Susan Hill

Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the full bedding-out season but all human life is there, enjoying the full English breakfast or even kippers. They sell everything — sofas, lamps, barbecues, waterfalls, bread, toys, meat, mountaineering gear. Oh, and plants and Growmore and those little windmill things. I went to buy extra geraniums and lobelia because it is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever you buy far more than you can possibly need for your pots, those pots expand when you turn your back. It was a gladiatorial clash of trolleys, and I trampled on several old ladies in fighting for the last ivy-leafed Brilliant Scarlet. I got it of course. I am an old hand.

The swifts had not arrived by June, nary a one, though a Yorkshire Dales friend reported their return, and there were masses in France. I read that there was a national shortage, bird people were doing surveys and panicking. In the 1970s and 1980s, swifts wheeled round every church tower, dashed through the streets screaming. Not now. I could have wept. Possibly I did. Why had the French ones not crossed the Channel? Was this yet another thing to be blamed on Brexit? Then, one July evening, there they were a few, then dozens, soaring, diving, swooping, crossbows in the blue sky. I have abandoned work, reading, watering, even drinking my wine, to sit watching these most beloved hirundines. Gaze while you can. Neglect everything. These are not birds, they are angels.

I don’t know why party conferences no longer take place in Scarborough. As a child, I saw many an important politician strolling to the Spa Hall, including Winston Churchill. I am a Conservative party member but I have never been to conference. What would I do? Standing ovate, I suppose. But this year? Hm. Theresa May messed up bigger time than she may ever realise. My local association saw the writing on the wall before the polls closed. A panic email came in. ‘It’s going to be very tight.’ Tight indeed. Now, the government seems entirely focused on Brexit, and of course it is important, but there are many other matters to sort out and I don’t mean internecine squabbles. Poverty. Housing. Schools. Holes in the road.

Go inside the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, preferably when it is empty. Look round. Look up. And there it is, with its elegant decorated and gilded curves, rising to the ornate cupola, panelled in duck-egg blue. Look at the proscenium arch, the swagged red curtains with seats to match. The chandelier above the stalls. It is perfect. The lines please the eye, painting and gilding are to just the right degree of ‘Over the Top’. You could equally well go to the King’s Theatre Glasgow or His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen, the London Coliseum, the Theatre Royal Wakefield or the Gaiety, Dublin, and do the same thing. Even before anything happens on stage, you are having a theatrical experience. You are in a Matcham Theatre.

To my mind, a bookshop is like a library — the only difference is that you buy the books, you don’t borrow them. But both have a duty to provide books (space and budgets allowing) reflecting a wide range — as wide as possible — of interests, reading tastes, subjects and points of view. Walk into one of either and there are the thoughts and feelings, beliefs and dreams and creations and discoveries of many men and women, and that is part of their never-ending excitement.

When President Obama left office, he confided that he had got through the eight years of stress by reading. He named some titles. I was surprised he chose V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival over his masterpiece, A House for Mr Biswas, which I count as the best novel written in the 20th century, if such competitive judgments can mean anything. But I so hope he will read it now he has time, because I know he will love and cherish it and reread it 20 times over the coming years. But Barack Obama does not need me to recommend books to him. President Trump does. Has he ever read one, do you suppose, or should I start my list with Ant and Bee?

February Fill-Dyke. But north Norfolk is dry, at least in terms of rain. Instead we have coastal flooding. Three years ago, a tidal surge caused major damage and destruction to sea defences, wildlife habitats, paths and buildings. Another surge last month was less dramatic but still reached the gate of a friend’s house, set well back, behind marshes and road. It is terrifying to experience this unstoppable force and hear its mighty roar. Whole shingle banks were flicked aside. As a small child, I stood on the cliff top above raging seas in Scarborough, and the storm seemed biblical. You never underestimate the force of nature, and possibly the wrath of God, once you have witnessed a tidal surge. Brexit has been as bad as any surge in washing away hitherto strong foundations.

‘Farm cottage available, Dorset. Long or short let. £5 per week.’ I was looking for a writing bolthole, so I rang. ‘Bit off the beaten track but it’s quiet all right,’ said the owner. It was also unfurnished. ‘We can get some basics together for you.’ So, in the summer of 1968, I drove down to Dorset and my first holiday cottage. It was backed by a large wood, surrounded by fields of dairy cows and meadows of wild flowers, bordered by elms. Remember elms? God’s finest trees. They whispered in the wind. Furniture. A deal table and chair. Cooker. Enough crockery, cutlery and utensils for one. An armchair, old and comfortable. A bed, old and uncomfortable. A small table with a mirror. Pegs for hanging clothes.

Have you ever set your face against a book? This year sees Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary and the novelist Tracy Chevalier has edited a short-story anthology each based on the climactic line of Jane Eyre — ‘Reader, I married him.’ Everyone knows it. I agreed like a shot because the brief fitted something I had been mulling for a while, and yesterday the handsome finished volume arrived. In the notes about contributors, it says: ‘Susan Hill has never read Jane Eyre.’ Lamentably, that is true, and now I suppose I never can. But the fact is, I have set my face against it, as my daughter has set her face against Animal Farm. Neither of us remembers where or why it started but we’ll never give in.