Butterfly Kiss

Something very weird happened to me yesterday. At least, it seemed weird to me but maybe I’m not in the best position to judge. For ten days now, I’ve been wiped out by some joyless virus that has stolen my brain and replaced it with snot. After ten days of doing nothing other than sleeping and coughing, everything has started to feel a little weird.

Anyway, in all this time, the only person who has been getting me out of the house is Benny. Strictly speaking, Benny isn’t a person because he’s a rabbit - but that’s just fussing over the details. Benny lives in an enormous rabbit mansion which dominates my front room. Even so, he likes to be let out of his mansion every morning so that he can drop bits of hay all over my house and trample down anything that’s trying to grow in my garden.

Yesterday morning, I dragged myself downstairs, let Benny out for a spin in the back garden and made myself useful filling the bird feeders with sunflower hearts and replacing the water in the bird bath. When this was done, I turned my attention to a small bowl of water that I keep filled for the thieving thirsty squirrels. As I bent down to pick it up, I saw a butterfly floating motionless inside.

It was a Red Admiral. Brown with orange stripy bits. It was perfectly symmetrical and arranged on display just like an exhibit.

‘Shit,’ I muttered, and I tipped the water and the dead butterfly on to a nearby parched plant.

To my surprise, the butterfly moved.

I leaned in closer and had another look but nothing more happened. The butterfly looked beautiful and sad and very dead. Maybe I was imagining things? Carefully, I touched its wing with my finger – and there it was again! A tiny, tiny flicker of movement.

I frowned. Then, very carefully, I picked the butterfly up and carried it in my cupped hands, down the garden and closer to my house. Then I placed it inside the plant pot of a rhododendron near my back door. Here, the butterfly had half a chance of survival. Here, it was less likely to get pecked to pieces by a blue tit or trampled to death by Benny.

I went off and did some other stuff and then I returned to check on the butterfly to see how it was doing.

It hadn’t moved. In fact, it looked deader than ever. Dismayed, I gave it another poke with my finger. And once again, there was that tiny flicker of movement.

I stood up and scratched my head. I had to do something. It seemed a real crying shame just to let a living thing die. Maybe this butterfly would benefit from an energy drink?

I went back to my kitchen, mixed a little icing sugar into some warm water and put a few drops of this sugary mix on to a piece of kitchen towel. Then I took it outside to the butterfly.

Like magic, the butterfly quickly started to come to life. I could see its antennae probing the soaked kitchen towel. I waited and watched as the butterfly grew livelier and livelier. It began to flap its wings and make tiny jumps into the air – but each jump ended with a clumsy crash landing. This butterfly was flightless.

As I watched, the problem became clear. One of the butterfly’s wings was torn almost in half. No matter how hard the butterfly flapped its wings, it wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Shit,’ I muttered again.

Maybe I was over-reacting because I was ill, high on Sudafed and lacking human contact, but this to me seemed like an absolute catastrophe. I’d revived this Red Admiral with a fizzy drink just to condemn it to an even worse death. It would have been better if I’d stayed in bed.

But then I had an idea. It was a stupid idea – as many of mine are - but it was also better than doing nothing. When I was younger, I used to mend my mangled cassette tapes with tiny slivers of carefully placed Sellotape. Maybe this same trick would work on the delicate wing of a butterfly?

I went back into my kitchen and cut a tiny fragment of Sellotape and stuck it to my fingertip. Then I went back outside to the butterfly.

It was still flapping its wings together and jumping around the rhododendron in sad little somersaults.

Carefully, I took hold of the torn wing and patted the sliver of Sellotape over the rip and then I let go.

The butterfly flapped its wings again and rose upwards in a dizzy, disorientated motion. Then it flew straight towards my face and landed right on the end of my nose.

I don’t like creepie-crawlies, insects or flappy things. My shoulders instantly hunched up around my ears and I stumbled backwards.

The butterfly didn’t move. It stayed where it was, right there on my nose. I could see it. How could I not see it? It was ****ing ENORMOUS and it was tickling me. I was being tickled by a ginormous angry butterfly.

