leaving the house

3: and every chapter must be so translated

I travelled from Bologna to Paris today, on the train. Well, last night. Well, today. Forgive me, I'm a bit tired. The train was two hours late arriving at Bologna - hours I spent on a humid platform fending off beggars and weirdos, always fun to be a woman travelling alone - then it accumulated another couple of hours delay on the way across Europe. I was on the top bunk, which required a bit of an acrobatic feat every time I wanted to go to the (fetid) loo. (Actually I don't know why it was quite so horribly smelly, it was literally a seat over a hole onto the tracks. Nice.) And the bunk was uncomfortable, and the train kept jerking, and I got so little sleep I've spent the whole day literally room-spinningly-dizzy.

And yet, and yet, I loved it. I never did that inter-railing thing that everyone was doing when I was a teenager. Me and my friend Esther did a mammoth train trip around Scotland, but never the backpacking across the continent. Well, some experiences you missed as a teenager can't be recaptured, but some can. I want to do this again, something about the challenge of it, the exercise of rusty language skills, the encounters with strangers, the feeling of being in motion... wonderful.

Some of my best moments were translating between Italian-speakers and French-speakers. I wanted to go "you're both speaking Latin, for goodness' sake, surely you can understand each other?" But I really enjoyed helping out.
"Venti due," said the Italian train conductor, "venti due."
"Vingt deux," I translated for a grateful French lady.
Somehow, bliss.

2: è differente essere Ebrea

That is a peach. It is gorgeous. You can't smell it, but I could and it's the kind of food that makes you think "if I eat this, it will become part of me, that's just fantastic." Bologna is famous for its food. Obviously they invented Bolognese sauce (served here over golden yellow buttery melt-in-the-mouth tagliatelle, not spaghetti), but also apparently lasagne. And just down the road is Parma. As in Parma ham and Parmesan cheese. Basically everything here is amazing; the tomatoes are specially incredible this time of year, just so sweet.

So, I've had a lovely day wandering around - not just sampling the food - until the heat overcame me. Walking back to my hotel I spotted this:

OK, were you a geeky child? It will not surprise you to learn that I was. Did your parents take you on holidays to historic English towns and to museums and exhibits called things like "The Museum of the Wool Industry" or "The bubonic plague hits Cirencester" or "Medieval Hereford"? Mine, naturally, did. And did you find yourself thinking something like "wow, if I'd been here in Medieval times, I wonder what I would have been doing, would I have had to card wool like in that educational diorama?" Maybe you did: we're sort of encouraged to do that in GCSE History. Imagine that you are a street urchin; write 200 words about your daily life.

The thing is, my dad's an historian and knows a thing or two about what actually went on. So when I said to him "dad, if we'd lived in Victorian Bath/Medieval Worcester/Elizabethan Aberdeen, what would we have been doing? Would you still have been a professor? Would we I have had to get a job cleaning chimneys?", he'd generally reply "well, we'd have been Jewish, so it would have been different."

And it is. Everywhere, and everywhen, pretty much, except here and now it's been different. A parallel history. Here in Medieval and Renaissance Bologna there are people inventing lasagne and building towers and founding the world's first university and all sorts. And there are the Jews, in the ghetto.

I had a little explore of the ghetto - I might go back properly tomorrow. My guidebook had said it was "quiet" and they're not kidding. It's like the minute you step off the main streets and into the ghetto the sound is deadened. Presumably the walls are thicker - perhaps Jewish people wanted to protect themselves from attack, or the Bolognese built thicker to cut themselves off more firmly - but also there aren't so many shops. The buildings are closer together. The few people seem to speak more softly. The walls are high and the streets are narrow.

What is one to do with a history like this? To forget it seems an insult to those who lived it. To insist upon it seems churlish to a world which now says "no no, we're all the same, please accept our apologies and come and join in the fun. We have Parmesan cheese!" It is a big and unanswerable question. What to do with history?

1: a long way from home

I start rather more energetically than I mean to go on, because I think I spent only 40 seconds today in a place I've been before: the one familiar place was Gare de Lyon Paris, marching through in an attempt to composter mon billet (ma billet? why would a billet have a gender anyway?) and get on the train for Milan before they closed the platform. Eight hours on a train from Paris to Milan, an hour on a train from Milan to Bologna, a cab, a hotel, a short walk and then this:

Yes it is a male statue's nice naked bottom, what of it? However, just so as not to be sexist, here is a female statue with water squirting out of her nipples (are they called statues when they're on fountains? I can't call them 'fountains').

