The McLehose Bible and the Clarinda Connection

                                    

I've finally decided to sell this fascinating Old Testament, with its connection to Robert Burns and his 'Clarinda'. It will be in Thomson, Roddick and Callan's next Fine Art and Antiques sale on 20th November. Here is its story: 

I bought this beautiful little book, with its traditional Scottish ‘herringbone’ binding, some twenty years ago. At the time, I was in the process of researching the life of Robert Burns, initially for a commissioned BBC radio play, but then for my novel about his wife, Jean Armour, the Jewel, which was eventually published by Saraband in 2016, along with a companion volume of Burns’s poems and songs written for Jean herself.

Who was Elizabeth?

With the bible, came an accompanying letter: 
25th December 1925
The enclosed Vol 1 of Bible belonged to my great grandmother Mrs Elizabeth McLehose or Graham and contains the names and dates of birth of her children except Lilias the youngest. It was given to me by my cousin Mrs Jane Hamilton or Patterson, Acton Hill, Stafford, who states she found it among Aunt Kate’s effects after her death. It probably got into Aunt Kate’s hands through her mother Elizabeth Graham or Hamilton, a daughter of Elizabeth McLehose.
James Graham.

For the genealogists among you, the inscriptions in the bible, front and back, are as follows (just as she wrote them herself.) 
Elizebath (sic) McLehose her bible June 30th 1779
John Graham and Elizebath McLehose was married the 26th of Aprill 1779 by Mr Furlong Minister in the Chapel of Ease Glasgow.
Helen was born the 18th day of April at 5 oClock Afternoon 1780
John Graham was born 27th of August at one oClock Afternoon 1781
James was born 5th May at nine oClock Afternoon 1783
William was born the 26th of Febry at one oClock Morning 1785
Patrick was born 26th August at two oClock Forenoon 1786
Kathrine was born the 5th of May at two oClock Forenoon 1788
Elizebath was born Nov 25 at one oClock Forenoon 1789
Marrion was born June 27th at two oClock Forenoon 1793
Adam was born the 28th of January at six oClock Forenoon 1795
Lilias born 1801 - (in a different hand.)

Elizabeth, (or Elizebath as she spelled her name) may have had two of these books – an Old and a New Testament, but it’s possible that she took the New Testament – which hasn’t survived - to the kirk, more often, whereas this Old Testament might have stayed at home, and would have been where she kept a record of her growing family. All the same, it still has its own soft leather case.

Elizabeth McLehose, born in 1753, married John Graham of Kittochside, East Kilbride, in 1779. Wester Kittochside is where the Scottish National Museum of Rural Life is now based, although I think this would have been an adjacent farm. John was a wealthy farmer, as testified by this book (possibly a gift on the occasion of the marriage) – a rare and expensive item, then as now.

 A Burns Connection?

I instantly wondered if there was any connection between Elizabeth McLehose and James McLehose, husband of Agnes Craig, Robert Burns’s Nancy, or ‘Clarinda’ as he called her in his many letters. 

A certain amount of research, with some help from a descendent, Judy Philip, in Australia, revealed that this was indeed the case. They were first cousins, of similar age, and would almost certainly have known each other, especially given the somewhat scandalous tale of Nancy, her unsatisfactory husband, and the celebrity poet.

Nancy

Agnes ‘Nancy’ Craig was born in Glasgow in 1758, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, Andrew Craig. Her mother was Christian McLaurin who died in childbirth in 1767, leaving a young family in the care of their father. Nancy was a sickly child, but grew into an exceptionally pretty and accomplished young woman.

Nancy’s husband, James McLehose, was a lawyer. As a suitor, he was not at all welcomed by Nancy’s father, but he persisted in his courtship, and the couple seem to have met in secret. One of his expedients was to buy all the seats on a coach between Glasgow and Edinburgh, when Nancy was travelling, and then to woo her throughout the long journey. It’s hard to believe that Nancy herself didn’t know about and acquiesce in this ruse.

They married on 1st July 1776 when Nancy was eighteen and she gave birth to four children in four years, the first of whom died in infancy. The marriage was not a happy one, and there are stories of drunkenness and cruelty. Shortly before the birth of her fourth child, late in 1780, Nancy left her husband and returned to her family home in Glasgow’s Saltmarket, citing his cruelty. James spent some time in a debtor’s prison, then managed to take custody of their surviving children, but soon returned them to her. In 1782, he tried to persuade her to emigrate to Jamaica with him, where his Uncle John was a plantation owner. Nancy refused.

Her father, meanwhile, had died in that same year, having lost most of his money, and Nancy moved to Edinburgh, to a flat off Potterrow. She was supported by small charitable contributions from wealthy relatives and was very much reliant on their good will.

'Sylvander and Clarinda'

Nancy was intelligent and well educated. She wrote poetry and instigated the first meeting with Burns, at a tea party in a friend’s house, in December 1787. He was good looking and charming, and she was instantly attracted to him and he to her. She invited him to visit her at home, but he had injured his knee in a fall from a coach and was confined to his lodgings, so the relationship developed by means of an increasingly intense and flirtatious correspondence, in the course of which, romantic Nancy suggested that they call each other Sylvander and Clarinda, to maintain a certain anonymity. This was a reference to the fashionable fantasy of the classical 'pastoral' life of the shepherd and shepherdess, living in Arcadia, although the poet would have been well aware of the grim realities. Nevertheless, he was happy to indulge Nancy, and had occasionally drawn on this myth himself, in order to be taken seriously by the Edinburgh 'literati'. What else was a farmer poet to do? 

By the end of January, they had met six times. She would certainly have been vulnerable to the advances of this devastatingly attractive man, a celebrity in the city, lionised as an eighteenth century superstar, but she was also a married woman, and afraid of scandal.

She was twenty nine when they met and had been separated from her husband for seven years. It’s doubtful if the ‘affair’ ever amounted to more than a kiss and a cuddle alongside a very overheated  correspondence. Bear in mind that letters could be sent and received on the same day in the city. Nancy resisted any real physical intimacy (as poor Jean Armour clearly could not!) while the poet indulged in his usual self dramatisation and a number of lavish attempts to persuade her into bed, both poetic and actual. 

‘I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh Widow, who has wit and beauty more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian banditti,’ he wrote to a friend. Of course Nancy was not a widow, as she persisted in reminding him. The relationship resulted in one of the most beautiful songs of lost love ever written, in Ae Fond Kiss, although we should remember that he wrote Red Red Rose for Jean Armour, an equally beautiful celebration of lifelong married love. 

In February 1788, Burns wrote to Nancy from Mossgiel near Mauchline, in very disparaging terms about Jean, followed by a reference on 2nd March 1788 to his proposed farm at Ellisland being only a day and a half ride from Edinburgh, clearly planning future meetings – although it’s hard not to see this as more fantasy.

The following day, on 3rd March, Jean gave birth prematurely to his second set of twins, one of whom died on 10th and the other on 23rd March. By 12th March, Burns had returned to Edinburgh on publishing business, and there were a few more love letters to Nancy, albeit less passionate than previously. He seems to have been feeling guilty. 

