One word can say so much...

As some of you know and lots of you don’t if you haven’t read my blog bio, I’m a bit of language fanatic. I can become quite fascinated by an unexpected use of a subjunctive, the rule for making a comparative – more happy or happier? - and quite the pedant about when to use ‘fewer’ and when to use ‘less’. Which, on re-reading, doesn’t make me look like the ideal person to invite for dinner unless you’re having a gathering of English teachers or other people who like to disappear into a place where the sun doesn’t shine.

I avoided a split infinitive!
Image courtesy of Stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Anyway, my little language antennae were twitching like a badger’s whiskers on Saturday when The Times ran a feature on the importance of keeping alive minority languages, such as Cornish, Guernésiais and Manx. (It’s a fascinating article to which I’d love to be able to post a link but you have to subscribe to The Times to read).

One of the brilliant points that the article made was that there are words that perhaps occur in only one language in the world but encompass a thought or a feeling that we would all like to articulate occasionally. Having lived in Spain, Italy and Corsica in my distant youth, there are still words that I have never managed to translate into a perfect English equivalent.

In The Class Ceiling, my Basque heroine uses verguenza ajena, a gorgeous Spanish expression meaning ‘embarrassment at other people’s actions’, a kind of blushing on behalf of someone else, who isn't even aware they've made an excruciating social gaffe. The other thing the Spaniards do well when they bump into someone they know in the street is say, ‘Hola’ if they are going to chat and ‘Hasta luego’ (See you later) if they are acknowledging you but not intending to halt their march forwards, thus avoiding the weird 'Will they/won't they stop to speak' dance.

In Italy, leaving aside their lovely swear words, (as unlike my imperfect real life, I’ve made this blog a curse-free zone), my favourite is ‘fare brutta figura’ – literally to ‘make a bad figure’ – make a fool of yourself or make a bad impression. Although I’m wondering if I should revisit my self-imposed politesse because I am laughing at the fabulous Italian phrases for helping unwanted guests on their way (‘Go and poo!’ - or maybe slightly more vulgar in translation). I’m intrigued that Catholic countries tend to have swear words linked to religion, pigs and dogs where as British profanities usually refer to sex/parts of the body. I think that will have to be the subject of another blog…

In The Times’ selection of words we can’t live without, my favourites are Iktsuarpok from the Inuit language, which means going outside to check if anyone is coming to your party and Hygge (Danish) for the genial, intimate feeling of sitting round a fire with friends.

Oh darling, it's so lovely and peaceful here
Image courtesy of Graeme Weatherston at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The ideas I’d like to be encapsulated in one simple word are:

• The moment you realise the dog is going to eat the picnic belonging to the woman with the proper hamper and pristine tartan rug.
• The instant you flip from annoyance at the mistake your child has made to a desire to comfort them in their distress.
• The realisation that even though certain friends always accept your invitations, they don’t actually like you very much.
• The momentary not recognising yourself in the mirror because, in your mind, you are much younger.
• That nervous patting of the face you do when you’re talking to someone and you are not quite sure whether you’ve got toothpaste round your mouth, or worse, something hanging out of your nose.
• The feeling you get when someone comes out to fix the fridge and before they get through the door, you can hear the sound of nails rasping across a chin, preceding the immortal words, ‘It’s gonna cost ya.’
• The mortification you feel when a workman moves a sofa, washing machine or bed and discovers something unsavoury beneath it.

And if you’re reading this blog on Thursday 6 June…you can enjoy lots of language put together in a funny way to make a tale of school gate snobbery and romance. THE CLASS CEILING…for FREE…one day only…download at http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Class-Ceiling-ebook/dp/B00ANUAN72 or at http://www.amazon.com/The-Class-Ceiling-ebook/dp/B00ANUAN72 if you are one of my lovely readers in the US. Tell your friends!

Exams are a punishment for the parents

In my view, a brain can only have so much capacity, a bit like my camera’s memory card that blinks up full the second the dog is so hilarious that £250 from You’ve been Framed is just a ten second video away.

