I write my three columns at the weekend, on Saturdays and Sundays, while Monday to Friday I am always working on a book. I don’t have weekends, in the normal sense. Every day is a writing day. Which is what I love. Having a month off, or a week off, even an hour spare between books or columns, I get bored or frustrated.
When I am feeling rotten, with a cold or flu, or fed up and moaning, or had too much to eat and drink at supper, I find writing energising. I often drag myself up to my desk feeling I can’t face it, I’ll watch telly instead, but when I sit at my computer, something always comes. Afterwards, I feel so much better.
It is a bit like when I had asthma as a boy, lying in bed, wheezing, feeling miserable. If I dragged out my stamp album or my football scrapbooks, slowly turning the pages, studying them, getting absorbed, my asthma would miraculously lift. Work is distraction. It takes you out and away from yourself. Distracts you from the often rotten, depressing, unfair business of living.
I cheat a lot of course, in order to fill these three regular columns. And all the books. With age, I am more than ever recycling topics I have covered in the past. Not exactly the same, at least I hope not, but similar themes keep coming up. When the section editor in charge of you is only thirteen, or so it often seems, they can’t possibly remember what you wrote in the past, as they were still at school, so when they say I hear you were at the 1966 World Cup final, amazing, or did you really meet the Beatles, wow, then naturally I try to oblige and knock out a thousand words on the subject. Again.
Many years ago, when we had our cottage at Caldbeck, I met an old countryman called Charles Norman de Percy Parry living locally in a caravan. He had been writing a column for Horse and Hound for fifty-three years. He had started it in 1925 and in 1978, when I talked him, he was still doing it, by which time he was then aged seventy-eight. It was said to be the longest-running column in any magazine.
At the time, I was totally amazed. How could anyone ever keep up the same column for fifty years? So he told me his secret.
‘The public’s memory is only five years long, so never throw away old copy. After five years, you can start to repeat things. I couldn’t have lasted this long, if I had been unable to repeat old stories.’
I suppose writing about country matters makes it a bit easier, as the same seasons always come around. You have the same old things to react to every year.
Writing about myself, I do have the same thoughts recurring. Different events and stimuli trigger them, present-day happenings throw them up, but then I find myself going back to the same old stories and observations, topics and events, from my long-legged life. Another plus to being old. You have more to write about.
18
LOWESWATER
In 1987, we decided we should look for another house in the Lake District. The object was very simple. To change our lives.
For several years we had become fed up charging up and down the motorway five or six times a year, for half terms and holidays, to stay at our little cottage near Caldbeck. It was lovely when we were there, and the house was pretty enough, but small and dark and cold and very uncomfortable and cheerless in bad weather.
Wouldn’t it be nice, we used to say to each other on the long journey, to have a proper Lakeland house, you know, with lakes around, as we didn’t have any at Caldbeck, perhaps on a little hill, with views and light and space, big enough to have a room each to work in. A place we could live in – as opposed to visiting, rushing in and out.
But we felt we could not do it for some time, perhaps forever. Margaret’s father Arthur was still alive, aged eighty-seven. It’s always easy to remember his age, as he was born in 1900 (one of the inspirations for the book I did, Born 1900). He was a widower, as Margaret’s mother Lily had died in 1981, but in incredible fettle for his age, digging his garden, having several pints at the weekend at his Conservative Working Men’s Club. He had learned to cook, which he had never done in his life. He was always occupied. We went to visit him regularly enough and he would often just grunt when he let us in, saying he was busy, had his spuds to put in, had the sweet peas to weed, the grass to cut, though usually he was waiting for the racing to start on TV to see if any of his horses had won.
Flora was only fifteen still, at school, so too soon to leave her for months on end on her own, but the older ones were as good as off and away. Jake was about to graduate, so he had left home, while Caitlin had not only graduated but flown the country, in America doing graduate work.
But the more we thought about it, the more we felt we should start looking now for our Dream Lakeland Home, even if for the first two or three years, till Flora left home, we would just use it as we had done with Caldbeck, during the school holidays, not to live there.
After looking for quite some time, we found what we thought was almost our ideal fantasy house, at Loweswater, seven miles from the town of Cockermouth. It had three lakes within walking distance – Crummock Water, Loweswater and Buttermere – at the end of a stunning valley, surrounded by wonderful hills. It was on its own, surrounded by fields, but there were other houses not far away. Loweswater is not a village as such, though it looks it on the map, and from the signposts. There are no shops or streets, just a cluster of farm houses, but it does have a church, a village hall and best of all a wonderful pub, the Kirkstile Inn.
The house was on a slight hill, which was something else on our list, and with a mature garden with yew trees and lots of rhododendrons. There was a high hedge at the front, which ensured privacy and a yew bower over the wooden front gate, through which you entered. Then you walked up a little hill to the front porch.
The front was the same as the back, each with a porch, and there were large windows all the way round, letting in loads of light, even on the darkest day. Just two storeys, Victorian, from 1860. Not listed, so we should not be having too many problems with the Lakeland Planning Board. It was so symmetrical, front and back, it was like a child’s drawing of a country cottage.
