Depression

Five lockdown whinges

May 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news … or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

Death: Don’t try this at home

February 8, 2020 by Mo Fanning 3 Comments

My mother has been dying for 47 days and yet everyone who visits insists she looks better. They hover by her bedside and make impossible promises about things they’ll do together when she’s back on her feet.

Sometimes she manages a smile. Sometimes I do too. We both know we’re lying.

In the early years of the 20th century, 85% of people died in their home, surrounded by their family. Today, most find death in a hospital, care home or hospice. When I learned my mother wouldn’t get better, the hope for dying well became important. I made a deal with myself. She’ll end her days with dignity and in as much comfort as her catalogue of illness allows.

Most people get money in Christmas cards. Ten years ago, my mother slipped a copy of her living will into mine. This is what she wants.

Change

She’s always hated change. The Jif to Cif transition years were hell. Despite being confined to a hired hospital bed, she keeps control of the heating. I’m living in a sauna with scatter cushions.

On days when a nurse comes to change her dressings, my mother moans in pain. Afterwards, her mind melts, and sends her to wander through a mumbling, muttering maze as it mends.

Living out of a suitcase in a box room has taken its toll. Most mornings, the person staring back from the mirror looks like something the dog slept on. On the plus side, she’s now blind, and no longer knows for sure when I put on weight. It doesn’t stop the jibes.

My mother won’t get better. These are her final days and weeks. Each day, someone else dressed in blue arrives to remind us of this and hand over death-themed permission slips. When the time comes, a trained medical professional gets to dip into a stash of powerful drugs with a street value twice that of our car. Another signed document lets the same person pronounce her dead, freeing us of the need to ring around for a rare-as-hens-teeth out-of-hours doctor.

The unspoken rules of death

As this grim circus plays out , we ignore the elephant that’s not such in the room, as juggling balls and doing tricks for money.

An unspoken rule insists the living avoid saying the wrong thing to the dying. Like her visiting friends with their cards and flowers, those closet to my mother speak in positive terms, and never dare show frustration or exhaustion.

I sit next to her bed and drink tea, listening for any change in her breathing and trying to make sense of the words she cries as she drifts in and out of sleep. Late into the night, I watch TV and marvel at the self-confidence of the young and chiselled gods who populate reality shows.

Death forces you to reflect on what matters. I think it might be sex with 25-year-olds.

My mother how she should be remembered in death — Riding a camel in the 1980s, as you do

Testicular cancer: Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation

February 6, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Last year, around 2,300 British men were told they had testicular cancer. That’s more than six every day. The number of cases diagnosed has doubled since the mid-1970s with 70 men dying each year from the disease. 1 in 250 men will get testicular cancer. With those numbers, it’s only a matter of time before Moonpig does a card.

Despite being one of the most treatable cancers, there remain many misconceptions around testicular cancer.

As a notorious homosexual and a big fan of manscaping, I was no stranger to self-examination and judged myself low risk. Testicular cancer mainly affects men aged between 15 and 49, with those aged under 35 the most vulnerable. I was 52: a time for allotments and escorted cruises down the Rhine.

Instead, I sat through a scrotal ultrasound (as much fun as it sounds), trying to read the expression on my consultant’s face. She sent me to sit in a different part of the hospital where another doctor came to tell me I had cancer. He explained the operation (in and out within the day, literally) and what might happen afterwards. I may be anxious, suffer mood swings and feel tired. I joked about how this suggested I must have had cancer since the age of fifteen. He didn’t laugh.

Have a feel

A study by cancer charity, Orchid discovered that 67% of British men don’t know how to check their balls. Once a month, have a feel. Ideally after a bath or shower. The most typical symptom is a painless swelling or small pea-sized lump in one ball. If one of your balls seems firmer, or looks different to the other, if there’s a dull ache or sharp pain or a sense of heaviness–even if not constant–you need to get yourself checked out. Most lumps or swellings are not a sign of cancer, but they should never be ignored.

And if it is cancer, trust me, the fear of becoming a uniballer is more daunting than the reality. Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation. 80% of cases are cured completely, that rises to 98% if caught early.

Fast forward, and I’m about to mark two cancer-free years. Unless Mooonpig gets its act into gear, I won’t celebrate, but it’s a milestone I’m relieved to reach. Losing one ball is no big deal. I’ve been with the same bloke for over twenty years, so it was largely decorative. Most men of my age don’t so much have a scrotum as a windsock, so the nip and tuck of surgery has given me that much-sought-after youthful look.

