The Poignancy of Covid Separations...by Sheila Claydon

 

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This is about children. They feature a lot in my romances because they feature a lot in my life in the form of grandchildren and their friends. Animals also feature ditto. Authors are always told to write about the things they know, so I do...at least to some extent. And certainly as far as children are concerned. 

All of my granddaughters love books and all of them enjoy writing stories and poems, many of which give the family pleasure as they note the progress being made and the imagination being shared. Just occasionally, however, things become a little more poignant, none more than this letter from my 6 year old granddaughter who lives in Hong Kong. She and her parents were due to spend 6 weeks with us in the summer of 2020 but Covid put paid to that as they weren't allowed to leave Hong Kong. So now we continue, as we always have, to talk on Skype and to share thoughts on a WhatsApp Family Chat. This includes everyone in the immediate UK family. 

Due to the time difference we often wake up in the morning to messages and photos that have been sent while we were asleep and this is what arrived last week. 

Given that we are way past Christmas we are taking the greeting as it is intended. We also love the idiosyncratic spellings, the pink pen and the various stickers. The message, sent without any prompting from her parents, is heartrending though. In our UK family we have dogs, cats and a horse, some of which she has already met, and all of whom she has seen on Skype. A Hong Kong high-rise is not the place for pets, however, so she is living for the day when she can play with them all and ride the horse on a leading rein, as she was expecting to do last summer.

Having said that she is managing pretty well on Skype in the interim. She's been known to send her eldest cousin messages during a university lecture and call us up while we are out walking the dog and take the walk through the fields with us. We also manage to play games like UNO or Chess online after a fashion, read books or write stories, and, if they are with her, be introduced to many of her little friends.  It's amazing what can be achieved with technology and we consider ourselves very lucky to be able to maintain such a close relationship across the miles. It doesn't make up for that poignant little letter though. Nothing will.

On a lighter note, the middle granddaughter is known for her sense of humour and dry wit. These came into play this week when, to her disgust, she was told that because it was International Book Day she had to dress up as a character from a book she liked. At 14, she thought the whole thing was ridiculous in  the way only a teenager can, especially as lessons were still online! She is, however, a very dutiful student, so when the day came she chose Harry Potter as her character. She then mentally donned his invisibility cloak by keeping her camera turned off during her online English lesson. I don't know what costumes her classmates came up with but what I do know is that she won first prize. Obviously her English teacher has a sense of humour too. It has kept the whole family laughing all week. 

Now she is back in the classroom and so is our granddaughter in Hong Kong, and hopefully it won't be too long before we can all meet up again. In the meantime I have another book to write...children will feature!!

The Wisdom of Winnie the Pooh...by Sheila Claydon

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I often have children in my books and this was especially the case when I wrote Double Fault. The battle for their children, which was at the heart of the story, sometimes made me want to knock Kerry and Pierce's heads together. Yes, I know I invented the characters and wrote the book, but still...that's how it gets you sometimes!

Something else got to me recently. It happened when I was watching a Winnie the Pooh Disney film with my youngest granddaughter. It was the wisdom of children as illustrated by Winnie the Pooh and his friends.

Piglet: “How do you spell ‘love’?”
Pooh: “You don’t spell it…you feel it.” 

Such a simple question and answer, but one that goes right to the heart. And as a writer of contemporary romance, it's a philosophy that features in my books. Fanciful sometimes maybe, but how comforting.

And the pearl of wisdom below must surely be a translation of how Pooh's author, the writer A.A. Milne, felt sometimes when he was sitting in front of a blank page wondering what to write next.

“But it isn’t easy,” said Pooh. “Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” 

And as he said later, when he was standing on the bridge in Hundred Acre Wood:  “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” 

And talking of Hundred Acre Wood, I've actually been there. It's part of Ashdown Forest in the county of Sussex in South East England, about 40 miles from London. It dates almost to the Norman Conquest when it became a medieval hunting forest. The monarchy and nobility continued to hunt there well into Tudor times, Henry VIII being the most notable. 

