I know, lets have this big party…

Welcome to my At Home party, where I am launching The Woman Who Drew Buildings. At first I think it will be casual evening, where people will drift in and out of the rooms and we we will talk writing, novels, books, inspiration, Poland, publishing and possibly the state of the nation.

Not a bit of it! By seven o’clock more than seventy people are through the door – chatting, talking and filling the rooms and the hallway with wonderful life.

It’s been a busy week, a hectic few days and today has been truly mad. G has worked his socks off making sure everything in the house is right and he and the lovely T have made sure that the tree is lit by fairy lights. And, thanks to B, G, and my good friends Avril and Gillian of Room To Write – I am still sane and the party looks set to go.

(Here are Tony and Penny from WHSmiths who brought the books and kept smiling…)

Here is my friend Gillian in the kitchen with A, (The Boy Who Likes Chocolate), and Lynn, who is off soon to Australia. A and his stepbrother C play a blinder, pouring drinks, chatting and charming the socks off strangers. The food is fantastic: I’m allowed to say that, because I only did the humble things like charcuterie, boiled eggs with paprika, and cheese. But my friend, chef Anton did the proper dishes – Polish meatballs with sour cream dip, Polish* fresh plum cake, and Polish cherry dumplings. He has researched them especially for me and they are fantastic. We catered for masses and I wonder if we have gone well over the top and will be eating leftovers for a week. But no – the food vanishes in double quick time, so that must be thumbs up for Anton’s wonderful food.

Gillian (a chartered librarian, writer and literary Good Egg who reads my manuscripts last, before the publisher sees them) holds the fort brilliantly in the kitchen while I hold fort in the rest of the house trying to greet and talk to everyone. My friend Avril talks to many people, not least the wonderful writers from our group project in Easington.

Then, at seven o’clock, I get to say my few words my study. It’s very, very, crowded and unfortunately not everyone can squeeze in. Still, I know they’ll get the message as I float around between the rooms as the evening progresses.

The few words are of course about the The Woman Who Drew Buildings and also about the wonderful Mary Davies who was the inspiration for the novel. I tell them that my secret mission is to take this opportunity to celebrate twenty one years as a published writer. (I ask B how many words that is and he says, ‘Oh! About two million.’ Well here’s to the next million, then…)

Gillian McKay has helped me dream up this party. She’ s in command of marketing for Headline Publishing for York To Aberdeen. (I think that’s right…)

She’s an apparently quiet, small Scottish dynamo of a woman who is both supportive and protective of her writers and will always go the extra mile (often literally…) to help them. She loves bookshops and writers in equal measure and is secretly formidably efficient.

She arrives at five and never stops smiling, working, talking, helping, pouring wine, reassuring me right through the evening. She has this lovely smile and really looks as though she is enjoying herself, which she assures my she is. B – a hard worker himself – thinks she’s marvellous.

Apart from everything else, Gillian’s special mission tonight is to take care of Tony and Penny who have brought the books from WHSmiths.

They are great – so helpful and interested. Tony tells me he has just finished the new Dan Brown and takes an interest in my display of my back-list novels on the bookshelves. He asks about my novel called Self Made Woman - set in Russia in 1991 - but, alas, out of print unless you can find one on good old Amazon. I’m thinking maybe someone should bring that one out again…

(Note here my battered 35 year old desk that I bought at an auction for two pounds. That desk has seen a few manuscripts.)

I would love to list simply everyone who came but the list would flutter out of the window and up into cyberspace. Still, Terry from next door caught a few guests with his camera. So I’ll try to name at least these:

Here above are Elaine and Janet from the library and Eileen and her sister Marion. And the backs of the heads of Linda and Mary, very keen writers.

Here are flowers brought by my good writer friends Pat, (whose back you see below) and Liz and Fadia.

Here is Jackie, writer and business woman, who came with her creative daughter & Fred with whom I used to teach & Sheila who worked at the University Library

And how nice that David Shapiro, of WHSmiths at the MetroCentre, Gateshead turns up with his wife Susan. (Centre here) They are both great readers and Susan reads my novels and likes them. Hooray!

Another David from Easington is there (with glasses), as is Bill Gates (facing).

I meet his wife, my friend Judith every time they are in England to continue our decades-long conversation. Alas, they are off to back to America again soon.

With her back to us, writer Norma - whom I always want to call Marilyn - and Sheilagh, in the green dress, who brought a triple layer chocolate cake and her blessing from Lourdes. Just inside the door is John, Avril’s husband, who likes writers.

And here is Lynn again, with Steffa who has just retired from running a primary school with a very fine reputation. And below Jane and Jeannie who always seem to be laughing

G and the lovely T keeping an eye on things.

