‘There are stories out there we aren’t hearing.’ (Kamila Shamsie)

There’s been much talk recently about diversity in publishing (viz: the lack of it), and many creative initiatives to rebalance the scales, from blogger Naomi Frisby’s #ReadDiverse2016 to essay collection The Good Immigrant (ed. Nikesh Shukla), crowdfunded in three days thanks to enormous popular support and a push from JK Rowling.

Design: Stuart Bache

There’s a basic sense of injustice here, of course: why should any good book go unpublished just because of the ethnicity of its author? But there’s also a huge loss to readers of every ethnicity: we’re all missing great stories.

So, Stephanie Butland and I asked: what could we do about this? We don’t agent books, or publish books. We’re not literary editors on national papers. But we do teach Creative Writing workshops – good ones, we think. The writers we teach get a leg-up in their work.

Which is why, for the Creative Writing workshops we’re holding in Birmingham next month (link here) we’re offering four heavily-subsidised places for BAME writers: £50 instead of the standard £175. There are two going on Friday 13^th (Shape, Structure and Flow) and two on Saturday 14^th (Character-Building).

To apply, just send Shelley an email on shelleywriter@outlook.com, saying which workshop you’d like to be considered for, what you’re working on, and how the workshop would make a difference to your writing.

The deadline’s April 15^th – we’re really looking forward to hearing some new stories!

On Monday’s PM programme*, the writer Brian Christian (disconcertingly hailed as ‘the most human human’ for reasons that will shortly become clear) talked about how he’d acted as a ‘human confederate’ in 2009’s Turing Test. In this annual event, a panel of scientists makes small talk by text message with a number of computers and people, and tries to distinguish one from the other. The test is so-called because Alan Turing believed that when it was impossible to distinguish between the two, computers could be described as ‘thinking.’

Christian set out to not only out-human the computers, but also out-human the other humans, and he succeeded. What, he was asked, had been his strategy? The trick, he said, lay in building a sense of a single, unified individual. Computer chatbots draw their data from fragments of multiple conversations; we humans have the advantage of a single consciousness.

With computers: ‘It’s not so much that you’re not talking to a person, but that you’re not talking to a person.’

What Christian is nailing here is voice, a concept familiar to students of creative writing. When you’re studying it, voice can feel like a slippery customer. But when you’re reading, it can be the thing that won’t let you go, even if the plot is shaky, even if the premise isn’t fashionably high-concept, even if the character you’re hearing is annoying, or ridiculous, or just plain wicked.

As actual (real, unwritten) humans, our voice is the sum total of everything we’ve been and done. It carries the traces of where we’ve lived, who we’ve loved, our knowledge and skills and education, our disappointments and triumphs. As writers, we try to imagine someone into being so complete and present that, for us, there’s just a cigarette paper between them and a human human. We try to pass our own Turing Test.

When I taught English in schools, students would often challenge my insistence that they pay attention to the details of language. They’d argue that, after all, the writer herself over a 90,000-word novel couldn’t possibly care about each of those words; she just wouldn’t have time. I can now tell those students that a good writer really does work at that level of detail, that an author who knows her protagonist inside out will, after a while, know – as if by instinct – whether that character sits on a sofa, or a settee, or a couch, or a chaise longue. (And, by the by, I can also tell them that the process of writing a novel is far longer than any of us could possibly have imagined; easily long enough to pore over every single one of the bastard words).

For a masterclass in voice, try these beauties:

Jane Harris, The Observations: I could as well have chosen Harris’s Gillespie and I, since she’s a genius at voice. But I’ve picked her debut, in which the unforgettable Bessy, sometime gentleman’s companion, hastily reconstructs herself as a lady’s maid in the first chapter and pulls us along for the ride that follows: “Hells teeth, how can I explain the wretched despair I felt, except to say that my heart was banjaxed … Dear God, it was a gobaloon!”

PG Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters: But who am I kidding? You know I just picked this one randomly, right? Any of the Wooster / Jeeves books** would do, so gobsmackingly brilliant is Wodehouse. You know he’s one of the great master-stylists of the English language; you’ve read them already. Here’s Roderick Spode: “Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at 60 paces.” You’re welcome.

