Clár Ní Chonghaile's Blog, page 2

In Praise of Procrastination

 

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It has come to my attention during this period of lockdown that we are a family of procrastinators. Oh, the plans we made when this all started! The projects we sketched out! The personal enrichment activities we imagined!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we haven’t started any of these projects. We’ve started all of them with high-octane energy, enthusiasm and ambition. It’s just that when it comes to committing time every day to finishing a task, we are collectively useless. We joke that we are the “Gonna Clarkes” (my husband’s surname).

Our daughters started painting the doors of the garden shed to turn it into a sesh shed for vetted teenagers when lockdown is lifted. The first coat of white paint was a doddle. Then they started drawing wonderfully wacky figures on the doors. They even started painting those creatures. But that was several weeks ago and the doors are still mainly white with the pencil sketches fading a little more each day.

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I said I would sort the loft. I did spend an hour or so up there, moving the plastic boxes of souvenirs (I am a terrible hoarder and I hoard for others too) so that each person now has a stack of at least four boxes under the eaves. I did not open any of the boxes because then I might have to consider throwing things away, and I really need 30 old copies of Vanity Fair from the mid-90s.

I said I would sort our photos. I bought a scrapbook and one of those photo display gallery thingies that you hang on a door. Both are still in their plastic coverings in the spare room, where the bed is now covered with albums and scores of loose photos, of dubious quality, taken in different African countries in the days before iPhones.

I resolved to get to grips with my fourth novel and put down some serious words. To be fair, I have done some writing over the past eight weeks. However, I have also done more baking than ever before. Ever before in my whole life. That’s three full cakes, if you’re counting.

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(To be fair, the girls decorated this cake)

“Ooh, you’re baking again,” my daughter said as I whipped up the mixture for a lemon drizzle cake this morning.

“Yes,” I said. “Only because I don’t want to write. This is next-level procrastination.”

“I respect that,” she said, nodding her head gravely.

This daughter considers procrastination an art form. She recently explained, at length, that putting off doing her online homework for two weeks means that she avoids two weeks of stress. Instead, she does the work in a frenzy over two days, which to her mind is a much better use of time. She could be onto something.

The other daughter said she would make us all masks after I tried to buy some on Amazon and realised they would arrive in time for Christmas, possibly. She made two but then seemed to stall, which leads me to conclude that two members of the family are deemed expendable. I wonder which two. It’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.

My husband decided to tackle the garden and he has, to be fair, made great progress. But after a burst of activity, work intervened and now, on his breaks, he sits on the terrace, gazing morosely at the still untamed verges and sighs that there is still so much to do.

“Look, I weeded that area the other day,” he wailed. “And now the weeds are back.”

“It’s like housework,” I told him, totally not trying to make a point. “You do it and then you just have to do it again. And again. And again.”

“I suppose it’s a marathon rather than a sprint,” he concluded glumly.

And I think he might, once again, have hit the nail on the head.

In the Days Before Lockdown, procrastination had a bad rep because we assumed that we needed to get tasks done. Get Them Finished. Tick Them Off. But maybe we’ve been grasping the wrong end of the stick. With all this time on our hands, maybe the name of the game is to keep those projects going, to do them when we are inspired, to allow ourselves to be driven by joy rather than duty.

Maybe one day, the girls will feel like painting the shed again but maybe today they just want to read or watch Gilmore Girls or lie in bed staring at the ceiling and listening to their Sad playlist on Spotify. Maybe, I won’t get that novel written during lockdown and maybe today, I feel like trying out a recipe for carrot cake or snooping around the loft a bit more, or flicking through my photos again (not organising them, but remembering).

It’s hard for me to embrace procrastination. Not least because I want this novel — the enfant terrible of my short writing career, without a doubt — done. I want the words down and I want to be at that wonderfully exciting stage of submitting it for others’ opinions. I want this because I want to know that I can do it. Again.

It’s been a while since my last book was published (2018) and my fourth one has already had several difficult births. I want to get to the end to prove to myself that I can get to the end. But the fear of failure can paralyse. Hence the procrastination and the admittedly delicious side-effect of  feeling that I’ve finally grown up and become a proper mother who bakes cakes from scratch. I’ll be arranging flowers next.

Putting things off to another time is only a bad thing if you have a limited amount of time. Lockdown has put limits on our lives. But it has also provided some of us, the lucky ones, with a sense of unlimited time stretching ahead of us like a gently meandering path, not necessarily going anywhere but offering a delightful journey through interesting landscapes. For once, we don’t need to race along the path, rushing to the next stop on our journey. We can stop and rest and start again, when we feel like it.

I don’t like to think of myself as a procrastinator but maybe it’s time to ditch that negativity and embrace procrastination as a necessary part of life and of the creative process. To see procrastination as an action rather than inaction. As a benefactor rather than a thief of time.

 

 

 

Learning to see again in the age of Corona

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It astounds me how quickly we have adapted to this new life, this new normal. No more opening the front door and striding out onto the street, all casual confidence, secure in our right to go wherever we want, for whatever reason or no real reason, on a whim even. Instead, we stand hesitantly on the doorstep, scanning the paths to see if they are clear, fretting about whether this outing is really essential, hoping we won’t see too many people.

No more walking straight into a shop, lost in thought, reaching for the list in your back pocket, wandering up one aisle and down another, then retracing your steps because you can never remember where they keep the eggs. Now, we wait outside, like human dominoes, or if there is no queue, we pause outside the door and crane our necks to see whether it’s safe to enter, seeking reassurance from the person on door duty. We are newly cautious, uncharacteristically docile, painfully, deliberately patient. It does not sit easily with us, this new obeisance.

No longer do we rise early to wake grumpy teenagers, who groan and turn over and mutter that they ‘hate school’. No more making packed lunches, no more ironing uniforms, no more goodbyes at the door, no more shouting down the street “Have a good day!” They didn’t appreciate the irony then. They certainly wouldn’t now. And anyway, they have nowhere to go.

No more trips to London, or to the beach, or anywhere. No more hugs. No more handshakes. We shake our heads at TV shows from before. Watch them run fecklessly into a shop for a pack of fags! See them huddled together around a tiny table in a crowded pub! Imagine! It’s only been five weeks and yet that life already seems so alien, fraught with danger and careless abandon. 

We took our freedoms for granted because we did not recognise them. They were as simple, as rudimentary as the breaths we took every day, without ever thinking about the lungs buried deep in our chests.

The invisible virus has, in a way, made everything else shockingly visible. We finally recognise how good we had things; we appreciate the daily struggle of our bodies just to survive; we see, really see, the cherry blossom falling in the park like snow because we know we will not see it until tomorrow; we see, really see, the people who serve us in our shops, who care for us in our hospitals, the people who collect our rubbish; we wonder if they were always there and how we never thought to see them. We look into their eyes and our ‘thank yous’ are more fervent because we are no longer blind.

We cannot see the virus in the air we breathe but we finally see, really see, our children and our partners. There is nowhere to hide anymore. We are all, as they say, in this together and because there are so few distractions, we really look and we truly see. We see, really see, that our children have grown, that they are beautiful and strong and scared and thoughtful and angry. They see the same in us. We talk more because we have become more visible to each other.

