuaded to undergo the daily ordeal of the tube train to college. Two weeks that transform Delia’s life. After the first tentative meetings with her fellow students, she finds that Jane and Anna have become friends. More surprisingly she realises that if Celia objects, this time she will keep them. But her sister is, at first, too absorbed in catching up on lost work to notice anything amiss. She heads for the library the minute lectures are over, and for over a week, she accepts her sister’s decision to wait for her in the bar. It is as Christmas approaches that she finally catches on. Classes are winding down, she has caught up with the backlog, and one day she wants to head for home straight away. Delia’s refusal surprises and then angers her,
“What’s the problem? There’s nothing going on around here.”
“Well actually,” her sister hesitates, “I wanted to have a drink with my friends”
“Friends? What friends?” Celia is puzzled, “We don’t have any friends here. There’s just us.”
Delia bites her lip.
“That’s not … quite … true. We don’t have friends. But I have now, and I’d like you to meet them properly.”
“Whowhowho?”
Delia explains about Anna and Jane, how they got talking and how Celia’s trips to the library have kept the conversation going.
“They’re nice, really they are. Please come and see.”
Celia is about to resist, but when she sees her sister’s stricken face she has no option but to give it a try.
The evening is not a success. Anna and Jane have a livelier temperament than either of the twins, which is why Delia is drawn to them. But to Celia their talk seems loud and vulgar. In her rush to judgement she misses their knowing glances and ironic asides. After an hour and half, during which she has barely said a word, she whispers to Delia that she wants to go home. With a sigh her sister makes their excuses but on the way back is uncharacteristically sharp. At home she faces her Celia across the room and snarls,“Why do you always do this to me?”
“Do what?”
“Immediately dislike anyone I choose to like. And worse, just sit there, not even being prepared to make an effort”
“But—” Celia is overwhelmed by the onslaught. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t. You know I didn’t want to come out but you did. So I tried. And I really did try really. But what could I say to them? I mean all that rubbish about Big Brother and pole dancing. What a waste of an evening.”
“They’re having a laugh,” growls Delia exasperated, “They don’t take it seriously but it’s fun just to chat. Life doesn’t all have to be about molecular structure and optical isomers. There are other conversations.”
“And I don’t want to have them,” shouts Celia.
“But I DO,” cries Delia.
They look at each other horrified by the implications of what they have just said. They are suddenly aware that of the chasm that is opening between them and stand teetering nervously on the edge.
It is Celia on this occasion who pulls back and sighs,
“I’m sorry, I just didn’t get it. But if you want to be friends. Well I’ll give it a try”
Delia is grateful for her sister’s response, she realises what this has cost her. They hug and make up. For the last week of term they agree to compromise. Twice they stay in, twice they go out and once Delia goes out alone. The evening separation is hard but, they agree, it does them good to have a break from each other. They leave for the holidays reconciled, yet conscious of the fragility of the peace that they have made.
Christmas comes, Christmas goes. There are reunions, long walks, too much to eat and drink, presents opened by the fireplace, late nights and lazy lie ins. Their disagreement is forgotten for this short respite with their family. But as they start the train journey back to London, the conditions of their ceasefire hang unspoken in the air between them. The term starts nervously, with each twin trying to make sure the other sees how much they are trying to make it work. But try as they might, Celia cannot like Anna and Jane, and Delia will not give them up.
It is the flood at Anna and Jane’s house that brings about the final crisis. Once Delia’s friends are over the shock, they ask the twins to join them in their next house. Celia wants to say yes, but her sister immediately says no.
Yesnonoyesyesnonoyes
Backwards forwards forwards backwards
The argument rages until Delia reaches a cold clarity. Unless she can persuade Celia to make this move, they will be trapped together in their double room in a chain of twin mirror reflection reaching into eternity. In desperation she throws down her final challenge.
“If you won’t – I will.”
Celia freezes. Somewhere inside she knows this is the only path across the canyon that now yawns between them. But she cannot see how to make the first step. Instead she turns her back on her sister and retires to her bed.
Delia tries to rouse Celia but she is ignored. For the first time in their lives they go to sleep without saying good night. All through the next day Delia packs while her sister’s back is firmly turned against her. That night whilst Jane helps bring Delia’s boxes down to the car, she maintains her steadfast pose until the very last minute. Delia makes one last entreaty to her sister,
“Come with me. Please”
Celia turns and coolly says, “You seem alright without me. I’ll stay here thanks,” and turns away to avoid the sight of her sister’s tears, a reflection of her own.
Delia drags herself away. But she rings the minute she arrives in her new home. Celia does not answer. Delia rings again and again. The next day she calls round but the landlady is out and her sister will not come to the door. On Monday she hopes to see Celia at lectures but the older twin does not turn up. On Tuesday, she catches their landlady who reassures her that Celia is upstairs and all is well, so she decides to leave it for a few days. She tries to adjust to her new life as a singleton and finds it wanting. She likes Anna and Jane, but the evenings in their company in their new home seem somehow insubstantial. She misses the twinly end of the day chats, their intuitive responses to the same incidents. She does not want to go back, but she feels as if she has been washed over a cliff and is drifting randomly in the current. A week without speaking to her sister is unbearable. On Saturday morning, she decides to visit Celia one more time, determined to find a way back in.
Meanwhile all week, Celia lies in her bedroom, hugging her duvet. Occasionally she gets up to eat toast or have tea, but then she subsides miserably underneath the covers. Once or twice her landlady knocks to ask if she is alright. She shouts an effort making cheery reply and remains on her bed. In her dreams she wanders through a hall of mirrors calling for her Delia. But she cannot find her sister anywhere, and all she can see is mirror after mirror reflecting each other into an uncertain eternity.
At the very moment Delia turns into her street, Celia awakes. Half asleep still, she looks into the mirror and thinks her sister is back in the bed opposite.
“Deely,” she jumps up to hug her. But all she finds is the cold hard glass of the mirror.
“Deely.”
Without thinking she throws herself at the mirror as if it can bring her sister back to her. She hurls and hurls herself at the implacable glass until at last it shatters and the splinters and shards are thrown across the room into her face, her body and her arms. She is dimly aware that she hurts and is bleeding, and there are voices calling her. And Delia is there after all, to staunch the blood and call an ambulance as if she has never left.
Now a locked door separates the inseparable sisters.
Delia visits every day. Her sister seems smaller somehow, still wrapped in bandages, eyes slightly dulled with medication. They never say much, the nurses notice. Instead they sit opposite each other mirroring their arm movements as if performing some strange religious rite.
“Ceely.”
“Deely.”
“Ceely.”
“Deely.”
CeelyDeelyCeelyDeely
Which is which and who is who?
There are days when even they wonder.
copyright c Virginia Moffatt, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Scummy Mummy Diaries
Back on the topic again, but I couldn't help but comment on the way that Kate McCann's words written in a private diary (which presumably she had no intention of ever showing anyone) are apparently being used by the Portugese police to prove she is an unfit mother capable of harming her child. (I say apparently as of course, as with everything else in this case, we don't know for sure that's what the police are after, but the media seem to think they are).
Allegedly she refers to her children being "hysterical" and "hyperactive". She sometimes found Madeleine difficult to control and Gerry doesn't always help with the childcare.
Hell---ooooo????
This is evidence of a bad mother???
Sheesh. She was dealing with three children under the age of four, including a set of twins. That is enough to send the sanest of people demented.
I don't know a single woman who has had small children who at one time or another hasn't found it hard to cope. And to a woman, my girlfriends ALL complained about their husbands when their children were small. Sorry, boys - I know there are some very devoted dads who read this blog, but the way the world works the majority of you don't get the unenviable task of spending 24/7 with toddlers and babies and just have no real idea of how exhausting and draining it can be. I can remember horrifying Spouse by saying quite vehemently one day, if whichever child it was who was particularly bugging me at that particular moment did it one more time I was cheerfully going to strangle her. (Imagine what the media/police could do with a statement like that!)
Three years ago, when I had four children eight and under I was a woman at the end of my rope physically and emotionally. I had been looking after small children for so long, I had forgotten what it was like to have a life of my own, and frequently felt unequal to the task of caring for my offspring. I can completely relate to Kate McCann's feelings of frustation. I think her honesty in writing about them rather then being a sign of her guilt, is a sign of what a good mum she is.
For many women - particularly capable, career orientated women like Kate McCann, the sudden switch from being at the top your game professionally to being at home in a swirl of chaos and nappies is a huge shock to the system. (To quote Lynnette Scavo, my favourite Desperate Housewife, "I used to run a business and now I can't manage two four year olds". Quite). It takes time to grapple with the changes in your life, and ironically the period in parenting when you get the least time to yourself, is also the period when you probably miss your freedom the most. I think I chafed at the bit far more with regards to my lost social life when the children were small, then I do now, when thankfully I have a bit of time to myself and the sprogs have got a lot more civilised.
But for the record, as I did find that period when my children were small in the main, frustrating, hard work and bloody awful at times, that probably makes me a Scummy Mummy too.
And here are my top five failures from that period to prove it...
1) Letting no 2 climb on a telephone table, from whence she fell thereby breaking her arm in two places and having to have an operation.
2) Going ahead with a planned night out in town (the first time I'd done so in eighteen months) when no 4 wasn't well and getting back to discover she was having a major asthma attack and had to go to hospital. (The memory of that night still fills me with horror.)
3) Dashing upstairs to do some tidying leaving no 3 to play in the hall. Two minutes later she managed to impale a plastic umbrella in her mouth. You should have seen the blood...
4)Shouting at my children on a nearly daily basis (better but still applies).
5) Frequently wishing that I could hand my notice in now and go and do something else...
Just as well I don't have a child missing in the Algarve isn't it?
Allegedly she refers to her children being "hysterical" and "hyperactive". She sometimes found Madeleine difficult to control and Gerry doesn't always help with the childcare.
Hell---ooooo????
This is evidence of a bad mother???
Sheesh. She was dealing with three children under the age of four, including a set of twins. That is enough to send the sanest of people demented.
I don't know a single woman who has had small children who at one time or another hasn't found it hard to cope. And to a woman, my girlfriends ALL complained about their husbands when their children were small. Sorry, boys - I know there are some very devoted dads who read this blog, but the way the world works the majority of you don't get the unenviable task of spending 24/7 with toddlers and babies and just have no real idea of how exhausting and draining it can be. I can remember horrifying Spouse by saying quite vehemently one day, if whichever child it was who was particularly bugging me at that particular moment did it one more time I was cheerfully going to strangle her. (Imagine what the media/police could do with a statement like that!)
Three years ago, when I had four children eight and under I was a woman at the end of my rope physically and emotionally. I had been looking after small children for so long, I had forgotten what it was like to have a life of my own, and frequently felt unequal to the task of caring for my offspring. I can completely relate to Kate McCann's feelings of frustation. I think her honesty in writing about them rather then being a sign of her guilt, is a sign of what a good mum she is.
For many women - particularly capable, career orientated women like Kate McCann, the sudden switch from being at the top your game professionally to being at home in a swirl of chaos and nappies is a huge shock to the system. (To quote Lynnette Scavo, my favourite Desperate Housewife, "I used to run a business and now I can't manage two four year olds". Quite). It takes time to grapple with the changes in your life, and ironically the period in parenting when you get the least time to yourself, is also the period when you probably miss your freedom the most. I think I chafed at the bit far more with regards to my lost social life when the children were small, then I do now, when thankfully I have a bit of time to myself and the sprogs have got a lot more civilised.
But for the record, as I did find that period when my children were small in the main, frustrating, hard work and bloody awful at times, that probably makes me a Scummy Mummy too.
And here are my top five failures from that period to prove it...