William Boyd, Any Human Heart: Almost everyone who’s read this experiences a sort of crumpling in the mouth area when you mention the novel. It’s a funny, compassionate, heartbreaking chronicle of a human life, notable less for stylistic pyrotechnics (though there are some), than for the patient way in which the reader walks in step with Logan Mountstuart through the course of his life. Uncompromisingly intimate.

*Link here. You’ll find the interview at 46.35

** Yes, the other books are great too, but I wanted to look specifically at first-person writing here.

Daisy’s post is about abundance – an abundance of love which gave her an abundance of confidence, which gave her an abundance of sex and food and pleasure and an abundance of her own, joyful flesh. It made me tremendously happy, a response shared by most of its readers. A few people though, were (threatened? scared? I think it can only be that), and trolled her for it. She tweeted the next day about how crap that made her feel.

I felt, of course, angry at them, and a teeny, weeny bit sorry for them too, and hacked off at the whole situation (not a new situation, but still).  What Daisy did was important, because every time we see a woman happy with her body, that’s actually an incredibly radical thing in our culture. It’s a win for every single one of us. It’s just a pity that it takes bravery to do it. (Imagine that. Imagine a society where it’s an act of bravery to say you’re happy the way you are. That’s some serious dystopian shit.)

It made me reflect on some of the places where I find body-positive images of women, where not everyone is young and white and able-bodied and skinny. I like spending time in these places. Here’s an image from the This Girl Can poster campaign. I don’t love the name (come on, Sport England: they’re women), but I love everything else about it.

And that made me think again about this thing that happened at the weekend. A bloke with 106 followers makes a misogynistic, body-shaming comment. His takedown gets eighty-eight thousand RTs – and counting. BURN!

Fashion retailers are legendarily bad at dealing with actual, real, female bodies – but there are some glimmers of light. I think the U.S. might be a little ahead of us here. Look at this image, from ModCloth’s spring 2015 campaign – these are ModCloth employees.

(Photo: ModCloth)

And here’s the latest Target swimwear campaign, using bloggers as models:

(Photo: Target)

It probably goes without saying that Sweden is pretty much ahead of the game too. You can buy Gudrun Sjödén clothing here in the UK, and doing so is a pleasure, because their catalogue makes you feel chipper rather than shamed. Here’s a favourite image:

(Photo: Gudrun Sjödén)

But there are British companies doing exciting things, as well. I’ve long loved Who Made Your Pants, the social enterprise that takes leftover fabrics from the garment industry and gives refugee women the skills to turn them into fabulous pants. The process leaves a lot of people happy: it’s environmentally sound, it gives economic power to potentially vulnerable women, and the pants are absolutely gorgeous.

(Photo: Who Made Your Pants)

WMYP takes care with its customers too, going to extraordinary lengths to make sure their pants are marketed in empowering ways. After a series of public workshops, they’re holding an experimental photoshoot in London on August 27^th, and are calling for volunteer models. If you’re up for something a lot more fun than body-shaming, then their cheerfully radical approach could include you too – step this way.

I’d love to know which other fashion retailers here in the UK are marketing their wares in fun, happy, body-positive ways. @BrightMeadow kindly pointed me towards some of the labels mentioned in this post, but if you’ve got any recommendations, I’d love to know about them.

I used to be a teacher and got a real kick out of it. Now that I’m an author I still teach whenever I can – and relish the process. I love supporting writers as they increase in confidence and skill, I love seeing – right in front of me – the messy, diverse process that is creativity (set sixteen writers exactly the same activity and each one will produce something utterly and only theirs, and almost always something I’d never have predicted when I set it.).

I especially enjoy organising tutored retreats, where I offer writers protected time to work in peace, alongside lively group workshops and one-to-one support. When I came to plan the next one, I drew up a wishlist:

1: I wanted to team-teach with another author, someone who’s a superb trainer as well as very, very good with people and a lot of fun. A friend said: ‘You should ask Stephanie Butland if she’d do it with you.’ Well yes, of course I should – Stephanie’s a wonderful writer with incredible range, an author of both non-fiction and novels. Plus, she’s a De Bono Master Trainer (a rare breed; she jets off all over the world training people in thinking techniques). In addition – and possibly most important – I just really, really like her and think teaching together would be a blast.

So: fabulous author, gifted teacher, a lot of fun. Chances of her being free? Slim to nil, I thought.

