Hello!

Does anyone else feel like this:   they have a website,  since otherwise they are not In Contact with the outside world,  but they can’t bear to update it,  since they feel like narcissists telling everyone about their achievements,  so they just ignore their own website,  and it becomes like a dog that they tied up outside the bookies,  long ago – even thinking about it induces a feeling of shame?

Well clearly this isn’t good enough,  and I must Take Action.  But how?  Any advice?

Andrew

We have just finished the last Rory Branagan book,  The Great Diamond Heist,  and I read it to the girls in the garden,  and,  as we got to the bit where Rory finally met his dad,  and got a few things off his chest,  everyone cried.   Meanwhile,  Tim Hope at Oscar-winning Passion Pictures has been making a sample Rory film,  which he’s been pitching to Netflix and the BBC.  I’m excited about that,  but also because I am going on the road doing school visits again – my favourite thing – starting off with a return to Waverton,  where the kids of three schools gathered and elected Rory their Best Children’s Book of the year,  giving it their Waverton Prize,  which involved five hundred pounds,  and as much Waverton School Peach Crumble as I could eat.

I tell you something I hate:  when grown-ups give presents to kids, saying “This is really something for when you’re older…”   What this means is:   “I’m giving you something totally wrong, because I couldn’t be bothered to think what you like…”

When I was ten, I remember my stepdad gave me, for my birthday, a complete box set of Jane Austen books, handing them over, with a speech about how his gran used to reread Jane Austen throughout her life, and I listened politely, while inside I was boiling, and wanting to shout:

“I am ten!  What I actually WANT… is a Table-Tennis  bat!”

I like Jane Austen now, of course…   I love her elegant style, deceptively deft storytelling, and how the knowing irony of the dialogue makes the characters flash to life.   (Reread Northanger Abbey where Catherine is flirting with Tilney.)   But to a ten year old – oh I read em!   There was nothing else to read! –  Jane Austen books seemed to go on for hundreds of years, while people said things like “Lord M has ten thousand a year, and a barouche-landau…”  and I wanted to shout:  “I would never ever care about Lord M, unless he turned into a vampire…”

It frustrates me still that while I was struggling, aged ten, through the complete works of Jane Austen, I could have been reading The Hobbit, or The Chronicles of Narnia, or Tintin,  or something that was actually designed for a ten year old.

Anyway…  I am now a grown-up, I do try to be sensitive to what my kids are reading, so I can suggest good stuff.

I am proud that I introduced the Divergent series into the house, and Cassandra Clare, and Michelle Harrisson and Sally Gardener – any many of the writers who’re loved by my eldest girls.  My youngest daughter (Iris)  is aged nine and not a keen reader, but there’s one series she adores – that we both adore – the Ottoline series by Chris Riddell.  Oh, we love them!  Chris Riddell is the reigning Children’s Laurate, and his illustration is – I would contend –arguably better  than that of Tenniel or Heath Robinson or Arthur Rackham, all of whom it seems to reflect.   You don’t read  the Ottoline books, so much as you explore them, marvelling at the details, and gasping, sometimes, at the sheer beauty of the design.   I also feel enormous love for Chris Riddell,  because my daughter Iris felt compelled to send him some fan mail, and Chris Riddell …  replied!!!   Did he send her a letter, in grown-up language, talking about things she might like when she was older?   Of course not!  He wrote a simple, jokey letter, and he thanked her for her kindness in writing to him, and he included – just for her – a special cartoon, that he’d drawn.

We love you Chris Riddell!  We love you!

Anyway Iris and I were so happy, yesterday, when Iris and I were out and about in Canterbury, to find that his latest Ottoline book has just appeared.   Ottoline and the Purple Fox.

