A little pen portrait I wrote a while back

There’s an artist who comes door to door and breathes whisky fumes at you. Every time I open the door to find him there I get a shock of annoyance and wish I’d used the peep-hole. He gets maudlin when he sees my children behind my legs. He leans down and exhales over them and tells them that he’s lost his kids. He seems to think I’ll be surprised. Even now when he’s been on my doorstep half a dozen times and told us the same thing.

I feel sorry for him with his rheumy eyes and his threadbare clothes but not for long, because then he starts to annoy me with his whining and his self-pity. You’d think he was the only man in the world to have lost his job. And wife. And kids.

He says that his street is the worst in the world for drug-dealers. Or rather it was, because he’s been moved now. He says it’s better now but there are still drug deals going down. Well, of course there are. There’s a dealer down every street in the land. And everyone’s always stunned by the revelation of criminal goings-on in their leafy avenues and nice neighbourhoods. My parents had a coke dealer operating out of the house on the corner of their Georgian cul-de-sac. There was a dealer on our last street who’d get his methadone at the chemist while I was picking up nappies. There’s probably one in the street we live in now, nestling among the students and the therapists and the social workers and the teachers.

The artist carries his wares in a plastic bag. Not a solid carrier from a high street shop, but one of those paper-like supermarket jobs which rustle when they fold and cut into your hand. He does beautiful architectural drawings, complex, technical. Not my taste, but admirable. I’m always astonished by them, and have a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t do them himself. No one could drink the amount his breath tells me he does and draw straight lines. He says he used to be an architect before things went wrong for him. I always wonder if it was the drink first, or the marital breakdown, or the job loss, or whether they came thick and fast, a tidal wave of sorrows that engulfed him. So now he’s living in a council flat in a drugs-infested street and telling his woes on the doorsteps of strangers who will say anything to get rid of him.

Once when I’d protested several times, but pleasantly, that I didn’t have any money and therefore couldn’t buy one of his drawings, he pressed one into my hand.

“Take it anyway,” he said, “No bugger seems to want to buy any today.”

And he pinched my tiny girl’s cheek half-heartedly, as she stared back at him with blank curiosity.

It was a drawing on a post-card of St Philip’s and St James’, down in the centre of town, a run-down old Victorian church set amidst the concrete and glass of the shiny newly rebuilt shopping centre. It serves during the day as a drop-in centre for the city’s waifs and strays, a place where they can tip their contraband liquor into plastic cups of weak coffee and exchange misery.

I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t give it back. It sat on the hallway shelf for ages and has now made it into a drawer somewhere. I feel bad about it, because I really didn’t want it and I should have told him that, rather than saying that I had no cash. Now when the doorbell rings, if I remember, I use the peephole. I don’t know why, because I still open the door because I know he can hear me and I don’t want him to think badly of me. I think I’m probably nicer to him than most people because he relaxes when he sees me, leaning on the door jamb in a way that makes me search in my mind for excuses to get away; “there’s something on the stove”, “the baby needs changing”, “I’m terribly sorry but I’m really desperate for the loo”; that sort of thing.

“Hello, it’s me again,” he says, and I smile wanly, “I’m here with more of these drawings,” and he holds them up resignedly, knowing that no bugger wants them.

Rain, rain, go away

It's raining again.

It feels as if it's been raining for weeks. It hasn't of course, but it feels like it. We have had some sunny spells, but I don't think we've had a whole day without rain for ages.

Since I walk dogs every day, I am aware of the rain. They are so encrusted in mud now that I don't even bother to clean it off. So our house is festooned with dog towels. The windows were cleaned inside and out yesterday; a triumph of hope over experience if ever there was one. My house is full of washing draped everywhere in the vain hope that it might dry. We don't have a tumble dryer because we don't think it's a good thing environmentally, but if this goes on we'll be turning on the heating, which won't be doing our carbon footprint any good.

Tomorrow we're off to West Wales with kids and dogs to househunt for a holiday home. We'll be pootling round Pembrokeshire coast and the Brecon Beacons looking at seven houses. None of them will be improved by the rain, I dare say. But at least we'll see if any of them let in the water. What a joke! Apparently torrential rain will be making travelling difficult - we're to expect an average two months rainfall to happen in the next two days. Excellent. Just what the doctor ordered.

