Like the hare in Alice in Wonderland, March is the month I go mad.
I don't know what it is - whether it's the effects of a long winter, whether it's spring fever, whether it's just a kind of annual clock built into me - but every March, my brain melts and I flip my life upside down. March is the month I walked into my old PR company and quit without any forethought; March is the month I tried to win BJITW; March is the month I fell in love with The Boy from 6,000 miles away, and - exactly one year later - it's also the month we broke up; March is the month I quit my job in Tokyo, flew home to England for five days and then flew back to Japan, crying the whole way. Every single year, in March my ability to reason goes out of the window. And every single March, I go totally bonkers.
I was early this year. I started going bonkers about ten days ago, which is why I've avoided writing this blog: even a mad person knows that you shouldn't write in public where everybody can read it when you're being a mad person.
And make no mistake: I'm totally crazy. I'm crying, I'm clawing at walls, I'm talking to myself, I'm flushed and itchy and constantly scowling. My writing - of which this post is an example - is completely incoherent, verging on bullshit. I'm having the most dreary dreams in the world which mean I'm foul as soon as I wake up, because real life is boring enough without making it last another ten hours every day. I hate everybody in the world, and I mean everybody: I screeched at my mum yesterday because she was talking about her brand new sugar bowl and I didn't want to, and this morning I shouted at a five year old who whacked my left breast and called me "grandma" without finding it in the least bit amusing. My confidence is zero; nothing is funny, nothing is interesting, and I'm so bored I want to rip my hair out, except that I also currently hate my hair and it will only make it worse. And I'm driving too fast because (and this shows I'm crazy) I'm secretly hoping something happens. Nothing bad, but just... something. I don't normally hope something happens when I drive: only in March.
And - most importantly - I am desperate to flip my life upside down again, but I don't know where to flip it to. I'm lonely, bored, deeply uninspired, and I want out of Japan, but I don't know where to go next. And I can't work it out, because the March madness means that I'm spending a couple of hours a day Googling working on a ranch in Mexico or teaching scuba diving in Jamaica (when I can't scuba dive), before I inevitably end up dissolving into a bonkers panic, screaming, throwing something, ringing somebody up just so that I can shout at them and then falling on to my bed, clawing at my chest and telling the walls how useless I am.
Normally, my life is like a pancake: incredibly easy to turn upside down. But this year it feels stuck to the bottom of the pan and I don't know what to do to make it loose again. Walking out of jobs, falling in love, breaking my heart, moving countries: all tempting, but unfortunately impossible this March.
So I'm just going to have to sit it out and see what happens. And hope that when April comes I'm just a fool, and I don't get trapped forever in March: a mad hare at my own bonkers tea party.
Surrounded by goddamn new sugar bowls.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Sunday, 20 February 2011
In Passing
My friend Yuki just sent me an email. I am so sorry that you passed away yesterday, she wrote. How do you feel today?
I didn't think I could get any sicker than I currently feel, but apparently - via the complex subtleties of the English language - I can. Passed out, Yuki, I emailed back. Passed out. I didn't die, although it now feels like I may have done. Small but extremely important difference.
Shit, sorry, she wrote back. Passed on?
Still means dead.
I'm sorry you fell asleep yesterday, she wrote. I'd be sorry if you died too, just so you know.
Which has actually made my hangover feel remarkably better. It's amazing how a little bit of your own death can put things in perspective.
I didn't think I could get any sicker than I currently feel, but apparently - via the complex subtleties of the English language - I can. Passed out, Yuki, I emailed back. Passed out. I didn't die, although it now feels like I may have done. Small but extremely important difference.
Shit, sorry, she wrote back. Passed on?
Still means dead.
I'm sorry you fell asleep yesterday, she wrote. I'd be sorry if you died too, just so you know.
Which has actually made my hangover feel remarkably better. It's amazing how a little bit of your own death can put things in perspective.
Smacked bottom
I just had what was - by all accounts - the best house party in the history of all house parties.
There was a naked wrestling match between five of the male guests, who decided at 2am to take their clothes off and start throwing each other around my living room. One of the guests fell asleep in the spare room, only to be woken up by an Irishman who had thrown Betty on top and was attempting to surf her. Half way through, a few guests disappeared to the local bar where they got on stage for an impromptu musical performance, complete with guitar, and then came back with printed out photos to show everybody. Baba - when I turned up with a male friend to borrow a wine opener - was delighted that I had finally found a potential husband, and arrived ten minutes later at the party with a huge bottle of sho-chu and strict instructions that I was to go nowhere near my scooter. There was a misunderstanding between three friends, which resulted in a lot of drunken crying, the boys took turns putting on my scooter helmet and punching each other in the head, and the girls took turns rolling their eyes at the boys. There was a tickling contest; Billy the 2Pint Bong was brought out, and brand new lifelong friends and possibly soulmates were made. It was, according to reports, the most fun anyone had ever had, and nobody will ever have that fun again. Ever.
And I say according to reports, because sadly I wasn't there for any of it.
I was there in body, obviously. That was the whole point. I was throwing a party because I've been so wrapped up writing that I've seen nobody for weeks and weeks, and I needed - desperately - to let my hair down and see my friends. So I didn't just plan a party: I spent the day cleaning the house, buying ice, alcohol, crisps, rearranging furniture, borrowing futons and cushions, and purchasing a brand new lipstick. I scrubbed and scoured and decorated and set up fairy lights in the living room. I even cleaned the spare room, and I never clean the spare room. So determined, I was, to let my hair down and have fun - and so nervous, I was, about being around people after so long on my own - that as soon as Yuki turned up I cracked open the rum, and by the time the second guest arrived, I was drunk. By the time the third and fourth guests arrived I was hammered, and by the time Shin rocked up and forced me to drink almost 2 pints of rum and whiskey with a dash of coke from a Bong (which - for the sake of my grandparents - is a long tube with a funnel that forces alcohol down your throat at lightening speed, although as my grandad used to be a policeman he probably already knows this), I was explaining to Yuki that whenever I pee into a Japanese toilet I end up peeing on my right foot and attempting to faux-demonstrate behind the sofa.
And that was the end of the party for me. I vomited, fell asleep wrapped around the toilet - which I haven't done since University - and was carried to bed where I stayed, unconscious, for the rest of the night. Apparently I was involved in some of the wrestling, in that for about five minutes they moved it to the bedroom for my benefit and for a little while I was sleeping underneath it, and I have a vague, dreamlike memory of running to the toilet to vomit again and being aware that none of the boys were wearing any clothes, which seemed quite normal at the time (my friends like getting naked: I blame onsens). But other than that: my party ended at around 9.30pm. Everyone else's ended seven hours later.
"What happened?" I asked the two remaining stragglers when I woke up this morning.
"Best party ever," they said. "Seriously. You throw awesome parties, Holly."
"Oh you're kidding me," I snapped. "I threw an amazing party and then passed out for the whole thing?"
"If it helps, you woke up when we were wrestling on top of you, punched Shin in the face and then immediately passed out again. So at least you did it in style."
"Oh for God's sake. The whole point of having a party was for me to actually have a party. Not to prepare one, sleep through it and then clean it up afterwards."
This morning, when Baba turned up to help me carry my rubbish to the bin (grilling me the entire way about why I couldn't get a boyfriend), she asked me if I had had a fun time.
"Not really," I said. "I drank too much too quickly, vomited and fell asleep after an hour and a half." This I told her via the international language of a drinky drinky charade.
"Horrreee!" she cried. "You are very naughty!"
And then she whacked me hard on the bottom. Which is exactly what I deserve at the grand old age of 29 if I haven't learnt by now that you can't transform yourself from teetotal hermit to party-girl hostess in fifteen minutes flat without suffering repercussions.
It is now Sunday lunchtime, and all I have to show for all of my hard work on Saturday is a smacked bottom, a stonking hangover, a rearranged house, four bowls of stale popcorn and approximately 24 bottles of half drunk coke in my kitchen. Which means that I'm going to have to throw another party in March so that I can finally have some fun as well. During which I will be staying well away from hard spirits, naked boys, Shin and/or his Bong.
After all, it's all very well and good throwing the best parties in the world, but there isn't a lot of point if you spend the whole time in another one entirely.
