Nigella Signing in Knutsford

Last Thursday I went to meet Nigella. At least, that's what the in-store poster said, 'Meet Nigella Lawson', except it wasn't so much of a meeting but more of a 'jump on this treadmill and wave at Nigella as you speed by really fast'.



I wasn't born yesterday and I do know that high-profile authors attract a greater following and that each person cannot possibly spend ten minutes chatting away as if they were alone in the room. Yet, having been to such events before, this signing was disappointing. Many people ahead of me merely put their book on the table to have it signed and left with a meek smile, Nigella herself hardly making an effort to engage.

This is what surprised me the most; had I wanted laughter, fun, games and a pat on the back I would have attended a Jamie Oliver signing, I agree, but this isn't just about the character of the person. It is as much about the involvement and the effort that an extremely well-known, busy author should make in order to engage with readers, even if, bah humbug, there are five hundred of them. What a chore!

Who knows, the management at Waterstone's may like to organise things differently at some other time, so that we don't end up feeling like filing morons and more like readers invited to an actual event. How about a quick greeting from the author to those already queuing in store? A few words delivered to the masses would do better than this. Personally, I did engage with Nigella and she was as graceful as I expected. However, I'll remember the day as a huge anti-climax.

Of Baking And Reading

I don’t understand why people don’t cook onions more often. And I don’t mean as the staple basic item that always goes, and should go, in casseroles, soups, risotti and all else, but on their own. I’ve meant to say this many times on here and lest I forget this time as well, here is what I think: onions are at their very best when boiled until they are very soft, drained and dressed with salt, vinegar and oil. Gosh my mouth is watering. And don’t worry, please don’t worry about reeking of onion; you won’t, it’s only raw onion that will make you stink to high Heaven.

Now that I got that one off my chest, I should tell you of my return to baking. It took place at the weekend, perhaps unsurprisingly, as I spent the previous two days ticking things off Eat Me, a delightful pink book by Cookie Girl.



So I picked the Banoffee Cupcakes and the Lemon Meringue Cupcakes and they both turned out fantastically awesome, even though I decorated the banoffee ones with a slice of strawberry but I guess I really wanted to go saccharine sweet in the style stakes and I don’t think that a sliver of banana cuts it as well as one of strawberry. Do you agree? Or don’t you agree? In any case I am now hankering after Lakeland’s piping set (which I already mentioned here) and I can’t stop thinking about all of the other cupcakes I can try. I really ought to fill the cupboards with chocolate as well as we are rushing towards Easter and I am convinced I can make my own egg this year.





I’ve also been reading a novel which is something I rarely do. It surely seems odd to be a literary person stating that I don’t really read novels, especially when it ain’t quite an accurate statement. There surely would be no English degree and no PhD if I had not read plentiful. But over the last year or so I have mainly concentrated on non-fiction, thus relegating the memory of fiction to the long-lost days of summer holidays spent on a beach (and this was... oh my God... a lifetime ago). Being the person who doesn’t judge a book by its cover but chooses it on its merits, I picked up The Elegance of the Hedgehog, as its pictorial reference right here reminded me of many happy times in France.



I am barely half-way through it and I am enjoying it very much, except for a vague sense of pretentiousness poking out from between the lines. When I am done with this, I think I will read Dr Zhivago. Just thinking about it thrills me. It thrills me because I know nothing of it. Strange to be admitting to ignorance, right? Well, I am not afraid of confessing that there are books that have always been present in my life, and yet in a removed state, a bit like certain actors. Robert Downey Junior springs to mind, a guy I’ve always been aware of but never quite followed. Like the stench of disinfectant in Starbucks if you sit near to the toilet you know? Something you know it’s there but you do a great job of ignoring. And so it was with Dr Zhivago, a book (or movie) that many people mention in passing but that I know nothing of. Not for long though. Thrills I am telling you, frigging thrills...

WHS And Tesco Slammed Over Book

Do you know who Josef Friztl is? You would have to have lived under a rock for the past year not to know. Or perhaps you just have to be one of the Unbelievably Moronic Idiots that work at WHS and Tesco, from store managers down to shelf-stackers. Both of these places suggested a book about the infamous criminal as Father's Day pick for 2009. I do realise that WHS and Tesco are to books what McDonald's is to haute cuisine but still... Full story right here.

Remember Your Duty To Your Make-Up

I think there is only one thing I can claim to know for certain besides the obvious 'one day I will die': there is no woman in the world that does not benefit from wearing make-up. And it doesn’t matter whether the woman is a cleaner or a super-model, every woman looks better with make-up than without and that’s a fact of natural life. I don't care if you think it doesn't apply to you because, flash news, it so does. It applies to me, to you, to my mum, to Claudia Schiffer, to Linda Evangelista, to Michelle Obama, to every woman. It is, of course, no news whatsoever, as Winifred Watson, who wrote Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day in the now distant thirties, epitomised so well Chapter VII.



They moved her from the mirror. The most important moment of the day had arrived. ‘The face,’ said Miss Dubarry, ‘Can you do anything with it?’ asked Miss LaFosse nervously.
‘With that to start on,’ said Miss Dubarry, ‘I’ll do a job.’

She stood away and regarded Miss Pettigrew. She walked around her. She cocked her head on one side. Her brow grew corrugated. Miss Dubarry, in her professional guise, was a different woman. No nervousness, worry, or indecision. All gravity, firmness, competence: the expert at work.
‘Look at that jawline, ‘ said Miss Dubarry. ‘Clean as a whistle. No mass of fat to be massaged away. Look at that nose. Perfect. You can do a lot with a face.... but a nose! That takes a surgeon, and there’s not many will risk that.’
‘Beautiful,’ agreed Miss LaFosse.

