Ghosts

An appropriate Hallowe'en subject - interesting discussion on the radio about it, and how the perception of it has altered through the ages.  In the Catholic Middle Ages, people thought of ghosts as helpful, often religious characters, who came to advise or warn quite often.  After the Reformation in the early 17thC people began to think they were actively demonic - this view is still largely held in the US - presumably it was taken there by the Pilgrim Fathers and the other English free-thinkers who went over there in the C17th... and now this idea has returned from the US to haunt evangelical and charismatic Christians.

The author being interviewed said that a popular idea now was that buildings, especially those made of organic materials, held impressions of strong emotions, so deaths and births were often a factor in hauntings... this made a lot of sense to me.  After all, many churches have a fantastically good atmosphere because of all the positive prayer going on there for centuries.  The two best attested hauntings at my parents' house were connected with a birth and a death.  What of the other ones?  The moving wardrobe may have some other origin... and those bursts of laughter and noise I used to hear occasionally - who knows?   I feel the atmosphere in Cippenham Place is very bad again, which is one of the reasons why I don't like going there.  It's ennervating - I have to fight it.  It makes me feel defensive and hostile - or is that just my family?   No, I do think that there's something there now, maybe connected with my mother, or negative emotions concerning her last years there.  I don't know whether this can be exorcised, since it is not exactly demonic.

Apparently ghosts seem to proliferate in England due to the anxiety about them after the Reformation - people were forbidden to pray for the dead, the doctrine of Purgatory was dropped, and people felt unhappy about the lot of those who had died recently, this anxiety seems to have proliferate belief in ghosts.

I think I've seen ghosts, Finn has seen one in this house, and I have certainly suffered from "atmospheres". I have always thought the story of the ghost on Salisbury Plain who "warned" my friend's son Mark was a very interesting and credible story, much more proactive than merely seeing a woman simply drifting through one's room.  It is odd about my parents' house: I liked it when it was properly haunted - although it could be frightening.  I didn't like the fact that they had a perfectly nice house exorcised, although it did get rid of the jumping wardrobe and the haunted cupboard.  (And nearly did for the drinks cupboard - that's what happens when you get a charismatic evangelical to exorcise for you).  Maybe what I experience there is a sense of closing in - the idea of fewer years ahead, the necessity to make peace with one's mortality (I think I have) and perhaps the restless unwillingness of my father to do this.  Oh dear.  

Fanfare for me!

Yes, you do have to blow your own trumpet - nobody does it for you.  I announced to the awaiting world the completion of Conscience vol 1 on Facebook this afternoon, and got a "like" from Finn - and the rest of my eager chums? nada, zilch, niente...  I expect they were all busy, it is Hallowe'en after all, and I seem to be the only person who doesn't treat it as a lesser Christmas.  I hope that's why no one noticed, or did they notice and think I was showing off... or are they all assuming I am about to fail.   Perhaps I am.

Anyway, I finished Conscience today.  This was an idea I have had for a while - and, sometime in 2003 I went up to London on a train with a small notebook and came back with the whole plot.  I've never looked at that notebook since, it is probably full of gorgeous ideas which I would be kicking myself not to have used.  I can't actually remember when I began to write it - when I started The Romantic Feminist I had already written about 20,00 words of it, and I wrote a little more on it after I'd completed the first few drafts of the RF.  I wrote it so slowly and infrequently, it had taken me at least a year to write those first 20,000 words, perhaps two years.  This afternoon I finished it.  I decided this morning that Thursday and Friday were going to be busy days, so I should just go for it.  The last chapter is just under 5,000 words, all written today.  It will need considerable polishing, but I wanted to get some momentum back - the previous chapters had covered about 4 weeks in about 15,000 words.  I didn't think my readers would want it to drag out, every painful conversation, every initiative.  M of course wanted me to include a scene with a recruiting sergeant - I felt that had been "done" - I left it out, there is some anxiety about how the wife character changes - is it a but unrealistic, has she been subsumed to the plot in some way...

Some weeks ago it became apparent to me that the story, which I originally imagined as one big fat book, and then realised would make more money as two, might actually become three books.  Currently this version is about 87,000 words - slimmer than TRF, but still a respectable size - about 220 pages... it may need some padding out - but there were a few ideas I had as I went along that perhaps need to be expanded a little - and maybe the last chapter would benefit from another couple of thousand words.  I am desperately excited, and thrilled, and also a little deflated - what on earth will I do next?  Some housework perhaps?

Maggie O'Farrell

It is always a great joy to read a good new writer.  I have been aware of MO'F for a while - she used to write for the Guardian - and so I tended to treat rave reviews of her books as a bit of hype for an ex-colleague.  However, this month's Book Group book was The Disappearance of Esme Lennox, which I thought was a really interesting, competent book - very well written, well constructed, interesting characters, interesting inter-relationships.  I enjoyed it, admired it - these things are not always synonymous.

Social whirl...

Well, not exactly, but just at the moment, if I wanted to I could more or less go out all the time, and when I am at home dear friends are ringing for lovely chats, which is lovely - but 3 today is going it a bit, what with the weekly weightwatchers meeting and shopping it is surprising that I get any work done, but I did 2,600 words of frustrated sex scenes - God I'm getting so good at this!  I keep saying I'm nearly finished - but another 1,000 words slip in.  I may finish it by the end of the week, but if I don't, I don't.  Tomorrow I should have a good run at it.

