Clár Ní Chonghaile's Blog, page 3

Playing ping pong over the rainbow

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When I was a young girl, I got laughed at a fair bit. We weren’t very well off, I was a chubby swot and I wore those pink plastic glasses you got on the Medical Card. Then, there were my secondhand clothes, my bike with the brown parcel tape covering the ripped saddle, and the way my face went bright red with pale splotches whenever I did any exercise. (I still wince at the shame of cycling through the village after camogie training, red face glowing under an orange knitted hat and long, long matching scarf trailing behind me). I knew I was the antithesis of cool and sometimes that really upset me. But it had absolutely no effect on what I wanted to do or to be. It just made me mad, which then made me want to do well even more. My long-suffering husband would say it has also left me with a large chip on my working-class shoulder and that is probably true. It might explain why I cannot see Teresa May on the telly without morphing into a female version of Father Jack Hackett (a whispering Father Jack though because the children are usually around). I’ve spent my life ping-ponging between a sense of not being good enough and a smouldering, unshakeable belief in my ability to do whatever I put my mind to.

It’s the same with my writing.

What I find exhausting, but also at times exhilarating, is living life in the messed-up zone where doubt and self-belief wrestle endlessly with each other. You’ve got to have a phenomenal amount of self-belief to finish a book. You have to believe that you have something to say and that you can say it in a fresh new way. Basically, you’re saying: I am a seer, I can take you places you have never been before and I can promise you the journey will be worth it. Now, you might not be right every time. Some readers will hate the journey. Some will wish they had taken a later flight, a shorter route. Some of your fellow travellers may turn away, pop in their earphones and pull down their eye masks. You are willing to take that risk. What arrogance! It leaves the plastic-glasses-wearing me frankly flabbergasted. I’m actually quite a shy person. When I was younger, I used to dread walking up the aisle to get communion on Sunday. Even though we were only four benches from the altar. Nonetheless, I am brazen enough to believe I can build worlds that others will want to visit. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have written my books. I wouldn’t keep trying my hand at short stories despite failing miserably in every single competition I enter. I know I’m not a natural short story writer. I got another “Not this time” email this week. You’d think I’d get the message and give up but although every rejection plunges me into an hours-long funk, I keep entering competitions. Why? Because I honestly believe that one day I can nail this short story lark. I just have to keep trying.

When I was writing my second novel, Rain Falls on Everyone, the Jekyll and Hyde parts of my personality were in overdrive. I remember an early-days lunch meeting I had with my editor — oh, how I waxed lyrical about the scope and scale and depth and pure brilliance that would be my as-yet unwritten novel. Everything was crystal clear in my mind. Six months later, sitting at the dining-room table, my head in my hands, I was literally moaning like a stuck cow as I tried to find another way to describe the sky (If you fancy, I wrote this piece for writing.ie on that whole process). Everything I read during my months of grappling with Rain Falls was both an inspiration and an indictment. I remember a description in Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies — a hilarious and lyrical coming-of-age novel set in a boys’ school in Dublin. The passage that caught my eye was this:

“In the distance, on the crest of the hill, the silhouette of the obelisk protruded like the nib of a fountain pen, inscribing a clouded signature on the tenebrous contract of the night sky ..”

Okay, maybe a little over-written but there was an obelisk in my own novel and a sky and I hadn’t come within an ass’ roar of imagining it as a fountain pen. I felt like such a fraud. And bear in mind, I wasn’t even writing at that point. I was supposed to be relaxing. But as depressed as I felt, there must’ve been a tiny, very faint whisper of self-belief underneath the all the self-pitying whinging. Because the next day, I sat down at my computer and wrote and deleted and deleted and wrote until it was time to hold my head in my hands again, get the chocolate chip biscuits, eat 15 and try again with sticky, smudgy fingers.

Dolly Parton put it well: If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

 

 

 

 

Goldilocks and the three Brexits

The June election is making me feel like Goldilocks. Only instead of having a bowl of too-hot porridge, a bowl of too-cold porridge and a bowl of just-right porridge, I am being offered a bowl of too-hot Brexit, too-cold Brexit, and a bowl of “meh”. What’s a golden-locked girl to do?

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When Teresa May pulled the handbrake and executed her dizzying U-turn by calling a snap election, I initially thought: Great! We can have another say on the madness that is Brexit! Surely, I thought, politicians of all hues will now raise their voices to propose an alternative to a course of action decided by a referendum so contaminated by lies, misleading rhetoric and hate that I am frankly amazed anyone can take the result seriously? Not to be too Irish, but if at first you don’t succeed, vote and vote again until you do. (Some proper analysis on this phenomenon here)

How wrong I was.

Instead, we have the Tories stubbornly refusing to see the iceberg while shouting down the hatch to stoke the fires higher. We have the Labour Party handing out lollipops (free hospital parking! More bank holidays!) while failing to notice that someone is making off with the sweetshop (my husband’s analogy). The Lib Dems are at least offering us voters a chance to have a say on the final deal — you’d think this would be a given, but it appears not. (The Lib Dems have also cheered me up no end with Nick Clegg’s masterly performance of linguistic versatility here. I know, I know. I’m being superficial but I love the way his whole being changes ever so slightly with each language.)

Here’s a helpful BBC piece about where everybody stands on Brexit, though to be honest there is a lot of uneasy butt-shifting on this, and no wonder. Hard to do anything else when nobody really knows what Brexit will mean.