‘When you’re over thirty-five,’ lectured Miss Dubarry, ‘make-up must be sparing. There’s nothing worse than a middle-aged woman with too much make-up. It accentuates her age, not lessens it. Only a very young, unlined face can stand the lavish emphasis of too many cosmetics. The effect must be delicate, artistic, the possibility never strained that it can, after all be natural, so that the beholder is left wondering which it is, art or nature.’

Miss Dubarry set to work. Miss Pettigrew had her face pommelled, patted, dabbed, massaged; cream rubbed in, cream smoothed off; lotion dabbed on, lotion wiped off. His skin tingled; felt glowing, healthy, rejuvenated.

‘Well!’ said Miss Dubarry at last, ‘it’s the best I can do here. It’s not like my own place. But you can’t have everything.’
She looked consideringly at Miss Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew glanced back nervously. She felt a little guilty, as though, somehow or other, she should have wafted herself into Miss Dubarry’s shop, though it was beyond her comprehension that any more bottle or jars could be needed.
‘You see. I haven’t blackened the eyebrows and lashes. I’ve merely delicately darkened them. Would you say they weren’t natural? No. You wouldn’t.’
‘Can’t be bettered,’ agreed Miss LaFosse. ‘You’re a genius, Edythe’.
‘Well, I’m pretty good in my own line,’ acknowledged Miss Dubarry modestly.

[...]

Miss Pettigrew stared. She caught the back of a chair for support. She felt faint. Another woman stood there. A woman of fashion: poised, sophisticated, finished, fastidiously elegant. A woman of no age. Obviously not young. Obviously not old. Who would care about age? No one. Not in a woman of that charming exterior. The rich, black velvet of the gown was of so deep and lustrous a sheen it glowed like colour.

[...]

She, Miss Pettigrew, elegant. That delicate flush! Was it natural? Who could tell? That loosely curling hair! No ends, no wisps, no lank drooping. Was it her own? She didn’t recognize it. Those eyes, so much more blue than memory recalled! Those artfully shaded brows and lashes! That mouth, with its faint, provocative redness! Was it coloured? Only by kissing it would a man find a satisfactory answer. She smiled. The woman smiled back, assured, composed. Where was the meek carriage, the deprecating smile, the timid shyness, the dowdy figure, the ugly hair, the sallow complexion? Gone.

[...]

A lump came into her throat. Her eyes became misty.

[...]

‘Guinevere, ‘ gasped Miss LaFosse. ‘Control, I implore you. Your make-up. Remember your duty to your make-up’.

Order

I was talking to a friend the other day, discussing my new bookshelves. There is a fundamental problem with these bookshelves you see, they are from IKEA and if you are a friend of mine, or even an enemy of mine, you will know how disgusted I feel for having bent to the Law of The Skint, for having caved in and bought the cheapest of the cheapo, for having shifted my weight the wrong side of the aesthetic fence.

I had no choice my friend (or my enemy), for I had books covering every flat surface of my small abode, and that included floors. I have spent the weekend re-arranging everything and taking forgotten texts down from the loft and onto the shelves and, finally, I feel like I’ve moved in, almost seven years after having done so. I’ve got all my books (and Rick’s books) at arm’s length (especially Rick’s books I should say) and it feels great.

And IKEA or other, I had underestimated the Power of Book Order, which is a bit peculiar considering I am a Virgo and like any good Virgo (or is it Virgoan? I don’t know, but I surely prefer the former) I am clean and tidy and often go completely ape when my stuff has been moved. Now I am sitting in bed, looking at one of the new bookcases, a little white one at my feet, and I am mesmerised by the beautiful spines, by the typefaces, by the colours, by the sizes, able as I am, for the first time since I bought all of these books, to really see them and to really look at them. I have strung up fairy lights on top of them and for the first time they make me feel all serene as opposed to narky for having yet again stubbed my toe on them. Gosh, I feel happy. I never thought that serene and happy and IKEA could go together but I guess they do.

Latest Loot

When I feel a little hard-done by for whatever reason, I buy books. And also when I do not feel hard-done by, I buy books anyway. Seeing that I am going to London this afternoon, I thought that an Amazon order was due and so here's this week's picks:



Now that my book is finished, I've already started thinking about what to write next, provided my first oeuvre doesn't tank with a bang. You may not know of Watchmen unless you are, at least in passing, into graphic novels, but the movie adaptation is finally coming next year and I have an inkling that I may be able to squeeze some book-worthy ideas out of both graphic novel and movie itself. You'll hear a lot more about this book in the coming months so brace yourself.

Ripailles is a fantastic book about classic French cuisine and one that, like many other books, I was inclined to judge by its very thick padded cover and thick mat pages. I know that French cuisine isn't exactly vegetarian-friendly but I can safely state that I do not care. I have plenty of books about cooking that are not vegetarian books and I am all the better for them. Widen your horizons, that's what I say.

Vampire Knight is the first in a series of Japanese manga picture novels, something that reminds me of the fantastic manga cartoons I used to watch as a child. And considering that the conclusion of my PhD is still sort of absent without leave, I am certain that this little volume and many similar others will come in handy. That's how I justify its price anyway.

The Second Sex needs no introduction, nor stilted paragraph. I need it for something else I'm writing and I think that it will go very well indeed with What Is A Woman? by Toril Moi, some other excellent text I am using for work.

