Veronica - a miscellany

Can't think of an appropriate caption

Veronica’s Dad, Vic, was a chef. I indirectly profited from this.

Although Veronica was far better behaved at social events than I ever am or was, she rarely initiated them. A sort of shyness seemed to overtake her. However, there were exceptions. Long before I abruptly decided to learn singing she took up painting. Private lessons at first then, uncharacteristically, she joined a weekly art group and, even less uncharacteristically, made several long-lasting friendships.

In rootling through her drawers (ie, furniture not underclothes) I came upon her earlier paintings and was astonished at their quality. I’m not into tombstones, etc, but I can’t think of a better way of enhancing her memory than getting them framed.

Since moving from Kingston-upon-Thames to Hereford 26 years ago we’ve attended more funerals than we ever did during the previous years of our marriage. Although one or two of these lugubrious events might be described as successful most were abject failures. Brits simply aren’t prepared for public mourning and are compelled to fall back on banality and/or shrinking silence. And Veronica agreed. There’ll be no funeral service for her. nor for me, although in my case I won’t have the final word.

Veronica had tiny feet. Size 2.5 in actuality but these are rare and she made do with Size 3. Given her comparatively straitened upbringing, she spent quite large sums on her clothes once we were comfortably off. To my secret horror, given my sartorial tendencies match those of the homeless. Even so, there’s one scarlet coat of hers I doubt I’ll ever dispose of.

Although Veronica had a well-developed sense of humour she rarely laughed aloud. This used to worry me as we watched such rib-ticklers as Groundhog Day and Some Like It Hot. Eventually I accepted it as an offshoot of her built-in restraint.

I’ve often said that human encounters have greater potential for delight than the prettiest of sceneries, I look back on my married life and realise this belief requires some qualification. In all my most memorable geographical experiences (San Francisco, Port Underwood in New Zealand, the west coast of Scotland, the Verdon Gorge in France) Veronica has always been with me. I now know her presence was an essential element in these emotional explosions.

There’s lots more but this is becoming an indulgence. Except to point out there’s an intentional omission in all this. A four-letter word that is both over-used and used  inappropriately, especially, I fear, in the USA. Sorry about that. Brits can take it as read.

A fond accretion

You've seen it before; I think it shows we "got on"

I need to write about Veronica but I’m under an obligation. I must strive to be interesting, anything less would be a betrayal; she was an interesting woman. Out with clichés and euphemisms.

First, then, she wasn’t playing cards so she didn’t “pass”. She died. Death notices often stress “peacefully” but in her case a better adverbial descriptor would be “in a remote state”. Her final six months were spent in pain from two long-standing sources, angry that she’d lost the fine edge of her articulacy and unimpressed by what she saw around her at the nursing home – to wit, others sharing her ailment. Uncomplainingly, almost casually, over and over, she told me she wanted to die. Three weeks ago her status became “palliative care”. I tried to visit every day, staying for three hours, keen to know if and when the morphine dosage would be increased. In effect she departed from me several days before I got the phone call but I approved of this drawn curtain.

Hers was a close and comfortable family life, unlike my rackety and ungoverned boyhood. Her scores in class were in the inhuman nineties and Oxbridge (that’s OXford followed by CamBRIDGE) beckoned. Misguided parental control prevented this and she settled for three years qualification as a State Registered Nurse, albeit sixty miles away from the family home. At (adopt a sonorous tone) “one of London’s greatest teaching hospitals.” Scores of 90%-plus continued.

When we met – as part of a foursome – I’d been in London a mere three months, a blissful escapee from Bradford, oop North. As to dating I’d had three evenings out with a progressively disenchanted 20-year-old Yorkshire lass who wore highish heels.

What happened that evening in London is irritatingly blurred. Logically I, a proven failure with the opposite sex, should have been overwhelmed at finding myself buying a G&T for an undeniably beautiful woman. I just can’t re-create those feelings. Veronica has always remained shtum on this and I find it hard to believe I managed to keep wraps on my crass Northern-ness.

Quite soon she took a two-week holiday at home and was trustful enough to give me the address. Naturally I wrote a letter (it’s my default state). It's sixty years ago and all I can remember about her reply is she’d acquired the Only The Lonely LP by Frank Sinatra. True I was a Sinatra fan but did I detect something symbolic in that LP title? Surely that only happens in books

A month later we had a fratch (Look it up.) and she left me a note suggesting we break it off. Surely this must have disturbed me but, no. I merely replied by letter and all was well again. Was I in danger of becoming a character in an epistolary novel? How terribly unfashionable.

