Ten Thousand Ways To Say Thank You - Liz Kessler

My blog today comes to you with a couple of warnings

Warning number one – this blog is not entirely about books (although it is related).

Warning number two – it ends with a request.

To those of you who are still with me, thank you and read on…

About thirteen years ago, I was working as a teacher when I suddenly remembered that I’d always wanted to be a writer. As is sometimes my way, I acted swiftly. I packed in my job, enrolled on a Novel Writing MA and decided that I was going to be earning a living as a writer within a year.

As is sometimes Life’s way, it turned out I wasn’t destined to have the smooth ride I had planned. Within a few months of setting off on this exciting new venture, I was told I had cancer. Which rather changed things.

Right from the start, I was assured that I had an extremely curable form of thyroid cancer and the prognosis was about as positive as you could get. In fact, the surgeon’s words (and I shall never forget them) were that if he was told he had been bad and had to have cancer, but he hadn’t been that bad, so he could choose which cancer he had – he’d choose what I had.

Still, it’s never nice being 33 (or any age – and a bit of a hypochondriac at that) and told you have cancer. So my year of adventure took a few unexpected twists and turns. But cancer also did a few things that I never knew it would do, and left a few surprising gifts in its wake. Its biggest gift was gratitude. At 33, I now knew what it felt like to wake up each day being glad and grateful to be alive. Many people don’t have that awareness until reaching their later years. That gratitude gave me a strength I didn’t have before, and made me even more determined to become a published writer – if not within twelve months then definitely at some point. Cancer taught me that if I wanted to do something, I had to get on and do it. If I put it off, by the time I got round to it I might be too late.

And so I worked very hard, and I did become a published writer, and a few years later, I had begun to make a living at it. More reasons to be grateful.

A few years later still, I upped and left my life in Manchester, set off in a campervan and ended up starting a new life in Cornwall.

This meant that my life now consisted of doing something that is my absolute passion for my job, and living in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Add to that my daily knowledge that I was lucky merely to be alive – which I had felt since my earlier illness – and I can tell you, I was starting to feel very much in need of something to do with all the gratitude I had.

Which was when I heard about the Precious Lives Appeal.  This was a charity aiming to raise £5 million to open Cornwall’s first children’s hospice. As I was very much aware that Cornwall had given me a beautiful home and that children were largely responsible for my wages, this felt like the perfect fit, and I got in touch to find out what I could do.

A couple of years on from then, Little Harbour, Cornwall’s first and only children’s hospice, has now been built. The hospice this year started working with families across the county who have a child or children with life-limiting illnesses, and supporting both the children and their families. The work they do is utterly incredible, and the place itself is just beautiful. (Part of the ethos is that children coming here should feel that they are staying at a Five Star hotel, not a hospital.) When I first visited the hospice, just before they opened, I knew that I wanted to do whatever I could to help them. With annual running costs of around £1.3 million, they certainly need all the help they can get.

So I decided to plan a few events. The first of these is The Big Raffle for Little Harbour. For this, we have managed to get almost fifty local businesses to donate prizes. We have AMAZING prizes, ranging from a week’s holiday in St Ives at Ayr Holiday Park and one or two night stays at SIX top hotels around Cornwall, to meals out, private cinema screenings, even a signed surfboard from one of the UK’s top surfers. We hope that the holidays will appeal to people outside of Cornwall whilst the other prizes will appeal to local folk too. We are being very ambitious and hoping to raise £10,000 for Little Harbour with this raffle.

So here comes the request. (And don’t say I didn’t warn you – it’s up there at the top.)   Would you like to help support this charity by buying some raffle tickets? You can find out more about the raffle and a full list of the prizes here. In brief, though, raffle tickets are £1 each and we are selling them in books of five. So if you’d like to do any of the following...

• Possibly win a holiday in St Ives
• Win any of the other amazing prizes
• Or just support a beautiful and incredible children’s hospice

...all you have to do is to write a cheque for any multiple of five (plus a pound for postage) made out to Children’s Hospice South West and send it to THE BIG RAFFLE, c/o Halsetown Inn, Halsetown, St. Ives TR26 3NA. We will send you your raffle tickets and, if you win anything, you’ll hear about it soon after September 4^th. If you no longer possess such a thing as a cheque book, you can call us on 07554 631690 or message us on our Facebook page to find out other ways to pay. 