Yet, for all of the shrieking excitement at the delivery of the parcel only yesterday, I am actually taking Christmas Stories to London with me. It has the most lovely robin on the cover, a silk red bookmark, looks intelligent, doesn't weight a ton and feels great in my hands. Not that I would dream of judging a book by these attributes mind you...

Another Thing Of Beauty

There is this idea in England that those who take good care of themselves, who are always reasonably well groomed and therefore become good-looking are shallow. This is such a preposterous piece of miserable crap that it is not worth addressing in any considerable depth; suffice to say I do not know an English (or indeed British) man who does not admire French women or Italian women or Spanish women for their seemingly innate capability to look reasonably good, no matter what nature bestowed upon them. Do you know why people are attracted to beauty? Because beauty is the promise of happiness. Now do yourself a favour and read the superb The Architecture of Happiness.

Library

I once met a person that scoffed at the proposition of using a library. 'Tsk, I buy books, I do not borrow them', she told me with a very highly arched eyebrow, as if I had just suggested she run around the neighborhood naked to see whether she could elicit a response either than the obvious. 'Tsk, I like to wear clothes thank you very much'.

Yeah, well, she was (and probably is, although I don't see her any more) that sort of upper crust person that would not lower herself to borrow because she can buy. I buy books all the time. Books are the only money-spent indulgence that never ever makes me feel like I should have curbed my enthusiasm and kept the Switch in the purse. I always justify myself with 'so what, I invest on my brain'. Stupid and self-righteous as this sounds, it is the truth. But even I, with my Switch-happy tendency insofar as printed matter is concerned, thought that perhaps it would be a good idea if I borrowed sometimes, instead of placing Amazon orders by the hundreds.

Today I went to the library in Wilmslow and came back home with lots of titles I would probably not have bought. One in particular is about wheat-free cooking. A friend of mine should not eat wheat and I must admit that this culinary restriction really stomps me. I cook with wheat. I do not even give it a second thought. It's like Starbucks or flossing my teeth or styling my hair. I cannot imagine life without these. Or wheat. Now I have a book about it though and I found that restrictions of any sorts force us to be a little bit more inventive. What would life be like if I could not eat, say, carbs? Or if I could not drink caffeine at all? Or if I were allergic to dairy? I am grateful none of these apply to me, but I am on a mini-mission to get a little more creative for my own sake and for my friend's too as well. For the next week, I am planning to go carbs-free. And you'll agree that for a vegetarian, it ain't going to be easy.

Thank You For Reading (Or Not)

Unless you’ve come across one of her books; unless you tread bookstores with the same hunger and thirst a revolutionary Parisian used to raid a bakery; unless you think of your life as an introspective journey that has taken you around the ages while still being sat at the same table in the same old cafe, it is unlikely that you will know who Dubravka Ugrešić is. I can tick of all of the figurative boxes above, yet, I didn’t find Dubravka’s work by word of mouth or printed matter, I found her because of a very peculiar book.



I recall when our encounter took place. It was during my slow and painful return to work after my sick leave years ago, when I could browse bookstores in the afternoon, mid-week, without the lunchtime sword of Damocles hovering above me like Mancunian thundering clouds. I was in Waterstone’s Deansgate, where a table was neatly stacked up with the latest Shakespearian edition, next to this intriguing title, Thank You For Not Reading. I had yet to start approaching agents at the time. I lived an uncracked clean state of optimism and ignorance which, usually, go hand-in-hand insofar as the working life (or life in general) is concerned. Still, those five little words framed under the vintage, good-looking lady, somehow rang prophetic bells in my then empty head, clear as it was of the preconceptions of so many agents being surplus morons and of the publishing world being sales-, and not quality-, driven.

Dubravka can be defined as an academic writer, where academic means a thinker who does not limit herself to skimming issues (that’s what most journalists are for these days). She deconstructs the sub-text(s) and re-assembles the parts in ways often surprising and always spot-on. Using academic as a description of anything often raises eyebrows, especially so among those whose eyebrows don't sit very high to begin with.

It’s academic... I have heard this hateful expression in a multitude of instances in the business world. Middle managers and senior managers relish in the opportunity of pulling this out of the drawer and throwing it onto the meeting table with the same quiet pride and countenance of a poker player laying down the winning hand. I suppose in their minds saying ‘yes, but, all of this is academic’ highlights their supposed great thinking skills high and above the debate in order to be able to solve it.

The sub-text of ‘it’s academic’ is that the academia only ever debates, it never provides suggestions or solutions to the debates that rage within itself. It is easy (and simplistic) to think in this misguided manner, for few people realise that the greatness of studying philosophy, for example, resides in the knowledge that this provides of the understanding of mankind’s evolution. One needs a greatly analytical mind in order to be able to grasp, understand, de-construct and utilise the meanings of works as old as mankind itself. Except a philosophy graduate is currently considered an un-employable opium-filled dreamer who is about as useful to the working environment as a painter or a writer. And here enters Dubravka in what I like to view as an excellent defence of the gift of creativity.

“While one person’s self-esteem wanes, another’s grows. That is, presumably, how the commercial world is arranged. I say ‘presumably” because I don’t know much about it. But I do know something about my own kind, about writers. If a writer isn’t sure that he or she is a writer (and real writers never are), then the sense of his or her own profession isn’t real either. So how can such writers charge money for their literary efforts? With difficulty. So the publishing industry profits from the low self-confidence of its producers.

