Magic, Rain and Wimbledon

As If By Magic was published on Thursday (in Britain, this is; for some mysterious reason it’s not out in America until August.)  There is, disappointingly, very little ballyhoo about publication day. Not much, anyway.  This was the scene outside our house on Thursday morning



 

 

 

Okay, so I'm exaggerating slightly.

It feels as if you should wake up to the blare of trumpets and the roll of drums.  For a mad moment I thought that had happened but all it was that one of the kids was in the shower with Radio One turned way up.  I mean, nothing happens.  No apes, ivories or peacocks delivered by Royal Mail’s parcel force or, indeed, any other method, no red carpet in the street, no frenzied bursts of applause as I step forth, no aeroplane sky-writing overhead.  The morning consists of informing random children that if they don’t shape themselves they’ll be late for school, making sandwiches, telling Gok Wan (fashion guru, youngest daughter and hair-straightener addict) that her hair is wonderful and can we please leave, clearing up the morning’s small deposits from the animal branch of the Gordon-Smith household and wondering What To Have For Tea. Basically, Life, Jim, and just as we know it.

            Except As If By Magic is published; and complete strangers, who I don’t have to cook dinner for, I’m not related to and who do not have my hand in marriage are buying it and reading it.  And I know it is being sold because the Amazon figures say as much.  For thirteen quid and twenty-nine pence (who decides these price points?) with free postage chucked in, it can be yours.  It sounds like the bargain of the year to me, and I’m not remotely biased.  Honest.

            Have you been watching Wimbledon?  I must say, I’ve derived a huge amount of innocent amusement from listening to the commentators virtually praying for rain.  It’s the new roof, you see. Yes, I know it cost quzillions of pounds and looks like something that Thunderbird One should pop out of, but it’s still a roof, for pete’s sake, and the way John McEnroe, David Mercer and John Lloyd et al have been going on about it, it’s as if the concept has just been invented.  But, what with one thing and another, I’m sort of used to roofs. We’ve had one on our house for ever such a long time now and the neighbours – ruddy copycats! – have got them too.

            Everyone got very exercised about The Roof Question during Andy Murray’s match and you can’t say the weather wasn’t trying.  But, however much the skies lowered and the lightning forked down over Surbiton, those few square yards of turf in London SW20 remained unrained upon.  It’s a big difference from the glory days of Harry Carpenter in the 1970’s when you’d actually turn on the telly to listen to Harry rhapsodise about the rain. It was incredible what he could find to say about rain.   As it pooled and grew on the green covers, Harry, truly a man for all seasons – particularly wet ones – would hit his stride. “Covers still on the outside courts.   Thousands of people, waiting, hoping against hope…” The cameras would close in on rain, then draw back as a particularly extravagant splash would fountain up.  “There’s a drain down both sides of the courts where the rain can escape,” Harry would explain, apparently anxious for the fate of each individual drop.  Then, in a burst of philosophy worthy of Marcus Aurileus (“Doth aught befall you? Fear not; it is all part of the great web.”) Harry would assure us, in face of all the evidence, that Brighter Weather Is Expected Soon.  Come on!  We know what an English June can do!  The weather, rather like the English themselves, has a sense of humour and, exactly like taking an umbrella to a picnic Just In Case, the fact that someone’s nicked the roof from Tracey Island means that the sun will continue to shine with unabated fervour for the next week.  I hope so, anyway.  I don’t think John McEnroe could stand the excitement if they had to close the thing.

            However, if they do, you could always curl up with a good book.  Did I mention  As If By Magic was published this week?

Books, Castles, Champagne and Shoes

            I wouldn’t be human if the main thing on my mind wasn’t the fact that my new book, As If By Magic is published on Thursday.  Yes, that’s Thursday the 25^th June, so

 

  

 

You get the idea!

Do you read John Buchan?  I only ask because almost always, in Buchan’s stories, there’s a comfortable – nay, snug – castle, somewhere on the Scottish borders that various heroes retreat to in the course of the story.  These little glimpses of Paradise were obviously places he knew well.  I only mention it, because my nephew, Richard, got married last weekend and the reception he and his bride, Donna, was held in the most perfect John Buchan-y castle you’ve ever seen.  Comlongan Castle (flag it up on Google if you want to know more) outside of Dumfries is exactly the sort of place he described.  Weddings are always fun, especially if all you have to do is turn up and enjoy yourself, and this one was really special. Even the weather was perfect!  Being Scotland, there were lots of hairy knees in evidence – not mine I hasten to add! – (there are limits) but from various be-kilted blokes, all of which added to the jollity of the occasion. 

The old part of the castle dates back to 14 something but the John Buchan-y part looked like an Eighteenth or early Nineteenth Century extension.  We piled in through the vast oak doors with a piper playing outside into a cosy (honestly!) hall with stained glass, oak and suits of armour. 