The Aftermath

Some six weeks later, the poet and Jean were officially married, possibly in Gavin Hamilton’s house, in Mauchline. There is some evidence that they had never not been married, since they had agreed to marry a couple of years earlier, a binding contract under Scots law, but Jean's parents had objected, strenuously. In a letter to his friend James Smith, dated 28th April 1788, Burns is writing happily about his marriage to Jean and his intention of buying her a printed shawl. The marriage wasn’t officially acknowledged in the Mauchline kirk until August of 1788, probably on the insistence of the minister, the Reverend Mr Auld.

Burns left it to his friend Ainslie to give Nancy the bad news.

Her subsequent response to him has not survived, but in his reply, dated a whole year after his letter disparaging Jean, he points out that he has behaved pretty well in the circumstances and refers to Nancy’s accusation of ‘perfidious treachery’! Nevertheless, the correspondence with Nancy continued, intermittently, although by December 1791 Burns is pointing out that he has sent Nancy six letters to which she has not responded – although perhaps she had set off for Jamaica by that time.

In 1791, Nancy sailed for Jamaica in a misguided attempt to reunite with her husband. She arrived to find that Elizabeth’s cousin, James McLehose, was living with a local woman, Ann Challon Rivere, who had given birth to his daughter. With admirable strength of character, she turned around and sailed back to Edinburgh on the same ship.

It’s clear that Jean was aware of her husband’s correspondence and tolerated it, although the ‘disappearance’ of some letters that the poet mentions, sent via Nancy’s friend Mary Peacock, and one about Nancy’s health, sent to the poet from Mary herself, may be connected with Jean’s loss of patience as she coped with a difficult domestic situation. The two women even met, after the death of the poet, a scene which I imagined in The Jewel. I think Nancy's affection was genuine.

What the owner of this little bible thought of her errant cousin, his wife and her association with the greatest poet Scotland has ever known, is a matter for speculation. It’s hard not to imagine that it must have been hotly debated at Kittochside, although perhaps not within earshot of the children. One wonders if – when James briefly took custody of his and Nancy’s young children – he might even have left them with his cousin Elizabeth and her husband for a time. 

A tenuous connection, for sure, but a fascinating one, this beautiful book and its inscriptions are a  gateway to a more widely known tale of love and loss and the creation of one of the finest love songs the world has ever known. 

'I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, 

Naething could resist my Nancy. 

But to see her was to love her, 

Love but her and love forever.' 

To Beta or not to Beta

A wearisome heap of old
literary magazines in which I had 'stuff'. 

It seems to have become compulsory for all writers, but especially those starting out, to enlist a 'beta reader' or two to vet early drafts and offer helpful suggestions. Theoretically, this should be OK, but is it? 

The term comes from the world of video games, where beta testers are asked to play a game in the later stages of its development, to see where there may be glitches and bugs that have somehow managed to slip through the long, expensive and complicated process of building a game. They are usually enthusiastic and experienced gamers so their opinions matter - but it's a later stage process, whether in games or software development, and I often think it's akin to the work of a good copy editor. 

Copy editing is also a late stage process and involves someone checking your manuscript, not just for grammatical glitches, but for repetitions or general imperfections. For example, something might make complete sense to you, the writer, but it may puzzle the reader. He or she will also pick up inconsistencies, and do a certain amount of fact checking. Or at least will point out to you that you need to do some fact checking yourself. A good copy editor will never tell you what to do, but may ask difficult questions. It's often done on the finished manuscript, using Track Changes (in Word) or similar, so that you can have an online conversation. All this is incredibly useful but it's a professional job, and it's not what beta readers do in the world of writing. 

I used to run a writers' group in Ayrshire. It started out as a Workers Educational Association group, but over the years, funding failed. The council took over, and when the council stopped funding it we just carried on, because by that stage, the group members had become friends. We were a disparate bunch of writers, working on everything from plays to novels, with short stories, poems and articles in between.

 As time went by, the group became a safe space - to use current jargon - where people could comfortably read out some of what they had written and gain feedback. It's the job of the group leader to impose a certain amount of control over all this, making sure that suggestions are just that - not instructions. It's nice, as a writer, to be taken seriously, and it's interesting to be asked questions about your work, because in coming up with the answers, you often make the work better. But nobody should ever feel bullied into making changes that don't feel right. 

The wrong word at the wrong time can damage tender shoots of talent, especially since people in groups sometimes feel that they have to give feedback. One of my colleagues, who later became a celebrated and well published poet, was put off writing for several years by inexplicably damning feedback from an already successful poet tutoring a writing course. 

None of which is to say that work doesn't benefit from good feedback, good editorial input. All the same, looking back on a long switchback of a career, I'm surprised to note that I've had far more bad editorial advice than good. I remember one theatre director musing that I had been much too open to his suggestions. (The question of why, perceiving that, he didn't stop giving them, is something that has puzzled me ever since.) Another editor, this time of an early novel, wrote to me to apologise about the mess she had made of my book. I've been told to delete a third of a novel by two different, allegedly competent, people. The problem was that one wanted the first third gone, while the other had problems with the last third. Both were wrong, although the book in question certainly needed work.

Time is often your friend here. If you've finished the precious first draft of your novel, can I suggest that before you hand it over to anyone else, you let it lie fallow for a while. Write something else. Resist the urge to begin editing immediately or - worse - hand your baby over to a reader or editor of any kind.

 All writers know the horror of someone asking 'what are you working on now?' We tend to fudge the answer by coming up with the most generic, least specific description possible. This is because most of us will have had the experience of pinning a project down, only for it to dissolve before our very eyes. Wait a few weeks or even months* and you'll find that when you go back to your work with a fresh eye, problems - and their solutions - will often leap out at you. Another technique is to print out at this stage, read the words on the page and even physically shuffle things about. 

In my opinion, one of the best books about the craft of writing is still a slim volume called On Writing, by Stephen King. Part memoir, part manual, it should be required reading for anyone contemplating a career as a writer, even though the industry itself has changed since he first wrote it. He advises the aspiring writer to do plenty of reading and writing. It's my belief that many writers who are starting out don't do nearly enough writing. Most of us used to have drawers full of the stuff. Now we have files on old computers or Dropbox stuffed with failed experiments. His advice to go with the story and see where it takes you is both liberating and inspirational for anyone who has ever become bogged down in the need to plot. 

To beta or not to beta - that is the question. Well, if it works for you, go with it. But don't ever forget the observation about the camel being a 'horse designed by a committee'. Not to cast aspersions on camels of course. Collaborations between creative people can work magnificently. But not always. And not without someone keeping the vision of the whole project in mind. 

That someone should be you. 

* I am currently working on a manuscript of a novel I wrote some fifty years ago. Yes, I've been writing that long and even longer. I was very young. I filed it away and forgot about it. But I kept it. It's something of an adventure. It's raw and needs a lot of work, but it's also surprising me with the freshness, the insight, the emotion it contains, before the publishing industry got its claws into me! 

Refugees and Me

 

 

Here's my dad, not long after he married my Leeds Irish mum, in the very late 1940s. I wrote about his wartime experiences and those of his family, in a book called The Last Lancer, currently out of print, with a revised edition due to be reprinted later this year. 

