The Writer Worms Have Turned

Today's blog post is brought to you in collaboration with Guy Le Jeune. It is essential reading for all writing competition organisers. Writers are invited to add their own amendments to the manifesto via the comments box below. Too long have writers suffered under the tyranny of unclear, confusing or inadequate competition rules. We have lost too many brain cells banging our heads on our desks trying to fathom where to put our names on our entries, too many nights' sleep wondering if we should have sent that attachment in docx format.

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you:

THE WRITING COMPETITION ENTRANTS' MANIFESTO

We are writers: entrants into many competitions, winners of too few (runner-up is nice and all that, but let’s not kid ourselves, it’s the winning that matters. Oh, okay, and the writing. But mostly the winning).

We are also neurotic. It’s part of the job spec. That’s why we are writing in the pluralis
modestiae. (We had to look that up on Wiki: modesty is the sister of our particular neurosis)

We spend hours and days sitting in front of glowing screens or scribbling on scraps of paper, crafting, shaping, honing. Our stories are our babies, we love them (even the ugly ones, though sometimes they have to sit on the naughty step).

So, there we are, neurotic parents of babies that only a parent could love, and what do we do? We send those babies out into the world to be judged. 

Give us a set of rules and we will agonise over every single, insignificant detail, worried that one misstep will send our beloved creation straight into the recycling bin, unread. Entry deadlines, shortlist dates and prize money pots are scribbled on sticky notes. Fridges, notice boards and laptop screens are covered in the yellow slips of potentiality and hopeful dreams. We study eligibility criteria and submission guidelines. We lick stamps, reformat entire manuscripts and pluck sentences of outstanding beauty and genius out of finished pieces, just to fit the word-limits. We trudge to the Post Office with our brown envelopes stuffed and sealed, or hit the 'submit' button on the keyboard five minutes before the deadline, our eyes swimming with word counts, font mandates, file type restrictions.

But, fellow writers, stop and think. Where would these competitions be without us and our
stories? Where would they get their entry fees, their publicity, their sponsorship? That’s right, without us, they are nothing! And it’s about time they listened to OUR rules.

And so we present to you: The Writers’ Manifesto for Consistency and Clarity in Competition Guidelines. Each and every writing competition should adhere to these guidelines or WE WON’T SUBMIT (that’ll show ‘em).

The Writing Competition Entrants’ Manifesto

1. Word Count. Pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. Different software counts words in
different ways – and some programmes count things as words that clearly aren’t (an asterisk is not a word, Word. Asterix was a Gaul, but that’s another story). Tell us which software is your gold
standard for word-count. And tell us if the title is included (here’s a hint: it isn’t).

2. Deadline. Now we can submit electronically, a date is not enough. We need a time as well. Midnight is always a good choice.

3. Filename. Just make it the title of the story. It’s how we’ve saved it anyway, but tell us too whether we need to add or omit our name. And as far as unique identifiers go, there isn’t a literary
award in the world that requires 16bit encryption so keep it short.

4. Format. Doc, docx, pdf, rtf, blt, whatever. Just be specific. Pick one and stick with it. And if you are going to upload any of the entries anonymously, please ensure that you check the properties tab to make sure that any inquisitive right-clickers can’t see our name, address, email and telephone number.

5. Cover sheets: if you must insist on us having a cover sheet, does it go in the story document or is it a separate attachment? No, seriously, we can lose a good half-hour worrying about things like this. If you want it in the one document and you want the pages numbered, do we really have to wrestle with trying to take the number off the cover sheet and get the numbers to start at number 1 on the second page when computer says no? *contemplates applying Tippex to computer screen because that would totally solve the problem*

6. Exactly where can we put our names? Polite answers only, please.

7. Long-lists, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.

8. Short-lists. Okay, we like short-lists, that’s a credit we can take to bank. But here’s the thing: sometimes a short-list is a list of people who might still win; sometimes it’s a list of people who nearly won, but here’s the names of the people who already did. Sometimes the people on the short-list are told before it’s published, sometimes seeing their name on the screen is the first they know about it. Follow a few writers on Twitter and you will see how we agonise about short-lists. Has anybody heard anything yet? Will the short-listed people get an email first? Anyone stalking the judges on Facebook? Has the deadline been extended? HAS ANYBODY HEARD ANYTHING YET?