Too much about me. What about those moments when she demonstrated forms of wisdom that I demonstrably lacked.

In those days it was traditional to buy one’s wedding dress. Veronica explained that hiring one meant oodles more style and one didn’t then have a useless garment cluttering up the wardrobe. I have to admit it looked fabulous

I did contribute initially in a minor way but it was Veronica who brought up our baby daughter. How did she know all that stuff? About bottles and nappies, quietening fits of crying without resorting to strangulation, knitting bibs, weaselling a free pickled cornichon from the Jewish grocery man by telling him our daughter’s name was spelled the Jewish way.

Finding an inexpensive source of asparagus in Dalston market..

MORE FOLLOWS, Time to create something dull and unhealthy while remembering what meals used to be. Ah, eggs mornay.  

On sharing

My bedside mobile rang at about 2.30 in the morning and the dilemma that has dominated me for the last few months was at an end. A gentle Asian voice told me that Veronica, my wife of 66 years, had died during the night at the nursing home.

A dilemma that many must have shared. Such deaths are often described as “a blessing” and even I – a detester of clichés – surely approved of the fact that she was no longer suffering the  torments of dementia; a death something Veronica had desperately sought before coherent speech was denied her.

Well-meaning people had told me that the suffering person whose hand I held was no longer the woman I had married.  I found this hard to take. Physically, at least, she was that woman. Stripped of the abilities of speech, creative thought, and the essence of motherhood she nevertheless radiated memories of a life we had shared. For the first time I recognised that the phrase “my life” was imprecise, that “our life” was the greater truth. For 66 years we had lived in combination, created a family and done the things that families do. Perversely I tell myself “our life” still endures. For a little while

So, here’s one of those shared memories. A salutary occasion if you like.

We were poverty-stricken when we married. A honeymoon is hardly the right word. I borrowed my mother’s Lambretta scooter and on a chilly early-October morning we left London aiming for the mountains of North Wales. Veronica riding pillion. It didn’t get any warmer.

Mid-afternoon we stopped for fuel at a primitive filling station. An elderly Welsh woman emerged and silently did the necessary. This was long before the credit card era and I dug out a pound note. The woman took the note, pointed to the adjacent house, and said sternly, “Now take your wife in there for a cup of tea before she dies of cold.”

We laughed about this over the tea and scones but only now have I become aware of the greater significance of that event. In marriage one becomes two, a mutual two. And I hadn’t yet recognised my responsibilities. I hope to hell I learned quickly.

Credo (Hey, look up the translation)

Music: in the end the only true division is not between categories (Pop. Classical. Folk. Jazz, und so weiter) but by quality. It's either good or bad and you make the decisions, but it does help if you're moderately well informed

You think I'm a hypocrite, wedded to Schubert, Schumann and all those dead old fogies. Perhaps I am but, in my defence, I offer this:

A concert to celebrate Paul Simon's 75th birthday. The Boxer, a moderately complex tune but backed up by words worth listening to. Simon, perfectly on the beat with quite forcefully vigorous strumming, that lightish voice ensuring we hear everything. Joan Baez, as it were playing second fiddle but with great grace, contributing a sort of descant, thus another view of a "good" song. A second guitarist, presumably doing the bass line, allowed a dozen bars of fascinating variations at the end. No essential difference between The Boxer and Gute Nacht which kicks off the Winterreise song cycle.

An emotional choice? But the mind is at work too.

A belated thank-you

Taken only a few days ago, I thought this
 expression shows- quite vividly - the result
of devoting oneself to language; the face of
one who has never seen a Dr Who episode

Time passes, on balance less beneficially. I'm writing better than ever before but life is at its worst ebb as my other half slides into oblivion. Comment if you wish but please, please, even if you feel inclined, don't sympathise. There is nothing neither you nor I can do to help.

Even though the visit to France (qv) proved to be a brief exception

As with all misery, irony is just around the corner. I've always condemned nostalgia on the grounds that I mistrust the Golden Era way of thinking. That things were better decades ago merely because they occurred in the past. For me the past was left wrapped in a shapeless bundle in my birth city as the future brought with it a growing sequence of happy revelations.

Until three years ago. And now I trawl the earlier years of Tone Deaf, plus its predecessor Works Well, for scraps of comfort.

To find something I've only just recognised: a genuine sense of community.

