Looking at an old book on reading theory today, I have been involved in some reading theory of my own. One chapter is scribbled and underlined, not with my notes, but my son's. I can remember him doing it - after years of telling him never to write on his own books, he'd just discovered me making notes on mine - but what I couldn't remember is what it was he was writing. And then I got it. He'd crossed out many times any word he couldn't understand, he'd put circles round the name Woolf (and this was a chapter about Virigina Woolf so there were a lot of them) and by the side of any name he thought was funny, such as Arbuthnot, he'd drawn a star linked to the comment 'hahahah' in the margin.
I've got to say there are some theories I've been trying to work out recently that make his look positively useful.
And following this obvious academic bent in the family, my brother has just started researching as a - very - mature student in a university and is usefully filling in his times sending us links of websites featuring ugly babies and extraverts at the point of orgasm. The future of green agriculture is safe in his hands.

Not particularly proud of it, but there's something about handbags that makes my heart race. Not as much as some though. Found this wonderful handbag blog - http://www.purseblog.com/ - which makes me feel like a complete amateur. I love the fact that these women are actually watching films looking at what handbags the actresses are carrying and being able to identify most straight away. I don't think I've ever written about any of my characters' handbags. Obviously a trick missed.

One of the joys of having a teenage daughter is that early morning hunt for all the cosmetics and clothes she's borrowed from you. This is made even worse because somehow, in our rented house, she's bagged the bedroom with the en-suite shower. But this morning's search for my conditioner was put on pause when I spotted the collage of family photographs she'd made. In every single one of them, I'm eating. No one else, just me. Stuffing my red face in every beauty spot we've visited. I thought about throwing a CZJ hissy-fit but something stopped me, and that was the realisation that - come adulthood in a therapist's office - she'll obviously see me as an all-devouring mum anyway. So I left, leaving the conditioner too.
On Saturday I went to a poetry workshop on passion led by the beautiful Catherine Smith. All wonderful apart from that moment when I shut my eyes to think of objects of desire and saw, not Russell Crowe, surfers on Cornish beaches or even tanned feet in leather sandals, but the exact red I want to paint my kitchen walls.
So it's official. I've turned into a woman with wispy, unconditioned hair who takes paint samples and tap catalogues to bed. There are worse things in life, I suppose. Untanned feet in plastic smelly sandals?

It's rabbit time on the common which means my dog is in bliss. I always know how to find her though because I see a rabbit rushing in one direction, and Tally will be tearing away in the complete opposite. I took her to the vet to see if she had trouble with her eyesight, my daughter thought she was blind, but she sees perfectly. Her sense of smell seems to be OK too, so we've been forced to come to the conclusion she's just completely stupid.
Someone has taken a sofa up to the common, one of those plush floral ones, and left it there like a bench. It looks wonderful and I love to think of people sitting on it at night, watching walkers go by like in front of a television. Well, I know they'll be doing other stuff as well but ...
When I lived in Soho in London, I came back from work once and a couple had set up a dining table on the pavement, complete with cloth, candles, china etc and were having a full-blown candlelit meal a deux oblivious to everyone walking by. It was a beautiful image and stays in my mind as the ultimate in romance.

My gran used to have this verse in her bathroom that we all thought was the cleverest thing in the world. Much as we loved her, there wasn't always much to do at Gran's so we independently learnt the rhyme by heart. Or so we thought - when we tried to remember it recently we all had different ideas, but luckily my sister found a real copy. So for history's sake ....

Please remember - don't forget! -
never leave the bathroom wet.
Nor leave the soap still in the water -
that's a thing you never ought'er! -
and as you've been so often told,
never let the 'hot' run 'cold':
nor leave the towels upon the floor.
Nor keep the bath an hour or more -
when other folks are wanting one;
just don't forget - it isn't done! -
an' if you'd really do the the thing -
there's not the slightest need to sing!

Counting the days until I go to New York. It's not so much going to the city itself I want, although I get bubbles in my veins just thinking about it - but the fact that no-one will be able to raise their eyebrows at me in that way again and say 'what, you mean to say you've NEVER been before.'
Meanwhile, to keep me out of mischief, I've been persuaded to go on a striptease course with a friend. Actually, although I'd like to cash in on some of Belle de Jour's publicity, all we get to do is to remove a glove which is a relief, especially as the course is being held in Unit 3 of an industrial estate which doesn't really provide the right atmosphere.
Re Belle de Jour - 'she' has to be Michel Faber, doesn't she?

Spring must have taken hold of me - woke up this morning deciding both to go on a diet and not to buy anything for at least a week. And now the lists of all the things I really, really need to buy are knocking at my door, and I can't even eat chocolate to take my mind off them. AND have just spent an hour at the dentist so am dribbling and lopsided around the mouth. THe not buying thing comes from a big clear out I had of my books yesterday - I'm still going through them but I'm horrified to find how many I haven't read. So why am I buying new ones? A friend told me something that stuck with me once - that when we buy a book we're actually buying the time to read it. So, am going to give myself the time this year, preferably lying in the grass by my allotment underneath the cherry tree I planted last year and with the sun shining down. THe cherry tree's just a dry stalk at the moment, but I have faith.