For the sake of our sanity, state when the short-list will be published, and tell us if the writers on the list will be emailed first. Simple. Of course, that won’t stop us believing the email got lost in the ether, and scanning the lists just in case. But that’s our problem, not yours.

9. Each and every competition shall submit the rules and guidelines to a consultant writer before advertising the competition. That writer shall go through the process as if they were submitting. Nine of ten times they’ll ask you for clarification. Better one writer emailing you before the competition starts than hundreds a day before the deadline.

10. And remember, always, that without us, there is no competition.

Thank you for your attention and we hope we can assume that all competitions will one day
abide by these simple suggestions.

You can view this manifesto in spiffy pdf format by clicking here.

Losing is Not the Same as Failing

In 2012, I made twenty-four entries to sixteen writing competitions. I tried to be targeted and strategic with my entries, to maximise my chances of success. The net result was one win, one runner-up place, one fifth place and one honourable mention. The prize money from the win just about covered my outlay on entry fees for the year.

One of the competitions I entered was the newly founded Costa Short Story Competition, run by the Costa Book Awards. This competition was exciting because it was open to all writers, whether they had been previously published or not, had a substantial prize pot and was associated with Costa's very high-profile book awards. Twitter and other social media meant that we hopefuls knew a lot more than usual about what was going on behind the scenes: we knew that several hundred stories had been reduced to a short list of sixty. We knew when the celebrity judges were reading these stories, when they were meeting to decide the shortlist of six, when the decision had been made. We just needed the official announcement. And then the wave of disappointment hit. We didn't (still don't) know who those shortlisted writers were, but we knew it wasn't us.

Reactions varied according to the experience of the writers involved. The comments of some of the competition 'newbies' reminded me of myself when I first started entering writing competitions and made me realise how much I have learned about the process, and about myself as a writer over the years. So I decided take all my experience to date and offer it as a guide to understanding what failing to win a writing competition really means. Here it is.

Why Losing is Not the Same as Failing

So, you’ve written a kick-ass short story and you decide to enter it into a writing competition. It’s your best work ever, and while you don’t exactly expect to win, you feel there’s a good chance of getting on the short list, or the long list at the very least. You watch the competition’s website, follow them on Twitter, start checking your inbox every five minutes as the deadline for the announcement approaches. Finally, finally, the shortlist or winners are announced, and your name’s not there. Not anywhere.

This leads you to one of two conclusions: either your story was rubbish and you are no judge of your own work, or the judges are idiots. Right?

Wrong. Here’s why:

But I wrote such a good story!

Yes, you probably did. But so did many, many of the other entrants. A small-scale competition will attract maybe 150 to 200 entries. Larger competitions will get thousands. Say, for example, in a small-scale competition, half of the entries are just not up to scratch – poorly written, ungrammatical, or disqualified for not adhering to the entry guidelines. If your story is still in the competition after those have been eliminated, you’ll still be up against at least fifty other stories and probably many more.  The judges can award prizes to maybe three of those stories. Does that automatically mean the other forty-seven or so stories were no good? Of course not.

The best story always wins, right?

No, the story the judges like best will win. What judges are asked to do is rank stories in order of preference, and ultimately that is a matter of opinion. This became apparent to me when I entered a competition where the entrants posted their stories online while waiting for the judging to take place. We were able to read and critique many of the other entries, so when the results came in, we could compare the peer-reviews to the judges’ rankings. Needless to say, they didn’t always concur.

The competition involved some 500 writers, placed into groups of twenty, competing over several rounds, with competitors progressing according to how many points they accumulated. In the first round, the top ten stories in each group of twenty writers were awarded points. If you didn’t make the top ten, you got no points. Now, many of the writers on the online forum felt that big fat zero against their entry meant the judges had read their story and thought it was worth... well, nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. But of course, that’s not what a score of zero meant. It just meant that in that group, there were ten stories that the judges preferred. It’s the same in any writing competition, although not always as transparent as in this example.

