Team Harry

 

I enjoyed this book. It's extremely well ghost-written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist J. R. Moehringer, and it shows. 

I'm not much of a royalist. Think it would be better if we had the kind of low key monarchy that you find in other parts of Europe, instead of ours with all its pomp and circumstance and hangers on. But the thought of an elected President Johnson is discouraging. 

All the same, I have a great deal of sympathy for Harry and his wife. I know the royals are immensely privileged but the price for this young man, at least, seems to have been just too much to bear. I am, of course, pretty much alone in this among my friends. Even - or perhaps especially - among the dyed-in-the-wool royalists, who will never read the book. 

Meghan had a raw deal from the media. It's not hard to find the evidence, if you look for it. Everything from the crazy comparisons between Meghan and her saintly sister-in-law to the exploitation of her rather vulnerable father. But even I, approaching this story with a certain amount of sympathy, didn't realise the full extent of the press intrusion on Harry, from the day of his birth, through the death of his mother, to the present day. Comparisons with other members of the family make no sense when it comes to the 'spare' - Diana's son.  Privacy is an impossibility when the press are determined to hunt you down. Even in the army, (where among other things he learned to fly a helicopter in record time) the media found him, casually and deliberately exposed his presence, and carelessly put those serving with him at risk. 

There was and remains no way in which this couple and their children could ever maintain the kind of low, private profile that people keep telling me should have been their aim. Maybe it should, but the media simply won't allow it. Therefore, the only option is to come out fighting. It may not be advisable. But it's all too human. 

This is the story of a sweet natured boy, who lost his mother in an appalling and public way at a young age and who has been unable to properly process that bereavement. Who has never been allowed to process that bereavement. Whose every adolescent and young adult error has been picked over by the world's press and is resurrected at every opportunity. No saint, no demon, no fool either. If a dysfunctional family is one where 'there's no open space to express your thoughts and feelings freely' then the Royals certainly are dysfunctional, and Harry has seldom been allowed any space at all. 

Incidentally, and inexplicably, his father and his brother seem to persist in calling him Harold, when his name is Henry. As in God for Harry, etc, etc. That Henry. So why? It doesn't sound much like a pet name, an affectionate family nickname. The only Harold that springs to mind for an oldie like me (and, presumably, Charles too) is young Steptoe, stymied at every turn by a demanding father. 

We're on Team Harry in this house.

Read the book. You might just find it enlightening.  

Ben Hur - At Last!

It's taken the BBC a very long time to get this out on audio but here it is at last. My dramatisation of Ben Hur was - almost unbelievably - made back in 1995. If not exactly a cast of thousands, it has a big, brilliant and very starry list of actors. Where else can you hear Sam West, Jamie Glover, Michael Hordern, Freddie Jones, Michael Gambon, Phyllis Calvert and many more, in one space, with specially composed music as well? 

They really don't make them like that any more. 

Alas, the great producers I worked with back then: Glyn Dearman, Marilyn Imrie, Hamish Wilson, are all gone and soon after that production, I found that my face no longer fit as far as radio was concerned. I had younger producers who wanted to work with me, but no proposal was ever accepted. At first, I would say, 'well you can put it forward if you like, but I fear you'll be wasting your time' and I was usually right. Eventually, I realised that, after more than a hundred hours of produced radio drama, the time had come to move on, so I did. It was hard as far as income was concerned, but very good for me as far as work was concerned, because it made me focus on theatre, but more importantly, on fiction and non-fiction writing, with some success. 

Besides, the great days of radio drama were ending, and I don't think they'll ever come back. Big productions of the classics, such as Ben Hur, Kidnapped and Catriona, The Bride of Lammermoor, Treasure Island, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, all of which I dramatised back then, could still be made and disseminated on audio,  but I don't think the budgets to pay writers, actors, skilled technicians and producers are there. Besides,  I suspect many of the unique radio skills of producers, sound engineers, radio actors (it's a very special talent) and dramatists have been lost. Which is a pity. 

Ben Hur was made at the old BBC studios in Maida Vale. Glyn had approached me to see if I would be prepared to do it and I'd jumped at the chance. It was a more demanding project than I'd thought it would be, not least because the original novel, while a wonderful story, was written in a sort of archaic pseudo biblical English and had a plot with significant holes in it. Holes that had to be filled, without damaging that fine story. Back then (unlike, say, the recent Great Expectations dramatisation) while recognising that we were working in a different medium, with its own demands, we did respect the original text as far as we could. So just as in my dramatisation of Kidnapped, we really had to find a way to make David climb that perilous tower at the House of Shaws, we couldn't possibly do Ben Hur without the chariot race. Even on radio. You cheat listener expectations of well loved stories at your peril.

I think we managed it, mostly down to some fine acting and directing, but an equally brilliant sound picture from Wilfredo Acosta. I remember that when I was deep into writing that scene, my PC crashed, and I had to do it all over again. I type so fast that back then, I routinely caused the computer to throw a wobbly. Doesn't happen now, thank goodness.

Working with such stars presented its own set of problems and challenges too. With a big radio drama project like this, you don't record in sequence. Often, actors will have other commitments that the producer has to work around, so scenes from different parts of the production will be recorded on the same day. I often thought that the production assistant had the most difficult and unenviable job of the lot, co-ordinating all this. She must have had  nightmares about getting to the end of a production only to find that a key scene with, say, Michael Gambon, had been missed out! 

Glyn Dearman was a pleasure to work with. Ben Hur stands out in my memory as one of the highlights of my radio career and that was, I think, largely down to his eccentric and charming personality, his ability to make difficult things seem easy, his extraordinary talent. 

They don't make them like him any more either. 

 David Rintoul and Paul Young in my and the late Marilyn Imrie's dramatisation of Kidnapped 

Here Be Dragons? - Writing About Poland

 

First things first. My Polish historical saga The Amber Heart is free on Amazon Kindle for three days only, from Wednesday 29th - Friday 31st March. If you haven't read it, now's the time! It's available to buy in paperback too, if you prefer to read in that format. 

Given that my new non-fiction book The Last Lancer was published a month ago, the response to it has been quite low key here in the UK. So far, I've done a detailed interview for Emma Cox for her excellent Journeys into Genealogy podcast. You can read my short guest blog about the process, with links to the podcast here. You can listen to the whole podcast from the links at the bottom of that piece  - especially useful if you plan to research your own family history in Central and Eastern Europe. I'll also be doing a session at the Boswell Book Festival in May, alongside a Ukrainian refugee, of which more later.

Perhaps predictably, the most enthusiastic responses have been from my fellow Poles. Two friends brought flowers and chocolates. A lovely Polish writer friend spread the word - and copies of the book. I sent copies to Poland and elsewhere, to the friends and relatives who had helped with my research. Not the easiest process in the world since Brexit. 

