written in water

Going, Going ...

2012-02-10T15:16:00.002Z

I’ve got Pure, by Andrew Miller lined up to readnext. I read his first novel, IngeniousPain, about ten years ago. Here’s what I remember about that – it was aperiod novel about, I’m pretty sure, a man who couldn’t feel pain. And Ienjoyed it. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you about that highly thought-of,prize-winning book. I might as well not have read it. The same goes for prettymuch every novel I read these days, and every film I see for that matter, goodor bad, they fade, they disappear like a photo left in the sunlight. So what’sthe point? Is it just about the pleasure in the moment?

It would begood if reading a book was more like listening to music, more of a sensoryexperience. It’s easy to remember a loved piece of music, even easier to remembera gig. Listening to The Pretenders play Brass in Pocket at the Marquee, TheSpecials at the Lyceum, The Clash at Lewisham Odeon. I saw some good gigs.Hearing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on a friend’s car cassette player as hedrove me away from the hospital on a sunny day in 1982. I remember the sounds,sights, textures of those experiences, I associate layers of feelings withthem.

But books?Films? Slipping away. Going, going, gone. Shards and tatters of memory,twisting and turning as they vanish, dwindling, out of reach. I used to reviewbooks. For the TLS, The Spectator, Kaleidoscope on Radio 4. Couldn’t tell youmuch about those same books now. In an ideal world, memory would be a resource,something you could turn to, file through, like your own personal Wikipedia.You consult a memory, examine it, and find it in some way helpful. Maybe I shouldwork harder at it, make lists of books I’ve read, even a few notes about eachone. Is that a bit weird though, a bit anal? It makes life sound like an examfor which you’re being continuously assessed. Our tastes may create us, but that doesn’t mean we have to rememberevery step along the way. Maybe it’s enough that abook retains a resonance, an emotional weight. Something lingers.

That title, Going, Going - it's from a Philip Larkin poem, right? One that's actually got nothing to do with memory. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure ...

The Dark

2012-01-26T15:24:00.001Z

My secondnovel, The Alchemist, explores thestrange evolution that makes children into adults, and suggests that what weaccept as normal life is subject to radical change, beyond our control. I couldtrace in it aspects of my own life, which have been creatively processed, but Idon’t really want to try. There’s probably nothing to be gained, and possiblysomething to be lost, in too thorough an examination. I wrote a short story a fewyears ago, in which a man walks out of his job, finds his relationships withpeople beginning to fracture, and spends his nights out in the garden diggingholes. I liked it without quite knowing what it was all about, until someone,well Ian McEwan actually, suggested it was a writer, leaving his structured,ordered life and, for no obvious reason, digging in the dark. That rang true. I like the darkaspect, the delving and exploring and fumbling and tripping over but picking yourself up and carrying on, not always knowing what you’re up to or where you’re going, tillyou step back and think ‘Ah, got it, that’s what this is about.’ Sometimes it's much more planned and self-conscious, but it’s that darkaspect, that makes it fun and mysterious andfrustrating occasionally but exciting too.

A Chinese Summer

2012-01-10T13:46:00.000Z

So along came,in 1988 when I was 25, my first novel, AChinese Summer. It was about the aftermath of a relationship, about a youngman who gets cancer, and about a movement from depression and isolation towardsa sense of community and belonging in the personal and in the wider world. Likemany first novels it was a short, first-person piece in which the narrator wasthe same sex and the same sort of age as the writer. And lived in the sameplace as the writer, and travelled on the same trains, and shared some of thesame experiences. But he wasn’t the writer. No, honestly. He was like the writer, but he reacted tothings differently, he was a bit over the top about things, and he saw thingsdifferently, in a more heightened way.

I was just reading Lindsay Clarke on this. He suggested we use story to convert experience into something with meaning and value. It's the way we pass from feeling into meaning. Makes sense to me. Anyway, I don’t thinkit’s possible to choose not to use your experience. It tends to be what youcare about, what’s central to you. It’s not just what has happened to you, it’salso what has helped to make you who you are. Throw in a vast mixture ofevents, and the emotions they give rise to, add nature, as well as nurture, andpersonality, which perhaps has some sort of core content, irreducible, put allthose together and some weird alchemy makes an adult out of a child. And in mycase, because I’d always wanted to be a writer, as long as I could remember,part of that process was writing a novel. That sounds like it got coughed up -whoops, there it is. No, it was crafted, lovingly, sentence by sentence, beatby beat, and also it was consciously, ambitiously, a step on the way tobecoming a writer. Experience, craft, ambition, heart. Those are goodingredients.

1988. It’s history now, isn’t it?

Big Snakes

2011-12-21T15:46:00.000Z

My mate asked last night, (over sloe gin and Scrabble), if he could have my kids' hamster, after it died, to feed to his kids' snake. Blimey. Wasn't sure they'd be up for that, especially six year old Son. (Him of the forks and scorpions, below.) I could see him being unsettled and confused by it. Is this what happens to all dead creatures? What about aged relatives? Are they fed to a big snake when they die? No, not too sure about that. If we did it, we'd have to have a ceremonial burial, then follow it with a moonlit, Burke and Hare style exhumation. Take the corpse to the reptile. Midnight feast. Of course, worms, snakes, what's the difference in the end? Circle of life, etc. I told him I'd think about it. Drank some more gin.

Jerusalem

2011-12-14T14:25:00.000Z

So Jerusalem was wonderful, not disappointing at all. Maybe a tiny bit overlong, in that final third, but basically I loved it. Traffic wardens, giants and Rooster Byron as a sort of ruined reincarnation of St George or King Arthur, funny and surprising and shot through with a deep thrum of melancholy, which is something I always respond well to, because life is shot through with a deep thrum of melancholy too, isn’t it? Along with joy, you’d hope, and surprises, and a forward-looking drive towards, you know, something. And a good sprinkling of contentment. But Jerusalem, yes, it wasn’t all about that central performance, but still, Mark Rylance was brilliant. I wasn’t sitting there admiring him, admiring the craft, I just believed it. Lovely stuff. Plus the Courtauld Gallery, and catching up with family and friends … all good. And I’m looking forward to Hugo in 3D. And Dr Who this year, from the look of the trailer, it looks pretty good, doesn’t it?
And, as a nice bonus, got home to find a review of The Last Word in The Guardian.

http://bit.ly/uYc3za

'A lobster quadrille of tentativeness' ... exactly what I was shooting for, obviously.

Slippage

2011-12-01T13:50:00.001Z

Feeling better now. Been grappling with an episode, not getting it right (apparently), feeling frustrated and worried ... but now it's done, and satisfaction seems to be in the air, and look, it's December, Christmas has moved from a vague shape on the horizon right into view, a jaunty boat with colourful sails and a crew full of elves drunk on Baileys ... I'm going to give up that metaphor. What am I mostlooking forward to between now and Christmas? Going to London to see family andfriends, and, especially, to see Jerusalem.It’s had fantastic reviews, Mark Rylance is supposed to be stunning, have Iimagined it or did I see the phrase ‘once in a generation’ somewhere? Soobviously, it’s likely to be disappointing. Maybe Rylance will be like DanielDay Lewis in Gangs of New York, overthe top, mannered and frankly a bit panto. Maybe he’ll be bravura, like AnthonySher swinging around on his crutches in RichardIII, so you admire and enjoy it, but you aren’t fully engaged, don’t quitebelieve it. Maybe. Either way, I’m expecting slippage between anticipation andthe event. Because I’m a bit of a gloomy git. I’m Paul Giamatti in Sideways (which I saw again a couple of days ago - fantastic), not Thomas Haden Church. But,but, but … still capable of taking pleasure from anticipation, from actual experience,and from memory, because it’s London, family and friends and a play, what’s notto like? And then it’s Christmas, more family, and food and drink and presentsand Dr Who. Although Dr Who last year, that giant, floating shark, it wasrubbish, wasn’t it?

I Hope It's Forks

2011-10-21T11:26:00.000+01:00

My son’sthinking of an animal. So far I’ve managed to establish it has less than fourlegs.

‘Two?’

‘No.’

OK, maybe he’sthinking of a snail. ‘Just one leg?’

‘No.’

‘It has threelegs?’

‘Yes.’

‘No animal hasthree legs.’

‘This onedoes.’

We go back onforth on this for a while, but he’s insisting all the time that he's right. Finally, like he’sgetting really frustrated with how dim I am, he’s shouting -

‘It has threelegs! Three on each side!’

‘OK, we’regetting somewhere. So is it very small, like an ant?’

‘No, it’s verybig.’

‘A very biganimal with six legs?’

Turns out,eventually, it’s a scorpion. Which has eight legs. My son’s not too botheredabout whether it’s an insect, an arachnid or indeed a mammal. He has athoughtful look in his eyes now.

‘Which d’youthink there’s more of in the world,’ he says. ‘Scorpions, or forks?’

Lumb Bank

2011-10-13T09:48:00.002+01:00

It’s an eighteenth century mill owner’s house on a long grassy terrace halfway down a valley outside Heptonstall, West Yorkshire. Across the valley you’ve got the hillside, covered with trees and heather, and then down in the valley it’s just seething with trees in every shade of green. Mill chimneys poking up out of the foliage, looking like they’ve always been there.

