When I go away from home I usually have my daughter to light the way so when I decided to spend a week at a holiday cottage to write I was not prepared to be this strange person who takes her own tea towels.
Tired and with an upset stomach ( stress takes me that way ) I arrived in pouring rain to find my cottage cold and confusing. I had to work out the heating, the hot water, Sky television, the Kindle internet, phone internet, where I had put my toothbrush and whether to throw out the prepared beef stew which for some reason was four days old by then. NASA rockets have been launched with less kerfuffle.
It's fifteen years since I stayed in a cottage and I had Timmy my spaniel with me then. I walked him on the glorious Northumbrian beaches at least twice a day. At the moment I have pain from arthritis in both knees so walking is more of a nice idea than an actual event.
When I was a small child my family had a static caravan at Hauxley Bay. As I began to grow up I found the place boring and longed for excitement.
Northumberland is full of memories for me, best of all being the year when I took my daughter to Lindisfarne. The bedroom was where the boats kept their sails and I can remember the night when I opened the window and held her so that she didn't fall so that she could see the moon across the grounds of the monastery.
The best part of my week this time was spent sitting on the balcony gazing out at a blood red moon on Remembrance Sunday but I need new places and to make new memories. The past is all very well but the future holds the fun.And I don't need to go anywhere to write, I do it here in the evenings with dinner and wine in my little back room which overlooks the garden. Goodbye, Hermit Crab, I'm off to Miami next year, to try to see dolphins in the bay beyond my boutique hotel. I have bought lovely full length dresses to wear in the evenings. Luxury is my way forward, making my own casseroles is over.
Monday, 17 November 2014
Thursday, 23 October 2014
The Face That Launched a Thousand Headlines
Dear God, here we go again. Renee Zellwegger or however you spell it,managed to get herself on to the main six o'clock news yesterday all because she has altered her face Apparently people care whether she did it with the help of a surgeon and others are concerned that she felt pressured to do so.
More to the point I can remember one actress saying that she had spent the whole day under Mel Gibson while they kept on shooting and shooting one particular scene and all the shots were of him. Oh yes, a glamorous life. Being an actress, like most other jobs, is tedious. The bottom line being that one hopefully occasionally gets paid for it. Rather like writing really. Gritted teeth and unpaid bills. Lonely. At least as writers we spent most of our lives not being looked at.
Why do top actors have to look beautiful? Why can't they just look like people? I blame Hollywood. I watched the original version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and guess what? No beautiful people. It was so much more honest than the American version which I thought was dreadful. All blue eyed gazes and love scenes which were more Enid Blyton than Masters of Sex. Why is Hollywood so coy and yet needs beauty all over the damned place? I'm tired of it.
Luckily I was brought up to believe that you are what you are and whatever you are in every respect is damned well good enough. I would never have made an actress. Sometimes I hate being at home and working but I can waffle around the garden in my pyjamas, water the plants in my dressing gown and watch afternoon tv. At the moment I'm researching shepherds so I watch - fittingly enough - Escape to the country. Very funny. All these women who don't know how to use an Aga. Come out the way, woman, I can cook a dinner on twigs.
In the meanwhile for God's sake leave poor old Renee and the other actresses alone. They have enough to worry about.
Now I have my pyjamas on and the fire and it is just time for a nice glass of fizzy. Oh the joys of being a writer.
More to the point I can remember one actress saying that she had spent the whole day under Mel Gibson while they kept on shooting and shooting one particular scene and all the shots were of him. Oh yes, a glamorous life. Being an actress, like most other jobs, is tedious. The bottom line being that one hopefully occasionally gets paid for it. Rather like writing really. Gritted teeth and unpaid bills. Lonely. At least as writers we spent most of our lives not being looked at.
Why do top actors have to look beautiful? Why can't they just look like people? I blame Hollywood. I watched the original version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and guess what? No beautiful people. It was so much more honest than the American version which I thought was dreadful. All blue eyed gazes and love scenes which were more Enid Blyton than Masters of Sex. Why is Hollywood so coy and yet needs beauty all over the damned place? I'm tired of it.
Luckily I was brought up to believe that you are what you are and whatever you are in every respect is damned well good enough. I would never have made an actress. Sometimes I hate being at home and working but I can waffle around the garden in my pyjamas, water the plants in my dressing gown and watch afternoon tv. At the moment I'm researching shepherds so I watch - fittingly enough - Escape to the country. Very funny. All these women who don't know how to use an Aga. Come out the way, woman, I can cook a dinner on twigs.
