No fairies in our house this year . Only bears Gilbert and George ...[more]

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The long roofs over the drop-off point at Terminal 5 resembled rows of nun’s headdresses, like gigantic angel wings. Quite Christmassy, really.


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I was up into the opening hours of Christmas Day after everyone else, involuntarily glancing every few minutes at the fireplace below the hanging stockings. It isn’t even a real fireplace and there is no chimney, so I’m not sure what my eyes were hoping to catch.

My belief in the existence of Father Christmas was rudely shattered one year when my mother burst into my bedroom at one am, throwing my presents onto the foot of my bed and saying ‘There’s no point in pretending anymore, is there?’ Both my siblings are older than me and I suppose my mum and dad had just become tired of the whole ordeal. Although, to be fair, I was thirteen.

Last night I was holding a microphone plugged into my laptop and attempting to record an audiobook version of my late novel with the intention of selling it on iTunes, with or without Harper Collins’ backing...

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An Extract from Christmas
Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?


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I can’t believe I used to wrap presents really carefully, with little home-made tags and that shiny stuff… er, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s like flat string in metallic colours – oh, you know what I mean. They were all arranged under the Christmas tree (a bargain, because I worked at the Christmas tree farm) about a week before the big day. I’m not sure whether it’s writing or motherhood, or just plain laziness that has prevented me from getting round to doing anything yet, but anyway: Happy Christmas, everyone!


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The queue for the night bus was a mix of mainly foreign young men with backpacks, a few loungers and a couple of wasted-looking characters crouched on steps in shop doorways.

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Editing is a funny thing. In a draft, we spend so much time flinging the words down, deliberating over each and every sentence and finally, if we're lucky, a book is complete...

Ha! The word complete does not come into a writer's vocabulary. All we can hope for is to snatch whatever story is given to us to tell out of the ether and try to present it in the best way we can...

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Firing Sid is largely a symbolic gesture. With agents, as with girlfriends, it’s probably better to find a new one before getting rid of the old, but (as with girlfriends) this is easier said than done. But as we approach the beginning of a new year, I’m all about clean breaks and fresh possibilities. It is the only way I have managed to keep remotely upbeat in the last week.

The simple truth is that Sid is no longer effective in any business capacity, and he will probably interpret the termination of our professional relationship as the firing of him as a friend. Which is, of course, part of the problem. This is the first time I’ve had to sack anyone since I got rid of the Colombian drummer of my old rock band. He was the most popular member but he couldn’t play in time. But as Cheryl says, Sid’s in a ‘gots-to-go situation’...

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The book was on a high shelf, and I was a short eight-year-old kid, but there was something about the spooky lettering on the spine that made me tiptoe to reach it. It was a collection of real-life ghost stories, and it scared the living wotsits out of me so much that I didn’t sleep without a light on until I was at least fourteen. It is twenty-five years since I borrowed that library book, but it is directly responsible for an aspect of Kill-Grief. Childhood reading has a deep impact.

The ghost book came from Irby Library, which is due to close next year along with 12 others across Wirral.


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So, I have ten spiral-bound notebooks from W H Smith (they have to have the right, tolerant paper, and be identical so I can keep a rough track of the word count on the stripy-sweater principle) and a new packet of my favourite kind of biro. I've even been tidying the study, because even though I'm not naturally terribly tidy, it helps a lot to have a bit of elbow room: clear desk space to leave open the current reference book, neat ranks of books and files of learned paper and postcards ready to hand, and all without knocking the essential cup of tea over. In other words I'm ready... Well, as ready as a I'll ever be.

I don't plan to keep a running record here of the writing of this novel. It's not just because, faced with the mountain in the distance and all the invisible lanes between me and even the nursery slopes which are only the beginning of the climb, it even feels a twinge hubristic to talk of it as a novel.

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