Early days, of course. But I suppose it's inevitable that my Polish friends will 'get it' in the way that many of my UK friends perhaps never will, even when they enjoy the book. Or as Polish Leftists more robustly wrote, on Facebook, at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - 'you will never understand us and how the experiences of multiple occupations shaped our societies and how that historical experience is present in our every day conversations and in our system of values.'

I fear that many of my UK friends might find the time and place I've tried to evoke in the Last Lancer just too foreign. Hic sunt dracones. Here be dragons. I had the same problem many years ago, when I first wrote the Amber Heart. 'Loved it, couldn't stop reading it, wept buckets' said potential publishers, among much else that was positive. 'But ... Poland?'

I thought times might have changed and maybe they have. We'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, if you've read The Last Lancer or The Amber Heart and enjoyed it - do please leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere, even a short one. Once we've done the hard work, good reviews are our lifeblood. 

A Nice New Kindle

 

Here's my nice new Kindle in its nice new case. A fairly bog standard Paperwhite. 

This is my fourth e-reader to date. The first was even more bog standard - an early Kindle - but did sterling service. The second broke down but Amazon replaced it immediately. The third one has lasted for some six years of constant use. It was used for several hours every day, it was routinely dropped on the floor when I fell asleep while reading. It got lost among the bedcovers. It is a well travelled Kindle. But alas its time had come. 

It is still working. Just rather slowly as befits its age. And crashing a bit too much. And developing strange foibles. (I sympathise. Me too.) 

The case was in worse condition than the Kindle. We'd find odd bits of pink plastic in the bed. 

Anyway, I was attached to it, and postponed replacing it till - having been paid for some work - I thought the time had definitely come to find a new one. 

If you have an Amazon account, and buy your Kindle from Amazon, it is the easiest thing in the world to set it up. In fact my only problem was with our 200 year old house, with its immensely thick walls, and trying to set it up in in a part of the house where it wasn't picking up the hub properly.  As soon a I moved downstairs it worked like clockwork. Or better than clockwork, let's face it.

I love books. Have a room full of them, and overspill on shelves in the other rooms too.

But I love my Kindle even more. It goes without saying that the availability of books is wonderful - but I love the way I can dim the light a little, if I want to read in the early hours without disturbing my husband. Or change the font size.  I love the way it switches itself off when I fall asleep (even if it is tangled in the bedclothes.) But remembers my place for me. I love the way it is slim and simple and reasonably light, and allows me to take a whole library away with me when I'm travelling. 

Of course I can read on my phone and on my laptop if I want to and I sometimes do. But nothing beats my Kindle for ease of use. And no - I'm not being paid to write this! 

A Salutary Experience.

 

My latest non-fiction book, The Last Lancer, was published by Saraband, here in the UK, a couple of weeks ago. It's something of a companion volume to my previous book A Proper Person to be Detained, (the paperback is on special offer on Amazon right now) about the Leeds Irish side of my family, and the mystery of a murder in the family on Christmas Day, 1881. 

The other side of the family, the Polish side, was much more exotic, but even more tragic. I'd planned to write about it for many years, collecting material along the way. Fortunately I'd asked my father (that's him on the cover, with the goat) to write down what he remembered of his childhood on the family estate in rural Eastern Poland, a part of the world that is now Ukraine, all the borders having shifted. I'd done a lot more research since his early death in 1995. His anniversary is on 20th March, so he's very much on my mind as I write this. I researched and wrote in earnest during Lockdown. Then, last February, with the book almost completed and about to be submitted to my publisher, Russia invaded Ukraine. And the book suddenly became much more relevant in the saddest possible way. 

Our local branch of Waterstones in Ayr had very kindly hosted launches of my previous Saraband titles over many years. They had been joyful experiences, well attended, (local author and all that) and the shop had sold a lot of books.  Some of those attending had bought two or three copies as gifts for family members. However, since this year I've been invited to speak at the Boswell Book Festival, at Dumfries House in May, we thought that we might 'launch' Lancer at that event - for which Waterstones supplies books. All the same, because people have been asking me about copies, I'd assumed, in my innocence, that my local store would at least have a few in stock. 

Yesterday, finding myself on the High Street and doing my bit for bricks and mortar, I went into the shop, and had a brief look around. No sign of the Last Lancer. So I approached the young man absorbed in his computer behind the counter and asked - very politely - if they were going to be stocking my book. I had a handy copy in my bag. I may have waved it at him in friendly fashion. 

He glanced up at me and said 'Is this Boswell?' 

It seemed an odd response and I was a little taken aback, but I soldiered on. 'Well yes. I'm doing Boswell in May this year. But I wondered if you were going to be stocking any copies before then.' 

He shook his head.  'No. Just for the festival.' He glanced down at his screen. 'I could order you a copy if you like,' he said helpfully. 

I declined his kind offer. I have plenty of copies, ordered from my publisher's distributor. I've been sending them out to those who inspired the book or helped with the research and to a few close friends. That very morning, I'd received a beautiful postcard of thanks from one of my literary heroes, Neal Ascherson, whose novel The Death of the Fronsac had been an invaluable source of information. 

In fact I've been clinging to that postcard like Jack clinging to Rose's floating door, as evidence that I'm not some elderly imposter. 

Still processing the young man's 'just short of rude' response to me, I asked for a copy of HAGS by Victoria Smith - a book that has been widely praised and publicised across social media. This morning, Victoria was on BBC R4, speaking about it. I'd had a look for it while I was hunting for The Last Lancer, and hadn't seen it. 

'We should have it,' he said. 

As far as I could see, they had a single copy. We found it tucked into a corner, spine rather than striking front cover facing out, low down on the New Non-Fiction shelves. I bought it. 

Reflecting on this experience in the sleepless early hours of the morning, it struck me that there could be no better illustration of the thesis of this excellent book. I wasn't looking for recognition. Just a certain amount of interest and engagement. I hadn't become invisible. I had been all too visible, but as an older woman, I was utterly negligible. Or to quote from the introduction to HAGS 'You're still an object. You've just changed in status from painting or sculpture to, say, a hat stand.' 

Reader, I was that hat stand. 

By the way. You can find The Last Lancer, eBook and Paperback here. And if you'd like to read my novel on a very similar theme, you could try The Amber Heart also as an eBook or Paperback.

You could also buy HAGS while you're at it. I can recommend it. 

A Tragic Anniversary

 

I'm reblogging this on my own blog, from my publisher's website. You can read more about my new book  here. 

As the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, I find myself thinking about a remote family member, one I rediscovered when I was researching The Last Lancer. Jerzy, living in Lviv with his wife, was no longer young. He was the son of my grandfather’s stepfather Jan, by his second marriage, After my great grandmother Anna died, her second husband remarried. Complicated relationships.