2: I wanted the retreat to be in a gobsmackingly beautiful place; I’ve had my eye on Gladstone’s Library for a while – get a load of this:

Beautiful. And the accommodation is gorgeous: a Sawdays Special Place with a Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence. In January, it topped a Guardian readers’ poll of wellbeing retreats.

3: I wanted as much comfort as possible for writers, and no chores allowed – so every room should be ensuite, every meal provided. The only demand on anyone’s time should be their writing.

This really was my wishlist – and I didn’t think I had a hope of getting it. But I did: the Library can take us, and those ensuite rooms are ready and waiting. Best of all, Stephanie’s miraculously free; between us we’re planning an absolute corker of a tutored retreat.

So I’ve got what I want! Mwahahahaha! If it sounds like something you’d want too, here’s a link to the details. Now I’m off to eat some salted caramel chocolate and drink a mug of proper tea – squeaky with caffeine.

Put down that Crème Egg and listen to me: this is important.

I’m writing to you from 2015, via an ingenious time-travel mechanism, the specifics of which I can’t be bothered to concoct. I won’t tell you anything about 2015 because if I did it would irrevocably alter the history / future of human life as we know it / are likely to know it.

On reflection, I think it’s a really good thing I / we don’t write speculative fiction.

Right about now, you are embarking on the first draft of Vigilante with a song in your heart. You have been told – by those who know more than you – that a second novel is a difficult thing. Nevertheless, you have chosen to believe that this does not apply in your case. You’re already in love with the concept of Vigilante and have spent considerable time researching and planning, so now it’s merely a matter of execution. And you know all about execution, don’t you? Because you’ve already written one novel, and that got published, so it’s easy from here.

Are you out of your bloody mind?

Unable as I am to comment on the wisdom or otherwise of your thoughts at this time, may I instead offer you a little advice to take you through the writing of your second novel?

Yes, of course it’s difficult
All those writers on Twitter who trill about how joyful their process is? Ignore them. Don’t you remember how many drafts you had to put Jubilee through? What on earth makes you think it’ll be any different this time? Writing a novel is hard. I can’t believe I’ve just had to remind you of that. You berk.

Feelings Schmeelings
Your feelings are a pretty poor guide to how well you’re actually doing. Try not to confuse feeling bad with writing badly – however strong those feelings are. I’m not suggesting you disregard perfectly justified Quality Control impulses, but if it’s just your inner critic making you feel like crap in that horrendous, catastrophising way she has, ignore her and keep on going. To quote Dory: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

Stop caring
Art requires freedom and risk-taking. Commerce requires deadlines and responsibility. When you landed your publishing contract, you signed up for both, and they’re largely incompatible. So from time to time, you inveterate Good Girl, might I suggest you just try … not caring. Try not being reliable. Try not worrying about whether it’s good enough. Try … just doing it because you feel like it.

Life events will occur
They will occur because you are alive. You will have mess and interruption. You will have sick kids and meetings with teachers, and a car which goes kaput. You are bloody lucky to have all these things, and they will slow down your writing. Roll with it. Besides (repeat after me): material, material, material.

There will be a day – there really will – when Vigilante is actually published. Without giving anything away (irrevocably altering history &c) I think when you get to that day you might feel really proud. Between now and then there will be many times when you fantasise about publication, and many others when you seriously believe it will never happen. Hang in there, and keep swimming.

Finally, remember: keep your powder dry, meditation helps with everything – and don’t waste time trying to do flicky eyeliner. It will never work on you.

OK, you can eat that Crème Egg now.

• I do a minimum of domestic labour.
• I do what the hell I want all week.
• I eat what I want.
• I give myself permission to ignore duty.

So I set up a holiday reply on my email, instructed the children to make nice, eschewed social media and laid down a stock of cook-chill meals and chocolate-covered brazil nuts.

The bad news, after all that prep, is that it the only retreat worth the name is the one that has you leaving your home behind. I found it extraordinarily difficult to ignore urgent emails and my kids’ homework-related crapness. People still rang me, or knocked on the door. Stuff still came up. The good news is that I discovered the value – and the joy – of the Do What The Hell I Want bit. I’m quite duty-driven. I rarely give myself permission to freewheel, and I did worry that a week in which I placed no pressure on myself would be a wasted one, workwise. But actually, once I’d liberated myself to do what I wanted, it turns out that what I mostly wanted was to write. I cracked through a ton of work (and that’s including the day I spent mainly in bed catching up with Serial). There’s probably a self-help book in this somewhere.

