The Woman Who Talked Too Much

Does anybody actually enjoy post-match interviews with tennis players? Last night's with Andy Murray was a particular gem. After four hours of watching the man be driven to near-death by that Swiss bloke with the hot bod and the piggy nose (I am a close follower of tennis, you understand) I really didn't need to have some short dude with a microphone come out onto the pitch (it's called a pitch, right?) and ask a series of the most inane questions known to humanity. "So what was that like? Do you enjoy winning then? Is it hard work?" Having studied these interviews carefully I know that they are all the same and all questions are answered in exactly the same way: namely, by describing the game of tennis that I have just seen. ie "Well, I started off badly, the other guy was beating me, then I got better, I started hitting lots of good serves / ground strokes / etc, then I was winning, then he got better again, then I got better again, and then I won." It's a bit like having the director interviewed over the closing credits of the movie: "Well, at the beginning the boy met the girl, but then there was a big misunderstanding and the boy lost the girl, and we were all really worried about that, but then at the end of the movie the boy got the girl back so it was all OK." WE KNOW! WE WERE WATCHING!

I have to admit, though, that I the more I watch these post-match interviews the more I love Andy Murray, and I have started from a position of not loving Andy Murray at all. The reason I love Andy Murray is because of his total visible irritation with the whole thing, and you can see on his face the exact moment when he remembers that his management team told him it was very important to make people like him. So last night, desperate to go home and have a sarnie and a kip, blocked from the exit by the interviewer like that last boring bloke who corners you at a party and will not shut up, he got asked: "So what about the closed roof, did it make the crowd better?" He visibly started, and you could read the reply like it was written on his chin: "The closed roof made me lose the first set and I couldn't give half an elephant's fart about the sodding crowd." But the BBC are *obsessed* with the Wimbledon crowd. They want us to believe that it is the best crowd in the WORLD, when in fact it largely consists of people like me who don't watch a second of tennis for the whole of the rest of the year, but who can be relied upon to turn up wearing union jack tops and tennis balls for earrings [not like me - we have moved on now] and cheer the double faults of the guy who wasn't lucky enough to be born in the UK. Anyway, Murray got halfway through his answer about the humidity and the speed of the ball before he remembered that Simon Fuller had told him to say how great the crowd was, and then he did it with about as much conviction as a politician apologising for an unfortunate war. "Obviously, having 15,000 supporters is great. I like having 15,000 supporters. Thanks, 15,000 supporters." That's what I adore about him: his naked contempt for his fans.

That, and the fact he looks just like Ned Flanders' long lost third son. Am I wrong?

I am actually quite impressed and can only stand back and watch the carnage in awe. I filled my life to saturation point so that any sudden catastrophe could tip it into chaos. And then, an unexpected death. Farrah? Jacko? No, my computer monitor.

More blog as it doesn't break.

I know that doesn't actually make sense.

It is madness in here (by "in here" I mean "in my own head").

Roll up roll up! Exciting new event ahoy.

In August, I will be co-hosting The Firestation Book Swap with Scott Pack, once grand fromage of Waterstones, now grand fromage of The Friday Project. He writes a great intro to it over here, much of which I will now repeat.

Basically, it's going to be a book event for people who love book events but are also slightly bored of them (for example: all authors.) We're going to invite two or three writers who are also good talkers onto the sofa and chat about all kinds of things. I don't know what kinds of things yet, because part of the evening will involve pulling questions written by the audience out of a jar, and we're going to have a no-questions-about-writing rule for those. There will be no reading out loud and guests will be chosen for being interesting rather than having a new book to promote. We're going to have an audience-manned Twitter feed for the event, and hopefully a podcast, so it's very up to the hip moment, yeah. I have a strong suspicion there will be tea and cake, because I have never done anything with Scott which has not involved tea and cake.

The reason it's called the Firestation Book Swap is that it's taking place in a converted firestation, and all audience members and guests will be asked to bring a book they don't want any more to swap, and afterwards we'll all go to the bar and chat and swap our books.

As for the Firestation, it's a very cool new arts centre in Windsor. I can only speak as a Londoner, but Windsor is a piece of piss to get to from London, as it's only half an hour by train from Paddington and a bit longer from Waterloo. It is even easier to get to from Windsor.

More news as it breaks. Meanwhile, if you are an author thinking: hey, I want to take part in that book event because I can chat and I like cake and I don't like reading out loud, or a publisher / agent etc thinking: how do we get our authors into that cooler than cool Firestation, it sounds so very cool, then get in touch with me - strugglingauthor [at] tiscali [dot] co [dot] uk.

Meanwhile, while we're talking events, just a reminder that I will be giving a talk on How To Write A Novel at the London Writers' Club in Clerkenwell on Tuesday July 7th. Tickets now on sale for a tenner, they are £15 on the door.

