Folklore into fiction - by Lu Hersey

 I've recently been writing up some folklore stories as part of an ongoing project, and can't help noticing how easily I'm distracted. So many questions come up about each tale, I spend hours researching (which mostly means going down google rabbit holes), and of course there are no definitive answers. Which possibly goes some way to explain why folklore provides ongoing inspiration for fiction writers. Every story provides so many opportunities to speculate on what really happened.

By way of example - this is the story of the Mermaid of Zennor. (I'm unlikely to write a fiction story based on this in the near future, so if you feel there's something you'd find useful in it, go ahead!)

The basic story goes something like this: there was once a young man called Mathew Trewhella, son of the churchwarden, who sang every Sunday in the church choir in the tiny village of Zennor, Cornwall. His voice was so beautiful that it attracted the attention of a mermaid, who took to sitting on a rock in Pendour Cove, below the church, to hear him sing. (In some versions, she also had a beautiful voice, and when she sang, Mathew was captivated by the haunting sound, drifting up from the Cove)

Unable to stop herself, the mermaid came closer to the church every Sunday, until one day she ventured inside to find the man with the beautiful voice. Matthew was enchanted by her, they fell in love, and the mermaid enticed him to follow her back to the sea. The couple were last seen swimming out of Pendour Cove, and no one in Zennor ever saw them again. 

There are a few different versions of this story, but the basic elements are the same - choirboy Mathew Trewhella falls in love with a mermaid and follows her to the sea. Did they live happily ever after, or did he drown when they got into the ocean? The answer isn't part of the original story. But stories can grow over time...

In one version, a ship drops anchor near Pendour Cove many years (possibly centuries) later, and a mermaid appears, angry that the anchor has landed on the home she shares with her husband, Mathew Trewhella, and their children. The captain weighs anchor immediately, because every sailor knows mermaids have the power to send ships to the deep, but his telling of this encounter adds an extra layer to the original. 

In another version, Mathew's mother is heartbroken by his disappearance and mourns him ever after, but fortunately she is well looked after by her many other children. This extra snippet made me wonder if Matthew was simply fed up with the responsibility of looking after his elderly mother, and when he found a lover outside the village, made good his escape. 

Of course there's the basic question - do mermaids actually exist? Belief in the existence of intelligent sea living entities crosses many cultures, and there's often an element of truth, however slight, in most folklore tales. People believed in the existence of mermaids until very recently - and some (myself included) still think it's a possibility. Certainly something for a fiction writer to consider...

The only definite in the story is that someone, or maybe something, came to the church, unable to resist the sound of Mathew's voice. Was she really a mermaid? If she was, what happened to her tail? It's hard to believe a mermaid came into the church without the congregation kicking up a more of a fuss - traditionally mermaids only carry a mirror and a comb, Maybe this one wore a dress to cover her breasts and her fish tail, or the villagers were too scared - or in awe of mermaids - to say anything. It might even simply be that she was an outsider (Zennor is a very small village) who wore unusual clothes, and Matthew eloped with her. 

The point is that no one really knows what happened, and it was a very long time ago - which means you can make the story into anything you like. Perhaps it was originally intended as something as basic as a parable about the power of hymns drawing a heathen mermaid into the church (even if she didn't stick around long).

However you tell the story, the mystery of Matthew's disappearance has lived on for half a century - and legend has it you can still hear him singing out in the waves on a stormy night. And best of all, a beautiful mermaid chair, carved well over 400 years ago in memory of Mathew, still resides in Zennor church today. Enough to inspire any writer...

And that's the beauty of folklore.

Lu Hersey

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MERMAIDS IN FOLKLORE. by Sharon Tregenza

MERMAIDS IN FOLKLORE

The rugged coast of Cornwall is the perfect setting for the mysterious and magical - the sudden sea mists, the constant rush of the waves crashing against the dark granite cliffs. And nothing is more mysterious and magical than a mermaid. 

In Cornish lore these beings are more than just alluring sirens with flowing hair and fish scale tails. They're more complex - sometimes guardians, sometimes omens. Their stories are passed down from generation to generation and whispered by fishermen to this day. 

Certainly some Cornish mermaids were malevolent - conjuring up sudden storms or luring sailors to a watery grave and often people believed a mermaid sighting foretold a drowning or shipwreck. This duality, both dangerous and beautiful, echoed the moods of the sea.