None of this is good for repelling the dog. I know some people suffer in winter with SAD - seasonal affective disorder, and they have to spend time in front of those sunlamp thingummies. Me, it's rain does it. I hate it. I can feel myself getting sadder and sadder. I don't care if the sun doesn't shine. I just want it to stop raining.

Yes, we Brits do talk about the weather all the time. We're sympathising with each other. And we laugh, if we can; it's all we can do.

Down tempo

I'm in full flow on my novel, but I have to break to post something which has troubled me for years.

Is it just me who hears songs I used to love years ago and thinks they're much SLOWER than I remember them?

Is it?

If anyone else thinks that, any ideas why?

Doing the Tony Benn historical perspective on politics thing.

In response to Andrew's comment on my post yesterday, I'm expanding a bit, as much to make sure that my thoughts hold water as from any need to convince anyone!

I have to confess to always having been a bit of a Brownite. I could see that Bambi was a Good Thing for the UK in 1997, but the gilt very soon wore off the gingerbread for me, being someone who likes a little substance with their style, and has the old fashioned belief that politicians should lead their country bravely to do the right thing rather than checking with the public whether it would be all right by them if the governement followed a certain course of action. Ironically the only time when Tony Blair did 'lead' us, when he didn't talk to a focus group, it was into that disastrous war. I don't think Gordon Brown would have done such a thing, because I don't think he is as concerned with his place in the history books, and I don't think he would ever have been blinded by the Bush dynasty.

In short, I think that had the little chat in the Ivy turned out the other way, the world would be a very different place today. But such conjecture, although interesting to me, is ultimately pointless.

But as to this government being dead in the water, well, that doesn't only depend on the leader of the party in power, or indeed the party at all, but very largely what you'd replace them with. I don't really think that David Campbell is the next Prime Minister. He's lost a lot of his own party who are bewildered by the direction he's taking the party in. He's very policy-lite. He swings from Hug a Hoodie to We're The Party Who Support Marriage in that populist way which TB made work so well, but the British populace are wise to that now, so he comes off as doing a pale imitation of Blair ten years too late.

I think there's a historical precedent for what's happening in British politics today. The post-1997 turmoil in the Conservative party looks very much like the post-1979 turmoil in Labour.

In 1979 Thatcher slaughters Callaghan and Labour panics. With Britain having elected a right wing government they lurch sharply to the Left and choose Michael Foot as their leader over arguably the best leader they never had in Dennis Healey.

In 1997 Blair slaughters Major and the Conservatives panic. With Britain having elected a soft left government, they lurch sharply to the right and elect William Hague over arguably the best leader they never had in Ken Clarke.

In 1983 Thatcher wins again. Michael Foot ditched. In comes another left winger in Neil Kinnock. He in turn is defeated in 1987.

In 1992, unbelievably and unexpectedly, Major, who’s knocked out Thatcher, wins over Kinnock, who stands down. The marvellous John Smith comes in, but death cheats him of his election opportunity and it’s young Tony Blair who wins the election.

Now the Tories implode. In 2001 Blair wins again, predictably. Hague is ditched in favour of Ian Duncan-Smith, another right winger. Then Michael Howard loses in 2005, and now our Dave will pitch at the next election. They haven’t got it right yet and they’re all over the place. I can’t see that they have yet earned the right to run the country. No one knows what they stand for. Not even they know what they stand for.

True, David Campbell looks, politically, a little like Tony Blair a decade ago, and not, I think, in a good way. His ‘modernisation’ of the party has a whiff of TB c.1996-7 about him, but really, it’s all a bit pallid and passé.

I reckon that GB will win another election; the Tories will change leader and win the next one. Maybe I’m wrong, but I might even be persuaded to place a small wager that I’m not.

Nice one, Gordon.

