So, we are all gorging ourselves on information at the moment - trying to work out what actions to take to protect ourselves, our families and friends, and our communities from this virus. It's hard to believe that simple soap and water is probably the most efficient way to kill the virus (see the science here) and that keeping apart will stop us from falling apart.

It traces the 'civilizing' of manners in Western Europe since the Middle ages, looking especially at books of manners.

I read sections of this book again last week and wanted to share. The level of detail with which advice is given on intimate bodily functions is surprising - to say the least!

This, from 1619 is rather lovely:

There is plenty for us to take note of when it comes to sneezing and coughing. (Handkerchiefs were unknown at this time and in later years, a luxury of the richest only. In 1599, after her death, the inventory of Henry IV's mistress was found to include five handkerchiefs.) In the absense of a handkerchief, people usually blew their noses into their hands or their sleeve.

So, thirteenth century advice from Bonvesin de la Riva, in (De la zinquanta cortexie da tavola) includes:

My personal favourite from Ein spruch der ze tische kert in the fifteenth century is this:

Our ideas of Medieval banquets often look like this:

in fact this was a time of privation by our modern Western standards - people generally had their own knives, but shared not only bowls and plates, but often spoons. And, of course, there was no concept of germs.

Dishes of meat were generally brought to the table, usually everyone cut themselves a piece and took it in their hand or put it on a plate or slice of bread, then passed it on. Stews or soup however meant that in many cases, people took a mounthfull then passed on the bowl AND the spoon.

A whole raft of manners were needed to cope with this situation. Tannhauser's thirteenth century poem says:

I should think so!

And from De civilitate morum puerilium by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1530:

OK, so what has this got to do with Covid 19 I hear you ask.

Well, it's when you read these extracts that you appreciate Elias's comment on communal eating: "this necessitated special precepts at table - politeness required that one blow one's nose with the left hand if one took meat in the right." We still have the expression today, 'cack-handed' - to mean awkwardly done / done as if with the left hand. The left hand was the 'cack hand' (from the Latin cacare or the French caque) - the hand used for (as modern dictionaries more sensitively phrase it) 'ablutions'.

So, thinking about that, I've taken a Medieval approach to my shopping - I go with a 'clean hand' and a 'cack hand'. Somtimes I put a disposable glove on the cack hand - if only to remind myself of my method AND to stop me touching my face - but usually I don't bother.

So setting out, I leave my hand bag, phone, purse etc at home or in the car. I put my paper list and credit card in my clean-hand pocket. When I arrive at the grocery, it's basket (or trolly handle) in the cack hand: list in the clean hand.

I park the trolly or set down the basket when I come to what I need. Then I open any refrigerator doors/touch handles, take my item and put it in the basket/trolly with my cack-hand, pick up the basket with the cack-hand and continue onwards until I come to the till.

Clean hand in pocket (out of the way), I use my cack-hand to place all the items from the basket onto the belt/counter. If I can, I also place them in my shopping bag with my cack hand (it helps if you have a bag that sits square).
I take my creadit card out of my pocket with my clean hand, tap it and put it back in my pocket.

Then off I go. If I'm wearing a glove, I remove it carefully and put it inside out in my cack-hand pocket - recently I've not bothered (see below).

Once home, I go straight to the bathroom (having left the door open so I don't have to touch the handle) and wash my hands. Then I put away the shopping. Then I wash my hands again.

So, I'm quite serious about this for a few reasons...

First, I understand that the virus has to get from inside an infected person to inside me. It's all about person-to-person transfer and it has to get inside via my mouth, eyes or nose - it can't get in through my skin which is actually an amazing barrier. The virus is not really in the air except in the few feet in front of an infected person - so keeping physical distance and reducing the time spent near others is the most important thing.

After that, everything else is just an extra precaution.

Generally, surfaces have only tiny traces and not enough to infect me (someone would have to be infected, then cough all over a surface and then I would have to lick it for me to pick it up from a surface). But the viral load may build on some surfaces like the handle to the fridge. It can't get in through the skin in my hands (skin is AMAZING) but I do need to try not to touch the handle and then my face.

So most of this is about keeping me super conscious so I don't touch my face thereby getting any trace I pick up near my mouth.

You see, I see ladies with gloves and masks get to the till then rooting around inside their handbags (with their gloves) for their wallet. I see them get the wallet out and then take out a credit card, pay and return the credit card to the wallet with the gloved hand. Then they put the wallet back into the bag - next to their lipstick/sanitiser/hand cream and PHONE... all the time feeling super secure because they are wearing gloves...

