This passing moment

This morning, the last day of February, we have snow on the limestone edge behind the house, and the sun has been playing hide and seek since I woke up. This was the sky at 6.55 a.m.

This was the sky at 7.14:

And this was it just half an hour later:

I woke up feeling blank. But after paying close attention to the changing sky I am bright and bouncy and ready for the day, and now I've blogged, I'm going to pick up my sax and attempt to improvise on God Bless the Child.

"Let’s love today, the what we have now, this day, not

          today or tomorrow or

yesterday, but this passing moment, that will

          not come again."

James Schuyler, from A Few days

mostly for parents

When I was staying with Isaac and Wendy in Boulder over Christmas I got very attached to their Alexa, and as soon as I got home I tried to persuade Dave we should get one. No dice. 

Have you come across Alexa? It's a voice controlled computer that Lux, Cece and I used to tell us the weather, listen to the radio (e.g. Carols from Cambridge on BBCRadio4) tell us a joke, time the baking we had in the oven, play songs we asked for - e.g. "Alexa! Play I want a hippopotamus for Christmas!" "Alexa! Play Big Yellow taxi by Joni Mitchell." There are far more sophisticated uses than these, but the girls and I were happy with our very modest requests.

Lux and Cece use Alexa with fluency, as you can see from this tweet of Isaac's:

It's time to make a pact

You could say that February has been a minor bete noire in my writing - both in the blog and in the books.

For example....

'February that year was muddier and greyer and more miserable than usual'
But I Told you Last Year That I Loved You

'February's always grey and cold. You look out of the window feeling desperate for fresh air, and then you look up at the leaden sky and change your mind.'
Zuzu's Petals

'The price is February. The grey days, the looming mists, the dripping rain, the faded grass, the inescapable mud and the long dark nights: I hate them all.'

Plotting for Beginners

'Talking in bed circa 3 a.m…
Me (surfacing from sleep, quasi-drugged): “Kit, Kit, Wendy wants me to go on a Senior Citizen day trip to Iceland with her, all inclusive for £10, with a good lunch. Do you think I should go?”

Kit (as if I am not talking gibberish): “What date is it?”

Me:  “9^th of Feb.”               

Kit:  “Definitely go.”

Me:  “Why definitely?”

Kit:  “It’s a vile month, so you should do something to take your mind off it.”

This man is perfect for me: 

a/ he takes my dreams seriously

b/ he appreciates the horror that is February.'

Plotting for Grown-ups

And then last year on the blog it changed (February 8th 2016):

'This year, despite the execrable weather, I feel differently. I keep thinking back to this time last year, when Mary was dying. This year the thought constantly running through my head like one of those banner headlines under a newscaster is: "No February could ever be as bad as last year's February." And the next thing I think is: "I am still here, still alive. Mary isn't. I am lucky. I get to see another spring, I get to talk to my kids and laugh with my grandkids, and hear that 3 year old Cecilia said on the day of the Superbowl "I would like to be a Broncos player when I grow up but I more want to do fossils," I get to talk and laugh with Mary's kids, I get to sit in the sun and play my sax and share things with my friends and cycle up the Monsal Trail, and laugh at the hilarious things Dave says, and so on and so on.'

I have felt differently this year too, except last week, missing Mary, I sank back into the old ways and I tweeted:
"February is a very trying month."
Several people agreed, but Roopa Banerjee tweeted: 

"I like the hidden hope in February. The gradually lengthening day, the daffodils, the slight lifting of gloom."

And I decided that the lengthening days are what I am going to concentrate on in future. Because it is pretty wonderful when it gets past 5 o' clock and it's still light enough to see the snowdrops.

The other thing is what I say in the para above from my blog last year..."I am still here, still alive."

...which ties in with what I said last week -
"60 and 70 year olds don't care what they look like when they're dancing: they want to enjoy themselves. Next week they might be seriously ill, they might be dead." 

...which ties in with a quote from the Quakers' Advices and Queries no 30. which used to puzzle me until last year -
"Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully."

The years of active life I have left are numbered, and I am feeling that, rather than just knowing it intellectually. And to dismiss every February as a month to be tolerated, is dismissing a twelfth of what I have left. 

