Website

Am in the process of rebuilding my website (or rather getting someone to do it for me properly!), so if you happen to stumble across there at the moment you won't find anything. Hoping to get it up and running soon, with a much more proactive and zingy website, and news of and I hope cover of Last Christmas. Will keep you posted!

If you like cooking I may well be putting recipes up there from time to time, as part of pr for the new book (my heroine does a lot of cooking, and so do I.)Haven't quite worked that one out though, and entirely unclear as to the copyright issues relating to recipes, given that I never have all the ingredients so do tend to make stuff up as I go along. Cooking. A metaphor for my life...

A birthday trip down memory lane (not for the faint hearted)

This time of year is our birthday season. And today it's no 2's turn. Her birthday coming only two weeks after no 1's, means no 2 sometimes feels no one is quite as interested in her big day. Added to which, it being in half term means it's often a bit of a damp squib. Five of her birthdays have been spent away from home (though on the plus side, last time we went away she got three cakes as a result). We also missed her 7th birthday because Spouse took me to Venice to celebrate my 40th (and has she ever let us forget that one? Why no. I think she'll be reminding me on my deathbed.) This year she was mighty pissed off when she discovered that no 1 would be on a school trip to Germany, and has only been mollified by copious texts and no 1 promising her an "extremely coolio Geburtstag pressie" (any parody of Georgia Nicholson fully intended. I think no 1 fantasises about being Georgia Nicholson - I don't think the reason she now calls us Mutti and Vati has anything to do with learning German properly.)

I meant to mark the occasion of no 2's tenth birthday as I did no 1's here with a rhapsodising post about the joys of her birth, but somehow didn't get to it last year. So instead, as I muse rather sadly that I am losing my second little girl to a preteen hormonal world of secondary school and semi independence, I'll take that nostalgic look back now....

After no 1's birth which was hugely traumatic, I did think for a while I couldn't face going through the whole shebang again. But Nature is a cunning Old Bird, and when no 1 hit one, she got me bang between the eyes. One year old babies are just beautiful. Gorgeous, funny, engaging. Doing new things all the time. Not so demanding as when they first come out. So you get completely besotted with them to the extent that you forget all the horror of their birth and the early weeks of no sleep and no life, and suddenly your body is screaming at you I WANT ANOTHER ONE NOW!!!! So it was that I forgot my resolve that no 1 would be an only one on whom I could shower all my love and affection, and by the time she reached her second birthday her new sibling's arrival was imminent.

I never seemed to manage labour straightforwardly - well, ok does anyone? -but my babies all went into stop start mode, so I'd have really strong contractions for a bit which sent me scurrying into hospital, only for everything to stop and I'd come home the next day with my tail between my legs feeling both disappointed and stupid. It was very very tiresome.

And after all those shenagigans which went on for weeks before the baby arrived, the little buggers turned up late.

No 2 was due on 23 May, but showed no signs of arriving so I had an appointment on 28 May to do a swipe (you don't want to know, but clever way of getting a baby moving) and was given another appointment for an induction should that not work. As no 1 was induced I wasn't keen to repeat the experience, so it was a mighty relief that no 2 showed signs of arrival in the afternoon.
My mother was staying with me on standby to look after no 1, and by midafternoon was keen to get me into hospital. I wasn't budging till I knew for definite the baby was on its way, so I made her take me for a walk around the park, during which I had to pause for the odd contraction. I was strangely relaxed. After the absolute hideousness of having no 1, doing it naturally seemed like a doddle in comparison.

At teatime the contractions were coming closer together, but I insisted on feeding no 1, and then bathing her, even though my mother was practically pleading with me to go in. It was only when reading no 1 her bedtime story that I conceded defeat. I had a rather puzzled two year old, saying Keep going, Mummy, when I kept having to pause from reading as I breathed my way through contractions which were definitely on the wrong side of painful.

So Spouse and I set off for the hospital, which is luckily only ten minutes away. All was calm when we arrived. We were ushered into a labour room, examined, I was strapped up to a monitor, given some gas and air and we were left to it for a bit. Being in a labour room is really really strange. You lie there looking at your bump, trying to think about something other then the pain, and trying and failing to imagine your new baby lying in the empty crib awaiting it. Everytime I did it, it felt weirdly surreal.

