DRIVE SAFELY - IT MAY BE YOUR LAST CHANCE....

While browsing Google, as you do, and wondering about friends and writers I havent met for a while, I happened across fantasy writer William Horwood's website.

It's a long time since I saw William but I have fond memories of his arrival at my Lake District home one lunchtime, waving a bottle of champagne, and cheering about a new property he had just bought. After broaching the bottle and eating lunch, we walked up the fell and he pointed out tiny sundew flowers, which I had never seen before. William  always was a stimulating, interesting and amusing companion.

Anyway, the blog I found was about his experience after inadvertently breaking the speed limit one day. (He was doing 37mph in a 30m limit area.) He was offered the chance of attending a Speed Awareness Course at a cost of £60, rather than have 3 points on his licence. He chose this and found it interesting, instructive and, I guess, rather salutary. 

As one who always likes to tread in the footsteps of the famous, this happened to me too, not so long ago. I think I was doing 34. I realised the minute I'd passed the sign and slowed down, but too late, and a fortnight later along came my own invitation. I can tell you, after 48 years with a clean licence, I was mortified and only too pleased to have the chance to keep it clean. So off I went. And it was interesting. So much so that I decided to take it a step further and apply for a Skill for Life Course with the Institute of Advanced Motorists - something I've long wanted to do anyway.

I've just completed the course - six or seven runs with an Observer and then one with a Senior Observer, just to get a different eye on me - and taken the test, and I am more thrilled than I can say to tell you that I passed. It's a pretty intensive test, lasting nearly two hours and with a bit of everything - country lanes, estates with 20mph limits, motorway or dual carriageway, you name it - and on the day I took it I had heavy rain, standing water and spray to contend with too, but my examiner (a police driver) was relaxed and reassuring and at not time did I feel intimidated. I was just allowed to drive and display my newfound skills.

After 48 years on the roads, what were they? Well, things have changed a bit in the meantime - the motorway was a new concept back in 1964, there are a lot of different road signs now, there is a lot more traffic, and roundabouts are more complex. But if you drive all that time, you develop and grow with the changes, so I don't think I was all that bad. (But then, they say that 95% of drivers think they are above average, and obviously they can't all be!)

What I did discover was that I didn't use my nearside wing mirror enough (we didn't even have wing mirrors when I started!) and especially when turning left (there might be a bike coming up on the inside) and in fact I didn't use any of my mirrors enough. 'Only once every thirty seconds,' my Senior Observer said reprovingly. 'Try once every ten seconds!'

I also didn't know how to merge properly with motorway traffic (get your speed up to theirs, so that you are going as fast as the gaps) or to stay at that speed as you leave the motorway, so as not to inhibit vehicles behind you. I knew (from the Awareness Course) the two-second rule when following other vehicles - note when the chap in front passes some mark and mutter 'only a fool breaks the two-second rule' before you pass it as well. (Three or even four are better sometimes, but just saying it doesn't have the same effect.) But I didn't know about Limit Points on ordinary roads - always drive so that you can stop within the distance you can see ahead. Instead of making you go more slowly, it gives you the confidence to drive a little more briskly ('making progress' in IAMs language) and not hold up other traffic - one of the great principles of IAMs. (If you cause frustration in  another driver and he/she then goes on to have an accident, you have probably contributed to that accident.)

And that's what this course and the test have given me - confidence. As an older driver, I was aware that I was beginning to lose it a little. I was starting to drive more slowly. I didn't like big, busy roundabouts. I was beginning to to enjoy my driving.

Driving smoothly, stopping without a jerk and consideration for other road users was never a problem for me. But that's not enough. I wanted to know that I was a safe and efficient driver, and would continue so for the rest of my driving life.

So maybe breaking that speed limit back in March did more than myself a good turn. Since then, I have indeed been more aware. Awareness is the key - awareness of yourself, your car, of other road users. All of them, from other vehicles to mothers with toddlers and buggies, to the elderly and disabled, to people who may be deaf and not hear you, to the person walking a dog, to cyclists, to horse riders. Everyone.

Hopefully, if you see me coming now you won't need to duck into the hedge to save your life. But how will you know it's me?