So today I am making a pact with February, as Ezra Pound did with Walt Whitman:

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman - 
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.

Come home, Fred and Ginger

Perhaps I should begin by saying that I didn't go into town to see La La Land. I went to see Manchester by the Sea. However, something unavoidable got in the way and by the time I got to the cinema, the only film that fitted in with my train home was La La Land. And as it was a dull February day I decided to see what all the fuss was about. 

Now I've seen it I still don't know what all the fuss is about. If this is the writer-director's homage to old time Hollywood musicals, he either hasn't seen enough of them, or he just doesn't have what it takes to create an homage. I could have lent him my collection, if he'd asked.

Firstly, the film was too long. After the first half hour I was wondering if I should check the timetable for an earlier train. Then it got going. But...

Singing and dancing are surely central to a Hollywood musical, but neither of the leads have more than mediocre voices, and as for the couple's dancing!!!!!!! (and I am a woman who despises exclamation marks.) I could have done that dancing. Any tap class beginner could have done that dancing. The choreography was uninspiring and hopelessly basic. It was dull. It was milk sop stuff. Yes, you could infer I was disappointed.

The acting was terrific, and I liked two of the musical numbers - City of Stars and Audition. For me, Audition was the best part of the whole confection. Hmm...I also liked the what if sequence at the end of the film. That was good. And the whole film was certainly more entertaining than standing in a field in driving sleet waiting for murmurating starlings that don't arrive.

But what's going on with the ending? This was surely a rom-com. The couple said they would always love each other (quite convincingly too.) Then five years later she is happily married to someone else and has a child. Is this the only bit of reality to invade the story? That people who are single-minded enough to achieve their dreams in showbiz can't stay faithful and committed to someone who they say they will always love? 

Enough. I need to get back to rereading Billy Mernit's Writing the Romantic Comedy. He talks such good sense.

How you feel is how you feel

Some people, kind people, don't understand that the way to be a friend is to sit alongside a sad person, and to accept their feelings....to accept their feelings as valid. 

Some people, kind people, think the way to be a friend to someone who is sad is to try to persuade them to see the bright side - "Cheer up - it's not the end of the world!" "Cheer up - think of all the things you have to be grateful for!"

If you do that, the sad person feels misunderstood and even more alone than they did already.

Let's learn to accept how other people feel, no matter how uncomfortable it is for us, because it's the best way there is to comfort them.

Yesterday it was Mary's anniversary - two years since she died. I felt happy. I was still in the dancing zone. It was a bright sunny day after a week of yukh. I considered this - that I was feeling happy - and thought - Well, I am not going to feel sad or feel guilty about being smiley on Mary's anniversary. I miss Mary everyday. Everyday. There is a big Mary-shaped gap in my life that no-one else will ever fill, and if I don't feel sad on this particular day, I know Mary wouldn't mind, so why should I?

Mary with her two lovely daughters

Grief is a thing which varies from day to day and there's no making sense of it, no pattern to depend on so you can protect yourself. It hits you hard and unexpectedly sometimes and then it recedes. 

I've been considering poems about grief and bereavement this early morning, and this is the one that captures how I felt yesterday. Today could well be different. 

The Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.

Pablo Neruda

I love to dance!

I went to a party last night. It was for a friend who was turning 70. His 'kids' had planned the surprise party with exquisite care, and he loved it.

I loved it too. After a month of anxious concern about politics here and abroad, I got to dance. The last time I danced was two years ago at my nephew's wedding, which is too long ago when I love to dance. Actually, no. The last time I danced was in my pyjamas with Lux and Cece in their kitchen. I LOVE TO DANCE!

Last night a small rock band played oldies like Blue Suede Shoes, La Bamba and That'll be the day, and the hall was filled with 60 and 70 year olds, all having a fantastic time.

60 and 70 year olds don't care what they look like when they're dancing: they want to enjoy themselves. Next week they might be seriously ill, they might be dead. And what's also nice is that offspring of 60 and 70 year olds tend to be past their teenage years, and are no longer embarrassed by their parents' dancing.

