Trendy But Casual

Make It Mine*

Oh yes. The Scudder Road Circus has been back in Italy for a sunny, wintry break. What were we doing there? Maybe it was a bit of a buying trip:

I can't say anything more than that. These days I have internet stalkers, apparently, who monitor this blog to track my movements and - perhaps - assemble a case (or two) against me. Why? I guess when you have a circus, a lot of people want in. My advice: start your own circus.

For Tikileaks operatives, here is some potentially useful evidence of my ongoing commitment to eating and drinking while in a foreign land:

 

 

The two restaurants pictured are both in Montepulciano - the splendid Caffe Poliziano, and Acquacheta - with its handwritten "completa" sign hanging in the window. After four tries, we managed to squeeze in to an early seating there. It was absolutely worth the wait.The very first picture was taken at Panella in Rome, where we ate outside, coats off, in the sunshine, while the soft Romans around us huddled under blankets and gas heaters. They wouldn't last two minutes in Glasgow, though their commitment to smoking at all times while outdoors would be admired.

By the way, we called into a motorway Autostop on our way down to Rome, and I saw a giant jar of Nutella for sale. 'Who would ever buy such a thing?' I wondered. Now we know: vendors of giant donuts and toffee apples in Piazza Navona. This is why it's important to travel to foreign places. It broadens the mind.

Other things I learned in Italy:

1. If you're not wearing a quilted jacket/coat and long leather boots, Italians will look at you a little strangely, as though you are a sad case, or probably a gypsy.

2. There is no limit to the number of bookmarks I will buy if they reproduce a bit of fresco.

3. When there is no way of lighting the stove in your rented apartment to boil water for tea, then drinking wine instead is the only solution.

4. We really need to get a family crest. (We can only agree on two panels so far - a circus tent and a snake.)

5. During carnival time in Italy, even the cats dress as harlequins.

That's enough Italy. I have other news to report, like a German-language rights sale for RANGATIRA (to the very nice people at Walde+Graf), but that can wait for another post and a web site update. First: a book to finish work on by the end of this month ...

* The title of this post is a reference, of course, to THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN. If you are unfamiliar with this song, or (even worse) the movie, please remedy your cultural ignorance right away.

RANGATIRA. launched

I'm in an LAX transit lounge, on my way back to the UK. There's coffee out of a machine and free wireless: what more could you want? TMiddy has emailed to tell me that DOWNTON ABBEY series 2 just ended, and He Knows Who Died. This is why internet access is so vital.

Last Monday, October 31st, the launch for RANGATIRA took place at Art + Object in Auckland. This is the contemporary art auction house run by my dear friend, Hamish Coney. (Later that week they held a record-breaking auction of rare NZ books and manuscripts). Lots of family and friends there, a big crowd from Penguin, other writers and literary people-about-town. Here are a few pictures. The first is of the podium with a blow-up of the book's beautiful cover.

 

 

Debra Miller of Penguin Books NZ welcomed everyone and said some very kind things about the novel; then Steve Braunias launched it (see a copy of his speech here); and then I stood up and burbled and cried, as I always do, while people laugh at me. (See my mother, seated, and father, standing - both brandishing walking sticks!)

 

 

I was very happy that my cousins drove down from Whangarei, and also that so many people made the long drive down from the Paratene Te Manu marae in Ngunguru, and from the Ngunguru School, which was founded by Paratene and his matua, Henare Te Moananui, in 1870. There was a mihi, a blessing, a waiata. I was very touched. Penguin were kind enough to let the marae take the cover blow-up with them back up North to Ngunguru.

 

The catering was in the capable hands of my nephew, Matthew Hill, and his gorgeous girlfriend Martha Carrillo. Martha is from Mexico and her Chilean friends, Jerson and Francisca, were also helping. (I wanted an all-Spanish-speaking team.)

