Cathy Kelly Interviewed
September 24th 2010 07:16
Original Creative Writing:
David Jobling
Cathy Kelly and I managed to catch up while she was in Adelaide on her whirlwind tour of Australia. We managed two sit-down interviews, but just for the record they were both in the back of her car while she was keeping up with her busy schedule.
David Jobling: Now, Cathy Kelly, how long have you been on tour this time out?
Cathy Kelly: Well, wait till I think about it. This is about my eleventh day. I think it's about my eleventh day or twelfth day I think, Im getting very confused. Its a two week door to door, So I left my house on a Friday morning and Im going to be back in my house on a Friday morning. In two weeks.
David Jobling: Thats quick work.
Cathy Kelly: That's neeeooowwwwing! Yes. I don't always know where I am. There's nothing new there.
David: But you always know who you are.
Cathy Kelly: I always know, always know. Well most of the time. Once I take my medication Im fine.
David: (laughs) You sound like me.
Cathy Kelly: That was a joke, everyone, you know. Irish sense of humour. Problem with the Irish sense of humour is people think you are being serious you see, they take you seriously when youre makin a joke.
David: How can they take you seriously when youve got such a beautiful accent.
Cathy Kelly: Oh darling, thank you. You see I don't think I have an accent I think everyone here has an accent, thats all.
David: You know our accents is a bit derived from the Irish accent
Cathy Kelly: Is it really?
David: Yeah, back in the day there were lots of Paddys sent out here
Cathy Kelly: Its just, itsn't it amazing, because Ive just been finding out that you know Adelaide there were a lot of farmers came out here and I was in just been in Tasmania, and when we arrived in the hotel we were staying in they research your name and they give you a print out of people with your name who arrived on the convict ships -
David: (Laughs)
Cathy Kelly: But it was just so moving. There were are all these Catherine Kelly's and at first I thought that the second thing on it was the name of the boat they came out on but then I realised that Kangaroo was Kangaroo Island and there was a Catherine Kellly who went to Kangaroo Island, just so sad - you know they probably stole a loaf of bread.
David: Crust of bread, piece of potato or something.
Cathy Kelly: Just the cruelty was unbelievable. But anyway. You know. The world was a cruel place.
David: You're interested in history?
Cathy Kelly: I'm very interested in history. I mean, Homecoming my current book has a little bit of history in it; its set in modern day, modern day Ireland, in this little square called Golden Square I made up and all the characters live around it. But one of them who is a psychoanalyst who comes back from New York after being there for seventy years and she had left Ireland in the thirties in great poverty and she comes back, and she's got a little book, a recipe book for life that her mother wrote for her. And there's lots of Irish historical stuff in there. It sort of a bit anthropological, its about how people lived.
David: Absolutely it is. You manage to get so much into a sentence-
Cathy Kelly: Thankyou
David: You have sentences that begin, and reading a lot of books, a lot of the time you think 'ah she is going to describe something, "she wears blond hair and high heels"
Cathy Kelly: Yep.
David: You've got a whiff of scent, an attitude, silk, linen, something felt. I mean there's all these things that build into it.
Cathy Kelly: Thank you. It was amazing to write. I normally write in the third person. And for this I wrote in the first person. And it was actually, it was quite amazing, it was a very different experience. But I love the idea of you know, culture of any country I think any history that makes us what we are is very important. And you do get more interested in that as you get older don't you?
David: Sure.
Cathy Kelly: No doubt about it. Looking back now Im thinking I should have asked my grandmother more stuff. So I would advise everyone if their granny and their grand dad are still around tape them. Ask them things because a lot of it, a certain amount of the stuff that I used in this I got just from my grandmother who is now, she must be dead thirteen years god rest her. So I remember asking her all this stuff. She came from the West of Ireland and I spent all my holidays there so for three months every year I was down the West with her and she had a cow and she milked the cow and she...
David: churned the butter
Cathy Kelly: churned the butter, when I did it manys the time, damn hard work I can tell you.
David: She separated the curds and whey
Cathy Kelly: She separated and then you have to be washing that separator that was a hell of a job. And she had hens and I used to look after the hens. Actually the hens were great. When they were babies they were called Pullets and they lived in an old crashed Volkswagen which I thought was fabulous you know, I mean there were no seats in it, but it was wonderful that was their house and then when they got bigger they got they got moved up the road to the proper hen house. But all this stuff she told me and the, I don't know the folklore, the way they lived the way they used to use carrageen moss or seaweed for peoples chests -
David: There is this extraordinary line, I mean, that is the thing. This is not a genre I would usually look at but I love your writing. The detail of it is so exquisite.
