The Kitchen - Cafe Theatre

Theatre has evolved in this country, perhaps more interestingly, if that's a word, than any other genre. Travelling players such as the Jolly Boys who come to Durham Castle and perform outdoor Shakespeare in the summer and Heartbreak productions - I saw them at Dunham Massey a couple of years ago performing An Ideal Husband. These things are picnics with plays.

 However, here in Durham we have gone a step further than that and a very clever and wonderful step it is. We have a catering company who have their premises at The Kitchen on Alnwick Road and last night I went with my friends Joan and Malcolm to a murder mystery night, complete with three courses and coffee for twenty pounds. What a bargain. There are only half a dozen tables and I don't suppose that anybody is making a fortune but what lovely people. The actors, the staff and the meal were all great, brie parcels, steak pie and some wonderful dessert concoction which I do not know the name of.

They supplied us ( mostly me, to be fair) with lots of red wine and in between courses we were set to solve the murder that they acted out for us. Inbetween courses also they came and talked to us in character and I was able to harangue the nasty man in the play for being mean to his wife. He denied it all.

Malcolm and Joan went to see Brief Encounter last month and said it was superb.

To put on a play in a small cafe such as that is like pavement art, so close and so good.

I do love the way things move forward in such a positive way. Everybody was there because they wanted to be and the intimacy made the whole thing so immediate.

They do other things as well, they have bistro nights, special occasions for children and a gorgeous Christmas menu.  They also have paintings for sale on the walls so I think I might walk up there this morning and take another look at the one of Staithes which I liked so much last night when I was full of food and wine.

Here's to you, Peter Robinson

I ran out of Rebus novels a few weeks ago. Oh, the pain. I know that Ian Rankin has another coming out and I ate up his two new novels with his new guy who doesn't drink and smoke and is the opposite of rebus except that he is very clever but there is nobody like Rebus. I picture him asleep in his chair, having drunk the whisky I hesitate to spell here. He makes me feel better about my faults, Rebus is sexy and dark and drinks at the Oxford Bar. I want to go to the Oxford bar. I could bore on about Rebus forever and I am very excited that Ian Rankin and P.D. James are speaking in the cathedral at our literary festival next week.

And then I found Peter Robinson.  The joy.  Banks is sexy and clever. He has moved on from whisky to red wine and therefore we have lots in common.

 Banks lives in Richmond. Peter Robinson doesn't call it Richmond. Banks lives in a village outside the town of course, at least he  may have moved on. I am reading the books all back to front as I can find them, and don't really mind. Amongst all the streams and ducks and stone cottages the place is full of crime and there are lots of murders in graveyards and on the lovely moors. He drinks at lunchtime, he's like something from a better dark age when people didn't care that they might live to be old and pissing their knickers in a nursing home at ninety because they didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't have Brie and didn't eat scones and walked three or four miles a day.
In Banks the local coppers go to the pub at lunchtime. The other thing is that the weather is awful. I love bad weather. I'm such a happy bunny when it rains and snows and hails and all the other things it does regardless of what the calendar suggests.

I came home yesterday with All The Colours of Darkness. It's like hiding a radio under the bedclothes when you were a kid except that my parents would never have minded.  I have lots of pillows and read and revel. I have just finished Innocent Graves. A murder trial. Yes!
I have also just finished The Litigators by John Grisham which is a totally different level, rather funny and quirky. I love anything about the law, how it works, how it doesn't work and am a big fan of Helena Kennedy who wrote a wonderful book called  Eve Was Framed. The only thing is it makes me seethe for how the law has treated and still treats women.
In the meanwhile I have Banks looking after North Yorkshire and it's a very comforting thought. And I still have about twelve books to go.

The World's best cathedral?