Britain has gone crazy over immigration.  All our media have gone crazy over immigration.  It's impossible to turn on the TV or radio, or pick up a newspaper, without getting the impression that the whole country has been flooded with threatening young aliens.

Every time I hear an interview with an angry man or woman advocating drowning or burning the incomers I think of my dear dad. It's not everyone, or even the majority, but as with all senseless and crass hatred, those are the ones that stick. 

Dad had been part of the Polish Home Army, the resistance, initially as a young courier in the Polish east, then in the Warsaw Uprising, followed by a spell in a German Labour camp, where he worked in the infirmary. This was followed, after liberation, by some time in Italy, in 'General Anders Army' - essentially part of the British army. 

There is no reference to his time in the Home Army in his official papers. This is hardly surprising, because people who had been in the resistance, returning to Poland in the post-war years, were often sent to Gulags, as enemies of communism. Stalin was no friend to Poland. My grandfather was dead at the age of 38, probably of amoebic dysentery, having been imprisoned by the Russians in some hellhole and then released to trek east. He is buried on the Silk Road. My grandmother  was believed to be lost, although many years later, the Red Cross facilitated a reunion. She had survived. I often think of her and so many other family members when I watch Doctor Zhivago  - each becoming 'a nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid.' Dad's much loved Aunt Ludka died in Bergen Belsen just before liberation. 

Under 'next of kin' on his army papers, Dad had written a Polish phrase that translates as 'closest family to nobody'. 

Julian Czerkawski came to England in 1946 to a Polish resettlement camp near Helmsley in Yorkshire, and was later demobbed to a job in a textile mill in Leeds. The choice initially was mills or mines, and dad chose a mill. He was an 'alien'. Years later, I wrote a poem about that term. You can read it at the end of this post. In my naivety I thought we might be past all that, during those years when we were members of the EU, but it seems that Britain will never ever be past all that. 

 The camps worked, largely because they were properly organised, that word 'resettlement' being the key, with language classes, gardens, healthcare, education and even visits to nearby halls for dancing. By the 1950s, there were some 250,000 Polish refugees here. Of course this wasn't handled by big private companies, milking the taxpayer for every last pound, which is perhaps why it seemed to work pretty well.  

Not long after that, dad met my mum, Kathleen, and was soon absorbed into her large Irish immigrant family. My nana at least knew all about prejudice. These days, people will tell me how much they liked the Poles. How they fitted in. Except that mum told of somebody saying 'Don't you think they should send all those Poles home?' to which my forthright mum replied 'Not really. Seeing as how I've just married one.' 

Neal Ascherson writes of a 'packed out rally in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh where a church minister was cheered as he abused Poles as scroungers and Papists.' 

Even after I was born, when we were living in a tiny, shabby, two room apartment in central Leeds, whenever a crime was reputedly committed by a 'foreigner', the police would come knocking. Often in the middle of the night. Or they did until one night my mum - with a new baby and a short fuse - went down and told them exactly what she thought of them. They never came back. 

Dad went to night school after work, studied, and eventually had a long and distinguished career as a research scientist, contributing to his community, especially once we moved to Scotland, in a great many ways. Today, people still make a point of telling me how much they liked him. 

But as I wrote in The Last Lancer, 'we became complacent. Brexit seems, in part at least, to have been facilitated by the same jingoistic resentments of incoming foreigners that caused people to scrawl "Go Home Poles" on walls in the post war period. The skewed perception that it is the poor who take jobs and houses from the poor.' 

We are not alone. There are problems with the rise of the far right all over Europe, and - to an even more alarming degree - in the USA. 

As brilliant historian Timothy Snyder wrote, 'Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.' 

I wish those intending to vote Reform in our next election would bear that in mind, but I'm not holding my breath. There will almost certainly be trouble ahead. 

ALIENS

I am small in springtime

on my father’s shoulders.

I can see everything even the

bald patches on the

heads of passing men,

a precarious and thrilling position.



My father’s hair is coal black and curly,

Polish hair as foreign as he is.

The word refugee is as familiar

to me as my own name.

I hold his ears for balance,

while he trots with me aloft.



My father’s papers proclaim him alien

which makes me half alien too.

Poland might as well be Pluto but

the iron curtain is real.

I see it sweeping across Europe

made of polished metal,

dividing kin from kin,

as unfathomable as space.



Small and safe on his shoulders

his hands steadying me,

I grip his ears and laugh.

We are what we will always be

to one another:

complicit and loving

alien invaders of

a mystifying new world.

From Midnight Sun, Collected Poems by Catherine Czerkawska

Dad on the right, looking into the camera.

Just Reprinted - For Jean: A Love Story in Letters and Verse

What if there was a quiet, steadfast heroine behind the poet’s genius?

I’m in the process of reprinting my collection: For Jean: Poems and Songs by Robert Burns for his Wife, Jean Armour. I never quite understood why my publisher let this volume in particular fall out of print after it had so comprehensively sold out. It was well reviewed and should have had a long life as a gift for any Burns enthusiast - of which there are plenty.

‘Jean Armour, the lass with the “voice of a nightingale,” has often been reduced to the margins of Burns scholarship. Yet it was her enduring presence—her strength, grace, and quiet resilience—that supported Burns through a life of brilliant highs and shadowy lows. This beautiful collection gives Jean her long-overdue spotlight.’

Whether you're a Burns enthusiast or a lover of literary history, the book offers a fresh perspective on the poet’s work. With poems written for Jean and others inspired by her, alongside candid, moving letters to and about the woman he loved, For Jean reveals a poet who was not just the rakish bard of popular imagination, but a man who returned, again and again, to the one woman he undoubtedly loved.

Collected and annotated with sensitivity and care, this edition includes:

• A selected glossary to guide readers through 18th-century Scots dialect
• Rich historical context that brings each poem and letter to life
• An intimate view into the couple’s complex yet enduring relationship

The book was intended as a companion volume to my novel  The Jewel, which fictionalizes Jean’s life. Together, these works give voice to a woman who has, until now, lived too quietly in the shadow of her husband’s legend. The link above is to the Kindle edition of The Jewel, but I'll be reprinting the paperback in the next few weeks.

Fortunately, For Jean is now available again, in paperback, under my own Dyrock Publishing imprint.

What's In A Name?

I switched on BBC Scotland's Television News on Sunday morning to be met with the deep voice of a male Scottish newsreader mangling Iga Świątek's name. It's perfectly reasonable to ask 'where does the 'n' come from?' because unless you know about Polish diacritical marks - the technical term for the various squiggles that change the sound of a letter in many languages - the name looks as though it should be pronounced swiatek or similar.  Most of us know how to say Señora, even if it's written with an ordinary 'n' but in an unfamiliar language, we tend to ignore these marks if we're not set up with the right keyboard. I'm guilty of it too, although when I was writing The Last Lancer, I went through the final draft and reinstated them all. 

I'm usually very understanding about the difficulties of Polish pronunciation for English monoglots. But in this case, I was irritated enough to shout at the television. He didn't mispronounce it. He mangled it. And - given that she had just won the Wimbledon Women's Singles Final - her name had been on the news since the night before. He should have known. He could have asked his phone. I've just done it, and up popped a clear audio file. Given the ease of finding out the pronunciation of foreign words, it has become ill mannered not to try, given a little advance notice. But he simply couldn't be arsed. 

