A bit of Critical Media Analysis for your Monday Morning

At the start of the autumn I remember making a rather rash promise to come back and do a post on the orgy of pleasure and escapism (and, in this house, also of wine and Mrs Patmore-esque pudding) that is Downton Abbey. Its non-appearance is, in part, due to a bit of reluctance to tarnish the joy for American readers by selfishly spilling spoilers, but also (much less nobly) because I evidently go into a mysterious trancelike state the moment I hear the title music and the instant it's finished I can't think of a single critically incisive comment to make about it. I love it all, and even when I'm howling at the television and rolling my eyes, I'm still loving it (which admittedly might have something to do with the wine and pudding.) Anyway, am feeling slightly envious of you US gals who still have it all to come. Here, we're already looking forward to the Christmas episode.

Talking of Christmas, it's still only November but already the advert breaks are full of sleigh bell sound tracks and polystyrene snow. Happily, my critical brain is in fine form when it comes to this year's crop of festive supermarket offerings. Forgive me again, non-UK residents, for whom the names Morrisons, Asda, John Lewis and Sainsburys probably mean nothing, but the following clips will tell you all you need to know. Let's start with Asda, who this year have decided it's a great idea to get us lay-deez to spend our money there by reminding us that, on the great Downton scale of things, we are definitely Team Servants. And our husbands, of course, are Lord Grantham and Matthew and King George V all rolled into one. Notice the cheeky little line at the end from the humorous boy-husband...

(No, you may not have a proper seat at the table; you might get ideas above your station. Oh, and while you're down there...)

I have a theory that Morrisons' creative team went to the same 'Feminism: Let's Pretend it Never Happened' seminar as the Asda chaps (and I bet they were chaps), but they were at the back of the queue for coffee and the biscuits ran out, giving them a darker take on it all. In their offering, our downtrodden heroine is not plucky and cheery about her lot. No. In fact, she is clearly a woman on the edge of doing herself harm and the whole thing looks a lot like an advert for a seasonal mental health helpline. 

('I wouldn't have it any other way.' WHAT???  You're not fooling anyone with that line. And PUT THE CARVING KNIFE DOWN.)

John Lewis are a definite cut above, darling, and their adverts are whimsical, high-budget and have great soundtracks. When I first saw this one I liked it, I really did. It has snowmen! And look, in snowman society the male of the species has reached a peak of evolutionary finesse way beyond human men, enabling them to go shopping! And yet... and yet... watch it back-to-back with the other two and don't you need to crack open the cooking sherry? It's all so... grim, this seasonal slog to equip ourselves with the trappings of festive overindulgence. You'd think these retail giants would have an interest in making it look easier, wouldn't you? I'd love it if John Lewis could produce a follow-up advert that showed the snow-woman whip out an ipad the moment her partner shuffles tortuously off into the blizzard, and order him something online. 

(Did you keep the receipt? I don't suppose you could take them back and swap them for another colour...?)

For me, Sainsbury's is the clear Christmas Campaign winner. Look, no tired stereotypes! Cute kids! Cute dad! And he allows the mum to sit on an actual chair at the table! I am filled with hope for Christmas Yet To Come when this boy will have grown into a man who knows how to work a dishwasher

Well done Sainsburys. And, as a reward I will do all my shopping with you this year, as always.  So, tell me - do these adverts set your teeth on edge too or do you laugh in wry recognition (because you're less uptight than I am?) Have I spent too long at the keyboard and become and joyless overthinker? 

Lipstick, literature and a lovely weekend.

Back at my desk and feeling rather deflated (though sadly only in an emotional rather than a physical sense) after a weekend of brilliant company, amusing conversation, culture, champagne and shopping. Friday saw the annual Mills & Boon Author lunch, always a full-blown lipstick-mascara-heels event and a big gold-star date on my calendar. Travelling down on the train I tapped away at my laptop, enjoying the illusion of being a proper Professional Person, while trying not to bounce up and down on my seat with excitement at the prospect of seeing everyone and a whole day and night of behaving irresponsibly with Abby Green.

Cool professionalism was further undermined on arrival in the room where the lunch was being held (feel the urge to refer to it as 'luncheon', which tells you what kind of room it is) by the pink goody bags at each place setting. As someone who, over the years, has spent vast amounts of cash and many late nights putting together pink party bags for mini-guests at endless birthday parties this was a most pleasing manifestation of karma, though I have to confess that nothing as generous or exciting as Laurent Perrier champagne, Hotel Chocolat Kir Royale chocolates, candles or pink moleskine notebooks (with M&B logo) have ever appeared in a party bag of my creation.

