'STOCK' - Saturday 31st December 2005

The year is almost over and I find myself thinking that I ought to organise and sort the events of the last twelve months into some sort of deeply meaningful order... but actually, all I want to do is work out what my Top 5 films of the year are. And as I'm in need of some frivolity, I'm going to go with the latter.

So here they are, in the order in which they were seen... and I must say I'm very disappointed they've all turned out to be English-language movies...

1. Vera Drake [M. Leigh]
2. Million Dollar Baby [C. Eastwood]
3. The Machinist [B. Anderson]
4. Mysterious Skin [G. Araki]
5. A History Of Violence [D. Cronenberg]

As ever, many of the DVDs I watched proved more worthwhile than a lot of the cinema fare. Notable titles included: Noi Albinoi, Since Otar Left, Goodbye Lenin!, In The Land Of The Deaf, Czech Dream and Dirty Pretty Things.

By the way, Christmas was good. I made a strawberry pavlova for the first time. Everyone seemed to like it.

And as for taking stock... well, OXO's vegetable cubes remain essential inhabitants of our larder.

'UNBELIEVABILITIES' - Monday 19th December 2005

I wouldn't normally make an entry like this, but I also wouldn't normally watch the Parkinson show, so here goes...

Saturday night. ITV. Aforementioned Parkie. His final guest is Paul McCartney. Most of the chatter is of the blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda variety, but at one point, my ears go into red alert (red for livid, stinking, foot-stamping RAGE, you understand).

"Yeah, yeah, I've written a children's book," says Macca (not his exact words, please note). "Well, I didn't really write it. I told some people the story, and they went off and wrote it for me." (And I'm thinking, 'Oh, ok, cool, at least he's being honest.')

Parkie: What's it about?

Macca: Well, the main character is a squirrel. He's called Wirral the Squirrel. And one of the main themes of the book is the way we abuse the environment.

And at this point the knuckles on my right hand thanked me that I'm not a violent person, because the closet pugilist in me was ready to stride up to the TV screen and give Sir Paul of Macca a complete set of shattered pearlies. Why???! I'll tell you why!

Because my own recently-completed children's book - The Beginning Of The Story - features a character called... wait for it... Chirrel the Squirrel AND one of its themes is the way we absue the environment. That's why!

I could take some comfort from the fact that Chirrel isn't just a squirrel... but I don't. The only thing I can take is time to come up with a new character, because I can just see a literary agent accepting my story now!

Can you feel my fury, dear reader?

Changing the subject completely, someone I know came back from an American holiday recently and amused me with stories of 'how they do things differently there'. By far my favourite description was of their ATMs. You know how when you use an ATM and a message might flash up on screen saying something like, 'Would you like a receipt for this transaction?' and you get two options on screen: 'No' and 'Yes'. Well, apparently in Florida, the two options that appear on screen are: 'No, thanks' and 'Sure'. I didn't know whether to laugh or weep when I heard that.

'HOCKEY' - Sunday 11th December 2005

Experiencing something out of one's personal definition of 'the ordinary' can be beneficial. I watched a hockey match today, quite unexpectedly. Not a professional one. Just a few 12 year olds having a practice on a freezing Sunday morning. The main thing that struck me about the event was that if someone had written down, word for word, everything that was said and done, and then rewritten it all as prose or a script, I'm sure their work would've been criticised for being cliched and contrived.

All the stereotypical Sunday morning kiddie sports match trappings were in evidence. The coach yelling, "Guys! Guys! Communication!" Or, "Who's on the goalie? Who's on the goalie?" The players' nicknames: Hacker, Irish Leprechaun, D-Boy. The 40+ year old dads with bald patch heads and track suit bottoms waving their arms and shouting each time the ball misses the goal: "Whose side are you playing on, son?!!?" The designer-shade wearing mums with their flasks of coffee and their conversations that manage to touch on every topic except the match before their eyes: "It was really lovely, but I didn't get one, 'cause they didn't do it in red." (Although it should be said that they all seem to possess a freakish mum-like ability to know exactly when to pause their conversations to throw out a quick, "Oh, well DONE darling!" or perhaps, "Ooh, unlucky, never mind," to some lanky, grinning thing on the pitch.) The older chaps who grumble when the match is delayed because the pitch is frozen solid: "That wouldn't have bothered us in my day." The younger brother sitting on the side-lines clearly dreaming of the day when he'll be old enough to get involved. And so on...

It just made me wonder why it is that we so actively try to avoid cliches in any form of art. Perhaps one reason is that coming face to face with something unusual jolts us into discerning the true nature of everything that is normal and ordinary.

'ILLUSTRATION' - Monday 5th December 2005

Below you'll find one of the sample illustrations the actress and artist Joy Richardson has produced for my children's book, The Pumpkin Seed. Joy can be contacted through London's Great Western Studios and she will soon be appearing in Alfonso Cuaron's film of P D James' novel, The Children Of Men. Please click on the image below to view a larger version.

'CLEAN' - Sunday 4th December 2005

I've been trying to work out why I enjoy washing my car. Generally speaking, I'm the kind of person who's perfectly happy for a layer of dust to become, oh, about half-an-inch thick before I feel something needs to be done about it (and even then, it still takes another half-an-inch for me to go hunting for some kind of cleaning implement). I'm also not especially interested in cars in the way that - time for an evil stereotype - many testosterone-fuelled creatures appear to be. But every Sunday, unless it's raining or I'm away from home, I'm out on the driveway straight after breakfast sponging the week's grime away.