Talking to Pat after signing Lynn’s copy. You can see my little writer’s doll sitting on the library steps…

And here are the flowers sent from London by my very special Debora and Sean to underpin a terrific day.

As with all parties , this one was simply made by the people who came. And thank you also for coming to my party…. wx

Looking out at the tree with fairy lights and looking forward to the next party …wx

* To those not yet in the know, Poland in 1981 is a central theme in The Woman Who Drew Buildings.

Plums For Writers From A Good Man on Sunday

In order to build up energy for the busy week ahead, leading up the big party launch on Thursday for The Woman Who Drew Buildings I decided to take Sunday off: no writing, no reading, no thinking, no brooding, just a blank mind and a relaxed body. 

But my good intentions and Sunday lounging were dive-bombed by  Mariella Frostrup interviewing William Boyd on BBC Four’s A Good Read – a genial, articulate interchange full of little plums for all good novelists to gobble up.

Here we go again!

William Boyd  is an interesting mixture -  laid back, articulate, self possessed -  a witness to the Biafran war as a growing child and a product of Gordonstaun, the austere Scottish boarding school . He writes clever, accessible, literary-comic, occasionally darkly-comic novels (First one I read was A Good man in Africa. Brilliant.)

He and Mariella discussed his new novel Ordinary Thunderstorms,  his film writing, his other novels, and - best of all -  the state of the novel from the inside. His comparison of the importance of the novel vis-a-vis the film was masterly.

 There were lots of Plums From The Boyd Basket:

• ‘Fiction is no more a hoax than is historical writing …’
• The novel – although it’s ‘made up’, invented, to achieve authenticity – is the more powerful because history is shaped by  forces that the author cannot replicate.                (I suppose the proposal here is that  a novel  is more whole, more capable of delivering a fully worked, authentically imagined truth.)
• To find out about a time or a life, read the fiction of that time. (This pleased me, as it has always been part of the pleasure of the research when I write my stories. For instance as well as all the usual research for my WW2 novel A Thirsting Land, - which has early scenes in Alexandria, - I studied the whole Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell.(Beautiful, well located, complicated, contemporaneous novels.)  
• I would also add to that the fact that magazines and newspapers of any modern time can add great, if coded, insight. I have this treasure trove of  magazines (see above) from 1939 t0 1945, bought from a junk shop who had acquired them from a farmer’s wife who had stored them for fifty years in a barn …)  I studied them, for the same novel.
• Any life is an aggregate of good luck and bad luck.  - A perfect firework to light up the structure of a novel.
• He talked of authentic randomness. Another firework! I’ll have to think a little – a lot - more about that.

I have always listened to the radio. Today I was reminded that it is a basket of juicy plums: a whole mountain of plums standing there in the literary market place. Perhaps very good for a writer on a quiet Sunday afternoon. And proof that there’s no rest for the wicked.*

Wx

* For the record, I have written a novel called this:  No Rest For the Wicked. It starts on the day of the funeral of Sarah Bernhardt in Paris in 1923 and is about this rather picaresque travelling theatrical troop…

The Brain Surgeon and the Possibility of Writing too Much

OK, I write a lot. I’ve written since I was eight and have written almost constantly since since I was eighteen or nineteen. I write, research, think about or plan my writing most days including so-called holidays.

Essays, reports, theses, poems, stories, articles. novels, now this weblog - you name it, I have written it.

I love to see the word on the page.

I enjoy seeing the pages in my notebooks full of my own writing. I like the smooth sheets of typescript as they shoot off the printer in their hundreds. I like the scribbled, densely edited sheets waiting to be transcribed yet again. I like the crisp new pages in the published books, miraculously reflecting the paragraphs that started out as speculation in my notebooks.

In my work I meet a lot of aspiring writers and am very impressed by their ambition to write a good story, a fine poem, a great novel. I have been privileged to see these great things happen.

But I am bewildered that - for some - the delicious, enticing activity of writing itself is seen as a chore. I hear how hard it is to get down to the writing. Such aspiring writers will cite meetings, obligations, domestic work, child care, parent care, challenging hobbies, gardening, cooking, the washing, cleaning the car, doing the shopping, a bad leg, a bad cold – all these things are cited as reasons why individuals find it hard to find time for their writing.

I tend to reflect, then, about priorities. For me, to sustain it at the centre of my life, writing needs to be very near the top of my list of priorities. For me, it has come second only to the safety of my children and the serenity of my home. For me, this lifelong writing apprenticeship has developed the imaginative skills, the focus, and the intellectual organisation to write the stories that bloom and blossom in my mind. Each novel is a new adventure.

