A Stroll though Highgate Cemetery

Posted in London, Places, Writing by carolcooper

My mate Gus was out one day;

Someone asked ‘Do you know the quickest way

To Highgate Cemetery?’

‘You bet I do’ said Gus

As he pushed the poor fellow under a bus.”

There are lots of reasons for visiting Highgate Cemetery in North London. Here are just a few of them.

It’s a final resting place for many literary folk, among them Douglas Adams, Alan Sillitoe, George Eliot, Pat Kavanagh and William Foyle (who founded Foyle’s with his brother Gilbert).

Douglas Adams, with pencil tribute

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’s writer

Literary agent Pat Kavanagh

One half of W & G Foyle Ltd

Then there’s this avid reader.

Jim Horn 1976-2010

Poor Harry Thornton didn’t survive the flu pandemic.

Pianist Harry Thornton 1883-1918

I expect you know who Malcolm McLaren was, unlike the couple nearby who thought he had something to do with double buggies.

Malcolm McLaren 1946-2010

Pop artist Patrick Caulfield plays a visual joke on the headstone.

DEAD or alive? Probably dead if you look closely.

But Jeremy Beadle goes all serious with books.

Jeremy Beadle 1948-2008

There are war graves, mainly from World War One, and a 1930s monument to the London Fire Brigade. There’s also one very bad boy.

Mastermind of the Great Train Robbery 1963

Bruce Reynolds, the brains behind the Great Train Robbery

You were expecting the big man? Oh, all right. Here you go.

Funny how the communist gets the most lavish tomb, dwarfing those around him. Souls of lefties gather round, among them historian Eric Hobsbawm and Iraqi Communist leader Saad Saadi Ali, while a little further away lies Philip Gould, architect of New Labour.

Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012

Saad Saadi Ali

See? Ali is left-leaning even in death.

We were not alone, as we soon discovered.

These days you can still be buried in Highgate, though space is at a premium. The impressive statuary is packed close.

We’d only visited the East Cemetery, but, as the sun began to set, it seemed time to leave…

27Nov2014

The Top 5 Things I Learned this Week

Posted in Family life, London by carolcooper

You’re never too old, right? This week I found myself on a steep part of the learning curve, and began to wish I had crampons to stop me falling off. Here’s what I learned.

1 It’s entirely possible to tell the difference between hairspray and other kinds of spray, but – here’s the tricky bit – I have to remember to look first.

Still, I had the reassurance of knowing that my hair wouldn’t smell like mouldy trainers.

2 ‘Loading’ does not have a strict definition set out in legislation. If you think stopping to pick an order from a shop constitutes loading, then be prepared to argue your case. The general interpretation is that loading/unloading should be in the nature of a collection/delivery. It does not include parking in the loading bay while shopping or, if you’re feeling peckish, visiting McDonalds.

If you too are just getting to grips with that little lesson, you may like to check out Ticket fighter.

3 There is only one correct way to offer a horse a lump of sugar. FYI it is not by holding the sugar cube in your fingers.

If the first one doesn’t bite your fingers off, the second one probably will.

4 Although drinking alcohol on London’s underground system has been forbidden since 1^st June 2008, it doesn’t mean the guy swilling Special Brew on the Jubilee Line will thank you for pointing that out to him, especially if he has a fuck-off haircut and a nasty glint in his one good eye. No, not even when you explain you’re only trying to spare him a hefty fine.

On the other hand, you may qualify for a discounted coffee at London Bridge station (wonder if there’s a sliding scale of discounts depending on the location of the injury?).

5 Letting a child with a cold kiss you is a really bad idea. I’d show you the end result, but it proved far too gruesome for a photo.

You know what really worries me? The week isn’t over yet.

20Nov2014

The Hack’s Progress

Posted in London, Places, Writing by carolcooper

Harriet has been a journalist for 16 years. At first, she hoped to become a household name.

Now, as she sits in Starbucks, her goal is more mundane: to pay Simon back. Her boyfriend put a roof over her head and this new laptop in front of her. Still, it would be nice to be invited to speak at an Editorial Intelligence Breakfast Salon. Or just contribute to a trending topic on Twitter, ideally in the same week that it’s trending.

Simon does not approve of Starbucks, or, as he puts it, ‘all that it stands for’. Harriet’s view is less complex. It stands on the corner and it’s a place to work.

Whenever Harriet thinks her career’s going OK, she brings herself back down to earth. What kind of household name would pen features like “What your loo roll says about you”?

