Rosie Rowell

My girls are mad for a dog. They have been for almost two years. We have a menagerie of Furreal animals that bark and purr and lift up their paw on command and scare the living crap out of you when you trip over one in the middle of the night. This weekend the eldest called a family meeting to decide what type of dog to get. She watches Animal Planet ‘Dogs 101’ to stay up to date with the best breeds. Her current favourite is a Miniature Pinsher.

‘There’s no ways,’  I say ‘we have no garden.’

‘Let’s move!’ says number 2. ‘I don’t really like our house anyway.’

‘Or we can get a Chihuahua. They don’t need gardens.’ suggests Number 3.

‘Chihuahuas aren’t dogs’. I say. ‘They’re a domesticated line of rat.’

Number 3 looks horrified. ‘I’m telling Miss Ilaria. Miss Ilaria LOVES chihuahuas.’ There goes the lead part in the next class assembly.

‘What about a baby brother instead,’ I say, going for broke. None of them liked that idea. ‘Baby boys wee in your face,’ was the well thought-out reason.

The only other person who doesn’t want a dog in the household is the cleaner. ‘I don’t like dogs,’ she says to me in a severe voice, ‘I really don’t like dogs.’ They way things stand at the moment, the cleaner carries a veto vote.

I do worry that by not having pets they are missing out on a precious part of childhood. And it gets awkward when they start quizzing me about mine. ‘Three dogs,’ I have to admit, ‘And three cats and two hamsters. But not all at the same time. And we had a big garden.’

‘So let’s move!’ repeats Number 2 as if she’s dealing with a complete dullard.

A month ago I agreed to the compromise of goldfish and sent out husband and children to buy them. ‘Two at the most,’ I warned. They returned with six. Apparently they don’t survive very long, says husband. Which is true – 3 of them have already passed on to bigger waters.

A friend gave me some advice a few weeks ago. ‘You could start with the goldfish, and then the hamsters and then the cats and then the dog. Or you could just get the dog.’

2012  is supposed to be the year of the dragon. But who knows.

There are 22 days left of this year. This makes me unreasonably happy. I know that every day is a gift  and all that crap – but the sooner I can peel off this year, the better. There is no rational for my loathing of 2011, it just feels like its been a lot of very hard work with no measurable results. I call it being a writer. And, on a bad day, a mother.

The trouble with being a writer is that it is so easy to stop. It starts as a niggling tug of a thought as you stare at a blank page: Who cares? What if I don’t write? After struggling with a chapter that will not work, its a thrilling option. Soon it has grown into a big statement.  The world doesn’t need more writers, it needs more mothers. And you volunteer at school, organise playdates. You get the DVD man in, you file three years of bank statements.  Those things do make a difference.

My guru this year has been Fantastic Mr Fox. The audio book was top of our car playlist for months. Though I’ve heard the story more times than one ever should, one line always made me smile. The foxes are digging for their lives, they haven’t eaten or slept for days. The tractors are closing in on them (see – I know it very well). Instead of telling the little foxes, We’re nearly there, or It will all be alright, Mr Fox says, in Roald Dahl’s 1940s BBC rumble: ‘Keep going, my darlings! Don’t give up!’

Perhaps there are some achievements this year I’ve overlooked. I can do a headstand now. And I’ve taken up horseriding and last week did my first jump. To be fair, it was a very little jump – one would struggle to slide a letter underneath it, and my children were too busy playing with a mangey stable dog to see it – but I did it. And although I seem to have a staggering inability to finish the edits to my book, I’m still chipping away.

gone

Everyone knows one shouldn’t make any big decisions during January in England, but booking this holiday I reckoned was different. After all, I was simply arranging to be away for a few weeks, not emigrating or investing all our money in sunshine lamps.

Long Suffering husband was not so sure. ‘You’ll be on your own for 3 weeks with the girls,’ he pointed out.

‘That’s nothing,’ I’d replied, gazing out at the half-light, half-drizzle of another gloomy London day, ‘Easy-peasy-Japaneasy.’

