MAY 2004
Mon 31st May, 8:20pm
Felix said his longest ever sentence today. He went running in from the garden to find Ally and say "Mummy play tunnel Daddy come on come on play!" Sorry, that's probably horrendously cutesy. But it's true!
In other news, I'm beginning to accept chaos as the defining structure in my life. Order is so yesterday, darling. Who knows, I may even learn to stop being a control freak.
Mon 31st May, 2:40pm
I’ve cheated a bit. I’ve thought of a load of stuff I forgot to mention, and I’ve edited yesterday’s post. Think of it as Spot The Difference. If you can find the four new additions, you get a prize.
Sun 30th May, late at night
Blimey. I have about a fortnight’s worth of stuff to catch up on, but it feels like a whole lifetime.
It was Felix’s birthday on 19th May, and I finally got to play with his new choo-choo. There’s a funny thing about language. Felix is at nursery full time, so he learns a lot of words there which we find hard to decipher when he brings them home. For ages I’ve been calling trains “toot toots” because I thought that’s what he was calling them. It turns out he was probably originally calling them “choo-choos” but seeing as I was calling them toot toots then so was he… but now I’ve decided to call them choo-choos which means he’s now the only one calling them toot toots… Anyway, the choo-toot was a success.
Then on Friday he got chicken pox. We’d just about recovered from the news of Ally’s redundancy, and were all packed up and ready to go to London, via York, where we were supposed to be dropping Felix off with my incredibly helpful parents. Cue a load of frantic phone calls. Add a car which broke down on the way to work, and then the news that I was going on the radio with the editor of a nasty right-wing rag (the Daily Express), and you might begin to imagine the stress levels. Oh, and there was of course the minor matter that we were only days away from a multimedia performance, had never even seen the visuals, and then discovered at the last minute that they weren’t in the format we thought they were going to be (which was our fault, by the way).
Still, by Sunday afternoon Felix was in York, we were in London, the visuals were in our hand and we’d found a marvellously helpful person to transfer them into the correct format. We’d even managed to look at them. But the planned rehearsal went a bit awry when we discovered that the new format didn’t work, and we’d left the CD decks and mike stand behind in London. But Bella and Greg, our hosts for the week, came up trumps x 10 when they found replacement CD decks and mike stand, as well as transferring the visuals to a new format. Which worked.
We’d arrived in London the day before, and I’d run straight back out of the house to dash across town and meet my brand new nephew Joseph for the very first time. My journey started on a bus ride down Caledonian Rd, so I drove right past Prowler Stores and started to get very excited indeed. This was it. Me. In London. For the launch of my first ever book. I got terribly romantic about London, revelling in every little detail of Caledonian Rd, particularly the perfectly-named little solicitor’s office, “Harter & Loveless”.
I decided that there are two things I want to achieve out of all this: I want to have adventures, and I want to be remembered when I’m gone. The first wish is cheap and almost laudable, but the hankering after fame is terribly self absorbed. I don’t even know how I want or expect to be remembered. It doesn’t help that I don’t even seem to know who I am, or at least I struggle to describe myself. That nice polite girl? The insane warbler? Fuck knows. But it doesn’t matter, because even though I will almost certainly fade into obscurity and die unknown, there are books which have my name on the spine and if last Tuesday was my fifteen minutes of fame, it was worth it.
When I walked into my sister’s flat on Saturday evening, her partner was holding my nephew on his knee, and it was amazing how I was drawn to him. Joseph, not his dad. I had to hold him straightaway – I could hardly put my bags down quick enough. He’s utterly gorgeous. I’d even say he’s more beautiful than Felix was. I’m smitten. Blood really is thicker than water, eh?
On Monday I was on the radio with the deputy editor of the Daily Star (not the editor of the Daily Express). After having panicked about having to discuss politics the night before the launch, and then being reassured that it was a very lighthearted show and I was unlikely to have to talk about anything more taxing than sex and soap operas… I ended up arguing about nationalism and the St George cross flag for half an hour. And did a really bad job of plugging my book. I was a nervous wreck by the end of it, but the phone lines went mad and they rang me the next day to tell me how much the presenter liked me and to ask me to go back on the show whenever I’m in London. And like a fool, I agreed. I’m going back on Monday 12th July.