 Jo from Unity Books was on hand to sell books - as she has been at all my book launches in New Zealand going back to QUEEN OF BEAUTY in 2002. Here I'm signing a copy for Jill Rawnsley, until recently the artistic director of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

 This last photo I took this weekend at Unity Books in High Street in the city. They have a fantastic window display for the novel.

It was a brief visit home, congested with interviews and meetings, but I was really happy to be back for the launch of RANGATIRA. I'm proud of it. The novel is dedicated to my parents.

The Rugby World Cup: won, over.

It's Tuesday, so I must be in Auckland. I'm sitting at the desk in my niece's bedroom in Mt Albert, looking out the window at yellow flowers in a hanging basket, a blue sky, the tin roof of the house nextdoor, the top of a cabbage tree. My niece is in Germany right now. 'Don't mess up my room,' she ordered yesterday, via Skype, from her university hostel. Stuck on the wall behind her: a giant All Blacks/World Cup chart.

When the final was happening, I was on a flight over the Pacific, waiting for middle-of-the-night text updates from a member of the crew on our TV screens. My niece went to an Irish pub in Heidelberg to watch the final. After the game, she had an 'Irish breakfast' of bacon, eggs, sausages, toast and baked beans. I just tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon, when 100,000 crammed into Queen Street to watch the All Blacks parade by, I was asleep on my niece's bed in Mt Albert - like Goldilocks with dyed hair, jetlag, and too many SIM cards.

Apparently everything fun and festive to do with the World Cup has now closed or been trashed by drunken revellers, so I have nothing to distract me from the tasks at hand: promoting RANGATIRA. It's my fourth novel for Penguin NZ, and comes out next week. I have various interviews to do this week, and an article to write for a magazine, and arrangements for the launch to complete.

For those of you longing for dispatches from the Scudder Road Circus, TMiddy is off to St Louis while I'm away. He needs a break. The Rugby World Cup made him WAY too strung out.

He wore a different AB shirt for each game.

I'm off to my parents' place now. My father, who is about to turn 78, recently joined Facebook. This led to the following conversation between my mother and sister.

My mother: What is Facebook?

My sister: [gives long speech on how Facebook is a sort of noticeboard which allows you to post photographs, updates on your whereabouts, and information about what you're doing, all for your friends and family.]

My mother: What a good idea!

With my mother's endorsement, I believe that Facebook will now really start to take off.

 

A Not-So-Bad Author Day

It's over a month since I last posted, after a particularly bad week. This week has been better, author-biz-wise. No word of international sales, or anything like that, but the film option for RUINED was renewed, and lots of publicity requests for RANGATIRA are coming in. The novel comes out on Halloween, and I'll be home in New Zealand for the launch.

Actually, about a hundred hours of this week were dedicated to getting together a mailing list for the launch. I couldn't find anything useful - like, say, the list for my last launch. The only one I could find on the computer was the one for QUEEN OF BEAUTY, a book published in 2002, and everyone has remarried and/or moved house since then.

Much of today was spent preparing for a photo session, because it's time I had some new pictures. First up: hair cut. It looked really great until I walked home in misting rain.

I had to wait a while at the salon, so I decided to use the time wisely, exploring the great moral and philosophical questions of our time – e.g. “Is Beyoncé really pregnant?” To help me in this quest for truth, I read the captions and columns of OK magazine. This is the British version of OK (OKUK, as I think of it), and this means its pages are peopled with the ‘stars’ of BIG BROTHER and the ex-husbands of Katie Price, one of whom may be about to have a Druid wedding ceremony at Stonehenge. OKUK is highly educational, filled with celebrity insight. Kerry Katona is for the Dale Farm Travellers; Cliff Richard is for corporal punishment. My favourite column in the current issue is written by Jedward, brothers with cartoon hairstyles who are popstars of some kind. Jedward contend that the "UK is a really cool country because you've got Scotland, you've got England and Northern Ireland and Wales, and we've got the Olympics coming which will be like an upgrade for the UK." Wise words.

