Darn – Happy Family‘s book launch can’t happen on April 25th. But it’s not cancelled, just deferred. We’re moving it to when we can all gather and mingle in safety. Details to follow.
In the meantime, keep buying books (especially mine), support your indie bookseller and most importantly #staysafe and #stayathome.
Happy Family has completed its blog tour and the results are in. Huge thanks to all of the book bloggers, and to Anne Cater who arranged the tour.
Blog tour reviews:
You can read other reviews of Happy Family on Goodreads and Amazon – and if you have read the book, please leave a review too. They all help.
Happy reading.
A consequence of the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown is that I’m staring at my phone more. I know it’s wrong but I can’t stop swiping. 
And I’ve come across a Facebook group dedicated to my school’s alumni. There they all are, my classmates, the good, the bad and the extremely naughty, all grown-up. It’s meant to be a forum for all ex-pupils, but the posts are dominated by my cohort. It must be the fact we have more past than future that’s exciting my classmates. I put it down to nervous chatter.
Swiping through the discussions I find their ‘voices’ sound the same today as they did all those years ago. This shouldn’t surprise me but it does. They don’t seem to have changed at all – although the Facebook photographs suggest otherwise. We look like our parents and some of us look like our grandparents. Especially me. Gravity takes its toll and the weight of years has led to bad knees and bald heads – or is that just me again?
Not everyone in my year has joined the group and most of those who have, dip in and out. I wonder how many there are like me, who watch silently from the sidelines. I suspect I haven’t declared myself for the same reason we lost contact in the first place: the bonds weren’t sufficient. As in all things, natural selection knows best. Interestingly, those with whom I have kept in touch haven’t appeared in the group either. I’m not sure what that says but I think it says something. Perhaps we all died and no-one told us.
There are, however, a few who post comments all the time, and I’m ashamed to say this raises uncharitable thoughts. Is it because they prefer who they were to who they now are? Or is it vice-versa – a chance to rewrite history by replacing one personality with another? Time, the great leveler. Be nice now and people might forget what an awful shit you once were. The irony is that those who keep feeding the discussions of school memories, were, at the time, the keenest to leave school.
Certainly, friends I remember being pushed to the fringes of playground society are now in cheerful discourse with those who pushed them there. That’s good, but I wonder how long this social re-balancing will last. Once a Piggy always a Piggy, as Ralph and Jack might write on their post-apocalyptic Island Friends’ page.
Talking of Piggy, I was hoping to find some posts about me but disappointingly my name seldom crops up. I am so absent I had to check I actually went to that school. It seems I left little or no impression on anybody which is odd because I have a clear recollection of being popular. Too bad that’s a memory nobody else shares. Not even my friends.
However, other, darker, memories are posted. Complaints of casual racism, chronic bullying and punitive abuse by teachers. But just as casually, any attempt to discuss these traumas are closed down with comments such as ‘that was then and this is now’ and ‘it’s best to move on.’ Best for whom, one wonders? And move on to what? It’s clear the idyll is not to be broken. This is a happy website for happy memories. Even so, I am reminded that it is dangerous to be different. That is true now and it certainly was then.
And so the posts return to safer ground. We are challenged with questions such as ‘who was your favourite teacher’ and ‘what music did you dance to’. I liked to head-bang to Lyrnyrd Skyrnd but that’s not something I’d want to share with the group. Or should. We all have our murky secrets. But frankly, there are only so many posts I can read on the subject of ‘who remembers Miss Finaghty’ before time spent in this way becomes disappointingly repetitive.
I have a platonic relationship with the past. I don’t want to forget it but I also don’t want to relive it. I would jump at the chance to be sixteen again (knees permitting), but only if I could take my current mind with me. I suppose like most people I am secretly trying to walk up the down escalator.
Being social media migrants means we should be careful about getting too carried away in an online world. We might forget this jaunt down memory lane is in reality a public and open forum. Feelings can be hurt, confidences broken, libel laws breached. Worse still, we might encourage each other to wear cheesecloth again.
One day we will all know everything about everyone. There will be no secrets and the past will sit side-by-side with the present. Only the future will remain unknown and unknowable, as COVID-19 has demonstrated. But that’s how it should be. ‘That was then and this is now’ is indisputably true, but it’s tomorrow that interests me. Especially as I still hope to be in it.