Anyway, things are moving along - and every time I see a friend they suggest something else we could do or go to or see... do I want to go and see an am-dram production of Mapp & Lucia?  Do I want to see an interesting poetic-play by Nancy Charley - or hear Jamie Moores play?   This weekend is mapped out - Marine Studios 3rd birthday party - then a concert on Saturday afternoon - then supper with our paying guests... then?  Sunday a walk if it's fine - maybe to collect wood - or we could have the first fire of the season.  And the other thing - unknown people wanting to be friends, sending me messages.  Perhaps all the astrological stuff about getting a high profile is true.  Oh yes, a high profile in Thanet!

A Party for a Peter Blake exhibition

The other day when I was minding the shop I was also eavesdropping at what was happening on the tourist info. desk.  I heard the chief volunteer phoning around - to invite "influential people" to a re-launch of a pub.  Actually, the pub's been going strong, but its former manager has returned... so they're having a re-opening party. I wondered who the "influential people" were who were being invited, fairly safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be one of them.  I'm not sure what it takes to be "influential" in Ramsgate - and who you'd be influencing - if it's Thanet District Council, any one with a brown envelope would be in this category, or the membership of a Masonic Lodge.

Anyway, one of the invitees I did hear the name of, has invited me (in her PR capacity) to something rather more interesting: the opening of a new proper art gallery a two minute walk from the house.  It's an interesting thing - a commercial art gallery - but a proper gallery - which is going to be holding commercial shows of really good known artists.  It is being located in an odd place, but the owner is already an established galleriste and has a strong list of clients - who will pursue her even to the wilds of Ramsgate... so should we expect parking problems? Or will they all come by train?

I am not quite sure why I've been invited: is it because I've written reviews of exhibitions for Thanet Watch (which probably makes me Thanet's leading art critic - pas grand chose, alors!) or because I am middle class and local.  It is certainly not because I am an art buyer likely to pick up the odd Peter Blake drawing, or even to influence my avid readership to do this. Maybe I have become "influential"? without realising it.  Now I am going to be fascinated about two things, firstly whether they do what Turner Contemptible did - have a couple of preview parties for locals and then have a really important party on the last night, or will it just be the one party - and we hoi polloi from Ramsgate will be rubbing shoulders with international art glitterati and buyers.  Will Peter Blake lui-meme be there?  There will be champagne - although I think putting that in the email title was a little de trop, no doubt it was to indicate that this would be no ordinary, prosecco reception.  The other fascination is - who will be there?  The 250 most "influential" people in Thanet?  Or just a few vaguely groovy people? Will it be commercial and sensible or just vaguely arty?  Will the elusive Ramsgate Millionaires be there?  Peter Blake is a very sensible choice for a first exhibition - figurative art always goes down a storm here...

So why me? What list do I appear on?  Who mentioned my name? Or is it just a mistake - like those weird people who follow one on Twitter?

Staying up late

I don't really want to stay up late - but when Mark's away I can without anyone grumbling at me, so I do.  He has gone to the Society of Antiquaries to a lecture on Selborne Abbey - for which he is providing the pictures.  Tomorrow he is going to see his father, then go and see mine - we'll all have supper there on Friday night.   But first Friday has to be navigated.  The last 3 Fridays have all been hellish for some reason - due largely to my having had too much to do in the time available.  I daresay this Friday will be the same.  Rush, rush, rush - so why am I not in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just?  

If I'd really wanted to make a night of it I could have invited the whole Festival Club back to mine - but what would have been the point?  I would just have drunk a ludicrous amount and made Friday impossible to navigate.  I am going to sit in Suzy's shop again and read and think - it is usually quiet on Friday mornings, and I can read a serious book.  At the moment the book is Nick Cohen's You can't read this book - which is interesting.  My brain is really dying... I just have lost concentration - I think it's because I live so much of my time on the unconscious level - the writing etc.  And the super-charged daydreaming...

I had some very welcome feedback on TRF from Kirstie - not depressing enough - Denise thought bits of it too depressing - K would have preferred that Lucy jumped off the viaduct.  She loved the Benjie character - and the end, thought it was only slightly improbable.

Some songwriter was talking about Bob Dylan today and how they "borrowed" from him all the time in their songs.  I was thinking that I don't consciously borrow from literature - or rather I do do conscious intertextuality - deliberately, but I don't "borrow" plots and situations from literature - rather from life, so I've borrowed  bit of Bella, a bit of Michelle, some actual circumstances from the LO's life - and Kirstie said that Melissa was a classic gorgeous American ballbreaker... perhaps I should have made her Australian? which means that I haven't borrowed her from anywhere, she's just an archetype I picked off the shelf...so perhaps she was "borrowed" from literature.

Happy!

Even though I only wrote 300 words today I made progress in all sorts of other ways.  I re-wrote the synopsis of Conscience1 and edited the first 3 chapters again - they are in pretty good shape, but there was some stuff about the conchies I needed to correct.  When I re-wrote the synopsis I had to go to the end, and although I knew roughly what was going to happen, it was good to clarify the story.  There is just one thing I haven't done... an idea I have had, but am not sure about.  So that can be my new thing to worry about for the next few days.  I don't want him to do a Soames Forsyth on her, but I can imagine it.  I think it would upset family members a lot.  I need to make the distinction between plot - which the history of my grandfather's life provides, and story - which is the bit I've made up.  Yes, I've made up a story to fit the facts.  There will have to be an afterword...