LS was worried. Based on how well he knows me and how well he knows our children, it was not an irrational concern. Because when I get stressed, things tend not to go so well for him.

But now that we are in our final week, I am rather proud of how the holiday has gone. There have been no midnight SOS calls to LS, demanding that he drop everything and come and sort his children out, because: ‘I can’t. Handle them. ANYMORE.’

I have realised a few home truths along the way though. One of which is that beach holidays are relaxing for everyone except the mum. Especially sole parent mum. Which is why this current beach holiday has at times sailed dangerously close to ‘Cartoon Network’ holiday. After the first week, once everyone has gotten used to the good weather and the excitement of the beach, the standards begin to slide. The decision between a glorious late afternoon swim at the beach and an hour of playing at home before supper (read ‘tv’) becomes more complicated. Because after you’ve packed the bags and locked up and negotiated your way between the ultra-slow, octogenarian Fish Hoek drivers, the wind has picked up a little and as you finally arrive at the beach, Child #3 categorically refuses to get out of the car  because, ‘You know I hate the wind, Mum, you KNOW that.’ At the same time Children 1 & 2 are racing towards the waves. And when, after 20 minutes of uninterrupted whining, Child #3 announces that actually there is nothing in the world she’d like more than to go for a swim, the other 2 are starting to turn blue from the cold. Inevitably at this point the ice cream man appears with that irritating bell of his and one of them trips and cuts open her knee. And as you’re dabbing at the bloody knee whilst handing over the contents of your wallet to the ice cream man, you notice a couple walking along the shoreline, arms entwined and unable to take their eyes off each other and you want to run up to the starry-eyed girl and say, ‘Don’t do it! Look at me – this is the logical conclusion of a romantic walk. It’s not worth it!’

Later though, once all 3 are finally asleep and I feel my levels of motherly love begin to regenerate, as I stroke their salt-sticky hair and kiss their rosy cheeks, I know that these really are the wonder years, filled with magical days, whose hard edges will slowly soften to become the stuff of family legends.

Long Suffering Husband spent a week holidaying with us. It was going to be 4 days, then for a horrible half hour at the airport, it was looking like less, but in the end turned into 10 days. Such is the way of holidaying with a husband in the Financial Services and we take what we can get, because as I’m often reminded:  ‘Real people don’t actually go on holiday for 2 months a year.’

That may well be, but when the school you chose (not, sadly, on the basis of how many days a year the children are acutally in school, but (secretly) because they have the cutest uniform) have four months holiday a year, as a stay-at-home mum, your life is all about the holidays.

In the 10 days that Long Suffering spent with us, for the most part he managed remarkably well to ignore his email (it helps to stay at a house that doesn’t have internet access). But half way through, he cracked. ‘I’m just going to check in the with office,’ was how he put it.

Four hours and the batteries of 2 mobile phones later (during which time he paced the garden, staring up at the heavens, saying: ‘How about now? Can you hear me better now?’), I left him to give the children supper while I went to yoga. I figured that way he’d have to stop.

I was wrong. An hour and a half later, I return to see him seated at the table, having resorted to the landline. ‘So lets just go over those figures one more time,’ he says, by way of greeting.

All the compassion and tolerance gathered at yoga has vanished. Along with the children.

‘Where are the children? I ask.

He smiles at me and carries on talking. Clearly the ‘Family Mute’ button is on.

‘I said, where are the children?’ I repeat, slowly and loudly.

‘The what?’

‘Did you give them supper?’

‘Ofcourse I gave them supper,’ he says scornfully, and then, ‘I’ll just finish this off,’ and disappears out of range to a bedroom.

The children, inevitably in front of the tv, feel none of my annoyance.

‘We had a silent supper!’

‘It was so much fun! We had to mime everything!’

‘Why don’t you ever give us such fun suppers?’

After supper follows the inevitable: inevitably he is tired and I am pissed off. Inevitably I say: ‘But I’m trying to keep the family together, I’m doing this for the family!’ and inevitably he replies, ‘But so am I!’ and we go to bed, the stalemate hanging in the air.

