Two barely connected ideas

I missed my mother today. I feel as though my life is moving on and away from her. And I don’t want to leave her behind.
I am engrossed in Helen Dunmore’s Talking to the Dead. I admire her writing tremendously. In this book, a woman talks about her sister thus…
Sometimes Isabel pours Jeyes Fluid down her drains, or boiling water on to an ants nest which is too near the kitchen, as our mother did. When I watch Isabel do these things I am at home, as if something is going on which is beyond liking, beyond even love.
Helen Dunmore speaks to me.

One cool baby

Not only does my new granddaughter, Lux, have a big yawn, but she also has her own Twitter account @thebeean, and now she has made CNN. I think that gives me an excuse to have her picture on here – and her father’s- the man who works for Twitter: one happy dude (and not because Lux made CNN.)

Restraint

You may be looking for a new post, but you need to be thankful I’m not peppering my blog with pictures of my new granddaughter and her parents. Don’t you think I am being restrained?

Home

I was feeling sorry for myself yesterday, because I had to sign the contract for the sale of Ma’s house, delaying, pushing the papers around my desk, thinking - this is the last step, the last step and I don’t want to take it. It’s the final tangible goodbye.

One of the papers had to be signed with a witness, so I went to see a neighbour. I left the other two papers that did not need a witness, and went to mow the lawn. But the morning passed, and I had to get them in the lunchtime post, so in the end, I grabbed the papers and signed them in a rush like ripping off elastoplast.

Meanwhile, my 75 year old neighbour, who has been on 24 hour oxygen for over a year, is now too ill to be at home on his own, and yesterday was taken to hospital and thence to a care home. He has lived in that nice little house with the sunny, sheltered and pretty front garden since he was born. He will never see it again.

Meanwhile a family in  Gaza are living in their bombed out wreck of a house, on inadequate provisions, with water and fuel limited.

Meanwhile, a family in Pakistan has had their home washed away by the floods.

And here am I feeling sorry for myself?

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse,

Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Doing my head in

Trying to re-think a novel which I thought did exactly what I wanted it to do, in order to fit in with someone else’s view of the book, while maintaining the truth of it, is doing my head in…

…whereas walking back from the village shop with Dave on a sunny Saturday afternoon – that is heaven.

photo by Isaac Hepworth

Recidivist

Three weeks ago, I gave up watching Neighbours. There were two new hateful characters, a new actor had replaced one of my favourites, and the storylines were tawdry and tedious. Had it always been this way? Was the change in me? Had I finally grown up? 

This week a letter arrived, falling on me like a heavy weight. It was just another stage in a journey I never wanted to take, the journey that began with Ma’s dying. The solicitor dealing with the sale of Ma’s house wrote:

Please find enclosed a copy of our letter received from the purchasers solicitor this morning. I should be obliged if you could proceed to contact me at our office to confirm that completion the week commencing 23 August is agreeable.

This is what we have been working towards – of course -  but to see it in black and white makes it real. There is no alternative, there is no solution. We must bear the loss of the house.

It was lunchtime and I’d been working hard all morning. I took up the jacket I’m knitting for Lux, and sat down to watch Neighbours for comfort. It worked. The world of story is powerful. What would I do without fiction?

Tweets, texts and telegrams

Grandmothers get anxious during childbirth. When Isaac first rang to tell me that Wendy was having contractions, I told myself I would not text for updates more than every two hours, and I would not phone. I didn’t want to be intrusive or annoying.

For the first evening and then one night of sleep, it wasn’t too hard to restrain myself, but the labour went on and on with no result, and by the second night, if Isaac didn’t respond to my text within half an hour, my mind was ablaze with awful possibilities.

They were so far away, and there was nothing I could do. It doesn’t matter how old your children are, they are still your children. You don’t want harm to come to them, you don’t want their hearts to break.

Isaac works for Twitter, so it isn’t surprising that as well as sending texts to the family, he was tweeting to the world about the arrival of “the bean” (who, by the way, has her very own Twitter account and some of the following tweets are hers, forwarded by Isaac.)