I’m going to share with you one thing I did last week, which worked really well as a planning tool. For me, there’s a bit of a Three Bears thing about planning. Jubilee I under-planned, and had to massively restructure as a result. Vigilante was originally over-planned (it has a somewhat intricate plot, and I didn’t want to drop the ball), so I had to go back in and loosen it all up in the edit. This time I’m going for the baby bear option: a clear direction of travel plotwise, but nothing blow-by-blow, a sort of spine on which I can put flesh as I write. To achieve this I’ve invented the Plan-O-Matic , an innovation I feel sure will prove as commercially successful as my groundbreaking Chapt-O-Matic . Global patents have already been applied for, so watch your step.
For the Plan-O-Matic you will need:

• A roll of easel paper
• A pen
• A notebook containing a hotchpotch of ideas for your story
• Post-It notes in different colours
• A long stretch of floor
• Music

To set up your Plan-O-Matic:
Make a cup of tea and put on your chosen music. Unroll the easel paper thus:

Decide what the different elements of your story are, in terms of plot (at its simplest, this might be a main plot and a subplot) and assign a different Post-It colour to each one. For the particular book I’m planning, the subplot acts as an anchor for the main, so it actually needs to go down first. I did a blue note for each idea I’d had for that subplot and – no matter how haphazardly I’d written those ideas down in my notebook – I stuck them on the paper in the order that will make sense in the final story. Like this:

Then I assigned a new note colour for the main plot (yellow), and transferred all those ideas to notes, and put them down in the order which made sense for the story. Because the notes are repositionable, I could move them round endlessly, and shift whole sections up and down the easel paper if it became clear that one part of the book was more full of ideas at the moment than others. After that, it looked like this, and I needed a few more chocolate brazils:

Finally, I realised that for me there was a third element – the ideas and themes that underpin certain moments in the story – and I wanted to note them down as well, so that when I come to write the novel I’ll have them front of mind. I did them in orange, but forgot to take a picture.

The final step is to cut the easel paper where the plot ends and fold (fold! Don’t roll!) the plot up, concertina style, so you can unfold it as you write. And that’s it: my next novel, in notes, in order. Not too prescriptive, not too nebulous; I’m hoping this one is just right.

How long did it take? It took two full plays of Ziggy, one of Aladdin Sane, and one side of Ladies of the Canyon.

With every book I write, I learn new skills and make fresh resolutions. This time, I promise myself, I will be kind to my creativity. I’ll allow my unconscious the space it needs to reflect on the new project. I will protect stretches of time for the kind of aimless meandering which writing needs. I’ll be more carefree, less uptight.

I’ll just pause there for a moment, so you can finish laughing.

**********************************************************

This is what I hoped my In-Between days would be like:

Though I suspected they might be more like this:

In fact, they’ve been pretty much as busy as ever, because they have filled up with all the many, many things I was unable to do as I headed towards deadline. So, I’ve met up with friends to whom I’ve been a stranger for months, I’ve finally got round to grappling with Scrivener, I’ve performed a mammoth and psychologically transparent tidy-up of my writing room. I’ve also seen Son2 into his new school and prepared for the three (three!) October birthdays in my household.

The truth is, that my life doesn’t realise that these are In-Between Days. Bizarrely, the world has not stopped turning, and the cats still need taking to the vet. Those wide-open spaces of time don’t happen for me unaided, and in many ways I’m very lucky they don’t, because people fill them up and I rather like those people.

So I’ve decided to carve out my own In-Between time, a week where I won’t answer emails, where the only food we eat is cook-chill, where I can just shut off the noise for a while and see what falls into the silence. I’ve picked my way through The Birthdays and some teaching and all the things I need to do to shepherd Vigilante into the world, and I’ve arrived at a date in early December, my first opportunity to just stop.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

After such a successful debut, I wondered what the process of writing her second book had been like for Kerry. She agreed to spill the beans. Personally, I think the following holds good whether you are writing your first novel, your second, or your fifteenth.

Today is a day of celebration for me. This week is. This year. This lifetime. Because I have my second novel. Thirst, coming out – a proper book from my publisher who I adore – and I truly believed that might never ever happen. Not because I wasn’t under contract (I wasn’t though – I had a one book deal) or because I couldn’t think about what to write next but simply because it was my second.

