I'll be a log in a minute...

I've caused quite a lot of amusement since I acquired my new smartphone - sending unintelligible messages which seem to be immune  to predictive text. So it is with interest and trepidation that I read of the introduction of the new Kalq keyboard, designed at St Andrews University and soon to be made available as a free app on Android.

I'll be a log in a minute,' I texted my friend the other day.
'I always thought you looked a bit wooden,' came the quick-fire reply...

Trusty old Qwerty, which I've used since I first learnt to type, has me racing along on my laptop at around 120 words a minute, as opposed to the  20 words per minute most people manage on the average tablet.  Not surprising, then, that an idea developed in the late nineteenth century has finally found a  serious rival.

Apparently a lot of thought has gone into the study of thumb movements which, as all typists know, are usually reserved for the pressing of the humble space bar.  So, as I'm all fingers and thumbs at the best of times, I suspect I should  give it a go. Kalq, by the way, represents the four letters on the bottom line of the screen, which shows the keyboard split into two.

The developers are due to present their research work at a computing systems conference in Paris on May 1. Paris in the Spring?  I'm beginning to think this is a very good idea after all...


 

An expert on men - at ninety-one - will she tell all?

A loud cheer for the appropriately-named  Eileen Younghusband  whose book 'One Woman's War' has been shortlisted for The People's Book Prize.  The ninety-one-year-old started writing her wartime memoirs four years ago when many women might be content to spend the day knitting socks or pottering about in the garden.

Last week on this blog I championed the demise of the typical granny with her grey bun and steel-rimmed specs.  Now we have the proof! Eileen's latest book discusses the numerous men, famous and not so famous, she has met in of the course her life. 'Men I Have Known' gives some surprising insights, from  encounters with Rex Harrison and Dylan Thomas to her meeting with Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher's infamous predecessor, who apparently  'had no desire to talk to a woman.'  In the most unlikely quote from this book, as seen in The Times this week, Mrs Younghusband says

'Among these men it is for you to know and me to wonder how many I slept with...'

One Woman's War, describes  Mrs Younghusband's life in the Filter Room of RAF Fighter Command, collecting data from radar stations in order to plot the path of German bombers. After that she spent time in Belgium studying the  flight paths of V2 rockets. Even after the war she continued to help the  RAF by showing officers round a Belgian concentration camp, before settling back in Britian to run pubs and hotels.

Meanwhile, this indomitable lady has been studying creative writing, socio-linguistics and philosophy in her spare time.

'One Woman's War' is available from Candy Jar Books priced £8.99
'Men I Have Known' will be launched in Wales this summer  on the author's 92nd birthday.


 

Mother can you spare some time?

My mother around the time that I was born

 

 



 If we could pick our mothers, just as we pick flowers, I wonder what they would be? Prime Ministers or primary school teachers?   Celebrities or stay-at-home mums?

'What do you want to be when you grow up?' I asked the nine-year-old daughter of a friend of mine the other day. 'Successful' came the reply, 'like my mum.' Her mother is a respected artist who works from home, sharing her time and her talent with those she loves most.

The greatest gift a mother can give her child is time. Looking at the grieving Carol Thatcher this week I couldn't help wondering if this is where The Iron Lady went woefully wrong. What do you think?

Men-oh-pause?

A friend of mine has reached that time in her life when  hot flushes have taken over from hot dates.
        'I'd rather stay in and read a good book,' she said to me glumly the other day.
        'Oh well, I said, grinning,  'I knew you'd see sense in the end.'
With sixty being the new fifty and botox available to the masses, I'm surprised anyone feels old these days. Our facebook pages are filled with adverts for anti-wrinkle treatments, 'fat tummy' busters, hair extensions and  lip enhancement, making sure we all spend our money on chasing our long-gone youth.

My daughter found an old book the other day about growing up in the war years, or more accurately, what life was like in 'granny's day.'  The granny on the cover was sitting in her rocking chair knitting, had grey hair in a bun and steel-rimmed glasses. I wonder what the updated version would look like?  She'd probably have died red hair, matching lips, a nose piercing and be posing in a  pink and green Zandra Rhodes dress. Oh, and be called by her first name, of course.

The other thing about oldies these days is that they tend to get married again, something that rarely happened years ago. The tabloids seem full of couples who got together during the war, lost touch, have  met up again and decided to share a seaside bungalow till the end of their days. And why not? Why should being old stop people enjoying themselves?

Meanwhile today's women's magazines are full of photos of actresses like Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman looking exactly as they did fifteen years ago. They don't eat, rarely drink, spend four hours a day in the gym and update their fiancés on a frighteningly regular basis. So what's going to happen when Hollywood runs out of' 'mature-looking' women? You never know - there might  be a chance for me yet...






 

Twenty eighty four? Time for another Orwellian novel...

Sunrise in the Lincolnshire sky

 

 

'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen...'

 



What makes an author see into the future? Watching a science fiction film the other day, one made way back in the 1940s, I saw a saucer-like  spacecraft glide silently to the ground. As  it came to a standstill the doors opened seamlessly, as if by remote control. Yet remote control hadn't been invented.

My favourite book of all in this genre is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the first line of which is quoted above.  Written in 1948, it's a  breath-taking insight into the world of Big Brother where cameras tracked  the minutiae  of Oceania  'inmates' as they went about their daily lives.

Described as 'the definitive novel of the 20th century,' the book was translated into 65 languages and sold millions of copies world wide.

The name Big Brother is now sadly famous for a very different reason - the popular reality television programme devised in America.   In 2000, the Estate of George Orwell successfully sued CBS for copyright infringement and received undisclosed damages.

Robert McCrum, in an article in the Observer in May 2009, suggests 'The irony of the societal hounding of Big Brother contestants would not have been lost on George Orwell.'