I know we’re supposed to be over the whole Brexit thing but this new election has reopened the wounds.

I find myself shaking my head all the time, wondering how we ended up in this ludicrous situation. The reasons, of course, are manifold: the financial crash of 2008, rising inequality, cynical political exploitation of the fear resulting from economic hardship, data manipulation by shady pro-Brexit forces, Tory party in-fighting, and the frankly disgraceful performance of some elements of the media. What is truly distressing though is the fact that questioning the validity of this Brexit course of action has become an absolute non-starter, worse, an almost treasonous act?

There is something frankly nauseating about the neo-colonial rhetoric of plucky Britain, standing strong, stoic and alone, forging a new, independent and better future for itself, free from all those pesky foreigners with their insistence on rights and shared values and all that. Teresa May seems to believe that Britain will get whatever it wants from the EU as long as the British leader is strong … and called Teresa May. It’s so blatantly disrespectful. (This is worth a read: Yes, I know it’s Clegg again but the man is making a lot of sense, to my mind.) It’s as though the British government believes the other European leaders do not matter, that they have no say and worse, that they can be tamed  and brought to heel by a “strong” British leader. Of course, when EU leaders or officials dare to utter any thoughts about the complex negotiating process ahead of us all, they are accused of negativity, obstructionism and even trying to influence the election.

We are constantly told that there was a clear mandate for Brexit. In reality, the margin of victory was thin: 51.9 percent vs 48.1 percent on turnout of 72.2 percent. If you don’t think so, read author and philosopher A. C. Grayling in this interview. We are told that the British people have spoken and that we can no longer challenge their decision. But read this excellent article about data manipulation and maybe think again. If you do have any doubts though, whisper them. You don’t want to be dubbed a traitor and forced to learn the rules of cricket, or something.

Look, I know one is not supposed to remoan. I know the referendum is over and Brexit is almost underway. But this is such a gigantic, existential change that I am flabbergasted at the absence of substantive debate about alternatives. Especially as the reality of what leaving the EU means becomes more apparent every day.

I had hoped that this new election would be a chance for an open conversation about where the UK is heading but instead we seem to be ring-fenced by fear of censure and tired political tropes, doomed to listen to platitudes and out-of-date rhetoric while our children wonder what the hell the grown-ups are doing.

If any campaigners are wondering, there is only one issue for me as a voter: Brexit. Offer me an alternative and you’ve got my vote. Of course, other policies are important too but everything depends on whether the government decides to go ahead and pull out of the European Union. It’s about time that we start to speak the unspeakable and do the unthinkable.

 

 

What’s with the daytime ads, lads?

There are a number of disadvantages to unemployment but I’m beginning to think that the main one is the morbid nature of daytime ads on TV. Particularly for someone like me.

Here I am, on the very wrong side of forty, faffing around at home every day with only a schizophrenic Golden Retriever pup for company. I am trying to get going on my third novel, nervously chewing my nails over the second, which is slowly inching towards publication in July, and all the while trying to convince myself that giving up my job and moving out of London — to find better schools, be more present for my girls, and focus on fiction writing — was a good idea. My social circle now is almost entirely canine – I am on first name terms with a range of doggies, from chocolate Labs to yappy terriers, though I keep forgetting to ask their humans their own names, ages, and whether they are up for drinking wine at lunchtime on a weekday.

Given all this, I really do not need to be reminded of mortality and the passage of time every time I turn on the telly. (I mainly do it for the company and sometimes because I am unable to turn away from the never-ending, slo-mo motorway pile-up that is British politics these days.) But apparently, today’s Mad Men think what I really need to see all day are pictures of smiling, white-teethed, grey-haired “seniors” gardening or eating lovely dinners in spotless, expensive kitchens, and talking about how happy they are to have put money aside for their funeral.

I cannot imagine a world where I would ever have this conversation. Then again, I did find myself scrubbing the windowsill in the kitchen the other day after moving all the random pieces of child-made pottery, empty water bottles and dead plants to get at the dirt (the employed me would have sensibly put MORE stuff up there to hide the dirty bits. Truly, the devil makes work for idle hands).

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I have also recently re-hemmed a pair of jeans. For tea the other day, I served roast mushrooms with a garlicky sauce, or more accurately, perhaps, a drizzle. (My delightful children said: Wait, what? Mum, did you do these? We thought it was Daddy.) This week, I wrote a concise but comprehensive email to my youngest daughter’s school, detailing my ideas for an Irish stall for International Week. And yes, I have joined a genealogy site.

What I am trying to say is that I am feeling a little lost and pretty vulnerable – not unlike Will Smith as he wanders around post-viraloptic New York. He has a dog too.

Only for the fact that I am to electronic devices what water is to witches, I would probably be broadcasting a continuous distress signal on a ham radio from the back of the garden. As it is, I go down sometimes to stare mournfully over the hedge at the free-ranging pheasants.

The last thing I need right now is to be reminded  that I am at that age when society seems to think the only thing I could possibly be interested in is the cost of the wood for my own coffin. Or unlocking the equity in my house (as if). Or buying life insurance.

Chirpy woman with sherbet voice: There is no medical, sir, just a few lifestyle questions. How old are you and have you ever smoked (always ending on a high note)?

Young and ridiculously healthy looking man: I’m 32 and I’ve never smoked (that self-satisfied high note again).

Cue smiles all around and cut to picture of beaming, non-whining child.

Exactly HOW is this relevant to me?

