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Stiff upper lip – and no moustache

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

Every so often people write about the psychological damage caused by the British uppercrust boarding school system as it was experienced until fairly recently.  The writers are men, describing the experience of boys, often sent away at 7 or 8 to prep school before going on to one of the big name schools.  Years of physical and sexual abuse was the lot of many.  The most recent book of this genre to be in the news (Channel Four, 11.4.17) is Alex Renton’s “Stiff Upper Lip.”  It took him forty years before he was able to talk about his school life, at Ashdown prep school followed by Eton.  Jon Snow interviewed him, sitting on a bench in the grounds of Ashdown house – now transformed and reformed, I must add.  The writer pointed out the window of the headmaster’s study.  Watching, one could only shudder for the child that had been abused within those walls.

In the studio was a psychologist.  She talked of boarding school syndrome.  A child removed from its home and immediately taught not to cry or object to any treatment is likely to become an adult who internally harbours a bereaved child, whose needs have never been heard.    The child part may not be recognised in the adult, by the adult or those in relationship with them.   But it will make itself known in behaviour.

When I was training to be a psychotherapist, I was led to consider childhood experiences, and the effects of boarding school on others but most particularly on myself.  Oh, I loved school, I used to say.  Then I remembered, with numerical exactitude, my first three weeks of nights spent soaking my koala bear with tears, hoping no-one in the dormitory could hear me.   At least we were allowed to have one soft toy, before we were shamed into leaving it behind.  Were there others gulping down tears?   Maybe not.   I joined the school in January when I was ten and a half, the only new girl in my house and form.  The rest had joined in September, at the beginning of the school year.  They’d long since learnt not to cry.  No-one came in the night to comfort me.  That would have been breaking a taboo as long established as the school, founded in 1864 and modelled on Arnold’s Rugby.    After 21 nights, I remember clearly coming to the conclusion that I must give up tears.

Alex Renton’s television interview prompted me to think again about boarding school syndrome, and the differences in experience for boys and girls.  Boys suffered physical abuse: beatings and sexual abuse.  What about us girls?  We are never part of this conversation.  Does that mean we weren’t abused?  I haven’t yet gone into this in any depth.  But I’m prompted to think about it today.

At my boarding school, we weren’t beaten and – to the best of my knowledge – no mistress ever sexually abused a pupil.  There was no sex education.  My mother must have thought the school would deal with this so I had no idea how babies were made.  I remember thinking that tummy buttons might be involved.  The novels in the meagre fiction library had been thoroughly censored, although there was something rather thrilling in ‘How Green Was My Valley’.  A girl admired her body in a mirror.  That was the sort of mild and innocent scene that excited a female boarding school inmate growing up without mirrors, without guidance.   On leaving school at 18, I was at sea, as keen to learn what sex was all about as I was frightened to learn.

This is a strange way to be brought up, but can it be labelled as abuse? I think so.  It was emotional abuse, a gender-compatible form.  We were brought up not to be ourselves, not to be fully feminine; in fact, to be sort-of-men, to have stiff upper lips but not – horrors! – moustaches.   At hunt balls and Scottish reels in village halls we met boys a little older than ourselves who’d been at the right sort of public schools.  We were as inept as each other at relating to the opposite sex.  Somehow most of us muddled through, despite that early damage.   But it’s well to be aware, as the psychologist in yesterday’s interview pointed out, that many of our ruling elite are, at heart, bereaved children, who – as children – silently suffered regular beating and/or sexual abuse.   How may that influence their policy-making?  The irony is that the system is continually reinforced by fathers sending their sons to their old public schools.   “Never did me any harm!”   Mothers have usually resisted, for a variety of reasons.

My schooling, for which my father paid more than he could afford on a retired army officer’s pension, left me determined not to send my children away to school.  We came home from our Greek island life so that our two could go to the local comprehensive, and we chose Devon as the best location for that local.  Peter and I get heated in any discussion about private education.  We think it is the single most divisive element in our society.    Worst of all, private education has become a far more widely desired goal than it ever was in the past.  In the days of empire, boarding schools were a practical necessity for people serving overseas.  They are still necessary for people whose work is abroad.  But goodness me, if you’re Chinese, African, or of any other nation, please don’t perpetuate an abusive system by propping it up with your offspring.  Even if boarding schools are not nearly as harshly run as they were, the private education system is not good for a child.   It turns out individuals with a false and dangerous sense of superiority; those that have boarded have the added handicap of being emotionally stunted.  How could they not be.

