F#####G CENSORED!

The right to freedom of speech of one of those inalienable ones, until someone says something we disagree with, for whatever reason. Americans have it as their First Amendment, for all we seem to hear more about the Second one. The ability to speak one's mind without fear of punishment is something that many of us in the UK and the US take for granted, I suspect. Every now and then there will be a news story from China or similar that makes us draw a sharp breath in shock, though usually this particular right is one we don't even think about. But do we really have that right?

Some censorship may make sense. Child pornography, for example, should be censored out of existence, along with its disseminators. The protection of military secrets rather depends on your view of the need for a military. Other censorship, such as that described as 'political correctness', seems overly nanny-like. And don't get me started on groups such as the American 'Focus on the Family'.
                                                   

The real trouble with censorship is that half the time, you probably don't know whether what you're seeing/reading/hearing has been censored. I don't mean just the self-censorship, the 'I probably shouldn't say that about my boss because I still need my job' type comments. It's the stuff the government thinks we can't bear to know or won't understand or will misinterpret (thanks for that vote of confidence in our intelligence, by the way). It's the super-injunctions, when various celebrities persuade the courts not only to keep their identities and court-cases secret, but also to keep the secret a secret. It's the decision by someone *higher up* that certain reading matter is subversive and therefore should not be circulated ('higher up' being a relative term here, not a mystical one).

Before the printing press, subversive material was limited in quantity but it didn't stop its existence. Subversion leads to discontent which leads to either rebellion and/or censorship. Socrates was made to drink hemlock because he had promoted philosophies that the ruling class of the day disliked, and that was some considerable time ago. Once Europe got its hands on that movable type, there was no stopping the pesky subversives - so the Catholic Church came up with an Index of Forbidden Books. Pope Alexander VI (the Borgia Pope) had tried to prevent unlicensed books being published back in 1501 but it wasn't until 1559 that the Index was first created, under the auspices of Pope Paul IV, the driving force behind the Roman equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. (A stubborn man, he only accepted the papacy in 1555 because the Holy Roman Emperor Charles didn't want him to - or so we are told.)  Although the Index was refined later by the Council of Trent, authors could still be put on it simply because their views were deemed 'heretical', even if the subject matter of the book was not. Kepler, Kant and Newton were all forbidden in the Papal States and many Catholic countries courtesy of the Index.
                                                        

Official censorship via the Index was finally ended in 1966 by Pope Paul VI although the man in charge of the Holy Office (formerly 'The Sacred Congregation of the Index') at the time, one Cardinal Ratzinger, said, "The Index retains its moral force despite its dissolution." Yeah, him.

Michelangelo had no reason to like Paul IV - practically his first act as pope was to cancel Michelangelo's pension - but I suspect his outspoken manner would have also turned him against a man who was keen on censorship to the point of burning offenders at the stake. At least we don't burn people at the stake anymore for abusing their right to a freedom of speech. Or do we?....

Organised myself - check!

A short while ago, I read a blog (apologies, I forget whose - maybe Helen Hollick, maybe someone else - or possibly even a comment Helen made on someone else's blog!) who commented that they carried round a notebook to jot down all those ideas they had when not near their PC, because otherwise they just forgot them. A problem in the shower, which is where all my bestselling ideas occur, but the principle was sound. I have plenty of notebooks, I thought, I should do that. (Yes, I know, I should *already* have been doing that, but cut me some slack.)

Then, as part of my continuing effort to lose weight (and to encourage the other members of the household without sabotaging my own efforts, let's be honest!) I started planning menus. Too often I had found that mealtimes would come round again, the fridge would have only half the ingredients for a sensible meal and we'd end up eating pizza. Or chinese. Or fish and chips. (Never all three.) By planning one proper meal a day, and ensuring that I had not only the ingredients for that but also a few things for small meals and snacks for the rest of the week, some of the stress was taken out of it, as well as quite a lot of the calories. Apart from anything else, many of the recipes I've done are 'serves four', so it helps with the old portion control too.

