Laurie Graham's Blog

I’ve been trying to figure out why going to work, to be precise, going to novel-writing work, has become something I dread. If an editor gives me the green light on a piece of journalism, I go to it with relish. But Dr Dan 5? At 9am with the file open on my laptop, oh woe, ever-so woe is me.

It pains me to say this but I’m not sure Dan 5 will ever see the light of day. Though I made a determined start on it several months ago I find I’m defeated by its unavoidable theme: the pandemic. This morning, yet again, I’ve been searching for plot points where I could insert a bit of comedy. Trust me, there are none. Covid-19 has changed doctors’ lives in entirely negative ways and Dan’s story, which I have always tried to keep realistic, must reflect that.

There is also, of course, the Trevor Buxton factor. He was respiratorily (is that a word?)-challenged in Book 1. What chances for him seven years on, with a virus that can wreck even healthy lungs? Truth be told, I can’t bear to kill him off. I want to leave him as he is at the end of Dr Dan, Dr Dad, blissfully happy in an unexpected frost-blossom romance.

What, if anything, to do? I suppose I could release a few Dan 5 excerpts here on my website. I might even try writing Dr Dan’s Covid diary (less onerous than plotting a novel). If nothing else, that could be my penance for complaining about the GP protocols we’ve all been subjected to since early 2020. At the practice where I’m registered it is still almost impossible to see a doctor face-to-face and I know that’s not unusual. But face-to-face has been the very essence of Dr Dan’s work.

Will doctors ever go back to the old ways? It’s hard to imagine they will. Could there be a cheerful post-pandemic Dr Dan book somewhere down the line? Never say never. But, forgive me dear, loyal readers, I can say with confidence, it won’t be this year.

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Great excitement in the Graham household, quite apart from the imminent arrival of grandchild No. 8.

First came a message from the Middle Daughter. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘you’re the answer in a word puzzle!’

And there it was. Not in the same league as getting an airport named after you, but still. And little did I know it but there was more to come.

My friend Mike, who puts exam candidates through their paces with practice papers, called to tell me he’d just spent an hour helping a student to comprehend, (English not his first language, so heaven help the child), and analyse the opening paragraphs of my novel Mr Starlight. I had been promoted to Teaching Aid.

It was all very thrilling. Rather more sobering was the fact that I couldn’t begin to answer the questions.

How does the writer use language features to describe Selwyn and Cledwyn’s living conditions when they were growing up? How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?  How does the writer focus your attention at the beginning and how does she change the focus as the source develops?

Dunno, dunno, dunno. I didn’t even know what a language feature was until Mike told me: punctuation, syntax, metaphor, that kind of thing.

I suppose I should understand why I do what I do, but I don’t. I just do it. And I have a sneaky feeling that creative writing is a bit like a golf swing. The more you analyse it, the worse it gets.

Nevertheless, I am tickled pink (idiom) to have something of mine selected. Just when you think it’s all over.  What next, I wonder?

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I’ve finally made a start on Dan 5 and a mixed experience it has turned out to be. On the wholly positive side, it’s like being back in the company of an old friend, or slipping on a comfortable pair of shoes. ‘What kept you?’ I hear Trevor Buxton ask. On the other side of the coin, I’ve been forced to read Dan 4 in order to remember who’s who and what’s what and then, of course, to draw up the condemned list. There will be, perforce, some exits.

Exits are now very much a part of my life because I live among the elderly. What am I saying? I’m among the elderly myself. This state of affairs has been sprung upon me, perhaps because I spent my sixties and early seventies focused on someone else. Now, suddenly, I’m being asked about my End of Life wishes. They are, in brief, not to have a television or radio blaring within earshot. Just an open window so I can hear birdsong, please. Oh, and preferably not to leave behind an unfinished manuscript, but I appreciate that that’s beyond the compass of modern medicine.

