When I'm older...Oh, wait a miunte

Forgive me, dear reader, for writing such a self-obsessed and narcissistic blog post. I was half way through composing a piece about cover versions of songs then got side-tracked.

It started with a hair colour. My highlights were growing out and I could neither afford nor be bothered to have them done. A couple of weeks ago I got my kindly, obliging other half to help me do the roots of my hair - not to highlight them, you understand, but to colour them with my natural hair colour so it just looked like I had massive root re-groth, without the aggressive grey, pampas grass that would insist on sprouting up. So, basically, I was trying to pretend to be younger. Then I started to toy with the idea of dying my hair a purple-pink hue, which (in my imagination) would be picked up nicely on the highlighted bits of hair. I decided to be sensible and buy a wash-out spray rather than a permanent dye. I surprised the kids one day by spraying loads of it in after they got home from school (didn't risk doing the pick up like that). As the vivid purple colour faded to a more pastel violet, my daughter looked me thoughtfully and said:

“You look like you’ve got grey hair, with purple on top.”

Great! I thought. I’ve given myself a blue rinse!

So yesterday, still with a burning desire to look younger, I purchased a semi permanent colourant - a tube of red goo. On the box it looked red red, when it came out of the tube it was cherry red, however the resultant colour was a disgusting maroon. Worst of all, I thought, it made me look older.

“Why are you so obsessed with trying to look younger?” The old man asked me.

It's alright for him, he is unequivocally handsome - 'Handsome Al’ I call him. He might not be to everyone's taste but he has the cheekbones and the velvety eyelashes and the winning features that people seem to go for. I’m more of an acquired taste like olives, pickled walnuts and gin (urgh it tastes like earwax, hmmm, it's bitter but refreshing, hey but think of the vitamins in earwax!).
I’ve lost count of the number of women who’ve told me how lucky I am, with various degrees of snideness. 'You’re so lucky!’ they say - subtext - how on earth did you manage to snag him, you ugly bi-atch! My dears, I’m simply longing to say, next time I get one of those 'you're so lucky’s’ - "Yes, I ensnared him with my magic vagina." Do you dare me to?

Anyway, I digress, I’m not trying to look younger because people keep implying I’m punching above my weight, we’ve been together donkey's years and that's always been the case.
Is it because I saw a holiday photo, taken this year, where I managed to look both 6 months pregnant and like one of my great aunts. I wonder whether I’ll ever be pleasantly surprised by a photo rather than the total opposite. I’ve tried to embrace body positivity, I really have, but it's rather hard to do it in practice.

Is it because there are a couple of young folk in my office who were born in the 1990s? My new line manager was born the year that I met my husband. I mean, I was a teenager but I am technically old enough to be his mother. I keep trying to mask this by never mentioning Vesta curry or the miner’s strike but I fear that something will give the game away. I shouldn't worry about this - it's all meaningless, really and if I was advising anyone else I’d say to pay no heed to how things  look, just focus on your own happiness and fulfilment but even so…

Is it because I was an 'older’ Mum? My younger daughter keeps asking me how old I was when I had her and I keep knocking ten years off and telling her  that I was 29! Rather than have her blab my age to all her friends.

I think though, the stupid maroon hair dye was the last straw! I’m going to embrace my age. It's a fact, as much as my weight (gah!), eye colour and IQ. I’m going to shout about it more - I’m 44! Deal with it! I was listening to Suede first time around. I'm going to be 45 in 3 months time and that's fine, really it's fine, no really it's fine and if I hadn't been born in the '70s I’d never have seen Bagpuss. Well, maybe I would have as it still seems to be everywhere and I show it to my kids but I would never have seen Ludwig - the bizarre animation about the musical egg, which nobody but me seems to remember.

Yep, I’m not going to lie anymore, I owe it to the sisterhood. Ageing is just a fact. When I am older I shall not dye my hair purple.

My favourite Film

The Squid and the Whale ⭐⭐⭐⭐

2005: Writer/Director Noah Baumbach

Great ‘80s music amidst family strife.

The Squid and the Whale (2005) is set in Brooklyn in 1986 and details the breakup of the marriage of middle class intellectuals, Bernard and Joan, and the effect this has on their sons, Walt and Frank.