Why is that people always frame unpleasant comments with a statement that demands your inclusion? I had a woman the other day saying 'I know you won't mind me saying this but ...' And I did mind her saying it but she'd already told me I didn't, so I was disarmed before I started. It's like 'with the greatest respect' and 'honestly'. Language is so slippery. Take responsibility - it actually means the opposite of how we use it most of the time. It must be rooted in 'having a response', but most 'responsible' people just take control and don't respond at all.

Was at my daughter's Shakespeare Festival last night - five classes had fifteen minutes each to perform a different play so the stories were reduced with a vengeance. The funniest one was Romeo and Juliet where the girls had carefully planned everything to miss out even the slightest hint of romance because that would have been 'sad'. I'd never realised it was such a violent play. Also to give everyone a chance at starring, they had four Romeo's and two Juliet's taking it in turns so you had even less idea what was going on than you might have.

Reading Amy Tan's essays and came across a nice quote from her introduction to the Best American Short Stories - 'I had become a successful but unhappy person, with work that was lucrative but meaningless. This was one of those moments that cause people to either join a religious cult, spend a lot of money on psychotherapy, or take up the less drastic and more economical practice of writing fiction.' Am doing a reading on 'agony' tomorrow at the University of Kent so it seems appropriate.

And two sites I wanted to record. First, a plug for the US edition - http://www.nydailynews.com/01-22-2004/entertainment/books/story/157074p-137949c.html and secondly a great site for book reviews, interviews etc - www.cercles.com

Am cack-handed today - losing stuff and sending without finishing. Re Highsmith's comment, have been wondering about the boundaries of writers, maybe all artists, i don't know. If you spend your life trying to imagine yourself into someone else's mind, then it's hard to be normal in company, surely. You have to put up barriers if you're going to stay 'on' for your writing.

Just typed out a whole chunk but it's gone missing. Will probably appear again and I'll repeat myself endlessly. Reading Patricia Highsmith's biography 'Beautiful Shadow'. The contents page alone is poetic - Chapter 6 - A trail of unmade beds, Chapter 12 - Instantly I love her, Chapter 18 - A Lurking liking for those that flout the law, Chapter 35 - Art is not always healthy and why should it be?
Highsmith likens the artist to a spider spinning a web from within itself, and less prettily said it was necessary to strip away the protective patch of normality to reveal the festering wound underneath.

Have found an amazing site - www.factmonster.com when I was searching for pronounciations for some of the mathematical words in my monologue. Can't believe I haven't come across it before because pronounciation is one of my real difficulties. I find I take very tortuous routes through conversations sometimes just to avoid certain words I know I won't know how to say properly and so will make a complete fool of myself. Although I suppose if you say them confidently enough then everybody will just think you have a silly accent.

A conversation on a forum I belong to about the difference between male and female writing - and reading. Seem to have been here so many times before, and there's no resolution. One email talks about the need in societies for the submissive group to watch the more dominant group's behaviour closely in order to anticipate and mimic - will only be a matter of time before someone suggests this is why women are so good at writing male characters, but not necessarily the other way round.

Reading Toast by Nigel Slater - he uses food as the framework for his autobiography, chunks of time separated by different foods or ingredients. Some good memories - sherbert fountains, how difficult spaghetti used to be to cook - those long tubes of blue paper. Inevitably took me off on my own foodie trails - cheesy baked potatoes in front of the Flintstones, that horrible jelly in pork pies, how we'd never eat custard out of a matter of principle although I, for one, secretly loved it, how mum tried once to disguise it in trifle but we 'found her out', the day she gave us brains and we refused to eat them. The crushed iced surfaces in MacFisheries, blue and white tiled walls in the butchers, going round the supermarket stealing the gollywogs out of the Robinson jam wrappers - they were only tucked in, not sealed, jars and jars of sweets - coconut mushrooms, exotic american hardgums, wine gums we'd think made us drunk. We knew that we would be abducted for the white slave trade by men offering us boiled sweets, so we planned what to do - we'd pretend to accept and then steal the sweets and run away. But what if the sweets were poisoned? Once we - the group of girls I used to play with in the street at home - got ourselves into a state of complete hysteria because we saw some rope in a parked car and persuaded ourselves it was a murderer's. Strangely when we did meet up with a real life flasher, we all carried on talking to him unaware of what he was doing until a woman came up and told him not to make a fool of himself. A bit of an anti-climax all around.
Got my American page proofs - sweet little hearts by each footnote.
To the cinema last night to see Spirited Away, the Japanese cartoon, except it's not called cartoon for adults, it's an animation. Wonderful whatever.