1) Letting no 2 climb on a telephone table, from whence she fell thereby breaking her arm in two places and having to have an operation.
2) Going ahead with a planned night out in town (the first time I'd done so in eighteen months) when no 4 wasn't well and getting back to discover she was having a major asthma attack and had to go to hospital. (The memory of that night still fills me with horror.)
3) Dashing upstairs to do some tidying leaving no 3 to play in the hall. Two minutes later she managed to impale a plastic umbrella in her mouth. You should have seen the blood...
4)Shouting at my children on a nearly daily basis (better but still applies).
5) Frequently wishing that I could hand my notice in now and go and do something else...
Just as well I don't have a child missing in the Algarve isn't it?
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A Good Enough Parent?
I have a very good and wise friend who when I frequently fret about my inadequacies as a mother, says to me, but are you a good enough parent?
I think the answer is, as it is for most of us, probably, yes. We all probably fall down in some areas of parenting, but in general most parents are benign and doing the best for their offspring. That we don't always get it right is part of human nature.
I mention this, because, like I guess the rest of the country I have been transfixed by the Madeleine McCann story this week. I was going to blog about it anyway, when I came back from holiday, but now more then ever, it seems pertinent to do so.
One of the most troubling aspects of this case is the decision the McCanns and their friends took to dine 100m away from their apartment while their children slept.
On balance, I think - I say I think, I don't know as we never took a holiday like that when our lot were that young - I wouldn't have done what they did. But I sure as hell can understand why they did it.
Being a parent means that sometimes, particularly when you have very small children, you need some childfree time, with your partner. We still find that, and nowadays get it less and less as the children stay up later. Being on holiday can add to the frustration you feel about not getting enough adult time (which incidentally has no bearing at all on how much you love your children. To keep a marriage going through the difficult times of coping with small children it is vital you do find time to spend together). I can really see the appeal of a holiday which allows you family time, plus some time away from the kids.
I presume it is those considerations which led the McCanns to make their fateful decision. I also presume that it was something that others did at the resort, which perhaps led them to feel more relaxed about it then they may have been at home. Being abroad can have that effect. When holidaying in paradise no one expects to encounter the snake.
I have no idea why they decided not to go for the babysitting option offered by Mark Warner, but if it is anything like situations we have been in where the babysitting option actually means someone sitting in a room listening to a monitor but never actually checking on the children, I can understand why they might have thought that they'd make a better fist of it. After all, they were the parents. They would know if their children were likely to wake up or not. The worst they can have imagined was that one of the kids might have woken up crying - and hell we've been at home and not heard a child cry and realised they've been yelling for ages.
In the circumstances as they've been described I think they took a reasonable risk. All of us in our daily lives assess situations to see if they are risky or not. I know I am a particularly risk averse individual, but even so, letting my eleven year old walk to and fro from school on her own is a risk. She may get kidnapped/knocked over by a car. She probably won't. But she may.
The trouble with risk of course, is that it is a two way street. How many hundreds of others have passed through that apartment and taken the same risk, and nothing happened to their child? The tragedy for the McCanns is that they were the unlucky ones, so instead of coming back from a happy holiday in May, they have been embroiled in a nightmare ever since.
I find it very hard to blame them for that decision. It probably wasn't one I would have made, but they are going to pay for it for the rest of their lives. What right do I or anyone else for that matter, have to condemn? I can think of at least two situations I know of where a parent has taken a reasonable risk like that and an unforseeable situation occurred that if it had gone the other way could have been catastrophic. Even last night, as I bathed the younger two children, the older two were downstairs playing. I got downstairs to discover the back door was unlocked. A reasonable risk, perhaps. We aren't prone to having strangers wander into our gardens here, but it could happen. And if it did, what kind of incompetent parent might I appear?
What has happened in the last few days to the McCanns beggars belief. I don't think for a minute they are guilty of anything more then inaccurately assessing a situation, and it has cost them dear. To look at the pain in Kate McCann's face, and the deadness in Gerry McCann's eyes is to see two parents who are utterly bereft. I will put my hands up if I am wrong about this, but really, is it credible that two people who up until now have led hitherto blameless lives, would suddenly throw it all away in an act of such wanton madness? Even if Kate McCann, as alleged, accidentally killed her daughter, why bring attention to what has happened by this sustained media campaign? Surely the sensible thing to do in the circumstances would have been to keep your head down and get the hell out of there. It seems clear as mud that the Portugese police haven't had a clue from day one as to who could possibly have taken that poor child.
While I appreciate that in the majority of cases like this it usually is the family who are responsible, I just find it hard to credit a mother who has struggled to have children through IVF (surely that would make them more precious then ever?) could do such a thing, let alone a mother who appears to be such a devout Catholic. Anyone who knows anything about catholicism will know that guilt goes hand in hand with the religion. And if Kate and Gerry McCann did kill their daughter they would be hard pushed not to show their guilt. Perhaps they are incredibly good actors, but is it really likely they killed their daughter and then went out to dinner as normal? I find that hard to believe.
When we were in Menorca, we found ourselves watching Sky News alot. I use the word news advisedly. 24 hours rolling news actually brings you very little that is new. Instead the same stories are repeated over and over again. Inevitably we found ourselves watching the McCanns story unfolding. I had of course been aware of the story before we went on holiday, but found the over sentimentalisation of it in our press rather uncomfortable, and hadn't been paying much attention.
Somehow, being in a quiet resort very similar to Praia de Luz, on holiday with our family, the story became charged with so much more resonance. And every time that picture of Madeleine came up I would look at no 4, who bears a passing resemblance, and is only a year older, and think, what on earth would I do if something similar happened to her?
I think I would have probably done very much what the McCanns have done. In a global age, we have the ability to use the media and internet to reach out to the world. When faced with such a desperate situation, I think I would have been inclined to do anything to find my child. The fear must be that eventually the world will move on, stop looking, and the search will stall. I can completely see why the need to keep Madeleine's story in the news has been paramount.
But of course, if you sup with devil you need a very long spoon, as the McCanns are now finding to their cost. Back then, in August, it was clear that the Portugese press were making some very wild allegations about the couple (perhaps fired by an irritation that the McCanns had granted exclusives to the British press?), which were not being reported by our media. We watched an interview the couple gave to Sky News in which they refuted utterly the (as then unknown) claims being made against them. It was one of the most harrowing things I have ever witnessed. Neither of them appear to me to be the wear your heart on your sleeve sort, but their distress was palpable. Their emotion seemed genuine. Is it really likely that a professional couple who have had no involvement with the media hitherto could manage to put it on like that? I find that hard to believe too.
Now thanks to the events of the last few days, the McCanns are discovering to their cost the consequences of supping on that long spoon. The media from having regarded them as saints (would a working class couple have got away with not being castigated for leaving the children? I don't think so), now seems on the verge of casting them down as sinners. There is an equivocal tone entering into a great deal of the reporting. People are beginning to put caveats in place, and if any more damaging material comes out, no doubt, those who have held them up as tragic figures will be the first to cast them out in the wilderness.
Indeed, on the internet where fierce debate rages as to the guilt or otherwise of this poor benighted couple, in some quarters you'd think their guilt was established as fact. I have never read such pernicious and vile slurs on anyone as I have read about the McCanns in the last couple of days. They are often accused of being unemotional (in these post Diana days of course that is the biggest crime - to me they seem very dignified) and bizarrely, as with Diana, complete strangers somehow feel they have more rights to "Maddy" (not a name her parents call her incidentally) then the McCanns do. Because the McCanns don't act in what is deemed to be an appropriate way - namely tearing their hair out and acting hysterically - they are castigated for it. It's beginning to turn into a witch hunt, with people accusing them of all sorts of terrible things.
And yet, what exactly do we know? Thanks to the secrecy of the Portugese investigation (a good thing in theory - if the press weren't being fed wild tidbits from somewhere), we actually know very little. In fact, all we can say with certainty is that on May 3 Madeleine McCann disappeared from her holiday apartment. No one knows if she is dead or alive, though I have to say, gloomily I tend to lean towards the former. And yet the whole world knows what has happened to her, and according to a lot of the nasty stuff going around half the world appears to know her parents killed her.
It reminds me of a short story I once read (whose name I forget, though I have been bashing my brains trying to remember it), about a man who found his neighbour dead in the bathroom. She is a former actress, and he climbs a ladder to break into her house when it is feared she has met with an accident. Initially his account is believed. He is a good neighbour, worried about the woman he hasn't seen for a few days. She has committed suicide in the bathroom. But then the press start looking for more salacious details and the gossip starts. By the end of the story the neighbour is alleged to have been involved of a love triangle with the actress, and has possibly murdered her. His wife ends up having a nervous breakdown and the couple move away. The last line of the story goes something like this. "They all knew the truth about the actress. But no one knew the truth about me."
I think something of the sort is happening here. None of us knows what happened that night, and I suspect we will never know. But in the meantime Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent until proved guilty. I personally don't think they have done anything wrong. And despite what the press would have us believe, they are neither saints nor sinners, just a normal couple trying to deal with the most horrific of situations. And tragically at a time when they need all the support they can get, they are being villified in some corners.
They are good enough parents.
Just like the rest of us.
I think the answer is, as it is for most of us, probably, yes. We all probably fall down in some areas of parenting, but in general most parents are benign and doing the best for their offspring. That we don't always get it right is part of human nature.
I mention this, because, like I guess the rest of the country I have been transfixed by the Madeleine McCann story this week. I was going to blog about it anyway, when I came back from holiday, but now more then ever, it seems pertinent to do so.
One of the most troubling aspects of this case is the decision the McCanns and their friends took to dine 100m away from their apartment while their children slept.
On balance, I think - I say I think, I don't know as we never took a holiday like that when our lot were that young - I wouldn't have done what they did. But I sure as hell can understand why they did it.
Being a parent means that sometimes, particularly when you have very small children, you need some childfree time, with your partner. We still find that, and nowadays get it less and less as the children stay up later. Being on holiday can add to the frustration you feel about not getting enough adult time (which incidentally has no bearing at all on how much you love your children. To keep a marriage going through the difficult times of coping with small children it is vital you do find time to spend together). I can really see the appeal of a holiday which allows you family time, plus some time away from the kids.
I presume it is those considerations which led the McCanns to make their fateful decision. I also presume that it was something that others did at the resort, which perhaps led them to feel more relaxed about it then they may have been at home. Being abroad can have that effect. When holidaying in paradise no one expects to encounter the snake.
I have no idea why they decided not to go for the babysitting option offered by Mark Warner, but if it is anything like situations we have been in where the babysitting option actually means someone sitting in a room listening to a monitor but never actually checking on the children, I can understand why they might have thought that they'd make a better fist of it. After all, they were the parents. They would know if their children were likely to wake up or not. The worst they can have imagined was that one of the kids might have woken up crying - and hell we've been at home and not heard a child cry and realised they've been yelling for ages.
In the circumstances as they've been described I think they took a reasonable risk. All of us in our daily lives assess situations to see if they are risky or not. I know I am a particularly risk averse individual, but even so, letting my eleven year old walk to and fro from school on her own is a risk. She may get kidnapped/knocked over by a car. She probably won't. But she may.
The trouble with risk of course, is that it is a two way street. How many hundreds of others have passed through that apartment and taken the same risk, and nothing happened to their child? The tragedy for the McCanns is that they were the unlucky ones, so instead of coming back from a happy holiday in May, they have been embroiled in a nightmare ever since.
