What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?
I met my late husband through a magazine article. I was working with my local MS Therapy Centre and we were sent a new magazine called Pathways and inside was an article from a really attractive man – my ideal, sort of hunky but with glasses. He was being winched into the rigging of a tall ship in a wheelchair! I was so impressed. He wrote about going scuba diving in the Florida Keys and having an adventure on the high seas and how it was all possible, you just had to find the right boat. It was such a difference in style from previous magazines I’d read that focused on a cure or making life safe, it was inspiring and I thought our members would love to hear about it. So I wrote to the magazine to ask permission to put a snippet in our own newsletter and added a note for Jerzy to ask if we could use his photo. Of course I added our email address just in case he’d like to write back. I just felt something when looking at his photo and thought ‘what the hell.’
Jerzy wrote back and I got a dial up internet connection so we could email each other. We messaged for three months and then graduated to a weekly phone call. Hearing his voice gave me goosebumps. After about two months of phone calls he asked if I’d go down to Milton Keynes and meet him in person. I wasn’t sure. He tackled that in the best way, instinctively. He told me we’d keep talking but the offer was always open. I was soon on my way to Milton Keynes. I felt so comfortable with him immediately. He was impressed with the way I handled a cab driver who nearly a had a heart attack as he clumsily transferred from the wheelchair and the aftermath of him knocking a full cup of coffee on the floor. I’m not phased by much. He asked me if I’d come down again in a fortnight to go to the ballet, the Northern Ballet Company’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. I was transfixed by it. I loved the dramatic black and red costumes and the freedom of a contemporary ballet. Late that night we were having a midnight breakfast – scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, coffee and Buck’s Fizz – and he commented on how natural it was to have me there. I agreed, we’d been comfortable from the first day. I knew. As simple as that. I knew I wanted this person to be in the rest of my life. He said ‘would marriage be out of the question?’
If you could pick any fictional animal to be your lifelong companion (like a Pokémon or fantasy pet), what would it be?
Many years ago I mentioned Mr Tumnus to my friend when we were talking about children’s books. She looked delighted.
“Ooh yes! James McAvoy Mr Tumnus?” She asked with a wink.
“Er no. I just want to go to his house for tea.”
She looked mortified and I couldn’t stop laughing. I’ve never had sexual feelings for Mr Tumnus but he is the fictional creature I’d want to hang out with. In my copy of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the illustration of Mr Tumnus by the lamp is one of the most magical scenes in literature. In fact a couple of years ago a local stately home decorated one of their rooms with a fir tree forest. You walked through a door and into the smell of pine and sounds of a forest, snow on the ground and a lamp. Then at the back of the room was one lone tree with a star on top. It really did create that childish magic.
By Amanda Clarke link at the bottom of the page
My mum bought me a painting of Mr Tumnus for Christmas and he’s perfect. He’s wearing a velvet frock coat and his very long scarf, exactly as I imagine him. We share a love of cosy homes with roaring fires, afternoon tea and books. I could imagine whiling away many hours chatting and eating crumpets, reading in the quiet of the afternoon and having a little nap after tea. I thought about this a lot when I built a friendship with my lovely friend Nigel, now sadly gone. He made contact with my then husband as part of a disability network that wanted to expand. I didn’t expect to be part of the conversation because it was meant to be business, but we just clicked the minute he walked through the door.
Nigel was an older gentleman who had sustained a spinal injury and while able to walk on crutches he did struggle with pain and other symptoms. I loved his sprawling Victorian house with its tiled floors and amazing antique furniture. He was an antique dealer and the house was a treasure hoard of art and stunning glass pieces that were lit up on glass shelving throwing rainbows around the room. There was barely an inch of wall uncovered and with antique mirrors bathing everything in a soft light it was a beautiful place to relax. He wore smoking jackets adorned with brooches and had blond very curly hair that could have been hiding a faun’s antlers. Time passed differently with Nigel as he plied me with the ‘good’ coffee, cream cakes and gossipy stories of people in town. He was the GOAT in the gay community and an absolute magnet for young gay men in a town that seemed years behind the rest of the country in terms of diversity. I often found someone sat in the big wingback chair listening to his advice. There were clocks in the house too, everything from cuckoo clocks and grandfather clocks and everything in between. The ticking and soft chiming every half hour was so meditative I used to fall asleep, as cosy as if I was with Mr Tumnus having tea.