The crucial lesson is that while winning a writing competition means you’re doing it right, not winning doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing it wrong.

It’s a numbers game

So, how do the judges really decide who wins? Understanding how writing competitions are judged can help get both your wins and your losses into perspective.

In smaller competitions, the named judge or judges will probably read all the entries, but in larger competitions, the entries will be read first by ‘slush’ readers. The first job of these readers is to weed out the stories that are ineligible for any reason (word count too long, requested format not adhered to, theme not followed, etc).  Don’t underestimate how important these details are. Plenty of stories are not even read the whole way through before being eliminated. An experienced slush reader told me:

‘I reject any that are littered with typos, grammar or spelling mistakes. If the author can't be bothered to polish and perfect their story, why should I spend my time reading it?’

Even if your grammar and punctuation are impeccable and you have adhered to the required font and formatting, your entry might still end up in the reject heap without the slush reader making it to the end of the story:

‘An experienced reader can tell very quickly if the story might be a contender. It needs to grab my attention straight away and that's largely down to whether there's an engaging voice in the opening sentences.’

So the first cull can be brutal, and you really need to be at the top of your game to survive it. Even so, each slush reader will still have a big stack of stories to read in full and winnow down.

How do slush readers decide which stories to put forward to the ‘named’ judges? Most commonly, they will use a score sheet. The slush readers will score the stories, and put forward the top scoring ones for the next stage of judging. The score sheet will list a variety of qualities that the story should be judged on, and a maximum score available for each criterion. Points can be awarded for voice, tone, characterisation, engagement of the reader, plot development, how satisfied the story leaves the reader, and many other qualities. The balance of these scores is often reflected in judges feedback, where it is available: stories that fail to make the grade may be praised for a ‘lovely voice’ but lose out on character or plot development. Or a story may have a great story arc, but the main characters feel wooden or lacking. Or the writing might be just sublime, but the story underdeveloped. In other words, if any crucial element leaves the slush reader feeling ‘meh’, no matter how strong other elements may be, the story is unlikely to make it to the next round.

These readers will be well qualified for the job – they are often writers and editors in their own right. They will know ‘good’ writing when they see it, and will have the experience to analyse and score the stories fairly and knowledgably. But, even bringing all that experience to bear, there is no empirical way of measuring which story is ‘the best’. Judges are readers with opinions and personal taste, just like anyone else.

The same applies all the way through the judging process. In a larger competition, there will often be a panel of ‘high profile’ judges and the final selection will be made by these judges coming together and discussing their favourite entries until they arrive a consensus. And consensus can sometimes mean compromise. It is safe to say that all the stories being considered at this point will be ‘good’ stories. Yours might well be one of them.

So what do I do with that ‘failed’ story now?

It’s always disappointing when you send your beloved story out into the world and the result is a resounding silence. Just bear in mind everything I’ve said above, and remember, it’s not that your story was no good, it’s just that there were three, or five or whatever number of stories that the judges liked better. That’s all you can really infer from ‘losing’ a writing competition.

So what now? Enter your story in another competition, if you know in your heart it’s a good story. I won a competition recently with a story that had been entered into at least half a dozen other competitions over several years and had never so much as been long listed before. Another story that had been doing the rounds for a while finally got shortlisted in a competition where the winning and shortlisted stories (including mine) were subsequently published in an anthology. In that case, the judge was looking for stories that would work well together as a collection. Many an excellent story may have not made the cut because it didn’t fit that theme.

If you are suddenly doubting whether the story is any good, get other writers to read it and get their opinion. Don’t ask your mother or your best friend. Join a writing group or online writers’ forum and get honest feedback. It’s hard to maintain faith in your writing if you are working in a vacuum, and failure to win competitions is no way to accurately judge the value of your work. Some competitions will provide feedback on your story for an extra fee, and this might be worth considering.