But now he is gone and in the quiet evenings I think of the other mothers I know, holidaying with their children while the husband/dad dips in and out. I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t matter that you can afford a lovely house in an idyllic spot – if it means that your husband can’t afford to join you, surely somewhere we have gotten something wrong.

Epiphanies come at the oddest times. It’s the end of our writing term, and I’m sitting with a fellow writer enjoying a glass of wine.

‘It’s just really hard,’ I say, settling into a good moan, ‘when your husband is so much more succesful than you are.’

‘I know what you mean,’ she says.

‘It’s not just the whole money thing, or whose day was more important, it’s just the whole balance in the relationship. Of course he doesn’t see it that way.’

‘Of course not. Why would he?’ she says, and then adds, ‘It’s difficult when it all changes suddenly.’

‘Yes!’ I say, thinking rather nostalgically of the years when Long Suffering Husband was struggling to set up his own company and I was struggling to finish my book. We were so aligned, we were a team, it was us against the world. Now he’s gone and gotten a big-time, proper job and I’m still struggling. Not that I begrudge him success in any way, he deserves it in bucket loads, and I’m very aware that someone has to support the struggling writer and her large brood. It’s just that it’s different now.

‘So, what’s changed suddenly for you guys?’ I say, taking a sip of wine.

‘My husband’s just won an Oscar,’ she replies.

As I’m mopping up spluttered wine from the table and my shirt, a voice in my head is trying desperately to save me: ‘Be cool!’ it says, ‘It’s just an Oscar, someone’s got to win them. Whatever you do, don’t go all weird on her!’

‘Oh, right,’ I say out loud, attempting nonchalance, but there’s no point. I’m gripping the stem of my wine glass in excitement.  ‘Did you go?’ I can’t stop myself, ‘Was it amazing? Did you walk the red carpet? Is it very red, and very long? I bet it is. Oh-my-GOD!’

What are you doing? the voice is shouting in my head, Get a hold of yourself! This is the very thing she’s complaining about!

But the voice is overruled. The words keep coming. ‘Did you go to the after parties? All of them, including the Vanity Fair one, cos that’s like the best one. What did you think of Natalie Portman’s dress? Who did you talk to? Did you talk to Colin Firth? He’s amazing isn’t he, he looks amazing, and HOT. And his wife, of course, is lovely and such a role model. So inspiring.’

I draw breath. ‘Sorry about that,’ I say.

She smiles.

‘So what did  you think of it?’

‘It was,’ she says, ‘A little bit… tatty.’

‘Tatty?!’ I am incredulous.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Wow,’ I say, finally at a loss for words.

It suddenly strikes me that in our media-crazed and excessively driven society we hype up success to the point where it becomes the end goal, rather than the achievement of what we’ve set out to do. And when I think about my aspirations for my first book and my misgivings about starting on my second, I see that when success matters more than achievement, whatever it is we’re setting out to do really does stand in grave danger of turning out to be a little bit tatty.

My four-year-old daughter (Grumpy Child no. 2) sat me down recently and said that while she loved me picking her up from school, she’d prefer it if I’d wear high heels. To be fair, ours is the type of school where a lot of mummies do wear high heels to pick up, particularly those smart ones with the lovely red soles.

I laughed off her comment, I put it down to the precociousness of four-year-olds, but then the other day on the way to school, we passed a young woman. From my point of view, behind the wheel, she was very young, ‘first job, trying too hard’ young. She was bedecked in a pencil skirt, a fitted jacket with a faux fur lining (it had to be, right?), and sauntering along in very high heels.

‘Look!’ squeals No. 2, with the excitement normally reserved for passing puppies.

‘She looks lovely,’ breathes No. 3.

‘She looks posh,’ says No. 1, who likes to know these things.

‘What’s posh?’

‘Posh means very pretty,’ says No 1.

‘Do I look posh?’ I tease from the front.

‘NO!’ they groan unanimously.

‘The only reason she looks so posh is that she works in an office,’ I say.