My Dad was there first, as a student, in the 80’s. I turned up in 1990, tutoring a Starting to Write course. 16 students, two tutors, living together from Monday to Saturday, workshops and one to one tutorials. I was there again the following year, tutoring a school, and then I lived there for three years, with my then girlfriend now wife, we were running the place as Centre Directors. The job wore us down in the end - being nice to people every week, it wears you out - but we never got tired of the place. I’ve been back many times over the years as a tutor and a guest reader, most recently last week, tutoring a lovely Starting to Write a Novel course with Patrick Neate. It’s one of my favourite places in the world.

Every room has memories, every corner of every room, layers of memories. When I’m there, I feel like trailing my hands along the walls, picking them up through touch, through smell, through the sound of pens on paper or dishes clattering in the kitchen or people talking somewhere. A reading silencing everyone; a room full of people laughing during a workshop; the party we had the night we got married, the room full of our closest friends; crossing the garden, heading back to the cottage after a reading, beneath a big sky, seeing shooting stars, a hedgehog, hearing the low white noise of the river. And standing there, by the low wall, looking out at the view, in every season, at every time of day and most times of night, just looking.

Twenty Questions

2011-09-12T16:40:00.000+01:00

I’ve just done an interview on Steve May’s always intriguing blog.

http://thesecondbesttime.blogspot.com/

20 questions about this and that. Zombies, The Last Word, Emmerdale, Angela Carter - the usual sorts of things I guess. Which makes me think I could do a whole blog entry on meeting famous people, because I have run into a few over the years. It would be about how rubbish I am at it. Angela was an exception, because it wasn’t a social meeting, it had a context, she was reading my stuff and criticising it. And then if I did meet her socially after that I felt like I knew her, and it was fine. It was very nice, in fact. Others though … just awkward. Embarrassed smiles, sidelong glances, blushes, tongue-tied responses. It sounds like a shy boy meeting a girl, doesn’t it? You have to pity famous people I guess, if they get that reaction very much. What are you supposed to do when faced by it? Still. I’m older now. I might be better at it if it happens again. Although I didn't do very well with William Boyd (July 09.) Maybe I'd be better just to avoid them ...

If ...

2011-09-05T14:29:00.000+01:00

If I hadn't been ill I'd have gone to Manchester University instead of UCL. I wouldn't have met my future wife. I might not have entered the Time Out/Whitbread competition I stumbled on in my second year, so my first story wouldn't have been published. I wouldn't have had the editor of the LRB as a tutor, so my second story might not have been published there, nor my third which got into Fiction magazine because an agent saw my second in the LRB. I went to UEA partly because a mate who had a cricket match there picked up an application form for me, because of those three stories on my CV, and because of a good reference from another tutor, Dan Jacobson. Perhaps without all those factors I wouldn't have got there either. I wouldn't have written my first novel. Illness gave me a subject, a structure and a style for A CHINESE SUMMER. It gave me a bank of memories, impressions and sensations to draw on, and it gave me a mood-flavoured point of view which gave the novel it's voice.

It's like one of those episodes of Star Trek where they encounter a temporal anomaly, and find out how things might have been. I wonder about this life I didn't lead, those gaping holes it would have left. Would they have been filled by something I'd be equally sorry to lose? I doubt it, but then I would, wouldn't I?

The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

2011-08-24T10:18:00.002+01:00

Finished it. The last third is as good as anything he’s done, which is to say very good indeed. He habitually writes in short stories, linked short stories presented as novels, like my last book, TENDER. 1000 Autumns is essentially three novellas, the first weak, the second an improvement, and the third excellent. So, a qualified recommendation. But there’s a humanity underpinning his writing, a belief that honesty and kindness are the best options in human relationships, that I find very attractive. He's not interested in cheap, attention-grabbing tricks, melodrama introduced to make the plot work, or as an excuse for some purple prose, his stories are inventive and surprising, the ideas bubbling beneath them are always at least interesting, his language is beautiful and distinctive, his characters engaging and his research – which I was a bit snippy about below – unsurpassed. And they're about to start filming his masterpiece, CLOUD ATLAS, I believe. Films of books, that's a whole different discussion ...

Edinburgh

2011-08-22T10:29:00.000+01:00

Up on stage. Dragged up on stage by an unusual comedian at the Edinburgh Festival, in front of maybe 300 people, squinting into the dazzle, trying to smile, wondering what’s happening to my lips. It was embarrassing of course, but fun too, even while I was up there I was enjoying it, it was memorable. That was The Boy With The Tape on His Mouth, a man doing an hour’s show with his mouth taped up, using mime and physical comedy and the audience; child-like, playful, sophisticated, bit of Tati, one of my highlights. The other would be A Slow Air by David Harrower, lovely play at the Traverse, about family, a brother and a sister, estrangement, something I always seem to be looking at in my fiction, beguiling. And the wonderful story-telling of The Man Who Planted Trees, with the very funny dog puppet, the surprising and engaging kids’ show, Boxes and Bubblewrap, Michael Morpurgo doing his gentle, moving thing in Private Peaceful, and Neil Gaiman at the Book Festival, being pleasant and interesting, though I’d have liked to hear him read.

So that was a success. Daughter desperate to return next year. Son a little more luke-warm, a little less surprised by it all. Walking down the Royal Mile among tightrope walking jugglers, fire-eaters, strangely dressed performers accosting us to hand out fliers, he’s earnestly asking me, Who would win in a fight between Caligula and Blackbeard?

In other news, The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Z … a bit disappointing. I love David Mitchell, but I’m not enjoying this very much. Jacob de Z’s a bit dull, the thriller story of the second part’s an improvement but not very thrilling and with a predictable (inevitable?) twist. Just beginning the third part. When you admire the visuals on a Pixar film, you know there’s something wrong with the story. Here, I’m admiring the research.

Riots

2011-08-11T09:52:00.000+01:00

It’s poverty, it’s bad parenting, it’s police harassment, it’s failed education, it’s lack of aspiration, it’s lack of discipline, it’s the glamorisation of criminals, it’s adults spending too much time trying to be like cool kids instead of showing kids how to be like adults, it’s defining people by consumerism then denying them consumer goods, it’s straightforward greed, it’s gangs of criminals, it’s the cult of self-esteem, it’s lack of role models, it’s the closure of youth clubs, it’s all a bit depressing. Hard to imagine a way back from this. It would take enlightened, longterm work by politicians who weren't going to be influenced by unpopularity, looming elections or the Daily Mail, who were dedicated to perceptive, compassionate, hard-headed policies aimed at improving all the above. Like I say, hard to imagine.

A Different Life

2011-08-08T14:15:00.000+01:00

So, after February 1982 (see below) there were about two years where my life was arranged by illness. Chemotherapy, knee replacement, physiotherapy, radical surgery. What does it mean, to be ill? It means being a step back, being passive while other people do things to you, and for you. Doctors and nurses clustered round me, prodding me, examining me, made me feel important. Or they left me alone, walked past, checked a chart without a word, made me feel neglected, ignored. Powerless, either way. I lay in my hospital bed and watched somebody die in the bed opposite, and I was sad and scared while watching it, but grateful to be there, to witness it. I lay there while friends and family visited. I lay there and craned my neck so that I could look out of a window at what was going on in the street outside. I sat in other people’s cars as they drove me to and from the hospital, and looked out at what was happening in the ordinary, breathing world. You’re behind a window a lot, or feel like you are, looking out at life going on elsewhere.

Once a friend called Robin drove me away on a morning when I couldn’t have chemo because my blood count wasn’t right. We drove up the hill out of the hospital, on a beautiful sunny morning, and he put Beethoven’s violin concerto on, and it felt like the world couldn’t be more perfect than this: being driven away from hospital by a friend, in sunlight, with the music playing, and not having chemo. Your values are rearranged when you’re ill. You’ve entered a different world with different rules and when you leave it – if you leave it – you’re changed.

That period has influenced everything since, has made me a different person. I’m more or less with Nietzche on this:

As far as concerns my own sickness, am I not infinitely more indebted to it than to my health? It is to my sickness that I owe a higher health.

OR: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

(I haven't read Nietzche, I heard the first quote in a lecture, and saw the second at the beginning of Conan the Barbarian. It seemed clever to me at the time, and apt, since I was in the midst of illness, but it’s become a cliché, and lost it’s power. Thanks, John Milius.)

I try not to be romantic about it. If I could keep the change but lose the experience, then I’d do it. But if I could only lose both the experience and the change in myself, then I’d most likely do that. And then I'd be an altogether different person, living a different life.

Snapshot

2011-07-28T14:14:00.001+01:00

READING – Just started Game of Thrones. Because I loved the TV series. Got 1000 Autumns of Jacob Wotsit lined up next. Because I think David Mitchell may be the most exciting and interesting living English novelist. I’m trying to remember what I finished before GofT. I can’t. I’m racking my brains (or am I wracking them?) and I genuinely can’t remember. Which is a bit scary.

WATCHING – The Killing box-set. The Danish one of course, not the American remake. Dour, slow and utterly absorbing. The Hour. Yes, it’s miscast, the two leads are at least ten years too young. And apparently it’s nothing like a newsroom, but I’m enjoying the story, the characters. I want to see where it takes me. Torchwood. Which is silly, which you expect but maybe it’s a bit too silly, so I may not stick with it. And Emmerdale, naturally, which is in a good moment, Aaron on trial, teetering on the brink of an abyss of guilt.