I see men (being the brave hunter-gatherers) wandering around with gloves on, then pulling out their phones, putting them TO THEIR FACES to check with their wives and girlfriends which brand of xxx they meant... putting the phones back in their pockets (for later!) but feeling OK because they are wearing gloves.

It makes me want to scream!
So take the Medieval approach I prithee, cack-hand/clean hand... with my apologies to my left-handed friends.

Anna

P.S. I am trying to use this time to update my website and especially to copy articles I've written for others and group them so they are easily accessible. At the moment it's chaotic, but do come back another time when it's all slick and wonderful and working and have a browse. (You'll have to refresh the page - I did not know that!)

First published by IBBY for IBBYLink 37

I learned to read very early and was a voracious reader – I don’t know what age I was exactly, but I must have been quite young to be such a fan of Enid Blyton’s collections of short stories about Mr Pinkwhistle! I was given The Naughtiest Girl in the School as a present and, because I didn’t know how such books worked. I read it the same way as I did Mr Pinkwhistle – choosing a random chapter to start off with then another… It was incredibly confusing and the ‘stories’ didn’t make any sense and were all about a girl called Elizabeth, but I couldn’t work out what was going on! I must have read about four chapters before I realised that it was one long story and had to start at the beginning and read all the way through – which was rather spoiled by the fact that I’d already read the penultimate chapter!
 
Once I got my head around it, I really enjoyed this new format and getting my teeth into longer stories – more Naughtiest Girl stories followed, then the St Clare’s series, Malory Towers, the Five Find-Outers, the Adventure of Spiggyholes, the Famous Five and Mr Galliano’s Circus[i]. I just ate them up.
 
The books were full of girls called Felicity and Gwendoline and Penelope playing lacrosse, eating cress sandwiches and drinking ginger beer. Growing up in rural Ireland in the 1970s, I had never met anyone called Gwendoline or Penelope and I had no idea what cress was. I was shocked that the children were allowed drink Ginger Beer as I assumed it was alcoholic… but I adored the books anyway and read and re-read them endlessly.

Then I was given a book called Flight of the Doves (1968). It’s about a boy called Finn and a girl called Derval. The children run away from an abusive uncle to find their granny in Galway. Well, when I came to that bit, I was so excited. Galway! I’d heard of Galway - it was real. I might even have been there. To this day I remember how the world shifted on its axis as I read this book. Suddenly the world inside the book was real and tangible and meaningful. Children like me were IN it. I read the book more than 40 years ago - I’d even had to search Google to get the title - but I can still remember clearly that the girl cut her hair and pretended to be a boy so people looking for the children wouldn’t recognise her and take her back. I remember a bit where they were helped by a Traveller family and how kind they were. I remember it like it happened to me. Suddenly books were something I was IN!
 
Flight of the Doves was written by Walter Macken and it began a voyage of discovery for me. This was an era before ‘teen’ (and even more so, before ‘tween’) literature. It can still be a tough time for readers – outgrowing their childhood favourites but not ready for adult themes quite yet. Back then it was nigh on impossible to find material for an avid and very able reader in her teens. I went on to read Macken’s The Silent People – a moving adult novel set during Ireland’s Famine. This led to Famine – a magnificent book by Liam O Flaherty and then O Flaherty’s short stories both in English and in Irish.

My journey continued with Across the Bitter Sea, by Eilís Dillon then onto Quiet Flows the Don (Aleksandrovich Sholokov) and a raft of Russian writers.
 

It’s amazing how these early experiences influence and shape your life. I continued to have a passion for Russian fiction and it was my major at University College Cork, studying Chekov, Dostoevsky and Turgenev before I turned away to specialise in the Gothic Novel.
 
This in turn initiated my interest in the publishing industry itself and on graduating I emigrated to the UK in search of work in publishing. I never thought I would end up spending all my working life in Children’s publishing – as an editor, publisher and writer. Now, once more, I find myself back under the influence of that first reading of Flight of the Doves – reliving that feeling of discovering someone like me in a book.
 
It’s a feeling I nurture and keep at the centre of my publishing philosophy as I try to make books that include a range of children. So when I write or publish books with little assertive girls or black boys or naughty frogs or grumpy bears, it’s not to fight racism or strike a blow for feminism or counter disabled stereotypes or promote empathy - though, of course, I hope it will do all those things. My driving force is to make sure all children see themselves IN books. Books show children the world and they need to see themselves in books to know they have a right to be in the world. I know that – Walter Macken taught me.

Woke to glorious sunshine on Saturday - you could be in Greece! Had lunch out the back:

Then off to pick some blackberries - sméara dubha.

