Everyone’s talking about... Angelina Jolie’s Tits

Shocking, isn’t it, when I put it like that?

I was shocked, when I heard, the other day, that Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy as a result of her family medical history, her mother’s death, and her own dramatically increased likelihood of being a victim of breast cancer.

I was shocked that it is sixteen years since her mother’s initial diagnosis, and six years since her death, at the age of fifty-six.

I was shocked that Angelina Jolie is now within striking distance of forty!

I was not at all surprised by the media circus surrounding the announcement, nor that Ms Jolie decided to make a statement about her choices and her surgery in the press. I hope that what she has done will help to raise awareness for breast cancer and for preventive measures and care.

This is a very personal story, however, and one that affects very few women, most of whom will already be aware of their increased risks from the disease, because most of them will already have seen too many of the women they love suffer and die from this disease. The rest of us, those of us who follow the Stars, live in the first World and have all the benefits of modern medicine, including breast screening.

First World women will not be helped much by Ms Jolie exposing herself in this way, and the rest of the World’s women are unlikely to be helped at all.

I hope that Ms Jolie made good choices for herself, and that she has escaped a miserable fate. I hope that she lives a long, happy, productive life, raises her children and grandchildren, and even bounces her great-grandchildren on her slender, pretty knees in the decades to come.

I can’t help wondering, though, who advised her to go public with this very private information. I can’t help wondering which publicist sat down with what spin doctor and decided that if word ever got out that Ms Jolie had spent time in hospital and hadn’t been forthcoming about it, her reputation could be irreparably damaged. I can’t help wondering who stood up in a meeting and suggested that all hell might break loose if anyone ever found out that Ms Jolie’s perfect breasts had ever been under a surgeon’s knife, for any reason. 

Do they look a little higher or firmer or rounder, or even bigger than they used to, or should for a woman her age?

Angelina Jolie

I don’t read gossip, but it seems to endure in the World’s press and get more speculative and less pleasant with every year that passes. Who’s sleeping with who? And who’s had what work done? And is that a baby bump? And how much cellulite can one pair of thighs possibly sustain? seem to be burning questions in the minds of so-called journalists.

If I was Ms Jolie, I’m not sure I’d want the World to know what medical procedures I might have undergone, or why. I think the personal cost hugely outweighs any good she can possibly do for any potential breast cancer victim of her particular stripe, and I think her ‘people’ have done her a disservice.

Today I saw a comment on a newsfeed, suggesting that Ms Jolie couldn’t possibly know what other women in the same position go through, simply because she happens to be able to afford the best medical care and reconstructive surgery, as if that makes up for the trauma of the decision-making process or of losing her breasts, let alone her mother. Most women going through this don’t have the gaze of a hungry, bitter, cynical public on them, either.

I rather wish Ms Jolie’s ‘people’ had advised her differently... I rather fear that this is all she’ll ever be allowed to talk about from now on.

I also wonder how Hollywood will treat her. Notoriously conservative, TinselTown struggles to cast gay actors as leading men...

... It’s not a huge leap to wonder how the powers that be will deal with this, is it?

Antisocial Behaviour

The husband and I quite often go out for a drink on a Monday night.

I know it seems odd, but the reason we do it is because we don’t very often go out at the weekend, or, at least, we didn’t. Lately, we’ve become rather more sociable, and have taken one or two forays out on a Saturday night for dinner, and have enjoyed ourselves hugely. As a rule, though, we stay home on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving our local town centre to the young and gorgeous.

We go out for a drink on Monday nights, because it’s generally very quiet out, and because the husband has taken to drinking cocktails. We can be fairly confident that our favourite cocktail bar will be quiet, and Paul, who works the bar on a Monday night will have time to mix something special, often of his own choosing.

So, that’s where we were last night, in our favourite bar, drinking, I believe, a Pisco Sour for him and a Negroni for me, when a man walked in and ordered a Whisky, a McAllen, I believe, a double with one ice cube. He introduced himself to the barman by name, shook his hand and left a tip. He sat at the table next to ours, but with his back to us, and quietly drank his drink.