This is a record of Isaac’s tweets…

update: no update. 4:59 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

RT @thebeean: ok let's do this thing. bring it. #hippiehomebirth 8:29 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

it's going to be a long night. 9:10 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

there's a whole lot of breathing going on. 11:17 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

twenty-four hours of labor and no sign of @thebeean 3:33 PM Jul 30th via web from Mission, San Francisco

refueling (@ Philz Coffee) http://t.co/W1cMz9I 5:08 PM Jul 30th via foursquare from Philz Coffee, San Francisco 

RT @thebeean: this #hippiehomebirth is taking forever. 7:20 PM Jul 30th via Echofon

still no baby. the @wendyverse being super strong and brave. #hippiehomebirth 10:04 PM Jul 30th via Echofon

35 hours of labor. come on @thebeean! 2:41 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

headed to the hospital. this #hippiehomebirth is becoming a #hippiehybridbirth. w00t! 3:28 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

#hippiehybridbirth formally known as #hippiehomebirth (@ St Luke's Hospital) http://t.co/EZDG91L 3:39 AM Jul 31st via foursquare from Mission, San Francisco 

settled in to hospital room. @wendyverse doing well but still no sign of @thebeean. 5:11 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

41 hours of labor and I now know what color hair @thebeean has. or at least what color it has on the tippy top of it's head. 7:58 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

44 hours of labor and a Cesarian brought me and @wendyverse Lux Hepworth (aka @thebeean), 8lb 4oz & 20.5". http://t.co/ubuzyeZ 6:29 PM Jul 31st via Echofon

RT @thebeean: hello, world 10:56 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

thrilled at the arrival of @thebeean and so touched by all the tweets over the last 50 hours. wow. THANK YOU. 9:01 PM Jul 31st via Echofon

Back in the 1950s, telegrams were the way to go. Ma’s twin sister lived in Africa, and every time she had a child, my uncle would send a telegram to my Gran.

BABY BOY SAFELY DELIVERED STOP MOTHER AND BABY DOING WELL STOP

I bet 1950s communications were easier on grandmothers’ nerves, but texts and tweets and emails and Flickr and Skype combine to help close a 5,000-mile-wide chasm in a family. Last night on Skype I saw little Lux and heard her cry, I saw Wendy happy and well, I saw Isaac holding Lux. I am glad I live in 2010, even if it did take me three days to unwind from Wendy’s labour.

The photo above is of me holding my grandson Gil.

An ending and a beginning

While little Lux, latest addition to the family tree, was settling on her twig, and while the Little Red Hen was recovering from 44 hours of labour – actually, while we were ALL recovering from her 44 hours of labour – I was doing a final sweep of Ma’s house with my big sister, Kath.

We have a buyer, we think it will go through, and this was our final weekend. Jen was there the weekend before, taking down curtains and dispatching remnant furniture to a sale, and she’d left us three mugs (one each, and one for Jonty, when he called), two dishes, a kettle and a pan. We had garden chairs and a card table, and we slept on a mattress on the floor.

It didn’t feel as awful, or as raw as it did last time. I don’t know why.

Jonty was there on Saturday afternoon helping us, when a cousin and his wife rolled up. They live 100 miles away, but happened to be driving through the dales, and thus Ma’s village, on their way to a holiday cottage, and Janey thought they should make a quick detour down the lane to say goodbye to Ma’s house.

“And there were three cousins standing in the road!” she said.

We sat on the lawn, with three of the party drinking tea (remember – only three mugs), and we remarked on how pleased Ma would be to see us there together in the sunshine on that last historic visit.

On Sunday, Kath and I locked up for our last time. There was nothing left of Ma, except a vase on the windowsill (for Jonty)

and a photograph of Ma, aged 90, sitting in the garden talking to some local children. Kath hid it in a quiet corner for the new owners to find.

She’s here!

My darling new and first American grand-daughter arrived in the world on Saturday after a long long labour, and then a Caesarean. She’s called Lux.

I can’t wait to meet her in September.