Cathy Kelly: Im honoured. Oh my god.
David: Really. True.
Cathy Kelly: You have to send me a copy of this. People don't use the word exquisite very often I want to have this to listen to every morning when I get up.
David: Everything that has ever gone onto this stove says one of the women in Homecoming, everything that has ever been cooked on it, was brought in from outside first, she says. That would be your grandmother.
Cathy Kelly: Yes it was a different world. They didn't have the shop so everything they grew the food a treat would be get up early in the morning and go around the fields and find the wild mushrooms and put them on the stove with a little bit of salt things like that. It was just an amazing life.
David: The further away you get from all that source material do you find it drawing you back towards it?
Cathy Kelly: I think so. You know when I started writing I was tewenty seven and I think as you grow older your books change your writing changes your life changes and certainly I love going back into the past and seeing how the past shapes us. Makes us what we are. The thing that I found that was interesting was that okay these people were you know incredibly poor on so many levels and yet they worried about the same things that we worry about. Okay they weren't worrying about the stock market they were worrying about you know poverty and sick children and relationships and will the unmarried sister ever find a husband - theres a woman in there and her her you know her beloved is killed in the war of independence and its like thats it now shell never find anyone else you know the sort of things that matter to us today life is one big cycle isn't it?
David: It is. And thats one of the things you do notice from it because theres a repetition of values different times similar reactions to different circumstances, you could almost say its all coming from the same gene pool -
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David: They have their preset notions that they stick with.
Cathy Kelly: But I wonder is that the human gene pool, you know? I mean are we the same everywhere? Okay, I a woman from Ireland and I write books that are popular say in Adelaide and the same things matter..
David: Oh sure - the universality of it -
Cathy Kelly: You know its absolutely amazing isn't it? I get letters from people you know, in India saying "something in your book touched me" and I think god (you know) I try and find the link between my writing and what life must be like in India and yet its there you know? Human experience is amazing.
David: It is isn't it. Is that something you find amplified when you are doing these book tours?
Cathy Kelly: That was the perfect word, amplified, you know as a writer you're normally sitting at home at your desk. You are on your own and wondering if anyones ever going to read it or weather you should you know give this up as a bad job.
David: Nice door stop.
Cathy Kelly: Yeah exactly. I'm gonna stop now and then suddenly you meet people and they say what you have written has touched them and thatÃÂs sort of overwhelming I don't know, as I get older I'm becoming more and more of a hippy, but I have this whole belief in this sense of the great conscience the more you travel the more linked in I feel to it. The great human experience.
David: I can see how you would be feeling that washing over you fairly frequently.
Cathy Kelly: Yes. It's wonderful.
David: And writing with a protagonist who is in her seventies - have you discovered a new demographic? Was that demographic there the whole time gracefully getting older..
Cathy Kelly: When I started to write older characters, I think when I wrote first I was nervous of writing anything that was you know too different. I was afraid I'd get it wrong. Like writing about things that are incredibly sad or poignant and it was only when my father died of Alzheimer's when I thought "Okay you know I think I'm going to put some of this in a book" and I thought god is this very dark and sad. And suddenly dark and sad was wonderful and i loved dark and sad and it gave me courage to write different things and I think that when you are seventy and eighty you think the same way you do when you are twenty and thirty and forty. I mean the world treats you differently
David: Yes
Cathy Kelly: But you are the same person. I love that and I love the wisdom that you know the women, especially, Elanor in this book has, and yet the world looks at her and thinks, you know, old lady. How sad is that?
David: It is extraordinary. Women in their sixties and beyond can pick this up and feel invigorated by it, I would think. Men probably too but I would think less so. It is a very feminine story
Cathy Kelly: And hopefully feminist, I like to think that theres a good feminist thing there about women and empowerment. I don't know somebody once did a review and said "Cathy Kelly clearly not a feminist" and normally with reviews you sort of go - okay - that hurt - I tell you I wanted to go around to this womans house and beat her up. I went, "How dare you say I'm not a feminist".
David: You're wearing high heels and jeans, very feminist.
Cathy Kelly: Oh the clothes the clothes doesn't matter. Its interesting, you know I do a lot of work with UNICEF because I'm an ambassador for UNICEF Ireland and the terribly sad thing is feminism, we think, yeah great we ve got feminism, but we haven't got feminism and enormous swathes of the world feminism hasn't touched because women and children are still downtrodden and dying of HIV/AIDS. You see women in parts of the world and they go away and they leave their kids to work because there's no work for the men and they don't see their children for three or four years I mean whats good for women about that? Thats a tragedy.