I had a problem over the weekend. I saw a cathedral I liked as much as Durham. Very worrying. If you can't be prejudiced about such things as the one in your own city what can you do?
My lovely daughter took me to Milan for my birthday. Oh, the shops. I didn't know until then that Milan is the shopping city.
I think I would feel very poor if I lived there and very badly dressed since I cannot afford to pay five hundred quid for a handbag. I'm not convinced I would ever spend such money. It seems obscene. There is the argument of course that the designer tries to reach the heights, be it a Ferrari or a handbag. And they must of course.
We did however go to Gucci for coffee. The waiter didn't speak to us. I realized after a while that it was not a communication problem, it was a city problem. Nobody talks to you or smiles at you and people push past, all intent on their own business.
Milan is covered is beautiful buildings and graffiti. You get used to the look after a while and you concentrate on the food and wine and Italy has to be the best.
Designer dogs are all over the place and I like that in other countries than ours dogs and children are not taboo. The first night we ate at a place recommended by my daughter's American friend, Kate, who has been everywhere and is a real foodie. There were children, even at ten at night, eating and enjoying themselves. Nobody crying. It was a Friday of course and there weren't many English people around. The second night we went to Lucca's. Oh my God, the world's best steak, cooked over sizzling herbs.
We had gelati and the kind of coffee you cannot get in England.
Also, I hesitate to say this because of how everybody slags off Ryanair but they were lovely, apart from the two dragons in Milan who made my kid squash her Furla bag into her tiny suitcase. It did recover, you will be happy to hear and no, it did not cost five hundred pounds but it is melon pink, round and shiny.
The flight there was early, the flight back was early. We hadn't paid for priority booking. My advice is don't, it isn't necessary, and yes, we didn't sit together on the way back but I was just in front.  The staff were lovely. The wine and crisps gorgeous and the pilot was very reassuring Good old Ryanair, eight five quid return from Manchester to Milan. Cheaper than the trainfare to Edinburgh which was the other place we had thought of going.
Our lovely hotel was half an hour's joyful shopbound walk from the cathedral, the room was spotless, the staff kind and very competent, the breakfasts -  so many croissants, parma ham being bacon, - new one on me and one I may adapt.
The sun shone in Milan and the cathedral is free. How many cathedrals in Britain are free? Ours is of course. I hope it always will be.
So if you do happen to go to Milan, comparisons are odious but the cathedral is awesome. We had lunch the second day on the roof top of a department store. We sat outside, right next to the cathedral and watched people up at the top taking pictures.

Gordon Ramsay, inspired

I've never liked Gordon Ramsay. He isn't prissy enough for me. I like my chefs polite and middle class. I like Nigel Slater and I loved Elizabeth David. I can't stick Gordon's Ramsay's programmes as he swears and tells people what to do. He reminds me of a little street kid, spitting on the way to school because he wishes he could stay at home and play.
The stupid thing is that until I sat down, word blind yesterday from working too hard and happened upon Gordon Ramsay cooking, I couldn't see his appeal. It should be obvious that he didn't get to the top of his profession unless he could cook but strangely I'd never seen the guy cook before and he wasn't trying to turn tricks or given any personality impression. He really is a chef. It was less Gordon Ramsay and more the food he cares about and his enthusiasm and expertise made me want to get up and make something to eat which should be the whole point of cookery programmes. Nowadays I think it's just food porn.
I stopped cooking many years ago, being left with a small child who refused to eat anything that had been within several feet of an animal. I was queen of the casseroles and I hated vegetarian food. For years we lived on garlic bread and blue cheese and I used to go to the supermarket and come home with nothing other than red wine and salad.  Sometimes even now I walk round and round, wondering what the hell I'm doing there.
Yesterday afternoon I went into W.H.Smith's and looked for Gordon Ramsay's books and there he was, looking like the school bully, when in fact he's one of the swots and can turn into a magician, before your very eyes and show you how to make the kind of food you really want to eat and you believe him and trot off to the kitchen in search of better dining.

