Authors Electric

It must be forty years since I last read Little Women and its sequels. Perhaps it's longer. I have no clear picture of where or when I first encountered Jo only that I did.  I cried over Beth, of course, and was briefly guilted by Marmee's virtue and ashamed that I had never given away my breakfast to someone else that needed it. But it was Jo that inspired me (along with every other female writer of my vintage that I have ever met.) I was a little bit worried that I lacked her spirit. I was never a tom boy and though, of course, I was in love with Laurie, there was no equivalent in my life. I was not Jo in any real way except in my awkwardness, but I wanted to do what she did: I wanted to write. Looking back I wonder if rather than that being a point of contact between us, the fictional Jo and the half invented Nicky, that I wanted to write because that was how I could be Jo. Surely I am not that shallow, on the other hand...  I have often scoffed at the idea that to be so...

It has been an interesting month of contrasts. In London I have been attending meetings with the fast-expanding marketing team being recruited to launch the novel I have ghosted about a man called Joe, who just might be able to solve every one of the world’s current problems. It is now due for publication in the Netherlands next June and in the UK next September. The writing is 99.9% done and so I was able to enjoy the meetings knowing my responsibilities were almost fully discharged. The nucleus of the party met and stayed at “The Rookery” in Clerkenwell, a wonderful hotel which is a sister to the eccentric Hazlitt’s in Soho and feels like a rather grand country house despite being in the middle of a very buzzy bit of  London . Highly recommended and a million miles from the other story I was researching this month in  Africa . The subject of the latter book walked out of South Sudan in search of an education when he was a young boy. He had no mon...

Christmas is here. This year, as I geared up for the occasion - especially the ritual of decorating the Christmas tree with my daughter - I couldn’t help but think back to my girlhood. Studying in a Catholic convent as I did, Christmas was an eagerly awaited time of the year and undoubtedly the highlight of the winter season for us in school. For me personally, though, there were always two signifiers of the season – apart from the nativity play in school, it was my mother’s silk sarees and shawls coming out of the almirah (wardrobe). This is one of the silk sarees Ma had gifted me - worn in Dec 2014. The most tangible sign of winter for me was the excitement with which Ma took out her ‘winter clothes’ in the sun. There were several times when there was wholesale cleaning/washing/drying in our house – the ritual summer (Bengali new year) and autumn (Durga Puja) cleaning that happened every year. But the December one was different. It was more luxuriant. Ma took out her...

Hare's Choice by Dennis Hamley There's a tiny village school in Herefordshire, so small that it has only two classes: infants and primary.           Two children, Harry and Sarah, twin brother and sister, are walking to this school one morning when they discover a dead hare.The more they study it, the more impressed they are by its beauty and the more saddened by its death. They carry the body to school, to show their headmaster and fellow students.           The girl says, in a burst of feeling, "We should tell a story about the Hare."            We, the readers, follow Hare into an after-life, jostling with all the thousands of animals, of all kinds who have died that day...           The headmaster of the little school sees a teaching opportunity. If the children can, between them, devise a...

In a former life (well, that's what it feels like now) I worked in Child Mental Health, specialising in play therapy with traumatised children. I did all the training, read all the books - but all that learning came down to one thing: it was the relationship between the child and the therapist that did the work. And so the most effective thing I could bring to the work was myself. I don't need to go into the soul-searching and supervision that went into all that. But it meant that I had to be acutely aware of events and feelings in my own life that I might bring into a session, in order to understand whatever the child might bring. I was pondering on this last week - as we geared ourselves up for the election and then dealt with the aftermath. Every day I sat down at my laptop and forced myself to write a word or two - having deleted that twaddle that I'd forced myself to write the day before.  I knew the drama of the election was in the way - and normally I'd be a...

Church of England Christmas:  Carols round the Tree So wrote Janette Winterson, making this quote from her adoptive mother  the title of her autobiography (published in 2012). “Fast forward” from Thursday 12th December, and we’ve nearly hit Wednesday 25th December, Christmas Day... As a person who studied social and political science, my involvement with the recent shenanigans in our Parliament has been on alert . For the UK election, the NHS and climate change topped my agenda. And I am unambiguously appalled by the results. On “social media” many of us have shared – not reviled, ranted, or abused, but shared – our distress for our country. We  are not happy. We don’t want to see this as “normal”. Parents of disabled children, people with long-term health problems (like diabetes), people who know through their work the cost in human life and future prospects of child poverty, homelessness, poorly funded education and failing health and mental health ser...

Dear Santa, This Christmas, I would like: 1. Full fibre broadband with a secure wired router, so I have the option of working at home without being radiated by wireless technology. 2. A train with a wi-fi shielded carriage (possibly combined with the quiet carriage?) so that I can read a paperback in comfort. 3. Orange street lighting so I can see the road in the dark on my commute. Failing that, a pair of those yellow night-driving glasses, which I don't seem able to buy now we have LED street-lighting and actually need them. 4. A local cafe with NO wi-fi (free or otherwise) and a "no smartphones" sign, where I can enjoy a cup of coffee and cake without getting indigestion from everyone else's devices. 5. An off-line friend who would enjoy a chat over coffee in the "no smartphone" cafe. (Can also be an online friend, of course, provided I get 1 as well). 6. An off-grid cottage for holidays so my body and brain can recover from all the wireless...