I find it very hard to blame them for that decision. It probably wasn't one I would have made, but they are going to pay for it for the rest of their lives. What right do I or anyone else for that matter, have to condemn? I can think of at least two situations I know of where a parent has taken a reasonable risk like that and an unforseeable situation occurred that if it had gone the other way could have been catastrophic. Even last night, as I bathed the younger two children, the older two were downstairs playing. I got downstairs to discover the back door was unlocked. A reasonable risk, perhaps. We aren't prone to having strangers wander into our gardens here, but it could happen. And if it did, what kind of incompetent parent might I appear?
What has happened in the last few days to the McCanns beggars belief. I don't think for a minute they are guilty of anything more then inaccurately assessing a situation, and it has cost them dear. To look at the pain in Kate McCann's face, and the deadness in Gerry McCann's eyes is to see two parents who are utterly bereft. I will put my hands up if I am wrong about this, but really, is it credible that two people who up until now have led hitherto blameless lives, would suddenly throw it all away in an act of such wanton madness? Even if Kate McCann, as alleged, accidentally killed her daughter, why bring attention to what has happened by this sustained media campaign? Surely the sensible thing to do in the circumstances would have been to keep your head down and get the hell out of there. It seems clear as mud that the Portugese police haven't had a clue from day one as to who could possibly have taken that poor child.
While I appreciate that in the majority of cases like this it usually is the family who are responsible, I just find it hard to credit a mother who has struggled to have children through IVF (surely that would make them more precious then ever?) could do such a thing, let alone a mother who appears to be such a devout Catholic. Anyone who knows anything about catholicism will know that guilt goes hand in hand with the religion. And if Kate and Gerry McCann did kill their daughter they would be hard pushed not to show their guilt. Perhaps they are incredibly good actors, but is it really likely they killed their daughter and then went out to dinner as normal? I find that hard to believe.
When we were in Menorca, we found ourselves watching Sky News alot. I use the word news advisedly. 24 hours rolling news actually brings you very little that is new. Instead the same stories are repeated over and over again. Inevitably we found ourselves watching the McCanns story unfolding. I had of course been aware of the story before we went on holiday, but found the over sentimentalisation of it in our press rather uncomfortable, and hadn't been paying much attention.
Somehow, being in a quiet resort very similar to Praia de Luz, on holiday with our family, the story became charged with so much more resonance. And every time that picture of Madeleine came up I would look at no 4, who bears a passing resemblance, and is only a year older, and think, what on earth would I do if something similar happened to her?
I think I would have probably done very much what the McCanns have done. In a global age, we have the ability to use the media and internet to reach out to the world. When faced with such a desperate situation, I think I would have been inclined to do anything to find my child. The fear must be that eventually the world will move on, stop looking, and the search will stall. I can completely see why the need to keep Madeleine's story in the news has been paramount.
But of course, if you sup with devil you need a very long spoon, as the McCanns are now finding to their cost. Back then, in August, it was clear that the Portugese press were making some very wild allegations about the couple (perhaps fired by an irritation that the McCanns had granted exclusives to the British press?), which were not being reported by our media. We watched an interview the couple gave to Sky News in which they refuted utterly the (as then unknown) claims being made against them. It was one of the most harrowing things I have ever witnessed. Neither of them appear to me to be the wear your heart on your sleeve sort, but their distress was palpable. Their emotion seemed genuine. Is it really likely that a professional couple who have had no involvement with the media hitherto could manage to put it on like that? I find that hard to believe too.
Now thanks to the events of the last few days, the McCanns are discovering to their cost the consequences of supping on that long spoon. The media from having regarded them as saints (would a working class couple have got away with not being castigated for leaving the children? I don't think so), now seems on the verge of casting them down as sinners. There is an equivocal tone entering into a great deal of the reporting. People are beginning to put caveats in place, and if any more damaging material comes out, no doubt, those who have held them up as tragic figures will be the first to cast them out in the wilderness.
Indeed, on the internet where fierce debate rages as to the guilt or otherwise of this poor benighted couple, in some quarters you'd think their guilt was established as fact. I have never read such pernicious and vile slurs on anyone as I have read about the McCanns in the last couple of days. They are often accused of being unemotional (in these post Diana days of course that is the biggest crime - to me they seem very dignified) and bizarrely, as with Diana, complete strangers somehow feel they have more rights to "Maddy" (not a name her parents call her incidentally) then the McCanns do. Because the McCanns don't act in what is deemed to be an appropriate way - namely tearing their hair out and acting hysterically - they are castigated for it. It's beginning to turn into a witch hunt, with people accusing them of all sorts of terrible things.
And yet, what exactly do we know? Thanks to the secrecy of the Portugese investigation (a good thing in theory - if the press weren't being fed wild tidbits from somewhere), we actually know very little. In fact, all we can say with certainty is that on May 3 Madeleine McCann disappeared from her holiday apartment. No one knows if she is dead or alive, though I have to say, gloomily I tend to lean towards the former. And yet the whole world knows what has happened to her, and according to a lot of the nasty stuff going around half the world appears to know her parents killed her.
It reminds me of a short story I once read (whose name I forget, though I have been bashing my brains trying to remember it), about a man who found his neighbour dead in the bathroom. She is a former actress, and he climbs a ladder to break into her house when it is feared she has met with an accident. Initially his account is believed. He is a good neighbour, worried about the woman he hasn't seen for a few days. She has committed suicide in the bathroom. But then the press start looking for more salacious details and the gossip starts. By the end of the story the neighbour is alleged to have been involved of a love triangle with the actress, and has possibly murdered her. His wife ends up having a nervous breakdown and the couple move away. The last line of the story goes something like this. "They all knew the truth about the actress. But no one knew the truth about me."
I think something of the sort is happening here. None of us knows what happened that night, and I suspect we will never know. But in the meantime Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent until proved guilty. I personally don't think they have done anything wrong. And despite what the press would have us believe, they are neither saints nor sinners, just a normal couple trying to deal with the most horrific of situations. And tragically at a time when they need all the support they can get, they are being villified in some corners.
They are good enough parents.
Just like the rest of us.
Of course....
Mums of eleven year olds aren't immune from stupid behaviour as a result of getting used to a new situation.
Cue me, yesterday at 4.30 pm thinking, Where Is She???? and ringing her up. Only for no 1 to pick up the phone and say, Hi Mum, I'm home.
On the other hand, this morning she rang me five minutes after leaving to say she had forgotten to ask me to sign her planner, and was about to be in Big Trouble. Cue mercy dash in Spouse's car (luckily no 1 is now leaving so early we had time) to go and sign it.
So I think we're even....
Cue me, yesterday at 4.30 pm thinking, Where Is She???? and ringing her up. Only for no 1 to pick up the phone and say, Hi Mum, I'm home.
On the other hand, this morning she rang me five minutes after leaving to say she had forgotten to ask me to sign her planner, and was about to be in Big Trouble. Cue mercy dash in Spouse's car (luckily no 1 is now leaving so early we had time) to go and sign it.
So I think we're even....
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Things Eleven Year Olds Do When They Are Left To Their Own Devices For the First Time
1. Arrive home half an hour after expected because said eleven year old has had to stop at their friend's house en route home to use the loo.
2. Forget their school bag so they have to go back for it while their mother is waiting ten minutes away at the local tennis club. En route to getting the bag, they lend their phone to a friend, get sidetracked with two other friends buying ice creams and arrive twenty minutes later....
3. Manage to remember to do maths homework.
4. Forget to bring maths homework to school, thereby earning a caution.
5. Ring their mother on the way to school to say they have found a crow stuck in a hole and what should they do? Biting her lip said mother promises to ring the RSPCA.
6 Twenty minutes later, when Mother is now late for school with her siblings, the eleven year old rings back to ask has Mother rung RSPCA? Cue Mother managing (just) not to swear and telling oldest child she had better get to school and fast...
7. It occurs to Mother that child shouldn't actually be at the place where she found the crow if she is going to the school on the agreed route.
8. Cue Mother spending rest of the day in state of high anxiety....
I just LOVE having an eleven year old walking to school....
2. Forget their school bag so they have to go back for it while their mother is waiting ten minutes away at the local tennis club. En route to getting the bag, they lend their phone to a friend, get sidetracked with two other friends buying ice creams and arrive twenty minutes later....
3. Manage to remember to do maths homework.
4. Forget to bring maths homework to school, thereby earning a caution.
5. Ring their mother on the way to school to say they have found a crow stuck in a hole and what should they do? Biting her lip said mother promises to ring the RSPCA.
6 Twenty minutes later, when Mother is now late for school with her siblings, the eleven year old rings back to ask has Mother rung RSPCA? Cue Mother managing (just) not to swear and telling oldest child she had better get to school and fast...
7. It occurs to Mother that child shouldn't actually be at the place where she found the crow if she is going to the school on the agreed route.
8. Cue Mother spending rest of the day in state of high anxiety....
I just LOVE having an eleven year old walking to school....
Back to School
Well I'm here again, finally...
The last few weeks of the holiday were inevitably busy and I had very little time to blog. And last week I was attempting to catch up on the housework/garden while arranging a fortieth birthday party for a friend which we hosted at the weekend (of which more later).
Last week saw not just the kids back to school but nos 1 & 3 both starting new schools (next year for the first time in five years I won't have a child starting a new school, which will be such a relief...).
No 1 as I may have mentioned before got just a tad stressed at the end of last term about the prospect of going to secondary school. I felt like a worn out dishcloth by the end of it, and was mightily relieved when school finished and we could forget about it all.
As the last week of the holidays wore away, however, she got increasingly anxious. We spent a fabulous weekend at my mother's in Shropshire, where she poured her heart out to her granny (lucky old granny), and when we left she surreptitiously sobbed all the way home.
By the Sunday she was like a cat on hot bricks, but we had a long (and I thought calming) chat in the car on the way home from a day out, and I thought she'd be fine.
Wrong....
Last Monday she started to look teary around lunchtime and by teatime was claiming she wasn't hungry. (A sure sign that something is wrong. No1 is always hungry).
I sent her upstairs to get in the bath, as I could see she was about to lose it big time and thought she might not like an audience. I gave her half an hour and followed her up to discover her sitting rather tragically in her room in floods of tears. I think she probably sobbed for nearly two hours, by the end of which she a) couldn't actually tell me what the problem was and b) was so lacking in oxygen I felt sure she was going to have a panic attack.
In desperation I shoved her in the bath, letting her borrow all my body wash/bubble bath etc and let her soak for about an hour, which seemed to do the trick.
While all this was going on, I of course was busy hiding my own stress about the idea of my baby going off to school on her own without me. I suddenly realised talking to a friend in the week there was a reason I had been waking up early every morning, and that was it...
The thing is though, hard and all as it is to let go, and it is very very hard, I know I have to do it.
In a sense I feel that from the moment you have a child you embark on a series of leave takings.
As women we carry our babies for nine months, and they are physically part of us, until the moment the placenta is cut.
For a while we generally sleep with them, then maybe we move them into a cot next to our bed, before eventually transferring them to a room of their own.
As they grow we start to leave them occasionally with others, and when they're big enough we spend mornings or days apart from them as they progress to nursery, and then on to school.
At each point, our children step away from us and move onwards to a place where they will one hopes have the confidence to leave us and face the world.
Because that really is our job as parents. Our children aren't ours to keep. They are the greatest gift we have for sure, but it is inevitable that one day they will leave us. Which is just as it should be, however hard that is.
So come last Tuesday, when I walked no 1 up to her new school (a measure of her nervousness was that she made me accompany her all the way) although I felt a pang of longing for the little girl I am losing into adolescence (a pang that nearly became a flood when she turned to give me a hug - the first time she's done that at the school gate for years), I couldn't help but be pleased for her as well. Though she doesn't think so, she is more then ready for big school, and it is time she and I both moved on.