Fear has opened our eyes. In our old lives, back in normal times, we were too busy to remember that death stalks us all. Or to put a kinder spin on it: we forgot that we are here for a good time, not for a long time. Death is not new. Death is always the most unrelenting of constants. But we were too busy — commuting, working, going places, seeing people, taking trips, buying stuff — to remember. Now, we are told death is in the very air we breathe, the air that sustains us. Today, our every move is not driven by the desire to forget but by the need to remember, so that we may slow death’s stride. And perhaps, because of that, we have also remembered how to live.

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We have seen that impossible is but a word, or maybe a state of mind. Shut our schools just before exams? Impossible. Make millions of people work from home? Impossible. Ground the planes? Impossible. Close our shops, our bars, our restaurants? Impossible. Stop the cars and clear the air? Impossible. Stand outside our homes at the same time every week in this land of casual estrangement, clapping with our neighbours, who we finally see, for people we have never met? Impossible. Get into a side plank and lift your leg to the sky for 30 seconds? Impossible.

Our certainties have crumbled in the face of a virus that has exposed our frailty, our weaknesses and our tendency to pay attention to all the wrong things. It has redefined the impossible but by doing so, it has also reshaped the possible. Who knows where we will go from here but what is certain is that our imaginations will stretch further and deeper because the boundaries that once limited our dreams, and our nightmares, have been pulverised.

This is also why we are all so frightened. Nothing is impossible. But maybe today, despite the appalling loss and pain and suffering, despite our anguish at being separated from loved ones, despite all the big and small everyday tediums, we can find some hope in the  expansion of the possible.

People say this is the new normal. It is not normal at all. But maybe it is time we found a new way to be normal in a world where the old certainties of our rat-race lives have been radically reshaped, a world where we see, really see, the cherry blossom fall like snow more often.

 

 

 

Would you like to read a story?

 

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Because spring will come …

 

It’s hard to get my head around this new reality. All of us at home, all of the time. The world in stasis. Daily anxious check-in WhatsApp messages to far-away family, many working in hospitals. No more school uniforms to wash. Instead a washing basket full of exercise gear as my teenage daughters go mad for online Booty Buster and Fab Ab classes. No more cheeky Tuesday trips to the pub. No more popping to Costa for a pick-me-up coffee. No more trips to London, or the beach. No more Easter holidays.

But maybe the best thing, the only thing to do right now is to turn that formula around: more time together as a family; more silly laughs at leisurely family meals; more art and music; more garden time, just chilling; more talking and debating and wondering and sharing hopes and plans for the future; more tolerance and patience (mostly!).

And in the spirit of more, here’s a short story I wrote in the Time Before. It’s been languishing on my desktop for ages, occasionally making a short foray into the cut-throat world of competitions, only to return with its tale between its legs:) As I struggle to whip up the motivation to write new stuff, I thought I would give this little guy a dust-off. I think he’s earned it.

So if anyone is stuck for something to do, he’s here for your reading pleasure. Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments. Hope you enjoy! (I should say there are a few “bad words” in here though, just in case that bothers anyone and they want to give it a miss.)

The distance between T and no T

Why the hell had he agreed to do this? Cruising for a bruising, as usual.

He tightened the Aston Villa scarf around his neck, wincing as the cheap, polyester threads caught on the ridge of shredded skin under his right ear. The October chill had ice-lumped his hands. He scuffed his trainers against the concrete then jumped up from the bench, as if about to stomp away, or throw a punch but his abrupt energy expended itself in that single movement.

He stood, gangly and unresolved, wiggling his frozen toes in his Hi-Top Nikes. He lit a cigarette, smoking it like a teenager, the fag cupped inside his hand. He wasn’t sure you were allowed to smoke here. That would be ironic.

He looked at his watch. Frank was late. Bloody typical. He had offered to meet him in the car park, but Frank said no. He was always a stubborn bastard. Still, someone must’ve come with him. What was it he had? Nathan tried to remember. Was it a sister, two? They had talked about their families during those endlessly boring breaks in the endlessly stultifying heat before the endlessly terrifying foot patrols, but he had forgotten much of that now. Or maybe he was never listening properly, part of his brain always alert to the unexplained crackle, the distant boom, the tiny click. There was so much he couldn’t remember now and even the things he could, he wasn’t always sure if they were real. Every now and then, he would sit upright as a fragment – a face, the sharp smell of burnt metal, an open mouth, a blast, a song, a particular shade of blue — lodged in his brain like a splinter. He would finger it, pulling it this way and that to see if it was real, teasing and torturing. Once he had placed the half-memory in its rightful place, its true or nearly true context, he would spend days trying to bury it again. He sometimes wondered if his thoughts would ever become tame again.

Some memories hadn’t faded – sharp grass crackling in the heat, pebbles rolling under dusty boots, the siren song of gunfire, birds slicing the air overhead and shrieking like winged traitors. Every sound was jagged there. Every thing was jagged, even the air seemed to want to hurt as it sliced through dry, open mouths into chests bandoliered by fear and Kevlar.

He had been ambushed only this morning by a long-buried shiny bomblet – a harmless one this time. He was dressing in his room, banging his head to one of those songs from before, trying to keep his father’s heavy silence from sneaking under his dented door. He felt bad about the door. He felt bad about his mother’s tears, and his father’s rage, and Darren’s head, but fuck it! He always felt bad.

He was singing along, the noise pounding into his ears through the Beats headphones Darren had given him, tentatively, when he turned 24. It was his first birthday at home for years. Hunched in the armchair, facing his parents and Darren, all seated knees-together-tense on the sofa, he realised, as he unwrapped their gifts, that the only thing that was likely to explode in this bad-movie scene was him. And everyone knew it.

As he listened to the music, he was thinking idly, to prevent any other kind of thought. He remembered the singer, vaguely, from before. Crew cut, earring, baseball cap, crooked teeth, smart-ass Londoner. He had liked him, identified with his wide boy persona, his easy, streetwise rap. They were both 17 the same year. What did that mean? Nothing. He had long ago given up trying to shoehorn his experience into ‘real life’. The ‘whys’ could kill you. Or they could make you kill someone else. Like your soldier-dad, who insisted he knew what you felt, just because he’d served in Belfast in the fucking 80s, another planet.

That’s how the door got dented. Too many fucking ‘whys’, and ‘why can’t you be like me?’ and ‘why is it different for you?’, and ‘why don’t you snap out of it?’ In the end, Nathan had thrown a punch just to stop the questions. But he missed, of course. Sergeant Michael “Rottweiler” Taylor was still fast, despite the one eye and misshapen face, the results of a stupendously bad decision to go out drinking one Monday night in Ballykelly in 1982. Nathan had tipped forward, swinging into the empty air like a clown in oversized pants, all exaggerated uselessness. Darren couldn’t help it. He laughed. Nathan recovered his balance, swivelled and slapped him round the head. That’s when his father threw his own punch, straight into the door. Nathan couldn’t be sure if he’d missed him on purpose. His father stomped off, his long step still military in its extension, its heaviness, its unflinching, fuming certitude. Beyond the fury in his face, Nathan glimpsed the mask of horror from that Monday night in the Droppin’ Well. The moment the bomb went off would be forever preserved in the crooked nose, scarred cheek and glass eye. Nathan’s mother stood in the hallway, her tears silent and accusing as she grabbed Darren to her. Nathan saw fear struggle with pity in her face, and stormed into his room, slamming the door behind him. He felt bad, but he always felt bad. It was just a question of degree. It would always be just a question of degree.

