Trouble in Paradise or the First Fight of the Year

New Year is full of resolutions that last about five minutes. I stopped making them years and years ago when I realised it's not years that are important, but days. Every day should contain a seed of better behaviour, clearer objectives, less swearing and more piano practice. Big sweeping declarations are for the theatre. Makeup, stage lights and surges of clapping. Bullsheet. None of us have any idea what we will be thinking in September.

One of my longterm resolutions, almost a twin sister of mine, has been to cutout the freak-out. I mean, Don't lose your cool, Catherine. I mean, try to look through to the other end of the moment and see how frantic and uncontrolled you appear from the other side. Don't lose it. 

But I do lose it. I've just lost it now.

You wonder whether in disassembling a moment that has passed whether there is any lesson to be learned. When you see the jagged spot where you should have bitten your tongue and not lashed out. When you drive back along the glittery snowy road now devoid of holidaymakers. When you sit there in the silent car thinking, is it my fault that I have raised an ungrateful, demanding teen? Or am I just caved in, playing the victim, as was said?

As mothers we are always juggling plates and often - for me - at least one drops.  You are thinking about the jammed road all the way home down the mountain, the rent to pay, bills galore, your crappy work status, the homework to nag about, the dog on heat, the house now a male hovel to clean, the extra 150kms driving tomorrow to resettle Ungrateful Diva... and how the hell do we get to the end of the month.

And then to be pushed off a shelf. Told that, Why should you be any more tired of driving than anybody else? When you freak out at the bl***y long queue of public holiday skiers and tell a certain lazy teen to get out and walk the short walk to the ski slope. (And this after 650+kms driving lately, including midnight forays into the -10 night to heat up an ailing engine.)

Sorry doll but this was a red flag to this stomping steaming bull.

We all know that suicides and domestic violence surge when families spend too much time together over Christmas. Too much alcohol, sluggish digestion of rich foods, cramped kitchens and rubbish to be taken out, bright lights in supermarkets and the empty fridge. I was fine through all of this. I've had wonderfully helpful family members here on holiday, it's just my own damned kids.

But I could have a saviour. My hit-of-last-year writer Simon van Booy has written a philosophy book called Why We Fight. This book will be the first book I order this year.

How about you? Did anybody make you lose it over the silly season?

***

Read a great writer interview and review of Pelt and Other Stories on www.whisperinggums.com

Things I Have Learnt This Year OR One Thing I Have in Common with Madonna

Everybody is piling the internet with things they've done this year, books they've read, good wishes they want to share, more stuff that they've done, anything they can think of. Well I'm going to add to that pile of virtual, often useless and sometimes warming information.

What have I learnt through another year in northern Italy, trying to write my way out of a wet paper bag?

That I love getting up before dawn. I like the blankness, the unwritten quality, the last coursing of the night between trees in the yard. The way stars fade or the moon delivers its final beams. I like having a clean mind, breathing in cold air.

That I dislike jellyfish. Although I have a gigantic shark phobia that makes each swim I take in Corsica a risky trial (I see them snaking along the sandbed, I imagine fins.. everywhere), I have now realised that jellyfish are not-so-loveable. I had my first huge jellyfish sting this summer and it lasted a month. Ha! And due to global warming the global jellyfish population will only double, triple, quadruple in the next few years. Jellyfish have no predators - not even man! They appeal to certain Chinese palates but otherwise none of us have devised a culinary way to cull the jellyfish population. This could mean more jellyfish stings for all of us. Speaking from experience, it ain't funny.

photo:Paul McVeigh/Word Factory

That I like reading in public. When DLC came out last year I had shaky hands and BREATHE written all over my speech. I even had a speech! These days I've learnt a couple of reading tricks. Practice your piece as though it were a sonata to be played for Carlos, my maestro. No mistakes! Oh and a pint at the pub around the corner is essential.  


That there is a God. This higher entity encouraged my current favourite writer to walk through the bookshop door at my reading in Soho last Saturday night. This higher entity allowed the tongue in my head to move and speak words in English.

