Ten things I hate and love because it will make me feel better to put them down here.

Like the film which is great but I hate

1. Those dreadful cheery letters people send you to tell you how wonderful their lives are. Liars.

2. Evenings. After Eggheads there is this big scary nothingness which I fill with work, wine and food. For some reason summers are worse than dark nights.

3. Quiz shows where I can never answer anything. Television, sport, personalities, popular songs. With the exception of football ( I wrote a book about it ), tennis and snooker both of which I really like. One other exception I love Eggheads.

4. Television generally, all those dreadful food programmes, reality programmes, dancing, morning news, the people who go around escaping to the country thinking they can keep a couple of sheep in the garden!!  And can afford an Aga but don't know how to use one.

5.  The country anyway, cyclists, tractors, caravans and weekend drivers. I love to go to Weardale but I couldn't bear not to live in the town.

6. People who use fuck instead of breathing or as an adjective.

7. People who think northern accents mean people are stupid or below them.

8. Sweets in general. Cakes, biscuits and cheese flavoured crisps.

9. Religion. It denigrates women.

10. People who tell those with depression to pull themselves together.



I love

1.The Champagne Bar and red wine and white wine.

2. Good homemade food, in particular soup, bread and Indian meals. This varies depending on how I feel.

3. My caravan, which of course is in the country, see number 5 on hating the country.

4. My lovely little town house which has original fireplaces and stained glass windows and is ten minutes walk from my beloved cathedral See 9 above, I love psalms, choirs singing, the dean who seems such a lovely bloke. I also love St Cuth's which is near and where I go to classical concerts, St Oswald's because it's so beautiful and I go to university orchestral concerts there and oh, yes thousands of other churches and graveyards and so on.For history and music.  And I love to write about religion because it's so complex and offers all manner of opportunities to slag off vicars. In the book which comes out in the summer the vicar is killed. Sorry but I really enjoyed this.

5. The herbs in my garden and all the other lovely things which Howard sorts out for me. I grow  basil on the window ledge and in the garden bay leaves, lemon balm, rosemary thyme, curly parsley. I adore lavender .

6. My friends of course. Whatever would I do without them. I can't name them, it wouldn't be polite.

7. Music, opera, ballet, anything by Chopin and the rest of the gang.

8. Anthony Trollope and everything he ever wrote.  Books, books, books. Fiction and non. Anything. I once read a book on sewage systems of Northumberland. Fascinating.

9. Audio books on Amazon which save my nights from despair.

10. Ceylon tea, Assam Tea, Darjeeling tea, Earl Grey tea.

Most of all of course I love my wonderful daughter and my writing in that order which of should go first and goes last and first and every other  number.

I feel a lot better now. Eggheads is on any second so I must go.

Elizabeth Gill, Author

I was talking on the phone to Trisha Ashley the other day and moaning about the fact that my books aren't selling as well as I would like them to  - do they ever? - and she said why don't you have an author page, what used to be called 'Facebook Fan Page'. No, honestly, I am not Madonna, I do not have fans, I have readers, at least I hope that somebody besides me is reading my books.
Now I took a test on Facebook three weeks ago to find out how techie I really am and it told me that I was first class. Either it tells everybody they are first class or I lied through my teeth and it  believed me. I set up this blog myself. This would account for the fact that since I went into Apple products I cannot upload photographs so all there is is the text and there are no bobbly bits around the edges like pictures of me or dates of whatever or, I don't know.
Stormfront guys set up official things, and my lovely techie man, George, set up everything else so what gave me the idea I could do an official page about my books I'm not quite sure.
I read about it, I wrote down about it and then I attempted it. At first it seemed easy and then I tried to  upload ( that is right isn't it?  I find it hard to tell the difference between up and down  except on stairs and very often these days I go up and down trying to remember what the hell I was doing there in the first place. Things are bad on my ageing planet. Yesterday I tried to reverse the car and couldn't find the clutch pedal and my mouth has a nasty habit of going into alien territory when I'm on the phone, trying to remember somebody's name or when I'm doing a crossword. I will not give up, I have a very reliable Crossword finding book or whatever you call it.
However, back to the Elizabeth Gill, Author problem. I did upload a pic of me, sitting there grinning Cheshire cat style. Unfortunately it uploaded the pic five times and could I hell get rid of it. There I am grinning from ear to ear everywhere you look with nothing and nobody in sight. I spent two hours uploading and getting rid of this pic and uploading and getting rid of the pic of my latest effort book wise but nothing happened. Every time I tried to delete one there was nothing but white space and so now there are five grinning pics of me on my would be Author page.
My friends know how bad I am at this. I can however type three times as fast anybody else I know and as my daughter pointed out last week I am a nice person. She has to say that, she's my only child and knows where the silver is.
Worst of all people seemed to notice, though I hadn't meant to inform anybody, that there I am alone except for myself on my Author page and people found out and have liked it. Are they secretly worrying about me, sitting there in all my glory, or do they just think 'Liz is being daft again' and the nicer ones forgive me. They know that I have no skill once I'm on a screen but hey I can't even remember how to tell people from Facebook and Twitter that I have written another blogpost so perhaps nobody will read it. I do like writing this though, I believe I'm funny. I don't believe I'm clever, I'm just trying to remember what I came upstairs for in the first place.
I shall now go tentatively to try and upload another pic of me so that when the odd person does politely want to view the page she may seen dozens of pics of little old me and thereafter have to go downstairs for some tea.