There was a naked wrestling match between five of the male guests, who decided at 2am to take their clothes off and start throwing each other around my living room. One of the guests fell asleep in the spare room, only to be woken up by an Irishman who had thrown Betty on top and was attempting to surf her. Half way through, a few guests disappeared to the local bar where they got on stage for an impromptu musical performance, complete with guitar, and then came back with printed out photos to show everybody. Baba - when I turned up with a male friend to borrow a wine opener - was delighted that I had finally found a potential husband, and arrived ten minutes later at the party with a huge bottle of sho-chu and strict instructions that I was to go nowhere near my scooter. There was a misunderstanding between three friends, which resulted in a lot of drunken crying, the boys took turns putting on my scooter helmet and punching each other in the head, and the girls took turns rolling their eyes at the boys. There was a tickling contest; Billy the 2Pint Bong was brought out, and brand new lifelong friends and possibly soulmates were made. It was, according to reports, the most fun anyone had ever had, and nobody will ever have that fun again. Ever.
And I say according to reports, because sadly I wasn't there for any of it.
I was there in body, obviously. That was the whole point. I was throwing a party because I've been so wrapped up writing that I've seen nobody for weeks and weeks, and I needed - desperately - to let my hair down and see my friends. So I didn't just plan a party: I spent the day cleaning the house, buying ice, alcohol, crisps, rearranging furniture, borrowing futons and cushions, and purchasing a brand new lipstick. I scrubbed and scoured and decorated and set up fairy lights in the living room. I even cleaned the spare room, and I never clean the spare room. So determined, I was, to let my hair down and have fun - and so nervous, I was, about being around people after so long on my own - that as soon as Yuki turned up I cracked open the rum, and by the time the second guest arrived, I was drunk. By the time the third and fourth guests arrived I was hammered, and by the time Shin rocked up and forced me to drink almost 2 pints of rum and whiskey with a dash of coke from a Bong (which - for the sake of my grandparents - is a long tube with a funnel that forces alcohol down your throat at lightening speed, although as my grandad used to be a policeman he probably already knows this), I was explaining to Yuki that whenever I pee into a Japanese toilet I end up peeing on my right foot and attempting to faux-demonstrate behind the sofa.
And that was the end of the party for me. I vomited, fell asleep wrapped around the toilet - which I haven't done since University - and was carried to bed where I stayed, unconscious, for the rest of the night. Apparently I was involved in some of the wrestling, in that for about five minutes they moved it to the bedroom for my benefit and for a little while I was sleeping underneath it, and I have a vague, dreamlike memory of running to the toilet to vomit again and being aware that none of the boys were wearing any clothes, which seemed quite normal at the time (my friends like getting naked: I blame onsens). But other than that: my party ended at around 9.30pm. Everyone else's ended seven hours later.
"What happened?" I asked the two remaining stragglers when I woke up this morning.
"Best party ever," they said. "Seriously. You throw awesome parties, Holly."
"Oh you're kidding me," I snapped. "I threw an amazing party and then passed out for the whole thing?"
"If it helps, you woke up when we were wrestling on top of you, punched Shin in the face and then immediately passed out again. So at least you did it in style."
"Oh for God's sake. The whole point of having a party was for me to actually have a party. Not to prepare one, sleep through it and then clean it up afterwards."
This morning, when Baba turned up to help me carry my rubbish to the bin (grilling me the entire way about why I couldn't get a boyfriend), she asked me if I had had a fun time.
"Not really," I said. "I drank too much too quickly, vomited and fell asleep after an hour and a half." This I told her via the international language of a drinky drinky charade.
"Horrreee!" she cried. "You are very naughty!"
And then she whacked me hard on the bottom. Which is exactly what I deserve at the grand old age of 29 if I haven't learnt by now that you can't transform yourself from teetotal hermit to party-girl hostess in fifteen minutes flat without suffering repercussions.
It is now Sunday lunchtime, and all I have to show for all of my hard work on Saturday is a smacked bottom, a stonking hangover, a rearranged house, four bowls of stale popcorn and approximately 24 bottles of half drunk coke in my kitchen. Which means that I'm going to have to throw another party in March so that I can finally have some fun as well. During which I will be staying well away from hard spirits, naked boys, Shin and/or his Bong.
After all, it's all very well and good throwing the best parties in the world, but there isn't a lot of point if you spend the whole time in another one entirely.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Breaking up
There comes a point in every relationship when you know it`s the end.
For me, this point is normally well after the actual end has already happened. I`ll hang on in there, gamely trying to give it another go, until the other party is trying to kick me away with steel toed boots on and poking me with a long stick they bought specially. Not for me the habit of walking away from a relationship too quickly or too easily. No: I like to stay until walking is no longer possible, and all I can do is crawl along the floor using my chin as levitation.
Which is why what I`m about to announce comes as a bit of a surprise: to myself, if to nobody else. I`m leaving Japan.
Our relationship is over. It`s not on its way out; it`s not going through a few rough patches. It`s not struggling because of the weather. It`s dead: caput, rotting, deceased, gone to meet its maker. It was dying at Christmas - I had little to no interest in Kyoto, or Osaka, or Nara, and found myself thinking at the base of some of the world`s most famous temples and shrines Oh, look, another goddamn bit of red wood and some more bells - and by the time I came off my not-so-happy-pills there was really no way of saving it (drugs are the only thing in the world that can make me not care that I don`t love something: hence why I always end up on them in relationships with men). I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and yes: I`d like to be friends, but I`m only saying that to make us both feel better.
When Japan asks why I`m leaving, though, I won`t know what to tell it. But you used to adore me, it`s going to say: You said I was The One. I thought you found me exciting. And I did, I`ll have to tell it, but I don`t anymore and I`m sorry: my feelings have simply changed. I can`t change them back.
Everything I used to love about Japan now irritates me. The sound of the Japanese language - a language that deep down I still think is one of the most beautiful in the world - has started to bug the hell out of me. When my work colleagues chatter away to each other right next to my chair - inexplicably standing over me, as they`re doing at this very moment, for instance - and they make "eeeeeeeehhhh??" and "ugh ugh ugh" sounds that are very, very Japanese, I want to rip their vocal cords out with my bare hands. The children are frequently irritating me: their obsession with Rock Paper Scissoring me every time they see me now resulting in me dodging around the school trying to avoid their scrunched up little fists. I`ve lost my Rs: I`ve started speaking English with a Japanese L sound instead, which meant that the world gorilla a couple of days ago caused serious problems. I`m tired of having to say everything slowly, and carefully, and three times to be understood: I`m tired of never having a normal, natural conversation, where my brain is engaged with content, rather than simply execution. I`m sick of having to do paperwork for everything, because Japan doesn`t function unless you fill out a form for every element of your life and I do not like frigging paperwork. Which means I`m constantly in trouble. And I do not like being constantly in trouble, especially when it`s being in trouble in a language I barely understand.
It`s more than that, though. And these are the things I won`t tell Japan when it asks: the things that would hurt it unnecessarily. I`m sick of seeing green fields everywhere and signs I can`t read: I`m sick of not being able to buy a foundation in the right colour or shoes that fit me. The smell and taste of Japanese food is starting to make me nauseous: I`m avoiding soy sauce like arsenic, and the texture of rice is beginning to make me gag. The insincerity of the irrrrasssshhhiiimmaaassseee every time I enter a shop (weeeelllllccccooooommmmmeee) is driving me insane. Stop yelling at mmmeeeee I want to scream back: you don`t even mean it. I don`t want to do Karaoke, I don`t want to eat raw fish, I don`t want to look at any more goddamn rice fields. I don`t want to hear the strange chirupping sound the zebra crossings make when you`re supposed to cross, and I don`t want to have to listen to six different radios playing simultaneously when I go grocery shopping. I don`t want to see any more men that look or sound even remotely like my soulless void of an ex boyfriend. I don`t want to get stared at when I walk into shops: I want to be able to go for a goddamn dinner on a Friday night without an entire restaurant immediately turning around to stare.
Even the sea is irritating me. No matter what time of year it is, no matter what time of day it is, it`s constantly full of surfers who are out there regardless of whether or not there are any waves. All I want to do is stand on the shore and shout Stop littering up the water!
Suffice to say: I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and every day that goes past I love it a little bit less. So I`m leaving.