Guys, they have an actual name for this – it’s called ‘Second Novel Syndrome’. Note that it’s not ‘hiccup’ or ‘set-back’ but an actual ‘syndrome’. I’d heard about it and I was scared of it. And at the same time I was working on my second novel (squeezed in where I could in lunch breaks and my commute) things I never expected in a million years were happening with my first novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Before He Stole My Ma. It was shortlisted for seven literary prizes and won the Scottish First Book Award, it was reviewed in the papers, so people actually read it (yes, even people I didn’t know) and suddenly people were interested in what I might be writing next. Then, there it was, the terrible, dark looming presence of Expectation. Alongside that, I was lucky enough to get an Arts Council grant to travel across Russia to research my second book. So now I *had* to write a good book, I’d been given money, people were wondering if I was a one trick pony, I was wondering the same myself…Can you hear it? The high pitch of my anxiety, with the fearful thump of my heart as a bassline?

So how did I overcome it? Well first of all I decided to ‘fuck it’. That’s right, the first thing I did was give less of a shit about what people were thinking, wondering or expecting. I think for most parts of life this is a good strategy but especially for taking that leap and embarking upon making up a whole world using only your mind and words. Then I took the following steps, my own Second Novel Syndrome prescription. You are all welcome:

I wrote a quick and dirty first draft to start with. No pressure about beautiful prose or the perfect descriptive term for moonlight on puddles just words on the page until the story and characters went from one place to another. Actually it wasn’t so much a quick and dirty first draft, as an utterly filthy draft, but it was my raw material I could sculpt into the book I knew I had in my head.

I took time away from my literary life. Listen, it is really (really!) nice when people are saying lovely things about your wee novel that you thought would sink without a trace in a sea of other debuts but it is also very distracting. I think ego, either a hurt one or an inflated one, is along with Expectation the enemy of good writing. So I used every penny I had (again) and took myself back to Vietnam for four months. Away from the noise of my first book, where it was just me and my bicycle and Dave and Alena (and yes, the internet, but I still felt so much more removed from it all).

I decided to honour Dave and Alena. My main characters, the heart of the novel and people who go through incredibly hard things and yet show bravery and hope, who still have the capacity to love and be loved. Typing it, it sounds slightly insane to not to want to let down fictional characters but that’s the truth none the less.

I started giving a shit again. I returned to the UK with a decent…fifth-ish draft (it’s hard to keep track after you’ve pulled it apart and built it again so many times…) and began thinking of the reader, not critics or peers or my editor even, but the people who would pay their hard earned tenner and loan me their hearts and minds for the duration of the book. And then I didn’t want to let them down either.

So that’s it really, maybe it’s a help to someone somewhere. For me, this week is a celebration. Thirst is the book I had to write, from my heart and guts and is as good as I could possibly make it. And now? Now I’m a quarter into my third novel which I doubt will be any easier but I’m starting to realise: it’s the battle that keeps the writing alive on the page.

Until now, those were the two options for finding a mentor: serendipity or deep pockets. If you were an aspiring writer on a low income and without industry connections, you had little chance of finding one, and that in turn made it a bit less likely that you’d be published. But as of today, with the launch of Kerry Hudson’s WoMentoring Project for women writers on a low income, there’s a frankly bloody fantastic opportunity to secure your own mentor from a list of industry professionals which is – and I am not overstating the case here – jaw-dropping. Every mentor will be giving her time gratis.

It makes me so happy that some of the most sought-after women in the business (senior editors, top agents and bestselling authors) are offering their services here, to women writers who would not otherwise be able to afford it. For once, those on a low income will benefit from help unavailable to their wealthier colleagues. I’ll be pitching in as a mentor too, and I cannot tell you how delighted I am to be contributing in a small way to this re-balancing of the scales.

This initiative is not just good for writers – it’s good for readers as well. Because if mentoring makes it more likely that a writer will be published, then readers will get the chance to hear a more diverse range of voices: those which don’t just come from within the industry, or from the monied.