Finally, bear this in mind (and this applies to all sorts of submissions, be they to competitions, magazines or publishers): your work is not judged in isolation, but in relation to all the other entries. The judges may want the winning and short listed entries to contrast with or compliment each other, to work together in an anthology or to reflect the style of the sponsoring body. It’s as if they are putting together an outfit and what they really need to complete it is a nice pair of black boots. But you’ve sent them a red dress. They already have some red dresses, and one in particular suits them better than yours. So they politely decline your offer of a red dress. Does that mean your red dress is any less lovely? 

Further reading:

Since I first posted this, I've found or been directed to some other great posts on the subject. I'll add them here as I go along.

• A great post here by Tracey Upchurch on why you are never too small for the 'big' competitions.
• Two fabulous accounts of what it is really like to be a slush reader: Susannah Rickards on Emma Darwin's blog here and Dexter Petley recounting his experience here on Lesley McDowell's blog.
• Feel like giving up after five rejections? Ten? You'll never give up again on a story you believe in after reading this article on submitting to magazines. Success is like getting all the numbers right in a combination lock. Rejection might mean only one number was wrong.

Stuck at Stage Three

 A short piece on the radio this morning in reaction to this article about Maurice Saatchi had me furiously nodding my head in agreement. Actual air-punching would have been inappropriate, as the discussion was about grief. Specifically, about how you don't 'get over it' or 'move on'. You learn to live with it, but one of the great lies about the seven stages of grief is that everyone moves through them to arrive at 'acceptance'. Me, I'm pretty much still going with anger (stage three, apparently). And you know what? That's okay. I'm okay.

It's nineteen years since my mother died, followed by my father less than a year later. I was in my mid-twenties, newly-married, younger than I knew. Raw grief is a devilishly difficult emotion to live with. It takes your guts and twists them so you can barely stand. It fills your head with the incomprehensible that makes your brain buck and reel away from believing something that Just Cannot Be. And that's when you cry - you howl out loud so you can't hear the howling in your head.

But you can't live like that for long - it's exhausting and debilitating. So you learn to quiet that part of your mind, you fill your time with the relentless stuff of life that insists on being attended to, even when all you want to do is live under your duvet. Until you appear almost normal again. But you have a secret, a dirty little secret - the grief is still there. Always there.

It doesn't take much, nearly two decades later, to bring my grief back to the fore. I'm not good with funerals, either real or fictional. An unexpected glimpse of my father in a family video, a photograph of my mother that I haven't seen before spied on a mantlepiece, the opening bars of the Schubert Cello Quintet in C Major that I played over and over at a deafening volume on the day I heard that my mother's illness was terminal, these things remind me that I haven't 'dealt' with my grief, if dealing with it means neutralising it. I still feel it, and what I mostly feel, still, is angry at the unfairness of it all. But anger is not a productive emotion, so I feel it, and then I put it away.

It's not something I talk about much these days, partly because I don't think people want to hear that it never goes away, that the 'seven stages of grief' are a fallacy. So I was pleased to hear Matthew Parris talking on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning about how he still grieves for his father five years after his death, and how he thinks that is perfectly okay. To paraphrase, he said that when someone you love dies, they leave a space that cannot be filled, and that's as it should be. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes you have to look into the hole, into the blackness, acknowledge it, give it the respect it deserves, then continue your life walking around its edges.

Something in the Ether

This is a slightly unusual blog post for me as it is about self-promotion. But bear with me, I hope you'll find it's worth it.

I started this year determined not just to write more, but to get that writing out into the world. One of my best discoveries has been the Ether app on the iPhone. Ether specialise in quick reads and have a mix of free and paid downloads. They curate all the content - this is not self-publishing. So if you pay for a story on the app, you know you'll get something good. Even better, we writers get a cut of the download fees too. I have six stories on the app now and am really happy to reach be reaching a new audience. In many ways, writers are taking back the means of distribution for the work in this new digital age - there is as much opportunity as there is threat and we have to get out there and sell our wares.