I think blogging may have ruined my enjoyment of the bigger books. I used to love immersing myself in books that could double up as doorstops, but since I started blogging I’ve found it more difficult. Blog tours and commitments to blogger groups or book clubs have to take priority over my own reading. At first I did lots of blog tours, mainly to get to know other bloggers and organisers and I’ve made some lovely friends. It was also a good way of getting used to receiving proofs and to refresh my skills. Reading and reviewing to a deadline felt like something I hadn’t done since university and I still get so excited when bookmail arrives. I was so grateful, to Anne Cater particularly, who took a chance on an unknown and very green blogger right at the beginning. Mood reading had to take a back seat and even then it’s been shorter novels because of the short time I had between deadlines. It’s so easy to be influenced by the bookstagram treadmill and get caught up in followers, the latest proof or trend in book stacks or flat lays and forget why you started this in the first place – sharing the books you love.
Long novels take time. I need to set aside a few hours to really pick up the threads of a story and fully immerse myself in its world. I have tried to read longer novels by reading in short sessions between my other commitments but it’s too difficult. Either I don’t get long enough to really connect with the story and lose heart or I get confused between the two novels. It’s one novel at once for me these days. I have a pile of long novels waiting to go but they have to wait for holidays when I have no other distractions. Here are three long novels I’ve read more than once.
I LOVED this beautiful book by Jodi Picoult exploring the theory that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman, Emilia Bassano. At 540 pages it’s weighty but such an easy read that I was able to finish it on a birthday weekend away in Port Sunlight. Emilia struggles to be taken seriously as a playwright, instead she’s expected to marry and stay at home. Despite this she keeps writing, takes a lover and yearns to get her words on the stage – maybe if she finds a man willing to be the ‘face’ of her work she will finally hear her words on the stage.
In modern day New York, student playwright Melina Green finds that even in the 21st Century her words will struggle to make the stage, when the power is held by men. Inspired by the life of her ancestor Emilia Bassano, Melina takes a lesson from history, and submits a play to a competition under a male pseudonym . . .
As Melina discovers more of Emilia’s extraordinary life in Elizabethan England, she is determined to right the wrongs of the past – and finally tell her story.
Two women – centuries apart – are both forced to hide behind another name.
But can either make their voices heard?
Depending on the edition, Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell comes in at between 782 and 1024 pages so it’s a whopper! This book gave me the feeling of being a child again and luxuriating in the detail of this fantastical novel. With an incredible opening where the statues of York Minster come to life, it’s soon clear to the reader that lengthy description is the only way to bring magic to life. My favourite sections include the terrifying ball where the fairy gentleman takes Mr Norrell’s resurrected woman every night and the scene on the beach where a grounded ship is recovered by the incredible spectacle of sand horses summoned by Mr Strange. Amazingly it never feels like a slog.
The year is 1806. Centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation’s past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange. Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.
Coming in at 864 pages this is a brick of a novel and I adore every last page. It’s one of my all time favourites and its heroine, Sugar, may be one of my literary heroes.
Gripping from the first page, this immense novel is an intoxicating and deeply satisfying read. Faber’s most ambitious fictional creation yet, it is sure to affirm his position as one of the most talented and brilliant writers working in the UK. Sugar, an alluring, nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870’s London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realised characters. At the heart of this panoramic, multi-layered narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. The Crimson Petal and the White is a big, juicy, must-read of a novel that will delight, enthral, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.
What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
Ask any book lover what’s the first thing they get asked by visitors to their home and most will answer “how many of them have you read?” Depending on how this question is asked I have two responses: some people ask this question as if they’re trying to catch you out, as if you’ve furnished your house with books to impress others; others are genuinely interested and I’m happy to tell them that any good library has plenty of choice. There are books in my library that have been there several years without being opened. Others are read the minute they come through the door. No matter how much we read and how varied our library there are books we pick up and struggle with. No matter how much we’re told about how brilliant it is, or how many prizes it’s won, we simply can’t get into it. It might be the wrong time, maybe something has happened in life that means we’re not emotionally prepared for it. Maybe it sounded interesting on the shelf in the bookshop but now you can’t build up the enthusiasm. Maybe you started it but hate the narrative voice or structure. Whatever the reason we all have famous unfinished books and here are a few of mine. I normally don’t do negative posts but I know these authors can take it. They’re bestselling authors with books beloved by the world, in fact I have books by all three on my shelves so I’m sure they won’t mind.
