Not a good day today, I'm sorry to say. I suspect this will be a rather short blog as I'm utterly wiped out in terms of energy. So, hey, there's always a silver lining for my reader then ...

Most of my day has been spent ringing PPP, ringing the hospital and ringing the Surrey Park Clinic. Over and over and over again. All I want is for someone - anyone, please! - to give me a code for a D&C operation, as PPP won't speak to me, or even acknowledge my presence without it. It was actually so incredibly stressful that at one point I couldn't stop shaking, so lay down on the bed and cried for a while. I still feel incredibly tearful now, as it's late afternoon and nothing's been resolved. I desperately, desperately want it to be sorted out by tomorrow as I can't bear the thought of starting the working week next week, knowing the op is on Thursday and I'm still struggling with the admin side of it all. I think that, if I don't hear anything from anyone today that's remotely helpful, I'm going to drive to the Clinic tomorrow and just sit there sobbing until someone gives me the fucking code. I mean, for God's sake, how hard can it be?? Give me the fucking code, for crying out loud!!!! I'm not even worried about whether it will or won't be what they end up doing to me next week - I just want the code so it goes on PPP's paperwork and is therefore an option I can have. I don't know why everyone is making it so bloody difficult. Fuckers, all of them. Even the nice ones ...


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It is an absolute pleasure to welcome author, poet and creative writing tutor, Sarah Salway to my blog (click here for her website, and here for her terrific blog). She’s written two of my favourite books, (Something Beginning With and Leading The Dance – I’ve yet to read her third, Tell Me Everything, but I wouldn’t bet against it being added to the list) - she’s able to list Neil Gaiman as a fan, she temporarily joined the circus – and do you want to know something really cool – she’s agreed to be interviewed here.


So Sarah, tell us a little bit about your work.

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the poet Ruth Padel's mother was a biologist, and her grandmother Nora was a botanist in the days when botany was more or less the only acceptable science for women. Apparently Ruth took her mother to a poetry reading, and afterwards her mother said, 'I see the point of poets now. They notice things.'

Don't laugh - though poets are allowed a wry chuckle before they open the email which tells them their publisher has gone bust because their Arts Council funding is now paying for a few seats of one of the Olympic Stadia - because it's actually very important. It's the same idea as Gwen Raverat's 'losing experience'. If you spend as much time around poets as I do, you know that no one observes better, athough people don't think of it as part of the training as they do of visual artists like Gwen. And when it comes to novels, let's face it, people first notice the plot. But that capacity to observe is so important. I don't think I'm the only writer who doesn't read on buses or have an MP3 player because I'm too busy eavesdropping. And I can particularly recommend the cafeteria of the Croydon IKEA, for truly bizarre conversations.

When you say that you spend time observing, non-artists (there, I've managed it, obliquely) think that you're going to start putting the things and people you've observed into your work, but it's not as simple as that.

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Not only does my father email to invite me to lunch - his treat - but he actually makes the trip to London by train to meet me. He asks me to pick the restaurant, so, through a total lack of imagination, I choose Christopher’s in Convent Garden.

As I wait for my father to show up I try to think of things to say that aren’t bitter, hurtful or childish.

“My name’s Christopher as well,” I tell the pretty waitress as she pours my bottle of beer into a glass.

“Wow,” she says, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. In a place like this the staff is supposed to treat its customers reverentially but they see through me.

“If I was wearing a suit would you take me seriously?” I ask her.

“Possibly,” she says, smiling, and she takes the empty bottle away as my father arrives.

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Lots of strange dreams last night about baths which I couldn’t really make a lot of sense of. Always good to be clean, I suppose … Still, at least I did get to sleep at a reasonable time, hurrah, so feel less like a squeezed-out sponge with no soul. If sponges even have souls, that is … Meanwhile at work, the saga of the info talks timetabling continues – some of it is gradually falling into place, or simply falling perhaps, I think, but it’s hard to say. At the moment it feels as if I’m still battling for survival in the middle of a rather large jungle. And I’m not sure which direction the enraged puma will leap from next. As it were. Ye gods, but my mind needs to chill out more for certain. Even I’m not quite sure where that image is going … Anyway, all the different talk timetables seem okay for this week at least, and possibly even next, so probably best to leave it there and not look too far ahead where the undergrowth is thickest. I’ll do that when I’m feeling stronger ...


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I'd never really thought of it like this, but Joyce Carol Oates nails it:

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul."

I came across this quote here, where it kicks off a very interesting meditation - by a psychologist, not a novelist - on how empathy works in fiction. One of the most interesting things it mentions is that people who don't empathise easily in real life have a stronger empathic response to characters in a movie if they think they're fictional, than if they think they're real. The suggestion is that empathy in real life is dangerous for people like this (and we probably all are like this to some degree, sometimes): it involves relaxing your guard, becoming vulnerable to someone who may take advantage, or whose pain may destroy us, whereas empathising with fictional characters will do no worse than, say, make you cry at the end of the novel.

This makes it sound as if reading is living lite, as it were: reality safely eviscerated.

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Things seem slightly calmer today, thank goodness. Possibly because I’m simply too tired to respond to difficulties with anything other than a grunt. And, if I’m feeling energetic, maybe even a shrug. Heck, I’m such fun at parties, you know. No, really …

Anyway, I’ve decided to go for the D&C at the hospital next week, so have sent letters to all and sundry, telling them this. Whether this will mean anything to the hospital by the time I turn up remains to be seen, so I’m planning to take all my correspondence with me so I can wave it at them at the due time. I think I’ll also ring up on Thursday when I’m at home, just to make sure – and then, if they do end up taking my leg off, it will most definitely not be my fault ...


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Much to my astonishment, I actually managed to get an appointment with the nice doctor at 8.30 this morning, so as I only found out at 8.10am, it was a mad rush to get there. Once again, he was very sweet and helpful, but I’ve been left with even more confusion and decisions to make than I had before. Groan. The upshot is that he's concerned about:

1. The ablation - he doesn't think I need it and says the new consultant does have a rather steamroller approach to stuff, even though she's good. He suggests a coil (which I don't want) or a D&C which is an alternative and less extreme option. To be honest, I really didn't want to have to think about anything the week before the op, but it appears I must. I just feel really upset and confused about it all, particularly as the consultant said the doctors probably wouldn't like it. I'm stuck in the middle of a medical disagreement - not a great place to be. At the moment I'm leaning towards a D&C, if that's the moderate answer, but I suppose I'll need to write yet another letter to the hospital & everyone, plus ring PPP up again. And I suppose I'll have to do it this week if it's going to mean anything. Deep deep sigh ...


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An illuminating insight into freshers week at Sheffield Hallam as youngest son posts his first photo album of student life (entitled Fresh Meat Week) on facebook. Find it reassuring that the ritual of balancing as many objects as possible - ashtrays, food, pizza boxes, discarded underwear - on top of comatose student clutching empty bottle persists ...

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So there I was, pootling around in my big desk notebook, (not, of course, procrastinating, no, not a bit), pretending to collect up the bits and pieces of thought about the nameless new novel because it wasn't just the right moment to dig back into my PhD commentary. And I came across this sentence at the bottom of a page:

Pain of trying not to be in love with someone.

True enough, I thought, absently. Don't think it was to do with the novel. Maybe a story? Can't remember what I meant. Has the milk come yet? I'd kill for some coffee. Standard stuff. Come on Emma, either keep going or do some other work. Goodness knows there's enough waiting. There didn't seem to be anything else useful on that spread, so I flipped over, and found the rest of the note:

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