D E C E M B E R   2 0 2 2 

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Don't sweat the small stuff - there's too much of it!

 I felt like I needed a traditional Christmas rant, so here it is:

 I’ve been despairing again about the news. 

    Yes, the stories of war atrocities, injustice, political unrest, the cost of living crisis, strikes by public sector workers, the increase in food banks and homelessness, the Tories’ latest debacle, the economy, etc etc etc are all deeply depressing. However, what really annoys me is the banality and pointless exaggeration of much of the news I read online. Apparently, this country has been gripped by a Big Freeze over the past few weeks, when in reality it has been a normal seasonal chill – the real story is the fact that my geraniums were still in flower in my garden at the end of November. In Yorkshire. Yes, we’ve had frost and a bit of snow, recently, but this isn’t abnormal in Winter, is it?

    And then there are the non-stories. Here’s one I just read on the Huffington Post. Apparently, a man in Derbyshire ordered an expensive Macbook Pro laptop for his daughter for Christmas, from Amazon, and was instead sent two boxes of Pedigree Chum.

Ok, this is mildly amusing, unless it happens to you, but even if it does happen to you, it’s a relatively trivial blip in life’s rich tapestry, I would have thought.

The man in the story explained how Amazon’s initial response was to refuse to refund his money, which seems unlikely to me and suggests they had misunderstood or that there was more to the story than the news item suggested. Anyway, they subsequently apologised and promised to repay him, so presumably all is now well.

The aspect of this story that struck me was how varied human personalities are in their responses to what are in reality minor inconveniences, but how the responses that are reported in the media are always the ‘outraged’ type. These stories would have no readworthy aspect at all if the protagonist wasn’t presented as being an ‘outraged victim’ of something or other, and we weren’t all invited, and expected, to become outraged on thie behalf.

According to the media, the population of this country are in a permanent state of outrage, or at least they ought to be. Everything from the gender pay-gap to Autumn leaves falling on their lawns seems to make people apoplectic with fury. There doesn’t seem to be any nuance, and the media seems to expect us all to ratchet up our own emotional responses when we read these stories too. As far as I’m concerned, a man being sent the wrong item by Amazon is a complete non-story, barely an anecdote in fact. It might evoke a small smile, but outrage? Surely outrage is an emotion best kept in reserve for things that really deserve it, such as people voting to leave the EU or a homeless Polish man being beaten to death by a British racist.

 

The man who received the dog food by mistake had, tragically for him, been recently diagnosed with a serious health condition, and this was used in the article as a supposed reason to view Amazon’s blunder as being somehow more significant than it was and the man’s experience somehow more upsetting than it would have been for someone else. But, much as I believe that companies like Amazon are run by the Devil’s Disciples, it isn’t as if the CEO called the warehouse and said ‘Make sure you send dog-food instead of an Apple laptop to Mr X because we’ve just found out he’s suffering from XXX’, is it? It’s terrible for this poor man to have been diagnosed with a serious illness, but I’m sure that, of Amazon’s many erroneous deliveries (they’re a huge company so they’re bound to make many errors), there will obviously be a proportion that are misdelivered to people with serious health conditions. This doesn’t make the error somehow more heinous than if they were delivered to the super-fit, does it? Looking at it another way, you might argue that this particular man must be wealthier than many people in this country as he can afford to spend £1200 on his daughter’s Christmas present. I can’t afford a Macbook Pro, for example. But this doesn’t mean that Amazon’s error is less difficult for him to deal with. It’s just an error, and errors happen because people make mistakes now and then, particularly massive companies employing huge numbers of staff and underpaying most of them. That’s what we should be outraged about.

It is also the lack of logic that makes me despair. I’m as guilty as anyone of this. We all ‘instinctively’ feel that if we’ve thrown two sixes in a row, the next throw is less likely to be another six. Or if we use a different lottery number from the one we’ve used for the past five years, this will be the week those numbers come up. The ‘victim’ of this ‘terrible tragedy’ suffered from a different kind of logical fallacy. He was quoted as saying he had bought things from Amazon for twenty years with no problems, but he was no longer going to shop with them, which seems a weirdly illogical thing to do. If they have been reliable for two decades but make one minor blip which they put right, even if they annoy their customer by initially being unhelpful and even rude, isn’t this like cutting off your nose to spite your face? Surely, shopping on the High Street or even online shopping in various different stores is going to be more inconvenient and stressful, particularly for someone with a serious health condition, than continuing to use a company that has been reliable for twenty years? It’s like saying ‘Well, my friend has supported me through thick and thin since we were children, but she accidentally broke my lamp last week so I’m never going to speak to her again’.