And here is her lovely mother – my super daughter-in-law, aka The Little Red Hen…

The family…

Here’s looking at you, kid…

Waiting

It’s a still quiet morning here, at 5.42 a.m. The dawn was red and yellow and deep dark grey – beautiful. I am up and awake because I am waiting for news of the baby. The Little Red Hen went into labour 13 hours ago and all through last evening we got updates and now there is no response to my texts, and Isaac’s last tweet said “update: no update.” San Francisco is an awfully long way away, and 13 hours is a long time to be in labour, although I know it’s not been heavy going all that time, because on Isaac’s first call he said Wendy was having contractions every four minutes and eating cereal in between. Several hours later, his text read “Wendy is eating a burrito.” But that was a whole English night ago. What is she eating, now?

10 a.m. I am still waiting. Poor Wendy.I don’t think she’ll be eating anything, now.

Domestic update

1/ I am waiting for quotes from 3 local printers so I can cost out self-publishing;

but

2/ I am still considering whether I can change the book in the way the agent wants;

3/ our painter, Ben, has been here, and not here, for so long (on account of unsettled weather impeding his progress) that he has become part of the family. The cat has been sleeping in the back of his van in the daytime, and I no longer make mistakes from nerves when I am playing the saxophone in Ben’s earshot. (I have just realised that these two behaviour patterns are linked! The cat always leaves the premises when I am practising – and now she has somewhere comfy to go.) Lastly, Ben’s assistant can not only walk the length of my slackline - (pest! I still can only walk half of it) - but he has gone and bought one for himself.

4/ every time the phone rings I expect it to be Isaac, telling me the Little Red Hen has gone into labour, which makes me somewhat edgy, and that – added to my general ratbagginess -  probably contributed to my recent unpleasant telephone behaviour. (The Sally Howe part of me is also always half expecting the agent to ring, saying she has changed her mind. Poor Sally.)

Finally, a British Prime Minister calls a spade a spade

"Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

How very refreshing. And how very strange that it is a Tory prime minister saying this, and not a Labour one.

Sue Hepworth is a ratbag

I am a ratbag. It’s official. I chew people up on the phone. And I don’t mean people selling double glazing or trying to entice me back to BT, or someone from the subscription department of The Times, with a great, great offer.
I chew people up who I like. I chew them up when I’m stressed. I chew them up when I’m waiting impatiently for a particular call and the wrong person rings.
On Saturday morning a good friend got it. She was due to come over with her boys, and after speaking to me, she changed her mind. (Who could blame her? Even I didn’t like me much on Saturday.) The boys were looking forward to coming to see me, so she tried to bribe them to go paddling in Padley Gorge instead. They chose me.  She told them I was a ratbag. They still wanted to come. She told them she’d buy them an ice cream. But they wanted to see me more. I apologised profusely on the phone to her, and begged her to come. She relented, bless her. She forgave me.
So…I may not have a publisher for my novel, but it is a delicately nuanced novel.
I may be a ratbag, but my grandsons like me more than ice cream.
No-one is perfect. And I am especially not perfect, but the people who matter still love me. So everything is OK.
And here is an official apology to everyone I have ever chewed up. I’m really sorry.

But I told you last year that I loved you - The good news and the bad news

the good news: My third book – But I told you last year that I loved you - is written and ready to go, and my critical readers all think it is better than my others.

the bad news: I don’t have a publisher. For various reasons, I parted company with the publisher of my first two books, and I have been trying for a long time to get a literary agent, as these days, publishers will not look at novels unless they are submitted through an agent. I had lots of responses from agents who said they liked my writing, my characters, my dialogue, etc, etc, that I was a very accomplished writer, etc, etc, but they were not going to offer to take me on “in this current climate.” That phrase was a mantra at the end of all their letters. The recession has hit publishing like every other section of the British economy. Publishers are publishing fewer novels, and there is a common phrase in literary papers - “death of the midlist.” The mid-list is my home.

the good news: In April I got an email from a top agent saying:

I’ve read it and I love it. I think you're a wonderful writer and the novel is lovely - clever, funny, subtle, wry, sad and uplifting all at once. I ADORE Sol.

I think it needs a bit more work, though, a bit more of a journey, more of a challenge for Fran before she gets to where she should be. And I also think it won't be easy to sell this quiet, delicately nuanced novel in which nothing much (other than Life!) happens in our current horrible publishing landscape.

