Where I Read

I had a birthday in May, not a significant one by age, but a most significant one as far as presents go. John tends to get a tad grumpy when considering what to get me—I’m not sure why because he invariably chooses well.

This year I thought I would alleviate his angst so happened to mention that, should he be in Scotsdales our local garden centre, he might like to consider an ‘egg’ chair. He went, he saw, he bought! And, even better, it was delivered a couple of weeks before ‘the day.’

Assembled in time for an evening cocktail I swung happily, deciding this hanging egg would be my new favourite place in which to contemplate life. And I did for a couple of happy weeks. Now, it is only fair to admit that I too can be grumpy. After those glorious May days, weather-wise, early June was foul. And so was I one unpleasant morning.

“I told you when we married that I never wanted to be old and cold. Well, I’m both now!”

Not a gracious start to the day, and thankfully my comment was ignored, although he did turn on the heating.

The weather here—always a topic of conversation in England—is best described as capricious. At the moment many are sweating and sweltering. Exposing parts of the body that, given due consideration, should perhaps not be exposed to all and sundry but kept to the confines of the back garden, and preferably one with a very high wall. But I digress. I smile. Others wilt.

I am happy. This is the warmest I have been since leaving the Caribbean three years ago, and am revelling in the sunshine but always under a hat. Most of the year, I start my day with a cup of tea and a piece of toast, plonk myself down on the sofa in the kitchen and pick up a book. It is a pleasant start to my day. I have fed the cat, more often than not have taken a cup of coffee up to John, and can then settle with no guilt for an hour of uninterrupted reading. My phone is invariably turned off, so the threat of intrusion is minimal.

Mostly the books relate to whatever I happen to writing at any given time. Here’s a clue to my next book! I have just finished Edda Mussolini, a brilliant book by Caroline Moorehead, about—you guessed—Mussolini’s daughter. I sit and sip, sticking post-its on relevant pages to which I can return once the book is finished so I can start the note taking phase.

I also use that sacrosanct time of the day to read the pub book club choice of the month. I run the event so am beholden to read whatever has been chosen. Should you be in the ’hood on the third Thursday of the month, do please join us at The Lion at Ickleton. There are two sessions, lunch time or early evening, both relaxed and open to anyone whether the book has been read or not, because there is always something to say, or add to the conversation. And it’s fun. We are about to discuss The Elements by John Boyne, which I have no doubt will evoke much comment.

But now, in this truly glorious weather, I have a new morning routine. I sit, I sip, I read, and I swing in my egg chair as the birds chitter around and the sun creeps ever closer. I am, on occasion, disturbed by Bella the cat who takes affront at the nearness of the more brazen birds and shows her displeasure by an ack, ack, ack sound that emanates from her indignant mouth, and makes her chin judder. She then joins me on the chair and, like most cats, does not expect to inconvenienced by the turning of a page!

I can spend three hours in my ‘egg’—warmed by both the brilliance of the sky and the indirect sun before guilt sends me back to my desk but I comfort myself that I have been working. It’s a variation on a theme of working from home— I just swing to a different tune!

Footnote: I forgot to post this and now, as winter approaches, the ‘egg’ is less likely to be used to the same extent and, more horribly, our beautiful Bella was run over by a speeding car.

Addicted to Pot(s)

I love road trips, unplanned preferably. Although travelling on the fly has become infinitely easier with the advent of those travel apps that allow comparison of prices, parking and flummeries. However, that convenience has lessened the wonder of what’s ahead. It would be fair to say we have had a few—what shall I call them—unexpected surprises, but on the whole winging it has worked. It is those misadventures, those idiosyncratic overnights stops, that have become family lore to be taken out and laughed about over the dinner table.

But what has that to do with pot(s)?

It all started about forty years, in a bar in Bangkok. Along with pots, I like markets. But Chatuchak Market had failed to impress me. Good for birds and kittens, not so good for pots.

“You need to go to Chok Chai,” said an old Thai hand. 

“Where’s that?” I asked, thinking it was an area in the city.

“Oh, about a five-hour drive north east. Near Nakhon Ratchasima.” 

And so, along with two friends equally enamoured with pots, we headed north, with no plan apart from the hunt. Ding came too, the driver my husband insisted we take in case things went awry. We checked in at the only hotel in town. Ding stayed with a cousin. In those days, three farang women travelling alone were unusual in that part of the country and, over supper, we were intrigued as to why various men eyed us before disappearing through an unmarked door at the end of the dining room. It led, so we learnt later, to the adjoining brothel.