When I began to write The Last Lancer in earnest, and dug out the mass of research I had done over many years, I found an old letter from Jerzy, hand written in Polish. It had arrived during a time of family illness and bereavement, when I had temporarily shelved my research. I had never had it translated but had filed it away and – unforgivably – forgotten about it. In any case, there was no return address, no internet searches back then, no way of finding out where he lived.

Then, early in Covid lockdown, a Polish friend translated it for me and pointed out that this lovely man had once known my grandfather, when he himself was a child. My grandfather, Wladyslaw, the Last Lancer of my book, a kindly young father at that time, had given him lifts in his fancy Chrysler Open Top Tourer, to the village where his family lived, something that he still remembered all those years later. Jerzy had been so fond of Wladyslaw that he had named his own son after him.

A few years later, my grandfather had found himself in a Russian prison, followed by a Gulag and then, in 1942, trekking east after Stalin changed sides, had died, probably of amoebic dysentry, at the age of 38. He is buried near Bukhara on the Silk Road. Jerzy and his family had spent many years in a Gulag too, which explained why he had married and had his own children rather late. His had been a life interrupted. LinkedIn miraculously allowed me to get in touch with his daughter, and she said that her father, in his nineties and rather frail, was nevertheless excited at the thought of writing to me about that side of our family history and seeing if he still had any photographs and documents.

Very soon after that, Putin made his move.

With two young children herself, Jerzy’s daughter fled to Poland, where she had already spent time working, but her parents refused to move. Russian invasion, occupation and extreme brutality had disrupted Jerzy’s life once before and he wasn’t going to allow it to happen again. We seize whatever agency we can in such situations. Soon after Christmas 2022, his daughter messaged me to say that he had died. Peacefully in the end. He should have been able to get palliative care, except that the hospitals, even in Lviv, are full of wounded soldiers, so he had to make do without.

I find myself occasionally having to fend off over-confident pronouncements from friends here in the west who think they understand the realities of occupation. They don’t. Frankly, I don’t either. But I know more than they do. And when anyone tries to tell me what Ukraine should and shouldn’t do in these circumstances, I find myself thinking of this man, with his fine, ordinary, precious, cheerful life interrupted yet again by the deluded dreams of a dictator. There is no excuse, no possible justification for a foreign regime to inflict such horrors on the innocent and there never will be.

Bad Advice, Good Advice

 

A few years ago, it struck me that I had probably been given more bad than good advice about writing over the years, all of it from well-meaning 'experts'. I've been known to hand out quite a bit of writing advice myself over the years and sometimes I find myself thinking 'have I done more harm than good?' and not being at all sure of the answer. Although when I have commented on a piece of writing, I do tend to do so with a huge proviso that nobody should ever take anyone's else's opinion as gospel. Not ever. 

One of the most worrying aspects of my time spent as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, at the University of the West of Scotland, where my job was to help students with their academic writing, always came when that academic writing involved some aspect of creative writing. I vividly remember telling one student that she needed to take her script away and 'play with it'. 

She looked horrified. 'But we can't play with it,' she said. 'We have to get it right!' 

How could I possibly explain to her that most professional writers spend hours, days, weeks 'playing' with an idea, trying to find out if it's viable, trying to find out what works and what doesn't. And more to the point, why were her lecturers telling her that there was any one way of 'getting it right'. Bad advice indeed. 

Bad advice I've been given over the years? 

Don't turn this radio play into a stage play. (It was crying out to be turned into a stage play.)

Nobody is interested in the supernatural. (You're kidding me, right?) 

This is a library novel fit only for housewives. Bin it. (You can read that novel here. I still get messages from people telling me how much they like it - but perhaps they're housewives!) 

Listen to your script editor. They have your best interests at heart.  (Some do, some definitely don't. The trick is knowing the difference.) 

Don't self publish. Nobody will ever read it. 

We don't have any development money in the budget. (There is, in fact, a budget. They just decided not to pay the writer.) 

Best advice I've been given over the years? Two gems that have never lost their power to inspire.

Stop watering your Dylan Thomas adjectives and watching them grow 

The only way to learn how to write is to write. And read. A lot.

Which leads me to the unexpectedly worst possible advice I've had. I used to believe it. Hell, I've probably said it myself to emerging writers. 

Write about what you know about.

That way, boredom and madness lies. I know there is some truth in it. If you're writing about - for example - Scotland, it helps to know a bit about the country. If you're setting your novel or story in an unfamiliar city, you'd better find out what you can about it. If your feisty 18th century heroine is doing things that no 18th century woman would ever do, or knowing things that she would never know, you might need to have a rethink. 

But for heaven's sake, don't be afraid to use your imagination. Stretch it. Make some leaps into the dark and see where you land. Even when I was routinely telling people to write about what they knew about, I would always qualify it with 'but you know more than you think.' Not only that, but you can find out almost anything.

Use that knowledge in a million imaginative ways. That's what writers do. 

An Uncanny Image

Even though words are my business, I find it very hard to describe my feelings when I first saw this small animation of one of the few pictures of my grandfather in existence. 

My dad brought this tiny head and shoulders image with him when, at the end of the war, he ended up in a Polish resettlement camp at Duncombe Park, near Helmsley in Yorkshire.  This is the grandfather I never knew, the person I wanted to know more about, the man I occasionally fantasised might turn up on our doorstep in the Leeds of my childhood. 

He never did, of course. He was long gone by that time, another of Stalin's victims. But one of my reasons for writing The Last Lancer was to try to find out more about him, to get to know this person my father had loved so much. 

Then a friend posted a vivid animated picture of one of her handsome forebears online and thanks to her, I realised that My Heritage would allow me to do the same thing to this image of Wladyslaw Czerkawski.

I uploaded the picture, clicked and waited. 

My grandfather looked out at me and smiled. It is movement, however small, that brings people to life. 

It was the strangest and most spooky feeling. Not in a bad way. I knew that he was a kindly man. Had always known it. He had his flaws and faults, of course, but he was a man whom many people loved and so do I.

My heart still aches when I recollect what happened to him. But I feel a little closer to him now. 

   

Luminate - What Went Wrong?

 

Back in October 2017, I remember becoming aware of a Scottish Festival of Creative Ageing, organised under the umbrella of an organisation called Luminate. You can still have a look at the brochure online. I went to one of the 2017 events: a Creative Ageing Day in Ayr Town Hall. 

It was described as 'A fun, explorative event which aims to generate some genuinely creative thinking through a range of hands-on workshops, performances, talks and screenings of short films. There will also be a marketplace to promote local opportunities for creative learning, arts and cultural activities.' 

