To see ourselves as others see us

I am nothing like that, he thought.

Two minutes to midnight. What the heck am I doing still
a. up?
b. faffing around on the internet?
c. sitting upright and tippy tapping at a computer when every muscle is screaming STOP/ LIE DOWN/ PICK UP WOLVES OF THE CALLA* AND READ, IDIOT WOMAN.

Oh, sigh. I wanted to post something, anything, just to let y'all know that I'm still here despite...

Oh, yes, despite some rather interesting stuff going on. That's 'interesting' in its Chinese sense. For we sure are living in interesting times. Of which, more later. Much later. And I'm talking months plural, so don't hold your breath.

But for now, I'm buzzing. Literally. There's a wasp's nest in my studio, somewhere up in the attic where all the ancient files and portfolios from Art College days are stacked. Somewhere in that tonnage of ancient paper, there's a whole lot of chewing going on; out of my awful drawings of old grizzled men, new life is being created. New insect life. I sit, flinching, splashing brushes around in my watercolours as overhead, wasps stitch a route twixt their nest and my Veluxes.

Sometimes they mess up their orienteering and fall, angry and vengeful, onto my wet artwork, and what a mess they do make. Then I get angry and vengeful, but my aim is atrocious and there follows a fruitless twenty minutes of my chasing the beasties round the studio, armed with a vast unwieldy duster against the possibility of being attacked by their tiny but accurate stinger. And in the middle of it all, sits a vulnerably wet and pale watercolour painting, at the mercy of any flailing insect or dislodged clot of cobweb and dust.

I'd far rather be playing around with charcoal and big bits of paper to produce drawings like the one at the top of this post. To do that, I stand up at my drawing board and get moving. The process is dynamic, not static. I put on some loud music. The walls and windows begin to - there is no polite way to say this, people, they throb.  Oh, yes indeedy. I get fizzicle. I get down and doity. I get my hands all black and mean looking and then I smudge my face by accident and after a few hours of this, I look like Pig-Pen on acid, by way of Calla Bryn Sturgis**, if it do please ya.***

Nothing like the ladylike person that sits, ducking marauding wasps and splishy-splashing in her watercolours. She's douce. She's all pastel twin-sets and vintage Jean Muir.

The one who draws in charcoal is an altogether more serious proposition. Phwoarrrrrr. You wouldn't want to meet that one on a dark night. No, really. You wouldn't.

*I have come late to the Stephen King master-of-fantasy-fiction party. Which in a way is a blessing, since it means I can read the Dark Tower seven novel sequence one after the other, which is as close to this reader's idea of heaven as it gets. And, it has to be said this reader hates fantasy. But the Dark Tower sequence... on this subject, words fail me entirely. Suffice to say, I am smitten.
** Lovely name. A place where terrible things happen to half of the children. One of the many Callas, townships/regions in the Dark Tower novels.
*** A phrase from the argot spoken in book 5 of the Dark Tower series. I'm not fluent, so forgive me if I've got that one wrong.

Last strokes of Mr Wolf

You'd think I'd celebrate. At the very least, take a day off. Crack open a bottle of something bubbly. Award myself a bar of chocolate or something...anything...sheesh, just a little something to mark the end of several months of work on one single book. Yes?

No. Heck, no. Calvinists 'r us. Celebrate? Don't be ridiculous, woman.

Here's how we marked the posting off of the final artwork for What's the Time, Mr Wolf? to its Publisher. Gentle Reader, read on and marvel at how we illustrators really Have Ourselves A Good Time.

There's a shrivelled bunch of past-its-dates therefore 75% off asparagus going peely-wally* in the fridge, some brick hard parmigiano courtesy of my friend Gaz whose Mama was unaware that her only son was drowning in il grande, and passed the surplus dairy product on to us. Filo pastry was unearthed from the freezer and eggs from sister Sue's hens. Wah hey - we have a pie. To drink -there was some flat tonic which mixed with a leathery lime was passably wet. No gin. There was no gin, by choice. It's winter, for heaven's sake. I don't drink much in winter. Actually, these days, I don't drink much at all.

And now, the night is middle-aged and I'm about to curl up on the sofa with a book. A real book, on real paper. Another in my as-yet unbroken chain of winter reading about Polar exploration. Tonight, we're in the Antarctic. My head is full of leads and sastrugi and crevasses and moulins and Great Barriers and narwhals and, heaven help me, an Inuit word I can't remember for the particular variety of the blues that comes upon a person living in a region of low light levels which translates, roughly as weight of the world. I love that. Or perhaps 'love' isn't the right word. I feel that would be closer to the truth. Weight of the world and my place in it. My tiny part in it.

I think there might be a book bubbling up out of all the icy reading I've been doing this winter. Or then again, maybe not. Come what may,  I'm reading my own body weight in words on Polar exploration for sheer joy. In truth, I never did get over my love affair with Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the Snow Queen ; of all childhood stories in my big white book, that is the one that has stayed with me all through my life.

