No useless leniency

At the same time as waiting to hear the results of one competition and finishing my entry for the Bridport Prize I've been making a lot of cake, photos of which usually end up on my Facebook page. I think it's quite weird that people are very happy to comment about cake but trying to get them to write a review of your novel is just about impossible. There's possibly some sort of lesson there, but I'm not really sure what it is.

I think there's some sort of drifting lesson about why I write so much about cake when I think this is supposed to be about writing. I admire people who divide up their different blogs so ruthlessly between physics and dog grooming, never overlapping the two. Or even mentioning their devotion to Zoroastrianism, which reminds me I'm in the process of making a mantilla. When I was a teenager it was still normal for Catholic women to wear one during mass, and I always looked forward to the day when I was married and would wear one. Well the marriage bit sort of didn't happen for ages, and by the time I was in a state of grace again, women had stopped wearing them. I should add that I do own one, but it's very stiff and big - not by Spanish standards - it's ok for funerals, but not every week. So I've bought some very soft lace and black roses and will be stitching away soon. Just as soon as I can stop writing.

I have had no luck in the last million competitions that I've entered - ok, apart from winning Rubery, and I often wonder why, as we all do. Years ago my daughter entered her first feis and won every dance she competed in. When this wasn't repeated, she found it hard to understand why. I know the feeling. The first competition I entered seriously was Fish in 2006 when I was shortlisted and a finalist. I've been longlisted twice since then, but apart from that, nothing. 

The story that made me a finalist became the first chapter of Jump Derry, and one of the first people I gave it to to read sat in a kitchen in Derry with me talking about it, and he said 'that voice'. That voice. That's it, isn't it, really, my first bit of literary criticism, and it hit the nail on the head. You've got to get that voice back, or else it doesn't work. Since I've written another novel since then it's just a bit worrying.

 Recently I did some research into romantic fiction writing - i.e. reading stuff I'd never normally read. I must say Katie Fforde writes  more than anyone else alive - and I mean within her books. Hugely developed plot, sub-plots, it made me feel overwhelmed. I did read two novels by the same author which felt as though I was reading the same book twice but with a different story. Which is all about voice, isn't it? Strangely I found the whole experience strangely alluring, probably a bit like taking drugs, and so whenever I go shopping now and see those covers I have to stop my hand from stretching out to reach for one. I did all this mainly because of the Dave Duggan novel I talked about - which is great - and because on the ferry back from France I was sitting alongside a woman reading the said Katie Fford novel and she said to someone who wanted her to do something else 'oh it's alright, I'm only reading,' ONLY READING? For heavens' sake, only reading? Like you can stop and talk to someone about garden centres for half an hour because you're 'only reading?' and it's something you can stop? Crikey.

 I must say my children found Katie Fford's name a bit hilarious, but they've obviously been brought up in the wrong circles. I did temp with someone called something like Featherstonehaugh, but I've never met anyone called Fford, though at school there was a Foorde. Since his first name was Aaron it was all a bit confusing for me, I'd look at his name on his flourescent PE bag as he walked home, he lived round the corner, and I'd wonder if I'd got it right. Since the woman who he was always with looked like a granny rather than a mum he was a total mystery, but some people are. My one and only friend was sick on the table next to me one day, was taken home from school and never came back. Writing that now, forty five years on, it sounds incredibly sinister, but there was probably a very simple explanation. But since I'm supposed to be entering a competition, I suppose it's not something I should think about right now, or make any more cake.

the tigers have found me

After much hoohaa - well I suppose that's how you spell it - my sister and I didn't manage to get a stall at Wickham horse fair, but we did go and had a hot, if tired, time. We were both tired before we went mainly because the night before we'd packed up the car and prepared ourselves for sleeping on our pitch till about 4 in the morning, then getting up to do the fair. 

We couldn't get one, but after so much excitement and exertion - and we'd been really busy getting ready, cake decorating, phone case decorating and dress making for weeks before - that on the day it was all a bit too much. And it was hot, which both of us don't really like.

However I did buy the most beautiful handbag in the world, which involves zebra print and roses. I overheard a phrase which I won't repeat here but which was at the start of two girls trying to fight each other, which makes me want to drop everything and write a short story, but right now I'm a bit busy, yeah, cake making and writing other stuff.