A novel of mind-bending imagination and scope from the author of Ghostwritten and Utopia Avenue
Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies . . .
Six interlocking lives – one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity’s will to power, and where it will lead us.
I know everyone thinks this is brilliant. I’ve even read other books by the author and enjoyed them. But I genuinely can’t get into this novel. My rational brain keeps telling me this is a book you need to keep reading to see its full effect and if I just give it a couple more chapters I’ll know what’s going on, but my irrational part is screaming ‘throw it out the window.’ I’ve tried on three different occasions to read this and one of them was in a holiday where I’d run out of books and this was the only one in the house. It’s in a lot of holiday cottages when you start to look and I have a theory. It’s a book people save to read on holiday and then decide life is too short and it’s better to play scrabble and stare at the rain. No matter what I do this book languishes on my shelf until the day comes when I’m ready to read it.
Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry. Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other’s sentences. No one could ever imagine them without each other.
When Gerry dies, Holly is devastated. But Gerry has left her a bundle of notes, one for each month of her year, each signed ‘PS, I Love You’.
As the notes are opened, the man who knows Holly better than anyone teaches her that life goes on. With some help from friends and family, Holly laughs, cries and finds that life is for living – but it helps if there’s someone watching over you.
I genuinely did throw this book out of the window and into the garden! It made me bloody furious. Gerry is dying from cancer, but somehow in the final weeks of his life he summoned up the energy to write Holly letters, buy gifts and even go to the travel agents to book a holiday with no one else knowing. In my experience, both providing care for elderly people with cancer and watching my own husband die from MS complications, people in their final weeks rarely have the energy to do all this without help and someone is always with them. I get this is a romance but it did push reality to one side to create something so sickly sweet I couldn’t bear it. One day I might be ready to read this, but a few years after a major bereavement? Absolutely not.
First came the virus. And then came the dreams . . .
A man escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out over 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks.
Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge – Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the ‘dark man’, the apostate of death, the warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil.
Now the survivors must choose between them – and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
I had a horror reading stage in my late teens and early twenties, powering through James Herbert, Dean Koontz and most of Stephen King. I love Stephen King’s ability to tell such fantastical stories that we believe utterly and scare the wits out of us. Everyone I knew who read widely said his best book is The Stand so I gave it a go. As a reading experience it felt like wading through treacle, plodding along and taking its time to set out the post-apocalyptic world and its leaders. It just wasn’t grabbing me like his other novels and I was really struggling to stay interested. I kept looking at how many pages were ahead and thinking if life’s too short to stuff a mushroom it’s definitely too short for meandering through this. I set it aside and didn’t come back. We’re now thirty years on and I finally picked it up and read straight through. I have no idea why but I really enjoyed it, it’s not my favourite of his books but it isn’t the worst either. I have no idea why I had such an aversion to it: a teenager’s inability to concentrate, being used to more ‘sensational’ novels or that my taste has simply matured. Who knows?
Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?
I have no doubt that my favourite place to vacation would be in Finland with the Moomins and their various house guests. Many people stay in the blue tower this family call home, on the edge of a lake in Finland. Built a long time ago by Moominpappa it was once lost, but after the Great Flood it is rediscovered in the perfect setting:
“At last they came to a small valley that was more beautiful than any they had seen that day. And there, in the midst of the meadow, stood a house that almost looked like a stove, very elegant and painted blue.” The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945)
It could easily take a day just to explore this strange house that’s full of the features Moominpappa didn’t have when he was a child like balconies, turrets, secret staircases all topped off with a glass knob that looks like an onion. I mustn’t forget to visit the huge chandelier where the Ancestor hides out. It’s a comfortable house with squishy furnishings, fabrics like plush and velvet, and endless shelves of books and trinkets to enjoy.
“And so the Moominhouse was rather full – a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow.”