Mrs Gill's Book of Household Management ( or hints for merry widows)

If you are newly widowed you will be feeling anything but bloody merry. It took me twenty years to be glad I didn't have to iron shirts, produce homemade cakes or buy groceries for two. Actually the second part of that sentence is a lie. I never did produce homemade cakes and if his lordship tried to insist, I baked stuff that would have driven any decent man to a dentist. He was a lovely lad, my husband and had beautiful teeth so it was all a bit difficult really.
Firstly, seriously, don't try to do everything. If you can afford help get it. I have my lovely Howard to sort the garden, a window cleaner who needs nothing but a cup of tea, (two sugars), and recently a smashing lady to do my house. When she comes I go out and work and do research and eat lots of chocolate.
Last week I took myself to the Fat Buddha and had honey chilli chicken and a large glass of Chardonnay.
The other thing is and it took me a long time to sort this one out as well - don't try to be the perfect parent. Your kids will never work out that there is only one of you and that you are not there to solve their problems, prop up their bank accounts and listen to their moans when you have a) work to do, b) an excellent meal getting cold, or c) a glass of champagne which is rapidly warming. Train the little buggers not to phone in the middle of a decent film or a good conversation. When you die they will inherit everything unless you are peeing your knickers in a nursing home by then and in that case they put you there so don't deserve anything.
Secondly, or thirdly if you read the last paragraph, don't expect to marry Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie was there before you.  I have just recently accepted this. To be fair nobody ever wanted to marry me and although I blamed God at the time I am quite relieved now. I won't be looking after any man in his dotage, won't ever have to watch sport, can lie in bed all day if I want to and have made a habit of chatting up young men in supermarkets. They don't seem to mind, since I am wearing a purple fur coat and a purple hat they know I'm dotty anyway.
I have recently gone back to cooking. It has taken me twenty six years. My kitchen now is full of the smells of good bread and chillies and ginger and garlic. My evenings are spent stirring things in pans and wondering where I put my second best wooden spoon. In between, I drink wine and do bits on my current book which I either think is the best thing since Anthony Trollope - yes, I do go on a lot about him, I know, but he is my favourite author - or is the biggest load of garbage in the history of writing and is too bad even to inhabit my bin.
Being widowed means you don't have to live in the country. I do love the country and spend a lot of time there but it can be very boring. There are no theatres, no cinemas, no cathedral. Awful really. Shops sell lemon yellow cardigans and have never heard of a chocolate croissant.The country roads are not just full of tractors, I can deal with the odd tractor, it's the bloody cyclists and I don't mean motor. Farmers spread muck on the fields and I can always find the odd sheep with a limp. The bends in the roads have spattered dead pheasants and run over moggies.
Nextly try not to drink coke. It's undignified at our age. Some people think it's better for you than alcohol. If you want to ruin your teeth with fizzy stuff go to Majestic wine and buy Chandon from Argentina. It's made by Moet and is the nearest thing you can get to champagne for thirteen quid. You have to buy two bottles of course but that's never been a problem for me.
Lastly, please don't talk about your grandchildren to people who don't have any. Either they wish they had or they are bored witless. It's bad enough them having to listen to me going on about how intelligent and charming and about to take on the whole world is my only child. She is, you know.
And lastly again, being widowed is awful, it's lonely, it's painful and nobody understands. Someone once described a widow as 'a bird with a broken wing'. Well, all I can say is 'up yours, mate!' Get out there, people and fly!!!