David: Yes. I've done a lot of work with new arrivals here from Afghanistan and I'm amazed at how little will or determination, self determination they have the capacity for. It seems like it has been stripped out of them as a generation. Are you seeing that with your UNICEF ambassadorship?
Cathy Kelly: So far my UNICEF work has taken me to Africa to Mozambique and Rwanda it is just phenomenal exactly as you say people are in survival mode. I mean just trying to survive changes everything doesn't it you know. You don't have time for the other stuff that we can get involved in they are just trying to live. Day to day. Keep their families alive.
David: I know young adults who have to make the choice, do I wait around for a care package/handout if I can get one, or do I join the bandits and go break the law to survive?
Cathy Kelly: Completely, you can see in some countries why young and poor disenfranchised men are the easiest targets for the whole world of terrorism becaue they have nothing so its very easy for manipulative people to get them involved which is the tragedy. Absolutely horrendous tragedy.
David: How does a writer of fiction actually end up being in this UNICEF Ambassador position? Is it because you've got a certain status?
Cathy Kelly: A little bit of that but also I was always very interested in Africa particularly when I was a journalist and I was asked to be involved in this UNICEF charity book six years ago now and they came out to our house and we were saying we'd do everything we could - and we got so into it because its just such an amazing charity that they asked me would I get involved so what it means is whenever I go anywhere, whenever I doi a talk or an interview I talk about it. I think UNICEF suffers slightly from being such an enormous organisation I think they've had a l;ot of corporate sponsorship over the years so people don't see it as a thing that ordinary poeple can get involved in - does that make sense to you?
David: Yes I can see how that would be a problem. Such a big organisation that pople possibly think its all sewn up and theres nothing they can do-
Cathy Kelly: So my message is to try and explain that you know we work in fiftyeight countries around the world. We are non-political, of course we are aligned to the UN and that's incredibly useful because it means they can get in on Government level in cases like Mozambique for example - trying to help education programs, funding patient programs, they can do amazing things. What I do is I paint the picture for the people who can npt get to Africa and can not sit in the mother and baby clinic and see the womane with the children and know that one fifth of those children will not reach the age of five because of measles, diarrhoea, bad water, HIV/AIDS, malaria, all things that in our world are fixable.
David: Or manageable in the case of HIV/AIDS.
Cathy Kelly: Exactly.. I paint the picture. One of the best things we did was, I cant remember what book it was. We worked it out, because I was on a tv show once and we worked out that if the tv show was a two hour tv show, by the time it was over four thousand children would have developed HIV and so the same thing with the book and I said if this takes you three days to read this book x number of children will have been orphaned by HIV, x number of children will have died from measles and malaria and simple things that are entirely preventable and that is a strong message.
David Jobling: How many drafts of a novel would you write, conservatively?
Cathy Kelly: Well now you see there's the question. Everyone I know, all my friends write drafts and um, I ... er, do it a totally different way. Which I'm determined this time I'm going to crack the draft system because I think the draft system sounds like a much better way of writing a book. But I spend six months writing the first quarter of the book, endlessly, over and over again, editing it within an inch of its little life, until I'm nearly gone insane and then, that's done. You know and I can move on. Then I sort of almost draft the rest of it. And then go back over it but the beginning of the book there's no draft thing. But I think the draft sounds like such a fabulous thing because you know you get that sense of achievement, you're done, and then you're going back and you're doing your tweaking but I dunno, I've never been able to work that way.
David Jobling: Okay. What about your pathway into writing in the first instance? College, University?
Cathy Kelly: College. I did journalism. I did a two year journalism course. I have a certificate in journalism.
David Jobling: Jolly good.
Cathy Kelly: Yes Jolly Good, I'm going to wave my certificate all over the place but god knows where it is.
David Jobling: Well it means you're valid.
Cathy Kelly: Yes I'm valid. I dunno what I'm valid for but I'm valid for something. So I did that, and I worked in radio for a while at the time pirate radio in Dublin, which I loved. I read the news. My mother still recalls me giggling apparently through an entire broadcast, I don't remember it but maybe I've just sort of blanked it out. Did that, and then a little bit of freelancing and I got a full time job with the Sunday tabloid newspaper called The Sunday World and I was hired with another guy. He's now a very famous Irish crime reporter Paul Williams and we were to be the Dempsey and Makepeace, I don't know if you remember them it was a British TV series, she was a supposedly posh English police person and he was this American NYPD tough guy anyway so we were the Dempsey and Makepeace allegedly. It was great fun. I did lots of mad stories I think one of my first assignments was going out and investigating pubs in Dublin to see if they had loo seat covers. You know those sorts of ones that you put on so you don't have to line it with toilet paper? And there was of course an accompanying picture of me beside the toilet. That was me. My foray into journalism. Serious journalism here. You know. Any way there was a lot of very serious you know crime stories and stuff like that in the newspaper and I wasn't very good at that so I segued into features became the Agony Aunt as well. Against my will. They said "Would you do it" because I had written a lot of social features and I was interested in that sort of stuff. So they said "Be the Agony Aunt", because the agony aunt was going and I went "Nnooooo" and anyway obviously I'm very bad at saying no. So eventually I said "Yes. I'll do it for three months," and I did it for about six years. And simultaneously I was the film critic which was fun.