Some background is necessary. Since age 11 I have written continuously. Thousands of letters to my widest family, articles for newspapers and magazines, reports about my confined existence in the Royal Air Force, speeches to restless audiences, eloquent appeals to US editors that they consider me for employment, amateurish attempts at fiction, a blog, rather more professional attempts at fiction, and, most surprisingly of all, verse.

In all these outpourings, over 79 years, I wrestled with language as – later – I wrestled with singing: in both instances to achieve an individual voice. I was very serious about this, to the point where self-centredness got the upper hand. Understand this:  writers deserve not a shred of understanding. Their burden is self-imposed and the great majority becomes insufferable outside what they write. To some extent truly dedicated plumbers end up in the same hole.

On reflection I find I’ve been remarkably lucky. Blogs invite responses and – lo and behold – I enjoyed my own Golden Era. For a few years it seemed there were others out there in cyberspace, all individual voices, all capable of grasping ideas and expanding them according to the true meaning of conversation. Driven by a desire to enrich rather than to dispute.

To them this belated expression of gratitude. My misery continues but it would have been crass of me, having discovered this phenomenon, not to have publicised it.

Unequivocally good news

The above image could be described as a portable hi-fi system with Anker power source. Certainly it qualifies as portable, the detached control unit (encircled in cable) is a mere 8 cm long (2.25 in. for those living in Trunkasia). But the system's minimality is  at odds with the adjectival phrase "high-fidelity"; good quality sound reproduction tends toward bigness.

And big cost. The Marantz amplifier I use - inter alia - to  increase and improve TV sound cost £500, some 15 years ago.

Nevertheless the little darling you see cost about £50, all told, and  has touched my heart.

VR is not happy in the nursing home. This is understandable and her stress is infectious; I visit her most days and I come away heavily saddened. Maintaining any sense of optimism in our conversation is often impossible. So why not swap words for music?

For tedious reasons assembling this mini-system took more time than I expected (VR refused earphones) and although I had willing permission to use it in the nursing home I was never able to arrange reasonable listening conditions. Today I did. And within three or four minutes of play there was confirmation I was on the right track. One of the patients - quiet yet distracted by her awful malady - pointed at the speaker (ie, the white circle) - and said. "That's the fourth piano concerto." Turning, she added, "Beethoven." and wandered off-stage.

She was right. 

VR seemed at rest, a rare occurrence. She remained silent for the piano concerto (it lasts 34 minutes), a favourite of both of us, Bach's Goldberg Variations  (over an hour), and a handful of English songs by Dame Janet Baker (say ten minutes). No gloomy predictions, no complaints. I emerged into the afternoon rush-hour; maintaining my patience via the car's audio system playing Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata.

Yeah, music.

Boring old stuff; forget it

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. — Plato

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. — Pericles

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty - Jefferson

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act - Orwell

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men* to do nothing - Burke. (* and women)

It's time for me to become boring. But first let me make one thing clear: you are entitled to ignore me. By any international standard I am without formal education. I left school at 15 and entered journalism because the prospect entertained me. Forty-four and a half years later I retired as a journalist, having influenced no one.

Just this once, I'd like to modify that view of my life.

This decision is a reaction to what has happened within the last 24 hours in the USA. A country of which I may speak with a tiny bit of authority since I worked there  as a journalist, 1965 - 1972. I was drawn there because I'd read a lot of US authors, admired the skilful way US professionals made movies, and, at heart, I believed the USA was a "good" place because of the way it had helped destroy Fascism in WW2. I enjoyed life there, I learnt a lot, and was able to apply what I learnt when I took to writing novels in retirement.

Along the way I ran a blog, starting in 2008. Less so in in the last two years given that the defects of old age have overtaken my family and reduced its energy capacity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my blog attracted US readers. Articulate types on the whole. And I noticed from their comments those who said they weren't interested in politics or averted their eyes from reports on what was happening to US government. For them I would point to the quotes above

Within the last few hours Trump appears to be making good on a promise he uttered while campaigning. "Get me in this time and you may never have to vote again." His proposed restriction on mailed-in voting is a first giant step towards doing away with the ballot box. Hitler did something similar but forget about him, think what he did for the German people

To those who prefer to shy away from thinking about impending tyranny, the message is brief: forget about yourselves, death will soon bring an end to your worries. Think about your kids.

A small break, with consequences

I have to be careful. When I moan audibly about the difficulties of my present life those nearest to me try to cheer me up with solutions. Recently I stared mournfully at a half-empty glass of beer and reflected that I’d already visited France for the last time. And France (with its conversations) is an essential constituent of my life blood.