There’s also some vague possibility that I’m going to be on Woman’s Hour (Radio 4) some time next week. Then again, I might not. I was told GMR (local BBC radio in Manchester) and then I was told “BBC Manchester’s Woman’s Hour”. Well, Woman’s Hour is produced in Manchester, but then again maybe GMR just have an equivalent show. Who knows. It’s pretty exciting either way.
So, what about the launch?? Oh hang on, I forgot to mention that on Monday, before going on the radio, I went round to Emily Dubberley’s for tea. It’s so nice when internet friendships pay off. There’s always that lurking doubt that all those vital bits of body language that are lost in email conversations will add up to one big shock when you finally do the face-to-face thing. But no, luvverly Emily Dubberley is just how I thought she would be. Which means we nattered non-stop at each other for several hours and then I was late for the radio thing. Yay! And it wasn’t until I was sitting in the studio that I replayed the evening and realised I’d just spent the last fifteen minutes at Emily’s giving her sore shoulder a massage, and not even giving a second thought to the intimacy of the moment – that’s the kind of stuff makes you know you’ve got a new friend.
So, the launch. Once I was actually in the venue, a roll of gaffer tape in my hand, plugging things in and taping things down, I was happy. All the technical tomfoolery came together at the last minute, and the performance went better than we could have dared. I was paranoid throughout that it was going on for too long, even though the signs said otherwise (hushed silence in all the breaks, and not a fidget in sight). Then the end came, and they wouldn’t stop applauding! I didn’t know where to put myself. Tons of people turned up (at least fifty, I reckon), including my agent (well yes, that seems obvious, but we’ve only met once and she hasn’t actually had a chance to represent me for anything yet, seeing as I did it all in the wrong order and found the agent after the publishing deal). Also Mil Millington was there, and a journalist from New Woman (long story).
After the launch we went on to a brilliant little bar called the Lincoln Lounge (on York Way, I recommend it) and had a sort of lock-in (I think – I was too pissed by that time to make sense of it). I suddenly realised that I was finally at the moment I’d building up to for the whole of the previous fortnight. And then of course someone pointed out that the whole of the previous year had been a march towards that point. Well, it felt bloody good.
I did an awful lot of over-enthusiastic nattering with my new friend, the illustrator Francis Blake, who I also met on the internet. Actually I met Mil Millington on the internet, too. And Emily Dubberley. And the amazing Bella, who put us up for the week. And the vast majority of the audience at the launch, seeing as they were nearly all from the Big Chill forum. A nerd? Me? Hurrah for the internet is all I can say.
Oh, and the room we did the launch in was also hosting an exhibition of photos. Of dicks. Well it was in a sex shop, after all. I really think the dicks and the utterly weird live band at the Lincoln Lounge made the night.
So, oh God, tons of other stuff happened but I’m already getting tired and confused. Our friend had a mini nervous breakdown and tried to run away to Iceland, we ended up getting our photos taken in somebody else’s clothes in a bar just off the Portobello Rd, Felix and I danced in a puddle in the pouring rain for half an hour (yes, with chicken pox, and yes I am a terrible mother) and Milwall lost to Man United in the FA cup final (leading to much paranoia from this Mancunian wandering around London on her own, convinced that the sobbing Milwall fan was going to take his grief out on the nearest confused-looking woman with a Northern accent).
Back in Manchester, I’m in City Life and Out Northwest this week, and after a few days of swollen glands and looking after a very trantrummy pox-ridden two-year-old and generally recovering from the last fortnight, I’m now grinding into gear again for Tmesis on the 1st June and then the Manchester launch on 9th June.
Actually, Felix may have started being a bit of a sod in the tantrum department, but it’s amply made up for by his general cuteness (millions of cuddles) and the leaps and bounds of his language skills after only one week. He’s using adjectives left right and centre, he’s somehow learnt the words to the Bob the Builder theme tune, and he now knows what “funny” means. Which is surely a very important life skill. Also he did a hilarious thing yesterday afternoon. He demanded fruit. So we went to the shop and bought fruit. As soon as we were back in the house, he demanded the fruits (ahem) of our labours.
“FRUIT” he said.
“Which kind?” I said. “We have grapes, or apples, or…”
“FRUIT,” he said.
“Well, you can have…”
Then he brought his face very close to mine, put his hands either side of my head and spoke very slowly, in a do-you-speak-English kind of way. “FRUUUIT,” he said.