David Jobling: That would have been good.
Cathy Kelly: That was great fun. Yeah because you know you're sitting in a movie theatre at half ten on a Monday morning with your cup of coffee and that's work.
David Jobling: And you get to judge people -
Cathy Kelly: Oh God you do -
David Jobling: I mean in a constructive way.
Cathy Kelly: In a constructive way but I think I was actually a terrible, now that I look back I didn't have the correct judgement I would make a much better film critic now. But at the time I new nothing.
David Jobling: Did that not inspire you to write some screenplays?
Cathy Kelly: I'd love to write a screenplay but I don't think; none of my work is filmic in my opinion I mean I think screenplays are a whole different area. I'm really interested in it I love reading all those, Adventures in the screen trade and which lie did I tell, I love those sort of books they're great fun. But I think that's a very different sort of thing to what I'm doing right now.
David Jobling: What about optioning your novels?
Cathy Kelly: Oh I would be delirious if anyone wants to option it. And I'm waiting to be optioned. But it hasn't happened yet. Because as I say I think, I don't think they're filmic. I think there're a lot of types of writing there that aren't necessarily filmic and I certainly think the sort of stuff I do isn't particularly filmic. Maybe I'm wrong. And if anyone wants to film me an offer a cheque-
David Jobling: I guess it would depend on how they wanted to tweak it around to adapt some sections to bring it into that sort of, film language; is there from your days of film criticism is there some film maker who you'd like to have a go at your work?
Cathy Kelly: Oh goodness there's millions of film makers I'd let have a go at my work. I'd let anyone have a go I'd be delighted it would be so much fun. Sorry I sound terrible, but t'would be great fun-
David Jobling: No no it's fine - clearly you'd be quite happy for someone to have a go-
Cathy Kelly: Very very happy. Although you know then I look back at the films I love Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder, oh, lovely. Obviously not available, given death and everything. I'm very fond of James Cameron although I believe not alot of other people are. But I like, I did like Avatar. Aliens I think one of my favourites-
David Jobling: Aliens is a great film.
Cathy Kelly: It's because Sigourney gets to kick bleep bleep bleep bleep.
David Jobling: Yes.
Cathy Kelly: I love that. I want my own flame thrower.
David Jobling: Yes and was that not the first moment, I mean she was really the first female science fiction
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: kick ass
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: sort of hero, or heroine,
Cathy Kelly: Yeah
David Jobling: And then they developed it that little bit further then with her and the relationship with the little girl in Aliens so
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: They teased that out a little, she was more than just a dick-less-Schwarzenegger-sort-of-thing. She actually had credibility
Cathy Kelly: Yes, but Sigourney Weaver she's just a brilliant actress I love that but also I hate films where the women flail about and go Oh my god that man is going to kill us and lay on the floor and do nothing. I like the films where the girl gets the AK47 so I was very keen on that movie
David Jobling: Yes. It was actually pretty ground breaking when it came out
Cathy Kelly: It was. It was absolutely brilliant.
David Jobling: So, maybe Ridley Scott could have a go-
Cathy Kelly: Oh Ridley Scott. I interviewed Tony Scott once, and I'm trying to remember for what film they're amazing. They are amazing those people and they're behind The Good Wife that series. I don't know if you have it here. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
David Jobling: Yes. Very intelligent isn't it?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, wonderful. It's beautifully intelligent, you know, writing. I love screenwriting I just don't know if I have it in me to do it, and at the moment I don't have the time. But it's certainly on my long range plan.
David Jobling: How is it that you don't have the time? Are you not a, a-
Cathy Kelly: A lady of leisure?
David Jobling: Yeah-
Cathy Kelly: Oh dear?
David Jobling: Making billions of dollars and just sitting back and eating strawberries? Occasional trip to Africa?
Cathy Kelly: Yes I know and I get my grapes peeled and everything. No I'm a, well I'm a hard working mother of twin seven year olds who does her own grocery shopping and so er um
David Jobling: Are they boys or girls?