As gently as my terror would let me, I swatted it away. It flapped around in front of me for a moment and then flew straight back into my face and up towards my hair. Closing my eyes, I stumbled all the way back to my house in a blind panic. Clearly this butterfly didn’t like the fact that I’d stuck sticky tape on to its wing and now it was going to eat my brains. With my shoulders up to my eyebrows, I fled into my house and peered into a mirror, terrified of what I was about to see. But to my relief, the butterfly was gone.

Breathing more calmly, I went back to my kitchen door. Straight away something caught my eye. Just on the other side of the door, the Red Admiral was flying around and around in circles and spiraling higher and higher.

I started to laugh. Then, as I watched, it broke out of its spiral and fluttered away over my neighbour’s fence.

I hope my repair job lasts.

[PS I'm no wildlife expert and I'm certainly not advocating sticking things to animals and insects but sometimes you have to try emergency methods.]

Felixstowe Docs Part 2

What an absolute marvel Felixstowe Book Festival is and what UTTER STARS are all those young writers from Felixstowe Academy who came along to Felixstowe Library last Friday evening in order to read their poems to an audience of 80+ people. I knew we'd definitely have a committed few who would turn up and do their school proud - but in the end, we had 22!!! And here they all are!  (I snuck on to the Twittery thing and borrowed this lovely picture from @FXA_English - the account of Felixstowe Academy's English Department).

It was a really emotional evening. I am a woman of flinty steel but even I had a misty-eyed moment when Oliver (Year 7) stood up, took a firm grip of the microphone and boomed, 'WHEN I THINK OF HOME, I THINK OF CHICKEN CHAR GRILLS...'

💗

Who couldn't be moved by a sentiment as pure and relatable as that?

And then there was Alyssia with her brilliant 'Mosquito Bitten Knees' and Matthew with his film called 'Saturday Bike Hike' which had an excellent Jamiroquai soundtrack and all sorts of camera trickery going on - and Sunnie with her bitter-sweet 'Good Times Beach Huts' and Connor with his 'Enjoyable Times at the Skate Park' and... and... honestly, it was all so good! And the future of Felixstowe is in safe hands.

If you want to see the beautiful little book that we all made together, pop into Felixstowe Library and check it out. But here's a flavour of how lovely it is...

When I go to schools, I'm often asked which of my books I like the best. This isn't my book - but I'm proud to have had a hand in it and...you know what?... I think this is my favourite anyway. 

All 46 contributors got a complimentary copy - as every writer should. They also got one of these beautiful T-shirts from BLOC (Building Libraries on Creativity - the Suffolk Libraries' Youth Arts Programme.) On Saturday - following our Friday triumph - I spent a lovely day with some of these young writers. You can see us here modelling our T-shirts. I am told this is called a Boomerang. If you look closely, you will see that the only old person in this film is also the only one who is not able to jump and make a clean landing.

And here is the special message on the back of our t-shirts.

Love Your Library. Love your town. Love our teenagers. They are all sources of inspiration.

Thank you to everyone involved xxx

Felixstowe Docs

A lot of people have heard of Felixstowe docks but - drop the K - have you heard about Felixstowe.docs? This is the name of a project I've been working on for several months with BLOC (Suffolk Libraries' youth arts programme), Felixstowe library, Felixstowe Book Festival and, crucially,a group of students from Felixstowe Academy.

It all began back in the winter of last year with an unexpected proposition in my inbox.  

Hello Hayley

We would love you to come and work on a writing project with young people in Felixstowe.... 

...... blah blah details.... blah blah... more details... please ask us any questions you like....

Look forward to hearing from you.

Felixstowe?  It's the town I grew up in.  It's where I went to school.  These young people I was being offered the chance to work with were living a 21st century version of my teenage life.  I read the email through a few more times and then I sent back a reply.

Hello

Thank you for your email which I read with interest.... blah... blah... If we could meet or have a chat on the phone sometime soon that would be great.

Look forward to hearing back from you.