I'm the one with the big smile, because this year I achieved something, and I am pretty dead chuffed about it!

Getting to Grips with E-Books

The time has come. After 45 years of being in print, I am now embarking on a kind of publication I could never have dreamed of all those years ago: e-books.

Mind you, all my Lilian Harry books have been in e-format and available on devices all across the board for some time now. But I didn't have anything to do with that - I just signed a contract and those nice people at Orion did it. As far as I was concerned, it 'just happened'. And very nice too.

But, like a lot of us long-serving authors, I have quite a few books published by other houses (Headline, Severn House, Scholastic etc) which are now out of print. And it seemed to me and to my agent, Caroline Sheldon, that it was time they saw the light of day again. The light of cyber-space, anyway.

So, starting with my first venture into historical novels, The Glassmakers Trilogy, written nearly 25 years ago and under a different name*, we're embarking on our first Journey Into Space (who else remembers that?). And it's pretty nearly as exciting and breathtaking as the real thing. Well, for me, anyway.

There are three books (you guessed that, didn't you) and they were published, along with five others, by Headline. (Hopefully, if these do well, the others will follow them on to an e-reader near you.) Starting with CRYSTAL, they follow the fortunes of the Henzel and Compson families from mid-nineteenth century Stourbridge in England's Black Country,  through the glittering colour of Paris at the time of the Great Exhibition and the subsequent desperation of the Siege (in BLACK CAMEO), to the burgeoning 'Crystal City' of Corning, New York State,USA,, where the story is completed in CHALICE.

I had not read these  books since they were published (you don't, do you? Or maybe you do...) so to read them all again, in quick succession, was an eye-opener. Had I really written these absorbing stories? Done all that research? Created these colourful characters? Had I ever really known all that about making glass?

Well, I suppose I must have done. And I feel rather proud of them now, and not at all unhappy about seeing them go out to a wider world than they ever found in print, and - I hope - find a lot more readers.

So how is it done? Well, I reckon I am still on ther lower slopes of a fairly steep learning curve. I've had to master Dropbox - easy enough, and a wonderful way to manage proofs, which arrive magically on my screen, can be read and corrected there and seen immediately by the publisher. Surely all publishers will use this method before long?

I'm now tackling the art of metadata, a word which had not been in my vocabulary until now. That means making it possible for people to find (or stumble across) your books before they even know they exist. You know the kind of thing - you google, say, tulips, and before you know it you're reading the history of Amsterdam, booking a river cruise and ordering a copy of a novel to read along the way.

Or you look up your favourite author and notice someone else who writes the same kind of book and think, hm, I'll try that.  Or.... but you get the picture, I'm sure.

Metadata is making sure this happens. Giving my publisher, who is a lot more clever than I am over all this, as much information as possible so that they can work their magic and attract the attention of web-crawlers which trawl about looking for words, phrases or quotes and getting them up there where you might look.. (Goodness knows how authors who don't have someone to do this get along. They too must be a lot more clever than I am.)

Then there's cover design to attract the eye. I was entertained to find my e-publisher (Acorn, by the way) recommending the designer who had been responsible for my Lilian Harry jackets, not knowing that I was LH! I am hoping she will be the one to design new jackets for these too. Not that they'll actually wear jackets, like a print book, but there will be a nice picture to look at when you buy.

As I said, I am only part of the way up the learning curve but my new e-publisher has been helpfulness itself. I had to pay a bit upfront (that felt a bit funny!) but remarkably little, and I have a proper contract, negotiated by my agent. And I get a decent share if/WHEN the books sell. By the way, we have to set the price - I have no idea what readers will be prepared to pay. But again, Acorn will help and advise.

So for those who enjoy Lilian Harry books and don't like the wait in between, here is the good news. More books will be arriving, of a different kind but - I hope - equally enjoyable. Hurry along to your e-reader and snap them up. And please do let me know what you think - either by email to my website www.lilianharry.co.uk or on Twitter @LilianHarry

I'll let you know what happens during my climb up this new learning curve.

Oh - nearly forgot. The name to look out for is Donna Baker. OK? And the  three books of the Glassmakers Trilogy should be available soon - just in time for Christmas. I'll try to make sure you know.