So I gave him some fruit.
Snoop, Muck and Dizzy, and Roly too (F: “ROLY TOO!”)
Lofty and Wendy join the crew (F: “THE CREW!”)
Bob and the gang have so much fun (F: “MUCH FUN!”)
Working together to get the job done (F: “DONE!”)
Bob the Builder, can we fix it? (F: “FIX IT!”)
Bob the Builder, yes we can! (F: “WE CAN!”)
P.S. I nipped out of the house one day last week to pick up a parcel from the Post Office. I didn’t take my handbag. Which contained my ID. Which I needed to prove the parcel was mine. ALWAYS TAKE A HANDBAG.
P.P.S. I was sitting at the traffic lights on the way back to the Post Office after going back for my handbag, when an old man at the side of the road asked me for a lift. I couldn’t think of a reason to say No, so I waited while he plodded slowly across the road with his walking stick, and let himself into the car, giving me his stick to hold while he did so. After I’d dropped him off a couple of hundred yards up the road as directed, he tapped me for a couple of quid. Which I gave him happily. I enjoyed this little exchange. It made me happy that he felt happy to ask for the lift. It made me smile to think that he probably does it all the time, and presumably with some success. I don’t care if it was just an elaborate form of begging. It made me feel a part of my local community. I hope more random strangers ask me for lifts, and I hope I comply.
P.P.P.S. It’s incredibly hard to write on a bus. You don’t notice how vibraty they are until you get a pen out.
Fri 21st May, half after midnight
Apparently the launch will start at 6.30pm sharp. Forgot to mention that before! [general flappery]
Fri 21st May, 11pm
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I was told I’d be on with a woman called Sam Taylor, editor of the Daily Express. Well, the editor of the Daily Express is a man called Peter Hill.
So I’m now going to stop flapping, go to bed and get some sleep!
(Hopefully they meant Sam Taylor-Wood, the Beckham video Turner-Prize-shortlisted woman. Which would be well cool).
Fri 21st May, 10pm
Where to start? My partner’s been made redundant, my son has chicken pox, I’ve spent the week madly rehearsing and grappling with complicated video format issues, and now I find out I’m on the radio for an hour on Monday night with the editor of the Daily Express.
Could life get any weirder?
I’m setting off for London first thing tomorrow, so no time to write more I’m afraid. I’ll try and write a massive report-back when I get back from the book launch next Wednesday.
P.S. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
Mon 17th May, 11:50pm
It's another one of those bloody after-midnight time slots. Well sod it, this time (although it's actually 2:18am) I'm just going to pretend it's before midnight, and that way I can legitimately claim it's still Monday without causing confusion.
You know, I’ve been a fan of Jilted John’s track “Jilted John” since I was about eight or nine, and me and my sister went halves on it. All that time I thought the lyric went “Listen John I love you, but there’s this bloke I fancy. I don’t want to toot on you, so it’s the end for you and me.”
They had funny southern accents, so I thought “tooting on someone” was some kind of cockney slang for two timing. My mistake has only just been pointed out to me. It was a proper lightbulb moment.
I’m getting nervous again. I had a brief period of calm, although my life has continued to be utterly mental.
After the first copy of the book arrived last week, the baby metaphor was extended, as wellwishers kept popping round to have a look at it, and they all wanted to hold it. It is still (as far as I know) the only copy in Manchester, and people are gratifyingly keen to steal it from me. Every time my friend Saira comes round, she reads a little more of it in a corner, chuckling to herself. This week I think more are arriving, so I can start sending people away with their very own copies. Which means they really might start reading it. Properly. In which case I might have to go and hide under the bed for a bit. Actually I’m already under the bed because of the journalists who have proof copies. Oh help.
Apparently some authors, whenever they go in bookshops, go and retrieve their books from dusty corners and surreptitiously carry them to the front of the store, where they add them to the big “Buy me!” piles. I like the sound of this. And Mil Millington promised he would do it for copies of my book, which is an even better idea. Authors of the world unite. Rah.
Various exciting things have been happening. The June issue of Diva is out, with my interview and a full page ad. The ad is also in G3, and I got an email from someone who noticed it there.
My Nine Ladies article is in this week’s copy of the Big Issue in the North. A double page spread. Yay!
I’m being interviewed by City Life and Out North West tomorrow.