I think Gordon Brown has made a good start to his leadership. I like the fact that he's a little dourer and less televisually appealing than Bambi, (whom I liked until he decided to stop leading and start pandering). Where politics has turned into a beauty contest, the intellectual level of the debate is usually low, the wrong people get elected and stuff starts going hideously wrong. I like that Brown is as likely to spin events as my dog. He's a plain-speaking Scotsman and I respect him for it. I like that he's inclusive and wants a cabinet full of big brains and big talents. (Pity the new Home Secretary, clever, talented Jackie Smith; a big mipper if ever there was one, whose statement about the Glasgow airport and London bombs was subject to press scrutiny...because of the depth of her cleavage - what crass tossers the press are sometimes. Would they discuss a male member's package, if you'll pardon the pun? I think not.) I like that Gordon doesn't talk about his religion. Note to future participants in the British electoral process; we're not American - we don't do that. I like the fact that he's ditched the supercasinos - what a rubbish idea that was! I like that he's serious, intelligent and he won't be the story if he can help it at all.

The reason I've put up the two photos above is because of an interest I've had for many years. When I was studying for my French degree I wrote a paper about press political bias in the French newspapers. To illustrate my point about this I included a large section on the choice of photographs of particular plitical figures. Jacques Chirac, at the time mayor of Paris, was depicted as hard, untrustworthy and borderline misshapen in the left-wing papers, and shiny, smiling and handsome in those of the right.

One of these photos comes from the Daily Mail, the other from a Northern Labour website. Any guesses?

What's your theme?

Martin likes animals. He'll watch animal documentaries, reads animal books, supports animal charities. He'll cry about the plight of polar bears. He's not anthropomorhic about them either. He doesn't attribute human characteristics to our furry friends. He respects animals in all their bloody, fierce, primal, instinctive, essence.

Me, however, there's only so much wildlife I can watch. I like people. I watch documentaries about people, read about people and support people charities. And like Martin, I don't really expect people to be any different from the way they are. I accept people's petty vanities, prejudices, idolatries, their brutality and their potential to be sublime.

And for that reason I am fascinated by the twin issues of memory and identity. I only mention that because that's what my novel is about. And because I'm so fascinated by memory and identity I'm getting carried away on stuff which isn't strictly plot-driven. But as I'm not writing a screenplay this time it's okay!

How much of our identity is dependent on memory; from our earliest days to what we chose to eat at our last meal (in my case a prawn sandwich, even though I'd promised myself I'd take the time to make a salad - and then I beat myself up for being overweight...)? I would argue that all of our identity is based on memory; those we remember but also those which through choice or overburden, we have elected to forget.

Memory is interesting on so many levels. Not long ago I sat with a friend in a group and we shared memories of a holiday we took together some fifteen years ago. She was telling anecdotes which were hilarious, but which featured incidents that I didn't remember. When I told stories, I could see her wrinkling her forehead in an effort to recall. Sometimes people recount things that happened and I was there and I don't remember it at all like that! But who's to say my memory is right and theirs is wrong...?

And sometimes when I'm sharing a little story with my friends or family, I wonder even as I'm recounting it whether what I remember actually happened. I'm not beyond embroidering a story for effect, and I think that my memory has become entirely untrustworthy.

So when all these noteworthy (and supremely un-noteworthy) people pen their memoirs years after the event, how much of their memories are reliable? Clive James recognised this when he wrote his "Unreliable Memoirs", and a terrific read it was. How much of what happened to me exists in my memories, fragile, malleable things that they are, and how much in what actually happened, even if I can't, or don't want to, remember it?

Which leads me onto the subject of identity. Traditionally, and I can't quote the source, your identity is supposed to be made up of how you see yourself, how others see you and how you think others see you. Well, by that token I'm a different person every day of my life. Yesterday, for the very first time in my life, I was alarmed by a very fleeting, but quite intense, suicidal thought. Now that's a big thing, but I can't say that I'm a suicidal person. As soon as this thought flitted into my head I immediately rationalised it, and within a couple of paces had about five reasons sorted out why I shouldn't do what had popped into my head. Some days I think I'm the life and soul of the party; somedays something approaching a hermit. Some days people would describe me as friendly and approachable; some days a bitch on wheels.