Cathy Kelly: Boys
David Jobling: Oh lord
Cathy Kelly: Two beautiful boys Murray and Dylan, and I actually live a very very ordinary life and I'm not there surrounded by running hot and cold slaves or anything so
David Jobling: Sure, it sounds like you'd be the slave if you've got twin boys
Cathy Kelly: Yeah. Absolutely. Oh listen you know I think they think they're in a high class restaurant a lot of the time they say "Mom we'd like this for dinner" and I'm going, Excuse me? You know. And I'm writing a book a year. So that's the other thing. You know, time wise.
David Jobling: So how many hours a day on average do you have to put aside
Cathy Kelly: That's a very good question and I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. I bring the boys to school in the morning and I come home and I do all those, you know, woman who works from home stuff-
David Jobling: Yeah yeah.
Cathy Kelly: I put the dishwasher on and tidy up and make a cup of coffee and listen to the radio the go God I better go and do some work, so I get all my best work done when they're at school so maybe five good hours a day.
David Jobling: Ah that's not bad.
Cathy Kelly: Nah that's pretty good. And then in the afternoon you know I've a helper comes in and I get them from school and I do their homework with them and then maybe I'll take another hour or two and I would do the admin stuff that you know is a huge part of it, you just do so much admin and stuff.
David Jobling: That's getting back to emails and letters and such-
Cathy Kelly: Yes, I do that, Admin is not a nice word for it it's the non writing part of what I do. But I think it's very important when people took the time to contact you I think you, you know have responsibility to get back in touch with them so I do that.
David Jobling: And how marvellous for them to have someone get back in touch with them, and it's you.
Cathy Kelly: People tell me amazing stories when they write the emails so, you know, not to respond to someone laying their heart out, you know, over the internet, is just-
David Jobling: Be a bit hard wouldn't it?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, I couldn't. I would lie in bed and think "Oh my god I never got back in touch with that person" You know, so.
David Jobling: Do you run a website?
Cathy Kelly: I have a website, yeah and I'm on Facebook, I now have finally, I have an assistant. The joy of having an assistant. So I send her emails saying things like "Will you remind me" because my main problem is forgetting things so I say "You will remind me to do this and remind me to do that" but I do the newsletter and I do the admin-
David Jobling: And you know that any woman that's got seven year old kids particularly two at the same time forgets everything because there's always something to distract her.
Cathy Kelly: Do you know what my mind is like a sieve I would never be able to write my memoirs I wouldn't anyway, because I can't remember anything.
David Jobling: (laughs)
Cathy Kelly: How do people do it? They must be making it all up you know? No they're making it up!
David Jobling: Ian McKellen's got everything on his website, everything he's ever done so he doesn't have to remember.
Cathy Kelly: You see I should do that. I mean even as I'm travelling around I keep thinking, and I love making notes, I have a bit of an er, note book fetish and I love note books I always have about eight on the go-
David Jobling: Wow!
Cathy Kelly: No, but that doesn't work because then you forget-
David Jobling: You're not sure-
Cathy Kelly: Which one you put it in. Then you lose it and you know, any way
David Jobling: Does that imply that you handwrite your work to begin with as well?
Cathy Kelly: No I work totally on a laptop I have an ipad and I got the most adorable little key board that goes with it. That when I'm here I can work. But actually it's just been so intense I haven't really done anything but I in desperation I will make notes in the little note book I do that all the time, I'm always making notes, I'm ripping things out in news papers you know the way you have an idea and it just pings and you have to have it and you have to rip it out-
David Jobling: Is that a discovery that you've made in the process of being a writer over the period of time or is that something that someone said early on?
Cathy Kelly: Oh no I've always done that I've always done that I'm terrible you know the Sunday papers you know I really want them there for about four days so I can really see, you know totally go through them.
David Jobling: And then do you source little episodes in your stories from those sorts of things? Do they inspire you to be creative around that sort of thing?
Cathy Kelly: It doesn't really work that way I read something and I think Oh that might be interesting idea and that's the springboard but it is nothing more than the springboard generally you know just an idea that just appeals to me the problem is you need to write, as soon as you rip it out, you know, you need to write what interested you because otherwise then you look at it and you say six months later, "Why did I tear that out?"
David Jobling: Yeah, what did I want that for?
Cathy Kelly: What did I want that for? Yeah.
David Jobling: If you write one novel a year, how soon after you've completed one?
Cathy Kelly: Do you need to start the next one?
David Jobling: Well, do you start to feel that there is a new novel emerging whilst you're completing one, is it something like, "Ah... this is coming to me..."
