Late last evening an invitation plinked into my In Box. Well, kind of. The Cultural Institute at the Bulgarian Embassy in London is hosting a forum on Bulgaria and its image in Europe and the gist of the invitation was that they would have loved to ask me to speak but were unable to offer me a speaker’s fee. Nor even expenses.

I explained in my reply that lack of funds, theirs or mine, has never prevented me from accepting speaking engagements  – though you’d think an embassy’s Cultural Institute would be able to pony up a girl’s bus fare from somewhere  – but I had a prior and non-negotiable committment.  Oh yes, and there would also have been the minor drawback that I have absolutely no expertise on the subject.

I believe Mr F just said, ‘When did that ever stop you?’ but he’s getting rather clever at not moving his lips.

The flimsy basis of the invitation, just so you know how these things work, is that I once wrote a novel about the culture clash between post-Soviet Bulgaria and cutting edge 21st century America. It was published in Bulgaria and even warmly received. My fear that Bulgarians would be offended by it turned out to be groundless. If anything came out of Lubka looking really bad it was the music business.  Still, what I know about Bulgaria and its sense of nationhood could be written on the back of a season ticket to Levski Sofia. Writer, know thy limits.

Authors these days are expected to perform. It isn’t enough to write the book. You must also submit to the dog and pony show. Crazy really because some writers, who are brilliant on the page, can barely string three words together on a platform. That isn’t my problem and neither does a microphone hold any fears for me. People who come to hear authors are generally well-disposed before you even open your mouth. You’re a real person, the face behind the name and you’re gamely sitting up there in the hot seat. The audience are glad it’s not them. And it beats staying in and watching the telly. 

But an ignoramus speaking at a Cultural Institute? Uh-oh. I picture stern faces. I imagine the impatient rustling of learned papers. And no taxi ticking over outside the front door, ready for the fast getaway. The stuff of nightmares.

   Almost without exception every novel I’ve ever written has caused some reader to get in touch with me and ask me how I know so much about their life. I try to assure them they’re not being stalked by a crazy old scribbler. The fact is, there are only so many stories in the world. It’s the little local details that makes us feel that a story is our own.

When The Dress Circle was published and I did the rounds of  daytime TV shows I got nobbled in the Green Room by one transvestite and his wife who insisted, in the friendliest way possible, that I had told their story and theirs alone. They forced upon me a kind of gratitude I’d done nothing to deserve.

Similarly, after The Future Homemakers of America was published I met an USAF wife whose story was identical to the one I’d invented for the widow of First Lieutenant Okey Jackson. This experience spooked me slightly, but it was also encouraging because she said I had the military details exactly right. So, phew.  

Last week I heard from a reader who just finished At Sea. Why had I chosen Morecambe Bay as one of the book’s locations, she wondered? And why were two of my characters breeders of Dandie Dinmont terriers? These features were strangely close to her own story. Well, I think I chose Morecambe Bay because no-one else did. You know? Enough with the novels set  in Paris or New York. Let’s hear it for Carnforth for a change. And if people don’t know where Morecambe Bay is, let them go forth and consult an atlas.

Similarly for the Dandie Dinmont. It’s not a fashionable breed, though I know it has its devotees. As I recall it, when I was sketching out the characters of Mumsie and her Special Friend, Bobbie, pursuit of perfection in the pedigree of the Dandie seemed a suitable obsession for a pair of crusty old ladies. Was I right, was I wrong? Darned if I know. This whole writing business is a mystery to me.

Time is a strange thing for a writer. Sometimes it passes at a luxuriously leisurely pace and you can spend a whole morning deciding whether to name a character Desmond or Donald. What do you mean, does it matter? Are you crazy?

Then, often without warning, time scrunches up into a log jam of tasks that must be addressed immediately. Like this week. Suddenly page proofs were ready for checking and could they please have them done and delivered by next Tuesday, bearing in mind England and its postal service is in the middle of a Siberian winter. Plus there was an interview for an American newspaper, a bunch of emails to answer and the gas engineer to call, again. 

I was able to deal with the Pittsburgh Examiner while dressed in my pyjamas, so thank heavens for email interviews. By 7 am this morning I achieved warp speed, cracked on with the proofs between mouthfuls of porridge, delivered them electronically by early afternoon and yes, feel like I got shot through a particle accelerator and met myself coming back. But I predict that next week I’ll be able to spend several slow-moving aeons tinkering with one pesky paragraph that’s been giving me trouble. It’s all to do with light and gravity and stuff.

So there you have it. The Laurie Graham Theory of Time. Next week, Black Holes and Creative Writing Workshops.