Unfortunately, I`m not leaving until July (unless the people I work for read this, in which case I`d imagine I`ll be leaving in about three hours). As with any long term relationship, you can`t just cut and run because the love is gone: there is administration to do, and important things to tie up. I have a contract to finish, and a lot of money I have not managed to save yet, and a book to finish off writing (that`s where I`ve been for the last fortnight, incidentally: the first draft is now done, and just needs editing). I have a school year to finish out, and goodbyes to say. And - more important than all of that - I need to work out what the hell I`m doing next, because I have absolutely no idea. The desire to hide in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet - so incredibly strong six months ago when I was heartbroken and exhausted and swearing off men forever and ever - is no longer there: a year of living on my own in the middle of bogging nowhere has killed it right off. And the desire to jump into another teaching job is also fairly miniscule. There are only so many children you can teach without getting one single sincere thankyou before you think: you know what? Teach your bloody selves.
It`s a temporary loathing: I know that. It`s the same with every failed relationship: at the point where you leave, it`s natural to hate everything. In fact, it`s necessary, or you would never leave in the first place. Deep down, under all the irritation and all the knee-jerk anger, I still care very much about Japan: deep down, of course I`m very fond of the children and the food and the culture and the language. I don`t regret being here. But I don`t love it anymore, and so it is over. And while I may return one day, it will only be for a holiday, and it will only be as friends.
I`m terrified. I don`t remember what life is like without Japan, and I won`t know where to go, or what to do, when it`s over. It has become a part of me, and the thought of being anywhere else scares me senseless. I have no doubt that when I go I`ll feel lost, and scared, and I`ll miss it horribly and wish I`d never left. And I also have no doubt that now I`ve told it I`m leaving, I`ll start wishing I could stay and loving it all over again. But it doesn`t matter. When love is gone and you know it`s not The One, the only truly honourable thing left to do is to leave before you start looking for it elsewhere. To leave before you have to drag yourself away, or end up in two places at the same time. Before you end up hating it and spoiling it forever.
But the beautiful thing? The strength to leave Japan is the strength that Japan gave me.
And - for that, and for many other things - I will always adore it.
For me, this point is normally well after the actual end has already happened. I`ll hang on in there, gamely trying to give it another go, until the other party is trying to kick me away with steel toed boots on and poking me with a long stick they bought specially. Not for me the habit of walking away from a relationship too quickly or too easily. No: I like to stay until walking is no longer possible, and all I can do is crawl along the floor using my chin as levitation.
Which is why what I`m about to announce comes as a bit of a surprise: to myself, if to nobody else. I`m leaving Japan.
Our relationship is over. It`s not on its way out; it`s not going through a few rough patches. It`s not struggling because of the weather. It`s dead: caput, rotting, deceased, gone to meet its maker. It was dying at Christmas - I had little to no interest in Kyoto, or Osaka, or Nara, and found myself thinking at the base of some of the world`s most famous temples and shrines Oh, look, another goddamn bit of red wood and some more bells - and by the time I came off my not-so-happy-pills there was really no way of saving it (drugs are the only thing in the world that can make me not care that I don`t love something: hence why I always end up on them in relationships with men). I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and yes: I`d like to be friends, but I`m only saying that to make us both feel better.
When Japan asks why I`m leaving, though, I won`t know what to tell it. But you used to adore me, it`s going to say: You said I was The One. I thought you found me exciting. And I did, I`ll have to tell it, but I don`t anymore and I`m sorry: my feelings have simply changed. I can`t change them back.
Everything I used to love about Japan now irritates me. The sound of the Japanese language - a language that deep down I still think is one of the most beautiful in the world - has started to bug the hell out of me. When my work colleagues chatter away to each other right next to my chair - inexplicably standing over me, as they`re doing at this very moment, for instance - and they make "eeeeeeeehhhh??" and "ugh ugh ugh" sounds that are very, very Japanese, I want to rip their vocal cords out with my bare hands. The children are frequently irritating me: their obsession with Rock Paper Scissoring me every time they see me now resulting in me dodging around the school trying to avoid their scrunched up little fists. I`ve lost my Rs: I`ve started speaking English with a Japanese L sound instead, which meant that the world gorilla a couple of days ago caused serious problems. I`m tired of having to say everything slowly, and carefully, and three times to be understood: I`m tired of never having a normal, natural conversation, where my brain is engaged with content, rather than simply execution. I`m sick of having to do paperwork for everything, because Japan doesn`t function unless you fill out a form for every element of your life and I do not like frigging paperwork. Which means I`m constantly in trouble. And I do not like being constantly in trouble, especially when it`s being in trouble in a language I barely understand.
It`s more than that, though. And these are the things I won`t tell Japan when it asks: the things that would hurt it unnecessarily. I`m sick of seeing green fields everywhere and signs I can`t read: I`m sick of not being able to buy a foundation in the right colour or shoes that fit me. The smell and taste of Japanese food is starting to make me nauseous: I`m avoiding soy sauce like arsenic, and the texture of rice is beginning to make me gag. The insincerity of the irrrrasssshhhiiimmaaassseee every time I enter a shop (weeeelllllccccooooommmmmeee) is driving me insane. Stop yelling at mmmeeeee I want to scream back: you don`t even mean it. I don`t want to do Karaoke, I don`t want to eat raw fish, I don`t want to look at any more goddamn rice fields. I don`t want to hear the strange chirupping sound the zebra crossings make when you`re supposed to cross, and I don`t want to have to listen to six different radios playing simultaneously when I go grocery shopping. I don`t want to see any more men that look or sound even remotely like my soulless void of an ex boyfriend. I don`t want to get stared at when I walk into shops: I want to be able to go for a goddamn dinner on a Friday night without an entire restaurant immediately turning around to stare.
Even the sea is irritating me. No matter what time of year it is, no matter what time of day it is, it`s constantly full of surfers who are out there regardless of whether or not there are any waves. All I want to do is stand on the shore and shout Stop littering up the water!
Suffice to say: I`m not in love with Japan anymore, and every day that goes past I love it a little bit less. So I`m leaving.
Unfortunately, I`m not leaving until July (unless the people I work for read this, in which case I`d imagine I`ll be leaving in about three hours). As with any long term relationship, you can`t just cut and run because the love is gone: there is administration to do, and important things to tie up. I have a contract to finish, and a lot of money I have not managed to save yet, and a book to finish off writing (that`s where I`ve been for the last fortnight, incidentally: the first draft is now done, and just needs editing). I have a school year to finish out, and goodbyes to say. And - more important than all of that - I need to work out what the hell I`m doing next, because I have absolutely no idea. The desire to hide in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet - so incredibly strong six months ago when I was heartbroken and exhausted and swearing off men forever and ever - is no longer there: a year of living on my own in the middle of bogging nowhere has killed it right off. And the desire to jump into another teaching job is also fairly miniscule. There are only so many children you can teach without getting one single sincere thankyou before you think: you know what? Teach your bloody selves.
It`s a temporary loathing: I know that. It`s the same with every failed relationship: at the point where you leave, it`s natural to hate everything. In fact, it`s necessary, or you would never leave in the first place. Deep down, under all the irritation and all the knee-jerk anger, I still care very much about Japan: deep down, of course I`m very fond of the children and the food and the culture and the language. I don`t regret being here. But I don`t love it anymore, and so it is over. And while I may return one day, it will only be for a holiday, and it will only be as friends.
I`m terrified. I don`t remember what life is like without Japan, and I won`t know where to go, or what to do, when it`s over. It has become a part of me, and the thought of being anywhere else scares me senseless. I have no doubt that when I go I`ll feel lost, and scared, and I`ll miss it horribly and wish I`d never left. And I also have no doubt that now I`ve told it I`m leaving, I`ll start wishing I could stay and loving it all over again. But it doesn`t matter. When love is gone and you know it`s not The One, the only truly honourable thing left to do is to leave before you start looking for it elsewhere. To leave before you have to drag yourself away, or end up in two places at the same time. Before you end up hating it and spoiling it forever.
But the beautiful thing? The strength to leave Japan is the strength that Japan gave me.
And - for that, and for many other things - I will always adore it.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Anne
Yesterday, I learnt with delight that Anne of Green Gables - my favourite book of all time - is huge in Japan.