I can see that my sense of priority is in contrast to a more dilettante approach to writing where writing is a pleasant and rewarding hobby, as much for personal satisfaction and literary identification as for any desire to be a professional writer. This is absolutely fine. Such people are great fun to work with and can produce excellent writing.

It’s interesting, though, that occasionally I sense that because I write a good deal and - amongst other things - write a full length novel each year, it is seen as not quite right. That somehow the quality of the writing must be less. In some mouths the word prolific becomes loaded. Yeah, I am too polite to say, as prolific as Charles Dickens, as prolific as Honore de Balzac, as prolific as Anthony Trollope.

I stifle my feeling of unease but I long to say read the books! Read the books…

Only once have I responded outright and that was when some rude person used the term churning out. ‘Yeah,’ I said, flinching. ‘You’re right. I churn out books like brain surgeons churn out operations.’

Ah, well…

Wx

Four Books on My Mind in Newcastle.

Talking about your work to numbers of strangers is not for the weak- kneed. On Tuesday night I was booked to talk to a group of readers at the new Palace of Books, Newcastle City’s six storey’d glass fronted multi-million pound library. G. who dropped me off for the train (and eats girders for breakfast), told me he thought I was very brave.

To be honest, no matter how many times I do this, it’s never easy. It’s like cabaret. You put on your make-up. You wish you looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. You choose your outfit. (Black ,with that favourite pleated tourquoise scarf that falls around all the time.) You wait in vain for someone to wish you to ‘break a leg’ as you go on.

I am especially early, to see this wonderful new facility and also to gather my wits before ‘going on’. In the neat little cafe where I have home-made lemonade and coffee, I bump into Carole McGuigan, a talented playwright and actress, and we talk about Julia(Darling), whom we both miss. Carole is now revising her first novel so we have lots to talk about.

Sheila Naughton, services manager at The City Library who comes to find me, reminds me that Newcastle is a hotbed of writing talent, nurtured by New Writing North, under the indefatigable Claire Malcolm and figure-headed by internationally esteemed Mslexia Magazine, edited by a quiet Americam, Daneet Steffans. Lots of wild writers up there.

In the room is a very nice crowd of people. Beside me is a table full of my books – mainly Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker (about which I am to talk as it’s is out now in paperback); a sprinkling of The Woman Who Drew Buildings (new in hardback) and a few of my back list including Family Ties and The Lavender House. Borders have done me proud.

I look at the bright, interested faces and read passages from Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker – an easy novel to talk about, as (although it is fiction), it has an unusually close connection to my personal and family history. I go on then to share with them fascinating inspiration for my new - very different - The Woman Who Drew Buildings which is launched in hardback this week.

The first smile of appreciation and the first spurt of laughter are like bulbs going on in my head. Now I no longer need to feel brave.

The questions they ask are penetrating: life experiences are shared. Then among the very good questions one lady asks a very familiar one, ‘When did you first start Writing?’

This is my opportunity to produce from my bag a small book protected by cling film. This is my very first published book – a children’s novel, written in 1972, called Theft. It was published by Corgi Transworld and the editor who bought it was a great woman called Anne Wood, the first Children’s Editor for the Transworld’s Carousel imprint. Anne went on to invent the Teletubbies and become a great force on children’s media.

I went on to write a lot more novels.

I thought I owned the only copy in the world, of this little, thirty odd year old paperback. But this very morning a new copy came through the post, courtesy of Amazon world wide second-hand market. (Odd when your own books become collectibles) Amazing! The people here in Newcastle share my pleasure at this surprise.

I know they have enjoyed it. There is a real buzz in the room at the end. One woman comes up to talk about fate, and how things are pre-ordained. Others come up to say thank you, how much they enjoyed it. One woman says it was great. Best yet! (In a programme of talks.) Her friend nods vigorously. Great endorsement.

I have talked here before about how I love and treasure libraries and now I love Newcastle City Library. Thank you Sheila and your colleagues. Your library has style. That’s confirmed for me when the driver actually opens his taxi door for me as Sheila waves me off.

After the train, another taxi! (No G or B for a lift – both on rugby duty…) Sitting here in the taxi it dawns on me that I’ve had four novels on my mind today: 1) Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvel Cooker, 2) The Woman Who Drew Buildings, 3) Theft, and my exciting new one (4) which is now in process and always on my mind, The Miracle of The Maison d’Estella.

As we draw away from Durham I realise this taxi driver is talking a lot - about adjusting to his father’s new girlfriend, and all the problems in his life. How he lives alone. How his father at 74 is going off with his girlfriend to another part of the country to live. He rambles on about the family house which, to his regret, is being sold.