So I talked to the agent – who was very professional, and very enthusiastic about my book, and who knew my minor characters by name! – and she said that because fewer books are being published, publishers are no longer interested in books that appeal to sets of people. They want big hitters and nothing else. She said she had submitted 33 novels to publishers this year – novels she really believed in - and she had only sold 10. That’s how terrible the current climate is in publishing.

So, she said I needed to make my novel more dramatic. (it is difficult to explain this fully without telling you about what happens in it and spoiling it for you when you eventually get to read it.) So I tweaked the novel in response to most of her reservations, but I did not make the big change she was looking for, to make the plot sufficiently gut-wrenching. I could not think of a way to do it that was true to my characters or my idea of the story.

the bad news: The agent says that she cannot sell it to an editor as it is. This does not mean that there will not be people out there who want to read my book, just that the publishers will not make squillions out of it so they’re not going to bother publishing it.

I respect the agent’s professional judgment, which means I have to think again – can I do what she wants? Can I change it in the way she wants and retain the integrity of my novel? At present I don’t think I can. But I will continue to ponder on this.

the good news: Dave and I could publish the book ourselves as it is – the way I am happy with it.

the bad news: The marketing would be difficult. We could sell it on Amazon, but probably not through every bookshop in the land.

the good news: if I am self-publishing, I can produce the book EXACTLY as I want it. I can choose the cover! (In case you didn’t know, an author rarely decides on the cover of her book. I hate the cover of Zuzu’s Petals. Who the hell is that vapid-looking bimbo in the hat supposed to be?)

So there you are – that was the bad news I got on Wednesday night when the rabbit bounced onto the blog. Oh, but I do love it that I have written a “delicately nuanced” novel.

Comments welcome.

The Bunny Club, episode 2: Outed

I wrote the last post late at night because I couldn’t sleep (on account of the bad news – of which more later). I sat here in my study writing. The house was silent, and I was just about to go and make some cocoa, when I heard a sudden skirmish behind the kitchen door. I froze. I didn’t want to stumble on a scene of carnage. So I went to bed, cocoa-less. When your kitchen -the ultimate altar to domesticity - becomes a place of creepiness and possible death, it’s deeply uncomfortable.

What was hiding in there behind the units? When four mousetraps had not caught it, but were contemptuously tossed across the kitchen by the quarry, you worry. When the demon is lurking out of sight, just sneaking out occasionally to snatch fragments of chocolate digestive lodged on said mousetraps (“Sorry, Ben,” (the painter), “the rabbit has finished the chocolate biscuits, you’ll have to have shortbread fingers”)  - somehow the intruder assumes the proportions of a monster. I mean – Dave said he saw a rabbit, but was it really a rabbit? It could have been a rat. He has been known to be wrong. He is a man. He just came in the bedroom saying he was freezing cold and had been waiting for me to wake up before coming in for clothes, and I pointed out that he has a heap of discarded jeans and jumpers in his study. If he can miss those, he could surely confuse a rabbit and a rat…

Thankfully, in the morning, the kitchen floor wasn’t strewn with bloody lapine entrails nor garnished with a headless corpse. We hadn’t really wanted the cat to kill the intruder, but we’d gone to bed fed up, and it seemed the natural thing to say to her - “You brought it home, you flush it out!”

When we opened the door, she bolted from the kitchen, as if desperate to get away from something. Was it a rat? Later she deposited a gutted bird on the doorstep, an apology for failing us.

“Right,” said Dave, after breakfast. “We can lure it out with lettuce, or consider force majeure.” He began to dismantle the kitchen again.

“I think it must be behind the fridge,” I said.

Dave pooh-poohed the idea: “There isn’t room.”

He pulled out the washer, the cooker and the dishwasher and cleaned their tops, their sides and the floor behind them. Then he took the kickboards off the units and swept out the droppings underneath. “Where the hell is it?” he said.

“I think it’s behind the fridge,” I said.

More pooh-poohing: “There isn’t room.”

He poked between the units and the wall with a long stick. Nothing.

“I think it’s behind the fridge,” I said.

Finally, he pulled out the fridge, and yes! It was a rabbit! Thank God! It wasn’t injured, and it didn’t have a stray mousetrap clipped to its ear. But then it rushed into the boxing around the pipes.