It was a book that was a pivotal part of my childhood, because I, too, was a freckled, redheaded, skinny child with no friends, an overactive imagination and the inability to put anything in perspective, and so I loved all of the Anne books with a deep and fervent passion: drew an entirely unrealistic amount of comfort from her lifelong romance with Gilbert Blythe and her meteoric rise from unloveable orphan to - ahem - teacher (at the time I was deeply unimpressed by this: with hindsight, perhaps even less so) and I was definitely under the impression for a long time that she and I were actually the same person, a century removed from each other. She remains, as far as I`m concerned, one of the most vivid fictional characters ever created, and so while she may not have been particularly well loved by my peers (they were busy dancing to MC Hammer) it wasn`t a massive surprise to me that she`s been adored in Japan for decades. Harry Potter, it seems, was not the only Western children`s novel that captured the imaginations of a nation of adults, and Akage no An (Anne of Red Hair) was both an anime and a compulsory text in Junior High school for a number of years.
I can only assume that those years were not the ones during which the head of the English department at Kitago was at school.
"Have you heard of Akage no An?" I asked her this morning.
"Of course!" she said. "It is very famous here. Although I never read it. But I heard of it."
"It`s my favourite book!" I told her enthusiastically. "Isn`t it wonderful? Isn`t it just so heartwarming?"
My colleague looked at me in shock. "Mmmm," she said. "You really think so?"
"Of course! I`ve loved it since I was a child. It makes me so happy."
Yuko looked even more alarmed.
"It makes you happy? But it`s very sad, isn`t it?"
"Is it?" I`m rereading it at the moment, but I couldn`t remember it being particularly sad when I was eight years old. "What`s sad about it?"
"Well, she dies doesn`t she?"
"Umm...." I trawled my memory. "I don`t think so. I mean, there`s six books and she gets married and has children. Maybe she dies in the last one, but...."
"No, I`m certain she dies. Anne with red hair: she dies, I am sure of it."
"Really? Crikey. What have the Japanese done to it? She didn`t die in England."
"Yes, yes, she dies. Very sad. And she`s - - - nandake....." Yuko got her dictionary out. "A Jew?"
"Anne of Green Gables is a Jew? Now that definitely wasn`t in the Canadian version. Why have the Japanese made her a Jew?"
"She`s a Jew and she dies. It`s terrible. Not heartwarming at all. It shouldn`t make you happy, Holly."
"No, I can see that dying wouldn`t be heartwarming but...." I looked at Yuko. "Hang on. A Jewish Anne who dies and it`s very sad? Are you talking about Anne Frank by any chance?"
"Anne who? Did she have red hair?"
"No. She was a little girl who kept a diary in the War and was killed by the Nazis, and it`s very sad and does not make me happy."
"That`s it! But she`s not Anne with Red Hair? She`s not this Anne of Green Gables?"
"No. She`s a different Anne entirely."
"Ooooh. I thought they were the same person. That`s why I never read the book."
"Right. Well. There is a bit of a difference. Unfortunately, because Anne of Green Gables is fictional and Anne Frank was not."
"Maybe I`ll read that one now then. If she doesn`t die in a concentration camp."
"I think I can promise you quite solemnly that Anne of Green Gables does not die in a concentration camp. Tragically, the one who did was real."
I`m not sure, exactly, what the marketing around Anne has been in Japan, but it has clearly become a little bit confused; leaving an entire generation to well up as soon as they spot a red plait. And as happy as I am that Anne is so popular here - both of them, combined into one person - it seems even more poignant that the fictional girl got such a lovely ending, and the real girl such a tragic one.
There`s scope for imagination here, after all, in swapping them over.
It was a book that was a pivotal part of my childhood, because I, too, was a freckled, redheaded, skinny child with no friends, an overactive imagination and the inability to put anything in perspective, and so I loved all of the Anne books with a deep and fervent passion: drew an entirely unrealistic amount of comfort from her lifelong romance with Gilbert Blythe and her meteoric rise from unloveable orphan to - ahem - teacher (at the time I was deeply unimpressed by this: with hindsight, perhaps even less so) and I was definitely under the impression for a long time that she and I were actually the same person, a century removed from each other. She remains, as far as I`m concerned, one of the most vivid fictional characters ever created, and so while she may not have been particularly well loved by my peers (they were busy dancing to MC Hammer) it wasn`t a massive surprise to me that she`s been adored in Japan for decades. Harry Potter, it seems, was not the only Western children`s novel that captured the imaginations of a nation of adults, and Akage no An (Anne of Red Hair) was both an anime and a compulsory text in Junior High school for a number of years.
I can only assume that those years were not the ones during which the head of the English department at Kitago was at school.
"Have you heard of Akage no An?" I asked her this morning.
"Of course!" she said. "It is very famous here. Although I never read it. But I heard of it."
"It`s my favourite book!" I told her enthusiastically. "Isn`t it wonderful? Isn`t it just so heartwarming?"
My colleague looked at me in shock. "Mmmm," she said. "You really think so?"
"Of course! I`ve loved it since I was a child. It makes me so happy."
Yuko looked even more alarmed.
"It makes you happy? But it`s very sad, isn`t it?"
"Is it?" I`m rereading it at the moment, but I couldn`t remember it being particularly sad when I was eight years old. "What`s sad about it?"
"Well, she dies doesn`t she?"
"Umm...." I trawled my memory. "I don`t think so. I mean, there`s six books and she gets married and has children. Maybe she dies in the last one, but...."
"No, I`m certain she dies. Anne with red hair: she dies, I am sure of it."
"Really? Crikey. What have the Japanese done to it? She didn`t die in England."
"Yes, yes, she dies. Very sad. And she`s - - - nandake....." Yuko got her dictionary out. "A Jew?"
"Anne of Green Gables is a Jew? Now that definitely wasn`t in the Canadian version. Why have the Japanese made her a Jew?"
"She`s a Jew and she dies. It`s terrible. Not heartwarming at all. It shouldn`t make you happy, Holly."
"No, I can see that dying wouldn`t be heartwarming but...." I looked at Yuko. "Hang on. A Jewish Anne who dies and it`s very sad? Are you talking about Anne Frank by any chance?"
"Anne who? Did she have red hair?"
"No. She was a little girl who kept a diary in the War and was killed by the Nazis, and it`s very sad and does not make me happy."
"That`s it! But she`s not Anne with Red Hair? She`s not this Anne of Green Gables?"
"No. She`s a different Anne entirely."
"Ooooh. I thought they were the same person. That`s why I never read the book."
"Right. Well. There is a bit of a difference. Unfortunately, because Anne of Green Gables is fictional and Anne Frank was not."
"Maybe I`ll read that one now then. If she doesn`t die in a concentration camp."
"I think I can promise you quite solemnly that Anne of Green Gables does not die in a concentration camp. Tragically, the one who did was real."
I`m not sure, exactly, what the marketing around Anne has been in Japan, but it has clearly become a little bit confused; leaving an entire generation to well up as soon as they spot a red plait. And as happy as I am that Anne is so popular here - both of them, combined into one person - it seems even more poignant that the fictional girl got such a lovely ending, and the real girl such a tragic one.
There`s scope for imagination here, after all, in swapping them over.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Scooby Died
When you learn a lesson in one area of your life, there is absolutely no reason why this lesson can`t be applied to other parts of it too.
From my last foul relationship, I learnt a lot. I learnt that hanging desperately on to something that is constantly trying to hurt you is extremely dangerous. I learnt that depending on something that is going nowhere is silly, and that if it has to be kick started every morning there`ll never be a point where you don`t expect it not to kick start at all. I learnt that if you can`t tell where something is going you`re probably not supposed to go with it, and if you have to beg it constantly to function you probably shouldn`t be with it in the first place. I learnt that if you spend more time and energy worrying about when it`s going to fall apart than you do enjoying the fact that it hasn`t yet, there are better things you could be doing, and if you`re constantly tensed for the end then you`ll never enjoy the beginning. I learnt that if something is trying to kill you it`s a good idea to walk away before it manages it, and if they have a deep dark hole in them that you can`t see but know is there then there`s absolutely no point in trying to block it up because you can`t. And I learnt - perhaps most importantly - that if they`re old they`re old, that it`s not a good thing if you look closely and find that they`re going bald, and if you ignore it they`re just going to get older and balder.
All of which can also be applied to my scooter.
Scooby did his best, poor mite. He has gamely carried me to and from school for nearly three months: dealt with all sorts of bad driving and rough country stones and ash from volcanos. But it has been clear for a while now that it was never going to be a healthy relationship: that every single morning it was extremely debatable whether or not he was going to wake up again, no matter how hard I kicked him. He has one mirror. He has no speedometer, which isn`t actually a problem because he can`t go any faster than 30kmh but it still doesn`t bode well for this general health. He`s had five flat tyres in three weeks, and he won`t stop indicating, except that he changes his mind every three seconds about what direction he plans to head in. He has, as of this past weekend, no light, which means I can`t take him anywhere at night-time, he coughs for the first 20 minutes of every ride, and his tyres are so sleek and smooth I can see my face in them. And you`re not supposed to be able to see your face in tyres. It`s very dangerous.