Today, writers, artists and musicians continue to be fascinated by stories of the half woman half fish creatures and local souvenir shops sell plenty of trinkets and books with a nod to their myths and legends.

Whether you believe in these elusive sea spirits or just enjoy a good story, there's no doubt that that there is something undeniably attractive about them.

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Hunting for Treasure - by Liz Kessler

I’ve always believed that writing a book is a very special journey of trust and exploration. It’s like a dance, maybe, or a relationship, or a treasure hunt. In fact, it’s all of those things and more. 

I am actually in awe of the way a book tiptoes into existence. How does it do that? I mean, yes, I put in the hours – lots and lots of them – but I am convinced that there is something more to it than that. Something beyond me, and beyond my understanding. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know I am grateful for it.

When I was a child, I used to read Whizzer and Chips and The Beano. One of my favourite things in these comics (other than The Numbskulls; I ADORED The Numbskulls) was a feature on the puzzle page. The Hidden Objects puzzle.

They looked a bit like this:

If you imagine that this picture is the world, and the hidden objects are the pieces of your story, this is what writing a book is like.

The pieces of the book could be hidden anywhere – in a castle or a shop or on a path; in an object on the beach; in the bushy grey hair of someone’s beard; in an unusually shaped cloud; in a conversation. They could be anywhere. I firmly believe that my job as a writer isn’t about making up stories – it is about finding the pieces and putting them together until they form the story they were always meant to be.

I have written over twenty books, and out of them all, this journey of bringing together pieces of treasure to form the story has happened particularly intensely on two occasions. Once was with my Young Adult book, Haunt Me, where every scene came to life in my head as I walked along the coast path listening to a playlist I made especially for this book.

The other time was with my latest book, Emily Windsnap and the Pirate Prince.

I can’t help thinking it’s quite appropriate that a book involving pirates and treasure has brought me closer to this treasure hunt than ever before.

Unusually for my books, I knew the title before I knew anything else. A chance remark from my amazing US publicist Tracy Miracle (yes that’s her real name, and yes she does live up to it) meant that the Pirate Prince was mooching around in the back of my mind for a year or so before it was time to write his story.

That chance remark was the first piece of treasure.

When the time came to start writing the book, I had to decide where to go on a research trip. (I love my research trips and always have at least one per book. They have taken me to all sorts of places from the beaches of Bermuda to a Devon village completely destroyed by a storm.) This one was an easy decision: I had to go on a tall ship.

And here’s where piece of treasure two came in. After a day of scouring the internet for suitable trips, I came across a last-minute opportunity to be part of a tall ship crew. It was sailing out of Tenerife for a week around the Canary islands, and was leaving in five days.

Five days later I was on that ship.

As research trips go, this one was about as special as it gets. Sailing on the ocean on the beautiful Morgenster, feeling the breeze in my hair, tasting the salty spray, hearing the tinkling of the masts at night, witnessing a sky packed full of stars as the ship sliced through dark waves: I lost count of how many pieces of story-treasure I found that week.

The phosphorescence as the waves glinted at us like stars at night; the dolphin that swam through these lights; the inspiring personalities of the ship’s crew, many of whose names I used in the book; the locker that I sat on with my notebook out on the deck, which became known as ‘Liz’s office’; the sunrise across the water; the shop where I bought a crystal on a chain without knowing why, other than a kind of inner knowledge that it would appear in the book – and it did. The old pirate stories one of my crewmates told me each day. And above all, the beauty of the tall ship, Morgenster, that I fell a little bit more in love with each day. Treasure upon treasure, the building blocks of my story were found, gathered, stored for later.

But a little while after arriving home, I had a sense that there were more pieces waiting for me somewhere else.

Several years earlier, I had witnessed an amazing sight at Mont St Michel in France. It was a spring tide and we happened to be there at the exact moment the tide charged in so fast it was like a river. I had never seen a tide come in like this and I was hungry to witness it again. I felt sure that it would have something to do with my book.

So, my partner and I headed off on a road trip to France. I timed the trip for a day when the tide would be at its strongest and highest, and I booked us a room on the outskirts of the castle on the island of Mont St Michel. And here’s where the strange thing happened.