For the first time in weeks I woke up happy. It was the best medicine. I now feel energised for all those letters I've got to write to Theresa May.


There's only one way to beat the sadness of life - with laughter and rejoicing.   
Rohinton Mistry

Return to basics

February is bleak and dreary out here in the sticks. We have fog, frost, rain, snow, khaki fields and mud. I'm glad I'm not a sheep.

I have to mentally bludgeon myself to go out on my bike.  

February entertainment consists of going to the local starling murmuration site at dusk, standing in the cold for half an hour with other people and seeing nothing, nada, zilch. 

And going again the next night and being driven home by a wave of sleet.

Meanwhile in Calais, lone refugee teenagers are sleeping rough hoping that we can make enough fuss to persuade Theresa May to change her mind and give them sanctuary. I just found three petitions online. Here's one. 

At least I can sit and write. Or attempt to write. The current project hasn't been going too well so I've been doing writing practice, namely some of the exercises in my favourite writing book - Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.

Also I've been reading and working from her book on writing memoir - Old Friend From Far Away, in which she says:

Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect. It's not a diet to become skinny, but a relaxation into the fat of our lives. Often without realising it, we are on a quest, a search for meaning. What does our time on this earth add up to?

I like that.

Challenged

I went to a Quaker conference about forced migration at the weekend and I am still processing it. The accommodation was good, the people were friendly, and yet I was hugely relieved to get home afterwards and I've been trying to work out why.

Everyone there was concerned about the plight of asylum seekers and refugees, and about the UK government's attitude. When Theresa May was Home Secretary she set out to create a "hostile environment" for them. (her words.) She succeeded. You would be shocked if you knew what happens. One asylum seeker told us her gruelling story and at the end when she was thanked, she said "I hope you enjoyed it." Everyone sighed and said "No, we didn't, but we are very pleased you came to tell us."

I heard about the work being done by Quakers all over the country to help people seeking sanctuary in this country - legal advice, general support, providing money, food, clothing, language teaching, hospitality, accommodation and friendship. 

The feeling was that just as the two world wars were a challenge to Quakers - should they respond by fighting, conscientious objection, serving in the Friends Ambulance Unit, or doing relief work? - how we each help forced migrants is today's biggest challenge. 

What am I going to do to help?

I was thinking about all of this when I messaged the Aging Hippie in California this morning. We agreed how we started each morning depressed after reading the news, and that we'd like to give up reading it, but she said "No, we need to know and to respond if we can. It's a depressing struggle but we have to continue. They are waiting for us to burn out." She's right.

Onward and upward, friends!

To read or not to read. That is the question.

A friend of mine, who has more or less the same taste in fiction as me, reminded me last week that a book I'd recommended to her had upset her so much she'd stopped reading it. It was Helen Dunmore's The Siege. It's about a family fighting for survival during the siege of Leningrad. She couldn't bear the suffering. And I puzzled over why I could. I think it's partly because it's a historical novel (set 70+ years ago - which distances it from me somewhat), partly because they did survive (well, most of them), and partly because I love Helen Dunmore's writing. I don't always like her books and I stopped reading The Greatcoat which I thought was weird and tedious. But her writing is beautiful, and her latest book Exposure is gripping as well. It is brilliant.

This friend is the one I've told you about before: she always reads the last page of a novel before she begins, so that she knows how it ends and doesn't rush through great writing to find out what happens. So I told her the ending of Exposure and told her she must read it.

Another author whose writing I think is beautiful is Sebastian Barry. My favourite novel of his is A Long, Long Way, which is set in the First World War. There are parts of this that are so upsetting to read, despite its being historical, that I had to take a break of two weeks in the middle of reading it. Barry and Dunmore are both poets, and it shows in their prose. Dunmore is very sensual and neither of them are wordy. 

Why am I blogging about this today? Because Barry has just won the Costa prize with his latest novel Days Without End. I read the reviews when it was published and thought it might be too near the knuckle for me, and decided not to pursue it.