I am not supporting Amazon here. Like most people, I find the company a very convenient way to buy things, and I love my Kindle. However, I still have misgivings about many of its business practices. And I’m not knocking poor Mr X in Derbyshire who received two boxes of dog food when he’d ordered a computer – most of us would be at the very least a bit miffed by this.

But please let’s get things into perspective. Let’s think about what really is news and what isn’t. Let’s try not to let the everyday problems we all experience now and again overwhelm us or seem much bigger than they really are. Let’s focus our anger on people who really deserve it – say, Elon Musk.

One thing that I’ve learned since I reached my fifties is that time goes past ever more quickly – tempus fugit indeed! – and even the important stuff passes by in a blur. Your car needs a new tyre, you have to cancel a get-together due to Covid, you’re worried about going to the dentist for a filling, the train is delayed, you haven’t bought sis’s Christmas present yet, they’ve run out of satsumas at your local supermarket, you’ve put on a few pounds, you ordered a copy of ‘A Christmas Carol’ from Amazon and they sent you a pound of sausages instead. These things will pass. You’ll deal with them, one way or another, and they’ll be replaced by some other trivial problem.

So don’t get outraged. It’s bad for your physical and mental health. Don’t let the media wind you up. Just deal with the problem and move on. Do something worthwhile to fill your memory bank with joy instead. Join a choir. Go to an Art Gallery. Go on a protest march. Become a Samaritan. Drop some groceries into a food bank collection point. Organise a Christmas party for your elderly neighbours. Phone your parents. Take in a stray cat.

On your deathbed, you don’t want to waste your time regretting not decking the delivery person who brought you the wrong item from Amazon.

Publications in 2022

Here is a list of the pieces I have had published, placed in competitions or shortlisted in 2022:

Secret Attic – stories which won 1^st prize:                  - 

The Leaf [Picture This!]

Different Worlds [drabble]

 

‘The Artist’ [poem] was accepted by New Verse News, Thursday 24 February 2022,https://newversenews.blogspot.com/search?q=Louise+Wilford

 

‘Blue’ [poem] was accepted for Issue 53 of Silver Blade (May 2022*)

 

‘The Immigrants’ [poem] was accepted for the American Diversity Report [ADR], a spin-off of Silver Blade,  Jun 2022 issue

 

‘Backwards’ [short story] was accepted by River & South, published in Summer 2022,  https://riverandsouth.com/index.php/2022/06/17/backwardslouise-wilford/

 

‘Quake’, ‘No Seeds Were Lost’ [poems] and ‘L and Mark’ [short story] were accepted for Makarelle, Spring edition, theme: Landmarks,  https://makarelle.com/

 

‘Pink’ [comic poem] won an informal Facebook comp on Suffolk Writers group

 

Four five-line poems were accepted by Punk Noir, April 2022

 

‘Misunderstood’ [Flash] was accepted by Pine Cone Review, Issue 4https://thepineconereview.com/louise-wilford-misunderstood-issue-4/

 

‘Miranda’s Child’ [short story] was accepted by 805  https://www.805lit.org/post/mirandas-child

 

‘To The Youngest’ and ‘Thistle’ [poems] were accepted by Last Leaves, Issue 5 (theme: Growth):  https://www.lastleavesmag.com/last-leaves-issues https://www.lastleavesmag.com/_files/ugd/dccfc8_88b991023bc845f180be7def8e01249c.pdf    ‘Thistle’ on p141, ‘To The Youngest’ on p153

 

‘Target’, ‘Dressed to Impress’, and another piece of flash fiction were accepted for the ‘Flash Mob’ anthology of Flash Fiction organised by Crossing The Tees Festival

 

‘Pigs can’t swim’ [short story] was accepted by Fairlight Books and appeared in the summer:  https://www.fairlightbooks.co.uk/short_stories/pigs-cant-swim/.

