Conversations with Friends – or Is Sally Rooney Actually as Crap as I Think?

I was talking to a friend yesterday morning (I should really say a Ffriend, as Quakers do, making it look like a Welsh word, because I was talking to someone who was a Quaker as well as a friend). We were having coffee (I had a pot of tea) at a lovely tea rooms in North Leicestershire called St Joseph’s. This is a project set up by people who have a history of helping others by letting them sleep over or giving them cups of tea etc, the sort of thing I always think I would like to do but actually don’t enjoy at all, and is a lovely environment for a chat and possibly a walk, though we didn’t walk as it was cold and I didn’t have time. Anyway, this Ffriend who I shall call Ffiona though that’s not her name, mentioned how much she enjoyed reading this blog. She asked me whether I got paid for it and I explained that as with most things connected to the arts, you have to shell out a lot of money even for the slightest, remotest chance of making any at some distant point in the future. ‘So what do you get out of it then?’ she asked, and I thought, this. The warm and fuzzy feeling that I get when someone tells me they enjoy it. The pleasure I get from entertaining or interesting people; in short, human engagement. As far as I’m aware, no matter what Dr Johnson might say (‘no man but a blockhead ever wrote, but for money’) writers write for precisely that reason; to make contact, to know that we are not alone. Which is pretty much the same reason that people read: to come across a page and think Yes! That’s exactly how I feel! In reading have discovered more soul mates in fiction than I have in real life. That doesn’t make me sound sad at all, does it?

So: to our conversation in bed this morning (that’s me and OH, not me and Ffiona) when the topic of Sally Rooney reared its head. Now, I have to be honest, I’ve never actually read her but somewhere along the line I formed the impression that she was fiction lite; not something I’d be interested in. But she is massively – and I mean massively successful, the kind of writer other writers hate, like J K Rowling – but I don’t hate her at all (and this is nothing to do with the so-called trans dispute which is hardly a dispute at all, just something whipped up by the press) because she deserves her success – and for all I know so does Rooney. So I downloaded a sample of Conversations with Friends – and we shall see. I’ll keep you posted.

Last night I went to a music evening at the Moonface in Loughborough, a great little micropub that does a terrific selection of beers: I had some of the last batch of a stout called Q-something (not Q-anon, definitely not that) so-called because it comes from a local village called Queniborough, and I did a couple of poems for International Women’s Day, which is today. One of them was a tribute to Victoria Wood which includes the line: ‘there’ll be an outcry – they’ll all go tuh!’ I’m puzzled by the fact that the rest of the poem gets lots of laughs, but that line never does, so I thought I’d find the original and see how she does it. But can I find it? Can I buffalo! Any ideas? The original line is: ‘I live in the dullest place on God’s earth, full of the most stupid, thick people. I can’t tell you where it is or there’ll be an outcry – they’ll all go tuh!’ Answers on a postcard please.

https://www.realalefinder.com/beerboard/?moonface-brewery-and-tap-loughborough

There used to be a band called Answers on a Postcard. I wonder what happened to them…

It’s Loughborough Beer Festival this weekend. Sadly I don’t think I’ll be going as it costs a tenner to get in and these days I don’t drink enough to make it worthwhile.

Kirk out