People in the somewhat-far-away past were a lot less prudish than people in the recent-past and than we imagine everyone before us was. I can't imagine someone getting permission from a city council to erect something this frankly (and slightly weirdly) sexual in the centre of town today.

I am in Bologna. I got here by train, all the way from London, with a night in Paris in the middle. I thought I would love that experience, and in fact I really did. I love the fact that I actually felt the miles go past. That, having travelled here, I have some idea of what's in between London and Bologna. (Lac du Bourget looks amazing.) Travelling by train is like browsing the world. It's all very well to be able to put yourself in a metal box, ascend several thousand feet above the earth's surface and then come back down exactly where you wanted to be. But some of the best discoveries are made when you weren't really looking for them. After today, I can say with certainty that the Alps are really blooming impressive, and that the houses south of them have a distinctly different look to those north. And that I want to do this again.

Shall we do it again?

Yes, I think we shall.

I've had that feeling creeping over me for a few weeks now. Staring at places I pass by but have never been into, remembering places I've been recommended. The other day, driving back home from central London I almost drove straight past Regent's Park and then I thought "I have literally never ever been to sit in Regent's Park." So I pulled over the car and sat under a tree for 20 minutes, watching the kids play football and the couples flirting. And thought, as I often think "why haven't I ever done this before?" And yes, I think it's time to start another Visiting New Places project.

Now, last time I did 31 places every day in August. However, I know that I'll be incommunicado for a lot of the first week of August. So. Let's start now, and I'll do 31 by the end of August. OK? As before:

- it doesn't have to be a long visit, five minutes will do

- I have to write something about the place

- it has to be somewhere I've never been before. but could be, eg, the gardens which I've never visited of a house I have visited. clear? 

- a new place not a new activity

I'm sort of cheating, because currently I'm in foreign - a city I've never been to before - so the first few days will be a bit easy. Should I make it harder? I don't think so. Part of the joy of this last year was the 'found' visits; places I happened to be anyway, but related to differently because I was doing this. So, OK, off we go!

The rabbit above, btw, was photographed by me at the University of East Anglia. There are rabbits everywhere and if you sit very very still they will come right up to you. But it has to be very still. Like, not even turning the pages of a book. One of them hopped over my foot, another nibbled a page of the book I was (not) reading. It's here also to remind me of a post I must write entitled "the wisdom of Michele Roberts". Intriguing, eh?

OK, let's go.

wait until dark

Here's something people don't know about me: I'm a bit afraid of the dark. Not very afraid, not afraid like I really think there are monsters under the bed or in the wardrobe, not like I freak out if I'm in a tube train and the lights go off for a bit. But just, unsettled. Like a lot of people who grew up in the city, who've lived all their lives in the city, I find total darkness intimidating. Better if there's just a bit of light.

But somehow I don't like feeling like that. And so when I heard about a project that involved wandering round in pitch-darkness, I wanted to experience it for myself. Rather appropriately (or inappropriately?) for the longest days of the year, this weekend I visited The Question, a demonstration of what the organisers hope will become a larger project, open to the public. I hope it will too, it was magical.

The technological aspect is interesting - and I hope to write more about it - you're guided around the space by a mechanical lotus flower which opens and closes depending on how near you are to a 'zone of interest' - in these zones there are things to touch, and the headphones you're wearing play music or snippets of dialogue. But talking about the technology doesn't really get to the heart of the experience.

Here's what it's like. First of all, I felt nervous. A small group of us walked through the 'light lock'. The door closed behind us. The space really was black. It made no difference whether my eyes were open or closed, so I closed them. I shuffled forward. I had no idea of the size of room I was in, where the other people were or where I was. I held on tightly to the wall. I realised, comfortingly, that my hand was quite a good enough guide to lead me around the room. I became bolder. I walked a little more. I started to realise that I could hear things: other people, the faint hum of electronic devices, and feel things: the wall, the sensation of the floor, the lotus buzzing in my hand, and smell things: cologne, perfume. I realised that no one could see me - that there was nothing to be embarrassed about in my  slow exploration, because no one was watching. My hands started to feel like eyes, mapping out the space, finding familiar and unfamiliar objects. I'm not sure I can quite convey how, over the half-hour 'performance', I began to understand the incredible richness of what we can sense without sight.

Yesterday evening, I began to get impatient for it to get dark. I wanted to turn off the lights, close the blackout curtains, and navigate my flat by the faint glimmer of light from the street, and touch, and sound. Darkness suddenly felt comforting, safe, less distracting than the gaudy day.