I ask how he gets on with his father’s new girlfriend. ‘That’s immaterial!’ he barks. I am silenced. He asks if I have family at home. ‘Yes,’ I say, stretching the truth a bit, ‘a very large husband and a very large son.’

I make sure he drops me at the end of my road, not outside my house. As I walk along I can see (with my peripheral vision) that the taxi hasn’t moved on. Luckily there is a large van and two cars in the road, which will obscure just which house I enter. When I get inside my darkened empty house I double lock the doors, front and back. (Now there’s a fifth story when you think of it…)

And maybe G’s right. It is brave to be doing what I’m doing.

wx

Hope you’re enjoying the novels.

The Holocaust Survivor and the Little Children

 Like many who grew up in the years after the second world war, the events and outcomes of that war are hard wired into my intellectual system, providing markers for the nature of virtue and evil that survive in me to this day.

At the time my childish mind grappled helplessly with reportage of  the terrible acts that could only be called evil. Later in my life I read and studied more about the war and was able to contextualise, if not bury, such horrors.  Even so, it’s been necessary to  revisit these deep feelings regularly as the anniversaries of the war have rolled out in the half century between now an then. And this week again the newspapers and media are full of it, focusing on the significance of the seventy year anniversary of the declaration of that war.

All this has brought to my mind an event earlier this year at the small library in  Spennymoor where I chaired a discussion between eighty-seven year old Sylvia Hurst and a large group of child and adult readers. Sylvia was there to talk about her autobiography Laugh or Cry  which recounts her life before and after she escaped the Holocaust in 1939.

The children of Ox Close School – bright faced and interested -  reminded me of myself at that age. Bizarrely, it was Red Nose Day, so they streamed into the Library in fancy dress, red and green hair sporting painted faces. Some girls wore party dresses and pyjamas. Some boys came in football shirts. They, with a sprinkling of adults, were there to meet Sylvia Hurst, nee Fleischer, who as a young girl, escaped Nazi Germany on the last train - the kindertransport – sent by their families to safety in England as the war clouds were gathering.

In the library the children sat in orderly rows on  mats and listened as Sylvia spoke eloquently of her happy pre-war life as a member of the loving family of an affluent corset maker, who so believed in Germany that he refused to leave. In the end, like his wife - Sylvia’s mother who loved haute couture – he died with other members of the family, in extermination camps.  Richard, Sylvia’s younger, thirteen year old brother, had also stayed. Mr Fleischer thought the kindertransport would be too dangerous for him. Richard was taken by the Nazis but survived the camp to which he was sent.  Sylvia told the children, ‘You know, those living skeletons you see in the pictures? He was one of those the end.’

But now she reassured them  that - in his eighties now - Richard lives in America and has had a long and fulfilled life.

Sylvia, at sixteen, was too old for the kindertransport, but had escorted younger children so far, and by some blessed error, was allowed to continue.  After a hard journey Sylvia arrived in England where - her pristine German sense of cleanliness offended - she first lived in a flea-ridden house in the East End. Then she went to rather reluctant relatives to live with them and work in their factory. Later she she went on to be a successful West End dressmaker and designer, then on to lecture in Manchester on fashion design, and finally she moved up to Tantobie in County Durham, where she  ran her own pub and restaurant.

Sylvia sat there in the library  full of energy and occasional laughter as she told her tale. She had combed her once blonde, now grey curls down over her shoulders because – she told me - she thought the children would like it that way, see her as a heroine or a princess…

Still, you might think this was heavy duty material, for ten year olds! But these children had been prepared by their teachers, having read appropriate  material and looked  at an  Ann Frank exhibition that  was touring at the time. (I have to admit I stifled a thought that the horrors of the Holocaust had been tamed by being ‘on the curriculum’.) 

But these children here asked wonderfully searching and insightful questions, drawing even more  extraordinary  information from this unique lady. Subjects ranged from brainwashing, to haute couture, to the kind of things Sylvia had chosen to put into the the single suitcase she was allowed to take on the train. (Her father said she could choose any suitcase to take with her. She chose a fine crocodile skin case, which she later regretted because it was so heavy!)  The best question for me was the girl who asked what it felt like, to go through all this.

So Sylvia  in her still strongly accented English,  described again the joys of secure family life in pre war Germany  being shattered by inhuman, shameful events that no child – so person – should endure. As she spoke she used examples from the children’s own world here and now to illustrate her loss and her suffering as a child.

It felt to me like magic, then, as these children used their considerable imaginations to enter the world of this lady -  seventy six years their senior – and grasped something of her extraordinary life. In this way they transformed their technical understanding of a bit of the history curriculum into genuine empathy with someone who had lived it.

