A sketch of what Jim and Mary's attic bedroom ('Someday, Maybe' ) might have looked like. 

Fiction or Non-fiction?

Where do you stand on fiction versus non-fiction? Which do you prefer?

Amongst those who came to have a few words about my novels ‘Someday, Maybe’ and ‘Moving On’ when I was in South Harting the other week was an elderly gentleman who told me, with a certain touch of disdain,  that he was not interested in reading fiction.

               “Why would I want to read about imagined events that happen to imaginary people?” he asked. “Why waste my time with something that isn’t real? Fiction is pointless. Non-fiction is informational, mind expanding. When I read, I want it to be something that will teach me something, make me think.”

At my elbow at this moment are the two books that I am currently reading. One is Emma Healey’s novel, ‘Elizabeth is Missing’ and the other is professor of physics Chad Orzel’s ‘How to Teach Quantum Physics to your Dog’. Across the table, my husband has columnist and broadcaster Rory MacLean’s ‘Berlin: imagine a city’ and the novel, ‘The Finckler Question’, by Howard Jacobs. Sometimes the mood and the moment is right for the reading of one, and sometimes for the other. Surely, there is a value in both fiction and non-fiction and very much a time and a place for both.

Certainly, non-fiction can be educational, informative, engaging and educative, given the infinite variety and complexity of reality.  Slower labour is required; you have to proceed to the next paragraph only after you have managed to grasp the previous one .You need more energy!  It involves slower, line-by-line reading;   you can’t just glide over the words. Fiction may not require as great an intellectual effort, and is, of course, dependent on the experience and imagination of the author and his or her idea of how a person might feel, think or act – though non-fiction, too, depends on the research skills,  integrity and organisational skills of the author, as well as his judgement as to how to represent or interpret the information at his or her hand at hand – but some intellectual effort is required in fiction reading in order to recreate the world of the book and the characters according to  the words the author has given us. There is also an argument that information may be remembered better when presented in a fictionalized form.

More importantly, though, I am with those who think you can gain insight into other people’s lives, human nature and emotions and develop human empathy through reading novels. During my conversation with the gentleman  I mentioned David Halberstam, who spent two years in Vietnam during the early stages of American involvement in the Vietnam war and who wrote a non-fiction book about it afterwards,  ‘The Making Of A Quagmire’.  Afterwards, he said, he had felt that he wanted a way to portray the frustrations and the emptiness of the war and so he wrote a novel about it, too.  ‘One Very Hot Day.’

 Like Halberstam, I believe that stories don’t just entertain, but also enlighten and engage us and allows us to learn about social interaction, psychology, history and so on  in a way that non-fiction can’t. By drawing us into their imaginary worlds, novels don’t just give us a narrative or stimulate our imagination, but also enlarge our understanding of ourselves and increase empathy with others. We identify with fictional characters and think about how we would react and respond to their situations. We try to imagine what it would be like… As someone said, novels are word machines which carry us through time and space. 

My gentleman said that truth is stranger than fiction.  Mark Twain said that it’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

 Pity I didn’t remember that quotation at the time!

Wakey- wakey!

Instead of watching the latest episodes of ’Spiral’ on television last evening I made the mistake of recording them and instead spent the time wrestling with a knotty problem that I had hit with the plot of my latest book, the sequel to ‘Someday, Maybe’, (available online and on Kindle along with the second book, ‘Moving On’!) and scribbling down some possible solutions for getting over it.

I should know better!

It wouldn’t have been so bad if my brain had kept me awake most of the night in order to continue with working on the subject, but it didn’t. What my brain and I amused ourselves with to pass the night time hours was a dreary and protracted recital of nursery rhymes, ‘’Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle’, ‘Little Boy Blue’, ‘Dr Forster went to Gloucester’, ‘Little Polly Flinders’ and so on and so on, which seemed to be on a loop, arriving on the hour every hour. Between performances, we employed ourselves usefully in making such fascinating studies as counting up how many of each letter there might be in my full name and what the sum total of those numbers might be; how many generations have lived in this house ( musing at length as to whether a generation should be two-score-years and ten or somewhere around 40 to allow for having children), what route my husband’s troop train would have taken between the Hook of Holland and Berlin when he was doing his National Service, how many stops and where there might have been (wondering at length whether or not the men got undressed at night to get into their bunks. I decided not; no room.) We continued in like vein until the light crept in weakly around the edges of the curtains, whereupon I drifted off…

… and awoke moments later knowing that I had discovered the Meaning Of Life! Eureka! What a moment!

Fortunately, I keep a notebook by my bed and I scribbled it down for posterity before drifting off again.  I entrust it to you, dear reader:-

‘Joy of joys,

Tea of teas.

Don’t it make you

Want to sneeze?’

Yes,I did find it just a little disappointing in the morning.

New Year’s Eve we lit a bonfire on the headland at the place where the winds from the sea meet theOn  winds from the stars. We danced with flying hair and pounding hearts amidst the glittering sparks, drank deeply to our dear lost friends and shouted our hopes and wishes for the New Year into the orchestra of the crashing waves. 