However what I do want to mention is the heavy handedness of the police. Whether in response to My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding or Dale Farm, the police were unlike they usually are. In the past you could sell puppies, play pitch and toss and do all sorts of other stuff, and they'd turn a blind eye. Last year we did see two members of the SWAT team, but they didn't seem to be doing anything. This year the police seemed to take any tiny opportunity to be confrontational and hostile. Yeah, there were some stroking horses and chatting to the dealers, but this, I found, was the exception. The helicopter overhead didn't help much either. And when the girls started fighting the other policeman videotaping the proceedings probably didn't help much either. 

When Dale Farm happened, well, by that I mean the eviction, which is still so horrible I don't want to think about it too much, many people involved in talking about traveller issues said it was the start of better things for travellers. I really wish that seemed to be the case. But I really don't think so.

So apart from cake, short stories and being too hot, well, there's all the usual crap of being alive, all the stuff that happens each day. And sometimes you don't really want it. 

Writing & Cake

So I went on holiday to Normandy, and I sat in a cafe in Valognes, and I realised I wanted to write about it. I'd sat in another cafe in Port Bail and felt an overwhelming sense of peace, similar to when I walked outside my first night in Northern Ireland, so close to the border, and weirdly felt the same overwhelming peace. I suppose I like being away from home, because it makes you think differently. And if you are thinking differently, it's only a small step to writing different.

I'd already felt the earth move beneath the pavement when I'd seen a patisserie for the first time, and ran across the road wth my daughter to look at it, when we first arrived in Cherbourg. My adventure in pastry is being documented here but it began there at the window, and continued in the cafes and streets of northern France.

I then came home and finished writing the first and probably only draft of my novel, my believing that Jack's dictum of first word best word is totally and utterly wonderful, and find the whole creative writing school dictum of re-writing the crap out of something to be totally soul destroying - and art destroying as well. You don't repaint a picture seven times after you've painted it, do you?

So I'd like to say a big thank you to the waitress who looked like Michelle Garcia, Amy, Valognes, Patisserie Yvard, Mont St Michel and the lack of traffic which made everything much easier, and I'm also very grateful to the d@rt centre for coffee and space to write while my daughter does hours of Irish dancing. The New Forest Cookery School also gets a very big thanks, and all the people who've been great, especially when I've said about seemingly abandoning intellectual pursuits. But I don't want to, I really don't intend to give up writing at all. I had a slight wobble when I heard about Dave Duggan's new novel A Sudden Sun, as it seemed to be much the same as mine, you know distressed Derry woman with a heap of problems trying to get over them, but thankfully it's the same but not the same, and I'm enjoying reading it very much, especially as he remembers me as the woman who told him a rambling pointless story about a feis. But enough of that. It's all waiting, right now. 

Cake Again

Normally I make cake to eat, but now I'm making cake for decoration, but as I love the whole decorating side of cake I don't know how much difference there is. Among traveller women there is a demand for cakes that aren't real, that are for display. I'd seen these cakes at horse fairs, but were never sure if they were real or not, and didn't want to ask. The ones I had seen were brilliant white, and made of polyfilla.

So one of my cousins asked me to make a cake for her, on a pretty tight time schedule, and I said yes. So I spent a good while on the internet trying to find out what to do, and then more time trying to find fake fruit, and experimenting with piping polyfilla, something I honestly thought I'd never do in my life. 

I loved it when the Swarovski crystals arrived, they were so glittery, I suddenly realised why people want them, they're beautiful. The strawberries were a tiny disappointment, and then I couldn't get half strawberries which would have looked better, but the cherries were amazing, and even now I take them out and look at them. 

So I started, and used a polystyrene cake dummy as the base. I then coated it in pva glue, and then painted it, yes, brilliant white, which I'm not sure I'd do again. I then piped big stars of polyfilla on to the top, but when I put the fruit on I hadn't enough edging, or enough fruit, so I piped some more on, and pulled polyfilla icing round the edge of the cake to make rough, ruffled icing. More paint, then I glued some of the fruit on. 

I had a great time doing it, but I was more worried about driving the length of the M3 and then partly round the M25 to get to my cousin to deliver it. The driving turned out to be no problem at all, and I had a lovely time sitting in a chalet sticking the remaining cherries on, and then coating it with a gluey wash to make it shiny, chatting to my female relatives. This, on the right, is how the cake turned out.