Jimmy Savile - the latest

Perhaps I am over interested in this subject, I think I felt a vague connection with him as a result of seeing him liveon the Beatles Christmas Show: I hadn't seen many famous people in the flesh as a child.  Thank God I didn't get too close! (actually, I would have been too young then even for his depraved tastes),

So, the latest is last night's Panorama programme.  It gave an interesting picture of life at the BBC in the 70s.  JS was clearly incredibly cocky, often suggested to people that he was "having" various young girls - made jokes about young "birds" etc. and a number of people recognised that something was very wrong.  One DJ explained how he was certain that JS was up to all sorts of nefarious things, but as a very junior person, felt he couldn't make trouble for a "star".  This DJ is also gay, far less acceptable at that time - so perhaps kept quiet for fear of it all rebounding on him in some way.  I don't imagine JS was very forgiving - despite his much-vaunted devout Catholicism.   There was the usual list of damaged young people who were now upset middle-aged people and the sins he committed were all very predictable - ranging from mild sex pestering to a good deal of oral sex, and full intercourse.  There was the horrible story of the police asking him to help find a runaway teenager "but if I find her I get to keep her for the night as a reward" he said, and he did.  Most of the sexual stuff is banal, also the fact that he consorted with other paedophiles such as Gary Glitter.  What is so sickening is the number of incidents, the abuse of his celebrity and the way he actually boasted about what he was up to.  He winked, he hinted, he insinuated, he was pleased with himself - either he didn't think it was wrong, or he did but was exulting in his own power to do what he wanted.  Either of these suggests he might have been something of a psychopath. People around him felt he should be treated differently because he was "a star". Different standards applied to stars, especially those who devote their lives to "charidee".

It was in part his charity work that made him untouchable in his lifetime - now the damnatio memoriae is almost complete: a building named after him is changing its name, and both the charities bearing his name are winding themselves up.  They will presumably donate the funds to charities with similar objects.  He had sought to leave a legacy "more enduring than bronze" - but within a year it has been destroyed.  Maybe bringing him to trial would have obtained a public sympathy for a frail old git - and that would have been the lasting memory of him.  Instead, since he is dead, we can recall him at his cocky peak - and enjoy the poetic justice of his rapid fall.

A life of contrasts

So, on the one hand, I am on the verge of being offered a publishing deal, and getting an agent on the case, and on the other hand our card is being rejected at the supermarket because we have run out of money again.  Part of me is utterly convinced that I am on the verge of a breakthrough of some sort - and the other half of me is living in poverty and misery.  If we hadn't had paying guests this month I don't know how we would have managed.  Our client hasn't paid on time... and the building society has rung us to complain about lack of funds.  If we didn't have £100 in cash from the weekend, we would be really in the fecal matter.

It reminds me of when I was a freelance financial journalist: I would have lunch or maybe just drinks at the Savoy on some corporate jolly - and then home to scrambled eggs... all I could afford. Boy did I get sick of chicken in those days. Life is strange, I am still pushing quite hard at the square wheel - but am constantly being distracted - we need to finish Clive & Naomi's garden and get that money, and I need to do some more work for my father (and get some money from him, although I don't think he should pay me) but I am desperate to finish Conscience vol. 1.   I spent this morning doing 2,000 words in about 3 hours, but loads of that time was spent doing picture research on Google to find nude male statues they might have seen together. I knew the ending was going to be hard work.  And it is.  Not hard, but careful, concentrated work, that needs a lot of attention to get it right.  And all the time, my time for doing it is being eaten away.  I really want to finish before the end of November - because once Christmas gets near it all becomes impossible.

The good news is - two bits of new work have come in today!  Wonderful!  So money will flow eventually...

Old friends: Combining business with pleasure

Have had a really nice time in the last 18 hours or so.  Spent Saturday in the usual sweat over tidying, bedmaking etc. and cooking a bit.  Cheesecake disaster - put in double the biscuits in the base and forgot to include the sour cream in the topping.   That apart, no problems.

At 5.30ish my old university friend Al turned up for his "lads' weekend" with two fellow social workers, Steve and Stephen.  They have an annual weekend away - and this year he chose a trip to East Kent - and the BandB they stayed in was mine!  So we'd agreed a few weeks ago that they would pay me for B&B and I would give them dinner - and I invited Clare around too - so that I wouldn't be totally outnumbered.  It was great fun - Al and I managed to have some good talks on our own, as well as the general conversation and after midnight we just sat and talked and had the "what do you think of the show so far?" conversation about life - reflecting on relationships and how they had gone and what it felt to be getting older and so on.  It really was great, I had forgotten how close I always felt to him - I think we both have a capacity to feel deeply but appear on the surface rather analytical about relationships.  He talked about how difficult he found it to cope with rejection - and about not asserting himself enough in situations - and I certainly empathised with that - we also talked about children - their emotional meaning in relationships, rather than their specifics.  It was very good to have this conversation with him.  We did cover a fair bit of the ground that is covered in The Romantic Feminist but I realised how many more stories there are about our conflicts between our emotions and our ideologies - and in some ways how feminism can be an artificial construct that comes between people - preventing them acting the way they really feel.  Oh dear.  I can almost feel a re-write coming on... I also appreciated his emotional language - a subtly different way of talking about relationships.  I have become very aware since starting this blog how dependent I am on certain words - I need MORE words...

I think the other thing I became aware of was how few of my women friends have this sort of analysis of relationships... he is like me very fond of proper conversation - inquisitive, piecing things together, making conclusions,   I was very interested to hear his great sad love story... and his observation which I also make, about how one buries stuff and ignores it - and how some people have this ability to completely ignore past mistakes, and never admit regrets (I can think of an enormous number of people like that). We speculated on the possible areas of regret of some people we knew.

The other two S's were both very nice - one was extremely quiet - the other less so - and teased Al a lot.  It was nice to meet them and it was fun having a "dinner party" - we had the works: lots of snacky starters (multicultural tapas: mini salami, Polish brawn, Latvian smoked sprats, felafel, Spanish olives with manchego, beetroot salad, stuffed peppers), then bobotie, rice, salad and carrots, then the fated cheesecake, cheese, coffee, chocs etc.  The two S's went out before dinner to explore the Conqueror - apparently voted the best real ale pub in Kent last year.  Still haven't been there.