Later in the afternoon I paid someone to ice my face with an excess of make-up ("Is that what you're wearing?" she asked, trying to conceal her dismay). Then I met up with the photographer, Mike Brooke, in the Merchant City. We took pictures in the Trans-Europe Cafe, the Corinthian Club, and an alleyway near the music hall where Stan Laurel made his stage debut. Hopefully I'll look good in some of them. A friend, Sarah Zebaida, sent me an email this morning wishing me well for the session. You still have good skin, she pointed out, "despite your enormous chronological age."

 

 

 

Any Questions?

Often I use this blog to announce good news – a manuscript completed, a book published. The happier moments in a writing life, I guess.  Some people have remarked how easily things seem to come to me: contracts flow in, novels flow out, and there I am, disciplined and undaunted, breezily prolific. Travelling too much and spread too thin, perhaps, but getting things done. (Of course, people say, you have no children. They forget I have a circus to manage, and TMiddy.)

As public faces go, this isn’t a bad one. It’s not very accurate, but why not make a fiction of my life?  Sometimes, though, I get quite tired of being chipper, especially when I’m being asked the following questions: What’s happening with the film version of HIBISCUS COAST? What’s happening with the film version of RUINED? Why aren’t your New Zealand novels available in the US? Why aren’t your American YA novels available in the UK? Why haven’t your books been translated into 18 other languages yet? Why can’t I find a copy of TRENDY BUT CASUAL in my local book shop? Why haven’t you sold millions of copies like [All Other Authors]? Why don’t you write a book that’s a best-seller? Why don’t you write a book that wins lots of prizes?

The answer to all of these questions is: I don’t know. I don’t know why my new YA novel DARK SOULS, which is set in the English city of York, is apparently of no interest to a British publisher. I don’t know why the Bulgarian people are not rising up to demand a Bulgarian-language version of FORBIDDEN CITIES pronto. I don’t know why the film production company that optioned RUINED (just a few months ago) is not already auditioning dark-haired ingénues from the greater Los Angeles area. I just don’t know.

And if I spend too much time thinking about any of the above, I get quite depressed. So, thanks for the questions. Keep them coming!

This hasn’t been a great week, I have to say. I’ve been sitting in the British Library for most of it, willing myself to work. The sequel to RUINED is due in – oh, about five minutes. I still feel as though the story is over-sticky dough at this point, and I don’t want it to turn out half-baked. (Not sure if this metaphor works. Don’t trust anything about my writing at the moment.)

As some of you know, I’ve been writing a monthly column for NEXT magazine for the past eighteen months. The magazine has a new editor, so this week I got the ‘thanks but no more columns” email. A big UK publisher read the manuscript for RANGATIRA and seemed to love it, but it’s a challenging time, and a challenging market – and, I suppose, it’s a challenging book. It has a Maori narrator, and it’s set in the nineteenth-century. No deal.

Today is Friday, so if anyone else would like to email me with bad news, please hurry. I’d like to confine as much of it as possible to this week. Next week has to be better. Sentences will dance their way onto the page. I won’t dread opening my email. Someone will read RANGATIRA and think that other people might want to read it as well.

The only questions people will ask me will be about my books, not the selling of them.

And hopefully the university where I work will change my room allocation, so I’m not expected to change classrooms four times every Tuesday.

Back to work.

 

 

The Scudder Road Circus goes to Edinburgh

Don't get excited: the Scudder Road Circus & Literary Journal isn't performing at the Edinburgh Festival this year. Transporting all the animals and printing presses on the train from Glasgow would be complicated, and Edinburgh is very crowded in August, with little room for us to unfold the Big Top. It's hard enough for TMiddy and me to wrangle ourselves, anyway, especially with the weather this changeable. But a visit to the Fringe Festival seemed like an essential office outing, so off we ventured yesterday morning to the Far East.

