Animals of October

We are decamped at a friend's house to look after her cats while she's away. This is an annual occurrence. There is a dog in this mix who is uncontrollable when it comes to firework season, so our friends take her away somewhere remote in the hope of avoiding the bangs and booms. Mostyn is one of two cats at this abode and just look at him: as regal and as glorious as they come. He's a friendly fella with a wild streak and a show-off attitude. He is quite used to Hannah and I as his occasional carers because we are a key node in a network of pals who feed each other's pets at times of holidaying. Arrangements are made, keys are exchanged, bags of treats are left on kitchen counters alongside complex instructions about medicines that need to be administered or specific foods for specific creatures. Curiously, at times, it feels like we see more of each other's animals than we do of each other.   All of this is currently allowed according to COVID rules, but will not ...

Last night I concluded a series of Creative Writing workshops designed for autistic adults. It's something I had planned to get going in the Spring and was originally supposed to take place at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. I had Funding, I had Plans, I had Dreams. And then, whoops, someone coughed and everyone caught a Pandemic. Such is life. With a PhD to finish, I put the series on the back-burner for a while and then resurrected it online-wise for October. What a total joy it was. I had a contingent of nine participants who threw themselves into the exercises I set with great enthusiasm and focus. I was worried that my instructions would be too confusing or too neurotypical (whatever that means, eh?), but we all seemed to gel really well. I always set aside time at the end of each session for the writers to share what they'd written if they wanted to. MY GOD, they are a talented bunch. I was frequently delighted and astonished at their beautiful words and their pl...

I'm here with my very best dude, Strong Snowy. He's an albino gorilla with faded sideways eyes, floppy arms and a scrappy flap of a nose. He's got a ridge above his eyes for cheeky monkey expressions and patches of his fur have worn down the cross-stitch. He's about 25 years old now I reckon, and he's spent most of his ridiculous life at my childhood home in Preston, but currently lives with me in Manchester in my study. If memory serves me right, he originally belonged to little brother Rick, but he soon became a firm favourite among all three of us kids. We gave him a voice, a sort of low-pitched nasal cartoony ape voice (not far removed from Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book ), and he developed a personality as a lovable fool, a sort of Falstaff among a clan of scruffy teddy bear layabouts.  The toy has come back into my life because he's become a major feature of the novel I've been writing for my PhD. He features as a recurring motif throughout the bo...

One of my most treasured possessions is this stamp gifted to me by Hannah some years ago. It’s a wren perched on the words ‘EX LIBRIS David Hartley’ and I use it to stamp the title pages of every book I own that I finish reading. I used it yesterday after closing the last page of Ali Smith’s Winter , book two of her beguiling and fabulous seasons quartet, the one with the disembodied head and the ladies of the Greenham Common protest. I actually saw Smith reading from the book shortly after it was published and was amazed to discover that her writing was right up my street. The covers of her books do not convey the wicked weirdnesses within - quite the opposite. Not only is she one of our finest contemporary writers, she’s superbly skilled at weird fiction, although that might be a genre too far for the literary crowd. Well, let’s not get fall into that pit spikes or you’ll never get me out. The wren has some special significance for me as it forms part of a nickname for my autistic si...