Days later I received an email from daughter, Occasional Speeder, saying she’d booked three days at Fécamp in northern France, on the Channel coast, for the two of us and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

Can you guess my response? 

So there we were, sitting in the Skoda, in a train presently stationary at Folkestone in Kent, waiting to travel – undersea for 35 minutes – to Calais. The hell with travelling by ferry which takes a couple of hours, what with all the driving on and driving off. Getting on to the train is like entering a continuous metal tube. Easy-peasy. Time for me shave in situ given I’ve never got on with beards.

Neither of us had ever visited Fécamp before and, I must confess, initially it was something of a downer. Elderly and industrial sums it up. And our small terrace (US: row) house was in a narrow back street. Cheap though. However, a quick walk changed my mind.

Fécamp is a working town, mainly trawler fishing, reminding me that what I hate are places that have become RESORTS, a term of abuse for me. Both residents and visitors behave less naturally in resorts. While Fécamp’s restaurants displayed themselves less tartishly.

Still Fécamp. What you see is my grilled sole, arguably the best flat fish in the world. Bloody marvellous and half the price it would have been in a resort. Served me by an utterly lustrous black waitress. Occasional Speeder eventually went inside to pay and when the till worker saw the note I’d specified as tip she beckoned the waitress over. And the waitress was embarrassingly grateful. But for me the emotions were even more pronounced. I was in France and now happier.

We drove up the coast and stopped to visit a war cemetery at St Valéry-en-Caux. This area is fairly near where it all happened on June 6 1944 and, inevitably, there are lots of war cemeteries. This one was Franco-British but it could easily have been Franco-US. And here it behoves me to make a point. The French have never forgotten to be grateful towards what we used to call the Allies and how they rescued France with the invasion. This was a smallish cemetery, enhanced by being on a slope. Flower beds recently trimmed, some tombstones which hadn’t stood the passage of time (France was very poor then) had been replaced. Beautiful and tranquil.

So we progressed up the coast towards a geological reminder. Once the isles of the UK were joined to what is now the French mainland. And there’s proof. You may have heard of the white cliffs of Dover (Vera Lynn sings the song); well here are their continuations in France and I stood to marvel.

Did I say the French still remember? There were flags waving over an area close to the shore and deliberately left bare. Over seventy years ago a US Flying Fortress crashed there and a huge plaque lists in detail everyone who died.

Too morbid? I can't apologise.

Heard of absinth? A near-toxic liqueur that killed the painter Toulouse-Lautrec and - the waiter assured me - wrecked Van Gogh. I have heard it's making a comeback. Had to be with the flood and courageously ordered two centilitres. Remarkably like Pernod. And, as far as I can tell, I'm still alive.

Something more personal. We went southish, crossing the wonderful Pont du Normandie.I wantyed to point out its glories and turned to the car's rear seat where VR usually sits, inviting discussion. But of course VR wasn't there and - being unable to travel - was, no doubt, reflecting unhappily in her Hereford nursing home. I visit her almost daily but, yesterday, I remained silent about the visit to France with OS. My needs having been granted but at a price.

Finally: A noticeboard lists the maximum purchases at a drinks emporium near, I think, Honfleur: 10 litres of alcoholic and “spirituous” drinks; 20 litres of “intermediate” drinks (port, vermouth, madeira, etc), 90 litres of wine, 100 litres beer.”

Yeah, about right for an average party of ten. That’s chaps, of course.

 

Time for persiflage

FAREWELL FAMOUS TYKE David Hockney, Britain's best-known painter, died yesterday. He and I simultaneously attended  Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire  though he was was two years younger. I never spoke  to him but I observed his behaviour. As might be imagined, even then he marched to the beat of a different drummer and this attracted the school bullies.  As they punched him he giggled; this foxed these sporting oafs and they quickly walked away, disappointed.

Hockney, of course, travelled the world and is frequently remembered for the work he did in California. Despite this he retained much more of his West Riding accent than I did. The difference being he spoke charmingly whereas I always sounded as if I was complaining. Eventually the years spent in and around London, plus the six years in Pennsylvania, wore away most of these unwelcome linguistic roots and I can now pass as geographically anonymous.

WRITING STYLE Having - more or less - mastered English grammar and left spelling up to WfW's Checker I can afford to concentrate on writing style. By now - and I should bloody well hope so! - I know what I want but defining those two words is fiendishly difficult. There are certain identifiable factors. A war on superfluity, for instance, but without lapsing into terseness. Choosing exact verbs rather than opting, lazily, for generalities. Chasing after that which is vivid plus its corollary: the unexpected. 