  

In the meantime, thank you (not that you had any say in the matter, but thank you anyway!) for letting me use my spot to share something that feels more meaningful and important to me right now than most other things I can think of.

Find out more about The Big Campaign for Little Harbour

Find out more about Little Harbour Children's Hospice

Find out more about Liz

This Is Why We Do It - Liz Kessler

What is it that defines us? 

Have you noticed how often it’s about our jobs? But how does it really work? As writers, is it about the number of books we've written, the number of people who've read them, the amount of money we've made from them? What exactly is the thing that means we can confidently claim the title of 'writer' as part of what gives us our place in the world?

Before I was published, my day job was as a teacher, although writing was my passion and the thing I spent most of my hours doing. But I found it hard to say to people that I was a writer, because it wasn't what I did as an actual, paid job. 

My best friend recently passed a test which means she is now trained to work with the local Coast Watch station – an organisation which exists to keep an eye on people out at sea, and which in all of its years of existence has saved many lives. Loads of people congratulated her when she passed this test, but she was embarrassed by the congratulations – because this is ‘only’ a voluntary role and not a 'proper' job. 

But why do we find ourselves defining our role in the world and our status by how we earn our money? This can't be right. So I've decided that we should start doing it differently. I believe a better way to think about our role is in terms of the difference we make to other people. 

So…if you work in a shop and you recently helped a customer buy a lovely Christmas present for someone they love – just think, when that present is opened, you contributed to the smile it will bring! If you’re a teacher and you gave a pupil some praise for their work this week – believe me, that praise could stay with them for years. (I know it did for me!) And my friend at the Coast Watch station, think of the difference she could make to the world with just one phone call if a fisherman were to get into trouble along the local coastline. 

These are the ways we should judge our place in the world – not by money or cars or houses. 

So what about us writers? Where do we fit in with this idea? How do we know when we've made a difference to someone's life? Well, how about this as a start? A picture that one of my readers sent me this week. (It's my character Emily Windsnap, in both her human and mermaid forms!)

To think that a child has been so involved in one of my books that they have taken the time to make such a sweet picture, and then wanted to send it to me, is absolutely heart-warming. 

Or this, from a recent message on my facebook page… 

“I lent one of my best friends your book, "The Tail Of Emily Windsnap", for her book report. She hardly ever reads and didn't like to read, and now she's reading your books like crazy! Thanks for helping my friend to like to read!” 

I helped a child to learn to love reading! Wow! 

If you'll forgive me a tiny moment of trumpet-blowing, my latest book, A Year Without Autumn, has just been shortlisted for an award. (The first award I’ve ever, ever EVER been shortlisted for, which is why I can't resist sharing the news!) 

The best part of it is that this is the Blue Peter Book Award, which is judged by children, not adults. Whether I win or not, if only a few of those children enjoy my book the most, I will know that I've had the opportunity to contribute to a few enjoyable hours of their childhood – and what could be better than that? 

Well, actually, I'll tell you what could be better. 

This.  

What’s this? I hear you ask. A pile of books? 

This is, in fact, an example of the generosity and all-round wonderfulness of my fellow writers. 

I’ve recently become involved with a charity that has been building a children’s hospice here in Cornwall. The hospice, Little Harbour, has just opened and has, this month, started taking in its first families. When I visited, I noticed some empty bookshelves. A few messages and a few calls later, and within a week, I had over 200 books - mostly signed specially for the hospice from fellow writers, and a couple of boxes from my publisher and agent, too. 

I took the books to the hospice this week, and saw the bedrooms where they’ll be placed, the family room where they’ll adorn the bookshelves, the cute little nooks and crannies all around this amazing place, where children in the most difficult circumstances that any of us could imagine will be able to sit quietly and get wrapped up in the wonderful world of a book. I have to say, my heart melted on the spot. 

