Losing my Nerve and Feeling Melancholy

So I'm taking a break from being an agony aunt for a while. I get to be the moany one, and you guys get to rub my back and tell me it'll be alright. I have the first three chapters of my novel ready to send off. It's sitting on my desk with my CV and coverletter, waiting to be sent to an agent who's curently accepting new submissions. I've spent countless hours poring over the pages, making both major and minor adjustments. I almost know all 100+ pages by heart, I think it's ready. The other God-knows-how-many-pages are mooching around my hard drive, waiting for that special attention that will make it a completed book. My profs at uni have seen it and think it's great. They gave me a first for it for goodness sake. I've had one agent look at it, and even though it's not even the sort of thing she takes on, she's said that she can definately see it doing well if I send it off to a more relevant agent. Sounds great right? Except I don't feel so great. I'm shit scared. What if I don't get a deal? But worse...what if I do? I've always been a private/shy writer. I hardly ever show any work to anyone, so you can see that there's a massive dichotomy there. How do I become the published writer I want to be, and remain able to keep all my work to myself? That's like eating my cheesecake and having it, right?


Maybe I could use a pen name. You know, make up a name for myself. But then I can't, because that would make mockery of Mummy and Daddy and Grandpa C and Grandma O and all the other literary/artistic/creative people in my family. What would all their hard work mean if I just discredited it by attributing my work, on recognition, to names that bear no relation to theirs? In case you haven't noticed, I hold legacy and family values in very high esteem.


Another problem. If I used a pen name, I'd feel like an incredible fraud. I'd feel like I never really wrote any of it, that I found an old manuscript somewhere written by this other anonymos person with the strange name and tried to pass it off as mine. A pen name wouldn't match up with the name on my phone bill, my bank account, my passport - it wouldn't be congruent with the name I've written carefully on every text book and exercise book throughout my school career. It would have no context and no history. The work wouldn't be something I created so I wouldn't be able to take ownership of it.


So I can't use a pen name, you see. But I still don't want to show my work to anyone. Why the hell can't I have my cake and eat it. I don't like this grown up world where you have to rationalise things and make concessions for your ambitions. I feel like throwing the mother of all tantrums and perhaps I will. Then when I'm done, I'll suck it up, stick on some massive sunshades so that no one will see me, then go and post the damn thing. (This is the part where frustration with myself is directed at the work itself).


On the flipside, I have the book launch all planned - the guest list, the venue, the concept, everything, and I can assure you it's FABULOUS. I even know what I'm going to wear and how the photos of the event look. I have a whole marketing plan for the book mapped out. I know what the competition prizes will be. I've had long, stimulating conversations with the people at the book signings. Told you I'm a weirdo.


Jeez, oh man, I have problems!

Terror on Tuesday Morning!

Images from Google Images

Early on Tuesday morning I was at the airport, seeing my sister off. Online check in made it such that we didn’t have to queue for hours and hours, so after baggage drop off, we went in search of something to eat. We ended up in Café Italia (or something – it was too early to be fully conscious) and had very nice croissants and teas.

So it came time to say goodbye. I was struggling not to cry, being the pathetic cry baby that I am. Just to delay the final moment a bit longer, we went to the loo. Funny how even at that time of the morning, you still have to queue for the women’s loos…I swear, we spend to much time in there, it’s embarrassing. Anyhow, while I was standing there thinking of how I really shouldn’t give in and cry, this woman walked out of one of the cubicles. I recognised her uniform to be a Wetherspoons one.

To my near heart attack shock, she walked out of the cubicle, after I had heard various forms of scraping and groaning, and just sauntered out of the bathroom. SHE DIDN’T WASH HER HANDS!!! Oh my goodness, I was instantly awake. I thought I would faint. I thought of all the meals I’d eaten at various Wetherspoons pubs, and all the future meals I was likely to have there, and then I felt sick because clearly, they could very well have been handled by an urban savage who doesn’t know that it’s UNACCEPTABLE not to wash your hands after you’ve been to the loo.