I may, of course, live another twenty years. This would require a genetic aberration because apart from my Great Uncle Alfred who was still riding his bike at 95, my relatives have all taken early showers, but such things can happen. And so, on, on…

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I have nothing to tell you, except that Dr Dan 5 is still in blank page format. I did make some notes but then the sun came out and I found a million other ways to spend my days. I need to steel myself for one last marathon. Journalism is different. When the phone rings I (almost) always say yes. If I’m sitting on a bus when a job comes in, I begin writing it in my head. If I’m at home, I sit right down and get started. My fingers fly over the keyboard, a bit like this. Yes, finding daft things to watch on YouTube eats up quite a lot of my time.

Since I became a cossetted Charterhouse Brother my needs are simple. Proper coffee made on my tiny hotplate. Enough sleep. And plenty of laughter. I’m setting off for Italy tomorrow, so here is a little rib-tickler to tide you over until I have something interesting to say. No, not the movie trailer! I’m talking about the Wilson, Kepple and Betty Sand Dance. It never fails for me.

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The older I get the list of things I’ve already given up grows longer. Liquorice Allsorts, Bourbon biscuits, Schubert Lieder, Cognac, Father Ted. Can’t stand any of them. When my Orthodox husband was alive we’d give up meat, but nowadays, contrary to medical fashion, my body tells me I need it. Not an enormous rib-eye that hangs over the edge of the plate, but definitely a bit of red meat protein.

The idea in Lent of course, is to stop desiring things and to turn your mind to what is needful. I should probably try to give up sneering, but it’s part of my stock-in-trade and I do still need to work. I might just dial it down a bit. I could try giving up testiness and ingratitude. That’s a plan.

I have now embarked on an unlooked for career as an occasional tour guide at my new home in the London Charterhouse. We offer two types of tour: those conducted by professional guides who really, really know their stuff and Brothers’ Tours led by people like me, who simply live here and have made it our business to learn about the place. I make no particular recommendation. I just put it out there.

And yes, I am now Brother Laurie. No surgery has taken place, no hormones prescribed, no hair shirt added to my wardrobe. Although, perhaps for Lent…

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Today, apart from changing the sheets and taking out the garbage, I have a job that gives me some satisfaction: playing God. Which, of Dr Dan’s previous cast of thousands, will survive to Book 5? Some people like designing gardens or rearranging furniture. My thing is playing the Grim Reaper, but with a red pen instead of a scythe. 

In any series there must be arrivals and departures, and not always expected ones. I have already received pleas for mercy on behalf of Trevor Buxton, Lilian Blacksmith and Emlyn Gadd. I make no comment, I make no promises. Just don’t run away with the idea that I find killing people easy. I live with these characters for the year it takes me to write their stories and when they go, as go some of them must, I feel the loss.

A few readers have questioned my decision to retire next year. They think I’m bluffing and they may be right. Since returning to work I feel less tired, not more so. Of course, there’s work and there’s work. Journalism, which by definition must be produced yesterday if not sooner, sends me into an adrenalin-fuelled tizz. My heart races, my fingers fly over the keyboard and after the piece is done and delivered I can’t sleep. A novel-writing marathon is quite different, an investment of time and energy that often feels like a wrong turn. Still, it beats any other job I ever had, and as it’s too late for me to become a firefighter or a neuro-surgeon or any other heroic asset to society, on I go. The red pen is poised.

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… on the way to the supermarket. I rediscovered my Get Up and Go. Or, more accurately, my Get Up and Write.

Walking has often served me as a pipe-opener, literally and figuratively, and I go out for a walk most days, exploring my new neighbourhood, piecing together the jigsaw of London. But it was on an urgent walk to the supermarket (washing powder and Marmite-coated cashews) that I was suddenly able to answer a question that’s been plaguing me: what, if anything, to write next.