So, yes – of course we want the pay cheques, the advances, the royalties – and yes, we dream about the film deals and the sales and even the book awards. But really, these are only the things that make us feel good on the outside. What matters most is what makes us feel good on the inside. 

And if I can play a part in the short life of a child who comes to stay at this beautiful children’s hospice – if a child spends a few happy hours curled up with one of the huge Little Harbour teddy bears, reading one of my books and losing themselves in its world – well, THAT is why I am proud, honoured and grateful to call myself a writer.

Find out more about Liz here

Find out more about Little Harbour Children's Hospice (including how to make donations) here

REACHING GREAT HEIGHTS for ROOM TO READ – Dianne Hofmeyr

There are some incredible athletes amongst our ABBA bloggers but if scaling Everest only happens in your dreams, read on – Just a few weeks ago on 14th May, a friend of mine, Rob Hart, made the summit and raised $15 000 in sponsorship for the Room to Read Project in South Africa and for building a school in Nepal. The trip took seven weeks, starting in Kathmandu on March 30th, and ending there on May 17th.

Passionate about Room to Read Rob and his wife, Anna, first got involved with the project when they moved to Singapore in 2008. Room to Read daily transforms the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on books, literacy and gender equality in education. Apart from building libraries and encouraging children to read, they support girls, who in most circumstances would’ve had to drop out of school, with special scholarships which give them the chance to complete secondary school and reach their full potential.

But back to Everest!

Rob has climbed the Seven Summits at the rate of one a year since 2003. He says: 'I’ve dreamt of climbing Everest since I can first remember, and that dream morphed to include the highest mountain on each continent. The attraction of frozen digits, howling winds and inedible food eludes many, but to me the draw is that such adventure and challenge is still available in modern times.'

This year’s success was his second attempt at Everest. In 2005 the mountain defeated him with icy winds. Even this year’s assent was not without its drama. Coming face to face with other climbers on their way down who hadn’t made the summit, he writes: ‘We meet mostly disappointed climbers coming down in the other direction, because the wind was quite strong the day before, May 12. One girl sobbing through her oxygen mask stands out, her dream in tatters for the time being. I know how that feels from last time. Some of the others did not make the top, but are just happy to be getting down alive.’
The ‘getting down alive’ part is brought grimly home when they came across a Japanese climber who’d died two days before. ‘Apparently he had got hypothemia, become disorientated and when his sherpa tried to help him, he became aggressive and pulled off his goggles, and so they had to leave him. He was still attached to the rope, looking like a wax model, and just a few meters off that path, so we cut him loose and retied the rope so that climbers could continue to use the fixed line.’ ‘A quick 9 hour slog up the mountain and I am on top of the world. As you can see I was tired enough to want to sit down. With only 2 of us up there it was impossible to hold the flag out properly - Mike took 3 photo's of me with my flag with his hands out of the gloves in -20C, and this is the best one. You can see the South African flag with the Room to Read logo beneath it.'
For the record, the same Mike Horst who took the picture, went on to climb the Lhotse peak too and summited at 5am the next morning, becoming the first person ever to climb two 8,000m peaks within a 24 hour period! No wonder they’re drinking a beer! And below huge hugs for Daddy! Very few of us will make the Everest summit, but right now the Room to Read logo is lying at 8,848m at the top of the world! Quite an endorsement of reading!

So if anyone wishes to support Room to Read as they transform the lives of millions of children in the developing world – one book, one child, one community at a time, click here .

If You Go Down to the Woods - Charlie Butler

I’m not especially generous to charity, but I have a few conscience-lubricating direct debits that go off every month to selected causes. Sometimes, mind, I look at my little list and wonder about my priorities. Next to the cancer charity, and the fund to bring clean water to African villages, the longest-standing of these payments – my monthly contribution to the Woodland Trust – may seem rather trivial. After all, keeping a few broadleaf trees alive isn't quite as morally urgent as stopping a child from contracting cholera, is it?