In the meanwhile for God's sake leave poor old Renee and the other actresses alone. They have enough to worry about.
Now I have my pyjamas on and the fire and it is just time for a nice glass of fizzy. Oh the joys of being a writer.
Saturday, 11 October 2014
A Man ( or woman ) by any other name
Fiction is a strange thing. Whoever can look at a Jane and not thing of that wonderful grey figure in Jane Eyre? I cannot think of the name Barbara without thinking of the person as fat even though the two Barbaras I know are very slender. Names evoke character. I cannot envisage Bob as anything more than a dog with silky ears whereas several of the men in my books have managed the name Rob with no trouble.
My men are not heroes. I hate the very word. There is no such thing. Some of them have evil qualities but I try to keep them human or I feel as though I have failed the reader. Most of them are decent, and to me that's the most important quality of all.
There are fashions in names. In my latest book, the Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton, which is set just after the Great War, the two main female characters are called Gemma and Lucy and as somebody pointed out these are not the sort of names which women used at that time. Well, tough. They suit the sisters and I like them. Sometimes you have to get past the obvious even in history. You expect your reader to overcome disbelief and slide willingly into your story. Otherwise she should be reading something else.
My favourite man in a book is not the psychotic Heathcliff, the arrogant Mr Darcy or the bully Rochester but a slight unassuming figure, Freddie, the main man in Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.
Freddie is not clever and not handsome, he is not tall. He is rich, I have to say and I did wonder rather whether Miss Heyer took her character partly from the bumbling Bertie Wooster, my favourite man apart from Freddie in fiction. I have this dream that one day I will be twenty and beautiful and will marry Bertie Wooster and spend the rest of my life dancing late at smoky dark clubs, drinking champagne and being looked after by the inimitable Jeeves.
I will wear gossamer dresses and drive sports cars, write stories for Aunt Dahlia's My Lady's Boudoir and be unfailingly polite to the horrifying Aunt Agatha. I will of course be kind to Bertie's uncle who looks after the Wooster millions. We can sit by his study fire and talk of books My background would be perfect and so high in society that my family can talk of nothing but matters that don't matter.
I sometimes think that mothers burden their sons with special names so that no clutching female will come along and skin of them of their cash, as Bertie would say. Cecil is not the kind of name where he would nick off from wife Ann for a floozie named Posy.
My mother obviously didn't think when she named me Elizabeth Rosemary. Many is the time I have signed my name Elizabeth R and heard titters.
Quentin only in Enid Blyton, same for Julian and Dick and even George.
My favourite name of all time is Harry. There's something sweet and yet wild about Harry, I can see him now sitting in the dark corner in a pub. He's just come back from war, the woman he adored has married another man and he is brooding, drinking a lot. He will never forgive her but he desperately wants her back.
And if you doubt me this is part of the story of one of my books, Swan Island. There is no hero in this book, just two decent men doing their best after the hell of a war where everybody lost someone. It's also my mother's story. The man who loved her went away, I think to Burma during World War Two, to fight. Her first husband had died, ( that's in my story, though differently ) and thinking she had lost her second love to the war, she married my father and then Harry came back. The other man in the story is called David Black and like my father is a decent upright hard working rather clever man and Ella loves him so what is she to do?
My mother used to tell the story so well, of how my father had taken her to a dinner dance at some lovely hall in Darlington and she saw the man she had loved and promised to marry walking across the dance floor toward her. There she is beautiful, black haired and blue eyed and pale skinned in the Irish way that she had, wearing a silver and peacock coloured dress, wondering why fate is doing such a thing to her.
My mother was called Bertha Ann but she was always known as Pat because her father saw her in the cradle and said 'What a little Pat. ' Irish to the core and a borders lass too. There you go, you see. A rose by any other name, my lovely lovely mother.
My men are not heroes. I hate the very word. There is no such thing. Some of them have evil qualities but I try to keep them human or I feel as though I have failed the reader. Most of them are decent, and to me that's the most important quality of all.
There are fashions in names. In my latest book, the Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton, which is set just after the Great War, the two main female characters are called Gemma and Lucy and as somebody pointed out these are not the sort of names which women used at that time. Well, tough. They suit the sisters and I like them. Sometimes you have to get past the obvious even in history. You expect your reader to overcome disbelief and slide willingly into your story. Otherwise she should be reading something else.