Oh, no, we didn’t, I’m wrong there. Sorry.

We were in bed by ten.

I do remember a time when New Year's Eve was the highlight of our social calendar. Christmas for the children, NYE for the adults. In the earlier years, we usually spent it in the home of some Scottish friends, who really pushed the boat out, first-footer and all. Then later, we would host a dinner party for a group of good friends. It usually went on all night. The last time we celebrated NYE with any sort of style and degree of  enthusiasm must have been  seven or eight years ago now. 

Does it make us feel uncomfortable that the years are flying past too fast? Do we have insufficient energy and optimism? Are there too few dear friends left with whom to celebrate? Does the midnight tolling of Big Ben remind us too much of good times that are passed? Are we too fearful of tomorrow?  Who knows!

We feel quite happy really. We just prefer an early night. 

A True Ghost (?) Story for Christmas.

I always sleep on the right side of our heavy, four-posted bed. At my left hand is a pine bedside cabinet upon which is a table lamp and a small clock, and beyond the cabinet is the old oak door leading onto the landing. Another small oak door facing the foot of the bed leads to the shower room.

I had been aware for some time that a short while after I put out the light there would come a rather odd little noise from the direction of the door, something between a metallic click and a sigh.  I told myself that there was probably a draft blowing somewhere which was rattling the latch of the door, but at the same time, it did make me feel just a little disturbed.  

We had an electrician in to do some work one morning and after he had gone, I was surprised to find a small, cone-shaped pile of what looked like ash, about an inch across, sitting on my bedside table. Rather crossly,  (sorry, lovely Mr Electrician) I wondered if by some chance he had been smoking in the bedroom whilst working up there during the morning and forgotten to clear away the evidence. When I brushed it away, it left a blackish stain which took some removing. There was no sign of any of the substance anywhere else in the room.

When I went to bed that night, I found on the floor at my side of the bed another neat conical pile, a little bigger this time.  We scanned the ceiling but it was smooth and (reasonably!)  white as usual, so presumably the ash or whatever it was hadn’t fallen from the attic. The carpet around was unmarked, and there was no sign of anybody having been walked something in.  Once again the stain left by the substance was difficult to remove and left a faint grey patch on the carpet even after my best efforts.

Over the next three or four weeks, these small, neat, conical heaps, some the size of a ten pence coin, some smaller, some rather bigger, appeared quite frequently and always either on my bedside cabinet or on the floor at my side of the bed and nowhere else in the room. They left a greyish-black stain on the carpet, as soot might. We searched but could find no cause for them.

The strange little noise at the door when the light was put out continued. I am not an ‘It’s a ghost!’ sort of person, but I must confess that I began to feel as if there was someone in the room and quite spooked and uneasy about opening the bedroom door in case another mysterious little heap had  appeared.

Then, early one evening, we were getting ready to go and visit some friends.  As had become my wont. I peered nervously and carefully round the door before entering the bedroom, but the cabinet and carpet were quite clear. It didn’t take us long to change. My husband left the room and I went briefly into the shower room, emerging again a moment later, only to pull up short.  A nice, neat new conical pile had appeared on the carpet at my side of the bed.

I called my husband back to show him, and said to him, perhaps only half-jokingly, ‘If They are going to bring me little presents, I wish they would bring me something nice like sweeties instead of little piles of ash!”

We had a pleasant evening, returning quite early as I rarely go out in the evening, not having much stamina left by then, and were in bed by ten. There were no heaps of  ash this time.

I don’t sleep well as my rheumatoid arthritis makes me very achy and I woke early. My heroic  knight in shining armour got up and went downstairs to make me a cup of tea. When I heard him creaking back up the stairs I put on my bedside light and sat up, blinking around, as he entered the room.  On the floor at my side I noticed something colourful and shiny.   I pointed it out to my husband, and he picked it up. It was a Roses chocolate wrapper, one end carefully pulled out and pleated into a pretty fan shape.

I have never heard the sighing click at the door again.

No more little piles of ash have ever appeared.

I don’t have that odd feeling that there is someone else in the bedroom any more.

Rational explanation, anybody? 

Christmas past

I used to say the same bedtime prayer every evening when I was a little girl:-

“Dear Lord, thank you for looking after me through the day; please look after me through the night and look after Mummy and Daddy and Nanna and Grandpa and Aunty Mar and Peter(my dog) and Wilhelmina and  Henrietta and Augusta and Charlotte and Jemima (my hens).  Keep us safe and well and ever in thy service. And don’t let me have any bad dreams.  Amen.”

Then, around early December, at some point, when I was five or six or seven, I started adding another bit before the ‘Amen’:-

“And please don’t let me die before Christmas.”