I was standing talking to Paul at the bar, and to the husband, opposite, when the customer interjected. His conversational gambit was entirely appropriate, polite and perfectly seamless, so, of course, he was soon included in the conversation. Why wouldn’t he be?

We started talking books.

When I came back from the bathroom, a little while later, the husband was apologising to the man. He had inadvertently let slip that Iain Banks is seriously ill. It turns out that the chap is quite a fan. When he got up to have his glass freshened at the bar, I naturally had his next drink added to our bill. I couldn’t have the husband drop a bombshell like that and not buy the poor man a drink. One thing led to another and we had a very convivial hour or two together.

It’s not a terribly unusual story, is it?

I would think not. This sort of thing happens fairly regularly. I talk to people all the time. On the other hand, perhaps that’s just me.

This man has been living in our town for nine months, having moved from Tooting to take up a job in our local hospital. He’s a doctor, as it turns out. He’s quite a junior doctor, but nonetheless, he’s a young professional, and he moved to a strange town, alone, nine whole months ago. He told me that last night was the first time that strangers had welcomed him into their circle, even for a drink and a conversation.

How bloody miserable is that?

He was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly nice bloke. In fact, he was a little more than that, because he was more intelligent, more educated, more socially aware, and  more willing to make an effort than a great many other people might be. He had popped out for something and walked into a bar on a Monday evening on the off chance that he might meet someone, and he’s been walking into public arenas on the off chance for nine months.

It shouldn’t be as tough as that! It really shouldn’t!

We’re all only too happy to meet and talk to total strangers on-line for no better reason than because they happen to have turned up in the same forum or chat room as us. They could be anyone, and probably are. We talk to people on the web with fake names and cartoon avatars, and we think nothing of it, but we won’t shake hands with a real person in a bar and share a drink with him.

Shame on us!

I think we can do better than that, don’t you?

Leo actually thanked us for not rebuffing his conversational gambit; he needn’t have. I like to think that’s something I would never do. You might think twice before turning your back the next time a stranger is friendly to you in person, because it might be a while since they had a real conversation with a real somebody, and, who knows, one of these days, you might be the new guy in town, and, do you know what? You just might meet someone fabulous.

The Big Bang Theory... For Really Reals!

It has become my practice to devote Monday’s blog to something or other of interest, to me at least, from the Sunday papers, except, yesterday, I didn’t get to look at the Sundays, because I was doing something rather more interesting... I was having a fascinating, real life conversation about extraordinary stuff, over a very good English breakfast cooked by the husband.

I haven’t seen Jules for a grillionty-ten years... He’s happy enough with that number, and he began his adult life as a mathematician... He and the husband were best friends at grammar school, back in the seventies and eighties, and, because of social networking... yes it does have its upside... Because of social network, they  rediscovered one another, reignited their relationship, and, as it happens, so did Jules and I, since we were also well acquainted, and while passing through England between his home in the US and a trade show in Germany, he came for said breakfast. I’m very glad he did.

Jules is unashamed to call himself a geek. He was a geek when we met, when computers had BBC emblazoned on the front and took 5 five inch floppy discs, when Pong was the height of sophistication in game consoles, and long before the ZX Spectrum was on the market. He studied maths at Cambridge and played long, involved, but fiercely exciting games of Traveller, which the husband refereed. 

Jules is my latest reluctant hero.

From time to time, you will hear me banging on about carbon footprints and climate change, and how we all have a responsibility to moderate our habits, to consume less, to get the ball rolling on doing something to preserve the planet we all have to live on, for our kids and their kids.

Jules talked about this very usefully, by pointing out that there are four types of people on the planet: those who have nothing, those who have a light bulb, those who have a washing machine, and those who have everything. If you’re reading this, you have everything. In any given timeframe a percentage of the population jumps from one bracket to the next, and with that jump comes a vast increase in energy consumption... And I mean VAST!