The forest has a rich archaeological heritage with evidence of prehistoric human activity dating back 50,000 years, and it contains Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano-British remains.

It was also the centre of a nationally important iron industry on two occasions, firstly during the Roman occupation of Britain and then in the Tudor period when England's first blast furnace was built at nearby Newbridge, marking the beginning of Britain's modern iron and steel industry.

In the seventeenth century, however, more than half the forest fell into private hands. The remaing 9.5 square miles were set aside as the common land which still exists today, and it is the largest area with open public access in South East England.

Nowadays, it is more heath than  forest. Nevertheless, ash trees and hazel vie for space in the wooded areas and in Springtime it's carpeted with wild flowers.   It's the sort of magical place that small boys, like Pooh Bear's friend, Christopher Robin, love. A place of adventure, a place that feeds the imagination. 

”We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun,” said Winnie the Pooh to his friends. 

And when his best friend, Piglet, said, “‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ 

‘Even longer,’ Pooh answered.” 

He even understood the need to talk things through with a friend when life gets tough.“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” 

“When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” 

The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh, aka A.A. Milne and the young Christopher Robin could, and did, fill books. And they made Pooh and his friends famous. So famous that many years later Walt Disney made some of them into films that captivated new generations of children (and their parents and grandparents). It wasn't all honey though, even though Pooh Bear considered honey (hunny) to be the cure for everything. For many years the real Christopher Robin hated the celebrity he had thrust upon him. He was teased at school and, in later life, felt he didn't live up to his Father's expectations. He was also estranged from his mother. But Pooh even has an answer for all of that, an answer that Christopher Robin seemed to acknowledge in his own memoir The Enchanted Places, which he wrote in 1974, and which is the basis of the latest magical film Goodbye Christopher Robin.

“You’re braver than you believe and stronger and smarter than you think.”

Or if, like Pooh, you sometimes look at it another way...

”The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually.” 

So there was even angst behind the magic of Winnie the Pooh, as there is angst in everyone's life to a greater or lesser degree. But pick one of Winnie the Pooh's snippets of wisdom and somehow nothing seems quite so bad. 

”I must go forward where I have never been instead of backwards where I have.” – Winnie the Pooh 

    

Christmas on a cruise ship and other places...by Sheila Claydon

Of all the books I have written, only Cabin Fever features Christmas, and even that is without the snow and cold we usually experience in the UK. If you, like me, prefer the sunshine, however, it makes a very different read for the holiday season. In it, the cruise ship Osprey makes it way down the coast of New Zealand to Sydney in Australia. With illness, secrets, jealousy, misunderstandings and an unexpected desire trying hard to get in the way, the entertainment crew still manage to pull together a spectacular Christmas show for their passengers, as well as finding a way to mend two broken hearts.

A few years ago I made the selfsame journey, arriving in Sydney Harbour on Christmas Eve. Although it was wonderful and was the reason I eventually wrote Cabin Fever, there was nobody on board as mesmerising as Ellie, the heroine, or as outrageously handsome as Drew, the hero. Reliving the memories got me thinking about my own Christmases, however, and I realised how very varied they have been over the years.

Instead of the traditional English meal of turkey, Christmas pudding and mince pies I've enjoyed huge and juicy BBQ prawns on the beach in Australia, roast goose and red cabbage in Denmark, tandoori chicken with rice and chapattis in India, and Chinese wontons with noodles so hot and spicy they made my lips numb!

I didn't set out to experience Christmas in different places around the world but with a son who lives and works abroad it sometimes just happens that way, and each foreign Christmas has always been intriguing, delicious and enjoyable.

I've learned that hygge really is a thing in Denmark where Christmas is celebrated beside a blazing fire while candles flicker from every available surface.  Hot fruit tea and chocolates really are best enjoyed snuggled up in a furry rug. Schnapps, which makes an appearance at random intervals throughout the day has to be downed in one swallow accompanied by a loud shout of Skaal (cheers), and the specially brewed Danish Christmas beer really is much stronger than anyone realises until it's too late!