He was replaying the scene as he listened to the music. He saw himself flailing at his father, ridiculous in his baggy pants. Baggies. That was the bomblet. He suddenly remembered, like a slap, that Frank was a West Bromwich Albion fan. He remembered Frank telling him as they marched through a stubbled field over there. He could see full Frank laughing, all teeth under tinted eyes. That’s why he wore the Aston Villa scarf to this place today – he didn’t even fucking support them. It was just to piss Frank off. Just to make this all a bit more normal. As if they could be normal again, pulling the piss just to pass the time. The scarf was an innocent cruelty, and this made Nathan happy.

“Nathan! Wotcha!”

He spun round. He’d been staring at the monument’s white stone, the broken circle, and the spear-like trees ranged round it, like useless sentinels. Jesus, he’d met a fair few of those. The anger he’d felt as he walked through the gates earlier was swelling. It wasn’t enough that he had had to spend 12 months over there. Even back home, he had to be part of it. He’d paid his dues. This was what he was trying to forget. He didn’t want to pay tribute to the dead, or to honour them. He wanted to forget them.

He looked down at Frank, hoping to feel grateful, but it didn’t work. For a while, after that day in Helmand, Frank had made him feel humble, but that was wearing off. Frank annoyed him now. He was a constant reminder of what had happened, how it had happened, what it had cost, and worst of all, of the fact that Frank was trying to fit back in, to ‘make things work’ while he, Nathan, was stuck in a toxic mental stew, unable to go back, unable to go forward, caught on those bloody shards of glass in his brain.

Nathan swallowed, chucked his cigarette into the grass, realizing even as he stretched out his arm that the gesture was too grand for the flimsy butt and for him, something stolen from a movie probably. He punched his friend on the arm. A girl in a green parka, her face half hidden by wet, straggly hair and a furry hood, gripped the handles of the wheelchair. She nodded at Nathan, and there was something defeatist in her stance as if the wheelchair was defining her too.

“Wotcha, yerself. You’re late, man.”

“You got something else on?”

Frank was smiling. He’d always been the quick one in their eight-man section. Now, it would be a 6 ½ man section, except that it didn’t exist anymore. Sections, divisions, units, combat groups, fireteams – they were all as unreal here as Death Eaters and Thestrals. They had no place in this treacherous symmetry that suggested order and dignity in death. Stone lies.

It had been Frank’s idea to come here today. Nathan had agreed reluctantly, maybe because it was hard to say ‘no’ to a man in a wheelchair. But now he felt as though he had been tricked into something worse than betrayal, a kind of false nostalgia that demanded he surrender his anger on that flat altar in the middle of the fractured circle where a bronze laurel wreath lay, useless as all flowers were.

He hated himself for not having the balls to say ‘no’ to the half-man in the wheelchair. Nothing was straightforward anymore. He couldn’t be himself and he was somebody else, but he didn’t want to be that person either. He wasn’t sure he could be that other person – that veteran, that messed-up cliché with the PTSD that everyone talked about but no one understood. The unicorn on the medical rainbow.

“Why d’ye want to come here, anyway?” Nathan muttered as they moved towards the ramp that led up the Armed Forces Memorial.

It started to rain. Frank gave his scarf a sideways sliver of a look. Nathan grinned. Happy moment. Frank wasn’t wearing a scarf or a hat, just a thin red jacket and jeans that had been clipped up around his knees. In the days after the ambush, the doctors thought they could save the bottom half of his right leg, but it became infected, and so both legs ended at the knees now. At least he was balanced, Frank often said, laughing loudly.

Nathan was a long way from being able to joke about Frank’s legs. The war had calcified his humour – or maybe it was not fair to say the war. It was really just that day in Helmand. This day, one year ago. How had he survived a whole year? What had he done? Nathan couldn’t remember and as he puzzled over this conundrum, he forgot to listen to Frank, his eyes on the mute memorial.

Why didn’t they include sound effects with these things? A high-pitched screaming would be about right, men yelping like hurt children. But that wasn’t completely true either. What he remembered most about that day in Helmand was the silence-filled buzzing that had filled his ears after the bang that started, and ended, it all.

“I thought we should mark the day. It’s like an anniversary, or something,” Frank was saying when Nathan tuned back in.

A lot of Nathan’s days were like that. He would remember snatches of conversation but most of the words, words, words that were thrown at him missed their mark. He thought sometimes that his brain was full.

They got closer. Nathan hated the inevitability of their slow progress. A man in a wheelchair. A sister, who had been stripped of her right to tease and given the shite job of nursemaid, and no right to complain. And a 24-year-old former soldier who couldn’t hack it, who didn’t have the balls to go back, or whatever was needed to go forward. They were inside the cold, white arms of the memorial now.

“You know, I don’t remember a fucking thing about the attack,” Frank said.

Nathan pulled his eyes from the statue showing a dead soldier being lifted up by comrades. Nearby, a forever-young child clung to its mother’s knees while an older couple keened together.

“Look at this,” Nathan gestured, wide as the movies again. “It’s nothing like this.”

“Easy now, easy.”

Frank’s sister moved away for a smoke. She was standing in the opening of one of the half-circles, huddled beside the wall, looking out towards the obelisk and the grey, dirty River Tame beyond. He wondered what she was thinking. He wondered if they’d go for a drink somewhere after. He could do with a drink, and a snog. Or a shag. She might be sympathetic. Fuck.

Frank wheeled himself over to the slab of rock where names of the dead were carved. For a moment, Nathan heard nothing but the wind keening at the edges of this monument to an idea of death that was the worst betrayal of all. The blood rushed in his head, twisting those glass shards deeper into the soft tissue of his brain. He braced himself.

“Here he is.” Frank pointed to the name.

It was one of the newest ones, carved at shoulder height, but Frank could only point, his neck straining as he tilted his head back.

Gilman, D.

Nathan traced the letters, like a child compelled to squeak his finger down a misted window. Or was this too something he had seen in a film? So this was it. That Saturday morning had been reduced to these seven letters. Those 40 minutes that stole Frank’s legs, and parts of his soul. This is what it meant back here, out of the rabbit hole.

Danny would tell him to cop on to himself. He’d pass him a freshly rolled joint, pungent weed from an Afghan soldier’s stash, and pat him on the shoulder. At 23 and on his second tour, Nathan always felt older, duller, more stodgy than Danny, the ginga with the little-boy freckles, foul mouth and one of the deadliest aims in the battalion.

Gilman, D. didn’t do Danny justice at all.

It was a regular patrol, but that wasn’t telling it true either, Nathan thought. No patrol was regular. How could it be regular to walk, taut as a curse through winding, sand-blown streets, swinging wildly when you realised you were in front of a gaping doorway you hadn’t spotted? He was behind Gilman, D. But when it began, he forgot that fact. It began when the first soldier, who would later prove to be Frank, entered the deserted market square, and stepped with pointless caution onto the buried mine. The dull thud that followed mangled his legs, and rent the air. Frank was screaming, the other men were shouting, and the air was whining as machine-gun fire poured down on them from the roofs of the concrete buildings around the square, which was no longer a safe square of predictable angles but a shifting quadrant of death, its perimeters defined by the puffs of dust that marked the range of the unseen fighters. Nathan was bringing up the rear, so he ducked back into a dark doorway halfway down the street they had just crept quietly through. Such a waste, that toe-crimping, breath-stifling crawl of just minutes before. Their enemies had always known they were coming. They thought they were being careful but caution doesn’t count if the men who will kill you are already in place, fingers steady on triggers.