In the tea break that followed , one by one the children came up and cuddled this old lady, almost as though to comfort the little girl - not much older than them - who had been left alone and had lost her family in the Holocaust.

 

 

w

Sunflowers like dinner plates and Australian Champagne

Yesterday I was just trying to gather my thoughts to complete an article about John Fowles’ The Magus for Norman Geras when there was a knock on the door and I was confronted by the man from the florist with an armful of sunflowers like dinner plates. This lovely bouquet was from Sherise, Celine, Gillian and Maura at my publishers (Headline) to celebrate publication day for The Woman Who Drew Buildings. Headline knows brilliantly how to mark the day. Thank you wonderful Headliners.

Of course we will have the proper big launch party very soon, but the day one’s book is out there in the world is is so very special and the flowers were a great start. 

Mid afternoon my friend Avril came with chocolate and we had coffee and talked of writing which must do justice to our work with the women in prison( see last post). Also we talked about what a joy and privilege it is to write for a living and the importance of staying positive in an uncertain world. We laughed a little and cried a little and came away smiling.

So I  didn’t get back to the Magus article.

Later, I went out to dinner with my clever friend Judith Gates and we drank Australian champagne to celebrate my publication day and her discovery of a relative born around 1760 something who shared a name with her husband Bill (or William as it says on the record). Just think of it – born before the French Revolution! Just imagine!

No getting back to the Magus article after that.

But today I have finished  the Magus piece and sent it to Norman.  So this post celebrates a task enjoyed and completed. Celebrations all round, then.

wx

PS We had Australian Champagne (called something else, of course…)  because that was what the restaurant had. In fact it was very, very good…

Durham Book Festival and Writing on the Edge

I was at a meeting yesterday a Low Newton Women’s prison  to discuss a forthcoming event at the Durham Book Festival where a panel at the Gala Theatre Durham City on Tuesday 27th October will discuss the benefits of original writing in prison.

It will be a full session.

Readings by actresses of some writing by women in the prison will be interleaved with the other elements:  Charlie Darby Villis, the inspirational prison librarian, will make the crucial link with reading; three writers - Avril Joy, Richard Hardwick and I  - will give our view on our different experiences and will read extracts  from our own  creative fiction which spring from our experience working in prison – in Richard’s case also working with homeless young people in shelters and hostels. His novel is called Kicked Out. Avril will read from her novel Bad Girl.   I will read from my short story collection Knives. My work at Low Newton was a direct inspiration for many stories in this collection.

This event is part of the legacy of the work in original writing and reading that Avril and I completed with the women at Low Newton before my second residency ended last year. This included our own ‘Litfest Inside’, planned to coincide  with the Durham Litfest of that year, also our Orange Prize Project where prison readers paralleled the process of judging the short list.  Also a wonderful and resonant book of the writings of the women with whom we worked – The Self Revealed – which has been admired by many outsiders.

All this was done without outside support. But this year the Durham Book Festival (which replaces the Litfest) is directed by the dynamic  Alison Redshaw and she and Durham City Arts are fully supporting this initiative both in and out of the prison. Hooray for her!

 I look forward to working alongside Richard; it’s always good to meet someone with similar preoccupations. We have already started a discussion - which may go on - about how one renders material so distinctively factual into authentic prose fiction without stealing people’s lives.

As I said to Richard, my work with women in prison was life enhancing and life changing. It resonates now through all of my work. For instance the new novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings begins with a young man, just out of prison, making his way to the house of his mother, whom he has not spoken to for two years.

I have close memories of the women which continues to resonate through my life. They made a difference to me.  I hope I made a little difference to them.

wx

Schools and The Great Story Vandalism

I did feel like hanging up my hat when I heard on late night radio that some school somewhere  had given up its library altogether. I’ve been too heartbroken since to check it out, deciding it was just a bad dream and we are not really on the edge of a precipice, preparing to leap back into barbarism.

Now this fear has returned as, on succeeding days in my daily paper, I read interviews with two great children’s writers who separately nail the importance of school experience in the making or breaking of a story reader. Michael Morpurgo, the eminent ex children’s laureate, reflects on his own experience where, having loved stories at his mother’s knee he went to school, where ‘stories’ became ‘texts’ to be studied rather than enjoyed. Rescued from that by an inspired university teacher he became a teacher himself when ‘…the only time I had all their heads pointing one way was when I was telling them a great story.’

The iconoclastic writer Terry Deary goes a step further, declaring that he detests schools with a passion. In his own education his obvious talents went unremarked and unsupported and (unlike Michael Morpurgo) his obvious intelligence did not thrust him on to a university education. Terry is cynical about the value of schools, saying here, ‘Schools are an utter waste of a young life… (the bureaucrats said) “lock them up all day in the same room and call it school” ’.