The midwife was popping in and out checking up on me, and it became very clear after a bit, that the ward was incredibly busy. To the point that, having examined me and discovered I was still only 2cm dilated (another incovenient fact of the way I gave birth was my babies took HOURS in the first stage of labour, and because I wasn't at 3cm and therefore officially in labour, no one ever took my pain seriously) she suggested I go home. I'm sure they needed the room I was in, as although I really really didn't want to budge, somehow we were persuaded that going home was a really good idea. Have a nice hot bath, were the midwife's parting words.

Now. I had been to antenatal classes for nos 1&2. I had read nearly every book on childbirth I could lay my hands on. I knew that labour takes two stages. Stage one when the cervix contracts. Stage two when the baby is born. I also knew that in between stages one and two there is a transitional stage, which can involve: confusion, irrational behaviour and violent shaking. Did I recognise all of these things when they happened to me? No dear reader, I did not.
So there I was lying in my bath, thinking, oh yes, I remember this from last time, this feels soo nice, and all was going swimmingly as it were, when all of a sudden, the nice easy controlled contractions I'd been experiencing turned into the most godawful shuddering bodyshaking pains I have ever felt. I hadn't a clue what was going on, but suddenly that lovely feeling of being in control vanished and I was a gibbering wreck. I fortunately had enough presence of mind to get out of the bath, and just about enough to resist the temptation to go the loo, but otherwise I was a complete mess. I wandered up and down the landing moaning pathetically, dripping with water, resembling no doubt a rather large and sad looking fat whale. I called downstairs to Spouse, who couldn't hear me (my moans really were that pathetic), but I couldn't quite work out that I needed to either get dresssed or shout louder. Eventually, I must have done the second, as Spouse came and found me. To do him credit he didn't burst out laughing, as I think he would have been quite entitled to, but instead tried to find me some clothes.

At that point I turned into Mad Labouring Mother From Hell.

Where are you leggings? he asked
In the drawer, I replied, not actually telling him which one.
Not that bloody drawer, you idiot!!

He had to put up with quite alot more of this until he managed to get me back in the car. I can remember clinging to the passenger handle for dear life everytime one of the enormous body wracking contractions hit me (which seemed to be about every five seconds), and then when Spouse miraculously got us to hospital in one piece, I climbed out of the car, and felt the most incredible urge to push. Wtf? I'd left hospital less then two hours before, I couldn't believe the baby was on its way.

Somehow between contractions which involved me stopping where I was, refusing to move and clinging to Spouse like a drowning woman, we managed to get up to the labour ward. By now I was raving like a lunatic and demanding an instant epidural. They tried to give me gas and air instead, and I kept spitting it out, effing and blinding that it was doing no good whatsoever. In the midst of all this, I was dimly aware that all the staff seemed to be moving swiftly into battle stations, and someone was ripping my leggings off. I spotted Spouse with a silly grin on his face. Suddenly the penny dropped.

Oh. Is the baby coming? I said stupidly.
Er, yes, was the patient answer. Followed by a stern lecture from the midwife that I needed to get myself under control if I wanted my baby to come out and be placed straight in my arms.
Three pushes later, and suddenly I was being presented with a wriggling writhing little alien. Spouse and I were so shocked at the speed of it we could barely speak.

I looked down at her in awe. Second baby. I was now a mother of two. It felt just as good as the first time.

Still does. Actually.

She might feel neglected, and overlooked sometimes. But no 2 has always made her presence felt since her dramatic entry into the world. And on her eleventh birthday I thank her for the fun she brings into my life, for the laughter, even for the tantrums. She's one in a million.

The first eleven years have fled by far too fast. Can't wait to see what the next eleven bring...

For my special, A. With love on your birthday.

PS just realised, the word I was looking for was sweep, not swipe. Blame the next phase of my hormonal womanly journey. Am having huge trouble remembering the simplest of words. Not very helpful for a writer...

Five Live Richard Bacon show

If you are a chick lit fan, if you like the brilliant Kate Harrison, and if you happen to be near a radio at midnight tonight, tune into Five Live to hear her discussing chick lit with Richard Bacon.
You can read more about it here. If you don't have the stamina for late night radio, you can always listen again tomorrow...

Teenage Kicks ( a slightly self indulgent, spoilery post)

As of last Friday we have a teenager in the house. (She is already thoroughly sick of jokes about turning into Kevin, particularly as she has never seen that episode of Harry Enfield.)