"Associate with all the smart, funny, talented, creative people you can, learn to write beautifully, but don't stay locked in your room to do it: go out and try new things, meet new people, have a wonderful, rich, compelling, and interesting life -- and then tell me about it in the most beautiful prose imaginable." --Jeff Kleinman

Reading about seductresses in a book a friend lent me. It's research for my next novel - the Seduction Committee - and it's fascinating. Keep wanting to put it down and discuss every page. And it's funny. One quote - 'God never favoured the badly dressed' will definitely inspire a short story for me. The author Betsy Prioleau dedicated it to her daughter though - can't help wondering if this will be a legacy welcomed later, or will it cause intense embarrassment? In Writers [on writing], Barbara Kingsolver (who seduces me every time) writes an essay about her mother reading one of her sex scenes. A friend tells her 'Barbara, you're in your forties now, and you have two children. She knows that you know.'
I'm in the opposite position, it's me who gets embarrassed in front of my kids, but they don't bat an eyelid. I wouldn't let them take a story of mine which appeared in a book called 'Sexy shorts' (www.sexy-shorts.info) into school although they wanted to.
Book dedications anyway are difficult. I'm still a beginner but it's a strange, almost hormonal time publishing a book and my mood swings are frightening. Have been torn between wanting to thank everyone profusely and saying 'sod all of you, this is my book. I've worked hard enough on it so I'm keeping it to myself', but I guess that wouldn't make me seem very nice. Actually, the Lexicon is dedicated to my particular friends in Edinburgh and it makes me feel warm having them all together at the front of my book, so I get the best of both worlds.

Having just moved my desk to the window so I can see out, I'm interested to read just today that Flannery O'Connor sat for two hours every day at a typewriter facing the back of a wardrobe so she'd have absolutely nothing to look at. This is from Writers [on Writing], collected essays from The New York Times. Worth buying just for the title of Joyce Carol Oates's piece: To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet or the one I have most sympathy with In the Castle of Indolence You Can Hear the Sound of Your Own Mind by Paul West. I'm a great fan of being lazy and would hate to see us losing the art of it.
The subject of the monologue I'm writing at the moment, Alice Duer Miller, wrote for one of the New York papers on the suffrage movement. Extract from one of her columns:

Why we oppose pockets for women!
1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward women, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pocket.
4. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.

She wasn't lazy though. She was a mathematician. Once she said about somebody - they are not exactly well bred, they are not exactly ill bred, they are the sort of person who keeps a parrot. That still makes me laugh.

Another addictive internet site - www.awfulplasticsurgery.com. It's like playing spot the difference - alhtough some must just be camera angles. I wasn't quite at the stage of being happy playing all day with a cardboard box but we did get a lot of pleasure when I was a kid from these photographs in the newspaper which showed an everyday household object from a strange angle, and you had to guess what it was. Think I might write a story through the games/quizes/shows that make up someone's life. The Golden Shot - Bernie the Bolt! - Crackerjack - every Friday I still seem to look at my watch at five to five and feel the urge to shout it out, alhtough it pisses my kids off - Open the Box! - that conveyor belt in the Generation Game - the Daleks - Spot the Ball. Do they even do Spot the Ball now?
Reading The Christmas Carol for the first time. Have a list of books I always think I've read but haven't - The Hobbit has only just been crossed off. Mind you this list isn't as long as the one of books I've pretended I've read - Daniel Deronda, Finnegans Wake. And I keep turning anyway to the book I treated myself to yesterday as a reward for spending Saturday teaching - The Life Laundry, How to Declutter Your LIfe Forever. If only ....

My house is turning against me. It's crawling on the outside with builders sawing it up and knocking things into it, so it's retaliating inside. Three times bulbs have popped when I've turned the lights on, the boiler won't allow any heating to work and there's a persistent and numbing dripdripdrip from somewhere I can't identify. Will have to buy it flowers and light candles to pacify.
My publishers, Bloomsbury, have a great website, and a service which sends a word for the day to your inbox. Here's todays: OPISTHOPOREIA n. Involuntary walking backward. Apart from walking up the down escalator, it is hard (though amusing) to conceive a case of this. How would the sufferer ever get to work in the morning? And, much more
worrying from the sufferer’s point of view, how would he get home?
I also subscribe to my daily horoscope and two uplifting writer's quotes - it's OK I scoff at myself. The best free site on the internet though is www.facade.com where you can get your tarot cards read. I keep telling myself it can't work, but it's strangely addictive.

Bought my diary for 2004 today - always feels like a significant moment. After all this is the thing I'm going to have by my side for the next twelve months - and this year it's a grown-up one. I've finally given up the Far Side and got myself into black leather with an address book and even a little pen which I know I'll lose straight away but is nice to have anyway. If I could be one thing next year, I'd like to be organised. I always used to have diaries with addresses at the back, and it was interesting to see who was transferred through to the next year and who was left behind.
Have been invited to an old - and I do mean old - school reunion. There were only eleven girls in my year and we're all meeting up in January. We last did this about five years ago after a gap of about ten years and after the initial, mandatory shriek every time someone first walked through the door, we all settled down and it was as if we saw each other every day. Actually, come to think of it, nearly all the others do meet regularly - they had to trace me through that schoolfriends website. Ho hum, so I'm already feeling like the unpopular one, not transferred from year to year.