The tide didn’t move me, as I had thought it would. It didn’t race up the beach, carrying inspired thoughts about my plot along with it. We watched, and yes, it was a fast moving tide, but I didn’t feel anything, and my book didn’t call out to it.

For a moment, I wondered if we had wasted the trip. And then the next day, we walked around the castle, and explored the narrow, winding, cobbled streets around it – and something began to stir.

Yes, the tide had brought me back here. But it dawned on me that the tide wasn’t the hidden object in the picture after all. Instead, it was the bustling, bartering atmosphere of the small village that would find its place in my book.

And I remembered that in the old picture puzzles, sometimes you found the objects in places you would not expect to find them. Sometimes you had to work a little bit harder to find the hidden treasures.

Once more, I came home with a head full of ideas and a notebook full of scribbles. And I finally had enough pieces of the puzzle to start working on threading it all together.

And here we are, nearly two years on from my wonderful trip on the Morgenster, and the book is out next month. This is why I love being a writer. Not for sales or awards. (Just as well as I’m not really an award-winning type of author!) Not even for the emails and letters from happy readers, although they are right up there with the best things about the job. 

I love being a writer for the journey. For those moments of connection. For the joy of creativity, in and of itself, seeking nothing but wonder. And above all, for the privilege of following a path that I know for sure is paved with a sprinkling of magic.

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Fabled Beasts And Mythical Creatures: Jigsaws and Shape-shifters, by Lari Don

Centaurs and kelpies, mermaids and selkies... Why are we so fascinated by animal / human mashups? And not just us, now, but most cultures, in most places, since the start of (once up on a) time. The Egyptians had animal-headed gods. The Greeks were happy to slice almost any animal in half and stick it onto a matching bit of human. And most cultures have shape-changer stories.

Why are we fascinated by these impossible creatures and their stories? And what are the differences between our need to have people shift into animals, and our need to have people who are also part-animal?

I was privileged early this month to do a launch event for someone else’s book (I know that’s a bit unusual, but I stepped in at the last minute when unforeseen circumstances meant the real author couldn’t be there.)

Kate Leiper's beautiful selkie

So I was on stage, waving A Treasury of Scottish Mythical Creatures, showing Kate Leiper’s gorgeous pictures and reading Theresa Breslin’s enchanting words, and chatting to school kids about selkies. I asked if anyone knew what a selkie was. One pupil said, “It’s a half-seal half-girl.” And I said, “Very close!” then explained that a selkie is sometimes a seal and sometimes a girl, rather half a seal stuck to half a girl. Which we then realised would look a bit like a mermaid...

Which made me think about the similarities and differences between two very distinctive forms of animal / human mix and matches.

There are the shape-shifters, the sometimes-human sometimes-animals: the werewolves, the kelpies, the selkies, the kitsune, the frog princes, the lion women and hyena men...

And there are the jigsaw-ed beasts, made up of bits of people and bits of animals, but always the same shape: the mermaids, the minotaurs, the centaurs, the satyrs...  (The Greeks were masters of these mix and match monsters, but you find a few in other cultures too.)

So what’s the difference between them, and why do we love (or need) to tell stories about them both?

I believe that shape-shifters are fascinating because they could be right beside us, right now. You can’t tell whether the person sitting beside you on the bus in the morning will be a wolf creeping up behind you tonight...

But shape-shifters are often vulnerable too, depending on the rules of their magic. I love Kate’s picture of the selkie, because she has buttons down her tummy, to show that the sealskin comes off when she becomes human. And if she loses that sealskin, she can’t become a seal again. So in Scottish folklore there are a lot of very disturbing and frankly abusive selkie wife stories about a fisherman getting himself a reluctant wife by stealing her sealskin.

It’s not just female selkies who are vulnerable. I tell a story about a werewolf who needs to wear his own clothes to become human again, and is trapped as a wolf when his trousers are stolen.

So, shape-shifters can be vulnerable, and also very easy to hide inside a crowd. This makes them very useful in stories!

And shape-shifters allow us to imagine having different powers and skills. Flying, running, jumping, swimming. It’s probably the opportunity to imagine a human sensibility inside a body with an animal’s capabilities and limitations that attracts me to writing about shape-shifters.

