An absolute shocker

            An interesting Lithuanian Christmas Eve with Penny's brother John and his family at their house high in the hills on the New South Wales/Queensland border. John's wife is originally from Lithuania and likes to keep some old customs one of which is Christmas Eve and involves twelve dishes, all fish or vegetarian, each of which you have to sample and no alcohol. You also wish each other a happy and prosperous new year and break unleavened bread.

            What I found almost most fascinating is that at the end of the year Lithuanians traditionally wipe the slate clean, cancel all debts and generally start afresh. Terrific, of course, but alas life for most of us isn't like that and we don't have the luxury of being able to start completely fresh because the accumulated baggage stays with us no matter what.  So even though this is a time for taking stock and making new resolutions there are things which have been done and things left undone and they can't be changed. I'm all for wiping slates clean but there is, for better or worse, a limit. Our slates can't be wiped clean if only because much of the writing is indelible.

            On the plus side the arrival of Henry Heald on November 25^th is the best news. The third grandson and the first to carry the family name and a British birthplace. Welcome Henry. In the summer my son, Tristram, got married, and I am now in Auckland in anticipation of the fourth wedding, that of Lucy. When she is joined in holy matrimony next Friday that will make all four children married and still with their spouses. Almost a record.  

            My job on Friday is to "give Lucy away" though the service seems likely to be predictably contemporary and will take place en plein air or under canvas and as far as I can see with minimal religious involvement. My Lithuanian sister-in-law, responsible, of course, for Christmas, eve has urged me not to do what all Australians do which is to make a really insulting speech on such occasions in the belief that this illustrates true devotion. I am further encouraged in this by the words of Gabriel Garcia Marques, the great Colombian novelist, who is retiring from public life because he has lymphatic cancer. His words, accompanied by a chanson and pics of Paris have been sent on by Annie van Es widow of the photographer Hugh, whose wake Penny and I organized at the Frontline Club in London and whose obituary I wrote last year for the Guardian. Marques says we should speak fondly of our nearest and dearest, reminding them at all times of how much we adore them.

            Well, I will do my best, but I am reminded that I was brought up and educated in an old English tradition which thinks tears and expressions of love rather cissy and bad form while encouraging one to go in for stiff upper lips and loads of deprecation and understatement. Old habits die hard and I am wary of too much public display of emotion. On the other hand...Whatever else I do however I shall use Lucy's mantra about me as a source of constant encouragement. "Dad...you're so embarrassing." I feel that's my role in life, both generally and in particular. Which includes, of course, saying the unexpected and contrary as often as possible. More on all this next month.

            The down side began with my younger brother's funeral in Wells Cathedral. He actually died at the very end of  2008 but his departure has cast a shadow over the whole of my 2009 and will I am afraid be part of the rest of my life. This is very un-Lithuanian but a mark of what I mean. There are certain things which can't be eradicated and which are part of one's life however one comes to terms with them.

            I suppose that the sudden death of a close and younger relation always has a significant effect - you'd have to be pretty bloodless to be unaffected. The most obvious lesson is probably "Carpe Diem". For example on this trip to New Zealand I was quite keen to explore the South Island where I have never been. My wife who is naturally more sensible and cautious said that we had neither time nor money and we would be much better leaving the south to "Next time". I protested that there might not be a "next time" but I lost as usual and I have a horrible feeling that I will never see the South Island.

            Death seems to have that effect and there seems to have been an increasing number of them in 2009. Some of them were contemporaries, some a little bit older, a very few younger. People's passing inevitably changes one's mental furniture and I find that this means many of one's assumptions alter as well. If life is just one clattering carousel there is no escaping the fact that one is getting to the moment when one falls off, or is taken off, that new people are arriving and that the balance of power has shifted. My elder daughter, Emma, will be forty next year, and will hate me for telling everyone but it's as big a landmark in my life as it is in hers. A man with a forty year old daughter is a senior citizen, a pensioner, a grandfather and will, if he gets into trouble, be described as such in the morning paper - if there is such a thing.

            So, suddenly, this is where one is at: old man in a hurry. Much advice has, as always, been of the sit tight, hunker down, take no risks variety and while I am, contrary to much general perception, very sensitive about advice especially from experts. all my life I have been  counselled to be cautious and then when a calculated risk works out I am told that "it's different for you". Such is life and if I have advice it is to listen to everything that is on offer and then to take the decision oneself erring on the side of risk. That way life is interesting, rewarding and relatively free of "if only". There are an awful lot of sad people around who will never know what they might have achieved if they had only taken what seemed at the time to be an unacceptable risk. Carpe Diem.

            I have undertaken two speaking engagements to interesting foreign parts in the last year. One was a trip north of the border to speak to the Scottish Cricket Society in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Know-all Sassenachs and even some Scots assured me that there was no such thing but there was and Penny and I had a thoroughly enjoyable and unorthodox visit to both cities. We also spent a few days in Antwerp where I conducted a crime-writing workshop to some daunting Flemings. I enjoyed the whole business even though I found my audience suitably daunting and Antwerp itself was every bit as remarkable and wonderful as I had hoped. Our B and B, overlooking the cloister of the St. Paulus Church was quite one of the most special either of us have ever experienced.

            We also spent a week in Krakow and almost three in the Veneto where I interviewed the American crime writer, Donna Leon for the Daily Telegraph. In a different (and better) world I would have written lucratively and publicly about both these places but the world has changed and though I wrote about them here, with enthusiasm, I couldn't generate interest from traditional outlets on which I used to feel I could rely. The same has been true of the latest long visit to Australia and New Zealand which has taken in all five days of a fascinating cricket Test between the West Indies and Australia at the Adelaide Oval, a tour of Manning Clark's old house in Canberra, weddings in Sydney and outside Auckland, and much much else besides. But there you go. There is a widespread saying voiced by today's young Turks that says the days when you could do a deal over lunch at the Garrick Club are long gone. I'm afraid I belong to a generation which believed in the efficacy of such lunches. It reminds me of the great Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson's response when I proposed writing him a proposal to bolster my notion of writing him a biography of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland. I explained that such proposals were now very much the vogue. Christopher looked perplexed and said that he wanted no such thing on the grounds that "I know who you are; I know who Barbara Cartland is; and I know what a biography is." We did the deal; I wrote the book,; it was a critical and commercial success.

            Anyway from a commercial and creative point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I use the word advisedly because when my mother was startled by a loud explosion shortly after arriving at the military HQ in Dorchester, Dorset, in World War Two the Regimental Sergeant Major, said, by way of explanation, "It's that shocker Heald". It was my father who was, at the time, the Weapons Training Officer, and who amused himself by removing the pins from hand-grenades and then throwing them after the longest possible interval. This earned him the family sobriquet of "Shocker" which was generally pretty well justified.

            Anyway from a professional point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I could go into more painful detail but I have already used up 1500 or so words and I don't want to seem unduly grumpy. I'm told it's bad for business and I hope that from this point of view as well as many others 2010 will be a huge improvement on its predecessor. Not that 2009 was consistently dreadful. It wasn't. There was much to enjoy. But professionally speaking it was an absolute shocker.

            And I see no sense in pretending otherwise.