Plug of the Month - Beauty in the Beast by Hugh Warwick



Our lovely friend Hugh Warwich aka "Hedgehog Hugh" has done it again. Another cracking book extolling the virtues of native wild animals, in the words of their passionate ambassadors. In an attempt to see if any animal can be an equal to his beloved hedgehogs, Hugh travels the length and breadth of UK meeting a diverse collection of animal mad Britons. There's Amy who loves moths, and Kate Long, the novelist, also known as "Vole woman" who can watch them for hours. 90 year old  Denis had a full time career in ICI but developed an expertise in sparrows on the way; Paul lives in a castle and has let beavers loose on Scottish estate with astonishing results; whilst Gareth, the mid Wales Badger man really sees badgers as part of his family. Mimi, the otter advocate swears by the smell of their droppings so much, she sends Hugh some in the post, Gordon the toad shaman dances with toad spirits. There are many more besides, a fascinating collection of characters and the animals they adore.

I once entertained aspirations to be an ecologist, but the nearest I got to it was traipsing round York misidentifying the local flora. This book makes me want to adopt a local mammal immediately and spend my nights in fields getting wet and close to nature. I probably won't but I enjoyed the inspiration.

Hugh's enthusiasm for the natural world, wit and knowledge make this an entertaining and accessible read. He's "a modern day Johnny Morris" according to the Hay Festival. I can't disagree.

That Special Someone

At first, like everyone who's been before, you succumb to her. You don't quite know how she does it, but there is something about her that makes you feel special,  needed, central to her concerns. Perhaps it is the softness of her speech that soothes your soul. Or the tilt of her head as she listens intently to your every word. Or is it the sincerity of her response to you - the way she makes you feel she's always on your side, the two of you against the world?

Other people, older and wiser than you, warn against her wiles. They point out the ways she has misled them in the past. They tell you tales of  broken promises, of roads to heaven paved with wilful deceptions. The lies built on so many lies that  truth is a long forgotten concept, buried deep beneath the ground. But you don't believe them. You won't believe them. How could you imagine that those wide brown eyes might be deceiving you? Or think her gentle voice is really full of guile?

It is only when your paths begin to diverge that the doubt creeps in. The moment you express an alternative point of view you detect a hardening tone of voice, a narrowing of her eyes. For months she has had you wrapped up warmly safe from bitterness and cold, but now you begin to sense a chill is in the air. Still you won't admit your fault. You don't want to admit your fault. Till even you begin to catch the faint criticism lingering behind her words of praise and your faith begins to weaken, your eyes to open.

It takes the arrival of the neophyte for you to finally succumb. To allow the truth to rise from the depths where it has lain buried under so many lies and broken promises. Your fall from grace is as rapid as his ascendancy, as the favours that were once bestowed on you are suddenly granted elsewhere. You try to warn him, but he doesn't listen. You tell him everything, but he doesn't believe you. He won't believe you. How could those wide brown eyes be decieving him, that beguiling voice be misleading him?

There is nothing you can do, except to join the others, older and wiser than you. They warned you once and  though you did not heed their warning they welcome you into their ranks. All you can do is watch and wait for paths to diverge, faith to weaken, eyes to open wide.

Woolf on Words

Oh this is marvellous. My heroine Virginia Woolf speaking about words in the only recording of her voice in existence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8czs8v6PuI Please take a moment to listen. Hat tip to the wonderful folk at Shakespeare and Company for posting it on twitter this morning.

We're All Different and that's OK

I usually use this blog to celebrate writing - fiction, drama, poetry, my own and others. But I'm making an exception today to join in Bloggers Against Disablism Day.


I have worked for and with people with learning disabilities for nearly thirty years. Although we have come a long way since people with learning disabilities were locked in institutions they, and other people, with disabilities still face a lot of discrimination. So I'm delighted to be part of BADD which is a great way to tackle disablism.


A few years ago I gave an assembly at my daughters primary school about people with learning disabilities. I told the children (aged 5-9) We are all Different, We are all Equal, We are All Special. I explained that sometimes people with disabilities weren't treated equally or seen as being as special as others. It maybe a bit cliched but children really do have an innate sense of justice, and straight away they all recognised how unfair this is.


