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Where the heart is...Update - November 2002 Okay, so my plan to do regular updates has fallen down somewhat! But to make up for that, maybe this will be an extra-long update? Either that or I could pretend to have written half of this last month and the other half next month, but that would be dishonest, and dishonesty is something I prefer to avoid unless absolutely necessary. (That's an example of pragmatic idealism, I suppose!) So, why the delay updating the site? Well, the short answer is that my house is still a wreck after the flood, I was away for four weeks backpacking round Europe, and I'm desperately trying to finish my second novel at the same time as producing the second issue of the Bulwell community magazine that I edit. So, my mind has been elsewhere. But I did discover recently that some people actually do read this site, so I feel duty-bound to provide something new to read! The saga of the flood is beginning to feel never-ending. Four months on, I still have bare concrete floors, big holes in the kitchen, and all my possessions stacked up in piles that I have to climb over to get into bed. The story of the flood truly has the makings of a soap opera, with its constant twists and over-wrought emotions arising from complications that shouldn't exist in the real world. Or a space opera, perhaps, as I seem to have entered an alternate universe known as Making a Claim on your Household Insurance, where every time I phone up to chase something, I seem to threaten to tear a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum, judging by the panic in the voices of those I deal with. Sometimes I think that my claim is coming apart at a sub-atomic level. I can imagine people at the call centre hanging onto their desks when I call - screaming, 'She cannae take much more of this, captain'. Mine must be a high-risk assignment, too, because every time I call, the person who was last dealing with my case has been promoted or sacked or gone on a well-deserved holiday.
Then there's the people who come round to actually do work in my house. There's been a lot of them - ripping out carpets, taking a sledgehammer to part of my kitchen, crowbarring my skirting boards off the walls, chopping up wrecked furniture, using a blowtorch to take up the kitchen tiles, putting down disinfectant, measuring for damp and new skirting boards and carpet. They've all been very nice, helpful people. They've all held an identical conversation with me, too. It goes something like this: Workman: So, you were flooded, eh? But there's no river round here. That always amuses me. I know Bulwell isn't the poshest part of Nottingham, but it isn't exactly South Central LA. True, some of my neighbours are a little dodgy and the, er, alternative economy is flourishing, but you'd think from people's reactions that I take my life in my hands just by living here. This talk of the nature of the place where I live reminds me of a writing workshop event I once attended at a country house not far from Nottingham. I think we were all supposed to be deeply impressed by the host's pile - and yes, it dated back to mediaeval times and boasted some remarkable things, including an upstairs drawing room decorated by someone famous a couple of hundred years ago, a library that with wall-to-wall leather-bound books, and the highest four-poster bed I've ever seen (I've never understood that - low ceilings, doors that even I have to duck to get through, and beds that require a ladder for getting into...). But the most remarkable thing about the day wasn't the house, but the people who owned it and their literary friends. First business of the day was a tour of the 'hise' and the 'grinds' (they spoke that version of English that sounds like they've swallowed their tongue along with the end of the word they're trying to pronounce) - complete with stories about a nanny (or was it a footman?) who had hung themselves in the attic, a moment of reverential pause in front of a glass case that contained a ring that once belonged to Byron, and bizarrely anachronistic references to women from the village who came in to 'do'. Just as I thought that the point of the day was to remind all of us who weren't born into this stuff that we were kidding ourselves if we thought we would ever be able to write Literature, we sat down for a discussion about 'hises' and what they say about the characters of the people within. Now, that is an interesting idea, in a way - after all, when writing fiction, the kind of environment a character lives in is important to portray and understand who they are and the world they move in. However, I have to admit that my hackles rose as the discussion continued among that rich, almost sickly laughter that people must be taught to give in public school. I felt the stirrings of class antagonisms that had no place in that kind of Country Hise, certainly not above stairs, anyway. But the people holding this discussion for our edification were talking about where people lived as if, in Real Life, you could tell what kind of person someone is by the place they live in. Now, this may seem radical, but if someone is living in a high-rise flat, or a terraced house, or even a three-bed semi in suburbia, the fact that they live there rather than in a sixteenth century country mansion with acres of land attached probably says slightly more about their credit rating than it says about their character. But the opportunity to voice this opinion was not exactly forthcoming. The discussion was opened up so that us plebs politely listening could contribute any experiences of living in unusual places. It took me a while to realise that the flat I used to live in, on the fifteenth floor of a council tower block, would probably qualify, as it would be way outside these people's sphere of experience. But I hesitated and never put this forward. It took me a long time to figure out why I kept quiet - most of the journey home, in fact, while the people in the car I travelled in muttered darkly about revolutions and the uses walls would be put to when the time came. But finally I realised why I had kept quiet in front of Their Poshnesses. It wasn't that I was intimidated by their absolute belief that they were the pinnacle of civilisation; it didn't even bother me that they might apply their own theory and draw conclusions about who I was based on this revelation. I think it was because I knew I would be met with an absolute lack of understanding. They would proclaim fascination for what life in a tower block is like - probably a genuine fascination, the way they'd be fascinated if someone said they used to live with a nomadic tribe in Mongolia. But that's the point - just as I didn't 'get' their way of thinking about the world at all, just as they seemed like an alien race to me, I knew they would never 'get' what I wanted to say about my world. And while the day didn't have the calming, inspiring sense of history that I think I'd been expecting, it did help me to put into perspective the world I was trying to write about. I came away from a day at a beautiful mediaeval country house inspired to find a way to pin down the realities of existence in a dirty, noisy, crumblingly modern city. That's what I've been trying to achieve when I write. I'm not there yet - but maybe if I ever did feel I was there I would have nothing left to write about? Maybe all the writing any of us ever do is just edging closer to an understanding of the world we live in? That understanding will never be complete, because people make up that world, not buildings, and people are endlessly fascinating, and different, and can't be conveniently slotted into categories - country house, semi-detached, terraced, high-rise. All of which brings me back to my own situation again. Writing has been difficult recently, mainly because my house and therefore my working environment is in such a bad state, but I am finally nearing the end of writing my second book. I think my book and the repairs to my house will be completed pretty much simultaneously, which has a nice parallel with the subject developing in this ramble. The second book seems to be going reasonably well, too, though I'm sure I'll know whether I'm right about that once my editor has read it. Writing the second book has been a very different experience to writing the first - I've got a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing, which means that I think it's a much more tightly structured book than the first. That's obviously a good thing, although for Book the Third I want to allow myself a little more freedom to stray from the immediate demands of the story I'm trying to tell. And what is Book the Second about? That would be telling... all I'll say is that it's set in Nottingham again and it features a social worker who gets too involved in a case. Work with Beholden continues, with a publication date of 3 February 2003 - not that far away now. My publicist (yes, reader, I have a publicist!) has some good ideas for promotions and seems to be steaming ahead with securing reviews in magazines and so on. The local angle is looking good too - I went for lunch with the Deputy Editor of the Nottingham Evening Post, who shares my passion for all things Patricia Highsmith, and it looks like they will give some good coverage. There are three of us 'young local recently published' writers, which seems to have people excited - I think they see us as a Nottingham renaissance. The other two are Stephan Collishaw, whose first novel is published a few weeks after mine, and Jon McGregor, whose debut made the Booker longlist and whose paperback comes out shortly after Stephan's. We are hoping we'll be able to hold a joint event early next year - I'm sure I'll tell you more about that closer to the time. But for now I think I've said enough. I hope there won't be quite as long before the next update as there has been since the last - but that depends on my house surviving the winter without any further damage! |