I’m going to be on BBC London radio next Monday night (24th May) talking about what’s in the newspapers for a whole hour with Joanne Good and another guest. You can listen online here.
Oh yes, and I’m now on the Diva Direct website, which is particularly exciting as that was the first place I visited when I heard I was being published by Diva, and finally my book is up there with the others, which makes it seem so much more real. I still can’t quite believe that it’s actually about to happen. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to have largish numbers of people read the book. People I know. Ulp. Back under the bed.
It was Felix’s birthday party on Sunday (yesterday), and it was suitably manic. I’d been dying for it all week so I could get to see him play on his new tunnel/slide/playhouse. Of course in the end he had most fun rolling his cars down the slide. Then this evening I finally coaxed him through the tunnel and into the tiny house, but only by doing it myself first. Given that it’s designed for two-year-olds, I was a little squashed. It was all very Alice. Now I’m dying for his birthday (Wednesday), so that I can play with his new train set!
On Saturday I went shopping for a book launch outfit. I came back with two great new outfits, neither of which are suitable for the launches. Argh. Still, I like them. And that was not a bad hit rate seeing as most stuff doesn’t bloody fit me. The worst part of the day was the designer shop with the minimal furniture, nowhere to hide and the most gorgeous clothing on the planet, all several sizes too small for me. The one I tried on said “large”. Purlease. It’s not even as though I’m fat or anything. Well, not very. I knew it wouldn’t fit me. I really don’t know why I bothered. And then I got into the changing room and discovered no mirror… you had to walk out into the shop, which was so small you were clearly visible to passers by, in order to admire your bulginess and hairy legs in the mirror, while two shop assistants politely looked on. Oh, the humiliation! I left that one extremely demoralised.
I tried refuelling with baked potato. The shop said “BAKED POTATOES” on its frontage and that was it. I thought that they must have got it down to a fine art. I thought that I would surely get a decent spud. But for heaven’s sake, how are you supposed to cut through a well baked tater skin with a flimsy plastic knife and a tiny curved styrofoam dish? And why don’t they give you butter? Bemused is I think the word. It didn’t taste great either. But I enjoyed pulling faces at the bored 3-yr-old who smudged his face up against the window while his parents argued about socks.
There is a shop in Piccadilly Gardens that is absolutely jam packed full of beautiful things. I must note this down for future reference. Sadly they were all quite heavy and by the time I came back past at the end of the day, it was shut.
On Friday night we went to see Oi Va Voi, who were great, but their violinst, Sophie Solomon, was utterly bewitching. I think I’m in love. Ally and I fought over who got to flirt with her afterwards, and both got very excited about being able to say to her, “oh, you’re playing the Big Chill? Yes, we’re on in the MediaMix on the Sunday afternoon…”
They played songs that had 14 beats in the bar. 4, 4, 3, 3 one of them went. I had lots of fun swaying on the dancefloor with my eyes shut and trying to count beats. I got there in the end. Then I raved about it to the lead singer afterwards.
And I remembered (again) because I forgot (again) – that you should always take a handbag! Even though my handbag is more of a mini rucksack, it’s no use, I just can’t train myself into being the kind of woman who carries a handbag.
Why have I never asked the question of how a toilet flush works itself around the rim of the bowl so forcefully and evenly? The amount of times I must stood in shark-infested bathrooms watching the water go down. I simply don’t believe I’ve never asked this question before. Something’s not right.
Wed 12th May, 12.20am (i.e. it's really still Tue night, but I thought if I wrote Tue 11th, people might think it was Monday night)
When Ally accused me of coming upstairs to write my blog for three hours, I insisted that I really was going to bed, but yes, I might just write “my book, my book, my book” in my blog.
I gave birth to a beautiful bouncing baby book today! No pain relief apart from champagne, and no stitches (only a little paper cut).
The first copy arrived in the post this morning, and for all those times I laughed at the new-born book / baby analogies, I sincerely apologise.
It has already matured; my friend Emma has rubbed it against her nipples. This was before she insisted that I bring it to bed with me, inside my bra. Unfortunately there was no room for it. It’s incredibly thick! I did know it had a lot of pages (the dialog stretches it out) but it is only 94,000 words, after all. All written by me! Incredible. I can’t actually believe it. I think I probably asked someone else to write it for me, then murdered them and developed selective amnesia.