A growing number of people, who have ‘done better’ than their parents, want to give their children the education they didn’t have themselves.  They send their children to private day schools.   But in country areas it’s a case of taking, not sending.  They drive miles and miles, not just for the normal school day but for after-school activities.  The children have no local friends.   The parents consider they’re giving their children the chance of a good education.  But it’s not a matter of a better or worse education; it’s our society’s value system that’s askew.

In my utopia, everyone, girls and boys, go to the local school, to the great benefit of that local school’s standards.  If parents have to live abroad in a country where local schools are non-existent, then their children are fostered back home during termtime with a family in the local school’s catchment area.  It is inhuman to send a child to an alien environment without pressing cause.  In my utopian comprehensive system, streaming allows people of similar abilities to learn together, and practical skills are as valued as academic ones.  As my great-aunt Lydia Becker said, “Every boy in Manchester should be taught how to darn his own socks and cook his own chops.”  Lydia, a forerunner of the Pankhursts, founded “The Women’s Suffrage Journal” in 1870.   See page 111 in ALIVE IN WORLD WAR TWO, The Cousins’ Chronicle 1939 – 1945 and 2016.

Roll on, Utopia.  Meanwhile, I’ll order Alex Renton’s “Stiff Upper Lip” –   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/12/stiff-upper-lip-by-alex-renton-review

Sometimes I feel my age

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

I remember my mother saying this.  It struck me as an odd thing to say.  It no longer seems remotely odd.  I know exactly what she meant.  It’s just that I’m years too late in having a good conversation with her on the subject.

The thing that’s prompted my thought is my present need to engage on social media in a far more energetic way than I’ve ever wanted to do.   I’ve used a computer since the early 90s, but I’ve barely bothered with Facebook and other such sites.  Now I must.   Today I penetrated into the nether reaches of LinkedIn and dared a post. I then linked it to Facebook and Twitter.  Have I ever tweeted?  I can’t remember.  Who on earth will see a tweet of mine?  You need followers.   Followers used to mean the young lads who would hang around a kitchen door waiting for a parlourmaid to come off duty.  Or so I picked up from novels of the early twentieth century.

Now it’s the 21st century, and even politics is conducted by tweet.   Very soon I shall retire gracefully from the fray.  I’ve just one more job to do: help promote “White Lies” among book bloggers.  See

www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/white-lies-susan-barrett-tour

 

Do you feel on the inside the way you look on the outside?

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

We get so used to the appearance of people – our family, friends, people in the public eye – that we think we know what they’re like.  But think for a moment what it feels like to be you, and match that against what you see in the mirror.  The mirror image may not be what other people see when they look at you.  And no-one else can possibly know what it feels like to be inside that face and body.

I’ve been contemplating the mismatch between appearance and inner experience, prompted by an interview I did with wonderfully exuberant Michelle Cornwell-Gordon, of the U.S. IndieReview Behind the Scenes programme.  Maybe there are people who come across this post who feel exactly the same inside and outside.  I don’t.  I had to ask my husband as we watched the video together, “Is that really like me?”  It wasn’t that I particularly object to the person I saw being interviewed.  It was simply hard to accept I am that person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft-xXmaPsMU

Promotion

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

Nobody likes a braggart.  People of my generation in particular were brought up not to blow our own trumpets, as our parents’ disapproving voices phrased it.   So what does a writer producing a new book in one of the many independent ways that exist nowadays do about promotion?

When I was firmly bedded in the mainstream literary world, I never had to worry about PR.  The publisher and my agent would do what they could; it was in their interest, too.  The last novel that was published in the conventional way – Stephen and Violet, published by Collins – was launched with a small party at my agent’s office.  Two other writers kindly came: Jonathan Raban and Sebastian Faulks.  They were ‘names’ then but went on to become even better known.  Heady days, which I took for granted.

Today, without an agent, without a publisher, I must pick up, polish and blow my own trumpet.  Although it’s half a year since I brought out two novels and a non-fiction book with CreateSpace on Amazon, I’ve done nothing as yet.   But my reluctance to self-advertise has changed.  I’ve embarked on a publicity venture, thanks to Teddy Rose of Virtual Author Book Tours.  On Saturday I shall find myself in my study, facing my laptop’s screen, video-conferencing with someone called Michelle in the States on a Blog Talk Radio Show.   The book I will be pushing is “White Lies”.  I’d better leave this post and have a quick re-read to remind myself what on earth it’s about…

Separating the wheat from the chaff

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

If you picture the actual process behind the expression ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’, it’s easy to see that there is always a great deal more chaff than wheat.  You have to pick out the precious wheat, and let the chaff blow away.  That’s useful to remember when applying the expression as a metaphor in real life situations.  Take this page, for instance.

