My Notice Board

I have a room in our house which I call my den. It used to be my office when I worked from home. As I got nearer and nearer to retirement it became less and less an office and more a little cocoon where I curl up and listen to music and write my novels and poems, and occasionally this blog.

I always had a notice board. It had pins on which I would hang reminders of whose VAT Return had to be done by the end of the month, lists of jobs to do, even charts of this year's tax allowances. Gradually it began to have vacant space which I filled with photos and cards and reminders of happiness. Even though I have still not quite managed to retire, still sorting out a few tax returns which have to be done before January 31st, I can now look at my noticeboard and see that it is no longer a business aid. It is now a personal reminiscence prompter.

Top left a buff certificate. "Eyam Carnival 1985. Third Prize." Eyam is the plague village in Derbyshire, famous because in 1666 the rector William Mompesson persuaded all the inhabitants to cut themselves off from the rest of Derbyshire when the Black Death arrived in a bolt of cloth from London. Two thirds of them died. Their deaths are recorded to this day in the village church and on little plaques by the front doors of cottages, and on graves in fields. When the gravediggers were dead, people buried their loved ones close to home, so there are now graves in cottage gardens, unconsecrated  but likely to bring a tear to your eye. There are still people in the village with the same surnames as those recorded on the graves.

We were honoured to live there for five years. Every August there is a carnival. You will find it difficult to get served in the pub on Carnival Day unless you are in fancy dress. Wearing a cape made from embroidered velvet curtains and a hat made of same, I was an Archbishop and got third prize. A drunken lady begged me to hear her confession. Naturally I said yes. Obviously you understand I cannot divulge what she confessed, even if I could remember.

Then there is a photo of me in Fifteen  to One on Channel Four. I was eliminated by not knowing the name of Socrates's shrewish wife. Does anyone know her name, except Socrates? A photo of the late George Melly who gave me one of his hats (another story), photos of my children and grandchildren, a photo of me with giant figures of Wallace and Grommit when I was Finance Director of the International Animation Festival, three one pound notes from Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man, all places very dear to me. An invitation to the Queen's Collection of paintings at Buckingham Palace (see my blog of 03/12/2009), a ticket for the Queen Elizabeth Hall "Celebration of Adrian Mitchell." Why is he dead and me not? We both failed Latin in our prelims while reading English at Oxford, so we did Remedial Latin together. As everyone knows Adrian hated exams and decreed that none of his poems should ever be the subject of an examination question. He was making a film called "Dumb Crambo." Does anyone know whether it still exists? I had a part in it.

There is a poster of an event at the Rose and Crown Theatre pub in Walthamstow with my name, well down below the leading lights, but reminding me that people actually paid £5 to hear me reading my own poems. Wow!

Then there is a grey and white photo of my mother holding me, showing me a flower in the garden, long, long, long ago; a bookmark from "The Tass" the best pub in Edinburgh, a One Goiler note, only given to honorary citizens of the Independent State of Lochgoilhead in Argyll. How did I earn that? Another blog?

I get quite a lot of happiness from listening to music in the solitude of my den, looking at my noticeboard.

Good night to all my readers.

Holding Hands at Midnight

        My new novel "Holding Hands at Midnight" is resting, like a bottle of good wine. I have edited it and feel it is ready for publication. I have printed it out so can now read it on the page rather than the screen. However, I think that before it is let loose upon the world, I have to read the printed version as if I had just picked up a book from a bookshop and was browsing.

        I tried to do just that, read it. It was impossible. All the characters have inhabited my head for the past three years, day and night, on my walks, in the pub, at my desk, in my dreams, wittering away, pulling my sleeve saying "Give me more lines. I would have said or done so and so."

        "No you wouldn't. I decide what you do and what you say."
        "That's what you think."

        I could not read it. It was too close to home. So I have sent a synopsis to various publishers and am about to give a printed copy to a trusted friend to read and comment, hopefully honestly. It is a difficult book and I suspect some family and friends will not like it. It is set in the 1960's and has four main characters, all in love with each other in various combinations at different times, but all at the end of the day loyal and supportive of each other. Two are women who escape unfulfilled marriages by falling in love with each other. This leads to their outraged husbands casting them out, homeless. They survive by becoming prostitutes, helped by a sympathetic married couple. In time the relationships between the four of them develop in surprising ways, complicated by the two lesbian prostitutes having a child each, and the married couple having two children. So we have a household of four adults and four children. The children are very happy in this menage until questions are asked at school.
        There is a sub plot concerning the daughter of one of the prostitutes. She writes stories for children and has one accepted by the BBC, who turn it into a series for children's television. BBC want to interview her. A ten year old would normally be accompanied by her Mum. But her Mum might be recognised by some of her punters. Tricky.
       Then one of the adults gets breast cancer, and the rather unorthodox household in which she lives, sustains her until she dies, and sustains her children after her death.

I will be asked what do I know about prostitutes and in particular lesbian prostitutes. In my twenties on my way home from the pub I came across a woman lying in the gutter with her face kicked in and her arm and ribs broken. I took her to hospital and looked after her and discovered that she was a prostitute living with her lesbian partner. It so happened that at that time I fell out with my landlord and became homeless and the two lesbian prostitues took me in and gave me a home, and I lived with them for nine months and that was a very happy time. So I do know enough to write about these subjects.
        But I may well be accused of glamourising prostitution. All I can say is this. There have been, probably are still, happy and successful prostitutes. I knew two of them fifty years ago. I was not surprised to read "The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl" by Belle de Jour. Nor was I surprised last year when I met her at the Oxford Literary Festival to discover that the author was Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist specialising in neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. Very handsome is Dr Brooke. You could see why she was successful as a hooker. I was considerably hooked.
        So that I can separate myself from the characters in my novel, and read it as a new reader, I have decided to divert my mind to other matters. I have made a start on the next book. In fact I am now on page 41. Without telling you what it is about, there are two possible titles at the moment.
        1. "The Floors of Silent Seas." Quotation from T.S.Eliot. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
        2. "Green in Judgement." I need to look that one up, but I'm sure it was Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra "My salad days, when I was green in judgement."
        Votes please.