That I understand the rain. Going to London quite a few times this year means I've learned what it means to have rain trickling down your face, into your scalp, down your back, in your shoes. It means nothing. It means that you will dry off later. It means that you will go into a bookshop and drip on the floor. It means you will smell like a dog on the tube. Before, I used to despise the rain. Now I've bought chunky boots that are as eager as frogs for a good puddle. As Madonna says, damp weather is good for your skin.

That it's hard to sell books. This is not a surprise to me, although it is. I thought some uplifting force would thrust my books into the public eye and they would be purchased over and over. That uplifting force is me. And I can't even lift more than three bags of shopping. I am skinny and distracted and my internet connection is weak and my computer makes me cry. I have learnt that my efforts are not in vain, but just about. This no longer upsets me. What sells, sells.



That a writer should go home and write. Ha! you laugh. She didn't know that? Oh I've heard it bandied about many times. Writers write. Builders build. Musicians perform. But I wasn't connecting the dots. I was writing - yeah - but I wasn't putting up a brick walled fence between my writing time and my social media time. Things were getting mushy. Lately, they are not.

That most of our problems are very minor.


Let me know what you think you have learnt this year. Are we taking ourselves too seriously here? No chance.

MERRY FESTIVITIES AND DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE

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How to Love the Cold

The cold is here in the north of our now topsy-turvy world. How is it hitting you? We have frost ahoy outside in the mornings and it is so beautiful to see the dawn lifting her tinkering icy skirts. And yet I have many friends and family who shrink from this season, who fail to see its distinct pleasures and delights.

Buy a moose hat

You might ask how a skinny person such as yours truly, born in a sub-tropical climate, who spent 15 years in tropical East and West Africa, who spent her fourth pregnancy (electricity cuts and there was no AC anyway) lying mostly on the cool tiles of the floor, who was once seen frozen with bare ankles in the coldest winter known to Paris ('85), and who used to beg to stay in the car, with the heating on dammit!, whenever she was dragged to the friggin' Dolomites...can speak positively about this even crueller season.

Well, what happened sista? How did you of all people come to love the cold?

It's been a long hard ride and now I will share my secret tips. These range from walking with bare feet in the snow to - of course - succumbing to the sales. And also involve mulled wine and mulled wine.

These are suggestions that work:

1. Walk tall. One of my BFFs, an ex-ballerina, told me not to hunch to keep warm. She said, Throw your shoulders back and straighten your spine. It's so true. Hunching means your impoverished circulation will never warm your extremities. Walk the walk, preferably in a pair of beautiful, double-soled boots (*see ahead*)

2. Turn your heating down. Or off. At least twice a year I forget to top up the gas tank outside, or it's a public holiday, or a bill hasn't been paid, so our cold stone house drops to 7 or 8 or 9 degrees inside. What to do? Get used to it. Pile on layers. Enjoy your hats one by one. One time I polished all of my 1930s plantation furniture from Togo. Of course I'm not suggesting we all live in iceboxes but it is possible to do with so much less. Before renovations, there was barely any heating in this house, and it was tough but we survived. Read the passage in Silas Marner where the mother freezes in the snow, try to imagine the rags she was wearing, and you will feel hot where you are sitting.

3. If you don't believe *2*, try removing your shoes and running in circles in your yard or local park in the snow. I promise this will make you a better, fun-lovin' person who laughs at the cold.

4. Get half-naked and go to pool. Friends shiver when I say this and - silly people! - I saw a wetsuit for sale at my local pool today. The temperature is the same as it was before you ninnies! It's only coldish for the first three laps and then, by degrees, you warm yourself from your very core. This is a lingering, enrichening warmth which is almost as good as, well, lingering with your precious one, who may not always be on call.

5. Clean your rafters. I say this because I vacuumed mine this week, in a fit of I-don't-know-what, probably because I was locked between stories. How the layers of clothes and scarves and beanies came off!