He saw Gilman, D. fall. He registered that first bullet exiting from the soft place behind his knee. If, at that moment, he had remembered it was Danny, he would have thought about how the bullet had smashed the kneecap with the wolf tattoo, all bared teeth and red eyes. But he did not remember it was Danny. And he did not recognise Frank in bits on the ground ahead. It was as though, in seeing what was happening, knowing what it would mean, his mind, already weary of this hot, fucked-up, saviour-less land, had raised its eyebrows, sighed and turned away with a teenager’s “whatever”. Because this was a teenager’s war.

The girl was back, pushing Frank towards the opposite wall and another tally-fucking-ho representation of death. Here, a woman and man were preparing a prone body for burial, while another man chiselled the dead soldier’s name into the wall, and a fourth person pointed through a slightly open door carved into the stone.

Nathan trailed behind them, his eyes on the doorway, his screams held tight in his chest. On that day, when he slipped into his own doorway, and watched Danny fall and then jerk like a crisp packet under heavy rain, until they stopped pouring bullets into his body, he knew there was nothing left. He still did not let himself know about Frank. He did not want to know about the rest, and refused to admit to himself that the mangled body just feet from his hidey-hole was Danny. He didn’t even register the piece of stone that zipped out of the wall into the soft skin under his ear. He just ducked and fired, ducked and fired for however long it took.

Sometimes now, he would wake drenched in sweat, but what woke him was not the remembered sound of the bullets slamming into the stone beside him, or the peculiarly wet sound of lead screwdriving through Danny’s vital organs. It was a soft moaning, protracted, vowel-less. He didn’t remember hearing that on the day, was not even aware he had registered it, but he knew now that it had been Frank, or half-Frank, lying in the dust, his left leg five inches to the left of his left thigh and his right leg twisted and awful and dying too.

“Do you remember moaning and groaning that day?” Nathan’s voice was high-pitched and harsh. He meant it to be.

Right now, right here in this place of hard lines and soft lies, he wanted to pierce through the bullshit.

“You whimpered like a baby, mate,” he said.

Frank had his back to him, and the girl was at the other side of the circle, reading the cards on the rain-battered bouquets of flowers left at the base of the wall like rubbish from a party. Part-ay! That’s what they all thought Afghanistan would be. And the commanders and officers and all the others ranged above them in spit-polished-glory let them believe their own teenage nonsense.

“Shut it, Nate,” Frank said.

He turned the wheelchair slowly so that he was facing Nathan. They were just feet apart, both vertically and horizontally. Nathan felt a kind of heartbreak when he looked down at his friend, at the sharp cheekbones he had never had before, the deep lines that had appeared like brackets around his mouth, the cripple’s crow’s feet around his eyes. But he couldn’t do pity.

“Yeah, like a baby. I could barely hear the gunfight you was moaning so loud.”

Frank shook his head, and turned away. He wheeled himself towards the exit, flinging “Cath” over his shoulder. Cath slouched away from the flowers and joined her brother. They started down the ramp. Nathan went the other way, down towards the river, across the Disney World grass. He walked fast, mind empty, rain smacking him on the head, eyes watering in the damp breeze. He would always love the rain now. He rushed through a copse of whispering oak trees, crunching the dried leaves under his feet like bones. He felt like running, but where to? A brace of pigeons exploded from the tops of the trees. He jumped and fell to one knee, arm extended with an imaginary gun. His eyes caught up with his ears. He stayed as he was for a split-second, just long enough for his brain, in its turn, to catch up, and then, slowly, he bent to retie the lace of his Nikes. He stood wiping the mulch from his jeans. He was not embarrassed, not any more. The PTSD duck-drop-and-dawdle. When a waiter dropped a tray of glasses behind the bar in the restaurant his parents took him to on his birthday, he had done the same, somehow pulling the tablecloth and cutlery onto the floor with him, so that nobody looked at the blushing waiter with his oil-sheened hair but at the other man who was on his knees, arm lifted, eyes scanning the horizon of napkins and wine glasses.

The mist had drifted back over the river again so that it looked as though the water was alive and breathing warm sighs into the cold air. If he could really believe that the water was warm, would he have the balls for it? He didn’t want to be cold in those last minutes. And it would be minutes. Drowning was not fast, but he imagined you would lose consciousness pretty quickly.

Danny had not lost consciousness quickly enough. Even after his body jerked countless times, and even when silence fell over the market square because the faceless ones in the clouds were rearming, he was still alive. Nathan had been close enough to see his lips move. Maybe he was praying, asking for help. But please, not from him, not from ‘My Mate Nate’, as he used to call him. Because Nathan couldn’t move. He could no more move from that fetid, sweltering doorway than he could fly.

He knew, deep as a heartbeat, that all his anger and loathing came from that moment. And this would never change. Nathan thought he could have been okay if he had helped Danny. He chose, if that is the right word, not to. In the end, it was a false choice because here he was again, deciding between life and death. He would be tested until he got it right.

“Nathan, Nathan!”

It was Cath, running across the billiard-green grass, her hair flying behind her, the limp strands suddenly alive.

“Frank’s only gone and fallen out of the wheelchair. Come on!”

Nathan followed her. The river could wait. There was always tomorrow. Other rivers.

Frank was lying sprawled on the gravel. He had lifted his chest and was trying to sit.

“Fuck it,” he growled as they approached. “I practiced this. Let me try again. Just bring the chair closer. Here, no HERE!”

Cath did as he said, glancing nervously at Nathan. He stood, feeling his arms long and useless against his sides. He watched as Frank levered himself into a sitting position, grabbed onto the wheels and tried to pull himself into the chair. Sweat rose on his brow, tiny drops of spit flew from his mouth at every gasp, and Nathan felt splinters shear from his soul.

“Frank, let me help you, wont ya?”

Cath was crying as she reached an arm around her brother’s waist. He shrugged it off. She turned her back, walked away, her shoulders heaving.

“I can’t. I fucking can’t.” Frank hissed the words.

Nathan bent his knees, got his arms around his friend’s body and lifted him into the chair. The legs made a difference alright. He would never have lifted full Frank like that. Full Frank had been stocky, muscular, legs like a farmer’s. The lads called him Lardy Arse. He was all bone now. Nathan stood back, panting slightly but only because he was trying not to cry. Tears had a habit now of not stopping if they started, and they had to get home. Or at least out of this place. Danny would have hated this place. Danny would have jeered non-stop, he would have guffawed at the statues, and if he had been drunk, he might even have pissed on the wilted flowers. That was Danny.

“Drink?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

Frank tried a smile. Cath was wandering back, eyes shifty. Frank looked at his sister.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

“Don’t fucking do it again,” she said, but then she smiled, and punched her brother on the arm.

“There’s a pub in Lichfield, by the station. That’ll do,” said Nathan, pulling his fags from his jacket and lighting up.

“Gimme one of them, will ye?”

He handed the pack to her. She smiled at him properly now. She looked better: the anger and run for help and the rain had reddened her cheeks and loosened her hair. Her teeth were crooked, like Frank’s, folding over each other in the front, but on her, it looked okay.

The pub didn’t have a ramp, so they sat outside, downing pints like the end of days. Cath sat on the bench beside Nathan. Her thigh was warm, comforting, and moving more than was strictly necessary. As night fell, they got drunker and louder and Frank spilled his beer and needed the loo, so Nathan got another lad from inside to help him lift the chair up the steps, and then he held onto Frank while he peed. It could’ve been awkward, the stubbornly sober part of his mind said, but they were drunk and so he swore at Frank for getting piss on his shoes, and Frank said, “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about that anymore, eh?” And Nathan laughed so much he nearly dropped his friend.