It’s likely that the great majority of the comments that Posts like this receive will be chaff.  Similarly, in the self-publishing world, there is far more chaff published than worthwhile wheat.    It’s a shame when the wheat gets lost in the flurry of chaff.

I don’t think there’s a way of providing the facility for comments without letting in all those advertisers who use it to for their own purposes.  It would be good if people with genuine comments could use the word ‘Wheat’ in their first sentence!  Then I’d read their contribution carefully and not trash or spam it with the chaff.

First past the post second time around

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

I wrote my first post on July 11th 2016.  Tomorrow that will be six months ago.   Now, at the beginning of a new year, it’s a good time to reflect on my website history as well as look forward to the way the site is developing.

Re-reading my first post, I can remember my feelings of bewilderment and determination.  It was like diving into a lake shrouded in fog.  I knew I wanted to be in that lake – but was it safe?  Were there unseen obstacles?  Was it full of struggling swimmers who might pull me down?  Would I sink without trace?

Even though I’d set up websites in the past – one that I paid to have designed, another I’d created myself on a template – this WordPress one seemed almost too easy.  I hadn’t set out to make a blog appear on its home page, but hey presto!  a blog appeared: an easy forum for passing thoughts.   What was I going to call it?  The term used in the menu to describe this page was ‘Posts’.  In the whoosh of my first dive-in, the phrase “First past the post” came to me.  Well, it was the first post and I was past it.  Then I discovered how ripples appear some time after a post.  A few days after my first dive into the lake,  there were people – unknown people – reading what I was writing.  They were commenting on “First past the post.”   I began to wish I hadn’t chosen such a numerically definite title.  First is only first when it is first.  But never mind the wording, I told myself; I was getting responses from unknown people who seemed to appreciate what I was saying.

Then, among the genuine responses came the useless ones, intent on selling their own wares.  I haven’t yet learnt how to stop these coming in. Perhaps it’s inevitable that you’ll receive unwelcome visitors when you offer an open forum.  So far they are not harmful, just a nuisance.

The comments which I welcome are from people who want to learn something new.  However, I’m not sure exactly what the something new might be.  Perhaps they simply like to read of my experience as a long-term writer dealing with the opportunities and obstacles that exist in present day publishing.   It would be helpful if any readers of this post would present a specific question.  Even without such prompting, I find there is always a new thought that pops up and inspires a post.

Looking back at my first post, I’m reminded of my reason for setting up the site.  I thought I would – with a fair ration of good luck – reach new readers for my work, particularly for “Alive in World War Two, The Cousins’ Chronicle”.  There have been sales, but no more than there might have been without this website.  I know the thing to do is to stay put, keep with it, not give up.  So I’ll carry on.  I’ll continue with this First Past the Post as many times as it stays worth it for me and for – I hope – others.

 

How to set targets

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

Now is the time a great many of us make resolutions about how we will improve ourselves and our lives.  We resolve to give up bad habits and/or take up good habits.  My bad habit is eating too much Bombay Crunch and drinking two glasses of wine while watching the evening news.  Just to write that sentence makes me nervous that some bossy part of me will dictate that I must give this habit up.  My rebel part kicks in.  I won’t give up wine and Bombay Crunch!  Even if I managed for a week of abstinence, it wouldn’t last.

A good habit that Peter and I have developed over the autumn is a 20 minute walk.  The target is to go for this short local walk every day after lunch.  Timing needn’t be exact but it’s usually around 1.45.  We turn right along the lane, then up a steep hill to the top; turn round, and back home.  By 2.15 or so we are at work again, P in his studio, myself in my study.  If we have to miss a day, we don’t beat ourselves up.  But the reason for missing has to be justifiable.  It can’t be just “it’s too cold” or “I’m not feeling like it.”

We’ve found it easy to maintain this habit because the target is so modest.  If we’d vowed to walk two or three miles every day, we’d never have managed to keep it up.  There wouldn’t be time.  We’d sometimes be too tired or we’d have too many other things to do.

