Authors Electric

In December 2005 Francis, Bertie, Archie and I were sitting in the semi-darkness outside the National Theatre.  We’d enjoyed our annual outing to the Private Eye entertainment and weren’t quite ready to go home. An unknown lady came up to us and asked if we’d like three free tickets to Coram Boy , Helen Donaldson’s adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s award-winning novel. At first we found it hard to believe that the offer was genuine but she convinced us, handed over the tickets and hurried away. The box office had one more ticket available so the four of us were in. The play was enthralling, terrifying, heart-breaking. The image that stays most vividly in my mind’s eye is the golden-lit rear alcove with a small orchestra playing music from The Messiah (first performed at the Foundling Hospital in 1750). The front of the stage is dark: there are small mounds which we, in the audience, know to be graves; desperate women are running to and fro, clutching the swaddled bodies of the...

Back in March, before I suddenly took on the totally unwelcome, ugly, and unwished for status of widow, my head was full of ideas, plots, images. My first picture book: '...and Nobody Noticed the Mouse', was due to come out, with TopThat! in September, and a second: 'Quicker than a Princess', had been accepted for publication by the same publisher for some time in 2014. My only other picture book text had been 'DOUBLE DRAGONS', which was really part of an anthology, so I was delighted to have sold two stand-alone stories. Things felt good. Since David died, I have done no writing except for that single, previous May blog for Authors Electric, which was mostly devoted to him. This will be my second. Writing a monthly blog, I tell myself, is probably a healthy discipline. Whether I can continue doing it remains to be seen. I said no writing , but that's not entirely true. I have been writing letters to my man. This was David at Christmas, opening one o...