    When people find out I’m a novelist they ask, quite reasonably, what kind of books I write. That’s the moment when I long to be able to say ‘Mills & Boon,’ or ‘thrillers’. Then they’ll know exactly what they’re dealing with. As it is, the most helpful thing I can do is to murmur ‘social comedy’ and pray they don’t follow through with a supplementary.

The word ‘comedy’ raises certain expectations. More than once in my life the supplementary has turned out to be more an accusation than a question. Something along the lines of, ‘Really? You don’t seem like a funny person.’

In fact even my husband, most avid reader of and chuckler at my books, has been known to say, ‘How come you’re so funny on the page? Do you have a ghost writer?’

What can I say? It’s true I have a serious demeanour and a short fuse. I guess something happens to me when I sit down to work. I rattle away at the keyboard and sometimes what comes out makes even me laugh. How weird is that? But be the life and soul of the party? Tell jokes? Never. Actually I don’t very much like jokes though I have two friends who deliver the most excruciating ones so superbly that just picturing them makes me smile.

So what I do remains inexplicable to me. My sense of humour is like the soap in the bath tub. I know it’s there and sometimes I think I’ve got a handle on it, then it slips out of my grasp again. I believe people pay good money for courses in writing comedy. How does that work, I wonder? First you do A, then you do B, add a smattering of C and voila, a perfectly formed laugh, good to go. The Ikea School of Humour.

It’s a mystery, I tell you. A goshdarned mystery. Just don’t judge a book by its prune-faced author, that’s all I’m saying.

People say, ‘Oh you must be so self-disciplined, working from home and writing books and everything.’

Well yes and, er, no. Yes in the sense that I turn up at my desk six days a week, open the computer file and read balefully through what I wrote yesterday.  But no in the sense that I fight a losing battle against all the trivial and non-trivial domestic Stuff that comes my way.

This morning, before I could do anything else, I had to go to a solicitor to get a certified copy of my passport. I need this because, extraordinary to relate, the Italian tax department say I’m owed a refund and as I’m no longer resident there I have to supply my delegate with various documents so they’ll hand over the dosh to him. The novel concept of someone giving me money rather than demanding it with menaces spurred me on to deal with this pronto tonto. By the way, in the course of this bit of business I learned a new Italian expression. Where we might say, ‘Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched’ the Italians say, ‘Don’t sell the bear skin before you’ve killed the bear.’

The anti-fur brigade may well be after me for repeating such a politically incorrect old saw and I suppose I should really have posted it on Sunday Growler but I’m not changing it now.

After the solicitor I also needed to go to the Post Office to send parcels and to the pharmacy to see which of Mr F’s myriad prescriptions needs renewing. But not before I called the bank. Again. I shouldn’t get cross with the bank. They’re truly trying to sort the mess created by those finagling feckers at the Gas Board. But when people promise to call you back and don’t… you know? And then as long as I was going to the Post Office I thought I might as well go to the hardware store. I needed plastic numbers to stick on our wheelie bins. After they’ve been emptied they end up half way down the street and I want to be able to identify them at a distance. Even that wasn’t simple. At first glance they seemed to be out of 3s, but no, some twerp had hidden them behind the 5s.

And then it was lunch time. Also, the bed hadn’t been made and I had an overwhelming urge to blog. So there we are. 1.30 and I’m about to start work. 

I bet Henry James never had to deal with Stuff.

I spent yesterday checking the copyedit of my new novel. A Humble Companion won’t be published till June but that’s the way of publishing these days. You need to get proof copies out to reviewers, movers and shakers ASAP.

A good copy editor (and I’ve been lucky enough always to get good ones) can save a writer many a blush. It’s the last chance to catch anachronisms and other such bloopers before the typescript goes to the printer. Checking the copy edit isn’t hard but it is tedious. It requires close concentration and sometimes a bit of humility. ‘Hmm’, you find yourself thinking, ‘what exactly did I mean by that?’

So I finally left my desk at 8pm last night, bog-eyed and with a stiff neck, but also feeling very slightly excited about this book. It’s been a long time coming. And having worked 12 hours straight I felt justified in taking a half day today and indulging in a very pleasant diversion: buying books for two granddaughters who have birthdays very soon. They’re both too young to read this blog so it’s perfectly safe to share with you that my purchases include David McKee’s Not Now, Bernard, Claire Freedman’s Aliens Love Underpants, and Julia Donaldson’s Tyrannosaurus Drip.

Now we’re all wi-fi in this house Mr F often sits downstairs by the fire and emails me. A message from him just plinked into my Inbox. I looked at the clock and thought, ‘Ah, the cocktail hour.’  But no. The message just says ‘sssssssss’.  A slow puncture perhaps.