Here is an excerpt from today's Guardian about Barry winning the Costa: 

In a decision that the chair of the judges, author Kate Williams, said took 90 minutes, Days Without End was picked unanimously by the panel as the winner. “It is brutal, it is terrifying, it moves you to tears, it horrifies – and at the same time, it has these fantastic moments of light and beauty, and of friendship,” Williams said. “It takes you from the highs to the lows of human experience. It is an absolutely magnificent, incredible book.”

I am trying to decide if I want to read it.

What you can do

Don't feel powerless!

Follow this link to find ways you can help to make things better.

Beyond satire

I've been thinking about what I wrote in the last post and I've changed my mind. I am not going to limit what I read about Trump. I need to be able to protest, fully-informed.  Trump's policies are offensive, cruel, scary and depressing, and they are beyond satire. There is nothing funny that can be said about them. Perhaps it was the satire that was making me feel queasy.

Look at this link to see the full list of today's protests in the UK against Trump's anti-Muslim ban.

And if you live in the UK, look at this link if you want to sign the petition to the UK Government to stop Trump from coming to the UK on an official state visit. Downing Street announced this morning that the petition would not make any difference, but I think the more people we can get to sign it, the stronger the message will be to Theresa May that we want the UK to distance itself from Trump, not cosy up to him.

That man

Every morning on waking I look at the iPad for messages or photos from my family, then emails from anyone else, and then I look at the news headlines. They depress me, all bad, one after the other, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then I go on Twitter to see what Isaac has been tweeting about, and this broadens out to look at tweets from other people I follow. 

I've found it uplifting to read about the Womens' Marches all over the globe, and entertaining to see the many placards. I'm making a collection of my favourites. Some of them are too rude to post on here, but here's one I can show you:

There is a lot of politics in my Twitter feed, and lately this has meant a lot of Trump. Some of it is news reports, some of it comment, a lot of it satire. Yesterday morning I realised something had to change. I was spending an hour first thing reading about Trump. Even though half of it was satire which made me laugh, I ended up at 7 a.m. queasy and depressed. Yes, the satire might be funny but the reality is not. Yesterday that sick feeling lasted most of the day, so I decided things had to change. I have time-limited Twitter and Trump in the mornings and I'm going to start my days differently.

Today I read a chapter of the current novel and after posting this I am going to work on my own. 

Meanwhile, the snowdrops in the garden are pushing through the dead leaves, 

and the snowdrops in the lea of the wall down the lane are already blooming. 

We need to protest and to stand up for what is right. Meanwhile...

"The sun rises in spite of everything."

Derek Mahon

Just three words

I was driving behind a white van in Bakewell last week. The initials F.M.E. were printed in bold on the back of the van along with the slogan: Passionate. Focused. Responsive. And at the bottom, by the number plate, small graphics showed three items, a plasterer's trowel being the only one I could make out. As an advert for a company it was lacking - I had to Google the initials to find out what they did: multi-disciplinary refurbishment projects - but I loved the slogan. I'd love it if someone described me as passionate, focused and responsive. It made me think of the Blind Date column in the Saturday Guardian where each person on the blind date has to describe the other one in three words.

How would you like people to describe you in three words? 

It also reminds me of that question we used to ask each other when we were little: If you had to choose between them, would you be beautiful, clever, or good?



p.s. I've just found out from the very responsive F.M.E. that they don't advertise on their vans because they only work in the commercial sector. It's a shame, that, as their speedy and private response to me was impressive, and I'd certainly get a quote from them if I didn't have my very own man-about-the-house.

Interview

We had a five minute interview about the Bridges Not Walls banner on Radio Derby on Friday January 20th on the Ian Skye programme. If you want to hear it, click on this link and advance to 1 hour 45 minutes into the programme. Our slot was at 8.15 a.m. 

#BRIDGESNOTWALLS

BAKEWELL FOOTBRIDGE, fixing the banner

Tower Bridge, London

Westminster Bridge, London

Vauxhall Bridge, London

Aberdeen

West Cornwall

York

Cambridge

Glasgow

Denmark

Demonstrators at the #BRIDGESNOTWALLS event in Bakewell yesterday

We did it! And the sun shone for us after a week of dank mist. There were 47 people with us over the two hour stretch, which is pretty wonderful for Bakewell in January. It was lovely to meet so many new people who came along to join us.