We all sit smugly talking about how we buy locally grown produce and offset air miles and use greener detergents and drive more efficient cars. We all blame the Americans for their gas guzzlers and the Chinese for their industrial development... 

... And we all consume the internet as if it were powered by fairy dust.

All those clouds run off servers that consume electricity, and they are all housed in buildings that are cooled, because those servers produce vast amounts of heat, and the air-con consumes more electricity, and the hunger for the internet, for instant global communication and networking of this kind is never going to change, and the demand is always going to be more and it is never going to go away.

Jules is working on the most extraordinary technologies. He’s all about applications, so he more or less refuses to take any credit for any of this, but I’m going to talk about him, anyway.

Here’s what’s happening in Jules’s company:

Non-silicon based technologies are being developed to build much more efficient transistors, so electricity can be used more efficiently, and produce less heat as a bi-product.

If that isn’t good news, I have no idea what is!

I use energy efficient bulbs, and have done since they were available, and I turn off appliances instead of leaving them on standby. When I replace an appliance, I also replace it with the most energy efficient option. I never wash at a temperature higher than 30 degrees, and so on...

It had never crossed my mind to think about how the electricity got off the grid and into my house, and from there into individual appliances and so on down the line, but I’m very, very glad that there are very clever people who think about those things for us.

We’re not going to turn off our appliances unless or until we have to. We’re going to have to adapt better technologies in order to reduce our carbon footprints on those things, and this seems to me like a very intelligent way to tackle one issue.

I had only heard about this technology yesterday morning, over breakfast, but, some Sunday, soon, you’ll be reading about it in your Sunday papers, and, very soon after that we’ll all be using the technologies that prove most efficient and cost effective, without even knowing that we’re doing it, because they’ll all be integral to the services and appliances we buy... Maybe, in the fulness of time, we’ll even see reductions in our fuel bills as a result.

Sometimes... you know... progress really is a good thing.

Just for fun, Jules took out a tiny little box and very carefully uncovered some of his product. These things were so small I had to look at them through a magnifying glass, and, if it wasn't enough that they're little marvels of technology, they are, also, terribly pretty.

I know it's daft, and I know that some scientist somewhere will tell me that human's perceive as beautiful the most robust or adaptive bits of nature, rather than the other way around, but, somehow, all the best bits of science always do seem to be the most beautiful, don't they?

Doctor Who... The In-Joke

I like clever people and the in-jokes they play.

I’m not necessarily claiming to be clever, but I plant lots of little jokes in my stories, simply for my own pleasure. They often revolve around names. For example, my story Cell for the Sabbat Worlds Anthology was about resistance fighters, so I gave them all monikers derived from old French, and just to add to my own delight, I gave them all Huguenot names, because that’s where Abnett came from, originally. Yes, it takes a little longer to research, but the names have to come from somewhere and it stands to reason that people from one region might have names that share something in common, so I’d be researching them anyway, so my little whims and jokes give me a starting point.

As many of my regular readers know, I’m not a great sleeper, so I put my iPad on my nightstand and tune in to NetFlix for boring tv. I don’t, after all, want anything that’s going to keep me awake. The other night, I was watching an episode of Kingdom with Stephen Fry; it was, in fact, series 3, episode 2, and it was a storyline about crop circles and UFO enthusiasts. Among the characters was Dr Who as played by Tom Baker, or, in this case, a lookalike. 

This was all meant to be amusing, and it was, of course.

It was the sub-plot, headed up by Lyle Anderson, ably played by Karl Davies, that had the pathos with an elderly couple threatened with eviction, but it was also in the sub-plot that the most satisfying joke of the piece was played out.

It was all in the casting.

Colin Baker as Dr Who

The elderly man, the mainstay of the couple, the householder under threat from eviction and the carer of fifteen dogs was played by non-other than Colin Baker... Dr Who number Six.

I do hope lots of other people enjoyed the joke, too, but I suspect whoever indulged himself with the casting choices really didn’t care, one way or the other.