So...

For one week only, Ether are running a Halloween competition - there are sixty new halloween-themed stories on the app and they are all free to download. Now, here comes the pitch: the writer that gets their story downloaded the most between now and Halloween wins a rather splendid prize. And I would like to be that writer. So, if you haven't discovered the Ether app yet, go to www.etherbooks.com or search for Ether Books in the App Store. Then download this:

And while you're at it, have a look at some my other stories. Oh, okay, there are other good writers on the app too (anyone heard of Hilary Mantel?)

Scan this QR code on your iPhone for a shortcut to the Ether app:

My war with books, or how I have come to love my Kindle

Do you have a favourite book? I'm not talking about the content here, but the actual thing. The cover, the pages, the feel and heft of the thing. My favourite book (the physical thing) happens to also be my favourite book (the words bit). It is a 1952 Collins hardback edition of Pride and Prejudice that belonged to my father. It's a slim volume, just the right size to hold and carry. It is bound in blue cloth, the spine now faded to grey and the cover mottled with water marks and embedded chocolate crumbs (because reading and chocolate go together like Fred and Ginger). The pages are thin but creamily sturdy and the print stands just a little proud of paper - I like to run my fingers down the age-rippled pages and feel the words. Properly stitch-bound, the pages are as secure now as the day the book was made, and fall open easily, allowing me to hold the book comfortably in one hand (the other hand being needed for eating chocolate, obviously).

This is one of many books I purloined from my parents' shelves. I grew up in a house full of books. Novels, picture books, reference books for all the hobbies and distractions my father indulged in instead of writing, cookery books, how-to book, and a gorgeous, glorious collection of Folio Society books that I happily inherited (and continue to add to). However, I don't remember my parents buying books (apart from the Folios). Most of the novels, plays and books of poetry were bought individually by my parents before they were married. Books after marriage, with a mortgage and a family, were a luxury. We got fiction books as presents. The reference books came in as piece-works, paid for bit-by-bit, or as part of special offers from the Readers' Digest. Voracious readers as we were, books were borrowed, not bought.

We were luck enough to have the Lisburn Road Library no more than five minutes from our house. Converted from a large Victorian villa and with a huge Monkey Puzzle tree outside, it was a home-from-home - two floors of books, a whole room of children's books. Long walls just crammed, end-to-end, floor-to-ceiling, with books. I still dream quite regularly that I am in that library, looking for a book. We visited the library probably every other week, and when my mother had read all the books the Northern Ireland Library Service had to offer, she joined the private Linen Hall Library and started working her way through their slightly loftier collections as well. The last time I visited my local library here in SE23, in another fine Victorian building, I kept looking for other rooms, the rooms where the books must be. I never found them

As readers, I don't think my family did much to economically support writers. Buying books was a luxury - and wasteful, because a lifetime is too short to read all the books out there. Who has time to re-read a book? Only the very best, the favourites, were bought. A bad book (by which I mean a badly written book) is a waste of time and paper. If you borrow a book and you don't like it, no harm done. If you buy a book and you don't like it, it sits there on your shelf, mocking you, because it is a Book, and Books are Sacred Things, so you can't just throw it away, much as you'd love to.

I didn't start buying books until I was earning my own money (or living off my husband's) and had bookshelves of my own. Books became cheaper, both relative to my income, and as book price-fixing by publishers was abolished in the 1990s. Over the years, I have acquired many, many books that I have read once and will never read again. I give a lot away to charity, but there are still books under the bed, and double-shelved in the guest room. And I resent it. Some of them are Very Bad Books Indeed. All of them collect dust. I don't want them any more.

Which is why I love my Kindle. I know as a writer I should be concerned about electronic books - about protecting my intellectual property and getting paid for it. But as a reader, my Kindle frees me up to try all sorts of different books. If I don't like it, I delete it. Gone. Poof. If I really love it, I go out and buy the book. I would rather buy an e-book version of a book than borrow the real book from a friend, and I have added e-book versions of my old favourites to my Kindle, so in those ways I have paid the author twice. I have become a much more experimental reader since I got my Kindle - it's like having  the Lisburn Road Library in my pocket.