My favourite man in a book is not the psychotic Heathcliff, the arrogant Mr Darcy or the bully Rochester but a slight unassuming figure, Freddie, the main man in Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.
Freddie is not clever and not handsome, he is not tall. He is rich, I have to say and I did wonder rather whether Miss Heyer took her character partly from the bumbling Bertie Wooster, my favourite man apart from Freddie in fiction. I have this dream that one day I will be twenty and beautiful and will marry Bertie Wooster and spend the rest of my life dancing late at smoky dark clubs, drinking champagne and being looked after by the inimitable Jeeves.
I will wear gossamer dresses and drive sports cars, write stories for Aunt Dahlia's My Lady's Boudoir and be unfailingly polite to the horrifying Aunt Agatha. I will of course be kind to Bertie's uncle who looks after the Wooster millions. We can sit by his study fire and talk of books My background would be perfect and so high in society that my family can talk of nothing but matters that don't matter.
I sometimes think that mothers burden their sons with special names so that no clutching female will come along and skin of them of their cash, as Bertie would say. Cecil is not the kind of name where he would nick off from wife Ann for a floozie named Posy.
My mother obviously didn't think when she named me Elizabeth Rosemary. Many is the time I have signed my name Elizabeth R and heard titters.
Quentin only in Enid Blyton, same for Julian and Dick and even George.
My favourite name of all time is Harry. There's something sweet and yet wild about Harry, I can see him now sitting in the dark corner in a pub. He's just come back from war, the woman he adored has married another man and he is brooding, drinking a lot. He will never forgive her but he desperately wants her back.
And if you doubt me this is part of the story of one of my books, Swan Island. There is no hero in this book, just two decent men doing their best after the hell of a war where everybody lost someone. It's also my mother's story. The man who loved her went away, I think to Burma during World War Two, to fight. Her first husband had died, ( that's in my story, though differently ) and thinking she had lost her second love to the war, she married my father and then Harry came back. The other man in the story is called David Black and like my father is a decent upright hard working rather clever man and Ella loves him so what is she to do?
My mother used to tell the story so well, of how my father had taken her to a dinner dance at some lovely hall in Darlington and she saw the man she had loved and promised to marry walking across the dance floor toward her. There she is beautiful, black haired and blue eyed and pale skinned in the Irish way that she had, wearing a silver and peacock coloured dress, wondering why fate is doing such a thing to her.
My mother was called Bertha Ann but she was always known as Pat because her father saw her in the cradle and said 'What a little Pat. ' Irish to the core and a borders lass too. There you go, you see. A rose by any other name, my lovely lovely mother.
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Oh bugger, it's a stick!
In the past year I have had to have reading glasses and hearing aids but doing my knee in last week was the final straw! The doctor suggested a stick since he wasn't sure whether it was arthritis or a torn muscle. Possibly both, he said cheerfully.
I therefore - I was going to say 'dashed off'. Unfortunately not. I hobbled to the indoor market with a friend who knew how to use a stick. Isn't that what friends are for? To experience things before you? The man in the market was very helpful and now I am the proud owner of one of those sticks which you can fold up and put into your handbag.
Stick walking is an art form and requires remembering which foot to put in front. Pain helps of course.
But there are a lot of limits. I can no longer go to my favourite lunch restaurant because the loos are upstairs and I hope to God this doesn't last over the spring because my favourite dinner restaurant is by the river, The Cellar Door and by hell, it requires people who can get down at least fifty steps before they get to the river. I have sat there in rain, in sunset and in shine and I'm damned if I'm going to give it up.
I can't walk into town and especially not back, Durham, like Rome, being built on seven hills.
You melt into the background when you have a stick. Some people don't see you and trying walking over you. This is why older people are grumpy. I made other folk get out of the way. Tall young men are the worst, I think they just can't see me. I've lost an inch in height lately as well and believe me I didn't have it to lose. I will turn into a square me shortly.
In the meanwhile my daughter tells me I don't remember anything she says and have taken to putting things into the fridge which don't go in there. Now I know why people have bungalows, at least they don't have to back upstairs for everything that they have forgotten.
I shall take comfort in the fact that I do my work sitting down with my leg up though not above my heart at the doctor suggested. Even laptops have limits.
I am going to Prague next week. I cried down the phone at my daughter who is going with me but she said,
'I'll get you around Prague if we have to have a wheel chair.' So if you happen to be in Prague next week I'm the woman in black waving a stick. I tell my friends I'm turning into John Steed from the Avengers who had an umbrella which became a weapon. Watch out, here I come!