You don’t expect that I swallowed my shock did you? As soon as I had finished (and washed my hands twice to make up for her lack of personal hygiene) I marched straight into the Wetherspoons and reported her to her manager. I also reported her to the bathroom cleaning lady who tut-tutted. I was being stroppy, you say? I beg to differ. There are very few things more disgusting/repulsive/unforgivable/offensive/torture-worthy than a fully grown woman who has poor standards of hygiene. Eww. I feel sick just recounting this. This is how it went:

Me: Err, hi, are you the manager?
Manager: That’s me!
Me: Hi, sorry, this is going to sound weird, but I was just in the bathroom, and one of your staff – that lady wiping tables over there – she didn’t wash her hands when she finished in there.
Manager: Well I can safely tell you that the first thing she did when she got behind the bar was wash her hands; it’s part of our staff policy to wash hands as soon as we get behind the bar.
Me: That’s fair enough, I appreciate that, but you have to understand that for your customers, it doesn’t inspire confidence in your company to see such poor standards of personal hygiene from the staff of a food serving establishment. I’m now having convulsions thinking of the number of times I could have been served a pint or a steak or a chocolate cake by someone who went to the loo, amid gurgly noises, and didn’t wash her hands…I feel defiled!
Manager: Yeah, I understand, but she definitely washed her hands.
Me: Well, I just thought you should know.
Manager: Thanks, I’ll still speak to her about it, though.
Me: Thanks!

And I left. Guess who’s not going to Wetherspoons anytime soon? One because, I’ve been to Wetherspoons countless times, and the staff don’t always wash their hands once they get behind the bar, whatever the company thinks its policy is. I’d know if they did; it’s the sort of thing I notice. Two, because last time my sister and I had their breakfast, the eggs were flaming orange and I’m now inclined to think (in retrospect) it’s because they were contaminated. So what makes this time any different? Why should I believe that she washed her hands when she got behind the bar. After all, the poor manager had to say that, it was his get out of jail free card.

Notice to people out there – if I catch you being a dirty urban savage, I will report you! You can’t poison the rest of us who enjoy eating out, just because you can’t be bothered to do the right thing. And rinsing your finger tips under a cold tap isn’t enough either. You need to WASH those hands under a HOT tap with SOAP! And then you have to hold your hands up and not touch anything, like surgeons when they’re scrubbing in for surgery. Any questions on how to do this can be answered by watching a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy or any other medical dramas. Parents, please teach your kids these things, or else, they’ll be judged for being lax and germ-ridden.

Uuuuugh. I am so grossed out. I shall stop typing now because I feel myself getting meaner and more disparaging….Maybe I’ll put together an alternative guide to dining in London. It’ll be called Where Not to Eat Because You Are Likely To Get Popped Off By Malicious Pathogens, and the list will be the names of restaurants where I’ve spied on the staff and discovered their appalling habits. Any establishment that doesn’t appear on the list, people will know it’s safe to eat at (for the time being, at least, or until I catch them trying to kill off their clientele with toilet bacteria). Good idea, don’t you think?

On Books That Challenge You

I was in a bit of a reading rut, recently. You know when that happens, it's like you can't concentrate, you really want to read but you're intensely bored etc. So anyway, I started reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (thanks Uncle Geoff!) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and have now finished both. It's unforgivable to descend to banal platitudes when talking about great books and literature, but oh my God! They were amazing. Please drop whatever you're doing, scrape together your last pennies and go out and buy these books. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I'm proud to announce has made it onto the Booker Longlist. I haven't read Gifted by Nikita lalwani yet, which is the other Penguin title on the list so I'm not sure exactly which one I'll be rooting for, but it will definately be one of those. I know The Grumpy Old Bookman isn't overly enamoured of these literary prizes, and neither was I for a while, but I really feel Hamid's book deserves some major recognition.


Anyway, back to Kingsolver and Hamid. I think what I enjoyed most about their books is that they've done something different with first person narration. The prose was beautiful but not contrived, poetic without being ridiculous. Kingsolver narrated the story of the undoing of an American Baptist family in the Belgian Congo, by giving each of her characters their own unique voice with which to tell their story. The overall effect was of sitting round a table at some family's reconciliation meeting, getting their different perspectives on what they went through. Because each of them used their own lingo, and explained their thoughts and feelings, we got valuable insights into the character's motivations, which as I've mentioned before, is very important.


Hamid's book appealed to me simply because I have a particular fondness for eavesdropping on stranger's conversations. I love sitting on the bus, in a restaurant, on a plane listening to what the people around me are talking about, how they're saying it and guessing at why they're saying it to whom they're saying it to. (You don't get to judge me, by the way!) So we see Changez, the protagonist sitting at dinner with someone, telling him about his life in America, how came to fall out of love with the country, or possibly, how the country fell out of love with him. It felt like I was sitting at the table next to them, listening. The setting is Lahore, the two are eating dinner, but at the same time, it's New York, because the stories of his youth (which he's telling) transport us back there with confidence, mastery, and a little bit of nostalgia. It's a brilliant twist at the end, when the talk turns to secret plots and conspiracies, that the unnamed dinner guest pops off Changez. Everything is implied of course, it's all very poetically done, but I felt awed and excited at the end at how it all worked together.