 Plied with champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, we strolled round the grounds, feeling like lottery winners.  There’s always something though.  While the photos were being taken, I felt myself slipping further and further backwards until it looked like I was trying to regain my balance in a hundred mile an hour wind. In a way, Teresa Chris, my agent was responsible.  On a shopping trip – I’ve mentioned those before – she’d seen a pair of killer red heels and told me I had to have them.  Okay, so that was a sale then.  The aforesaid heels drilled themselves into the soft Scottish turf, causing me to list like a leaky tug.  The only way of freeing myself was to step out of my shoes and rip them from the ground, then spend the rest of the afternoon creeping round on tip-toe so I wouldn’t sink with all hands (or all feet) once more.  Peter’s cousin peered at me and announced, in that earnest Scottish way, that it was a case of pressure per square inch.  I did feel that a truly tactful person wouldn’t have pointed that out! 

            As the soft twilight fell, there were fireworks on the lawn.  It was exactly as I’d imagined the firework scene in Mad About The Boy? (Go on – buy a copy – it’s dead good) only with fewer mysteriously dead bodies, which is always a plus at any party you’re hoping will go with a bang. Live the dream!

 

 

Match Report

I went to see the England and Argentina rugby game on Saturday.  Now, when England play the Argies at football, it’s a cue for some serious crowd control, but the atmosphere on Saturday was terrific.  The game was at Old Trafford and that in itself was quite an experience.  The famed home of Manchester United seems to be smaller than it looks on TV, which is something I’ve noticed before.  Maybe when we see something on the telly, we over-compensate in our mind’s eye and turn the little image into something huge. 

Our seats (which had cost £10 each – not a lot) were in the Stretford End, about eight rows up from the pitch. It’s all-seater, of course, which I, for one, was grateful for. Old-fashinoned terraces are very chummy, but it’s nice to sit down.  In 1950 something, my brother’s father-in-law (if that’s not too complicated a relationship) lost his brand-new hat by hurling it into the air in the Stretford End to celebrate United’s win.  I’d always wondered about those bits in old films when you see hundreds of hats thrown up;  how did you ever find the correct lid again?  The answer is that you didn’t – and he was never allowed to forget it!

 Goodness knows how much the seats would set you back if United were playing, because the view was marvellous.  It’s odd watching this sort of thing in real life; I kept waiting for the action re-plays!

The game (which was only a friendly) wasn’t, to tell the truth, particularly inspired, as both teams decided to play aerial ping-pong, walloping the ball hopefully down the field, instead of getting down to brass tacks and running with the thing.  However, simply being there made it gripping.  There’s all sorts of details you don’t get on the telly. For instance, how easy it is to roar out “God Save The Queen” and how the Argentine national anthem (which sounds like a really dodgy bit of Verdi) needs an operatic soprano to even attempt it.

 A very smart squad of RAF personnel marched onto the pitch before the game began, when a brass band playing and, having paraded round the field, shook out an enormous Argentine flag.  That was good – after all, in 1982, the RAF were doing their level best to shoot down Argie planes and vice-versa.  Mind you, Manchester rugby fans do, perhaps, have a soft spot for the Argies; the Captain of the local team, Sale Sharks, for the last few seasons has been the Argentine Captain, Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe.

The atmosphere was great.  The two sets of fans mingled freely and, in a burst of old-fashioned sportsmanship, applauded each other’s good work.  At the end of the game I shared some chips with a policeman who wished that every game could be like this.  The only thing that really went wrong was the weather, which was a historical recreation of the D-Day Landings; miserably cold and threatening rain.  The bloke behind me had just remarked how perishing it was when some stalwart ran onto the pitch and, dropping his trousers, showed us all his manly form.  Like little walnuts, they were!  Then he tripped over his trousers as two policemen thudded after him and he was led off to reflect on his shortcomings; as did we!

I’m off to London to sign copies of the new book, As If By Magic this week.  Bring it on!

The Curse Of The Cosy

The Curse Of The Cosy.

Or, if you prefer, “Cozy”. 

Once upon a time, writers wrote Detective Stories.  This pleasing formula was easy to spot.  The Penguin ones came in green covers with white bands, but there were plenty of other stories on the market.  (This is a British experience by the way – I don’t know how American publishers packaged their books.)  By and large, the title would give a clue as well;  The Body In The Library;  The Mysterious Affair at Styles;  Unnatural Death;  Death In The House; Warrant For X.  (Christie, Christie, Sayers, Berkerley; MacDonald respectively.) 