That was at least easier than some of the other features. The commissioning editor of RightHere! magazine, a terrifying Glaswegian woman, once wanted a really fun piece on women who’d traded their baby for a Hermes handbag. When Harriet’s jaw dropped, the editor assured her there were zillions of women out there that would feel unconditional love for a Birkin, hen. Especially since it wouldn’t poop and cry all night, and it certainly wouldn’t tell them it hated them in 12 years time.

Harriet knows all about ‘really fun’ pieces. After making a zillion phone calls and pestering everyone on Facebook, she still ends up without any case studies willing to give their real names and photos, let alone women young, slim and blonde enough. Editors always claim to know their readers, but Harriet doubts if any of them are smart sassy under-40s. RightHere! magazine could probably keep 99% of its readers happy with knitting patterns and offers on cod liver oil.

Instead Harriet asked “Could it be a Mulberry bag?”

The editor was withering. “Are ye daft? Nobody would do that.”

Christmas is coming up and Starbucks has gone all red and green. This time of year makes Harriet blue so she tries to keep busy. She is up to her eyes in her piece Great Gifts for Under £10. These are remarkably similar to Great Gifts Over £10, except for the quality.

She wonders about covering Fabulous Festive Gifts Over a Grand, but doesn’t think PR companies will send over the freebies she has in mind.

By now most titles have Christmas sewn up, but there’s always the chance of a last minute request.

The editor at RightHere! will probably ring her with a really fun festive feature idea. All Harriet would have to do is find three women who’ve had an immaculate conception. They’d have to give their real names and be photographed, of course. And it would a bonus if their partners are carpenters.

***

Harriet is a freelance journalist from my novel One Night at the Jacaranda. This weekend you can read more about her and other single Londoners for only 99p (UK Kindle edition). And let’s face it, what could you get at Starbucks for 99p?

2Nov2014

Ham and Eggs with Mr Turner

Posted in London, Pills by carolcooper

It was lovely to sit down for two and a half hours with my mobile turned off. On the minus side, I had to put up with caricatures that would have done Harry Enfield and Chums proud. In the lead role is an on-form Timothy Spall doing his best-ever impression of Timothy Spall’s rendition of Timothy Spall.

His gurning is magnificent, his grunts fit for a piggery at feeding time. It all helps establish JMW Turner’s origins: his father was a barber and his mother a lunatic (as it was termed in Victorian times). The artist’s inarticulacy is well portrayed, but I didn’t see the need to over-egg the pudding, turning him and his housekeeper into Wayne and Waynetta Slob.

There is also much gasping, groaning, staggering and falling about, all of which sharpens the contrast between Turner and his colleagues at the Royal Academy (filmed at Wentworth Woodhouse near Rotherham, South Yorkshire). There we have John Carew, David Roberts, John Constable, John Singer Sargent, Sir John Soane and others. The more Turner grunts, the more they twirl, ponder, recoil, ponce about and generally over-act.

Then Mike Leigh takes the piss out of the Ruskin family who come across as unbearably pseud.

I can't show you a Turner. Go to the Tate Britain.

I can’t show you a Turner here. Go to the Tate Britain.

The film Mr Turner goes to huge lengths (or, as the Daily Mail puts it, ‘amazing tricks’) to make the film authentic in every detail. Doctors did house calls in those days, though I’m not sure how Leigh induces Dr Price to come to London all the way from Margate for a simple home visit, especially since, in the film, Margate has quietly slipped west to Cornwall.

Still, the stethoscope is spot on as the simple tube invented by Frenchman René Laënnec. His name is pronounced ‘Le Neck’ though this isn’t where doctors wore it at the time. The binaural model used today only came into production in 1851, the year Turner died.

HP Rapaport Sprague stethoscope, circa 1981

I liked Turner’s last mistress Mrs Booth (played by Dorothy Atkinson) who bears more than a passing resemblance to my ex-husband’s new wife. And Marion Bailey is a superb depiction of loyal housekeeper Hannah Danby, not least for the evolution of her psoriasis. First we see her scratching her neck, but later her scaly skin turns rampant. As the years pass, she becomes increasingly stooped and rigid, probably from psoriatic arthropathy which affects some 10% of people with psoriasis.

Turner’s eccentricity and talent come across well, as does the progression of his style of painting. Many of the images are genuinely beautiful. But the acting? More ham than a Bavarian market.

This is just my opinion. In no way does it represent the views of my husband (who thought we had booked to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), let alone the rest of the movie world. I’m sure everyone else will absolutely love the film to bits, darling.

11Sep2014

‘Cockanese’ – A Guide To Cockney Rhyming Slang, For Beginners Or Americans

Posted in London, Marriage by carolcooper

With thanks to Don Charisma who allowed me to take over his blog so I could teach the world to speak Cockney, the dialect of my home town.