From Finn Family Moomintroll
The best thing about Moomintroll’s family is that they accept everyone ‘just as you are’ – a promise so important it’s engraved on the inside of my wedding ring. The beauty of this family is that you can belong but you don’t have to fit in. The Moomins simply accept everyone for what and who they are. Snufkin comes and goes for long periods but there’s always a bed for him in the Moominhouse. The Hemulen prefers to wear a dress and has his magnifying glass on a chain around his neck. Even the very naughty ‘Stinky’ takes refuge behind the vacuum cleaner on one occasion!
There’s something magical about snow and the way it seems to muffle noise and cut us off from the rest of the world. Moominmamma and Pappa are always hospitable, feeding their guests well and sharing their celebrations and outings with whoever is around. I could have a gossip with the Snork Maiden or go fishing with Snufkin and Moomintroll, with a hearty picnic packed by Moominmamma. I could go nature walking with the Hemulen who could surprise me with their botanic knowledge. Their celebrations are always lit by dozens of fairy lights flashing between trees or the tiny tube-like Hattifatteners who look like miniature ghosts and feel like stinging nettles if they brush against your legs. The family are so accommodating I doubt they’d mind if I curled up in a window seat with a book watching the snow fall. There’s always a chance of seeing the Northern Lights too, from the warmth of the glass veranda, reflecting their changing colours in the lake. I have no doubt I’d come back with so many new experiences to share, incredible photographs and new friends I can visit whenever I want.
“Moomintroll’s mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table. And so the Moominhouse was rather full – a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow.” (Finn Family Moomintroll, 1948)
Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?
It so hard to pick one character when there are so many loves in my fictional life and so many versions of me to choose from. In children’s fiction it’s the Snork Maiden – short, plump, blonde hair and utterly in love with love. Then there are all those characters from my later childhood like Jo March and Anne of Green Gables, – the tomboys, strong willed, stubborn young women who don’t want the norm and dream bigger than those around them. Neither want to marry Laurie or Gilbert and live a small town life where they stay home and have babies. They want to be writers and both get their big adventure. Jo goes to New York, she writes stories and goes to the opera and joins a men’s debating club as well as being the governess to two small children. Imagine my disgust when I do a quiz on Facebook and find out that of all the March sisters I am most like Amy. As for Anne she goes to university, she teaches and meets different people than those back home in Avonlea. Yes she marries Gilbert in the end, but only after she chooses to come home herself.
Saoirse Ronan as Jo March in Little Women
I relate most to Louisa Clarke in Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You, with her bumbling character and bumble bee tights. She’s a working class girl whose ambitions feel out of reach and she’s so caught up in the lives of her family that she doesn’t make plans in her own. Lou loves fashion and colour which is definitely something we share. When she gets a job as carer to Will Traynor her life starts to change. Will’s family are wealthy so they’ve never moved in the same circles but an accident has left him quadriplegic and he’s back, living in his own part of the family home. Lou is a bubbly and kooky sort of girl and she’s never done this sort of work. Slowly they start to understand one another and they each teach the other person something. Will sees that Lou is under confident and doesn’t have the nerve to follow her dreams in case she fails. She thinks she’s going to open up Will’s world, he’s been depressed since his accident and doesn’t really participate in life so she starts to suggest going out more. He’s reluctant, but he sees someone who hasn’t had the experiences in life he’s had mainly down to his family having money. So he takes her to the theatre/opera, slowly opening up her world.
Emilia Clarke as Louisa in the film version of Me Before You
I relate to this because I arrived on my late husband’s doorstep with only a photograph and address. We’d written and talked on the phone for several months but never met. When we did meet we went for dinner and talked for hours. Before I left he asked me if I wanted to go to the ballet and I said yes, I’d never seen one. We saw Romeo and Juliet by the Northern Ballet and I was entranced with it. We came home late that night and ate scrambled eggs and bacon with Buck’s Fizz at midnight. Six weeks later we got married. It was crazy, but I simply didn’t want to be anywhere else. He totally opened up my world with opera, jazz, theatre and supported me to do the English degree I’d always wanted to do. I was learning so much about culture and art, but also about love. On our honeymoon week I had to learn about intermittent catheters from a man called Richard who we dubbed the King of Piss. We didn’t get out of bed much except to order Chinese food which we’d eat in bed, showing each other our favourite films and listening to music, reading the papers together. He’d travelled and I’d never had a passport. He’d spent time in New York, played rugby for London Irish, and learned both scuba diving and tall ship sailing after becoming a wheelchair user. He was adventurous and believed I could do these things too. I think this is exactly what Will gave Louisa, but she gave him a sense of family that was warm and loving. She saw him and not the disability, something he was even struggling to do for himself. She let him know he was still everything he was before his accident and the rest was just logistics.