In addition to all this planning, I had often scribbled on a piece of paper the more urgent things that I really needed to get done that day, whether it was checking online for planning permission information for our community newsletter, working out what I was doing with my pupils that week at school or remembering to collect a parcel from the post office - and then with joy I could cross things off the list as I did them. Or transfer them to a new list the following day.

My kitchen table was beginning to look like the result of an explosion in a paper factory. Bits of paper everywhere, all with essential information, perhaps. I needed a system.

Now, way way back in the dark ages, last century, people used something called a 'diary'. They would jot down things like appointments and birthdays in them, a little aide-memoire. In fact, when I was based in New York and working with the fabulous Penny England, she was super-organised and would spend the first few minutes of each working day building up the list in the office diary of what needed to be done, always transferring over the few things from the previous day that hadn't happened (it was off-off-Broadway theatre, there were always things cropping up that meant the usual stuff didn't get done).

You're probably thinking here, 'There's an app for all that.' Well, I have tried. I really have. I use the calendar app in my phone and have linked it to my gmail calendar. I use the reminders app. I use the notebook app. I even paid for a couple of To-Do-List type apps, one of which, Clear, is really clear and easy to use. (Business Insider has it down as one of the 7 Best Apps to organise yourself with.) But the trouble with all of these apps is, you have to use all of them. You have to go to each of them and open each of them and then do the stuff in each of them! I know, it's not really a hardship, but it's too easy *not* to do it. Plus, I suspect I have over-cluttered Clear with lists of plants to buy - eventually - for the garden. The biggest problem I have is that it's easier to write something with a pen (or pencil) than it is to type it in on an iphone keyboard.

It's a bit late in the year to buy a diary for 2013, so I've redirected one of my many notebooks, written the dates for the next couple of weeks at the top of each page, and started including *all* the stuff I need to know in that. And I've bought a proper diary already for next year, an A5 lined page to a day. I will still use the calendar app on my phone, and the reminders. But I now have several ideas for blog entries jotted down at the back of my notebook - you could even say I've got a little list! - and I can also cross off one of today's 'things to do'. Now to tackle the next one - cooking lunch.

The Joy of Jam-Making

Last weekend I made jam for the first time *ever*.

This will doubtless seem to some a shocking revelation, while others will be totally unsurprised. I am, after all, hardly a Domestic Goddess. I have just discovered the new nomenclature of 'outsourcing the catering' when having friends over for dinner (aka getting in a takeaway, preferably one that is delivered). But the lady round the corner had phoned in desperation: could I take some plums off her hands, as her trees had gone into overdrive. I'm not the world's biggest plum fan, having endured a surfeit of them as a child, but I had seen a recipe for plum clafoutis that looked quite straightforward and was marked 'easy' in the margin. Yes, I said, I can take a few.

My next mistake was letting the OH go round to collect them. He, of course, did not endure a surfeit of plums as a child and was therefore not shocked when the plum-grower filled a carrier bag (admittedly, a small one) for him with a fraction of her produce.

I shouldn't be eating puddings. I certainly shouldn't be eating plum clafoutis day after day after day, especially when it's made with double cream. What else could I do with it? A vague memory of a jam setting on my breadmaker popped into my head. Would that solve my problem? Fortunately the recipe was extremely easy: 500 grammes plums, halved, peeled and stoned; a cup and a half of granulated sugar; 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice; some pectin. I can't remember how much pectin because in the end, despite my OH locating some, I didn't use it. There should be enough naturally occurring pectin in the fruit for the jam to set, I reasoned, happy to agree with several in the online fora.

I don't know if you've ever tried peeling plums. You can't use an ordinary peeler as you would for apples or potatoes. And trying to get the stones out of them wasn't always easy either. I was lucky that the halves were supposed to be chopped roughly before putting in the machine. After that, it was easy enough. Switch it on to the correct program, sit back for a few minutes before sterilising the jars (which in my case involved washing in hot soapy water, rinsing and then baking in the oven, as per the breadmaker's instructions; no boiling jars and fingers for me!). Everything went to plan and I have in fact made a second batch, following the same instructions. The jam hasn't set brilliantly but then we bought some jam in the Azores earlier in the year that wasn't set - still tasted amazing. The second batch is darker in colour as I didn't peel most of the plums, hoping that there will be more pectin in the skin.