Don Charisma

Dr Carol Cooper’s been a friend since fairly much the beginning of the Don Charisma blog.

Carol is an author, blogger and a lady who gets my sense of humour. I believe she’s also quite well known in the UK, Google would tell you more, I’m sure, otherwise this will start to look like a Dr Carol Cooper resume or groupies club, which it’s not …

She’s also in my experience very humble and personable, which counts to me personally more than any other accolades … charm is magic they say … so …

Quite a few moons ago I, a little tongue-in-cheekily, proposed a title for a guest post, and Carol being the good soul she is, took the bait, hook, line and sinker … A break from the norm, something a little different, here’s Carol’s version of how to speak like a Cockney …

Disclaimer – no Americans were harmed in the…

View original post 643 more words

10Aug2014

Is Beatles Music a Health Hazard?

Posted in London by carolcooper

Exactly 45 years ago, photographer Iain Macmillan stood on a ladder and shot the iconic image for Abbey Road. Tourists from all over the world continue to come to London’s most famous crossing. They gawp, revere, take selfies and generally mess about, taking no heed of cars, vans or the 189 bus. This was the scene yesterday.

Now Westminster Council is considering the use of a lollipop lady to keep people safe. I hope they recruit a lady or gentleman who looks the part in period 60s gear.

On that August day in 1969, did the Fab Four realise the poor example they might be setting for future generations of fans? I think not. If they had, they’d never have larked about as they did. And Paul would have surely kept his sandals on. It’s madness to walk around London in bare feet.

Pretty much everyone (not just Charles Manson) has their own interpretation of Beatles lyrics. While most people focus on the drug references, the songs may contain other menaces to health.

Sleeping in the bath is something I’d never recommend, yet that’s exactly what happens in Norwegian Wood. Luckily John doesn’t drown. But what does he do when he wakes up? He burns the house down. OK, so he was a Beatle scorned, but arson does seem a tad over the top.

There’s another fire hazard in A Day in the Life. The track opens with John’s graphic reminder of what happens if you run a red light. But in a later verse Paul dices with death when he nods off on the bus with a lit cigarette in hand.

I feel like shouting the B-side of Can’t Buy Me Love (in case you don’t remember, it’s You Can’t Do That).

Paul survives his bus journey. He still hasn’t kicked the tobacco habit two years later, though, because there he is holding a ciggie on that album cover. But the USA did some unauthorised airbrushing and removed the offending item from posters.

Other risky lifestyle choices advocated by Lennon-McCartney:

One night stands in Day Tripper
Coming in via the bathroom window in a track of that name
Sticking 50p up your nose because you can’t find a ten-bob note like Mean Mister Mustard.

The Beatles will always be my favourite band, but as a doctor I’m concerned about an already over-stretched health service having to extract coins from noses, bandage injured feet and give whatever medical help is needed to those mugs who take their oeuvres too literally.

On Revolver we’re even told that you can call Doctor Robert day or night, he’ll be there any time.

In your dreams, John and Paul. Not in today’s NHS.

The thing that worries me most, though, is on the White Album. Yes, hotel rooms cost money, but doing it in the road is the ultimate in unsafe sex. Nobody’s watching you! So you’re even more likely to get killed by some motorist who wasn’t expecting to see people bonking on the asphalt.

I’m really hoping Westminster Council will be wise enough to install appropriate signage.

3Aug2014

An Evening at the Proms

Posted in London by carolcooper

Geoff mops his brow as he steps through the doorway and into the shade. Glancing down at his ticket, he remembers the invariable rule of the Royal Albert Hall: whichever door you enter, it’s diametrically opposite where you need to be.

He heads from door 4 to 12, stopping off at the café for a Coke Zero.

All human life is there already: young people with rucksacks, alte kakker in Birkenstocks, middle-aged women with sunhats. Only one person seems to have dressed up for the occasion, and she’s got purple hair, a pierced nose and a tuxedo ripped in multiple places. When did people stop wearing smart clothes to concerts?

Sitting next to Geoff, a middle-aged woman nurses a large glass of rosé. Every two seconds she looks up at the entrance.

Her date finally turns up. Rosé woman comes to life, falling over herself to greet him. When the man sits down, she babbles constantly and paws his wrist.

Geoff gets to his seat in the Choir (West). The lights dim and tonight’s fare begins with a Brahms piano concerto. So far, so soporific thinks Geoff, despite the energetic pianist.

Part two is Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. It may not be a Mass, but it has everything else, Geoff reckons: choir and solo voices in some unidentifiable language, plus brass, wind, strings, drums galore and that massive organ which is almost in his right ear. Geoff studies the cellists. A fellow student once told him cellists were the raunchiest of the lot, as they were used to stroking a mighty instrument between parted thighs. He can well believe it.