I therefore - I was going to say 'dashed off'. Unfortunately not. I hobbled to the indoor market with a friend who knew how to use a stick. Isn't that what friends are for? To experience things before you? The man in the market was very helpful and now I am the proud owner of one of those sticks which you can fold up and put into your handbag.
Stick walking is an art form and requires remembering which foot to put in front. Pain helps of course.
But there are a lot of limits. I can no longer go to my favourite lunch restaurant because the loos are upstairs and I hope to God this doesn't last over the spring because my favourite dinner restaurant is by the river, The Cellar Door and by hell, it requires people who can get down at least fifty steps before they get to the river. I have sat there in rain, in sunset and in shine and I'm damned if I'm going to give it up.
I can't walk into town and especially not back, Durham, like Rome, being built on seven hills.
You melt into the background when you have a stick. Some people don't see you and trying walking over you. This is why older people are grumpy. I made other folk get out of the way. Tall young men are the worst, I think they just can't see me. I've lost an inch in height lately as well and believe me I didn't have it to lose. I will turn into a square me shortly.
In the meanwhile my daughter tells me I don't remember anything she says and have taken to putting things into the fridge which don't go in there. Now I know why people have bungalows, at least they don't have to back upstairs for everything that they have forgotten.
I shall take comfort in the fact that I do my work sitting down with my leg up though not above my heart at the doctor suggested. Even laptops have limits.
I am going to Prague next week. I cried down the phone at my daughter who is going with me but she said,
'I'll get you around Prague if we have to have a wheel chair.' So if you happen to be in Prague next week I'm the woman in black waving a stick. I tell my friends I'm turning into John Steed from the Avengers who had an umbrella which became a weapon. Watch out, here I come!
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
When I'm 64
I'm sixty four next month. Yesterday for the first time ever a young man offered me his seat on the bus.Mind you there was a student on crutches on the bus last week and I offered him my seat. He was mortified.
Okay, so what have I learned?
God help us.
1 There are very few problems which money cannot sort out.
2. Nobody loves you more for being thin.
3. I hate cheap food and wine. I'd rather starve.
4. My chances of marrying Brad Pitt have gone down to nil. There's no point in asking for him for Christmas. I'll only be disappointed again.
5.Good champagne smells like sick and tastes like heaven.
6.Living alone is better than putting up with a moaner, a poor man or anybody who comes anywhere near my newspapers, my computer or my car. Or the remote control for the television.
7. You get what you pay for, like my Dad always said which is why Matfen Hall and Apple computers are the best.
8.Living in a small city like Durham is wonderful. Concerts, restaurants, a champagne bar, the Gala theatre. The student productions, the library, the cathedral, a lovely house with all the original fireplaces and stained glass windows and best of all friends.
9.I'm thankful for the countryside around me is wonderful. I love the Durham dales better than anywhere on earth and spend my summers there, watching the pheasants and the bunnies waffling around the fields.
10.God, I feel lucky to be here. I've survived widowhood, breast cancer, the loss of my job several times, being orphaned and hardest of all so many of my friends have died of accidents, cancer, heart disease and old age. I love my friends, here and in the past and think about them all the time.
Okay, so what have I learned?
God help us.
1 There are very few problems which money cannot sort out.
2. Nobody loves you more for being thin.
3. I hate cheap food and wine. I'd rather starve.
4. My chances of marrying Brad Pitt have gone down to nil. There's no point in asking for him for Christmas. I'll only be disappointed again.
5.Good champagne smells like sick and tastes like heaven.
6.Living alone is better than putting up with a moaner, a poor man or anybody who comes anywhere near my newspapers, my computer or my car. Or the remote control for the television.
7. You get what you pay for, like my Dad always said which is why Matfen Hall and Apple computers are the best.
8.Living in a small city like Durham is wonderful. Concerts, restaurants, a champagne bar, the Gala theatre. The student productions, the library, the cathedral, a lovely house with all the original fireplaces and stained glass windows and best of all friends.
9.I'm thankful for the countryside around me is wonderful. I love the Durham dales better than anywhere on earth and spend my summers there, watching the pheasants and the bunnies waffling around the fields.
10.God, I feel lucky to be here. I've survived widowhood, breast cancer, the loss of my job several times, being orphaned and hardest of all so many of my friends have died of accidents, cancer, heart disease and old age. I love my friends, here and in the past and think about them all the time.
