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ÌýWhen a book reminds you of what you feel is important about writing stuff...

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine PatersonOne of the best things I’ve read. All afternoon and evening taken up with this tiny novel from 1978: the story of a grumpy teen fobbed off onto foster homes and longing for her glamorous mother to ask her to join her in San Francisco. Gilly is stuck in a household of people she comes to appreciate too late.
I think it’s perfect, and gobsmackingly succinct. Every character is wonderful and has that magic thing of feeling like someone you already know, as soon as they shuffle on. Paterson writes about strong emotions better than anyone and never obviously and boringly.
It has all the features I love in a novel � I can’t even pin down what that is: a combination of wounding pathos, a down-at-home slightly dusty and messy atmosphere, a rag-bag cast of characters who erupt easily into hilarity and chaos, and who are doomed to part. No outright villains � just bad behaviour at the wrong time. Someone struggling with being clever and doing the wrong things and trying to be good. The way hope can let you down but people can surprise you. Even a ruffle of letters at the end.
It’s a lovely book. The copy I read is even signed by the author � a 1980s Puffin � and the kind of book that reminds me why I’m still trying to write my best.

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My Terrance Dicks Poem
I took a spare copy of Planet of the Spidersfor Terrance to sign for my friend who wastoo ill that dayto come to the pub.
I watched the hand of the manwho’d typed almost every bookof my childhood.His quashed red fingerspressing down hard in black felt tip,writing as he sat
with a great big plate of meat pie and potatoes,swimming with gravyin the tiled and noisy cavern ofa Manchester pub.The grand old man just beamed at me
when I told him that anything worthwhilein the whole Show was invented by him and his matesbetween 1969 and 1983.
‘Yes, yes,� he said excitedly. ‘And they keep onbringing all thebuggering things back!�

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I guess I'm really missing bookshops! Here's a short piece I just wrote about bookshopping in Darlington and Dressers Department Store when I was a kid...
1985 � Paper
I think Mam must have enjoyed shopping in Dressers, the Edwardian department store on High Row in Darlington. My obsession with reading � always there, but reaching new heights in my mid-teens - brought her to their book department on the first floor. It was a very calming place, with white shelves, creaking wooden floorboards and tall windows that looked out on the very middle of town: the clock, the market hall, and the main street, which had once been a portion of the A1, the busiest road in all the country, running through the middle of town. Dressers had a lovely smell. I think it was paper. Fresh newspaper and magazines, warm with ink. Or it was the art supplies and those wide shelves containing every size, type and quality of paper. Crepe paper, cartridge paper, watercolour paper, pastel paper, wrapping paper, tissue paper. Everything smelled delicious and fresh. In fact, all the art supplies seemed almost edible: all the coloured inks from deepest, darkest blue to apple green and gold and silver. Was it just imagination, or did the squashy tubes of oil colours and gouache smell wonderful as well? The smudgy brilliance of the ranks of oil pastels exuded an exotic scent as you breezed into the shop and took the creaking staircases upstairs, past Fancy Goods and Fine China� I can picture Mam shopping in the Books Department in the middle of the 1980s. I have a copy of a collection of stories by Paul Bowles that she bought me from there. What made her pick out Paul Bowles for me? It seems a strange choice: neither of us would have heard of him. I remember loving that book so much � with its dense atmosphere of heady decadence in faraway places. It was a Picador modern classic, and Dressers always had a fine display of white-spined Picadors. Maybe she browsed those, one after the next, choosing at random, reading the backs, studying the pictures on the front? I have a gigantic, incredibly heavy, richly illustrated History of World Art. Something else she would have found in Dressers and gifted to me at Christmas, late in my teens. A book I still browse through to this day, and you can still somehow catch a whiff of that shop from the paper. The thing about Dressers, for me, was that it was about moving onto grown-up books � away from the kids� books of WH Smiths. The perfect time for me, looking back, would be when I was visiting both places� upstairs to spend my carefully-hoarded pocket money � the warm orange glow of the rowdy upstairs of Smiths and the more austere, old-fashioned, wonderfully-scented upper storey of Dressers. When I was reading both Dr Who and DH Lawrence. It was a time when I was only just finding out about the wider world of books. I was finding my feet. And I recall that Mam loved to buy me books, just as she had, back when I was learning to read: when she was teaching me from the Ladybird Books, the Well-Loved Tales series, back in Peterlee, when I was two, and we were living in a little box house in a landscape of little boxes. She was still picking out books for me, but I was growing up and developing my own tastes, and soon she would be losing track of what I liked and didn’t; what I was checking out and what I wasn’t. She would soon find it harder to know what I’d enjoy and what was any good. I suppose it’s the old tale of developing your own tastes and exploring on your own. For me it just happened in the medium of reading. There was a biography of David Bowie I bought from Dressers � an expensive hardback I splashed out on after Bowie played Live Aid and I was enthralled. I remember reading this book, hardly able to breathe because it was so exciting. It was transgressive and shocking to fifteen year old me: all this talk of sexuality and rock and art. It was wonderful. I couldn’t believe I owned a book of my own that had such wonderfully rude words scattered throughout� I’d always known that the books I chose, and which were chosen for me by loved ones, could be relied upon to transport me. I loved those familiar book departments even more because they were the launching sites � calm, quiet and smelling of polish and paper: they could lead me anywhere, and they did.