I did hear back and we did meet.  One morning, just before Christmas, three of us sat down in a Norwich cafe and chatted about our plans for the young writers of Felixstowe.  We all got quite excited. 'We'll call it Felixstowe.docs,' I said.  'Because the words that these kids write will be modern and fresh and will show that Felixstowe is much more than just a massive port - and we'll publish their writing in some sort of booklet-' 

'No, it will be an actual book,' said one of my new Felixstowe.docs friends. 'Hardback. Nicely done.'

I nodded and started running ahead with a new idea. 'And maybe these young writers could also turn their words into arty little films?'

'Yes,' said my other new friend.  'And we can show their films at Felixstowe Book Festival. And perhaps they can do poetry performances at the festival too?' 

We left that meeting buzzing with ideas.  This was going to be amazing.

But I'm no poet. And I'm certainly no film-maker. You know what? Sometimes I'm not even sure if I'm a writer.  A lot of the time I just sit and agonize about what I should write next and whether anyone is ever going to read it anyway! How on earth was I going to inspire anyone else to get creative?   

I needn't have worried. 

In Felixstowe Academy, there are some wonderfully talented and positive young people. Where do I start?  I could tell you about Molly who made a film called 'Ocean Commotion' and wowed us all. I could tell you about Matthew who wrote a poem about what he sees in Felixstowe whenever he's out on his bike. I could tell you about Millie who is one of life's superstars simply because she never stops smiling. 😊 And I could tell you about the smashing little gang of teenagers who gave up part of their half-term to stand on a chilly breakwater and shout their poems at the sea.  We had so much fun!  And for the record, it wasn't me inspiring them - it was absolutely them inspiring me!  The Felixstowe.docs project is one of the best things I've ever had a hand in and I feel uplifted!  Thank you book people of Felixstowe for asking me!

You know, I really could go on about this for ages but I'm not going to because - if you can - I want you to come and see Molly, Millie, Matthew and all the rest of them at the Felixstowe Book festival. We are in Felixstowe Library at 6pm on Friday 28th. Tickets are free but you need to book them and they ARE GOING FAST. Click this link for more information. We'll also be having a bit of a 'Poetry Slam' on Saturday 29th in Felixstowe Library at 11am and then we'll be wandering down to the prom to entertain the people passing by... or maybe, just to shout at the sea. 

😉

  

Come and join us!

 All shouting at the sea in accordance with legal rules. All pictures with permission.

Quick Reads in Wales - the launch

Last week, I hopped on the train at Norwich and five hours later, I hopped off again in Cardiff - my lovely old stomping ground - in order to attend the launch of the four new titles in the Quick Reads series in Wales.

They are:-

Reset Your Goals - inspiring stories from Olympic hurdler Colin Jackson, Leicester City footballer Matthew Jones and footballer Laura McAllister among others.

Music to Make Friends By - that's the one I wrote and it's all about pop music AND HOW MUCH I LOVE IT

... and in Welsh / Cymraeg

Y Goliau a'r Dagrau - by Tash Harding

and

Wil ac Aeron by Heulwyn Ann Davies

AND THEY ARE AVAILABLE NOW IN PAPERBACK AND TO DOWNLOAD FOR £1.

A QUID.

That is loose change for 100 or so pages!

If you haven't read my book yet, I want to know why!

Anyway, it was well worth the long train journey to Cardiff. Apart from beautiful weather, beautiful views across Cardiff Bay and a beautiful venue (the Norwegian Church), we also ate cupcakes with our books on!  And I got to have my photo taken with a load of super fit Welsh sporting stars and I think some of their athleticism must have rubbed off on me because I've been feeling really chipper and athletic ever since 🌝

But best of all, I got to sit in the sunshine with my old DJ partner Kirsty. Back in the noughties, we were the girl DJs of Cardiff's bar and club scene. We even got to play in the legendary Clwb Ifor Bach!  That's us below - then and now.

A Little Drive to Wales

This lot are from Rhyl.  Sweethearts 💓

Anyone who knows me will know that I love Wales.  North, south, mid, west - I don't care so long as I'm in Wales.

Which is sort of a shame because I live in Norwich which is quite a drive away.

So I was delighted to do a mini tour of Wales for the Welsh Books Council and Hot Key Books to celebrate 'The Nearest Faraway Place' winning a 2018 Tir na n-Og award.