Cheers!

I Remember, He Remembered

This was the title of a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast on Saturday afternoons some years ago, and it fascinated me. The premise was that if someone had told you their earliest memories, those memories stayed 'alive' and could be passed on by you to future generations. Oral history in the making. And the examples they found - of elderly people who recalled memories recounted to them by their own grandparents - were quite incredible. One man had been told by an ancient relative of his memories of the Napoleonic Wars. Imagine that! A family memory going back to 1815, handed down from father to son, and eventually to great-grandson, and still kept alive in the late 20th century. Maybe there is still someone who holds that memory, like a treasured family heirloom, and will pass it on yet again.

Perhaps in the same programme, someone talked about a field behind their house, which was exceptionally hummocky, with one particular hillock always being referred to locally as 'where the old king was buried'. Nobody knew why it was called that. It just always had been, as far back as anyone could remember. It was a folk-memory.

One day, it was excavated, and what was found there? Relics of a far-distant age which indicated that it had indeed been the grave of a highly important man - a 'king'. The folk-memory was true - an instance of 'I remember, He Remembered' so old that nobody knew when it had begun; yet it had persisted through many centuries.

My 'I Remember, He Remembered' was passed to me by my father, who was born in 1895. He grew up in Gosport, Hampshire, which stands on the shores of Portsmouth Harbour and close by his house ran the branch railway line from near the harbour to Fareham, where it would join the main line. It was probably quite busy - I remember trains using it regularly myself, although mostly for freight by then - but its main claim to fame was that it was used by Queen Victoria when she visited her home Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight.

Now, the most direct route for the Queen would have been via Portsmouth itself. There's still a station right on the harbour, and in older days the Isle of Wight ferries used to come right to the end of its platforms. But Victoria disliked Portsmouth, to such an extent that she refused even to use it as a travelling route. She caused a jetty to be built further up the harbour (still called the Southern Railway Jetty) and there she disembarked and crossed to Gosport, where her train awaited for the last part of her journey.

It was the last journey she ever made that was remembered by my father, after she had died at Osborne House. As a boy of six, he saw the black-clad carriage bearing her coffin, travelling slowly through the fringes of the town, and knew that the Queen's body lay within. Someone presumably told him, and presumably he understood the gravity of the occasion, for it was a memory that stayed with him throughout his own long life, until he died at the age of 89. A memory that was by then 83 years old.

Queen Victoria died in 1901. I hold the memory now of that train journey, and it's 110 years old. I've told my grandchildren (and I'll probably tell them again, to make sure!) and I hope that either they or I will tell their children. It could last another 50 years. Another 100. Who knows?

I'm not looking to draw any conclusions from this. Not all folk-memories are true, though they're worth paying attention to. And it doesn't really matter to anyone else that I hold a memory of a moment in history 110 years old, or that some descendant of the Napoleonic Wars man holds one going back nearly 200 years. But it's interesting. And, somehow, it feels valuable.

So if you have such a memory, passed down through the family, take a little time to make sure it gets passed on. It's as valuable as a piece of antique porcelain. In fact, since it can't be sold at auction, subject to the vagaries of a collector's market, it might be said to be even more valuable.

Have a rummage through Grandma's attic (her memories) and see what treasures are still there!

Flies- I Hate Them!

I mean – why flies? Why are they necessary? Are they, indeed, necessary? And, whatever their purpose, can they really carry it out to fulfilment by massing and buzzing at the very top of the high triangular window in my new kitchen extension?

Every fine day, there they are. Where are they on dull, wet days? Why can’t they be satisfied to be there when I have the doors and windows open? Why? Why?

Maybe I seem a little hysterical on this subject, but so would you be if you had had the experience I had, years ago, when I had just moved into a small cottage in Worcestershire, under the shadow of the Malvern Hills.  I’d been in it a week, just got the furniture arranged and the books unpacked, and was carrying out the building society’s demand for woodworm treatment by employing two gentlemen who were possibly more at home on horseback, wearing Stetsons and shouting ‘Whip crackaway!’ to do the necessary work.   I’d left for work that morning, having let them in, and returned in the evening confident that all would be well.