My own name is almost invariably mangled. I've spent my whole life reassuring apologetic people, and I honestly don't mind. I'm happy to answer to Catherine. And I know exactly what it feels like to be confronted with a spelling and potential pronunciation  I've never met before. After all, I worked in Finland for two years. But then I'm not a BBC announcer. 

My Scottish doctor pronounces my surname perfectly, without being prompted. And when the late great Ray Bradbury introduced my radio dramatisations of some of his Tales of the Bizarre many years ago (I did them along with the wonderful Brian Sibley) he pronounced my name properly as well.

But from my first day at school until - well - now, it has been challenging. I could have changed it, but I was damned if I was going to. One of my first publishers persuaded me to change the spelling, so that it looked a bit English, but it also looked ridiculous to anyone with even a little knowledge of Slavic languages and I changed it back as soon as possible. 

Now, it's increasingly a badge of being 'foreign' and although we seem to have passed through an all too brief period of that not mattering, once again, it does. My late biochemist dad was a refugee alien who, by the time he retired, had a 'double doctorate'. He had a PhD but he was also a Doctor of Science -  a higher doctorate, only awarded for significant and original contributions to a scientific field, usually at the peak of a fine career. In Germany, where they like to acknowledge such things, he was once called 'Doctor Doctor' which amused him. 

What he was never awarded, in spite of his popularity, the distinction of his work, the way in which he wore his learning lightly, his ability to engage with and to manage people, was the headship of his department in the Scottish government research institute where he worked for many years. That went to the man developing 'spreadable butter'. 

At the end of his career, he spent two wonderful years based at the IAEA in Vienna, touring the world as visiting expert in agricultural projects for developing countries. It was a kind of reward, I think, and he enjoyed it very much. It was also a small slap on the face to the authorities here who had baulked at promoting a foreigner. 

There is a weird kind of low key xenophobia in the British psyche. People like to pretend it isn't there, but it is. All my life, I've been aware of it, popping up when least expected, even in my own career as a writer. I once wrote a short story about it, called Mind the Gap. You can find it in my anthology A Bad Year for Trees. Almost all of the stories in that anthology have been published in various magazines or collections, and two of them have had another life as radio plays. Mind the Gap was turned down immediately and brusquely, given that I was an experienced and very well published writer and might at least have expected the courtesy of an explanation. I think it made the editor feel deeply uncomfortable. I certainly hope so. 

What's in a name? Quite a lot as it turns out. 

Precious Literary Letters

My cohort of teachers in our Finnish language school.
I'm the very dark girl with the 'Purdey'' haircut and the red sweater, at the back.
Photo courtesy of fellow teacher, Wladek Cieplinski.

Next week, Lyon and Turnbull in Edinburgh are holding a Rare Books and Manuscript Sale.  Among much else of a vastly rarer nature, (letters signed by Mary Queen of Scots herself, no less!)  they are selling two little bundles of letters written to me in the 1970s. 

Lot 64 is a correspondence from Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Lot 65 is a collection of autograph (i.e. hand-written) letters from George Mackay Brown. Back then, I was a young writer, just starting out on my career, and they were both friends and mentors. The letters were precious to me, and I have kept them for fifty years, but now the time has come to let them go. I began to be afraid that when I'm gone, they would finish up in a skip. Since they are such a reflection of their time and place, an insight into two great poets, I wanted to see them preserved and archived.

The letters from Ian, ten in all, are closely typewritten, often on both sides of his headed paper, and annotated by hand in his own frank, energetic and inimitable style. They talk about various topics, and include observations about his building work at his amazing garden at Little Sparta.  'We have raised the level of our loch and I am building, with great labour, a little island,' he wrote. I had been a fan of his work as soon as I learned about it, and visited the garden. He calls me one of the 'last letter writers' in the world, and perhaps I was. 

I first met George when I spent a summer in Orkney, cycling about, visiting innumerable neolithic passage graves, writing poetry, and spending time with Strathclyde Theatre Group, who were performing there. His correspondence is 'warm, personal and detailed' as Lyon and Turnbull describe it, and has a great deal to say about Orkney life and events there, his friendships and his BBC work - kindly and encouraging for me, gold dust for any scholar.

In 1975, I moved to Finland to teach English as a Foreign Language. You can read about that time in a previous post, here. But it was then that my correspondence with these two Scottish greats dwindled, although George and I exchanged Christmas cards for many years. I simply had too many letters to write. I was sending fat, newsy letters to my parents just about every week (no Facebook Messenger back then) and I was keeping in touch with various university friends who were also travelling, or starting on new and exciting careers. Besides that, I was teaching for long hours, and enjoying it very much, doing my own writing whenever I could, and accepting a great many invitations from my students. I loved Finland and only left because I wasn't really making enough money to carry on living there, and saw no career pathway that I could follow. 

After that, I spent a year in Poland, teaching English at Wroclaw University. By the time I came back to Scotland, my own creative career, writing commissioned drama for BBC Radio, some television and the theatre - as well as writing fiction and working as a community writer for the Arts in Fife - was taking off and absorbing all my time. 

These two bundles of letters are, therefore, two little jewels or precious fossils: a slice of time that will never come again. I even kept the envelopes. I loved my work and I loved my writing back then. Not the struggle to make a decent living (vain hope!) but the sheer pleasure of exploring and communicating, of shaping words and ideas. In these days of creative writing degrees, the constraints imposed by the internet and academic judgments, I sometimes wonder if young writers can ever feel that same intense pleasure in exploration, the freedom of it. I hope so, but I have my doubts. 

I was lucky enough to be mentored by real, practising writers whose work I admired. Whatever else she was doing, the hopeful girl you can see in the picture above, with her 'Purdey haircut'  always wrote unselfconsciously and took immense pleasure in the work. Now, much older, but not a lot wiser, I hope to find a way of rediscovering that joy.

You'll find full details of the forthcoming (18th June) sale at Lyon and Turnbull.

Small Isn't Always Beautiful

Catherine, way back when.

When I was a student, I had a summer job working in a small hotel in Wales. I almost wrote 'spent a summer in Wales' but I didn't spend the whole summer there. I worked there for a few weeks and then chucked it in and came home. 

I don't remember why I chose Wales, but I think it may have had something to do with liking Alan Garner's book The Owl Service so much, even though when I had written Garner a fan letter some years earlier, and innocently? naively? - I was about 12 - mentioned J R R Tolkien, I got a very dusty response. Still, it taught me a lesson about being nice to people who contact me about my own work, and I hope I still am. 

Anyway, it didn't put me off the Owl Service, which I still reread from time to time. But an indirect result was that I spent a miserable few weeks working in Wales. Not that it had anything to do with Wales as a country, which I'm sure is a fine place. 

It was the job.