I told them that all it takes is understanding and a bit of adjustment from those of us who do not have disabilities, and everyone can shine. I used the children's story "Amelia Bedelia" to illustrate my point. Amelia Bedelia is hired to be a housekeeper.  She is keen to do well and impress her new employers, but when they go out and leave her a list of chores she is a little puzzled. "Draw the curtains," the list says, so after thinking about it, she draws them a picture of the curtains. "Dust the furniture", and she covers it with dust. She interprets "Change the towels," literally and cuts them to make them different. "Put out the lights," really stumps her till she decides, like washing, the lightbulbs need hanging out on the washing line. Her employers return and are horrified by her actions. They are on the point of sacking her until they smell her delicious lemon meringue pie. When they realise how wonderful the pie is, they ask her to stay. They are clever enough to work out how to ask her to do things her way. When she is told "Undraw the curtains" "Undust the furniture."  she gets it right. In other words, instead of expecting her to be like them, they celebrate her uniqueness and adapt their behaviour to match hers.


It's a simple message. Instead of letting disability be a problem,  we need to see people for who they are and make the necessary adjustments to ensure they can fully participate. The kids totally got it.  Why is it so difficult for grown ups?


If you would like to do something about disablism you might want to start by checking out these fine bloggers: Benefit Scrounging Scum (Kaliya Franklin) - shortlisted for the Orwell Prize; Diary of a Benefit Scrounger (Sue Marsh); Where's the Benefit? (Collective).

Write until they pay you.

It was Mark Twain who said “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay". Which is exactly what I've been doing since I decided to take my writing seriously a few years ago. Like many a (better) writer before me, I've discovered it's a long old haul getting noticed, let alone published, and I've had plenty of moments where I've considered jacking it all in.

I haven't done so, because I realised (just about the time I started taking myself seriously) that I am a writer -I just have to write. And the more I write, the more I learn about how I write, why I write and tricks to improve my writing. In the last couple of years, this appears to have paid off, and I now have several on-line credits to my name, as well as some appearances in anthologies.  Up until now, I haven't been paid for any of them but it hasn't mattered. For there is nothing more heartening then receiving an email with the magic words: "We'd like to use your piece". It's a wonderful antidote to depressing tutorials, rejection slips and the many times when you look at your work in progress and decide it needs confining to the dustbin.

So I was delighted when the good folk at the Blank Media Collective accepted my piece "Following the Real Miss Piggy" as part of a publication to accompany their Inside Exhibition. They've published me in their fine magazine Blank Pages before and it was a thrill simply to be part of one of their shows. Imagine how excited I was to discover that not only was my little story in their collection, but this time round they are in a position to pay contributors. It's not much, but the experience of receiving my first cheque for a piece of fiction  is absolutely priceless to me.

And thanks to my lovely husband giving me a long weekend pass, I am taking the lunch time train to Manchester in time for the launch of the exhibition.

This writing life doesn't get much better than that.

Hesitation

I should leave now. I really should. There's nothing here to keep me. The party ended a long time ago. All that remains are the scattered crumbs of former pleasures: fading wine stains; crumpled beer cans; the faint scent of stale cigarettes.

I should leave. I  Should. Really. Leave. Now.

But still I hesitate. Pacing up and down our narrow hallway, rolling my black suitcase back and forth over the  red carpet. Occasionally a wheel snags on the frayed edges, causing me to pause in my pointless journey. As I stop to untangle it, I wonder why I am still here. It can't be out of any desire to stay.  To remain in the hangover of a now that has long past the point of no return to what once was.

Perhaps I am tempted by the tantalising illusion that what might be. That somehow we could still create a future where the bitterness of now is long forgotten, replaced by a magic that could be even better than what once was.

Or is it fear holding me back? The sense that what will be is bound to be a hell far worse than what is. The terror that if I leave, I will find myself  yearning for the life I endure now, as much as I now long for the life that what once was.

From the kitchen, the oven clock beeps - seven o'clock - reminding me that the time to choose is passing. Before your feet tramp up the path, before your key turns in the lock I must be unpacked or be gone.