WRITING – New novel, The Last Word comes out August 17th. Yay! Available for pre-order on Amazon. Working on Victorian novel. Working on kids’ TV series idea. It’s at an early stage but there’s been a little bit of interest. Might it be possible to get some development money? We’ll see. Working on a stage play idea, a collaboration, possibly for Edinburgh next year. But that’s not going to happen is it? Surely not. But you never know, and working on it is fun. Playing with a film idea, a Gothicky, ghosty thing. And working on Emmerdale. (Of course.)

And meanwhile, lining up readings for The Last Word, at a library, a bookshop, also in Manchester. Maybe a launch. And the zombie film’s coming out next year.

And meanwhile, everything else continues, family, friends, texture, the getting from one place to another, the sleeping and not sleeping, the hopes and worries, the appalling news stories.

And meanwhile, this morning, Son was disappointed over spending his little savings on something he didn’t much like. His mood, his sad face, have affected my day more than any of the above.

A Lake of Tears

2011-07-21T09:53:00.000+01:00

Leavers’ Assembly. Last day of Year 6. Girls weeping, mums weeping, dad’s sniffling, boys looking a bit puzzled. You have to go with the cliché here, it’s irresistible - seems like last week, literally last week, Daughter was entering her big new Primary school with a crowd of other kids, gait awkward, legs stiff, because they were so very nervous. That was four years ago. Seems like only the week before I watched her toddling off holding her mum’s hand, and her little lunch-box, to infants’ school. That was seven years, maybe eight years ago. She didn’t even much enjoy school these past few months, got too big for it, wasn’t learning much, marking time before moving on. Makes no difference. A chunk of childhood is over, four years, more than a third of her life, and you can’t help it, nostalgia gets you, and maybe the worry about whether you enjoyed it enough, wrung enough out of it, appreciated it enough, valued it enough.

Time works its slippery business. You’ve got a pretty good grip on it as it plods along, hour by hour, day by day, then suddenly … woah, what was that? You’ve dropped it, spilt it on the floor, and there’s four years round your feet, finished, irreplaceable. So that’s it, it’s becoming a memory now. You remember that trip, that teacher, that time when we … It’s gone.

February 1982 (Part 2)

2011-07-18T10:56:00.000+01:00

I was wearing a shirt with cufflinks. God knows why. I think it may very well be the one time in my life I’ve worn cuff-links. Maybe someone gave them to me. I was 18, probably thought they were sophisticated. Westminster Hospital. The doctor was a woman, and by now she had the results of the X-ray at Greenwich and the biopsy, so she had the definitive word, a sketch of the likely treatment, prognosis, all that. She was very firm that it was curable. Which made me think – for the first time? Surely not, but perhaps this was the first time it became articulated – it made me think it might not be curable. But my memory as usual skips around the dialogue, all the dramatic stuff, fixes on the embarrassing detail. She needed to take some blood. Just roll your sleeve up, she said. Then she sat and watched me as I fiddled with the unfamiliar cuff-links, with fingers that may have been shaking, wanting to tell her it’s not that I’m upset, although I am obviously, it’s just that I’m not used to these things, these cufflinks, these impossibly fiddly, utterly pointless bits of metal. How long? Probably only 30 seconds or so, but it felt like minutes. Is it even possible that she helped me? Perhaps I asked her, or perhaps she couldn’t bear to sit there any longer, watching. Anyway, the sleeve went up eventually. I imagine we both felt like cheering. Big events are written in capitals, they’re loud, they have exclamation marks. But it’s the small stuff, very often awkwardness, clumsiness, a mis-step, it's the ordinary texture of life that snags the emotions and hints at everything that lies beneath.

Zombies

2011-07-13T10:22:00.003+01:00

Saw a trailer for Before Dawn last night, the relationship drama with zombies I wrote, from a story by Dominic Brunt and Jo Mitchell. It’s looking good. Strange hybrid, first half a serious, hopefully emotional unpeeling of a troubled relationship; second half zombie holocaust. High production values, (top actors and crew, make-up by veterans of Harry Potter and Dr Who), tiny budget. It’s out next year. Made with a new camera, I’ve forgotten what it’s called, but it basically seems to mean anyone can make a film that looks like Hollywood product for bobbins. Sounds a bit like e-books, potentially revolutionising publishing by allowing anyone to get their books on Kindle, via Amazon. In both cases of course, publicity is still the key. It’s all very well having your film or book out there, but people have to know about it before they buy it.

And this morning, in the playground, I signed a tea-towel. I got Dom to sign it last night, and was asked to add my own signature. I’ve signed a few books in my time, but this was a first. It was an Emmerdale tea-towel, I should clarify, a raffle prize. Has my felt-tip scrawl really made it more desirable? I honestly doubt it.

Inside and Outside

2011-07-11T14:37:00.001+01:00

I remember a line in The Great Gatsby – actually, I don’t remember the line, I remember a version of it, without any of Fitzgerald’s swooning poetry and elegance – Nick Carraway’s at a party, and he says something about feeling that he’s ‘inside and outside simultaneously’. It doesn’t sound like much, but it struck me as a deliberate allusion to the writer’s position, experiencing something while at the same time observing that experience, storing it up, filing it away, for future reference, like the actor who checks the mirror when his mum’s died, to see what bereavement looks like. Which means that you’re busy observing it, but you’re also diluting it, making it less worthwhile, and less enjoyable, by standing with one foot outside it, as if you’re really not entirely sure you want to get involved, thank you very much.

Of course I was an awkward teenager when I first read GG, and it’s no coincidence that inside and outside simultaneously is also the position of the awkward teenager, trying to be confident, trying to be unselfconsciously in the moment, but a bit too uncomfortable in his skin, too shy and, well, too awkward, to wholly carry it off.

So what does that mean? All writers retain some element of the awkward teenager inside them? No, that’s clearly nonsense. Any sentence that begins ‘All writers …’ is probably pointless. Just bring it back to Fitzgerald, ‘inside and outside simultaneously’, which suggests that dilution I mentioned, an incompleteness, a less satisfying life, if you’re doing the ‘outside’ part properly, conscientiously. But does it have to be simultaneous? Maybe the secret is to have the full experience at the time, then remember it later, in tranquillity. Back to memory then, which more and more seems like a polite word for making things up …

University

2011-07-01T10:07:00.001+01:00

I made a mess of my Cambridge entrance exam. I seem to remember in the practical criticism writing a lot about the punctuation in a poem. I felt I was in a hyper-perceptive state, and I spent a page or so writing about the placing of a particular full-stop. In retrospect, it was not a very charismatic full-stop, and I was probably hyper-nervous rather than hyper-perceptive. And then I made a mess of the interview as well. There were two interviews in fact, and I was waiting outside the first room with a boy from Radley who, it turned out, seemed to think his interview was at the same time as mine. I felt pretty smug about this. Radley had just had a TV series devoted to it, something that my school unaccountably had never quite managed. He was going to be very embarrassed when he found he’d made such an elementary mistake. He hadn’t. I ran out of the building, and around the quadrangle several times, like that sprinter in that scene from Chariots of Fire, opening doors and peering in more or less at random, and eventually I found the right building and the right room and I was only about ten minutes late. Unfortunately, I was breathless. He asked me about King Lear, something I was quite knowledgeable about at the time, but I couldn’t speak, all I could do was pant: ‘Justice ... flies to wanton ... any cause in nature ...?’

In retrospect of course, everything (except that full-stop) has its own shape and meaning, which you entirely miss at the time. My efforts, once I’d got decent A levels, were largely irrelevant. I applied for Cambridge, didn’t go there, had a place at Manchester, didn’t go there either. I finished up at University College London instead, which was a great place to be, but which I hadn’t even applied to.

School

2011-06-30T10:13:00.001+01:00

I had some odd teachers. I remember sneezing once, as I was leaving a class, and seeing the teacher wheel round and bellow ‘Who did that?’ I hesitantly put up my hand and he came slowly over to me, stood above me, and snarled ‘If you do that again I’ll make you dress and undress in front of the class six times.’ I remember my feelings moving slowly from fear to puzzlement. Dress and undress? Six times? Are you sure that’s what you meant to say? Many of them tended to fly into tempers very easily, as if they lived always on the edge of some nameless rage. You could watch the progression, if you’d said or done something you shouldn’t have. The pause as the teacher’s eyes slowly focus on you, the wounded look developing on his face, he seems to wince, his head sinks briefly into his hands as the enormity of your crime sinks in, the words start quietly, 'You think it’s funny ...’ He’s shaking his head, in all his years of teaching he’s seen nothing like you, and now the volume is rising, he’s working himself up, the colour is entering his cheeks, and you can see him taking a breath ready to roar. Some of them loved a little drama, the petty exercise of power.