Four bodies and multiple pots made it back to Bangkok intact. 

Another such escapade took place on the Baja Peninsula, that little finger of North America that belongs to Mexico. John and I were dab hands at driving west nonstop so off we set, destination San Diego. Now the trouble with spur-of-moment travel is that diaries are not always consulted, and so it was that we drove up to a motel, then another, and another, to be told no room at the inn. We had not taken into account the fact it was Labour Day in the USA .

“Not to worry,” said John. “We’ll carry on to Tijuana and cross now instead of in the morning.”

Did I mention it was Labour Day in the USA? 

Every college student between 18 and 21 was either on the road to, or in Mexico, that Latin country south of the border not having the asinine American age restrictions for having a drink. No room at the inn became the recurring theme. We slept in the car.

As well as not consulting the calendar we neglected to check the weather forecast. Hurricane John kissed the peninsula at Cabo San Lucas making the roads impassable. We loitered at Guerrero Negro until the way was clear. John’s relaxing foray looking for a retirement home was curtailed when he had to go back to work in Houston. I stayed on, with Megan, our dog. 

I didn’t find a house but I did find Mexican pots.

The drive home was arduous. It took me, driving solo, five days. US immigration officials were an irritant at regular interviews up the peninsula, insisting I unload the car at random stops. They were looking for more than pot.

On the up side, Labour Day was well and truly over so accommodation was not an issue. Until, somewhere in New Mexico on a dark desert highway I decided to find somewhere to sleep. There was room at the inn, but the inn was definitely dodgy. Megan and I slept in our clothes, and neither of us liked putting our feet on the carpet. We double locked the door and wedged a chair under the handle. But my pots were safe.

Fast forward another twenty or so years and I find myself living in rural Cambridgeshire. Buying pots from a garden centre doesn’t incur the same sense of fun. And so, on a recent meandering drive through France and Spain catching up with friends and family, I once again felt the urge for a pot. 

It’s a long drive to Spain but it was worth it because not only did I meet up with my delightful Australian cousins but in a little town equidistant between Segovia and Navacerrada there is a delightful treasure trove of pots. Row upon row upon row of every size, colour and style.

The olive tree is still waiting. Perhaps a trip to Italy.

The Friendship Loom

I don’t often read the agony pages or advice columns but a newspaper clipping I’d kept for years in a file surprisingly called ‘newspaper clips’ caught my eye the other day, while I assiduously looked for ways to avoid actually writing. The letter came from the Houston Chronicle and read, ‘Friend’s adventures change her.’ Advice was sought about how to reclaim a friend who had lived overseas for three years teaching English; the agony was that her friend had changed and now had in the enquirer’s eyes, ‘a big fat ego.’  Her epistle ends with the query, ‘How can I get my friend back?’ 

How many of us on the global trail have returned to base to find a shift, sometimes slight, sometimes tectonic, in relationships with friends, and occasionally family. Inevitably things change, and it is not just going abroad that does that. It can happen when one goes to university and another stays at the local community college, or goes straight into work. Staying in the same city but in a different job changes us. Marriage and children change us as priorities shift. Different experiences, exposure to different norms and cultures, whether Toledo or Tokyo or Tunbridge Wells, will affect the way we look at the world.  

With mutual respect at what the other has achieved in wholly different environments, and a recognition that often each would neither want nor seek the other’s life, goes a long way to stitching back the friendship. The chippy or arrogant attitude at first perceived with that re-meet might be a front for uncertainty or unhappiness on either or both sides. 

Going to boarding school in rural Australia as a ten-year old from an international community in Malaysia I quickly learnt that I had very little in common with my peers, not to mention I spoke with a crisp English accent. Their childhoods, so different to mine, fascinated me. I could not imagine being schooled by correspondence, not having playmates of all colours and creeds, or playmates at all. Of the flying doctor service instead of a car to take me to hospital after the inevitable spills of childhood. And yet those friendships sewn through my teen years, despite oceans and years apart, are the weft of my friendship loom.

For a while we relocated internationally every twelve to eighteen months, and I thought friendships made might be short-lived, might not survive the oceans and continents between us, and occasionally that has been the case. Lives move on, mutual experiences fade and memories become almost dreamlike. And that’s okay: sad but okay.