Normally, of course - if I was the Old Me (this is how I now refer to the Me who was a bit of a walkover) - I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d hope that somehow, magically, he fixed himself. And even though I`d know that it was pretty rare for scooters to fix their own tyres and brakes and front lights and indicators, I`d still hope. I`d get on that damn scooter and I`d continue whispering please please please continuously, and hoping furiously that it didn`t get fed up and decide to kill me just to shut me up. And then, even though I`d know, deep down, that it was inevitable, I`d wait until it was too late and he fell apart completely and stopped functioning and then I would cry and cry and cry because I`d be totally screwed and probably in pieces too.
Luckily, I`m not the Old Me anymore, and the New Me has learnt her lesson. I`ve been secretly prowling around scooter shops when Scooby wasn`t looking for weeks and weeks now, and last night I finally found something that Will Do: a scooter that actually functions. It`s not my perfect scooter - it`s not the cream and brown leather Italian Vespa I`m going to end up with one day - but it`ll get me to and from school for the rest of my time in Japan, and I can pimp it up nicely enough to make it acceptable to myself and to my students. So I bought it. I handed the money over on the spot and I bought it: both on impulse, and on sensible consideration. And I have one week to wait before he`s ready to start his next relationship and we can begin something new together.
This morning, minutes after coaxing Scooby awake, he died. In fact, he chose the most dangerous possible time to fall apart, just as I knew he would: at the exact moment I pulled out in front of a large lorry. The back tyre exploded, Scooby made a very sad little sound and gave up the ghost exactly two thirds of the way across a main road, and I just about made it to safety before the lorry forced me to give up the ghost too. And as unsentimental as I am, now, (the New Me, not the Old Me), I`m ashamed to say that I swore, left the dead Scooby on the side of the road and got an incredibly expensive taxi to work. And I may have stuck my finger up at him as the taxi drove past.
So I`ve finally learnt my lesson. Just. I learnt my lesson about 12 hours before I would have had to learn the same lesson all over again, except this time with a lorry smashing me up instead of a boy. And it still cost me 25 quid in taxi fees.
When something is broken, there`s no point wasting your time and energy and money trying to fix it: get another one. Don`t wait until it leaves you a mess on the side of the road. And if the next one isn`t perfect? So be it.
It`ll help you to get to the one that is.
From my last foul relationship, I learnt a lot. I learnt that hanging desperately on to something that is constantly trying to hurt you is extremely dangerous. I learnt that depending on something that is going nowhere is silly, and that if it has to be kick started every morning there`ll never be a point where you don`t expect it not to kick start at all. I learnt that if you can`t tell where something is going you`re probably not supposed to go with it, and if you have to beg it constantly to function you probably shouldn`t be with it in the first place. I learnt that if you spend more time and energy worrying about when it`s going to fall apart than you do enjoying the fact that it hasn`t yet, there are better things you could be doing, and if you`re constantly tensed for the end then you`ll never enjoy the beginning. I learnt that if something is trying to kill you it`s a good idea to walk away before it manages it, and if they have a deep dark hole in them that you can`t see but know is there then there`s absolutely no point in trying to block it up because you can`t. And I learnt - perhaps most importantly - that if they`re old they`re old, that it`s not a good thing if you look closely and find that they`re going bald, and if you ignore it they`re just going to get older and balder.
All of which can also be applied to my scooter.
Scooby did his best, poor mite. He has gamely carried me to and from school for nearly three months: dealt with all sorts of bad driving and rough country stones and ash from volcanos. But it has been clear for a while now that it was never going to be a healthy relationship: that every single morning it was extremely debatable whether or not he was going to wake up again, no matter how hard I kicked him. He has one mirror. He has no speedometer, which isn`t actually a problem because he can`t go any faster than 30kmh but it still doesn`t bode well for this general health. He`s had five flat tyres in three weeks, and he won`t stop indicating, except that he changes his mind every three seconds about what direction he plans to head in. He has, as of this past weekend, no light, which means I can`t take him anywhere at night-time, he coughs for the first 20 minutes of every ride, and his tyres are so sleek and smooth I can see my face in them. And you`re not supposed to be able to see your face in tyres. It`s very dangerous.
Normally, of course - if I was the Old Me (this is how I now refer to the Me who was a bit of a walkover) - I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d wait and I`d hope that somehow, magically, he fixed himself. And even though I`d know that it was pretty rare for scooters to fix their own tyres and brakes and front lights and indicators, I`d still hope. I`d get on that damn scooter and I`d continue whispering please please please continuously, and hoping furiously that it didn`t get fed up and decide to kill me just to shut me up. And then, even though I`d know, deep down, that it was inevitable, I`d wait until it was too late and he fell apart completely and stopped functioning and then I would cry and cry and cry because I`d be totally screwed and probably in pieces too.
Luckily, I`m not the Old Me anymore, and the New Me has learnt her lesson. I`ve been secretly prowling around scooter shops when Scooby wasn`t looking for weeks and weeks now, and last night I finally found something that Will Do: a scooter that actually functions. It`s not my perfect scooter - it`s not the cream and brown leather Italian Vespa I`m going to end up with one day - but it`ll get me to and from school for the rest of my time in Japan, and I can pimp it up nicely enough to make it acceptable to myself and to my students. So I bought it. I handed the money over on the spot and I bought it: both on impulse, and on sensible consideration. And I have one week to wait before he`s ready to start his next relationship and we can begin something new together.
This morning, minutes after coaxing Scooby awake, he died. In fact, he chose the most dangerous possible time to fall apart, just as I knew he would: at the exact moment I pulled out in front of a large lorry. The back tyre exploded, Scooby made a very sad little sound and gave up the ghost exactly two thirds of the way across a main road, and I just about made it to safety before the lorry forced me to give up the ghost too. And as unsentimental as I am, now, (the New Me, not the Old Me), I`m ashamed to say that I swore, left the dead Scooby on the side of the road and got an incredibly expensive taxi to work. And I may have stuck my finger up at him as the taxi drove past.
So I`ve finally learnt my lesson. Just. I learnt my lesson about 12 hours before I would have had to learn the same lesson all over again, except this time with a lorry smashing me up instead of a boy. And it still cost me 25 quid in taxi fees.
When something is broken, there`s no point wasting your time and energy and money trying to fix it: get another one. Don`t wait until it leaves you a mess on the side of the road. And if the next one isn`t perfect? So be it.
It`ll help you to get to the one that is.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Literary
Of all the things I wanted to be as a child - ballet dancer, scientist, astronaut, astronomer, paleontologist (geeeek) - writer was never one of them. I wrote because I loved it: diaries and poems and short stories from four years old upwards (perfectly rhyming stanzas at six? Hell yeah). But be a writer? It never even occurred to me. Writer wasn't on the career's list, and when I went to talk to my career counsellor she never suggested it.
'What do you love doing most?' she asked me, age 13 (me, not her. She was fully grown up).
'Writing,' I told her.
'Excellent,' she said. 'Have you thought about being a journalist? Or in PR? Or in advertising? Or an English teacher? Or an English lecturer?' She got a list out. 'These are all career possibilities that involve lots of writing.'
All, that was, apart from writer.
So it didn't occur to me. In fact, my intense love of writing actually pushed the idea further away, because it was so much a part of me already that I took it totally for granted, the way you don't realise how much you love somebody when you're with them all of the time. So I carried on writing - filling up pages and pages and practicing different styles - and simultaneously panicked about what I was going to do with my life. Chose English Literature as a BA because it involved reading books, and that seemed good, and Shakespeare as an MA because it involved reading Shakespeare, and that seemed good too. I was so shy that it took four entire years of University to submit anything to the Uni newspaper, and I was so shy about writing that I refused to apply for journalist jobs because it meant other people reading me. I went into PR because sometimes - when I was really lucky - I got to write a Press Release about compost, and when I applied for Best Job I had to do the take where I said "I'm a writer" six times, because I kept laughing. And I only started this blog because I was told that I definitely wouldn't win the 70 grand Best Job prize if I didn't. And the 70 grand carrot was enough to get this donkey moving.