And best of all, when I am reading Julian Barnes, I can click on the words I don't understand and look them up in the dictionary. I hated Barnes' Booker winning book, but boy did I expand my vocabulary.

How does my garden grow?

 My name is Rachael and I am a garden bore. There. I've said it. I love my garden. I love getting dirt under my fingernails and leaves in my hair. I carefully pick up freshly dug worms and put them back in the soil, tossing the odd one to the robin who always appears as soon as I have a spade or fork in my hand. From April to October, I have to spend at least five minutes every day checking what's blooming, what's fading and what's downright surprising.

What's most surprising is that I have become a gardener at all. I used to be the girl that not only killed all her own house plants, but also transferred the kiss of death to any plant I bought as a gift. The first two gardens we owned I viewed with suspicion and tried to keep under control, but no more than that. When a Japanese Maple tree started throwing up suckers in the grass and then, even worse, under our kitchen floor in our last house, all my suspicions were confirmed - nature was the enemy.

All that changed when we bought our current, beloved, house. It came with a mature and extremely well-loved garden. On our second viewing, the then owner, Angela, made coffee and confided that they had just turned down an asking-price offer on the house from a man who wanted to dig up the lawn and put in a swimming pool. When we moved in, the neighbours told me how Angela would stand on the terrace every morning with a cup of coffee, just looking at the garden. I felt an immediate responsibility. This garden I had to look after.

As it turned out, in the first few years there wasn't much to do except keep things ticking over. With a toddler and then a new baby, I was glad to let the garden do its own thing. Every year things grew, things flowered. Throughout the summer the garden was filled with colour - purple and pink hardy geraniums, sky blue lupins, sweet lavenders, blousey pink roses, creamy-white and fragrant mock orange. The pear tree dripped with big-bottomed fruit. The cherry tree flowered twice a year, spotting the tips of its brittle branches with puffs of blossom. I watered and feed and tidied and continued to think of it as Angela's garden.

I knew when we decided to moved to New York for a few years that leaving the garden would be hard. One warm sunny day in early-June, we sat on the patio eating take-out chicken and thinking just how beautiful it was, while the men inside packed up the house and the children ran around on the grass. It seemed cruel that we had to leave just when the garden was at its very best, but leave we did.

We returned three years later to one of the worst summers in London for many a year. Cold and wet. The tenants had moved out six weeks previously and the grass was knee-deep. Three trees had been lost to the January storms earlier in the year. But, much worse, the ivy had run amok. It covered the deep flower beds, all but meeting the grass. It had grown right over the top of the pear and apple trees, and even the tall cherry tree was bowed under the weight of an ivy canopy. The letting agents argued that this had all happened within the six weeks the property had been empty. I knew this was three years of neglect.

I cleared as much of the ivy as I could, rediscovering the old paths and border boundaries, pulling and teasing lengths and lengths of the stuff out of the trees. For every foot of ivy there were two of bramble, lashing cuts up and down my arms. There is only so much one small woman with a pair of secateurs can do and the final hacking back took two men and a chainsaw the best part of a day.

And then we waited. And waited. Surely some of the old perennials were still alive under there? The hardy geraniums earned their name and dutifully came back. A nameless silvery shrub thrust out soft spears of purple flowers - it may be a Salvia, I'm still not sure. The evergreen Euonymus shrubs still marched down the shady side of the garden.  A woody rosemary bush was alive but in danger of being pushed out by one of the many ant hills. Little else survived.