And then they went outside and Cath’s face was soft in the moonlight and Nathan kissed her, tongue thrusting past the crooked teeth, while Frank tried to light the wrong end of a cigarette, finally succeeded, realised his error on the first drag, threw it in the road, and tilted his head up to the stars above the pub and yowled.

And then Cath took Frank home and Nathan moved to the next pub. And then a few more. He got tired of beer and drank whisky. A few guys bought him drinks, guys he didn’t know but who recognised what people in books always called the “thousand-yard stare” but which he thought made the blankness sound too grand. As if it was a superpower.

And finally, after grabbing a small, skinny guy with a briefcase by the front of the shirt and calling him “a faggot” and spitting in his face with all the bile of the past few hours, Nathan was kicked out onto the street, harsh guffaws and slurred curses spilling out around him as he staggered into the gutter, and then stumbled down the street, heading for the park and the idea of a bench. He needed to get a bus home, but he didn’t fancy another row. He could sit on a bench for a while.

He was stumbling along the canal, thinking about distance, the tiny ‘t’ between here and there. My foot here could be there, in the water, and then I would be there, and it would not be here, and that might be good, and it’s really only a question of inches, and with this much alcohol in my body, I’d go down pretty fast. It might actually be nice. It might be worth a try. I bet Frank thinks about it. But he’s too bloody-minded to give up. That’s not right. It’s not giving up. It’s just not going on. It could be as simple as that. Danny didn’t go on, and maybe he was better off. What was Frank going on for? What was he, Nathan, going on for? What the fuck was left when inside his head was fried.

A hand grabbed his jacket. Nathan teetered and in that second, that infinitesimal space between ‘t’ and no ‘t’, decided to lean back, decided to wake again to the daydream. The man who pulled him back had a mournful black Labrador on a leash. Nathan tried to pat the dog. It growled. The man asked for his phone.

“Who’d’ye want me to call, mate? You should get someone to collect you. Who’d’ye want me to call, eh?”

His father came later, his face taut, the scar marks like pattered paths across his cheek. He was wearing his old donkey jacket, and Nathan noticed it hung more loosely on him than it had before. His father had shrunk, or maybe the whole bolloxed world was shrinking around Nathan, pressing him further into himself, pressing the little sharp pieces of glass further into his brain.

“C’mon, let’s go home.”

It was barked as an order and Nathan obeyed it as an order. He was in no hurry anyway. He could think about distances another day. Those four or five inches between here and there, and this and that, and all or nothing would be there tomorrow and the day after and the day after, world without end.

In the car, he felt his father’s eyes – one real and one false – on his face.

“You have to pull yourself together, son. You have to learn to live with it. There is no other way. I know what you’re going through and God knows, I had my own but you have to push through. All soldiers go through the same. We’ve all been through it.”

The anger was gone. His father was tired, but it was not enough.

“Yours was a different war, Dad. You know fuck-all about ours. At least, let us have our own fucking war. At least, give us that respect!”

Nathan pulled a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. His father motioned for one. Their hands crossed for a second – hands with matching stubbly fingers that didn’t really know what to do now they were back at home.

“It’s all the same war.”

His father’s voice was quiet, the barked cadences smothered by the nicotine. Maybe it was the same voice he had used to whisper into a sharply pretty Northern Irish girl’s ear that night in the Droppin’ Well before someone pulled the plug on them all, fizzing them in unnatural poses like the images on screen when ancient televisions lost the signal.

“It’s all the same drama and the same pain and the same fucking mental roundabout. And you’ll never forget. Never. And you might not be able to go on. Plenty weren’t. You’ll need help. I found it in the bottle, and it looks like you’re heading the same way. But that can’t go on. You have to build your own box for what happened, and then bury it deep as the fucking sea.”

Nathan closed his eyes. The dull thrum from the last bar was still ringing in his ears. The beers were slowing his heart and his brain and his lungs, and he just wanted to sleep.

And on this tomorrow at least, he would wake up.

“You’re only 24. You’ll find a way.”

Nathan thought, I’m only 24.

 

 

And … go! The truth about Publication Day

I was once asked: what do you generally do on publication day? It was just before my second novel, Rain Falls on Everyone, came out and I remember answering that I wished I had published enough books to have a Publication Day Routine.

Last week my third novel, The Reckoning, was published by Legend Press, and … I’m afraid to say, I still don’t have a routine. Planning a Publication Day Routine would be a bit like buying pink, fluffy booties before the baby is born. I’m much too superstitious for that.

However, I do have some very unhealthy Publication Day Rituals. You’d think by now I’d know better. You’d think I’d be cool. Chilled like Will Smith in MIB.

But no. This is how my Publication Day for The Reckoning went. It’s not pretty and I’m not proud but I figure I might as well tell the truth as I’m not actually writing fiction at the moment.

Wake up. Tell myself it’s only 5 am, there will be no action on social media yet. Wait five minutes. Give in and check Twitter. Wonder why no one is tweeting yet about my amazing new release. Try a variety of keywords. Nothing, except hits for The Reckoning by some guy called John Grisham. Check Facebook and Instagram. No joy. Why didn’t I get Snapchat? (Answer: I couldn’t figure it out). Wonder if it’s too early to send a Publication Day tweet. Don’t want to seem desperate. Probably best to have coffee first. Go downstairs. Wake Simba, the dog, by going into the kitchen. Simba seems unimpressed that today is Publication Day. Make tea for the rest of the family. Feel slightly miffed that no one high-fives me/hugs me/whisks me off to a fancy spa hotel to celebrate Publication Day. Grumpily concede that the girls still have to go to school while husband has to do a motorway awareness course (Don’t ask). Fair enough. Will wait until they go. But eldest daughter is sick. Make her more tea, caress her brow, deliver special Mummy hugs. Feel secretly delighted/relieved/twitchy that I cannot reach my computer or phone from her room. It’s a Publication-Day-Free bubble, albeit a slightly germ-y one.

Push youngest daughter out the door, kiss husband goodbye, distractedly wish him luck. Tell eldest daughter to try to sleep. Head to computer. Refresh all of the aforementioned social media sites, and, of course, Goodreads. First reviews are in. They are not what you would call great. Try to tell myself that two stars are the new four. Am unconvinced. Simba seems unperturbed. Bless his tiny Golden Retriever brain. Decide to walk him by which time the offer for the film rights will undoubtedly be in my inbox. (Actually, that is a lie. We do not walk the dog. The dog walks us). Fail to refrain from checking Twitter while walking dog. But cannot read phone with my glasses on so push them onto my head and end up being dragged through a low-lying tree by Simba while squinting at said phone. Simba stops walking and lies down (a regular occurrence). Try to fake angry voice but really just happy to refresh Twitter and Goodreads. Simba chews grass and stares at sky, as if pondering the position of The Reckoning in the Amazon charts. He appears to find no answers.

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Nope, haven’t a clue

Head home, after a bit of a tug-of-dog. Rest of morning evaporates in a flurry of tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming and Refreshing, Refreshing, Refreshing. Husband comes back, chastened, and whisks (yes, a grey Volvo can indeed whisk, reader) me off to lunch. Have not showered and am in dog-walking clothes so feel a little embarrassed in posh St Albans restaurant. Nothing the prosecco can’t handle.