But summarising  that in, say, less than thirty words is beyond me. For the moment. I'll return to this subject however tedious you may regard it.

I wonder if I may be trying to write as if from my belly button.

It rhymes with reach (+ out)

The fact that I feel so damned lonely must be proof that I married well. During sixty-six years there've been plenty of arguments but also plenty of agreements. Notably when VR - already a mother - agreed to share the adventure of uprooting ourselves from the suburb of Stoke Newington, from London, from England and from Europe and settle - for an unspecified length of time - in the USA. Where I knew nobody, would live unprotected by the NHS (National Health Service) in a sub-continent where more than two-thirds of the population had never owned a passport. A huge but parochial land mass.

Why? The immediate assumption, on both sides of the Atlantic, was that I intended to make my fortune. Not so, and I fear you'll just have to take my word for that. I was influenced, of course, but not so much by movies or by TV. Rather by Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Henry James, Anne Tyler, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, P. J. O'Rourke, Ross McDonald, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Lorenz Hart, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, James Jones... Many more. Many re-read. Yup, folks, it was the writers who wove the web.

Two things kept me there. One I fear will sound like boasting but don't complain; aged ninety, I won't be boasting for much longer. Fact is I'm good at what I do and this was recognised. For which, many thanks.

Second: life as it is lived in the suburbs.This came as a surprise especially when VR gave birth. Suburbanites are, I suppose, in the majority and it's my opinion that this is where the USA's true heart lies. Take it or leave it.

And now we - the USA and I - are suffering; VR is in a nursing home and US suburbanites are being maltreated by a starkly mad salesman. I felt  it was time to show that I cared.

Hence the tee-shirt bearing a single word. It's not a word that's as well-known in the UK as it is in the USA. And I haven't done it any favours by mirror-reversing it. But it's the eventuality we should all be hoping for. And, if that's your habit, praying for. 

Loss... from another angle

Not many people would have read the post - A Different Type of Loss - which I wrote, published and then quixotically destroyed a day or two later. Not because it was defective or the subject ill-chosen; I think the transformation marriages can bring about is under-explored. Ceasing to think purely as an individual and absorbing - in parallel - aspects of another person's life can be beneficial. The trouble is I had created an elephant in the room. In some respects I had - as the cliché goes - swallowed the camel while straining at the gnat.

I had taken a vow not to write about the medical condition that had overtaken VR even though there had been powerful discoveries I'd made along the way. And misunderstandings that needed clearing up. But I knew in my heart of hearts VR would not have approved of such a project. Silence, however inadequate, would be my paltry gift.

But quite by chance I came upon a reference by Stephen Fry in his arguments against the possible existence of an all-powerful God. One who had thought everything through and then brought about all aspects of life as we know it. Why, Fry asked, had God thought it necessary to create a form of bone cancer that is more or less fatal and only attacks children? How could that fit into the principles of overwhelming  love said to form the basis of Christianity?

As it happens, in one of my short walks to pick up the newspaper, I had fallen into conversation with a woman who'd recently been widowed - in mere middle age - and was struggling to re-establish herself. The chat lasted quite a long time and I was drawn in by her articulacy and the way she was able to control her emotions. Inevitably I compared her situation with my own. Was a partner's death preferable to the awfully inflicted cruelties I found myself sharing with my wife of 65 years?

There is of course no agreed answer to this question. Unless, of course, the all-powerful God exists and he'd seen my situation as worthy of the most exquisitely devised punishment for coming to the wrong conclusion about his all-abiding love? And believe me the torture is very finely wrought since it relies on those benefits that marriage has conferred on me.

I may find it necessary to destroy this substitute post too. Who knows? Like the weather I find myself changeable. Very English, that.

A different type of loss

Sorry Lucy, I've had second thoughts about this one. Hence I'm exercising editor's privilege.

But the email would be greatly welcome.

Cheers,

Robbie

Navel inspection

 

These days I get out more, meet new people and – as with the unchanging spots on a leopard – I ask them questions. Initially to help me get work done; latterly, when I’m impressed by the quality of the answers.

I’ll call S a charity worker even though that’s inexact. What’s true is her work demands a sense of vocation, certain aspects would put off someone less sympathetic, she immediately gets on with people and she’s well-informed. Her husband is also “not exactly” a charity worker but is much closer to being one.

The obfuscation is intentional.