It certainly was a fun day, most notably because it seemed to involve mostly older people doing their own creative thing. By themselves, for themselves, with plenty of enthusiasm and skill.

A glance through the brochure for the whole festival shows a variety of excellent events run by all kinds of groups throughout Scotland. There was Irvine Community Art Club, 'a group of retired people who share a passion for art.' There was traditional jazz, a life affirming drama about a son accompanying his elderly father on a trip back to India, and an inter-generational photography project. There was an event called Celebrate National Grandparents Day by taking part (with your grandchildren) in a workshop run by an experienced traditional carpenter. This included 'A chance to use axes, draw knives and chisels in an appropriate and safe manner to make a small piece to take home.' There were tapestry and other craft workshops for adults and children or grandchildren, a workshop on Muriel Spark, something called Thrawn Craws, a Murder of Writers aged between 40 and 80, committed to writing for older actors. ('We invite you to join us as we present important stories about the many facets of love in contemporary Scotland.') There were dance classes for the over 60s and Prime, an over-60s semi-professional company presented a series of bespoke two minute solos, created by top Scottish choreographers for individual company members. 

The whole programme was full of interesting, exciting, entertaining events with the aim of showing that older people are already wise and creative, and that when you provide opportunities and mix up the generations, without patronising, something wonderful can happen. 

Then have a look at this. 

Do you spot the difference? The way in which the whole venture has become didactic (Creativity for carers, anyone?) rather than exciting and inspirational. 

What went wrong? How, in five short years, could something that was so vibrant, so interesting, and so positive become a project almost wholly aimed at facilitating (they're very fond of that word) younger creatives to teach us poor oldies how to be creative in our dotage. The creative practitioner as a sort of cut price social worker promoting our 'wellbeing' (another buzz word) whether we want it or not.

Why and how did this happen? Was it a political decision? If so, it was a bad one. The creative arts are always worth engaging with, in and for themselves, not as some kind of short cut to 'mental health'. 

All I know is that something that started out full of life and vibrancy, seems to have become stodgy, pedestrian and faintly patronizing. 'Let's find something for the poor old folks to do' and 'let's train our young creatives to facilitate them.'

Am I alone in finding this profoundly depressing? Especially compared with how it all began? 

Happy New Year - and another of my (very occasional) writing tips ...

 

My grandfather, Wladyslaw Czerkawski: the last lancer himself.

OK, I have a new book coming out in late February 2023. You can read more about it on Barnes and Noble's website here. It will be available as they say in 'all good bookshops' and on Amazon too. 

This means that issues of publicity and promotion are, dear reader, very much on my mind. Because these days, even traditionally published writers have to do a significant amount of promotion themselves. It isn't so very different from being self published in that respect, and I've done both. 

I've begun to share links to the book like the one above. Begun to talk about it as a real thing, rather than the difficult project I've been wrestling with for years. It has become exciting rather than harrowing - and it was harrowing and moving to research and write, even though I loved doing it. 

But something else occurred to me when I was taking stock of my social media profiles and use, early in the New Year. Facebook is as good an example as any. I still like Facebook, still use it to connect with old and new friends including a few friends I've known and loved since we were very young. I also use it to connect with other writers, to find out what they're working on, how they're going about it, and what's new in their creative world. I sometimes find myself straying into (perhaps unwise) political discussions on there, but mostly, it's just good to chat. Good to see people's photographs and artworks too.

Except that there are some people - and I hate to say this, but they do tend to be men - who only ever interact on FB when they have a book of their own to promote. They will not so much as bestow a small 'like' on anyone else's news, professional or personal, never mind go to the immense effort of making a comment. They are clearly only there for the promotional opportunity. It's a bit like those experiences we've all had where you've just started talking to somebody at a party and you can see their gaze already moving to the middle distance in case somebody more interesting hoves into view. 

So here's a marketing tip. By all means promote your books on social media, talk about your books, tell us about your trials and triumphs. We love to read these. But in return you have to show just a wee bit of interest in other people, their trials and triumphs too. 

It isn't too much to ask, is it? 

The People of the Black Foot and Other Curiosities

 

When you start to research a piece of writing - in my case new fiction  - you can find yourself following strange threads that lead you back in time to something unexpected. As happened to me last week.

I love research. My first degree was in Mediaeval Studies, and then I did a Masters in Folk Life Studies. Everything I learned then still informs the things I write. But the problem is knowing when to stop. You enter a labyrinth and you may never find your way out again.

Some years ago, when I was researching and writing my novel about Robert Burns's wife,  Jean Armour, The Jewel, I came across the notion of a 'go between' - somebody whose job it was to arrange the courtship and marriage between two young people. Here in Ayrshire, at the time of Burns, that person was colloquially called a 'black fit' or black foot. And no matter where I looked or who I asked, I could find no very convincing etymology for the term. It was definitely in use. To quote my own book: 'A black fit was somebody, often an older woman or man, whose help might be enlisted to carry messages back and forth between lovers. ... Sometimes a black fit was needed where parental disapproval might be a bar to meeting. Sometimes it simply meant that a respectable person would act as match-maker within a small and curious community, easing the means of two young people getting to know each other.'

In my novel, Rab and Jean use the services of an older woman called Katy Govan as their 'black fit' to facilitate their courtship - as indeed it's believed they did. 

Back in 2020, in the middle of lockdown, I wrote several posts about the history of this part of South  Ayrshire or Carrick. You can find the first one here - A Little Bit of Ancient Carrick History   and the second one, on Place Names and Clan Names.   There are two more and you'll find links to them in each post.

But now, I think I may have drawn the wrong conclusions about the 'tribe' who lived in this part of Carrick, the people who may have had dark, curly hair. Because somewhere among my reading over the past few weeks, I came across another reference to the 'tribe with black feet' in Kirkmichael. And this time the writer suggested that they may have been so called because they were people who wore hand made hide brogues, with the dark 'hairy' side facing out. Making them distinctive. It seems odd, but possible. Especially when you realise that nearby Maybole  has a long tradition of boot and shoe making, extending right into the 20th century!

At the same time, another historian pointed out that the Celtic 'tribe of the black feet' were the 'kindred' - the Galloway and southern Ayrshire clan - who would later become the all powerful Kennedies, one of whose prerogatives was to organise marital alliances between various members of this huge extended family. So maybe you would go to the 'black fit', aka your Kennedy chief or kenkynol of your muinntir or household, if you wanted to arrange a wedding!

Following the threads of this research, I also came across a wonderfully haunting song called Oran Bagraith, which is judged to be the earliest known example of the Galloway language, (other than place name evidence which is much older and prolific) - a  mixture of Gaelic and Brittonic, with some words that nobody can translate. But it certainly belongs here, containing references to various local place names and to the people of the black foot. You can read about it on this site and listen to the song here.   The song is a 'song of defiance' and may have been composed as a lament for the 2nd Earl of Cassilis, Gilbert Kennedy, who was murdered in Prestwick in 1527 by Hugh Campbell, Sheriff of Ayr. 