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Sheesh, would you look at the hair!

Well, maybe there’s a twinge of discomfort left. Shall we order wine? Why the devil not. Place phone in handbag. Fingers twitch but guess what? Wine gets rid of that too. Eat wonderful food and forget the bad reviews. Ok, pretend to forget the bad reviews. Decide I am a successful author and my next book will be even better. Husband asks about plot of next book. Rookie mistake but he’s buying lunch so I forgive him. Make vague, but hopefully profound, remarks about failure, redemption, life’s tragic brevity. Wave hands a lot. Manage not to spill wine in heady display of pre-first-draft enthusiasm.

Head home where the computer yawns open like the  maw of a beached whale of despair. I cannot resist. Daughter is feeling better. Make more tea. Later go to pub because, as husband points out, drinking in the daytime is only really fun if you continue drinking. Day ends. Decide not to check the function on my phone that tells me how much screen time I’m guilty of. I fear it may be a tad above average. (And that’s without counting the computer time). Go to bed. Am slightly tearful, deflated and tired. But underneath it all, I’m actually happy. Because the thing that wasn’t a thing is now a thing and it is making its own way in the world.

Tomorrow, I promise myself, I will put it all aside and go back to the day job. I will not dignify Goodreads with even a sideways glance. As for Amazon? Ha! Smamazon. I will be above and beyond it. I will probably not even check Twitter. Well, maybe once. In the morning. And maybe once before lunch. I know, I’ll go into town. Definitely not to check if my book is in the stores though. That would be crazy.

On a serious note: I would like to thank all the bloggers who have taken part in the blog tour for The Reckoning. Your reviews and interviews have meant so much to me. Thank you so much for taking the time and spreading the word. Thank you too to all the readers who have reviewed The Reckoning on Goodreads and elsewhere. I do read every review (see above!) and I value all opinions. Even if I have been known to mutter darkly a bit at first. I’m sorry. I’m only human. Thank you to Legend Press for their tremendous support, and especially my editor Lauren Parsons. To all my friends, your encouragement and faith is a balm to the soul. To my beautiful girls and  wonderful husband, thank you for everything. And finally, to Simba: may your tail always wag, your barks always echo and your eyes always shine.

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42068431-the-reckoning?from_search=true

 

 

A short story on Dodging the Rain

The lovely people at Dodging the Rain have published another of my short stories. Check it out if you have five minutes and let me know what you think in the comments below. [image error]

I love this site: beautifully presented, fantastic poetry and prose, and based in Galway, where I’m originally from. It was founded by three graduates of NUI Galway’s MA in Writing programme and one graduate of Uversity, the NUI-recognised Creative Process MA.

NUI Galway, or University College Galway as it was back in the day, is where I studied Arts and graduated with a degree in French and English. So it all feels very apt and circular and I am particularly fond of circles that close.

Do check the site out and recommend it to readers and writers alike. You can also follow them on Twitter @dodgingtherain

 

It’s #NationalWritingDay! So here’s what I’ve learned

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As I wait for my third novel to be published in October, and given the day that’s in it, I thought I’d try to bring together some of the things I’ve learned during my years of making stuff up.

I’ve written three books, all very different. Fractured is set mainly in Somalia and tells of a kidnapped journalist who befriends a young Somali working with his captors; Rain Falls on Everyone tells the story of Theo, who came to Ireland after the Rwandan genocide, struggles to find his place and drifts into drug-dealing with catastrophic consequences; and The Reckoning is a mother’s letter to the daughter she abandoned, set during the First and Second World Wars.

If there is a common thread uniting these books it is, I suppose, my curiosity, my desire to see the world through other eyes and then to re-create that experience for others. It’s not a moral exercise. It’s more a necessity. I read because I don’t want to live a blinkered, one-dimensional life. That’s also why I write.

So here, in bullet points because apparently they are all the rage these days, are a few things that I’ve picked up along the way. They won’t work for everyone but this is how I do it and who knows, maybe something in here will help someone. And wouldn’t that be a great thing.

Be like Nike. Just do it. You may be waiting for the perfect moment but know that it  does not exist. There will always be ironing and cleaning to do, kids to cherish and nurture, dinners to cook, dogs to walk and Netflix series to binge on, but they’ll all still be there when you’ve done your words. It’s now or never.
Don’t edit as you write. I learned this the hard way. I am a perfectionist and this really held me up when I was writing my first two novels. I would anguish over the first paragraphs, the first page, going over and over them again until they were perfect. Which is all well and good except I wasn’t moving forward and in those early days, you need momentum. It’s like getting over a wall. Just get over the wall. Don’t worry about how you look from the ground. You can go back and work on your parkour skills later.
Never underestimate the importance of a cushion. Writing a book is a killer for your backside. Treat it well. Without it you are nothing. If things get too bad, find a bed, lie on it and type there. A change is as good as a rest.
Don’t be afraid to use the thesaurus. I use it as I imagine Coleridge used opium — as an inspiration, a way to open my mind and get the juices flowing. I rarely use the alternative words I find there, but I always think of something else that fits even better.
Some days, your sentences will read like the operating instructions for a washing machine. Don’t give up. Keep putting those words down. You can make them fly later but only if you have already tied them to the ground.
That said when you really hit a wall, when you hate your idea, your words and your life, step away from the computer. I go running. I listen to podcasts about books, interviews with authors, success stories basically, and that clears my mind and gives me hope. It also gets rid of all that useless aggression because I can’t run for toffee. My daughters call my jogging ‘staggering’.  If I am really down though, I feel no shame in going upstairs to bed, pulling the covers over my head and trying to dream my way out of the problem. Twenty minutes is good and no more than 30. Then downstairs, cup of coffee and back to work.
 It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: the first draft will be monstrous. You will want to pluck out your eyes when you read back over it. Don’t panic. This first draft bears as much relation to your finished novel as five-year-old Michelangelo’s stick-men drawings do to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Chill. You’ve got this. It can’t get any worse, right?
Somewhere around the middle of the novel, you will lose your way, your hope and the will to live. At this point, you can try writing late at night, with a bottle of wine within easy reach. You just have to get over this slump. You have to write through it and just as wine/beer/vodka/your personal Chumbawamba list help you loosen up in public, they may also free your writing mind. It’s worth a try.
Talk about your work. Make it live in the outside world because sometimes you need to remember why you decided to do this in the first place and one way to do that is to talk about it to someone else. Let your passion shine through. Forget about the small detail of getting thousands of words into sentences and go big on the overarching themes, your VISION. It’s a kind of unreality check and it might just kickstart your enthusiasm in times of crisis. Feel free to add wine too.
If you have children, tell them what you are doing. Talk about the story. They will ask awkward and annoying questions, reveal plot holes and correct inaccurate assumptions. You may end up stomping out of the room but later, when they are in bed, you will fix your manuscript and remember why you love them.
Mix it up. For my first two books, I wrote as the book should be read. But in my last one, I got stuck and frustrated but instead of banging my head on the table, or avoiding the problem by cleaning the shower (my LEAST favourite task because really, why?), I decided to try to write a few paragraphs for the ending. I more or less knew what my last lines would be and it just seemed more productive to do that than the above. It worked. Of course, I later rewrote most of the ending but it got me going again and that’s the best you can hope for sometimes.
Set your characters free. If they go off on a tangent, follow them. If they box themselves (and you) into a corner, take a deep breath, sit back and ask yourself, why did they do that? Chances are they’ve done the right thing and now you just have to figure out the motivation. Once you work that out, my bet is that corner will turn out to have a door or a window or maybe both, and you’ll be off and running again in no time.
When the writing is flowing, don’t sweat the small stuff. Feel like you’ve written that very same phrase to describe a room three chapters earlier? Don’t worry. You can fix it later. Just keep swimming, as Dory would say.
The FIND button on Microsoft Word is the best invention since screw-top wine bottles. Use it. I can generally sense when I have used a phrase before. With FIND I can check, and boy do I check!
Enjoy the ride and when you finish, realise the true scale of your achievement. You are a superhuman creator of worlds. What once did not exist, now does. Feel free to don your superhero cape, dig out that tiara, pour yourself some wine and bask in your success. This is no time to do the ironing. You are a god.