Indeed not – but neither is morality as a zero-sum game, despite the tendentious arguments of policitians (“Wouldn't you rather we closed your local library than stopped homecare for the elderly? Do you hate old people that much?”). That is a false choice, because understanding and valuing what connects us to nature and to our own history is part of what makes us capable of caring about the other things too. Britain is, historically, an island of forests, and although frighteningly little remains of its ancient woodland, a visceral memory and sense of its importance persists amongst even the most urban of town dwellers. The wild wood, as Alan Garner once put it, is "always at the back of our consciousness. It’s in our dreams and nightmares and fairy tales and folk tales."

It's sometimes said that you can judge a country by the way it treats its prisoners. In children's books, woods and trees can act as a similar touchstone. In C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, for example, we know things have got really bad when the trees are felled on the order of the False Aslan; while Saruman's willingness to cut down trees to feed his furnaces in The Lord of the Rings is a sure sign of his depravity. By contrast, a love of trees betokens health and moral soundness, whether they grow in Milne's Hundred-Acre Wood, a locus amoenus subject to seasons and weather but never to calendars, clocks or the other impedimenta of downtrodden adulthood; or in the hardier worlds created by Arthur Ransome and BB, whose children find both shelter and challenge under the shade of the greenwood, as Robin Hood did before them. Underlying all these, nestling in the leaf litter, lie our memories of the fairy-tale woods with their witches, wolves and wandering children. Their long roots wind in and out of our dreams, as ineluctably as those of Yggdrassil.

When my father died, I paid the Woodland Trust to protect an acre of woodland in perpetuity. Dad’s patch of earth is in a small wood near Winchester, not far (to bring in a gratuitous children’s literature reference) from the grave of Charlotte Yonge. One autumn day, a few months after his death, our family dedicated his acre by scattering his ashes there, in the furze of a small clearing. The ashes blew about a little (‘Don’t sneeze your grandfather!’ I warned my daughter), but I think the wood accepted our dusty libation. I plan to end up there myself, one day – unless of course it’s been turned into a car park by then. To prevent that happening, either to that acre or to many thousands of others, I urge you to consider signing one or both of these petitions, protesting against the current plans to sell off publicly-owned forest:

38 Degrees

The Woodland Trust

Dear Ms Keith - Nicola Morgan

I have been patiently waiting till today. Well, not very patiently, actually. It's just that I really wanted to shout a little bit about that silly letter in the Observer. (Scroll down to the one from Ann Keith.) Many people have already objected to what was in it and my message feels a tad out-dated, but 11th January is my allotted date to speak out on ABBA, so I kept a lid on it. Now, I'd like to reply to Ms Keith and set her straight.

Dear Ms Keith,
You say, "The self-righteous and arrogant puffery of the assorted literati to whom you gave publicity in your headlines and articles on Bookstart really cannot go unchallenged." Well, nor can ignorance. Let me put you right on two aspects, since to tackle you on every point would take too long and I've got books to write, a veritable fortune to be made.

First, you refer to the "amount of money" made by authors and publishers and ask us to declare our financial interest. I would like to tell you how little I earned from the sale of books last year but a) I have lost my magnifying glass and b) I'd be ashamed. Last time the Society of Authors did a survey of members, the figures were shocking. More than two thirds earn less than half the national average, for example; half earn less than the statutory minimum wage. Since then, we've had a recession and enormous price-cutting, slashing author incomes for almost everyone. So, Ms Keith, "financial interest"? Don't Make Me Larf. You have no idea. You. Just. Have. No. Idea.

Second, who are these children "patronisingly thought to be in need" of books? All children are in need of books. True, some parents are less able to buy them - which is a fact, not patronising - and if there was a way to get books to those families, I'd vote for it. But the Bookstart scheme, by giving books to all children, is therefore so far from being patronising that I wonder what dictionary you used when you chose the word.

Maybe, Ms Keith, you should read more books. Would you like a free one? I can't really afford to do this too often but I'd happily make an exception for you. If that's not too self-righteous, arrogant, or patronising.