It's less than an hour on the train to Edinburgh, but over there it's a different world, really. The train station is crammed with tourists. The streets are lined with cashmere-and-kilt shops. The bagpipe buskers play 'Scotland the Brave', not 'We Will Rock You' as they do in Glasgow. "Now I feel like we're in Scotland," TM observes. He foolishly draws my attention to a commemmorative Princess Diana tartan, and then manhandles me down the street before I have time to distract myself with royalist tat. We don't have time for Scotland right now: we need to collect our booked tickets - for five shows - and find the first venue. As it takes us fifteen minutes just to find the right way out of Waverley Station, we're already running late. (I've slipped into present tense, I know. It makes the whole day seem more dramatic.)

Picking up the tickets at the Fringe Festival Office is also complicated, because much of the Royal Mile is thronged with desperate people brandishing flyers, trying to drum up audiences for their shows. This is necessary, because there are too many shows. Evidence:

Many of these show-hawkers are in costume and/or aged 18. If they're not shoving flyers at you or shouting FREE SHOW! or TWO-FOR-ONE! or FOUR STARS!, they're dancing around on makeshift stages, waiting to dance around on makeshift stages, attempting to out-bill-sticker everyone else, or handing out paper masks (that may or may not be ironic) to a dubious TMiddy.

We pick up our tickets (tip: book online in advance, so you don't have to stand in the endless queue) and try to make sense of the venue map. It's hard to do this when you're being accosted by people wanting to know if you would like to see a great/free/four-star show that day, or if you would like to buy a copy of the Scotsman and get a free I Heart Edinburgh bag.

We only have four different locations to deal with today for the five shows, so it's not as bad as it could be. The tightest change-over time is 15 minutes. I've picked our shows based on various strict criteria. Anything we see today must be: a) recommended by my friend Deborah Keyser, who comes here every year for ten days, seeing six shows a day, so she can book acts for theatres and arts centres in Wales; OR b) randomly selected because it sounds sort of interesting.

 

Ever since I spent an evening at the Osmond Family Theater in Branson, Missouri (in 1998, while travelling to every place Laura Ingalls Wilder ever lived), I have appreciated the power and time-saving efficiency of the medley. So the first show of the day is a medley, of sorts - Mervyn Stutter's Pick of the Fringe. This show runs every day for ninety minutes, and seven or eight acts get a chance to do a few songs/dances/jokes and promote their own gig. Every day the show is different. As we're not British, we haven't heard of Mervyn Stutter, but apparently he is the Comedy Voice of the Baby Boom Generation. He wears a pink suit with a yellow trim. ('Sounds awful,' as my mother would say.) This get-up reminds me of a black pencil skirt festooned with pink, turquoise and yellow polka dots, owned and loved by me c 1980/81. I wore it (with a black leotard) to see Cheap Trick at the Auckland Town Hall.

(I can't say any of this to TMiddy, because he grows enraged at the fashion/musical taste of my formative years. In 1981 while I was skulking around West Auckland trying to look New Wave, he was living in New York, allegedly dancing with Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, dropping by Elaine's for cocktails with Woody Allen, and listening to Beethoven and the Clash.)

Mervyn Stutter, who been doing this show for 20 years, hands out 'I Saw Merv in 92' to anyone claiming to have been there back in the day. He tells us that he and his team of researchers have seen loads of shows and carefully selected acts "so you don't pay tenners for turkeys." He also tells us that today is the first time ever, in 20 years, that he's sold out this venue. (We're in Beyond in the Pleasance Courtyard, which I think seats around 400 people.) Courtesy of Mervyn, we see some numbers from the musical APPLY WITHIN ("the first time I've ever heard the word 'fart' in a musical!" snorts Merv); comedian Mark Olver selling his show OLVER: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, which promises, he says, "actual violence"; an amazing and sinister dance excerpt from PINOCCHIO: A FANTASY OF PLEASURES by Company XIV from New York; the first seven minutes of the play SOLD - seven minutes which run through the entire history of slavery; some amiable nonsense from the FITZROVIA RADIO HOUR; comedian Steve Hall with tales of man-hair from his show VERY STILL LIFE; and a crowd-pleasing, wide-smiling a capella group from South Africa, SOWETO ENTSHA.