So Dave unscrewed the boxing.

He put it on the back lawn and the harmless, cuddly bunny hopped jauntily away. 

Our kitchen hasn’t been this clean for years.

Dave is a star.

The Bunny Club – a late night posting

Do you remember I said we had a mouse in the kitchen and the cat wasn’t interested because she just wants to catch rabbits these days? Well…

… there I was in the dining room at 7.45 pm, eating a late tea of fish and chips and drinking a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, trying to recover from some bad news I’d just received via a phone call, when Dave came in from the kitchen and said, “It’s not a mouse in the kitchen, it’s a rat. And it’s hiding under the dresser. I’m getting my boiler suit on and my wellies, and I’m going to deal with it.” Then he retreated.

Five minutes later he came back and said, “It’s not a rat, it’s a rabbit. Can you come and help?”

I finished my tea and went into the kitchen, to find him climbing behind the washing machine.

“I thought it was under the dresser,” I said.

“It ran out when I poked it. It was too quick to catch.”

We don’t have a big kitchen. We don’t have a fancy kitchen. Half an hour later we still had not found the dratted rabbit. Had it escaped through the open window while his back was turned? Who bloody knows? We’ve left the cat in there, and I’m telling you now, Dave can go in there first in the morning.

The phone caller with the bad news had left a message with Dave for me to call her back when I got in at 7. “I hope that doesn’t spoil your dinner plans,” she said.

Dinner plans? Fish and chips for one, while the other dismantles the kitchen in search of a fugitive rabbit?

p.s. I am considering whether to tell you the bad news.

 

Dreams

My son and my daughter-in-law (AKA the little red hen) are expecting their first baby at the end of July, and the other night I dreamed they sent it over here from San Francisco for the first two weeks of it’s life, for me to look after. They didn’t want me to feel left out.

They ring us every week. They come to see us when they can. I go to visit once a year. It’s not as if we aren’t in touch. Somehow, though, when momentous events are in the offing, Skype and email and blogging are not an adequate substitute for being together for real.

Almost persuaded

There are a load of vegetarians in my family, and every so often I consider whether I should be a vegetarian too, and then decide against it. I am a carnivore, bred in the bone. I was brought up on a farm where animals were for milking, fleecing, or eating. Oh yes, and for stealing eggs from. That kind of upbringing is hard to shake. It is especially hard to shake if you really, really, really, like bacon.

I do care about animal welfare. For years I have had the policy of not eating eggs that aren’t free range, and I won’t buy meat where the animals were not reared outdoors. This means that although I love chicken, I avoid it in restaurants and bought products, because it’s almost certain the chicken will have been intensively reared. I have had this policy for at least ten years. (I am not annoyingly strict about this, in that If I am eating at someone else’s house, I eat what is provided, so as not to be a nuisance.)

So why have I raised the subject?

Because the cat is ignoring the mouse that has come to live in our kitchen. She has developed more sophisticated tastes. On Friday, when we were sitting playing Scrabble in the kitchen, waiting for the jam to reach setting point, she appeared on the windowsill with a baby rabbit dangling from her jaws.

I don’t blame the cat. It’s in her genes.

But being faced with such a horrid sight at such close range – “nature red in tooth and claw” – was far more persuasive that any number of lectures from veggies.

The cat is following her instincts. I have a choice. Why is it sadder and more vicious to eat a rabbit than a pig?

Jam making time again? Already?

The jam took so long to reach setting point yesterday that we had a game of Scrabble on the kitchen table and watched an episode of American Office while we were stirring. If Dave kicked the bucket, and the Little Red Hen persisted in living in the US, I’d give away the blackcurrant bushes. I wouldn’t want to make jam on my own.

Blast from the past

In amongst the scores of letters that my mother saved, was a letter I wrote to my Gran when I was 14. Here is an excerpt, transcribed precisely…

We had our Christmas Fair last Saturday; I was fencing, Jen was doing Judo, and Pete was in the Gym display. Our form had a Tin Shy and a fortune teller. For the fortune teller’s booth we rigged up some screens and curtains with piles of brightly-coloured posters on the outside. We had two fortune tellers, who took it in turns, but we called them both “Mme Zena,” because they wore the same wig. One was a boy and one was a girl, and they were a great success. One man went in and was told he would have six children. He looked very worried and said that he was not married. To which Madame Zena replied, “Don’t worry. The truth often hurts.”