The Gift part ii

Having talked about the myth of the poor artist, and how attached to it we all are, how poverty somehow feeds the artist, how he must be hungry or needy, in some way, in order to produce something of value, I was thrilled to be introduced to an opposing view while listening to Front Row last night.

Angela Gheorghiu, the singer, found that she was unable to perform when she was in a state of emotional distress. She actually left the stage and was hospitalised, during her divorce, and, quite literally, found it impossible to sing. For this artist, at least, hardship did not feed her art. To perform, this woman had to feel calm and content.

I wonder whether this holds true for other artists of other stripes. I suspect that it might. I suspect that it very well might hold true for artists who require the use of their bodies to make their work. An artist who cannot hold his pencil or paintbrush, because he’s so nervous or upset that he is shaking, an actor who cannot speak because he is so anxious he is hyperventilating, a dancer crippled by nausea resulting from grief or distress... None of these things is hard to imagine.

I wonder whether it might hold true for writers, too. I wonder whether I produce my best work when my life is easy. On the face of it, of course, my life is permanently easy.

On the other hand... I have stated, more than once, that I can work under most circumstances, that I simply sit at my computer and get on with it, because that’s what professionals do, and it’s true. What I don’t talk about much is the years that I spent editing and proofreading, and not writing, at least not much and not longform fiction. 

I write a lot, now, and I write through all sorts of difficulties. I very rarely have a day when I absolutely cannot put words or thoughts on file. They do happen, but I can reliably pick myself up and move on again, quickly, usually within a day or two and without any real fallout.

Those years spent editing and proofreading and working at the periphery, and wishing I was doing other things and wondering whether I ever really would were also the years I spent choosing not to medicate for my bi-polar.

It’s a choice that a lot of bi-polar people make for a variety of reasons.

We’re used to writers and artists and creative types being a little eccentric; we rather like them to be that way; it’s part of how we understand who they are and what they do. I have no problem being considered to be ‘creative’ or ‘artistic’ or ‘neurotic’ or even, at a pinch, ‘difficult’. In fact, during the time I’ve spent with the husband, and it’s been a bloody long time, it’s been a sort of charming aside that he rather likes ‘difficult women’.

I’m rather glad it became sufficiently unbearable for me to opt for medication in the end. I’m rather glad I decided I needed a break from all the things that I thought made me who I was and needed to be. I’m rather glad that my creativity was finally allowed to breath, that I was finally calm enough and content enough to be able to sit at a computer and put those thoughts and words down consistently and confidently, and do it often enough and for long enough to produce finished work, and to do it for... how many books is it now? Seven? With how many more in the pipelines? Well... that'd be telling.

Just like everyone else, sometimes we have to live with poverty and mental illness, but being creative shouldn’t bring with it a life sentence of either or both of those things. They don’t help us any more than they help any one else.

Poverty and mental illness are problems wherever they occur; there is no romance in them, so let’s not pretend that there is... even for creative types.

Generating Interest or Oscar Pistorius vs Jeanette Winterson

There is only one real reason to be a writer, and that is to be read.

Other writers will tell you differently, of course they will, but that is mostly self-aggrandisement and vanity. No one, but NO ONE is more important than the reader; every word is filtered through him, and the only important opinion is his opinion. It’s that argument about the tree falling in the forest and no one being within earshot. It is the vibration of the stuff in the inner ear that makes sound, and not the tree falling. It is the reader and not the writer that gives the written word its voice.

The same is true of blogging. I write this blog with the intention of it being read. That is not to say that I will do anything at all to ensure that it is read, but it does mean that I monitor it to see what sorts of posts are popular, which people return to and why. 

Some of that is nonsense, of course, because the blogs with the highest readerships are often those with the most controversial or sexiest titles. It’s inevitable, I suppose.

One of the things I indulge in from time to time is borrowing from the great and the good. If someone says or does something interesting and is in the public eye, and I have something to say about it, I will use that in the blog.

I am sometimes surprised by the results.