I packed a lot into a few days.  Here's a quick summary:

I drove across Britain, 

said hi to Newtown Library at the start of Libraries Week,

met the smashing kids of Llanidloes, 

marveled at the boys who plotted an entire thriller 

IN JUST FIVE MEASLY MINUTES,

literally looked at 'witch things' with Helen from 
the Welsh Books Council,

went in the oldest WH Smith's IN THE WORLD,  

had a quick trip to Llangollen,

drank a pint of beer that was too strong for me in Wrexham,

met Boo the Staffie,

met loads of very cool kids from Rhosnesni High,

ate a scone the size of my head,

visited Wrexham Football Club and talked about 1970s football with Shoned,

played 'Hunt the Radio Station' in Glyndwr University,

found it, 

recorded a radio interview,

danced on the beach all by myself in Rhyl,

had a very big chat with the bright young people of Rhyl,

drank a pumpkin spice latte with Kat Ellis - writer and Rhyl girl,

   walked almost to Prestatyn,

watched 'The Apprentice',

drove back to Norwich.

It was good!  And I met so many great people and I feel like a have a whole load of new friends.

It was also a bit knackering.  Next week I'm going to Aberystwyth...

Newtown WH Smiths.  Proper old skool.

Shoned from the Welsh Books' Council.  lyfli 💓 (I don't know if that's how you say lovely in Welsh but it looks right.)

Rhyl girl and horror writer Kat Ellis.  Not actually horrific at all.

In Which I say a Little Something for Aretha Franklin

The whole world and her husband are writing about Aretha Franklin right now, and I’m going to say a quick something about her too because yesterday’s announcement that she's no longer with us brought me about as close as I am ever likely to get to a religious experience.  On hearing the news, my emotions went into a spin-cycle.  One moment, I was letting out a sad little sigh and a second later I was just nodding my head in awe.  Because what a life she had!  And what a remarkable human being she was!  Twice a mum by the age of 16 and a young black woman in a white man’s world, the teenage Aretha could surely never have guessed the impact that she was going to make on millions of people all over the globe – including, me, in my bedroom in Felixstowe in the 1980s.  With my clock-radio tuned to Laser 558, an offshore pirate radio station, I came to know and love all her famous Atlantic Records hits of the late 60s.

Back then, I remember thinking that those records - 'Respect', 'I say a Little Prayer', 'Chain of Fools', 'Rock Steady' - sounded amazing.  So what if they were already approaching twenty years old?

And the magic is that they always will sound amazing.  There’s nothing at all on them to date.  Just timelessly brilliant musicians, perfect backing singers and Aretha’s strong, heart-tugging and unmistakable voice.

Years later, my friend Kirsty and I had fun on the Cardiff club and bar scene as a couple of ‘Girl DJs’.  We called ourselves Barabajagal and we described our night as ‘Beat Soul Funk of the late 60s and early 70s.’  To begin with, we didn’t have many records – and I am, of course, talking about your actual physical LP RECORDS which played on the WHEELS OF STEEL, not some abstract digital download - so we mostly just alternated between Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and hoped no one would notice.  And if they did, nobody seemed to care.  Because, honestly, if you start off with ‘Rock Steady’ and then crossfade into ‘Superstition’, and then switch back again to Aretha and ‘You’ve Got the Sweetest Smile and the Funkiest Style,’ you’re already off to an absolute flyer.  Who but a fool could possibly feel short-changed?

Some time later still, I started writing books for teenagers and I squeezed music – and Aretha – into the plots whenever I could.  She’s there in the background of Lottie Biggs is Not Desperate and she’s a crucial part of Griff and Dylan’s healing process in The Nearest Faraway Place.  I wouldn’t ordinarily quote myself but in this instance, I’m going to give myself a special pass because I can’t sum up the power of Aretha Franklin’s voice any better than I did as Dylan, the narrator of that book.

'I stood completely still and listened in breathless wonder as Aretha sang.  I’d never heard anyone like her.  She had a voice that was strong enough and dramatic enough and warm enough to wake the dead.'