…etc…etc…

Love Sue xxx

p.s. Remember: the Rolling Stones are the best group in the world. Please give my love to Mrs Dirkin.

What a hoot.

p.s. I am very impressed with my 14 year old punctuation – aren’t you?

Rare creatures

I told you how I had searched and searched for a fire engine birthday card for Gil to no avail, didn’t I? Because of that, I decided to start looking for a dinosaur card for Tate two months ago, and I found a pink one ( hooray! Tate loves pink!) in a craft shop in Northumberland.

I took it to the counter to pay and said to the woman, “This is a Diplodocus, isn’t it?”

She studied the card and said, “Yes.” Then she paused. “But I don’t think they were pink.”

Home

I have just got in from the garden. I’ve been picking strawberries in my nightie and dressing gown and wellington boots. It’s good to be home.

It’s good to be home. There is no comfort in my mother’s house any more. Aristotle asked - when you are eating an apple, when does it cease to be an apple?  Is it after the first bite? Or the second? Is it when you get down to the core?
We have stripped the house of everything that was uniquely my mother and father – except for the cloth thing with pockets that hangs at the bottom of the stairs and is stuffed full of knitted gloves and scarves and a rolled up, yellow kagoule.

When Kath and I wanted to sit down, to read the paper, or to eat our dinner, we sat in the sunny porch on Kath’s garden chairs, not in the cheerless house. Oh, there’s an old tapestry cushion made by my mother still in the porch, and a piece of faded floral linen (so archetypical of her taste) on one of the garden chairs.
It’s all but finished, now. We took down the ancient airing rack from the kitchen ceiling for Kath’s daughter. She will have the cutlery, too. Every one of the eleven grandchildren has taken something, which is a wonderful testament not just to their upbringing of re-using old things, but more because they have such happy memories of staying at Gran and Grandpa’s house, and they want a little bit of them somewhere in their own homes. Someone has the milking stool, someone the sewing machine, someone will have the fire irons.
How lucky I was to share the task with my cheerful, positive, hard-working, big sister Kath. And how lucky I was to be able to drive down the M1 and arrive at Zoe’s house in Sheffield where part of the future of the family –  my elder grandson– was having his sixth birthday. He is dinosaur crazy, and knows the names of them all, every last syllable. He even knows what it means when a fossil is labelled the Cretaceous period. He wants to be a palaeontologist when he grows up – “Actually,” he said, “I am a palaeontologist now.”
This is him on the right. (He asked his little brother, to help him blow out the candles.)

Here’s to the future (she said, trying to buck herself up.)

More signing off

I am going to Wensleydale with Kath today, to undress our mother’s house (that Jen and Kath and I dressed in March in order to sell it) because… someone wants to buy it. I hope they will love it as much as we do.

I am looking forward to being there, and walking in the dale with Kath, and having a laugh with my brother Jonty, but at the same time I am hating the mission. It is one step nearer to losing the house.

Less is more

The other evening, Pete and I looked through a suitcase of papers I’d brought back from Wensleydale last year. Most of the stuff in there was to do with Pa. There were records of the prizes his cows won at the Dairy Show, appreciative letters from his employers, the 1958 brochure for the dispersal sale of the prize-winning herd he’d built up, and so on and so on.

We found some things we had never seen before – such as a letter awarding him a scholarship, a photograph of him in a school production, and one doing the long jump (mid-flight), and this photograph of him above, clutching a Dairy Show trophy. I don’t remember him looking like this - I was only 3 at the time. 

To begin with it was interesting and fun to look through the papers in the suitcase. I was curious, and then enthralled, and we plundered on, and then suddenly I had had enough, overcome with a heavy sad weariness at the weight of it all…the memories, the sadness of his huge successes reduced by a corporate decision to sell the farm, the transience of everything, the loss of our childhood, the fact that we would rather have our father back than any kind of treasure trove.