The picture worth 90,000 words

When should you pop the champagne? It’s a tricky question for authors, riven as we are by self-doubt, suspicion and debilitating outbreaks of imposter syndrome.

Do you pour the bubbly after you type ‘The End’ on your first draft? Surely, this would be premature. Doesn’t everyone worry that when they read back over that first draft, they will find a to-do list, a stream-of-consciousness rant on neglected housework, or the transcript of a recent dream somewhere around Chapter 12? Mind you, that might just be me.

Maybe you wait until you send a later draft to your editor, in my case the wonderful Lauren at Legend Press. But that would surely be tempting fate. What if they don’t like it? What if they ask for a huge rewrite? Better keep that bottle chilling for now.

What about when you get the final proof-read PDF back from the publishers? By now, you’ve probably moved seamlessly from the euphoria of finishing to the anxiety of anticipation. What if NOBODY likes it? What if everyone who has read it so far is only being nice about it to spare your delicate feelings? What if you can’t get any endorsements? No, no. Champagne at this point would be akin to mentioning disaster without touching wood.

So, in the end, if you are me, you keep that bottle in the fridge through weeks and weeks of finishing, and then finally drink it to celebrate something entirely unrelated, tagging your new book’s existence onto the end of the toast, really quickly and really quietly.

The whole process of finishing a book is always a testing, if thrilling, time. But the arrival of the cover art offers a moment of pure joy. I am invariably amazed and awed by how brilliantly the illustrators manage to capture the essence of thousands of words. It is a special, magical kind of alchemy. This is my third book and once again, I have been blown away by the cover design, created by Anna Green. Somehow, she has found the perfect image to illustrate the complex story inside.

And so my baby has a cover. It’s a little like getting that first ultrasound. This is what she looks like. This is who she is. I’m delighted to meet her.

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I have a story to tell you, Diane. It is my story and your story and the story of a
century that remade the world. When we reach the end, you will be the ultimate
arbiter of whether it was worth your time. You will also sit in judgment on me.

In a cottage in Normandy, Lina Rose is writing to the daughter she abandoned as a
baby. Now a successful if enigmatic author, she is determined to trace her
family’s history through the two world wars that shaped her life. As the century
draws to a close and her own end beckons, Lina feels it is time for a reckoning.
Lina can no longer bear to carry her secrets alone, but once the truth is
out, can what she did ever be forgiven?

(The Reckoning, published by @Legend_Press on October 15, 2018)

My name is Clár and I think I have a problem

This week, I went to my daughter’s school to take part in a careers fair. I had two posters, one for author and one for journalist. The former was  beautifully illustrated by my 11-year-old and the latter was my rather pathetic attempt at bubble-writing.

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I had photos from Somalia and Ivory Coast, loads of newspaper clippings and copies of my two books. But I still struggled to say ‘I am an author’. I muttered something along the lines of, ‘Hello, do you have any questions about being a journalist? I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Oh yes, I write books too. Well, I’ve written these two and I’ve another coming out in October. Any questions about being a journalist?”

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You see, it’s hard to admit to an addiction. It’s difficult to stand up in public and say, ‘I cannot seem to shake off my debilitating need to make stuff up and write it down’. You’d think I’d be better at this by now. You’d think I would be able to own up to my weakness. But it’s still not easy to be honest about something so delusional in our oh-so-pragmatic world.

It’s not like this is my first time on this merry-go-round. I’ve just finished my third novel. And I do mean finished. It has been edited and proofread and will soon be winging its way to the printers. It is really, really done. Or rather my role in its journey is over. I have no control over what happens next. I am done. So why do I feel so unsettled?

Last week, I found myself moping around our dusty, neglected house, wondering if now would be a good time to break with tradition and actually move the furniture when I hoover. Perhaps, it was time to acknowledge that the insides of the cupboards also needed cleaning. But I felt too wound up for housework.

I was incapable of settling to anything. I made long, LONG lists of all the family admin I needed to do, the photo books I needed to make, the rooms I should clear out. But that’s as far as I got. I found myself staring into space way too much. I trawled Twitter to seek out competitions I could torment with my barely-there short stories. I opened the Microsoft Word files where my previously unsuccessful tales are lurking, but it was not enough.

Finally, it hit me: I am in withdrawal.

Of course, I’ve no one to blame but myself. This is all my fault. Again. This is my third attempt to kick the habit in as many years. And it is not going well.

I’ve tried to distract myself from my cravings. I went for a 10-km run (my first in about a year, it nearly killed me). I have been reading a lot. I am watching way too much 24-hour news and talking angrily to myself, Theresa May, Trump and sundry other world leaders as I stomp up and down the stairs, pretending to tidy but really just moving teenager-litter from pillar to post. I have also started talking to the dog. He is as alarmed as I am. None of it is working.

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You’d think I’d be over my costly fixation. This last book was difficult. It bears little resemblance to my previous two — Fractured, set in Somalia, and Rain Falls on Everyone, which tells of a Rwandan boy who grows up in Dublin after fleeing the genocide. My new book, The Reckoning, takes place during the first and second world wars. It required a lot of research. I was overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge. Halfway through, I rued my choice of subject, of setting, of protagonist. How could I possibly imagine what it had been like then? How could I be so arrogant to think I had something to say on a subject about which so much had already been written?

I swore many times that this would be it. After publishing three books in three years, I would take a break. I would strive to, gulp, get a job again and earn some money. I would return to earth and stop flitting around in the clouds. This was it. No more books for a while. Time to get real.

But despite all the internal ranting and raving, I pushed on, putting word after word on the page. I wrote, and rewrote, and revised, and reordered and eventually the story took shape and took off.

And now I am bereft. Yes, it is partly the terror of not knowing what happens next. The Fear. What if everyone hates the new book? What if ‘they’ wanted something else, something similar to what I have done before? What if I was right when I told myself again and again that I was trying, very unsuccessfully, to reinvent the wheel?

But mostly my malaise is the result of my addiction. I miss writing the book. I need to make things up. That’s why I can’t focus. That’s why I am squandering so much of the time I wished I had more of when I was knee-deep in Book 3. I’ve tried to go cold turkey and it isn’t working.

So, with deep and sincere apologies to my long-suffering husband, I must confess that I have slipped off the wagon. The other day, I found myself down the rabbit hole again. I wrote ‘Book 4’ on a clean page in my notebook and then I scribbled four or five lines. That’s all it took. One puff of magic and I was hooked again.