You might expect a film about divorce to tip over into sentimentality but The Squid and the Whale never does.  Instead it combines dark humour with hyper realism and gives an unflinching portrayal of the messy emotions involved in a divorce. The adult characters are deeply flawed and they are shameless in their attempts to get the boys on side. There’s a stark contrast between the intellectual pomposity of Bernard’s (Jeff Daniels) speech and the childish way in which he tries to score points off his estranged wife, Joan (Laura Linney).  This is embodied literally at the beginning of the film when the family are playing a game of doubles tennis and Bernard tells Walt to go for his mother’s backhand because it’s weak. The sides are clearly drawn at this point, pre-break-up, Walt allies himself to his father and Frank sides with his Mother.

Jesse Eisenberg’s character, Walt, is a fake, he emulates the grandiose speech of his father - ‘Don’t be difficult’, tries to pass a Pink Floyd song off as his own and recommends books to his girlfriend that he hasn’t actually read, himself.
Younger brother, Frank (Owen Kline), acts out his trauma in intensely anti-social ways.
All the characters are fully formed but perhaps none more so than Laura Linney’s, Joan. Joan is emerging as a respected writer and both her sons are disturbed by her obvious sexuality. Although Joan is portrayed as somewhat selfish, she also displays great insight, when she tells Walt:
‘You think you hate me, but you don’t’
Walt himself only becomes more sympathetic towards the end of the film when he relives a happy memory from childhood and we get to learn the origin of the film’s title.

There’s a touching moment between Bernard and Joan when they discuss the fact that Joan called Bernard’s father and Joan says she misses him (Bernard’s Dad). Both characters seem less defensive at this point and this instance of vulnerability, amongst other glimpses of humanity, save the film from being too brutal.

There is no disputing the fact that The Squid and the Whale is something of a (albeit underground) classic. Its arena of middle class intelligentsia is a world away from where I grew up and yet I got a massive jolt of recognition when I first saw it.  The striking thing is that for a film centred around people who hide behind intellectual facades, it is the most authentic portrayal of the fallout from a divorce that I’ve ever seen.

Noah Baumbach

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach went on to make While We’re Young (2014) and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), amongst others. His films tend to be character driven, rather than plot driven but he always seems to coax brilliant performances from his actors. Adam Sandler is the least annoying I’ve seen him, since The Wedding Singer, in The Meyerowitz Stories.

I'd say that if you are a fan of the films of Woody Allen (before he became problematic) and enjoyed films like Juno and Ladybird then Noah Baumbach films would appeal to you. He's more subtle and just as funny as Judd Apatow, in my opinion, and sometimes it's just good to see a film where a family is more dysfunctional than your own.

Lost in a good book

My lifelong love affair with Jane Austen began, aged sixteen, when we were set ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for A level English.

Much talk was made, in class, of what constituted a classic and one of the main conclusions was that it had to be something which still felt relevant or at least recognisable, many years later. The universality of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ really spoke to me. What sixteen year old girl wouldn’t have recognised the boy-obsessed, Lydia, with her ebullient spirits and flirtatious manner? Even if you weren’t like that yourself (I wasn’t, not without copious amounts of Bacardi, anyway) chances were that you knew plenty of girls who were. The world of 'Pride and Prejudice' felt at once familiar yet charmingly removed from my own life. The carriages, balls and servants were a world away from a working class, South West London suburb in the early 1990s but I recognised Austen's characters, especially the villains. Pompous, self-aggrandising, Lady Catherine de Burgh, simpering, servile, Mr Collins and uber bitch, Caroline Bingley, they all seemed familiar, if a little exaggerated. Our English teacher took pains to reiterate that if we’d been around at the time the book was set, we’d have been the ones who were up at 5 a.m, making up the fires and sweeping the floors.

Thus she ensured that that the momentary illusion of living through the characters was destroyed. It didn't matter in the long run though, the text still spoke to me. I still recognised that Miss Bingley was constantly trying to undermine our heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, because, in addition to being an inveterate snob, she had her sights set on Mr Darcy and viewed our Lizzie as a rival.

