Gingerbread Sherlock, and his faithful Watson

Happy Birthday! May your celebrations be worthy of fistfuls of Mrs Hudson’s soothers.

As you may have heard, that nice Mr Cable-Knit there has gone and got himself a rather significant new job. This development has been met with universal whoops of glee and hula-dancing to They’re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard, swiftly followed by a trembly lower lip at the consequences for Sherlocky fun. (Or perhaps that was just at my house.) However, since Freeman is quite perfect for both roles, I think we can all agree that there’s only one logical solution.

Sherlock: The Adventure of the Bag-End Burglar

My childhood library. (That's not me in the picture. I'm not quite that old.)

This is the library I grew up in: probably the place that made me want to be a writer.   The children’s section was underground, accessed by a wrought-iron gate, a staircase coated with slippery green moss, and a dank, dripping tunnel.  Going to borrow books was like passing into the underworld – except you got to come out the other side, clutching fistfuls of Roald Dahl and Lucy M Boston.

The tunnel has been replaced by wheelchair and pushchair-friendly slopes – for which hooray, obviously: now the book-borrowing there is done by my smallest niece and nephew, who are a bit wee to appreciate a cod-gothic intro to Story Time.  My borrowing takes place in Oxford, under the amused gaze of a librarian who (correctly) suspects I am not taking out Meg Cabot on behalf of an absent teenage daughter.  But I still have the same sensation of being in a vast papery sweet shop.  There are books!  I can take them away without paying!  And if I bring them back – ok, get this, no, really – they’ll let me have some more!

My last visit did remind me of two downsides of my childhood adventures in that underworld:

I reread a lot as a kid. The instinct is still there: my hand reaches automatically for the familiar titles, because I trust them. And I didn’t know how to move on.  Downstairs the names on the spines were old friends: upstairs books were sorted by genre, and I didn’t have a clue where to start. I fell into a gap: not quite ready for Austen, and deeply scared that I might borrow something too challenging or, erm, porny by accident.  (My pre-teen brain: oh, sigh.)

And now? I’m not sure that would’ve happened.  There are SO MANY GOOD BOOKS – and so many ways to find out about them.  You kids these days, you don’t know how lucky you are, with your gigantically varied YA universe, and your well-informed librarians, and your new-fangled reviewing blogthings on your interwebs…

I take it back. That is me in the picture, and apparently I am that old. Now get off my lawn, you whippersnappers! *waves stick* *throws cat*

I started Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush: lovingly written, and if YA paranormal romance is your bag then I suspect this is cream not milk – but it’s just not my cup of tea. Alice Kuipers’ Life on the Refridgerator Door fascinated me in a writerly way (how much of a conventional novel can you strip away without losing the fundamentals?) but I was left disappointed, mostly by the thought that we as readers probably need those conventions after all.  And then I read Anne Cassidy’s Forget Me Not, which blew me away.  The story of an missing child, which becomes the story of another missing child from almost 20 years before: multi-layered, suspenseful, all in deceptively simple prose that takes you by the hand and won’t let go.  I want to read everything she’s ever written.

I keep leaping out of bed at 2 am to write down ideas.  Then leaping out of bed at 8 to write them properly.  I’m making wrong turns, and there’s still lots to do with the opening chapters before they are on-the-nose right, but the voice is sorted, and it’s all a bit lovely, this new thing.

Raising a glass of Luigi’s finest to Gene Hunt and the Ashes To Ashes crew, who went out with a blinding finale and will be much missed (I’m still not over the departure of The Perm: this is going to be a slow break-up); ducking Lost finale spoilers (cos I’m only on S5 and that’s too many hours of having my brain broken to ruin the ‘ending’); wondering if my life will ever stop revolving around television about wonky time-travel (while watching Doctor Who, obvs).

Joshua Files launch: Agent Peter Cox, MG Harris and BBC Oxford's Bill Heine

In a change from our regularly scheduled bacon sarnies, this week I got to hear good mate MG Harris nattering about books in a slightly more glam context.  The launch party for the third Joshua Files book, Zero Moment, transformed Oxford Blackwell’s into a riot of excited readers and luminous cake.  MG even dished a big secret about Book 5!  Now, if only I can persuade her to give me her Lime Cheesecake cupcake recipe…

I confess, I snagged an early preview so I read this a while ago – but gosh, Zero Moment really does live up to its limited-edition glowing green cover.  If you’re not up to speed with all things Joshua File-y, I suggest you kidnap the nearest 11-year-old boy and insist he fills you in.  (Then let him go again: it’s only polite.)  Josh leaves Oxford for Mexico once again, with Mum and Tyler along for the trip, but a thrilling buggy ride across the sand ends in disaster.  This time Josh isn’t the one in obvious danger – but while he’s chasing one set of bad guys, there’s another lot closing in.  Throw in some nifty time-travel and a car chase on a winding Swiss mountain pass that will leave you utterly breathless, and you have, undubitably, the best Joshua book yet – and that’s high praise indeed.

The downside of having finished the first draft of The Poppy Project is that this week I had to read it.  Ugh.  AL Kennedy sums up the state of mind beautifully in this weekend’s Guardian: could do better.