Today was no different, except that I started wondering why I enjoy doing it so much. The only answer I could come up with is that it's 90 minutes of effort which produces a definite, visible result. You look at a dirty car and you know exactly what needs to be done with it: there's a spray for the alloys, a soap for the bodywork and some handy wipe-type-things for the dashboard. And, if you feel like adding a touch of flair to proceedings, you can always cover the wheels with some dodgily-named Wet'n'Black.

Writing is the exact opposite. You look at a blank screen and you have no idea what you want to put onto it. You start typing something, but you don't really know if it's the beginning, the middle or the end. You'd like to inject your work with some flair, but you end up regurgitating every cliche in the book.

So does that mean that a writer's success can be measured by the cleanliness of his or her car?

'FACE' - Wednesday 30th November 2005

Today, my mind seems unable to shake off the news that the world's first face transplant was carried out in France last weekend. At the moment, I know little about the event beyond what could be expressed in a single paragraph of newsprint. But even that was enough to spark off all sorts of thoughts and questions.

At the moment, our faces are so inextricably linked with our sense of who we are that the prospect of facial transplants becoming commonplace might force us to select some other part of our bodies to become the 'primary site' of our identities. I wonder what that part might be. Aren't most of them already 'transplantable'? Perhaps one day, when anything and everything can be lifted off one body and grafted onto another, we'll have to find some metaphysical ways of asserting our uniqueness... like blogs perhaps...? They're about as honest and transparent as most faces, aren't they?

'TOMMY' - Wednesday 16th November 2005

Yesterday the BBC showed a documentary about the UK's last remaining survivors of WWI. If one ignored the patronising musical score and the redundant 'historical reconstruction' inserts, the programme was quite excellent.

It contained several thought-provoking and noteworthy moments, but the one which struck me most deeply was when we were told that one of the survivors, 107-year-old Harry Patch, did not speak about his war experiences until he was 100 years old.

The thought of more than 80 years of silence leaves me quite wordless.

'TIME GOES BY...' - Tuesday 15th November 2005

Someone at work asked me a question today. "Are you a doctor?" she said.

"Sorry?"

"Are you a doctor? Have you got a PhD?"

The first words that came into my head were, "Are you mad, woman? I'm FAR too young to have a PhD!" But then I realised that I'm not too young at all.

So I bit my tongue. And I shook my head. And I skulked away.

Which is interesting, because as far as I'm aware, I haven't got any issues with age at all...

'HOPE' - Sunday 13th November 2005

I'll come clean: I've spent a great deal of today listening to a radio station which is giving away tickets to a certain global megastar's 'intimate' gig in London this Tuesday. I had a couple of goes at trying to get through on the competition phone line. Needless to say, I had no success (which is perhaps just as well, because the questions have been VERY hard!), but I was stunned by one DJ's admission that he'd received over 100,000 hopeful telephone calls in the space of 30 minutes! Only 1 caller out of those 100,000 could have won the tickets, which of course means (I'm so glad I did A Level Maths) that this competition's odds of success were 1 in 100,000.

Now, those of you who visit this site regularly will remember that in a recent post I described how one literary agency takes on only about 3 new authors out of approximately 15,000 submissions received every year... so the odds of success there are around 1 in 5,000.

So, guess what? That makes me one very happy unlucky fan, because it means I've got a MUCH bigger chance of being an author than I have of being at the Koko Club on Tuesday! I had no idea that I'm such an optimist...

'HELP' - Sunday 6th November 2005

I was in Cambridge yesterday and as I was wandering around the town, I heard a loud car alarm going off again and again. Just like everyone else around me, I ignored it. But when I got closer to the sound, I realised not only that it was coming from a Royal Mail van, but that in between each burst of the alarm, a disembodied female voice was delivering the following message in a perfect sci-fi staccato: "Help. Help. This Post Office vehicle is under attack. Please phone the police." And next to the van was an embarrassed postman desperately trying to switch off his vehicle's security system! This brought a smile to all of us who walked past the hapless deliverer of our junk. So we all radiated gratitude towards him as we left him to his struggles.

'ODDS' - Friday 4th November 2005

I promise not to turn these diary entries into nothing more than a series of updates about rejection letters from agents, but I feel the contents of the letter I received yesterday are worth sharing.

The missive started with the usual words about how the agency is inundated with work and that I mustn't lose heart etc etc, but the closing line provided an interesting statistic. Apparently this particular agency receives 300 submissions A WEEK. Now, all weeks being equal, that means they get something in the region of 15,000 separate submissions every year. Would you care to know how many writers actually get added to their books out of those 15,000? Well, roll your mouse over the blank space below and you'll find out!

So, what d'you reckon? Is an agent going to take on my script or am I going to get struck by lightning?

'SUCCESSES' - Tuesday 1st November 2005

Could all this really be happening? The other day, I got a letter from an agency stating that they would try to read the synopsis of my film script soon. Today, I got a letter from another agency saying that not one, but TWO people have read my synopsis. Two whole people! If I were a character in an Agatha Christie novel, someone would be reaching for the smelling salts right now. These two people decided that my work isn't "quite right" for their agency (although there was "a great deal" they "enjoyed" about my synopsis) but that's besides the point at the moment.

Sixteen more bona fide rejections and I'll be in the same league as J K Rowling!

My other success concerns the illustrations for my children's book The Pumpkin Seed, the first 'drafts' of which I've finally had a chance to see. To call them most promising would be a gross understatment. I must ask her if she'd allow me to post some of them on this site...