Actually, I’d already returned at lunchtime to find that all was not well. While spraying noxious substances in the loft, one of them had fallen through the ceiling over the landing (well, it’s easily done when you’re more accustomed to the wide open spaces of Arizona) leaving a large, unsightly gap in the newly-painted plasterboard. But they’d apologised profusely and promised to return to make it good, so there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t, however,  expect to find what I found when I came home that evening.

Every fly that ever there was had taken refuge in my loft. (I should, perhaps, explain that it was October and they were hibernating, thus answering that other age-old question about where flies go in wintertime. Check your own loft sometime, if you dare.) They were large and fat, replete with whatever flies eat to keep them going through the long cold months until they come out to torment us again. And the woodworm spray was as fatal to them as it was to woodworm.

They were dying. All over the house. With that huge gap in the landing ceiling, there was nothing to stop them. They came down, staggering slightly, in search of fresh air, but it was too late and they lay, spinning on their backs and making that high-pitched buzzing noise flies make as they die – and I can tell you, when three or four thousand do this together, the noise is horrendous. It sounds more like a chainsaw being operated just beside your ear.  And they were doing this everywhere. On the floor. On the furniture. On the windowsills. Down the back of the sofa. In the beds – yes, in the beds. And they were doing it to the pervading and noisome smell of woodworm treatment. Nowadays, Health and Safety would probably say you couldn’t live in a house that was being treated like this. But this was before that august body burst upon us and I and my 10-year-old daughter had nowhere else to go. And my dear little cottage had been spoiled for me. I was in tears.

There was worse to come. My car, a battered little Mini, needed distilled water for its battery (I told you it was a long time ago) and I had to walk to the nearest garage to get some. That was over a mile away, along dark country lanes and of course it was raining. Lashing with it.

Carrying an empty cider bottle, I set out, leaving my daughter at home, and trudged sobbing through the dark, wet night. About 40 minutes later, wet, bedraggled, tear-stained and clutching my cider-bottle, I opened the front door and came in, to find a strange man sitting on a kitchen chair, having brushed it clear of dying flies (however fast we swept them up, more came lurching drunkenly down from the loft) and, presumably  for want of anything better to do, showing my daughter a selection of carpet samples.

I had completely forgotten he was coming. I never found out quite what he made of the wild-eyed apparition who came bursting in out of the night, nor of the apparent squalor in which we lived. But I dragged myself together, explained rather unconvincingly that the bottle contained distilled water, chose a carpet more or less at random, and once again set about vacuuming up flies’ bodies. We went to bed in the only sheets I could find that hadn’t been died upon, and next morning cleared up the harvest of the night.

Eventually they were all gone and – eventually – the cowboys did return and replaster the ceiling, although they never came to repaint it. But that’s why, when flies arrive on hot days and buzz around the rooms or mass on that high window, I get a little tetchy. And I can’t go to bed knowing that they’ll be there in the morning. Last thing at night, I get the vacuum cleaner, climb on to the kitchen table and suck them all into its bag. I hate to think what it’s like in there but I am never going to look, so I’m never going to know.

If ever you want to see murder in a woman’s eyes (probably you don’t) just look into mine when I am setting about the flies that dare to enter my house in summer. I tell you, I absolutely loathe them.

The UnBucket List

You know that film The Bucket List? I haven’t seen it myself but I gather it’s about two old men, facing terminal illness, who set off an on an odyssey to do or see before they die, all the things they’ve wanted to do for years and never got around to. It sounds a good idea – something like that book (which I haven’t read) 100 Things To Do Before You Die.

Well, I have an UnBucket List. It comprises all those things I have decided I am never going to have to do again.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not unadventurous. I’ve abseiled down the local City Centre building, ballooned with one of the country’s foremost balloonists, canoed in Wales, Canada and New Zealand, glided over Dartmoor, learned to windsurf in Canada, toasted a cheese sandwich in the fumerole of a simmering volcano, walked through three countries in one day, skied down more mountains you can shake a stick at and travelled in around 15 countries. Even though I probably won’t do all (or many) of those again, they aren’t the things on my UnBucket List.