I must have written those words about three years ago and they were never fiction - only ever a candid expression of what I heard through my clock-radio as a teenager and have always heard ever since.  Aretha Franklin was up there on her own.  A force of nature.  A natural woman.

Thank you, Aretha x

A Few Words about Irma

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably don’t need me to tell you that Irma was a little black Netherland Dwarf rabbit.  She lived for nearly eleven years and it was a privilege and a pleasure to have her with us for so long.

She liked sweet things like apples and carrots and little bits of rich tea biscuit.  She also loved hay and there was usually a long piece of it hanging out of her mouth and twirling around in circles, getting shorter and shorter.  A few times in her life she was so ill I thought we were about to lose her, and then, when she was recovering, she’d only eat wild dandelions and G and I would go out foraging for them with a plastic bag.  For days afterwards, our fridge would be choc-a-block with lunch boxes filled with washed dandelion leaves.

Despite being a rabbit, Irma wasn’t fussed on greens.  I tried broccoli (she ignored it), then cabbage (she ignored that too) and then spring greens (she was furious) and then Kale (OK, she said, I’ll eat this but only if you alternate it with cavolo nero.)

Irma lived indoors in the room where I write.  Sometimes, while I sat at the computer, she’d lay down and sleep just by the side of my chair.  Other times, she’d lay right on top of my feet.  There was one occasion where she quietly chewed her way through the laces of my Converse without me realising.  Together we wrote a bunch of novels – everything, in fact, since 'Lottie Biggs is Not Mad'.  We also watched a lot of telly and listened to a lot of music together.  Irma was very familiar with Elastica, Kurt Vile, The Breeders, Belly and PJ Harvey.  She didn’t like PJ Harvey but I think she liked everything else.  She definitely loved Nick Drake because she'd always go calm and still if he was playing.

Outside in the garden, she was boss.  She liked chasing pigeons and trashing my flowers.  I wasted my time once planting a load of tulips and she trampled the whole lot to the ground.  Irma also liked killing pansies by eating them.

When she died, in her sleep of old age, we put her back in the garden with a new little tree we now call The Irma Tree.  I know she’d approve of the tree we chose because on the planting instructions it said, ‘Protect this tree from rabbits.’

I never knew a rabbit could be so interesting and so nice.  I never even knew that a rabbit had facial expressions until we had furious/cheeky/happy/nosy Irma.  But then again, that’s the thing with pets – the more you put in, the more you get back.

To be clear, that is not an Irma statue in the background.  It's a French bulldog my niece gave me.

 

 

Empathy Day - June 12th

June 12^th is Empathy Day.  If you’re not totally sure what that entails, this famous quotation from Harper Lee’s wonderful novel To Kill a Mockingbird is an interesting place to start...

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

It was Atticus Finch who said that.  Now I love Atticus and he said A LOT OF WISE THINGS but in this particular instance, I’ve always felt that his use of imagery is distracting.  Actually, if you really overthink it, it’s downright creepy and disturbing.   So rather than taking the advice of Atticus, take the advice of the good people at www.empathylab.uk instead and simply read a thought-provoking book.  Here are my Top Five recommendations for Empathy Day.

Coming to England by Floella Benjamin  

This book is beautiful.  And if you are lucky enough to get hold of the big colour illustrated edition, it’s even more beautiful.  Floella Benjamin tells us about her early life in Trinidad and about her big noisy family and her inspirational mother and the Caribbean food she remembers eating and about her long and exciting voyage to England as one of the Windrush generation.  After that, the story darkens somewhat.  We hear of the hostility that is waiting to greet the family in England and about the unfair treatment Floella frequently encounters at school.  Luckily, and with the support of her brilliant mum, Floella keeps her chin up and finds a way through it all.  This is an inspiring little book and an important one.

Refugee Boy 
by Benjamin Zephaniah

I’ve written about this novel before but I’m writing about it again here.  Alem is a 14-year-old boy from Ethiopia.  His dad is Ethiopian and his mum is Eritrean and that makes life very complicated because Ethiopia and Eritrea are at war.  One day, Alem’s dad takes him on a surprise trip to London.  And then his dad just vanishes leaving Alem all alone and in the care of UK social services.  It’s not difficult to read this book and think, What if that were me?  Or my son?  Or my brother?  Or whatever.  And it’s not hard to read this story and make sense of the truly desperate lengths that human beings will go to in order to get themselves or their children to a place of apparent safety. 