And inevitably of late we've also been watching a lot of current teen movies. Along with all her peers, no 1's current obsession is Twilight. (If you haven't heard of/read Stephanie Myers bestselling series, you clearly don't know any teenage girls.)

Twilight interested me from the off, as in my previous existence, when I had a proper job and everything I used to edit a teen fiction series called Point Horror. (So anyone reading this, who was a teenager in the early 90s, you partly have me to thank for any nightmares you may have had.) Actually, by today's standards PH was pretty tame: the stories in the main were fairly formulaic: a group of high school kids would a)find themselves in an isolated location b)be stalked/terrified by local looney/ghost/vampire/any other terrifying thing you can think of c)there was usually a love interest who may or may not be trustworthy and d) it all worked out in the end. (Apart from a brilliantly shlocky mini series called The Babysitter, which went through to Part IV - the original heroine who was stalked by scary person while babysitting ended up so demented she became the stalker/looney tunes by the end.)

I absolutely loved working on Point Horror. The stories were formulaic, but they were incredibly well written and pacy, and one or two were a cut above the rest. (I still rate my favourite PH, The Fever by Diane Hoh incredibly highly. A teenage girl is trapped in a hospital suffering from a mysterious fever, and hallucinating wildly. Someone is trying to kill her. Or are they?.... - use of ellipses is essential in describing any PH - It's such a terrifying premise, and Diane Hoh so brilliantly captures the vulnerability of being stuck in hospital with no one believing a word you say, that I think it could almost work written for an adult audience.)

I learnt masses about the appeal of popular fiction, how to write cliffhanger endings (master of the CE, a certain Mr RL Stine, who was also responsible for terrifying a generation of 8-10 year olds with his brilliant Goosebumps series), and how important such stories are in reaching kids for whom books and reading has passed them by. One of the very best bits of my job was receiving letters from kids, often wildly misspelt. So many of them said, I'd never read a book till I read a Point Horror, now I'm reading lots of different things. It made my job incredibly rewarding (and ok, yes, of course I loved reading the stories, and thinking, hey I get paid to do this.)

I see Stephanie Meyers' series in the same tradition as PH. Things have moved on of course, now. We weren't allowed to do sex ever (though I spread into other genres and I did publish and outrageously cheesy Beverley Hills 90210 lookylikey series called Ocean City which was pretty much a shag fest - all done in the most impeccable good taste), as though our target market was 12+ we knew that PHs were being read by 1o year olds. (An aside to that, we got into terrible trouble at the time of the Jamie Bulger trial, as two of my crime books: School for Death/Shoot the Teacher ended up in a primary school thanks to our book fairs, and the head teacher accused us of moral corruption. Story got picked up by the mainstream press, and Sunday Sport ran an article with a picture of one of our PH covers, which featured a bloody trainer - of course there was blood on the trainer that was used to kill Jamie, therefore we were responsible for the moral degeneration of today's kids, dontcha know? Anyone reading this who was a PH fan, please enlighten me if you think I debauched you. I'd love to know (-:)

Twilight is probably a lot more graphic then anything I edited, but as it focuses more on the emotional intensity of the relationship between the heroine Bella and the vampire Edward, to whom she is irresistibly drawn (and boy does it focus on that - jeez, I was all emotionally intensed out by the end), the sex angle is quite downplayed. And though the bad vampires (Edward and his family only feed off animals - in a rather witty quip, he tells Bella they're "vegetarian" vampires) do some fairly nasty stuff, it isn't graphic (just compare it with Interview with a Vampire and you'll see how toned down teen vampires are.) With my editor's hat on, I'd say Twilight could have been cut considerably - the most exciting bit happens in the last third of the book, the first two thirds have far too much of Bella and Edward mooning over each other (although Edward is an exceptionally sexy vampire, so I do get the appeal). Having watched the film yesterday, I'd say it suffers from the same problem (although it is quite moody, and I liked the grainy way it was shot). There were A. Lot. Of. Significant. Looks. And. Pauses. Which. I. Could. Have. Done. Without. And I found Robert Pattison's Edward deeply unsexy. I could have also done without so many vampire characters (a failing of the book as well) as I got them all muddled up. However, Kirsten Stewart's Bella is wonderful, and I also loved the character of Carlisle (he is outstanding in the book too) - the honourable vampire who is teaching them all to be better then they are. Interestingly enough, as Spouse pointed out, the whole thing is a metaphor for sexual restraint, which is quite refreshing in an era when our children are bombarded with sexual imagery and the expectation that they will be doing it before the end of their teens (before they're even legal in some cases....)