Cathy Kelly: Yes it does absolutely it's amazing it is, it just comes from I don't know, up there, somewhere else, normally when I'm near the end of a book I'm thinking about the next one just, it just sort of happens that way I begin to think now what's interesting because in a way by the time you're finishing a book you're finished with that idea and that thought, that's, well, I've never done a sequel, I always feel I've completed; that thought is completed in my head. So you're finishing it and you're tying up the ends and there's some other part of your brain; isn't the brain amazing.
David Jobling: Yeah it is.
Cathy Kelly: There's another part of your brain going brrr brrr brrr what's new? What's interesting? What's touching you? So I do that all the time.
David Jobling: This'll be a new neural pathway emerging.
Cathy Kelly: A new neural pathway exactly! I know, I love it. I'm very interested in lucid dreaming. I'm very keen on that, you know the idea you go to bed and you focus on something and then you see what happens though my dreams are just crazy and mad any way so I don't think I could write any of them but you know.
David Jobling: Have you tried a bit of that?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, no, I have tried it I just think it's very, I'm very interested in the brain, you know and its plasticity-
David Jobling: It's extraordinary and this last decade they've learnt so much more about it
Cathy Kelly: Absolutely fantastic. I love those things where they do MRI's of the brain at certain points when it's doing different things and it's lighting up it's just absolutely fantastic and the concept that we use so little, not so little but, you know, there is -
David Jobling: Just a disproportional amount of it
Cathy Kelly: Yes because there's so much there it's just amazing you know myself and my husband we're involved in a neurological charity back home this amazing guy, god he should be running Irish Health System but that's a whole other story; and he works on people with everything from stroke to Parkinson's and just talking to him about the brain, he's a neurologist obviously, fascinating. The brain is the last great frontier we haven't discovered really isn't it?
David Jobling: Yes it is. I haven't asked you about Ireland. What part of Ireland are you from?
Cathy Kelly: I live in Whitlow which is the county just below Dublin. I was brought up in Dublin although I spent all my holidays in the west which is with my grandmother which is where I got all of you know, those sort of lovely snippets for the book. I was actually born in Belfast but just because my family were working there so I was only there for a year which accounts for the lack of a Belfast accent. But Ireland is wonderful. I love it, but we're in a bit of a 'state of chassis' as they say right now. We're a bit broke. Hopefully we'll come back.
David Jobling: Well you're not the only ones.
Cathy Kelly: No we are not the only ones we are in particularly dire straits and that's not a pun about music. We have the international problem but we also had a property bubble and incredibly bad bank regulations so we've a triple whammy going on.
David Jobling: Right. That's not so good.
Cathy Kelly: No, but we will, you know, I keep thinking we will come out of it. We have one.. You know we don't have gold and diamonds and we don't have mines but I keep saying we've one amazing resource, the people, and the people will really get us out of this.
David Jobling: Absolutely, you're completely correct with that. Some of the best writers have come from Ireland, some fantastic artists, brilliant musicians-
Cathy Kelly: Yes, Oh yes. There gonna find out the creative gene when they nail that well I'd say there's a lot of that going on in Ireland, I'm fascinated with genetics to.
David Jobling: One thing you'd like to leave your readers with?
Cathy Kelly: Oh my goodness that's a very difficult thing what would I like to leave my readers with Do you know what? Two things, actually. I love little quotes, I'm a great collector of little quotes and one of my favourite ones is Henry James saying The three most important words in the English language are kindness, kindness and kindness. And I just love that and then my other one which is a very pro women one, which is from Madeline Albright the former US Secretary of State and she said There should be a special place in hell for women who are unkind to other women, so that's one of my little what words... I love these little quotes.
David Jobling: Thanks so much
Cathy Kelly: Thank you David my darling it was a pleasure huge pleasure.
David Jobling: Cheers.
David Jobling: Now, Cathy Kelly, how long have you been on tour this time out?
Cathy Kelly: Well, wait till I think about it. This is about my eleventh day. I think it's about my eleventh day or twelfth day I think, Im getting very confused. Its a two week door to door, So I left my house on a Friday morning and Im going to be back in my house on a Friday morning. In two weeks.
David Jobling: Thats quick work.
Cathy Kelly: That's neeeooowwwwing! Yes. I don't always know where I am. There's nothing new there.
David: But you always know who you are.
Cathy Kelly: I always know, always know. Well most of the time. Once I take my medication Im fine.
David: (laughs) You sound like me.
Cathy Kelly: That was a joke, everyone, you know. Irish sense of humour. Problem with the Irish sense of humour is people think you are being serious you see, they take you seriously when youre makin a joke.
David: How can they take you seriously when youve got such a beautiful accent.