Personal crisis in retrospect - Mother stuff

Thinking the other day about how my sister C is still very emotional about the rejection she felt from our mutual mother, and how I seldom feel like that now, I wonder.  It is the kind of thing that used to make me very upset indeed, especially about this time three years ago - not long after she died.  Then I started taking Citalopram - in August 2010 - and so began a long period of relative emotional calm - almost as if I had achieved the ataraxia - the state of being unmoved that the Stoics recommended and aspired to.  During that time I frequently felt angry with my mother, and I occasionally felt that there was something inherently artificial and not altogether desirable about the drug.   It is now - what? 4 - 5 months since I stopped taking it, I don't think it's having a residual effect, but I feel the same.  I am probably a tad more irritable than when I was taking it, but I have stopped feeling those more introspective negative emotions, the sort of self-pity thing, don't feel pain at certain things - don't feel as rejected as I used to.  Does this mean I have "got over it"?  Whatever it was?

There were several different factors in the crisis of 2009 - there was my mother's death, the apparent imminence of my father-in-law's death (I was very fond of him), Mark's terrible illness and of course the mysterious reappearance of the LO, the sudden flare up of the writing and so on.  Quite a year really - and most of these things rolled over into 2010 - so by the summer of 2010 I was in a fair old two and eight.  So what happened?  When I went into therapy and did come out better and wiser with greater empathy and understanding - my mother said "I don't think it was the therapy - you just got older."  I thought that was just her general contempt for therapy and fear of what it would reveal.  So perhaps we could say that since then I have got 2-3 years older and have survived these things and life went on, and I have had to survive more horrors - like the fiscal meltdown of 2011 - and the weekly fights to stay afloat financially.  Maybe the distractions of that helped me to put the stuff that had/hadn't/could've happened in the 2009-10 crisis in perspective and in the past.  So it's not ostriching exactly - but it is not dwelling on it, not wallowing in it.  I could have gone into therapy - but I didn't.  The Citalopram worked on my brain a little bit the way an anti-inflammatory works on muscle pain.  The muscle tenses with the pain and that makes it worse, the drug relaxes the muscle, masks the pain and gives the muscle the opportunity to recover.  In the same way my emotions were relaxed, the pain masked and everything got a chance to recover.  That is how psychiatric drugs, well anti-depressants are supposed to work.  It was easy to come off it and give it up and now everything is fine. I mean, that while the objective conditions are not fine, I am not buckling under with misery about them.  In fact, I find it easier to get angry now - while my nearest and dearest may not think this is a great advance, it is meant to be more psychologically healthy than bottling it all up.

Actually, this is still not about my mother.  I find it hard to write about her while I am still feeling quite angry with her.  I wasn't allowed to be angry with her for 4 years because she was ill - and before that - well, it was different.  I wonder why I am so angry with her, and why exactly?  I think it's because she or rather her attitude to me, have given me all sorts of stresses and strains in my own persona, anxieties about so many things and a fundamental sense that people dislike me.  I know rationally that the reverse is true - that people rather like me, find me interesting, want to be friends etc.  But my mother's attitude to me since conception perhaps, has given me that feeling.  And it is tiresome at this advanced age to find oneself endlessly justifying and rationalising about people's feelings towards you - imagined feelings I should say.   I do not like being chippy/prickly - I would like to be a smoother person really. However, there is evidence I am recovering - the incident of discovering I had not been invited to a birthday party was a bit of a turning point.  Years ago I would have agonised, why didn't they?  I would have turned it over and moaned and groaned and worse still, seen it as further evidence that I was not really a nice person.  Now I just think "how rude of them!" to invite A but not us... but then again, they are free to invite who they want, and I am grateful for their behaviour has liberated me.

I am feeling a lot freer about many things now.  The other day I counted the number of women I could have coffee or a glass of wine with in Ramsgate, it was over 10.  Of course that is "too many" friends in one sense, because I haven't actually got time to see them regularly - but if I see one a week I get enough society and gossip and deep meaningful discussion...but when I think how incredibly lonely I sometimes was in London, I feel quite amazed. And I didn't count the men friends...

Comeuppance Log: Andrew Mitchell

Well - while the world holds its breath over the fate of the clumsy fare-dodging attempts of the Chancellor Gideon "Do you know who I am?" Osborne - Andrew Mitchell has fallen on his sword - perhaps in an attempt to distract attention from Gideon's malfeasance - or perhaps because he couldn't live with the fact that he had apologised for something that he said he hadn't said anyway to a policeman who'd accepted the apology for whatever it was Mitchell hadn't said while the rest of the world thought what he hadn't said was outrageous.   So from Bullingdon on a bike, we go to Bullingdon in a Buffet Car (there was no buffet car, that's just poetic licence).

And even more gloriously, Berlusconi is facing the prospect of 15 years in prison for sex with a minor - the famous Ruby Rubacuore... boy the great planetary aspects have really got it in for the rich and powerful - their misuse of their wealth and power is bringing them down - in a very satisfying way.

Meanwhile I am waiting for a few more ratchets to turn on Fortune's wheel and carry me to the highest spires of contentment... (c) John Donne.