So. Not a bad effort, for a teen film. But not as good as the teen classic of my era: Gregory's Girl, which Spouse and I caught the end of last night. Actually, I have to fess up and say I've never managed to see this one all the way through (what can I say? I didn't have a boyfriend at the time, and it was a dating kind of film. My twin did, so she went and told me the plot, so I didn't need to go(-:) Watching it last night I was first struck with an OMG Did I really wear that moment? as one of the girls was wearing a print skirt with a Hawaiian beach scene, horribly reminscent of the one I had aged 16, and which I sadly loved. And secondly, I thought despite the sweet innocence of it, Susan who manipulates Gregory into going out with her seems way ahead of him in experience terms. And I loved the way it was her that walked him home, a really forward thinking stroke, that, for the time. I really must watch the whole film sometime...

A better modern comparison with Gregory's Girl, though, which is another of No1's favourite films is: Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging (the UK book from which this film comes, is actually, Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging, but the US market still hilariously pretends to be prudish). The film is based on Louise Renison's best selling series, and features Georgia Nicolson, who is the inner teenager we all were.

I absolutely loved this film, because, while there are comments about thongs, and bras (hilariously, the bitchy character pads herself up) and slight whispers of sex, it is, like Gregory's Girl, a really innocent film. As a parent, I completely love the relationship between Alan Davies and Karen Taylor and the wry looks they throw one another as Georgia embarks on one potty scheme after another (guilty as charged. Spouse and I do that ALL the time.) But I also love it because it captures perfectly (as every good teen film should) the agonies, the ecstacies, the sheer embarrassment of teenage life. It's also superb on female friendships, and the awkwardness of dating boys. And it cheered me up to think that perhaps teenage life hasn't altered that irrevocably from my day, and despite my fears about the next few years featuring sex drugs and rock n roll, it might all turn out to be tamer then I think...

Here's hoping anyway...

Just cos you can, doesn't mean you should

Many many years ago when I was a very junior production assistant at an academic publishers, I was taken to visit a printing factory, as periodically happens when you work on the production side of books. Part of the deal is you usually get a fancy lunch out of it, and with this particular printers, they offered you a choice of free books from the bookshop attached to the printing works. I was very new to the job and the industry, and not entirely sure what the form was. Should I demand a huge thick hardback, or find the cheapest paperback going? Eventually after umming and aahing for ages, I panic grabbed a selection of Metaphysical poetry (which still graces my shelves now, as it happens).

I was mortified about the whole thing, particularly as my work colleague refused to accept anything. He told me later, that he didn't like being given presents by printers (it was the end of the 80s and we were frequently given bottles of wine or spirits, particularly at Christmas. The printers I knew then were so generous, I didn't buy any alcohol at all for our engagement party ). His thinking was that by accepting the gift, he was in effect accepting a bribe - you give me a case of wine at Christmas, and I promise you work in the New Year, irrespective of the fact that your work isn't a) competitively priced and b) up to scratch. He was right too. Our boss at the time was far too cosy with one particular typesetter, and it didn't seem to matter how crap their work was, we still had to use them.

I mention all this now, because of course I have been totally transfixed by the MPs expense stories. I'm inclined to agree with Stephen Fry that as usual the media have blown it out of proportion, and that everyone is guilty to a greater or lesser extent to taking/accepting things in the course of their work life to which they're not entitled. You don't think so? Ever taken a post it note pad or a pack of pens home? MPs have been doing the same but on a greater scale. We live in a society which more or less dictates that you should get something for nothing, even if you don't deserve it. It's your right, don't you know? So I disagree with Stephen Fry that it doesn't matter that a few MPs (and let's face it, it really isn't all of them) have gone up to their limit on expenses, because as he rightly points out journalists are probably just as guilty of doing the same, because the whole point about it is that while technically they may not have done anything wrong, morally I think they have. Just because you can claim expenses for your second home, doesn't mean to say you should.