According to the notes in Geoff’s lap, Janáček was keen on pan-Slavism, and his mighty work celebrates nationhood and peace.

That’s not something that Geoff can figure out from the music. There are noisy outbreaks from various instruments. Now the horns. Then the snare drums. Strings come in, and an exquisite harp.

Janáček, it’s also said, placed his nationalistic beliefs above the welfare of his own daughter. Geoff would have had words with him. Nothing on earth matters to him more than his son.

The conductor chops the air with his hands, then dangles his fingers like jelly fish. The orchestra hangs on every move of his digits. Then the organ erupts into a fantasia.

Nationhood and peace, muses Geoff. Chance would be a fine thing. The world could use a damn good conductor.

*For those not in the UK, the BBC Proms (or more exactly the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts) are an annual summer season of concerts in London, most of them held in the Royal Albert Hall.

5Jul2014

The Not-so-Secret Game of Sevens

Posted in Dating, London, Writing by carolcooper

I’ve been tagged by alternative historical fiction author Alison Morton in a game of Lucky Sevens.

It’s a bit of online fun for writers that pulls us out of our sheds, studios or beds where we sit scribbling away for hours on end and lets us reveal a little of our current work in progress.

That’s almost word for word what Alison said in her blog. I’d love to go the whole hog and copy all of her fiction writing so I too can enjoy her amazing success, but back at school the nuns drilled into me that envy was A Bad Thing and that plagiarism was even worse, and the two together were The Devil’s Work and would ensure I never met St Peter. Ever. So I’m only copying a little eeny bit of Alison’s homework.

Here’s how the writers’ Game of Sevens goes:

Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
Go to line 7
Post on your blog approximately the next 7 lines or sentences – as they are!!
Tag 7 other people to do the same

Now, a lot of people have already done this, so I’m not tagging automatically, but I’m inviting any writers who read this to dare to do the same. Just let me know if you do and I’ll add your name to this post (free advert!).

Alison posted seven lines from AURELIA, based in Roma Nova and the Germanic Federation state of Prussia and set in the 1960/70s. As I said, I’m not a complete plagiarist, so you’ll have to go to her blog to read her excerpt.

My seven or so lines are from my forthcoming novel CAMDEN PASSAGE. It’s set in London and follows on from my novel ONE NIGHT AT THE JACARANDA:

Dan had never been on radio before. And this was live. Which explained why his heart was leaping around in his chest long before he arrived in the studio.

The building had a massive atrium that was all shiny marble and glass. So this was where the license fee went. No wonder they weren’t paying guests anything.

He’d made a tray of his new monkfish parcels. They’d be OK cold, especially with a light garnish of red amaranth. Each one was roughly bite-sized, with a toothpick through the middle.

A woman in the lobby barely looked up from her desk to tell him to take a seat. It was the kind of seat designed to make you uncomfortable. So there he sat, balancing out the foil-covered tray on his knees, staring at a bank of silent TV screens for what seemed like ages. Lucky old people on TV.

Well, not that lucky, because one of the programmes was a hilarious reality show in which children were meant to humiliate their parents. Dan supposed Jack would do much the same when he stopped being a cute little baby and grew into an egregious adolescent.

Egregious. It was Dan’s word of the day. He rolled it around in his mouth, still not sure he’d use it on air.

Let me know if you too want to take part of the writers’ Not-So-Secret Game of Sevens.

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO and PERFIDITAS. Third in series SUCCESSIO is out now.

30Jun2014

How to Go Up in the World in Just Four Steps

Posted in Dating, London, Writing by carolcooper

Now that Dan’s out, he’s on the up. First off, he needs to find work. The snag? How to explain away six years at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Inventing a job abroad might fill that big gap on his CV. Lucky he’s got a good imagination. You don’t get very far without one, in his experience.

Dan is one of the characters from my novel One Night at the Jacaranda. In this post I’m letting him out to share his current MO with you.

Dan needs to learn stuff. That’s step two. He reads a quality paper every day now. Cover to cover. At the public library, if it hasn’t already been nicked. Or he might find one in a bin. Some days he has to pay for one.

And he listens. You can learn a lot from people, especially when they don’t even realise what they’re saying. That’s when you discover things.

He chooses his own words carefully. From a dictionary he got at the charity shop. That’s step three: not sounding like a lag anymore. Course, when you’re inside you want to sound like everyone else, because bad things are even more likely to happen when you don’t fit in.

A lot of his new words are adjectives. Easier to slip into conversation than nouns. How the fuck would you shoe-horn a word like behemoth into a chat with the bint on the till at Iceland? Yesterday he just about managed to use contiguous.

