An open letter to everyone who I have pissed off

Dear everyone I upset and who shouted at me on the internet this weekend, 

I am very sorry. 

Sometimes you think everything is going grand and life decides to tear a strip off you. Sometimes this is by letting you walk down the street with your skirt tucked into your granny knickers, sometimes by disenabling your motor skills when around someone you fancy, sometimes by having you mortified by the medium of a national newspaper supplement. I believe they call it being handed your arse.

If you are upset with me, if you’re one of the people who called me ‘ignorant’, ‘stupid’, ‘colonial’ or, my personal favourite, ‘a feckin’ eejit’ then no doubt you’ll have seen my article entitled Roddy Doyle: My Hero in the Guardian Review.

Make no mistake, for a wee debut writer like myself getting that slot was a big deal. It was special to me because I was so excited about getting to say thank you to one of my greatest influences and because of that I was really, really nervous about fucking up. So of course I fucked up.

I fucked up by writing ‘Roddy Doyle is one of Britian’s greatest writers’ when I actually meant ‘Roddy Doyle is loved and admired by many, many folks’ I meant his work had a far and wide reach - look at me who’d discovered Roddy in a tiny library in Norfolk - and that he was admired through Britain and, of course, Ireland too. It’s a clumsy, stupid sentence. A mistake. I make them a lot, in a lot of areas of my life - they happen, I fix them, I get on with stuff. Anyway, you guys know the rest, it was meant to be changed before the paper went to print as it was a stupid sentence that didn’t say what it was meant to. It wasn’t changed and I beat my thumb to a bloodied stump tweeting apologies to everyone (lots) who were mightily pissed off with me all weekend.

And yep, I was mortified (‘morto’ as Doyle’s characters would say) but mostly I was gutted that it seemed that few people were bothering to read beyond that first line, to read how heartfelt and honest my admiration and respect were for a man who changed my life by making me believe that even if I came from a council estate, was a bit gobby and no one really thought I should, I had a right to tell stories and write books as much as anyone else. 

Some people were kind, people who either acknowledged that I was at least being up-front, that the piece was clearly heartfelt or said that they made the occasional mistake themselves too. The funny thing is one of the reason I’ve always loved Doyle’s books is because his characters are flawed - they make mistakes, act like feckin’ eejits and fuck up. It happens, you’re not a bad person or a deliberate and concerted arsehole. These things happen. But usually if I’ve walked down the street with my skirt tucked into my knickers (true story) I’ve not had people still tweeting me three days later to demand an explanation. Still, this is not a real problem in the scale of things and I remember this - I’m a very lucky woman that I get the privilege of writing what I want to and live a life that makes me happy. 

So there we go. This is my formal apology to everyone who took exception to my clumsily worded sentence that was never meant to be printed in the first place. An apology full of swears (probably a few typos an’ all…sorry for those too) but as honest as can be.

To all of the people who I upset and all of the people who shouted at me: I am very sorry, I do know where Roddy Doyle comes from and I admire him and his writing just as much as ever.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the man himself thought, he said on Facebook he’s made me an honourary Dubliner - whatever you do don’t tell Aberdeen. 

Peace,

Kerry