Rex? King? I thought
      you meant the dog.
Image courtesy of Gualberto107
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This week has been the brain equivalent of force feeding. I have been helping the son revise so much that I don’t think I can claim to be a non-pushy parent. A juggernaut of ambition more like, if the alacrity with which I seized the Latin vocab sheets is anything to go by. If anyone ever needs me to decline dominus or rex, I’m your woman. The son, of course, still thinks rex is the name of next door’s dog and dominus is something to do with Fifty Shades of Grey. While I was there suggesting little notes, rhymes and visual prompts to jog his memory, he was seeing how many yawns he could do in one minute.

What's this brush for? Should
never have learnt about enzymes.
Image courtesy of imagerymajestic
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So filled is my poor aching brain with guff about methyl orange, the equation for hydrochloric acid and yeast (unicellular!) that if I don’t get a bit selective about what I remember next, there’s every chance the useful brain cells will get pushed out and I’ll know that litmus paper plus ethanoic acid gives us red but I will have forgotten how to do my bra up. Or perhaps I’ll know the equation for photosynthesis but have to be reminded how to clean my teeth. The son, on the other hand, won’t know what colour the litmus paper will be, but will know the exact shape of every stain on the ceiling. He’ll still be bumbling through a shaky combination of water, sunlight, oxygen and carbon dioxide, but will have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the moves needed to move up a level on FIFA 13.

So what’s the answer? Not help at all? Trolley off to the sitting room to snuggle with the dog oblivious to the son’s wails of ‘I don’t get this!’. Shrug shoulders and let him sink into the depths of despair? I wish I could.

Maybe my mother had the right idea after all. Reverse psychology though I didn’t realise it at the time: ‘Put your books away and come and watch telly.’

I never did.

Happy Bank Holiday weekend to you...if you need a funny book to read, check out The Class Ceiling - school gate snobbery and plenty of pushy alpha mothers! http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Class-Ceiling-ebook/dp/B00ANUAN72

THE CLASS CEILING - contemporary romance - IS FREE!

Friday 17 May...THE CLASS CEILING is FREE...Downton Abbey in a contemporary school setting

Praise for The Class Ceiling:

'I read this book in one sitting, plied with tea and various whingeing noises from husband, son and dog.'

'This is a cracking debut from Kerry Fisher who manages to distill drama from the everyday lives of ordinary, flawed people.'

'The plot draws you in from the word go with some laugh out loud moments up front, and then keeps you turning the pages all the way to the end - with more than one twist thrown in!'

'Excellent first novel, Funny, entertaining and sometimes sad.'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Class-Ceiling-ebook/dp/B00ANUAN72

I am not a woman who diets

 I am not a woman who diets. Clearly, that will lead to the half of you who know me saying, ‘Yep, we can see that’. The other half, who wouldn’t know me if I peered into their newspaper on the bus, will hate me because it makes me sound like someone who scarfs up industrial quantities of treacle tart while everyone else sips San Pellegrino and nibbles on oil-free quinoa.

The truth is, I’m ‘solid’, as my mother likes to say. Solid is good. I’d rather be an heirloom oak dresser to be passed on down the generations, caressed and scribbled upon but able to scrub up well when the need arises. Better that than some finely bred, beautiful but delicate objet d’art, all filigree and fanciness, wiped out in moments by the whisper of a dog’s tail and confined jaggedly to the attic awaiting a repair that never comes. I won’t blow over in a spring gale, get a chest infection at the merest hint of a drizzle or turn blue round the lips if someone leaves the kitchen window open in March (or perhaps I should say, May).

I’m not someone who scans magazine covers, yo-yoing between ‘Dump a dress size’ and ‘Snap up a bikini body’. I don’t really notice what people look like unless they’re wearing something that could have housed potatoes in a former life or is of such sartorial elegance that I would have to be living in the cupboard under the stairs not to admire. Which I suppose makes me an excellent or rubbish friend depending on whether you’ve been sucking back the doughnuts or existing solely on wheatgrass and amaranth.

Something has changed...have
you got new shoes?
Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So it has been a revelation to me this week to veer from my usual mantra of ‘no empty calories unless they are in wine, in which case they count as fruit’. For two weekends in a row, I didn’t jump out of bed on a Sunday with anything approaching, well, a jump. This clearly was not down to the flexibility of my knackered old knees but more a result of finding myself increasingly interesting and entertaining in direct proportion to Sauvignon Blanc consumed the night before. The main result was that I simply could not stand to do algebra homework with the son. Is there anything worse than (x+6)(x-1)(x+ series of incomprehensible things+hangover squared) to make you want to lie on the floor with your head on the dog and accept that you are an unfit mother?