“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a writer.”
“I don’t mean that... we’re all writers in some ways! I’m asking what you do, how do you pay the bills?”

A real writer always has problems with low self-confidence, is always consumed by doubt, even when he or she is publicly acknowledged. By winning the Nobel Prize, for instance. Especially then. I once met just such a Nobel laureate, so I know what I’m talking about. Someone with low self-esteem is like a punching bag that anyone can use; whoever passes by gives it a punch. A real writer feels guilty and thinks that what he’s doing is unimportant, or useless, or privileged (although he’s not paid for it), while other serious people work. Such writers are always in awe of physicists, carpenters and surgeons, and can always be crushed with the greatest of ease, like a worm or a fly”.

So what do you do in order to be less wavering in your quest for high self-esteem? You seek agents. I do not think writers seek agents because, first and foremost, they want publishing deals. Writers seek agents because individuals depend on one another for self-validation throughout life. Think about this: I could be the most self-sufficient and self-confident of writers with the deepest understanding of the publishing industry there is. I am likely to still be the same confident person after ten rejections from agents. I may even be the same after thirty. But some very fine lines may start to appear on my conviction around rejection number fifty. Or number one hundred. Or, if I am a true stoic, around rejection three hundred.

I defy even the most capable professional out there not to start even a fleeting introspective questioning once three hundred people act like he isn’t as good as he thinks he is. Because we depend on others to define ourselves as individuals, the work of the writer is one that can easily be relegated to the bottom end of the hobby pile. Yet, it is worth hanging in there and fending off the paranoia because:

“In the world of the jet set, wealthy party-givers, socialites, star-editors, star-agents, star-publishers; in the world of the media conglomerates, where publishing itself is only an incidental business which doesn’t make much money; in the world where the one-time fee of a catering-artist (a cook) exceeds the advance of a serious writer several times over; int he world of TV stars; in the world where the memoirs of Monica Lewinsky get a thousand times more publicity than the collected works of Marcel Proust; in the world of the powerful, in other words, things happen differently. Exactly how, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been there.

[...]

Some time ago , I found an agent with a PhD in classics from Yale. Encouraged by his references, I sent him my manuscript. After a while, a letter arrived:

I have read your manuscript. It is an elegant, unusual, and unconventional work. In other words, it would be hard to find American publishers who would buy such an essentially “European” work. As a lover of European literature, it is hard for me to acknowledge that the battle against the resistance of American publishers (and readers) to European prose is in vain. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I would like to be of more help and to be able to respond more optimistically.
With great respect, cordially yours,

At the same time, a letter arrived from a French agent:

I have not read your manuscript, but I do not doubt that it is an exceptional literary work. However, it would be hard to sell it at this time to any West European publisher. East Europeans are no longer the trend, which is of course sad, but true. If Solzhenitsyn has problems finding a publisher, there there is nothing we can do but wait for happier times.
With warn greetings,

At the same time, a letter arrived from my former Croatian publisher:

Hey, you’ve been on the blacklist for ten years, it’s natural that your readers have forgotten you! Not more than a dozen people would buy one of your books together. No one reads local writers anymore. They hate anti-regime writers, while regime writers make them sick. Books are expensive. It comes to the same thing, one way or another. Only the Croatian edition of Mein Kampf has sold really well. So there you are.
Yours,”

Am I being all doom-and-gloom these days? Will this place soon turn into Domestic Mess - A Bitter and Sour Slice Of Life? No it won’t. No it isn’t. My readership has grown from zero a month back in January to almost ten thousand a month. You may not have noticed this, but there is a little counter at the bottom of this page telling you how many people have visited since I installed it for all to see, on June 23rd.

Out of these (almost) ten thousand visits, many of them will be knitting and crocheting people, others will be people interested only in food and cooking, others are real-life friends who can now gain an insight much more accurate than any afternoon spent with me could provide them with. And then... others will be writers who are well-read and well-educated, who know what they are doing and where they are going, except their self-esteem is non-existent.

When I wrote this, I didn’t write it in order to have a dig at agents. If I wanted to have a dig at anything or anyone, there would be venom dripping off your screen because a certain type of criticism is fun to read and even more fun to write, yet, it is not subtle nor long-lasting. I wrote The Agent Fairy in order to encourage and, yes, even inspire creative people to have more faith in their capabilities before those three hundred rejections come through the door. And if you still have to ask yourself why your work is so little valued, why your gift of creativity is unrecognised and scorned, or why everything is shit, do not waste your time with this (although it will give you yet another example of shit itself), read this instead:

“ [...] “While the price of gold is more or less stable, the price of shit has seen astronomical growth in the last thirty years. And it’s still rising” [...] The transmutation of shit into gold is nevertheless no simple thing, for if it were we would all be rich. You need institutions, galleries, media, a market, publicity, interpreters (those who will explain the meaning of the artistic gesture), promoters, art dealers, critics, and, of course, consumers.

[...]

There is, presumably, something in the very nature of shit that makes it so loooooved. And however much the theoreticians of popular culture try to explain why shit ought to be loved, the most attractive aspect of shit is nevertheless its availability. Shit is accessible to everyone, shit is what unites us, we can stumble across shit at every moment, step into it, slip on it, shit follows us wherever we go, shit waits patiently on our doorstep [...]. So who wouldn’t love it! And love alone is the magic formula that turns shit into gold”.