If you are going to work in hospitality, do not, if you can possibly help it, work in a small hotel. You will work long split shifts, but worse, you will do everything, all the time. There were three or four of us girls, packed into a small, dark, stuffy bedroom, and we were worked into the ground. Worse, the owner shouted at us and sometimes threw a massive tantrum which involved screaming, while tossing pots and pans into the sink, filling it with a hellish mixture of caustic fluids and ordering us to clean them. We changed beds, we cleaned rooms, we cooked, we waited at table, we washed up, we mopped floors, we cleaned toilets, did laundry, we washed windows, we hoovered carpets, we poured drinks, we ran from pillar to post and we had very little free time. Besides that, the dust had triggered my asthma and I was wheezing a lot. 

Friends who have worked in big hotels tell me that although the work is equally hard, the hours equally long, the rooms even more filthy (I gather that the rich are filthiest of all) - you at least do your own job and that's that. In good hotels, there's a lot more organisation, and usually enough staff for the job in hand. Also management tends not to scream at the staff in public, because it upsets the punters. 

Anyway, I came home a bit early. The only thing I got from those weeks was a knowledge of how to make sherry trifle on a grand scale and a compliment from an elderly guest in a wheelchair who, I gather, was a photographer of some distinction, and who stopped me before I left to say that he would have liked to photograph me. I still thought of myself very much as an ugly duckling at that stage, so it stayed with me. 

What I should have learned, and didn't, was that small isn't always as beautiful as you think it might be - and - later -  that the lesson applies as much to publishing as it does to working in hotels. Big publishers have their drawbacks too as I would find to my cost a few years later when I signed with an excellent, reputable, nurturing, medium sized publisher, only for the company to be taken over in mid project by a mega corporation who were after beach bonkbusters and not much else.

Small publishers, like small hotels, can be well meaning, full of ideas and ideals, praised and admired, and they often produce lovely books. At their best, they are hands on and caring. That's the good side. The media will love them. The reading public who, on the whole, don't care who publishes anything, will see elegant swans, gliding along, but not the many wee feet paddling like blazes below the surface, i.e. the writers. And sometimes they'll be drowning.

Small publishers, like small hotels, simply don't have enough time or money or staff, don't have the bandwidth, to make things run smoothly for their writers. Much of the time, you're on your own. They certainly don't have time to do publicity. Or even, sometimes, to send out review copies. Mind you, big publishers don't have the inclination to do publicity for any except the starry, celebrity few - who don't really need it. So there's that. 

The only thing to do is decide what works best for you, but - if it isn't working - don't stick with it. Whatever doesn't kill you, doesn't always make you stronger. Sometimes it breaks you. These days, there are always other options.

Like jacking in a job where the boss is a bully, and hopping on the first train home. 

Thinking about Finland

A huge folder full of my letters from Finland

Many years ago, after my parents died, we cleared their house. Fortunately, we could take our time over the task. We kept what we wanted, gave things away to their and our friends, and sold what we didn't need. Among the things we treasured were several boxes of 'keepsakes'. Some of them had been stored in their loft since I came home from university. 

I didn't settle anywhere for very long, till 1980, when I moved in with Alan, who would become my husband. First I went to Leeds University to do a Postgraduate Masters in Folk Life Studies, but then, instead of looking for museum work (the obvious choice) I did a summer school in teaching English as a Foreign Language and in 1975, I set off for Tampere in Finland, to teach English to adults. This sometimes involved business English, often conversation with groups, occasionally complete beginners (challenging when I didn't speak Finnish!) and quite a lot of one to one sessions. 

A few weeks ago, when I was searching these keepsake boxes for something else altogether, I found a great bundle of letters I had written to my parents, starting with my arrival in Finland in the autumn of 1975. I worked there for two years, but for some reason, my parents had only kept the letters from my first year in Tampere and a few from my return to Finland in autumn 76. 

I spent hours sorting them into date order and reading through them. I was an enthusiastic correspondent back then, and it was clear that mum and dad wrote back, although sadly, all their letters are missing. Sometimes, I would write two or three letters a week, but post them all at once, so some of the envelopes were very fat. I would add little drawings to some of them, to illustrate what I was writing about. 

It makes me a little sad that this kind of correspondence no longer exists for most of us, although I suppose blogs like this one fulfil the same purpose - but without the spontaneity, the immediacy and intimacy. 

It astonished me how many things I didn't remember till reminded by these letters. Memory is very strange and very fluid. I had certain events fixed in my mind, the 'stories' I told myself. But as I read through this long and detailed correspondence, it struck me that over time, I had edited my own memories. Well, some of the correspondence was edited as well, given that I was writing to my parents, but not in quite the same way. Most of it was written in longhand, spontaneously, late at night, and I seldom crossed anything out. 

I was working long hours, having the time of my life (most of us teachers were young, footloose and fancy free) and just loving the country, the people and the landscape. I was writing about it because of course I was also writing my own work: poems, stories, plays and the first draft of a novel. I'm not sure where I found the time, but I did. 

Among the keepsakes was the typescript of a novel which I seem to remember one of my students typing up for me. I had filed it away as 'not very good' but now, I think that judgment came from UK publishing's reluctance at that time to publish anything with a remotely 'foreign' setting. Rereading the first couple of chapters, I reckon it's worth revisiting - a curious little story set in Finland, that I'll probably retype, rework and publish for my own satisfaction. As for the letters - well, I'll type those up as well, immersing myself in that time and place. I may even publish an edited version of them. 

Meanwhile, there's a certain symmetry in the notion that our video game designer son is currently so much at home in Scandinavia. 

Ice Dancing - The Story Behind the Story.

 

Cover image by Michal Piasecki

Of all the books and stories and plays I've ever written, I find myself going back to Ice Dancing again and again. It's a love story, but it also tackles a serious and troubling issue that never seems to go away. When I was describing it for publication, I called it a 'very grown-up love story' and that's certainly what it is. 

When he was young, my son learned to skate, here in Scotland, and then played ice hockey for a number of years. He only stopped because playing hockey 'just for fun' is difficult in this country, and the demands of school work and his other passion at the time - karate - meant that something had to go, and that something was hockey. He enjoyed it very much, but he knew that it was never going to be a career. Later, living and working in Sweden, he went back to it for a while, as the hobby sport he had enjoyed. 

As an adolescent, he had a fine Canadian coach, one who cared about all the kids, whether they were good or not, a coach who commanded the kind of respect that made the parents on the sidelines behave themselves - in short, a model teacher. 

At the same time, we were hearing about other kinds of coaches, in this and in other sports. Coaches who were not at all trustworthy. Coaches who would come to give the sport a bad name. 

The other day, a nice, kind, trusting person of my acquaintance remarked on social media that she would always trust people when they told her who or what they were. Having grown up in a loving and protective family, I used to feel the same. Unfortunately, life taught me, as sooner or later it teaches all of us, that there are people in the world who tell you only what they want you to hear. And then, when they behave badly, manipulate you for their own ends, you find it incredibly difficult to accept the betrayal. It's not nice to feel that you've been deceived. Not at all nice to surrender at least some of your trust in the innate goodness of people. 

I've written about betrayal rather often: sometimes a betrayal of friendship or love, sometimes the terrible betrayal of trust between adults and children. 

Many years ago, having had two successful and well reviewed full length productions at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, I submitted a new play which attempted to tackle this kind of betrayal, only to have it turned down. They were quite within their rights, and it may not even have been a very good play - but I was hurt at the abruptness of the rejection when I had worked so hard for them in the past. 'I hope they nurture this new talent' one distinguished theatre critic had written. Some hopes. 