On the way out of the theatre, all the performers are waiting, in a reception line from which there is no escape, to smile in sweaty exhaustion and hand us flyers. (This is especially impressive in the case of the APPLY WITHIN cast: they left Mervyn's stage to perform their entire show at another venue, racing back just in time for the flyer-shove.)

The other shows we see are TOM BELL BEGINS at the Tron; CHRISTMAS FOR TWO: FRIENDS WITH YOU at the Caves; NEW ART CLUB: QUIET ACT OF DESTRUCTION at the Bosco Theater @ Assembly George Square; and MATT GREEN: TOO MUCH INFORMATION back at Pleasance.

Matt Green is funny, and gets a good reception from the audience (a full-house, albeit a small venue). He is probably the most slick and conventional of the comedians we see. Christmas for Two is a double-act, Sarah Campbell and Amy Hoggart, and there isn't a whole lot of atmosphere at their show - not really their fault. Sketch comedy in the afternoon, in front of an audience of 20 or so ... No wonder the performers are clapping themselves at the end of each sketch, just to give us all the idea. The sketches are well-acted, I think, but not funny enough, and not as weird as advertised.

More rollicking fun is to be had at New Art Club's show at the Bosco Theatre. This is a Deborah Keyser recommendation, and an excellent one. There's shouting, dancing, a tug of war. Even TMiddy joins in the spirit of audience participation. It's easy when audience participation = a massive bread-throwing fight,us making animal noises (mainly owls and stags), and someone made to dress up as a wizard/badger. There's also a re-enactment of one of my favourite Morecombe and Wise sketches. We've already booked tickets for TM to go again later in the month when his brother visits from the US.

All comedy's an acquired taste, of course. Two people march out of New Art Club after ten minutes, looking grim-faced with disapproval. As we're leaving at the end, I overhear two sulky youths with Arctic Monkey haircuts.

Monkey 1: So, did you like it?

Monkey 2: No, not really.

They exchange pained looks. Maybe we Scudder Road Circus-ites enjoy the show because the Bosco Theater makes us nostalgic for a big-top tent of our own.

Nobody walks out of Tom Bell's show, but some of the c. 15 people there look very unhappy. I glance over a few times at a stony-faced older couple, for whom the act apparently is torture. On the way out, another couple apologises to the man they brought along. 'So sorry!' they groan, as though we've all just endured a nightmare.

I, however, spend much of the show crying with laughter. Tom Bell is hilarious. He looks like the weird nephew of Keats and Rick from The Young Ones. Although before the show, while arranging the chairs, he tells us "this is a friendly show," there's an anxious edge to it, the feeling that it might all implode and have to be abandoned at any minute. His humour is very, very silly, which is the highest possible accolade from the Scudder Road Circus. Highlights: kitten falling asleep on bookcase; Kegworth; other fish in the sea; cat with ruff; deodorant. (The story that involves the cat with the ruff is over-elaborate and stupid, but very funny.)

The show is a bit of a mess: there's a lot stuffed into an hour, including a couple of sort-of songs, and it isn't clear if the Neptune wardrobe malfunction is planned or not. (Tom's laptop running out of power is clearly not planned, but much funnier.) But weird, silly, edgy, surreal messiness is exactly what we're hoping to see at the Fringe. The show is at 3:40 PM every day at bar downstairs at the Tron - entrance on Blair Street. Don't get confused as we did and wander around upstairs, clutching your tickets and looking pathetic.

Tom Bell's show is also highly educational. I am now a convert to the delights of LOVE IT! magazine. Today I handed over 68 pence at W.H. Smith on Sauchiehall Street, and brought my own copy home. At the moment, when not out and about on important Scudder Road Circus business, I am working on the sequel to RUINED (referred to by TMiddy as either EVEN MORE RUINED or RUINED 2: RETURN TO NEW ORLEANS. It is called neither of those things.) But occasionally I need a break from artistic endeavour. Evidence:

And yes, that is a coyote on top of the record player.