I had just spent a week looking at yellowing notes for a novel my former publishers didn’t want, trying to assemble them into a coherent plot and failing. Maybe the publishers were right after all. It has been known.  Then, leaning into the wind between Goswell Road and Golden Lane, came a moment of clarity. What I want to do is write Dr Dan 5 and then retire. A lo, the clouds opened.

I’ll begin the outlining and research next week. Start writing by March. Publish before the end of the year. By which time I’ll be 75 (how the heck did that happen?) and, I think, ready to confine myself to a bit of journalism and the occasional blog post. It’s a plan. I do love a plan.

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I always suspected it was a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’.  And yes, in spite of two armfuls of Pfizer plus a booster, it got me in the end. Here I lurk, in strict quarantine, but supported and serviced by fellow residents. They make sure I don’t starve, though they know as well as I do, I could live off my body fat for quite some time.

I’m not exactly ill: a bit of a cough, a bit of a sniffle, but so depleted of energy it’s as though someone hoovered out all my mojo. Like liposuction, but for energy. Posting on this much-neglected website has required a huge effort and a stern talking to. ‘Get off the couch, Laurie. Post something. Post anything.’

Have I done any writing lately? No. But I have moved my notes for a possible new novel from the cardboard box of publisher’s rejects to my desk. They are there somewhere beneath the masks, the Kleenex, the Benylin and the Vick’s vapour rub. Tomorrow I might look at them. Heck, even Tolstoy had to start somewhere.

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My new life is gradually taking shape, though so far without accommodating any gainful work. There have been some changes. Now, as soon as I set foot outside my apartment door, I’m in a community. If I wish to eat breakfast with my fellow Brothers (and generally I do), I need to be dressed and on parade by 8.20. The chapel bell rings just before 8 o’clock and some of the menfolk use that as their alarm clock. All very well for them. A quick shave, a comb through whatever hair remains, jacket on, done. We girls need far more time.

My decision regarding which meals I’ll be taking has to be made a day in advance. It’s a small price to pay for being so well looked after. The meal register is ticked, the die is cast and I must put in an appearance. If I don’t, my compadres will wonder if I’ve woken up dead.

After years of servicing a large family I suddenly have few demands on my time. Theoretically I should have plenty of free hours in which to do all those things I have left undone or that I thought I desperately wanted to do. And yet, and yet… I reach supper time, (6.30, self-service, in the Great Hall), and I haven’t made much of a dent in my to-do list. Am I sliding into slothful old age? Or is this how life is supposed to be outside the hamster wheel? I really don’t know. But while I think about upping my game, please peel me a grape.

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I’m surfacing at last from the exhaustion of moving, not just house, but country too. I’m home, after a long absence and my children and grandchildren are relieved. 

I haven’t done a lick of work in weeks, which got me thinking about some of the jobs I’ve had over the years. My first, at the age of 15, was as a table-wiper and dishwasher in a cafe. There was then a brief stint at Woolworth’s, doing hourly rounds of the tills and scooping up cash into a leather bag. I’d have been a ripe target for mugging, but mugging had yet to be invented. Also, it was Woolworth’s, not Harrod’s.

I have also been a cashier in Halford’s Car Accessories, a temporary mail-sorter in the days when people sent Christmas cards, a canteen dinner lady, a pharmacy sales assistant, a bookshop employee and a printer cartridge factory operative. My patchy memories of this very chequered career are that I grew to loathe the smell of institutional gravy, that I spent most of my bookshop wages on books, and that I looked pretty good in a boiler suit.

Oh, and I have also been a feature writer, a newspaper columnist, a novelist and a script writer.

Now, approaching my 74th birthday, I am unemployed and not sure how I feel about it. I can start on a new book tomorrow. Today even. But I’m rather enjoying the novelty of an empty diary and London outside my front door so I’m thinking that I might doss until January. Dan 5 probably needs to wait until the Covid dust has settled, so next year’s project might be something different. Perhaps another historical novel that no-one buys…

So, not a gap year, but a gap November/December. The sheer luxury of it!

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