‘I wish you worked in an office,’ sighs No. 2.

‘Yes! Then we could come and visit you!’ says No. 3, whose only experience of The Office was when Hardworking Husband took them in on Christmas Eve one year. They were entertained by Mr Lollipop and then watched DVDs with the secretaries. Clearly, my girls believe that this is what Hardworking Husband hurries off to every day.

I never expected my girls to be quite so girly. They notice every time I paint my nails, every new dress I wear – which poses a problem when one is trying to slip one past Hardworking Husband. No.s 2 & 3 measure their hair growth almost every night in the bath, because it’s longer when it’s wet, and everybody knows that only boys (and mummy) have short hair. This feminine streak doesn’t come from me, so where did they learn it? Is it too much Disney, too many Barbie-inspired stories where the heroine is always beautiful and wears high heels? Am I exposing them too young to empty ideals that will translate into impossibly high standards, against which they will measure themselves for the rest of their lives?

Or are they just girls, who love pretty things, and soon enough they will outgrow fairies and princesses and before I know it they will be trying to pierce their noses upstairs in the bathroom and be walking around in ‘AC/DC’ t-shirts?

I think so. Just as they grow out of The Night Garden (thank God!), they will move on from this current Pink Princess Paradise. And they don’t look at passing girls and think, ‘Skinny bitch, she’s clearly not had kids!’, they think she looks pretty. And she does.

Dear Anna

Thank you for the reminder about needing more washing powder, as usual I had, in fact, forgotten. And while I think about it, because I’ll probably never remember to say it, thank you for not reacting to Grumpy Child no.2 who wouldn’t let you put her tights on this morning. I know she can be trying, but it’s just a phase. Deep down she’s such a sweetie. And she’s so fond of you.

I was wondering this morning, whilst upside down on my mat, why getting this silly book published mattered so much. It’s a pride thing of course, if only I’d kept my mouth shut about writing and the book, it wouldn’t matter at all. But it seems that over the course of four years, I’ve managed to tell pretty much the whole world. And apart from the personal satisfaction and being able to dedicate it to Long Suffering Husband, I realised that it really mattered that you saw it in print. That I could show you and say: ‘Look, Anna, whilst you clean my house and tolerate my children, and generally keep our family running, I”m not just sitting on Facebook or updating my wishlist on The Outnet. I am a writer, I too have a job.’ Somehow I feel that you don’t quite believe it.

I must dash. Would you mind awfully picking the girls up this afternoon? I’ll leave money for a taxi, it’s very cold today. And I’ll pick up the washing powder on my way home.

Yours unrepresented,

Rosie

Dear Intern

Thank you very much for the printed ‘With Compliments’ slip you sent, along with my returned manuscript in my self-addressed stamped envelope. It fell through my letterbox at 11.15 this morning with a now familiar heavy thud. It’s a pecualiar thing, Honourable Intern, but I can hear that thud anywhere in my house.

I appreciate the sentiments of your standard rejection reply, that you are not confident you’d be able to find a publisher willing to publish my work. You’re the professional after all, but I have a question before I leave you to get on with your dream-slashing: did you actually read it? But properly read it?

I know it’s easier not to stick your neck out and actually recommend a manuscript to one of those big, scary agents, furthermore I know that you think you could write a book a million times better than anything you’re reading – you’re fresh out of university after all, we all thought that then. That arrogance will pass.

I have a request, sweet Topshop-clad Intern: next time you pick up a manuscript and glance at it for a total of 30 seconds before chucking it away, stop and look at it again. Because in that careless gesture of yours, you’re trashing four years of somebody’s life, you’re trashing somebody’s dreams, perhaps a stable mental state or a happy marriage.

Mine is a good book, worth reading. I don’t take it personally that you don’t agree, we are all entitled to our own opinions. But I ask you, in future, to be brave. Take a chance.

I wish you all the very best of luck elsewhere.