You might be wondering why this opportunity is only available to women. Kerry Hudson says: ‘In an industry where male writers are still reviewed and paid more than their female counterparts in the UK, we wanted to balance the playing field. Likewise, we want to give female voices that would otherwise find it hard to be heard, a greater opportunity of reaching their true potential.’ I would add that, with women still earning significantly less than men in almost all jobs, they are also less likely to have the funds needed to pay for mentoring.

In fact, even mentors themselves are more likely to be represented as male. In thinking about this project I’ve been considering fictional mentors and finding (surprise!) that they’re almost always men. They usually look like this:

The few fictional female mentors I’ve found look something like this:

They are wicked but devastatingly charismatic and say things like, ‘You’ll find the shame is like the pain: you only feel it once,’ something I’m tempted to throw in during the mentoring process at some point, should the conversation start to flag. But then I’m also tempted to do the whole thing in a false beard so I’m playing both sides, really.

I’ve had to employ a fair amount of self-discipline not to take this blog post completely off-piste and rant on about that, (how the authority and wisdom of a mentor sits uncomfortably with cultural constructions of womanhood, how – shut up, Shelley!) If you want to read a similar rant, try this Jezebel piece.

And if you want to apply for a mentor, here’s the link you need. Good luck!

* Illustration by Sally Jane Thompson, one of the mentors on the project.

I’m starting with the idea of a retreat. There will be times when you need to be in a place where your sole mission is to write, away from (delete as applicable) work emails / the cat / the partner / the constant stream of admin and chores; you know what I’m talking about. When I’m on retreat my productivity soars in ways which are only partly down to the extra time available. For the rest, a lot of it is about the designation of this as a writing space and as nothing else.

One friend of mine retreats by hiring a cottage on a remote coastal path; from one day to the next her only human contact is to wave at the odd walker. It works brilliantly for her, but it would make me miserable as hell. So below is my own very subjective set of criteria for the perfect retreat.

Here’s what I need:

• I need to be left absolutely alone while I’m writing, but have company in the evenings.
• I need someone else to cook for me so my head doesn’t have to be full of planning and practicalities (because that’s what I do – relentlessly – when I’m not on retreat).
• I need quiet.
• I need no-one else to give a damn how I spend my time, so that I can stay hermit-like in my room for eighteen hours at a stretch or give up on writing altogether and laze on the sofa without feeling the weight of anyone’s expectation. At the same time, and most unreasonably, I need there to be a sense of creative purpose to the place.
• I’d like everyone to be chilled please, and friendly.

Reading this back, I think I must be a nightmare guest. So demanding! And it did take a few years to find somewhere that ticks all those boxes. Finally, I found my perfect retreat in Devon (here’s the link; I’m sharing nicely).

There’s home-made bread for breakfast, a hot water bottle in your bed at night, and the only time hostess Debs ever interrupts work is if it gets much beyond six in the evening, when she’ll tap on my door, shimmer in, deposit a glass of wine on the desk and shimmer out again.

This is Debs. She shimmers.

If that sounds like heaven, it pretty much is. Debs describes a retreat as ‘a sort of temporary bubble, inside which there is nothing but you and your writing.’ A writer herself, she says running a retreat has involved her embracing all sorts of roles, from counsellor to mediator to mother figure. You can catch her doing it sometimes, with the lightest of touches. It’s a delicate balance: enough to help, not enough to be intrusive. On a more mundane note, I’m also impressed at the way there’s always a slice of home-baked something-or-other in the snack tin, no matter how greedy I’ve been the previous day.

Retreating doesn’t come free, but part of the point of this occasional series is to look at the alternatives to a £9000 MA course, well beyond the reach of most of us. You can get started as a writer for about a fiver (a free library card, a notebook and pen). Any money you can spare after that has to work hard; a good retreat is one of the places where it works hardest.

And finally, as good food is central to a good retreat, here’s Deb’s ‘non recipe recipe for soup’.

Gently fry a large onion for a long time – a good 20 minutes (it really does make a difference to the taste of the dish). Then add leftover mash, veg, stew, pasta, whatever you have. Chuck in some stock – cubes is fine, or a tin of tomatoes (use your judgement – it depends on your leftovers) a dash of wine, plenty of pepper and whatever herbs – or not, you deem appropriate. You can add a tin of beans if you like, if it needs beefing up a bit. Simmer, mash or whizz up, add a dash of cream or plain yoghurt. Taste taste taste throughout and adjust additions accordingly. Serve with homemade bread if possible and proper butter.