In Australia it is far more laid back with daily BBQs and a lot of sun, sand and beer. The excitement grows as New Year approaches though until what seems like the whole population converges to watch the always magnificent firework display at Sydney Harbour.

In India we were taken to the Golden Temple at Amritsar where Sikhs go in their thousands to celebrate the New Year. As one of only a handful of westerners there, it was a mesmerising experience. Also, that same Christmas, for some now unremembered reason, I ended up riding a camel as well as being marooned in the middle of an enormous boating lake while vultures flew overhead the cloudless sky. If that sounds a bit scary it wasn't, it was stomach clutchingly funny. It is, however, a story for another day.

Of course I love the traditional English Christmas too and that is mostly what I experience. It was best when my children were small, that is until grandchildren arrived and reworked the Christmas magic for all the adults in the house.  Last year it was a traditional family Christmas at home with the whole family, something that is not always possible, and with a 3 year old in the house in the lead up to the celebrations we had to find a different hiding place for the Christmas Elf every day and then remember that there was still a chocolate to be eaten in the Advent calendar!

This Christmas, however, we're back on our travels and off to Hong Kong. We have no idea what to expect except that the people we know who have experienced it say it's one of the best places to be at Christmas.  Let's hope they are right because I've just received this picture as a precursor and I think the elves look a bit scary!!

For Cabin Fever and the rest of Sheila's books go to:

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Christmases Past...by Sheila Claydon

My latest book, Empty Hearts, is a vintage romance. It isn't about Christmas, but the cover, designed by the wonderful Michelle Lee at Stardust Creations at http://michelleleedesigns.net evokes the spirit of Christmas, chilly though it is.

I have very mixed feelings about Christmas. For a start I don't like cold weather. I'm not that keen on crowded shops either, or the ever increasing razzmatazz that is the modern celebration. On the other hand I love seeing family and friends, and I especially love seeing how much children enjoy it.

This year, all my immediate family are going to spend Christmas together for first time in 9 years so the house is going to be very full, as are the cupboards and the fridge, with the overflow stored in a cold outhouse. Consequently I have had to start thinking about it much earlier than usual this year, and this has prompted me to recall the Christmases I enjoyed when I was small.

The first one I remember was the one when my parents gave me a dolls house. I was probably about 5 years old and it wasn't any old dolls house, it was one they made themselves. Money was tight so buying a fancy one was out of the question, so my father divided a wooden box into 4 'rooms' and papered each one with scraps of wallpaper. Offcuts of carpet were stuck to the floor and curtains were hung at the windows on tiny lengths of wire so I could open and close them. Although the windows themselves were merely holes in the wall I thought the whole thing was magical. My Mother, meanwhile, was busy with the furniture. I can still clearly remember the flower-patterned sofa and two armchairs. They were comfortably padded and had frills around the base and it was a very long time before I discovered that they were made out of matchboxes. The bed in the upstairs room had pillows and sheets and a bedspread (no duvets or throws in those days) and there was also an upholstered cot (another matchbox) for the baby.  I don't remember the rest of the furniture so clearly but I know there was a bathroom and a kitchen with a few pieces of bought furniture. No stairs of course but my family of dolls were all very adept at clambering up the walls to the upper floor, and I certainly don't recall considering that a defect. Far from it. I thought it was the most perfect house I had ever seen, especially as my Father had somehow found some stick-on paper that looked like tiles for the sloping roof. What a gift, and knowing how I feel when I see my grandchildren open a special present, I imagine they had as much joy as I did.

When I was older books and drawing materials were my preferred option, and there are two other Christmases I particularly remember. The first is when I received an artist's palette, paintbrushes, some tiny tubes of oil paint and a few canvases. My parents and grandmother all had to sit for their portraits and for years those pictures hung on the walls of my childhood home. Sadly they disappeared a long time ago, probably around the time I got married and my mother cleared out my bedroom. As I fondly remember them as true likeness it is probably just as well I can no longer see them and  be disillusioned as to my artistic skills.