But every now and then those seemingly short-term friendships turn into long- term relationships that do survive distance and time. There is a thread that is caught with each reconnection that has woven itself into your own story, and each new meeting tightens the weave.

A woman I had known for over twenty years returned to Edinburgh after two years teaching in Sharjah, UAE, and we needed to renew the bond between us, to remember shared stories, to laugh. We agreed to meet in York, neutral territory, although chosen because I happened to be there for a conference, and she was ever-willing to find middle ground. Those two days reconnecting reinforced the importance of making time for friendships forged in different parts of the world. It ended up being the last time I saw Marian—she died suddenly, much much too soon, a year later. 

People met and friends made are the intangible in a global life—it is often the difference between a good or bad posting.  Sometimes the time spent together may be short, a few months, but those experiences shared and confidences exchanged can turn into a relationship that will last a lifetime if nurtured across the miles.

If you happen to be on the same trail—the oilfield, the military, the diplomatic and so on—you sometimes bump into people maybe thought lost to your story. Inexorably they, and people met through them, become interwoven and whilst there may not be a continuous thread, there is an intermittent one and therefore important to the overall tapestry.

Now living in rural Cambridgeshire, we met up with old friends from Equatorial Guinea in a local pub a couple of evenings ago. Sure, our lives have moved on, changed from the sometimes surreal life in a despotic West African country as we both settle into retirement in different parts of the world. But that doesn’t matter. The thread is still there.

So, in answer to the letter in the agony column, ‘can you ever get the old friend back?’ I would ask, why would you want to? True friendship is a growing, changing entity—each new experience whether shared or not, adding to the depth of the relationship. All the threads stitched together.  

Isn’t that what friendships are about, wherever you live?

And now, no more procrastinating, I have a book to write. Unless you’re calling to catch up!

Books and Fleet Feet

Ashoke Ganguli, in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel, The Namesake, says ‘That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.’ He is responding to Mr. Ghosh, an elderly man, who is advising him to travel the world while he is young.

I’ve liked the quote ever since I read the book many years ago. However, having just spent the weekend attempting to flog books at a fair, Saturday in Hertford, Sunday in neighbouring Ware, I now take issue with the phrase ‘without moving your feet’. 

The Herts Book Festival is an annual event wherein thirty or so writers of all genres get together to sell their words so painstakingly put into print. It is a lively weekend, with a melange of voices—writers and punters, interspersed with high-pitched children’s squeals of delight at some of the less polite terms bandied around for all things lavatorial by those who cater to the younger reader. 

Book-laden trolleys clatter over the cobbles, or across carparks, to be at the starting gates when they open at 9 a.m. so that by the time the public enter an hour later there is a feast of all things literary awaiting them. Tables are artfully draped, books are propped and prepped in appealing fashion, realia—that word so loved by ESL teachers—offer tangible objects in an effort to provide a tactile experience between abstract concepts and reality, especially useful for children’s books and, so I learned, books on magic and magical dystopia. Think Helen Rose and The Supersonic Fart or Roxy Eloise and The Guidal Series. Some tables are softened by floral arrangements, others attempt to bribe the buying public with free chocolates. Anything is fair game in trying to draw a reader to a writer’s table.

But here’s the thing about books at fairs and festivals—the bookseller’s feet are constantly moving. To and from the carpark, at least twice for set up and break down. Feet move back and forth in an attempt to ensure a book banner is visible from all corners of the hall, or at least not blocking someone else’s table. Feet continue to move once the doors open as the author sits, then stands, then sits again, only to leap to his / her feet when someone shows interest. 

Therein lies another conundrum. Should one stand? That might seem intimidating to the height-challenged reader with a cane and tight grey curls who has picked up the latest historical fiction, perhaps The Woman in the Red Cheongsam by Sarah Jane King. Should one sit behind the table? That could appear to show disinterest in the chap who has picked up a comedy sci-fi offering, perhaps a Toby Frost book. Did you know, by the way, that the two perennially popular genres are sci-fi and romance, followed closely now by romantasy! None of which I write, but I digress. 

Then the eager writer wonders how long does one wait before speaking? If the punter is a book-lover he or she is, or they are, quite capable of reading the blurb on the back without the author’s interference. Again, is it disinterest or overbearing? And all the while, the feet shuffle in anxious indecision.