I believe I taught Jerzy to laugh at himself. To find his situation annoying but not unbearable. I taught him that family look after each other and that true friends don’t say ‘we must get together’ but never ring. They pop in and put their own kettle on. I taught him that loving someone means you’ll fight for them, to make their life the best it can possibly be. I taught him to stop and look around once in a while. To enjoy the small things. Unfortunately for Louisa, Will decides that his life is still not how he wants to live and he opts to go abroad for assisted dying. This has been heavily criticised in disability circles for the trope of using a disabled character to teach or improve the life of an able bodied person, only to be discarded once the lesson is learned.
I also had to lose Jerzy. Not in the same way Lou lost Will but we had that discussion. Once he was unable to swallow food without aspirating and had to be PEG fed through a tube into his stomach he lost a lot of the joy he had in food, one of his great passions. He said later that he wished he’d made the choice back then, had he not wanted to stay with me. However, pneumonia and sepsis weakens the body and when it’s a repetitive cycle it’s exhausting. I was essentially doing the work of several nurses by the end with skills in PEG feeding, catheterising, suctioning the airway, chest physio and many other things. I was tired. He was exhausted. One night he was taken to hospital again and he never returned. He spent weeks in hospital and eventually chose to suspend treatment. When he died at 5am in the morning the world stopped making sense.
What Jerzy left me with was similar to what Will left Louisa with. So many experiences and a confidence I’d never had before. He had more faith in me than I had. I got a first in my English degree, then went on to get a diploma in therapeutic counselling, after five years of study. I even started a PhD – although I didn’t finish. I also got that passport and went to New York and Venice, two bucket list destinations. More recently I’ve started to write for myself and have the confidence to put my writing out into the world. Jerzy taught me more than anyone or anything else in life because he taught me how to love, to commit to someone even when the going is almost impossible, to laugh every single day and I hold what he said to me before he died very close to my heart. He’d watched his father struggle after his mother was killed in a car accident and he didn’t want me to be stuck. I’ve resolutely moved forward and kept going even when I made terrible mistakes, never forgetting and keeping him lodged firmly within my heart. Now all I need are those bumble bee tights.
Share a photo of your pet and tell us one thing that makes them uniquely them.
This is Dolly. I had to share several pictures because I’m always photographing the pets, particularly Dolly because she stays still the most. We saw her online at the RSPCA and I knew straight away. So we got in the car and called them on the way. Can we come to see Dolly? Yes, when would you like to come. Is now alright, we’re outside? Experience has taught me that when you know it’s your cat you have to go for it. She was a gregarious little cat that first day. Barely a year old and already had a litter of kittens. She came out of her enclosure and strutted up and down the walkway saying hello to all the other cats. Now she does that here. We’re a tucked away little lane of four 18th Century cottages and in the morning I hear her go out of the cat flap and visit each house in turn. Saying good morning to the neighbours as they start their day.
She’s now progressed to visiting them. Especially in summer when doors and windows are open. It’s weird enough that she sleeps in our bathroom sink, but I know the neighbour was shocked to find her sleeping in theirs when he went to the loo in the night. She pops up onto their porch and slips through the open window and sleeps with their daughter too.
She is an absolute gannet when it comes to food. We feed her twice a day, but have had to reduce it as she also eats elsewhere. Once when we returned from holiday we were greeted by an elderly man who lives just over our garden fence in another cottage. He was very anxious that we should come and collect our pregnant cat. I assured him she wasn’t pregnant, just fat and he told us he didn’t mind her being there but she’d taken over their conservatory and ‘mother’ was getting worried she might give birth. He went scurrying back to fetch her and about ten minutes later he reappeared with Dolly laid in his arms like a baby. We’ve found out since he calls her Madame La Blanc and feeds her from time to time. This is a much more flattering name than Fat Bird or Fat Girl that she gets at home. Our neighbours call her Chonk and Fatso, but if I hear them I message and say ‘stop fat shaming my cat.” They adore her and send us videos of her trying to catch pigeons with very little success.