No 3 was much more sanguine about her change of circumstance, skipping in happily on the first day and demanding that I left her in the junior playground. Which means I'm down to one in the infant school - another two years and I'll be saying goodbye to that part of my parenting life for good.
Like I say, parenting involves a series of leavetakings, which can sometimes feel rather sad and final.
On the other hand nothing matches the feeling I got at the end of the day, when no 1 sent me a text.
Hi Mum, she said, I had a fab dayxxx
Sometimes it is so fabulous being a parent.
The last few weeks of the holiday were inevitably busy and I had very little time to blog. And last week I was attempting to catch up on the housework/garden while arranging a fortieth birthday party for a friend which we hosted at the weekend (of which more later).
Last week saw not just the kids back to school but nos 1 & 3 both starting new schools (next year for the first time in five years I won't have a child starting a new school, which will be such a relief...).
No 1 as I may have mentioned before got just a tad stressed at the end of last term about the prospect of going to secondary school. I felt like a worn out dishcloth by the end of it, and was mightily relieved when school finished and we could forget about it all.
As the last week of the holidays wore away, however, she got increasingly anxious. We spent a fabulous weekend at my mother's in Shropshire, where she poured her heart out to her granny (lucky old granny), and when we left she surreptitiously sobbed all the way home.
By the Sunday she was like a cat on hot bricks, but we had a long (and I thought calming) chat in the car on the way home from a day out, and I thought she'd be fine.
Wrong....
Last Monday she started to look teary around lunchtime and by teatime was claiming she wasn't hungry. (A sure sign that something is wrong. No1 is always hungry).
I sent her upstairs to get in the bath, as I could see she was about to lose it big time and thought she might not like an audience. I gave her half an hour and followed her up to discover her sitting rather tragically in her room in floods of tears. I think she probably sobbed for nearly two hours, by the end of which she a) couldn't actually tell me what the problem was and b) was so lacking in oxygen I felt sure she was going to have a panic attack.
In desperation I shoved her in the bath, letting her borrow all my body wash/bubble bath etc and let her soak for about an hour, which seemed to do the trick.
While all this was going on, I of course was busy hiding my own stress about the idea of my baby going off to school on her own without me. I suddenly realised talking to a friend in the week there was a reason I had been waking up early every morning, and that was it...
The thing is though, hard and all as it is to let go, and it is very very hard, I know I have to do it.
In a sense I feel that from the moment you have a child you embark on a series of leave takings.
As women we carry our babies for nine months, and they are physically part of us, until the moment the placenta is cut.
For a while we generally sleep with them, then maybe we move them into a cot next to our bed, before eventually transferring them to a room of their own.
As they grow we start to leave them occasionally with others, and when they're big enough we spend mornings or days apart from them as they progress to nursery, and then on to school.
At each point, our children step away from us and move onwards to a place where they will one hopes have the confidence to leave us and face the world.
Because that really is our job as parents. Our children aren't ours to keep. They are the greatest gift we have for sure, but it is inevitable that one day they will leave us. Which is just as it should be, however hard that is.
So come last Tuesday, when I walked no 1 up to her new school (a measure of her nervousness was that she made me accompany her all the way) although I felt a pang of longing for the little girl I am losing into adolescence (a pang that nearly became a flood when she turned to give me a hug - the first time she's done that at the school gate for years), I couldn't help but be pleased for her as well. Though she doesn't think so, she is more then ready for big school, and it is time she and I both moved on.
No 3 was much more sanguine about her change of circumstance, skipping in happily on the first day and demanding that I left her in the junior playground. Which means I'm down to one in the infant school - another two years and I'll be saying goodbye to that part of my parenting life for good.
Like I say, parenting involves a series of leavetakings, which can sometimes feel rather sad and final.
On the other hand nothing matches the feeling I got at the end of the day, when no 1 sent me a text.
Hi Mum, she said, I had a fab dayxxx
Sometimes it is so fabulous being a parent.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Oh God
I was going to blog about lots of stuff today as I have oodles to catch up on, as kids have just gone back to school. But I've just seen on aol that Jane Tomlinson has died, and it's taken the wind out of my sales a bit. I will be back, but probably tomorrow now.
If you have never heard of her, she was a wonderful, amazing, courageous woman who on being told that she had terminal cancer seven years ago took herself off the gym and started training, first for marathons, then for triathlons, Iron Man and the like, raising millions of pounds for charity along the way.
As a rather crap runner and putative triathloner, I have always found her story immensely inspiring.
My heart goes out to her family, particularly her husband who has been an amazingly stalwart support. He must be feeling so bereft.
Bugger. Isn't life crap sometimes?
If you have never heard of her, she was a wonderful, amazing, courageous woman who on being told that she had terminal cancer seven years ago took herself off the gym and started training, first for marathons, then for triathlons, Iron Man and the like, raising millions of pounds for charity along the way.
As a rather crap runner and putative triathloner, I have always found her story immensely inspiring.
My heart goes out to her family, particularly her husband who has been an amazingly stalwart support. He must be feeling so bereft.
Bugger. Isn't life crap sometimes?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
WF Deedes 1913-2007
So farewell then (in the great Private Eye tradition) Dear Bill...
I'm not given to feeling sad when people I only know through the column of a newspaper die, but I have to confess to feeling terribly sad about the demise of the late great columnist, WF Deedes.
Anyway, I am grateful to Spouse for introducing me to the Torygraph, because among other things for the past ten years or so I have regularly read and enjoyed WF Deedes column. He was amazingly a journalist for over 70 years. Until two years ago he regularly travelled the world covering stories in all sorts of war torn places most of us wouldn't dare to go to. He was a humane, just and compassionate man, who wrote with searing honesty of the evils he saw in the world, yet retained the most incredble optimism in the face of man's inhumanity to man. At times of great crisis, as for instance after 9/11, he was capable of raising the spirits by pointing to the simple things in life, frequently finding comfort in nature. I for one will mourn the coming of Spring without his wonderful descriptions of the flowers in the hedgerows et al.
His was a remarkable life. Not only did he start his journalistic life in Ethiopia in 1931, but he was also a war hero, an MP and minister and the editor of the Daily Telegraph to boot. It is a cliche, but, they really don't make em like that anymore. Though a decade older then my father and fil, he represents all that was truly great and noble about their generation.
I'm not given to feeling sad when people I only know through the column of a newspaper die, but I have to confess to feeling terribly sad about the demise of the late great columnist, WF Deedes.
Long before I started reading WF Deedes in the Telegraph I knew all about him - or I thought I did. This is mainly because I like most of my contemporaries read Private Eye in the 80s and roared with laughter over the Dear Bill letters. It was only many years later when I started to read the Daily Telegraph that I discovered what a good egg he was.
(There I've admitted it, I read the Torygraph. I shall now have to go to therapy - to most of my more left wing pals admitting that is tantamount to saying you are somewhat to the right of Ghengist Khan. My natural inclination is actually to read both sides of the political spectrum, but Spouse reads the DT, and I never get round to buying the paper. Thanks to the internet and the very brilliant bloggers around and about like Dave Hill at Temperama and Political Umpire on Fora, I do get more then my required daily fix of both sides of the fence, which allows me to sit just where I belong, firmly in the middle, but that, as they say, is another story.)
Anyway, I am grateful to Spouse for introducing me to the Torygraph, because among other things for the past ten years or so I have regularly read and enjoyed WF Deedes column. He was amazingly a journalist for over 70 years. Until two years ago he regularly travelled the world covering stories in all sorts of war torn places most of us wouldn't dare to go to. He was a humane, just and compassionate man, who wrote with searing honesty of the evils he saw in the world, yet retained the most incredble optimism in the face of man's inhumanity to man. At times of great crisis, as for instance after 9/11, he was capable of raising the spirits by pointing to the simple things in life, frequently finding comfort in nature. I for one will mourn the coming of Spring without his wonderful descriptions of the flowers in the hedgerows et al.
His was a remarkable life. Not only did he start his journalistic life in Ethiopia in 1931, but he was also a war hero, an MP and minister and the editor of the Daily Telegraph to boot. It is a cliche, but, they really don't make em like that anymore. Though a decade older then my father and fil, he represents all that was truly great and noble about their generation.
And he was the inspiration not only for Dear Bill, but William Boot in Scoop (which I read long before I even knew who Bill Deedes was). That I think is a really neat trick. To be immortalised not just once, but twice in print.
He apparently carried on working till pretty much the end, filing his last copy two weeks before he died. It was a typically forthright piece on the evils of the conflict in Darfur, which he likened to Nazi Germany. Given that he saw the effects of both, I think he is better placed then most to make that judgement, and it is one I totally agree with. Darfur is indeed a stain on humanity's conscience. I wonder if we'd hear more about it if it was a war being waged by white supremacist religious bigots against almost anyone else?
If you want to read it in full you can here:
Remarkable last words, from a remarkable man, who led a remarkable life.
He will be much missed. Not least by me.
Holiday Snaps
Well as requested by lovely Bec (and who am I to refuse lovely Bec?), here are some holiday snaps.
There is a reason why I don't post pics on this blog very much. Apart from the fact that I don't really want photos of my sprogs on the internet, I am also so technologically inept it takes me forever and a day to get pics up. It doesn't help that currently my main computer is not linked to the internet, and I have had to download the pics onto it and transfer them across. Somewhere in the process several photos stubbornly refused to copy so it has taken me over an hour, and I haven't got all the pics up that I wanted to. Still for what it's worth here they are...
We were staying in the resort of Cala en Porter on Menorca, and our beach looked like this...
We went to visit these horses...
Who did this....
Am I alone in worrying about the state of their joints?
Every night we had a visit from this little fella - who we named Gordon the Gekko. Although we thought we'd killed him on our last night, as he leapt on the blind to escape us and fell off. He did a very good impression of a lizard playing dead, and then to our relief scooted away into the corner. Gordon no doubt was even more relieved the next day that we'd gone home.
And these last two photos are here in honour of a friend, who started Spouse and the kids off on this little pastime. Thanks to an obsession with dragon making that started on a beach in Bournemouth, everywhere we go they all have to build dragons. I could have joined in, but I used the opportunity to go for a swim instead.
He created a lot of interest on the beach, and Dumdad, you will be amused to know that hordes of Menorcans came to take photos of the kids standing by their creation, and nary a one asked me if I minded. Back home they'd have to be police checked and filling forms in triplicates
As we left four little Menorcan boys were hopping around Horromouse taking no notice of this plaintive plea left by no 1 (it reads, Horrormouse, Do Not Tread On Him, if you were wondering). I have a feeling his demise came fairly soon after our departure....
There is a reason why I don't post pics on this blog very much. Apart from the fact that I don't really want photos of my sprogs on the internet, I am also so technologically inept it takes me forever and a day to get pics up. It doesn't help that currently my main computer is not linked to the internet, and I have had to download the pics onto it and transfer them across. Somewhere in the process several photos stubbornly refused to copy so it has taken me over an hour, and I haven't got all the pics up that I wanted to. Still for what it's worth here they are...
We were staying in the resort of Cala en Porter on Menorca, and our beach looked like this...
We went to visit some caves where by day you can have a nice drink staring at the views, and by night it is a nightclub. Hmmm. Having looked over the edge at the scary drops I'm not sure I'd fancy being pissed as a newt there...
Down the road from where we were staying, there was a bar with some fantastically tacky tribute bands. The Horde were very taken with this lot. (Having been brought up to the dulcet tones of Dancing Queen, this is perhaps not surprising...)
We went to visit these horses...
Who did this....
Am I alone in worrying about the state of their joints?