 

‘Basil’ [children’s short story] was nominated for Best Of The Net 2022 by Amanda Marerro, editor of Parakeet children's magazine

 

‘Dead Batteries and ‘Shy’ [poems] were accepted for Bindweed's Winter Wonderland Anthology, being published on 21 December

 

‘Crimes and Misdeameanours’ [short story] was accepted by Makarelle, and appeared in the Summer 2022 edition, themed ‘Sizzling Misdemeanours’ https://makarelle.com/

 

‘A Public Enquiry Into The Case Of Edward Overdice’ [short story] was shortlisted for Dark Matter but not ultimately chosen

 

‘Choose’ [Flash] came third in the Fosseway Flash Fiction Competition 2022

 

‘The Sea On The Doorstep’ [children’s short story] was accepted for Parakeet, to appear in next edition published on 15 January, 2023   https://www.honeyguidemag.com/parakeet-shop

‘Visiting the T-Rex in the National History Museum’ and ‘The Word Worm’ [poems] were accepted for Balloons Lit available by the end of 2022
www.balloons-lit-journal.com 

 

‘The Goddess Of The Free’ [poem] was accepted for POTB, Issue 17, out on 21 May 2023

 

‘On Christmas Morning’ was read out (beautifully) by the lovely Gae Stenson at Wirrall Poets Christmas poetry reading on Wed 14 December

Book Reviews: What I've read since last month

 Transcriptions & Human Croquet Kate Atkinson

   

Anyone who has read the book reviews on my blog before will know I am a huge Kate Atkinson fan. During the past month, I have read the last two of her novels downloaded onto my Kindle and I suspect this means I’m up-to-date with her current oeuvre, so no more to read for a while, sadly.

Human Croquet was a title I had on my Kindle for years without reading. I actually thought it was by Rose Tremain, though that wasn’t why I was avoiding reading it as I like her books too. It just kept slipping out of my sight-line, for some reason. Anyway, I have now read it. It is a novel about fairytales and Shakespeare and forests, common themes in Atkinson’s work. Transcriptions, a novel about spies in WW2 and the BBC in the 1950s, has a central character called Juliet and frequent references to Shakespeare.

            Having read Atkinson’s masterpieces A God in Ruins and Life After Life within the past six months, and having very recently re-read her stunning debut Behind The Scenes In The Museum, I was at first rather underwhelmed by Human Croquet. It had Atkinson’s characteristic humour, diversions into the almost-magical and the certainly weird, but these moments were finally explained away by ‘reality’. The apparent time-slips and alternative realities in the novel were very compelling to me however, though they are given a mundane explanation at the end. Atkinson has great skill at conveying the experience of dysfunctional family relationships and this book displays this power very vividly. It also contains at least one monstrous human being.

            By contrast, Transcriptions isn’t concerned with families but with the loyalties and betrayals of wartime colleagues and friends, bound together and split apart by duty and ideology (and by shared trauma). It is a novel whose central theme is fidelity – it asks us to consider the meaning of faithfulness, of patriotism, of the truth, and of treason and duplicity. Like all Atkinson’s novels, it has moments of great humour. Juliet is a mistress of dry wit, and there are several set-piece scenes, particularly in the early part of the story, where her youthful naivity makes her a deeply unreliable and comic character. But this is a serious novel, ultimately, dealing with grave, sometimes frightening, realities. Overall, I found Juliet herself a rather distant, unsympathetic character. I don’t think I would like her if we met, whereas I could imagine liking the central character of Human Croquet in real life. The adult Juliet has an emotional control that makes her seem distant – she is interesting and cares about others, but she is such a private person, for reasons that become clear as the novel progresses, that it is difficult to fully warm to her.

            Both novels are definitely worth a read, particularly if you’re an Atkinson fan.

 

***** Excellent – highly recommended, though not her absolute best

 

Breathing Lessons Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler sets her novels in Baltimore, and you do get a flavour of the city from them. However, what they really give you is an insight into human relationships, particularly those within families. Like Kate Atkinson, she is a mistress of the domestic drama – unshowy, unflamboyant, often quietly profound, often humorous, always devastatingly realistic, she unpicks the strands that bind and divide people, with immense skill.

            She is best known for her 1985 novel, The Accidental Tourist, which was made into an excellent film starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. This novel, along with her 1982 novel Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant (my personal favourite) and Breathing Lessons (1988) were all shortlisted for The Pulitzer Prize, and she has won and been nominated for many other awards.

            Her central skill is in her attention to detail. Without becoming pedantic or clogged down in the trivial, she manages to capture the nuances of everyday relationships with superb intricacy. Her characters sound like real people. The couple in Breathing Lessons have the sorts of arguments we all do, and speak in the sort of language real people do, just with a Baltimore accent. They engage in throwaway bickering, they have banal conversations which often disguise deeper emotions, they misunderstand each other and sometimes understand each other more than they let on. They say things which the readers, with our broader knowledge of what different characters are thinking, recognize as revealing aspects of their characters unknown to themselves.