You can watch a video of the event here.

The Washington Post covered the UK wide banner drop here.

Publicity

It's been busy here. Thankfully I am better from the shingles. It was obviously a mild dose, or that anti-viral drug was super powerful. 

Monday was press day...by that I mean I set about getting publicity for tomorrow's BRIDGES NOT WALLS event in Bakewell. This resulted in a piece in the Derbyshire Times the same day, and an interview with a reporter for BBC Radio Derby. He met me and John Cummins, another Quaker, on Bakewell footbridge to ask us about our banner drop. 

He recorded some ambient sound - the rush of the weir and the screech of the gulls - and then we moved to the quiet end of the bridge for the interview. It seemed to go OK. He plans to have it on Friday's breakfast show, which is great. It might encourage some listeners to come and join us.

When I got home, Dave told me I had a streak of toothpaste on my cheek. Hmm. No-one told me when the photo was being taken, which reminds me of Sally Howe and her disastrous photo-shoot in Plotting for Beginners. (At least she didn't have dried up shingles spots to disguise. Oh vanity, vanity, thy name is Susan.)

Moving on....the banner is ready. I was sad that I was too tired from the shingles last week to organise a home-made fabric banner, but the one Dave and I designed looks good and as it's printed on vinyl we can use it again and again. It's message won't date.

Since then I've been making placards for people to hold. 

New slogans coming up today.

There are going to be over 100 banner drops in the UK, so I hope you'll look out for them, and join one if you can. There will be huge banners on many of the big London bridges on Friday morning. You can check out if there's a banner drop near you by going to the main page of BRIDGES NOT WALLS and scrolling down to the map. 

Fear and hatred get a lot of publicity, but friendship and trust will build a better world. Let's stand up against racism and fascism. We can all do something positive and practical - welcoming and supporting refugees is just one example.

A ramble through the last 24 hours

On my penultimate day in Boulder I woke up with three insect bites in a row on the edge of my jawbone. It looked as though a spider had landed on one side of my chin and then crawled up, biting me as it went. I paid these bites minimal attention but by the time I got back to Blighty I had three more, and the ones on my ear were shooting out little jolts of pain, so I went on the NHS website to check for some easily diagnosed spotty disease: there was nothing that looked like my large itchy lumps. The GP, however, took one look and said "Shingles. You have it on the trigeminal nerve - on the beard line." Hmm.

He gave me an antiviral drug to stop it spreading and getting worse. It's not been too bad since then - Tuesday - except that it wears me out. I am easily tired, under par, and a little fed up. Apparently I can give people chicken pox but not shingles. The family member who declines to be named wanted to come and visit yesterday and I wanted to see him. He cheers me up. But I couldn't recall if he had had chicken pox as a child, though I do recall his measles.  And this made me think of my mother. I was always incredibly frustrated when she couldn't remember which diseases I'd had as a child, and yet there were FIVE of us. Now I forgive her. I hope she forgives me. Dave did remember: the offspring in question had definitely not had chicken pox.

So I felt grumpy at not seeing him, and decided that a spot of writing would cheer me up. I've had a novel idea bubbling away for some months which I know it would be foolhardy to pursue, but I might do it anyway.

Then I went for a short walk and felt even better. The fresh air was one thing, but the afternoon winter sky was streaked with pearly grey and pastel yellow behind a row of tall trees and was heavenly. I love living here. 

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me, so here is Friday's sunset instead, taken from a bedroom window:

We played Scrabble last night and unusually I won. Dave said that when I am winning, I always tot up the scores out loud, something I never do when he is winning. Now that's the kind of trivial yet interesting habit that would be good to put in a novel. 

This morning I had a messaging chat with Karen, the aging hippie in California, who is going on three demos in the coming week (all pro-equality and anti-Trump): this is the banner she's made to hold -

and then a phone chat with my brother which involved a good-natured spat about Mr Vole (see last post). Having a jolly argument with a much-loved sibling about a children's book, where voices are raised but no feelings are hurt, is both invigorating and cheering.