Not a huge response for Disquiet, although thumbs up from 100pc of participants, so I am undaunted. However, I am also very low on very short books, so this month's is a normal length. But it's summer, so what better way to pass the time than sitting in the sun reading Patrick McGrath's Asylum

This is one of those books I cannot believe is not read, marveled over and discussed at tedious length at every party that you go to. It was recommended to me by fellow author Jessica Ruston, but it was a while before I picked it up, probably because, as I have since discovered when trying on innumerable occasions to purchase it for someone else, it is simply not very often stocked in shops. (WHY???) Anyway, I picked it up in a bookshop and read the first page and I knew straight away that I had to have it and to read it immediately, which I did.

Set in 1959, Asylum tells the story of Stella Raphael, whose husband takes a job as deputy superintendent of a hospital for the criminally insane, and who has an intense sexual relationship with one of the inmates. But it's also the kind of book which starts off seeming to be about one thing and then later on you realise that another, hidden story has been being told underneath. It's an incredibly gripping, exciting read which leaves you with the question: is love itself a form of insanity?

Off you go. Meet back here on July 16th.

PS I do seem to specialise in books that have featured Natasha Richardson in the adaptations; the image is of her as Stella.

Even looking at my copy of Disquiet gives me the creeps. It's so incredibly sinister. The lead character - "the woman" - is cold and detached, bruised literally and metaphorically by a violent relationship. She returns with her children to the loveless home of her upbringing. There, a fresh nightmare awaits her: her brother and his wife Sophie return from hospital with a stillborn baby which she refuses to give up for burial, and which 'sleeps' on a satin pillow in the freezer. Gradually the horror of the situation engulfs the whole family. Eventually, the woman, like Sophie, also has to make a choice between love and death, between her pain and her children.

I think the book is an incredible piece of work, a dark masterpiece of atmosphere, with surprising emotional depth for a book so short and so macabre. I'd be very intrigued, if any of you read it, to hear your thoughts...

As discussed (passim), I am an author, which involves much sitting around in my house by myself. Now, I don't want to ruin the image of authors, but it's fair to say that the clothing one might choose for sitting around the house is not quite the same as what one might choose for leaving the house and being seen by other humans. Essentially, if I am not going out, I tend to work in one of a selection of stretchy tracksuity type garments (cashmere in winter, cotton in summer), with one of those vests underneath that has the bra built in - so stylish! If the weather is really hot, I might wear a cotton smock, and if I am really lazy, I might just wear my pyjamas, and / or a dressing gown. When it's really cold, I have fingerless gloves to enable typing, and a little jacket that is essentially a cropped duvet with sleeves. Not directly relevant to writing, I also have a pair of Crocs, which I keep by the back door for when I need to nip out and water the garden. Bluntly, I look fucking dreadful in all of the above, but it doesn't matter, because the only people who see me in them are either peering nosily into my front window, or have come to the door because they are the postman, are selling me something, or are inviting me to join the a new religion. Happily, rarely all three at once.

Thing is, though, I should really not have used the present tense in the above paragraph. Because I am experiencing Creeping Clothing Blight. It started with the Crocs. First I wore them to water the plants at the front of the house as well - makes sense not to change shoes. Then I started going to yoga in them, because I am already looking shitty in my shitty yoga clothes, and also you have to take your shoes off at yoga and it doesn't take long to remove Crocs. Then I figured that if I was wearing them to yoga, which involves walking past all my local shops, there was no reason why I shouldn't wear them to go shopping as well.

This morning I had an optician's appointment in the highly chic optician at the corner of the extremely fashionable shopping street about twenty minutes' walk from my house. I'd had yoga that morning, and I thought to myself: well, there's no point getting changed. So I went in my yoga gear: frayed, and actually quite dirty, old tracksuit bottoms, so worn that the knees sag out, pulled up over shorts (waistband visible), pulled up over sporty underwear (waistband also visible), "secret" support vest, tatty hoodie that the flatmate I lived with six years ago nearly threw away before I rescued it from the bin, dirty yoga hair tied back, no make-up (ha! as if). I was, however, wearing Converse. Not Crocs. I am clinging to civilisation by my toenails, but can wandering the streets in a black bin liner, stapled to form sleeves, be far away?

(As an aside, I get far more attention from men when I go out dressed like a ropey old slattern. I don't know if I look like an easier target or if I am just deluded and this really is my more beautiful, au naturel self. Anybody who works in one of my local shops care to speculate?)