Two Weeks with the Queen by Maurice Gleitzman 

I stumbled upon this when I was doing my teaching practice way back in the last millennium.  It’s a story about a 12 year-old Australian boy called Colin who is sent to England to live with relatives while his brother has treatment for cancer.  Colin decides that the most useful thing he can do while he is in the UK is ask the Queen to recommend a good doctor.  Colin doesn’t get to meet the queen but he does meet a gay Welshman called Ted.  A lot happens and I don’t want to spoil anything by giving too much away.  But basically, this book is about cancer and AIDS and homophobia and grief and it’s.... often really, really funny.  It really is!  Go and read it.  However old you are.

The Catcher in the Rye 
by J.D. Salinger

J.D Salinger’s ground-breaking novel about a 16-year-old boy who goes AWOL for three days in New York City may seem like a strange addition to this list.  Holden Caulfield is a boy with a wealthy and privileged background.  On every page, he whines and sneers and boasts and lies and contradicts himself.  In spite of being arguably the most famous teenager in fiction, Holden isn’t an easy person to get on with.  But Salinger isn’t asking us to like his protagonist.  I’m not even sure that he desperately wants every reader to understand Holden either because Holden’s bravado is so unrelenting, it’s very easy to chuck the book aside and miss the clues that make this novel so powerful.  But look carefully at Chapter Five where Holden tells us about Old Allie’s baseball mitt.  And then ask yourself if you still think Holden Caulfield is just a spoilt whining pain in the arse.

           

The Diary of a Young Girl / The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank 

This book should need no introduction.  I borrowed it from my school library when I was a teenager and the thing that struck me most about it was the ordinariness of it all.  Anne moaned about her mum and her sister, thought her father was the cat’s whiskers, wrote a reasonably detailed description of her own foof and had a slow burning thing for Peter van Pels.  Except, of course, that nothing was ordinary.  This is a true story from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and Anne was a Jewish girl hiding in an attic for over two years.  And then the diary abruptly ends because the people hiding in the attic are betrayed and everyone is carted off to concentration camps.  Of the nine people in the attic, only Anne’s father survived the war.  I think everyone should read Anne’s diary at some point in their lives.   

The Tir na n-Og Award 2018

A few days ago I drove to beautiful Aberystwyth to attend the presentation of the 2018 Tir na n-Og children’s literature Award.  This is an award which celebrates English-language books with an authentic Welsh background.  And guess what?  I won it!!!  

I am so very, very chuffed.  On the night, up in the National Library of Wales, I was also excited and a bit nervous and then sort of so overwhelmed that I couldn’t eat any of the fancy snacks that had been laid on because my stomach was all full of butterflies.  I did manage a glass of wine though. It would have been rude not to!  And I won’t ever forget that night halfway up the hill in Aberystwyth because I also met some wonderful people and made some lovely, lovely new friends.  So I want to use this blog post to wave hello to Eloise Williams and Wendy White and Sharon Tregenza and Valeriane Leblond.  We were all on the shortlist together.  This one:

Santa's Greatest Gift by Tudur Dylan Jones and illustrated by Valeriane Leblond

King of the Sky by Nicola Davies

St. David's Day is Cancelled by Wendy White

The Jewelled Jaguar by Sharon Tregenza

Gaslight by Eloise Williams

Valeriane, Wendy, Sharon, Eloise and I sat together on a stage in front a lot of people and answered questions and... although that sounded like a scary prospect, it was a real laugh.  I’ve looked online and found this picture which I’ve borrowed from Simon Fisher aka Daddy Bookworm to show you what we looked like: 

Hello Simon and family, I’m waving to you all too and thank you so much for all the support that you have given me and other writers.  You can check out their website here.  And I also want to wave to Paul Jeorrett who asked us questions and made us laugh and somehow inspired me to tell a few hundred people about the eating habits of Irma, my beloved pet bunny.  And I want to wave to Helen Jones and Eirlys at the Welsh Books Council who are LUSH and who are doing stirling work promoting reading and books for children in Wales in both the Welsh and English languages.  I was very impressed to learn that Eirlys was in the BBC drama of ‘The Owl Service’ which scared the sh*t out of me when I was about 12.  Now I’ll have to watch it all over again to see if I can spot her.  