Back or Forth? Once or Future? Now or Never? It is time to make up my mind.

I really should be going.  Really. I should.

Writing Heroes (2)

Last World Book Day I had the bright idea about writing about some of my writing heroes. I enjoyed it so much I suggested rather foolishly that it might be a regular feature of this blog. Alas, my life is never like that, and another year has whizzed by without me repeating the exercise. But last night, chatting to my cousin Christina on twitter, I got thinking about some more writing heroes. Maybe, this needs to be an annual event instead. So here, for 2012 (in no order of preference) are some more:

Jeanette Winterson Oh how I love Jeanette Winterson's writing. Oh how I wish I could write like that. She burst into my consciousness in the 1980's with her debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, surely the best rites of passage novel ever written. It's a longstanding favourite of mine (featuring as one of my rave reviews) recently enhanced by Winterson's brilliant memoir Why Be Happy When You Can be Normal which told the real (and somewhat more painful) story. After Oranges came a flurry of marvellous novels which I devoured eagerly:  The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Boating for Beginners, loving the wit, the fabulism, use of myth, religious imagery and the quest for love and indepence that permeates these novels.  I drifted away from her for a bit after that, till I was given Lighthousekeeping - an extraordinary book about people living in fantastical situations on the edge of things - and I was back in the fan club. Shortly after that I  read Gut Symmetries which is quite simply a work of genius. Only Winterson would dare to write a book that connects Grand Unified Theory, the Ship of Fools, wormtunnels with stomach illnesses, love triangles and missing persons, all wrapped together with dazzling language, and word play. Gut Symmetries manages to be both a grand narrative that is funny and poignant and a book of ideas that I still think about four years later. So, if Winterson isn't on your bookshelves she should be. You really won't be disappointed.

David Mitchell is another writer I'd love to be. He's one of the rare authors that my beloved and I both adore in equal measure. Since we read his lauded debut novel Ghostwritten in 1999 we have been desperate to grab our hands on everything he's ever written. Ghostwritten appears at first glance to be a series of short stories, which at first seem to have little to do with each other, but gradually the reader notices that the Japanese lovers in the background of the first story about a terrorist, take centre stage in the second. The cheating cleaner who has an affair with the lost financier in Singapore, reemerges as the granddaughter of a Chinese peasant woman who survives the brutality of Japanese and Chinese soldiers on a lonely mountain. The tree that the Chinese woman thinks speaks to  her, is in fact a lost soul seeking rebirth. Altogether these stories lead us to consider what we believe, how can oppression be resisted, how do we survive pain, what are the consequences of our actions and what connects us in our humanity. Mitchell is a fine narrative writer, whose use of imagery is outstanding and like Winterson, is a master of wordplay. He is also experimental, as seen in Number 9 Dream where his hero, a Japanese jazz lover fantasises about finding his father as he drifts between reality and imaginary worlds, perhaps pursued by gangster, perhaps not. The book ends in a breathtakingly audacious fashion that I suspect only Mitchell could get away with.Cloud Atlas is my favourite - 6 interlocking novellas in completely different genres (adventure, 1920's cad, thriller, farce, scifi, apocalyptic) all dealing with similar themes to Ghostwritten, and written with skill and passion. Black Swan Green, Mitchell's rite of passage novel, is less interesting, but it is still way above the average writer, whilst The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, after a slightly slow first part, becomes unputdownable. Mitchell's prose is light and airy, his images linger, and his characters are brilliantly drawn. He's a pleasure to read, and on every re-reading, I always find something new. Best of all, he loves to treat his fans with in-jokes, bit characters in one book take a lead role in another, and half the fun of a new Mitchell is spotting the references to previous books. I can't get enough of him and, once you read  him, nor will you.