As a teenager, I revelled in the love story at the heart of 'Pride and Prejudice’ and fell for the taciturn, misunderstood and fantastically wealthy, Mr Darcy, however, what I have come to really adore about the book and the rest of Jane Austen’s cannon, is the social observation and the humour. It's this aspect of Austen's writing that endures and that you come to appreciate, more and more, on re-reading of the texts.  The thing about re-reading books is that you get a jolt when you realise that you were younger than that central character when you first read it and now you're probably older than their parents! And yet they endure, they still reach you and touch you and shake you and you might notice something new, even on the 10th re-reading.

What surprised and delighted me about Austen, was that figures who were traditionally supposed to be above reproach, even in late twentieth century Britain, like the clergy and the aristocracy (think the way the media fawns over the royals if you are sceptical on this one), are presented as being ridiculous in her books. Foolish, simpering Mr Collins, who creates the mock dilemma in Lizzy's relationship with her parents, is far from being the only ludicrous vicar in Austen, we also have the risible Mr Elton in 'Emma’. Perhaps Mr Elton is even worse than Mr Collins because he's wilfully cruel, in his treatment of Harriet, and comes with an odious wife, the pretentious and overbearing Mrs Elton. Mrs Elton is one of Austen's bitches (I’m sorry, sisterhood, I can't think of a better word) and every one of her books has one. 'Sense and Sensibility’ has the aptly named Lucy Steele, who is steely of heart (which begs the question why wet fish, Edward Ferrars fell for her in the first place). In 'Northanger Abbey’ the 'bitch’, or perhaps we should say female antagonist, is Isabella Thorpe and in 'Persuasion’ it's Anne’s own sister, Elizabeth. Perhaps 'family’ in Jane Austen are another sacred cow that she lampoons and who furnish her with some of her choicest villains and figures of fun.

Many people are not what they first appear, in Austen's novels. Mr Darcy is not insufferably proud, more socially awkward, Mr Elton isn’t a nice guy but an arsehole with pretensions. Isabella Thorpe and her frat-boy oaf of a brother aren't true friends but opportunistic gold-diggers and Anne Elliot's cousin, William, is an out and out wrong 'un.

I’ve always used books for escapism and feel the need for that more than ever at the moment. To take a respite from the constant hailstorm of news articles - every time I see a headline about the state of the polar ice caps it's like someone has raked through my entrails with a metal claw, a person could do far worse than get lost in a good book. But can Austen do anything other than provide escapism?

I used to get irritated with a colleague of mine and her constant dismissal of Jane Austen, with the words ‘She wrote in the time of the Napoleonic wars and never mentioned them!’ Quite apart from the censorship that Austen and her contemporaries would have been subject to, did she really need to be reporting on the political situation at the time? Maybe her readers welcomed a respite from it.

I watched a programme about what people had got from the works of Austen, over the years. I was utterly charmed by the account of a soldier in the First World War, who recorded in a letter home, that he couldn't wait to get back to his 'Emma’. It provided solace to him in the trenches. This man didn't want to read about war, he was living it. I told my colleague about this but she remained unconvinced. For those of us not living in a war zone do we need an excuse for reading her books? (I don't think we do and hate it when people try to be prescriptive about books) However, I'm going to go back to the universality thing. There's a reason why Jane Bennett is not the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, and Elizabeth Bennett is, Jane is too nice (in the modern sense of the word) and doesn't really have anything to learn. Elizabeth Bennett is slightly flawed, she's quick to judge and credulous when a handsome young man (Wickham) spins her a sob story. Lizzy has to change (her mind) and Darcy has to change (his manners). We go on the journey with them and live through them - they are us. The eponymous heroine of ‘Emma’ is even more flawed than Elizabeth Bennett, and perhaps all the more plausible, to the modern reader, for it. However, Emma has the somewhat censorious figure of Mr Knightley to point out where she's going wrong, whereas Lizzy Bennett learns from her mistakes. Someone once posited the theory that Anne Elliot from Persuasion was suffering from depression, if you see the TV adaptation with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, Root’s wonderfully nuanced performance seems to bear that out. If it is true that reading makes you more empathetic, you can get much more from Austen than bonnets, corsets and a few laughs.

The reason for all this fangirling is that I’ve just re-read Emma and it's had the effect of all really great books, in that it's momentarily ruined me for other literature. So if I can't read, the next best thing is to write.