It was a fabulous day, ending with a lovely, champagne-hazy evening at the M&B Author Toast (complete with dainty canapes, but no actual toast) during which conversation embraced such highbrow topics as The Actor Most Suited to Playing Christian Grey (Henry Cavill, obv) and Preparations for Childbirth (which I'm not going to mention, for fear of attracting the wrong sort of visitor via Google Search).  The following morning I met Daughter #1 from the train at Euston as she'd been shortlisted in a poetry competition in Peterborough that evening, which was a fine excuse for a day in London first. Given the purpose of the visit and her literary leanings she was keen to make a pilgrimage to Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, which supplied the cultural element of the weekend. Not only is she a talented poet, but she also has a prodigious skill in getting me to part with large amounts of cash, so after lunch I found myself in Topshop with my credit card in my hand. Seriously, the girl's a genius.

The evening's poetry event was hugely enjoyable and inspiring, not only because Sir Andrew Motion was the judge and gave a reading, but also because hearing the variety of styles and approaches to the theme in the shortlisted poems was so interesting. Also on the judging panel was the super-cool Mark Grist, writer and performer of one of my favourite poems of recent years. Check this out...

(I like a man who even knows about the works of Jilly Cooper, 

never mind re-enacting the raunchy bits...)

Anyway, yesterday was spent sitting on draughty branch-line stations in the syrupy autumn sun and waiting for delayed trains and missed connections to get home. The days when this would have been an endurance test of endless games of I-spy and Hangman are still fresh in my memory, but it was actually a joy to spend time with lovely daughter #1 and talk about things we never get a chance to at home, where conversations rarely progress beyond the number of wet towels on the bathroom floor or the whereabouts of my Touche Eclat.

Back at home the fridge was full (of slightly random items ordered by Him in the online shop) the fire was laid, and there was plenty of time to unpack, hug daughters 2 and 3 and chill the goody bag champagne before DOWNTON ABBEY.

(And that, ladies, is a whole new avenue of joy and the subject of a post all of its own...)

New term. New Start. New shoes.

Daughter #3 left for her new school very early this morning (at least 20 minutes before her older sisters, who both go to the same place) looking unrecognisably smart and grown up in her new uniform and shiny shoes. Watching her go, I experienced one of those crystal-clear flashbacks that occur often in books but rarely in real life, of watching her walk down the lane to nursery in the autumn that she was 3 years old, wearing her purple coat and holding her daddy's hand, looking up at him. It caught me so off-guard I had to blow my nose hastily on a tea towel.

So the plan was that the moment the daughters were all out the door I'd be up to my office like a rat up a drain, typing away frantically and trying to get down all the fabulous, sparkly words and ideas that have glittered in my head all summer when I've been far away from a computer. Instead I spent the first hour wistfully sorting washing and feeling teary-eyed and nostalgic for the happy weeks of freedom from routine and time spent with lovely people. This year we timed our own prestigious Family Olympics to coincide with the similarly-named event in London, although as a member of Team GB I have to report that we didn't do nearly as well as the official team, despite my own gold-medal performance in the Sock Sorting event. After that, with scarcely a washing-machine-cycle's turnaround, we went off to St Ives, where the evenings were warm, the sea was clear and the surfers were plentiful. We'd chosen a house right in the centre of the town so the teenagers could come and go (and stay in bed) as they pleased, which seems to be the Shape of Holidays to Come. Am fleetingly sad about the passing of the sandcastle-building years, but on balance think that the going-out-in-the-evening and drinking-wine-on-the-beach years will have much to recommend them.

Back home again, the days settled into an easy routine of waking early and writing before the daughters roused themselves from their beauty sleep. I've been writing something a bit different which has been both challenging and fun, which I usually find a contradiction in terms. (Not sure whether the fun element was due to writing in bed, which adds a certain holiday atmosphere. Also, on the downside, a certain amount of toast crumbs. Impossible to write without devouring mini-breakfast, to boost creative energy levels.) The afternoons were given over to entertainment and adventure, and a good deal of extremely messy baking, so that the kitchen has become so covered in drifts of icing sugar it looks like Miss Havisham's dining room. It was only the prospect of cleaning it that finally sent me hurrying upstairs to blow the dust off the computer and locate the 'on' switch... (after which I spent a pleasant hour browsing the internet for new shoes - which are surely an essential compensation for the end of summer and onset of autumn?)