Another thing I noticed, from this altered perspective: as a culture we're afraid of the dark. Characters in movies and TV who go into dark rooms have horrible things happen to them. Our entertainment mostly takes the form of glowing backlit screens. We expend vast resources ensuring that our streets are never dark, that we can banish darkness at a touch of a button. I wonder if this is connected to a kind of superficiality, a constant obsession with what things look like. I close my eyes and the world feels more peaceful, more friendly. A bit of a revelation.

in this life, we are always in the process of leaving something

So I've changed the title of the blog. I picked the previous title "On the life of a new author" on a whim in 2005 when I sold my first novel and my friend Yoz said to me "you should really have a blog". Keeping it now I've published a second novel feels a bit coy, like Douglas Adams' description of the 'virgins' of Brequinda:

"no sooner would a flock of half a dozen silk-winged leather bodied Fuolornis Fire Dragons heave into sight across the evening horizon then half the people of Brequinda would be scurrying off to the woods with the other half, there to spend a busy breathless night together and emerge with the first rays of dawn all smiling and happy and still claiming, rather endearingly, to be virgins, if rather flushed and sticky virgins."

I'm not a new author anymore, nor yet a weary old hack I hope, but The Lessons has a page at the front which reads "Also by this author" which feels like the greatest triumph in the world. So I've chosen a new title: leaving the house. Why? Because on a day-to-day basis this is literally one of my big challenges. So easy to spend the day indoors writing or reading or emailing, not to notice that it's getting dark outside. So hard to remember to actually leave the house. And because my August project last year was so much fun, and because, well, I guess there's a sort-of-pretentious third reason which is that leaving the house is a kind of metaphor for writing? This is what we do: we step behind someone else's eyes and look out at the world the way they see it. Or we try to. We leave our own houses, literally and metaphorically. It is hard to do but satisfying. I'm lucky to have this as my challenge.

Anyway. Onwards. I have in fact just got back to my house after a week away at the Totleigh Barton centre in Arvon teaching creative writing to some incredibly lovely Devon teenagers. The painterly image above was the view from my window every morning (the girl in the middle is trying to get mobile phone reception). Now I'm back home, trying to tame my inbox, thinking in earnest about the *new novel*. And about leaving the house in order to write. Here we go again.

Interview with a hostile reader

So, while I was writing The Lessons, I tormented myself by imagining all the horrible things that reviewers would say about it. Sometimes I even wrote down a line or two, just to get them out of my head. And a couple of days ago my friend Robin sent me this, written by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project who apparently does the same thing! Her solution was to conduct an interview with an imaginary hostile reader, the reader who would ask all the most horrible questions, so she could answer them! And this struck me as so brilliant, I have done one for myself. And it was really fun, and beautifully empowering. Bring it on, hostile reader:

--------

So are you gay, or what?

I can see why you ask but no, I'm not. I'm basically heterosexual. Have occasionally been known to fancy girls but mostly fancy blokes, only ever fallen in love with blokes. I've just broken up with someone, actually, so if you happen to know any interesting/good-looking/articulate/vaguely-feminist-but-not-through-self-loathing men…

Why all the gayness in your novels then?

Well. OK. I have asked myself this too. Because it hasn't come from a conscious thought-process, but has been a subject that I've been drawn to. So I've had to work out why for myself.

So, here's my thought about why: I grew up in a frankly fundamentalist religion. There are many fine things about that religion but it is not a great place when it comes to talking about or experiencing sexual desire, especially as a woman. I had a pretty 1950s (or earlier, maybe 1890s)-style education about desire growing up which was basically: pick a husband based on his good character traits, and don't think about sex until you're engaged, and don't do it till you're married. Which is fine if that's what you want. I have friends for whom it worked very well.

I found it, in that way, quite crushing however. I wanted to be able to fancy men, but felt that with the education I'd had that wasn't even allowed. In a way, my experience of my heterosexual desire was of a 'love that dare not speak its name'. I would never ever want to suggest that my experience was *anything like* the historically appalling experiences which many gay and lesbian men and women have had to go through. But I felt a kinship with the idea of not even being able to experience your own desire without a degree of guilt and fear.

This has all been done before, hasn't it? Oxford glamour, decadence, drugs, sex, tragedy… there's Brideshead Revisited, The Secret History, The Line of Beauty… this novel is pretty derivative.