I suppose I should be grateful for the occasional sight of Eva Longoria spraying her non-grey hair to hide the non-grey. For an emergency selfie, as you do.

I have a suggestion for the Don Drapers behind this daytime mental torture. Ditch the dour, death-is-coming ads and fill our screens with foam parties, raves, orgies, and lots and lots of ads for vertigo-inducing high-heeled boots that we do not need but might just buy to help relieve the boredom of cleaning the bathroom again (I did it last week! Where has this dirt come from?). I want to see my people wigging out, I want to see middle-aged (yes, I know I’m being kind to myself here but hey, 40 is the new …. something) ladies glugging cheap wine in deck chairs and forgetting to pick up the kids from school. I want to see grey-haired ladies shaving their heads, putting on electric pink wigs and THEN picking up the kids from school. A little imagination, people.

I’m not going to buy a coffin. I might buy a pink wig, though. If it was really pink. And came with a complimentary bottle of wine.

 

Paws for thought

His eyes are soulful, his soft fur is the colour of pale butter and he is the living embodiment of cuddle-cute. But his spirit is untamed and he is, despite his tiny size, pushing me relentlessly towards the edge of sanity. This is Simba, the eight-week-old Golden Retriever puppy we brought home at the beginning of January. He’s only been here two weeks but already he’s turned our lives upside down. We’ve bought a crate and a stair-gate; I now get up every day at 6.30 am and find myself two minutes later in the dark, frosty garden urging an animal to pee; and all of our tables and shelves are cluttered with shoes, bags, umbrellas and all the things we can no longer leave on the floor. We’ve spent hundreds of pounds already on medicines as Simba was secretly infested with a plethora of parasites when we brought him home. And don’t get me started on toilet-training. One word: diarrhoea.

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My husband keeps telling me we will have a beautiful dog one day, but the thing is, today, and tomorrow, and the day after, I am at home alone with Simba. And I don’t know what to do. I have taught him to Sit but that seems to be the limit of my authority. The words Drop, Stop, No and Get Out seem to mean nothing to our little butter-churner. Today, I called a dog training company: 30 minutes later I had an astronomical quote for a home visit, and a sense that I might have been a little too needy with the poor woman who only required a few details, not a blow-by-blow sometimes tearful account of the last two weeks.

Thankfully, I had just finished a first revision of my new book before we got Simba. (It’s taken me four hours just to write the above two paragraphs so writing a book would have been a tad ambitious). When all of this was originally being discussed (and by that I obviously mean when our kids were demanding a puppy), I suppose I had this romantic vision of me taking a break from my writing to walk docile, sweet, silent Simba through the woods. I would smile benignly and probably a little smugly at passers-by as I came up with killer new story ideas in my head. When I got back to my desk (a real desk in my vision, not the dining room table where my computer is squashed between a never-ending game of Risk, a bottle of hand sanitiser and, of course, shoes), I would sip camomile tea and calmly type up my brilliant thoughts as Simba snoozed on my UGG-booted feet.

Instead, I am perched here on my chair all the better to regularly leap up to yell “NO” or “OUT”. I’m wearing my coat and scarf in case I have to dash into the garden at a tail-raised moment’s notice. The sound of Simba’s collar buckle rattlling is like the crackle of the baby monitors of yore: it sets my teeth on edge because it means he is on the move, sneakily looking for carpet fibres to pull, shoes to gnaw, cables to chew, or sweeping brushes to duel with in a Don-Quixote fashion.

But, you know, every cloud etc. I’ve seen some star-spangled night glories and dawn-of-time sunrises thanks to the constant toilet-training; the one time I took him on the bus to the vet, I spoke to more people than I have since moving to this town six months ago; I’ve learnt to iron really, really quickly; and I feel fully and unashamedly justified in dumping my resolution to make this a dry January.

Perhaps most importantly, I have had neither the time nor the energy to focus on the insanity that is the incoming Trump administration, or the fact that the UK is preparing to shoot itself in the foot, economically speaking, just because it wants to cut down the number of foreigners who come here. I know things are bleak and the world is a mess from Syria to the Philippines, but for me, getting the curtains and cables safely through another day is enough to be worrying about.

So, if it all seems too much as we prepare for the #OMG Inauguration #NOWAY #AMIDREAMING #IDIOCRACYBECAMEREAL #AMITRUMAN #PLEASEGODLETMEBETRUMAN, maybe think about getting a puppy.

 

 

Keep calm and carry on writing

You know that feeling you get when you didn’t know a thing was a thing. I usually experience it after a conversation with my daughters.

Wait, what? People are walking around trying to catch imaginary animals using their phones? There are special brushes for contouring your cheeks? Hiddleswift is off? Wait, Hiddleswift was a thing? What do you mean everyone colours in their eyebrows? A unicorn version of Uptown Funk is a thing? (I’ll get back to this, cos .. hot damn, already!)

This week, I got that feeling after stumbling onto the massive row about Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival. On the one hand,  it makes me want to go, “Duh, of course writers must be allowed to write about the world outside their own experiences. Their tales are made up. The clue is in the name.” But the sheer volume of outrage and the absolutely phenomenal amount of words written about what, frankly, seemed to me one of those self-evident truths, made me look a bit closer (Yes, I get the irony of adding to that ‘phenomenal amount of words’. I have a soft spot for irony.)