Yours sincerely,

Very Crabbit of Edinburgh

Books Do Grow On Trees - Nicola Morgan

The lovely people at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh invited me to the launch of a fabulous event but I couldn't go because I was in London, hobnobbing with Brian May, Roger Daltrey, Roger Taylor and a load of other stars. (Ouch, the name-dropping! Actually, there were a lot more I could have dropped but I held myself back. Besides, when I told my daughter the other names, her response was, "What sort of a tacky event was this, mother? Please don't tell anyone you were there.") Anyway, although the launch has happened, the event is still going on, and it's SUCH a wonderful cause and idea that I wanted to be able to say something about it here.

So, here's a message from Julie Gamble at Blackwell's:

"The Children's Book Tree at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh is a scheme that lets customers donate a book to a vulnerable child in the city who is living in care or in difficult circumstances. We are working together with Edinburgh Women's Aid, Edinburgh Young Carers, Barnardo's, many support units run by The City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh Foster Care to find out what each child would like. We then attach their requests to tags and hang them from our 'Book Tree'. From 25th Nov until 19th Dec customers can drop into the Children's Dept. at Blackwell's on South Bridge, choose a tag from the tree and buy a book to go with it. We'll then wrap and send the books in time for Christmas.

If you'd like to gift a book but can't make it in person you can get in touch with us on 0131 6228225. If you would like to buy a book on behalf of someone else we can also provide a lovely gift certificate!

Thanks for making Christmas a little brighter for these kids."

Hooray!! Fab idea. I'm going there very very soon. There's the tree, all ready and waiting for wishes to be fulfilled.

Does anyone know of any other schemes like this in your part of the country? Would you like to name them here? Or, if you don't, why not contribute to the Edinburgh one by dialling that number?

If we believe that books are important and enriching and wonderful, we must believe in their utmost importance for vulnerable children who have had such a bad start in life.

Oh, and as an extra treat, here's a pic of Julie, thinly disguised as an elf, standing with Sarah Brown, whom you might recognise. 

If you want children to read, buy Fairtrade!! By Leslie Wilson

This is World Book Day, but it’s also still Fairtrade Fortnight, and books and Fairtrade go together – not because authors are underpaid, though most of us are – but because there are thousands of kids in the world who never get a chance to learn. This is sometimes because they are girls, but mostly because they’re poor, and the children work and help keep the family going. I wrote in an earlier blog about the wonderful work that’s being done in Cairo, educating the children of the waste recyclers. But every time you buy a Fairtrade product, you're not only giving producers a fair price for their product, but also subscribing to a raft of benefits for the community.

Part of the price of Fairtrade goods is what's called the Fairtrade premium, and the producers choose what they will spend this on – examples are farm inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, but also, importantly, medical expenses and school fees. To give one example, the Kavokiva cooperative in southeastern Côte d’Ivoire, which produces cocoa beans. In this region, the illiteracy rate among agricultural communities is as high as 95%. Many schools are badly equipped and too far away for children to attend every day. Kavokiva was Fairtrade certified for cocoa in 2004. Although the global recession has hindered sales, the Fairtrade premium has helped the cooperative to build schools in some villages where the government school was too far away. It has helped furnish classrooms and blackboards, and other supplies. It also distributes scholarships to that the members’ children can pay school fees.

Clearly, one still has to scout around to find Fairtrade products in many areas – though the Waitrose coffee and tea shelves are a joy to behold – but things are looking up. You can buy Fairtrade avocados, fruit, chocolate, coffee, tea, honey, nuts, apricots, beauty products and goods made from Fairtrade cotton, to name but a few. Tate and Lyle, Cadburys, and Kit-Kats are some mainstream companies who have recently made Fairtrade commitments. I bought several T-shirts made with Fairtrade cotton from Marks and Spencers last year. I plan to email people like Marks and Sparks and say you’d like to be able to get more Fairtrade products even than they sell at the moment. I also mean to write to other chocolate producers and egg them on to go Fairtrade – but the Co-op does a nice chocolate bar, and Traidcraft Swiss chocolate is brill! Green and Blacks’s Maya Gold chocolate is Fairtrade, of course.