Well. On the one hand, yes, I did not pick a subject for this book which had never been treated before in fiction. For my first novel I kind of did, but that's because that was the subject which presented itself to me and about which I had something to say. I don't think there's anything much wrong with writing a novel 'in a tradition'. As long as you try to write a good novel, that is. There are a fair few novels out there about the Tudors, but Wolf Hall is still a masterpiece. On the other hand, I hope I did something a bit new with this subject. It addresses my particular concerns, and my particular generation, I hope. So yes, it is a novel with antecedents… I didn't go looking for 'the next Orthodox Jewish lesbians"!

The Catholicism in this book feels tacked-on; like you haven't really got to grips with the religion as you did with Judaism.

You know, in a way I feel that's fair comment although it's a pretty harsh way to put it! But yes, I couldn't claim to know Catholicism as well as I know Judaism. I did a lot of reading, I spoke to a lot of people but… unlike Disobedience, this isn't really a novel *about* the religion - that novel isn't mine to write, really. Even though I had flashes of genuine understanding, I would agree that Catholicism still seems far away from me in a way that Judaism, and even atheism, do not.

Don't you think you've just essentially written the same book twice? The love triangles, the weird controlling relationships, the concerns about sexuality, faith and the tremendous difficulty of overcoming a bad education?

Yeah. I'm very aware of the similarities between the two novels actually (I felt it especially at the end of chapter 11 of Disobedience and the final scene between James and Jess in The Lessons. In a way I hope that this is OK. Novelists I think have emotional veins that they mine. Sometimes the same story worrying away at them over and over throughout their career. Perhaps I've managed to make these stories seem sufficiently different that people won't mind the similar emotional palette.

This is a pretty miserable book, isn't it?

Yes mum, it is. Well. In a way it is. Some sad things happen in it. Having said that. I feel like it's hopeful at the end, actually. And quite a jolly romp at times. What can I say: I think some people are self-destructive, do go through years and sometimes decades of destroying their own lives. It was something I wanted to think about and explore. If, for you, a novel has to be light and cheery the whole way through, this is not the book for you!

Why on earth would anyone want to read a novel about a bunch of over-privileged over-educated youths drinking and taking drugs?

Hey, it's the kind of novel *I* like to read! But there are plenty of novels out there. If books about different kinds of people to this float your boat, go for it. No novel is ever going to please everyone.

If you're asking why *I'm* interested in this subject, the answer I think is that… many of us go through our lives thinking that our problems would be solved if we had a lot of money. We spend our lives chasing money, stressing about money. But I'm interested in exploring what might happen to a person if money were no longer an issue in their life. It's a thought experiment, like imagining human life without sex or religion or food. Take something away, see what happens. I don't think I'm in any way suggesting that what happens is great, or that my over-privileged characters are admirable. Even they don't suggest that.

Why isn't this book as lyrical as Disobedience? The writing doesn't have those loops and swirls to it.

Different subjects demand different writing styles. Disobedience is a novel about personal religious faith, a trembling and fragile subject. And it's a novel about people who live within the bounds of the Old Testament, so a biblical style is appropriate. The Lessons is a novel about students drinking, taking drugs and shagging each other. It felt to me that it needed a more immediate, raw style. But I hope the writing in it is still enjoyable to read.

Why have you written a novel that's so different to Disobedience? Don't you feel that you've stepped out of your area of expertise - Orthodox Judaism - and now you don't have anything original to say?

What can I say except: this was my actual life? Orthodox Judaism and then Oxford. I don't think I'm less entitled to write about Oxford because I didn't grow up Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I don't think my take on that experience is less valid because of that, or indeed less valid because I didn't write a Jewish Oxford novel. There may well be a Jewish Oxford novel to be written, but this is a novel about the mythology of Oxford, the ways in which its beauty and glamour can twist and distort perceptions, emotions, experiences. Also, you know, if George Eliot and Charles Dickens got to write novels about Jews, surely I'm allowed to write novels about people who aren't Jewish!

Taking it and liking it

Over the years since my first novel was published, I've had various friends, and friends of friends, and acquaintances of cousins of friends of friends of friends ask me if I would read their work and give them my 'honest opinion'.

It's flattering to be asked, of course. And I like to try to be helpful, even though reading a manuscript and commenting is *far* more time-consuming than simply reading for pleasure and... if your novel is in a place where it badly needs the editorial eye of someone you vaguely know it's unlikely to be a pleasurable read anyway.