Made some home-made granola based on my good friend Suzanne Bloom's recipe and some blackberry compote as developed in this very kitchen by Marijn Woudstra - ready for the morning!

tBut the weather is always changing in Kerry, especially here in Glenmore - close to sea and mountains... we often get this eerie mix of brigh sunshine and ominous clouds. It was enough to make me turn for home...

though not before I'd got my perfect photo of a Fuscia - a native of South American but growing wild here since it was introduced (due to the Gulf Stream). Think I'll use it as my Twitter avatar for a bit...

)After a long two days travelling, it was nice to get out for a walk (in fact I HAVE to get out for a walk if I want to call anyone as there's no phone or mobile connection at our house). It was a 'grand soft day' with the lightest of mist. The fuscia are still in bloom after a sunny summer...
and the furze are holding out.

You can easily forget about the abundance of autum in the city - but here, even in the drizzle, the berries are ripening... honeysuckle is scenting the air, rose hips are almost ready (I can't remember what my mother used to make from them - I'll have to research) the berries on the Mountain Ash are like corn-on-the-cob and even the briars are wonderful.

I remember why Gerard Manley Hopkins was a favourite poet...

               Glory be to God for dappled things –
                  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
                      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
               Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
                  Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
                     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

                All things counter, original, spare, strange;
                  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
                     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
                 He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                       Praise him.

So on moving day we were shocked to discover that the developers across the street had decided to do even more digging. We had permission to park outside our house - but now that the developers had created a one way, that wouldn't be possible...

But the amazing young men who arrived to do the move parked in the space outside the house, leaving the road clear and even a smige of foothpath - a sneeze would have brought the whole adventure to a premature end!

Our kind neighbours cooked us lunch and we said a sad goodbye. Then we packed the car - with kitty-crate and computer (that's all that would fit) and headed for Wales.

Poor Kitty is generally an outdoor cat, roaming the nearby gardens and only staying in when the temperature drops below freezing. Eighteen hours in the car was just too much! By the time we stopped to pick up a few groceries, she was gone into a daze... finally, in a traditionally misty afternoon, we arrived.

,I usually only blog here about books and related matters, but I was so uplifted by the AfroCelt concert I went to in Reading on Saturday night, I wanted to write. And, as I thought about what I wanted to say, I realised that actually it has a bearing on my 'book life' as it were...

I don't like to use the word 'diversity' very much - so often it's used by white people when they talk about 'others' - but you can't get away from the word when you're watching AfroCelt - they epitomise it in being a group of musicians from around the world creating the most amazing sound.
It's not 'fused' - you can hear clearly all the different original traditions at once - but together they do produce something new and amazing and exciting.

I think the reason I was so uplifted (not just from the amazing music itself but from the experience) is the fact that all of these people working together and creating this amazing new thing are a fabulous example of how much richer we are when we embrace and respect each others' traditions and when we celebrate what we achieve together...

This was in contrast to the direction the UK seems to be moving at the moment, and specifically the horrible comments I'd been reading the few days before on Emma Dabiri's Twitter feed claiming (in a nutshell) that Irishness cannot include anyone who is not white and being particularly nasty about people of mixed heritage.

There was a lot of talk about 'purity' in this thread - and I guess it wasn't a surprise that the comments came back into my head while I was watching a Punjabi-Sikh (from Slough - big up Slough) accompanying an Irish fiddler playing a reel...

Because while people claim that 'music is a universal language', there is much talk of purity in musical circles too - most especially in the area of folk or traditional music. On my last visit to Kerry I joined a great local trad session, but I was curious at the amazement at a local young flute player. Adopted as a baby, people were amazed at his facility to play Irish music - even though he'd been adopted into an extremely musical family - as if there was an Irish traditional music -gene.

I have no doubt that there are genes for musical aptitude, and I'm sure if this young boy was living in Russia, he'd be playing Tchaikovsky. But there isn't a gene for national music and it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone born elsewhere but growing up in a rich musical environment should be a skilled practitioner of a local tradition. When we talk of people being 'naturals' we somehow set up a situation where a tradition cannot be learned but has to somehow be inherited.

The thing about Afro Celt is that each musician is superb exponent of his or her traditional/native instrument and musical tradition. They are all amazingly skilled. And whatever about this talk of universal languages, actually even brilliant musicians from very different traditions cannot just roll up and start playing together...