            The action in Breathing Lessons takes place during one day, when Ira and Maggie Moran are driving to a friend’s funeral and then home again. Along the way, they have several minor adventures and there are numerous opportunities for them to reminisce and squabble and wind each other up, and to forgive and understand each other’s idiosyncracies. We find out about their youth and how they met, about their children and their grandchild. The book is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and occasionally brings tears to your eyes. The characters are utterly believable, and the tone is generous, sensitive, sympathetic, but always unsentimental. I loved this novel, though it isn’t as good as Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant, which I believe everyone ought to read.

            Many of Kate Atkinson’s novels are set in the mid twentieth century, and many of Anne Tyler’s novels were written in a contemporary world which is now decades old. The advantages of this are that characters don’t have mobile phones and the internet – they feel like they are about a different world in some ways. However, human relationships don’t change. It is only in characters’ interactions with their contemporary milieu that things are expressed differently perhaps – the essential tensions and bonds between people remain much the same from generation to generation. Atkinson is a more whimsical writer, more likely to engage in magic realism than Tyler, but both are extremely good at conveying the subtleties of marriage, parenthood, and friendship.

***** Highly recommended

 

Burns Books series by Liz Hedgecock

   

   etc

This is an unchallenging series of comic fantasy novels about a magical bookshop. It has a magical cat, dangerous books, an immortal owner, vampires, a coffee shop (by book 2) – oh, and an ordinary, modern young woman with a degree in Business Studies who becomes it’s manager. What’s not to like?

            Well, it is written in a very straightforward and rather unexciting way and the plots are remarkably simple. It is essentially a child’s book but for grown-ups. Everything is explained, even spelled-out – very little is a surprise for the reader, unless the reader is someone who is very easily surprised. Characters are uncomplicated and predictable, and above all never horrifying or genuinely scary. There is a lot of narrating of everyday activity iike serving customers and filling shelves and choosing what to have for your tea. The central character, Jemma James, is perfectly likeable but deeply unrealistic. She is sweet, kind, warm, efficient, rather naïve, has a comical faith in modern HR procedures and business-speak, and has the rather chaste relationship with the young man who runs the bookshop’s coffee shop of a girl-next-door from a 1950s or 60s novel that your mum would approve of you reading.

All this means you don’t have to worry about having your emotions put through the wringer. You won’t be kept awake by the exciting plot twists or sudden unexpected diversions, as everything is well-signposted. This is definitely ‘cozy’ fantasy. Words like ‘gentle’, ‘restful’, ‘undemanding’ come to mind when I think of how to describe the series. It is in fact excellent bedtime reading if you like mild fantasy of a rather unimaginative kind. Hedgecock does this stuff very well, and it is a definite niche for aspiring writers.

*** good bedtime reading if you like ‘cozy’ as a genre

 

The Twenty-Twenty Club

 

Christmas

Flash Fiction Competition

2022

Joint Winners: 

'Noelle' by Beck Collett 

'Christmas Lights' by Sue Davnall

WInner of best story-title: 

'The Clavering Optiscope' by Ron Hardwick

Commended:

‘One Hundred Words For Qanuks’ by Beck Collett

‘Toby’ by Beck Collett

‘Home for Christmas’ by Sue Davnall

‘Dear Luke’ by Antonia Dunn

‘The Clavering Optiscope’ by Ron Hardwick

‘She’ll Adore Him’ by DHL Hewa [Devi]

‘Christmas Present’ by Colin Johnson

‘Christmas Eve’ by Ruth Loten

WINNING STORIEs:

Noelle

by Beck Collett

  

‘Now, Joanna,’ Maureen (her boss at the elderly complex) had said, ‘some – but not all – of our guests like their flat to be trimmed up for Christmas. It is not for you to judge, only to listen and do. If they want an olive-green bauble covered in cobwebs to be hung on a wonky tree, then so be it. If their pride and joy is a bald doll with a torn doily for a dress, and bent tin-foil wings, you tell them it’s beautiful and stick it on top of their tree. Got it? Good. Number eleven first.’

 

Number eleven: Doula’s flat. Doula was like a riddle Jo couldn’t crack. The idea she wanted her flat festooned contrasted wonderfully with the always dark, and sometimes horrifying, stories she told Jo.