Emma has come with a wonderful plan for the launch night in Manchester. She’s going to dress up as a Woolworths checkout girl (she got particularly excited about the possiblility of a check tabard) and sell copies of my book from behind a customised counter. She has a trip to the Early Learning Centre planned specially, just so she can buy one of their toy checkout beepy gadgets. Apparently we have to give her three stars on her name badge. There was also a mention of a tattoo…
…and stickers on lamp posts. Hmm.
I forgot to mention that my friend Gordon described the book as Enid Blyton on acid. Ally says this is quite an accurate description.
There was more, but I’ve forgotten. That’ll be the champagne then.
Tue 11th May, 11.55pm
My book, my book, my book.
Sun 9th May, 6pm
Last night we went to a John Martyn gig. It was brilliant. He has the weirdest collection of accents, only one leg, a wonderfully idiosynractic walking stick, a brilliant onstage blarney (only when you see a singer with character do you realise that most of them don’t have so much) and the best voice in the world.
Before we went in, Ally passed me a shark, which bit me more ferociously than I was expecting. Cue much drifting off into space and making lists of thoughts throughout the whole gig. I really need to get this list-making thing under control. It’s a bit like a gutter that keeps filling up with leaves and needing emptying. Every now and then I had to dash about looking for someone with a pen and writing down the accumulated list. Then a brief period of relief while my brain was mercifully empty again, but it would quickly start to fill. But I think I need to come up with a better analogy than drains.
NB: If you’re stuck for a pen in a public space, approach women with handbags.
NNB (NBB? PNB?): Never forget that handbags contain useful things, and whenever you think “I don’t need it. I’m only going down the road,” you’re almost certainly wrong.
The Lowry Centre is a weird venue for a gig. It’s a proper theatre, with steeply banked terraces(?), and very long narrow rows. This means that if you arrive after the act has started, you cause a ludicrous amount of disruption while you push past people to your seat. You may also get vertigo as you’re so high up. What if everyone got excited and stood up in the seats and danced, etc? What if people got carried away on waves of excitement and started jumping off the balcony? There would be brief euphoria, and then very quickly there would be screams and mayhem, and the atmopsphere would change into one of injury, death, carnage, panic. Yes, this is ridiculous. But it’s quite representative of the thoughts I was fielding last night.
The support act was called Eva something-or-other. At the end of her performance, I thought Eva Thingy said: “I’m a foyer. An information desk. You can’t miss me, with my red jumper.” I thought this was really deep. But then Ally said she’d probably been heckled flirtatiously earlier on, and was just responding with something like “I’ll be in the foyer. The information desk.”
I had a silly idea while I was there. There was so much gunk crowding into my head that I wondered how it would be if I was sat at a computer, so that I could spew it directly onto the page. I decided I want to sit myself down in front of a computer one night with some good music, some beer and a shark, and then narrate my existence. But I expect that either (a) I’d get distracted and do something else, or (b) I’d have nothing to say, or most likely (c) I’d type manically for several hours and wake up in the morning to read back a load of unreconstituted drivel.
But I definitely need to try and fit in more good live music. Particularly the kind where you get to sit down! It’s such a great opportunity to sit around and drift off. A release.
I’ve been in touch with the VJs who are doing the visuals for our multimedia launches. We’re getting a DVD in the post in a few days of the stuff amukidi’s done. Very exciting!!!
I was reminded this week of a story I wrote when I was on the dole, about 12 years ago. Flibberty Gibbet and the Green Eyes, it’s called. I was bored one day and got suddenly seized by the urge to do something creative, so I wrote it in felt-tip on lined A4, and did a load of illustrations in highlighter pen. Highlighter pen is brilliant stuff. As long as you have a nice fat nib, and a fresh pen, then it kind of juices itself onto the page. They’re very juicy, those pens. And they have italic nibs. Lovely. Now, considering I can’t actually draw, I confess I rather like the drawings I did. Not even slightly publishable, but kinda cute. Anyway, of course it ended up being a distraction activity and I spent bloody ages typing it up and scanning the drawings into the computer when I should have been doing something else.
Here it is: Flibberty Gibbet and the Green Eyes.
I’m vaguely contemplating editing it, tidying it up and sending it off with the other kids’ stories I wrote before Christmas, and seeing whether my agent can flog it. But I expect this is a lost cause, because the drugs / sex references are a bit blatant. Not that they’re there, of course. You’re imagining them.