Comeuppance log: George Osborne

I am not a Tory, I have friends who are, but most of them are not allowed anywhere near government.  Actually, I have a visceral dislike of Tories MPs in general, and certain Tories in particular (I make a huge exception for Laura Sandys - who is a really nice Tory MP, honest!).  I have not liked George Osborne from the go-get.  He has this bland, almost doll-like demeanour that must be concealing something... initially it was concealing his very considerable ignorance of economics and finance.  I recall seeing him on the Andrew Marr show when he was shadow chancellor - he appeared not to understand the questions he was being asked whichever financial crisis was then unfolding (crashing banks? early stage of Eurozone? collapse of US banks? whatever..) and was quite unable to give a coherent economically literate answer (I am writing here in my capacity as a former business/financial journalist and merchant banker).

When Osborne became Chancellor he naturally set about making the usual Tory mistakes with the economy - i.e. adopting a stringently anti-Keynesian policy and as a result after two and a half years of effective recession, things are not looking great.  Whenever he speaks about the economy it is quite clear that he has no idea about how ordinary people live, work and struggle.  He thinks his silly little alterations will make very little difference to their lives.  He doesn't realise how marginally many of us are living - how a "small cut" can tip us over the edge.  How jobless people are not contributing to the exchequer - not paying taxes, not buying new things in shops, not supporting local businesses.  And thus, cutting us further, cuts the private sector (the hallowed, beloved private sector) and retail businesses continue to go bust.

Anyway, in short, he is a Bad Thing.  And today I feel full of glee, because he has been caught travelling First Class on a standard class ticket.  I am sure this will all be water off the government's well-oiled back, but perhaps it will help overturn the ludicrous coalition.  I am anticipating that the Lib-Dems will start to flex their muscles soon, in an effort to show the electorate that they are not only toothless and despicable but also desperate to be reaccepted.    I just feel the Osborne case is something to be savoured - and I am annoyed there is very little more about it yet on the news.  Think I'll have to go and check out Twitter.

Bullingdon values!

70's sex pest culture contd.

Remarkably I remembered some more "sex pest" incidents from my youth when we (Anna G, Kirstie and I) were discussing the dreaded Savile case at dinner last night: the coach driver at Aylesford, the Indian in the Tropical House at Kew - and the famous flasher Anna Cohen and I saw on the Tube on night.   I had rather forgotten these incidents - oh, and the wanker in Kensington Gardens - fortunately I was with my father that day (I was about 6 or 7).  Really, I seem to have spent half my childhood recovering from one minor assault or another.  How did I cope?  Clearly I was very lucky not to have suffered anything worse.  But I always have been very very lucky about sex - no rape, no unwanted pregnancy, no venereal disease and several really rather good lovers...worst thing ever to happen?  Going to bed with a couple of people out of boredom...that idiot toe sucker, the unwanted attempt at anal sex... rapidly repulsed.  I guess I have an adequate supply of haughtiness to rebuke such events.

Maybe "a lot of anger" sensed by my therapist, was also sensed by would-be assaulters - and they decided it was better not to risk it?  I don't know, would be interesting to know how often other girls experienced these incidents. Did I seem superficially more vulnerable - or was I just alone in the wrong places, with the wrong people?  Or maybe I didn't experience many of these events compared with others.

I don't think these events were especially frightening - except the coach driver - because he might not have let me get out of the coach... I wonder if they really had no great influence on me - or whether I just ostriched them?  I suppose what I find vaguely annoying about Coellie is that she rather wallows in all her pains - drags out the insults and goes over them - goes on courses to deal with them. Whereas I just try and get over them - to a certain extent I do rationalise them and to a certain extent that works.  I suppose it's a bit like CBT - when I think of an event and someone says "how awful, how ghastly" I'm often surprised, because I haven't dwellt on the what ifs, haven't thought about how much worse it could all have been...

She is clearly still very emotional about our mother and her relationship with her.  I am still upset that I feel so negative about her 3 years after her death.  But I understand from therapy that while one can understand a situation rationally, ie understand why my mother was so angry and upset about being pregnant with me, it doesn't necessarily help.  I could try going over it 22 times - but the truth is, I probably have and I doubt it has got much better so I think burying what one can't deal with or improve, may be unsatisfactory, but at least it doesn't prolong the agony. 

Emotional stuff

I don't know, for some reason found myself thinking about the artist formerly known as LO on the drive back from my father's.  I kept having these thoughts - wondered if perhaps something would develop - some contact, something.  Don't know why. Haven't particularly desired contact, and am pretty convinced that have undergone a sort of transference whereby all feelings once felt for LO have been moved to the character in the RF novel.

Felt very screwed up on Monday at my father's.  He and my sister C have an almost medieval world view... I find myself unable to go along with things... it's as if they have adopted a simple narrative to explain everything, which leads to the same point.  It is not that they are wrong exactly, just that they are interpreting everything in a very narrow way.  The world is too full of different ideas and explanations for things for us to go with one slender narrative to explain things - in this case the spiritual one.  For some reason ghosts were mentioned - "Evil spirits" they said... I just didn't bother to say anything.  T came along and added to the irrational chorus.

And the irony is, I am not a rationalist, I am a Christian - I believe in God, the Resurrection and the life of the world to come and all that!  But I am told by them that my world view is incorrect - or rather inadequate.  The trouble is, there is a perfectly good theological argument in the gospels in favour of Christians believing the same things - but we can't, temperamentally, philosophically - does God really want us to turn ourselves into inward looking sets of exclusive brethren - each believing we have the truth...?  I shouldn't think so - but I find it depressing being with them, because I can't share their beliefs.  They would say these feelings are because I am being plagued by evil spirits - which really cheers me up.  I cross myself and the feelings go - does that mean they were diabolical?  Or what?  No, it's not a coincidence - it works - but I think physically it maybe something to do with the fact that if one changes position one can change one's thoughts.  Nevertheless, crossing oneself does seem to banish unhelpful thoughts - the madness of overthinking I've done in that house in the last few years - I think there's a sort of miasma there that just settles on me when I return.   That's nice and rational isn't it?