You can read Shriver’s speech here. And I think you should because it’s properly thought-provoking, and there’s way too much exegesis being done by people who, I suspect, may not have read the whole thing. Or who maybe read it in that way that only lets you see what you want to see. Like when I’m reading an article about upcoming movies, but really I am just looking out for Ryan Gosling’s name. Cos, you know.

Here are some of the critical articles: this from writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who walked out of Shriver’s speech. Another from Nesrine Malik in the Guardian. There are many more, and many supporting her.

Basically, I think, Shriver was decrying the argument that writers who write about cultures/races/identities different from their own are guilty of cultural appropriation. She argues, cogently I think, that without this freedom, fiction is dead.

Now, I’m not saying racism and discrimination — subtle, subliminal or shout-it-from-the-rooftops — are not a thing. The proponents of the insidious ‘us and them’ discourse are pushing their way further into the mainstream every day. You heard it in the abysmal debates surrounding the Brexit referendum here in the UK, where suddenly the gloves were off, and the kind of xenophobic ranting that you would once only have heard in the pub — and moved seats to get away from — was suddenly pouring out of the radio on a daily basis, spouted by people who should’ve known better. In the US, the ‘us and them’ brigade, led by … nah, I’m not going to name him, he gets way too much coverage all ready … you know, THAT guy, has similarly debased political discourse to the extent that I wouldn’t now let my girls watch a debate for fear of what they might hear (This from a woman who chose Billy Elliot for a family movie about a year ago, and forgot that whole opening scene. And the fanny conversation. Oops.)

It seems to me that division is getting the upper hand: hatred of the other, fear of the other and a kind of sickening moral righteousness that purports to know what is best for others — ‘how dare they seek a better life? Well, they are definitely economic migrants, so they can’t stay. Off you go’ — without acknowledging that a common humanity must be built on common rights, and to believe someone else deserves the same rights as you, you need to see that person as an extension of you — just another human being.

Life is hard enough without us all working ourselves up into a lather about what divides us. We all face that ultimate challenge: life is finite, our tragedy lies in our birth, so how do we make the most of the time we have? And of course, if you are a young black man in America, there are unique challenges; if you are a woman in Somalia, again unique challenges; and some of those challenges derive from corrupt states, or flawed institutions, or ingrained repression, and it is right that these critical issues should be called out.

But here’s the thing: Lionel Shriver was talking about fiction. About make-believe. About books, about stories, about that great urge to escape the everyday, the mundane, and lose oneself in another world, another mind. Because sometimes our own minds are really too much. It seems so odd to me that the whole discourse on this has often conflated fiction and real life.

Is it difficult for minorities to get publishers? Perhaps. Is that a reflection of a kind of racial hierarchy in the publishing world? Maybe. Are these issues that need to be talked about, debated, and addressed? Yes. Is banning a particular group from talking about another group the way forward? I really can’t see how.

If you want to read a much more nuanced take on this, check out this article. The point about gatekeepers rings very true.

I would love to be smart enough and well-read enough to write something as well researched as that. But I’m not. I’m also really busy making stuff up right now.

So I’m going to go back to writing my second novel. My main character is a Rwandan 20-something, who lives in Dublin, and gets sucked into the drug world. Yeah, I know. I’m not Rwandan, I have never lived in Dublin, and I’ve never … well, you get the picture. In my first novel, I had three main characters: a thirty-something journalist of dubious moral character, a 60-something mother who had made some bad choices, and a Somali man who ends up working for Al Shabaab. I’m none of those things. But maybe I’m all of those things. Maybe we are all the same. Wouldn’t that be great?

Now, you can bash my efforts to portray a character, but if you say that I can’t write about anything other than being 40-something, female, Irish, a wife and mother-of-two, then God help me. And you. (We already have Angela’s Ashes, so not much to be done there). I don’t want to write about my life. I do want to imagine stories, explore ideas, invent characters, and travel to other worlds. When I do that, I hope the reader will follow. I hope I will be true, in the way fiction must be true, in making sense of life, in a way that helps us live life. More fully.

I was listening to an old BBC World Book Club recording featuring Jeanette Winterson on my run the other day (the World Book Club is pretty much the only reason I run. Or rather the only way I can run.) The podcast is some years old, but it seems very pertinent today.

The author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is asked do you have any way to resolve the thorny issue of how to describe, or label, different minorities so that they can more effectively fight for their rights? What label would work?

Her short answer: “Yes, human beings.”

And then: “Im not sure we do need to be naming difference. I think we need to learn to love and accept each other, and that we are all the same. We are made in the same way. Everybody wants to love … There are civil rights issues, of course there are. But that’s about equality, that whoever we love, and whatever gender we are, we should be equal under the law and in the eyes of one another. And that’s a big broad fight, that I’d like to think everybody was involved in: straight, gay, black, white, male, female. We should want a planet where we are equal, equal in love, equal in work, equal in our lives.”

Anyway, I’ve been mulling this for a few days. And then I stumbled across this video: yes, it may be a little twee; yes, it’s easy; yes, it’s in some ways perhaps a facetious take on this issue. (And yes, I am aware it is a Michael Jackson song. What can I say? I am a closet fan.)

But as we wield the Pritt Stick ever more vigorously, sticking labels on everything, reducing and reducing until all we have left are categories that in themselves risk becoming generalisations, maybe we should just watch this, and dance.

I would like to end with what Shriver thought of the whole row. Because it makes so much sense, at least to me, someone who tries every day to inhabit other minds, other lives. She is interviewed in Time.