Fall in love with a mountain (this one's mine & I climbed it)

6. I learned to ski as an adult and made a conscious decision to try to understand mountain people, mountain hardship, mountain car (bloddy) problems, mountain sports. In the first years there was one older gent who skied in a pair of boxer shorts. That's it. Ski boots on bare legs. It was said he had a disease and could not wear cloth against his skin. He wore sunglasses and lots of suncream, and looked very odd sitting outside lodges with everybody else in their mitts and goggles and cool jackets. Can you imagine? This man helped me feel warmer, much warmer.
I also advise mulled wine. Lots of mulled wine. In every ski lodge you should have mulled wine. And if there is no mountain or ski lodge nearby that's no excuse. Google the recipe! Red wine-brown sugar-cloves-cinnamon-orange peel in a pan. Go for it! It will make you a better winter person.

7. Next trick: if you are writer, then write about hot places. How I love doing this!! And if you are a devoted reader, then cast your eyes over literature from stinking hot places. It truly works. Egypt! Australia! Nigeria!

8. Come January, come the sales. That means boots. Although as you know I have already purchased these to help with my work. My writing work. My showing-up-stylish-for-readings-work.


**HOT NEWS** I'll be reading from my short story collection at the FREE Word Factory Christmas Party at The Society Club Bookshop and Cafe in Soho, London on December 14th, if you'd care to join us do book your place as the stylish venue is quite small. Wine and stories and wonderful company! Cannot wait for this!

The Somewhat Empty Nest Syndrome

Birds engage in brief acts of sex. Mother bird makes a nest lined with down. Baby birds cheep-cheep-cheep. Mother bird finds worms and rams them down their throats. Baby birds get restless, peering out the world above, below, about. Baby birds take off, wobbly and at risk. Who said the world is your oyster? It's a freakin' galaxy out there. Mother bird slows down, hangs out more at home, not having to be such a tireless provider. The nest is quiet. No more squabbling over worm bits, long discussions and reprimands. The nest is very quiet. Mother bird can... relax.

I don't know how it is with you but this nest is emptying. There is an uneven flow going on, and though Youngest Man is still here advancing through high school, my Older Kids are disappearing. Contrary to what goes down in Italy where men have been known to remain until 50 obeying Mamma's calls to breakfast, lunch and dinner, my kids are mostly out of here. The Boyz in town for study and work. And SopranoDivaDaughter - following her calling to Verona - has moved out to that glorious city.

Of course there are nights where there is a familiar invasion of young people when a massive bowl of pasta must be prepared, choc-peanut butter brownies made (plus banana cake); beer stuffed in the fridge. And then the thumping music goes on until the next morning and I find bodies on the couch.

But lately things have been quiet.

Unbelievably, I have had stretches of unbroken writing time. I'm no longer running a taxi service. I'm no longer filling my car with as much fuel as the green tea I drink in a day. There are fewer desperate phone calls about buses being missed or pains in the belly, or appointments to see angry teachers about wayward sons. Well, okay, it still happens, but less now.

The wildest thing of all, is that someone has given me my brain back. Not totally - there is always a heap of garbage going on - but little by little I'm regaining lost territory, lost time. I'm not so tied up in knots. The neverending span of my years of mother-of-toddlers/kids/teens might be setting in rosy panels in the west. I'm almost ready to open another bottle of red wine.

Is that allowed? Wasn't I supposed to feel a gulf, a chasm, when they all started to leave? Is it okay to be so, um, relaxed about it? Looking at friends still strugging with small kids, is it okay to think oh what a long ride it was?

I'm not saying it hasn't been good. Or authentic. I've even managed to write a lot, considering. But that's been broken up, busted through, harangued, left there like a lover I've treated badly. Now, I think it's time to roll up my sleeves, put on my writing beanie, get cracking at dawn when I come back from the bus stop and there is nobody in the house to rouse. This is what I have been doing lately.