The best thing about being an author - well, actually the best thing about being an author is being paid to sit around in my house making stuff up, which means that having had a late night last night I am writing this to you in an old smock, having not had a shower yet, or indeed achieved anything of note at all this morning, except gossiping with my sister on Skype. Living the dream, people. But one of the other really cool things about being an author is that you get sent free books all the time, many of which are rubbish, but some of which are good or even excellent. I prefer not to write about the rubbish ones, as it doesn't seem fair, especially as the books are often by debut authors who really don't need, as one of their sole bits of coverage, me slagging off their efforts. On the other hand it is a pleasure to flag up the excellent ones, and therefore, today, might I introduce you to In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin? (Memorise the surname, I am not typing it again.)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a collection of short stories set in Pakistan, loosely linked around the character of KK Harouni, a wealthy landowner. The stories move around time, place and class, revealing aspects of his life and that of his family and his servants - and by extension, Pakistan itself - over the course of around thirty years. The stories are beautifully written, faultless in execution and tone, full of carefully-observed detail on individual characters, social behaviour and cultural norms, and framed by exquisite description of Pakistan's landscape. I was particularly moved by Saleema, the story of a doomed young woman who tries to save herself by an affair with an older servant in the household where she works, and A Spoiled Man, a brutal tale of casual violence meted out by the police on a sweet, innocent man.

I did, however, feel somewhat distanced by the short story structure. There is always a risk in a book of short stories that it's difficult for the author to inspire the reader's interest in each individual character and their fate. In this collection,
this problem is exacerbated by some repetition in themes: most Pakistani men, it is shown more than once, can only become wealthy through corruption; Pakistani women can only advance themselves by whom they sleep with. Demonstrating these points repeatedly through different characters and stories diminishes the impact, because it appears to stem from a paucity of ideas. It's also an incredibly depressing portrait of a nation, and I'm not sure that the author wanted all his readers to put down the book thinking "thank God I'm not from Pakistan."

Nevertheless, this is a stunning achievement, each individual story crafted to perfection by a writer of very rare skill. It's just that, put together in one book, I fear they are less than the sum of their parts.

I have never really seen the point of having a Poet Laureate, mainly because I don't like most poetry, which, like bad Gewurztraminer, tends to be over-floral and leaves me with a headache. The poetry Andrew Motion wrote while Laureate was awful, and I can't believe that it's the best of his work; in fact, I am sure it must be the worst, and it is only because I am put off by reading the poetry Andrew Motion wrote as Laureate that I can't bring myself to go and read more Andrew Motion to check.

A Poet Laureate, anyway, is a national poet who is supposed to write poems about national things. A sort of poet-in-residence for the whole of Britain. The very idea of it makes me cringe. Every time a member of the Royal Family has a baby, this person will be wheeled out to compose the official haiku which encapsulates what how we all feel about it. Something like:

Don't care don't care don't
care don't care don't care don't care
don't care just don't care.

A few months back, Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate, which I found an intriguing choice. I met her a few years ago and saw her perform; I remember her being lovely and down-to-earth, and I was so struck by her poem Valentine as to have never forgotten about it -

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Even so I wasn't convinced she would be able to withstand the horrors of having to compose the Official Someone Royal Has Reproduced poem every however often.

Today her first poem as Laureate was published. Of course, it was the Queen's official birthday this weekend, so no doubt she had taken the chance to pen a sickly ditty devoted to Her Maj. Right?

Perhaps not. Perhaps, like the rest of us, she has other things on her mind. Perhaps, for once, we actually have a Laureate worthy of the position, who is actually capable of speaking for the nation - or at least for me - in verse. Hurrah for Ms Duffy for making me believe in poetry again.

'Politics'

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

If TV can have repeats, I don't see why the blog can't.

Today on Twitter the lovely Keris asked me to remind her of my editing / make-up analogy from my "legendary" now-defunct previous blog Struggling Author, and having tracked it down and read it, I found I enjoyed it a lot, in the way that one can only enjoy things one has written oneself and then completely forgotten every having written. So, for your delectation, here is a rare insight into the joy that is Being A Writer.

Oh fuck. Fucking hell. Fuck.

For the last couple of weeks I have been working on "rewrites" for my book. "Rewrites". Kind of suggests that you take the book and change little bits of it to make it better. I think that is considered the general idea. Doesn't sound like too much of a hassle. Shouldn't take too long.

So OK, put the rewrites out of your heads for a moment because I think most of you aren't novelists. A lot of you are women though so try this. Imagine that you are doing your make-up and it's all fine except that you have smudged a little bit of your lipstick. You try to wipe off that little bit of your lipstick and you realise that you had eyeliner on your finger so now you have smudged lipstick and a black smear on your cheek. So you wash the black streak off, but now you have taken off an area of your foundation. You reapply foundation to that area but the blending is all wrong now, so you are going to have to redo the foundation of your entire face. While wiping away the foundation, you smudge your mascara, but you can't take off the rest of your mascara without buggering up the eyeshadow. By now you look like fucking clown and any minute now you are going to have to go and wash your entire face and start again, and your boyfriend is shouting at you because you are going to be late for the party. And that's when you notice the smear of deoderant on your top.