The final Christmas that was special was the one where every present was a book! I can still remember my parents' faces as the pile grew taller and taller (I had a lot of aunts and uncles!). I think they were worried I would be disappointed, but I wasn't. I loved being given what was essentially a mini library and I still have some of those books today, ones that I have shared with my granddaughters. What Katy Did is a favourite.

So when I see my grandchildren open their presents this Christmas I will be remembering the excitement and hopefully at least one of them will receive a present that they will never forget.

Merry Christmas!

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Help from the little people...by Sheila Claydon

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So here I am in Australia again, visiting family. We've spent so much time in Sydney over the past few years, and have so many Australian friends, that it's beginning to feel a bit like home. Visiting, socialising and taking care of our little granddaughter does interfere with the writing of course, but not as much as you might think. 

Take 'Remembering Rose,' Book 1 of Mapleby Memories. I started that while I was helping to care for my then 6 month old granddaughter, and finished it when I returned home. It's a time travel romance but guess who one of the main characters is? Yes, a small baby! It wasn't intentional, nor is the fact that  Book 2 (so far only half written) features that same baby starting school, something very integral to the plot. And what did I do today that might influence how I write about that? Well I took my now 3 year old granddaughter to breakfast at her daycare nursery to celebrate Mother's Day (Grannies and other women special to the children always included) and sat with what seemed like a hundred tinies on mini chairs at a mini table - so watch out for something similar down the line in one of my books, maybe Book 2!

Why do we write what we write. Well for me the idea for a book is usually prompted by a chance remark or a newspaper article, or even by noticing someone or something when I'm out and about. How I weave that into a story is an entirely different matter however, and my eldest granddaughter (now old enough to read all my books and be my number one fan) tells me that she can recognise herself and her sister in some of the earlier ones.  Well not them exactly, but their behaviours and comforters. She's absolutely right and yet none of it was intentional. 

It is true that whatever and wherever the setting for a story, we still include what we know and experience, although to allay any suspicions my husband might have if he reads this (unlikely) I hasten to add that the romance is all imaginary:) No experience there at all!!!!

Several of my other books feature children, including 'Empty Hearts' which will be published later this year. The only difference is that this one is a vintage, written and first published in the eighties, so the little boy in it must have been based on my own children!!! Sorry about that guys, but a writer does what she has to do:)

While I am editing that and finishing Book 2 of Mapleby Memories, there is always 'Double Fault' if you like family stories. That also has children at its centre, and how!!!

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When did you last puddle jump? by Sheila Claydon

I've been time travelling again, back into my past.  My companion is my two year old granddaughter who is on a nine week visit from Australia.

When did you last puddle jump? Or balance across a log? Or count pine cones? Or draw pictures in the sand? And why does the wind blow the leaves on the trees and make some of them flutter down to the ground? And why do we walk on the wide paths when the hidden ones made by rabbits and foxes are so much better? And what about shadows, and crows, and the aeroplanes that leave a trail across the sky? And bubbles. There is nothing better than blowing bubbles and then chasing them until they pop.

All this and much, much more and we are only three and a half weeks into the visit.

We don't really forget you know, we just need an excuse to revisit our own childhood, an excuse to arrive home wet, or sandy, or both.  And discussing the magic of the wind, or blowing bubbles, are very satisfying occupations once we remember how to let go of our own reality and fly backwards in time to the days when we were two and a little bit.

I remember reading somewhere that we are our memories. Nothing that ever happens to us, no experience, good or bad, is ever lost. Some of our memories become less accessible over the years of course, but they are still there, just waiting for the trigger that will awaken them. And this month my trigger has been a two year old who has taken me back to a world I once inhabited.