Every night we had a visit from this little fella - who we named Gordon the Gekko. Although we thought we'd killed him on our last night, as he leapt on the blind to escape us and fell off. He did a very good impression of a lizard playing dead, and then to our relief scooted away into the corner. Gordon no doubt was even more relieved the next day that we'd gone home.
And these last two photos are here in honour of a friend, who started Spouse and the kids off on this little pastime. Thanks to an obsession with dragon making that started on a beach in Bournemouth, everywhere we go they all have to build dragons. I could have joined in, but I used the opportunity to go for a swim instead.
So meet Horrormouse... He's rather fine isn't he?
He created a lot of interest on the beach, and Dumdad, you will be amused to know that hordes of Menorcans came to take photos of the kids standing by their creation, and nary a one asked me if I minded. Back home they'd have to be police checked and filling forms in triplicates
As we left four little Menorcan boys were hopping around Horromouse taking no notice of this plaintive plea left by no 1 (it reads, Horrormouse, Do Not Tread On Him, if you were wondering). I have a feeling his demise came fairly soon after our departure....
A final word to my friend (also one of my longest standing readers).... Let Horrormouse be the gauntlet, and battle commence.
Do let us know what you can conjure up!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Stop Press!
I have some important news about this....
Rather then being published on 3 September as I thought, the pub date has been put back to the end of November.
Pub dates are funny things as they attain a not unnaturally huge significance in the minds of an author and their family and friends, and yet they are often chosen rather arbitarily/shunted about because of factors beyond the author's control.
Apparently the crap summer has meant that summer reads haven't been read, and everyone's anticipating a late September rush (How Climate Change Affects The Publishing Industry - you heard it here first!), soooo my poor little newbie debut title risks being swamped (scuse the pun) and washed away.
The plan now is to bring it out just before Christmas, a less crowded time in the publishing schedule where it has more chance of making an impact.
It is at times like this I really really appreciate having worked in publishing and understand the vagaries of this often strange world.
I might be feeling more anxious if I hadn't had the experience of publishing a fantasy list (also ironically in September), which was welcomed with open arms by booksellers who overbought the stock, only for them to send most of it back when it didn't sell through. The list never recovered, and to my frustration despite having some wonderful books in it, sales thereafter were never as good as they could be.
I am more therefore more then content to hang fire for a couple of months to avoid that happening to my book.
Besides, it gives me more time to work on my website, progress on which has rather stalled over the summer.
And luckily my book is pretty seasonal so it doesn't matter too much when it comes out. In fact... as my premise at the start is that the heroine is in a wintry state emotionally, and the first two songs I used for inspiration are Forever Autumn (for her) and California Dreamin' (for him), I think it works out better probably. Of course, this does mean the poor beleagured designer who's already gone through lots of hoops to get this fetching cover has to do some more tinkering to make it fit the wintry theme - if ever I owe someone a drink, I think it is probably him/her - but I think all in all it will probably work out for the best.
Although I will admit, I have the feeling at the moment that I am standing on a precipice, and I don't think I quite dare look down....
PS - googling as myself, as once you become a nearly published author one is egotistically inclined to do, I realised that I am now officially up on the Avon site. So if perchance you are interested in me and my little literary effort, click here to find out more.
http://www.avon-books.co.uk/pastures_new.aspx
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Gods Behaving Badly
I am pleased to say I have finally got around to reading this:
This tiny little cover doesn't do it justice in the slightest.
Although from a practical point of view I prefer reading paperback books, I have a weakness for hardbacks that dates back to my early days in publishing when I worked in the production department. I love hardbacks; the beauty of a clean hardback case, the wonderful feel when you crack open the spine. I always feel I've got a real book in my hands in a way I don't with a paperback.
And on that front Gods Behaving Badly doesn't disappoint. The jacket looks and feels gorgeous. It's got matt lamination, spot varnishing, embossing - all the tricks of the design trade which done badly can go horribly awry, but which have been used here for a simple and glorious harmony. Not only that the hardback case is a stylish black with (my favourite) gold blocking on the spine. (In my production days when we were bored we'd eschew black for the wildest most garish colours we could think of, but really, nothing beats black and gold I don't think). And best of all it's got endpapers - my favourite bit of a hardback - and they too are utterly gorgeous.
Before you've even opened a page you feel this is going to be a wonderful experience.
And it is.
It's always a bit of a worry when something is hyped as much as GBB has been, that it might be a disappointment. I didn't think it would be. I've read the opening chapters, I've read Marie's blog. Like I said before I went on holidayI am sure this is going to be huge. But still... There's always that smidgeon of worry, and I so wanted to like it.
Happily I can report, that I didn't just like it, I absolutely loved it. Marie's squabbling gods are hilarious. The plot is rollocking. Her hero and heroine are fab - I couldn't help but fall for a hero who secretly reads the sorts of books where a man presses his lips against a woman before ravaging her - and the whole conceit of the book is so clever and funny. I'm happily not given to jealousy about other writers, but if I had a book I'd like to have written, this would definitely be it.
I'm not going to do any spoilers, but I particularly enjoyed the idea that Angel Tube station (a place I used to use regularly when I was younger) is in fact the entrance to the Underworld. Neil, the hero reminded me of both Martin Freeman in The Office and Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead - he is utterly unlikely but turns up trumps. I am in love with him completely. And Alice, the self effacing heroine, also quietly turns out to have hidden depths.
Gods Behaving Badly is a wonderful wonderful book, thoroughly deserving of its hype. I can't wait for her next one...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Mattel Recall
Oh shit.
My house is full of Polly Pocket.
No 3 is really going to love when I tell her it's all gotta go...
My house is full of Polly Pocket.
No 3 is really going to love when I tell her it's all gotta go...
Talking of holidays...
No 1 couldn't sleep tonight and came downstairs, just as I was off to bed (Spouse had long since gone). We were having a bit of a chat about stuff, and then she mentioned that she and no 2 make up stories about one of our photo albums from a holiday we had in Crete in 1992. God knows why...
Anyway, she went to get the album and I said, let me tell you what really happened. Suddenly. There I was. Much younger. Much slimmer. On a great (and from memory wildly drunken) holiday in Elounda, in Crete. It had all the elements that a good holiday should have. Sun, sea, alcohol and most importantly it was spent with good friends.
Looking at those pictures again. I'm bloody sorry I'm not as thin as I was. Bloody sorry that I'm not as young as I was.
But on the upside.
The people that matter haven't gone away.
And sitting with no 1 beside me, it's nice to know I've gained a few extras along the way...
Even so. I know it's shallow, but it would be nice to be that skinny again...
Anyway, she went to get the album and I said, let me tell you what really happened. Suddenly. There I was. Much younger. Much slimmer. On a great (and from memory wildly drunken) holiday in Elounda, in Crete. It had all the elements that a good holiday should have. Sun, sea, alcohol and most importantly it was spent with good friends.
Looking at those pictures again. I'm bloody sorry I'm not as thin as I was. Bloody sorry that I'm not as young as I was.
But on the upside.
The people that matter haven't gone away.
And sitting with no 1 beside me, it's nice to know I've gained a few extras along the way...
Even so. I know it's shallow, but it would be nice to be that skinny again...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Happy Holidays
Twelve years ago, Spouse and I took a backpacking trip around Turkey. We had more or less decided by then that we were going to finally do the Baby Thing, but wanted one last joyous freedom fling before we did. And having done several backpacking trips without much funding, were revelling in the notion that this time around at least we had enough money to bail out of emergencies like sleeping on the beach as we'd done in the past.
I remember being very fed up before we set off as I was late, which meant the thought of coping with tedious women's things while travelling, plus I had a rather romantic notion that it might be nice to concieve while on holiday. I was actually six weeks late. Which should have told me something except a) I was irregular as clockwork and b) I had taken a pregnancy test which had proved negative (experience later taught me that my body doesn't operate the way of the textbooks, but I didn't know that then).
So we set off from Gatwick, flew to Antalaya, staying overnight in a rather grim Turkish b&b before heading off down the coast to Alanya, a beautiful and then quite unspoilt resort, from where we took a day trip to Northern Cyprus, climbed mountains, took boat trips (though thankfully in retrospect we didn't take part in a wander through a cave that ended up with you jumping fifty foot into the sea), before heading down to Side, an amazing town built entirely around the ruins of a Roman town.
It was only when we got to Side that I began to question why I was a) feeling sick all the time (I had been assuming it was Turkey tummy) b) felt knackered (Spouse kept saying I had become so boring he was going to go on holiday without me and c) was going off fags (I'd been blaming the funny taste of Turkish smokes). The penny finally dropped when we were sitting in a restaurant, I took a sip of beer and it tasted like poison. Suddenly I couldn't drink anymore. "Are you pregnant?" Spouse said in a rare moment of clarity, "I have no bloody idea," was my response, as my body was responding in the way it normally does prior to usual occurences. Besides, I'd never been pregnant before, so I really hadn't a clue. By number four I had worked out that a) my cycle being so erratic means that pregnancy tests don't work for me until I am at least a week overdue and b) About week 7 was the time when I stopped wanting to smoke/drink.
But I didn't know that then...
Of course, I came back, took a pregnancy test and voila, there was that very definite and scary blue line. I can remember sitting on the edge of the bath in a state of shock. I had only just decided to have a baby, and pretty much fell pregnant at the first attempt. I appreciate this an enormous piece of luck, but it was also pretty shocking and took some coming to terms with I can tell you.
So that was that. I was pregnant. We'd had our last swansong holiday, and we bid farewell to our freedom.
I only mention all this because we've just come back from Menorca, and for the first time since then Spouse and I have managed to relax on holiday.
Milestones include:
Actually reading all the books I'd taken with me.
Not being too stressed when the kids were in the pool (apart from no 3 who has just learnt to swim but does this rather alarming impression of the Man from Atlantis, popping her head up every so often to splutter for another breath).
Swimming nearly every day in the sea and not feeling guilty that Spouse was having to deal with mayhem on the beach.
Taking no 1 out swimming with me and being amazed at how far she could come.
Taking a pedalo out and not worrying (too much) that we were all going to drown.
Going out in the evening, and thanks to cheesy entertainment at the bar, leaving kids enjoying it while we sat and had a grown up drink.
That last one was well worth it. It's been years since we've been able to all go out and have a relaxing evening without tears and tantrums.
Menorca isn't the most exciting of locations, but it was pretty, the views across the bay stunning and the beach really safe, which is great for kids.
After enduring years and years of stressful holidays, it was wonderful to just be able to chill out for once.
And remember, for the first time in twelve years, that holidays, actually can be fun...
PS anyone who wasn't hanging about this blog this time last year might be amused to go into the archives for last August and see what a contrast THAT was...
I remember being very fed up before we set off as I was late, which meant the thought of coping with tedious women's things while travelling, plus I had a rather romantic notion that it might be nice to concieve while on holiday. I was actually six weeks late. Which should have told me something except a) I was irregular as clockwork and b) I had taken a pregnancy test which had proved negative (experience later taught me that my body doesn't operate the way of the textbooks, but I didn't know that then).
So we set off from Gatwick, flew to Antalaya, staying overnight in a rather grim Turkish b&b before heading off down the coast to Alanya, a beautiful and then quite unspoilt resort, from where we took a day trip to Northern Cyprus, climbed mountains, took boat trips (though thankfully in retrospect we didn't take part in a wander through a cave that ended up with you jumping fifty foot into the sea), before heading down to Side, an amazing town built entirely around the ruins of a Roman town.