Room at the Top

BBC4 has recreated Joe Lampton and all the characters thought up so brilliantly by John Braine. I remember reading all John Braine's books and Room at the Top evokes the 1950s so well in all its greyness. The era when young men ogled young women, every one of them in Joe Lampton's case. It was the time after the second world war when rationing was just ending and nobody had any money. You forget how far back it was and when I watched the tv production I discovered it wasn't something I wanted to go back to however temporarily, this idea of the working class lad and the posh girl and striving to get somewhere and how awful the meals were. Mind you, Maxine Peake was amazing, as she always is.
A l ot of writers however, think the best book Braine wrote was Writing a Novel. I reread it so many times I can still remember whole passages from it and this was Braine's legacy to other writers.
It isn't easy, writing a book of advice for other writers and making it less pedestrian than what to do with grammar, how you try to get an agent and all the other things which are actually of no help at all. I taught creative writing for two years so I do how hard it is to get the messages across.
There are four books I can think of which cover the subject with style. The first is John Braine's book, the second is Stephen King's  On Writing, which I've read three times, the third is James N.Frey's How to Write a Damned Good Novel.  I will never forget him saying that you will know when you are finished because every time you look at the book you want to throw up!
But the person who taught me and many other writers how to write as well as they were able was the creative writing teacher and novelist Natalie Goldberg. I can't even think of her name without becoming all Americanized because I used to have her Writing Down the Bones on tape in my car. I listened to it endlessly.  She has written a couple of novels but her greatest talent is teaching others to write and my God she is good at it.  She likened writing to meditation, clearing the mind, one of the hardest things of all.  She wrote several books on writing, My friend Leah Fleming used to holiday in America and would bring them back and present them to me for Christmas. 
In the publishing world, as in John Braine's book, there is always room at the top. I can't remember who said that for writers ( and presumably in almost every job ) it's ten per cent inspiration and ninety per cent perspiration.  Getting to the top is hard, be it the best seller list or K2 and almost impossible in the fickle world of publishing. Maybe that's why we love to attempt it because the view, like from Everest, is the better the further up you climb and you have the incredible feeling of achievement as you go, in spite of all those teachers who told you as one of mine did,
'Yes, Elizabeth, but when are you going to get a proper job?'
I'm sure my parents felt the same. I never did get a proper job. It's just after six in the morning here and all sensible people who don't have to get up and go to work are still in bed but here I am, drinking early morning tea and thinking about my book.

The Booker Prize - who would you nominate?

Next month the Booker Prize will be won by some lucky person -  depending on how you look at it. Having won such a prize who would ever write again or need to or even dare to if you were an inexperienced writer?  Having won the top prize in publishing would you be happy as a writer to spend the majority of your year going to literary festivals, putting up with journalists and sycophants or worse still people who are envious and tell you you're rubbish. Would you be ready for the sour grapes, the talks, the television shows, the way that nobody thinks you need paying because you're obviously already making so much money, the way that people intrude so rudely into your life. You don't  have your privacy any more, everybody wants a piece of you.
The saying 'be careful what you wish for, the gods  may grant it' comes somewhere fairly close to all forms of celebrity. When I was twenty five I was convinced I was Jane Austen. I did go through a phase where I wanted to be rich. It was short lived.  I once had a friend who said, 'you can tell what God thinks of money by the people he gives it to'. Not perfectly true of course but you can only eat so much, drink so much, drive one car at once, sleep in one bed. What else is there? I remember Bianca Jagger saying that one of the most difficult things about being married to Mick was keeping up the houses they owned.  Can you imagine?  All that hassle, all that stress?
I have a house, a car and my caravan. I can pay my bills.  What else would I want?
I would like to be able to do what Catherine Cookson did if I ever did make any real money. She gave most of it to the Newcastle hospitals and a great many people, including me, have been bloody glad she did. That's what money's really for, not to spend a hundred million on a yacht as I heard one guy had. It had three heliports. Presumably for the windmills in his head.
But what really bothers me about the Booker Prize is that it is elitist and the very word makes me want to throw up.  Who says what makes a good novel? 

So, if you could nominate writers for the booker prize you would choose?

I would choose Ian Rankin becaue his plots are brilliant, his characters are memorable and he takes on big issues each time he writes.
I would nominate PD James, not because I think she's the most wonderful woman in the world and doesn't believe in bullshit but because her prose is almost poetry.
I would nominate C.J.Sansom, who is every bit as a good a writer as Hilary Mantel.