The Lentil Shepherdess

During a visit to Durham cathedral yesterday I decided to have lunch. I hate the lunchtime boredom of sandwiches, soup and baked potatoes. Can there be anything more truly revolting than a baked potato with tuna in cheap mayonnaise? The only thing a baked potato should come with is lashings of good butter and sea salt.
At the cathedral they were offering shepherdess pie and I thought that would be lovely, nice and hot, tasty, for such a cold day so I queued, sat down and began to eat.
To be fair, I should have asked how it differed from shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie has minced beef. Shepherdess pie has ... lentils??  Oh my God.  The vegetables were cold, the pie with nothing without its meat.
There are some terrible eating places in Durham. I don't know why. Is it something to do with tradition or is it just that nobody complains?
Bhs store takes the biscuit for this if you will pardon the pun. This cafe has the best view in Durham but the food is appalling. I go for the view and the staff who are lovely but all I ever eat there is hot buttered toast.
For decent chains we have Ask and Zizzi's so you know what you're getting.
Vennels do wonderful cake and the staff are lovely there too.
The best place for Sunday roast or fish and chips is my local, The Garden House Hotel in North Road and the chef prides himself on his wonderful puddings.
In summer I go to the Cellar Door where I can sit by the river and watch the sun go down. The food is great, the staff too.
The cafes in Durham tend to be dark and in old buildings which they can't do much about. The cafe beside the Barker library, in a gorgeous building on Palace Green does sandwiches without butter. No, I have no idea why either.
We are now being urged to eat 'real food' and to ignore what we have been told about eating too much fat. I think the culprit is sugar so I try not to go too far with it. A balance is always good but most of all I will not eat food which is not good for me or tastes bad.
Chez Liz is the best eating place in town now, the wine is superb because I choose it, the food exactly what I want because there's only me and anyway I hate cooking for other people. I feel like I'm putting myself on the line somehow and it takes the pleasure from it. I feel like Mary, from Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library, who was the vicar's maid of all work, slogging away in the bloody vicarage while the vicar's wife sat on her arse. No wonder Mary overcooked or undercooked all the food.
At Chez Liz there are no complaints. Even last week when the second night of had been an excellent chicken curry was cooked to buggery in the microwave. The Aromatic Yellow Basmati rice was a kind of puke slop.
One of these days when I am rich I shall go and live at Matfen Hall where the food is the best. Would I get tired of it?  Oh, please, Lord, give me the chance!  In the meanwhile the dinner at Chez Liz is leek, lemon and white wine risotto and has to be better than the shepherdess I ate at the cathedral.