During lulls in reader footfall, the authors wander up and down aisles checking out who’s writing what, or scurry to the nearest café for a caffeine fix, or a sausage roll. And that’s another thing, you can be sure that the minute a mouthful is taken, someone will embark on an earnest and erudite discussion about some element of one’s research, or ask a pertinent question. It is difficult to look and sound knowledgeable while brushing pastry flakes from one’s bosom or chest. Here’s a tip for would-be booksellers at fairs or festivals—never ever have spinach quiche, or spinach anything. The mortification of later finding a leaf lodging between front teeth will stay a long, long time.

We writers suffer grievously from imposter syndrome. The ‘who are we’ to expect someone to buy our book and, I am told by far more successful writers than I, that it is a universal authorial affliction. Little comfort as our feet teeter to and fro with indecision.

So, today, as I unpack the unsold books—I never get the numbers right, too few of one, too many of another—I consider another quote that makes me smile. This one from George R.R. Martin, author of the series A Song of Ice and Fire, ‘A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.’

But, I wonder, which person walks the most? The reader or the writer?

Paddington and Pompoms!

Have you noticed how much more sensible women and girls are about shoes these days? So much so that I wonder if chiropodists and podiatrists are going out of business, due to bunions and hammertoes having been relegated to things of the past, maybe.

About a hundred years ago—or perhaps it was fifty—I worked in London at an advertising agency. I would totter through the Embankment Gardens having walked from my flat to the Willesden Green Tube station, then stood on the train for half an hour. It didn’t take me long to realise that, particularly in winter, Wellies were a far better option. They were red, as was my hat, and I felt rather chic until my boss, a delightful American, suggested I resembled that “bear from Peru, Paddington”. I didn’t care, pain-free comfort ruled, and I continued to wear both on my daily commute. However, for any other occasion while in town, I suffered through the agony of high heels.

Perhaps it was a hangover from seeing my 5’10” mother rarely leaving the house in anything but high heels. Perhaps, for her, it was a change from the regulation lace-ups worn by nurses, both army and civilian. Although neither Mum nor I ever reached the lofty heights of the shoes my daughter, Kate, wears and which put her in upper realms of over 6 foot heightdom!

Why this sudden interest in shoes? 

Not long ago, I spent a pleasant hour sitting with my husband at an outdoor taverna in Old Town Corfu. Perched on the cobbles of an alley leading to the Holy Church of Saint Spyridon, complete with a 1500’s bell tower, our table gave us a pigeon’s eye view of both a shoe shop and the many pairs of passing feet.

A few years ago, the game of guess the nationality was easier. American women were invariably shod in sneakers, or tennis shoes. Now everyone is. Now the players of the game must employ other tactics—language, dress, behaviour and so on. 

Fancy flats, glitzy be-sequined trainers, and sturdy boots have overtaken towering heels except for the grandest occasions. And, while the cobble streets of Corfu town do not encourage the wearing of high heels, I watched with awe as some women, young and not-so-young, navigate the alleys and spianadas with aplomb.

Sipping Pontiglio, a delicious mellow rosé, I observed not only feet striding, ambling, or skipping past, but the array of footwear displayed outside the shop. Sandals and tsarouchia climbed the walls tempting the passerby—the latter mainly children fascinated by the pompoms of all colours and sizes that adorn the toe of the slipper.

And they fascinated me too. On a previous visit to Athens, I had watched the Evzones, the elite ceremonial guards of the Greek Presidential Guard, parade while on sentry duty and I felt it now time to look into the whys and wherefores of their shoes. 

I mean, who would consider going into battle shod only in leather moccasins? The question, a classic example of the way a historical novelist’s mind works! Apparently the pompom was originally designed to keep the toes dry—I suppose it didn’t matter about the rest of the foot. But more intriguing is the fact that a small knife could be hidden under said pompom, always black for the Presidential Guard, to be yanked out during close-quarter combat! The sole of the shoe, traditionally hard, has a great many nails embedded which creates the distinct clicking sound as the Evzones change guard at the various palaces, and which is symbolic of historical battlefield marches.

I watched a woman of indeterminate age and, I was quietly confident, of American origin try on a pair of tsarouchi (for plural, add an ‘a’) and wondered the kind of battle for which she was preparing. And whether she’d have a weapon hidden. Not a knife, but perhaps a copy of a bank statement proving a husband’s misbehaviour.

Then I looked down at my sensibly clad feet, heels being a thing of the distant past, and was tempted. I mean, who doesn’t look good wearing pompoms?