            It started, for all practical purposes, with Sherlock Holmes, but he was only one of hundreds.  Suddenly, as anyone who’s read the collection The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes will know, the world was full of keen-eyed misanthropes who lived in or near Baker Street and had to put on a dressing-gown to think.  Incidentally, if anyone fancies reading a really good  and very funny book, try ES Turner’s classic Boys Will Be Boys with particular reference to the chapters entitled, “Sexton Blake” and “More Detectives.” 

            Naturally, as hansom cabs were replaced by motor-cars, Victorian drug-takers were replaced by sassy, occasionally aristocratic, sleuths.  Holmes still held sway, even in an inverted form.  “No one,” says Sapper of his detective, Ronald Standish, could look less like a detective.”  Which, of course begs (ie implores on bended knee!) the question, “What does a detective look like?”  The keen reader might notice at this point that I’ve got my tongue firmly in my cheek; that’s the only way to read a great many of these stories, but read them I do and so do a great many other people then and now. 

            They were very good stories, you see.  Escapist, yes – and if you were broke in the days before the Welfare State you’d probably want something to escape to.  Naturally, with this enormous popularity, some very good authors turned to detective stories and, being very good authors, real people and real situations crept in.  Now, real people and real situations are what novelists have always written about;  the circumstances may be odd (as in Jane Eyre) or very odd indeed (as in A Handful of Dust) but they are, granted what’s gone before, believable.

            And that’s what detective stories do. Make stuff believable.  Plus there’s an intellectual challenge.  Whodunnit?  Why?  And there is, thank goodness, a real end.  Having a real end to things, is, as we all know because we’re all living it, isn’t Real Life.

            Let’s knock this “real life” business on the head once and for all.  Fiction, however grim, violent and challenging is not real life.  It’s fiction; it’s made up.   Real Life, that darling of publishers and television producers, is messy, inconsequential, full of coincidences and never stops.  But works of fiction are works of art.  Shakespeare knew that and so do the Brothers Grimm and Dickens and… Well, add your own great name here. 

            We want, as readers, to have a solidly convincing bit of life carved out for us from the Real Life around us and to have it Start, Muddle and End.  Aristotle said as much in The Poetics (he’s someone who really would have appreciated detective stories) and you can’t say fairly than that now, can you?

            And then…. George Orwell put his finger on it in his 1946 essay, The Decline Of The English Murder.  This essay is so good, I’m going to quote it at length.

 

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice
long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the NEWS OF THE WORLD. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?
Naturally, about a murder. But what kind of murder? If one examines the murders which have given the greatest amount of pleasure to the British public, the murders whose story is known in its general outline to almost everyone and which have been made into novels and re-hashed over and over again by the Sunday papers, one finds a fairly strong family resemblance running through the greater number of them.

 

Orwell then names some famous cases, such as Crippen,  Florence Maybrick and Joseph Smith.

 

In one way or another, sex is a powerful motive ….and in at least four cases respectability… (or) to get hold of a certain known sum of money such as a legacy or an insurance policy.

 

Agatha Christie, take a bow!  Those cases are real cases but don’t they all sound like The Body In The Library ?  And then Orwell picks on the current cause celebre, The Cleft Chin Murder.  (Google it if you want to know more.) 

 

…the whole meaningless story, with its atmosphere of dance-halls, movie-palaces, cheap perfume, false names and stolen cars, belongs essentially to a war period.
Perhaps it is significant that the most talked-of English murder of recent years should have been committed by an American and an English girl who had become partly Americanized. But it is difficult to believe that this case will be so long remembered as the old domestic poisoning dramas, product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them.

           

            From then on, I would submit, detective stories, with their rationality and stability, have had to compete against “meaningless” crime.   Fair enough; it’s a big world with lots of books and lots of readers.  Both sorts of crime are “Real” or not, depending on how you want to argue the point.  No problem.

            And then Anthony Boucher decided to call the Crippen sort of crime “Cosy”.  Yes, I know what he was getting at – domestic setting, stable world, respectable  people – so far, so George Orwell – but it sounds, to British ears at any rate, fluffy and inconsequential.  You put cosies round things to keep them snug and warm; tea-pots; eggs; feet; not murders.  

            The word kills the whole genre by fluffy softness.  Would you, for instance, rather read an intellectual challenge, something that engages your mind as well as your emotions, or would you rather read a cosy? 

            Does it matter?  Yes it does, because although huge numbers of readers like detective stories (aka “cosies”), English publishers shy like startled pheasants at the word “cosy”.  It’s not something they want to be associated with because it sounds fluffy, inconsequential etc.  My agent, Teresa Chris, tells me it’s very, very hard to sell a cosy.  I’m not surprised.  Would you buy a bundle of fluff? 

So let’s drop this horrible term and call a whole traduced genre by either of its two proper names; Mystery and Detection.  At least there’s something to think about.