It had originally been the house of the village carpenter and all the floors were in the finest wood, in sparkling condition. His actual workshop was next door, but that had been converted into a small and separate house, lived in by the retired Vicar of Loweswater and his wife Joan, whose family owned both houses, and a lot else beside it.
You never get all that you want, when you play these fantasy house games, but there was only one thing missing – it did not have a lake view. But I told myself that in winter, when the leaves are down, if I lean out and stretch I am sure I will get a glimpse of Crummock Water, just half a mile away.
It was being sold on 7 May 1987 by auction, at the Globe Hotel in Cockermouth. Robert Louis Stevenson once stayed at the hotel, according to the plaque outside, which was a good sign. We had not been properly inside the house, just had a little look on a quick trip with Flora, most of which we spent sitting outside on the grassy, sloping lawn imagining ourselves living here. We had not done a survey either. We just both decided it had Spoken To Us.
I decided to go up from London for the day on my own for the auction, arranging for my brother Johnny to pick me up in Carlisle and drive me to the hotel where the auction was being held. If I failed to get it, I would come back that evening. If I got it, I would stay overnight somewhere, and ogle it.
It was the only house being auctioned that day by the estate agents, Smiths Gore. An elderly estate agent had come out from semi-retirement to conduct the sale and started by saying that in his opinion, after decades of selling Lakeland houses, this house had the finest situation of any he had auctioned. I thought oh God, I’d better go home now. The price will go mad.
I had been told by the agent that the guide price was £80,000. I promised Margaret, when I left for Euston that morning, I would not go beyond £90,000.
I started the bidding thinking I might frighten others off, hoping they would assume some slick stranger, probably from London, must have loads of money. But it rapidly got to £90,000. Despite the vow
to Margaret, I thought I can’t stop now, having come all this way. I got it for £92,000.
What I didn’t know then was that there was a rival bidder, much richer than me, a London solicitor, who would easily have paid more – but he wasn’t there. He had sent his clerk with instructions not to go above £90,000. No mobile phone in those days, so he couldn’t ring his boss and bid more. The solicitor later told me he would have bid more, but in the end he bought another house in Loweswater, right on Loweswater Lake, and we became good friends.
I stayed the night at Scale Hill, an ancient coaching inn in Loweswater, quite near the house, and went back to London the next day.
For three years we only used the house during the school holidays. Then in 1990 we began to live there for roughly half of each year, from May till October. We each had a study where we worked every day, just as in London, then walked every afternoon, just as in London. Except of course the Lakeland walks were a bit different from our London walks.
All the local walks were far better, far more extensive and far more stunning than we had imagined when we first saw the house. It was possible to walk for hours and hours, in total isolation, up and over fells, round lakes, without crossing any roads and seeing no one. When we left Caldbeck, where we had been for ten years, one of our local friends there had said that Loweswater was becoming trendy. ‘It’s attracting all the yuppies.’ That was a new phrase in 1987, a new smear. But it wasn’t true. Buttermere can be a tourist trap on bank holidays, but Crummock and Loweswater never get overrun.
Crummock Water was reached down a country lane, almost opposite the house. Perfect for swimming. No one could believe that when I told them, back in London. But every year for almost the next thirty years I have swum in the lake in July and August. Not every day, and some years only half a dozen times, but the average was about twenty swims every summer. I know because we kept a cottage diary. In it we recorded how many days we stayed, how many swims, how many perfect sunny days, what day we picked the first black-currants, gooseberries and apples. Perfect days were defined by Margaret with complicated codes on the wall calendar.
The garden was big enough, with three lawns which took me almost two hours to mow, but then I also bought five fields, some fourteen acres, around the house. In the smallest field, little more than a paddock, I created an orchard. I got a local nurseryman to plant twenty apple trees, both eating and cooking apples, insisting I wanted them all three-quarter trees, as I did not want them to grow so high you would need ladders. They all survived and went on to give us thirty years of lovely fruit – but I forgot one thing. They all ripen at the same time so we have a glut. That was mistake.
In the orchard, I later built a tree house, using recycled wood and planks and old telegraph poles. Oh the fun I had. And we had.
From the beginning, we made a vow never to go to London while we were in Loweswater. We were up here, properly living here, for five to six months at a time, and would avoid all invitations or temptations to go to London. We were rural people.
I came in from the garden once and heard Margaret on the telephone, saying sorry, we can’t come, we are in Lakeland.
I said who was that? She said Number Ten. I said Number Ten where? Downing Street, she said, some party, but it’s next month so we can’t come, we’ll still be here, we agreed we would never go to London while we are up here.
This was in 1997, during Tony Blair’s first premiership, and he was having trendy parties of so-called cool Britannia media people.
I picked up the phone and got through to Downing Street. I said, err, someone was just talking to my wife about a reception, we will be back in London in November, err, should there be another similar reception. Which there was. Margaret even agreed to go with me, after I twisted her arm. It turned out that Cherie Blair was a fan of Margaret’s books.
Some time later, I got a call from a tabloid picture desk saying they had a topless photo of Cherie in some villa in Italy reading a book. They gave me the name of the book, and I recognised it as one of Margaret’s. I added that we knew Cherie was a fan. They had worried slightly that it might not be Cherie, but someone else, so this was a clue it could be genuine.