Also, perhaps, shape-shifter stories allow us to explore ideas about what is ‘animal’ inside people, and what is ‘human’ within animals. (What is worthy of compassion, respect, understanding, perhaps? Though, of course, we shouldn’t just extend those to humans... )

But what about the jigsaw-ed beasts, the composite creatures? What about the half-horse half-man, or half-woman half-fish? What do we get from them?

I love writing about these creatures. I love their imagery and their power. The main baddie in several of my Fabled Beast novels is a minotaur, and the sidekick hero in all of them is a centaur. Mainly because I love the idea of a creature that thinks like a human being, but has the power of a large animal.

Perhaps our desire for that mix of agency and strength is why we don’t have a lot of compelling stories about half-worm half-girls or half-mouse half-boys. Thinking practically, if nothing else, the animal has to be big enough for the join at the neck or waist to seem plausible...

But while I love to write about the mix and match monsters, they are perhaps less generally useful and universal in stories than shape-shifters. Mainly because they’re a bit obvious. I’m fairly sure that wherever you’re reading this blog, you’re not sitting next to a minotaur. (Though it’s nearly Halloween, so I might be wrong...) The jigsaw creatures can’t hide among us as easily as the shape-shifters. They are less likely to be our friends and neighbours.

However they are very useful for creating monsters made of things we understand and recognise. (Minotaur = bull’s head + man’s body. There, you’ve got the picture in your head already. That kind of shorthand is very useful for an oral storyteller.) Also, I find centaurs are great for kicking doors down.

What else do you think these animal / human fabled beasts and mythical monsters give us, when we’re  inventing, telling and remembering stories? I’m sure I’ve only mentioned a few of the ways they're useful and important to us as we imagine and create...

But whatever niches they occupy in the ecosystems of our story world, I love writing about the shape-shifters, and the half and halfs...

I’ve written about them from my very first book, and I’m not going to stop now. There are centaurs, fauns and minotaurs, working with or against werewolves, mermaids and selkies in my Fabled Beast Chronicles. There are kelpies and various winged shape-shifters in the series of novels I’m working on now. I’ve also written a whole collection of shape-shifter stories, Serpents & Werewolves, including many of the myths, legends and folktales which inspire my novels.

So now, having mused about why we love and need these fabled beasts, I’m off to write a scene discovering how much faster my heroine can run with paws rather than trainers...

(And if you think Kate’s selkie picture is fab, you might be interested to know there’s an exhibition of her artwork at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh from 4th December until 9th January.)


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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In Which I Totally Indulge Myself, My Publisher, My Favourite Mermaid and a Ghost Ship - Liz Kessler

Anyone who knows me (and a fair few who don't as well) will know that my first YA novel Read Me Like A Book comes out this year. I've been shouting about this for a little while now, and have been super-excited about it for lots of reasons, one of them being the fact that I originally wrote this book fifteen years ago, so it's been a long time in the making.

But the same people might not know about the other book that's coming out this year and which in many ways I am JUST as excited about. This book, Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls, is the latest in my series about a girl who accidentally found out in a school swimming lesson that when she goes in water, she becomes a mermaid.

Emily and I have had lots of adventures together. She has a tendency to get herself into scary, exciting  adventures. [WARNING: Spoilers coming...] Emily has rescued her father from a prison out at sea; she's been nearly squeezed to death by a giant Kraken; she's explored mysterious castles, discovered banished sirens in underwater caves and very nearly been turned to ice by an evil man with too much magic at his disposal.

In August, Emily has her sixth adventure. I can't tell you too much about it yet, as it's still a closely-guarded secret. But what I can tell you is that, in typical Emily style, what starts off as an innocent Geography field trip turns into an adventure involving life and death decisions, a spooky ship and a trip to possibly the most magical place she's ever visited.

For me, one of the most exciting things about this book is that for the first time ever, it's coming out on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. My UK and US publishers are working together to make this happen, and TODAY, between us, right here, right now, I am very excited to be using the wonderful ABBA blog (thanks ABBA!) to reveal the cover!

So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, children and mer-kids, I give you, Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls - the cover. I think it might be my favourite Emily Windsnap cover ever (by the wonderful artist Sarah Gibb). Hope you think it's as beautiful as I do! :) :) :)

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The Waiting Game - Liz Kessler

Over the last couple of weeks, I’m pretty sure I have developed a few new grey hairs. My nails have been bitten down into messy, spiky shards and my heart has been beating a tiny bit faster whenever a new email pings into my inbox.