But what surprised me most was the reaction from my friends. 'You'll have such fun,' they told me. Really? I haven't had the heart to tell them (until now) that I've done it using a breadmaker in case that has taken the fun out of it all. But having to boil away sticky stuff on the hob, testing the temperature at regular intervals, trying to decant the bubbling gloop from a large saucepan into a small jar without spilling it all over the worktop - I fail to see where the fun is. Perhaps I should have taken greater pleasure from having my fingers stained plum-colour for several days afterwards. Suffice to say, the next jam I make (and yes, there is satisfaction in making one's own jam, especially from produce that was free, rather than buying jars of it from the supermarket) will be done in the breadmaker. And I will have great fun sitting reading a book while it cooks.

Birthdays, happy or otherwise.

Birthdays may not yield the post office or Clintons quite as much money as they used to, but it seems everyone needs to know about when your birthday is. Most forms of social media not only ask for your date of birth, they seem obsessed with telling all your friends when your birthday is - purely so you can be wished happy birthday, of course. You can always thwart this tendency by putting in a false date of birth (as quite a number of under-teens do on Facebook, for example) though it must be hard for those few whose birthday really *is* January 1st.

Some people would rather not celebrate their birthdays. One significant birthday (you know, those that end in a zero), I got positively grumpy, despite being offered a party to celebrate it. The OH did then try to offer a party the week before to celebrate the fact that the first digit still hadn't changed, but I was too stuck in my grumpy rut by then.

The next significant birthday, I made up for it. Massive party. And it was really good fun. Somehow, the digit at the front no longer mattered. I have since taken to celebrating the fact that I generally don't look my age (just don't look too closely at giveaway areas like my hands or neck) and delight in surprising people who hadn't realised. Yes, I really am *that* old. And no, I'm not going to say here how old I am. It might be different by the time you read it... I have finally realised that age is relative and it's mostly in your head. Your chronological age is pretty unimportant.

Alternatively, you can follow the example of other cultures. A Polish friend, for example, tells me that birthdays are quite low key but your Name Day, on the other hand, is another matter completely.  Happy Name Day, all you Sabinas out there, today being St Sabina's Day, according to the Catholic calendar.

It also occurred to me, while writing 'happy birthday' in Spanish for a friend, that some of it is in the wording. Harking back each year to our birth when mentioning birth-day is guaranteed to make us feel old, whereas the Spanish 'feliz cumpleanos' would appear to my vague recollections of Latin, to be celebrating the number of years you have completed, a more satisfying approach. Yay, finished another one, pass the sangria!

One of my brothers-in-law has a theory that people who set themselves a (usually totally unrealistic) lifeplan that is not achieved by the time they are 30 find crossing that particular threshold awkward, as if they have somehow failed. There are two potential solutions to this: one is to set yourself realistic goals rather than attempting to be e.g. president of Uruguay or a multiple billionaire by the time you're thirty - very few people manage this, if any; the other is pack so much into your life that by the time you're thirty you have a lot to look back on. My brother-in-law, a busy chap in his quiet moments, enjoyed his thirtieth birthday.

I suspect this is an approach that can be applied throughout the years, whatever targets you set yourself and is quite well summed up by the popular current acronym YOLO - You Only Live Once. Happy whatever you're celebrating today, just make sure you don't let it slip by without doing something to remember!

In memory of Daniel Pelka

Sometimes I find it hard to take sides or make a decision because usually I can see the other person's point of view. I make excuses for people driving badly, for example, (for all I swear at them!) or forgetting to include someone in a group invitation, partly because I can understand all too easily how such things might happen.