On the topic of books, I’m shamelessly using the column to make a plug for another charity, which is Bookaid International. They make books available to kids in Sub-Saharan Africa, Palestine and Sri Lanka. You can find out more on their site, url below. In Kenya, they help provide a camel mobile library service!! This is an idea that appeals to me greatly.

For as long as I can remember, books have lit up my life, but I had the benefits of being brought up in a highly literate family, having a good, state-funded education, and having, from the time I was very small, access to free libraries. I know many of you will have had similar advantages. But the relative wealth and privilege of our own country – the recession notwithstanding – has too often been bought at the expense of other people in poorer countries. The Fairtrade Foundation - and Bookaid - are working to change all that.

Look for the Fairtrade marque on Fairtrade products - I meant to put it in here, but couldn't manage the technicalities of downloading it! I'm sorry, daffy authors... But you can see it on the products I've mentioned above, or at their website.

I've found out one can help fund Bookaid (and other charities) by shopping at a range of online retailers, Amazon, Tesco, Asda, Next, M and S, John Lewis, Ebay, Comet – and more – via a site called The Giving Machine. There’s also a thing called the Reverse Book Club. For three pounds a month you can buy 36 books every year for people who need them.


www.fairtrade.org.uk, www.bookaid.org.uk

TRO reprise – Revolting writers and the reading revolution (Anne Rooney)

Two weeks ago I blogged here about starting a week-long Get Into Reading course run by The Reading Organisation in the wilds of Cheshire. I promised an update. The week was packed, and there was plenty of work to catch up with at home when I got back, so this account is very much ‘recollected in tranquillity’.

Our group – eighteen fellows of the Royal Literary Fund, all professional writers – was the first group of writers the TRO had tackled, and it was always going to be like herding cats. There was a tension between their expectations of writers and the reality, especially the reality of writers starved of decent caffeine. (Jane Davis, who heads TRO, kindly brought me a coffee pot and coffee supply when things got really desperate.)

Did Sartre go on a residential course before he wrote Huis Clos (‘Hell is other people’)? It was far from Hell – it was lovely to be with other writers and readers – but writers are solitary workers. Most of us spend hours a day writing alone and are masters and mistresses of our time. Being forced to be with other people, even delightful ones, for up to ten hours a day, was very wearing. Any longer, and we’d have been appealing to PEN's prisoner support scheme.

So, given that TRO had to deal with a group of unherdable, stroppy, stir-crazy writers, it went pretty well. The highlight of the week was undoubtedly Wednesday, when we got to practise on some real, live readers from the local area. Each of us led a session with some seasoned participants in reading groups. They were lovely, courteous, generous people, and all extremely good at articulating and unpicking their emotional responses to the poetry we looked at. They had all been going at least once a week to read poetry and prose aloud and talk about it with other ordinary readers. Although we had been told that the groups did not want lit crit style sessions, they spoke confidently about alliteration and symbolism, bringing up the topics themselves. One man who had spotted that the poem we were reading was a sonnet went home and checked the rhyme scheme and the next day told me it was a Petrarchan sonnet.

There was another highlight, too. On Thursday evening, we – the writers – put on a Shakespeare-themed stage show for the readers. And the high point of the performance was children’s writer Joyce Dunbar, dressed in green motley once used as a dinosaur costume, playing Caliban (rehearsing in the picture, no costume)


We talked a lot about settings in which GIR (Get Into Reading) groups take place, about the choice of texts and about what people get out of it – and not only the readers, but the facilitators get a lot out of it. Many of us left on Friday fired with enthusiasm to set up groups of our own. Merseyside must be pretty much saturated with groups; elsewhere they are still sparse – though there is one in the Cabinet Office. How many of us will do it? It involves raising funds, and writers don’t usually like doing that. Or working for free, and writers certainly don’t like doing that. But there’s a lot of enthusiasm.