I felt that I was surely owed a discussion of some kind. Perhaps questions about why I had wanted to tackle this possibly contentious and uncomfortable subject. None of that happened. What happened was that I got a short, abrupt, almost embarrassed note, saying 'not for us.' After which, I was 'ghosted' by someone I had thought of as a friend before ghosting was really a thing. When I look back on it now, I still find something disturbing about the finality of it. It was as though I had committed a terrible faux pas in writing about something unmentionable. 

Year passed, I began to write far more fiction than plays, and eventually I wrote Ice Dancing, set in a small lowland Scottish village - a grown-up love story that was about much more than the central relationship. It was a story that went back to that original play, and its themes, about male athletes in particular and what happened to some of them. 

Even then, no traditional publisher was remotely interested, even though they were publishing some of my other novels. So here it is, under my own imprint, and doing rather well. 

If you're curious, you can get it on Kindle for a bargain price of 99p for a couple of days! 

Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges.

They're here! - the first two books in my Canary Isles trilogy: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. 

As I told you in a previous post, these novels have had a long and chequered past. I first wrote the story - or something like it - many years ago, when I spent two winters with my husband, artist Alan Lees, living in the Canaries. Alan was skippering a charter yacht, a big, beautiful catamaran called Simba.

The first year, I lived aboard the boat and helped take care of our customers. I also got pregnant. By the time we came back the following winter, it was with our six week old son. We borrowed an apartment in Los Cristianos from a friend, while Alan worked, and I spent several blissful months looking after Charlie in a child-friendly place. My parents and then Alan's mum flew down to help. 

But our real love was La Gomera. It was where we had taken our visitors. It was where we went for sweet, clean water for the boat And it was a place we explored ourselves, loving everything about it. It was also where I wrote the first drafts of this story, which would become a radio play and an unsatisfactory novel that was published so badly that my then editor later wrote to me to apologise for the violence they had done to my subtle story of a cross cultural relationship. 

I filed it away under bitter experience, but then, decades later, with my own imprint (Dyrock Publishing) as well as a good many traditionally published books under my belt, I thought I would try again. My two main characters - Luis and Margaret - just wouldn't sit down and shut up. I loved them far too much to let them go. 

A couple of years ago, I published the first part, under the title Orange Blossoms, but quite soon, took it down again, because I still wasn't very happy with it. If you look for the new version, Hera's Orchard, you'll find its previous title in the book description. I did quite a bit of rewriting and editing, although if you are one of the few people who bought and read Orange Blossoms, don't worry. If you want to know what happens next, you can pick up exactly where you left off, and find out what becomes of the marriage, in Bitter Oranges. 

You can also download a freebie of the eBook of Hera's Orchard from 9th - 13th April, so if you want to check out the new version, you'll be able to do that as well. 

Bitter Oranges is the sequel and you'll find it as an eBook or a paperback. 

I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to write about a 'holiday romance gone wrong' or a scammer, or an untrustworthy foreigner, or all the other tropes that seem to crop up again and again in UK fiction and drama. I wanted to write a genuine love story, but more than that, I wanted to write a love story about two people from very different backgrounds. Luis says 'soy un buen hombre' and so he is. Let's face it - love and marriage can be challenging enough, even for good men and women, if they come from very different cultures. If they speak different languages. Languages that perhaps shape their thoughts differently. 

Brexit added yet another horrible layer of complexity and potential trouble, one I certainly didn't foresee when I was writing that first radio play, but one which I had to tackle head on in these new books. 

Does it work out? What do you think? 

Both these lovely covers images are by my talented husband. 

Things You Do When Writing Novels

I bought a Spanish guitar. This Spanish guitar, to be precise. It sounds as beautiful as it looks. Not that I can play it. But for the moment, I'm just admiring it. 

This has been the occasion of some debate among my Facebook and 'real life' friends. 

When I was in my teens, I knew a few chords, and I would often play and sing to please myself. But I can't really play and I know how difficult it is to acquire even a basic level of competence. It's like playing the piano, which I do play reasonably well. I started learning when I was seven, and carried on having lessons when we moved up to Scotland, only stopping when I went off to university at the age of seventeen, by which time I was on Grade Seven and tackling quite challenging pieces.

Much later, our son, then aged seven, had lessons for a year, until we came to a decision that it really wasn't for him, greatly to his relief, I might add! I took over his lesson for a few years. At that point I was the teacher's most senior pupil in terms of experience as well as years, and I thoroughly enjoyed being 'stretched' by her in what I could play. I still play - not half enough, but I do, and I enjoy it. I'm under no illusions about my abilities. There are lots of pieces that are way beyond my technical capabilities (most Chopin, for instance, although I can manage some) as well as pieces that I know I could play a whole lot better if I applied myself. 

But I know enough to know how little I really know - and that's a state profoundly to be desired for anyone embarking on any skill at all, whether it's playing a musical instrument, writing a novel or learning a sport. 

It goes like this. You struggle. Then, you think 'I'm getting the hang of this' and that makes you happy. After which comes a blissful spell of  'look at me, I can really do this' over-confidence. (I often wonder just how many politicians never get beyond that stage.) Then, you fall off a cliff edge and think 'I don't actually know anything about this at all!' 

After which you can really start to progress. All of which is to say that although I'm tempted to re-learn how to play a few chords, I'm never going to learn how to play the guitar properly. At the moment, I'm just looking at it, and touching it from time to time. The case is beautiful too - and that's made in Spain as well. 

I bought it at auction. I was in our local saleroom, hunting for the antique and vintage textiles I list and sell from our Etsy store, the 200 Year Old House. And there it was. The case was closed so I carefully teased it open and gazed at this lovely thing. When I ran my fingers over the strings the sound was mellow and beautiful. It carried me straight into the world of my novel. I told my husband about it and instead of saying 'you don't need a guitar' which would be true, he said 'Try to get it! I love musical instruments!' 

I'm working on a trilogy of novels set largely on the Canary Islands, mainly lovely La Gomera, but partly set in Los Cristianos on Tenerife and partly in Glasgow, of which more in another post. Like many writers, when I'm researching and writing something, I like to surround myself with 'stuff'  relevant to the book - pictures, maps, and even objects that are inspirational. It's a kind of immersion experience and it works for me. Even down to vintage perfumes, which I collect anyway - but right now, I'm favouring Embrujo de Sevilla (the Enchantment of Seville, launched in 1933) and Maja, launched in 1921, both by Myrurgia of Barcelona, both gorgeous old scents. 

Embrujo de Sevilla by Myrurgia

This need for immersion also explains why, years ago, when I was writing a novel called The Physic Garden, set in late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Scotland, I managed to buy a Georgian hand embroidered christening cape at auction - one that proved inspirational, and figured in the finished book. I decided to let it go a few years later, because it had done its work and it was time for it to move on. Like the guitar, it was a thing of great beauty, and I loved writing about it. Most dealers in antiques are well aware that we are only guardians of these old objects for a brief time. But with writing, it's a bit different.