Downstairs Dave was reading Alan Bennet's latest. He told me that his wellies are very warm and he is currently wearing them as slippers. Hmm. I checked them for muddy soles. (All clear.) Also, he might buy a pair specifically to wear inside. Hmm.

Then I went to Quaker meeting where only 18 people were present, but 7 got up to speak. It was very helpful.

Driving back in the rain I spotted the drains on the lane overflowing, so when I got home I excitedly donned my wellies and grabbed a spade and went back to clear them. As you know, I LOVE clearing drains.

Now I'm in bed at 2.05 pm exhausted, but the last 24 hours has been fun, even if I didn't see the family member who declines to be named.







  

Censored

When Zoe and Isaac were little, we had a Ladybird book of nursery rhymes in which appeared Goosey Goosey Gander - do you remember it? - "Where shall I wander?.....There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers so I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs." I so disapproved of that last sentence, on so many levels, that I glued the pages together.

Last year I came across a well-reviewed picture book called The Worst Princess by Kemp and Ogilvie. Readers on Amazon loved its feminist message so I bought a copy to give to Lux and Cece. But when it arrived in the post I was disappointed. It was funny and the pictures were good, and I loved the story of the princess ditching the male chauvinist prince and flying away with the dragon. But then in the last few pages the princess sets the prince's shorts alight and goes on to make mischief with the dragon, mischief wrought on "royal twits and naughty knights." It was a let-down. I wanted the princess to fly off with the dragon and be courageous, not to behave badly. She turned out to be just as bad as the prince, but in a different way. I didn't give the girls the book. It sits on my shelf, unwanted and unloved.

Lately I've been reading Allan Ahlberg's learn-to-read Happy Families books to Lux and Cece. If you haven't come across them, seek them out. They are wonderful. My favourites are Mrs Lather's Laundry, Mrs Wobble the Waitress, and Mrs Vole the Vet. The children and I laugh every time we read that last one (which is a LOT of times) and catchphrases from the book now pepper our conversation. 

After I got home I wanted to check something about the book and went on Amazon and found myself reading the reviews and was amazed and appalled. Readers found the book to be a BAD THING. They thought its messages were that professional women can't get by without a boyfriend, that absent parents should be forgotten about, and that having a lot of money is a necessary requirement of a good boyfriend. None of this had occurred to me. I felt challenged, but after careful thought I have decided that the problem is that these reviewers have no sense of humour and are not reading the book with sufficient subtlety. (I asked a children's-book-loving friend what she thought of the book and she said she loved it because of the way the children do their best to look after their mum.)

Let me set the scene. Mrs Vole has one son, two daughters, three cats, four dogs and no husband. She is a vet who works day and night in every season, and her three children worry about her constantly because she works so hard. When she comes home exhausted they look after her. They also decide that what she needs is a boyfriend. The absent Mr Vole (who appears on the second page only) has three stepsons and (I think) eleven rabbits and after telling us this, the author says "We will forget about him." He is obviously too busy to help the beleaguered Mrs Vole, even if he wanted to. He is therefore irrelevant to what happens next. The children say to Mrs Vole "What you need is a boyfriend, Mum." Then they give their spec of the ideal boyfriend.

Suitors then appear and are dismissed for various reasons, some of which are hilarious. The greengrocer, for example, is deemed by the kids to be "too cabbagey." Mr Aargh the Actor (who is pictured talking to a cucumber) is seen as too embarrassing. Mrs Vole ends up happily with Mr Lamp the Lighthouse Keeper.

The messages I draw from the book are that the kids love their mother a lot, do practical things to look after her such as getting her breakfast, making her cups of tea, and finding her slippers (I am working from memory here as the book is now in Boulder) and in trying to find her a boyfriend. The children's requirements of a good boyfriend are possibly questionable but they are children's requirements. Who can take seriously the requirement of good football boots? That sets the whole thing up as a joke. One of the Amazon reviewers is appalled by the book, and one reason is because the children dismiss "unsatisfactory candidates for the most arbitrary reasons, in a rather judgmental manner." Oh dear.  

I feel very sorry that such a wonderful book has been given such dire ratings. Authors are at the mercy of every reader who chooses to express an opinion online. Shall I write a review of The Worst Princess? Perhaps.