Why?

Because I’m suffering from a state that most authors will recognise: a classic case of ‘I Have Sent My New Book To My Editor And Will Be Hearing Back From Her Any Day Now-Itis’. Or IHSMNBTMEAWBHBFHADNI for short.

Interesting things happen during an outbreak of IHSMNBTMEAWBHBFHADNI. One of them is that you look around your study and realise that it doesn’t look much like a study.

You know on those cop dramas when the police suspect a criminal of hiding drugs or stolen goods or something and they go round to the criminal’s home and ransack the place? Drawers pulled out, clothes strewn around the room, photo frames knocked over, shelves upended, piles of paperwork flung across the floor. Yeah, that’s kinda what your study looks like.

I once heard the wonderful poet and author Jackie Kay talk about writing a first draft. She described it as being similar to organising a huge dinner party – but without doing any cleaning up along the way. After the party, when everyone’s gone home, you look around the kitchen and don’t even know where to start. 

NB This is a random picture downloaded from the internet, not actual Jackie Kay's kitchen after a dinner party.

I think she nailed it.

My study is a scene of devastation, filled with long trails of things that I have been ignoring/avoiding/not noticing for weeks. In those last few days of the first draft, where I’m working flat out every daylight hour - and a few of the pre-dawn ones, too - I put on my blinkers as I enter my study, carve a very careful path along the narrow channel that is not filled with paperwork glaring expectantly at me, sit down in my chair and start tapping away, noticing only the screen in front of me. And the continually-replaced cup of tea by my side. Actually, if I’m honest, in those last few days, when I’m working into the evening, it’s just as likely to be a bottle of beer by my side.

And then there is that magical moment. With a tiny tear in the corner of your eye that you’re never quite sure if you should really have (I mean, crying at your own book – is that even allowed?) you type, ‘the end’. The euphoria doubles as you write an over-emotional (you’re on your second beer of the evening) email to your editor, attach your baby – aka the manuscript that has taken over the last eight months of your life – and hit ‘send’.

Obviously, you don’t do anything much for the rest of that day. A good friend and special writer-buddy of mine, Lee Weatherly, once told me that you have to have a bottle of champagne when you finish a draft of your book. It’s virtually the law. And I don’t like breaking the law. Champagne, beer, whatever. Bring it on. This moment has been nearly a year coming. It's time to celebrate!

So let’s skip to the next morning. You know you have a fortnight or so before you’ll hear back from your editor. Actually, on this occasion, we're on a really tight schedule so it's more like ten days. Either way, it's time to mop up the mess.

For at least the last month, you’ve told yourself that this is the point when you will attack the email inbox, fill in the forms, sign the contracts, send off the tax stuff, return those shoes you should never have bought. Maybe even, I dunno, clean the house? Ten whole days. Your life is going to be SO sorted by the time you hear back from your editor. You're practically going to be a Stepford Wife.

I love good intentions. Don’t you?

Here’s what I’ve spent the last ten days doing.

• Having lie ins.
• Letting the dog on the bed so she won’t nag me for walkies.
• Mooching around the house in my PJs vaguely thinking about getting the vacuum cleaner out. Ha! As if.
• Meeting up with friends for coffees in the morning. In the morning!
• Watching Dragon’s Den recordings with my lunch. With my lunch!!!
• Reading multiple copies of The Bookseller and Practical Photography which have been arriving and being ignored every week for the last three months.
• Wandering around the garden with my new macro lens, taking photos of spiders, wasps and flowers.

Plenty more where this came from. If you want to see them, just ask.

• And yes, just to make sure I feel I’ve achieved something this week, replying to at least two thirds of the emails that have been patiently waiting for me whilst I was busy getting my half-girl half-mermaid heroine out of trouble.

And then, before you know it, it happens. The email. Ping. Fourteen pages of notes. Bam.

A very deep breath. And back in we dive.

Who wants to live in a tidy house with clothes all put away in drawers, receipts filed away in envelopes and email inboxes sparse and empty, anyway?

Not me, it seems. Someone pass me a beer. I’m going in.

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Writing the Wrongs - Liz Kessler

Last month, something rather horrible happened. The elections for members of the European parliament led to a widespread vote for far right parties, fuelled by a wave of anti-immigrant feeling.