Time will tell. Unlike Andersen's anti-heroine, I don't have an eternity of it, but I've learned that the best of things work to their own timescale and will not be rushed. I feel as if I'm preparing the ground. Sweeping snow off the runway. Building blocks of snow into a little round house. Getting ready for something. Waxing the runners on my sleigh. Keeping my eyes and ears and above all my heart, wide, wide open.

* Peely-wally. The colour of an untanned Caledonian.

Talking myself into it

When January does clear and frosty days, I think there is no better time of year. The light, what few hours we have of it in the North, seems to possess a clarity unlike any other time of year. And with the month getting older and the books I had hoped to have begun by now still unwritten, I took myself off for a long walk through the woods and down to the sea. I walked for hours, lunching on a handful of nuts and dried fruit, drinking a bottle of icy water, taking the occasional diary-photo on my phone, but mainly walking and failing utterly to still the ceaseless chatter inside my head.

Lordy, but I do go on. I would be booted out of any self-respecting monastery for crimes against meditation were I ever to join an order. My 'internal dialogue' is an internal wordsalad on steroids ramped up to an earsplitting volume by way of a Marshall stack. Somebody shut me up. Turn it down, wouldya?

I'm praying* it's entirely because I'm in the predromal phase of the socially-acceptable psychosis that is the precursor to going all-out fruit loops and gobbing out a book. But you know, I could be wrong. I could just be on the threshold of lunacy. Wouldn't be the first time. Uh huh. AWOOOOOOOOO. When is the next full moon anyway? Why are you backing away? Aw, c'mon. Stick around. It might be entertaining. It might be enlightening. It might even be unforgettable.

I can promise you one thing, schweethoit. It sure as hell won't be quiet.

*But, you know, not like a monk, yeah? More like a kind of Pentecostal holy-roller type with a bit of swaying and speaking in tongues. And fur. Sort of grey fur. And yellow eyes and pointy ears. Know what I'm saying? AWOOOOOOOOOOO?

sparkly new thing

I'm ready. I've been good. Over the holidays, I didn't fill my temple with assorted burnt offerings, I didn't stay up late knocking back vatloads of fermented grapes and grains ( too headache-inducing, alas) I played my fiddle lots, read three brilliant non-fiction books made out of paper and went for walks in woods and on beaches and didn't throw out any leftovers.

So. Today I tidied the studio. Well, insofar as I ever tidy. I paid bills and filed things but ignored the floor that hasn't been mopped for, pfffff, going on eleven years. Replied to emails that had to be replied to. Changed onto new diary. Shredded things. Put other things in envelopes and crossed things off lists.

I'm ready now. I have a clear window of opportunity in my diary. I'm going to take myself out for walks. I'm going to take photos. I'm going to make sketches. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to play my fiddle in the hopes of coaxing some ideas out of hiding by pretending to be doing something else entirely. I'm going to go for more walks. I'm going to write. I'm going to throw what I write in the bin. I'm going to go for even more walks. Play even more tunes. Faster. I'm going to write more binworthy stuff. I'm going to draw. Badly. I'm going to feel The Fear. I'm going to gnaw the end of my pen and wonder if I've lost it.*

I'm going to eye the bottles of single malt, lined up like dark green solace in the drinks cupboard, but then I'll remember that these days even the faintest whiff starts the siren-song of migraines. Instead, I'm going to seriously consider cleaning the u-bend, but then I'm going to get real. Ewwwwwwww. Fuggeddit.

I'm going to have a long bath and fall asleep in it and probably let whatever I'm reading** fall into the tepid water. I'm going to do a ton of displacement activities because- guess what- even after all this time, the act of writing, of pulling a story out of thin air still scares the living daylights out of me. But I have to do it. Come what may. Hell and high water and all points in between.

And if I'm very, very lucky, what happened in the picture above will happen inside my head.

A SPARKLY NEW THING will arrive from the place where sparkly new things come from.

Or even a sparkly new thing. Hey. I'm not size-ist. The mere fact of its arrival will be cause enough for celebration.

*My mojo, not my pen.

**Thankfully, not a Knoodle or a Why-pad

The self-employed person's office party

Crack open bottle of champagne, pour self a large measure into vessel usually used for washing brushes and drink responsibly. Crank up music till windows start to throb in sympathy. Pick up fiddle and join in. Read one of one's U.S. picture books out loud and marvel at depths of one's own perception and literary brilliance. Trip over rat's nest of trailing cables and belly flop onto tottering pile of books remaindered three months ago and sent by U.S. publisher to relieve pressure in warehouse. Note that these are the same volumes of deathless prose that one was declaiming from a scant five minutes ago. Sic transic Gliori(a) mundi.

Pour another generous volume of champagne and neck in one fell swoop. Too late, discover that along with fizz, one has inadvertently necked brush cleaning paint-water awash in a hefty titration of Cadmium Red. Cadmium? Faint bell goes off in memory. Isn't that radioactive?