So what’s new about all this? Nothing. The Get Into Reading group activity is very closely modelled on the Oxbridge supervision/tutorial, which in turn is modelled on Socrates’ teaching methods. The critical approach adopted by TRO is simply reader-response (or reader-oriented) criticism, practical criticism in the I.A.Richards model. [New addition - thanks to Steve Cook for this link to a description of practical criticism as taught at Cambridge, where I learned and taught it many years ago.] But if TRO can manage to sell Socratic dialogue to the nation and so get more and more people reading, that will be a fine achievement. The very fact that the method has survived two and a half thousand years is a testament to its efficacy. Getting the country reading, and talking about good books, and reclaiming their literary heritage, has to be a good thing - with or without Socrates as poster boy.

A Christmas Eve Miracle - Lucy Coats

The ABBA bloggers will be away till 27th December. Meanwhile, a very Happy Christmas to all our blog readers, and here is a Christmas story to keep you going till we return.

A Christmas Eve Miracle

The room was very quiet. She could hear the hushed bustle of the night nurses in the corridor outside, but she knew they wouldn’t come in. She’d had her cocoa, had her pills. They’d leave her to sleep—or not—till early morning. There was nothing else they could do for her, after all. She looked out of the window where she could just see the cross on the rounded dome of St Paul’s, outlined against the festive glow of the London sky. She found it comforting. It had been there a long time, seen every kind of suffering, survived intact. She sighed. She was not going to survive, it seemed. But she’d bloody well fight anyway.
She remembered the morning, two weeks before, when she had walked into the oncologist’s office. The children and Daniel had been outside, waiting; a solid bulwark of love. But she’d wanted to hear this news on her own.
“I’m sorry, Glorianna,” he’d said. “It’s not good. It’s spread to your lungs and liver very fast.” She wasn’t surprised, and had said so. Her breathing hadn’t felt right for a while now, and even the kids had noticed the yellow eyes. She’d joked about eating too much custard, but they weren’t stupid. Not her kids. Then he’d dropped the bombshell of hope.
“There is a new treatment. It’s very experimental—from Canada. We don’t know if it will work. But it’s your only chance. It would mean being in Bart’s over Christmas though….”
Hope is a funny thing, she thought. Without it, you have no choices, everything is grey, and you just have to get through to the inevitable end as best you can. But with it—with even a tiny drop of it—the world of possibility wakes in full colour, and you can start to dream again in a way that makes your heart beat faster with maybes. She’d discussed it briefly with Daniel and the kids, not wanting to spoil what they all knew was probably the last Christmas they’d ever have together. But Daniel had been adamant.
“Any chance is better than nothing. You’ve got to go for it. We’ll just bring our Christmas to the hospital, that’s all.”
So here she was. Christmas Eve. She didn’t think the experiment was working, and the new drugs had made the tiny bit of hair she had left fall out, which was a bummer, because baldness was not in fashion this year. But she had to go on trying and hoping. It was the only weapon she had. The quarter bells of St Paul’s tolled out the time. Bingbong, bingbong, bingbong. Only fifteen minutes to go, and it would be Christmas Day.
The door opened softly, and closed behind the person who had come in. She couldn’t see him properly. The room was lit only by the light from outside, and the green glow of the monitors. But it appeared to be a man, dressed in white scrubs. His name badge hung down from the breast pocket, obscured.
“Hello, Glorianna,” he said. “I thought you might like some company.” His voice was very soft, gentle, accented slightly. Middle East somewhere, she thought. He came over to the bed and sat down on the end, careful not to joggle her battered, tender body. He had longish brown hair, tied tidily into a ponytail under his theatre hat, and a short, neat beard.
“Haven’t seen you before,” she croaked. Her bloody voice was going too, then. She cleared her throat, impatient with it suddenly. “You just on for the Christmas shift?”
“Yes, just for Christmas,” he said. “I like the peace on the wards. Is there anything I can do for you while I’m here?”
“What, apart from a Christmas miracle cure?” she asked. “That would be good.” She was proud of keeping her sense of humour. She found it helped other people feel better about what was happening to her.
He laughed. It was a nice laugh, made her feel more cheerful all of a sudden.
“It’s snowing,” he said. “That’s a miracle if you like. It never snows in London at Christmas. The bookies will be furious.” She squinted over at the window and gasped with pleasure. He was right. Big, fat flakes of proper snow were falling, fluffy and white against the glass.
