Author diaries

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4 June 2007 Entry: "No Coverage"

No Coverage

I went camping to Middleton in Teesdale last week, as it was half term.
I woke in a tent and all I could hear were lambs bleating, birds cawing and singing, the tent flapping gently, a murmur of other campers. I knew if I climbed out of my nest of sleeping bag, duvet and wooly blanket and stepped out into the dewy meadow I would hear the constant soothing rush of the Tees.
We went swimming at Low Force and different points along the river; the river is the colour of old tea, and once immersed it turns your body amber. I would hover at the edge on slippery stone, then push out into the bubbling current as it tumbled over the lip of rocks - swimming down with the force of water propelling you at the speed of a champion. I made the mistake of trying to swim back up the current - I was gasping for breath in seconds and not getting anywhere, so best to slide out into the quiet calm of the bank side. I think it’s the only way to get straight in to the cold water, but once in, you acclimatise quickly, and it’s wonderfully invigorating exercise.
Many people advise how dangerous it is: to plunge in on a hot day can cause heart attacks, and with the impenetrable peat-dark of the water, impossible to know where rocks are close to the surface. We were sensible, and in the company of seasoned Tees swimmers.
I was camping in Middleton at half term this time last year. As it comes up to the second anniversary of Keith and Joe’s death, (and just passed Julia’s) camping with lots of old friends, inevitably we talk about the past and I feel that fluttering in the diaphragm as if a sob is about to rise and burst forth.
Last year, the whole of the first year without the lost person, is a year of anniversaries - you think back to ‘the last easter holiday’ or ‘the last birthday’ we shared. After the second year, you realise it is the first twelve months lived without any reference to the person at all. Whether we like it or not the memory and events and the person recede into our past - it feels like a different sort of loss. Remembering them with friends is a lovely and necessary sadness.
However, I realise that I’m much calmer, and not so close to tears and despair when I compare how I felt last year. We talk, play music, cook, eat and drink, go for walks. I read Richard Milward’s Apples a teen novel set in Middlesbrough. It is one of a selection being discussed on Radio Four’s Open Book next sunday, they are doing a feature on novels about teenagers set in the North East, and Wall is part of it, as is Julia’s The Taxi Driver’s Daughter and Chrissie Glazebrook’s The Madolescents .
I did a brief interview about Wall, saying I didn’t think it was a fad, or the beginning of Grit Lit, but a reflection of life, but that it could be set anywhere and the issues would be the same. I enjoyed Richard Milward’s book, all written in first person by different characters; funny but hard-hitting. He’s got into the mind of a teenage girl very convincingly.
It was bliss to get away from e-mails and mobile phones, I get no coverage in the Tees valley. It makes you reassess the importance of being contactable all the time. It’s a bit like stepping out of time. We all need to do it now and again.