Crikey. Better rinse out mouth straight from bottle instead. Cut out the middleman. So to speak. Chin, chin. What ho, chaps? Bottoms up. Vaguely recall apocryphal tales of office parties where unwise dalliances are conducted in broom cupboards and wobbly bits are photocopied to the general hilarity of all and sundry.

Eye photocopier.

Decide against making a complete idiot of self. Where's the fun in doing that if there's nobody to see you do it? Instead, while away the remainder of the afternoon turning the lights on and off to see if I glow in the dark yet. Like, just how radioactive is Cadmium red ?

And later, as I fall into the embrace of a particularly thorny rosebush on my evening commute home, ( 34 seconds up the garden path, max.) I consider how useful it would be for humans in the Northern Hemisphere to really glow in the dark. That way we could light our own way home like little self-contained candlepersons, instead of stumbling around in badly lit streets, falling over kerbs and cursing the darkness.

This reads like the deranged thoughts of a woman in need of sunshine, however. It is the day before Midwinter, and I don't know about you, but I am feeling particularly lumen-lite right now. Tomorrow, the year turns, and Light slowly gains the ascendancy, and with a bit of luck, my sodden Christmas cake will have returned from detox and will be fit to wear its coat of marzipan. Right now, it's slumped in a corner of the kitchen, muttering wetly to itself, exuding brandy fumes and trying to pick a fight with everyone that walks past. I overdid it on the 'feed your cake' instructions. To be fair, it didn't exactly try and stop me. Not one word of protest did I hear. It just sat there swallowing till it fell over with an expensive splash.

Now it's the kind of cake your mother told you to avoid. Come to think of it, I should have taken it to the self-employed person's office party. It would have been the life and soul of. Dance to the myooozick. Uh huh, uh huh. Voolay voo cooshay aveck mwah. Sisswarr. Oh, god, the shame. It would've been up on the photocopier in seconds flat. And as for introducing it to the shredder? Cake and shredder in a tree. Kay, eye, ess, ess, eye....well, you know how that one goes. Sultanas to hell and back. Currants? Peel? Just don't mention the angelica.

Slainte. A Merry Christmas to all of you Out There xxx

I am the Spoon

Or at least, I feel like I'm running flat out. Trying to get the inside artwork for my What's the Time, Mr Wolf? book ready to take to Lunnon the day after tomorrow. Gasp, pant, phew. A self-imposed deadline, I hasten to add. I mean, it's not like there's a big Dish in hot pursuit, at least not if you factor out the Domestic Debt, the impending Festive Season, the Next Project In Line, the Diminishing Number of Years Left of Functioning Eyesight....

Oh, shut up, Spoon. Just keep running, right?

domestic bliss

When we were younger, breakfast at GlioriSchloss used to look a bit like this. Back then, we fantasized about a future time when we'd actually be allowed to read the Sunday papers cover-to-cover without constant requests from the smaller members of the family for catering services/ quarrel arbitration/ laundry facilities/ taxi services/ toy hospital/ homework-helper and all the other multitudinous tasks in tiny print that parents find they've signed up to with the final pushhhh that ejects the precious little one out into the world. It's a bit like that moment when you've finally downloaded an app, or a program and if you're as fecklessly impatient as I am, you skim all the contractual gubbins and click the blue ACCEPT button in the interests of getting your sticky little mitts on whatever it was you wanted in the first place. Click, pushhhh, DONE.

I mean, did any of us who are lucky enough to be parents really know what we'd let ourselves in for? Hostages to fortune doesn't even come close.

I've been trawling through my artwork archives for the past few days ; ostensibly to locate some artwork for a publisher who wants to re-jacket a picture book, and also to put together a retrospective powerpoint presentation to try and give some idea of what my work has been about. In the trawl, I've been struck by how many of my books are about families. In fact, just about every single thing I've written and illustrated has a family at its core. And looking at the illustrations, I can trace the progression of my own family ; how we grew up, added new members, fell apart and remade ourselves into a new form. Seventy odd picture books, six novels and four works of junior fiction and they're pretty well all about families.

And then...a little bomb went off inside my head yesterday. I was reading the Saturday Guardian in which there was a heartbreaking article about growing up to become a writer by Jeanette Winterson in which she said, 'Unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.'

Winterson's story comes straight out of Grimm ; mine is more Hans Christian Andersen, but as I read on, I acknowledged a degree of kinship with this woman whose writing life has been the only way she could make sense of a world from which all sense appeared to have gone. I write about families because the family I grew up in was so fractured and desperately unhappy that try as I might, I still cannot make sense of it. So I'm making up families as I go along. Where do I get my ideas for my books from? I watch my own children, my own family and I am continually amazed by them. They are the best* people I've ever met.

*Even when they require laundry services/ taxis/ dispute arbitration/ loans/homework-helper/ catering etcetera.