Meanwhile, I'm sad to say, London is burning. Spending a day at the Edinburgh Festival, or escaping into the dreamworld of LOVE IT, it's easy to forget about the bad things happening down there and in other English cities. When we got back from Edinburgh last night, and caught a taxi home, the streets of Glasgow seemed eerily quiet compared with the violence going on elsewhere. I hope all our friends in London are safe from harm. We live in strange times.

 

 

New book, new flat

This is a banner week in the M & M household. Home after a busy month of travel to London, St Louis, New Orleans, Paris and Luxembourg, we managed to stay put for an entire seven days. Our new flat in Glasgow (rented, in case any of you imagine we've come into money) is finally looking habitable - furniture delivered, stacks of paper mostly hidden, books and CDs in categories/alphabetical order and on shelves. So I haven't unpacked my suitcase completely yet, and the stacks are hidden rather than sorted: oh well. It could be worse.

We love our new place. The first two pictures here are our living room; the last is my study, in which many of the stacks lurk. Most of them are notes for RANGATIRA. The blind in this room is closed against the sun, if you can believe that - it's south-facing, and incredibly bright. Glasgow: endlessly surprising.

 

 

 

The other happy news is that this was the publication week for DARK SOULS, my new YA novel. It's another mystery with a supernatural twist, this time set in York, England. The action takes place over one very snowy, misty week in December. I've written some more about the book at my web site.

 

Casual Colonialism

It’s been a long time since I lived in the UK. I left in December 1993, eight and a bit years after arriving in the misleadingly sunny September of 1985. 

In 1985 Thatcher was Prime Minister; by 1993 John Major had taken her place, and I arrived back in 2010 to the joy that is Cameron's Tory/Lib-Dem coalition. (I missed the Blair and Brown years altogether.) When I left, SURPRISE SURPRISE and NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY were still on TV. My fondest memory of SURPRISE SURPRISE is Cilla Black singing and marching her way through ‘In the Navy’ on board an actual ship. Sadly, this is not available on YouTube, though at least we can still see/hear the wonder that was the closing credits.

But I digress. Things change, things stay the same. One thing I had forgotten about: the casual colonialism. In the US, I got out of the habit of experiencing this. When Americans find out you’re from New Zealand, they are various things – delighted, curious, intrigued, envious. Sometimes they are confused, and think that you might have said Venezuela. But mostly they are positive. I heard the words ‘I love your accent’ at least once a week. (This was good, because nobody else anywhere – including anywhere in New Zealand – loves my accent.)

The casual colonialism isn’t as bad here in the UK as it used to be, but this is relative. It’s like saying service in Britain isn’t so bad these days either, or it hasn’t rained that much in Glasgow this week. An example: arriving in the mail recently, a copy of Scotland in Trust magazine. We get this as members of the National Trust. (The National Trust for Scotland, to be precise, because Scotland has to be separate and different. It has to contend with casual colonialism issues of its own.)

In the ‘From the Archive’ section there’s a black-and-white photograph of a kapa haka group standing in a walled garden. The headline reads: ‘Maori dance at Pittmedden 1978.’ Pitmedden Garden is a National Trust property in Aberdeenshire.

Don Currie, author of the short article, describes what we can see in the photo – the fountain, the yew trees, the audience, the ‘dancers’ who had just appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. He makes specific mention of the two guitar players standing behind the group. These guys, both young, wear shirts, blazers, and what people used to call slacks. The ‘elaborate attire’ of the other performers, notes Currie, stands out against the formality of the garden, ‘and even the musicians’ jackets and wide-collared shirts.’ Clearly, he deduces, ‘Maori culture did not go untouched by Seventies fashion.’

Um, what? There's a glimmer here of patronising smugness that – to give the writer the benefit of the doubt – was probably unintentional. Why would anyone Maori living in New Zealand in 1978 – let alone gadding about the world – be ‘untouched’ by the fashion of the day? Without the startling evidence of this photograph, would we readers of Scotland in Trust assume that, back home in the Land of Exotica, Maori walk around wearing piupiu, busily untangling poi or lowering kete of food into hot pools?