Full debrief of the pantomime now posted at The Sunday Growler.

I’ve returned from Panto Week (un succes fou, thank you for asking) intent on spring-cleaning my website. Think of it as the cyber equivalent of hoovering under the bed. To this end, dear faithful reader, there are going to be some changes around here. This blog will continue but from now on will comment solely on the ups and downs and ins and outs of the writing life. There will undoubtedly be the occasional snarl at the publishing business but for those of you who are also interested in/enjoy being infuriated by my wider world view there is a new blog destination: The Sunday Growler.

At The Sunday Growler, which should be up and sniping by close of play today, you will find my customary mix of rabid rant, jaundiced eye-roll and kitchen table whimsy. My links to other likeminded blogs have also moved to the new site.  So there it is. Two Laurie Graham blogs for the price of one, and just a mouse click apart. Am I good to you, or what?

 One final post before the bags are zipped shut and we head out to Pantoland. The thing is, I just remembered something else to worry about. Closed doors.

The Avogaria is a darling little theatre run by people who love what they do. We came upon it in a moment of great need (i.e, having been bumped by our original venue ten days before opening, in favour of a more lucrative deal that had come their way.) But Teatro Avogaria took us in. They were and are a joy to work with.

One of this theatre’s idiosyncracies is its invisibility. The stage door looks like the entrance to someone’s house. The public entrance… well, you have to be really determined to find that. It’s round the back and some, which is why you need A-boards and crew to light the way with lanterns if your audience are ever to take their seats. Another oddity is that there’s no Stage Right entrance. Therefore, to relieve the monotony of everyone appearing from Stage Left, I now write in several entrances from the rear of the auditorium, that is to say through the public entrance. And thereby hangs my worry.

In 2010, a couple of late arrivals slipped in quietly and, unnoticed by the stewards, very thoughtfully pulled the doors closed behind them. Some time later Prince Charming and his faithful steward, Laurie Dandini Graham, arrived to make their entrance and found themselves locked out. We tried knocking politely, we tried knocking forcefully. We thought of phoning the Stage Manager but neither of us had a mobile about our person. We had no choice but to hammer, kick and yell, ‘open this fecking door’. Which someone did. Just in the nick.

So I suppose now I should add ‘doorstop’ to my list of essential equipment.

I thought anyway I should leave the last word on being stranded out in the cold to dear Ethel Zimmerman. Heart of a lioness, voice like a band saw.

That’s all folks!

I thought I’d better give the wig and head-dress a final check before I chuck  layer them with tissue paper and place them tenderly in my suitcase.  You may think this looks more like Fairy Don’t Mess With Me than sweet, kind-hearted Fairy Cobweb, but what I was actually saying was, ‘cut  the top off of my head in one more photo and I’ll wither your freakin’ zoom lens.’

So there we were, 10am, me covered in fairy bling, Mr F still in his jimjams and his Grim Reaper hooded bathrobe, and the door bell rang.

I said, ‘You’ll have to answer that.’

‘But who is it?’ he asked.

My children used to believe I had powers of X-ray vision too.

This sequinned gown isn’t my costume, you’ll be interested to know. My costume is already in Venice. No, this is just something I threw on after breakfast.

The last, but by no means least important item to go in my Panto bag of tricks will be bananas. I can’t abide an over-ripe banana so I’ll buy them from the Billa supermarket before proceeding to the theatre. The banana is a most useful fruit. A preventative against both Waiting in the Wings foot cramp and Between Meals stomach gurgle.

Then there are safety pins. I have them in every conceivable size. To date I’ve never needed them but I belong to a generation that remembers elastic failure and old habits die hard. What was it about post-war elastic? Nobody ever hears their waistband go ping these days but in the Fifties it was up there with Communism. The things a girl had to worry about. The advice used to be, if your drawers fall down in public, step out of them, kick them to the kerb and walk away with your head held high. And next time, before you go out make sure you have a safety pin.

Other items in my bag are a magnifying mirror so I can check between scenes for mascara seepage, plus a pharmacopoeia of Strepsils, zinc tablets and vitamin C because the slightest hint of a cold will destroy the already middling chances of my hitting a high D con belto. And then there’s  duct tape. I love my duct tape. For running repairs to wings, wands and cheap sparkly slippers it cannot be bettered. It’s also potentially useful for gagging cast members whose cup of adrenalin runneth over and causes them to utter loud backstage shrieks during quiet on-stage moments. Okay, this isn’t Beckett we’re doing but, you know…?