Then I got shown much better, more beautiful cakes that came from Europe, which used real icing, and one of these is at the top of this post. I'm now working on one which will hopefully be a lot better, now I've seen others I don't want to think about the first one I did. Well, we all learn, but I'm still not sure how to make chocolate curls.

I've really, really enjoyed all this, I suppose it's joining up bits of my life, my family and cake, but it's cake without the usual hassles of what if it doesn't taste ok, or if it sinks in the middle, or any of the other things that can go wrong. Just a whole load of other things that can go wrong, instead.  

  

Propaganda by Memory

On this day in 1894 a 26 year old Frenchman died when a bomb he was carrying exploded in Greenwich Park. He was an anarchist, his name was Martial Bourdin and he was a member of the Autonomie Club. I felt as though for a time I was one of his friends, as I researched a lot about him for my Master's thesis, and then for my booklet, and then finally for Spectacular Times. 

This was the only real 'outrage' - as they were called - to  take place in Britain, but since there had been a sustained Fenian terrorist phase before this, the police, and especially Chief Inspector Melville, head anarchist hunter, were quite cocky about it. They assumed that they had all anarchists well and truly infiltrated, but I don't think this was exactly the case. In memoirs and official reports it is clear that the police were watching Bourdin but they had been badly embarrassed a couple of days before when Emile Henry threw a bomb into the Cafe Terminus in Paris. Henry, another member of the Autonomie Club, had travelled to Paris with a bomb he obtained in London. And yet Melville says nothing of it. Because he didn't know, obviously.

Eighteen years ago I was waiting around to have a baby, I was almost two weeks overdue at the time, and I perversely wanted her born on this day. She didn't appear on the day, but hey, she turned up a few days later. It would have been one hundred years exactly if she had been born on that day, but maybe it would have been a bad omen. It was also, in 1894, not too long before my grandfather was born.

I do feel upset about Martial because like many people he probably didn't think too much about what he was doing, what would happen if it all went wrong. Well, you know, really think, but maybe he did. Maybe he really didn't care about his life, but maybe he did. When someone approached him he said 'take me home,' which is such an incredibly sad thing to say when you're dying, but I suppose many people do say it. But I wish he hadn't.

In Spectacular Times I write about the effects of terrorism, or Propaganda by Deed as anarchists called it. The messy, sad and horrible stuff that is often not talked about. I wish Martial hadn't died, and I wish Emile Henry hadn't died either, although they both would be dead by now, as my grandfather is. I always want everything to be perfect, to be happy and married to your love of your life and have children and sit round the table being happy, but I know how little this happens. Maybe they didn't want kids or a wife or a table, maybe they wanted the big stuff, the spectacular stuff. Emile Henry had already gotten away with it once, maybe he thought he could get away with it again.

Like everyone else in the world I do not know what Martial wanted or intended or thought about as he was walking through Greenwich Park. His brother in law, Harry Samuels, editor of The Commonweal, didn't give the police any real information – that came out at any rate – even though he had dinner with Martial just before he set off for the Park. But lack of information certainly didn't stop Joseph Conrad from writing a pile of crap called The Secret Agent which is riddled with venom and bitterness towards anarchists. The police are great, anarchists are pimps, informers, fat or lazy. Or maniacs wandering round with a bomb under their coat. Don't get me started on sloppy writers comparing muslim terrorists with Victorian anarchists, just don't start me, please.

The damage one novel has done to the anarchist movement is huge. Because it's 'easy' – a nice clear message that the cops have it all under control and the anarchist movement is in effect not even real – middle class England laps it up and believes it. Everyone now believes Martial was a stooge and Harry Samuels was a police informer. How lovely and easy for everyone. Joseph Conrad, lie uneasy in your grave for what you have done.

I utter this curse because Conrad knew Helen Rossetti. He wrote a short story about her which is also full of bile, much along the lines of she's a middle class dilittante. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. But he had first hand, primary source information. And he chose such an easy, popular, money making route, and condemned anarchists forever to taunts. Well in this country anyway.

Rest in Peace Martial, and Emile, and Helen Rossetti. I love you all for the inspiration you have given me, and I've written about you all in Spectacular Times, and I try and keep your memory alive, and in the best possible light. I always wanted to visit the Autonomie, back in 1894, but since time travel isn't here yet, I did the next best thing and wrote a novel instead.