Under surveillance

Men who’ve had testicular cancer once are 12 times more likely to get it again. The NHS has me covered. For ten years, I’ll be ‘under surveillance’ and not just by Cambridge Analytica. For the first few years, every three months, there’s a blood test, every six a scan. It sounds intrusive, but I see this as insurance. The rest of you bounce from one credit card bill to the next, not knowing what’s going on inside your bodies. I get a regular MoT.

My life changed after cancer. In a good way. As soon as I knew I wasn’t going to die right away, I returned to writing – after years of putting it off ‘until tomorrow’. I went from knowing next to nothing about the subject, to talking about testicular cancer to everyone. Online and in the office … anyone willing to listen. I summoned up the nerve to try stand-up comedy – turns out that’s even scarier than losing a ball.

Most people suffer poor mental health post-trauma and I can’t deny there are days when anxiety wins. I no longer drink and that leaves me with little in the way of release when the world grows big and scary. I’ve reached the age when the people from Saga Insurance stalk me with junk mail and Facebook suggests male incontinence pants. But last year, I got married to a man I met 22 years earlier. I told jokes on stage in front of 200 people and finished work on my next book.

Cancer doesn’t need to be an end. In almost every case, it’s the beginning.

The joys of a new job

February 26, 2013 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

The thing you miss most when you start a new job though is a licence to moan. As a writer this is your thing. In your old job you got to huddle round the kettle and whine about how Debbie from Accounts spends half her day on Facebook. You got to spend lunch breaks in the pub with disenfranchised colleagues setting out how you’d do things differently, if only the powers that be would listen. To be fair, it’s why you quit. It just isn’t done on the first day in a new job to roll your eyes when someone jumps up in the middle of a meeting to punch the air and whoop about how the customer is king.It’s on the tip of your tongue to stage whisper ‘Moron’, but you have to hold back. For one thing, you’re an outsider. Everyone’s been told to be on their best behaviour and not scare off the newbie. Add to which they probably have you down as a spy – or the sort who runs to the boss telling tales.

Try snorting with derision when the person assigned to talk you through processes and procedures waves lyrical about how each customer is lovely. The look you get combines disbelief with fear. They look around for the hidden camera, convinced they’re on an episode of ‘Undercover Boss’. You can’t blame them, TV these days seems to have all but done away with the script. Channel 4 might as well screen live feeds from CCTV cameras. It recently reached new levels of stupid with Gogglebox. A fly-on-the-wall documentary about people watching fly-on-the-wall documentaries. And I do know the phrase fly-on-the-wall dates me, it just feels slightly more honest than the word ‘reality’. I’m waiting for the show to sidestep into the surreal idea of Googlebox people watching Gogglebox. I’m almost sure there’s a novel in there. Or a short story at the very least.

Can you hear the writer at the back?

Moving away from TV, is it me or has the world got louder? First thing in the morning, Brighton should be populated by eye-contact-avoiding drones clutching overpriced coffee. When did people start shouting so early and needing to drive inappropriate cars over speed-bumped side roads? Why are the once empty buses now crammed full of pushchairs and pensioners? It’s making me hanker for the quiet life, me, Mr Fanning and a field, perhaps a few dogs. So what I’m saying here is buy my novel and help keep at least one more person off the streets. It could be my seat on the bus that lets you rest your weary soul. Perfect karma and all for the price of a paperback – or a digital download if you’re feeling particularly modern.

The new day job has rather got in the way of progress on a new novel. I was a good way into things when stress took over. Given this has been my life for the past two or three years, it didn’t really surprise me, though it did feel even more ill-timed that usual, given I was quite enjoying the writer work in progress. I’m back on board with it now and progressing slowly. Of course the worry remains that nobody will want to read it. The thing that keeps me going is that I would buy it. I would read it. I’m enjoying how the weaker plot points come back to haunt writer. I find myself asking ‘why would she do that’, ‘how would anyone think that could happen’ and the like. I put much of this down to my attempt to embrace the snowflake method of writing. And when I say embrace, I really mean pucker up and air kiss. The work on creating a linear plot, character studies and sample scenes is paying off.