“Can I just say: I am dumbfounded at the reaction to that speech, the point of which I found self-evident and downright anodyne. And I find the aftermath very discouraging. The upside, however, has been that I’ve had an outpouring of solidarity from other writers. And that affirms my view that this is an important right to continue to carve out for fictions writers. But I find the concept of cultural appropriation so dubious that I am distressed that we have had such an extensive conversation about it.”

And this part, in particular, rings very true:

“The whole notion of re-enfencing ourselves into little groups, first off, encourages pigeonholing. It means that we don’t read books about people who are different; we just read books about people who are just like us. And we don’t experience the empathy that you’re recommending to me. And we all the more think of each other in terms of membership of a collective. And I don’t think that’s in the interest of any minority group. Why would they want that? And why do they want us to keep our hands off their culture and therefore ignore them? The exchange of cultural practices and ideas—even costume—is fruitful! It’s in the interest of those groups—for us to be able to exchange our experience.”

In my opinion, this exchange is critical. It’s what keeps us together. It is our shield against those who would divide us.

 

Ok, it’s good to get that off my chest. Now, back to the writing; to imagining (not stealing) another world, bringing a fictional (made-up, not stolen) character to life, hopefully in a way that makes people want to get inside someone else’s head. At least for a little while.

And about those unicorns: here you go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New School Blues

“But why won’t anyone play with meeee?”

Parents taking their kids to new schools this week know what I am talking about.

The nervous tugging at the jumper; the oh-so-casual pose struck in a corner, well away from everyone else who seems to know everyone else; the discreet staring while pretending to be interested in that fascinating tree over there.

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare. It’s the first day at a new school.

And it was my nightmare this week.

My two girls were fine, of course. The eldest strode off bravely into her new, huge, suburban school, holding her own, with a fabulous top-knot, among the gaggles of long-legged girls, all giggling and chatting as they walked past the back-to-school traffic jam snarling this middle-of-nowhere road. At her new primary school, the youngest stood mournfully watching a tennis-ball-football match for a while (but I think she was just wondering why they didn’t bring a football), and then found her new friends for a weird, high-octane game of forced hugs.

But what about meee? There I was, a newbie Mum, with no one to talk to. It doesn’t help that I seem to be older than all the other Mums. I pretended to read urgent emails on my phone (I don’t have a job and really, I was looking at Twitter and a story about why Keira Knightley has had to wear wigs, and wondering whether it was time to go gracefully grey before my hair begins to fall out, more). I tried discreetly to catch people’s eyes, but they were resolutely staying in their cliques. I looked for other lone wolves: but they were all men in their 20s, and I just couldn’t see how that conversation would start, never mind end.

You question everything when you are alone on the side of a busy playground. Had I dressed down too much? Should I have put on some make-up (this as I sized up a Mum in a floor-length skirt, with a thigh high split, and beautiful black shoes that I would only ever even consider wearing if I was looking for a snog, and I don’t do that anymore!)? Were people put off by my accent when I called out to my daughter?

Even my daughter ignored me. Actually, she told me firmly before we left the house that I was under no circumstances allowed to hug or kiss her in the school environs. “Do all your hugging at home,” she said, not budging despite my best downturned pout. She’s nine. I got a fist-bump out of her in the school hall but only cos I stood in front of her, and swore on my writing career that no one could see us.

Her 12-year-old sister was even more adamant. We were allowed to walk her to the turnoff to the school, but there was to be no touching, no hugging, no kissing (this was clearly underlined, even though it was a verbal instruction), and no waving. And certainly no entering the school premises.

In a moment of abject humiliation at the primary school, my nine-year-old broke away from her new friends, wandered over to me (well, close enough to allow me to hear her urgent whisper), and said, “Why aren’t you making friends, Mummy?”

So I wandered home, a little bereft, a little bruised.

You’d think I’d be delighted and excited to have our new house to myself, finally. I can eat cereal all day if I want (that’s just a random example, of course I would never do that. What do you mean there are no more Rice Krispies?). I could go to bed for hours, slide down the bannisters, or veg in front of endless reruns of Mad Men.

I could do that, if I didn’t have a novel to deliver by December, and that book is full of noisy people who just won’t leave me alone, damn it! Always with the backstories, and the questions: Why did I do that? Why would I say that? I would never go there! What are you doing to me?

But today, I knuckled down and gave them some quality time. Usually, I would do … well, anything really, before settling down at the computer, especially when the book is still just the faintest shadow of a ill-formed, half-glimpsed dream that I might or might not have had one wine-soaked night. And God knows, I have really good excuses to procrastinate — boxes not unpacked, floors not hoovered, dust so thick it seems a shame now to disturb its peaceful slumber. There is even ironing to do, for heaven’s sake.

But I had  another reason to throw myself into Dublin’s underworld, and the struggles of my main character, a young Rwandan. Writing a new novel is the worst thing in the world, unless what you’re thinking about is worse. (And unless, of course, it’s one of those days where it’s the best thing in the world, but for every day like that, there are the bridge days when you have to plod forwards, eyes down, never looking back, never thinking of the distance ahead — much like the way I did my measly 5-km run today).

What I was fleeing today was the realisation that my time as a mother is limited. The admonition not to kiss/hug/indulge in PDAs was no big surprise from the big girl, but that little part of my soul — where babies are always babies, but perfect now since they poo and pee alone and can speak — died a little when I heard it from my little one (I know objectively nine is not necessarily ‘little’ but I have always found numbers very subjective).