In the end, they never used the photo of a topless Cherie. Probably scared of a total bollocking from Alastair Campbell, Blair’s press officer.
The thing about living at Loweswater for the next thirty years was that it was like living twice. We had a rural life and an urban life, totally separate, totally different. By living there for up to six months at a time, you become totally settled, totally into the routine, as if you have never been anywhere else. Meeting people in the street in Cockermouth, they would not realise you had been to London for the winter, thinking they just had not seen you for a while.
When people did say to me, ‘Enjoying your holiday?’, I would go mad, explaining we lived up here, do you mind, we are locals.
I liked to think I became part of the community, attending village events, joining groups, giving little talks, manning stalls at Loweswater fairs, entering for the Loweswater Show. I like to think I got to know everybody in the Loweswater area, partly because I was part of a newspaper delivery syndicate for many years. One or two of the people we delivered to were housebound, so it was social work, as well as a chance to catch up on local chat.
I drove around the little lanes and up farm tracks delivering the newspapers in my old Jaguar, which was a bit daft, bashing into hedges, getting awful scratches, using so much petrol. When we moved to Loweswater, we had so much to carry up and down each time that I had bought this ten-year-old Jaguar. I have no interest in cars, but it was so spacious and comfortable to drive. I used to say it was gliding, not driving. Till it fell apart.
Margaret was not as sociable. She was constantly asked to give talks locally, to the Women’s Institute or Cockermouth School, as I did, but she always refused. She did not feel any obligation, to her publisher or the community. I looked back to my own school days in Carlisle, which of course Margaret had experienced as well, when no authors ever came to our schools, unlike schools in the London area. I said it was part of the duty of being an author up here, to help local worthy bodies when asked, especially in remote areas. She said I just liked showing off.
But Margaret always went to the Loweswater Show, which she loved. She was the judge one year of a children’s handwriting competition – and donated a prize. She always had wonderful, immaculate, bold handwriting.
Margaret loved the fact that we were cut off in Loweswater. No one door-stepped us, no door-to-door salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses. No friends or neighbours knocked at the door out of the blue, uninvited, though we made good friends and neighbours who would help if we wanted them, but they kept their distance, as Cumbrians do. There is an old joke about Cumbrian farmers. They winter you, they summer you, they winter you again, they summer you, they winter you again – and then they say hello. That’s exactly how Margaret liked it. She didn’t like all this southern phoney friendship and intimacy, kissy kissy, first names from the moment you meet. She liked to keep a distance.
I always tried to pretend I am really a Cumbrian, which is still how I think of myself, despite being born in Scotland. I was brought up in Carlisle and still look upon it as my hometown. Margaret was of course a true Cumbrian, born and bred, with a Cumbrian surname. She also had a Cumbrian character, inherited from her father. As a little girl, whenever they met anyone, he would always instruct her ‘Say nowt’. It was partly a leftover from the war, when of course Hitler and the Nassies might be listening, but also to the ingrained Cumbrian character of keeping themselves to themselves.
We both did a lot of work in those thirty years at Grasmoor House. I ran my little publishing company from there, doing all those Good Guides, plus many other books with a Cumbrian connection, such as biographies of Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, Wainwright and the one and only Eddie Stobart.
Margaret set several of her novels in Cumbria, or at least sections of t
hem. One early novel, The Bride of Lowther Fell, published in 1980, was written while we still had our cottage at Caldbeck, and was based on a local story. Her 2016 novel, How to Measure a Cow, was set in Workington. In the book, Workington is a random choice, the heroine looks at the map and wants to get as far away as possible, where no one would know her. It was Margaret’s joke, in a way, to send her to Workington. Not exactly the most handsome town in Cumbria.
People think that writers, real writers, meaning Margaret not me, are inspired by place and by scenery. In my experience, they are not. Writers are inspired by an idea in their head, which needs an empty room, a blank wall, no interruptions, peace and quiet in order to turn it into words on paper. They can find that, or create that, almost anywhere, if they try hard enough and concentrate, hence all these young writers today bashing away on their laptops in crowded caffs.
Inspiration can be helped by a feeling of well-being, happiness and contentment, but that comes after the work, when you relax and refuel. If you are in a beautiful or stimulating setting, there is so much to look forward to and enjoy, once you have finished for the day. But it does not necessarily inspire your work.
I found Cockermouth inspiring and stimulating, an historic Georgian gem, but not overrun by tourists, like Grasmere or Ambleside. I always went three times a week to swim in Cockermouth. In London, I have always done the same, but to Kentish Town Pool. In Cockermouth, I lunched afterwards in one of the many cafés and small restaurants, poked around the antique shops and collectors’ stalls, or popped into Mitchells auction rooms. I never stopped being in love with Cockermouth.
In London, coming out of Kentish Town Pool, I can’t wait to get home. Kentish Town High Road drives me mad, the crowds, the traffic, the litter, the noise, the dirt – ugh. I always looked forward to moving up to Loweswater, counting the weeks and days as soon as we got to spring. But I never looked forward to returning to London.
A Life in the Day Page 21