'Wrapt up in the folk of the black foot

in their agriculture and grazing

in the genealogy of the folk of the wolf

well mounted diamain* warriors

They would be salmon fishing in Lochinvar

They would be deer hunting in Carsphairn

They would be badger hunting in Glen Shamrock 

They would be feasting in Dalry'  

NB This is St John's Town of Dalry and Glen Shimmerock is a few miles to the North East of that town. *Diamain seems to have some Gaelic correspondence with Scots Gaelic Diobhain  This paper is interesting, but essentially only if you're already a Gaelic or Welsh speaker. If anyone can tell me what diobhain actually means, I'd be grateful! 

So there you go. No conclusions, but lots of questions. Galloway had plenty of MacLellans who were the 'folk of the wolf'. But the Kennedies were the 'black feet' and maybe these early Kennedies spoke a unique Galloway language with words and grammar that seemed to belong partly to Gaelic and partly to some form of Brittonic. Wikipedia will tell you that these people were 'erroneously' called Picts. But more recently scholars have recognised that some carved stones in Galloway certainly have what seem like Pictish symbols. 

Mystery upon mystery. 

Of course I'm writing fiction now, so I have a bit of leeway. But the facts and speculation underpinning all this are fascinating. 

A Bad Year for Trees and Other Stories

 

Just in time for Christmas, A Bad Year for Trees would make a good stocking filler for anyone who likes short stories. Almost all of them have been published before, anthologised by other people or even broadcast on Radio 4. 

I've been meaning to collect them together for a long time. At the moment, I have a new non-fiction book, the Last Lancer, going through the Saraband publishing process, I also have some ideas for a brand new project simmering away. Assembling this little retrospective has proved to be a pleasant distraction, especially allowing me to look back at what inspired these stories. 

I think they epitomise something I was told by an (ex) agent. 'Your work is too well written to be popular, but too popular to be really literary,' she said. My bad. 

All the same, it makes them readable! Let me know what you think. 

It's available as an eBook, and now in paperback. I've written other stories, over the years, but these are the ones that I believe have stood the test of time. 

The paperback was published with the invaluable help of Duncan Lockerbie at Lumphanan Press  

It Never Rains: Innocent Times, Beautiful Song, Beautiful Performance

Me, in Wuthering Heights mode, with the lovely Andy 

The other week, I was driving along with BBC R2 playing in the background. My husband is addicted to the Popmaster Quiz, although he seldom gets more than three points. Neither do I, unless it's something from the late sixties or seventies. I don't often have Radio 2 on in the car but suddenly, Ken Bruce played this song, and I was transported back to my very early twenties, just finished university, with - theoretically anyway - the world at my feet. Anything seemed possible.

It was a very happy time. I was about to go off to work in Finland for a couple of years and this song, although in reality it's a rueful song about broken dreams, took me right back to that time and that feeling, as some songs do. Especially Albert Hammond's songs.

I suspect this video is from Top of the Pops or something like it. Look at the dancing girls, slightly shy, slightly awkward, aware of the cameras. These were more innocent times, but also dangerous times, mostly because of that very innocence. You can't watch this genuinely lovely performance without remembering that the programme - and the company - had also played host to one of the worst sexual predators the world has seen: Jimmy Saville of evil memory. 

Nevertheless, there's something happy about this unfussy performance, from the clever lyrics to the gentle way the singer engages with the youthful audience that makes you recall the best of that time. 

Watching it, I looked at the young girls dancing and thought back to myself at that age. The pressures on young women to conform to some hyper-sexualised image were there, but they were certainly fewer. Look at their not-terribly-glamorous clothes, look at the make-up or lack of it, look at their hair. We loved clothes and shopping and make-up just as much as girls do now, although most of us couldn't afford to spend too much on them. I remember wearing a long regency style Marks and Spencer's nightdress to a party, a party at which an older woman observed disapprovingly that some young women were wearing nightdresses at parties ...

 I was, however, lucky enough to have a mum who was a talented seamstress - her sisters had worked in tailoring - and she made me fashionable clothes from Vogue Paris Original patterns: a midi dress, a Jean Muir dress, a Doctor Zhivago coat in black wool, with fur around neck and cuffs. But nobody was posting endlessly doctored selfies online, few young women thought they needed plastic surgery to conform to some impossible standard of femininity, and magazines weren't posting pictures of female celebrities and slagging them off for looking anything but perfect. If we were bullied (as I was, mercilessly, in my early teens, moving to Scotland from England) we could at least escape once school was over, retreating into our own little bubble, with music for company. 

I've always had a soft spot for Hammond who is - incredibly - 78 now. Born in Gibraltar, a British national, he is one of our greatest singer songwriters and so often, when you love a song, you'll discover that he wrote it. Songs like Nothing's Gonna Stop Us, and 99 Miles From LA and Moonlight Lady. He's not always as appreciated as he should be, but then prophets have no honour in their own lands and all that. 

Nevertheless, thanks for playing It Never Rains, Ken. I could (and quite often do) listen to it over and over again. 

Oh Duolingo! What Have You Done?

 

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

I can't remember exactly when I started learning Spanish on Duolingo but back in May of this year, I had been doing it for more than 1000 days (or a 'streak' in Duolingo's terms). I loved it and told a lot of people about it. I was usually on the site for between two and three hours a week. 

I allowed my streak to lapse when we spent a week in Barcelona, and sitting on the hotel balcony with a glass of wine, watching and listening to the world go by, in between visiting some of the city's wonderful architecture and restaurants, outranked the need to keep up or compete. Besides, I was practising my Spanish every day, albeit with limited success. And being intrigued by Catalan too. Making that leap from exercises on a screen, not just to speaking, but to understanding what native speakers are saying, is always a hurdle for language learners. Still, I managed a fair bit, including asking for and understanding simple directions, buying things in shops, ordering in restaurants and so on. When we came back, I took up where I had left off, albeit with a much reduced 'streak' - but with a reinforced enthusiasm for the language and for the app too.

I hadn't ever subscribed, so I was bombarded with adverts, but some of them proved to be quite useful - and developers have to be paid. Since you can do more than one language simultaneously, I had taken the opportunity to refresh my much more competent French. Duolingo used to have blocks of stories, and as you progressed, there would be exercises associated with them, so that you could do some writing of your own. The fact that I found this much easier to do in French than in Spanish was an indication of where I was 'at' in both languages. And the sad thing is that I had begun - via much repetition and practice - to be able to write paragraphs in Spanish as well. I was about to sign up to the paid version.