Where do you go to?

I have written in the past about what happens to your writings, and where you find them. And sometimes it comes as a great big surprise which is great. Years ago I wrote a booklet about anarchist stereotypes, which was what I wrote my Masters' thesis about, and which led me to write Spectacular Times. I looked to the often derided Rossetti sisters, Olivia and Helen, as a way of taking my desires for reality in the face of wanting to do something, but had no idea how, so I just did it.

Nowadays you can publish an ebook instantly, write something in the morning, publish it in the afternoon. I'm still not convinced about the goodness or rightness of this. But all those years ago I think I might have adored the idea, although the lure of having a physical booklet in my hands might have outwon my initial publication urges.

So I sat at the kitchen table and typed, and then cut up what I'd typed, and stuck it onto more paper, and then photocopied it, with tippex blocking out the joins. This is what we did, way back then, and for heavens' sake even ransom demands are probably written on computers nowadays, but what I produced was probably just a step up from one, you know, an old fashioned one. 

And I loved every second. I wrote about the Rossettis, and how they had a printing press in the basement of their house, and how I wished my house was slightly bigger and less crowded and richer so I could have more space and better equipment. Someone I knew had produced a flyer for the magnificent Televisionaries festival in 1988 and used Desktop Publishing and I can remember being slightly horrified that it centred things automatically rather than you having to count the spaces and the number of characters, and work it out yourself. Those were the days. You also had to spend hours at a photocopier reducing pictures to sizes so they were still viewable, but small enough to fit in your text.

I originally intended it to be sold at the Televisionaries festival, which took place in the Rio cinema in Dalston. I have simultaneous happy and sad memories of this day, but hey, that's what life's like. I didn't get it finished as my grandmother was almost fatally ill at the time I was doing most of the production work, and it got produced later. And then very shortly after everything in my life changed so much, and it all sort of ended anyway.

So today I was idly looking at something on the Kate Sharpley website when I came across a reference to my booklet, and I was amazed, so I googled it. It can be found here at the home of AK Press, another of my beloved things in life, and by the way thank you Dean yet again, it can also be found here which I find slightly disturbing as I don't really know what it means and best of all it can be found here, at home in Amsterdam, where it is it in its spiritual home.

When I told my modern 17 year old daughter all this she was surprised as she didn't know about it at all, and asked to read it, but I said that I'd probably have to buy one from AK as I thought the original must have fallen to pieces or just faded to nothing. Probably I will bring it out as an ebook, but oh my god, putting the illustrations in from those faded photocopies from the 1980s, yikes.

And then it brings me to self publishing, which I adored having 99% control over. Well apart from the hand which got lost in the bleed, but that's another story. But yet another ebook, not about anarchists at all, should  be coming soon, and all I can say is, I never thought I'd do it. More principles thrown out the window.

Not again

Not new year again. I always think sod that not making stupid resolutions, but of course I always do. I don't think any I made last year happened. I hardly read any books, didn't make an entremet, didn't publish any traveller books and didn't do any of the other marvellous stuff I wanted to do. 

I had a pretty horrid year. Ok I won an international book award, but I was nearly dead with an infection at the time, and it increased my sales by a grand total of one. That's pretty ungrateful, but maybe true about prizes and their nature. I did do something lovely with the money, which was to go to a literary festival in Derry, it makes me feel as though I'm not so much of a fraud. And I bought a beautiful dress. It might not have gone exactly as it should have, but I did a lot of useful networking. Ok, drinking too much & staying out way too late, but I did have a horrible hangover the next morning.

This year it does look like I'll finish writing my novel, which is going to be a very good thing. I want to get Spectacular Times finished as well, so two books, that can't be bad. I also want to complete my resolution of last year and sort out the traveller book. 

But right now I'd like to not be ill in various ways, and I'm trying to do something about that. So three books and health. Phew.

My ire rose yesterday finding out that James Joyce and Virginia Woolf's work has gone out of copyright. I suppose now we can look forward to Keira Knightly being Molly Bloom, Mrs Dalloway meeting fucking zombies and suddenly everyone 'getting' Joyce. I think it wasn't all that difficult to get him in the first place, he wasn't talking Russian was he? Hmmm, another year of tooth gnashing, but what's different? Oh yeah, major tooth sorting out as well. And another year my family are denied their home.