Earlier this month I was reminded of how a colonial notion of distance – cultural and physical – persists here. Robert McCrum’s column on books in the Observer mentioned the attention-seeking remarks made by VS Naipaul about female writers (it's all 'feminine tosh', apparently'), and cited the reaction by New Zealand writer – and Booker Prize winner – Keri Hulme. Hulme lives, McCrum advises, ‘amid sheep and fisher folk’ on New Zealand’s South Island. In other words, in some fairy-tale land, a place of yokels and delightful simplicity. (Try asking someone on the West Coast to point you in the direction of some ‘fisher folk’ and see what they have to say.)

According to McCrum, not only is Hulme buried deep in a Tolkienesque idyll, she ‘has been silent for decades.’ This news will surprise many New Zealanders. Is this the silent Keri Hulme who actively comments (sometimes under the moniker Islander) on literary blogs like the late, lamented Leaf Salon, and the lively forum managed by the indefatigable Bookman Beattie? Is this silent Keri Hulme the writer who was published in Landfall last year? The Keri Hulme who was the fiction advisor to the Montana Prize judges the year my first novel won a prize? The Keri Hulme who has edited a Huia Short Stories anthology, and this year is serving once again as a judge in their Pikihuia writing competition?

Hulme herself was unimpressed by the label ‘silent’ and told Bookman Beattie exactly what she thought here.

I suppose what McCrum is really saying is this: Here in London we haven’t heard anything from Keri Hulme for decades, so she MUST be silent. Whatever she’s up to in the distant colonies – ‘noises off,’ as it were – doesn’t count.

The patronising swipes don't stop there. Hulme, McCrum says, ‘told her New Zealand audience …’ – hang on, which audience? Is she the Queen of New Zealand, perhaps? Do we all assemble, amid the sheep and the fisher folk, at a weekly audience? Or perhaps she was speaking to a physical audience at some kind of festival event in New Zealand. No. Actually, she was commenting online on a blog post by Bookman Beattie. I guess McCrum doesn’t want to mention the source, or give a context for the discussion.

In her comment, Hulme calls Naipaul ‘a misogynist prick.’ This permits more smug colonialism from McCrum. ‘The language of literary criticism,’ he observes, ‘clearly has a different register in the Antipodes.’

This might be a more useful observation if Hulme had been engaging in literary criticism – say, writing a long essay on Naipaul for the New York Review of Books. But she was commenting online, responding to a blog post. Anyone reading various online Guardian/Observer articles will soon discover that the ‘language of literary criticism’ in online comments is pretty much the same all over the world. Here’s a selection from Guardian and Observer readers on the topic of Naipaul: he is a ‘total tool’, a ‘silly old fart’, a ‘mega-misogynist’, an ‘old git’, a ‘wife beating’ writer, an ‘oaf’, ‘a prize berk’, and a ‘sexist a**hole.’

A Guardian online article a few years ago posed the question: ‘is VS Naipaul simply the grumpiest, most conceited writer alive?’ In a print article about literary prizes in the Guardian earlier this month, writer and critic Bidisha alleged that a ‘man does a s**t in a potty and it is called a work of genius; a woman produces a work of genius and it's treated like a s**t in a potty.’ (You can read the whole feature here.) Gee, the language of literary criticism clearly has a different register in the UK, doesn’t it?

This is what I mean by casual colonialism: dismissive, smug, and a little patronising, with no sense that one’s own ignorance and/or parochialism might be informing an interpretation – of a picture, of remarks, of another culture, of another part of the world. It’s amazing to me that it still exists here.

This week, when I'm not puzzling over such absurdities, I'm thinking of two of my family members who are in strange places right now - strange to them, at any rate. My mother is in hospital in Auckland, and my niece has just arrived in Paris, where she'll be spending the next two months. I hope my mother will be able to come home soon. I hope my niece has the most wonderful, wonderful time.