I’d really love to publish the other kids’ stories on this site, but I’m a little bit paranoid about copyright. Bother money and making a living. Things like this should just be shared, no matter what. Grrr.
I heard snatches of David Bowie’s Major Tom on the radio this week (it was the theme music to Radio 4’s Book of the Week) – and all that adolescent emotion (about what, I'm not sure - excitement tinged with feelings of being deep and meaningful?) came flooding back. I used to love David Bowie. I feel a nostalgic music evening coming on. And isn’t vinyl so much more exciting than a CD? It’s got a real wieght. Like you can feel the music in your hands. CDs are crap.
A colleague told me a story the other day about when he was sitting his accountancy exams and the man at the next desk suddenly stood up, spread his arms out and said “I’m a tree.” Then his eyes glazed over and he had to be carried out. You couldn’t make it up, could you?
People are still buying my book from Amazon, and the sales ranking is consistently high, although it hasn’t quite made it back into the chart yet. This is fine, and I’m glad that it’s fine, because Ally predicted that I’d get myself into a right old state about it, and I do love to prove him wrong. ;o)
On the subject of sales… apparently one of the very lovely London Big Chill people (in fact our first ever Big Chill friend – we met him at Naxos 2000) has a mad scheme to pull together a crack commando squad of book readers. They will board tube trains, carrying copies of The Dying of Delight. Occasionally they will catch each other’s eyes and acknowledge that they’re reading the same book. Gradually they’ll leave the train, then reconvene and do it all again. Haha, I love it!
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I'm permanently paranoid about the standard of the writing in this blog. I rarely have time to edit, so it pretty much just splurges straight out of my fingers. Normally my writing is edited at least three times, generally with significant revisions, before it's released into the world. Of course there are bound to be dozens of would-be publishers visiting my site, reading my blog and then walking away with a sigh, saying to themselves, "Oh dear, and I thought we had the next bestseller on our hands. Pity she can't write."
I'm also paranoid that I'm expressing too many paranoias in this blog. If anyone has any other suggestions for pointless things that I can worry about, please email me forthwith, as I'm clearly underburdened with ghost neuroses.
The BBC want to interview me on their Manchester and London local radio stations. I’m dead excited about this! I read an article all about doing radio interviews in The Author magazine, so of course that makes me an expert. ;o)
I got an email from a man who was apparently in my class at primary school, saying congrats on the book. I really wish I remembered him. I like to think that it’s his memory at fault, not mine. He probably went to school with Claire Dowie, and he’s got us mixed up…
This made me laugh, from this thread about International Nettle Week, on the Big Chill forum:
“GORDON, I must have a word...
After reading your post before leaving work, it got me thinking. I remember nettles everywhere when I was a nipper, and I also remembered how at about the age of eight I'd been reading a cartoon book of fables about some bloke grasping the thorn and it not hurting him.
So being eight I thought I'll try that, so I grabbed a nettle knowing it wouldn't sting me, and it didn't!
This became my party trick for several years.
Like I say your post reminded me of this and so tonight after a cigarette I was walking round my garden and saw a big nettle. I thought ha i can take you and grabbed it! only to get stung like f**k.
I sit here with a throbbing hand and pain like i dont remember!
!!!make soup out of all nettles they are evil!!!”
My sister’s baby (Joseph) is of course beautiful. Not that I’ve met him yet, but everybody says he is, and he must be. I’m really eager to meet him – not sure I can wait a whole fortnight!
Felix’ language is developing really fast. This week he has finally grasped the concept of naming himself and has started saying Felix for the first time. He’s also started saying Yes, which is a big improvement on No. But the cutest thing is that he’s started telling himself stories in the evenings after we’ve said Night Night and shut the door, and in the mornings after he’s woken up but before he calls us in. Of course, most of it sounds like gibberish, but he’s really inventive with the intonation and there are definite real words in there. For all we know he’s the next JK Rowling and they really are proper stories, just that his pronunciation isn’t clear enough for us to fully understand.
I say “really” way too often.
Wed 5th May
The last last twenty-four hours have been dominated by computers, which have caused me to get very excited and very irate.
The irateness was a result of trying to do all the stuff necessary to safeguard my computer against this worm that’s doing the rounds. Well, all I can say is that I now have more grey hairs, not enough sleep, and my PC is no safer than it was yesterday. grrrrrrr.