That List is of  things like skittle evenings. Long-haul flights. Driving all day to some distant town where you have to spend a dark, rainy rush-hour finding first your hotel and then the venue (even sat-nav can’t always find you somewhere to park) where you are to give a talk to those readers enthusiastic enough to leave their own cosy firesides to hear you. Usually quite a few, to be fair, and I like doing the talk & chat afterwards, but it’s the driving there & back, the night away and all the sheer time and energy it takes… These days, I’ve decided, I only do talks if I can get there and back in the day. Or stay with family or friends.

I remember once going to Kidderminster. This was before sat-nav, and Kidderminster had changed a lot since my last visit, when I was researching my Carpetmakers trilogy. It was late November, wet as only late November can be, and in the search for the guest-house where I’d been booked in, I got completely snarled up in going-home traffic and found myself exploring the one-way system in depth. Several times. When I finally found the guest-house and set out again for the talk venue, everyone was going out for the evening and the traffic and the rain were just as bad. Not only that, the one-way system seemed to be going a different way. And when I’d given the talk, having arrived panting and bedraggled five minutes before I was due to start, I faced the further challenge of finding the guest-house again. I tried every road out of Kidderminster before I found it and got there just before they locked the front door for the night. (To add insult to injury, at breakfast next morning one of the other guests had a streaming cold which I developed three days later…)

And skittle evenings. I used to enjoy these on skiing trips to Austria, when we’d all had plenty of gluwhein and were ready and willing to join in the ludicrous games organised by the rep. But the one I was invited to by friends last winter wasn’t like that. It took place in a pub somewhere in the depths of Cornwall and was organised by the male voice choir they belong to. Oh, nice, I thought, a few games of skittles, a few drinks, a meal and then a rousing sing-song. I’ll enjoy that.

Wrong again. The people were nice, my friends kind (but teetotal), and the food was good. But the skittles… well, just let’s say the games went on for rather a long time. Tournaments do. I was knocked out pretty soon, as might be expected, and after a while, knowing nobody else there, the excitement of it all sort of dwindled away.

It came to an end at last and supper was declared.  Ah. Now for the sing-song. But no. After the raffle (which went on for about half an hour, leaving me with a strange sort of vase with bits of stick in it which  I still don’t know the purpose of) it was announced that we would now do ‘Killer’. Rapturous applause. Killer? I asked. What’s that?

It was worse than the tournament. It was a kind of torture by elimination in which everyone took part – once again, I was knocked out pretty well from the beginning – and it went on for hours and hours and hours. Well, until long  after 11.30 pm, anyway. And we still had the long, dark journey home to face.

Sailing is on my UnBucket List too. I’ve done a couple of sailing holidays, one on Windermere which wasn’t too bad at all, mainly because there was no wind  and we had to use the engine quite a lot and there was always a pub to go to in the evenings, and one on Loch Lomond. There wasn’t much wind then  either, but always the possibility of it, so we had to spend an hour or so each morning threading ropes through eyelets, not unlike the procedure (which I found equally tedious) my mother used to go through when threading her old Singer sewing-machine. After that, it was a matter of trying to catch what little wind there was and get it to take us somewhere. On one day, when I learned the true meaning of the phrase ‘bored to tears’, we took three hours to go three-quarters of a mile, tacking between the mainland (I was tempted to jump ship every time we came within jumping distance) and a small island about 300 yards offshore. Gazing miserably down in to the clear water, I got to know every rock in the bed of the loch as an intimate friend and promised to send one or two of the more attractive ones Christmas cards. (I never did, though. I mean, you just don’t, do you.)

Apparently, to the man at the helm, this was a challenge of monumental excitement and a proof of his skills. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes but this may well have been the start of my UnBucket List.

And Long Haul Flights? Well, I don’t even need to tell you. Anyone who has endured one of these knows that when Stevenson remarked that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive, he had never been on a Long Haul Flight. Not that hope isn’t a major part of it. Hope and prayer together, I’d say, and heartfelt promises to be good for the rest of your life if this could just be over soon. They say that, like having a baby, you forget the pain, but that’s not true. I haven’t forgotten either, and I’m not doing either, ever again. Not that giving birth needs to go on my UnBucket List. Nature has seen to that.

