I am delighted to welcome Ruth Leigh to my blog, to celebrate the publication of her second novel: The Trials of Isabella M Smugge. I was hooked within a few seconds when reading the first in the series, and this second one hasn’t disappointed. It is funny, heartwarming, honest, and doesn’t shy away from the difficulties life can throw at us. Here, Ruth lifts the lid on what life is like for her as a fiction writer and mum.
When I first invented my ludicrously successful ‘Instamum’ star, Isabella M Smugge, she was simply a comic device, a woman who couldn’t have been more different to me. I reside in a draughty semi-detached Victorian house, heated by an ancient Rayburn. This means lots of cobwebs and grime, although there are charming original features (windows that let in the wind, nice red tiles in the dining room, smoke-blackened fireplace). Isabella dwells in a Grade II listed Georgian house, clean and sparkling as you like (because someone else is paid to do it), heated via oil I would imagine and with more reception rooms than you can shake a stick at.
My garden is very on-trend. I thought you might like to know that. It’s rewilded. So now! (As in it’s full of weeds, the hedge needs trimming, the bushes need cutting back and there are plants growing where no plant should be.) Isabella’s acreage is a delightful panorama of velvety green lawn, charming flowerbeds and a Victorian greenhouse full of produce. Oh, and she likes to have her coffee in the reclaimed Edwardian gazebo by the pond.
The reality of this writer’s life
Even though I know perfectly well that success is 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration, before I was one, I thought that fiction writers were a different breed, ethereal, other-worldly, inhabiting a more gracious, beautiful universe.
If you are a fiction writer and this is your reality, do let me know. Feel free to share your secrets. Because I could really do with knowing. Let me open a little window into the insanity that is the Leigh household first thing in the morning.
Unusually yesterday morning, all three children were in residence and required driving to various places of education. My normal routine is to fall out of bed, wander about a bit drinking tea and making packed lunches then drive the 13- and 15-year-old to school. Yesterday, the 18-year-old, slightly fragile after a night in the public house with a friend was part of the matrix.
It was School Sponsored Walk Day. Standing in front of the mirror in the downstairs loo applying make-up ahead of Lovely Jason’s visit (it was book launch day and he shot a short video), I was joined by said children. One was dressed as a frog, complete with hat, the other was brandishing a large rubber horse’s head. As I tried to put on eyeliner in a straight line, my daughter stood behind my right shoulder, gurning at me in the mirror and flicking her tongue in and out while making frog noises (I suspect mimicking catching a fly) while my son nibbled at my elbow with the horse teeth.
This would never happen to Isabella M Smugge.
“Can I just mention that your mother, the author, has a big day today,” I quavered, rubbing concealer on to my huge eye bags. “My new book is launched! It’s in the shops and everything.”
Neither of them seemed that bothered. “Well done you!” my son said kindly, patting me on the shoulder from a great height (he’s 6 foot 1”). Scrambling into the car to do the double run (high school in Woodbridge followed by college in Ipswich), we bounced off down the flooded lane, muddy water running off the fields and optimistic white clouds scudding across the rain-washed blue sky. I began to wonder what I would write about for the second half of this blog. Five minutes later, it had written itself.
Hands-on parenting
For years and years, no car journey was complete without at least one mild row or wrangle. Today, hearing their voices rise and fall in good-natured abuse, I smiled to myself. Once upon a time, the exhausted mother of three little children, I yearned to have peace and quiet, to be able to go to the loo alone, to drink a cup of tea that was somewhere between boiling and tepid.
Now I can, but it’s the end of one season and the beginning of the next. They can still dish it out though.
Son #2: “Who were you talking to outside last night? I could hear you going on and on in my room! Do you know what time it was? [Impression of growly voice].”
Son #1: “I was talking to Evie! She wanted to know I’d got back all right. And what about you? All I could hear the other night was [second impression of growly voice].”
Son #2: “I was talking to Shay! We were saying goodnight! And anyway, what about Katie, FaceTiming her friends?”
Son #1 and Son#2: “Ooh, hello, how are you, giggle giggle, make-up, Netflix [impression of teenage girls].
Daughter: “Shut up! I haven’t talked to them at night for AGES! And I don’t talk like that.”
Son #1: “Ooh ooh!”
Me: “That sounds like that bit in Feelgood Inc by Gorillaz.”
Son #1: “So it does! Ooh ooh!”
Me: “Ooh ooh!”
And so it went on, everyone smiling and a general air of bonhomie in the car.
I dropped off the frog and the horse and continued to Ipswich. Thanks kids. The chaos, the rowing, the lost hoodie, the last-minute packed lunch – all grist to the mill. My heroine is new to the crazy world of actually parenting your children yourself, but she’s learning fast.
My house is messy and dusty, my garden is wild. But heck, authenticity is what it’s all about and here’s my truth. Behind the sparkle lies inspiration, exhaustion, innovation and a bit more exhaustion.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ruth Leigh is a novelist and freelance writer based in beautiful rural Suffolk where she lives with three children,one husband, a kitten and assorted poultry. She is a book reviewer for Reading Between the Lines and loves nothing more than losing herself in a good book. You can find out more about her and the world of Isabella M Smugge at ruthleighwrites