There's loads to be said about how to critique, what to look for when you are critiquing and what stage in your project to show your work to a professional writer your uncle once met in synagogue, but that's not what I'm going to address here. What I'm going to address is: how to respond when someone gives you critique.

It's really simple. You say: "thank you." If you want to be more of a mensch, you say "thank you so much. I realise your time is very valuable and I'm grateful that you've given me the benefit of your opinions. I'll think hard about what you've said." That's it. You can cut-and-paste that if you like.

Here's what you don't do: you don't argue. You don't say "no no no, but you've failed to grasp the significance of the rose dropped into the cake batter on page 35". You don't say "if you'd only read all 800 pages of my book you'd see that the character of Isprahim is eventually redeemed when he grabs the sacred stone from out of the Mire of Neblath and *that's* why he currently only talks in incomprehensible, ungrammatical English."

And the reason you don't argue is not because all professional writers know better than you, that's absolutely not the case. The reason you don't argue is: it's your book. You don't have to take on a word of the advice given to you by the person critiquing. If you disagree with everything that they've said, that's fine. Never show anything to them again. I'll say it again: it's your book. You get to decide what's right and wrong with it. You've asked someone else for their opinion, they've taken time to give it to you, you say thank you and then you can ignore every word they said.

It took me a while to work this out. When I was doing the Creative Writing MA at East Anglia, workshops started off feeling so raw and personal, like someone criticising my child, or my own self. Like someone looking me up and down and going "there's nothing about you I like" or maybe "I disagree with everything you believe in." But slowly I learned... critiques aren't opinions, they're taste. You can't argue with them. Even if you are the next Dickens/Rowling/Shakespeare/Plath not everyone will love your work. You may have shown your book to a reader who wouldn't go for your style even if you were literally the greatest practitioner of it in world history.

What you're looking for is someone who really seems to get what you're trying to do, and when they criticise something you go, internally "shit, I knew that wasn't working, but I hoped I'd got away with it". That is a reader who'll really sharpen your work. When you find one of those you do more than thank them. Buy them flowers, send them cards, offer to make dinner for them in exchange for reading the next three chapters. As for the others, just say 'thank you' and move on.

[BTW. If you have asked me for critique in the past year, please do not start assuming this post is about you. Many people who've asked have been extremely gracious and well-mannered. I've chatted about this to other writers, and we've all had at least one or two rather ungracious responders. If we're still friends, go ahead and assume you weren't one of them. ;-) ]

Not tonight, I have a headache

Today was a migraine day. I've had them all my life and yet the pain remains shocking, every time. Shocking how impossible it is to do anything else, terrifying how easily my whole consciousness closes down to a bright white thumbprint of pain. 

I have a friend who's only ever had one migraine in her life, when she was in her mid-20s. She went A&E, convinced that if she wasn't having a stroke anything this painful must mean she had some hideous infection past the blood-brain barrier at the very least.

That's what's so horrifying too, the pointlessness. At least if you slam your finger in the car door, you can see that damage has been done, that it's good to get constant messages to keep the digit still. If you've got flu, those aches keep you lying in bed where you can heal. A migraine means nothing. I had them when I was two years old. They meant nothing then either. Just simple suffering, caused by no injury or infection, leaving no mark when they're gone. 

The invisibility is also problematic. When I cancel meetings because I have a migraine, I always imagine that the other person might think I'm lying. It's the kind of thing you can say, isn't it? How can anyone check? I was disbelieved a lot as a child with migraine. There's nothing to show. It's the kind of lie a child might tell. 

A kind commenter sent me a message suggesting a diet free from foods containing 'histamine' might help. It was thoughtful of her, but I've already tried every exclusion diet possible. When I was a child my mother thought I might be allergic; for years we carefully noted down what I ate every day, trying to establish a pattern, weeded out likely contenders. It was comforting to think I might have some control, but it didn't really help. As an adult I've eaten all those foods and never got a migraine from them. Sometimes I know the cause: I didn't sleep well, I haven't been exercising enough, I got dehydrated, I was overstressed. And sometimes I just never know. It's like my migraine is a demon, clamped to the back of my neck, waiting to stretch out its long finger and erase a day or two as if they were nothing at all. 

Why am I writing this? Not to elicit sympathy really - these are my migraines, other people have their issues too, many more grievous than mine. I'm writing this out of pure superstition. This was my second migraine in four days. The first one erased Friday afternoon and evening, sending me whimpering to bed at 8pm, waking me up nauseous at midnight. I had a conversation with my migraine today, which is the kind of thing you do when you're in a lot of pain. I said "if I write about you, will you go away?" Half an hour later it was gone. So this is the fulfilment of a promise to the Demon Migraine. Go away, stay away, please no more.