A Thing Of Beauty

John Keats, one of those guys that makes my heart quiver with excitement and awe at the sole mention of his name, wrote in Endymion that a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Too true. I was digitally leafing through my pictures today and came across something that I consider extremely beautiful, yet, I stumbled across it somewhere that did not look anywhere near as beautiful as the thing of beauty itself. Do you know where I took this picture? Answers in the comments please. And while you’re at it, where have you found unexpected beauty?

Cats and Dogs

I don’t know what is the best bit about sharing one’s life with animals. I don’t know whether it is their soft fur or feathers, whether it is their voices, their bodies, their looks, their anti-stress properties or what else. While I cannot write for the whole world of animal lovers I can speak for myself. The best bit about owning animals is their goofiness. I have seen birds, horses, dogs, cats and fish displaying various degrees of goofiness (not necessarily proportionate to their sizes either), and when I think of my dog William, a meek smile and a resigned head-shake are automatic reactions to his symmetrically spotted face materialising itself before my very eyes.



I have had William for nine years and, good grief, he has given me enough goofs to fill an encyclopedia. From falling off a balcony to eating horse poo, William is one hell of a dal. Two of his favourite, life-defying stunts involve the patio doors that open onto the back garden. These have been the scene of the crime on more than one occasion. One day early on in our history at this address, when the lounge was not a lounge at all, but a semi-empty room with a table and a chair where I would occasionally sit to do some writing, William had gone out through the back door which, from the kitchen leads to the garden via a porch. I was observing him running around and sniffing the grass, feeling one with nature and, strangely for me I must admit, I was at peace with the world.

I waved at him through the glass, lifting my hand high above my head so that he could really see me. I even smiled knowing well that a smile invites particularly intelligent pets to respond to their owners. And he did respond. He immediately sprinted towards the house, quickening his pace as he reached the three steps that lead up to the door where I was sitting. For a nano-micron of a split second, I wondered why he had sped up, but even that fleeting thought came an instant too late. Next thing I knew, he was buckling backwards, his pink tongue clasped between his lips and only miraculously un-severed by his teeth upon impact on the glass. I wanted to jump to my feet flabbergasted at what I saw; instead I jumped to my feet, slid the door open and run to his rescue, ready to perform a doggie mouth-to-mouth. His head still in one elongated piece, he shook the impact off, looked at me as if he had just seen me for the first time, and went back to sniffing the grass, if only a tad wearily so for a while.

It is no fallacy that the killer always returns to the scene of the crime. In order to ensure no more potential head-butts into the treble-glazing, later that summer I kept the doors wide open, with only the metal blind pulled down in order to provide some shade. One afternoon, I let William out through the back door as per usual. It was above the swooshing and clattering of the washing up that I snapped back to life via a mighty crash from the lounge. I don’t know what I thought exactly if not that a piece of ceiling had finally given in and collapsed.

But it was not plaster that I found when I entered the room; it was a dog trapped between the crumpled slats of the blind, head and front paws through, rest of body somewhere at the back, suspended in mid-air. Unpicking the mess was not easy and became increasingly less easy on all of the subsequent occasions when he made his way back into the house through this most unorthodox entryway, slats snapping back to their righteous shape with less oomph with every crash.

I eventually got rid of the blind and the sliding doors; French doors with Georgian bars (and no blind) have provided much safer for William. So much safer in fact that he now darts pass them to paw hard on the back door even when I am standing right there calling him in, door wide open, gusts of November rain lashing into the lounge behind me.

I was recently delighted to discover that it is not just my dog that lives, should we say, in his own world. Cats too have their glorious moments of idiocy. Listen to this:

"Finally he nodded off to sleep and his head dropped forward so that the top of his head faced the bars of the fire.

At least, that's how it looked from where we were sitting. I think his fur must have been actually touching the bars.
We really weren’t paying that much attention. Lorraine had just said ‘Can you smell something burning?’ when suddenly, with a noise like a great puff of air, Brum’s whole head burst into flames.

It’s hard to explain the impact of seeing something like that. You just don't expect a cat’s head to do that. It was like he’d beed thinking too hard and his brain had just given up and exploded.
Luckily the bathroom is next to the lounge and there was a full tub of cooling water in there. Brum had gone mad and I just grabbed him, run full blast into the bathroom and thrust his head under the water.

He went off with a great his of steam. He seemed so stunned that he forgot to attack me for a moment."

This Brum cat has skimmed new heights of health and safety that even William has yet to reach. Now consider this, it will sound familiar:

"One summer day, Brum came sprinting from dustbin to fence to flat roof in an amazingly agile way (‘amazingly agile’ had he been a moose) and didn’t break stride at all upon spotting me at the window and heading straight for me.

I didn’t register alarm at first. I do seem to remember that in the last moments before impact I wondered why Brum appeared to be rapidly gaining pace. Only as he connected did I realise he has no intention of stopping. [...] The window simply disintegrated. I jumped backwards in shock as glass rained down around me. The noise was deafening - glass shattered and smashed everywhere; the room was instantly transformed into a sea of broken shards.

When the thundering pandemonium subsided, a lone cat stood picturesquely bordered by an empty wooden window frame."

Tempted to read more? I am not surprised. A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take The Cat Out Of Slough... both by the excellent Chris Pascoe. Enjoy.

The Third Place

In the You've Got Mail DVD, director/writer Nora Ephron discusses in passing Starbucks as a place that is neither home nor office but that surged on its own wings to the heights of a location that so many people consider familiar and use for activities that were once exclusively relegated to either the home or the office. Starbucks as a Third Place, as she says.