Hope everyone else has had a lovely summer and made a few more memories to add to the precious store we each carry with us. If there are any that you'd like to share I'd love to hear them...

A Wonderful Weekend, and the Season of Last Times

Am in nostalgic mood after a weekend in Penrith at the RNA Conference, where I met up with a whole  lot of truly lovely people - some of whom were old friends, others whom I was thrilled to be meeting for the first time. (That sentence is so grammatically correct it hurts.) Last year was my first so I'm still a Conference New Girl, but already it's become a highlight of my year. Where else would you be given free books and chocolate, educated, entertained, fed, motivated, inspired, hugged, and made to laugh and cry*? A ginormous thank you to all concerned for a fantastic weekend

(*yes, Julie Cohen, I'm talking to you!)

So, already feeling a bit emotionally brim-full, I've come back to a week of saying goodbye. On Thursday I'll be doing the school run for the very last time after doing the same route with daughters in varying numbers and of varying sizes since the last Millennium (September 1999, to be exact.) The Big School is within walkable distance of home, which is good news for the planet and our petrol budget, but I'm going to miss driving through the Cheshire countryside with the mist lying in veils over the fields, the cows telling us (through the medium of bovine body language) what the weather is going to be like, and the trees marking out the stages of the year (through the medium of Leaf). I'm also going to miss the school itself, and the fabulous people associated with it, who've taught each of my children to read (Number One on my list of Essential Lifeskills), taken them for their first nights away from home, looked after them when they've been sick, told them off when they've been naughty and generally made up for our parental shortcomings.



They've been pretty idyllic years. I loved the small (non-iron) uniforms and the handmade Mothers Day cards, with their unguarded, from-the-heart messages (You are the best mummy in the hole world. I love you millions). I absolutely adored the Christmas plays and summer fairs (where I campaigned tirelessly, tirelessly I tell you, to be allowed to serve Pimms alongside the traditional tea and coffee) and harvest festivals and, although I grumbled at the time, now I think I even liked sitting on a chair seat half the size of my bottom to watch them. I loved the parents evenings that consisted of smirking over the things they'd written in their 'News and Stories' book followed by a quick debrief with the teacher. I loved the way they always came out of the classroom smiling, and chatted all the way home about stuff that had happened that day. The teenage years are exciting and bring many advantages, but you need the skill of an Enigma Code-breaker and the cunning of Hercule Poirot to find out a fraction of what they used to happily impart from the back seat of the car.

Since the start of the school year in September I've found myself secretly and sadly counting down the Last Times: last Christmas play, last school trip, last Easter Bunny Drive. The past couple of weeks have brought last sports day, last Performing Arts Club play, last summer fair, and now we're down to last Monday and the final few grains of sand in the glass of the Primary Years. Must NOT weep too loudly and messily during the Leavers' Assembly and embarrass poor Daughter #3...

(Plenty of time for that when she gets to High School.)

Old Books, New Covers...

This month I'm back on the shelves with new books that are actually old friends in disguise. And what disguises they are...

Champagne Summer contains 'Tamsin' and 'Sarah' (who will both be extremely thrilled at their promotion to title characters!) from At The Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding and Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper. Wicked Secrets is my two Fitzroy books in one (rather beautiful) edition, and Secrets (of the non-naughty kind) sees my Taken For Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure tucked in alongside Penny Jordan's One Night in his Arms. I knew that this edition was coming out, but wasn't prepared for the arrival of a box of books one rainy morning, and seeing the 'Dear Reader' letter she'd written inside. Needed a cup of tea and half a packet of Happy Faces biscuits to get over that, I can tell you. 

It's raining here. A lot. Came downstairs this morning to find the kitchen floor under 2 inches of water and Ruby the airhead cat marooned on the sofa looking alarmed. Just as well my writing room is up in the attic, and I'm in the middle of a scene set in high summer... (which is what this is meant to be, isn't it?)

A post in which I use a lot of CAPITALS

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a couple of lovely days with Adorable Abby Green. She came to stay en route to a family wedding and we did some shopping, a lot of talking, some drinking wine at lunchtime (and at dinnertime, and for quite a long time before and after dinner, too), eating Irish smoked salmon and watching James D'Arcy in W.E. At one point, when enough Prosecco had been consumed to make such comments acceptable, she said to me WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST UPDATE YOUR BLOG?