Teachers at my school were subject to depression and suicide. Being fairly bright, and keeping a fairly low profile, I mostly got on with them. Looking back, I raise my eyebrows a little when I remember the odd one who had a tickling fight with me, an angel-faced eight year old, when I was in my gym kit. You wouldn’t get away with that these days, but I’m sure I enjoyed it, was flattered by the attention. My only problem was that, being scared of their tempers, I was too keen to please them, so for a couple of pre-O level years I would often copy the work of the boy sitting next to me who, by an alphabetical fluke, was the cleverest boy in the year. This would have been all right, but I was never very subtle about it, and we often seemed to get the same mark in tests, which was embarrassing. Happiest years of my life? No, not even close.

Blurb

2011-06-29T09:13:00.001+01:00

Working on a snappy and engaging blurb for the novel. (THE LAST WORD, out in August, may have previously mentioned.) Or, not a blurb exactly, something for Salt to show bookshop buyers, to persuade them to stock it. Trying to be intriguing, trying to develop interest without giving away the plot, trying to sound exciting without overdoing it – it’s not easy. This is what I went for …

Gloria, meet Stephen. He’s your dead brother’s best mate. He’s also a liar, and he doesn’t want to hand over your brother’s belongings. He’s got a hair collection, and he’s got somebody’s teeth hidden in a drawer. An inconvenient spider’s going to play a crucial part in your relationship. Oh yes, and someone – God knows who - is sending him letters claiming it’s his fault Max is dead.

Stephen, meet Gloria. She’s not good with people. She wants you to hand over all Max’s most precious stuff. She likes to steal things, she gate-crashes funerals, she’s going to force you to revisit some of the most painful moments in your life. And she doesn’t know who’s writing the weird letters you’re getting, but she agrees – she thinks it’s your fault her brother killed himself. Oh yes, and it’s down to her that you’re going to wind up in hospital, and all over the papers. Well, the Scarborough papers anyway. On the plus side – you might get to sleep with her.

You’re going to be together for one strange, eventful and occasionally horrifying week so … good luck. By the time it’s over, you’ll both know Max – and each other - a whole lot better. And the world will seem entirely different.

The world will seem entirely different. Cheesy? Possibly. Still, there you have it …

Post Shorts

2011-06-28T09:20:00.001+01:00

Shorts went well. Full houses, lots of laughs, mostly in the right places, applause, everything you could hope for really. And then a party afterwards, too much to drink. I left with a mate, some time after midnight, we found a guy standing outside saying ‘I don’t know where I am.’ Not one of our lot, a random guy with eyes focused a long, long way away. ‘You all right?’ A pause, as the words slowly penetrated. Then, ‘I don’t know where I am.’ ‘You’re in Hebden Bridge.’ He nodded slowly, like nodding too fast would be both difficult and dangerous. Then another pause. Then, ‘I don’t know where I am.’ We were wondering what to do. Did he need an ambulance? But then he ran off.

And so next year, next year … We need to debrief. We probably need to let a new bunch of writers do it. How would they get chosen? Don’t know, not really my problem. An anonymous competition type thing, I guess. But would I like to do it again? Yes, I would. Maybe I’ll do it in Manchester, if I get asked, where it goes on for two weeks, and the press turn up. Maybe …

Meanwhile other projects move forward. The Show of course, as ever, the kids’ TV idea, the radio play idea, this blog that I’m trying to do more frequently, where I’m trying to mix up memories and the present day, and the book. The Book. The Last Word, coming out in August.

Christmas 1981

2011-06-27T09:51:00.000+01:00

I was working in Harrods at the time. A Christmas sales job, putting up temporary dressing rooms, unloading lorries, that sort of thing. All the boys from proper public schools were behind the counters, wearing suits they looked natural in. This is the winter of 81/82. I remember walking through early morning streets hushed by snow. Cars creeping gingerly by. My footsteps crunching and squeaking. Brakes moaning like whale-song on Beauchamp Place. Occasionally I worked Sundays, double-pay, and at seven in the morning the city was as I’d never seen it before, never imagined it, deserted and draped in white as if for some ceremony, some fantastic wedding. I’d lived in London all my life, but I got to know it better, walking in it, from Charing Cross, over Trafalgar Square, up Pall Mall and round the palace, to Hyde Park Corner, along Knightsbridge to Harrods’ discreet back entrance. Home via Picadilly, where brake-lights shone in the early evening darkness, to Leicester Square, to meet friends in The Imperial. Monopoly names, which had once been evocative but meaningless. Now I was walking along these streets like I belonged in them. And being handed real money, a hundred pounds or so, in a wad in a brown envelope each week.

I’m not sure what my plans were. Three months earning money, working evenings and weekends, and then going to Europe, and travelling on long train journeys to places I’d never been before. Then Manchester, English and American Literature, then God knows what. The Harrods job wasn’t even a bridge, it was a doorway, out of school, into some new, more adult version of life.

There was a bump on my knee. I noticed it one day, and couldn’t remember having knocked or twisted it. It didn’t go away or get any smaller, and ached a little. Once I knocked it when I was manoeuvring a heavy trolley, and it hurt like hell, sending a shiver of pain through my whole body. The doctor said it looked like water on the knee, or something called, I think, a ganglion, and booked me in for an X-ray a couple of weeks later. My mother, ex-nurse, informed by intuition or anxiety, arranged for one two days later at Greenwich Hospital.

Shorts

2011-06-24T09:14:00.001+01:00

That’s short plays, not trousers. Six writers, mostly TV, mostly unused to theatre, writing 15 minute plays for the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. It happened for the first time last year, three nights, sold out, went down very well. Mine was set in a soap storyline office. This year mine’s set at the bottom of a cliff, after a nasty accident …

Hope it goes all right, I’ve got a great director and cast, but there’s been hardly any rehearsal time, availability problems, space problems. Tech yesterday, tensions running high, there was almost a fight – nothing to do with my merry little band – it was a thespian sort of fight, a lot of words and not much else. Eventually someone threw themselves between the combatants shouting ‘Leave it, he’s not worth it!’ and it all ended happily. Dress today, opens tonight. One of my actors leaves Wolverhampton at 5.30 to be in the theatre and on stage at 8.30. Let’s hope there’s no motorway pile-ups. It’s good though, good to sit in an audience and hear and see and feel their reactions to the piece line by line as it develops and unfolds. Telling a story, and seeing the response in someone’s face as they listen. Don’t get that with telly, don’t get that with books either, not unless you sit next to someone who’s reading it, watching their face intently, nudging them now and then to see if they’re enjoying it. Which isn’t really feasible.

This is what writing is – communication, Of course if the audience boo, or sit in stony silence, I might not be feeling so naively upbeat about it tomorrow.

June 1997

2011-06-23T09:18:00.001+01:00

I’m in a car with C, heading from Hebden Bridge down to Elstree, where they make EastEnders. C is an established, highly respected writer on the show, on his way to a commissioning meeting. I’m on my way to an interview. I’m a novelist, I’ve recently left five years of full-time employment (still the only years of full-time employment I’ve done in my life) and I’m intending to return to making a living from writing. I’m working on a new novel – at any given moment in my adult life, I’m working on a new novel – and I’m doing bits and bobs of teaching, but the new plan, the new Plan, is to try TV. So I’m on my way to Elstree.

C is driving. I read his storyline to him. He tells me about commissioning, what it involves, how the show works. We think about what they might ask me in the interview. I come up with a couple of criticisms of the show. Don’t do that, C says. Say it’s great, and tell them why it’s great. I sent them a calling card script, they seemed to like it, asked for another. Now they want to see me. I’ve written a couple of episodes of The Bill by this time, but I have to admit I’m more excited about this. I’ve watched Enders, off and on, for years. And it’s a chance – isn’t it? I’m not quite sure how these things work at this point – it seems like it’s a chance to get some regular, well paid TV work.

We have the interview. She talks about my script. She’s pretty negative about it, comically so. She’s not blessed with people skills. (A lot of TV people, perhaps a disproportionate number, aren’t blessed with people skills.) She isn’t wild about the main character, or the story, she likes the little characters, off to the side, having a chat about nothing very much. I tell her that’s what I like too. Not so much pushing the story from A to B to C, but the little things along the way, Tiffany and Bianca at the bar talking about men, the texture, the small stuff in between events. I think she likes that. Anyway, I get the job. C shows me round the Square. It’s the Square! It’s all very exciting, can’t quite believe I’m becoming a part - a small part, a tiny stitch - of the fabric of popular culture.

But these days, honestly, I much prefer Emmerdale.

February 1982

2011-06-22T09:33:00.002+01:00

I remember the sun shining. Walking across the heath, the long expanse of green criss-crossed by roads, the big sky above me. I took all that for granted, because I grew up with it. Then down the steep hill, Maze Hill I think, towards Greenwich Hospital where I received – can this be right? – the diagnosis. Odd that I can’t remember the particular moment when I was told. I think it was then, that day, that place, rather than with my GP, or at the Westminster or the Marsden, where I found myself later. I’d had an X-ray, they told me the result at Greenwich, sent me to Westminster for the biopsy.

I walked back up the steep hill, carrying this new information about myself, back towards the heath, and towards a moment I do remember well. It turns up at the beginning of my second novel, The Alchemist. Of course memory is unreliable, layered and patched by the stories we tell ourselves. I think I remember it well, but perhaps I don’t. Doesn’t matter, it’s solidly part of my history now. A woman was coming towards me, she was bulky and pasty-faced, she wore a denim jacket, and she looked like she was in the midst of an argument with someone. She glared at me, a scary fierceness to her, God knows what she might say or do, she shouted something into my face, and as I walked quickly past her, she turned and spat at my retreating back.