Oscar Pistorius, who has nothing at all to do with writing and has no direct connection with me, but whose misadventures (to put the case extremely mildly) had me up in arms ,garnered me a huge raft of extra readers on the days I talked about him. He was newsworthy and I had something to say. I said it and my readership grew on those days, notwithstanding the fact that, at least ostensibly, this blog is about writing.

Earlier this week, I devoted two blogs to Jeanette Winterson after reading one of the regular features in the Sunday Times magazine, which happened to have alighted upon her as a subject. She’s a writer and a person of interest to me. She’s in my age group, she’s hugely respected for her work, and she’s well known for being a person with an interesting life and opinions. I thought taking a look at what she had to say, particularly her writing practice, would make for fascinating reading.

I was wrong. The Oscar Pistorius effect was very much not duplicated. Jeanette Winterson, apparently, is not as popular with other people as she is with me. I am rather sorry about that.

You would suppose that since I make it my business to generate interest in my blog, I might decide not to write about Jeanette Winterson again. On the contrary; today, I am making it my business to change the opinion of my readership by telling you two things about Ms Winterson that you might not previously have known.

The first of those things is that Ms Winterson grows her own vegetables, lots and lots of them, and that she eats them with apparent relish. Good for her, keeping her carbon footprint down and being productive and a bit of an Earth mother, and all sorts of other good things. You’ve got to take your hat off to her for that, at the very least.

The second of those things is that Ms Winterson’s latest book is a horror novella called The Daylight Gate. Women often write the best horror, in my opinion. They are less afraid of the hard nasties than men seem to be, less squeamish about what’s real. Ms Winterson has written brilliantly across the board and I anticipate good things from her foray into genre. I do so hope I’m right.

Having readers matters, and it will always matter, but having an opinion and sharing it honestly, and not being tossed on every breeze, matters more, especially, I think, when it comes to blogging.

So, it’s a pretty good bet that I’m more likely to write about middle-aged, literary, women writers than I am about young, male sports stars. 

I’m sure we can all learn to live with that, though... right?

The Fear!

I’ve never met a writer who didn’t feel some sort of fear about the work.

Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who did anything worth doing, particularly in the arts, who didn’t feel some sort of fear associated with that pursuit.

It is my contention that artists had bloody well better be in fear, at least some of the time. Writing is dangerous and it does cause pain, and it should be, and anything that involves opening a vein, is bound to. That’s a large part of what being a writer is.

We claim to produce work whose value is related only to its beauty and its ability to move others. Wouldn’t that scare you? If not, I think it should.

It is a huge responsibility on the artist’s part to produce work that has genuine value, at the very least, at the point of sale. I might not still be in print when I die, let alone a century thereafter, nevertheless the person buying my product is hopeful that it will make his heart sing and nurture his soul. He’s not just filling his stomach, satisfying a physical appetite for a while. He’s not just covering his body to satisfy a need for physical warmth or comfort. He’s not even putting a roof over his head. 

When a reader buys my work product he is feeding and warming his soul, he is sheltering his heart from the storm that is raging all around him in a hostile World. That is my job, and I’d bloody better be afraid!

I take it seriously. 

I want to write well. 

I want to write great stories and I want to write them beautifully. 

I never want to lose the fear.

I also never want to lose the other feelings associated with writing.

I never want to lose the feeling of utter exhaustion at the end of a long, productive day.

I never want to lose the feeling of disbelief when I get to the end of a story that I didn’t know I could finish.

I never want to lose the feeling of a new character walking into a story and changing every thing.

I never want to lose the feeling that a story has a value of its own, because of some magic that I wove.

I never want to lose the feeling of reading a story I have written back to myself and knowing that it has value, sometimes more value than I could ever have hoped for.

Writing is not for everyone, despite the fact that everyone seems to want to write. It is a gift and a challenge, and a compulsion and an utter bloody nuisance, and it fills me with fear every day that I do it.

Fear is fine. Fear is one of the many emotions that keeps me going.

If you fear writing and do it anyway, perhaps you’re on to something.

The day I give up doing what I do will be the day I begin to dread writing.