Now I can do the dusting. I can hoover under the beds. I can tackle that pile of mildewed folders in the so-called office. I have a plan. A story is spreading its delicious juices through my bloodstream. I can feel it buzzing in my veins. I’m okay again.

 

To the men who catcalled my daughter at a bus stop…

… I have one question: Why?

What makes a group of men in a car slow down and shout obscenities at a 14-year-old girl waiting at a bus stop?

I am genuinely and furiously bewildered.

Does it serve some kind of bonding purpose? Is it a power thing? Does embarrassing a girl, who is just learning to be a woman, make you guys feel better about yourselves? Or do you not think about it at all?

My daughter was much cooler about it than me. She shrugged it off. I can’t.

After 45 years on this planet, I am beyond enraged that this mindless, needless erosion of women’s self-confidence, freedom and dignity continues.

I know this is hardly breaking news, but it broke my heart.

When she came down from her room, ready to go, my lovely girl was wearing a tight top, sweatshirt and what I call teeny-tiny shorts. I raised my eyebrows, as I always do. I questioned her choice. as I always do. I warned her that she might get unwanted attention, as I always do. We went through the list of what she should do in the event of said unwanted attention, as we always do.

She’s 14 years old. I shouldn’t be doing any of this and she shouldn’t have to listen to it. But neither she, nor I, nor her 11-year-old sister who listened to the whole thing, are naive. We can’t afford to be.

Last month, we got a letter from her school saying there had been a number of reports of “children being approached by men in cars, on the way to/from school”. We were advised to discuss personal safety with our children. And so we did, over the dinner table, all together, because sometimes the 11-year-old walks home from school too.

Obviously, all I want to do is grab the neanderthals who did this by the scruff of the neck, pin them to a nearby wall and pummel some sense into them. But I’m not that big and even yelling at people can get you into trouble nowadays (yes, I am old enough to say ‘nowadays’ in a prim, semi-nostalgic way).

I don’t have to put up with this nonsense any more because I have, thankfully, transitioned into the invisible realm (and all the absurdity of this situation lies in that sentence). However, I do not want my daughter to have to wait until she too becomes invisible before she can relax walking down the street, or waiting at a bus stop. Her light should shine bright and unobscured and respected.

So, if anyone has any clue why men do this, please let me know, because surely if we know what is going on in their heads, we can start working to fix it. We are all wives, lovers, partners, sisters, mothers, grandmothers.

We know these guys. They do not emerge out of the sewers solely to knock our girl-women down  before they have a chance to stand up. They are here among us and I want to know what they think and why they do what they do.

My daughter is adamant that she is not going to stop wearing what I call “skimpy clothes” because of what happened. Damn straight! The only thing that is going to change is that I am going to stop raising my eyebrows. I am going to try to be as cool as she is about it because — even though I know what is going to happen — she is not the problem.

It’s an obvious statement but this is a hard thing for a mother to say because the thought of blokes leering at her, or at her sister, makes me want to break something. But if she can take it on, then so can I. She is brave and sassy and this must not be intimidated out of her by those who are craven and crass.

In the meantime, if you have a brother, a son, a husband, a lover, an uncle or a male cousin and you can find out from them why men persist in this obnoxious, belittling, degrading and unfathomably stupid behaviour, do let me know.

I probably won’t feel any happier for knowing but maybe then I can answer my daughters’ question: Why?

 

 

Acts of Selfless Devotion. Or What Makes A Book

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At Lutyens and Rubinstein. A gorgeous shop.

Is there anything quite so discombobulating as a book launch?

You’ve spent months alone, muttering to yourself, literally and metaphorically pulling your hair out, wandering around the empty garden gazing sightlessly at the cruel sky, trying to find a new way to say “the sun rose”.

You’ve been up and down like a seesaw on steroids, you’ve cried, drunk so much coffee that the few words you managed to squeeze out over four hours dance in front of your eyes, and inhaled so much beer after bad days that everything dances.

And then, all of a sudden, like a literary Lazarus freed from the cave, you have to put on some smart clothes and go out and make like you knew what you were doing all along.

I had the official launch for my second novel, Rain Falls on Everyone, last week. It was held in the gorgeous Lutyens and Rubinstein book store in Notting Hill, and it was a glorious evening with friends and family and the wonderful people from Legend Press.

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Hugs and kisses, kind questions and praise. I felt like an imposter — all dressed up like the mental cray cray of the last year just never happened. Me, crying into my coffee? Me, dusting the backs of radiators just to avoid Chapter 12? Me, eating a whole packet of Maryland cookies because that, dear reader, is how new adjectives materialise? Oh no. I was always this balanced, and poised, and sure of myself and my book.

Sending a new book out into the world is a bit like watching your child on their first day at school. You are terrified, and proud, and weepy, and you might, as in my case, have to be forcefully dragged away to spill your tears into a cappuccino out of earshot of the school.

It’s agony waiting for those first reviews, hitting REFRESH on Goodreads like an addict at the fruit machines. When friends message you to say they have pre-ordered your book, you have to fight the urge to say: Ah no, sure you didn’t have to go and do that. No need to actually READ it.

You tell yourself that tomorrow, DEFINITELY TOMORROW, you will NOT check Amazon to see if anyone else has bought The Book. You creep around shops to see if it’s been stocked and slink out sheepishly when it is not (that may just be me, of course). You dream of making it to THE TABLES in the middle of the store. If you find a copy of your baby, you move it to a more prominent position. Hey, Lee Child doesn’t need the sales. No harm done, right?

And all the while, ordinary life goes on. The ironing is still, bizarrely, unsmoothed in the basket. The dust has not been informed of your new star status and insists on its right to accumulate. The daddy-long-legs also seem not to have got the memo about your brilliance. And your children still seem to think you will feed them.

I love the utter madness and contrariness of it all. Now that my second baby is out there, I’m itching to get started on the next, so that I can enjoy all this insanity again! But before I pick up my bandages and head back into the cave, I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who helped make this second birth so magical.

My sister Esther, who travelled over from Ireland, bought me shoes WITH HEELS so that I would not have to go to the launch like a grungy Cinderella in my daughter’s hand-me-down Doc Martens. Said 13-year-old daughter did my make-up, ignoring my insistence that I always put my foundation on with my fingers. She rolled her eyes, smiled sadly with the savvy of a streetwise teen, left and returned waving her magic make-up brush.

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My youngest daughter said I was gorgeous and that this was definitely going to be The Bestseller.  My husband’s family trekked all the way from Wales and the Forest of Dean to attend, and friends came from across London and beyond. My long-suffering, stalwart husband brought friends from work and shepherded the family to GBK after it was all over so that we could eat and drink and wonder at the sheer madness of it all. I was truly honoured and humbled and felt like an eejit for putting so many people out!

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Wonderful husband

Beyond friends and family and the delightful team at Legend Press, there are the bloggers and the reviewers – people I don’t know and have never met who took the time to read my book and then took even more time to write about what they thought. I have nothing but praise for these small acts of selfless devotion to the craft of writing. Launches are lovely but reading thoughtful words about how something you dreamt up made someone else feel – that’s priceless. Thank you to everyone who reviewed Rain Falls on Everyone, who tweeted about it, who thought about it, and who took the time to tell others. Kindness. That’s something we don’t get to shout about much nowadays, but it’s there, in the shadows.

Today, I cleaned the bathrooms, walked the dog, bought some shopping and hung out with my beautiful girls. The cave beckons, but I’m just going to stand here in the sunshine a little while longer. Thank you everyone.

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