But sometimes I cannot understand how someone can do something. The recent case of Daniel Pelka is one of those times. I haven't read all the stories in the news relating to it because it's just too sad and too distressing. The little I have seen projects Daniel's mother and her partner as being like the killers that I normally come across in TV shows like 'Criminal Minds', where it's all fiction and people like that don't really exist. Except apparently they do.

I can *almost* understand the stepfather's actions. I suppose it's the exercise of power by an extreme sadist. But what is so shocking to me is how the maternal instinct seems to have failed so completely in Daniel's mother. Clearly the boyfriend was a scary guy as Daniel's sibling tried to help but did so secretly, to protect both of them. So perhaps Daniel's mother was also scared of him. Perhaps. She didn't appear to show any remorse throughout the nine weeks of the trial, though. Ultimately, I can only agree with the judge who described their actions as 'incomprehensible'. Literally.

Thirty years doesn't seem much for what the two of them put a little boy through. But it will probably be thirty years in solitary for their own protection, because I'm pretty certain that their fellow jailbirds will find their actions incomprehensible too, and many of them will be parents.

Assisting in the birth (of a book...)

Since it seems the entire world is agog over what is, let's face it, an entirely natural process, I thought I'd approach it from a different angle.

This week's blog is about the birth of a *book*. Yes, you read that correctly. And the labour involved in bringing a book into the world can be extremely UNnatural, especially coming as it does after a pregnancy that for many of us is much much longer than nine months!

Just for a change, I'm not going to tell you about the trials and tribulations of exposing my own book, 'Moses in Chains', to the world (though this link should take you to the Amazon page to get it for your kindle if you haven't already!) but instead about a different book of historical fiction, 'The Handfasted Wife', by Carol McGrath.

Carol first got the idea for her book several years ago while visiting Bayeux, and you can read her account of it in her blog. Inspiration comes in many different forms and a small extract of a large picture is not a particularly surprising route, I think. The idea fermented for a while until she started a postgraduate Creative Writing degree at Royal Holloway, for which a completed novel would be part of the final submission. Over several years, she honed the characters and their adventures until it reached the state in which you now find it. We spent many happy afternoons drinking tea in the garden and hot-seating some of the characters, exploring different possibilities and laughing lots. (I think it was tea, though in retrospect it may have been Pimms.)  Other readers gave opinions that were filtered through Carol's perspective and more than one of us went through checking the spelling, punctuation and grammar (it is much easier to find those stray commas and spaces in someone else's work, believe me - though I can assure you, both Carol and I know the difference between villain and villein).

As for the labour, it is all too well documented how difficult it is to find an agent these days, or a publisher. Through the Romantic Novelists Association, Carol had met a number of people who had read her book in its earlier drafts and provided helpful comments - this is typical of the RNA and probably the wider writing community, because they've all been there and they all know how hard it is - and through one of her contacts, Carol was lucky enough to be offered a contract by Accent Press. I say 'lucky' not because she didn't deserve it but because so often great writing is overlooked because it's in the wrong place at the wrong time; you only have to read about J.K.Rowling's recent experience to discover how much is down to who happens to read your draft and when they read it.

Getting the contract was not the end of the process, however. The labour continued as Carol made changes to the text as requested by her publisher, decided on the cover, prepared her blog tour and made plans for the launch. (Here are a few links to the blog tour that Carol managed to organise. Kudos to her!)  Eventually the day came when the book was available as an ebook or paper copy, through print on demand. Carol's busy schedule meant that the launch was more virtual than actual until last Thursday, when Coles Books in Bicester kindly hosted a launch with wine, canapes and copies of the book available to be purchased and signed.

Is that the end of the birthing process? You might have thought so. Carol at least had already decided on the name but the media is still in pursuit - she has had a mention in an article in USA Today and of course has to follow up on the reviews that people kindly write, on Amazon and elsewhere. And of course, since Carol is not a one-book-wonder, there are the other offspring to consider; fortunately the first draft of the second book in the planned trilogy is already complete. I'm pretty certain that the parents of another recent birth can't claim that!