The day the results came out, I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. I felt depressed, disappointed and quite hopeless. In fact, it started before that. In the voting booth, faced with a ballot paper that seemed to list one far right organisation after another, I felt ashamed and perplexed. Was this really where we were? Was this honestly what people wanted? 

Then the results came out, and I felt much, much worse. Was this the best that we, as a society, could do? Had we learned nothing from the lessons that history has taught us? It seemed not.

So what could I do? I spent the day asking myself this question, over and over again. In the morning, the only thing I could think to do was pull the quilt back over my head and hide away from the world until I felt I could face it again. In the afternoon, I decided I would become an MP – despite never having been a member of any political party in my whole life. By the evening, thanks to one of my lovely writer friends, Elen Caldecott, I realised that neither of these options was really credible, but there was a third.

‘We’re writers, we’re artists,’ Elen said. ‘We have a voice. We have our books. That’s where we can make the change. That’s where we argue for a better world. That’s where we have power.’

She was right, of course, and she was the first person to say anything that actually started to pull me out of my slump.

I thought about her words all day, all week in fact. I thought about how privileged we are to do what we do, to have a job that means our words, our thoughts, our beliefs can find their way into the hands and thoughts of a generation of children: the people who will create the future. Could there really be a more powerful idea than this?

But how to go about it? You can’t exactly write a book that says, ‘Hey kids, here’s what you have to do. Treat everyone nicely; go about your dealings in life with fairness; accept others even if they are different from you; and please don’t ever vote for UKIP or the BNP.’ For one thing, it wouldn’t make for a very interesting read, and for another, no one likes to be lectured – especially whilst they’re doing something that is meant to be fun.

So then I thought about it a bit more, and realised that actually I already do say all those things. I say them all the time. I never intend to, but they always find their way into my books. I think I’m writing about mermaids or fairies or time travel, but time and again, I’m writing about social injustice, about standing up for what you believe in, about accepting yourself and others.

My Emily Windsnap books are at their heart a series about two very different societies who have every reason to mistrust and dislike each other, but who learn to coexist. Emily Windsnap’s family is put in charge of making sure this happens. Emily herself stands up in a court and demands that people are legally allowed to love and marry who they want.

My other books have a habit of doing this, too. Readers quite often write to me and say things like, ‘Your book told me it was OK to be me,’ or ‘Your book gave me the courage to stand up to bullies.’

Really? Did it? I thought it was just about a girl and her fairy godsister.

I honestly have no idea that I am writing about these things at the time, but perhaps it is inevitable that they will be at the heart of my books, when they are at the core of who I am and have been ever since I was a teenager. I’m not really that different now. I just do it more quietly than I did in my twenties.

Yep, that really was me. And yes, Mum and Dad, I really am smoking. Sorry!

Back then I protested against injustice by going on marches and getting people to sign petitions. Now I do it, mostly without even realising it, in my books. But whichever route it is, fighting for a better world, a fairer society and a place where people learn to be confident about who they are and accepting of others are the things that I care about.

So, in fact, all I have to do is carry on doing what I’m doing. One day I might write a book that deals with these themes more explicitly. In fact, I already have an idea brewing for such a book, and am quite excited by it. But till then, what an amazing honour and privilege it is to be able to simply write stories that I love and feel passionate about, and know that as I do so, I am sharing the ideas and beliefs that are at the heart of who I am. To know that every time a child enjoys one of my books, there is a small possibility that they may in fact take its message to their heart – perhaps without realising that they have done so, just as I don’t realise I’m putting the message there in the first place.

This whole idea feels revolutionary. It doesn’t mean that from now on I’m going to pile a load of messages into my books. I believe that this is the quickest way to kill a story flat dead and I would never do it. For me, books have to be first and foremost about the story and the characters. If you approach it from any other angle than this, I think it shows. But the exciting thing is that, as long as I continue to do this, I can trust that the rest will follow.

What a privilege. What a gift.

So no, I’m not about to seek election as an MP. I’m not going to pull the covers over my head in despair in the mornings, either. I’m just going to carry on doing what I love. I’m going to trust that as I do it, I’m gently, quietly and unobtrusively saying what I need to say. And I’m going to hope, hope, hope that if enough of us are doing the same thing, a whole generation of children will grow up with love, acceptance and equality being the values that rule their world, rather than xenophobia, hatred and fear.

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