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
Five Go to Tow Law
Driving back over the moors from Stanhope is a sea of bright purple bell heather which it always is in August. We are almost into September and only three weeks from the vote on Scottish independence. I can understand why the Scots might want to go. The thought of a permanent Tory government - which we would have if they left - makes me want to beg to them not to but it's nothing to do with me because I'm not Scottish, officially that is.
I'm a borders lass. My family has lived here for hundreds of years on both sides, my mother's family have been lead miners and farmers, my father's family was in business of different kinds for as far back as I can see.
Borders people are really neither Scottish nor English. With a name like Gill I feel so much more Scottish than English. For me England begins where Yorkshire ends south of me and although I have slight affection for all of it my loyalties lie here where there is a deep connection. I call Cumbria, the Lakes, the whole of Scotland, Northumberland and Durham as mine.
My friend, Joan, who was born in Edinburgh says that when she was 'a wee one' she read Enid Blyton books about middle class English children and felt left out. So did I. Five have never gone to the pit village where I was brought up, not even in my imaginings.
So while I do see that many Scottish people want to leave the United Kingdom if they go I will feel deserted. I love Scotland so very much. If it wasn't for the fact that I have several very good friends in Durham the moment that independence was declared I think I would want to run to Scotland. For choice I would go and live in Morar where the silver sands are. Some of the most wonderful times of my life were spent there, sitting in a little blue boat with my young husband and a tiny champagne coloured kitten called Thomas, fishing by moonlight, the flash of silver under the boat as the shoal moved. I left my heart there.
I'm a borders lass. My family has lived here for hundreds of years on both sides, my mother's family have been lead miners and farmers, my father's family was in business of different kinds for as far back as I can see.
Borders people are really neither Scottish nor English. With a name like Gill I feel so much more Scottish than English. For me England begins where Yorkshire ends south of me and although I have slight affection for all of it my loyalties lie here where there is a deep connection. I call Cumbria, the Lakes, the whole of Scotland, Northumberland and Durham as mine.
My friend, Joan, who was born in Edinburgh says that when she was 'a wee one' she read Enid Blyton books about middle class English children and felt left out. So did I. Five have never gone to the pit village where I was brought up, not even in my imaginings.
So while I do see that many Scottish people want to leave the United Kingdom if they go I will feel deserted. I love Scotland so very much. If it wasn't for the fact that I have several very good friends in Durham the moment that independence was declared I think I would want to run to Scotland. For choice I would go and live in Morar where the silver sands are. Some of the most wonderful times of my life were spent there, sitting in a little blue boat with my young husband and a tiny champagne coloured kitten called Thomas, fishing by moonlight, the flash of silver under the boat as the shoal moved. I left my heart there.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
Robin Williams
Manic, that's what the BBC news said about him. That he had suffered from depression all his life and had fought with drugs and alcohol. It isn't a fight with drugs and alcohol, it's the fight about depression and already this morning in the Guardian a report about how people with depression are very often not helped.
Have you ever heard that expression that talks about how we all hear a different drum? Many people go at a different pace, some of them a lot faster than others. I saw a video clip of an interview with Robin Williams yesterday about golf. It was very funny, he was talking at ninety miles an hour and everybody who listened to it recognised the truth.
People who race cars and motorcycles, for them each second is split and split again until a second is a long long time. For somebody like Williams you just go and go and go. There you are out in the limelight and you love being there because that's where you feel best, you feel effective, you're brilliant and it's where you feel right but the trouble is that you have to go back to the speed where other people are. You're way past the winning post while they are still coming up the straight so you have to try and slow down and then you come down and down and down. And you're exhausted, you're worn out mentally and physically and you can't bear the coming down and that's why you need the drugs to keep you from spinning up and down endlessly.
Boredom is the result, boredom is at the top of depression. Despair is at the bottom. Boredom is terrifying and the beginning of the downward spiral where you can't bear company, or you get as far as Tesco and then you can't go in, not because you don't want anything but because you can't make a decision.
I didn't used to be depressed. I can remember when all I needed was to have my husband come home from work and my child from school and I could stop writing and come down just as far as I needed to because love was enough then. Depression can teach you that nothing is enough and then you panic. I don't go out in the evenings very often unless it's to something formalised because I can feel myself thinking 'what the hell am I doing here?'