            ‘That one round the back, girl, where I don’t have to look at it.’ Doula had managed to make decorating the tree an ordeal, berating her every time she picked up a threadbare bauble or battered cracker. Now, only the angel remained.

‘Handle her with care,’ Doula said, in a gentle voice, ‘she’s special.’

Indeed, she was. Her tin-foil wings bent, paper-doily dress (held on with yellowing tape) torn, and on top of a tangle of yellow hair clung a shining halo.

Jo lifted the angel up for a closer look, and gasped. ‘Oh, it’s a tiny bangle! How lovely. Whose was it?’

Doula stared, entranced, at the little angel, as Jo placed her carefully atop the wonky tree. ‘Was Noelle’s,’ she replied, and reached up and touched the angel. ‘She was due on Christmas. Born still Jan third. Never got the chance to wear it, so the angel does. Like she’s still here. Just life,’ she said to Jo, who was busy blinking back tears, ‘just life.’

 

 

 Christmas Lights

by Sue Davnall

Night had fallen in the quiet Cardiff street. Rain bounced fiercely off the glistening pavements; it hadn’t let up all day. In the small bay windows giving on to the pavement lights began to come on, casting their gleam across the puddles. It was like the TVs in the Radio Rentals window of Luke’s long-distant childhood: each stone-framed aperture showed a different picture. In number ten, for instance, there was an oversized Christmas tree draped in tinsel, piles of jazzily wrapped presents stacked beneath, a couple of billowy sofas swamped with cushions, a cacophony of colour. Next door at number twelve was a much smaller tree and many candles of all shapes and sizes – thick church candles, spindly taper candles, a seven-branched candelabrum, a myriad tealights in dainty holders, all in muted green and silver. Number fourteen – that was where the Singhs lived. Christmas wasn’t their thing but they weren’t going to miss out on the fun: through their window Luke saw low couches with throws of gorgeous hue, golden platters on the tables laden with delicious-looking sweets, and a pile of presents waiting to be unwrapped.

              Across the road, one window glowed more dimly than its neighbours. There was no tree, no pile of presents - just a threadbare carpet, a stained and sagging sofa, dirty cups and plates on the floor. Luke had seen the children in the street sometimes, under-dressed and under-fed.

              He pulled from his bag two small parcels, clumsily wrapped in brown paper and string. Placing them carefully on the doorstep out of the rain he rang the bell then walked briskly away before heading for his usual corner under the railway arch for the night.

 

 

 

The Clavering Optiscope

by Ron Hardwick

 

The boy stood, thin jacket flapping in the bitter cold, looking in the antique shop window. Sleet eddied about his tousled hair, but he didn’t care.

‘What a telescope,’ he muttered. ‘Wish I had fifteen quid.’

An elderly gentleman in an old-fashioned frock coat and derby hat stood by him.

‘Interested in telescopes, are you, sonny?’

‘Oh yes, mister. They open up the sky for you. I’d love to see the moon and the planets through one.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be lucky this Christmas?’

‘No, mister. There’s just Ma and me. We ain’t got much. ‘Spect I'll get an apple and an orange, as usual.’

‘Pity. What’s your name, sonny?’

‘Jimmy Black.’

‘And where do you live?’

‘20 Dinning Street.’

‘You don’t want that telescope, Jimmy. It’s not worth a pound, let alone fifteen.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My name is Hugo Clavering. I used to build them. I invented the Clavering Optiscope. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?’

‘Sorry, mister, I ain’t.’

‘Never mind. Goodbye, Jimmy, and Merry Christmas.’

 

Christmas morning arrived.

‘Parcel for you, Jimmy. Left on the step. Must be a food parcel from one o’ they charities.’

‘Thanks, Ma.’ Jimmy tore at the parcel. In it was a long wooden box. He opened it and squealed with delight.

‘Oh, Ma, it’s a Clavering Optiscope.’

‘Can’t eat a telescope,’ observed Ma.

‘Oh, it’s so lovely, Ma. Brass. Built by hand. I must go out and test it. I’ll look at the moon. I’ll see the Man in the Moon’s face. I wonder if he’ll be smiling.’

Jimmy lived next to the cemetery. He walked through it as dawn broke. He extended the telescope and focused it on the gravestones. One inscription leapt out at him:

Hugo Clavering, telescope-maker, passed away on Christmas Day, 1920. Sorely missed.