For a very brief period when I was an editor I was given a company credit card. It was mainly for business lunches, a part of the job I loathed - it is a perk for an author, and it's very nice being taken out for lunch now, but it's not strictly necessary - and for business travel and other work related expenses. It wouldn't have dawned on me to go and stay in a posh hotel, or travel first class and charge it to the company. (Although I still feel guilty about the bottle of champers I was persuaded to buy at a Christmas party which technically I shouldn't have. Luckily there was a mistake and it never came through on the bill (-:) Apart from the fact that in my view it would have been wrong to do so, I also felt quite strongly that if we all wasted company money we were shooting ourselves in the foot, because it necessarily would impact on the company profits and ultimately, our jobs.

Such considerations don't seem to have held any water at all for MPs. Indeed, some of them genuinely don't seem to get why people are so upset, that the people paid to represent them are using taxpayer's money to improve their properties, escape CGT and make a profit at our expense, particularly during a recession. Hazel Blears still doesn't get it. I can't stand Hazel Blears, she always looks so bloody perky, like a demented little elf. And there she was on the news last night, perkily showing off a cheque to show she was going to do the "right thing" and pay the money back, which she should never have had in the first place. She was smiling away like we should be bloody pleased for her, still unable to grasp that we all know she's only paying it back because she's been found out. There's no moral integrity there whatsoever.

I shouldn't just pick on Hazel Blears though. Michael Martin's performance in the commons, slapping down the likes of Kate Hoey (now Hazel Blears could learn a thing or two about integrity from her) was atrocious. He's another one who arrogantly thinks that the common people don't need to know what their lords and masters are getting up to in the Commons. But then it's not in his interest to make the system more transparent and open, given that he's had investigations against him in the past.

The Tories haven't exactly been squeaky clean either (though I applaud Cameron's swift and decisive action in vowing to stamp out bad practice) - what the fuck does Douglas Hogg need a moat for? And does David Willets really not know the cost of lightbulbs? How can these guys represent us, when they're so out of touch? The most depressing discovery for me, though, has been finding out that our MP, Chris Grayling has claimed for at least two, if not three flats outside of his family home in Ashtead. He can easily commute to Westminster. Why does he need a flat in London? (I can understand the logic for MPs who live miles away, but anyone within the M25 should not be allowed to claim on a second home, I reckon. I always had to get myself home after work functions. So should they.) I had a lot of respect for Chris Grayling - he's a good constituency MP and I voted for him on the back of it. I think my vote may well be going elsewhere next time, unless he can prove that the £68000 he has apparently claimed in expenses is all legit.

The Lib Dems, so far don't seem to have come out of it too badly. After the disappointment over Chris Grayling, I was hoping against hope there wouldn't be bad news about Vince Cable, who has been a beacon of light and common sense during the global financial crisis, so I'm glad to see my faith in him is borne out. And having thought of Nick Clegg as a Cameron clone, I've had a lot more respect for him this week - although I've just looked his expense claims up and he's pushed it to the limit. Vince Cable, incidentally always commutes by train. Yay, for Vince Cable. Make him leader of the Lib Dems and I might just start voting for them again.

This has been a crap week for democracy in this country. A once honourable institution is looking severely shabby and dishonourable (mind you notions like honour don't cut much ice these days, so maybe we shouldn't care so much). There is a possibility of redemption: if Parliament can put its own house in order, remind MPs of what a privilege it is to represent the people, and teach them to abide not just by the letter of the law but by the spirit of it, then maybe we can get the government we deserve.

If not. We all know there's going to be an election next year. We have an opportunity to punish the lot of them. We should use our vote, and use it well.

Tempus fugit

We're just starting our birthday season - 4/6 of us have birthdays between May and July, leaving Spouse and no 4 alone a week apart in February.

The festivities have already kicked off as no 1 had her 13th birthday party on Saturday, although the big day itself is Friday.

13. I cannot believe I have a child who is going to be 13. It feels like I've blinked and she's gone all grown up on me. It hasn't helped that recently we found a whole bunch of videos we took when she was tiny - I don't feel I've changed a lot in the last decade (well ok, I have aged ten years, sigh), but my little toddler is now unrecognisable, and what's more her younger sisters who all seemed so tiny, only, what? minutes ago, are fast catching up.