Fortuitously, up popped the Fast Metabolism Diet in The Times. Two carb days, two protein days, three days of carbs and proteins plus healthy fats. No alcohol. No caffeine. No dairy. Simple. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say, I’ve missed tea more than the booze…nettle tea doesn’t have the same pick me up factor as thick, soupy PG Tips. But the most interesting aspect on the protein only days is that I am put off eating completely.

Breakfast...don't think I'll bother
Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Egg white and spinach omelette? Turkey wrapped in lettuce leaves? For breakfast? I managed the first two weeks but by yesterday, venison and cucumber for breakfast, plus a lovely snack of a tin of tuna just finished me off. My mind simply could not get over the matter that I like porridge for breakfast. Enough is enough. I have newfound respect for people who diet successfully…but could you just send me an email to let me know you’ve lost two stone before we meet? I’ll do an ‘OMG, you look amazing’ which will make all that celery with lime juice and salt worth it…

PS If you are reading on FRIDAY 17 MAY, my e-book THE CLASS CEILING – school gate snobbery and contemporary romance is FREE on Kindle…go get it, it will make you laugh! http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Class-Ceiling-ebook/dp/B00ANUAN72

Truth is stranger than fiction

I’m not one of those lucky people who just sat down and wrote a book without any training. I dithered and procrastinated and raged and feared failure and came up with all manner of lovely dream-blocking strategies including serving up self-hate for not ‘just getting on with it’ in great dollopy portions way before I ever put pen to paper. My favourite way of upping the ante on true self-loathing was to go into our local library and read the first pages of books by people I was at university with. Long defensive conversations about why I hadn’t actually written a novel with people I’d told I was going to became another outlet for my creativity.

Shoulda/woulda/coulda
written a novel
Image courtesy of imagerymajestic
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It seems astonishing to me now. If I’d used all that negative energy to sit my backside on a chair and snap up the laptop, I’d probably be about five novels further on. I still have moments when I sit there like a constipated cow, imagining all my peers with their fingers fairly flying over the keyboard, tapping out three thousand words a day while I look at a white screen and wonder if I’ll have a remotely entertaining thought again. Ever.

Like most things in my life, I’ve had to learn and then graft to make progress. Luckily, I discovered the online writing programme at the UCLA (University of California). It took me a good six months to enrol in case I was paying for proof that I was lacking the talent to do the thing I wanted most in the world. Happily, this turned out not to be the case. Aside from the lovely people I ‘met’ in my virtual classroom, the most fascinating thing I discovered was that whenever I added in something based on a true event, no one believed me. Of all the hundreds of events squeezed out of the fictional fantasy box in my aching brain, the minute I wrote about something real, it was as though everyone from Texas to California did a collective sniff and went, ‘Nah. That just wouldn’t happen.’

So these things are not going to appear in my books:

Last day in Sydney after six weeks writing and researching a guidebook. Ambling along Manly to Spit walk admiring the view. Man jumps out on me stark naked except for T-shirt over his head. (Frankly, the manhood was nothing to boast about, so I could see an argument for deploying the T-shirt elsewhere). Instead of running away, I shout and bellow until he is convinced I am more deranged than he is and runs for his life.

Win first prize at York Writing Festival for my novel’s opening line ‘I was wearing the wrong bra for sitting in a police cell’, then ditch fabulous line in final version of the book.

Live in Tuscany in isolated farmhouse in a field of sunflowers. Get back late one night to find house ransacked. Call local gamekeeper who bursts in with his pistol, slamming open doors and swinging into rooms, James Bond-style.

Take bus to the jungle in Thailand. Follow small boy on a moped. He beckons to me to cross the river. I look for bridge, boat, sigh, then lift my rucksack onto my head.

Children sit down without arguing and get on with homework. Son gaily accepts that as he is only thirteen, 15 certificate games and films are not for him. Daughter accepts that as son is two years older, it is perfectly reasonable for him to go to bed much later.

I’ll leave it to you to sort the fact from fiction…