When I'm writing a novel, whether historical or contemporary, I tend to go for immersion in the world of the book. Once you've sent the finished book out into the world, it can be very difficult to let go. It's as though the characters exist. They go on without you, even when you've moved on to something else but it doesn't take much for you to climb back inside that world all over again. Sometimes it can be a visit to an ice hockey game (Ice Dancing) or hearing somebody singing a song by Robert Burns (the Jewel) but sometimes it can be as simple as a spray of spicy, citrussy magical perfume. 

Georgian hand embroidered christening cape.

 

Canary Island Novels - Coming Soon.

 

Miel de Palma from La Gomera

Unusually, I've been neglecting this blog. 

We had a small interruption from Storm Eowyn when we lost all power, including heating, for three chilly days, played a lot of Monopoly and Scrabble by candlelight but eventually had to take refuge in a hotel for one happy night. We stayed in a wonderful old hotel in Ayr called The Chestnuts, and I can recommend it if you're ever looking for somewhere to stay or just to eat. They were beyond welcoming - even putting an extra heater in the room to thaw us out. The bed was incredibly comfortable, the food was fabulous and the staff were kind and helpful. I wish we could have stayed on for a few more nights, but Scottish Power turned up and switched everything on again so we had to go home. 

Anyway, the knock on effect of that was a certain amount of delay with my latest project, which involves the first two novels in what I hope will be a trilogy of books set in the gorgeous Canary Isles, but especially on one of my favourite places of all time - La Gomera. 

There is a long and complicated story to these Canary Island novels, which I'll write about in a later post. We had a couple of blissful winters there when my husband was working as a yacht charter skipper. I've spent the past few months editing the first two books in the series. And then editing them again. And again. Ever more reluctant to let them go.

Essentially, it's the story of a cross-cultural relationship and I suppose one of the other inspirations behind it was my parents' own long and loving marriage. Mum was from a working class Leeds Irish family. Dad was a refugee from an aristocratic landowning Polish family. They met at the dancing in Leeds. And they never ever stopped loving each other. 

Much later, when I wanted to write about this kind of relationship, albeit in quite a different setting, I started on these books. It was a rocky road and it has taken years and several incarnations including a radio play.  Latterly, I think I just couldn't bear to leave the people and the setting, so because I too want to know what happens next, there will have to be a third novel.

In many ways it's a simple love story - but with inevitable complications. 

Anyway, now that the files are off to the designer, they'll be coming out soon as eBooks and paperbacks: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. Watch this space for more about them.

Good friends have just come back from La Gomera, and they brought us a bottle of Miel de Palma - palm honey, which is a sweet syrup produced from the sap of palm trees - and delicious. A very fitting taste of the island where we spent some of the happiest times of our life and where - in some alternate universe - we might still be living. 

 

Tam O' Shanter

Ae Spring, by my husband, Alan Lees

Back in June 1996, BBC R4 broadcast my play on the writing of Tam O' Shanter : the narrative, comic poem by our greatest national poet, Robert Burns. That was back when I was writing plenty of radio drama, and at that time, was lucky enough to work with an international award winning producer/director, the late Hamish Wilson. The play was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of the poet, on 21st July 1796. 

A few days ago, a friend flagged up to me on Facebook that R4 Extra were broadcasting repeats of the production. It's still available online, and will be for the next 25 days, which I'm pleased about since we were in the middle of a prolonged Storm Eowyn powercut at the time! 

I wanted to evoke the older Burns, who seems to have been inspired to write the poem circa 1790, for the second volume of Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. This was when he, his wife Jean and his family were living at Ellisland Farm, not far from Dumfries. The poet was farming and working as an exciseman, all while writing and remaining, by all accounts, a loving father.

I also wanted to look back to the inspiration behind the poem, when a very young Rab spent time in Kirkoswald, not far from his mother's home town of Maybole, learning 'mensuration' or mathematics, but also walking across to the nearby Carrick coast with his friend Willie Niven. It was there that he met Douglas Graham of Shanter Farm, about half a mile from the village of Maidens. Duncan was the model for Tam. He had a formidable wife, and a drinking crony called John Davidson - 'Souter Johnnie', the Kirkoswald shoemaker, whose house you can still visit today.

Essentially, this is a tale of a very drunken Tam setting off home to Shanter Farm after a successful market day in Ayr, riding his 'grey mare Meg'. Increasingly beset by stormy weather and the fear of ghosts and goblins, he is heading for the River Doon, that marks the border between Kyle and Carrick when ...

'glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.—

Drunkenly determined to investigate, Tam advances on the ruins, only to see a dance of witches, 'rigwoodie hags' with the devil himself, Auld Nick, playing the pipes to accompany them. Unfortunately for Tam (or his horse) one of the witches, Nannie, is young and pretty, dancing madly in a very short shift, a 'cutty-sark', leaving little to Tam's imagination. He is so excited that he takes leave of his senses altogether and cries out 'weel done Cutty-sark!' whereupon - as the poet tells us - 'in an instant all was dark.' 

The 'hellish legion' sallies forth to chase him. 'In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'. But witches and warlocks dare not cross running water and 'Maggie' is a noble steed. They 'win the key-stane of the brig' just as the athletic Nannie catches hold of Meg's tail. 

'The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.'

It is a wonderful poem: witty and wise and perfectly structured, with a use of language second to none. I have always loved Burns's poetry and have written a good deal about him and his wife over the years - but I still think this poem is my favourite. 

In writing the play, I was keen to weave in some of the folkloric inspiration behind the poem, stories that the poet would have heard at his mother's knee and that his wife too would have been well aware of during her Mauchline childhood. 

I also wanted to evoke the poem's composition - not in the single inspiration that later commentators invented - but as a creative process. The poet clearly enjoyed himself, and it shows in the perfection and wit of the completed poem. 

The cast included, among various talented Scottish actors, Ayrshire lad Liam Brennan as Rab, Gerda Stevenson with a perfect voice to evoke Jean Armour's 'wood notes wild' - and an appearance by Billy Boyd who went on to play Pippin in The Lord of the Rings. You can hear Liam reading the whole poem, beautifully, at the very end of the play. 

Like all Hamish's productions, it was a happy project. He was skilful, talented, caring and kindly. 

As a postscript to this, you may want to read a little more about Hamish himself. After his death, I wrote a piece about him for this blog, later republished on the Sutton Elms Blog. Sadly the BBC decided that this award winning producer was surplus to requirements and made him redundant. Among much else, he had been a juror and jury chairman in the Prix Italia, Prix Futura Berlin and the Prix Europa - but he wore his distinction lightly. Perhaps too lightly for the BBC that jettisoned him as casually as they have jettisoned so many others over the years - myself included, some years later. My last radio production was in 2007. We were, as somebody pointed out to me much later, 'tainted by experience.' 

It turned out to be a good thing for me. After an initial period of mourning for the radio career I once had, I moved on to many other enjoyable and successful creative projects - and a writing career is always a switchback. Not quite so for Hamish, sadly. I've often thought that if these things had happened just a few years later, he would have been able to go it alone, much as so many writers like myself do nowadays. He was one of the best and I still miss him.