Jimmy Savile - correction

OK - he has definitely been more than a sex pest on steroids... there has been penetrative sex, and abuse of boys too.  It is all really incredible, appalling.  I don't think I have anything more enlightening to say on the matter.  I would like to know though what there was in his background that set him on this career of horror.  He always had a creepy Oedipal relationship with his mother... was he abused as a child?  Oh, lord.  I am not trying to diminish the nastiness of his behaviour - but one cannot help wondering what its roots were.

I will, I hope be able to abandon this topic now - unless something very enlightening occurs.

Jimmy Savile & the 70s sex pest culture

I'm not especially obsessed with paedophilia - or Jimmy Savile - it's just that this case is turning over new material every day.  There was a report yesterday that the police were investigating 40 victims and 340 complaints - so the potential for more to come to light seems considerable.   I must admit I thought "40?  It's bound to be more than that!  It wouldn't surprise me if he was the type of managed one a week - he had ample opportunities.

There haven't been many details of what actually happened with these girls - French kissing and stroking is all I've heard mentioned, which while obnoxious and probably unwelcome to a 13 year old are not quite in the league of the Rochdale blokes for example.   One poor transgender teenager had him put his hand up her/his skirt.

I am not trying to defend him, but I would say it would be an odd teenager in the 70s and the 80s who managed to pass through adolescence without hands up skirts, goosing, wandering hands in the cinema, etc.  I can think of two or three cases where it happened to me.  One serious enough to involve the police.  I'm not saying "get over it" - but I think there is quite a difference between this sort of thing, and the kind of full-fledged sexual intercourse with children that the term "paedophile" usually implies.   There were words for men who groped you - "perves, gropers, etc." and of course there were flashers too.  They were regarded as part of the social fabric, you were warned against them, and took evasive action.   Obviously some girls were less confident, less able - and obviously most pervs weren't tv stars and therefore endowed with a weird glamour which might encourage a girl to feel flattered rather than repulsed by the advances.  Overall, we didn't like perves, but we talked about them, giggled about them, I don't think they haunted our dreams/nightmares - unless I was more robust than most girls. .  What we probably needed was a stout hatpin!

What is apalling about the Savile case is the way he exploited those who were already vulnerable, in hospitals.  The idea of being a sex pest to a disabled child is horrid, the fact that he was allowed near psychologically vulnerable people was awful.  Whose bright idea was it to give him free range at Broadmoor for goodness sake?  Was it a publicity stunt dreamed up by civil servants - get a "character" - a "personality" on the board to show that they have the common touch?   Brrr.  I'd love to find out it was Edwina Currie's idea when she was Minister (very keen on the cult of celebrity she was) - but I may be disappointed in that.

Life with teenagers

Most of the time, there's nothing ostensibly wrong with the lifestyles espoused by Ned and Finn, the 18 and 15 year olds with whom I share my house and some of my genetic material.   Well, if you were a strictly moralistic authoritarian, perhaps having an unmarried 18 year old who sleeps with his girlfriend in the privacy of the double bed you actually bought for him a year ago, might be seen as wrong.   And Finn's occasional dope-smoking and school attendance record are not exactly desirable, but they are not completely appalling either.

There is nothing deeply awful that either of them does really, but there is something vaguely annoying about their lifestyles.  Ned is out a lot working in the bars, especially at the weekends.  When he's not there, he's mooching about the house, indulging in low-key grousing and ailments.  He is also quite helpful, and does housework to compensate for not contributing to his keep.  We occasionally discuss something important, and he's sensible, and interesting and quite funny sometimes.  When not working or socialising he plays the guitar, writes songs and writes other things, photography also features.  Why do I find his lifestyle inrritating?
I don't know, it must be me.  I think it's because he doesn't seem to be doing anything coherent and structured.  His job isn't going to bring in enough to contribute much to his university keep - but that's not his fault.   I am all in favour of the staring into space mode of creativity - and I want Ned to have the time to do this.  He's clearly a creative rather than an academic - so I really need to get over it.

Finn is the person who I feel has the potential to become a wealthy, successful professional (Ned also has this potential - but I feel the "portfolio career" beckons him).  He could do something really serious and a proper job.  But he is threatening to do something more trivial.  I feel like an archetypal Jewish mother - I want them to be doctor and lawyers and architects, and they want to be musicians, film-makers and graphic designers.  I think what disappoints me is how their many ideas for projects are dissippated and not pursued.

Socially, I don't mind the house being full of large teenagers - most of whom are more polite than Finn.  Three boys just came to the door, "Finn there are some friends here" "Oh Fuck!" Finn said - he has rather a long way to go before he masters the art of hospitality.  I suppose that response will just add to his general air of "swag".

A sort of liberation - one fewer friend to worry about

There's a rather comfortably off guy we've met over the last 3-4 years at parties, he and his wife have two places, a boat, etc. and we always get on very well, and we're always saying we must have them over and they say it would be great.  Last year I finally got to ask them over, and then had to cancel because I was ill - it was during the great autumn virus last year.   Since then we've seen them, I thought he seemed a little cool - but a lot of people are odd in their cups - and I later sent an email inviting them to select a date when we could re-convene the cancelled dinner party... I didn't get a reply, but I thought nothing of it, because they're always away and travelling and so on.   It was vaguely in the back of my mind to do something, but then I thought, sod it!  They've never said "no, you must come to us!" so I was only doing it for the sake of inviting our mutual friends together...

