January Diaries: Tania from 'Backwards in High Heels' Guest Post

I was bashful to ask Tania to write for my blog, given that she is a real, live writer, but when I did eventually pluck up the courage, she responded in such a positive and lovely way that I wondered why I had been so shy. Tania writes the blog 'Backwards in High Heels' (and has published a book of the same name with her co-writer). I would not be over-exaggerating if I said that her blog is my must-read each and every day; that I find myself wondering about her if the weather in Scotland is forecast to be gloomy. I find myself thinking about what she has written, long after I have read it. I consider her wisdom to be genuinely important and relevant in my day. Aside from the fact that she writes in a way that sometimes makes me catch my breath; the turn of phrase, the literary reference, the effortless metaphor. Reading Tania's words is like dipping a toe in a special, friendly, erudite pool. And then there is the beloved dog...

photograph by Tania

Should I explain who I am? I write books. I live in the North East of Scotland in a small granite house, surrounded by hills and trees, with one glorious black lab-collie cross. There were two, but one of my old ladies died last May. (This still makes my heart ache.)

Here is my day.

I wake to raging sunshine. I check my mental state. My father died eight months ago, and the echoes of that still fall about me. I feel it, viscerally, but I also examine it. This is the writer at work; it’s like a disease, I can’t help it. How interesting, I think, as I prod myself for unexpected symptoms and curious ramifications. How surprising, I think. And often, how maddening. I always want to write it, and, as my own Dear Readers know to their cost, I often do.

Today, it turns out, I am in Come Along mode. As in: come along, at least you are not living in The Congo. I think about the women of The Congo a lot; it is one of my enduring concerns.

Come along, come along, I say to myself. The dog, whose blog name is The Pigeon (for some reason I give everyone pseudonyms, even the dog) decides that she will encourage the Come Along spirit by being particularly sweet. She is the most glorious canine I have ever met, but occasionally she ratchets up the adorableness to new heights, just because she can. This morning, she has decided to give me her Grace Kelly gaze, which is so potent that I actually have to stop cleaning my teeth and get down on the floor of the bathroom to play with her. (Should I really be telling you this?)

The Pigeon

We have a little rumble, which makes me laugh. I think I should take life lessons from her. She is thirteen years old, her muzzle is quite grey, but her eyes are bright as stars, and she wakes to greet each new day as if it were the most thrilling thing in the world.

photograph by Tania

We go out, looking at the glittering frost dancing in the winter sun. I bless, as always, the old, dead, forgotten men who originally planted the oaks and beeches and limes under which I now walk.

photograph by Tania

I break out the strong coffee and get to my desk. I am working on the second draft of a book, which involves cutting, rewriting, filling in gaps. I have decided, for no known reason, that what the book really needs is a snappy section on the women of James Bond. I was re-reading some of the old Ian Fleming novels before Christmas and was reminded how different they are from the films; much sharper and harder and more interesting. The attitude towards women is paradoxical: rather modern and subtle on one hand, then suddenly unreconstructed and chauvinist. I am now reading a biography of Fleming himself, and am finding that exact attitude in his own life. He could be an absolute brute; he could also be understanding and sympathetic and nuanced.

Research is always hard because it feels as if one is not really working. I want to be tap tap tapping on the keyboard, watching the word count go up. Instead, I am making a few notes, but mostly reading and thinking. (It’s such an odd job, really; most of it is just thinking.)

'The Burn 

Then, there are boring domestic tasks. I am in day three of defrosting the freezer. My freezer is, as are so many things in my life, slightly bust. It’s not bust enough to replace, but just bust enough to drive me demented. It freezes itself into a berg of iciness, and all the shelves jam up, and I put it off and put it off until I literally cannot get to my bottle of Stoly, at which point the emergency alarm goes off. And then it takes three days, and there are towels all over the floor to mop up the water, and a horrid freezer soup gathers in the trough at the bottom and I have to scoop it out with a soup ladle.

As I do this, I think of how some people imagine a writer’s life to be filled with mystery and glamour. When I started, that was what I thought. I imagined that I would be going to parties with Martin Amis, and yacking it up with Salman Rushdie. (I did once meet Salman Rushdie, and he was quite polite, but he had a slightly baffled look on his face, as if to say: who is this woman?)

To reward myself, I make a huge pastrami sandwich, with rocket and tomato and mayonnaise, and eat it whilst listening to a riveting programme on Radio Four about the black arts movement in the seventies. Radio Four is my love and delight. It is how I know I am officially middle-aged. Each time I go into the kitchen, I automatically switch it on. Sometimes I am in a hurry, so I hear five minute snatches of programmes, and all the different subjects have blurred together in my mind by the end of the day.

Today, there was: Jenni Murray saying, in amazement, ‘Would you really want an implant made of mattress material in your breasts?’ There was the lovely Edward Stourton giggling hopelessly as he acts as referee in a spirited discussion about the future of the apostrophe. There was a government official from Kurdistan threatening a newspaper editor: ‘Do you know what I am going to do to him, that bastard? I’m a peshmerga.’

I have to go and look up peshmerga, because I do not know what it means. It turns out peshmerga is a name for armed Kurdish fighters who formed in the early 20th century, just after the break up of the Ottoman Empire. It literally means: those who face death. So that is my fact of the day. I do not like a day which does not have a fact in it.

photograph by Tania

Then: more reading and thinking and taking of notes. I write my own blog. I smile over the comments the kind readers have left.

I call my mother, for one quick question. Twenty minutes later we have discussed: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the drunkenness of Brendan Behan, and my grandmother’s third husband, who was not entirely heterosexual. For some reason, we get onto President Kennedy’s priapism. ‘I always wondered,’ my mother says delicately, ‘how he managed all those ladies, with his bad back.’ She pauses. ‘I mean,’ she says, ‘it can’t be very good for your back, all that.’

I take The Pigeon for her afternoon walk. The early dazzle has gone, the sun has set, the gloaming is gentling the hills. Everything is still and blue.

The Hill

When I come in, I take a final wander round the internets. It is fashionable now to deride the Internet as arid and anti-social. It’s just sad people, sitting alone in their rooms, staring at flickering screens. I love it. It means that I may live in this distant part of Scotland and still be in touch with the world.

I check the latest news from Syria, find an excellent blog post on whether men can be feminists (I say yes), read an interview with the Prime Minister about getting more women into Parliament.

I am slightly obsessed with the mysterious assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. No one knows who is doing it – the CIA, Mossad, some rogue black ops? It has been oddly under reported, but now the story is starting to explode. The blogosphere has got its teeth into the matter, and is shaking it like a terrier with a bone. I read all about it . Then I watch a sweet stop-go animation about books. This is the life of the internet; there is nothing arid about it.

The dark comes, and a luminous hunter’s moon rises over the horizon. I have, as always, not done quite enough. It’s strange, writing my day for you like this. It is a small day, a small life. I used to have dreams of living a huge life. Now, I like the smallness. I feel profoundly lucky that I may sit in a warm room in a beautiful country, and think thoughts.

The Pigeon side view!