This applies to me entirely, even though I find that the coffee shop, be this Starbucks, Costa, Nero, Republic, or your local one that doesn't know what an espresso is and pours lukewarm watery instant from an old glass carafe, usually works very well in concentrating the mind of many people. While I often see business people out for meetings at Starbucks, I equally often see creative people drawing and writing in their journals. I am one of those that uses Starbee Time, as a call it, to get myself into a trance where I right all of my working wrongs, and where the Concentration Muse descends upon me as soon as I put the caramel macchiato down and sit at the table. This is another reason why I usually prefer to go to Starbucks unaccompanied; my brain is hard-wired into it being a place of writing work and I cannot work if I am to entertain company.

Twyla Tharp refers to such a place in The Creative Habit, where she talks about rituals that get the creative habit into gear:

" In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming.

All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: when you enter into them, they impel you to get started. [...] It's Pavlovian: follow the routine, get a creative payoff."

That's it. Starbucks it is for me. The weird thing is that when I first read Twyla's book some time ago, I wistfully sighed, wishing for my very own creative ritual, for a third place that automatically instills concentration and the creative trance as soon as I flip the switch. I already had it and did not even know. We cannot force ourselves to find the third place that naturally becomes our creative place, the locus of work that is automatic, spontaneous and trance-like, but we can experiment during our quest for it.

I certainly tried to create routines for myself over the years and found that the conscious effort never paid off. I was struggling to concentrate and once concentrated, I was struggling to stay that way. Take my study for example, a room that I have furnished and painted with the sole purpose of promoting intellectual pursuits and relaxation, usually a combo that yields good writing results, at least as far as I am concerned. I cannot work in the study. I loathe the place (as I already mentioned here).

Yet, I don't have rational reasons to hate it. It just works that way. Similarly, I have no particular reasons to fall into a trance at Starbucks, it just happens. Significantly, it doesn't happen in all coffee shops I visit. The one in Wilmslow is the one that I consider my creative hole. And I'll tell you something peculiar about this: most of these posts I have made over the past few months were all drafted in my mind while at the Third Place, thoughts and ideas rampaging in my head as people were coming and going with their java and I did not even notice them. It just works. What's your third place?

Stifling Creativity

I am currently reading a marvellous book by Danny Gregory, The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are. I have hinted before at my interest in the creative process, one that is by no means exclusively related to my writing pursuits but to all arts and all creative processes associated with them. The Creative License may revolve around drawing and keeping a pictorial journal but I dare any creative person not to relate to this book on many levels, particularly in its first few pages, where the author discusses what happens when you stifle creativity.



"The ability and the need to be creative are hard-wired into all of us. I speak to so many people who tell me they make things (drawings, souffles, jewelry, movies, pop songs) because they just have to. They can't help it. It's a basic urge, an irrepressible impulse.

Yet an awful lot of people are able to suppress it. They trudge back and forth in a rut, never reinventing a single day. They jump to conclusions about themselves and their abilities and their obligations that they think will help them avoid conflict. They make certain choices that they think will prevent others from being disappointed, shocked or angry.

But deep inside them, a little ember flickers. That ember is their dream, the thing they would really like to do, if only. If only they had the time, the talent, the education, the tools, the money, the support, the freedom. But because they have decided long ago that they can't, they lock that little spark in a big steel box, hoping to suffocate it once and for all, and then they rush on with their chores and obligations. But the ember won't go out. Instead it heats up the steel box, and they start to feel that need again. It gets hotter and the feeling turns to pain. So they reach for an anaesthetic.

Our society is full of anesthetics - drugs, booze, television, mass culture, destructive behaviors, anger, defensiveness, selfishness - all are ways to take us away from experiencing the here and now, from being in touch with our true nature.

When we continue to deny who we truly are and suppress our ability to create, we become crippled and shut down. [...]

Ironically, our society tends to portray artists as dreamers. But those who suppress their creativity are actually the ones living in a dream. An artist is someone who feels and sees reality very intensely. Creativity doesn't mean just making things up out of thin air. It means seeing and feeling the world so vividly that you can put together connections and patterns that help to explain reality. It means you see the beauty in the world rather than trying to hide from it."

Petite Malaise

Sometimes I wake up feeling awful, like I haven't slept at all but someone has used me as a punchbag all night. I have always believed in Freddy Krueger and I am certain there is one with boxing gloves, rather than slashing hands, waiting for me to go to sleep and start dreaming. I managed to drag myself and Victoria to the vet for a check-up and then I figured out that nothing helps une petite malaise better than a new book, provided it is neither intellectually engaging, nor presenting new material. I chose La Vie Parisienne, a hybrid version of French Women Don't Get Fat and Two Lipsticks and A Lover.



All of these three books more or less speak of the same: attractive and pencil-thin French women who could teach the world, especially the Anglo-American one, a thing or two about style and diet. When French Women Don't Get Fat came out, it rapidly made it to many best-selling lists, despite revealing what is not really a secret to anyone who has lived in France for any amount of time: tiny portions and a modicum of physical activity are enough to look good when your contemporaries get too decrepit or too fat to attract even a passing scoff.

Two Lipsticks and A Lover is ideal for the frumpy friend who thinks cropped trousers (or indeed wrap dresses) suit everyone. I can only hope that those misguided British women that cannot stand Trinny and Susannah (big mistake, those two really know their stuff), will have a copy of Helena's glamour bible on their bedside tables. I find that it is especially vital that you read it if you have a daughter and are a little on the frumpy side. All hail the French! Considering they buy lipglosses, not Bratz dolls, to their seven year olds, it is no wonder that just about every French woman grows up knowing how to walk the right side of elegance. You see, often trendy is mistaken for elegance, yet they are two very different things. Take it from someone who has a deadly penchant for leopard print. At least I know it is vulgar. It just happens to be a vulgarity I find impossible to resist.