Then, suddenly and without warning, Duolingo changed the entire structure of the app, the entire way in which you learn. 

There used to be a learning 'tree' through which you could progress but also go back to repeat certain parts till they were drummed into your head. I've taught English as a foreign language and the only way you know you're becoming reasonably fluent is when the right phrase or sentence pops straight into your mind. Now, the Duolingo site is a long tail of pretty anonymous exercises, and for those who have been using the site for a long time, when confronted with it, you have no idea where you are. To be scrupulously fair, there are 'guidebook' sections that are useful. But only when you can tie them in to where you were and where you are now. Initially, the stories (which I loved) seemed to have disappeared altogether, but now I find that they're scattered along this never-ending tail so you can't access the more advanced and more entertaining ones. It may be for years and it may be forever, as the song goes. Not for me. 

The app was very much 'gamified' - no bad thing in language learning, since it keeps you engaged - but now the points (aka rewards) system has been pruned to within an inch of its life. Making mistakes is penalised by directing users towards in-game purchases. The paid version is probably better in this respect, but I'm told that the penalties are still harsh.

I hate it.

I've tried. But every time I go back to it, determined to try an exercise, I get so bored by it that I can't finish even one. It sends me to sleep. And all for five points. Who would? 

For a while, although the PC version had changed, I had the old app on my phone, but then that changed to the hideous new version too. So far, the CEO is holding firm. But complaints are legion. 

I've thought about this a lot over the past couple of weeks, because losing Duolingo has been like losing a friendship and I've wondered why so many users like me are so incandescent. I had huge affection for the app and its cast of characters. Especially Eddy. I'd invested a huge amount of time and energy. Now, it's gone. 

Nobody likes change. I've thought about the unwelcome changes that have been imposed on users over the years by, for example, Facebook. No doubt they too lost people. And presumably, that's what the CEO of Duolingo was and still is thinking. 'They'll get used to it.' 

But these changes on social media sites stopped short of the catastrophic destruction of the central premise. So we got used to them. By contrast, Duolingo seems to have taken the decision to destroy a palace and complacently erect an expensive hovel. It no longer allows us to do what we want to do. For a great many users, it is no longer fit for purpose. (It remains to be seen whether Twitter will weather its own storm, but I'm having doubts there too, and for much the same reasons.) 

If I had paid for Duolingo, I'd be demanding a refund.  I haven't deleted it yet, because I'm holding out a faint hope that sense may prevail, but I'm not holding my breath either. Meanwhile, I've signed up to Babbel. Plenty of other language learning apps are available. Good luck in finding one that suits you. 

Brits and Kids and Queues

In case you're wondering, that's me in the picture, back in 1986, about 6 or 7 months pregnant. We were filming my TV drama, Shadow of the Stone, on the Clyde, and you can see my 'bump'. You can still watch the serial as well, but that's a story for another day.

I was reminded of this when I recently followed a thread on Mumsnet. Some unfortunate mum had been queueing to check in for a flight, with a three month old baby, and mistakenly thought she could jump the queue. Not only did she get dog's abuse from other people, but the vast majority of mumsnetters agreed with the abusers, vociferously.

Following some of the thread (not much - I couldn't stand the holier-than-thou tone of it), I found myself thinking 'Brits and kids and queues. Nothing changes.'

When our son was born in November of that same year, my husband was still working as a yacht skipper, first on a beautiful catamaran called Simba and then on a couple of other big yachts: Clyde boats, mostly based in the Canaries. The baby, all grown up now, loves Spain, working in Barcelona for several years and revisiting it as often as he can. He speaks fairly fluent Spanish too. It's quite uncanny.

I had a harrowing time during his birth in Scotland, and felt ill for a long time afterwards. My chief memory of that time is pain and fatigue, combined with the joy of the new baby. And breastfeeding, successfully, but also being told that if I wanted to 'do that', maybe I would like to do it in the Ladies. Would you like to have your lunch in the loo? 

When our son was six weeks old, we flew south to Los Cristianos on Tenerife. We borrowed an apartment from friends, Alan was intermittently skippering charter yachts, and both my parents and Alan's mum flew down to spend time with me, and help out with the baby. All in all, it was a blissfully happy time. 

On board Simba

One of the main reasons why it was so blissfully happy was the genuine affection that the Canarians had for babies and children. On our first night, we took the baby in his pram down to a local restaurant It was a warm night - by Scottish standards, anyway - so we took an outside table and sat down. The proprietor came rushing out - 'no, no - you can't keep the bebe out here in the cold!' Inside, she rushed about moving tables so that we could enjoy our meal with the baby contentedly slumbering beside us. 

Over the months that followed, we realised just how relaxing it can be to have a child in a child-friendly country. Babies were welcome everywhere. I fed him everywhere too. You could leave the pram outside a supermercado while you did some shopping and come out to find a small group of teenage boys, intent on amusing the little nino. My parents decided that we needed a baby bath, and described how a kindly man in the hardware store had insisted on practically emptying his loft to get exactly the right bath (in his opinion) for them. Everyone from young, handsome waiters to elderly ladies in black played with the baby, distracted him if he seemed fractious, and generally made everything so much easier than it might have been. 

A few years later, back in the UK, a young Catalan friend came to stay with us to improve his English, and was incandescent with rage at a sign outside a restaurant saying 'children welcome'! 'But are children not welcome everywhere?' he demanded. 'Why not?'

I thought the UK might have changed for the better over the years. In this one respect anyway, because everything else seems to have got so much worse. And it's true that - for example - in Scotland, it is an offence to try to stop a mother from breastfeeding in public. 

But oh, those Mumsnet comments! 

God help you if you're in the UK and you try to jump the queue with a baby. 

Alan, his mum, and the baby at Candelaria

            

Bird of Passage: my Wuthering Heights inspired novel on special offer.

      

Cover art by Alan Lees

My novel Bird of Passage will be on special offer at 99p for the Kindle eBook version, for a whole week, from late on 14th October to the 21st October. If you haven't already read it, do grab a bargain. If you'd prefer the paperback, you'll find that here (at full price, I'm afraid, but it's a nicely produced book and a long one!) 

After all, what else can you do at this miserable time of year, with the country's economy crumbling around us, but bury yourself in a book? I plan to do the same thing, but I'll be writing something new as well.

Over all the years of my writing career, and even though I've been happily published by Saraband  for some time now, with my new non-fiction book, The Last Lancer, due to be published in 2023, there were two or three fairly early novels that I always thought of as the 'ones that got away'. 