I remember scouring those early-day parenting books — yesterday it seems — for the secrets I just knew had to be hidden within: How to get my screaming child to sleep at 2 am, how to make nutritious and delicious meals using just raw carrot, how to stay sane when reading Each Peach Pear Plum for the 11-millionth time (with voices, of course). And don’t get me started on watching the Teletubbies with that evil, soul-sapping repetition in the middle.

I don’t know if there are books for this next stage — there probably are, but I’ve not got them. And to be honest, I wouldn’t read them if I had. This is bigger than a book. This is a tectonic shift: today, I am pretty sure I was tolerated, nay indulged, not needed.

You know when they say: be careful what you wish for. It seems to me this is another one of Life’s little ironies (oh, how I love her mischievous humour, that cheeky Life wan!). We spend all those early, sleepless, mad years, waiting for them to grow, urging them forward, cheering every milestone, dreaming of the day we will be able to pee alone, shower alone, go out together as adults, read two pages of a book (without pictures) in one go.

Now, I am there. I have reached the promised land, and all I want is a little hand in mine. Some people are never happy. But I feel like Life is just hovering on the edge of sadistic. I could be wrong but I am also hitting Middle-Age so I don’t think so.

All’s well that end’s well though. I bought a Victoria Sponge for after school, thus forcing the children to chat to me at the table or forgo cake; my nine-year-old beat me again at memory cards, and my 12-year-old chatted my ears off as I tried to get her to go to bed. They are still there, and I am still here, and we are finding our feet, every day, on a road that reforms itself all the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bags are coming

So my question is: has anyone else noticed the slow, stealthy rise of The Bags. Here we are worrying about all sorts of catastrophes from climate change, to Brexit, to Trump, to the return of 80s fashion, and all the while, the real danger is right in front of our faces.

The bags are coming.

I admit I’ve been among the legions of unaware. But now I have moved from north London to St Albans, and there is no hiding from the truth: the bags are making a move.

Last week, my daughters and I were travelling every day from St Albans back to West Hampstead for a drama course booked in that pre-summer holiday panic, before we knew we were ditching life in the big smoke for life in the little smoke. Every day, we got on the train, and every day we marvelled at how bags of all shapes and sizes — from spindly shopping bags, to leather handbags, totes, computer bags, and rucksacks — were placed regally on seats, while mere humans crowded the aisles, like dour, rush-hour serfs. I suppose at least our new rulers seem very inclusive. No bag is excluded, even Aldi bags get the royal treatment.

Now, the bags have no tickets (And by the way, what is with the prices? Does everyone outside London sell their kidneys to fund their travel? Oh, how naive I was. I miss my Oyster.) And yet, there they sit, those elite bags, slouched casually towards the windows, or comfortably spreading out across the seats, no doubt bag-giggling at the plight of the humans standing up.

There have been other signs over the years, but of course, I missed them.

When we lived in Kenya, I used to put my handbag on the floor at restaurants, or parties, and the locals would tell me not to — that it was bad luck. Some ladies — the ones wearing outfits not clothes, with perfect hair, just-done nails, and beautiful shoes — even had these little hook-things that you could fasten to the edge of the table and then hang your bag from. They may have had a point. Once, a waiter tripped over my badly placed, squidgy handbag, and stood on it as he tried to find his footing, neatly destroying my iPod with his heel. Was I the victim of a cosmic force that watches from the sky to wreak havoc on anyone who dares leave a Bag on the ground? Or simply a ninny who left her iPod unprotected in a bag that only a mother could love?

In all seriousness, people, move your bags! I don’t want to live in a society where people put bags on the train seats and then deliberately look away as new passengers get on, staring in fixed wonder at the stationary scenery outside. Move the bags, already. (Shout out, though, to the young lady who gave her seat to my daughter, and then sat on her large, solid suitcase in the aisle. That’s the way to treat a bag.)

Here’s an idea — put the bags in those things above your head. See them. They’re called luggage racks, and bags are luggage. Yes, they are, no matter how much you may want to think otherwise, no matter how much you worry that their feelings might be hurt. They are luggage and that is where they belong. You will survive for the duration of a train journey without your bag. If you must, take out your phone, and book (who am I kidding?), before you stow the bags away.

My husband — his eyes glazing as I wound up a 40-minute rant — said I just needed to ask people to move their bags (and while we’re at it, to maybe move in to the window seat so that other people can sit down without clambering over your knees as you glare furiously? Yes, I know you want to sit alone. Yes, I know we don’t like human contact in this country, but I live a 40-minutes’ walk from the station and my feet are sore). But wouldn’t it be a much smilier, happier, unicorn-ier world if people moved their bags first?

My other great discovery during this time of mammoth transitions in our family life  (as well as moving, I’ve stopped “working” full-time to stay at home, mind the girls and write my next book. Sometimes, I also threaten to home-school them, just for kicks. Don’t judge me – I live in the ‘burbs) is that all removal men and other handymen take two sugars in their tea. It’s a thing. I think Jamie Oliver needs to get on this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A flame to fire dreams: the Olympic Torch comes to Nairobi’s Korogocho

“It’s here,” grinned Father John Webootsa, unhooking the padlock on his modest room in Korogocho, one of Nairobi’s roughest and most neglected slums. He disappeared inside and emerged clutching an Olympic Torch.

A British council worker donated the torch to Korogocho, a crowded neighbourhood of ramshackle shacks where pigs snuffle among roadside rubbish, and women bake chapattis at tiny tables on the street or wash clothes in plastic basins.