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I've spent the last few weeks obsessively drawing this series of cartoons about 'The Panda, the Cat and the Dreadful Teddy'. I've got a whole book's worth now, I reckon.

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When the Sky Fell In

Yesterday I read that folk tales have been used for a very long time for all kinds of reasons. One of their many uses has been for making fun of ‘mass hysteria�, ‘mayhem� and ‘paranoia.� Fancy that!
This is where Chicken Licken comes in. (I much prefer our name to the American version. Henny Penny sounds unnecessarily fussy somehow.) Remember that story?
The sky’s gonna come falling in! Running around like crazy warning everyone. It’s the end of the world! Duck and cover! Protect and survive! Dashing about the farmyard like a headless chicken.
In the current catastrophe I’m pleased to say that there’s been rather less panic than you might expect.
Chicken Licken has resorted to Twitter mostly, spreading every conspiracy theory he can find, raging about fake news and quibbling with almost everything he reads in ‘the mainstream media.�
Cocky Locky has taken up baking, with mixed results.
Ducky Lucky is livestreaming her keep-fit classes, flapping up and down and keeping everyone trim. She’s hoping for a medal in the New Year Honours. Dame Ducky would suit her, she says.
Goosey Loosey has waddled round the farmyard ten thousand times but forgot to ask anyone to sponsor her first. Home-schooling for her goslings has flown out of the window.
Turkey Lurkey deeply regrets the loosening of restrictions at Christmas time. He’d have been happier if the festive season had just been cancelled altogether.
Foxy Loxy is self-isolating. He hasn’t any symptoms, he’s just had enough of all those crazy birds.
Chicken Licken would like to add: ‘Don’t worry! Don’t panic! It’s not the end of the world after all. We’ll get through this! We can do it! You’ll see..!�

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The HillPaul Magrs
We’re all going over the hill!There was talk of going round it, so we could see what’s on the other side, but apparently that’s not do-able. (I’m not clear on why exactly, but anyway.)So � we’re all going over the hill!It’s quite a journey, by all accounts! A really arduous yomp! Various reports have come back from others over the years. Some have found themselves in real trouble. Some wore themselves out. Some couldn’t stop bickering amongst themselves. Some of them only got halfway up and then they suddenly went quiet.A few baulked at the very idea of having to go over the hill.Why can’t we go under? Why can’t we fly?Well, we can’t. We have to face facts. We have to go over, step by step.There’s no doubt about that. No wriggle-room, when it comes to going over the hill.The weather is unpredictable and it’s foggy much of the time, so you can barely see the peak anyway.Some people say: Is there even a top of the hill to go over? Can you see it? Prove it to me! Show me it’s worth it!Well, you have to crane your neck. Squint a bit. Have a look at the scrappy maps and charts other people have left behind.There!Sometimes on clear and brilliant days, or by the light of the moon or in the middle of a savage lightning storm � that’s when you see the top.Oh crumbs. Quite a long way up, eh?Quite perilous-looking. Impressive, really.All that way!We’ve got all that way to go!So make sure you pick your companions well. No one you can’t abide, obviously. No one who’s going to chuck you down a crevasse. Or elbow sharply past you in their own rush to the top. Or nick your precious supplies. Or chunter on endlessly as you toil your way up.Remember � don’t pack too much stuff. You have to carry all that gubbins with you. And there’s no wi-fi up there, or anything to connect to, and no sockets to plug chargers into.You might think you can get your friends to carry your bags for you. Some do. Don’t be soft and go round offering to carry everyone else’s nicknacks. Some folk will take a lend. Just look at them! Bombing ahead! Galloping up the winding path! They’re not looking back� and meanwhile you’ve got all the rucksacks � crammed packed with all their crap and dirty pants and socks and all kinds of horrible things. Typical!So…DON’T stop for breathers so long that you lose your nerve. DON’T let yourself get vertigo as you try to enjoy the vista on the less misty days. DON’T get drawn in by the weird, yelping siren song of the yeti. Oh, yes � he’s up there somewhere. That furry get! You know, he EATS unwary travellers! You’ll come across his abominable footprints and they’ll make you shudder with dread and wonder. But hurry on by!So here we go.We’re all going over the hill!There’s no way round it. There’s no avoiding it.The air’s a bit thinner as you get higher up. Breathe carefully…Look, maybe I’m dwelling on the negatives a bit much?Let’s think ourselves lucky!Yes, it’s tough. It’s not for softies.But just think.Think about drinking hot sweet coffee out of a flask and seeing that view. The whole world comes swimming into focus!Think about having lovely companions with you all that way and the whole world opening up around you.Just think how it must look from the top!And they say � from up there � that’s when you see what’s down the other side. That’s got to be worth it, hasn’t it?Personally I think it’s probably more of the same. I kind of hope it is.(But it might just be a vertiginous wasteland of yeti crap. Stinky and all downhill. That would be a disappointment, I guess.)Whatever � we’re all going over the hill � together!And at least we don’t have to do it on our own.And who knows? We might even have a laugh.

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I had a lovely time over the weekend, playing all the old records... and making pictures to commemorate Bowie's birthday.

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Cover reveal! Here it is - 'The Biscuit Factory Girls at War' by my good friend Elsie Mason. It's the second in the series and it's out in April. You can pre-order here -