Shopaholic becomes Chefaholic

I should put a sign outside saying Chez Liz. Having shopped myself stupid for the last few weeks in a bid not to be alcoholic of the year I finally got bored. Things went a bit further this week. I decided to cook.
No big decision, the rest of you think, but ah ha, I haven't cooked since I started living alone which is at least ten years. I do throw meat and veg into the oven, with olive oil and bring out charred remains when I remember it's there. I do a good line in Cheese and Garlic Bread as a main course. I gave up on fish when I could smell it three days after it left the pan. The exception is soup. I do a very good carrot soup.
This week on the menu has been the most wonderful daube of beef. Wine, rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, tomatoes and thick strips of orange peel. Can't you just smell it?  I actually went out of the house so that I could come back in again and enjoy the scent which wafted through the hall. Unfortunately my stomach, wondering what in hell I was doing, thought the daube too rich and I suffered the following day.
Then it was the best risotto I have ever tasted, leeks and white wine ( you see I do get the wine in, even if the alcohol has gone off it by the time I eat ), bay leaves ( the bay tree in the garden has had a hammering this week )and lemons. I adore lemons. It was sublime.
The day after this it was charred asparagus with lemon, basil and spaghetti.
Last night I excelled myself. Lemony chicken with Fresh Coriander. I hate coriander but my garden supplies curly parsley which I chopped very small. There was ginger made into a paste, garlic, chilli ( red since I had no green ) cayenne, cumin and turmeric. To go with it I had Aromatic Yellow Rice which boasted cinnamon and yes, you guessed it, more bay leaves.
In between all this I've been having rosemary bread with salads for lunch. Not ordinary salads, vine ripe tomatoes, avocado with lemon oil, yellow and orange peppers and king prawns.  I haven't had king prawns since Kitty died. She used to hide them under the beds like squirrels hide nuts.
Best of all I did have to go shopping. I needed one of those little collections of spoons which give you a quarter of a teaspoon, half a teaspoon etc. And I discovered that the lady who has the fruit and veg at the covered in market in Market Place, does a good line in herbs. I urge you all to buy your goods at this market. It's cheaper than anywhere else, the people there are lovely and the watch man is mending a watch of mine which hasn't gone for years.
The fruit and veg lady must go somewhere really good for her produce because it lasts and lasts. Of course it isn't very warm in the covered in market which possibly accounts for some of this but I have been buying bunches of snowdrops there, two for £1-50 which are locally grown. On top of that you get the chat, everybody there is so nice, it's a blissful way of shopping.
Today - deep breaths here - I am making spelt bread. I don't need to make dinner, there is enough left over from last night. I went to Sainsburys and bought a big loaf tin and a stainless steel mixing bowl so if you happen by the smell should be incredible.
The only problem I have is that I make awful coffee. I could hit the Guinness book of records for the coffee I have made which people merely looked at. So no smell of coffee.
Kind regards to Madhur Jaffrey and the lovely people at hamlyn books who wrote the mediterranean collection which I bought from my local library last week for one pound. My afternoons no longer exist under the spell of Escape From the Country - Freudian slip there - and Antiques Road Trip. My couch is awash with cookery books. Elizabeth David move over, here I come.

The Best Thing I Ever Wrote

The paperback of my book Far From My Father's House comes out on January 29th from Quercus. It is now available from Amazon as an ebook for 99p.


My agent still says this is the best book I ever wrote which is very frustrating because it means I'm not getting any better.  It was my second Saga and my new lovely publishers Quercus think it will sell in paperback. I do hope so. I chose the cover myself from a number of options because I think it looks like my mother and this book is partly about her.

She didn't like the book, she thought it misrepresented her and of course it did, it was my view of her early life and nobody can know what another's life is really like. She died fourteen years ago and by God, I miss her. She was beautiful, vital, dynamic and part of her is always there in the women in my books. The one I'm writing at the moment there my mother is, riding her horse down a beach into the water and being the outdoor person that I always wanted to be. I don't look like her, I don't think like her, on a good day I tell stories about her because it comforts me.

Annie is the main woman in the story, the man is David Blake. This was the first time I had made a man so important in my books, his voice is as complete as hers and the publishers have acknowledged it in that the audio will be read by a man in a northern voice. Oh joy!

I can't read some of the book because every time I look at it I want to cry. I used a great deal of my own experience. The funeral scene is my husband's funeral and what Blake goes through after it is the same hell that I went through when my husband died.  The nights where I never slept, the days when I didn't eat, the way that men would ask me casually if I wanted to go to bed with them, as though it was sex I missed and worst of all the awful loneliness which has never receded, raw and personal.

'Afterwards there was not a day in the rest of his life in which Blake could think about what happened without pain.'

That's me and that's why it's the best thing I ever wrote.

Alcoholic becomes shopaholic

My daughter sat me down over Christmas, when I had tonsillitis and was feeling weak, most unfair and she impressed upon me that I drink too much. I know, I know. I gave her all the explanations I could think of but it was no use. She was right. So I came home with the promise that I would cut down to half a bottle at night with a meal.
I'm sorry if this sounds pathetic. Don't read on if you are thinking 'what a stupid person'. On the plus side I thought it was my only addiction which is good because I have that sort of personality, unfortunate but true. I do everything I do to the nth degree. Very boring for other people, very boring for me as well but it's the way it goes.