Writing bliss. The nest almost empty. Is this allowed?

A Reading, a Visit to the Queen's Front Yard and the Inevitable Pair of Boots

Those who know me well know that I pack a good suitcase. I've been doing it for a number of years now. Even with house-moves I excel, though after nearly twenty of them that's a talent I don't wish to exercise any time soon thanks.

So late last week I packed two-and-half outfits, two pairs of shoes (one high, one low), the book I couldn't bear to leave behind, a stash of face cream samples; I adorned myself in my beloved Ethiopian silver and took off.

This time it was just me and my work. No auditions for the soprano. No great social happenings. No shopping moments. Not even very much food on the menu except for a Lebanese meal and an attempted Yummy Mummy morning tea. I took the cheap bus from London to Plymouth, where I'd been asked to read from my story 'Montgomery Akuofo, Father of Twins' at this year's launch of the review Short Fiction, at an event within the Plymouth Book Festival. ('Montgomery' is in Pelt and Other Stories.) The issue is full of touching artwork and well-crafted stories. It's an absolute thrill to see one's work in such a beautiful production.

As you see here I spent a sunny morning wasting time along the seafront, before a quick run-through with colleague Rachel Fenton in her hotel room.

Of course I have no photos of the way I was clutching my book that evening, not looking up (AT ALL) at the university lecture theatre above. Or showing the way I tried to plant my feet a little apart to lessen my chances of toppling over - a real risk given my thumping heart and new slick boots. Or how I steamrollered over the rude words ('cock', 'bush' - twice!) so as not to laugh or meltdown.

I had a good half-pint beforehand. This is strongly recommended.

One of the best things was of course meeting writer Rachel Fenton, especially over from New Zealand, with whom I had a drowned-rat experience in the driving Plymouth rain the night before. Rachel won this year's Short Fiction Short Story Prize and read a section of her wonderful story - and I'll interview her later on the Pelt blog and grab an excerpt. Other wonderful aspects were the cocktail afterwards at the university and a lovely dinner where I was able to speak more with Chief Editor Anthony Caleshu, and Assistant Editor Tom Vowler, both of whom are top writers with good tips.

After the endless journey back to London my bum was so paralysed I walked halfway across town with my gypsy bag rather than sit down again. The Queen was in, perhaps.

So this author has come back to the ranch buzzing. In fact, after even further writerly talks in London she woke up sleepless and frazzled last night and had a terrific idea for a bit in a story she is revising. So what did she do? She picked up her phone and half-blindly typed it out. There. This is what writers do, isn't it? The 2.43am brainwave?

I read my brainwave this morning after the alarm. What garbage. Even worse than before. Cancelled.

The one thing I did grasp from each writer I spoke to, is that there is a greater shared passion for words, a yearning to read the works of others and to get our own work right, to produce the very best from the bowels and bones of us.

And we are all so fragile and disbelieving and moneyless. The lot of us.

Rooftop Dancing for Wanton Women

This is what can happen.

It's Saturday and you play your Haydn sonata, the second and third movements, over and over in pieces on your maestro's divine grand piano. He whizzes through the trio you are going to play together.
You walk out onto the street, pooped.

You sit in a bar where the internet connection is so much faster than the Fred Flintstone pace you have in the sticks.
You spend two hours on just one ginseng coffee. One euro thirty.
There are lots of flashy families about. Men who've thought way too much about they're going to wear.
And they are wearing it.
You read the words to the Frost Scene in Purcell's King Arthur, which on the CD you've never been able to decipher.

 
What power art thou, who from below, who from below,
Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow?
See'st thou not how stiff and wondrous old, 
Far, far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I can scarcely move or draw my breath
Let me, let me freeze again to death.

You realise this music was created in the late 1600s and it kills you.

On the way back to the car a very nifty Nigerian beggar called Kevin asks you for his fare to Bari. Says he came up here looking for work for the vendemia - grape-picking.
You tell him the vendemia was over ages ago and you admire his crocodile tears.
You know exactly how much petrol is in your tank.