We noticed one winter that she’d stopped sitting with us in the evening. Nights were drawing in and we had the log burner in so we were very surprised that she wasn’t warming her tummy. One Saturday night a week later the neighbours sent us a picture of her laid in front of their open fire watching Strictly. It became a habit and at the end of the show she asks to be let out again and is usually home before that week’s eliminated celebrity has finished their final dance. I wouldn’t mind but we’re watching the same thing. As soon as the series is over she’s back home again on Saturdays.
Every morning, after breakfast she comes upstairs and arranges herself on my lap in bed. My other half starts work early so he feeds them and lets Dolly upstairs when he brings my breakfast – in bed, every morning for eight years. I got a good one. She will never lie on the bed or even my left leg. It has to be the right leg or nothing at all. I’m not allowed to move. I will rub her head whether I like it or not. She will fling an iPad out of my hand if I’m not paying attention.
This is where she waits for visitors, delivery drivers, the postie. Everyone must pay the toll of a head rub before passing through.
She likes to be enclosed. I bought a wicker tray to sit on the footstool but it only took a week for Dolly to commandeer it and now it’s her bed. She will push everything out of her path to get comfy.
Every so often she has a mad burst of energy and runs up a tree or onto the garage roof. She is remarkably sprightly for a large cat, unfortunately she has a similar penchant for the Christmas tree and has to have supervised access.
Most of the time she’s my companion. She’s usually next to me when I’m reading, indoors and outdoors. When I run a bath I hear her thundering up the stairs to the bathroom and she leaps into the sink. While I read in the bath she sleeps there as if we’re two besties on a spa weekend. When it’s hot she likes me to run the tap and soak her in cool water. She’s also a fan hogger, making sure she’s at the right angle for the most benefit. She hates it when I wear slidy satin pyjamas because she slips off me in bed. She’s our little peacekeeper, trying to calm relations between our male cat Max and our new addition Minka. She is very adept at keeping the dog in check too. We don’t know what we’d do without this massive ray of sunshine in our lives. She’s such a big personality and I’m so glad we found her.
The three words I would use to describe my home are cozy, colourful and bookish. It’s never tidy, there are always piles of things to sort out and my main concern is where we can put another book case. Currently we have seven and two book trolleys. But there are piles of books everywhere. Crime and romance live on the landing, counselling and other work related books in the office. Downstairs I have a glass fronted bookcase with my special and signed editions in the living room along with a corner of unread hardbacks. In my study is a bookcase made by my father and this holds contemporary fiction, historical fiction and spooky reads. In the same room there’s a little alcove with unread proofs and my main book trolley sits underneath with everything I need for blogging. There’s always a bag of books in this room so visitors can rummage and borrow old proofs and once a month it goes to a charity that cooks Sunday lunch for the homeless. The books seem to fly from there every time.
My textile sculptures, this is Kiko and Betty.
Every so often we go to a holiday cottage and I think ‘our house could look like this’. Everything could match and it would be restful and tasteful. It could be in fifty shades of beige or grey, which seems to be the new magnolia. The truth is I love colour and pattern too much. I’m a huge fan of William Morris and Liberty print, especially my ‘strawberry thief’ desk. If we did a declutter with Stacey Solomon I think she’d have a lot to say about my textile sculptures of hares, the amount of art on the walls and the piles of books living on the floor because I’ve run out of shelf space.
My William Morris writing bureau
My book obsession has even made its way onto the decor with bookish cushions, prints and kitchenware covered in Moomins. We have framed poems on the walls and characters like Mr Tumnus.
Even the cushions have bookish credentials
The most recent thing we did was renovate the kitchen, more in keeping with the period of the house which totally gutting the room and took three months to finish. I love the colour, the old pieces of furniture that don’t match and the blue units with brass. It’s the most I’ve ever spent on anything in one go but it makes me happy every time I go in.