And I want to wave to my friend Gwen who let me stay in her house.  Gwen has a cat called Bara Brith (Welsh teacake) who just happened to turn up inside the pages of ‘The Nearest Faraway Place.’  Here she is:

Just to be clear, that's Bara Brith - not Gwen.

And also, I want to wave to everyone in real life or on any social media who said ‘Congratulations’ or ‘Well done’ or ‘Llongyfarchiadau’ or anything else sweet and friendly to me.

Thank you so much.

Diolch yn fawr.

And Emma Matthewson, I kicked the bar for you ;)

Wales, I love you, don’t I?  I'll end this post with some pictures.

Down the other end is a bar that needs kicking.  It's an Aber thing. It's a lucky thing. 

Aberystwyth Castle.  Seen better days. 

Special bench.  Love conquers All.  Griff and Hari sat here.

Special sticker :)

For my fancy cabinet

Top Ten Novels about Teenage Love and Loss

It’s no spoiler to tell you that my latest novel, ‘The Nearest Faraway Place’ begins with a terrible accident.  It’s the literary equivalent of delivering a knockout punch before the audience has even got comfortable in their seats.  Game over.  Story finished.  The end.  Except of course, the game is not over and the story must go on.  In fiction - just as in life - endings and beginnings blur together in a never-ending cycle and we humans reveal ourselves to be a remarkably resilient bunch.  And nowhere is this resilience more strikingly apparent than in the teenager.  Where there is grief and loss, there is almost always love and hope.  Below is my top ten list of books which show teenagers and tweens at their most vulnerable - while celebrating, too, youth’s infinite capacity for recovery and optimism.  

         Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Surely everyone knows something of this story whether they’ve read it or not.  It’s one of those nineteenth century emotional rollercoasters which lifts the reader up on one page only to bring them crashing down on the next. Orphaned Jane Eyre lives in the house of her rich cruel aunt with her rich cruel cousins and keenly feels the absence of love in her life.   But then Jane is sent to Lowood School and is finally free of her hideous relations.  Hooray!  Except that Lowood turns out to be a joyless hellhole just screaming to be shut down by OFSTED.  Boo!  It’s OK though because Jane is befriended by the wise, kind and saintly Helen Burns.  But then Helen dies of consumption.  And so it continues.  Jane is feisty, self-reliant, irrepressible and wonderful.  I first read this book when I was twelve - or rather, I repeatedly read the first half of it.  My twelve-year-old self had zero interest in Jane’s adult shenanigans and all that soppy Mr Rochester stuff.

2.       Life: An Exploded Diagram – Mal Peet

Oh how I love, love, love this book!  Is it a novel or is it an autobiography?  In a note at the back, Mal Peet tells us it’s actually a bit of both.  Clem - or is it Mal? - looks back on his life and narrates the story of his origins in rural Norfolk.  He tells us about his stern and domineering grandmother – the marvellously named Win Little – and his own premature birth during World War Two when a German bomber crash-lands into the garden of the house where Win and his heavily-pregnant mother live.  The novel grows into a touching and funny teenage love story which culminates in a disastrous ending.  Love, lust, regret, loss – it is all here.  Oh, and there is not one but two jaw-dropping endings.  Ultimately, it is hope that prevails, of course.        

3.      A Time to Love, A Time to Mourn – Paige Dixon

Way, way back before the words Youtube, Smartphone or Ice-Bucket Challenge meant anything to anyone, I read a book that made me aware of a serious degenerative illness called ALS.  Or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis to give it its full term.  All eleven syllables have been burned on my brain since the age of thirteen when I powered my way through Paige Dixon’s heart-breaking teen novel about an eighteen-year-old boy called Jordan who, one day, experiences a weird loss of sensation in his arm while playing tennis.  From there onwards, Jordan’s health plummets.  BUT, in this unforgettable story, the bleaker things get, the more Jordan’s mental strength soars.  I remember that I cried snot and tears at the ending.  I also remember that I loved Jordan Phillips absolutely.  And secretly vowed that Morten Harket and I would name our future son Jordan Phillip in Jordan’s memory.   

