Retirement

There is no doubt retirement is an amazing institution provided you have plenty to do. Having said that, in the word plenty I am not referring to housework or gardening unless you have a definite unmitigating passion for them. I decided a year ago that housework for housework's sake was a non-starter. I've done it for years and years - exactly like cooking - hate it, and ironing. Now, I clean windows when the mood grabs me, not because I should.

My house still remains relatively clean. Unfortunately, my mother always spring-cleaned before Christmas. She washed curtains, she polished saucepans and cleaned cupboards. The result was she hated Christmas being too tired to enjoy the festivities. And that has stuck. I am currently examining my carpets. They definitely need cleaning and the lace curtain in the cloakroom look decidedly grubby.

So what do we know from that - we inherit the worst things from our parents!  Perhaps if I do nothing, express no views, stay in bed even, my children will escape an awful inheritance. My problem is, I write.
I get up at the crack of dawn, working on my latest thriller. I bore my family with plots and twists, and ask them to read long books to see if they are any good. Poor children - I hope they escape unscathed.

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Social Graces - Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee (apologies to John Donne)

If I had a great following, I probably would resist the temptation to write this blog. However, since I am the only person likely to read it ... here goes.

As far as I am concerned, the biggest difference (which is the one that socks you on the jaw every time you encounter it) between teachers in the public sector and teachers in the private sector is the lack of anything that smacks of social grace.

I mean, you would think that if you find a stranger sitting in the staff-room, a few questions might just pop into your head: such as, could this person be a terrorist, is it a poltegeist, or even ' what the hell is this strange person doing drinking our coffee and eating our biscuits!'

This does not happen. In so many state-run primary and secondary schools, I deliver my lecture to a year group and go into the staff room for coffee or lunch and the staff walk and talk over, around and through me. On one occasion I was even climbed over.

I might as well be invisible.

Not from them is the subtle, 'hello', 'good morning', 'what have you been up to?'

Yet in private schools, I quite frequently find myself talking to the headteacher. The head of English makes a point of welcoming me. At lunch in the canteen, I am carefully escorted to a table and introduced to the staff, with whom gentile conversation then flows. Then, at the end of the day, I am offered more tea or coffee, and a thank you and escorted to my car.

I wonder if there's a course at teacher training college on: how not to use good manners!

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Problems with age

It's rather like finding you have become an antique drainage system. You are still serviceable but full of kinks.
And there are always new hurdles cropping up. For me it's the keyboard of the computer. Once a touch typist with skill beyond reach, I find myself missing letters, typing 'o' instead of 'of', 'without' instead of 'within'. Ah, the painful nostalgia, remembering how my fingers flew across the keys.

Next week, I shall start wearing my glasses to wash up, then I might actually see that I have rinsed the cups clean!

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Life's like that!

It all so unreasonable - this getting up at seven full of good intentions. You'd think by the time m aturity has been reached, you'd have learned that good intentions are like the old saying: rain before seven fine by eleven. Except with intentions it's the other way round - by eleven they're gone - vanished in a puff of smoke - rather like Aladdin after his three wishes. So swimming didn't happen, nor the ironing, nor the housework, nor the car cleaning. Worse the few thousand words I meant to write - not so much as a scribble.

Ah well, there's always tomorrow. Meanwhile, the characters in my next book are stranded in a wood - I simply haven't written them out of it yet! How much longer, I hear them cry. Tomorrow - maybe!

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A different World

... for me that's travelling by train. And it's all Beeching's fault. For those that are too young to remember, he single-handedly managed to destroy all rail transport in the south west. Now to get anywhere, we are faced with the tedious process of bumbling along country roads by bus to reach a city. Mostly, we get up at the crack of dawn to bump along even narrower roads, festooned with cows or their skid-prone leavings, to reach a country station where they is a connection to London.

Several times in the past few weeks I have set out - feeling exactly as Scott did when he went to the pole. It's still dark and ahead of me lie lonely unmarked and unlit lanes in which, if you have a lively imagination, you might believe are ghost-ridden. They do, however, contain badgers and deer who have no respect for cars. Eventually, I reach the station in time to park and board a train, my seat neatly flagged up with my name on it. Such a civilised way to travel, until you are forced to disembark at Reading and pick up a commuter train that is wending its way south to Salisbury before eventually ending up at Victoria. Packed with merrimakers off to celebrate Halloween, bicycles, book-reading commuters, it bumbles along stopping every few minutes to deposit some weary traveller.

I had forgotten this is the way most people live - trundling up and down the steps of Clapham Junction or Redhill. This is the real England, scored by people determinedly making a living. I can't help wishing Beeching had left well alone - it would be so nice to reach the heart of England without quite so much hassle.