It's taken 29 years for me to be able to say I'm a writer, because I am: regardless of whether I ever get published or not. I'm a writer because I write: because I get up in the morning and I write, and I write during my lunch breaks, and I write in my evenings. I'm a writer because it's what gives my life significance, and because without it I'm not sure I'd bother. I'm a writer because I have a passion for it that is greater than any passion I have ever had for any man, and will always be greater than any passion I have for any man. I'm a writer, not because I chose it - not because I came out of that career's adviser's office and said "I will be a writer" - but because it chose me. Because nearly three decades of running away from it and ignoring it and refusing to talk about it or think about it has done absolutely nothing to alter the following fact: writing is what makes me happy. And everything else in my life is just what I do when I'm not writing.
Just as the career's adviser didn't tell me to be a writer, though, neither is there a career adviser that has told me what to write. And so I have struggled horribly. When I eventually realised that my only dream was to write novels, I very sensibly started trying to write novels. And, as a girl who likes to think of herself as vaguely intelligent and has been known to take herself a little too seriously from time to time, I wanted to write good novels. Award winning novels. Critically acclaimed novels. Literary Fiction novels, as The Guardian calls them. Novels with really cool illustrations on the front; the kind that people pick up and say "you know, this really is so surprising coming from somebody so young" (I would have been young if I had managed it when I started trying) and "it just totally breaks all the boundaries of fiction, don't you think?" So I wrote. I wrote seriously. I wrote pages and pages of Literary Fiction, and then - when I was 26 - I wrote an entire book of Literary Fiction: 102,378 words of the bugger. Deep, moving, stylised, with no quotation marks around the dialogue because that seemed pretty clever and modern (I put them back in eventually because I didn't know who was talking). My Big Achievement. The novel to change all novels. And then I read it and realised it was a bit crap, and the agents I sent it to agreed whole heartedly. They did, however, really enjoy the funny bits, and suggested rewriting and editing the rest of it out, and that left me with about six pages from start to finish.
As far as concerned, I was therefore screwed. What the hell was the point in being a writer if I wasn't going to win a Booker Prize for it? What the hell was the point of writing a novel if it didn't prove to everyone how clever I was? So I sulked, and I got stressed, and I tried to start another Literary Fiction novel, and wore lots of black and smoked and told everyone how hard writing was, and how they didn't understand.
It was only as I started re-reading all of my favourite novels - Anne of Green Gables, The Borrowers, The Far Away Tree, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, Great Expectations, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice - that I realised the key to my issue: I don't like Literary Fiction. At all. If a book falls into nothing but Literary Fiction (Life of Pi and White Teeth, I am looking at you), it tends to be instantly forgettable. Impressive, yes, but untouchable. Because they're not the books that change lives. They change newspapers, yes, and they change award panels, and they change bestselling lists, but they don't change lives. They just make it look like they could do.
So I put down my serious face, and I put down my next work of Literary Fiction, and I put down all hopes of ever getting a Booker prize. I put down all of my stylised efforts, readopted the speech mark, and resigned myself to being ignored forever by readers of The Guardian. I started writing a book that made me laugh: created characters that I fell in love with. And you know what? It's been easy, it's been fun, and it's been exactly what made me love writing to start with: the ability to make myself happy, and hopefully do the same to others. And my novel, in all of its fluffiness, is very, very nearly finished.
Last week at a teacher training course, I met a boy who told me - within two minutes - that he was "writing a novel" (funny how quickly that tends to come up in conversation: I still don't know his name).
'Really?' I said. 'Me too!'
He looked at me sceptically. 'Yeah? You don't look like a writer.'
'Thanks,' I said cheerfully. I have zero interest in looking like a writer: I'm quite happy looking like I can barely read. 'So what's yours about then?'
'Oh,' he told me airily. 'It's literary fiction. I couldn't possibly sum it up.'
'Fair enough,' I said with a grin. 'Mine's not. Not at all. It's about a 14 year schoolgirl called Harriet.'
Understanding dawned on his face. 'Oh, so not like a real novel, then.'
'Nope,' I said happily. 'Not a real novel at all.'
'You're lucky,' he told me, patting me on the shoulder. 'Literary fiction is so hard. It's so slow, and so difficult, you know?'
'Nope,' I said. 'No idea. Mine isn't in the slightest.'
Being a writer may not be a choice, but what you write is. And I've finally chosen to write the kind of books I love reading.
It seems so much cleverer that way.
'What do you love doing most?' she asked me, age 13 (me, not her. She was fully grown up).
'Writing,' I told her.
'Excellent,' she said. 'Have you thought about being a journalist? Or in PR? Or in advertising? Or an English teacher? Or an English lecturer?' She got a list out. 'These are all career possibilities that involve lots of writing.'
All, that was, apart from writer.
So it didn't occur to me. In fact, my intense love of writing actually pushed the idea further away, because it was so much a part of me already that I took it totally for granted, the way you don't realise how much you love somebody when you're with them all of the time. So I carried on writing - filling up pages and pages and practicing different styles - and simultaneously panicked about what I was going to do with my life. Chose English Literature as a BA because it involved reading books, and that seemed good, and Shakespeare as an MA because it involved reading Shakespeare, and that seemed good too. I was so shy that it took four entire years of University to submit anything to the Uni newspaper, and I was so shy about writing that I refused to apply for journalist jobs because it meant other people reading me. I went into PR because sometimes - when I was really lucky - I got to write a Press Release about compost, and when I applied for Best Job I had to do the take where I said "I'm a writer" six times, because I kept laughing. And I only started this blog because I was told that I definitely wouldn't win the 70 grand Best Job prize if I didn't. And the 70 grand carrot was enough to get this donkey moving.
It's taken 29 years for me to be able to say I'm a writer, because I am: regardless of whether I ever get published or not. I'm a writer because I write: because I get up in the morning and I write, and I write during my lunch breaks, and I write in my evenings. I'm a writer because it's what gives my life significance, and because without it I'm not sure I'd bother. I'm a writer because I have a passion for it that is greater than any passion I have ever had for any man, and will always be greater than any passion I have for any man. I'm a writer, not because I chose it - not because I came out of that career's adviser's office and said "I will be a writer" - but because it chose me. Because nearly three decades of running away from it and ignoring it and refusing to talk about it or think about it has done absolutely nothing to alter the following fact: writing is what makes me happy. And everything else in my life is just what I do when I'm not writing.
Just as the career's adviser didn't tell me to be a writer, though, neither is there a career adviser that has told me what to write. And so I have struggled horribly. When I eventually realised that my only dream was to write novels, I very sensibly started trying to write novels. And, as a girl who likes to think of herself as vaguely intelligent and has been known to take herself a little too seriously from time to time, I wanted to write good novels. Award winning novels. Critically acclaimed novels. Literary Fiction novels, as The Guardian calls them. Novels with really cool illustrations on the front; the kind that people pick up and say "you know, this really is so surprising coming from somebody so young" (I would have been young if I had managed it when I started trying) and "it just totally breaks all the boundaries of fiction, don't you think?" So I wrote. I wrote seriously. I wrote pages and pages of Literary Fiction, and then - when I was 26 - I wrote an entire book of Literary Fiction: 102,378 words of the bugger. Deep, moving, stylised, with no quotation marks around the dialogue because that seemed pretty clever and modern (I put them back in eventually because I didn't know who was talking). My Big Achievement. The novel to change all novels. And then I read it and realised it was a bit crap, and the agents I sent it to agreed whole heartedly. They did, however, really enjoy the funny bits, and suggested rewriting and editing the rest of it out, and that left me with about six pages from start to finish.
As far as concerned, I was therefore screwed. What the hell was the point in being a writer if I wasn't going to win a Booker Prize for it? What the hell was the point of writing a novel if it didn't prove to everyone how clever I was? So I sulked, and I got stressed, and I tried to start another Literary Fiction novel, and wore lots of black and smoked and told everyone how hard writing was, and how they didn't understand.
It was only as I started re-reading all of my favourite novels - Anne of Green Gables, The Borrowers, The Far Away Tree, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, Great Expectations, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice - that I realised the key to my issue: I don't like Literary Fiction. At all. If a book falls into nothing but Literary Fiction (Life of Pi and White Teeth, I am looking at you), it tends to be instantly forgettable. Impressive, yes, but untouchable. Because they're not the books that change lives. They change newspapers, yes, and they change award panels, and they change bestselling lists, but they don't change lives. They just make it look like they could do.