Until I took the decision to publish it myself, it had always been my orphan child, the book that a few people read and enjoyed, but that nobody in the industry wanted. Unlike The Amber Heart, that kept being turned down with fulsome praise, because 'nobody is interested in Poland', which seemed in theory at least to be a credible marketing decision back in the 1980s, no agent or publisher would even read Bird of Passage, in spite of its Scottish setting and Irish background, and in spite of the fact that it tackles some harrowing issues that are still very much current. In short, it was turned down unseen. I should add that I can't blame my current publisher for this. There is only so much work that an individual independent publisher can deal with and had Saraband seen it earlier, they might well have taken it. But by the time they became 'my' publisher, there was more work ready to go, more work I wanted to write specifically for them. Writing careers are tricky like that. 

In the case of Bird of Passage, back when I was still sending out submissions, I suspect the kiss of death as far as agents and publishers alike were concerned, was the Wuthering Heights connection. Later, I wondered if I should have been so up-front about it. Perhaps I should never have mentioned it. But surely they would have noticed the faint parallels? Or maybe not. 

Anyway, in all my innocence, I gave the game away. And that was the rock I perished on. No matter how much I was at pains to say that this wasn't a rewriting of the incomparable original, (how would I dare?) but was a kind of homage to it, nobody in my industry believed me enough to read it and see for themselves. 

Wuthering Heights was my late mother’s favourite novel. I was a Yorkshire lass, although one with a rich Polish and (like Emily) a rich Irish heritage as well. We lived in Leeds until I was twelve years old. You can read more about my family background in a book called A Proper Person to be Detained (Saraband 2019), part personal memoir, part family history. I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, a doubtful compliment some might say, and I was trundled over the moors in my push-chair to Top Withens, the setting for the Heights in the novel, if not for the house itself. As soon as I was old enough to read and begin to understand the novel, I fell in love with it, although I soon realised that it was a powerful and absorbing evocation of a cruelly obsessive love, with very little of romance about it. Since then, I have reread it almost every year, and have found more to marvel at with every reading. 

I'm not alone. I know plenty of people who are similarly obsessed with Wuthering Heights. And here we are again, with a new film, Emily, in cinemas from tomorrow ... 

 

But to return to Bird of Passage. Cue forward some years, and after a spell of writing for the stage, I began to focus almost wholly on fiction, with occasional ventures into non-fiction. Although most of my work since then has been beautifully published by Saraband, I still kept going back to Bird of Passage. Most writers have ‘bottom drawer’ novels: the books that you write before you are published. I have several, and most of them should never see the light of day. 

Like the Amber Heart, Bird of Passage always felt different. Felt like irritatingly unfinished business. I kept going back to it. Tinkering. Leaving it alone. Thinking about it. It haunted my dreams. It was as though these characters wanted desperately to tell their story. Back then, I still had an agent, but I had other work waiting for submission, and Bird of Passage languished on the far recesses of my PC. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody had the time to read it. Nobody cared except me. 

All the same, I couldn't get Finn and Kirsty out of my mind, so when I took the decision to combine some self publishing with my traditional publishing, this was one of three novels that I felt deserved another life beyond the confines of my computer and my own imagination. That was when I tackled it in a big way, with all the benefit that so much experience of writing and editing can bring. Suddenly, I knew exactly how I wanted it to be, exactly how the story should be told. When it was finally published, one of my reviewers wrote that it is a 'reimagining' of Wuthering Heights at a different time and in a different place. It is a good way of describing it, and that is perhaps as close as it gets to Emily's masterpiece.

The cover, designed by my artist husband, is exactly what I wanted, and seems to reflect the story as accurately as possible. It's a grown up story set mostly in the Scottish countryside, exploring the kind of mutual passion that is attractive in theory but ultimately destructive. It's a novel about the nature of obsessive love and the terrible, irreparable damage of childhood trauma.

If you love Wuthering Heights (or even if you don't) and if this sounds like your kind of novel, why not give it a try? 

Why Are So Many British Christian Churches So Embarrassed by the Reality of the Crucifixion?

The Execution by Alan Lees

    
My husband, artist Alan Lees, painted the above picture several years ago. Not because he is especially religious, and not because anyone had commissioned it. But just because he wanted to do it. He titled it The Execution. It is a striking and disturbing image of Christ on the Cross, a sacrificial victim amid a sea of less-than-kindly human faces. It is painted in acrylics on canvas board, it has a hand-made driftwood frame, and it is a very large and dramatic piece of work. It is also, in the opinion of many people who have seen it, strikingly beautiful as well as disturbing. 

We can't even give it away. 

For a while, we tried to sell it online from our Etsy store or from Alan's studio. He doesn't make a fortune (few artists do) but the images trickle out - sometimes wonderful originals and sometimes good quality giclee prints.

Lots of people admired it and one or two very much wanted to own it, but decided regretfully that it was just too large for their small houses. We had always thought that it would be more suitable for a church or some kind of religious foundation. I listed and promoted it online, here, there and everywhere, but nothing happened. 

Years passed. Alan has quite a large studio, but nevertheless, this picture dominates it and we knew that sooner or later, it was going to have to go. 

Eventually he decided that, given the subject matter, he would give it away, preferably to a church or religious foundation. Free to a good home. All they would need to do would be to arrange transport or some kind of courier. It's large and heavy, but it would fit into the back of a big hatchback or small van. 

I publicised this offer. Nothing happened. From time to time, I would try yet another church or religious foundation, including one for which Alan had carved a couple of beautiful statues to commission. Thanks, but no thanks, they said. 

Every year, I donate one or two of my signed books to the big Christian Aid sale in Edinburgh. I asked the organiser if she might know of anyone who might like to have it. She kindly said that she would consult 'the bishop'. The bishop seems to have been noncommital. How would they transport it the 70 odd miles between here and Edinburgh? Far too difficult. 

We tried churches, monasteries, salerooms. Nobody showed even the faintest interest. Rather, they seemed embarrassed by the suggestion that they might want to own this image. We even offered it as a fundraiser, but that was met with blank incomprehension.

 

A disturbing image with a beautiful frame.

Given this utter indifference, Alan's first thought was that he would make a bonfire of it, but it seems a shame and besides, the frame is lovely.

With the bonfire idea abandoned, Alan eventually decided that he couldn't waste the canvas and frame, and so he decided that he was going to have to paint over it. The picture would still be there. But there would be something else on top of it.

He hasn't done it yet, but the deadline is getting closer - two or three weeks away. He's already working on sketches for the new picture.

Two things have happened in the meantime. 

Somebody has confirmed our original thought that the picture would perhaps find a better home somewhere like Spain or Italy or Poland - in fact any country, worldwide, with a strong Roman Catholic or other Christian tradition. But there is a huge gap between acknowledging this truth and placing the image before anyone who might wish to acquire it for their church or monastery. Anyone with the authority to make the arrangements. And the problem of transport becomes a bit more difficult (and expensive) than a journey of 70 miles in the back of a car. That would be the responsibility of anyone who wants the gift of the picture, but it seems to be an expense too far.