Having moaned incessantly about the hardship of coping with babies and toddlers when they were small,, I now find myself in the inconsistently hypocritcal position of mourning the lack of littlies in the house. Come September I won't even have a child in the infants any more. How did that happen? And I can remember soooo clearly saying to one of my sisters when no 1 started school that I had nine years to look forward to of this, and now, poof! they've vanished. Mind you with the vanishing years has gone any impetus/enthusiasm I once had for helping out at Christmas fairs and the like, so it probably is Time To Move On.

Come September, no 2 will also be off to secondary school to join her sister (I am hoping with somewhat less trauma then no 1 had, at least no 2 knows what's coming), so for the first time ever I will only have two children on the school run (which of course, had I been sensible like normal people is what I'd have had all along). It feels like a massive change. And I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

Apart from anything else I keep having conversations with parents of teens which fill me with horror. Not only do I have my current maternal angsts of worrying about them being out and about on their own or getting run over because they think they are too grown up now to look both ways when they cross the road, to contend with, I apparently also have to look forward to them: drinking at a far earlier age then I did, having sex at a far earlier age then I did, and probably throwing a few druggie experiments in too boot. I have a feeling the only way to stay sane through all of this is to shut my eyes, hold my breath, cross my fingers and wait for them all to grow up. Maybe they will be like Zagazoo, Quentin Blake's hilarious take on parenthood, where a couple get a baby called Zagazoo, who as a small child is sometimes an elephant, or a dragon or a monkey, but when he turns into a teenager is more of a monosyllabic Yeti. Then one day they wake up and he is a polite young man offering them cups of tea. Yup. I think I could settle for that...

In the meantime I think I'll lie down in a darkened room waving a fan over my head, and praying that somehow they'll grow up all right, without me getting a day older...

Sod's law dictates...

... that following my last post I have been struck down with the mother of all colds. Have been feeling so rotten, if I were a man I'd be sure to think I had bird flu. (Actually will exempt my man from that comment as he most definitely doesn't do man flu and if he is ever ill has to be forced to lie down to get better.)

Anyway. Said horrible cold has led me to observe a number of things, which suggest some fatal flaws in the catch it, bin it, wash it approach to keeping diseases at bay...

1. As I started sneezing in Sainsbury's on Thursday when all the newswires in the world were going crazy about swine flu , I did try to discreetly sneeze into my shoulder as suggested, as not realising I was going to be so afflicted I'd come out without any tissues. However, this doesn't work when you are overtaken by a series of quickfire sneezes that take you so much by surprise you wouldn't have time to catch them, even if you HAD a tissue about your person...
2. Once I had purchased enough tissues, I thought to keep me going till Christmas, I realised how inherently wasteful the catch it system is. You sneeze into a tissue (if gunfire staccato type sneezing allows you time to), throw it in the bin and before you know it you've whipped through yet another pack of Kleenex's finest. It isn't exactly environmentally friendly. Which generally seems to be the case about trying to wage war against microbes. Spouse came back from a scary talk given by a microbiologist some months ago to announce that from now on all his lab coats had to go on a boil wash at least, or we were all going to die from the terrible microbes attached to the fibres of his coats which had come out of his patients' gobs. This doesn't sit very well with our environmentally friendly eco washing machine which suggests we wash everything at 30 degrees... (I do so love it when two mutually exclusive ideas clash).
3. Even though I spend most of my time at home, do you know how HARD it is to wash your hands every time you sneeze? Particularly when you are firing rounds of ammunition at a rate of about five sneezes a minute. Sneeze. Check. Catch it. Check. Wash hands. Check. Sneeze again. Check. Caught it. Just. Wash hands. Check. Sneeze. Check. Damned missed it. Shit. Forgot to bin the tissue from first two sneezes. Better do that now. Damn. Sneezed again, and didn't have time to catch it in my tissue, or my sleeve. Now hands, nose, eyes everything dripping. Should I just go and stand under a shower of dettol???

And don't get me even started about how hard it is to maintain at night. I spent the early hours of Tuesday morning sneezing every time I put my head on the pillow. If I'd gone to wash my hands every time I'd done it, I'd have probably created a local water shortage.

Still. It's nice to know in these credit crunch times at least tissue companies are going to be making money. In fact. It might just be worth us all investing the little money we have left in Kleenex...

Don't panic, Captain Mainwaring!

So. We're on the verge of a flu pandemic apparently.