Roman Holiday?

I'm always surprised to learn that anyone other than a friend, family member or fan visits this blog. (Those fans, by the way, often belong to Frank Cottrell Boyce, who rashly consented to an interview with me last year.) Occasionally someone else stumbles in and wanders around, agog - someone who's Googled SISTER'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY or DEVONPORT FERRY. For unknown reasons, these pictures of bag tags are very popular as well.

Sometimes students drop by to gather information for a school project. Other writers tell me they're regular readers, mainly to follow the exploits of TMiddy. All sorts of people pop up as readers - old school friends, current and former students, the brother of someone I once worked with. Some people demand more posts about my books and about writing in general. Some (i.e. my father) would like more pictures. Everyone wants more TMiddy.

But today I learned that not only people who like me seek out this blog. Apparently, other people with too much time on their hands read it as well. Who knew? In the manner of the Two-Star Detective Agency in Cedar Rapids, IA (an actual place of business), these people snoop about online for incriminating evidence. They suspect that when I was in Rome, I wasn't conducting research for a novel at all. Instead I was ... EATING AND DRINKING.

Here I am, pictured on this very blog, having a beer with my lunch! There I am again, later the same afternoon, eating gelato! And that night, after dinner, I'm spotted drinking a glass of wine! How can I possibly be walking around Rome, exploring sites, taking notes, and writing down story ideas when I am so flagrantly involved in non-research-related activities?

Well, haters, I have good news for you. TMiddy, now revealed as a Tikileaks operative, was with me in Rome, and he must be on your paylist. Every day we spent there, he took pictures of me running from the stiff handshake of Novel Research into the cool embrace of Liquid Refreshment. It was very hot in Rome, and we were walking miles and miles ... but no. No excuses. You all know the truth. I didn't go to Rome to research a book, did I? (However long the contract and tight the deadline.) No, I went there to drink Fanta and Frascati. Pictures never lie, and they always tell the whole story. Let the evidence be revealed.

 

 

 

 

 

In case some of the softer hearts out there are concerned I did nothing but rehydrate, let me reassure you. I also ate breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I know, I know. I should have been working THAT WHOLE TIME. But a woman cannot live on Fanta alone. Here is some more incriminating evidence.

 

 

 

 

In my defence, I'll say this: I wasn't alone in committing this crime of eating and drinking every day in Rome. TMiddy, my betrayer, was there right by my side (or, more typically, across the table). It was just like that scene in CASINO ROYALE where James Bond is playing cards with the villain, as though they're BFFs and not soon-to-be-brawling enemies. But I must admit, TM doesn't look at all happy here, does he?

 

 

He knew this would compromise the case against me, don't you think?

From now on, I'll add a new category to this blog: Tikileaks. It's a New Zealander's version of Wikileaks, with more humour and fewer Australians. I'll use it to tag anything useful in case against me (The People VS Dilettante). Knowing me, however, that's pretty much every blog post. La!

 

The end of Rome

Rome is eternal, but we just had a week there, crammed with too many things to see and beset by too many blisters. This was my scribbled-on, bedraggled to-do list after five days:

 

Sadly Ponte Milvio did prove a bridge too far, but we managed to get to almost everything else. And Tom took a picture that could be a cover for the Rome novel I'm writing - this is from the Protestant cemetery, where we spent a fantastic hour:

 

 

I've realized that place is the most important starting point for so much of my work. I had various plans and ideas (vague thoughts, really) before I went to Rome, but now much more is clear to me, and the story began revealing itself in the most unexpected places.

I wish I could get started on this right away, while Rome is still seething in my head, but now I must turn my attention to a sequel to RUINED. This has pushed its way to the front of the queue, in an Italian-like manner.

This last picture is me and TMiddy at the Trevi Fountain. We got up at 6:30 AM on Saturday to see it without the noise of the usual 400-strong crowd. We threw coins in, of course, as per the instructions in THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN. (TM: "I think I missed.")