So I put down my serious face, and I put down my next work of Literary Fiction, and I put down all hopes of ever getting a Booker prize. I put down all of my stylised efforts, readopted the speech mark, and resigned myself to being ignored forever by readers of The Guardian. I started writing a book that made me laugh: created characters that I fell in love with. And you know what? It's been easy, it's been fun, and it's been exactly what made me love writing to start with: the ability to make myself happy, and hopefully do the same to others. And my novel, in all of its fluffiness, is very, very nearly finished.
Last week at a teacher training course, I met a boy who told me - within two minutes - that he was "writing a novel" (funny how quickly that tends to come up in conversation: I still don't know his name).
'Really?' I said. 'Me too!'
He looked at me sceptically. 'Yeah? You don't look like a writer.'
'Thanks,' I said cheerfully. I have zero interest in looking like a writer: I'm quite happy looking like I can barely read. 'So what's yours about then?'
'Oh,' he told me airily. 'It's literary fiction. I couldn't possibly sum it up.'
'Fair enough,' I said with a grin. 'Mine's not. Not at all. It's about a 14 year schoolgirl called Harriet.'
Understanding dawned on his face. 'Oh, so not like a real novel, then.'
'Nope,' I said happily. 'Not a real novel at all.'
'You're lucky,' he told me, patting me on the shoulder. 'Literary fiction is so hard. It's so slow, and so difficult, you know?'
'Nope,' I said. 'No idea. Mine isn't in the slightest.'
Being a writer may not be a choice, but what you write is. And I've finally chosen to write the kind of books I love reading.
It seems so much cleverer that way.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Volcano
Last year I was a little upset when the volcano in Iceland erupted: 27 years in England, I'd spent - give or take six months here or there - and there'd been no impressive acts of nature at all. As soon as I was gone: poof! Volcanoes exploding, snow falling, heat waving: God doing as much as he ever does to the weather in Hertfordshire.
To make up for it - to say sorry for giving me no drama - the neighbouring volcano has just erupted. Poof! Just like that. And the first thing I knew about it was Baba screaming through my window.
'Ho-rrreeeeeeeeeeeee,' she was screeching. 'Ho-rrrreeeeeeeee.'
I was in bed, sick and reading my Kindle, so I didn't appreciate all the noise.
'Ho-rrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,' Baba shrieked again - and trust me, this lovely, cuddly old lady can shriek like a banshee - so I got out of bed.
'Mmmm?' I said in the international language of stop sodding shrieking at me.
'Look!' she yelled, and then pointed to the sky. At which point I realised that there was no sky, and it was a blanket of ash. Then - priorities firmly established - she pointed at my washing line. 'Take your washing in!' she yelled. 'It's going to get all dirty!'
I got my washing in, and then I went back to bed. Eventually, when I was hungry enough to require getting out of bed, I took myself outside and realised I couldn't see a thing. Not a single thing. The entire air was full of ash. It was all over my scooter, and all over the floor, and all over my face, an inch thick like snow. And - because I'm never prepared for any kind of emergency - I had to drive to the local shop to buy myself dinner: drive through air absolutely solid and grey, breathing through a mask. Thinking as I did so: thank God it's not a real emergency. Because when a real emergency happens, I am going to be totally screwed. All I've got in the freezer is icecream.
It's quite exciting, actually. It's getting thicker and thicker by the hour, and it's absolutely silent outside: the ash has muffled everything. In the six minutes it took me to drive to and from the shop, I managed to collect a coat of greyness so thick that I could - and did - draw patterns in it with my fingers.
'Oh,' the shop assistant said when I was asked him what the hell was going on. 'Just the local volcano erupting.'
Oh, just the local volcano erupting. Which is not a sentence we hear in Hertfordshire all that often.
As disappointed as I was at missing out on the English natural phenomenons, I'm quite certain I've held out for something a little more dramatic. And possibly a little more dangerous: I have no idea how healthy it is to be surrounded by a thick blanket of ash. I didn't give up smoking so that I could breathe a volcano into my lungs.
Whenever you forget you're abroad, there's always something to remind you all over again. A little bit of something you'd never expect in Welwyn Garden City. A little bit of foreign magic.
And as dangerous as it might be, it's also a little bit thrilling.
Poof.
To make up for it - to say sorry for giving me no drama - the neighbouring volcano has just erupted. Poof! Just like that. And the first thing I knew about it was Baba screaming through my window.
'Ho-rrreeeeeeeeeeeee,' she was screeching. 'Ho-rrrreeeeeeeee.'
I was in bed, sick and reading my Kindle, so I didn't appreciate all the noise.
'Ho-rrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,' Baba shrieked again - and trust me, this lovely, cuddly old lady can shriek like a banshee - so I got out of bed.
'Mmmm?' I said in the international language of stop sodding shrieking at me.
'Look!' she yelled, and then pointed to the sky. At which point I realised that there was no sky, and it was a blanket of ash. Then - priorities firmly established - she pointed at my washing line. 'Take your washing in!' she yelled. 'It's going to get all dirty!'
I got my washing in, and then I went back to bed. Eventually, when I was hungry enough to require getting out of bed, I took myself outside and realised I couldn't see a thing. Not a single thing. The entire air was full of ash. It was all over my scooter, and all over the floor, and all over my face, an inch thick like snow. And - because I'm never prepared for any kind of emergency - I had to drive to the local shop to buy myself dinner: drive through air absolutely solid and grey, breathing through a mask. Thinking as I did so: thank God it's not a real emergency. Because when a real emergency happens, I am going to be totally screwed. All I've got in the freezer is icecream.
It's quite exciting, actually. It's getting thicker and thicker by the hour, and it's absolutely silent outside: the ash has muffled everything. In the six minutes it took me to drive to and from the shop, I managed to collect a coat of greyness so thick that I could - and did - draw patterns in it with my fingers.
'Oh,' the shop assistant said when I was asked him what the hell was going on. 'Just the local volcano erupting.'
Oh, just the local volcano erupting. Which is not a sentence we hear in Hertfordshire all that often.
As disappointed as I was at missing out on the English natural phenomenons, I'm quite certain I've held out for something a little more dramatic. And possibly a little more dangerous: I have no idea how healthy it is to be surrounded by a thick blanket of ash. I didn't give up smoking so that I could breathe a volcano into my lungs.
Whenever you forget you're abroad, there's always something to remind you all over again. A little bit of something you'd never expect in Welwyn Garden City. A little bit of foreign magic.
And as dangerous as it might be, it's also a little bit thrilling.
Poof.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
The Beholder
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
I'm a redhead.
Who knew? I certainly didn't. Up until recently, I hadn't seen my natural hair colour in fifteen years. From the first, tentative streaks of pink as a teenager, to the bleach blonde bob that was my trademark for half a decade, I've been dying my hair: both in the sense that it was dyed, and in the sense that I had killed it. Long, short, white, grey (by accident), red, fluorescent orange (by accident), brown, black, fringe, crop, bob: I have done it all. All, that is, but leave it alone. I'm nearly thirty years old, and I've just discovered that the mean boys at school were all absolutely correct and I am, in fact, ginger. Or auburn, if you're going to be kind (and they weren't). Which I suppose explains all the freckles.
Beauty causes great internal conflict for me. The shy, introverted, bookworm part of me finds beauty and the concept of it uncomfortable: finds the idea of chasing it, or bowing down to social expectations of it essentially dull, stupid and shallow. Judging the internal by the external - making any kind of evaluation based on our packaging - leaves me vaguely angry and self-righteous. There are things to be doing other than checking our nails and extending our eyelashes, after all, and the cerebral part of me finds oohing and aaahing over lipstick a little nauseating and inexplicable. That part of me would far rather read Dickens than Cosmopolitan; refuses, categorically, to wear make up if I'm just going shopping, and is happy to wear the same pair of army trousers for a week. The girls - the kind who judge the world and everybody in it by how pretty or how handsome they are - make me sick and bored and anxious. And the boys who like those kind of girls? They make me even more so. Which is all totally understandable: I wore knee length jumpers for my entire teen years, spent so much time buried in books I didn't see my own face from week to week, and my cerebral, shy mother used to tell me as a child that washing up liquid was "all I needed for my hair" and that she didn't "believe" in moisturiser (as if it was some kind of fairy, or Santa Claus).