Now Abby Green is a wise and wonderful woman, and I never heard her give a piece of bad advice (except for 'I really think we should get another bottle'), so here I am, after almost two months, updating my blog. TWO MONTHS? How in the name of Cadburys did that happen? The last time I posted I was full of good intentions about nipping back within a couple of days with details of some of the cool stuff we got up to over Easter, and signed off promising to return 'once I've got some momentum going on the book...' (or words to that foolhardy effect).

 Ah.

At that point my manuscript word count was standing at about 60 thousand words, many of which I knew were neither perfect nor in the right place in the narrative, but I planned to carry on writing until I reached The End before going back and rearranging them all until they resembled A Book. Head down, absorbed in the vivid story in my mind, I felt that this was a reasonably achievable goal. And then I stopped for almost two weeks over Easter (and actually left the house and talked to real people which, with hindsight, was obviously asking for trouble) and when I sat back down and opened the document I discovered that the beautiful, intricately-constructed story I'd left was actually the longest and most tediously dull prologue in the history of writing and that NOTHING INTERESTING HAD ACTUALLY HAPPENED. In 60 thousand words. Gah! WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME?

OK, I thought, prowling around the house frantically searching for any stray mini-creme eggs the children might have missed on the Easter egg hunt; no problem, I'll just do some cutting. I can usually reduce my word count by a third just by curbing my adjective gluttony, so I figured it shouldn't be too hard to prune my rambling set-up and get down to some action. Except when I got back to my desk I discovered it wasn't quite that simple, and actually the whole story needed re-structuring. Worse than that, it desperately needed PLANNING.

I'm a well-documented, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying pantster, but once this fact had occurred to me there was no way of making it un-occur. So, first of all I retreated to bed for an hour and lay beneath the duvet shivering, then I got up, armed myself with a large pad of A4 paper, some different coloured pens (which served no practical purpose whatsoever but cheered me up a bit) and planned. Minutely. For about two and a half weeks.

It was all most dispiriting. After weeks of noting down my daily word count in a tiny silver diary bought specially for the purpose, it felt like failure not to be able to watch the total creep up any more. The pay-off was knowing for certain that the book will be about a squillion times better (ahem... once it's written) and that writing it should be a bit easier with some kind of map to follow.

That's the theory, anyway. Better get on with testing it out.

Sunshine

That's a very positive title for what was going to be one of my characteristically moany posts about sitting down at my desk and opening my wip document after almost 2 weeks away from it (on screen, anyway). However, the wonderful and eternally positive Kate Hardy has tagged me with a Sunshine Award which has shamed me into being more upbeat. The idea is to say what makes you happy, so with a wonderful Easter fresh in my mind, here's a not-quite exhaustive list.

Chocolate, of course. And Prosecco at lunchtime. And family, obvs - both close and extended, and the glow you get when you know you have a stretch of long days and late nights together ahead. Changing seasons. Old china. Red gingham ribbon. Clean white bedlinen. Places where you can see the layers of history and sense the presence of people long gone. Junk shops. Book shops. Cake shops. Proper tea, properly made. Writing (when it's going well). Hearing the daughters laugh together. Old-fashioned perfume (so, nothing that smells of melon). The bittersweet feeling of reading a brilliant book and you can't stop but don't want it to end, either. Clinique Chubby Sticks. Woodland walks. Pina Coladas. Getting caught in the rain (hahaha - not really, I hate both of those.) Wellies. Pyjamas (not necessarily together, although sometimes, when camping.) New season English asparagus. Late-night impulse online shopping. Scarves, especially of a pashmina-y persuasion. The place where I live. Elemis frangipani body oil. Baths. The apple tree in the garden. Toast and honey. Notebooks. Long lie-ins. Evenings at home on the sofa. Evenings out with friends. And singing loudly in the car, but that's my guilty secret, OK?

Thanks for that, Kate - just what I needed to kick-start the back-to-work week. Once I've got some momentum going on the book again I'll be back to fill you in on what we got up to over Easter, which - stop press! - involved actually leaving the house! Here's a taster of what for... (one of the things, anyway...)

Before I go, I think I have to tag someone else to give their Happy list. I'm going to ask Sharon Kendrick, but I'd also love to hear what makes you happy. Bet there are loads of things I haven't thought of that I'll want to add to mine...