Get the picture?

I "rewrote" something. I "rewrote" something else. I "rewrote" a few more things. And now my entire book is RUBBLE.

Fucking fuck in a fucking hat.

So, to Downing St.

Although by now I reckon I am pretty high up the list to get into the cabinet - my initails, after all, are MP and that's really all you need - I was in fact there with the excellent charity Chance UK, which I am a supporter of. It was a drinks reception, celebrating their brilliance and chatting up potential donors and councils who might want to extend the programme to their areas. It's a mentoring charity that works with primary school age kids with behavioural difficulties, aiming to get them back on the straight and narrow before they get to the age where they might be vulnerable to criminality, dropping out of school etc, and so helping them to be fulfilled, happy and safe, as well as safeguarding local communities against crime in the future. They have excellent, proven results in improving kids' behaviour and well-being. You can find out more about this brilliant charity, including how to be a mentor, here. (Indeed, if you enjoy this post, why not make a donation?)

What's that? Fascinated as you are with Chance UK, you want to hear about 10 Downing St itself?

OK. Let's get the important stuff out of the way first. The canapes were absolutely delicious (I loved the miniature hoisin duck wraps) and the wine was Berry Bros house red and white, which is so tasty and only £5.30 a bottle (though I reckon Downing St get a discount) that I might order some in myself. So we can all rest assured that the snacks and drinks representing Britain are not letting us down. Something to be proud of at last!

As you can imagine, going to Downing St there is a lot of security to pass. Policemen at the entrance to the road itself, another checkpoint where you have to have everything x-rayed a la airport (did not have to put all fluids in clear plastic bags though) and the policeman on the door itself of course. Then there is all the "soft" security, ie there's about a hundred flunkies in there greeting you and telling you where to go, and it does all feel like you are important and special until you realise that they are actually there to stop you from wandering off by yourself and nosing around the kitchens / stealing the silver (they don't X-ray you on the way *out* / having a bath.

You walk up the stairs (wall-colour: yellow) to the reception rooms on the first floor. The stairs are lined with pictures of old prime ministers. The one of Tony Blair is wistful, looking into the distance; John Major looks full-on into the camera, as if to say 'hey, I'm a straight kind of guy'; Margaret Thatcher has the exact concerned, sympathetic expression on her face that you would imagine the witch in the gingerbread house did, just before she lured Hansel and Gretel in. The rest of them all have the exact same slightly bouffant grey combover, aside from David Lloyd George, who sports a rather funky longer style, like a bob just below his ears.

Then you cram into the reception rooms and around comes the wine and food. Plenty of it too; no stinginess here. Brilliantly, they open up all the public rooms on the first floor, even the ones they aren't using for the party, so you can have a proper snoop around. It's worth snooping; the design is by John Soane (gorgeous vaulted ceiling) and features a double-flued fireplace below a window, which looks glorious, only apparently the heat used to melt the window putty and the glass kept falling out.

Bollocks to John Soane's double-flued fireplace! What about the loos, I hear you cry. Well, I didn't really need to go to the loo, but I went anyway, because I knew you'd ask. They are very average, but clean. Interestingly, they feature tampon machines, which I had not expected, but must be handy for Sarah Brown when she's caught short. But no condom machines. Make of that what you will.

Sarah Brown, incidentally, is lovely, and much prettier than she looks in photos. In fact she was so nice that my estimation of Gordon went up several notches (the "reverse Cherie Blair" effect). Apparently they have rehearsals for the trooping of the colour and changing of the guard outside day and night, so the reason the Prime Minister always looks so tired is not because he's having a construct a cabinet from second-string cast members of the Muppet Show, but because they have military brass band music played outside their windows at 3am.

I think that's all really. We left, took each other's photos outside (I'm afraid that's a fake knock in the picture - the door was open when I got there, I guess they knew I was coming), I chatted up the policeman outside a bit (he looked bored, but not as bored as the three paparazzi that are permanently stationed on the other side of the road.)

Any questions?

A full explanation of this picture:

(With apologies to those on Twitter and Facebook who are probably mighty sick of it already.)

But I think you get arrested for wearing them in Italy.

I'm not sure what it is that compels me to tell you every time I go away what the weather's going to be and what I'm packing, and yet. Tomorrow, very early, I leave for Milan to promote the Italian edition of Gods behaving Badly. Weather forecast: extremely hot AND torrential rain. What shoes am I supposed to take for that, then? Eh? Eh? Eh?