Those are just a few of the entries on my List, but you get the idea. And I was inspired to mention it because I see that the film is to be shown on TV again next week.

I shan’t watch it, though. It might just inspire me to do some of those things I always wanted to do. Like trek through Patagonia (Long-Haul Flight). Climb Vesuvius. Or go on a cruise to the Antarctic (LHF followed by sea-sickness.) It’s too much of a risk.

The Cupboard That Will Change My Life

At some point in all our lives there comes a moment when we think: 'If only [I won the lottery/had written The Da Vinci Code/got nominated to carry the Olympic Torch] my life would be so different. I would reach those sunlit uplands at last, life would be a dream and all would be plain sailing.' (Not that any sort of sailing would be easy on the sunlit uplands, except perhaps in a dream, but you get the drift.)

You might have less ambitious aspirations, of course. I do. In my case, they involve a cupboard in my garage.

This cupboard came from my old kitchen, where it had done sterling service for about 40 years according to the lady I bought the house from and, with other cupboards, when the kitchen was renovated, its destiny was to be put in the garage to continue its good work. A simple, unassuming wall cupboard, it would, along with its friends, provide me with joyous storage space in which I could squirrel away the paint tins, gardening bits & pieces, dog and cat food, spare wineglasses, tangled Christmas lights, unused windchimes, boxes that might come in useful one day, old plates, bags of pollyfilla, a juicer I used once before deciding it was easier to use a plastic lemon-shaped thingy and even, perhaps, the head of the lifesize wooden horse, built to take two men inside which was made for the pantomime of Robin Hood wot I wrote a few years ago, and which takes up most of one wall. (It's actually quite a useful cupboard in itself.) The sort of litter we all have in our garages, in fact.

All the cupboards are out there, but until I can clear a space none of them can yet be used. Not until I can start filling the wall cupboard. And I can't.

Because it is Upside Down.

It's not my fault. I got a handyman in to fix it to the wall. He was meticulous in measuring, using his spirit level and drilling holes in the right places. I was called away from my current masterpiece at least six times to hold the cupboard in position. I didn't mind - well, not much - because once the cupboard was up I could put things in it. The spare wineglasses. The dog and catfood, the polyfilla, perhaps some of the paint. Then I would be able to clear the shelves already there, remove them and fill the other cupboards (which would then be ranged neatly along the wall) with the juicer, the old plates, the rest of the paint, the windchimes, the gardening stuff and a few things I haven't mentioned because it just gets boring. And then I would be able to move some of the things out of the house - things that have no right to be there - and completely fill my lovely new cupboards. My spare room - not so much a spare room as a lobby - would be clean and tidy, and able to accommodate some of the detritus from my workroom. My workroom being uncluttered, my mind would be free to create wonderful new books. I tell you, I was really, really excited.

All it needed was this first cupboard to start it all off.

It was up at last. Nevil and I stood and gazed at it. Then he said, disapprovingly: 'I don't think much of these shelves. You won't put anything heavy on them, will you.'

'Nevil,' I said, 'this was a kitchen wall cupboard. It's had tins of baked beans and bags of flour and sugar and goodness knows what else on the shelves for the past 40 years. Of course I'm going to put heavy things in it.'

I opened the door, looked at the battens which held up the shelves. Instead of being beneath the shelves, they were above them. 'Nevil,' I said in a tone of deep, deep disappointment, 'you have put it on the wall Upside Down.'

I must say, he was mortified. For a perfectionist to make such an error, the hurt goes very deep. But nothing could be done about it then as he had to go, and when he rang later to offer to come and put it right, I said no thanks. I just couldn't bear to go through that laborious process again. Not when I had a builder in the house, who could do it in two shakes of a lamb's tail. And he would. In fact, he will. He's said so. It's just a matter of finding the time to pop in as he's passing, of remembering. And meanwhile...

Meanwhile, the garage, spare room, workroom and, by default, the entire house, remains cluttered because until that cupboard is usable I just can't seem to see my way through. And nobody, but nobody, realises just how quietly desperate I am to have a tidy garage. Starting with that one cupboard.

Once it's the right way up, I am sure Life will smile on me again. Or... could I just be making a bit too much of it...?

No. Surely not.