This evening, a mutual friend was over and said "You weren't at X's 60th party,."
I said we hadn't been invited, and I really wasn't that upset by it, I didn't feel hurt or excluded as I might have in the past.  I just thought it was rude, because after all, they met him through us.  Anyway, afterwards I thought, oh well, perhaps we're not in the address book so we slipped through the net.  But what I chiefly feel is liberated, because I am now allowed to admit to myself that I never found him very interesting company, we didn't really have a common topic, and our last conversation had dwindled to platitudes (I'm sure he speaks very highly of me too!) so that particular dinner party threatened to be very hearty and butch and I am glad I no longer feel I have to have it.  It isn't nice to feel liberated like this - but I suppose one must recognise that there are social/amical cul-de-sacs as well as emotional ones, and there's really no point in getting stuck in one.

What I am puzzling over a little is why I couldn't completely admit to myself that I found him a little boring before I had been slightly snubbed by him.  There are some people one senses one isn't rich or smart enough for - so it isn't a surprise when they drop you one way or another.  I'm sure we'll see them at parties again, but perhaps in the future we won't feel we the need to waste valuable conversation time with them.  I think I have a residual loyalty to anyone who's ever made it into my address book - but that too can be yielded up when the relationship is clarified in this way.

Andrew Mitchell - not quite finished

Ah, so, Andrew Mitchell isn't quite home and dry.  If he resigned, as many people wish, he would be admitting he'd said all the words that he's denied.  If I were asked to bet, I would bet a substantial amount that he did say those words, in fact, I'm certain he said them.

His own local West Mercia police are having a go at him now.  People are saying we ought to be sorry for him.  Yes, we should, but he should also know better.  He's two years older than me... mind you, I'm hardly a monument to even temperedness as the caller from the Nationwide, Mark and a lady in Smiths could attest today.   But I was trying to do too many things in too little time.    I saw Laura Sandys today - wish I'd had a chance to quiz her about Andrew Mitchell - but I bet he's a chum of hers.

But I suspect the unsinkable Mitchell will continue to breast the waves of controversy and we shall gradually forget.  Unless his local police force make a fuss - or they find that elusive CCTV lipreader!

Not quite an ultimatum

This is a post I put in my other blog, but since few people read it, I'm putting it here as well.



Today I finally had another go at the Agent.  I sent her the following email.

Dear *****,

A friend has just read The Romantic Feminist and gave me some notes, so I've made a few new changes (not too many since she seemed to be reading a book called Lucy Gets Laid and suggested I remove a lot of the feminism! However, she enjoyed it very much). The new version is attached.

I am aware that we will soon be reaching the anniversary of my original submission, and you have had this new version of the book since May. No doubt it could be further improved, and I would be happy to hear any suggestions you have.

At present I am within about 2-3 weeks of completing Conscience, the first of 2 or perhaps 3 books set in WWI and after. Casual, social discussions with publishers of my acquaintance, encourage me to think the story is pretty marketable. Perhaps you could advise me on the etiquette here: should I send Conscience to you as the currently sole putative agent - or can I just send a mass submission to any agents I fancy? Due to the approaching centenary of WW1 I would obviously like as many people to see it as possible.

I know you are extremely busy, and there may be other submissions that have languished longer than mine - but I would really appreciate a response.

With best wishes

Inevitably, I immediately received an "out of office" reply.

I am feeling so flat.  So discouraged, not because I don't believe in the books and the writing, but because it is taking so long.  Still, just better plug on and finish Conscience, so that I can think about submitting it.  I shouldn't be feeling flat really - shit scared might be more appropriate.

Book bloggers - Hilary Mantel

A lot of blogs become "influential" because they are about books, I have read some of these, they are not always interesting, if they focus on the kind of genre fiction I'm not crazy about.

I do occasionally write about books I'm reading - but frankly, I have not been working on getting a following for this, or any other aspect of the blog.  I also think that most of the books I read are not recently published, and therefore not "hot" and therefore not of interest to the fashion conscious reader.  That said, I have read two books that are just about to be published and I suppose I could write about those, but I am not going to do that.

However, despite a heavy diet of books published in 1910, 2005, 2007 and 2003 (I think), I am now reading a current book: Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies.  I really enjoyed Wolf Hall and am finding the way she challenges my Catholic-educated prejudices about Cromwell very enjoyable.  I doubt whether I will finish before the great day of the Booker Prize.  I really admire her work - she has written several books that have made an impression on me, most notably A Place of Greater Safety, 8 Months on Gizzeh Street, Beyond Black.  I have liked some of her other books too.  I particularly like the fact that she writes both contemporary novels and historical novels and takes up interesting topics.  I guess in so far as there's a writer I would like to be like, it's her.  Sadly whenever I have submitted my texts to the I Write Like website, the answer is still HP Lovecraft (why? why?)  Actually, I don't particularly aspire to her style - I aspire to her range.

Today the PM announced there would be major national remembrance of the outbreak of WWI.  Perhaps I will get my book snapped up as a result...I wonder if Hilary Mantel has ever toyed with the idea of a WWI book.  It wasn't my choice to use that period, but it happens to be when the events happened.  I am looking forward to getting back to it.  Meanwhile I have been re-editing The Romantic Feminist for the "last time" - taking on board the advice Denise gave me.  She recommended I take out a lot of the discussion about Feminism and Romanticism... I think she was reading a different book called Lucy gets Laid  or something... that was what she enjoyed about the book!

Jimmy Savile & Lance Armstrong - comeuppances

If you sit by the river eventually you will see the bodies of your enemies float by....  well, not one's enemies specifically, but dubious public figures whom one felt suspicious of.