I think memory and identity are so fluid as to be intangible. That thing about never stepping in the same river twice? Same thing with who I am or who you are. To try and pin people down is to diminish them and render them in their simplest possible likeness - a walking waxwork. Never trust one of them. And never trust those studies which try to categorise us... I am not just middle class, nor middle aged nor an AB1, nor an INFP, nor a auditory learner. I am me.

Black Dog

You will have noticed that I'm generally fairly up. But every now and then I fall into the clutches of the black dog of depression, and it floors me. It doesn't last that long, I'm pleased to say, so that I always know that I just have to get through it and I'll be cracking jokes as usual, but while I'm there it's not good.

While I've never, ever considered ending it all by topping myself, there have been a number of times when I've considered how easy it would be just to walk away from everything. I never would, naturally, as I'm far too responsible for that, but every now and then it's a tempting thought.

Now since I'm not a teenager burdened with too much make-up and an unnatural desire for negative attention, I'm not going to detail the ins and outs of my tussle with the dog. I am instead going to give you the opening of my current work in progress, the idea of which came to me in a previous, very similar, episode in my life.

Given all that followed, it is ironic that the most formative experience of my early life happened to someone else. After all, if the body lying partially hidden among the waste bins behind the Tudor Rose Hotel had been mine, as it should have been, as it was intended to be, then the existential crisis that led me to where I am today wouldn't really have cropped up.

They should have discovered me there, Claire, crushed and bloody. But instead it was Heidi, an exchange student from Hamburg earning a little extra money to indulge her passion for Miss Selfridge and glass paperweights, who was struck with a baseball bat on the back of the neck by a large, aggressive, but sentimental petty criminal. It was her family who were deprived of the chance to see her flower into womanhood and middle age, while I am heading stolidly in that direction.

I was coming out of a club in Bristol at the time of the murder, going through the lyrics of Joan Armatrading's "Walk under Ladders", and reflecting once again what an underrated artist she was, how absurd it was that she hadn't achieved the popular success of the likes of Culture Club. Entertaining as they were, they couldn't hold a candle to her for lyrical power. She had a profile, it’s true, but it was a low-key one. I comforted myself that their light would blaze and go out, but hers would be like the Olympic Flame. Later I traced the timing back to that one moment, that specific train of thought, and marvelled that I was unable to sense the life of a colleague, a friend even by some definitions, being snuffed out.

If Heidi had said 'no' when I asked her to swap shifts so that I could go and see Joan Armatrading at the Locarno; if Joan Armatrading had had a sore throat and had to cancel; if there hadn’t been a spare ticket for me in the first place, it wouldn’t have been Heidi pulling up her coat collar against the winter chill as she locked the kitchen door at midnight, relieved to be away from the smell of chip fat and looking forward to a beer and a cuddle with her rather thick English boyfriend in the comfort of her own flat. And I, Claire, would be dead.

Then it would have been my parents sitting, blotchy and stunned, in the pew-like seats of the court, listening to the evidence of how their daughter had been killed - the physical details, the scene of crime reports, the events leading up to it. Only it wouldn't have been so senseless, because it wouldn't have been a mistake. The events leading up to it wouldn't have been events that occurred in someone else's life. So they wouldn't have been able to turn their empty faces to another, similar, young woman, blaming her, all the while knowing that there was no reason to do so, but seeming guiltily almost to wish that if they looked hard enough at her the dreadful mistake might be rectified in retrospect.

If Heidi and I hadn't shared an enthusiasm for the same shade of a well-known hair colorant, if we hadn't been such slaves to fashion that we'd both rushed out to buy that black wool coat recommended in Cosmo, if Heidi had been a little thinner, or a little fatter, then perhaps he'd have realised I wasn't there, postponed the murder for a night, gone home and had a cup of tea and realised that it was an overreaction to want to crush the life out of me, to shatter my skull just because I warned Stephanie about him.

But then if Stephanie had never decided to overcome her natural disinclination to talk to unsuitable men in pubs, determined to quash her tendency to judge people by their looks, or if she'd picked instead the weedy, anoraked Mummy's boy whom she'd never normally have spoken to either, then perhaps Heidi would still be alive and so would I. Perhaps Mark Hunter would have met another girl, in his own time, in his own way; maybe she'd have shown him it didn't have to be like this. Maybe he'd have given up the gear, gone into rehab, got himself a job somewhere, settled down and had children, watched TV of an evening and warned his kids about the perils of drugs. Instead of doing life in Broadmoor.