I had antibiotics and didn't drink because I was quite ill before Christmas and that really would be stupid and then I thought, for God's sake, how ridiculous the whole thing is to let anything dictate your life to you but I can't bear the evenings. My dreadful empty evenings which I fill with work and food and wine. I know, I know, they say you should get out but my boredom threshold, part of my stupid depression, holds me in it so there are few things I can bear in the evenings. Every other time of day is manageable, evenings, forget it.

So there I am now, with my half bottle of wine stretching out until I go to bed and once there I can listen to stories and I like my bed, I'm happy there. The only thing now is I have much more energy in the mornings. Oh my God, I have turned into Tigger. I used to be Tigger quite a lot but life has ground me down. Here he comes again.  Boing!!  Boing!!  Boing!! Like bouncing on a mattress.

I get up and work at seven am, leaping out of bed to make tea first, I make soup at eight, I hit the shops at nine and boy, do I hit the shops. Yesterday I had to prise myself away from one of those cheese things that have mesh so that you can see the different kinds. This week I have bought sufficient groceries to keep an army going. I have rejected four different kinds of slipper boots which I do not need.  I have bought pyjama tops and pyjama bottoms - not matching, that's too easy. I have been to Sainsbury's as they opened and rifled through the sales there and I went to Next and bought a gorgeous new top in lots of different colours. I went to Wallis and Top Shop and Warehouse and then I went to Boots. I went to Marks and Spencer's twice and bought some very expensive make up. I bought six avocados at Tesco and special peppercorn sauce for my steak one night and my pork chop the next.
In Sainsbury's I kept the lovely young man who runs the fish bit of it in conversation for ten minutes - he had nothing else to do and was obviously impressed by my devotion to bream and sardines and trout, all fresh and all on special offer. I went home and finished off my already teaming freezer. I can get nothing more in there now, nor can I find anything. I don't even like fish!
I looked at shelf after shelf of wine because now that I am drinking less I am more discerning. If it's two glasses a night by God, it had better be good.
This is not a new year thing, I must say. I don't do new year things. I love food and drink. Giving up anything in January is nauseating so it isn't that kind of cutting down. My daughter wants me to live forever. I have tried to impress upon her that this is unlikely at best when my friends are being mown down by cancer all around me. I have already been wrecked by widowhood, being orphaned, had breast cancer, depression and swept aside my stupid family and most of the friends I liked very much but somehow couldn't manage.  I am ruthless that way but it's survival.
Today is Saturday and I have a plan. After breakfast, after making curried parsnip soup, I am going to Paperchase where the notebooks and the pens are on special offer, at least I hope they still are. I'm not walking into town, still a bit weak from blessed tonsillitis but I will take the car and wander the shops and wonder what else I can buy. I have rejected house buying, thankfully, I have a car and two new computers.  My garden has a new fence and my house a new coat of paint and my kitchen is less than two years old. I have walls covered in paintings and a wardrobe as big as John Lewis. I have bought furniture and tea towels. There are so many books in my caravan that the shelves are full. I have wonderful jewellery which my precious daughter buys me. Is there anything else?
Well, breakfast beckons now, soup has to be made and the shops are open. Can I get you anything while I'm there?  I know where everything is. You will recognise me. I'm the strange striped tiger rushing up and down the aisles, greeting everybody, smiling hugely, enthusiastic.
There is a lovely scene in the West Wing, one of my best ever favourite programmes, where the lovely president says to his sidekick something like, thinking of the economy, 'Would two weeks in the Caribbean have hurt you that much?' That's me, keeping the economy going single handedly. It's my duty to the country, getting and spending. Am I laying waste my hours? Should I be planning ahead? Or shall I just saunter into Paperchase and find all those notebooks. It's cheaper than cocaine, is shopping, it's better for you than smoking. It doesn't rot your liver like drinking and it doesn't expand your waistline like eating. So am I hoping for the best. See you in M&S.