I don’t remember receiving the diagnosis. I don’t remember telling my mother when I got back. I remember the mad woman spitting at me, opening the door to a different future.

Making Stuff Up

2011-01-28T13:32:00.001Z

Delighted for Jo Shapcott winning the Costa for Of Mutability, a collection that partly arises from and explores her experience of cancer. She’s called it ‘emotional autobiography’, less interested in what actually happened than in what it might mean. Most of the hordes of books on the subject are probably non-fiction memoirs, but I find the approach of fiction and poetry more interesting. People sometimes say they prefer non-fiction, because why should they read someone making stuff up when they can read what really happened. It’s an argument which reveals a basic misunderstanding of how stories work, and how writing in general works. Non-fiction is far from reliable about facts, let alone truth; fiction and poetry are excellent investigative instruments, looking beneath events, unpeeling emotions.

My first novel emerged from my experience of cancer. Like Jo, I was preoccupied by the different world you enter when you have a serious illness. The alienation, the stepping aside from the normal current of life. For me, it was bound up with the standard alienation of the angsty teenager, and the outside-looking-in feeling of the developing writer. And of course that experience was only one ingredient in the mysterious process of writing a novel, but it was an essential ingredient, a place to begin.

Augie and Dorrit

2010-04-19T09:31:00.004+01:00

So anyway, The Adventures of Augie March. The kind of novel I haven't read for a while. Difficult, knotty prose, an expansive and sometimes puzzling breadth of reference, strange syntax with a foreign feel to it, and alongside that a distinct sense of exuberance, a desire to dazzle, throbbing away beneath the surface. But, but ... so far (and I'm only running up to the first 100 pages at the moment) it's one character portrait after another, Grandma Lausch, Einhorn, all about them, inside and out, and pretty engaging, but where's the narrative? Chapter 6 starts 'What did I, out of all this, want for myself?' So maybe that focus is shifting. It's great by the way, I should probably clarify. It's a holiday in a foreign land, occasionally bewildering, but exciting.

And at work, at lunch-time, after my boiled eggs or my beans on toast, and before I fall asleep on the sofa, I'm reading Little Dorrit, because the novel I'm writing is my first ever period one, set around mid-nineteenth century, but you don't need any excuse to read Little Dorrit because it's so wonderful, so utterly involving in its many-layered, richly textured, extravagantly peopled, gritty, smelly wholeness. It may be displacing Bleak House as my favourite Dickens.

How is it possible that so many intelligent men I know (mostly men) say they never read novels? How do they live?

Longlist

2009-08-12T10:42:00.005+01:00

This is exciting. I'm on the Guardian's 'Not The Booker' longlist. As voted by readers who nominated any eligible books. So it's an extremely long list - 47 I think - but there I am, and voted for by some very nice person with excellent taste who I don't know. Always faintly surprising to remember that people I don't know read my books. And he runs a bookshop. (If you're reading this - thank you very much.) My local lovely little independent bookshop are great supporters of me too. Maybe I appeal to bookshop owners. Of course the likes of Mantel, Coetzee and Byatt are also on this list, but I hope they're not too intimidated by joining me. My own feeling is that people should get hold of the books they'd never heard of previously, the ones starved of publicity, probably from small publishers like, I don't know, Salt, they should read them and then, if they enjoy them they should vote for them and encourage all their friends to do so. But that may be just me.

Horror

2009-07-03T15:33:00.003+01:00

Waiting for Storylines. Should be working on a short story, or the radio play idea I'm going to submit soon, or the novel, but I'm not. Difficult to focus on that sort of thing when Storylines are looming.

I was in London for a couple of days this week. Lunch with my agent at Tate Britain. Saw a bit of Rothko and Turner side by side, which was fascinating. 'That man obviously learnt a lot from me,' Rothko said. Also saw 'Classified' with Hirst and the Chapman brothers, and others whose names I don't know, which was surprisingly coherent and engaging and generally good. surprisingly because I'm very sceptical about all that stuff. I enjoyed the room full of metronomes, and the big cabinet containing artefacts (old plastic bottles etc) found on the Bankside dig.

And then my agent told me TV drama had never been in such an awful state. As in, no one's commissioning. Or if they are, only from very established names. Nothing new there I suppose, but it did all sound a bit apocalyptic. He recommended low budget films, so that's what I'm thinking about now. Maybe genre. Low budget British horror. That's a fun area to explore.

And then a party at an astoundingly posh house in Holland Park, which I was taken to by the person I was staying with in London. William Boyd was there. Did I talk to him? No. Would have liked to, because I enjoyed Any Human Heart very much, and have read him on and off ever since The Ice-Cream War, but I didn't because he was surrounded by people, and I'm sort of rubbish like that. It was all in aid of an excellent charity called Room to Read. Google it - it's great.

Time to check if Storylines have arrived ...

Facebook

2009-04-27T14:11:00.001+01:00

Having said I’d have nothing to do with it below, ('vain ... odd ... young') I’ve quickly succumbed. Friends told me it would help sell the book. I’d create an Event, everyone would read it. Salt said the same. Well, maybe some time. At the moment I’m playing Scrabble. That’s what Facebook’s for, as far as I can see. Playing with three friends, keep checking back instead of working, feel it luring me now. Also played UNO with Daughter against Jelena and El Guaro, whoever they might be, which was fun. And have dipped toe in Poker. Games are what life’s for, surely, where we become ourselves and also, occasionally, forget ourselves. I’m sure that should be love, and sex but … no … it’s games.

Then there’s the friends issue. I currently have eight, which I believe is pretty paltry. Eight good friends in the neighbourhood isn’t too bad I think, if you live in a small town, but eight on Facebook is like ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ And one of them isn’t a friend at all, and I sort of wish they’d go away. But two are people I haven’t talked to in years and am enjoying being in contact with, and one of them I instant messaged with/to, which I’ve never done before. And he said he'd buy the book. So that was exciting.

So that’s me surfing the cultural wave then. Although obviously if I’ve finally grabbed my surfboard and stumbled into the sea and climbed on and wobbled my way out of my depth, then the wave is certainly elsewhere and I’m paddling about in yesterday’s stagnant backwash. Still … Scrabble.

Bigger

2009-04-24T11:24:00.000+01:00

Haven’t been anywhere this week, hardly seen anyone, it’s been a week spent entirely on The Show. Two edits and a new episode to work on. Sat at my desk, tussling with the best way to turn a phrase, to convey a story beat without being too on the nose, to find some texture in a plotty scene, to make it funnier. One of the edits has been heavy. No, they said, make it bigger. More twists and turns, more impact. Emotional explosions. Bigger. I may have said before, The Show is all italics and exclamation marks, it’s in bold and capitals. That’s what life is often like on The Show. It’s seldom like that in my stories and novels. It tends to be a more normal typeface, quieter, emotions simmer beneath the surface, only occasionally flare up, explosions are mostly avoided. For me, that’s like life. (Sitting at my desk, working with words. Putting the kettle on is a big event.) But I think we’re both right, me and The Show. Life after all, is a bit of this and also a bit of that, mixed, stirred and heated, with secret ingredients sprinkled in. Close your eyes, inhale the steam, see what happens. It’s mysterious. People, and marriages, turn out not to be what you thought they were. Your own body turns out to be hiding dark secrets, waiting for the right moment to reveal them. Peel back the surface and reveal … something else. That’s what we’re all trying to translate, on to the page, or on to the screen. So not a bad week. And on Sunday I’ll go to LaserZone with Daughter, and shoot people.

Clockless

2009-04-14T09:53:00.003+01:00

You know the drawing in pencil, or maybe charcoal, by Lowry, of Manchester Central Library? There was a print on the wall of my parents’ house when I was growing up. It’s a lovely picture, very simple, of this elegant, round edifice on St Peter’s Square. A slight hint of a UFO about it, or a wedding cake. I think in the drawing the library is less hedged around by other buildings than it is now, I have a sense of it standing alone. Anyway, that’s where I was last Thursday night, reading from TENDER, launching it, in a room that followed the slow curve of the building. The walls were covered not with pictures, but with wooden notice-boards inscribed with long lists of names in gilt letters. Chair of the Library Committee, Councillor So and So. And above the notice-boards there was a hole in the curved wall with wires sprouting from it, where a clock used to be. It had gone to be mended apparently, which felt appropriate. Time had stepped discreetly out of the door. I read a story (sort of) inspired by my teenage years to (mostly) strangers, sitting inside a picture from childhood, surrounded by the names of the dead. And felt a rare sense of aptness.

Halfway Down The Stairs ...