Although there are ironic, comedic overtones to Terry’s assertions here,  one senses heartfelt conviction. He would ‘cut off my left arm’ rather than go into schools to read his immensely popular books to children.

Yet, (declaring an interest, as I have been there), when he talks to children in other arenas he definitely has ‘all the heads turned in his direction’ as the children wait with baited breath for the next part of the story. Then afterwards the children wait patiently and expectantly in a queue clutching their books ready to sign. And when their individual turn comes he speaks to them directly, matily: he is one of them. They go away, eyes shining. (The other great writer who achieves this par excellence is the children’s writer, David Almond).

In fact, Terry, like Michael Morpurgo and David Almond, is a great teacher who doesn’t need a school. Great storytellers. by definition, are great teachers. They can do it under a tree, in a cave, on a street-corner. For proof of this, go right back to – amongst others - the Irish, the Greeks and the native Americans.

With his million-selling Horrible Histories and his many other firecracker works of fiction Terry locks onto the anarchic child in all of us and makes her see how wild, how strange, how interesting has life been through the ages and makes us reach for more of the horrible stuff...

Of course there are still great teachers and librarians in school who – under economic and institutional constraints  -  do a fantastic job of teasing and seducing children into the world of books, putting the right book into the right hand and the right time, essentially giving them a doorway to their future. My friend Gillian W is just such a one, as is my Australian correspondent here called  The Genteel Arsenal, (also called Bookpusher) whose site demonstrates perfectly the creative sometimes surreal matrix of obsession with  books and children that is the sign of a good librarian.

But still the vandalism goes on! How many children get As or starred As for English and have never read a whole book – just bite-sized chunks that will allow them to score well on directed questions? How many  clever thoughtful children have missed out on even this much story (losing therefore the benefits listed below) because they are deemed not academic? How many teachers (of all subjects, not just English) have time, in their hard pressed lives, to read full texts around their subjects – or, horror of horrors – for sheer enjoyment?

I taught in schools at a time when the good teacher, intellectually independent while still well prepared and delivering the goods, was not shackled to the Sadean chair of  tick boxes and computerized reports.  Working with the primary children I told stories continually, of my life, and of theirs, of the ideas we were tackling and of life around. And we always had a good story from a good book every day. I liked to read that to them in the morning, when they and I were fresh enough to imagine the wonder of the world in the book. So we were united and this set the tone of the day.

I have to emphasise that all this was not instead of a directed curriculum. It was incorporated all the significant elements of the curriculum and made it memorable. They learned it through story, you see?

So what do children learn through story?  They learn to empathise, historically and culturally; to incorporate their own world into the larger one;  they learn that cause is followed inevitably by consequence; that the weak can hold their own with the strong; that laughter is good for you; that it’s OK to cry now and then; that the people world can be reflected in the animal world; that in a just world evil does not go unpunished; that hard stuff happens in families and they are not alone.

Crucially they also learn how to sit still and concentrate, to listen, to hear words distinctly and in consequence will read and write more naturally; they extend their vocabulary by hearing new words in context, without the necessity for explanation. They learn to read on their own, with absorption and understanding. And these skills will take them naturally on reading history, geography, politics, current affairs and so they become part of the larger world. And they will always have the pleasure of escaping into a book when all around them is chaos.

Idealistic? Not really. I did it myself as a very poor and disadvantaged child: I learned all the elements listed above and I made it part of my philosophy as a teacher and as a writer.

But the barbarians with their clipboards are rattling the gates. We should watch out.

wxx

 Post Script from (my good friend) Sharon Griffiths from her article in The Northern Echo: her take on this issue

‘........Parkside Sports College at Willington has apparently scrapped its library, though it says books will still be available in the classroom.  And yes, when it comes to reference books, I can see there might be a point.  What’s the point of an out of date atlas when the internet can give you the most immediate up to date information?  We are in a fast changing world and we need to keep up with it.

And yet…. Before you can make the most of the internet and the unbelievable amounts of information available, you need to serve a long apprenticeship.  I can get what I want from the internet in minutes – simply because  all those years ploughing through reference books has trained me in how to access information, to find out what is relevant, and discard the dubious.  Today’s children will have no such training, no weighing and considering what they are told.

But what horrified me is that the governors of the school apparently declared books “obsolete”.  Obsolete?  ALL books?  If anyone involved in any way with teaching children  genuinely believes that, then the world is in meltdown.

Parkside might be much improved, but  with an attitude like that, what it is doing is training children to pass exams, tick the right boxes and little more It has nothing to do with broadening minds, exciting dreams, awaking aspirations and showing the children the endless possibilities of the world.