Quoi dire de La Vie Parisienne? I am not sure. I read a couple of chapters, ascertained that it is not an improvement, minute or otherwise, on any book about la vie francaise I have read so far and tossed it by the sofa. I am sure I will discover it again eventually, probably during the next sickly patch. There is nothing like brainless reading when une petite malaise strikes.

Lego Ergo Sum

‘Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you what you are’ was an original classic before it was replaced with the more succinct ‘you are what you eat’. I also heard of ‘tell me what you watch’ or ‘tell me what you listen to’ or even ‘tell me how you shag and I’ll tell you what Sex and The City character you are’. The ‘tell me what you insert verb, and I’ll tell what you are’ article re-surfaces in magazines and newspapers at regular intervals. Now it’s all about ‘tell me how you spend’, in the eighties it was ‘tell me how you exercise’; countless re-incarnations of a say that very much rings like a media proverb have infested printed matter for years and years. There is one at least in my mind that seems to always hold true; tell me what you read and I’ll tell you what you are. But does it, really?



I live in a small house with lots of books. I have books in the usual places, the bedside tables, the bookcases, the dining room table, and then I have books in the overspill places such as the boiler’s cupboard, the bedroom corners, the lounge’s floor, the kitchen’s tiny flip-down table. I have some piled up on the printer, some on the window sills, some in the filing cabinet and some abandoned in desperation when I have run out of neat columns. I was recently reading a thread on Ravelry, ‘Can you have too many knitting books?’. I have not added to the thread itself but I found myself thinking about the question many times over. You can’t have too many books, that’s a simple one to answer. The question can perhaps be, can you have too many useless books? Can a book be useless? Oh dear, when is a chair not a chair?



Years ago I scoffed at a friend reading a Mills and Boon. She said she didn’t find reading Mills and Boon an insult to her intelligence and that she liked to fill her spare time with unchallenging crap. This too, gave me reasons to think. I thought about websites that ask you for your hobbies; many people automatically type in ‘reading’. But is reading really a hobby? Isn’t a hobby something we do to fill our spare time? More importantly, what defines spare time? Is spare time the one we do not spend in a 9-5 job? What about a person that does not have a 9-5 job, does that mean a lot of spare time? 24 hours a day of spare time? I don’t have hobbies; that’s because a hobby is something that is relegated at the bottom of a never-ending list of tasks that invariably take priority. If I think of some horsey friends, I wouldn’t say that horses are their hobbies either. They are a way of life. How else to describe someone willing to drive 10 miles to her horse on a dark winter’s evening in order to school him? That’s not a hobby, that’s a second passion. Or a first one, depending on the rest of your life.



I don’t read in my spare time. Spare from what? Spared from the washing up? Spared from walking the dogs? In fact, is walking the dogs a job-like form of tyranny or a hobby? Hobbies do not exist. It’s like talking of work-life balance, something that comes up over and over in the corpo emails I re-route to the junk folder. Work-life balance; isn’t work supposed to be part of your life? I smirk when I think of the French; try and mention the work-life balance to any French person and you’ll be met with a supercilious, and oh so very appropriate, smile. There is no such thing as work-life balance outside of the Anglo-American world, there’s just life. And if there’s always time for books it’s because I make time.



If I were to squeeze them into my usual schedule, I’d never read a thing. I’d never write a thing. But reading, like writing, is a form of discipline. Recently, I was reading The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. A propos scratching, which could be defined as a method that brings inspiration to the artist, Twyla says: ‘If you read for inspiration, read the top-drawer writers, and read their masterworks first. [...] Scratch among the best and you will automatically raise the quality of the ideas you uncover’. I am no literary snob; if I were, there would be no Trinny and Susannah on my bookshelf, no Helena Frith-Powell, no guides on how to walk in high heels. However, they sit side-by-side with Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan, next to John Keats, to the Norton Anthologies, to TS Eliot, to Les Guides Blues and, yes, next to Gianni Versace’s books and next to Mario Testino’s, all part of a multi-faceted paper carnival that may, or may not, say something about me to those who have never met me. I wouldn’t dream to scratch for ideas among a good 80% of the depressing fiction offerings on Waterstone’s tables, mostly because they are of dubious quality.



As I ponder on Discipline and Punish, I wonder whether I may seem too serious, an adjective I would never pick to describe myself, or indeed my reading habits. As I flick through Two Lipsticks and A Lover, I wonder whether I may seem too shallow, the sort of girl that reads Cosmo (or Mills and Boon), rather than Prospect or TIME. I’m both and the reason that leads me to light-hearted non-fiction is to be found in Foucault’s work not in magazines; the reason that drives me to horror literature is sociological, not voyeuristic. It is not what I read that defines me. It's The Reading. I read therefore I am. Then my eyes wander to the top shelf of the library where the DVDs sit tight together, too many soldiers jostling for space. I think you can tell a lot by what people watch. But I’ll talk about that another time.