“People feel valueless here but the fact that the Olympic Torch was brought here means that these people have value,” Webootsa, a Comboni missionary, said as he stood clutching the shiny souvenir in the narrow entrance to his compound.





Father John with the Olympic Torch




Residents did double takes as they passed through Webootsa’s wood-and-steel street door and saw what the bearded priest was holding. A pretty woman with curly hair and pencilled-in eyebrows insisted she be photographed with it.

As Kenya’s elite athletes prepare for the London Olympics, young people in Korogocho, which means ‘crowded shoulder to shoulder’ in Kiswahili, have already tasted the Olympic dream.

John McBride from County Durham donated his torch to the St. John’s Sports Society in Korogocho after he was nominated as a torchbearer by the Catholic relief agency, CAFOD. He ran his leg of the relay barefoot in solidarity with the children of Korogocho.

In late June, the 48-year-old, who has long supported the Sports Society with CAFOD, flew to Nairobi. He ran through Korogocho surrounded by thousands of young residents, many of whom had a chance to carry the torch a short distance.

McBride said he wanted “to inspire people to be the best they can.”

Father Webootsa said the torch’s passage through the slum’s pitted, narrow streets gave its people a sense of pride.

“There are many senior athletes who have never touched this,” he said. “I remember one of the men (running with the torch) said to me, ‘the world is in solidarity with us … but does Kenya care about us?’”

If Korogocho is rich in crime, drugs, and other illegal activities, it is probably because it is so poor in everything else. There are few schools, hardly any state health facilities and residents often feel a sense of embarrassment simply because of where they come from.

Here, Father Webootsa is something of a Superman-cum-Good Samaritan. He runs a micro-finance scheme to provide alternative livelihoods to residents working on the nearby Dandora dumpsite, a sludgy, stinky wasteland where bristly Marabou storks poke among the rubbish alongside people searching for anything of value.

The priest has campaigned for over 10 years for the dump to be relocated, but the issue is political and there have been many delays.

He also runs St. John’s Sports Society, which was founded in 1994 and offers training in football, boxing, netball, taekwondo, karate, weightlifting and handball, as well as lessons in life.

Peter Odhiambo plays football at the Society, and sells sweets and snacks outside the nearby St. John’s School to survive.

“I spend most of my free time in St. John’s. We are not tempted (to commit crimes) because we get training, and are taught about the importance of life and sports,” said the 24-year-old, who was among those who carried the torch with McBride.

“Many people just see the torch on TV, but I touched it,” said the Manchester United fan.

He thinks Kenyan long-distance runners will do well in London, and says the Olympic Games, despite taking place a world away, mean a lot to him.

 “When I see our people running, they give Kenya a good name … It inspires us. You just think that one of these days, it could happen to you too. They started low down and now they are up there. We have hope.”

Several Kenyan athletes – like the late Olympic marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru and Odhiambo’s heroine, 800m champion Pamela Jelimo — also came from humble beginnings.

If Odhiambo wants to see Jelimo in action in London, he will have to pay 10 shillings (less than 10 pence) at a TV shack. That will get him two hours viewing, but he can ill afford the fee.

Father Webootsa hopes he will be able to show some of the Olympic events on big screens around the slum, as he did during the soccer World Cup.

He is keeping the torch in his room for now because the Society’s gym is not yet secure enough. Other London 2012 torches have been sold on eBay for thousands of pounds – an unimaginable fortune in Korogocho where more than 150,000 people live on just 1.5 square kilometres, and where muggings and robberies are common.

At St. John’s weightlifting gym – a shack made of sheets of corrugated iron held up by wooden beams with weights made from spare car parts — Emmanuel Omondi strips off his T-shirt to reveal his ripped abdomen and bulging biceps. Omondi runs the gym and works as a bouncer. He can also now call himself a torchbearer.





Emmanuel Omondi in the St. John’s weightlifting gym




“It meant a lot … I was on my way to work (when I heard about the torch parade), so I told my boss, ‘there is something special, I won’t be in.’

Nairobi Blast – Looking for Answers

The problem with terror is that it tends to trample on truth.

On Monday, an explosion ripped through a retail mall full of small stalls selling shoes and T-shirts in Nairobi’s Central Business District. More than 30 people were injured and some of those are still in hospital.

By the time I got there, the fire that had gutted the building was out, the injured people had been taken away and the emergency crews were beginning to tidy up their firehoses. A steady stream of suited officials and smartly uniformed, cap-wearing police officers gingerly made their way through the broken glass and burnt stalls for a tour and then a few words for the many, many cameras.

At first, most officials at the scene blamed an electrical fault. Or at the very least said it was too early to tell but that an electrical fault could have caused the blast.

“The initial investigation does not actually indicate anything to do with terrorism. It does not indicate anything to do with a grenade attack or anything like that. It’s actually pointing towards some kind of electrical fault and that is what we are treating it as at this particular moment, but of course the investigation is still ongoing to find out what exactly caused the blast,” said Jamleck Kamau, Nairobi metropolitan development minister.

He reassured Nairobians that the government was doing everything it could to make sure the city was safe, and that CCTV cameras would soon be installed.  (Capital FM says the 11 billion-shilling project will kick off next week with the advertisement of an international tender).

Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere also initially blamed an electrical fault, although Kenya Power (formerly Kenya Power and Lighting Company, or, as the wags would have it, Kenya Please Light Candles) quickly issued a statement saying there was no way it could have been an electrical fault as there was no ground-mounted transformer at the site.

Now, police and officials have said it was likely a bomb, possibly a fertilizer bomb. Some witnesses have said a bearded man left a bag at one of the stalls moments before the blast.

Of course, fingers are pointing at the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab. But there has been no claim of responsibility so far, which is odd. You’d think a group whose avowed aim is to cause terror and fear would jump at the opportunity to lay claim to an explosion in the heart of Nairobi at lunchtime. Especially since they threatened to bring the “flames of war” to the Kenyan capital after the country sent its soldiers across the border last October.

Police have now issued a photo of a man they want to question, naming him as Emrah Erdogan. He is believed to be either Turkish or German and may be linked to al-Shabaab. But not necessarily to Monday’s blast. Whatever it was. They have two other suspects they want to question for the explosion.

You do have to wonder if the string of low-level attacks in Nairobi can all be attributed to al-Shabaab. Of course, the attacks could be carried out by so-called “lone wolf sympathizers”. But maybe not.

At the end of April, a grenade was thrown into a church in Nairobi’s Ngara area. One person was killed and at least 15 injured. Police said afterwards that it was not a terror attack, but that it might have been the result of a long-running land dispute. But then later, Iteere said that the attacker was “a known terrorist”.  And again a photo was circulated.

We are already in an election year in Kenya. At the very least, that means heightened tensions, raised stakes and a reason to suspect motives. And having a bad guy like al-Shabaab on the scene may offer others a figleaf for their own actions, be they personal, political, economic.

On the letters page of the Daily Nation today, Omondi Ocholla Rampell writes:  “It has become easy for those who take such attacks at face value to attribute each of them to al-Shabaab militants. However, I am convinced that information from the intelligence community, which may not be public at the moment, could point to other internal actors who may not necessarily be connected to known terror organizations.”’

I don’t know why Ocholla Rampell, a political scientist, is convinced or what information he may have, but he does make some valid points. At the very least, we should know the extent of the unknowns, be they known unknowns or unknown unknowns, to paraphrase Rumsfeld.

Ocholla Rampell gives a handy list of where to start:

“Kenya must, therefore, take a hard look at the pattern of the attacks targeting civilians, their nature, explosives used and the identity of those behind the acts. We must also ask tough questions as to who could be keen on creating a breakdown in law and order in the country, including how such individuals or groups are likely to benefit from a temporary state of lawlessness.”

I’m not saying there must necessarily be a conspiracy theory. Or theories. But it’s worth remembering, I guess, that reflex responses may not be right. It’s not always THE bad guy. It may be the other bad guy, the one that you didn’t pay much attention to as the movie rolled along.

“Endemic Corruption”– More than a cliche

This story in the Daily Nation caught my eye today. It’s common to write that corruption is endemic in Kenya: it’s no cliche – the list of financial misdemeanours just seems to get longer all the time.

The Daily Nation says that an audit by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, covering up to 2010, shows that various Kenyan government departments and individuals were involved in the misuse or theft of some $3.3 million. The Fund, unsurprisingly, wants the money back.

The article says that a draft of the Fund’s report was given to the Kenyan government to check the allegations.

“In February, Public Health and Sanitation permanent secretary Mark Bor, in a letter to Mr John Parsons of the Global Fund, said the country agreed with the contents of the report and was in the process of implementing some of the recommendations,” the paper said.

Apparently some individuals named in the report have already returned some of the money.

“The report indicates endemic levels of theft and corruption in all the programmes at all levels, from the Ministerial Procurement Committees right up to transport officers and drivers,” the paper said, adding that the worst offenders included the National Aids and STD Control Programme (NASCOP), the National Aids Control Council (NACC) and the Division of Malaria Control.

“The report accuses NACC of paying millions of shillings to briefcase organisations, unbudgeted for staff (sic) and employing unqualified people,” the Daily Nation says.

The Global Fund itself is battling to maintain its reputation, and its donors, following allegations of corruption in some recipient countries.Banker Gabriel Jaramillo took over as general manager in February, hoping to restore the Fund’s tarnished reputation and improve efficiency as well as win back sceptical donors.

Also, last week there was a demo in Nairobi by Kenyans living with HIV who want the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) to release unspent funds to Kenya.

Basically, $500 million was earmarked for Kenya but is stuck as part of a $1.46 billion pipeine backlog in Washington. PEPFAR officials in the US said the funds had not been released because of inefficient bureaucracies, and reductions in the cost of Aids treatment, among other factors.

Activists want the money to be spent on providing antiretrovirals to more of the 1.5 million Kenyans estimated to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and on HIV treatment for pregnant women for life, the so-called PMTCT option B+.

Last week, GlobalPost quoted US officials in Washington and Nairobi as saying that Kenya had trouble spending the PEPFAR money because of inefficiencies in its two ministries of health.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is not that the stolen money from the Fund, and the unspent PEPFAR funds, are so badly needed in Kenya but that the news of theft/misappropriation is not that surprising. It’s not good for Kenya’s international reputation – but that is already suffering for various other reasons.

Cartoonist Gado put his finger right on the sore spot with his cartoon for the Daily Nation after former Liberian leader Charles Taylor was found guilty last Thursday of aiding and abetting rebels who committed atrocities in Sierra Leone.

Check his cartoon out here. It’s laugh-aloud-but-grimace-too funny.