The other part of me, though - the creative part, predominantly - tends to fall more towards the concept of personal beauty as one of the highest forms of art, and on that I'm more like my father. As Oscar Wilde claimed: "To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." When nothing, really, matters - when life is so transient, and so short, and none of us really know what the point of it is - there is an ugliness and stupidity in ignoring what beauty already exists, or in not trying to find it or create it or augment it wherever possible. For if we can write beauty, and we can paint it, and we can sing it, and we can carve it, why the hell should we not embody it as well? How can the world be a beautiful place if the people in it are not becoming part of that? And in painting ourselves, are not women finding a creative outlet for self expression prohibited, by society, to most men? Are they not taking back a little of the creativity that they've been denied for centuries? Is it not, in that sense, the purest concept of feminism? Is beauty, then, not to be celebrated and treasured and protected just as a poem is, or a story, or a song: more so, in fact, because it is more natural and more temporary?
And that part of me - the part of me prone to making daisy chains and putting them in my hair - is the part that very much enjoys reading Cosmopolitan and painting my eyes with green metallics and reading the ingredients on fifteen bottles of moisturisers and discussing the best way to apply foundation. That part of me finds it incredibly offensive that my intelligence can be called into question in any way at all because I find skincare interesting, or because I know how to apply mascara properly. That my in depth knowledge of King Lear can in anyway be undermined by the fact that I enjoy dipping my fingers into sparkly eyeshadows now and then; that my ability to hold a coherent argument can be questioned because I like looking at shoes. And that part of me is also the part of me that develops girl-crushes on beautiful women constantly, and tends to fall horribly in love with horrible, beautiful men, and values beauty - all kinds of beauty - far more than it should be valued. Because I sometimes mistake beauty, in all of my love for it, as something than runs deeper than it does.
Beauty, for women, is hard. I'm sure it's hard for men too - what with all the daily shaving they have to do - but it's harder for women. We value ourselves by it more, and we are valued for it more. We have been brought up to both chase it and reject it: to prize it immensely, both for ourselves and as the means of Catching A Man And Having A Family, and yet also to fear it, because of what it often implies about our intelligence and what it will one day say about us when it goes. And it's a balancing trick all women have to try and perfect: being pretty, and being interesting, and yet not minding too much that one day we'll be neither.
The key, of course, is to work on both at the same time: to be beautiful where you can see it, and to be beautiful where you can't. To understand and love your own unique brand of it - the thing you bring to the world that nobody else does - without making it everything. Being able to rely upon the beauty we can't see. To be capable of enjoying external beauty, and loving it, but still retaining the ability to walk away from it when we have to, and hold on to what's inside.
Because red hair, blonde hair, dark hair, short hair, long hair, no hair, we should all be able to walk away from the outside kind of beauty. For there's only one thing we can all be sure of:
One day, it is going to walk away from us.
- Miss Piggy
I'm a redhead.
Who knew? I certainly didn't. Up until recently, I hadn't seen my natural hair colour in fifteen years. From the first, tentative streaks of pink as a teenager, to the bleach blonde bob that was my trademark for half a decade, I've been dying my hair: both in the sense that it was dyed, and in the sense that I had killed it. Long, short, white, grey (by accident), red, fluorescent orange (by accident), brown, black, fringe, crop, bob: I have done it all. All, that is, but leave it alone. I'm nearly thirty years old, and I've just discovered that the mean boys at school were all absolutely correct and I am, in fact, ginger. Or auburn, if you're going to be kind (and they weren't). Which I suppose explains all the freckles.
Beauty causes great internal conflict for me. The shy, introverted, bookworm part of me finds beauty and the concept of it uncomfortable: finds the idea of chasing it, or bowing down to social expectations of it essentially dull, stupid and shallow. Judging the internal by the external - making any kind of evaluation based on our packaging - leaves me vaguely angry and self-righteous. There are things to be doing other than checking our nails and extending our eyelashes, after all, and the cerebral part of me finds oohing and aaahing over lipstick a little nauseating and inexplicable. That part of me would far rather read Dickens than Cosmopolitan; refuses, categorically, to wear make up if I'm just going shopping, and is happy to wear the same pair of army trousers for a week. The girls - the kind who judge the world and everybody in it by how pretty or how handsome they are - make me sick and bored and anxious. And the boys who like those kind of girls? They make me even more so. Which is all totally understandable: I wore knee length jumpers for my entire teen years, spent so much time buried in books I didn't see my own face from week to week, and my cerebral, shy mother used to tell me as a child that washing up liquid was "all I needed for my hair" and that she didn't "believe" in moisturiser (as if it was some kind of fairy, or Santa Claus).
The other part of me, though - the creative part, predominantly - tends to fall more towards the concept of personal beauty as one of the highest forms of art, and on that I'm more like my father. As Oscar Wilde claimed: "To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." When nothing, really, matters - when life is so transient, and so short, and none of us really know what the point of it is - there is an ugliness and stupidity in ignoring what beauty already exists, or in not trying to find it or create it or augment it wherever possible. For if we can write beauty, and we can paint it, and we can sing it, and we can carve it, why the hell should we not embody it as well? How can the world be a beautiful place if the people in it are not becoming part of that? And in painting ourselves, are not women finding a creative outlet for self expression prohibited, by society, to most men? Are they not taking back a little of the creativity that they've been denied for centuries? Is it not, in that sense, the purest concept of feminism? Is beauty, then, not to be celebrated and treasured and protected just as a poem is, or a story, or a song: more so, in fact, because it is more natural and more temporary?
And that part of me - the part of me prone to making daisy chains and putting them in my hair - is the part that very much enjoys reading Cosmopolitan and painting my eyes with green metallics and reading the ingredients on fifteen bottles of moisturisers and discussing the best way to apply foundation. That part of me finds it incredibly offensive that my intelligence can be called into question in any way at all because I find skincare interesting, or because I know how to apply mascara properly. That my in depth knowledge of King Lear can in anyway be undermined by the fact that I enjoy dipping my fingers into sparkly eyeshadows now and then; that my ability to hold a coherent argument can be questioned because I like looking at shoes. And that part of me is also the part of me that develops girl-crushes on beautiful women constantly, and tends to fall horribly in love with horrible, beautiful men, and values beauty - all kinds of beauty - far more than it should be valued. Because I sometimes mistake beauty, in all of my love for it, as something than runs deeper than it does.
Beauty, for women, is hard. I'm sure it's hard for men too - what with all the daily shaving they have to do - but it's harder for women. We value ourselves by it more, and we are valued for it more. We have been brought up to both chase it and reject it: to prize it immensely, both for ourselves and as the means of Catching A Man And Having A Family, and yet also to fear it, because of what it often implies about our intelligence and what it will one day say about us when it goes. And it's a balancing trick all women have to try and perfect: being pretty, and being interesting, and yet not minding too much that one day we'll be neither.
The key, of course, is to work on both at the same time: to be beautiful where you can see it, and to be beautiful where you can't. To understand and love your own unique brand of it - the thing you bring to the world that nobody else does - without making it everything. Being able to rely upon the beauty we can't see. To be capable of enjoying external beauty, and loving it, but still retaining the ability to walk away from it when we have to, and hold on to what's inside.
Because red hair, blonde hair, dark hair, short hair, long hair, no hair, we should all be able to walk away from the outside kind of beauty. For there's only one thing we can all be sure of:
One day, it is going to walk away from us.
Again?
My brain shook, and my brain shook, and my brain shook, and then I started hurting all over, and then I got a fever and started vomiting, and then my words started slurring, and then I decided that I wasn't so happy about all of these withdrawal symptoms and took myself to the doctor. Who told me not to be daft, because I wasn't withdrawing from anything: I had influenza and had to go to bed with medicine and water. Which I am now just about to do.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that something has to change, because working with children in a country against which I have no inbuilt immune system is trying to kill me on an almost weekly basis. I am constantly ill.
But I'll think about that later. Right now, I'm going to wrap up and go to bed where I can enjoy all the shaking of what's left of my brain. And the destruction of what's left of my immune system.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that something has to change, because working with children in a country against which I have no inbuilt immune system is trying to kill me on an almost weekly basis. I am constantly ill.
But I'll think about that later. Right now, I'm going to wrap up and go to bed where I can enjoy all the shaking of what's left of my brain. And the destruction of what's left of my immune system.
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