My Dimension Jump

Soon after I mentioned John Keats in my post about Paris, his presence lodged itself into my brain, awaken from hyper-sleep. It’s not that I haven’t thought of Keats in a long time, it’s just that writing about him as I recalled the days spent in the uni’s library brought back such vivid memories that it prompted me to pick up one of my anthologies and read some of his work. But I did not pick up my usual edition, the Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th edition, for that was the latest one when I started my degree course), but I picked the Oxford Anthology of English Literature, a fabulous volume with commentaries by Kermode, Hollander, Price and Bloom among others. As I stood by the shelf, turning the book in my hands and wondering how it came to be one of my books, the soft pages released a very faint scent. And so there I was, walking through the sharp carpeted corridors of the English Department at Lancaster University, my petite madeleine not a taste in my mouth but an eye-narrowing smell that I knew so very well but that I had not perceived for many years. I was so happy then, yet, I did not know it.

Inside the softback there is a sticker which reads: ‘EX LIBRIS MICHAEL WHEELER’.



Yes of course, Professor Wheeler. I met Professor Wheeler in my first year, when he gave a lecture about Victorian literature, if I am not mistaken, but it was not until my second year, when I took his literature and Christianity course, that I was privileged enough to work with him and witness his kind and persuasive teaching method. This is not to say that he tried to turn us around when we expressed various opinions; but he was always interested enough as to hold our cocooned suggestions in the palm of his hand and turn them into something that could flutter about the room of its own accord, no longer a matchstick with twitching wire antennas but a fully-fledged butterfly. Out of all of the colourful individuals that have started, followed and nurtured my academic career, Professor Wheeler is the one that stands out. I have often thought of him over these many years. He left Lancaster University as I was dabbing into my PhD proposal leaving the Ruskin Library as his greatest legacy. He was interviewed by the BBC over The Da Vinci Code brouhaha a couple of years ago since he is now also canon of Winchester Cathedral. I wonder whether he met Tom Hanks?

Every time I watch Dimension Jump from Red Dwarf series 4, I think of Professor Wheeler. In Dimension Jump, a much improved Arnold Rimmer bursts onto the scene as the heroic nemesis of the weasel-y, back-stabbing-Judas Rimmer as known in the series at large. As the story goes, it turns out that one important decision was taken at some point in the past; one Rimmer went one way and the other went the other in a parallel dimension. One turned into a sour, bitter moron, the other into an all-around super-hero. When I watch Dimension Jump, with all of its goofiness, I think of the day I sat in Professor Wheeler’s office, telling him that I was considering doing my PhD on John Ruskin, and possibly, Oscar Wilde. He grinned widely, rubbed his hands together and told me to ‘have a seat’. You may have guessed that I am the Steph that did not do the PhD on John Ruskin; I am the one who is doing cultural studies and whose work centers on post-modernism, horror and the super-human. I couldn’t have ended up father from Ruskin if I had tried to.

Yet, I am absolutely convinced that on that afternoon in that room , some other Steph, the more successful one, took the opposite decision and went on to spend her foreseeable future handling precious originals in the newly opened Ruskin Library. I wonder where she is at right now, whether she followed Professor Wheeler to Southampton, and then Winchester, whether she is an eminent Ruskin critic, whether she has been to Venice yet, whether she hobnobbed with Tom during filming of The Code. Perhaps she is not even married, doesn’t have a horse or not even dogs, but she sure as hell must have already finished her PhD.

When I returned to Professor Wheeler’s office a few weeks later and told him that I had decided against the PhD on Ruskin after all, he seemed slightly disappointed, for he suggested that such an opportunity, to work on originals, doesn’t come twice in a lifetime, especially so early on in the game. He was packing his books as he was moving out of the uni. He told me to have a look around and take whatever I wanted. What a guy. I picked the two volumes of the Oxford Anthology, one of them currently opened on my lap, its very faint scent a strong yet invisible link to my past and to my other life. This is probably as close as I will ever get to my self from the parallel dimension.

Today Is Another Day

Who would have thought I would have been on such a high considering I closed down April feeling slightly down and indeed going slightly downhill? I am thrilled that an agent has requested my book proposal today and totally thrilled by The Diary of A Provincial Lady which I found in a limited edition Cath Kidston cover. Virago has re-issued some of its modern classics dressed up in fabulous hardback covers. Catch them while you can at Waterstone's.

Literary Superstar

I discovered Jacqueline Wilson a few years back, on a lunchbreak spent trailing Waterstone’s at the corner of Fleet Street near Blackfriars Bridge. Secrets had just come out and because you can judge a book by its cover, I decided to buy it. I was so taken, I used to sneak it under my desk so that I could read a bit further , sheltered by the open laptop and the knowledge that my manager had popped out for coffee. It is a known fact that children’s authors are particularly good in the UK, and that Jacqueline was Children’s Laureate in 2005-2007. But even among a flurry of talented authors, she remains head and shoulders above the rest. She is real, un-sentimental, comical and dramatic; her stories aren’t tear-jerkers, nor are they pointless fantasy romps with Tolkien-esque pretensions (and just as deadly tedious). She is more engaging than Lewis Carrol, her world more fascinating than over-rated Narnia, her characters so memorable I remember all of them and I never ever re-read books. I am particularly fond of Vicky Angel, an exceptional exploration of bereavement, The Illustrated Mum, a fabulous analysis of mother-daughter love, and Girls Under Pressure, a sensitive, comical analysis of thin and fat issues. My Sister Jodie which I have just finished reading and is currently still sitting on my bedside table, is another gem.

‘The teachers stood in a sober line, gripping their hymn books. Jed was there too, in an old donkey jacket because it was clearly the only dark garment he possessed. His head was bowed. He looked white and watery-eyed. He could have been grief-stricken, but then again he might simply be suffering from a hangover.’