It’s impossible to forget the wonder and excitement of Christmas to a small child and of Father Christmas in particular. Even though it’s a lie that we tell our children and even though I shall not forget the deep disappointment when I found out that he didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have been without the magic of sending off my Christmas list up the chimney, carefully setting out the mince pies and sherry in the hearth for his refreshment, (not forgetting the carrots for the reindeer) and the mystery and excitement of seeing that they had gone, which was also, to me, hard proof that he existed. Listening for his sleigh bells, wondering how far across the world he might have travelled from hour to hour, wriggling my toes to see if the anticipated heaviness and crinkliness of a filled stocking had been laid across them – it was wonderful.

It didn’t really matter what was in the stocking. There were never very many things.  I most certainly didn’t get many, if any, of the items wishfully listed and[FL1]   sent up the chimney, but I didn’t really expect to do so; it was sufficiently exciting if I got just one.  I do recall my delight in a baby doll with a hard, shiny head, ‘real’ eyelashes and painted on hair that I received one year; I called her Rosebud and she was my pride and joy. There was once a miniature china tea set. That year on my list I had itemized the plates, bowls etc needed for a full dolls’ dinner service for twelve, but part of me had known that was never going to arrive and I wouldn’t have had enough toys to dine at such a table anyway.

 On another occasion there was a soft pixie toy I called ‘Puck’.  I only got rid of him a few years ago; he held too many memories to be easily discarded. Once there was a small box containing tiny little metal school desks and miniature boys and girls. Once there was a wooden monkey which swung between two sticks and which did a somersault if you twisted them correctly, once a plastic woodpecker which was supposed to climb up walls, though he never did; he invariably fell off. Once – and my only deep disappointment this, because I had been hoping for a doll’s house – a detailed wooden tram. It was a fair size but too small to carry Rosebud.  I tried to stuff Puck inside so that he could be the conductor, but he wouldn’t fit either. It was difficult to know what you could do with a tram too small for my dolls apart from push it up and down, and I very soon got bored with that.  I found out many years later that my uncle had handmade it for me in secret. I’m not sure why he didn’t go for the dolls’ house. I really would have preferred that.

 Then there would always be a book or two – one of them always an Annual and the other probably something by Enid Blyton or else something more educational, like an Atlas.  Maybe, as well, a tube of bubble mixture, and some pages of stick-on pictures of flowers or kittens and things and a little plaything like a yoyo or a handful of marbles or a slim book of paper dolls. Some plasticine, perhaps, or some glossy crayons, a colouring book or a dot-to-dot… And in the toe, yes – an apple and an orange and a handful of hard, brown nuts - even, you never knew, perhaps, a shiny new shilling!

Oh, such joy!

---

 [FL1]

I am a dinosaur

I mentioned on my website that I forgot to charge up my camera before the book signing at the Winchester Discovery centre and that I use a camera because I don’t carry a mobile.

I don’t usually carry a mobile, I should say. As I explained, we have one between us, a small, bricklike object which usually lives in the car and which has only one use: sending and receiving telephone calls.  It has no other attribute. No camera; no apps. It is certainly not in any sense ‘smart’.

Just occasionally, one of us will take it out with us, most likely me ringing home to say that the bus didn’t turn up for some reason and please can I have a lift… We also have to remember now to take it out once a month or so and  make a call in order to avoid our number being removed and given to somebody else (It gave us a nasty surprise when that happened unexpectedly; cost us a whole £10 that we had just put onto it when doing the weekly shop. It is, of course, Pay-As-You-Go). We are usually stumped for someone to bother with an otherwise pointless call, so we ring our home number and stare idly for a moment at the house phone ringing all to itself before switching the mobile off.

Why ever don’t we have proper, all singing, all dancing modern mobiles, did I hear you ask? This is 2014. What are we – dinosaurs?

Okay, let me think.

There are moments – as at the book signing – when something just a bit ‘smarter’ would have been handy, but in the main, if something doesn’t improve the quality of your life, you don’t need it and what would not improve my life would be to be instantly contactable wherever I may be. If I think I need someone to contact me on a very important matter, then I will of course, carry the mobile  and I will even try to remember to switch the thing on.

 Then there are clearly thousands of people who are just burning with things they simply have to chatter to other people about – and hundreds of friends just longing to know where the mobile user is, if he or she has just gone through a tunnel, what she said to him last night or he to her, or what they are planning to have for their tea.  Very few of my friends – indeed, none that I can bring to mind – would be the slightest bit interested and in fact, might be a bit narked if I broke into whatever they were doing to tell them what I’ve just bought in the sales. In any case, they usually keep theirs in their car, too, if they have a mobile at all.

Then, I am getting old and so, sadly, there aren’t that many of them to ring. Probably for much the same reason, my age, I can’t understand why people are happy to share their private conversations with others, or happy to wander the streets apparently talking to themselves.

If I want to know about something, I can wait till I get home and look it up then – and I don’t need a camera in the run of things. We gave up taking photos years ago, when we stopped liking what we saw when we looked at ourselves and when the big old storage chest got full.

Anyway, back to the Discovery Centre. Thank you to the staff and  to the lovely people who stopped for a chat about my books – I was especially delighted by those who told me how much they had enjoyed the first one, ‘Someday, Maybe’ and, of course, those who were kind enough to buy a copy of the new one, ‘Moving On’!