And absolutely nothing at all to do with education............"

Parkside incidentally, has just recorded its best ever exam results.  Says it all really.’ Sharon Griffiths,

This is a photo of the library where I sat and wrote for periods while I was in France. If you look hard you will see it is a young teacher introducing her small pupils to the delights of this fine library

.

The Gift of the Exceptional Mary D

My new novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings is dedicated thus:

‘For the exceptional and inspirational Mary Davies - painter, writer and healer.’

This novel has been in the making for five or six years, when the exceptional Mary D gave me a box of materials about her travels and experience in Poland in the 1980s.

Mary knew I was interested in the idiosyncrasies of letters, notebooks, images and ephemera that I used to inspire my novels. I was, she said, to use them as I wished. We had long talks about her experiences and the the dilemma of using them as inspiration, for what I knew would be - in fact -pure fiction.

It has taken me some years to develop my imaginative take on on all this material and all these ideas in order to allow the novel to emerge of its own volition. It became more fluid – easier - when my purely imagined characters got to grips with the material of their true to life inspiration.

The Woman Who Drew Buildings is the outcome of all these processes.

A taster for you:

The extract below describes the moment when Adam, the estranged son of Marie Matheve (who has problems of his own) comes upon just such a cache of materials as his mother lies in a coma in hospital:

… Adam’s eye moved to the wardrobe and the pile of boxes above it. Now this he could disturb. He climbed on the dressing stool and started to pull down the boxes. He worked swiftly and as he worked his spirit lifted. He started to drop the boxes so their contents spilled on the polished floor – books, notebooks, papers, brochures, travel documents, bundles of clothes, bright scarves, packets of photos, sheaves of drawings in a disorganised pile….

… he took a second bottle of wine from the fridge, took a new notebook from the pile in her bottom left desk drawer, came back and began to make a careful list of the things that had spilled out of the boxes. His face was burning with wine drunk too fast, his brain was racing, his hand was shaking, but one by one he listed the items from the brown cardboard box:

· Article in Esperantist magazine by Marie Mathéve, recounting her ‘Study In Poland.’

· A newspaper article about the visit of Marie Mathéve’s visit to Poland on a Siropotimist grant to consider buildings.

· Photo of Marie and a younger (very pretty)woman leaning towards each other, making a triangle. On the back Marie has written; Jacinta Zielenska and me in the Cherzov flat.

· Small published book of drawings of Krakov marked Ex Libris D. Adama Zielenski` Paperback with a brown paper cover to protect it.

· Photographic slides, small and hard to see, with viewer,.

· Poland’s Progress edited by Michael Murray first pub 1944 this the third ed 1945

· Krakow by Edward Hartig 1964. Coffee table book.

· Poland by Irena and Jerzy Kostrowicki

Official 1981 guide to Krakow

· Official guide to Katowice

· Notebooks, many notebooks

· Two small red Sylvine notebooks still with their 30p price tag on. Marked Poland Diary 1981

· One Winfield exercise book marked Paris Diary 1985

· Daler Sketchbook full of Marie’s drawings eg: Cherrzov From My Bedroom; steelworks; estate with Tabac in foreground; old steelworks; coal mine looking towards Katowice; done in coloured markers, making her usual style brighter and bolder. But style is unmistakable.

· Spiral Bound Daler Sketchbook with more subtle drawings from Brittany, Paris Luxembourg gardens, View from my window 8^th floor Rue de Rennes; Paris. Louvre 1985.

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(Watch out for a later Post - The day when Mary D regressed me back in time...)

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If you fancy it, The Woman Who Drew Buildings (ISBN 978-0-7553-3380-6)

is published by Headline Book Publishing

and is available in all good bookshops.

WX

The Miracle of The Woman Who Drew Buildings

It’s like a small miracle when a plain brown package arrives with the first edition copies of your new novel.

You tip them out. You put them in a row. You stand them up, you lay them down. You smell them. You flick the pages, to hear that crisp fresh sound. You open the book and on those pages - set for ever – you read the characters, the conversations, the comedies and tragedies  that have somehow spun themselves out of your writer’s head. The words and paragraphs look strange, as though someone else has written them.

You have lived with those words and phrases for one or two years. You have lived with the idea  of  the novel for five or six years (more of this in the next post).  And now, here it is. It looks good, it feels good, it reads well. It has legs and will dance out into the world. A shiver goes down your spine.