It was only when we got to Side that I began to question why I was a) feeling sick all the time (I had been assuming it was Turkey tummy) b) felt knackered (Spouse kept saying I had become so boring he was going to go on holiday without me and c) was going off fags (I'd been blaming the funny taste of Turkish smokes). The penny finally dropped when we were sitting in a restaurant, I took a sip of beer and it tasted like poison. Suddenly I couldn't drink anymore. "Are you pregnant?" Spouse said in a rare moment of clarity, "I have no bloody idea," was my response, as my body was responding in the way it normally does prior to usual occurences. Besides, I'd never been pregnant before, so I really hadn't a clue. By number four I had worked out that a) my cycle being so erratic means that pregnancy tests don't work for me until I am at least a week overdue and b) About week 7 was the time when I stopped wanting to smoke/drink.
But I didn't know that then...
Of course, I came back, took a pregnancy test and voila, there was that very definite and scary blue line. I can remember sitting on the edge of the bath in a state of shock. I had only just decided to have a baby, and pretty much fell pregnant at the first attempt. I appreciate this an enormous piece of luck, but it was also pretty shocking and took some coming to terms with I can tell you.
So that was that. I was pregnant. We'd had our last swansong holiday, and we bid farewell to our freedom.
I only mention all this because we've just come back from Menorca, and for the first time since then Spouse and I have managed to relax on holiday.
Milestones include:
Actually reading all the books I'd taken with me.
Not being too stressed when the kids were in the pool (apart from no 3 who has just learnt to swim but does this rather alarming impression of the Man from Atlantis, popping her head up every so often to splutter for another breath).
Swimming nearly every day in the sea and not feeling guilty that Spouse was having to deal with mayhem on the beach.
Taking no 1 out swimming with me and being amazed at how far she could come.
Taking a pedalo out and not worrying (too much) that we were all going to drown.
Going out in the evening, and thanks to cheesy entertainment at the bar, leaving kids enjoying it while we sat and had a grown up drink.
That last one was well worth it. It's been years since we've been able to all go out and have a relaxing evening without tears and tantrums.
Menorca isn't the most exciting of locations, but it was pretty, the views across the bay stunning and the beach really safe, which is great for kids.
After enduring years and years of stressful holidays, it was wonderful to just be able to chill out for once.
And remember, for the first time in twelve years, that holidays, actually can be fun...
PS anyone who wasn't hanging about this blog this time last year might be amused to go into the archives for last August and see what a contrast THAT was...
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I'm off, but before I go...
... I just wanted to say a big thank you to all the new bloggy friends I've made over the past few months. It's been a blast, and I've really enjoyed "meeting you" as well as the people who've been faithfully reading my witterings for longer than that.
I'm off to Menorca in the morning (trying not to stress about the flight - I wish I could take valium to get me through it, but who'd look after the children??), but I did promise someone that I would shout long and loudly about her book which is coming out next week (annoying just to late for me to buy it for a holiday read).
Last year I read one of those magical stories you read occasionally in the papers about a young struggling author who had had her first manuscript accepted overnight, was offered a fabulous advance, had agents fighting over her etc etc. I might not have taken much notice, except the book in question sounded such fun, and for once well worth the hype.
The book in question is called Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Philips, and is published on August 2 by Jonathan Cape for £12.99.
If by some amazing chance you HAVEN'T heard about Marie (and if you haven't, where oh where have you been?), the story revolves around the Greek gods having lost their powers and knocking about in a house in North London. Aphrodite sells telephone sex and Apollo has an unfortunate habit of turning young women who reject his advances into trees. I've read the first two chapters, and laughed out loud. Marie is both witty, clever and fun to be around, and I can't wait to read the rest of it.
I am absolutely certain this is going to be the Big Thing of the summer (or as certain as you can be in this business).
I am still slightly gobsmacked that thanks to the nice bookarazzi crowd I have been able to meet Marie online - it isn't every day you encounter people you read about in the papers - and it has really been a privilege. I am sure that this is just the beginning of a long and illustrious career.
You heard it here first...
I'm off to Menorca in the morning (trying not to stress about the flight - I wish I could take valium to get me through it, but who'd look after the children??), but I did promise someone that I would shout long and loudly about her book which is coming out next week (annoying just to late for me to buy it for a holiday read).
Last year I read one of those magical stories you read occasionally in the papers about a young struggling author who had had her first manuscript accepted overnight, was offered a fabulous advance, had agents fighting over her etc etc. I might not have taken much notice, except the book in question sounded such fun, and for once well worth the hype.
The book in question is called Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Philips, and is published on August 2 by Jonathan Cape for £12.99.
If by some amazing chance you HAVEN'T heard about Marie (and if you haven't, where oh where have you been?), the story revolves around the Greek gods having lost their powers and knocking about in a house in North London. Aphrodite sells telephone sex and Apollo has an unfortunate habit of turning young women who reject his advances into trees. I've read the first two chapters, and laughed out loud. Marie is both witty, clever and fun to be around, and I can't wait to read the rest of it.
I am absolutely certain this is going to be the Big Thing of the summer (or as certain as you can be in this business).
I am still slightly gobsmacked that thanks to the nice bookarazzi crowd I have been able to meet Marie online - it isn't every day you encounter people you read about in the papers - and it has really been a privilege. I am sure that this is just the beginning of a long and illustrious career.
You heard it here first...
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
That Boy Wizard (no spoilers here though)
My one claim to fame from the residues of my career in children's publishing (ok actually I have two. The other one was rejecting Jacqueline Wilson), is that but for a quirk of fate (called failing a job interview) I might have been JK Rowling's editor.
Ten years ago I had just returned to work after a period of maternity leave. For all sorts of reasons I won't go into here, it wasn't at all a happy time. I found it hard to slot back in after six months away, I was missing my baby hugely but didn't feel able to say so (let's just say for a children's company it was at the time remarkably family unfriendly), and the job I loved was becoming more political by the minute, so I was starting to hate it.
Publishing's a funny sort of career to have. There's no formal structure or career progress. To get to be a commissioning editor often requires huge doses of luck, and the term "editor" can vary hugely from company to company in terms of the job spec and the responsibilities. It is in short the sort of career where to some degree you make your own luck.
I started my work life in academic publishing, took a variety of different jobs to broaden my experience, then, when I realised a) I was never going to get promoted where I was and b) I wasn't actually all that keen to stay in academia I jumped ship over to children's book - a decision I never regretted.
I had a huge huge dose of luck at this point because the company I joined was expanding and I arrived just at the moment when we were launching a series which was to be its first great success. I ended up running the series and commissioning other related series, and was happy as a sandboy until the company grew so much that from being a cosy happy smallish team we became more and more facelessly corporate. It wasn't a change I relished and I felt increasingly restricted.
Hence my decision to go looking for another job. And lo and behold there was an ad in The Bookseller for Bloomsbury, a publisher I chiefly knew from having had a pal there at that atrocious Princess in Love book came out (but it WAS fun visiting the offices the next day and hearing all the gossip about it) and for being the home of my favourite living author (aside from Terry Pratchett that is), Margaret Atwood. Did I want a job there in those pre Harry Potter days? Did I ever. Apart from the fact that I'd be able to escape the misery of the situation I was in, the thought of working in a place I thought of with awe definitely appealed.
Alas, it wasn't to be. Though I had a very jolly and positive meeting with the then new head of publishing, I think perhaps I wasn't keen enough to work full time, and well, ok, she didn't like me probably. Anyway I didn't get the job. So my near brush with the most amazing publishing phenomenon of recent times is just that a near brush...
It's going to sound a bit daft, but it did take a long time to connect that job interview with the fact that had I got the job I'd have been editing Harry - I might even have given up writing my own stuff for the chance to do that - mainly because at the time, just prior to publication of the first book he wasn't exactly the main topic of conversation at the interview. If I remember rightly my putative employee spent more of the interview talking about Louis Sachar's Holes then Harry Potter. Though I do think the boy wizard may have come up in passing.
I only mention this because having just read HP7 it struck me anew what an incredible journey it's been for JK Rowling.
Being in the industry I probably knew about Harry Potter before most people had even heard of him - we had an editorial assistant who came from Bloomsbury raving about him. To my eternal shame I rather smugly thought, It can't be as good as all that (in my not very good defence we were the no 1 children's publishers at the time!). But when it came out, I couldn't resist reading it. I love fantasy so much and it is exactly the sort of thing I would have eagerly published, if I hadn't had my fingers burnt with a fantasy list a few years earlier (and been told, don't laugh by someone at Smiths that fantasy doesn't sell). For years after HP became successful our MD spent a lot of time accusing us all of having missed and rejected him, but I know for a fact if Harry had landed on my desk I'd have given him full attention, and ditto my colleagues - and especially my boss who edited Philip Pullman's Northern Lights.
What I will say is this though. I'm actually rather glad Harry didn't come my way, not because I wouldn't have relished the opportunity to work with such a brilliant author, I would have, but because I know my company at the time wouldn't have made the most of the marketing in the way that Bloomsbury did. I watched in awe as they came up with genius promotion after genius promotion. We'd have never have done that, and I doubt Harry would have had the success he's had if we'd published him.
So I'm not bitter about missing out (well, not much) and have really enjoyed the experience of reading his story along with the rest of the world.
But you know the thing that makes me the gladdest about the Harry Potter phenomenon?
It's the fact that thanks to JK Rowling people now take children's books seriously.
During the ten years I was working in the children's book industry, time and time again I found myself having to defend why I wasn't in the serious, more important bit of publishing - namely the adult section. Apart from stating the bleedin' obvious, I LOVE children's books and really enjoy what I do, it used to really nark me that people really missed the point. Where, pray dear reader, do the readers of tomorrow come from if we don't create them today. I have actually met twenty year olds (in fact I met one on Saturday) whose enjoyment of series I edited thirteen years ago has stayed with them into adulthood, and on Friday night when we walked back home from a party (via Waterstones natch) it was full of twenty somethings who've grown up with Harry Potter. Not all of them will read something else, but some of them might.
And now it is definitely ok to be seen reading a kids' book.
So I raise my glass to JKR. She and Harry have done my industry (and the children of the world) a great service. And I for one am very grateful - even if I'll never get to be her editor now.
No spoilers here - I promised - but the last book?
It's fan - bloody - tastic.
So there.
Ten years ago I had just returned to work after a period of maternity leave. For all sorts of reasons I won't go into here, it wasn't at all a happy time. I found it hard to slot back in after six months away, I was missing my baby hugely but didn't feel able to say so (let's just say for a children's company it was at the time remarkably family unfriendly), and the job I loved was becoming more political by the minute, so I was starting to hate it.
Publishing's a funny sort of career to have. There's no formal structure or career progress. To get to be a commissioning editor often requires huge doses of luck, and the term "editor" can vary hugely from company to company in terms of the job spec and the responsibilities. It is in short the sort of career where to some degree you make your own luck.
I started my work life in academic publishing, took a variety of different jobs to broaden my experience, then, when I realised a) I was never going to get promoted where I was and b) I wasn't actually all that keen to stay in academia I jumped ship over to children's book - a decision I never regretted.
I had a huge huge dose of luck at this point because the company I joined was expanding and I arrived just at the moment when we were launching a series which was to be its first great success. I ended up running the series and commissioning other related series, and was happy as a sandboy until the company grew so much that from being a cosy happy smallish team we became more and more facelessly corporate. It wasn't a change I relished and I felt increasingly restricted.
Hence my decision to go looking for another job. And lo and behold there was an ad in The Bookseller for Bloomsbury, a publisher I chiefly knew from having had a pal there at that atrocious Princess in Love book came out (but it WAS fun visiting the offices the next day and hearing all the gossip about it) and for being the home of my favourite living author (aside from Terry Pratchett that is), Margaret Atwood. Did I want a job there in those pre Harry Potter days? Did I ever. Apart from the fact that I'd be able to escape the misery of the situation I was in, the thought of working in a place I thought of with awe definitely appealed.