S’s answers to my questions were not only factual but reassuring. I didn’t want to waste her time but the atmosphere suggested a couple of minutes’ chat wouldn’t go amiss. “Just suppose,” I said, “you and your husband were faced with an unexpected day off; how would you ideally spend it?”

“Reading,” she said.

Break for stage directions. Journalistic questions are not plucked from the ether; many are intended to provoke a foreseen (possibly revelatory) answer. But not in this case. I had no real idea beforehand. If I say I was surprised by the answer it might imply I’d seen S as a non-reader. Perish the thought! I was, in fact, delighted. End of break.

I do a lot of reading, myself  (less so in old age, I fear). Mainly when the mood takes me. But am I such a devoted print-lover as to allocate a whole day to a book? The answer must be no. Am I missing out, then? Might there be bigger rewards if I were?

A situation that had me – agreeably – questioning myself.

Pure gold.

Gather ye comfort where ye may

This post does not break the vow I made under "Which?" It concerns me, not VR.

I visit her regularly and find myself comparing my current way of life (Lonely but free to do whatever I wish) with hers (Seated and surrounded by inarticulacy and/or other forms of suffering associated with this terrible illness). 

Leaving me feeling guilty. The manageress of the nursing home says: "You are not alone".

Both my daughters are distant and I am regularly in touch by phone. Both are immensely supportive. I mention this feeling of guilt but point out the word is inexact: guilt implies self-blame and I am not responsible for VR's illness. Wouldn't "grief" be a better word, one suggests.

It would. And, strangely, this greater precision helps me. The joy of getting language right.

**** And, with almost unbelievable timing, an email arrives from a local computer repair service which used TeamViewer Host software (ie, temporarily taking over the running of my PC from an office three miiles away) to cure a connection problem. At the time I was impressed by this very civilised way of doing business, and said so. Would I therefore write them a review? I would, but, I told them, it would not take the form of most reviews - apparently composed by the company owner's sycophant. 

Quite, quite different. I was surprised they posted it. But they did and they say it attracted over fifty viewings. Lessons learned: Stay clear of clichés, think before pressing the first key, revel in language's ultimate potential.

The authorial maze

I started writing my current novel - Rictangular Lenses - in early September 2016. There have been year-long gaps to the point where you might have thought I'd lost interest altogether. Brother Sir Hugh pointed out I started learning to sing the same year (early January) and there is no doubt I was absorbed by this new turning-point in my life. On the other hand I've been writing fiction since I was 11, the year 1946. Do the forties have any resonance for anyone who reads Tone Deaf?

I may not have written RL continuously but its existence nagged at me. In Lindsay I'd created the toughest of all the women who dominate my other four novels. She gives men hell and I've loved devising these torments; perhaps, deep down, I'm an unrevealed masochist. There was no way I'd let her drop into oblivion.

During the last six months I've resumed writing RL and I'm up to 75,181 words. For those who can't envisage what that means, an average medium-length novel probably tops out at about 100,000 words.

But here's a thing: creating  RL has stretched over a decade and there's no doubt - even discounting learning to sing -  during that period I've changed as a person and, thereby, as an author. I'm not sure I ever knew how RL would end but I've just completed a totally unexpected conversation between Lindsay and a concert pianist which must surely change the plot in a big way. How? I'm not sure. But then I'm kind of sure.

Am I being irritating? Cast your mind over the biographies of all the novel writers you've read: many have been downright peculiar, some close to criminal. It's not a job for healthy minds

WHICH?

Veronica now lives in a nursing home. Yesterday I visited her there for the first time. I do not intend to write directly about this matter again.

Not because the subject is too raw, too difficult or too personal. I’ve written for a living and I’ve tackled those adjectives before. Rather, because it would be pointless.

At the present core of our 65-year-old marriage is a dilemma, a word that’s often misused. Too casually. It is much more than a sticky how’s-your-father. Google puts it rather pungently:

A challenging situation requiring a choice between two or more equally undesirable, unfavourable, or mutually exclusive  alternatives… often… a  ‘no-win’.”

Occasionally, at three o’clock of a morning, I reckon I’ve cracked it. But it’s fool’s gold. One cannot do anything about the passage of time, whatever H. G. Wells postulated. To explain the dilemma would be easy enough, if wordy. But, as I say, pointless. And that’s what Brits call a full stop and North Americans a period.

A rather sadder message

Veronica, my wife of 65 years, now lives in a nursing home. I find myself incomplete and must get used to another kind of life.

Best kind of New Year Message

 Click image to enlarge