We shall be exploring this very evening…

But then there’s always that Insect Day, that the schools like to spring on us, just when we thought that – finally – the holidays were over.  (I imagine the teachers transformed into bugs and grasshoppers, sitting round some ring-binders).  Wait, they’re saying, you can’t just give us the children.  So The Youngest and I spent one last day together.  We went for a bike ride.  (Determined to cycle the first day, she wanted to rehearse).   We bought new trainers, water bottle, lunch box.  We cooked, and I enjoyed her childish genius for asking the sort of sunny questions that you’d want to answer –  “What was your favourite Mr Man?”  “What things did you like to cook, when you were a boy?”  “You know there are Guide Dogs… Do they have Guide Cats?   (Or even Guide Ducks!)”    And then this morning, we did do that bike ride, (setting off proudly in helmets and hi-viz).   We cheered as we whooshed down the hill.  We made festive plans (“Let’s do this every day!”)  And then suddenly we were at school, carefully taking out the new water bottle and lunchbox, and then, in a blink, she’d slipped into the school like a mouse going down a hole, and was lost to me.   I kissed some old friends.  I shook hands with a new dad, there for his first day.  “Any tips?”   he asked, and my mind sprang back, to the day, ten years ago, when I dropped off Eldest for her first day.  (I remember tensing inside, as she went straight for the Dressing Up Box Wedding Dress, and asked me to help her put it on).  “Gosh,”  I told New Dad, “I suppose I’d say… it seems only two minutes since I was you.”  Then, suddenly sobered, I retrieved the bike, and headed off through the fields.   And as I did that the thought struck me:  “What now?”  I thought vaguely of my work plans, now buried under a summer of animals and trampolines , and it felt like a mourning, as the emptiness hit.

There was a damp in the air, yesterday morning, and a cold whoonce of sadness that said: ‘Summer is over, and did we do enough?’ I became determined to use the last day of the holiday; I craved exploration, some small adventure; and this then muted – because I am now a dad – into: ‘Let’s visit a castle.’ I’d passed Dover Castle the day before, and felt exhilarated at seeing France from the cliff top, so I pressed them into it. Luckily my wife’s away, as is my Very Vocal Second Child, and there was only Grace and Iris to stand up to me. They were like footsoldiers crumpling before my cannon fire, I tell you. I’ve not been so in charge of an expedition in ages, and the experience was heady. We even had Mozart in the car, and I hom-pommed along, Dadly, as we spend eastwards…
Of course the reality of a castle, is never as good as the fantasy. I always hope to meet the ghosts of kings, to hear murder plotted in stony corridors; I arrive, and see men in beige coats, looking worried outside the Gents. But we had a great time.  The Eldest’s Planet Sized Brain needs to be sponging up information, so I got her the handbook and she read out facts about Wartime Tunnels. We saw falcons. We leaned over the windy roof and stared vertiginously at the floor. But really Visiting A Castle – it’s just an excuse to hang out, in an interesting place. I had a lovely time peering down stone holes with The Older One. And I always enjoy The Youngest One’s company. She has a wonderfully genial nature, and a childish enthusiasm to try things out. She sat on the throne. She swivelled the World War 1 Anti-Aircraft gun. She did full justice to the World War Two lunch. I felt glad just to be with them. I can’t say I gave them a day to be remembered in centuries to come, but there were moments when the stone corridors tinkled with our laughter, and the walls whispered with our curiosity, and that felt good.

The girls and I went to Camden Market yesterday, where we kitted ourselves as our fantasy versions of ourselves.  I got this new outfit to wear when I do shows – top hat, dark blue 60s Italian mac – so that I looked how I want to be:   a cross between Charles Dickens and the Cat In The Hat – but I didn’t get the red silk scarf I really wanted.  “Why not?”  the girls were asking on the train.  “Oh,”  I explained,  “my subconscious was saying:  ‘You’ve got two things already: that’s quite enough, Young Man!’  For some reason that made them guffaw.  (They were partly tickled that my subc’ calls me ‘Young Man’.   “You’re more than forty, Dad:   surely you should be Old Man!”)    But also they were amused that my private voices were rude to me.  “Aren’t yours?”  I asked, genuinely surprised.  “No!”  said the middle one.  “When I’m settling down to sleep, the voice in my head says things like:  ‘Well done, you’ve had another great day today, you clever, lovely girl!’”  Even the youngest one agreed.  “Sometimes I say things to myself like:  ‘Don’t worry, you can do it!’”   I was still thinking about this after I’d gone to bed.  (After ten minutes of them riffing on their favourite joke.   “Go to bed, Old Man!”  the youngest would say, then she’d cackle at her own wit).     But once safely under the sheets, I was still marvelling that, somehow, their internal voices are actually nice to them.   How did that go right?   I actually think this is the highest goal of parenting – to achieve that.   I think I should award myself that red silk scarf.  An old man must have some pleasures.  What do you reckon?