Alas, it wasn't to be. Though I had a very jolly and positive meeting with the then new head of publishing, I think perhaps I wasn't keen enough to work full time, and well, ok, she didn't like me probably. Anyway I didn't get the job. So my near brush with the most amazing publishing phenomenon of recent times is just that a near brush...
It's going to sound a bit daft, but it did take a long time to connect that job interview with the fact that had I got the job I'd have been editing Harry - I might even have given up writing my own stuff for the chance to do that - mainly because at the time, just prior to publication of the first book he wasn't exactly the main topic of conversation at the interview. If I remember rightly my putative employee spent more of the interview talking about Louis Sachar's Holes then Harry Potter. Though I do think the boy wizard may have come up in passing.
I only mention this because having just read HP7 it struck me anew what an incredible journey it's been for JK Rowling.
Being in the industry I probably knew about Harry Potter before most people had even heard of him - we had an editorial assistant who came from Bloomsbury raving about him. To my eternal shame I rather smugly thought, It can't be as good as all that (in my not very good defence we were the no 1 children's publishers at the time!). But when it came out, I couldn't resist reading it. I love fantasy so much and it is exactly the sort of thing I would have eagerly published, if I hadn't had my fingers burnt with a fantasy list a few years earlier (and been told, don't laugh by someone at Smiths that fantasy doesn't sell). For years after HP became successful our MD spent a lot of time accusing us all of having missed and rejected him, but I know for a fact if Harry had landed on my desk I'd have given him full attention, and ditto my colleagues - and especially my boss who edited Philip Pullman's Northern Lights.
What I will say is this though. I'm actually rather glad Harry didn't come my way, not because I wouldn't have relished the opportunity to work with such a brilliant author, I would have, but because I know my company at the time wouldn't have made the most of the marketing in the way that Bloomsbury did. I watched in awe as they came up with genius promotion after genius promotion. We'd have never have done that, and I doubt Harry would have had the success he's had if we'd published him.
So I'm not bitter about missing out (well, not much) and have really enjoyed the experience of reading his story along with the rest of the world.
But you know the thing that makes me the gladdest about the Harry Potter phenomenon?
It's the fact that thanks to JK Rowling people now take children's books seriously.
During the ten years I was working in the children's book industry, time and time again I found myself having to defend why I wasn't in the serious, more important bit of publishing - namely the adult section. Apart from stating the bleedin' obvious, I LOVE children's books and really enjoy what I do, it used to really nark me that people really missed the point. Where, pray dear reader, do the readers of tomorrow come from if we don't create them today. I have actually met twenty year olds (in fact I met one on Saturday) whose enjoyment of series I edited thirteen years ago has stayed with them into adulthood, and on Friday night when we walked back home from a party (via Waterstones natch) it was full of twenty somethings who've grown up with Harry Potter. Not all of them will read something else, but some of them might.
And now it is definitely ok to be seen reading a kids' book.
So I raise my glass to JKR. She and Harry have done my industry (and the children of the world) a great service. And I for one am very grateful - even if I'll never get to be her editor now.
No spoilers here - I promised - but the last book?
It's fan - bloody - tastic.
So there.
One More Step Along the Road I Go...
I appreciate I am rather late in writing this, as the children broke up last week, but I'm busy getting ready for our (I hope) rainfree holiday on Friday...
The end of term was rather fraught in our house. I had two children leaving schools. No 1 was leaving primary school forever and no 3 is moving up from the infants to the juniors.
Cue, lots and lots - and far too fucking many to cope with for this poor stressed mum - of leaving activities.
In the final fortnight of term we had:
One Leaver's Disco (no1)
Two Leaver's Plays (over two nights, no 1, over one night the following week, no 3)
One Leaver's Trip to local cathedral (also no 1, and happily without parental involvement)
Two Leaver's Assemblies (nos 1&3)
Unhappily the assemblies were orginally booked for the same day (no one but no one in the schools my children attend seems to understand the art of communication), but after a poke from yours truly, the infants kindly agreed to move theirs backward by a day.
No 3 in the main isn't too fussed about the big change in her life. She's pretty much outgrown the infants, has been desperate all term to join her big sister in the field next door to her school (this represents the highlight of life in the juniors apparently) and though she moaned about beng anxious about her play she was really very happy to stand up and be the narrator. Me, I was of course bursting with maternal pride, as AT LAST, after three attempts at it, I finally have a child who is the teacher's favourite.
It is a standing joke in the school that the teacher's favourites always get to be the narrator in all the school plays, and none of mine have achieved such glory so far. At least, not until no 3 came along. No 3 from the time she tottered into preschool seems to have the knack of making teachers like her. They raved about her so much and so embarrassingly often at nursery I used to refer to her as my child genius. Well, the child genius is all grown up and turned into teacher's pet. I was laying bets on her getting the narrator slot, and lo and behold I was right. The embarrassing thing about this of course, is that everyone else notices, and you have to protest loudly, look it's REALLY not my fault the teacher chose her, I haven't been bombarding her with promises of free dental treatment and a copy of my book, HONEST I haven't...
So despite a little wobble the day of the performance, and being rather exhausted afterwards as we had to have a disco post performance (this took place inside this year as the rain had caused the following danger: Wet Grass Is Hazardous was the reason giving for coming indoors), no 3 is dealing with the change in circumstances quite well. And I managed to get through hearing, One More Step Along The Road I Go without cracking up. Which is quite good for an old softie like me.
No 1, however was another matter.
Readers of this blog may have picked up that no 1 has had a bit of a rough year 6. It started right at the beginning when she came home with the forms for secondary school (Why oh why they saw fit to give the blasted things to the kids I don't know. It's caused me no end of trouble). She became very anxious about losing her friends and moving on to the new school, which was compounded by the stress of sitting for grammar school despite my best efforts to make things laid back and easy. This was followed in March by the discovery that not only had she failed to get into grammar school but she'd failed spectacularly badly. In the midst of her misery about this it became quite apparent that her wretched teacher had been piling the pressure on about how scary secondary school was.
Never mind, says Mum, at least you're going to the school you wanted to now.
Ha. Bloody Ha.
Three weeks ago no 1 went for a day at her new school. She was full of excitement and looking forward to it. But when I went to pick her up she burst into tears and said she'd had a miserable day. Turns out she's not with any of her friends bar one which was her main reason for wanting to go to that school and not the one she failed to get into. Never before have I truly wanted to bang my head against a brick wall, but really I very nearly went and did it. I HAD said over and over again till I was BLUE in the face, that she might not be with her friends at the school she's going to, so she may as well go for the grammar school as more then likely she'll make new friends anyway.
No 1 doesn't normally do crying, so it was something of a shock to spend not just the next two hours comforting her but for her to burst into tears at the slightest provocation nearly every day up until the end of term. If it was my drama queen no 2 I wouldn't bat an eyelid, but no 1 is such a bite your top lip kind of girl it came as real shock I can tell you. And of course, being the softie mum I have become - I used to have this hard Cancerian outershell till motherhood ripped it off me - the weepier she became the weepier I became. I tell you we've been drowning in this house without any help from the rain thank you very much.
Spouse meanwhile has been retreating into the garage to play with his new toy - a kit car Catheram 7 , which I PROMISE to blog about because I find the whole thing so funny, but it may have to wait till I'm back - and looking on bemused. As well he might. Unlike me he grew up in an exclusively male household. Poor lamb has NO idea what is about to hit him. Because without a doubt on top of the stress, hormones have been playing a big part. When I tentatively suggested to no 1 that her being this weepy might have something to do with All That, she looked absolutely horrified and said Oh no! Not that too....
Poor kid. I'd forgotten quite how lousy it is dealing with all this stuff.
But as a parent I can tell you it's damned wearing.
We had tears because she was ill and insisted on going in as it was her dress rehearsal (the school called me in and she missed it anyway.)
Tears because I suggested she miss the first performance of the play as she'd been ill. I relented in the end as her teacher said it was ok.
Tears because she was chosen to be in the novelty race (AKA the Race Where They Dump the Crap Ones and she knows it) for Sports Day.
Tears because she didn't want to do Sports Day.
Tears during Sports Day because she lost her race (she didn't even try, I was watching)
Tears at the end of the day because she'd lost everything on Sports Day.
Tears because she was the only one (of course) upset about leaving school, two of her friends are going to grammar school and she's not, she is devastated she got such a bad mark, she thinks her life is over etc etc.
I was like worn out rag by the end of the week.
And it got worse, when I went to her assembly and watched her grumpily read a poem out (she didn't want to do it), trying not to cry in between the moments when she laughed, shooting filthy looks at me every time I tried to take a photo and generally doing a grand job of making me feel as miserable as she did. I was ripe for a good bawl before I'd even started, and it only took one other mum to go for me to be wiping the tears away, along with half my row.
Luckily no 1 didn't spot me crying otherwise that would have REALLY lost her her street cred.
I have to fess up here to having been taken aback by the strength of my emotion. I have three kids still to go through the school, so it's not like I'm saying goodbye to it.
But...
My little girl is about to take a very big step along the road. And it seems like minutes since she took her first one.
I am conscious of time's winged chariot more and more as she gets older. The last seven years have sped by. Give it another seven and I'll be waving her off to uni (I hope)...
The years pass in our adulthood and make very few changes. We get older, gain a few grey hairs, pile on the pounds. But essentially we change little. But our children change beyond recognition with each passing year. And it is only now that I realise how brief their time in childhood is.
No 1's time in childhood is very nearly up. I hope it's been fun for her.
But what I really really hope is that the step she takes next is even better.
Oh. And that she stops crying...
The end of term was rather fraught in our house. I had two children leaving schools. No 1 was leaving primary school forever and no 3 is moving up from the infants to the juniors.
Cue, lots and lots - and far too fucking many to cope with for this poor stressed mum - of leaving activities.
In the final fortnight of term we had:
One Leaver's Disco (no1)
Two Leaver's Plays (over two nights, no 1, over one night the following week, no 3)
One Leaver's Trip to local cathedral (also no 1, and happily without parental involvement)
Two Leaver's Assemblies (nos 1&3)
Unhappily the assemblies were orginally booked for the same day (no one but no one in the schools my children attend seems to understand the art of communication), but after a poke from yours truly, the infants kindly agreed to move theirs backward by a day.
No 3 in the main isn't too fussed about the big change in her life. She's pretty much outgrown the infants, has been desperate all term to join her big sister in the field next door to her school (this represents the highlight of life in the juniors apparently) and though she moaned about beng anxious about her play she was really very happy to stand up and be the narrator. Me, I was of course bursting with maternal pride, as AT LAST, after three attempts at it, I finally have a child who is the teacher's favourite.
It is a standing joke in the school that the teacher's favourites always get to be the narrator in all the school plays, and none of mine have achieved such glory so far. At least, not until no 3 came along. No 3 from the time she tottered into preschool seems to have the knack of making teachers like her. They raved about her so much and so embarrassingly often at nursery I used to refer to her as my child genius. Well, the child genius is all grown up and turned into teacher's pet. I was laying bets on her getting the narrator slot, and lo and behold I was right. The embarrassing thing about this of course, is that everyone else notices, and you have to protest loudly, look it's REALLY not my fault the teacher chose her, I haven't been bombarding her with promises of free dental treatment and a copy of my book, HONEST I haven't...
So despite a little wobble the day of the performance, and being rather exhausted afterwards as we had to have a disco post performance (this took place inside this year as the rain had caused the following danger: Wet Grass Is Hazardous was the reason giving for coming indoors), no 3 is dealing with the change in circumstances quite well. And I managed to get through hearing, One More Step Along The Road I Go without cracking up. Which is quite good for an old softie like me.