That was when the old biddy behind him pushed her shopping right up next to his on the belt. He’d have let her go first, especially seeing as she only had a pint of milk and a packet of Rich Teas, but then he wouldn’t have been able to say contiguous. So he just put a divider up on the belt.

Today’s word of the day is egregious. Means outstandingly bad, but so far he’s only managed to use it once, even though he waited an age for the 16 bus and when he got on it ponged of rotten fish. Which is about as egregious as it can get.

Fourth and most important of all: he’s looking for a woman. Nobody said these four steps would be easy, but he’s got a good feeling in his bones.

Yep, there too.

5May2014

A Mini Blog Tour for Spring

Posted in London, Writing by carolcooper

The best thing about blogging? Connecting with other people. I’ve said that since I started, but this is the first time I’ve been asked along to a blog hop.

Yes, it’s the Writers’ Blog Tour, in which writers talk about what they write and how they do it. Sara Rose Salih invited me. Sara’s blog is a treasure trove of all things teen fiction, and no wonder. She’s the author of a new juvenile fiction series, Life As We Note It (check out the first book, Tales of a Sevie).

The tour has a lot in common with a chain letter, because you pass the same four questions about writing on to three new writer-bloggers, as I’ll do at the end of this post. So here goes.

1. What am I working on?

I’m writing a sequel to my novel One Night at the Jacaranda, which is about dating. Readers tell me they love the characters, so I’m taking some of my favourite flawed people (and theirs) into new adventures. Like the first book, it will be a racy read.

Yep, the location is London. You might also notice that this is taken north of the Thames. People from north London rarely venture south of the river unless they really have to, but let’s see what happens as the story unfolds.

2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?

My genre is chick-lit (‘commercial women’s fiction’ if you’re la-di-dah). But One Night at the Jacaranda has more than one protagonist and is written from multiple points of view (memo to la-di-dah types: it’s an ‘ensemble novel’). Crucially, many of the voices are male, so it appeals to male readers too.

Another contrast with most chick-lit is that there’s very little physical description of the characters, other than the fact that Dan is bald, Simon has a comb-over, and Karen’s body is a bit saggy (after four kids, who’ve had thought, eh?).

What they do have is dark secrets, so there are some serious issues, but the overall tone is still upbeat, in keeping with the genre.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I’m an established journalist and non-fiction writer, but I’ve always yearned to write a novel. Why I wrote this particular story, I really don’t know. The idea came to me on a Continental Airlines flight after my father died, as I’ve described elsewhere in my blog.

And now that I have developed such memorable characters, I’m going to help them live as long as possible. Well, I am a doctor!

4. How does my writing process work?

I write best on the sofa with pencil and paper. And cat.

To get me started I might need music and a coffee. Uh-oh. The pencil’s a bit blunt.

May as well sharpen all of them, right?

Once I have installed myself again (and the cat), I may spend as long as 10 minutes writing before the phone rings with something urgent for me to do.

Out of this highly productive routine I end up with reams and reams of material, most of which has to be re-written several times before I pass it on my husband and some writer friends for their opinion. I might also float some of it on this blog to see what you think. And that’s how I do it.

Time to pass the baton on to three talented bloggers.

L.K. Watts writes an eclectic range of books. Her first two stem from her worldly adventures in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. These fresh and funky books reflect L.K.’s personality perfectly. She’s travelled the Trans-Siberian Express in Russia and Mongolia and has done a ten-week stint of conservation volunteering in Ireland.

When she isn’t out making the most of life and living it to the max, she writes women’s fiction. Her debut chick-lit novel is her third book to be released.

But do not be fooled. L.K. is currently writing something that will make the most unshockable person gasp.

At the moment L.K. lives in the U.K with her partner and two adorable dogs. Her blog is LK Watts Confessions.

Anne Wainscott comes from a family of story-tellers. She’s an author and blogger at The Writing Well as well as a storyteller-for-hire right here.

Her 2004 mother-daughter memoir A Breath Away came after losing her mother to smoking.

She’s currently finishing her first historical novel, Torrential, a re-imagining of a flood that destroyed her hometown of Dayton, Ohio, a century ago.

You can also find her on Twitter.

Michael La Ronn is a fantasy author who writes Decision Select Novels, which are a modern reimagining of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks. He also writes traditional novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.

He is a former musician and loves jazz and other obscure genres that no one’s ever heard of. His upcoming book, Festival of Shadows, will be released in June.

Michael lives with his wife in Des Moines, Iowa.

You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.

Why not go look for them?

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

Category Archives: London