Thank you for reading this essay - it's highly subjective and I doubt that it would even earn me a 'D’ for GCSE English but I’ve enjoyed writing it and I hope that it inspires you to read a bit of Austen or better yet throw a ball and invite me to it.

Further reading:

To get a more proletarian view of Pride and Prejudice - Longbourn by Jo Baker, written from the point of view of the servants.

A brilliant article in defence of Jane Austen:

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/05/jane-austen-emma-changed-face-fiction?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2015%2Fdec%2F05%2Fjane-austen-emma-changed-face-fiction

Not another parenting blog

In all honesty, even I realise that the last blog post was somewhat rambling and disjointed. I haven’t really had the heart to write for a while, for personal reasons, and it was a tad tricky to get back into the swing of things. 
It’s well into the summer holidays now and the other day, after treading on a small but bone-shatteringly painful object for the fifth time in the space of two hours, I began to ruminate on ideas for what I would call a parenting blog, if I had one:

• Standing on sharp objects.
• Standing on sharp objects, the sequel.
• Trying not to Swear.
• Tissue in the washing machine - woman loses her shit
• Where do all the odd socks go?

All somewhat mundane, huh? Scrolling through Facebook one night, my husband said to me:
“I get sick of all these parenting blogs.”
“I know.” I replied. “Anyone can write about how shit it is to be a parent.”

Of course it’s not all shit and I adore and am very grateful for my two little shits but being a parent can also be indescribably wearing, emotionally exhausting and somewhat thankless at times. I can see that many of the parenting blogs have sprung up to try and bring some much needed honesty and balance to the equation. Something to redress the ‘motherhood is beautiful’, ‘I don’t even remember the pain of childbirth, I was so grateful to hold my delightful little bundle’, narrative. I’m not saying that many women don’t feel like that - that blissed out, baby bath advert image of motherhood, just that for the section that don’t, it can be deeply distressing to feel that you don’t fit the mould. 

The phrase that a lot of people bandied about, when my first child was a baby, was ‘Everybody else looks like they know what they’re doing’. And it’s true - if you’re in a certain frame of mind, all the other mothers seem so calm and capable, compared to the raggedy mess you feel yourself to be.  I’ve always overthought everything I do and I can’t imagine why I thought motherhood would be any different. I had this bizarre, half-comedic, half-serious fantasy of myself as an earth mother when I was pregnant with the first one. I saw myself multitasking like a demon, answering the door with a baby clamped to one breast, mixing bowl under the other armpit. (Like I would have ever answered the door with my tits out!) I had a relatively easy first pregnancy and I remember saying to my husband that I couldn’t ever imagine my little baby making any noise! The reality of sleep deprivation, cracked nipples and relentless noise sent me teetering to the edge. I spoke to a friend of a friend about a writing project and he said to me; ‘Maybe do some work on it when you have some down time and I remember screaming inside ‘I have NO down time!!’ 

It used to really piss me off, when I was struggling to get pregnant, when women moaned about their children - how much poo they produced, how they fought with their siblings etc, but when I was in the midst of it, I understood. Nothing really prepares you for parenthood and in those early days I remember lying in bed and feeling like I was falling off the world. 
For me, this phase didn’t last too long - around three months, but it would have been helpful to know that other women felt the same. I guess this is where the parenting blogs come in. You need someone to tell it like it is, I just don’t feel like that person should be me.

Perhaps the reason why I don’t write about parenting is the same reason I rarely publish pieces on politics - I don’t feel like enough of an expert. Yes I could tell you about nits and about nappies and about how even the best nappy, much like the best sanitary towel, can only do so much to stem the tidal wave of nature. I could tell you about school gate politics (shudder), bake sales, sports days and concerts but I think you’d probably get bored and I know I would.  Motherhood is great but it’s very healthy to have other things to focus on - I certainly wouldn’t want to apply all my energy into writing about it. 

Let’s face it, there are plenty of women already out there writing brilliant, reassuring and hilarious blogs on parenthood, you definitely don’t need another one from me. 