Hendon is a place on earth

So, tomorrow a piece of writing of mine is going to go public in a way that I'm not allowed to talk about. I know, mysterious right? But all will be revealed very soon.

Anyway, it's a piece of writing about Hendon. Which makes me anticipate the inevitable reaction that I'll get from the people of Hendon (which is where I live, where I've lived for the past seven years, where many of my friends live). When Disobedience was published, a lot of Hendon people and indeed a lot of Jewish friends said things to me along the lines of "why do you hate us so much? What have we done? What's wrong with Hendon? It's a wonderful place! Why don't you love us?"

Which, sigh, makes me feel rather like a cliched sitcom husband trying to explain to his wife that the suggestion that she not go to a business meeting in a bikini comes from a place that is the exact opposite of hate. That sometimes you can love a place or a person so much that you wish they'd communicate their wonder better to the world, or wouldn't keep undermining themselves in these stupid, petty ways.

So this evening I thought I would share a story of something that happened to me today which is the best way I know to express the glory of Hendon.

This has not been a great week. It's been very busy, full of meetings, so time's been tight and the one thing I didn't need was for my internet at home to be cut off for almost two days, especially when my gameplan for getting everything done included needing to be online from 10pm when I got home, and all the Starbucks' round here close at nine. Even so it would have been maybe OK if I hadn't woken up this morning with a migraine which felt almost exactly like a cigarette trying to burn its way out from the inside of my skull via my left eye. I have people coming for dinner tomorrow night. I have articles to write and presentations to plan and interviews to do. But all I could do was turn off the lights and close the curtains and lie in bed and wail.

This afternoon, at about 2pm, just before I passed out into a comatose sleep, I finally thought 'no way am I getting all the cooking done for tomorrow night. It's just not going to happen'. So, from my darkened migraine room I called my local butcher. The butcher is Nissim, he is on Brent Street, he and his wife make great chicken soup and wonderful roast potatoes and kugels and salads and just... if you are around these parts, go there. I called up and said "are you delivering this evening?" (I didn't really have to ask, it's Shabbes tomorrow, of course they're delivering) and ordered a bunch of food.

Less than four hours later, a lovely young man, Mr and Mrs Nissim's son, arrived at my door with my chickens and kugels and soups. And he stopped for a chat, that was the thing. He wasn't a supermarket delivery man with a timetable to keep to, he's just a guy and he knows me and knows my family. We chatted about what food I was making, about his family, his wife, what restaurants we like, what recipes are nicest with lamb. Basically he was doing what delivery men always used to do which is: not just to make their job nicer by getting to know people but also to make sure I was OK. I didn't even really notice that he'd stopped to chat with me - it seemed totally normal - but a friend who isn't Jewish was here and was amazed, just amazed, that we'd spent those few minutes on the doorstep, and I remembered why this is so unusual.

There's no delivery charge. There's no minimum order. There's no arbitrary cutoff point. There's no timetable demanding that the guy move on as quickly as possible. If I were an elderly woman ordering one carton of chicken soup a week, they'd still bring it round and chat on the doorstep. They'd notice if I seemed frailer, or confused, or just sad. If I didn't answer they might call someone - a member of my family, or a community representative.

This never used to be so unusual. I remember my grandmother's butcher and grocer and fishmonger and greengrocer coming around every week, stopping for a chat, sharing the gossip and swapping recipes and news. Somehow, in the space of my lifetime, we've mostly lost that sense of urban community, though. Instead of stopping for a chat, we order online and accept deliveries with a terse grunt and a signature. No one says, as the guy said to me tonight 'hey, I don't have change. Just pay when you're in the shop next.' Except in Hendon, and places like it.

People often seem really puzzled that I still live in Hendon. I suppose because I'm a writer they think I should be living somewhere edgier, cooler, or maybe more rural for that Walden vibe. Maybe they imagine that, having written a mildly controversial book, no one in Hendon will talk to me anymore. But it doesn't work like that; I may be a bit of a black sheep, but I'm still part of the flock.

So what can I say? Hendon, I still love you. Whatever you might have heard, you're still a part of me. There's a reason that I write about you as if you were a shtetl: it's because you're the closest thing to a shtetl that still exists. Yes, you may have your narrow-minded side. Yes, you may be conservative and conformist. Yes, those pants do not suit you. But you're still a good place. Now come here and give me a hug.