The Tour de France is one of the few sports I am vaguely interested in, and for years the French authorities were extremely suspicious of Lance Armstrong's endless victories in it.  They insisted he was doing it with drugs.  As it happens, nearly everyone was using drugs on the Tour for a while - but Lance was always testing clean, and they couldn't touch him.  People dismissed the French suspicions as a sort of chauvinism - the fact that Frenchmen weren't winning - and anti-Americanism, always a popular trop in French politics.   A little while ago it was revealed that Lance A. was using drugs - and now it has gloriously been revealed that he was effectively pushing them to his teammates and doing all sorts of tricks and manipulations of blood and so on, and practically blackmailed the others to take drugs which he supplied.   So, the French have been vindicated... Vive La France!

Meanwhile, the great Jimmy Savile saga unfolds - the Romans had a practice called damnatio memoriae where statues and public insciptions referring to the dead person were removed, broken or defaced -and this is exactly what is happening with JS.  Quite shockingly, his family had had his headstone removed and apparently broken up.  The charity that bears his name is thinking of changing it.  More revelations are coming out - there seem to have been a remarkable number of children with learning difficulties amongst his victims - because they were less likely to be believed?  Arrrrgh.    I wonder what his nephew is feeling now? We haven't heard any more indignant comments from him.   We have heard a great deal about the permissive workplace ambience at the BBC in the 70s and 80's though - Oh what a surprise! - not.

Proles vs. plebs

Would people have been more or less shocked, if Andrew Mitchell had called the policeman a "prole" rather than a "pleb"?  I can't remember when I heard anyone call anyone a "prole" apart from my mother - but I imagine if she used it (the popularisation of the term presumably came from 1984) other people did too.  Perhaps "prole" is even more offensive - even though to be a member of the proletariat is really the normal status of most of us - why should we mind?  Plebs are probably socially superior to proles, being small shopkeepers/businessmen - whereas proles, well, we're the working class, with no access to capital (apart from those of us who own our houses).  Is it any more snobbish to use one rather than another?

Marx, Hobsbawm etc.

Lovely tv programme about Marx this evening - and how his analysis of capitalism was proving to be correct (No!! Really?   Who's surprised?  Non-marxists obviously) - which justifies us all going round saying "Comrades, capitalism is in crisis" - as we have been since 2008. (Well, it was probably in crisis at the time of the Japanese Banking crisis in the 80's, and has been a bit hollow since then).  But the programme made a lot of points which glossed over things, for example it said that capitalism was strong and successful in the years after the Second World War - but failed to point out that in Europe a lot of capitalism formed part of a mixed economy, where there were financial controls, state-owned industries and wage councils and other such factors which prevented capitalism from becoming rampant.  Most of the problems we now have date from the Thatcher - Regan era of FreeMarketeering - the ending of exchange controls, the increase of globalisation, businesses moving offshore to lower wage economies etc.  (the US car industry going to Mexico for example - think that's correct?).  The final evidence of this came today when on the news it was annnounced that "Britain's biggest companies, the food retailers...." - for God's sake - what sort of country has food retailers as its biggest private sector employers?  How is that country making a living exactly - on the profit margin it makes whenever the customer buys the more lavishly packaged oven chips?

I watched it with Ned - who has an almost visceral hatred of Peter Hitchens - who for some reason (he's not an economist or much of an economic thinker as far as I know) was asked to make some rather inane comments (a task he rose to magnificently).  I have a similar visceral response to Nigel Lawson who was also on, being very smug and dishonest as usual (is this where Nigella gets it from?) but at least, being an economist and former Chancellor of the Exchequer he had a right to be there...

It seemed quite an appropriate programme to have on tv the day Hobsbawm died - it is true that I never read any of his books - because, well, because I have only studied modern history (i.e the Nineteenth Century) at a very low level - O-level to be precise, but it was always comforting to have a Big Socialist Historian occasionally putting in his Marxist oar in public debates... I'm afraid Tristram Hunt won't be an adequate substitute.  On the other hand, he was a notorious "tankie" - a man who remained in the Communist Party after Hungary in 1956 and Czecheslovakia in 1968... if it was only out of sentiment, why did he attach so much importance to sentiment?  It's a bit like saying I should have remained a Catholic out of sentiment, even when I totally disagreed with Papal Authority.

For years there were 2 Big Socialist Historians (apologies to the others) - Hobsbawn and EP Thompson - EP Thompson was a "goodie" since he was not a tankie and had written a book we'd all read about the British Working Class and was thus a Good Thing... he used to debate with Hobsbawm - in the days when I was more interested in that sort of thing, and I usually found myself agreeing with EPT - but off the top of my head, I cannot say what these debates - usually conducted in TLS/LRB and other worthy journals, were about.

The conclusion of the Marxist programme on tv was the well known fact that while providing an analysis of capitalism Marx had completely failed to suggest an alternative (how very dare he!!??).  So he wasn't much use after all.  I think it's a bit unfair to have expected him to find the solution as well as analyse the problem - not all analytical people are creative after all... and vice versa.  I cannot see any way of currently dismantling capitalism - but I think we should urgently find ways of harnessing it to benefit the proletariat to enable us to enjoy its apparent benefits, without oppressing others.  Sadly, the global nature of the beast will make this increasingly hard to do.   It is my suspicion though that perhaps the world is beginning to "run out of money" - and that we are living through a period in which capitalism is severely sickened - even the expanding economies of China and India cannot continue to grow at ludicrous rates if all their customers are too poor to buy their stuff.  It will not surprise me if we are now in the beginning of a period of long term economic adjustment to the new  realities that globalisation has brought about, which may see "the West" losing economic power rather faster than we had anticipated.  Never mind peak oil - there's peak tungsten, peak bauxite, peak coltan and a few other ingredients of economic growth to worry about.    .