In the book, Big Brother is the dictator of a totalitarian state where everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities, mostly by 'telescreens.' Now that we have reached the age of CCTV  what, I wonder, are the next generation's fears for the future? Will Britain still be a green and pleasant land or a place where law and order no longer exists? Are our children aware of the power of the technology they have in their own hands,  a power that is constantly evolving even as I write.

Now may be the time for a bright young graduate to pen a ground-breaking novel about life in 2084.  I can think of an ideal publishing date - 13.13.13.  When the clock strikes thirteen, of course.





 

From Chiclitz to Chick lit....

 Cosied up with your Kindle?   Knee-deep in 99p novels?     Life was so much better when we  borrowed our  books from Boots. Or was it? My favourite  film of all time 'Brief Encounter' sees the heroine calling in at Boots on a regular basis to change her library book (pronouced libe-brear-ree by the wonderful Celia Johnson.)

And this week I learned some fascinating facts about our  reading habits from a thirty-three-year-old hardback book 'Novel and Novelists - a Guide to the World of Fiction,' which  I discovered in a second hand book shop. It begins with the simple statement - The novel could not have had such a long and persistent history had it not been for public demand...

'The main market,' it adds, 'for the (pre-war)  novel was the commercial circulating library.  The largest were the Boots and WH smith chains with up to 400 branches each in their  heyday - whilst a myriad network of 2d or 'cornershop libraries' supplied fiction to the whole population.'

Edited by Martin-Seymour Smith, this 'guide to the world of fiction' makes reference to 'Old Bloody Chiclitz,' one of  400 characters  in Thomas Pynchon's famous novel 'Gravity's Rainbow,'   which won America's National Book Award in 1974.

The Chiclitz character, first seen in Pynchon's novella 'The Crying of Lot 49,' is thought to be a metaphorical form of the once popular 'Chiclets' chewing gum.  The small pieces of chewing gum looked like teeth and 'bloody chicklitz,' it seems,  became  cockney slang for broken teeth.

I'm not sure who invented the name  Chick lit, though the idea has been attributed to international author Kathy Lette. Interestingly, the increasingly  popular independent publisher Choc Lit, founded in 2008,  almost swept the board in national awards for romantic novelists  last year.

 I read recently that there is a growing interest in 'religious chick lit' which sounds to me  like  a bit of an oxymoron. Come to think of it, Oxymoron would be a wonderful name for a character in a 21st century e-book. All I need now is the plot...
 

From suffragettes to school runs....

  

 'School Run - Sorry - be back at 4pm'  The sign on the gift shop door made me stop and stare. Had I  stepped  back in time?  After almost a hundred years of campaigning for women's rights  some of us, it seems, are  still  hedging our bets. So what did happen to equality for women?

I wasn't around when suffragettes were starving themselves in prison or throwing themselves in front of the king's racehorse, but I do remember Women's Lib.  It wasn't  about bra-burning, though that bit has gone down in history. 'Women in a Man's World' ran the headlines in newspapers across the land. We were trying to prove we could do anything the men could do, in the same way, for the same pay.

'You want equality - then earn it,' said my then news editor, sending me to cover Sunday League soccer in the pouring rain.  I listened and I learned.  Women  worked harder to keep up with their  male counterparts;  took the flack,  resisted the sack and got the job done.

Back then job interviewers routinely asked married women if they were planning to start a family. Mothers were quizzed about childcare provision and always kept it a secret when their children were ill, even enlisting the help of a trusty neighbour. They may have been frazzled but they swore they could cope.

Today comes the news that working mums spend 28 hours a week looking after the home and family on top of their full-time jobs. This includes shopping, cooking, making beds and - you've guessed it - driving their children to school.

 'So why did the school sign make you mad?' asked my other half, innocently.
 'The shop owner,' I sighed. 'She's just making excuses.'
 'She?' he said, smiling at my indignation. 'How do you know it's not  a He?'

 He's right, I admit. But then he's a man,  Maybe we've found a different kind of equality after all?

 

Mum's definitely the word...

My post last week encouraging children to 'believe in make-believe' has a fitting post script today.

When three-year-old Millie got her mum a Mother's Day card, she wanted to scribble on the envelope, too.  Her dad didn't think anything of it till he spotted a special word in the wavy lines.  Yes, it was Mum...

 

Maybe we have another writer in our midst?

A ghost in the sea?

Sunrise at Bordeaux Harbour

This exquisite sunrise was sent to me by Guernseyman Robin Banneville, a brilliant amateur photographer who captures the island just as I always remember it. The first thing I saw when I opened this photograph was a ghost staring out from the sea. Just my imagination? Maybe.

But  where would we be  without our imagination? When I was a child my parents would  take me to watch Guernsey's famous sunsets,  and afterwards I really believed that the sun had fallen into the sea.

As I grew up, the power of  make-believe  made me want to write, and thankfully nothing has changed. Children are born with an innate sense of make-believe but some are in danger of losing this ability in an increasingly computerised  world.

The lines between fact and fiction are becoming  blurred as two and three-year-olds sit in front of the screen, entertainment taking the place of  early education.

I've just discovered a wonderful children's book 'The Chimneys of Green Knowe' written in 1958 by Lucy M Boston and reprinted in 2010 by Oldknow Books. This simple story, of a young teenager sent to live with his grandmother during World War Two, was transformed for the screen by Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes.  'From Time to Time' starring Maggie Smith,  and featuring Hugh Bonneville, Timothy Spall,  Dominic West and Pauline Collins is one of the most moving adult films I have ever seen.

'Don't tell fairy stories,' my mother used to say when I was  sparing with the truth.

I'm glad I didn't listen.

 



Thanks, Robin...