David Bowie is...

disappointing. Not a word I would ever have thought to connect with Mr B, but true.

Since forever, I have been a David Bowie fan. Back in the day, when my schoolfriends were debating the relative merits of Donny Osmond vs. David Cassidy, I couldn't be bothered with either of them. I preferred the weirdness of David Essex in 'Shine On' and was hooked by 'John I'm Only Dancing' and 'The Jean Genie' (I was a little late learning about pop, having been raised in a classical household). I saw Bowie only once, on the Serious Moonlight Tour, but then my student budget was always torn by the relative costs of food, books and music. The only reason I stopped buying the albums in the late 80s was the rising cost of children's paraphernalia. I should probably rectify some of those gaps now so that I can rip the rest of his oeuvre to my phone.

So I was really excited when my OH revealed that our mystery trip on Sunday, for which I had had to get up surprisingly early, was to the David Bowie retrospective at the V&A museum. I'd been aware that it had been on, but I usually find out about these things long after they've either finished or sold out. For a change, I was in on one of the Big Things.

To begin with, there were timed tickets. That should make sure that there is an even distribution of people going in, so that rather than being part of a crush to see things, you are part of a constant trickle. Should. Didn't.

Then there was the audio tour. Note, not an audio guide. They are very clear about that on the leaflet the girl handed to us before we got our audio sets. The idea was to provide a soundscape to the things we were about to see, in which proximity to the displays linked to a particular piece of the soundtrack, whether music or commentary. Quite a nice idea, especially when used to provide a soundscape for a musician.

I'm not sure how far apart the various timed entrances were, but it seemed as if our 10.30 entrance had been shared by about thirty people. They were all in the first room, I think, but it was quite dark so it was difficult to see. And because they were all there, it was also difficult to see the exhibits. When I finally got closer, I discovered there were small panels of writing underneath the various objects/photographs, usually white print on a coloured background. Difficult to read in the dark, especially when aware of all the other people around trying to get to the point where they could see *something*. At least at this point there seemed to be only one direction in which to move, so we all shuffled forward occasionally, and if someone needed to spend longer reading or studying an artefact, well, we just had to wait, or skip it. I'll be honest, I skipped a few. These were of his early years, stuff I could find elsewhere without waiting for someone else to finish reading it on the internet.

After a display of oranges, which appeared to have slipped slightly, and a short video of Gilbert and George with an soundtrack which I heard at least four times while waiting to move on, we went into the second room. There was a brief moment when the soundscape changed, and then I was back to the Gilbert and George soundtrack. Several more times.  I went back to a docent/guard to ask about it and he gave directions to where I could change the headset. I did try to follow the direction, but 'go to the end of the next room and turn left' was a bit too vague when the rooms are serpentine at best. I headed back to the OH, still listening to Gilbert and George, where my noble OH swapped headsets with me; for some reason, it started to behave. It must have known he would take no prisoners. Either that, or it realised that by moving forward six more inches, we could hear the Bowie medley being played over loudspeakers in the next room. At the same time as the soundscape. At which point, I took the headset off.

The costumes were interesting to look at but again, the low-level lighting - presumably to protect the fabrics - made it very difficult to read the information panels. I really would have preferred a more regular audiotour. The same criticism can be applied to the hand-written lyrics and notes for album covers. The point at which the audioset really was useful was at the compilation of film roles, when the dialogue could be heard, although since everyone was seeing the same thing at the same time, they could just as easily have put the sound over a public system in that room.

I don't want to give the impression that there was nothing I enjoyed about the exhibition: we spent nearly two hours there, including the obligatory exit via the giftshop. But this exhibition has received rave reviews from the critics and I can only assume that the critics got to see it without hordes of the general public blocking their view, because the general public will stand in the way when you want to see things and it will take all the time it wants to do so (I should know, I'm part of the general public!). Ultimately, I felt the only way to see all the information was to buy the book before I left the giftshop and that annoys me. A souvenir should be what it means - a memory, not a first viewing.