From: James Ellis
To: <Customer Care>
Subject: Re: Complaint – unused deposit taken [ref:_99DFT6200_gtDDS529:ref]
Date: 10 Mar 2020, at 08:27
Dear <Customer Care> – a few comments on your response to my complaint. From one writer to another.
Best,
James.
—————————–
From: <Customer Care>
To: James Ellis
Subject: Re: Complaint – unused deposit taken [ref:_99DFT6200_gtDDS529:ref]
On 9 Mar 2020, at 15:03, <Customer Care> wrote:
Hello James Ellis !
JE – An exclamation mark! Did you just leap out from somewhere? It does make it look as if my name has been automatically inserted, though. And seriously, neither of us are that excited. Go for a comma, or a full stop (period). Or even (heaven help us) a semicolon. Anything but an !
Thank you for contacting <Customer Care>.
JE – Well, that’s okay. But I would have preferred not to have had to. This is where you need to insert your apology.
The inconveniences you experienced are not acceptable to our standards.
JE – Nor mine. This is going really well. But it would have been better if you actually referred to my complaint here. Can you automate that in some way?
I want you to know that the comments and suggestions we receive are taken seriously.
JE – And I want you to know I expect nothing less. But strictly speaking, it’s neither a comment nor a suggestion. It’s a complaint because you have taken my money unnecessarily. And, in my opinion, the ‘I want you to know’ is too intense.
They tell us what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong and how we can improve.
JE – Yes, but it’s not all about you. It should also tell you I am dissatisfied. See above comment. This is now revealing itself as a generic response and the initial goodwill I had is receding. No mention of my specific complaint yet.
Your willingness to share your recent experience is genuinely appreciated.
JE – If you’re trying to mollify me, it’s coming across as me being patronised.
Please accept my sincere apologies.
JE – Hey, there it is. But it’s buried. This should be at the top of the email.
Be assured that any and all of the issues you’ve raised will be addressed, and that appropriate action will be taken. I have opened a Customer Service file, to document your comments, which will be reviewed by the department in charge to ensure that such incidents do not occur in the future.
JE – Great. This is what we want – some action. Please can I see your Customer Service File after it’s been reviewed so I can see how you will ensure this doesn’t happen again. That is, taking my money unnecessarily and the 5-10 working days to repay it. If I can’t see it, then you need to rethink the purpose of this paragraph. And I’d be careful using the word ‘ensure’. Someone might hold you to that.
If you should need any further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us again by replying to this email.
JE – See comments above. Hope they are of some help.
Kind regards,
I am very excited. The London launch of Happy Family will be on Saturday, 25 April at the brilliant independent bookshop, Nomad Books. It will start at 18.45.
The reason I’m so excited is because as part of the launch I am going to be interviewed by Germaine Kiecke – art academic, TV journalist and lead character in Happy Family. As you can imagine, getting someone with Germaine’s credentials to appear in person is a real coup, and I am indebted to Hannah Robins-Frank for helping Germaine make the unusual journey from fiction to reality. I absolutely cannot wait.
After the interview there will be some Q&A and a short reading. Alcohol and refreshments will be available – and I have no doubt we shall repair to a local pub later on for more launching.
Please come along and if you have a copy of the book, bring it along too and I can sign it. If not, there will be plenty on sale. Let me know if you can make it.
Watch out, many of the baby boomers’ final cohort will be turning 60 this year – those born in the satisfyingly neat year of 1960 (it is so easy to work out how old one is, when there’s a zero at the end).
So expect a deluge of articles on the subject – how entering the seventh decade is a liberating experience, that 60 is the new 40, that age is just a number (well, yes, but it does mark some passage of time) and that the best is yet to come.
But let that big birthday come at its own pace. Exciting though it is to become a sexagenarian, don’t rush towards it. I am one of those baby boomers, and I find I am already thinking of myself as being 60 even though I’ve another six months to go. That’s the problem with an approaching landmark-birthday, it’s like watching a giant planet from a small moon: it fills one’s horizons.
The decade of my fifties has been good to me and I don’t want to be rude by dashing off without saying a proper goodbye. I want to enjoy a full twelve months between one set of candles and the next.
So, my sixtieth birthday can wait its turn. No sneaking a few months from my fifties. When it comes I will embrace it with gusto but I do not expect to see any changes in what I do or how I do it. My only question is this: while I am being so determinedly 59 who will actually plan my birthday celebrations?
Seriously, it’s only six months away.