Pig flu out of control! screeched the responsible Super Soaraway Sun the other day, and that was before they'd upgraded to level 5. Mind you, I didn't think the BBC News on Tuesday night was much better - as the newsreader solemnly told us we were currently at a level 3 in terms of seriousness of the situation, a colour code showing levels 4 and 5 popped up on the screen, erroneously giving the impression to anyone walking in the room at that moment that we were already at level 4. Don't panic indeed...

I do appreciate the government is treading a tricky path on this one in the sense that if they don't mention the fact that we should be concerned (and I think there is a genuine worry that this may well be the pandemic all the health professionals have been talking about for years) and it goes global it will be a disaster, but if they do panic everyone and then nothing happens it's another situation where they've cried wolf. And then when the real pandemic happens no one will believe them.

Because the pandemic will happen at some point - Spouse has been coming back from courses for years telling me this. The NHS have spent billions getting ready for it (so a little cynical part of me thinks they need it to happen now to justify the expense. Either that or it's a good way for the government to divert our attention from the financial mess they've got us into).

However, even if this it - and I think it probably isn't because a)we're coming to the end of the flu season and it's likely to die out b) by all accounts the version of the virus that's come here is quite weak and c) in Mexico they're already reporting fewer cases - I think some perspective is needed here.

Flu is a seasonal disease that is most virulent in the winter. Under normal circumstances it affects the vulnerable and the elderly (the vulnerable include asthmatics - so my two who have it will definitely be getting the flu jab this year, a precaution I don't always take) and in this country roughly 12000 people die a year from flu. The concern about any pandemic is that the demographic changes and everyone will be affected (though, not those apparently over 45 - there is a plus side to getting older, I said sweetly to Spouse earlier in the week, given that he has just turned 45. He tells me that is irrelevant actually, he's just as vulnerable as we mere 43 year olds.) However, the projected death numbers are expected to be in the region of 50 000. Of course that is a vast number of normally healthy people to die, and if it was anyone in my family I'm sure I wouldn't be so sanguine. But. Out of a population of 6 million people it is a very very small percentage. Plus think how many people are dying weekly across Africa of a variety of different diseases.

If (or more likely when) we do have a pandemic at some point, the main thing really is not to panic, to observe sensible hygiene routines (my friend who attended all the courses says use tissues, bag and dispose of them straight away, and WASH your hands. You wouldn't believe how many people don't. Spouse says (gross as this sounds) you should cough/or sneeze into your shoulder. Everytime you sneeze on your hands and don't wash them, you risk infecting every surface you touch. THAT'S how flu spreads, so very simple precautions can minimise that.

Having said that, I don't think ultimately we can stop it happening once it starts, because the global village has simply become too small. But are we likely to have an apocalyptic Survivor type plague? Nah. I don't think so.

So I'm not panicking...

Welcome, baby Buzz!

Three years ago, I became a great auntie for the first time. As I had only just got my head round being 40, using the ephitet great aunt was a bit of shock. Luckily the great niece is so beautiful I have forgiven my equally beautiful niece for making me feel so old.

Last night BN gave birth to BGN's new brother. Baby Buzz, as he has been in utero (and which is such a cool name, I think I shall call him that for perpetuity, ESPECIALLY when he hits 21) has given his mother no end of grief prior to arrival in this world, so we are all hoping he will behave himself now he is here. Unfortunately his sister has chosen this moment to contract chicken pox, so I hope she's not too spotty to go near him...

I still don't feel like a great auntie, but having a new nephew is a wonderful thing, particularly as he shares the name we would have given no 1 had she been a boy (the which I was so convinced of I didn't believe she was a girl at first. In my defence, I had had a lot of pethadine...)

So welcome, Baby Buzz, into the world, and congrats to your very longsuffering and tired mummy. She deserves a rest now, I think...

For R, J, I and D with love...

Unbelievable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fire up the Quattro!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A whole feast of family fun...

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


Him...

Or Him (sorry Lisa)...

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

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Me

(David Benson as Tim, Rupert Hill as Peter)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet...

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

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

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

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

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

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

SueScott Davison Productions presents FUTURE ME By Stephen Brown

Directed by Guy Retallack

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

Future Me can be seen at:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additionally, I used :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...and something rather more troubling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Horns of a Dilemma...

What do you know?

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

or him?

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

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

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

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

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

On the other hand...

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

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

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

A Bad Tempered Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, it seemed like a good plan...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wrong...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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