Meanwhile, if you can visit Ellisland, probably the most atmospheric of all the places associated with the poet, don't forget to walk along the River Nith, where the poet walked and remembered his youth and imagined  the first drafts of the tale of Tam o' Shanter. You might like to listen to the play as well! You can find it here for the next three weeks or so: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027csp

River Nith near Ellisland

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Thirteen: Accept That You Are Running a Small Business

 

When I was first starting out on a writing career, I wish that somebody had sat me down and pointed out that I was about to set up a small business. That I was about to be a sole trader and that I had better believe it and act accordingly, rather than imagining myself to be some kind of acolyte, knocking at the doors of literature.

Actually, if I'm honest, they did. Or tried to. I joined the Society of Authors but over the years, they seemed to chicken out of the kind of robust advice they had once offered. Somewhere along the way, I remember booking an advice session with the Cultural Enterprise Office in Glasgow. It still exists, but back then it was proactive and well funded and you could book one to one sessions with people who knew what they were talking about. I also attended a few information days and events with my freelance woodcarver and artist husband, all aimed at prompting us be more businesslike. Although sometimes those sessions consisted of wildly successful people telling us how wildly successful they had been, rather than giving us any concrete advice about how they had done it. 

A few things are preying on my mind as I write this. 

1 I use Amazon a lot, both for shopping - we live in a rural area, and their deliveries are very good - and for publishing eBooks and excellent quality print-on-demand paperbacks. I don't make any fortunes out of the publishing, but Amazon pays me every month, on the nail, with tremendous regularity. They also supply me with data that I can understand. If you've never engaged with a traditional publisher, you will have no idea how rare this is. Hen's teeth doesn't even begin to describe it. 

2 Over the Christmas period, I noticed that most, if not all, of my various Amazon deliveries were accompanied by a small note of some kind. Like this one, from PetShop, the company that supplies me with No Mess Bird Seed, to feed the ravening hordes in my garden:  'Our company was founded with the help of a Prince's Trust loan in 2010.' The letter goes on to describe how one of the founders had moved back home and saw his mother, who had arthritis, struggling to carry pet food. The company aim to supply and deliver pet and wild bird food directly to the customer. And they do, efficiently and at a reasonable price. Another company, supplying my husband's acrylic paint added a cheerful leaflet announcing that they are 'new to Amazon Marketplace' even though they have bricks and mortar stores in the south and are eminently contactable in other ways.

3 Many of my writer friends routinely and very vocally boycott Amazon. Some of them have publishers that sell books on the platform, so I never quite know how they square this with their consciences, but they do. And yes - I'm well aware that most traditional publishers are no fans of the big beast for various valid reasons - but then the whole 'sale or return' set-up that persists for book sales is pretty faulty, wherever they are sold. Most artists and artisans will have discovered by bitter experience that any kind of sale or return deal with a store is a very bad idea. My woodcarver husband once loaned out a hand carved rocking horse to a supposedly reputable shop, only to have it returned with coffee mug stains and scratches all over the stand. On another occasion we had to execute a 'sting' to recover a large rocking horse from a store that we had been reliably informed was about to go bust, taking £3000 worth of his hard work with it. These are extreme examples, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that businesses don't value what they haven't paid for.

As far as Amazon is concerned, the animus is mostly to do with corporation taxes, avoided (but not evaded) by the giant, but many of my colleagues seem unaware that Amazon hosts thousands of small businesses, (2 million small and medium enterprises at the last count) many of which would not survive without the efficiency of the site underpinning their sales. And these days, most UK SMEs, hit hard by Brexit and the near impossibility of selling to the EU without incurring spiralling costs, need all the help that they can get.

These are small businesses that submit tax returns and pay their taxes. 

If you think Amazon itself (as opposed to those selling on the platform) should pay more taxes, lobby your MP.  And bear in mind that if you are aiming to publish and sell your creative work in any way, you are also running a small business. Act accordingly. Look out for yourself. Don't fall for the sob stories.

I should add that I wish I had followed my own advice years ago. But then, years ago, the option to self publish didn't exist as it does now, in various forms. I only wish it had.

Poor, Dear, Unfortunate Jean.

 

 

It has been brought to my attention that the National Trust for Scotland is holding a Jean Armour Supper in Burns Cottage on 24th January. Presumably in case potential attendees are otherwise engaged on the Bard's actual birthday on the 25th. Tickets are £100 a pop, so it's only for 'those and such as those' as the locals would say. 

Back in 2016, I researched, wrote and published what was generally accepted to be the definitive book about Jean Armour, albeit in novel form  - The Jewel. It's still available, both in paperback and as an eBook, which you will find here. Until then, she had been a mere footnote in the life of the poet. In the historical note to my novel, I point out that 'too many Victorian scholars seem to have been content to maintain the fiction that in marrying Jean, a reasonably prosperous stonemason's daughter, the poet was somehow marrying beneath him.'  Catherine Carson went so far as to call her an 'unfeeling heifer'.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. 

The poet called her his muse, in this loveliest of songs - O Were I On Parnassus Hill - one that another poet would later dismiss as a 'strained and vapid lyric.' He should be so lucky as to have somebody write such splendid words about him. 

In spite of living some eight miles away from Burns Cottage, in spite of the fact that the Burns Museum sold my books, and I had actually done a talk for them - admittedly on a different subject - last year, I found out about the event only when it popped up on my FB feed and when a few people asked if I would be there. If there were invitations, one of them wasn't for me. But perhaps it's just as well. 

Here's the publicity for the event. Can you spot the problem? 

It’s time the ladies had their own supper! Celebrate the life, love, and legacy of Robert Burns through the eyes of his muse, Jean Armour.

So it's not about Jean at all, is it? It's about the life, love and legacy of her famous husband with Jean as an also-ran. A 'ladies' addendum to Burns night. Because we can't possibly celebrate this fine woman in her own right, can we?

Back when the book was first published, I attended a particularly wonderful Jean Armour Supper. It was held in Troon's Lochgreen Hotel, it was organised by the Ayrshire Business Women, and the only men in the room were the waiters. I toasted the Immortal Memory of Jean. It still stands out as one of the high points of my working life, one of the most enjoyable events I've ever participated in. 

I sometimes wonder if my big mistake was in writing Jean's story as a piece of fiction. Well, I don't regret it, because I am first and foremost a novelist, and I wanted to get inside her head. But I'm a historian as well, and everything in the novel either did happen or could have happened. Mostly the former. A little while ago, I found myself chatting to somebody on Facebook who had been doing some research on his family's own connection with Jean. Much of what he was saying was what I had discovered as well. When I innocently asked him if he had read my book, his reply was 'LOL no!' 

I'm still not sure what was so funny about the notion of reading a well researched, glowingly reviewed book, fiction or not, about the very topic you're researching.

All this is on my mind because, among other things, I'm currently working on a play about Jean, one that will involve dramatising parts of my own book. There's a definite likelihood of a production. And perhaps we can make it a celebration of Jean herself, without placing her firmly in the long shadow cast by her husband. Who after their marriage, and even though he had once called her his 'poor, dear, unfortunate Jean', always gave her her due. 

'Then come, sweet Muse, inspire my lay! 

For a' the lee-lang simmer's day, 

I couldna sing, I couldna say, 

How much, how dear, I love thee.'

Ellisland near Dumfries, where Jean is properly celebrated.