I have two more books to write for my time travel trilogy Mapleby Memories. It's not going to be an easy process because juxtaposing different centuries in one story is difficult. What I've discovered this month, however, is that it will be easier than I anticipated. I just need to find the magic trigger that will transport me to an earlier memory. It might well be my little granddaughter because I already know there will be children in the next book so inhabiting their world as I write is important.

There are small children in the first book, Remembering Rose, as well. Children from three different centuries, and although it doesn't say so in the book, I guarantee they all loved to puddle jump.

Sheila Claydon's books can be found at Books We Love and Amazon

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Did My Kid Just SAY That? by Gail Roughton

     

     

You never know what’s coming out of a child’s mouth next. That’s one of the perks of having kids. They can embarrass you one minute, have you in stitches laughing the next, and occasionally, leave you open-mouthed and slack-jawed in sheer amazement.

All my kids have done it to me at one time or another and my grandchildren do it to me now. But the family did she just say what I think she said prize goes to my daughter, Rebecca. She was eight at the time, leaning back against the bathtub and savoring the feel of the hot water. Bath time was one-on-one time, hard to come by in a family of three children and two working parents, and I’d learned to grab it with each child whenever the opportunity arose. Sometimes we’d just talk, sometimes I’d read to them. I don’t know who looked forward to bath time more, me or them.

On this particular evening, I remember I had a book in my hand. It was a rather special one, at least to me. An edition of Tales of Uncle Remus I’d had since I was twelve or so myself, purchased at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, Georgia, home-stomping ground of the author, Joel Chandler Harris, and the oral folklore that gave birth to the Uncle Remus stories. Okay, I was a nerd even at twelve when computers weren’t even thought of, I’ve never denied it. We’d been reading a story or two every night for a week or so. But Brer Rabbit wasn’t on my child’s agenda that night.

She sat straight up, fixed me with the amber eyes so large and gorgeous they’ve made strangers stop and stare since birth and asked me, “Mama, are we ever born again?”

Not a question Mama was expecting, I’ll tell you that. I wracked my brain for its possible source. Maybe she’d caught a telecast of a Church service on television? A talk show, maybe? Or heard a radio show I wasn’t aware of?

“You mean like — are we born again when we die and go to Heaven?”

“No, no, no!!!” Her hand slapped the water. “I mean when we die, are we ever born again, here, on earth? In another body?”

 Eight, I thought to myself. She’s EIGHT! Where the heck is this coming from?! I wasn’t so startled I didn’t recognize this as the most basic description of reincarnation I’d ever heard, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she’d have thought of it. I fell back on the best child-rearing advice I’d ever gotten. No, not from my mother, or aunt, or mother-in-law, or best friend. From Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird. That fictional single parent and his major guideline of child-rearing got me through a lot while raising my kids, especially Rebecca, to-wit: When a child asks you a question, you tell them the truth. They don’t necessarily have to understand exactly what you’re saying, they just have to know you’re telling them the truth. Because they’ll know if you’re lying to them. 

So I gathered my wits about me and took a deep breath. “Well, that is, in fact, what many of the world’s religions believe, yes. That when you die you’re born again in another body.”

“But what do you believe?”

Great. Couldn’t avoid that, could I? “I believe it’s a probability it’s a possibility, yes.” I haven’t spent my entire adult professional life in a law office for nothing. “Becca, what on earth made you think of this in the first place?”

“I don’t know, I was on the playground the other day and it just seemed like I’d been there before, done the same things before, just in another body.”

Ah! De’ja vu, I thought. I was, in fact, rather relieved. A strange phenomenon, to be sure, but one pretty much everybody’d experienced at some time or another. I should have left well enough alone. But of course I didn’t. I just had to ask. “Well, then—who were you?” I mean, she was eight, of course she’d say, “A rock star.” “An Indian maiden.” “Cinderella”. Maybe even “An Alien Princess”. Something exotic, something dear to the imagination of childhood. Nope. Something utterly, completely, down-to-earth. Something realistic, and assuming that any universal recycling program called reincarnation does exist, completely possible.  “I don’t know," she said slowly.  "But I was black and had a lot of pigtails.”