And had I not decided that a seaside town was the ideal place to spend my summer holidays in 1985, surfing by day and washing dishes by night, then confronted fifteen years later with the opportunity to become someone else, maybe like most people I would have decided against it, wouldn't have taken Heidi's name and wouldn't now be living with one foot in fact and the other in fiction.

Mull and Manrique

Yes, we went to Mull. Yes, it has a micro climate. Yes, it rained. And rained and rained and rained. I believe that you should never ever go back to somewhere you've enjoyed because it is NEVER the same the second time around. Never.

I was adamant that I was going to do some writing and guess what. I didn't. I was BORED. I'm never bored. I believe fervently that only boring people get bored; interesting people can always find something interesting to do. My children know this mantra. They never complain of being bored. So there you are. It rained and I got bored.

I think I must be a bit of a jinx on holiday. Last month I went with a group of friends to Lanzarote for Denise's 40th birthday (Thanks, Ant!) and, while it didn't rain, the weather was dreadful. I learned two new Spanish phrases, which we heard every where we went: "Hace mal tiempo" - It's bad weather, and "Hace mucho viento" - it's very windy. Mucho viento? I should coco! We spent one afternoon on a beach and had a full body exfoliation from the sheets of sand which stripped us of comfort and skin. I think we managed to pretend we were enjoying ourselves for about an hour and a half before we gave in a headed for the bar for a refreshing beer.

But because it wasn't really hanging around the pool weather we went all around the island in search of culture and volcanoes. What an amazing place!

The twin influences on Lanzarote, each of which has left an indelible mark oin the place, are the volcano and an artist, a contemporary of Picasso and Miro, a man called Cesar Manrique.



The island is volcanic. In the eighteenth century the volcano erupted...for six years, wiping out everything, every man, woman, child, every tree, every blade of grass. We were told this in a matter of fact way as we were touring the volcanic craters in a tour bus. I looked out over this desolate lunar landscape and tried to imagine what that actually meant, what it actually looked like at the time. Can you imagine such an awful event - the volcano belching forth fire as you were working in the fields? Worrying about your children, not far away in the house which was in moments to be enveloped forever. Appalling.

The agriculture of Lanzarote has been coaxed out of the lava which coats everything like a thick mud pack. Farming here is hard, what with the unforgiving lava beneath and the harsh wind above ground. So vines and other plants are sheltered in small dips in ythe lava, surrounded by the shelter of dry stone walls in three quarter circles, the earth weighted with a sprinkling of lava stones. Even walking across this terain is exhausting; to farm it must be backbreaking.

Take a look at this:

Then there is Cesar Manrique. Artist and architect, it can be rarely that a man has left so vast a mark on his native land. Manrique worked with the landscape and the climate, harnessed it to make strange and wonderful things - buildings which use the difficulties of the locale and turned them to his advantage. His house was built out of a series of volcanic bubbles in the ground. By clever use of paint and mosaic and cutting just the right apertures in the stony walls he created beautiful rooms bathed in astonishing natural light. I could barely tear myself away.

He also built the Mirador, a point at the extreme end of Lanzarote looking over the bloest sea. He designed and built the Vistors' Centre in the volcanic park, and the curious, but compelling cactus park. Even if you hate cacti, which I really REALLY do, you find yourself giving in to this place. Stand one one of the raised levels and look over the planting and you have surrealist art. Extraordinary. Andon many of the millions of roundabouts all over Lanzarote are huge and colourful wind sculptures designed by... yes, Manrique. I'm not sure we saw any art by anyone else. To be honest, I'm not sure there's room for anyone else.

I loved being in Lanzarote, not least because of the company. Away from the family for a week, I did miss them, but in a good way, and they had time to miss me, and be pleased when I got back. But being with such a diverse group of fantastic women was a real joy. We drank far too much, we talked even more. We cooperated and had an amazing time.

All in all, fabulous. And to the beautiful and ridiculously youthful Denise, cheers!