Salman Rushdie is the reason I'm writing this post tonight, on the back of my cousin Christina tweeting about Midnight's Children yesterday. Midnight's Children is a bit of a marmite book. It's been voted the Booker of Bookers. Its advocates adore the magic realism, the endless diversionary stories, the linking of the hero Saleem Sinai to the history of independent India, which allows Rushdie to shine a light on the country of his birth. Critics say it's wordy and I do have to say, on re-reading they have a point. I tend to love novelists who are spare (like Mitchell, Greene, Forster) and Rushdie's prose can seem florid and bombastic in contrast. However, for me it's part of the charm - Rushdie is deliberately writing as an Indian storyteller in the market place, weaving ever more fantastical elements in his tale. And I adore the central premise of the gifts of the children born in the midnight hour that India came to independence, and how such gifts inevitabley threaten the State. Shame, Rushdie's novel about Pakistan does a similar job about Pakistan by describing the terrible events that occur inthe country of P. Rushdie has a neat trick of counterposing his fable with the odd intercession of an ironic, detached narrator who is always relieved to note that in the real Pakistan, none of these things happen. It's a brilliant device, which cleverly underlines the point he is making. And of course there's The Satanic Verses, a brilliant treatise on what we believe and why, with angels and devils grappling for good and evil, to the ultimate conclusion we have a bit of both in us. I have to confess I haven't really liked much else Rushdie has written, but these three fine novels can't be bettered.

JRR Tolkien gets my vote for The Hobbit and, of course, The Lord of the Rings. I am not a fantasy fan really, but I have returned to Tolkien again and again, with The Lord of the Rings being the book I most love to re-read. I think I love Tolkien so much because I resisted him for so long. My many siblings kept going on about him to such an extent I refused to read him, till one half term when I was 13, I finally picked up The Hobbit out of boredom and found I couldn't put it down. It was one of the most intense reading experiences I've ever had, as when I'd finished, I immediately picked up The Lord of The Rings, reading the whole lot in 4 days. What's not to love about both books? The Hobbit, being intentionally written for children, is obviously much simpler, but it's well written, brilliantly paced, and packed with wonderful characters. Bilbo Baggins' journey from a nervous, ordinary hobbit who likes a quiet life, to a bold resourceful adventurer, whose wit and quick thinking saves his companions time and again, is a wonder to behold. The dwarves he journeys with are all memorable, as are Gandalf, the wizard, and, of course, Gollum, whose brief appearance here, is far more important than the reader first realises. The Hobbit is a brilliant read aloud book, and it's given me great pleasure to read it to my children, as we've all enjoyed the humour and regular cliff hangers. And though it's simpler than the follow  up, it is still full of moral complexity, which marks it out from most children's books. The Lord of the Rings is a worthy successor, with Frodo being an equally beguiling reluctant hero. One who chooses the worst of all task, though he does "not know the way" because it is the right thing to do. His journey alone, is a tale worth reading, as he is pursued into the wilderness, and dark places, tempted beyond all endurance to achieve his aim. But his fellow travellers are also a joy to journey with. The other hobbits, Sam, Pippin and Merry, often there for comic effect, but equally grow in stature as they deal with their own individual struggles. Strider, the Ranger, who is later revealed as Aragorn, the returning King. Not being a fan of royalty or soldiers, I should hate Strider, but he's so noble, so strong, yetvulnerable, I fall in love with him every single time. Gandalf makes a welcome return, as does Gollum, whose original ownership of the ring is the cause of all the trouble, and whose own journey is both terrifying and sad. I do find the Elves a little bit twee as I get older, and must confess to skipping over the poetry a lot of the time, but Tolkien's storytelling is masterly and as with The Hobbit, he just keeps you begging for more. In both books, his descriptions of landscape are so rich and sensuous that I have vivid pictures of Mirkwood, Moria, Rivendell, Lorien in my mind. And although there are a lot of battles in both books, Tolkien is clear that they're not from choice. His solution to the war is not for the heroes to destroy evil using the enemy's weapon, Sauron's ring, but to destroy the ring itself. I can't think of a better outcome for violence than that.  But, the best mark of a good book is whether you are disappointed when you finish. And I am. Every single time. I'm currently reading it to my 9  year old, his first and my thirty third reading, we're both completely entranced. As I  hope you will be.

So there you have it, 4 more heroes, who I hope you'll enjoy too. I doubt I'll get round to doing this again for a while. See you next year?