2009-03-25T15:23:00.001Z

Spent two and a half hours on Leeds station, waiting for my mother, who was stuck just a few miles away behind a broken down train, waiting for a third train to come and rescue it. Browsed Smiths, M&S food store, Boots, sat with a coffee and an almond croissant, fed the meter in the car park, browsed Smiths again, sat and watched trailers for a Clive Owen thriller on the big screen. I like stations. The sense that you all have a more or less common purpose, and you’re neither here nor there, suspended in time. Halfway down the stairs is a place where I stop. Tried to think of books set in stations, or scenes in books. Remembered watching The Odessa File as a kid, Jon Voight … pushed under a train in a German underground? An American Werewolf in London, the businessman being stalked in the tube. That fabulous scene in one of the Bourne thrillers, at Waterloo station. The Guardian journalist - Paddy Considine? – getting shot. The Railway Children of course, but I never read it, only saw the film. The figure appearing out of the steam, ‘Daddy, my daddy’. But books … my mind’s gone blank. Or it’s been colonised by big, brash films, pushing all the books out. Graham Greene wrote Stamboul Train, didn’t he? That must feature some stations. Anyway, my mum arrived eventually, so our stalled lives coughed back into action and continued, and continue.

King's Lynn

2009-03-17T11:38:00.002Z

On the road again … The King’s Lynn Fiction Festival. An hour in a school, with not very responsive teenage boys, a panel discussion about whether literature should civilise, educate or neither, (short answer – both, through the medium of empathy), a reading from the new book (TENDER, published by Salt – I may have mentioned it), and a panel discussion around six Desert Island books. Lovely weekend. Well, lovely maybe wouldn’t be the word for the school. One boy proudly told me he’d never read a book in his life, which surprised his teacher, since he’s doing English GCSE. And he’ll probably get a decent pass too. Rest of the weekend though – lovely is the right word.

We were met on the station, Friday lunch-time, by a piper and champagne. Why a piper? Why not? It’s that sort of Festival. Booze flowed freely all weekend, and the food was good too. Talked children (mine) and grandchildren (hers) with Beryl Bainbridge, talked of sadly departed Malcolm Bradbury with Christopher Bigsby, talked of crime novelist John Dickson Carr with Jill Paton Walsh, talked Hawthornden castle and other things with Sophie Hannah, talked about those old days with Bloomsbury (publishers, not febrile literary coterie) with DJ Taylor, and chatted happily with Rachel Hore, Tessa West and Anthony Grey. And with all sorts of friends of the Festival and audience members too, because that’s one of the best things about it – you don’t sit behind a table, signing (or not signing) books, you just mill about, chatting. Did sell 20 books though. And stayed with a very nice guy who had a full-size Dalek called Salvador in his kitchen. So that was good.

And my six Desert Island books? They were Bleak House, Dubliners, Ragtime, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Passion, The Road. Could have been six equally valid, entirely different ones of course, but they felt like good choices at the time. Sophie was off to Australia on a book tour on the Monday, Chris was just back from France. I go to Macclesfield and King’s Lynn. And like it.

Macclesfield

2009-03-11T15:54:00.000Z

Macclesfield, dangling like a glittering jewel beneath the giant ear of Manchester. Had a very good time there last night, reading from the new book, TENDER. (Have I mentioned TENDER already?) Steve and I drove there, taking a bizarre route suggested by TomTom, nearly running out of petrol, unable to phone ahead because of no credit on the mobile. We felt vaguely like itinerant comedians, crossing the country from gig to gig, staying in dodgy B&B’s, spending the day working on new material, then back in front of the audience every evening. But we’re not comedians on a relentless, soul-sapping tour, we’re writers, on an outing.

We were warmly welcomed, in spite of being late, (TomTom, petrol, phone), by Jane, Jane and Lesley, and shown into a room at Ronnie’s Bar full of sofas and comfy chairs. I read from TENDER (it’s my new book, did I say?) and Steve (May) read from his excellent first novel Tag, published by Cinnamon Press, and then Ronnie provided some food, and we answered questions and chatted until (quite) late. We talked about favourite writers, and I mentioned Doctorow, Roth and Cormac McCarthy, and someone else said ‘What, no women?’ So I quickly added Atwood (mainly for The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye), Winterson (mainly for The Passion) and Alice Munro (mainly because she’s the best living short story writer.)

When you’re sat most of the time in front of your computer, telling stories to your screen, it’s good, and healthy, to get out sometimes and meet readers, or other writers, or just, you know, humans. Especially if they’re warm and friendly, buy you a pint and give you food. A good evening. I’d rather be a writer than a comedian.

Two Years

2009-02-23T16:50:00.003Z

How long? Two years? How did that happen? I don’t know, time does that, creeps up on you, then slips past, quickly and slowly, and suddenly it’s later than you thought.

Quick summary. New book out, very soon, with Salt Publishing. TENDER. (I recommend it.) Still on The Show, which is continuing gallantly as ITV rocks and shudders, and throws various bits overboard, threatening to founder, to sink slowly beneath the waves with nothing left to show for itself but a stream of bubbles. Daughter 8, Son 4, family life usual confusing collision of sit-com and reality show. What else? New house, same area. So basically, let’s be honest, two years have passed and not that much has changed.

Salt want me on Facebook, they probably want me to Twitter, they definitely want me to have a website. So I’m going to have a website, but I’m resisting the rest. It all seems so vain, so odd, so young. I’m sort of semi-involved in all that, simultaneously ‘Yes, yes, come in, come and meet me,’ and ‘No, no, who are you, what do you want from me?’ Not very 21st century. Grew up in the seedy, unfriendly, paranoid Seventies … and haven’t changed much.

Favourite book of the century so far? The Road. Which is much more 'No, who are you' than 'Yes, come and meet me ...'

Funny Games

2007-01-17T09:43:00.000Z

Got Sky two days ago. Reluctantly. Only because Freeview isn’t going to come round here till the day before analogue switch off, and then only if the wind is in the right direction and it isn’t raining. (Unlikely.) So set out to get Freesat, but then they sell us the two package deal because it’s actually cheaper, as long as we remember to cancel the packages before a year is up, which they’re hoping we won’t and they’re probably right. Two surly blokes show up (‘We’re not allowed to lift carpets’) and drill holes in the walls and stuff, and half an hour later we’re all Sky-ed up. And then we watched a five year old repeat of Frasier. That’s progress.

Last night’s viewing diary. Watched a bit of Battlestar Galactica on Sky 1. It’s been highly praised and I like SF but it’s into the third series and I couldn’t get into it. Ads came on, and stayed on a very long time. Switched off. Later tried Whatsisname Booker being nasty about TV. He played many many clips of EastEnders, linking them with weary comments about how boring it is. It is, but so was he. Tried Russell Brand talking about Big Brother instead. RB can be a funny man and almost was, but not quite on this occasion. Switched off. Watching Sky now feeling like wandering lost and confused in endless arid landscape in dry, airless heat, sterile earth all around, bland white sky above, not another living creature for miles around. Sort of Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas, but without the cool music. May suggest this for their next advert.

Next plan is to reduce Favourites (should be called Least Indifferent To’s) to five ordinary channels plus BBC4 and Film4. Pretend others don’t exist so can’t be distracted, confused and made anxious by them. (Actually not sure whether to include Channel 5 – is it really just back to back CSI?)

On happier note, Son has taken to leaving breakfast table and running into front room shouting in huge excitement: ‘Come on! Funny games!’ And Daughter yesterday cried out ‘Dad!’ from bathroom. Sounded urgent and I hurried upstairs, concerned. ‘What is it?’ I said. She replied: ‘I can spell spider backwards!’ Good to know.

Rhythm

2007-01-11T16:15:00.000Z

Back to work on The Show this week. A script to deliver, an edit to do. When not working on The Show I should be working on a few changes to the Book that’s out in the autumn, and the new Novel, and a Radio Drama idea, and the two original TV ideas I’m collaborating on with friends, and the Film idea I’ve got. Mostly though I’m on the Guardian website, or BBC, or Ain’t It Cool, or Digital Spy, or adding things to my Amazon wish list, or just buying them, or listening to Mark Kermode’s film podcast, or reading and sending non-essential e-mails, or working out what holiday we’re taking this year and ‘researching’ places and prices. Or writing this. Broadband is evil. Should be banned.

Trollope fitted in his hugely prolific writing life around working full-time for the post office. He was disciplined and conscientious, and he said if he missed one day’s writing it took him a fortnight to get back into the rhythm. Hang on, could be a lesson there …

All Human Life ... in the bath

2007-01-03T11:00:00.000Z

Christmas and New Year all good. Have barely sat in front of a computer for a fortnight, which must be a good thing. Haven’t thought about The Show except as a viewer and have been enjoying that aspect of it. Best moment possibly playing with remote control cars outside house, racing them around elaborate course. (With Brother-In-Law obviously, not child.)

Son was two yesterday. A good day, friends round, Teletubby cake, etcetera. Then in the bath in the evening he said he was sad. I said ‘Because Herbie’s gone home?’ He said Yes. I said ‘But you had a nice time with Herbie.’ He gave a small smile and said Yes. ‘And we’ll see him again soon.’ Son nodded. ‘Later,’ he said, with a bit of a question in his tone.

Seriously, why bother writing novels and short stories and TV dramas? Just watch a two year old, see the unfiltered emotions passing over his face. Regret, nostalgia, anticipation, hope. It’s Christmas, it’s the passing of youth, it’s the story of quite a few relationships. Something is gone or going, maybe something better is round the corner. Later. (Pronounced ‘Pater’ by Son.) Later.

Sunshine

2006-12-22T10:58:00.000Z

Mostly work this week, getting things done before term ends, relatives arrive and Merriment Begins. Adding a scene to an episode running short, having an edit (‘We want more fun’), finishing a draft of a new ep. Saw the Christmas ep on the DVD they send us – it’s looking very good, thriller-ish, setting up a good whodunnit to run for a while.