So when Johnny Kalsi (the Slough Punjabi-Sikh dohl-player) said "you need three legs for this one, it's in sevenths" he was really acknowledging the level of difficulty of the collaboration in the next piece. For someone like me, steeped in an Irish tradition, I was loving it, but struggled to keep the beat! And I was in awe of the Irish flute and fiddle player who somehow managed to play some kind of slip-jig to it!

These musicians, all experts in their own fields must have had to be prepared to really listen to each other, to be open to being amateurs and needing to learn about a different tradition.

And the result was so amazing. For me, what is SO exciting about Afro-Celt is that it's not just a blend - you can hear all the different instruments and traditions clearly, but the experience of hearing them together is mind-blowing.

So, if you are saddened by the daily updates on Brexit with their attendant xenophobia and the emboldening of those voices which would argue for pure homelands, check out Afro-Celt and lift your soul.

http://www.afroceltsoundsystem.org.uk/
http://www.afroceltsoundsystem.org.uk/events/

For the current series of concerts they are being 'supported' by the Dhol Foundation.
www.dholfoundation.com

So I'm humming 'All the single Ladies' in my head all week and I can't think why...

Everything is ready for Edinburgh Book Festival...

• magic wand - tick VITAL for under 5s events
• bookmarks with little cats for them to colour in - tick
• my box of goodies with glitter and tape and ribbons to decorate the bookmarks - tick

And then I realised - one of my craft activities is to make a Mary Mary doll. (Lulu loves the poem Mary Mary Quite Contrary - it inspires her to plant flowers and decorate her garden with shells and beads... Lulu thinks that the 'maids all in a row' are little ladies and she makes one herself. I then made some last summer and put instructions for how to make them on the website...

My events at EIBF will be focused on Lulu Loves Flowers and Lulu Gets a Cat - with storytelling and then craft. I ordered some wooden 'bodies' to act as the bases for the dolls but when they arrived they were far too light in colour - Lulu's dolls look just like her and that's important.

SO I spent the last few weeks painting the bodies - now these little ladies are ready to go!

This is a book I worked on in 1995 with the wonderful Margaret Bateson-Hill. She had already contacted the Lambeth Chinese Community about her story, and once I'd acquired it, I continued to work with them. They vetted the artwork (and if fact found a major historical error - the artists had worked from really good quality reference. However, she'd drawn the emperor's courtiers with beards and our consultant told us they were always eunuchs, so we had to remove the beards. We also contacted the community for recommendations and connections: they found us a paper-cut artist and a translator, and put me in touch with people who typeset a Chinese newspaper who I used for the Chinese text. They made a really positive contribution to the project. I'm not singing my own praises here, just making the point that this has been good practice for sensitive publishers for over 30 years.

This was the first in a series of four 'new' folktale-style stories, and we worked very closely with a group from the Native American Community (in the USA), a group of Russian friends in London and a number of Indian librarians living in the UK for the other books in the series. It was routine.

2) Sensitivity readers to check books for offence

Two points here actually. Firstly I hate the term sensitivity readers - like we are all some kind of snowflakes! If I set my book in a historical context and I as a writer/editor/publisher ask someone with knowledge and expertise/experience of this context, I don't call them 'sensitivity readers' I call them consultants. Though those who coined the expression in the first place didn't mean it in a pejorative way, it is important what we call things and certainly, I think calling them 'sensitivity readers' feeds into the kind of attitude expressed by Lionel Shriver - that it's all about sensitivity rather than accuracy or authenticity. Lee and Low (who I'm sure have also been using readers for a very long time call them 'cultural consultants' and I think this is a far more sensible term. It also speaks to the attempt by authors, editors and publishers to 'get it right' rather than having the  'unrelenting anguish about hurting other people's feelings' Shriver talks about.

Which brings me on to the second point - the offence bit.
See, as a writer myself and as someone who writes, edits and publishes stories set outside of my own experience, I am concerned about giving offence, sure - I think that goes without saying. However, the main motivation behind asking someone who is more knowledgeable or has more experience about a situation I'm writing about, it to get it right, to find an authenticity... a weird note, a slightly off phrase can break the magic of a story, draw attention to the writing, break the spell - that's what I'm trying to avoid - that slightly off note...

Sadly, I think one of the reasons publishing is recently talking about 'sensitivity readers' is that it has long been writing/publishing for an assumed white audience and white readers' notions of 'blackness' (or any other 'other'). In this context, a reasonably informed stab at representing any non-white character/voice/situation is good enough as long as it seems OK to the white writer/editor/publisher. This is the white gaze Toni Morrison talks about and which was recently referred to by L.J. Alonge in his recent brilliant article, Writing Past The White Gaze As A Black Author.
In recent years, especially in YA, readers have routinely voiced criticisms of texts which are inauthentic, and this perhaps is why publishers are waking up to the diversity of readers their stories are being read by - and that is feeding the (good) move to consult.