Cathy Kelly: Oh darling, thank you. You see I don't think I have an accent I think everyone here has an accent, thats all.
David: You know our accents is a bit derived from the Irish accent
Cathy Kelly: Is it really?
David: Yeah, back in the day there were lots of Paddys sent out here
Cathy Kelly: Its just, itsn't it amazing, because Ive just been finding out that you know Adelaide there were a lot of farmers came out here and I was in just been in Tasmania, and when we arrived in the hotel we were staying in they research your name and they give you a print out of people with your name who arrived on the convict ships -
David: (Laughs)
Cathy Kelly: But it was just so moving. There were are all these Catherine Kelly's and at first I thought that the second thing on it was the name of the boat they came out on but then I realised that Kangaroo was Kangaroo Island and there was a Catherine Kellly who went to Kangaroo Island, just so sad - you know they probably stole a loaf of bread.
David: Crust of bread, piece of potato or something.
Cathy Kelly: Just the cruelty was unbelievable. But anyway. You know. The world was a cruel place.
David: You're interested in history?
Cathy Kelly: I'm very interested in history. I mean, Homecoming my current book has a little bit of history in it; its set in modern day, modern day Ireland, in this little square called Golden Square I made up and all the characters live around it. But one of them who is a psychoanalyst who comes back from New York after being there for seventy years and she had left Ireland in the thirties in great poverty and she comes back, and she's got a little book, a recipe book for life that her mother wrote for her. And there's lots of Irish historical stuff in there. It sort of a bit anthropological, its about how people lived.
David: Absolutely it is. You manage to get so much into a sentence-
Cathy Kelly: Thankyou
David: You have sentences that begin, and reading a lot of books, a lot of the time you think 'ah she is going to describe something, "she wears blond hair and high heels"
Cathy Kelly: Yep.
David: You've got a whiff of scent, an attitude, silk, linen, something felt. I mean there's all these things that build into it.
Cathy Kelly: Thank you. It was amazing to write. I normally write in the third person. And for this I wrote in the first person. And it was actually, it was quite amazing, it was a very different experience. But I love the idea of you know, culture of any country I think any history that makes us what we are is very important. And you do get more interested in that as you get older don't you?
David: Sure.
Cathy Kelly: No doubt about it. Looking back now Im thinking I should have asked my grandmother more stuff. So I would advise everyone if their granny and their grand dad are still around tape them. Ask them things because a lot of it, a certain amount of the stuff that I used in this I got just from my grandmother who is now, she must be dead thirteen years god rest her. So I remember asking her all this stuff. She came from the West of Ireland and I spent all my holidays there so for three months every year I was down the West with her and she had a cow and she milked the cow and she...
David: churned the butter
Cathy Kelly: churned the butter, when I did it manys the time, damn hard work I can tell you.
David: She separated the curds and whey
Cathy Kelly: She separated and then you have to be washing that separator that was a hell of a job. And she had hens and I used to look after the hens. Actually the hens were great. When they were babies they were called Pullets and they lived in an old crashed Volkswagen which I thought was fabulous you know, I mean there were no seats in it, but it was wonderful that was their house and then when they got bigger they got they got moved up the road to the proper hen house. But all this stuff she told me and the, I don't know the folklore, the way they lived the way they used to use carrageen moss or seaweed for peoples chests -
David: There is this extraordinary line, I mean, that is the thing. This is not a genre I would usually look at but I love your writing. The detail of it is so exquisite.
Cathy Kelly: Im honoured. Oh my god.
David: Really. True.
Cathy Kelly: You have to send me a copy of this. People don't use the word exquisite very often I want to have this to listen to every morning when I get up.
David: Everything that has ever gone onto this stove says one of the women in Homecoming, everything that has ever been cooked on it, was brought in from outside first, she says. That would be your grandmother.
Cathy Kelly: Yes it was a different world. They didn't have the shop so everything they grew the food a treat would be get up early in the morning and go around the fields and find the wild mushrooms and put them on the stove with a little bit of salt things like that. It was just an amazing life.
David: The further away you get from all that source material do you find it drawing you back towards it?
Cathy Kelly: I think so. You know when I started writing I was tewenty seven and I think as you grow older your books change your writing changes your life changes and certainly I love going back into the past and seeing how the past shapes us. Makes us what we are. The thing that I found that was interesting was that okay these people were you know incredibly poor on so many levels and yet they worried about the same things that we worry about. Okay they weren't worrying about the stock market they were worrying about you know poverty and sick children and relationships and will the unmarried sister ever find a husband - theres a woman in there and her her you know her beloved is killed in the war of independence and its like thats it now shell never find anyone else you know the sort of things that matter to us today life is one big cycle isn't it?