The misadventures of an ersatz Wellness blogger

I’ve just come back from Cornwall - land of delightful contrasts; of huge crashing waves and calm, peaceful rockpools, of wide, expansive beaches and little coves, of hot days and breezy, misty nights, of crowds followed by peaceful seclusion. I could go on and on, rolling out platitudes but I’ll just leave you with one more image, as we drove over the border from Cornwall to Devon, we encountered a marvellous cloak of mist. I’m not a great fan of unflinchingly hot days so this styrofoam blanket of puffy whiteness gladdened my heart. Tall green trees and assertive pink rushes soaked in bubble bath over undulating hills. This is the England I remember from childhood holidays, I thought, with proper weather. ‘It looks like Scandinavia’, my husband remarked…It was a wrench to come back to the outskirts of the city. As I’ve said, I detest the heat but have sort of learn to tolerate it - investing in shapeless linen garments and drinking enough water to sink a ship, loitering in air-conditioned shops.

At the height of the heatwave, I had a moment of clarity.  I’ll just set the scene. It had been a particularly vile, hot and sticky day, it was the sort of weather which makes it impossible to be elegant, as one of the characters remarks in Emma.  Walking to the shops in the direct sunlight felt like being seared under a magnifying glass by a malevolent Greek God. When the sun went behind a cloud it was like walking through hot soup. I tried on some swimwear in a (blissfully air-conditioned) shop and when I removed my own clothes they were sodden with sweat. I felt guilty about transferring any bodily emissions onto the ill-fitting tankini top I was trying on, then I thought about all the other sweaty torsos that  might have squashed themselves into the same swimwear and I felt rather queasy. It seemed like an unending period of unremitting discomfort. However, later on, in the evening, after the kids had gone to bed, and I had my second shower of the day, I felt something approaching ease.  I sat, sipping a cup of camomile tea and nibbling on some grapes while the fan gently lifted damp strands of my freshly washed hair. It was the first time that day that I'd felt fresh and clean. If it wasn’t for the fact that my body looked like a set of bagpipes, I’d feel like one of those ‘Wellness’ bloggers, I noted. But maybe what the world needs is a ‘Wellness’ blogger who doesn’t look like a shaving of blonde wood, maybe there’s a gap in the market for one who looks more like an ancient fertility goddess…

Back to the heatwave, the next day it finally rained and it was oh so welcome. One of my teachers once told us that rain literally plucked the dust from the air and that was why the air smelled cleaner after a rain shower. Botanist James Wong tweeted the following fact about the smell in the air, after the rain:

So there it was, I had my first topic as a wellness blogger - smells! I’ve been wanting to write about happy smells for some time and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. When I opened the bathroom cabinet the other day I got a pleasant waft from the stash of Body Shop soaps  - pleasant, clean, citrousy smells. Dare I say - mood enhancing smells. My other half and I once had a debate about the fact that he said that the orange I was eating ‘stank’. And I said surely the word stink should only apply to something with an unpleasant smell, not something as wholesome as an orange. Of course it’s all relative, but an orange has a lovely, happy smell - sharp yet sweet. An orange is the embodiment of sunshine and hope, just as a broad bean is the physical manifestation of a disappointment and flatulence. 

Is there such a thing as a mood enhancing smell? Some claim that there is. 
https://www.psychologies.co.uk/boost-your-mood-happy-scents
Wood shaving-shaped wellness bloggers probably believe in them. Years ago someone bought my friend a candle which looked like the wax had been placed in a hollowed out orange. It smelled beautiful and claimed to give off an 'uplifting’ aroma. Closer investigation showed that it was a bergamot rather than an orange. (Bergamots are what they flavour Earl grey tea with which I've tried to like but can't). The point is though that bergamots are citrus fruit and thus related to oranges (this post really should have been called - ‘All hail the mighty orange’!)  And guess what seems to be on every list of mood enhancing smells - citrus, apparently citrus makes you feel more alert. So perhaps I ought to carry a Body Shop orange soap around in my handbag and sniff it during meetings.

Happy smells:

Fir trees/Christmas trees
Bonfires
Wood chips
Ozone - seaside (Do smells have seasons?)
Roses (real not in perfume)
Lavender (please see above)  
Floral smells seem to be very subjective - perhaps due to the emotional memories associated with lilies etc.

Can smells be comforting? Soup, bread, lavender?