No 1, however was another matter.
Readers of this blog may have picked up that no 1 has had a bit of a rough year 6. It started right at the beginning when she came home with the forms for secondary school (Why oh why they saw fit to give the blasted things to the kids I don't know. It's caused me no end of trouble). She became very anxious about losing her friends and moving on to the new school, which was compounded by the stress of sitting for grammar school despite my best efforts to make things laid back and easy. This was followed in March by the discovery that not only had she failed to get into grammar school but she'd failed spectacularly badly. In the midst of her misery about this it became quite apparent that her wretched teacher had been piling the pressure on about how scary secondary school was.
Never mind, says Mum, at least you're going to the school you wanted to now.
Ha. Bloody Ha.
Three weeks ago no 1 went for a day at her new school. She was full of excitement and looking forward to it. But when I went to pick her up she burst into tears and said she'd had a miserable day. Turns out she's not with any of her friends bar one which was her main reason for wanting to go to that school and not the one she failed to get into. Never before have I truly wanted to bang my head against a brick wall, but really I very nearly went and did it. I HAD said over and over again till I was BLUE in the face, that she might not be with her friends at the school she's going to, so she may as well go for the grammar school as more then likely she'll make new friends anyway.
No 1 doesn't normally do crying, so it was something of a shock to spend not just the next two hours comforting her but for her to burst into tears at the slightest provocation nearly every day up until the end of term. If it was my drama queen no 2 I wouldn't bat an eyelid, but no 1 is such a bite your top lip kind of girl it came as real shock I can tell you. And of course, being the softie mum I have become - I used to have this hard Cancerian outershell till motherhood ripped it off me - the weepier she became the weepier I became. I tell you we've been drowning in this house without any help from the rain thank you very much.
Spouse meanwhile has been retreating into the garage to play with his new toy - a kit car Catheram 7 , which I PROMISE to blog about because I find the whole thing so funny, but it may have to wait till I'm back - and looking on bemused. As well he might. Unlike me he grew up in an exclusively male household. Poor lamb has NO idea what is about to hit him. Because without a doubt on top of the stress, hormones have been playing a big part. When I tentatively suggested to no 1 that her being this weepy might have something to do with All That, she looked absolutely horrified and said Oh no! Not that too....
Poor kid. I'd forgotten quite how lousy it is dealing with all this stuff.
But as a parent I can tell you it's damned wearing.
We had tears because she was ill and insisted on going in as it was her dress rehearsal (the school called me in and she missed it anyway.)
Tears because I suggested she miss the first performance of the play as she'd been ill. I relented in the end as her teacher said it was ok.
Tears because she was chosen to be in the novelty race (AKA the Race Where They Dump the Crap Ones and she knows it) for Sports Day.
Tears because she didn't want to do Sports Day.
Tears during Sports Day because she lost her race (she didn't even try, I was watching)
Tears at the end of the day because she'd lost everything on Sports Day.
Tears because she was the only one (of course) upset about leaving school, two of her friends are going to grammar school and she's not, she is devastated she got such a bad mark, she thinks her life is over etc etc.
I was like worn out rag by the end of the week.
And it got worse, when I went to her assembly and watched her grumpily read a poem out (she didn't want to do it), trying not to cry in between the moments when she laughed, shooting filthy looks at me every time I tried to take a photo and generally doing a grand job of making me feel as miserable as she did. I was ripe for a good bawl before I'd even started, and it only took one other mum to go for me to be wiping the tears away, along with half my row.
Luckily no 1 didn't spot me crying otherwise that would have REALLY lost her her street cred.
I have to fess up here to having been taken aback by the strength of my emotion. I have three kids still to go through the school, so it's not like I'm saying goodbye to it.
But...
My little girl is about to take a very big step along the road. And it seems like minutes since she took her first one.
I am conscious of time's winged chariot more and more as she gets older. The last seven years have sped by. Give it another seven and I'll be waving her off to uni (I hope)...
The years pass in our adulthood and make very few changes. We get older, gain a few grey hairs, pile on the pounds. But essentially we change little. But our children change beyond recognition with each passing year. And it is only now that I realise how brief their time in childhood is.
No 1's time in childhood is very nearly up. I hope it's been fun for her.
But what I really really hope is that the step she takes next is even better.
Oh. And that she stops crying...
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Pastures New
Woooo! Well as you can see I finally have a cover for my book, Pastures New which is going to be published on 3 September, price £6.99.
First off, I have to say a big thank you to the lovely people at Avon for providing me with sucha fab cover and for all their support.
My last post elicited a response from a Ms I Want To Be Anonymous who I apparently went to school with. Whoever you are, please do email me as I'd like to say hello properly!! And yes you can tell all of our old school pals about the book....
I will I hope be blogging shortly over at Bookarazzi about my journey to publication. Suffice to say it was a long one, and there were many points along the way when I nearly gave up. Had it not been for my many lovely friends in the RNA who have been so supportive, my agent, my family (Mad Twin especially) and Spouse I think I might have...
But it's all come good now and I feel ever so slightly overwhelmed.
Mil is thrilled to pieces as it's going to be published in German (as I am), but I would have been happy just with England...
I must dash as have less then 24 hours till there will be no time for anything for six weeks, and I have to polish the first ten chapters of the next one so I can send it off to my agent for scrutiny.
Was feeling it was a pile of rubbish, but MT has made me feel better about it again.
The current book is about a dentist being sued, and I hope is a slightly tongue in cheek look at the madly obsessed with celebrity Looking Glass World we currently seem to inhabit.
I am utterly in love with my hero.
But then I should be.
He's a combination of Spouse and David Tennant. with a little bit extra thrown in.
It doesn't get much better then that....
It's sooo much fun being a writer!
I may be absent from the blogosphere for a bit as I am going to curtail my internet habits till I've read the new Harry Potter as I don't want any spoilers. So please if you too are an HP fan and you read it before the end of the weekend, DON'T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS!!!! And I promise there will be no spoilers here.
I have a five pound bet on with no 1 that Snape is a goodie. No doubt if she wins, she'll spoil that one for me....
Monday, July 16, 2007
42
Is, as every Douglas Adams fan knows, of course the answer to life, the universe and everything.
It is also the name of one of the best episodes in the current series of Dr Who. (I just put that in so I could think about David Tennant for a few minutes...)
And - ahem.
It apparently is the age I reached at the weekend. Though of course in my head I am still 21.
My eldest daughter very kindly made sure that I hadn't forgotten this fact by drawing my a card which said Happy Birthday Mum - 42. Wow!
Yes, like SUPER WOW.... thanks so much for reminding me.
She'd gone to all the trouble of drawing 42 candles on the cake, though she evidently ran out of enthusiasm for the kisses (she drew 5 kisses x 42 instead).
In her enthusiasm to do the card, she and her sisters also forgot about the breakfast they had prepared earlier - much earlier. So I got congealed porridge, rubbery toast and a cold cup of tea. But the thought was there, so that's the main thing.
Spouse meanwhile proved that he is definitely the man for me, by buying me a tardis shaped birthday cake complete with David Tennant. Sadly DT didn't jump out of it (as one of my friends suggested he might), but another friend pointed out the usefulness of a tardis for someone who is still 21 at heart.
So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to do a bit of time travel.
(Mad Twin, care to join me???)
It is also the name of one of the best episodes in the current series of Dr Who. (I just put that in so I could think about David Tennant for a few minutes...)
And - ahem.
It apparently is the age I reached at the weekend. Though of course in my head I am still 21.
My eldest daughter very kindly made sure that I hadn't forgotten this fact by drawing my a card which said Happy Birthday Mum - 42. Wow!
Yes, like SUPER WOW.... thanks so much for reminding me.
She'd gone to all the trouble of drawing 42 candles on the cake, though she evidently ran out of enthusiasm for the kisses (she drew 5 kisses x 42 instead).
In her enthusiasm to do the card, she and her sisters also forgot about the breakfast they had prepared earlier - much earlier. So I got congealed porridge, rubbery toast and a cold cup of tea. But the thought was there, so that's the main thing.
Spouse meanwhile proved that he is definitely the man for me, by buying me a tardis shaped birthday cake complete with David Tennant. Sadly DT didn't jump out of it (as one of my friends suggested he might), but another friend pointed out the usefulness of a tardis for someone who is still 21 at heart.
So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to do a bit of time travel.
(Mad Twin, care to join me???)
Thursday, July 12, 2007
You've been tagged
Um....
Darling Bec from Becandcall (who I am soooo glad to see back in bloggyland) tagged me um, a week ago to do a meme.
Somehow I have managed to hang about the internet for nearly two years and never been tagged before. I am not even at all sure I know what a meme is.
Apparently the rules are that I have to give eight random facts about myself (though quite why anyone needs/wants to know eight random facts about me I don't honestly know)... and then tag eight other people. I have to check out with these eight others whether they've done this meme before, cos I haven't a clue what's going on.
So, Bec. Thanks a bunch.
Here goes nothing....
1. I am a fifth daughter of a third daughter. Sadly that doesn't make me a witch.
2. I have no idea where my grandmother came in the family pecking order, so my chances of being a witch have just reduced further.
3. My husband is a third son of an only son. So he isn't a wizard/warlock either.
4. I really wish magic were true. (Can't you tell?).
5. I have never recovered from the disappointment of discovering that Narnia wasn't hidden in the back of my wardrobe.
6. I am looking forward to the last Harry Potter book mainly to prove to my oldest daughter that I am right and she is wrong: namely that Snape is a double agent.
7. I have yet to work out a way of whiling away the time till Dr Who returns. (Watching endless repeats will help).
8. If I can't have magic, I'll settle for David Tennant instead.
Um... so now I have to tag some people apparently.
Is this a bit like chain letters, and will all the people I tag hate me forever?
If they'll let me, I tag the following people:
Lesley Cookman
Bernardine Kennedy
Lucy Diamond
Kate Harrison
Rivergirlie
Struggling Author
Lisa Rullsenberg
Zinnia Cyclamen.
If you object, I won't mind at all....
Darling Bec from Becandcall (who I am soooo glad to see back in bloggyland) tagged me um, a week ago to do a meme.
Somehow I have managed to hang about the internet for nearly two years and never been tagged before. I am not even at all sure I know what a meme is.
Apparently the rules are that I have to give eight random facts about myself (though quite why anyone needs/wants to know eight random facts about me I don't honestly know)... and then tag eight other people. I have to check out with these eight others whether they've done this meme before, cos I haven't a clue what's going on.
So, Bec. Thanks a bunch.
Here goes nothing....
1. I am a fifth daughter of a third daughter. Sadly that doesn't make me a witch.
2. I have no idea where my grandmother came in the family pecking order, so my chances of being a witch have just reduced further.
3. My husband is a third son of an only son. So he isn't a wizard/warlock either.
4. I really wish magic were true. (Can't you tell?).
5. I have never recovered from the disappointment of discovering that Narnia wasn't hidden in the back of my wardrobe.
6. I am looking forward to the last Harry Potter book mainly to prove to my oldest daughter that I am right and she is wrong: namely that Snape is a double agent.
7. I have yet to work out a way of whiling away the time till Dr Who returns. (Watching endless repeats will help).
8. If I can't have magic, I'll settle for David Tennant instead.
Um... so now I have to tag some people apparently.
Is this a bit like chain letters, and will all the people I tag hate me forever?
If they'll let me, I tag the following people:
Lesley Cookman
Bernardine Kennedy
Lucy Diamond
Kate Harrison
Rivergirlie
Struggling Author
Lisa Rullsenberg
Zinnia Cyclamen.
If you object, I won't mind at all....
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