Being a writer

I’m also tending to patchwork more than before. With a novel, I always find there are set scenes I’m looking forward to tackling as a writer. Scenes fraught with high drama or knockabout comedy. Rather than wait until they arrive naturally in the plot, I’m writing them ahead of time, then dropping them in to edit in view of what has changed since first imagined. It’s proving a good exercise in that it keeps my characters on message, they don’t do so much out of character. It’s also curbing my tendency to rush to these scenes with sketchy chapters that read like shopping lists rather than natural progressions.

Someone told me a story just the other day about a writer who hit the big time with their first book was struggling with the second. Over dinner with a fellow scribe who’d only been ‘discovered’ after writing her tenth book, he mourned the pressure. The fear lay in having missed out on making mistakes in private, well away from the critics. The ten-book veteran had all the luck, he insisted, she’d been able to get it wrong in private. A bit like when rehab child stars whine about missed youth. Having so far packed four finished novels into boxes for burning, I can only hope I’m half way to pay-dirt. And to be fair, looking back on some of those early books, burning was too good for them.

Ideas keep coming

Encouragingly, an idea for the next novel has come into my head less than midway through the current one. This is how it used to be in the glory days of first writing. It’s another noncommercial idea, but another thing I’d love to read.

So, with this I leave you, again promising to make this a more regular sort of affair, something we can set both our watches by – if I wore one. I don’t. New boss stared at me in wonder and asked how I ever get to meetings on time. Easter lies around the corner and I’m hoping for a spell of better weather. And some quiet. And of course, the chance to actually get a crack on with the new book instead of making excuses. Sound familiar to anyone?

Is it enough to see Sarah Miles in Lidl?

May 2, 2012 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

The Fannings have reached a bit of a crossroads again. After so long in Amsterdam, it’s proving harder to find the right place to settle back in the UK. We own a house that Mr. Fanning poured his soul into giving a major makeover and rent a Brighton flat that takes damp to new levels. It’s time to decide whether to head back up north or buy a place down here.

The one flat we think we might love has been on the market for two years thanks to steady price drops and a water-damaged lobby. That said the place feels as close to right as we can get for now. And so we’re off to give it another once over with a bloke called Peter who knows a thing or two about damp Brighton basements. This aside, the flat lies hidden at the back of a square where we saw Zoe Ball attempt a three-point turn. In other celeb spotting news, our near neighbour would be Nick Cave and we recently saw Sarah Miles finger mixed peppers in the nearby Lidl. It’s a whole different world.

Middle class conversations

Talking of different worlds, the other day I overheard possibly the most middle class conversation ever. It revolved around the trials and tribulations of moving a piano from one floor of a house to another. The pitfall being it invariably goes out of tune. Luckily for both parties, they knew a marvellous little man who could fix that. I thought only Penelope Keith characters in 70s sitcoms knew ‘marvellous little men’. Turns out to be common currency for the Brighton middle classes. Even the corner shops round here sell kindling.

Until very recently, I’d have never dreamed of making a pizza base. Now I’m ready to experiment with different proportions of polenta to typo 00 flour. Mr. Fanning bakes a sour dough loaf every two days.

Whether this is reflects isolation from the outside world, I’m unsure. In Amsterdam, we knew hardly anyone, but that didn’t stop us indulging in the twin British pastimes of binge drinking and passive aggressive whispering. Although occasionally lonely, I don’t think we ever felt truly alone there.

What about the writing?

And then there’s the impact this has on writing or creativity in general. As amusing as piano moving can be, I miss the truth and humour of really decent overheard conversation.

We recently went to see an Alan Bennet play. It was marvellous. Not just the theatre, or Nicola McAuliffe’s stormer of a star turn, but the beauty of the words.

I worry I’ve lost touch with the real world, having not written anything that keeps my attention in an absolute age – and what’s worse, I pepper my blog with phrases like ‘absolute age’. I’ve had a few goes at cobbling together a story, but characters lack edge, the story lacks drive and I inevitably give up. If it doesn’t keep me interested and wanting to write, why would I expect anyone to read it?

The thing is, writers write what they know. Your life seeps into the words. That’s not to say Nicki French murders on a regular basis or that JK Rowling has first-hand wizard handling experience. You do though need to pour feeling into the words you produce if they are to sound in any way genuine.

Endless weeks in a damp Brighton apartment don’t make for great stories. Sarah Miles in Lidl isn’t enough. Possibly.