Similarly – speaking for myself – my writing targets are modest.  The morning is my time.  I am at my desk from, say, 9 until 1 p.m.  I will sometimes return in the afternoon, but as a treat away from other jobs.  How my study hours are spent vary, depending on what I’m working on at the time: it could be writing fluently while in the middle of a novel, or it might be reading background material, or writing a long email descriptive of some recent event.  That last I consider essential for keeping my writer’s hand in.  Writing is a kind of reflex action to things that happen in life.  Sometimes I can’t do anything else until I’ve understood, in the words with which I describe it, what exactly it is I have just experienced.

I never use word counts as writing targets, although I know many people do.   The important thing is to choose a target that is easy for you to achieve.  It’s the regularity that’s important, not the size of the ambition.

My target for the next month (never mind the next year) is to give up cow’s milk products.  Goat’s milk on my breakfast oats was the way I started today.  If I find this benefits me, I will be motivated to continue for longer.

Another short-term target is to discover how to block the advertising mailing that comes in disguised as comments on this page, sent by organisations or people who have latched on to my open door policy.  One that keeps appearing is about earning money from writing.  It has standard wording but is sent in by many different people.  The other repetitive comment is about bathroom products.   I trash it as soon as I see it, hardly giving myself time to work out what language it’s in, or what it’s about.

But I do click the Approve button for comments on the content of my posts.  Thanks to those people who tell me they find them useful and interesting.    “Please continue”, they say.  And so I resolve to continue into 2017.  Happy New Year.

 

 

Platform heels

/ Susan Barrett / Leave a comment

Remember shoes with platform heels?  We had a friend who was unhappy about his lack of height.  He loved the excuse the fashion gave him (it wasn’t confined to female footwear) to become a couple of inches taller.

This memory has been brought on by my use of the word ‘platform’ in a comment I made in a discussion in a LinkedIn group, ‘Books and Writers’.  The discussion was started by the question ‘How can an author find readers?’  There’ve been many comments.  I added one which I will paste below with slight editing.

The comments so far are about the quality of a book’s contents and its packaging – the cover, title and the descriptive blurb which indicates its genre.  But we haven’t yet answered the question.  Think of finding buyers for, say, sausages.  First, the ingredients must be good.   Then package them in an appealing way.  Are they pork?  Beef? Vegetarian?  Make it clear what the package contains.  That’s the easy part.  Now you’ve got to find buyers.  You need a stall in the market.  Similarly,  a writer must create a platform on which to present the book that’s been produced with all necessary care.  This means creating a website, becoming active on social media, contacting local bookshops, courting publicity in regional magazines and so on.  I’m a beginner at marketing, although an old hand at writing.  Other ideas are welcomed.  Of the 102,259 members of this group, I bet the majority are writers looking for readers, rather than readers looking for writers.  But here’s a question for readers – where do you find the books you want to read?

When fact gets in the way of fiction

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Good research of facts makes fiction more believable, even when that fiction is fantasy.  As readers we can relate more easily to the writing when we trust the writer knows his or her subject.

But research must be deftly sewn into the writing, so that it doesn’t outweigh the fiction, dragging it down into a muddy recitation of facts.  Invisible sewing is the name of the game.

Another way fact can get in the way of fiction has occurred in my life.  I was expecting to be absorbed in writing my new novel, working title “Greek Gold”.  I have got my main character to arrive in Cairo in 1943, poised for action.  But life, or rather death, has intervened.  My husband’s sister’s partner (not a close relationship from my point of view) died on Thursday of prostate cancer.  His unavoidable death has been expected since diagnosis last winter.  All the same, a death – however long expected – is a shock and a loss when it occurs.  As my sister-in-law’s partner he has been part of the family for many years, living only half-an-hour’s drive away.  We’ve been supporting Jennifer during this time and were at the nursing home with her when Bill died.

This is the second time I’ve witnessed that moment when someone crosses the hair’s breadth line between life and death.  Then how quickly the person we know becomes absent, leaving just chalky white material covering bones.  It is an astounding event, besides being the cause of grief.

I find that I cannot get back easily into writing fiction.  The image of Bill on his deathbed gets in the way.  Of course I know it won’t stay in the foreground of my mind for long.  The living man as he was will be what I remember.  But the manner of his death and the image attached to it will stay at the back of my writerly mind, and is likely to re-emerge as fiction in the future.

Real life feeds fiction, and fiction feeds real life.