Another theme that ran through both books, was the concept of 'otherness' in societies; what constitutes it, what perpetuates it, whether it can be overcome, and if so, how. The Price family kids in The Poisinwood Bible were set apart from their peers at school because they were labelled the preacher's kids. In Kilanga, in the Belgian Congo, they were set apart because they were the only white family for miles around. The local people of Kilanga and the Prices found each other equally strange until they learnt to identify common factors in culture: love, respect, generosity, patience, and use those to guide their relationship. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez was one of a few non-white students in his class at Princeton. When he was headhunted by the valuation company Underwood Sam, there was him from Pakistan, and Wainwright, from Jamaica, both trying to navigate the balance between who they were as proud young men from elsewhere, and how that fitted into the cosmos of work life, New York, and America after September 11.


Both books, without making a song and dance about it, tackle what it means to be a stranger in societies other than one's own, how extended abscence from one's place of birth and prolonged residence as a foreigner changes one's perspectives, and by default, allocates psychological/emotional energy to seeking out exactly who one is, what one believes and why. In the light of how the world is today, the Global Village, for lack of a better term, things like this are worth thinking about, and not just in a token, flippant way.


On that note, I'd like ot hear what you all think about issues to do with diaspora, otherness, and culture, in whatever form they occur. Also, what role do you see books/literature/creative arts playing in such issues? Should they tackle those issues full on, as a stated premise, or should it be done more subtley?

Rosbif

Here's the very humble beginning of a short story. This is hugely experimental for me in every way. 1) I never share work 2) Especially not on the internet and 3) This is the first time I'm attempting to use a male protagonist. So on that note, while you lot clap and cheer me on, this is it, provisionally called Rosbif:



If this were one of his films, Russ would instruct his camera man to treat the lady with procedural filmic respect; the kind where they view her from down up. From her ankles, up along a long thigh, to her neatly nipped waist, to her proverbially heaving bosom, to the base of her throat, to archly pursed lips, to the large wateriness of her eyes, oh! And this is why he was shocked. Because her clean little feet, coaxed into those brown wedge sandals, contrasting delightfully with the metal leg of the chair she had them wound around, did not prepare Russ in anyway, to reach the top of the shot, and find at the end of his visual appreciation, she was nothing but an urban savage. The red of her nails, the red of the meat, red flashed in the eyes of a gouging beast…

He retched onto the floor.

There’s nothing more repulsive than the sight of a woman eating meat.

*

‘You alright there, sir?’

Blink. ‘Yes, thanks. Quite alright. Just fine, thank you. Thank you.’

The waiter hesitated. The eye of his manager was upon him. Customer service, customer service, ringa-ringa-rosied around his psychology like the proceedings of a ritual and prevented him from jumping out of his skin. Vomit, eugh! ‘Are you sure, sir? I’ll just get you a glass of water while I get something to clean that up.’

Russ watched the waiter leave, and concentrated on the departing sound of creaking shoes. Then, on the approaching sound of cumbersome, chaffing thighs. He found it more productive, given the circumstances, not to dwell on the fact that he was the afternoon’s spectacle. People would go home and say, ‘So I was in this lovely little bistro in Russell Square today and this dude went and lost it all over the floor…’

Consider words like Disgusting, Revolting, Gross, Pathetic. It occurred to Russ; that people might speak those words later on in the day and remember his face, his favourite jeans, the sight of his elbows towering high in the sky as he rested his palms on his thighs and the revolt of his stomach shot the projectile toward the ground.

And in all the commotion that he was determined not to take any notice of, the scarlet woman sat there staring at him. Just impudently looking on, while she masticated her meat and scribbled in her notepad, like she was on celestial business. That word, that filthy word, surely, must have been coined with unsavoury connotations in mind. He stared back down at the floor, contemplating the offerings of his gut. It would serve her right, Russ thought, if he scooped them up with his side plate and novelly conditioned her hair.

***

And there you have it folks. That's most of what I've got for this one so far. Bear in mind that it hasn't been edited or worked on - this is th rough deal. I have a few other ideas, but thy need a bit of mulling over. Feedback and constructive criticism are very welcome, as are any questions/guesses on where you think the story might be going...