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Man's ingenuity

For me it's a conundrum. Today's must have gadgets: mp3 players, texting, playstation games, and Farmville of course, are steadily eroding thought and replacing it with an ability to push buttons, faster and faster. The problem I have with it all, is that the people who create these monsters,which are busily re-wiring our brains, are great thinkers!

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Joan Sutherland - diva extraordinaire

When I listen to the entrants on the X Factor tootling or howling into a microphone, only to be told they have wonderful voices, I often wonder if the modern generation has a clue about what actually makes a wonderful voice. One thing it is not - that is screaming a melody into a microphone while bending ones knees.

Joan Sutherland, who died today, was someone who could fill the Lincoln Centre in New York with the most glorious sound - as clear at the back of the Upper Circle as it was in the stalls. No mikes, no tricks, no gimmicks. She, with a host of other amazing opera stars, spent years learning their trade before casting themselves onto the world stage.

Sometimes I meet youngsters, who love music and spent all their time singing. But how many of them ever think of taking lessons, of learning how to breathe and project their voices?

I pray that opera won't head down the pathway of literature where good books are being upstaged by computer games.

Thank God, a few of us will mourn ...

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Signs of winter

With summer fading away, I find myself suddenly faced with a huge amount of travelling as I set off for Booksignings at Waterstones near and far. Obviously, they're not in China but they might as well be. England can become a hugely ungainly beast when you need to circumnavigate it. In the south-west we are miles from anywhere, the distances on a signpost appear to be doubled and can take forever, as you crawl along obeying an unremitting series of 20 and 30 mph signs. The eternal debate living here is: do I waste time driving 27 miles to reach a motorway or go across country?
Once upon a time going across country was an fillip to the soul, an enjoyable adventure. Now, it's the disagreeable alternative to driving in convoy along the motorway; as roads are closed with gay abandon, diverting traffic miles in the opposite direction.

I am sure by the time I have carried out a few of the Saturday signings, I will be putting my house up for sale and moving to a town, where there's a railway station.

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Embarking on a tour of lower England

I know very little about England. It is the country of my birth and, as a child, I was taken to 'interesting' places. Unfortunately, living abroad for so long, in my mind those places have remained the same.
I am constantly amazed when visiting new towns to see the progress - and yet, in some ways, very little has changed. I was battling my way round Bristol the other day, constantly asking for directions since mapreading requires both my specs and a magnifying glass. It struck me then that Brits are pretty much as they have always been - helpful and polite when you need directions. Except for teenagers! Sadly, they are totally lost if it involves somewhere more than a couple of streets away.

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Ode to Victoria Station

Whenever I visit London, I ask the question; how does London keep going? Under natural law, it should have collapsed in grid lock years ago. Tuesday there was a tube strike - the roads manic and, on the buses, even sardines felt squashed!

Despite the frustrations and the chaos, there still remains that frisson of electricity that sweeps through you the moment your foot hits the pavement Despite all the anguish, the noise and rumble of wheels - London possess something that no other city in England can aspire to.
Je ne sais quoi? Absolutely!

Oh by the way, you bosses of Victoria Station; the signs to the coach station vanish half way - what's that all about?

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Listening to heaven!

I've got Barber's violin concerto playing - a welcome change from TV. Am I getting old or is telly becoming more and more dismal every day. Programmes used to be fun and, above all, entertaining. Now, I'm bored before they reach halfway. Fortunately I have a shelf full of books! They never let you down.

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Nightmare scenario!

The worst thing that can happen to a writer is having a lay-off period between books. For months, you sweat and strain to get to the end of your current offering. After that you sail headfirst into the doldrums when the book is cast out into the world. For months you watch its progress; never happy, beset by a nagging voice ... what  if I can no longer write?  It haunts your dreams and fills every waking moment. You find yourself creating sentences and words for practice, drifting off the sleep forgetful of what you were thinking about a moment ago, fearful that you no longer can cut the mustard. Then that magical day when, once again, you write a halfway decent page, banishing your nightmares to the far corners of the earth for yet another year!

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In the past two weeks, I have met up with holiday-makers and tourists in Lymington and Weston super Mare.

A big wheel dominates the sea front in Weston and while they are upgrading the paving stones, orange bollards are scattered like snowball, resulting in hysterical lines of traffic cluttering up the seafront. Lymington is 83 miles from me. Reached by driving through Salisbury, it is a pleasant, easy drive in the early morning but a definite no-go area when people have finished their shopping and drive home.

Lyndhurst is worse - Someone needs to move the road or the town!

Once there, positioning myself at a table in Waterstones, I find it very nerve-wracking talking myself up - I mean - how big headed is it to say your own book is good and worth reading - even if it is!

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