Discovering that Wii swordfighting brings out my, um, forceful tendencies; watching so much BSG that I sincerely pondered the potential charm of an invisible blonde giant whispering in Poppy’s ear all through draft number 2; lamenting the de-relaxation properties of cancelled yoga classes.

I’ve wanted a hammock since the summer after my GCSEs, when I spent an entire week at a French campsite refusing to budge out of one, while reading Dune.  (Truly, there cannot be more compelling evidence of the comfortableness of hammocks.  Sorry, sci-nerds, but that’s a 750-page turd of a book.)

Today the sun shone, I read the weekend Guardian cover to cover, and there were raspberries, and much tea.   Bliss.

  Nomnomnombooks. Lately I’ve read Scarlett Thomas’ PopCo, which is marginally less weird than The End of Mr Y, despite being about commercial globalisation, treasure-hunting, and complex mathematical formulae. Brilliant, though: the ideas are magnificent but it’s the characters I still miss, weeks later. Then Nicola Upson’s An Expert In Murder: faux 30s detective fiction, starring actual 30s detective fiction author Josephine Tey (do you see what she did there?), who gets embroiled in a series of murders connected to her play about Richard III.  Being a Tey geek, I adore the concept more than is reasonable, but the execution is a disappointment: in lieu of narrative urgency the point of view wanders from character to character, including to the killer – who conveniently happens not to be thinking “hmm, wish I hadn’t committed that murder” at the time – and Tey is barely in it. I’d go and read Brat Farrar instead if I were you (or Allingham’s Dancers in Mourning, for genuine Golden Age theatreland intrigue). I’ve also finally read a Jaclyn Moriarty, Becoming Bindy McKenzie (YA), which I adored with the queasy reservations of one who recognises bits of her teenage self in the (profoundly unlovely) heroine. The denouement is bonkers, but there’s so much brilliance before that you don’t mind at all. It’s the 3rd of her Ashbury books, and I plan to eat the others as soon as the library lets me.

  I have proofs!  One last pass over the insides of My Invisible Boyfriend (the US title for Girl Meets Cake), which is going to look beautiful.  And I’m playing with a new Sooper Sekrit Project: only a few thousand words in, but I’m getting a wee bit excited.  If I can juuust get the voice right…

Becoming enthralled by the televisual loveliness that is Chuck; watching Don Juan De Marco (Johnny Depp is so young! Marlon Brando is so… many other things); being dead chuffed about Anthony Browne being the new children’s laureate; eating lasagne; still loving RebelliousPixels’ Buffy vs Twilight satire vid (just in case you missed it); wondering if I can bring the hammock indoors at the end of the summer so I don’t have to contemplate life without it…

I am in awe of your collective gingerbread boyfriend-making skills, gentle readers!  Apparently inspired by having made 60 gingerbread personages (YEP! SIXTY!), the divine Rosie has produced a selection of mini-dress and monokini-ed gogo dancers, hippy chicks, and Nehru-jacketed Beatles, look!  Cor, etc.  Anna, meanwhile, has beaten me to the TARDIS with her spectacular selection of Gingerbread Doctors (and Donna too, hurrah) – not to mention some unidentifiable-by-me-but-probably-very-recognisable-if-you-know-who-they-are snooker players, who you will find in the Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Gallery along with many magnificent new pics! Applause all round to Tina, Jess, Alex, Cerys, Other Jess, James, Small Person, Josie, and anyone who volunteered to clean up the kitchen afterwards.  I hope your Gingerbread Beloveds were all as yummy as they looked.

I feel strangely hungry now.

  Sally Nicholls, Season of Secrets.  READ THIS BOOK.  I mean it.  Find yourself an enormous box of tissues first and someone to hug you at regular intervals, because it’s an unflinching look at the impact on a family of the death of a parent.  But don’t let that put you off, because – like her brilliant debut, Ways to Live Forever – it’s also extraordinary.  Like David Almond’s Skellig, a family tragedy runs parallel to a child’s encounter with an improbable saviour (in this case not an angel but the mythical Green Man), which represents all their fears regarding the terrifying fragility of life, but also offers the hope of renewal.  Unmissable and unforgettable.

Have also just read Joanna Nadin’s My So-Called Life, the first of her Rachel Riley series, which is very very funny (though there was a disappointing lack of Jordan Catalano), and made me feel really quite relieved I’m not 13.

  I’m currently writing a comedy/romance/sci-fi/musical set in Oxford/space/The Future/1832, in which a girl/boy/wisecracking armadillo sidekick have to save the cheerleader/save the world/save the Wispa bar all over again, and also fight crime/some Conquistadors/each other! with hilarious consequences.  It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of thing.  Maybe.  Oh, all right, I’m not writing that really.  I quite want to now, though.  Who doesn’t love a wisecracking armadillo?  In the meantime, here’s my interview with the lovely Jenny at Wondrous Reads.

Being startled by how much I loved the new Star Trek (Gingerbread Kirk, Spock and McCoy? oh, I think so); cooking feijoada, mmm; getting overexcited by muppets all over again.