Besides work, bought Christmas Tree and decorated it, wrote cards, wrapped unfeasible number of presents, conducted onerous task of tasting various shop-bought mince pies. (Local bakery won by a mile, but they’re 75p each – so Spouse baked some.) Battled over Christmas Tree – ‘What about a stylish red and gold theme this year?’ I suggested, as I usually do. Chaos won, as Chaos always does, as Chaos probably should. But why don’t Christmas trees smell like they used to? It was the smell of Christmas, and it no longer exists. What is the smell of Christmas now? Melting plastic perhaps, as credit cards implode. Also, Why are there no more brazil nuts in shells?

Walked the long way back from town yesterday, because of rare sighting of sun after near 40 days near constant monsoon. Cool and bright, the way you want winter weather to be. (If you don’t like snow.) We're lucky to live here. The best walk is to the Monument, where there’s a huge view across the valley, and up and down the valley. Hillsides seething with trees. Lifts you, if feeling low on inspiration and energy. Renews you, ready for the next day. And the next.

Barry Norman

2006-12-11T14:24:00.000Z

Astoundingly (well, I’m astounded) saw three adult, mature-type, for grown-ups films last week. (Assuming we can agree Casino Royale fits that description.) Makes a change from steady diet of uninspired kids’ CGI crap over recent months. The Departed. Should have cut first twenty minutes and ending was ludicrous. All of a sudden there’s a second mole in the police force? Where did he come from? Felt like the writer holding up hands and saying I’ve got no idea how to end this. Enjoyed the whole middle section though, and would like to see Hong Kong original. Red Road. Slow and solemn, taking itself very seriously, but oozing atmosphere and, when the secret was finally disclosed, quite moving. Ill-judged thing with the little puppy at the end. And C.R. Too long, like Departed, like every film out of Hollywood now, too many endings, but a lot of fun. Some rubbish lines, not just the wonderful Rolex/Omega exchange, but also the thing in the shower ‘It’s like there’s blood on my hands and I can’t wash it off.’ Could it be any more on the nose? Also a bit distracting to have Alan Hansen as main villain, and the girl looking a bit like Richard E Grant. Or was that just me?

Gondolas

2006-12-08T09:36:00.000Z

Spoke to the fifty or so students. They were open mouthed, in rapt attention. Forest of hands went up when I asked for questions, storm of applause when I finished. Not really. But they seemed fairly interested as I took them through the process. Conference, Script Document, Scene Breakdown, First Draft, Second, Third, Edit, Edit, Edit. How your favourite scenes – the ones with lots of character and texture but not much in the way of story points – are the first to get cut, how to use communal sets, how to build to a tag, how to deal with an actor suddenly becoming unavailable. Two questions about how to get work experience on The Show. So that’s the next generation sorted. Also went off at a tangent about How I Became A Writer. Basically through writing a story called Journey to the Wreck aged 7. Finished up 12 or 13 pages long, which felt like War & Peace at the time. An experience shamelessly fictionalised in my second novel.

This was all in Bradford, where they are apparently knocking down the police station to build a lake. Presumably somewhere they’re bricking over a reservoir to build a police station. Bradford soon to become the Venice of the North, then. It’s a small step.

Michael Grade = Blofeld

2006-12-05T09:59:00.000Z

Conference last week was in a hotel on an island, reached by a narrow bridge. Half expected Producer to be waiting for us in a white swivel chair, stroking a white cat. We sit round in black leather seats, she presses a button and a 3D model of the Location rises out of the table. On the way back across the bridge a trap-door swings and someone who’d dared propose an unpopular storyline drops into the water. Splash. Scream. Water seethes and boils while the piranha feast. Disappointingly, it was not actually much like that at all. Unless all that happened while I was busy doing some tweaks to one episode (following Scheduling Problems) and a major edit on another (following Storyline Change.)

Met Editor/Publisher (same person) of my book for a drink. Passionate, engaging, complimentary, which is all good, clearly. We discussed some changes here and there, one or two fairly important ones. Plenty to consider – or there would be if I could remember anything he’d said in any detail. Hoping for an e-mail to clarify.

And tomorrow going to talk about writing in general and The Show in particular to a bunch of University students. How an episode happens, from conference to final draft of Script. They’re all writing short films apparently. Will they be interested in what I do? Will I remember what I do? We shall see.

Inside Information

2006-11-27T13:53:00.000Z

Finally got the date for a Procedure I’ve been waiting for. Had one last year, after various health issues I won’t trouble you with, and they removed a Benign Polyp. I thought it would be nice to have the BP in a jar on my desk like a … like a what? What would do justice to a BP floating in preserving liquid? I’m thinking mushrooms, baby’s fingers, penises. Anyway, got another Procedure lined up to check all is still well in there. It’s basically not too unpleasant except for the foul Preparation you have to drink twice, 12 and 24 hours beforehand. You mix it in half a glass of water then try to get it down you, like Dumbledore drinking that poison in the Half Blood Prince. And we know what happened to him. Will be keeping you minutely informed re my insides in coming weeks.

In that spirit … woke up in night with stomach ache. Line of pain across upper stomach. Probably appendicitis, I thought. I can’t have my appendix out, I’ve got too many deadlines. Will I have time to get two scripts off before it bursts? Will I be able to explain to Spouse which scripts to e-mail, where to e-mail them, how to attach them and properly encode them? All from my hospital bed, while suffering from complications brought on by a Superbug? Then I went to the loo, and pain disappeared.

TODAY’S LIST

Three Top Gigs

The Clash at Lewisham Odeon

The Specials & Dexies at Aldwych

Bowie at Parc des Princes

Chocolate

2006-11-20T15:00:00.000Z

A while ago, six months maybe, my friend S came up with this promising TV idea, and together we made it into a good 3 page Outline. Much harder than it sounds. A 3 page Outline can suck all the promise and life out of an idea and leave it like a dry, hopeless, inspiration-free husk. But our Outline bounced and amused and engaged. Well, we liked it anyway, and so did someone from an Independent Production Company, (who used to work on The Show, which helps.) So we write a first ep. Then rewrite it. Then rewrite it again. But the big thing is – and this does not always happen – each draft is getting better. It really doesn’t always happen. There was one writer who put her script through change after change after change over a period of several months. Eventually she thought Sod it, and sent in her original script again. Yes! Said the Script Editor. This is exactly what I wanted! Our experience has not been like this. The only difficult part has been handling mood swings from S. S has never worked on TV before, so goes from inappropriate optimism to utter despair very quickly. I remain on boring even keel. (It’s not just scripts I underwrite, (see below), it’s my own emotions too.)

And then the Independent Prod Co said ... No. After all that. Not surprising, but disappointing all the same. So it’s gone out via my agent to make its way in the world, knocking at the door of several other IPC’s. And we’re Waiting To Hear again.

Went to big party for The Show, laid on by sponsors. Fairground rides, loads of drink and food, rubbing shoulders with stars and execs. All very nice, but the highlight of the evening was definitely the chocolate fountain. What a remarkable invention.

TODAY’S LIST

3 Films I’ve seen recently and highly recommend

Good night and good luck
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Consequences of Love

Edit

2006-11-07T15:06:00.000Z

Had the edit on those two episodes mentioned below. Nearly four hour phone call followed by a few days work. Quite a lot to do. The storyline was always a bit thin, and I failed I think on first draft to bulk it up. The underlying message of the edit was Make It Bigger. I get that sometimes. I have a tendency to underwrite. Comes from writing Literary Fiction, probably. Took me years before I could bring myself to put an exclamation mark in a script. They’re considered the work of the devil in Lit Fiction, but they’re common currency in The Show. And why not? They’re pretty common currency in life too.

Son has been saying Bye Bye very sweetly for some time now. Has lately started saying Hello too, in an almost uncanny impression of Elmer Fudd. Part of me wishes malapropisms and Elmer Fudd impressions would go on longer. Daughter told me on way to school that she’s going to draw everybody’s shoes, and put their names next to the pictures. Why? I wondered, sounding casual but wondering about incidence of autism in six year old girls. It’s so she can go in the toilet and see who’s in the cubicles by looking through the gap under the door. Because she’s a Detective. Should we be worried?

And in other news, had the piss taken out of me for ordering Cheese Souffle in a restaurant. Cheese Souffle, it was implied, is effeminate. Can this be right? Had Wild Boar with Mustard Mash for main course which I think must make me unusually conflicted.

TODAY’S LIST

3 Favourite Short Stories

The Swimmer John Cheever

For Esme Salinger

Revenge Ellen Gilchrist

20 Years Ago

2006-10-31T11:54:00.000Z

Old Friend came, with family, for end of half-term. Met her at University of East Anglia, 20 years ago. MA in Creative Writing. That was a good year. Ten of us, aged between 23 and 50 something, different backgrounds, nationalities, experiences. Same hopes. And by some surprising alchemy instead of all hating and distrusting each other, trying to step on each other on our way to stardom, we all got on.