But the excitement came about because I’ve started my campaign to get people to buy my book on Amazon and bump me into the pre-release chart (details here)… and it’s working! Hooray! And thank you to the wonderfully patient people who have played along with my mad scheme. This is particularly exciting to a geek such as myself. Although I think maybe I should be stripped of my geeky stripes after the number of times I proclaimed my hatred of computers last night.
The other computer activity of course, bumbling along in the background of all this, is my job. Today I have been mostly wrestling with complicated SQL queries, which would ordinarily be quite engaging, but I confess to being just a teensy bit distracted by the rest of my life.
There was a great freak hailstorm yesterday in Manchester. Massive hailstones but bright sunlight. I could see sharply defined shadows on ground that was being pelted like mad. It’s one of the things I like about Manchester – the interesting weather. Then again, I say that, but I wonder if I just like the sound of it rather than truly feel it. I’ve been touting my book around Manchester publications this week, and it lifts my head up and reminds me that I do actually live somewhere.
I’m generally so oblivious to my surroundings – I wander around in a little bubble. When I was reading Gwendoline Riley’s book Sick Notes the other week, I was thinking about just what a Mancunian fraudster I am. Her character Esther was revelling in rainstorms and wandering around the centre and suburbs of Manchester, knowing the streets intimately, whereas I may as well live on the moon. I haven’t a clue what the latest bars and clubs are, I very rarely set foot in the City Centre, and when people mention venues and assume I will have heard of them, I just look at them blankly and feel like a foreigner.
But I’ve abdicated the responsibility for keeping up with stuff to Ally. He works on a local magazine. He covers all the local arts events. He can keep up with what’s what, where’s where and who’s who. No point in us both doing it. When I need to know, I just ask him. It’s like living with your very own events guide. I may have lived in the same inner-city Mancunian house for the last fifteen years, but it really is the house I live in, not its surroundings.
Another advantage is that when I do go into town I get to experience it as something new and exciting; as a visitor. Funnily enough I really enjoy wandering aimlessly about strange streets. I just never do it. It’s like swimming in a lake, or eating icecream cones – one of those things you only ever do on holiday. Life’s just too full of that life stuff the rest of the time. What life stuff? I really haven’t a clue, but whatever it is, it quickly fills up the spaces.
Felix is being especially cute at the moment. He insisted on taking both babies (dolls) and a Pooh bear (“Pooh Eurgh!”) and a dog (“oof-woo”) to bed with him. One of the babies has no toes since the real oof-woo chewed them off. Felix was most puzzled by the lack of toes, but then I explained that the baby had suffered an accident. He grasped this concept straightaway, grabbed at his own foot, said “Ow” and made me kiss them better (his toes, not the baby’s). Then he told me all about the “sore bits” on his knees, which correspond directly with my own war-wounds from last week’s hospital visit. I briefly pondered trying to explain that although a knee consists of your thighs when you’re sitting down, when you stand up your knee becomes your thighs, which extend to your knees. I thought better of it.
Sun 2nd May
I’m an auntie! My sister gave birth to Joseph Roy at around 3:30pm today. [big happy grin]
Sun 2nd May, 10pm
I have a new toy. Actually, I have two new toys. A nail gun and an electric screwdriver. They’re bloody brilliant. I built a fence and two gates with them today, and I’m feeling very proud of myself. I just have to hang the gates and our garden will officially be A Safe Place For A Toddler.
I like the thought of all the various incarnations our garden has been through. Not so long ago it was just a concrete yard rented to the local builder. Then the builder left, we had the concrete bulldozed, and we bought sixteen tons of topsoil and some turf, which I insisted on laying all by myself, with my diagram of circular lawns and grass pathways in hand. That was after I strapped boards to my feet while rolling the new topsoil flat…
Anyway, while I was digging I discovered an ancient layer of white chicken shit. It turned out that in the 40s the bandleader from the dance hall across the road lived in our house. He kept chickens in the garden, and had a smallholding further down the road.
The older the story, the more interesting we find it. In York I wandered around the Roman ruins in the museum gardens. I love to think of those Romans, getting on with their lives. But why? They were just people getting on with their lives, but if we think we might have discovered their shit buried in our gardens, we get all excited. We wouldn’t care if it was modern people in their semis. What is it about being old that makes it so special?