* Little side note, it was interesting to me that in the Toni Morrison video she speaks of asking her Mali friend various questions including finding an authentic name for one of her characters. Publishers may be waking up to checking white writers, but we all need to be sensitive when writing about any other culture.

3) Sensitivity Readers

Though the word readers is used in the plural when talking about this, it seems to me from a lot of the comments that in reality people use one reader. And while I understand how hard it is to get multiple readers, that surely has to be part of the exercise - if the intention is to genuinely iron out any glitches versus getting a tick of approval.

Chimamanda Adichie says pretty much everything worth saying on the topic in her amazing Ted Talk The Danger of a Single Story. And I think everything she says also applies to cultural consultants as I shall now call them. It is unfair to ask one 'cultural reader' to represent a whole group of individuals and we should remember that what might sound off to someone from a particular class/city/religion in a country, might be just fine for someone else from a different class/countryside/religion. Finding more than one reader might seem a daunting task, but actually it's not.

I was quite nervous when working on my book, My Friend Jamal. I had worked with the Somali family featured in the story for so long we'd become good friends, so I was confident the settings were OK. However, the mother of 'Jamal' was not a confident English speaker and at very least I wanted to be sure she really knew and understood what I was saying in the story. I knew two other Somali families really well and asked them to put me in touch with others - in fact one woman was part of a Somali women's group and she kindly invited me along to one of their meetings, introduced me and allowed me to read the story and have the women comment. Since I touched on religious practice in the story, it was very important to me that some very committed Muslims commented on it alongside some with more secular views. In my experience, people are incredibly willing to help you make sure you represent people like them accurately.


So, that's where I'll leave it. I think consultants are vital to anyone writing outside of their own experience - but it's important they don't feel the burden of being one voice from that community - whatever it is. For me at least, this is not about “marginalised groups whose feelings must be specially protected" it's about the authenticity of the story. I'll close with one anecdote. When I came to the UK first I was quite a fan of The Bill, but over time, I had to stop watching it. I found that every time an Irish character appeared on screen, he was likely to be the criminal. That was offensive. However, the other thing that made me stop watching was the inaccuracy - I watched one programme where two Irish guys were supposed to be brothers. Now, their accents were from different parts of the country - so I assumed it was part of the plot that they were not in fact brothers. However, it turned out they were (supposed to be brothers that is) - it was just some casual casting and lack of attention to detail. But it spoiled the whole plot and resolution for me and I was confused for much of the programme. That is what a consultant might have fixed - the authenticity bit. 

Finally, I think we need to guard against over reliance on readers - the story is ultimately the writer's responsibility and then that of her editor/publisher... a sensitivity reader can comment, but it should never be seen as some kind of tick of approval or badge against criticism.

Anna

Thoughtful comments please.

Bologna 2016 was a very significant one for me. Having sold the US, Danish and Dutch rights for the first Lola/Lulu book at the fair in 2004/5, I decided to set up Alanna Books to publish it in the UK. In 2006, all of us met to celebrate. Little did we realise how this little book-loving hero would take off!

So in 2016, I felt it was important to mark the 10 years - not just of Lulu's development, but also of the joy I've had working with such a tremendous group of people. I've begun to think of Lulu as a magnet for nice people, each time she finds a new champion, I make a new colleague and friend.

So first up, I'm so grateful that my stories are illustrated by not just one of the most talented illustrators in the business, but one of the nicest - Ros Beardshaw.

It was a fabulous evening with a very sweet moment towards the end - the lovely proprietors of Enoteca Storica Faccioli, Elisa and Stefano brought their little son to meet us. He was very excited to get a copy of Lulu as you can see and he reminded us what this really is all about!

I can't end this post without thanking two of my biggest supporters - the talented writer and storyteller, Margaret Bateson-Hill, and my wonderful husband, Brian, without whose support none of this would be possible.

In the photos: Marianna Warth, Pallas Editora Rio de Janero, Brazil; Andrew Macmillan & Tricia, MMS Publishing Services, UK; Martyn Chapman, ORCA Book Services UK; Rusty Scott, Yolanda Scott & Meg Quinn, Charlesbridge Publishing, Boston, USA; Kendra Marcus & Ilse Crane, BookStop Literary Agency San Fransisco, USA; Margaret Bateson-Hill, UK; Brian Pembroke UK at Enoteca Storica Faccioli, Bologna - with thanks to Simona Sideri.