The trouble for me was that because her book won the Booker - I'm talking about Wolf Hall which won a couple of years ago - I was prejudiced against it and that really is the problem. A lot of people think that the shortlist is books which are indecipherable to most people so many folk who might enjoy them don't because either they think they aren't clever enough to understand or that the Booker like some Oxford College is there for certain very clever people and that isn't most of us.
Hilary Mantel writes simply, with authority, clarity and near genius. They say you can make a moderately good writer into a good writer but you can't make a good writer into a great writer and really that's why MAs in Creative Writing are almost always a waste of time. You could go out and do almost anything else and gain more from it. Who on earth would want to spend her youth sitting in a little room pouring out stories about god knows what because she hasn't got any experience? It's bad enough sitting in a little room writing all day when it's what you do for a living when you get older. It's anti social and it makes other people think you're bloody bananas. And in some ways you have to be. Neighbours at my last house thought I was a nurse and always on night duty since I wore my  pyjamas during the day. I've been working at home for thirty years, all alone, of course I'm bloody bonkers.  And yes, I write for money but believe me there are not many rich writers around and when was the last time you told your bank manager you'd never heard of him and how come he wasn't one of the top bank managers in the country?
I sat on my balcony this summer in Santorini and read Hilary Mantel's book, Bring up the Bodies. It is superb.  I left a whole load of things at home so that I could take the hardback with me, I loved it so much.
But - and it's a big but - it amazes me that she was not awarded the Booker for her best novel which is Beyond Black, the only novel I have read in years which had new ideas. They say there is no such thing. Well, I don't believe that. Hilary Mantel has new ideas.
I haven't read the other nominated books so I shouldn't say I hope she wins, except that I hope she wins, because a  it would be the first time it had happened twice to a woman and b because it would be the first time it had happened to a woman.
I went to my hairdresser before I went off to Santorini and there in a glossy women's magazine I discovered that the editor was going to read the same book as I was on holiday and that really is the point. Hilary Mantel is not writing for some stupid literary elite, she writes for everybody, she is accessible to everybody and so are all the great writers, Austen, Dickens, Fitzgerald and dozens more.

My lovely balcony. I could have stayed for a month

Me in Santorini. I wrote every day, read every day. Bliss

It would be a great thing if the Booker Prize was an event. It isn't really, not for millions of people the way that Strictly Come Dancing is.  But it could be.  It just needs sensible people to take the opportunity of short listing top writers and the writing world needs to stop placing writers into categories. A novel is a novel is a novel and somebody somewhere has grabbed up a copy of this wonderful book, stuffed it into her suitcase and is sitting on her balcony on a Greek island being grateful that Hilary Mantel spent hours, days and weeks and months so that we could enjoy her work. That is what reading is about. If the novelist doesn't entertain there are plenty of other jobs that she could do.  I'm very glad that Hilary Mantel chose to be a writer. She made my summer brighter.

God, gods and godless

I had two Jehovah's witnesses at my door last week. This was most unusual. I can' think why it should be, I live on a busy street in a small city or perhaps they just call when I'm out. I get all kinds of people at my door. They can park and look at their maps when they are lost or they see me mucking about in my front garden and waffle over because they can't  find the cathedral / the way into town / the way out of town/ the fire station/ the police station or the hospital. I'm not sure whether it is comforting to have the hospital, the fire station and the police station so near. It reminds me of the Naked City when I was little, all those sirens. When something has gone badly wrong they all dash past at once. I can hear them from my bed in the middle of the night. New York has nothing on Durham.
I always try to be kind to people. I blame my mother, I'm so polite even when I'm clearly not interested and it is intrusive - people always bang on the door or ring on the phone when I'm working. It's very frustrating and of course working at home is never thought of as working, you are there to be interrupted.
I smiled at them and thought of how when I finished school, I won an award for religious studies, I'm not kidding you, I used to invite them into the back garden, give them tea and talk about the bible.  My mother in law had the easiest answer, she used to smile, say,
'We're Catholics,' which we were of course but I think my husband had the right idea.
When we lived in Ramshaw not far from Barnard Castle we built a house in the dip down by the river and we were hard at work, he was moving and facing stone and I was busy with the cement  mixer and this chap appeared around the side of the house. I saw the bible and knew what he was but Richard had much more idea.
'Hello, Fred,' he offered and the guy recognised him and smiled and started on about God and Richard said,
'Wonderful, and while you're here just give me a hand with these stones, will you?'
And the bloke did.  I thought it was the perfect answer.
I don't have anything half as good to offer these days except that when the woman said,
'Do you think God can save the world?'
I said,
'I just wish he'd get a move on,' and then I went back to work.