Some hours later you park the car in another city, the evening is closing in. You pass by a Pentecostal church milling with Ghanaians in green printed shirts, all of them the same material.
Your eyes fill with tears.

You walk into town with mates, walk through the people, over the cobbles. You try on those boots you've been ogling as much as you would ogle a man. More perhaps.

In a bar an old painter who has had a very bad accident tells you you are a fairy and he wants to paint you.

You are led up to the bar on the roof of the Basilica, unexpectedly. You are invited to drink by some rowdy men from Emilia Romagna, one of whom has a chequered blue and white sweater which is a little startling.

The setting is flawless. Palladian sculpted statues are set along the balustrade, each naked stone body hoisted upright by curved iron supports that look like bondage devices. The light is rosy on the broad stone wall reaching up into the copper dome against the night.

You hear some good music and take your gin tonic up to the small area where two older German ladies from Dusseldorf with spiky haircuts are dancing in crazy eighties movements which are totally off the beat.

Somehow, they have made your night.   

Weddings, walnuts, exes and sad dirty truths

There was a wedding. Not a huge one, nor too boisterous. It was a little stiff, with much joy however, on a cold crisp day.

There were exes present. Plus fluffy new partners. Kids darting off. Teetering heels getting trapped in the cobbles.

A certain young soprano we all know sang an aria beautifully, in a frescoed chamber.

Later, at the other end of the day there was a big dancing party at the ranch here. My homie DJ mates delivered us into soul heaven and I swapped my spiky boots for some chunky heels and grooved.

*

But as we danced and recovered and cracked walnuts the day after, there were other, larger events happening along the peninsula.

Way down south, near an Italian island that lies not far from the Tunisian coast, people were crowded into a leaky vessel that would soon find its way to the bottom of the sea. Three hundred lives were lost. It has been said that a fire was lit to attract attention when engine trouble slowed the boat. The fire took hold and people pushed to one side of the vessel, causing it to capsize. The boat was within sight of the shore. Despite valiant efforts by locals and coastguard, most people drowned.


Days afterwards, when bodies were still being recovered, another disaster occurred. More drownings. More coffins lined up along the shore, teddy bears for kids who've probably never held a teddy bear in their lives.

In Italy these boats arrive every day and they are not turned away. Or shot at. Nor are people put in camps. They are clothed, fed, medicated. They begin the long legal path towards possessing a visa or, if necessary, are simply sent home. But every time I stop to think about this - as everyone in the country has over the past two weeks - I wonder what type of determination is required to undertake this perilous journey. Even in a sound vessel the sea at night is treacherous - have you ever been cupped in its waves? And on a leaky vessel as a fearful non-swimmer, with no life-jackets, depth sounders, good captaincy or enough fuel, I can't imagine the level of terror. Is it foolishness to hand your life over to these human traffickers? Or does the blind desire to reach Europe cancel everything else out?

Once I employed a West African guy, a friend of a friend, to help me plant a row of trees. The guy was a rascal and we got talking. He'd come over in a boat. Twice in fact. The first time the boat broke down and they were sent back to shore - Libya it was, before the war. He lost his money and had to work as a labourer for another six months. Oh, and before that he said he'd crossed the Sahara (don't know if I believed that, but it was easier then). The second time he said they made it. I don't remember whether to Lampedusa or all the way to Sicily. On the way there were bodies thrown overboard. The sick, the weak. This guy was tough. He dug deep holes in moments, swinging the pick with huge muscly arms. He was a survivor. A rascal, but a hard worker. I'm sure he's flourishing somewhere.


The saddest story to emerge from last week's events is a mother and her newborn son discovered in the shipwreck. Why did a seven-months' pregnant woman attempt this journey? To rejoin family members? To give her son an easier start in life? To escape a war-torn country?

We will never know. The divers who found her - grown men, heroes - broke down when they found her.

Our masks were full of tears, they said. Our masks were full of tears.