It was taught back then by Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. Malcolm Bradbury took the workshops. Legs twined together, sardonic mouth, what my mother would call kind eyes. Somehow getting us all to open up to each other. Outside the classroom he might mistake you for someone else (possibly not seeing you properly through the haze of pipe smoke), but inside he was warm, engaging and sharp. You’d introduce your 20 pages, then he’d make sure everyone had their say, then he’d summarise the criticism and extend it and ask penetrating questions, and you’d finish up looking at your writing in a slightly different way.

And then Angela Carter. We met her for one to one’s, and since I lived in London I went to her house in Clapham. First time, looking down this long street of terraced Victorian housing, I knew which would be her house. It was the only pink one. And inside all this intriguing clutter, including a horse from a fairground ride. And her perched on the edge of a chair, all in black, with her cloud of white hair. There was a thunderstorm that first time, and a crack of lightning when I entered. ‘Sorry,’ she said. You sensed it was a bit of a chore for her to read your stuff, a slight air of weariness to her, but her observations and questions were acute, and often disarming, and she once began a comment to me ‘Well, obviously it can be published but …’ I didn’t catch the rest of what she had to say. Angela Carter thought it could obviously be published! She gave us presents when we finished, books she felt were apposite.

I was one of the stars that year. Wrote my first novel there, got it published the following year, had two more published and a bunch of short stories before I was thirty. Shame there was no fetish for younger writers back then. Good looking younger writers. Good looking younger writers writing thoughtful, moving, serious literary fiction. Old Friend was a slower starter, but now she’s a Leading Light of the London Literary Scene and I’m only now, all these years later, getting my 4th book published. But I’m not jealous and bitter. I have been in the past, but I’m not now. Your 20’s are for ambition, your 30’s for disappointment and your 40’s are for stepping back a bit and saying ‘Yes, this is OK, this is pretty good.’ Someone wrote that, or something like it. In fact several people probably have, including me. Does it sound plausible?

3 Books I’ve read recently and highly recommend

The Damned United David Peace

The Accidental Ali Smith

Runaway Alice Munro

Welcome to Blackpool

2006-10-25T10:17:00.000+01:00

Half-term. Time for a Day Out. Access to the town centre from the station is via a dark, wet, litter-strewn subway. Daughter spontaneously says Blackpool is the dirtiest place in the world. Down to the Prom. Poundstretchers, Woolies, bars offering topless waitresses, lapdancing and exotic this and that. (It’s Sunday lunch-time.) We consider the Sea Life centre, but I’m worried about what they might get up to with the eels in there. And so to the Dr Who exhibition, our reason for being there.

Daughter tries to act as if it lives up to her excited anticipation, tries not to admit to the mild disappointment that seeps in as you wander round the place. Mild disappointment – it’s what life has in store for most of us, isn’t it? There’s loads of authentic props and costumes, but it’s shabby and underfunded and more importantly under-imagined. What does it need? I don’t know – a Dr Who companion to show you round, actors in costumes wandering about, some decent lighting effects, maybe a soundtrack. It’s one of those places that seems to exist mostly for its gift shop. Where we buy a Dr Who bath set. No home should be without one.

Daughter mostly enjoys Air Hockey in a café we stop at, and the journeys to and from. I’ve packed food and water, a magazine, Snakes & Ladders. She spends the journeys with her friend on the floor in the luggage space between the seats. Home to Spouse and poorly Son. Reassure them they haven’t missed much.

TODAY’S LIST

3 of Daughter’s Favourite songs

Sk8ter Boi Avril Lavigne
Who Will Buy Oliver
Downtown Petula Clark

On and on and on and on ...

2006-10-20T15:06:00.000+01:00

So, had Story Conference for The Show this week. Involves Writers, Script Editors, Storyliners, Researcher, Producer and Assistant Producers, all sat round a table at the studios talking stories for two days. And going out for a nice meal in the evening. It’s a tough job. Some shows I’ve worked on, you are a tiny cog in a big machine. A small elite group deal with stories, you just work on your little episode and change it and change it again because of someone else’s whims. Much better where I am now. Very democratic approach. That does sometimes lead to problems mentioned below (‘We’ve had some thoughts in the Story Office …’) but no system is perfect. What’s good is a brand new Writer or a brand new Storyliner can say ‘Why don’t we do such and such?’ The worst you risk is a tumbleweed moment as you realise your idea is not exactly enthusing anyone. That long silence, those sidelong glances, the tactful let-down from the Producer.Is that a coyote howling in the distance?

And of course there’s all the fun of the group dynamics. The most articulate not always having the best ideas. Someone who goes on and on and on and on in a repetitive, unproductive and - oh God I’m going to chew my own arm off - boring way. The difficulty of getting a word in. Getting a word in but not expressing yourself very well. Getting a word in, expressing yourself reasonably well, and yet somehow your comment simply not being registered. But that’s OK – that’s all a bit like life, isn’t it?

So Story Conference is a Good Thing. Nice break in routine of life, and breaks in routine of life are usually Good. Especially when Son and Daughter are simultaneously on antibiotics, and miserable.

TODAY’S LIST

Son’s first three words (in order):

Star, Ball, Car

Rain

2006-10-17T15:48:00.000+01:00

So, a quiet day. Nothing much happened. Except the day unfolding as usual. Taking Daughter home from school. It's a steep road. Small voices like chattering birds. The sky is heavy and there's a wet smell in the air. Up the steep road, a car growling. We wait for it to pass. 'Hello there.' Mick emerging from a door, looking at the heavy sky. 'Do you think it's going to rain? I want to paint this door.' Then the slippery path up the snicket, placing crutches carefully. A squirrel freezes, looks at us, jumps away. A dog barks angrily. Her small hand grips my fingers. Rain spatters, but we're home. She lets go and runs away from me, towards the green door, pulling at the handle, and waiting.

TODAY’S LIST;

3 Things I can see from my window

A spider, about the size of a 50p piece, on its web, snacking on a small fly.
The church on the hill across the valley.
A tall dark brick chimney, nicely integrated into the landscape.

Open, Friendly, Relaxed

2006-10-13T09:28:00.000+01:00

So, sometimes Waiting To Hear is better than actually Hearing. They say No Thanks to Radio Idea. No particular explanation – just doesn’t grab them. So I’m going to try to rework it as a TV idea. It will be fantastically successful and they will be Very Sorry. Sometimes Hearing is much better than WTH. An e-mail arrived. We’d like to publish your Book next spring, if that’s OK. Let me see – Yes, I think that would be fine. Haven’t had a book published for many, many years, and am hugely chuffed. (Wrote ‘very pleased’ first, but that doesn’t really cover it.) Next spring may well turn out to be next autumn, but hey, I’m not fussy.

Immediately got invited to a launch. Intended to go but couldn’t due to Son being awake for much of previous night and me being shattered. Why was he awake? Did he know? Is he trying to sabotage me? Arguably, it’s just as well. I’m basically, not exactly socially inept, just too complicated and interesting and, you know, special, for those social events where I don’t know anyone and it would be helpful to make a good impression. Tend to avoid them. But I have been trying to get better at them. I’m a great believer in pretending to be confident. Almost as good as the real thing. Open, friendly, relaxed – that’s my motto.

In other news … sister-in-law has just left after stay of ten days. Easiest, pleasantest guest you could imagine. No, really. Kept taking Daughter off and entertaining her for long periods. Took her to school and picked her up. Bottles of red and bars of Green & Black’s kept appearing around evening time. Smoking was all done outdoors. Discreetly absent during hectic breakfast times – probably because her breakfast is a fag and two strong coffees. She lives in Munich but is buying a house four miles away to move into when she retires in a few years. Daughter is already planning sleepovers. Excellent news.

Still WTH about TV idea, co-written with my friend S. Should know more soon.

TODAY’S LIST:

3 DVD’s I bought, new, for under a tenner.

Edward Scissorhands
Stand By Me
Groundhog Day

Lava

2006-10-11T11:58:00.000+01:00

So, just finished a double episode of The Show. Will be on end of January. Quite pleased with it, tho it may be changed radically in the edit, then get insensitively cut, then have new storyline imposed at last minute. (‘We’ve been having some thoughts in the Story Office …’ No! Don’t have thoughts in the Story Office. Bad idea.) The Show’s in Good Shape at the moment, holding its end up, building to a big Christmas story. Altho, as I understand it, TV generally is in a very Bad Shape, due to us all playing on our PlayStations and imminently giving up TV in favour of watching on-demand DVD’s on our iPods or mobiles or something. So there goes my livelihood.

There’s always Radio. I love Radio. Had a play on in which everyone turned into a fish at the end. Don’t see that on TV very often. Another in which a man turned into a woman. Got an idea with a Producer at the moment, waiting to hear. Waiting To Hear is a near-permanent state when you’re a writer. Also WTH about a TV idea for a six-parter me and a friend are working on. Also WTH about my book, with a small publisher who’s been sitting on it for a year. Hopefully not literally.

Also going on in my life … Spouse, looking after two children and doing a Psychology degree and writing a novel. Son, 21 months. Shouts a lot. Daughter, 6, has taken to saying ‘If you don’t do such and such, I’ll kill you.’ I said to her, Do you think you could find a less unkind way to say that? She thought for a minute, looking at me, then said ‘I’ll punch you and punch you until you faint?’ Lovely. We had a little discussion, and settled on ‘I’ll wrap you up in lava until you vanish.’ I’m very proud.