It's not other people, it's me, I'm bored. I can't sit there because I feel like screaming. I can do it with wine, I can do it with concert music and with a decent play but even in the middle of all that if it's a live performance and I don't sit on the end of the row with the exit in sight I have horrible panic attacks where I can't breathe. I choke and cough and sweat.
My evenings have to be all absorbing otherwise people suffer because I complain and I become cynical and I witter on about stuff they aren't interested in. My close friends call it 'Liz ranting'. At that point I will do anything for a decent argument, for a decent discussion about something which is important to me while other people talk about normal everyday things. I just want to get out and go home.
I can remember hearing about Mozart and how his wife read to him when he composed and I feel that he needed the gap filling so that he would not give up. It amazed me that even he could have his concentration shot because there wasn't enough going on.
We all do it. We say 'if you work you can have wine, tea, coffee, whatever the hell'. I read, watch television, do crosswords all together, I can't just sit there. Very irritating for other people. What a complete pain depression is for all of us.
I understand what Robin Willliams felt. In a very small way I'm the same when I'm giving talks. I get myself on to a tremendous high, I love making people laugh, I adore being the centre of attention and then I come home and I drink wine because I can't stand the coming down, the aftermath.When the audience has gone home, when the book is finished, when the race is over what do you do? You fill that bloody great big hole inside you with chocolate, with wine, with cigarettes or whatever makes you feel better.
Robin Williams brought a tremendous amount of pleasure and laughter to a great many people and God knows they are grateful to him but the price of such lives is huge. And it's the loneliness and despair of depression that kills you.
Have you ever heard that expression that talks about how we all hear a different drum? Many people go at a different pace, some of them a lot faster than others. I saw a video clip of an interview with Robin Williams yesterday about golf. It was very funny, he was talking at ninety miles an hour and everybody who listened to it recognised the truth.
People who race cars and motorcycles, for them each second is split and split again until a second is a long long time. For somebody like Williams you just go and go and go. There you are out in the limelight and you love being there because that's where you feel best, you feel effective, you're brilliant and it's where you feel right but the trouble is that you have to go back to the speed where other people are. You're way past the winning post while they are still coming up the straight so you have to try and slow down and then you come down and down and down. And you're exhausted, you're worn out mentally and physically and you can't bear the coming down and that's why you need the drugs to keep you from spinning up and down endlessly.
Boredom is the result, boredom is at the top of depression. Despair is at the bottom. Boredom is terrifying and the beginning of the downward spiral where you can't bear company, or you get as far as Tesco and then you can't go in, not because you don't want anything but because you can't make a decision.
I didn't used to be depressed. I can remember when all I needed was to have my husband come home from work and my child from school and I could stop writing and come down just as far as I needed to because love was enough then. Depression can teach you that nothing is enough and then you panic. I don't go out in the evenings very often unless it's to something formalised because I can feel myself thinking 'what the hell am I doing here?'
It's not other people, it's me, I'm bored. I can't sit there because I feel like screaming. I can do it with wine, I can do it with concert music and with a decent play but even in the middle of all that if it's a live performance and I don't sit on the end of the row with the exit in sight I have horrible panic attacks where I can't breathe. I choke and cough and sweat.
My evenings have to be all absorbing otherwise people suffer because I complain and I become cynical and I witter on about stuff they aren't interested in. My close friends call it 'Liz ranting'. At that point I will do anything for a decent argument, for a decent discussion about something which is important to me while other people talk about normal everyday things. I just want to get out and go home.
I can remember hearing about Mozart and how his wife read to him when he composed and I feel that he needed the gap filling so that he would not give up. It amazed me that even he could have his concentration shot because there wasn't enough going on.
We all do it. We say 'if you work you can have wine, tea, coffee, whatever the hell'. I read, watch television, do crosswords all together, I can't just sit there. Very irritating for other people. What a complete pain depression is for all of us.
I understand what Robin Willliams felt. In a very small way I'm the same when I'm giving talks. I get myself on to a tremendous high, I love making people laugh, I adore being the centre of attention and then I come home and I drink wine because I can't stand the coming down, the aftermath.When the audience has gone home, when the book is finished, when the race is over what do you do? You fill that bloody great big hole inside you with chocolate, with wine, with cigarettes or whatever makes you feel better.
Robin Williams brought a tremendous amount of pleasure and laughter to a great many people and God knows they are grateful to him but the price of such lives is huge. And it's the loneliness and despair of depression that kills you.
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