Then again, I often gaze at all the little semis when I whizz past them on trains, and wonder who lives there and what they’re doing. Maybe antiquity just ratifies nosiness. When I was on the train the other week and all the houses were flashing by, I just couldn’t get my head around how many of them there were, and how many people must be inside. What were they all doing?
I have a new friend! I keep randomly emailing writers I like, and the very lovely Mil Millington has introduced me to his friend Emily Dubberley (great name, and she was born with it!), who has already interviewed me about my sex life, posted an advert for my book launches on her website cliterati.co.uk and generally been entertaining, enthusiastic and downright ace. I approve.
Someone emailed me the other day and asked me whether The Dying of Delight was anything to do with Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. I’m afraid I haven’t even read it, so I couldn’t claim that it was, but it turns out there is a “personification” in The Sandman who was originally Delight but then became Delirium… and the death of Delight is never quite explained… so it would make sense for someone to write of the dying of Delight. It’s a shame the someone isn’t me, as it sounds like a great idea. If only I were even slightly good at lying I might even try and blag it.
I’ve been being tactless again. I like to think of myself as spontaneous, i.e. not stopping to think every time I open my mouth – how tedious would it be if everything I said and did was edited? Still, not a good idea to tell someone about to undergo IVF exactly how awful it is, or indeed to tell someone who is pregnant and hasn’t yet bought a house that moving house before or immediately after childbirth is a nightmare. Arrrrrgh. I’m really sorry, if that helps.
It’s this not-looking-before-you-leap tendency that also leaves me constantly anticipating the next telling-off. Every time I get emails whose contents I’m not sure of, I think, “oh no, what have I done?” I’ve been doing so much cheeky schmoozing and general book-related control freakery I feel sure that sooner or later someone’s going to give me a sound dressing down.
Maybe it’s the bad reviews I’m really waiting for. Although, on the literary feedback front I only have good news. I was approached to write a short story for an anthology of short stories by Northern-based writers. I only submitted it last week so the publishers, Comma Press, haven’t got back to me yet (they may well hate it), but the four people who’ve read it so far (including the lovely Emily Dubberley) have all been very positive. Hooray!
It’s quite different from The Dying of Delight, but I enjoyed writing it. I might need to tinker with it a little yet though, because one thing I tried probably hasn’t worked. I’m always noticing how people get their tenses muddled up. It happens a lot in fiction writing – people move inconsistently between present and past tense – but also people do it when they talk. Like this: "God, you should have seen me last night. I was just walking down the street and the next thing you know this bloke's shouting the odds and he's telling me I'm an ugly fuck, so I'm like "what's it to you, potato face?" and he's got this fucking machete, so I just thought fuck it, I'm not having this, and I twatted him, right there in the street." See how they've moved from past to present and back to past again? People do it all the time.
That's what I was consciously aiming to reproduce - the way people really talk. Except that because I do it in the voice of the narrator, rather than in quotations, it’s not clear whether I’m not just yet another writer who is tense-blind. I’m working on a solution for this.
People have been searching for all sorts of things and arriving at this website. Somebody in the Physics dept at Berkeley (California) went searching for my aunt (Jenny Olive)’s maths website on google and landed here. I’d love to know what they thought. Although apparently it may have been my uncle.
I’m reading several books at once again. Largely this is because I keep finding myself needing something to read but not having anything to hand. Currently I’m reading Margaret Attwood’s The Blind Assassin, Jim Dodge’s Rain on the River, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, David Armstrong’s How Not To Write A Novel, DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, and an NCT book about potty training.
The insects in our computer are particularly active tonight. Tick tickety tick-tick, tickety. Maybe they just like Ally’s radio show, and they’re singing along. You too can listen to Enchanted Gordon’s online radio show, consisting of downtempo, ambient and aural oddities, on ALL FM, alternate Sundays, 8-10pm. It’s bloody good.
I’ve been talking to a sound engineer about possibly having a go at recording a few chapters of The Dying of Delight, as an experiment in the talking book format. I’d love to do that. There’s also a possibility of doing something for Big Chill FM, the Eastnor festival radio station. That’s pretty exciting, I reckon. Oh, and I’m going to be interviewed for the Big Chill website, I think. Coool.
Oh yes, and I’ve been asked to do a reading at a poetry night!
[general excited squeakery]
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Clare Sudbery