Yours unrepresented,

Rosie Rowell

When you’re in the thick of a novel, when you’re close to finishing, the world makes sense. Your life makes sense. Suddenly everything relates to your internal, fictional world: songs on the radio were written for your characters, world events, random comments by passers-by – everything has so much meaning. You dream about your characters, you catch sight of them in the Arrivals hall at the airport, and it demands the most enormous restraint not to run up to them and throw your arms around them. Your internal world, the world of your book, is as real as the world around you. In fact, it’s brighter, it’s more interesting, and of course, it is entirely controlled by you.

Then you’re finished, and you know you’re finished because there is nothing left to say. And because you’re finished your characters slowly start to fade. At first you hardly notice it, but soon enough the world of your book has receded into nothing more than a memory and in its place is nothing. A vast, hollow, vacuous nothing. So that pushing your trolley up and down the supermarket isles is not an opportunity to escape back into your world, it has reverted to the tedious task of pushing your trolley. And after a while the boredom gets replaced by a growing fear: what if that was it? What if I never get another idea for a story?

And then the panic sets in, and you think, ‘Goddamit, I will write! If its the last thing I do, I will find another story!’ And suddenly every one you speaks to is a budding writer with a great story lined up. And you start grabbing at ideas (‘Man walks down the street’ – hmm, great start, works for me!), but each idea fragments into dust before you’ve even managed to form a word around it.

Because the trouble is that you forget – you forget that the last book only really came alive in the third year of writing, you forget about the pile of a dozen notebooks jammed with writing that never even made it to the first draft.

You forget that characters and plot need space and time to settle in – they are willful creatures, they won’t be rushed. Novel Two is in many ways so much easier than your first, you’re at least 90,000 words wiser and more determined. You know how not write to it, you know to pace yourself.

But waiting for Novel Two, when you feel you’re being shut out of a world you once knew so well, when all you want, all you dream of, is the germ of a story with which you can start building another world, that’s one of the hardest things of all.

I took up writing and yoga at around the same time. In many ways the paths have been similar. I find that both of them route me in my life, make me a calmer, nicer person. Both of them demand commitment and humility and have so many levels of competency, that I could spend many lifetimes attempting to be any good. Both of them make me want to do better, to be better.

Such was my excitement and enthusiasm when I started practising yoga (not to mention degree of delusion) that to begin with I thought that the attention I received from the instructors was due to my natural ability. It was only when I visited a new studio after about a year of practising and was horrified when I caught sight of myself in a mirror that I realised that whilst on the inside I might be a warrior, with the person I was practising for balancing delicately on the end of my outstretched finger; on the outside my posture still sucked, my hips resolutely refused to open and I still couldn’t  balance on one leg.

Reality checks are good. They pull us back into the present when we’re rushing off another direction altogether. I’ve recently had my fourth writing ‘reality check’, or agent’s rejection letter for my novel. After three years of designing and reigning supreme in my own private universe, where I was God and my characters did as I said (well, for some of the time at least), it’s very grounding. And I’m in good company, I know, rejection is all part of being a writer, you’ve got to be able to deal it, in bucketloads. All of that I know in my head. But sometimes I feel slightly hysterical at just how improbable it is that I’ll ever get published – when one considers how many unsolicited manuscripts land on agents’ slush piles each week, what are the chances that someone is even going to pick up mine, let alone read it, like it and ask to see the rest of it? I don’t do maths, but I reckon you’re more likely to win the lottery.

My greatest fear in yoga is the headstand. I’m terrified of falling, I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be able to balance upside down. It’s a hangover from being a severely uncoordinated child. So whilst everyone else in the class gets on with getting upside-down, I develop instant lower back pain or some other lame excuse. Recently my instructor berated me for my feebleness. ‘Your body doesn’t have a problem with headstands, you’re strong, you’re perfectly able to do them,’ she said, ‘It’s all in your mind.’

As with most life-changing revelations, it’s perfectly obvious. The fear of falling is so much worse than falling; the real feeling of failure lies in not trying, not in getting it wrong. The only way in which I would ever be a failure as a writer is if I walked away from it.

Back to the mat then, back to the page.