The second thing that happened was that a friend who had admired the picture pointed out a truth that had occurred to both of us, without being fully acknowledged, because it is uncomfortable. The response to this image from so many allegedly Christian organisations has involved a weird mixture of revulsion and embarrassment at this depiction of the grim reality of crucifixion. And yet, without that sacrifice, what's the point? What is the point of positive images of redemption without some perception of the events, the sacrifice, the dreadful reality of the execution leading up to it? 

Why have so many wishy washy British churches - not to put too fine a point on it - so comprehensively lost the plot? 

If you are genuinely interested in finding a home for this picture somewhere in Europe or elsewhere, don't hesitate to contact us via this blog or through Alan's website.  But the window of time available is small now. And we've had time wasters before. It's still free to a good home, but you will have to arrange packaging, uplift and transport from south west Scotland at a definite time - and have a setting worthy of it. That's all we ask. 

Can you help? 

The Amber Heart eBook - Special Offer

 

The Amber Heart, my big Polish love story/saga/historical romance, however you like to label it, is free as an eBook on Kindle, just for a few days - 2nd, 3rd, 4th October. There's a nice fat paperback too, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay for that! 

Interestingly enough, my new non-fiction book, the Last Lancer, due to be published by Saraband in spring 2023, is the true story of my Polish grandfather, his family, his milieu and his forebears in Poland and Ukraine. Parts of it are even stranger and sadder than fiction. 

You Don't Need to Pay to Write

Lidl has lovely notebooks

I was troubled, recently, to see somebody posting online that she couldn't afford to pay for creative writing courses and retreats. The person in question seemed to have swallowed the myth that it isn't possible to write without them. 

I'm here to tell you that this is not true. 

If you want a recommendation for a 'how to' book, you should buy Stephen King's excellent On Writing, more memoir than instruction manual. The advice he gives is both simple and cheering. Read a lot, write a lot and avoid 'workshops' like the plague. 

I've written since I was a child, beginning with poetry, moving on to plays and short stories, and now all kinds of fiction and non-fiction. None of it has ever paid very well, and therein lies a problem. 

The numbers of writers who can earn a living from their fiction has become vanishingly small. This is why so many of us teach the thing we know most about - creative writing. For many writers tutoring classes and retreats is the only thing to keep what Robert Burns called the 'poortith cauld' - cold poverty - away from the door. They can be useful and helpful, no doubt about it.

But that doesn't mean any of them are compulsory.

'The only way to learn how to write is to write,' a novelist told me, when I was first starting out. So I did. 

You could, if you lack confidence, find a local writing group: one where you can receive encouragement or pointers or inspiration. These are usually much less expensive than the big professional courses. Joining a book group might be an even cheaper alternative, where you'll read and discuss books with other people, and gain an awareness of why some books are more popular than others and whether that matters, and what kind of  books you like best.

But don't let anyone fool you that you have to be able to pay to do courses or retreats or classes to learn how to write. If you don't have access to a computer, join a library, and buy yourself a big fat notebook and some pens. (Lidl has great, cheap notebooks. So does T K Maxx.) 

That is really all you need to get started. Give yourself permission to play around with words and ideas. Don't feel that you have to 'get it right'. Just enjoy yourself. Worry about all the rest of it later. 

Rest in Peace

Holyrood Garden Party

Some years ago - all unexpectedly - we were invited to the Royal Garden Party at Holyrood.  Well, my artist husband, Alan Lees, was. I was his plus one. You're not allowed to take photographs, but later on, Alan painted the above image from memory. It sold very quickly. He thought it was definitely a minority interest but I suspect somebody who had been there on that day recognised themselves. 

We had no idea what to expect, but it was a wonderful experience, from the ultra polite police checking passports and invitations at the gates, to the fabulous food, including little cakes with crowns on them. And plenty of fizz. The dresses were a sight to behold. As were the Royal Company of Archers, (much in evidence today at Holyrood) some of them in outfits that looked, and probably were, more antique than their owners. The gardens were beautiful, the sun shone, and everyone seemed full of good humour. 

The Queen must have been well into her eighties, but she negotiated the stairs down to the garden with ease. We were informed by the numerous helpful attendants that Her Majesty would go to one side of the garden and Prince Philip to the other, so we could choose who we wanted to 'see'. It quickly became obvious that the vast majority of us wanted to see the Queen. Philip must have been well used to it by that time. We were there with friends, none of us rabid monarchists, but not rabid republicans either, and we glanced at each other, slightly bemused by the fact that we were enchanted by the whole thing.

The Queen was in a particularly beautiful shade of peacock blue. I always admired her for the fabulous colours of her outfits, and this one was even more vibrant in real life. She stood out like a wee jewel, a lesson for all older ladies who favour the appalling beige. (And no, Eddie Izzard, she didn't look like a man at all.) She was tiny, although the kilted man in the picture, one of the people who was presented to her, was even smaller. It was clear that certain people had been singled out to speak to her. Not us, somewhat to my relief, although we were close enough to see and hear. She spent a full five minutes chatting animatedly to a young woman and her mum, and when she moved on, all they could say to us was, 'She was so nice! And she knew all about us!' 

There were, of course, attendants to jog her memory about the multitude of people she spoke to that day. But all the same, it was quite a feat for a woman in her eighties. Or for anyone. Such is the power of the office, and such - now that I think about it - was the power of a woman who has been a fixture for most of us, for most of our lives, that we could do nothing but admire her. 

News of her death made me teary in a way I wouldn't have expected. But it also brought very vividly to my mind an old BBC TV 'Castaway' documentary about artist Julie Brook. She was spending some months living in an old bothy on the uninhabited island of Mingulay. She was, as far as I remember, working with the landscape, but also painting, magnificently, the vertiginous cliffs of the island. I envied her those months of solitude and dedication. 

She told a story of how one day, she saw the Royal Yacht approaching and, as she went for her usual walk, a solitary security officer asked her if she could perhaps avoid that particular beach for a few hours. The royals were having a picnic. Later, she was painting, when she heard somebody at the gate. It was the Queen, standing there with a bunch of wild flowers in her hand, politely asking if she could see some of her work. Her overwhelming impression, the artist remarked, was just how happy and relaxed Elizabeth looked, as they chatted about her art and her stay on the island. But what a bizarre experience it was too. Dreaming about the Queen is a recognised phenomenon and not one that is exclusively experienced by dyed-in-the-wool royalists. Afterwards, the artist found herself fleetingly wondering if it had been a dream. 

We shall not see the Queen's like again. Above all, she was a role model for so many women born into a world where many of us were perceived to be second class citizens. I have no problem in pausing for a while to think about her with respect.