What is The Woman Who Drew Buildings about? Well, when you get the novel, the blurb will give you a clue to the story  but I will tell you what it’s about! It’s about a mother and her grown up son – Marie and Adam Matheve - who are estranged; about the romance of buildings; about the world here and now, and the world in the 1980s when Poland was under the unravelling Soviet domination; it’s about out-of-body experiences; it’s about the rejuvenating circles of redemption that can come out of crisis. And it’s about the long-kept secrets and the different kinds of love that glue our lives together.

Angus, who loves chocolate, is around while the books are being unpacked. He says my anxiety and excitement about the book is just like he feels about his GCSE results, due out this Thursday. Meanwhile, he’s dressing up, trying on some new clothes. But then he goes to find his grandfather’s big business coat  (bought in those same  1980s when my character Marie Matheve was in Poland)

…. Here he is! 

‘What do you think, Wendy?’

‘Lovely. Very gangster chic!’

He also insisted on to taking these other  funky photos here. He thinks they are very cool.

The dolly in the first picture? Oh, I made her for Debora when she was small but she never moved house when Debora did. She sits on a shelf  and watches me work and is very wise. According to her, The Woman Who Drew Buildings is my very best novel ever and everyone will love it….

Wx

Next post is about the wonderful Mary Davies, writer, artist and healer, who was the inspiration for The Woman Who Drew buildings. 

 

If you fancy it, The Woman Who Drew Buildings

(ISBN 978-0-7553-3380-6)

is published by Headline Book Publishing

and is available in all good bookshops.

Glittering Prizes and Fourteen Good Things

Apart from various exam awards, the Coty Compact I won for dancing, and the Collected Poems of John Keats that I won as a school prize – still use it !- my life has not been littered with prizes.

So I’m very excited that the clever Al has passed on to me the Kreativ Blogger Award for which I thank him very much. (Look him up – he’s interesting…)

How lovely to be labelled creative with a K!

Apparently my task now is to name seven things about myself that people might find interesting. To be honest I think I am mostly uninteresting except that I write novels, but here goes;

1. I see ghosts and sense time warps. ( I am trying to explore this in the novel I am writing at present…)
2. I knew I’d be a writer when I was eight, although I had never met a writer, and had barely even met a white collar worker.
3. I taught for nearly twenty years before I became a full time writer. During this time in schools and higher education I also wrote a weekly newspaper column and published four young adult novels. I loved teaching (and still do…) but always felt like a writer who happened to teach, rather than a teacher who wrote on the side. I think perhaps I wasn’t a conventional teacher.
4. I draft all my novels with an ink pen in ledgers before I transcribe them onto the computer.
5. I used to paint and pot.In fact I once taught art in secondary schools. I think I am a better writer than painter but I think there are interesting parallels in the two artistic processes.
6. I’ve experienced two bouts as writer in residence in a woman’s prison which I found both chastening and inspiring. A life-changing experience.
7. My disability is that although I love intense conversations I am woefully lacking in small talk. So I’d never make a twitterer.

And now I have to nominate seven blogs to whom I am to pass on this award. So!

My Nominations For the Kreativ Blogger Award

1. - Avril Joy at Writing Junkie for her poetic take on writing and her emotional honesty
2. Kathleen Jones on A Writer’s Life for vivid, inspiring posts that do indeed reflect the intricacy of a writer’s life.
3. Debora at Love and a Licked Spoon for showing that great writing and great cooking can be sisters in arms. Nepotistically speaking, she is my own Elizabeth David
4. Bookpusher at the The Genteel Arsenal for her delight in the world of children’s reading which is where it all starts. Also for a fun. fizzy site that is full of youthful energy
5. Check out http//: http://www.60goingon16.typepad.com/ for this wonderful woman of bohemian inclinations, particularly for her ironic tone, her joie de vivre, her social commitment and her wonderful photographs. These are a revelation.
6. Pinkpackrat for her political commitment and inspiring anger. And for her wit and knowingness.
7. And I have just stumbled on the wonderful Norman Geras’ prizewinning blog at http://normblog.typepad.com/. (Someone sent me a link following one of my own posts about Easington) I love the range, breadth and depth of his posts which may variously focus on the writing world, the political world, the world world. His posts are long, (which I like) , very readable, entertaining and thought provoking. A man of letters. As such a literate man I hope he might be amused to be labelled Kreativ with a K.

I recommend them all to you.

Happy reading, happy blogging!

Wxx

NOTE : According to Al if you want to pass on this award to some favourite blog., this is what you do! (Isn’t this quite democratic?)
1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.(Don’t need to tell you this, I’m sure…
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

- Check
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting. –Check

5. Nominate 7 of your favourite Kreativ Bloggers. - Check
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate. - Check
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated. – Check

this was fun to do -even for someone with no small talk wx