4.      Tape – Steven Camden

At the heart of this novel is a premise built pretty much upon cassette tapes.  Having spent my entire childhood and teenage years winding chewed-up tape back into its rightful place with the end of a pencil, I was OBVIOUSLY GOING TO LIKE THIS BOOK.  In fact, I loved it.  It’s a love story.  It’s also a very sad story.  And it’s about family too and wanting to know more about those who came before you in order to get a clearer understanding of who you are.  It’s touching and real and very, very clever.  I wish I’d written it.

5.      Broken Soup – Jenny Valentine

This is another book about family.  Jenny Valentine is particularly great at capturing in words the more difficult aspects of family life, and this book is a quiet little masterpiece in the study of grief and breakup and how that can impact upon the life of a teenager.  But we needn’t fret too much about 15 year old Rowan.  While everyone around her is losing their heads, she keeps hers firmly on her shoulders.  What a woman!

6.      The Outsiders – S.E Hinton

If, like me, your introduction to this book was via the 1980s brat-pack film, things can only get better.  The film was great.  The book is better.  Ponyboy Curtis is a sensitive soul in a brutal world.  No wonder he feels like he is an outsider.  There’s nothing more I need to say really.  Other than that S.E Hinton was 16 years old when she wrote this.  SIXTEEN.  And that this book about gangster-boys was WRITTEN BY A GIRL.

7.      Refugee Boy – Benjamin Zephaniah

I first read this book with a class of thirteen year olds when I was an English teacher almost twenty years ago.  But, sadly, the issues in this book seem more relevant than ever.  14-year-old Alem lives in Ethiopia.  His father is Ethiopian and his mother is Eritrean.  The two countries are at war.  One day, Alem’s father treats him unexpectedly to a holiday in London.  And then... he just disappears leaving Alem completely alone in a foreign country.  This is another story about love and loss.  It’s also a story about human beings who find themselves in situations so dire that they’ll do anything to get themselves or their loved ones to a safer place.  And about how the people in those ‘safer places’ receive them.  

8.      Waterland – Graham Swift

This is another one of those novels I’ve never been able to forget.  I read it in my first year as an undergraduate and it has stayed with me and haunted me ever since.  There’s an awful lot going on in this novel.  Love, grief, breakdown, family secrets, abuse... and it’s all set against a very atmospheric Fenland setting.  Tom, Dick and Mary are the teenagers.  There is love, there is certainly loss and.... well, actually, the teen resilience either burns out or peters out for all three of them.  Oh dear.  But quite simply, this novel is magnificent.  Depressing?  Hell yes!  But still magnificent.  

9.      We Were Liars – E. Lockhart

Clever.  Clever.  Clever.  Cadence Sinclair is seventeen and has survived a horrific trauma which has affected her memory.  We aren’t quite sure what it is.  In fact, as the title suggests, we can never be too sure about anything that Cadence is telling us.  But slowly, Cadence starts to work things out and so do we.  And I’m sure the experience of reading this unique story is different for every reader.  I read this just as I was in the early stages of mulling over an idea that became ‘The Nearest Faraway Place.’  I’m sure it added something to the flavour of what I would go on to write.  The very next book I read definitely added something too.  It was...     

1    The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

Wow.  Just wow.  In the opening pages of the novel, 13-year-old Theo Decker finds himself in the middle of a devastating terrorist attack which will impact upon his entire life.  It’s shocking.  It’s entirely convincing.  And it is, of course, a beautiful and captivating read.  And Theo’s story goes from New York City to Las Vegas and back  again and then to Amsterdam.  It’s heart-breaking and nail-biting and frequently very funny.  And at the end, I felt there was a section where Donna Tartt stepped away from her role as story-teller and just started talking to me – ME – directly – about THE MEANING OF MY LIFE.  At the end, I remember closing this brick of a book and thinking Wow.  Just wow.