Kindness in the Soul - by Jan Needle

Having been recently forced into close proximity with the section of society that keeps the rest of us from going under, I’ve been pushed to wonder, not for the first time, what writing is actually for.

Without going into too much detail, I have been meeting carers, cleaners, bum wipers and suchlike unregarded, ill-rewarded members of our Big Society. All but one of them, so far, has been black, all of them have been on the minimum wage, all of them have got degrees.

I have been, ridiculously, too polite to ask them how much they might earn, or if indeed they are on zero hours contracts. I do know however, that they are not paid for their driving time, have to provide their own cars, and pay for their own petrol. This, incidentally, in a rural area far from town, in a village that does not even have a shop, let alone a bus service. It does not even have a public telephone.

The oldest of these people is perhaps twenty-eight, from Zimbabwe, and highly qualified in computer sciences. She is the soul of kindness, and insists most convincingly that she loves the job. Mark you, she only does it until she can find a post more suited to her qualifications. If I were a cynic (and you all know I am not!) I might mutter "best of luck with that, love."

'that simpering disgrace who leads the Kipper clan'

When I say the soul of kindness, I don't think that I'm exaggerating. We've all done what they have to do now and again, I imagine. Showering with my mother when she was in her 80s, as the only way to get both of us clean again, is the sort of thing I mean. But that was a one-off, after an ‘accident.’ These good people wade through it more times than you want to think about. They smile, they comfort, they even have a laugh. Call it love in action, call it a massive generosity, call it what you will. I'll settle on the soul of kindness.

When I was younger, when I first started writing children's books, this sort of thing – imagined and observed; I am from a pretty rough part of town – was what fired me. My first published book was called Albeson and the Germans, and if not autobiographical was pretty near it.

My Mate Shofiq by Jan Needle

The second was called My Mate Shofiq, written when I had left the soft south (that's irony, by the way) for the dark satanic mills of Oldham. In my first month in that wonderful town (and that isn't irony) I actually met old women wearing clogs and shawls, with the famous local legs – damn near circular, from early rickets. In those days, incidentally, the place was still known in Lancashire as "brave Oldham" because, of all the cotton towns, it had suffered most in times of hardship. Many of the mills had gone cooperative, owned by workers' shares rather than by companies. Great idea until the slumps came.

After that, apart from mad dashes into other areas because I have an irrevocably butterfly-type mind, I wrote children's books that some people still didn't entirely think were suitable for children. My revered editor at the time, Pam Royds, did try to guide me in the direction of not leaving young readers without hope, as she put it, but she didn't always win. And it's an argument I'm still prepared to have.

Poverty and race played a part in many of my stories, as the titles might indicate. Piggy in the Middle, about a young woman who joins the police and finds herself struggling to survive the attitudes and behaviour of her colleagues. A Sense of Shame, about the blighted love affair between a Manchester girl (white) and her Manchester (Muslim) boyfriend. Given To Tears, about a forced adoption. My hope, I guess, was to mirror and portray things. And help to change them.

I've sometimes been accused of looking down on more conventional children's books, which was, and is, the most egregious baloney. I was weaned on Ransome and still devour books so soppy that they make your fingers wet. I think Enid Blyton is the best reader-bait there's ever been. Some of my children adored Harry Potter. Yippee!

So what am I talking about? This, I suppose. I haven't written specifically for children for some good time, and the thrillers and historical nautical novels I enjoy most doing now are challenging (if at all) in a rather different way. We’re being driven as a nation by an ever rolling torrent of feelgood propaganda in which people like Cameron, Osborne, Chris Grayling and that one who's out to wreck the NHS get away with almost anything, almost unchallenged. The great white hope, God save us all, is that simpering disgrace who leads the Kipper clan.

Our children, by and large, get books that fortify the status quo. It shames me to say it, but I think that might be all there is. Children are our future. Must they all grow up called Gideon and Samantha?


      PS. After I'd written this, I read Polly Toynbee's piece about housing in Britain today in the Guardian.  
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/nov/11/mainsection/the-long-read 
      If I said it was a happy coincidence, I'd be insulting the word happy. Here's a tiny extract:

     The England’s Lane hostel was intended to provide temporary accommodation for homeless families; however, once they move in here, “temporary” can mean years. The hostel is a modern day version of Dickens’s Marshalsea prison from Little Dorrit, a reluctant community with its own hierarchy of suffering, where years are ticked off by unlucky people who have run aground for one reason or another.

     Janice has been here for five-and-a-half years, with her husband and two children now aged nearly two and five. In one corner of her room, on top of a small fridge, stand a couple of electric rings to cook on. That’s the kitchen. There’s a shower room in a cupboard and all the family’s possessions are stuffed into a stack of suitcases squashed by the door. There is only just enough room for the double bed which they all share, the four of them sleeping together restlessly.

Smashing, innit?

My Mate Shofiq:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0078W05XU

Albeson and the Germans:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0078W057G