“Take me over there,” she said. “Let me look properly. Please.” Manners were important, even if you were dying, she thought. He got up and fetched the wheelchair from the corner. Gently, he helped her sit up, swing her legs over the edge, moved the drip so she could drop into the chair without getting tangled up. “Ooh,” she said as his hands swam past her blurry vision. “What have you done to yourself?” The backs and fronts of both were covered in square, white gauze dressings.
“Just a little accident with some nails,” he said. “Doesn’t hurt anymore, just a bit messy to look at.”
He wheeled her over to the long window. It was a first floor room with a little balcony outside. They’d let her have a room to herself—it was a lonely luxury. The snow was falling faster now, and the ground below was already nearly covered with a white rug She looked and looked. It was beautiful.
“Did you know that each flake is different?” she asked him. “God must be pretty amazing to have thought that one up, don’t you think.”
“I do,” he said. “And He is.”
Suddenly a pigeon landed on the rail, then another, then another. Fast and furious they came, wings whirling in the snowstorm, until the rail was heaving with swaying bird shapes. Glorianna opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it again. The sparrows had started to arrive now, squeezing between the pigeons, chirping and squabbling, fighting like the warriors they were. Her visitor laid his hurt hands on her shoulders. She felt their warmth, like healing honey dripping into her bones. She closed her eyes, drinking it in. Then she opened them again, as she heard a muffled miaow.
Now it was the cats’ turn. Slinking and squirming, they lined up in rows, unblinking slanted eyes trained on the man behind her. Grey ones, tabby ones, tattered ears, scars, stripes, orange, white, black, and everything in between.
“Whatever…?” she stammered. But the pressure of those warm honey hands sent her back into silence, just as the mice and rats appeared. Bootbutton eyes, twitching whiskers, a sea of intertwined tails and noses, and sharp, yellow teeth sat on the windowsill. The cats didn’t move a muscle. Glorianna strained her eyes to look at the ground below. It was now covered with fur and a general wagging which sent the snow into joyous flurries of white. A puppy let out a single high yelp, but was cuffed by its neighbour immediately into silence.
BONG! BONG! Great Tom started to sound the hour of midnight from the south-west tower of St Paul’s. As the last chime echoed into stillness, the animals bowed their heads, knelt, worshipped. Glorianna too slipped forward onto her knees. It was physically impossible for her to do so now, in her weakened state, so she must be dreaming, she thought. But it was a good dream, a dream she didn’t want to end.
“Please,” she prayed fiercely. “Oh God, please.” It was a formless entreaty, made many times before, but this time, with those hands on her shoulders, she knew she was being listened to. She offered up her great love for every bit of her life on this wonderful, flawed, generous earth. The long journey from Jamaica with Mam and Pop. The first cold winter, school, her marriage to Daniel, the births of Jasmyn, Dillan and Joel. She offered her cancer, her anger, her fear. She offered everything and hoped it would be enough. Because now it was Christmas Day, and she’d already seen two miracles. Surely a third wasn’t too much to ask.
When she opened her eyes again, it was nearly daylight, she was back in bed, and her friend of the night had gone. A new nurse was standing there, replacing the drip bag.
“Happy Christmas,” she said. “Look, it’s snowed!” When she’d done what needed doing and left, Glorianna cautiously eased herself out of bed. The window seemed a long way to go on her own, but she made it by leaning on the dripstand. The balcony outside was empty now, but by peering hard, she could see a few feathers and tufts of fur in the snow. The whiteness was also pocked and marked with small prints and lines where tails might have whisked through it. Glorianna pinched herself. It hurt. She was awake. It had been real. And she was going to live. She knew that as certainly as if it was written on the glass in front of her.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the cross on the dome. A man in the courtyard below stopped walking and looked up at her. He had long brown hair and a neat beard. He raised a hand to her in greeting. The palm and back of it were covered in square white dressings. Then he walked around the corner and was lost to sight.
I was asked to write this story for Cancer Research. It was published in the concert programme for their 2008 fundraising carol service at St Paul's Cathedral. It is dedicated to the memory of my sister, who died of cancer in December 2001.