From nowhere, I remembered my mother laughing about the stories one of my older brother told when he was small. Stories about “a long time ago when I was an old man.” So let the academics and professors and religious leaders debate all they want. I’ve never looked at reincarnation the same way since. I never will. Nor will I ever forget that night when out of the mouth of a babe came that beautifully basic and elemental description of such an extremely complicated and controversial belief, stripped right down to its barest element.  You know what they say about the sensitivity of children and animals. They know things.  Things we don't.  Or possibly...things we used to know but have forgotten?

Besides, I’m a writer. I’ve told you before—we never waste anything. We just recycle it into these things we call novels. Like my War-N-Wit, Inc. novellas. Wherein my heroine Ariel Anson Garrett wasn’t so sure about that thing known as reincarnation either. And boy, was she in for a surprise!

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Who said never work with children or animals? ... by Sheila Claydon

The legend is that it was the comedian W.C. Fields but this is frequently disputed. It is generally accepted, however, that working with either children or animals on stage always carries risk. A child may steal the whole show or, instead, behave in an entirely unpredictable way, either of which is a challenge for the other actors. This is only too well illustrated by this TV clip from 1969. Admittedly the presenters were probably asking for it as they don't seem very prepared for what might go wrong on a live recording, but what did go wrong remains a favorite memory for everyone who saw it. Over forty years later it's still shown on British TV from time to time, and it still makes everyone laugh.



Using animals and children in books though it's an entirely different matter. They can be the focus of the story or act as a link between the main protagonists. They can inject humor, fear or pathos into the narrative or just provide a colourful background. They can also be used to give individual characters status. After all if a writer wants her hero to be a father, then he must have a child. The trick for the author is to decide how much of the story should be given over to the children.

I've just finished reading those great imaginary essays on history, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel and she uses children brilliantly. There are many of them woven into the  epic story of the court of Henry VIII and yet none of them have a star part. What they do instead is, by their behaviour, show the reader who the adults are. Thomas Cromwell, for instance, reported by history to be many things from great statesman to cold-blooded opportunist, is, in Mantel's books, a loving father and uncle. His house is full of children and when his own daughters die of the sweating sickness that was so prevalent in London at the time, he doesn't forget his responsibilities to his dead sister's children, but makes a home for them even though they can never replace his own. Yet despite this, none of the children are more than shadowy background figures. What they do, however, is remind the reader that whatever else he was, Cromwell was a man full of human warmth who was kind to those he loved. He also loved dogs and in the books is never without one and from time to time he has the sort of conversation with his dog that all pet owners will understand.

In the same books, Mary Tudor, only daughter of Henry and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is portrayed through the eyes of the many adults who surround her. She rarely appears herself even though she is integral to the story. Instead, the reader learns much about her and about how cruelly she  is manipulated while she is still a child through the words and sniggers of the courtiers. As a consequence of this clever narrative much is learned about Mary's royal parents, Anne Boleyn her stepmother, and also about Cromwell himself. Whether any of it is true is a matter for conjecture, but as a story telling technique it is masterful, as is the reference to Anne Boleyn's small dog whose untimely death supposedly caused her more grief than the loss of her own infant baby.

Ruminating on this after I read the last page, I thought about my own books. Slight they may be compared with the epic histories of Mantel, but I realised that in some of them I have used the same technique. In Mending Jodie's Heart I've gone even further. Without the children, the dog, the birds and the horses, there would be no story. The children's likes and dislikes, their hopes and ambitions are the things that fuel it. Without the children and the animals the reader would never have learned about the hero and the heroine's flaws and their strength. The children and the animals were also the reason I had to turn what was meant to be one book into a trilogy. I had to know what happened to them. Whether I managed to use them skilfully enough to show the true characters of the adults in their lives is for the reader to decide.

My books are available at http://bookswelove.net/authors/claydon-sheila/ and also at Amazon. I'm also at:

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