As you can probably see, I’m out of practice with the blogging and this is all a bit rambly. What does this all have to do with eating grapes and drinking camomile tea?? I don’t really know, but if I am going to be a Wellness blogger then I’d better toddle off and do some power yoga or something.

Now SHE looks like a 'Wellness' blogger!

The confidence prescription

Whenever I’m trying to work up the courage to do something I get some lines from Macbeth floating around in my head: specifically the bit there the witches are urging Macbeth to be ‘bloody, bold and resolute’.  And look at how well that all turned out, eh…

As I’ve written before, I used to wish that confidence was something you could buy in pill form or have it injected.  This makes confidence sound like a drug and to me, it always did seem like something totally alien and unnatural, something which had to be imported in some way.
I think you know me well enough by now to know, dear reader, that when in doubt, I usually reach for a book. When it comes to parenting, as with all other areas of my life, I rely on my old friends the books to give me a helping hand. ‘How to be a happy Mum’ - literally, that’s what it’s called, to, erm Supernanny to Toddler Taming and when I felt that my children could do with a helping hand in the confidence department, (perhaps because I didn’t feel quite able to lead by example) I bought them The Confidence Code for girls.

What do other parents do when they don’t turn to books for everything? Take parenting classes? Enlist the kids in lots of extra curricular activities? Actually talk to the little monsters? (kidding).
The confidence code had been recommended by A Mighty Girl https://www.amightygirl.com/, who said that girls’ confidence could take a real dip between the age of 8 and 14. My children haven’t even reached the lower age limit yet but I was seeing things that caused me concern and so I turned to my old friends, books. You may well be thinking that I would be better off coming away from books and being more practical, but you see, The Confidence Code is a practical book - it has lots of scenarios and comic strips, illustrating the dilemmas facing the girls in modern life. It has quizzes to ascertain how the reader would act in certain situations. It encourages girls to question things in society and it challenges some of the more damaging and suppressing assumptions about femininity. It doesn’t just deal with being assertive, taking risks and becoming more comfortable with discomfort it also flag posts signs that some friendships might be a bit toxic.
Yes, it’s a book for children but I’m reading it too, because I want to see what messages it’s imparting to children. And do you know what, it’s great! As I was reading it I thought - I could do with following some of the suggestions in this book, I’m not particularly comfortable with taking risks, so I purchased the adult version for our Wellbeing collection at work.  It’s also diverse and inclusive - it tackles the different cultural and societal pressures that children might face and it addresses issues that LGBT teenagers might have to deal with. The Confidence Code is not about fitting in but fulfilling your potential, reaching high to try and attain your goals and being comfortable with who you are. How many of us, even as adults, are truly comfortable with who we are? Actually, you might be comfortable with who you are, but I’m not quite there yet.

There is another book I’m reading at the moment; it’s called Big Bones and it’s a novel for young adults.

I was nervous about reading this book because it’s about an overweight teenager who has no attention of trying to lose weight and the book that I’ve written, the book that I’m trying (unsuccessfully) to get an agent for, is about an overweight teenager who refuses to lose weight! I was worried that reading Big Bones would influence my writing or, worse, be so similar to my book, yet so much better, that it would destroy my confidence in my writing and make me smash my computer in tears of rage and despair. But Big Bones is a glorious book (which is nothing like mine) and it’s main character, Bluebelle, or BB for short, is a glorious character. Not only is she unapologetically fat, she is brimming with self-love and self-confidence. This is a very important book because there is a pervasive lie in our society, that if you are less than perfect, or, more accurately, if you don’t fit into the rigidly prescribed, societal parameters of what is deemed to be attractive, then nobody will fancy you and you’ll never have sex*. This lie is particularly insidious when you are young and starts to fade, for many, when you get older (although, as a woman, you’re not really supposed to get older either!) [*The great thing about Caitlin Moran’s book How to Build a girl is that at one point the character points out that she is fat but she has loads of sex, with lots of different people.] Bluebelle, in Big Bones, loves herself, revels in tight-fitting, brightly-coloured, clothing and she calls out all the fat-phobia around her. She is a truly magnificent, body-positive heroine.

I’ve always felt that fiction has its place in imparting messages and ideas, as well as non-fiction. I wish that this book had been around when I was a teenager, because what Big Bones does, for me (we all have our own interpretations), is demonstrate that confidence can be a choice.