The new kitchen
If we did declutter what would I do with my weird old objects, most of which end up living in the study. No one else would want a candelabra that’s a monkey in a Chinese dress or the decorative bird houses, the chesterfield armchairs that belonged to my friend Nigel and the oak kitchen table we bought from Facebook for forty quid. I have an old dresser from a previous home full of china from my previous in-laws, glasses with poodles on and a Polish pottery teapot that holds eight mugs of tea and stays warm with a tea light underneath. There are prints from seeing Monkey: The Opera in New York, my photos of Venice and my rabbit mask. Snowglobes, lanterns, orchids, antique taxidermy, stones from all the beaches I’ve been to, 17th Century dough bowls, phrenology heads and vases because there are always flowers.
Piles of books awaiting a home.
I love that my home has cozy places to read, like my chaise longue (all day long) and my chair in the study usually occupied by Max. I love that my cats have places to lounge and the dog knows she can hop up on the couch. I like the soft light from lamps and candles and the way the sunset gives the landing a peachy glow. I want people to come into my house and feel comfortable, welcome and to see who we are as a family.
On the chaise longue….
I guess I’m just a maximalist at heart, greedy for colour, pattern and soft soothing light, beautiful art and quirky collectibles. Of course most importantly a lover of books.
My study, Dolly and my reading chair from my friendThe hallway camphor wood chest and William Morris chair My pink and blue living room.
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
There’s joy not far from here, right I know there is This isn’t everything you are
These lyrics are so important to me that they still make me cry years later. This song isn’t the Snow Patrol song I played at Jerzy’s funeral. For that I chose Open Your Eyes, prompting my friend to tell everyone to bring their tissues because I was going to ‘Snow Patrol’ them. He listened to that album all the time in bed at home when he could no longer get up. Gary Lightbody writes songs that cut to the quick, somehow taking me deep into the emotions of a single moment.
When Jez died that morning at 5am it wasn’t a shock. We’d been sat there waiting, talking to him, telling him I’d be ok, urging him to let go. He was a stubborn man. Then suddenly he did. As I laid on the bed next to him and my brother lay in two chairs half asleep my huge, charming, intelligent, handsome husband was suddenly gone. I sat for a few moments and it felt like an intense roaring in my head. Then people were talking and I was responding but it was like fighting through static. The nurse gave me a hug and it must have been like holding an ironing board. I couldn’t relax into it. I don’t think the roaring stopped for months.
This song comes four years later. My memory is of putting it on full blast in the car and the singing the chorus at the top of my voice. Or on the stereo while I was in the bath. It was when I was at rock bottom. When I couldn’t see any way out of the deep well of sadness and despair. It was my way of reminding myself that I wouldn’t always feel like this. It was my inner voice coming to me through the music and reminding me that this was just part of my life, not all of it. That one day I would feel happy again. All the pieces of me that shattered that morning would come back together. Maybe not in exactly the same shape, but I would feel like me again. That moment might have been earth shattering, but it wasn’t everything I was.
If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?
If I could rewrite a book’s ending it would be for purely sentimental reasons. The first time I read One Day by David Nicholls I burst into tears. Genuine gulping sobs. Spoiler alert here, this line broke me.
“Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.”
It’s such a simple line, but beautifully written. The change from past to present tense so we’re right there in the moment of the accident, it’s the finality too. Not just a body but that peculiar magic of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that make up a person. That make us fall in love with a person. David Nicholls spends three quarters of the book manipulating us into falling in love with Emma and in a moment she’s snuffed out.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this response was down to my personal experience. Probably so. Partly I probably was grieving for my husband Jerzy, he’d only died two years before. Isn’t it strange the way our memories become confused but I would have sworn the book came out before he died. I imagined I’d read it while I was at university in 2001 but since the book was published in 2009 my grief would have been raw.
It’s the futility of all the time they danced around each other, for twenty years until Dexter gets his act together and recognises how much he loves this incredible woman. He certainly takes his time. Only for their time as lovers to be cut short in a second.
For me Emma is at her happiest in Paris. She’s cut her hair. She has a lovely apartment. She writes books for children. Everything she’s hoped and worked for is hers and then Dex turns up, newly divorced and suddenly she’s on his radar. Finally he sees what’s in front of him. So I would leave Emma in Paris, meeting men who see her value and writing her books, exploring the city that’s kickstarted her dreams and done with being Dexter’s consolation prize. She will always care but knows that’s the right decision for her and her happiness. We leave her with her thoughts and feelings intact, buying flowers and meeting a man for a gallery and dinner.