Angela's garden had gone and I had never taken the time to find out what all those wonderful plants were. So I started again. It's taken me three years, but I now know (more or less) what I have in my garden. As I sit here in late April, I can see bluebells and grape hyacinths, just passing their prime. The hardy geraniums are lush with leaf and in a few weeks will be smothered with both flowers and busy-bottomed honey bees. The lime green leaves and stems of purple alliums stud the length of the beds, some already in full bloom, others with their buds still closed in tight green bullets. Self-seeding aquilegias are already sporting their pretty pink bonnets and the sea holly and hostas are in full leaf, with the promise of colour to come. The wisteria is dropping its pale purple confetti on the lawn with every gentle breeze. From behind me comes the thick scent of lilacs, shortly to be replaced by the equally lovely fragrance of the mock orange tree.

And, happily, after years of hiding and sulking, some of Angela's plants have come back. There is a peony I forgot we had that has suddenly come into leaf. The smaller trees have recovered from their tussle with the ivy, and the firethorn tree is especially grateful for its release, with blossom in the spring and masses of hot red berries in the autumn and winter. The roses and flowering shrubs that had become woody and barren have been hard pruned and fed and left be and are now happily flowering again. Last year, a small grey nub of a stub that I decided against digging out for no better reason than laziness suddenly sprouted new branches, then leaves, then beautiful white flowers with blood-red hearts. It's a hibiscus. The ants have been evicted and the rosemary bush is happy. Even the hostas have been spared by the slugs this year, possibly because some hedgehogs have moved in and they love a nice juicy slug.

I don't kill things anymore, I grow them. A garden, a family, a home. All built on solid foundations and thriving.

The love of a child

When I was very little, the person I loved most in the world was Nanny. Nanny wasn't a proper fancy nanny, she was my Grandma Smyth's next door neighbour and she used to look after me and do a little light housework for my mother. I don't know where my mother was - I can only assume she had a job. My mother was a remote figure in my early years, but I remember Nanny very well.

Nanny used to bring me red grapes because they were the only type of fruit I would eat. When I had one of my frequent ear-aches, she would pack my ear with cotton-wool and let me rest my head in her lap. When Nanny babysat for me in the evenings, she would run me a deep, warm bubble bath and let me play in it until the water went cold. Then she would bring me downstairs and set me in front of the old fan heater, which she used in lieu of a hairdryer. I would sit with my back to the heater and she would gently brush my thick, thick hair until it had dried, smooth and glossy and so blond it was almost white. Sometimes I stayed the night at Nanny's house. She would feed me sausages and  baked beans that came from the same tin, and raspberry ripple ice-cream. In the house next door, my grandparents would be sitting either side of the fireplace smoking unfiltered Gallaher's cigarettes and not talking. Nanny was the warm, loving constant in my life.


And then, one day, Nanny told me that she was going away and was never coming back. She was going to live in a place called New Zealand that was so far away, she would probably never come back to Belfast again. She was going to live with her daughter. I begged her not to go. I cried and cried. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from beneath my little feet, my life turned upside down. When she was gone, I thought my heart would break. I didn't know it at the time, but I recognise now what that feeling was: it was grief.


Suddenly my mother and I were thrown together. I didn't care for her cooking - she never did things the way Nanny did. When she ran me a bath, she only filled it a few inches, and with tepid water. She neglected to brush my hair after it had been washed, with the result that it became as matted as a bird's nest. She would roughly brush the front of it, leave a heaving mass of tats at the back. She never bought red grapes or raspberry ripple ice-cream.


Gradually I got over my grief at losing Nanny and my mother and I became closer, although it took many years. I have often wondered what was going on with her during my early years. She was a naturally warm and loving person, but I don't remember much of that being directed my way back then. I wonder was she depressed, post-natally or otherwise? Did she find it hard having a baby in the house again, when my sister and brother were older and already at school? Did she find she only had enough mothering in her for two and there was just nothing left for me? And is that why I was so sure I didn't want another child after The Boy was born? I never want a child of mine to feel like an also-ran, an after-thought, an inconvenience.


I'll never get to ask my mother now, and even if she were still alive, I'm not sure I'd know how to ask. But for all the love I feel I missed out on then, there was much love from her later, so much so that when my mother died, the grief I felt then outstripped any I felt before, or have since. Turns out there is always enough love to go around.