Confidence is a choice.
Yes, easier said than done and some people have been so battered by life, so flattened by experience that it might feel like an impossible choice but if you are living high up on the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then perhaps it is a choice that you can adopt.

A place at the Table

In the conversation about diversity and inclusion, two things have come to prominence this week.

1) Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran felt compelled to delete her Instagram account after suffering months of racist and sexist abuse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44379473
Chris McCrudden has this to say about the more ethnically diverse Star Wars reboot:


So, to sum up - Diversity and inclusion isn't just about being nice and try to make sure that everyone gets a turn at pass the parcel - it also makes fiscal sense!

2) Author Lionel Shriver criticised the stance of Penguin Random House for it’s goal to reflect the population of Britain by 2025 - in seeking to publish more authors and employ more staff who reflect the ethnic/socio-economic/differently abled make-up of Britain. Her words, in The Spectator, were these:
Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. 
Now what can we safely infer from Shriver’s own words - that she thinks that writers of colour are completely incapable of producing anything of excellence? Ditto anyone with a disability? Or someone who falls into the LGBQT+ catergory. Also - crap education? Not a particularly articulate way to dismiss someone who doesn’t have a university degree, Shriver! (Penguin Random House have got rid of the requirement that their employees need a degree, in a bid to encourage more working class people to their roles. They are also one of the few companies that offer paid internships, for the same reason.)

I attended a PRH insight day last year #WriteNowLive - qualifying for it because I fell into one of the categories that Shriver so vilified - BAME. All attendees had to submit a sample of their writing and, of the 1700+ who applied, 150 were chosen - so it wasn’t enough just to be BAME (or LGBQT, or have a disability), Shriver, they had to see some promise in your writing too! They then shortlisted a handful of folk to take part in their mentorships scheme (I didn’t make this cut), before finally deciding on the lucky few to make the final cut. I say lucky but what I actually mean is the most talented. Because it’s not like the talent, skill, imagination sheer bloody genius isn’t there, it’s because maybe, for a vast number of reasons, publishing has been barred to these people for decades.
I didn’t realise, until I participated in and Unconscious Bias course at work, that people with ‘foreign sounding’ were far less likely to get shortlisted for an interview than people with traditionally British names.

I’m casting my mind over the books I’ve read recently, that have been written by the ‘tick-bos’ people Shriver is so dismissive of and that I’ve loved:

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A brilliant, insightful book.

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo
Funny, warm, brilliant. I found myself missing the main character, Barry, after I’d finished it.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
A really important book in present day America and also a cracking read.

Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems 
By Lemn Sissay
I’m a little bit obsessed by Lemn Sissay and his poetry is amazing. If you follow him on Twitter he often posts little snippets - ebullient, hopeful little pieces that ‘stoke your soul’ in the way that all great art does.

And do you know what - I know it sounds petty and childish but I’ve loved all of those books far more than I loved anything by Lionel Shriver.

What about marginalised voices in TV. Did you watch A Very English Scandal recently? So good I watched it twice. Penned by Russell T Davies, it was an absolutely magnificent piece of television and Norman Cook’s courtroom speech about how he wasn’t going to be masturbated in a corner then ignored was one of the most rousing I’d ever heard (Not sure how close this was to what the real Cook said in court). Up until that point I’d found Cook an irritating little squirt but when he made that speech he was liked a Gay rights, anti-establishment crusader. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it - the establishment. The predominantly white, middle class, Oxbridge education literary establishment, feeling threatened by the new voices peeping through - they feel they are going to be swept aside. Those ‘other’ voices were always there, Shriver and others, there was Maya Angelou and James Baldwin and Christopher Isherwood and Patricia Highsmith and plenty more...There were always there but Penguin Random House are just trying to remove some of the hurdles to other emerging talent - is that really so bad?
In September 2017 I sat in that large hall in Bristol and the CEO of Penguin Random House talked about his favourite book by an underrepresented writer (something we’d all been encouraged to do). He held up a book by a gay writer (to my shame I can’t remember what is was) and said that when he read it, as a teenager who was gay, it made him feel accepted.
As a child of mixed race parentage, I didn’t see myself reflected an awful lot in the books I read, growing up, but I’m happy that my children will have far more of them to choose from!