David: It is. And thats one of the things you do notice from it because theres a repetition of values different times similar reactions to different circumstances, you could almost say its all coming from the same gene pool -
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David: They have their preset notions that they stick with.
Cathy Kelly: But I wonder is that the human gene pool, you know? I mean are we the same everywhere? Okay, I a woman from Ireland and I write books that are popular say in Adelaide and the same things matter..
David: Oh sure - the universality of it -
Cathy Kelly: You know its absolutely amazing isn't it? I get letters from people you know, in India saying "something in your book touched me" and I think god (you know) I try and find the link between my writing and what life must be like in India and yet its there you know? Human experience is amazing.
David: It is isn't it. Is that something you find amplified when you are doing these book tours?
Cathy Kelly: That was the perfect word, amplified, you know as a writer you're normally sitting at home at your desk. You are on your own and wondering if anyones ever going to read it or weather you should you know give this up as a bad job.
David: Nice door stop.
Cathy Kelly: Yeah exactly. I'm gonna stop now and then suddenly you meet people and they say what you have written has touched them and thatÃÂs sort of overwhelming I don't know, as I get older I'm becoming more and more of a hippy, but I have this whole belief in this sense of the great conscience the more you travel the more linked in I feel to it. The great human experience.
David: I can see how you would be feeling that washing over you fairly frequently.
Cathy Kelly: Yes. It's wonderful.
David: And writing with a protagonist who is in her seventies - have you discovered a new demographic? Was that demographic there the whole time gracefully getting older..
Cathy Kelly: When I started to write older characters, I think when I wrote first I was nervous of writing anything that was you know too different. I was afraid I'd get it wrong. Like writing about things that are incredibly sad or poignant and it was only when my father died of Alzheimer's when I thought "Okay you know I think I'm going to put some of this in a book" and I thought god is this very dark and sad. And suddenly dark and sad was wonderful and i loved dark and sad and it gave me courage to write different things and I think that when you are seventy and eighty you think the same way you do when you are twenty and thirty and forty. I mean the world treats you differently
David: Yes
Cathy Kelly: But you are the same person. I love that and I love the wisdom that you know the women, especially, Elanor in this book has, and yet the world looks at her and thinks, you know, old lady. How sad is that?
David: It is extraordinary. Women in their sixties and beyond can pick this up and feel invigorated by it, I would think. Men probably too but I would think less so. It is a very feminine story
Cathy Kelly: And hopefully feminist, I like to think that theres a good feminist thing there about women and empowerment. I don't know somebody once did a review and said "Cathy Kelly clearly not a feminist" and normally with reviews you sort of go - okay - that hurt - I tell you I wanted to go around to this womans house and beat her up. I went, "How dare you say I'm not a feminist".
David: You're wearing high heels and jeans, very feminist.
Cathy Kelly: Oh the clothes the clothes doesn't matter. Its interesting, you know I do a lot of work with UNICEF because I'm an ambassador for UNICEF Ireland and the terribly sad thing is feminism, we think, yeah great we ve got feminism, but we haven't got feminism and enormous swathes of the world feminism hasn't touched because women and children are still downtrodden and dying of HIV/AIDS. You see women in parts of the world and they go away and they leave their kids to work because there's no work for the men and they don't see their children for three or four years I mean whats good for women about that? Thats a tragedy.
David: Yes. I've done a lot of work with new arrivals here from Afghanistan and I'm amazed at how little will or determination, self determination they have the capacity for. It seems like it has been stripped out of them as a generation. Are you seeing that with your UNICEF ambassadorship?
Cathy Kelly: So far my UNICEF work has taken me to Africa to Mozambique and Rwanda it is just phenomenal exactly as you say people are in survival mode. I mean just trying to survive changes everything doesn't it you know. You don't have time for the other stuff that we can get involved in they are just trying to live. Day to day. Keep their families alive.
David: I know young adults who have to make the choice, do I wait around for a care package/handout if I can get one, or do I join the bandits and go break the law to survive?
Cathy Kelly: Completely, you can see in some countries why young and poor disenfranchised men are the easiest targets for the whole world of terrorism becaue they have nothing so its very easy for manipulative people to get them involved which is the tragedy. Absolutely horrendous tragedy.
David: How does a writer of fiction actually end up being in this UNICEF Ambassador position? Is it because you've got a certain status?
Cathy Kelly: A little bit of that but also I was always very interested in Africa particularly when I was a journalist and I was asked to be involved in this UNICEF charity book six years ago now and they came out to our house and we were saying we'd do everything we could - and we got so into it because its just such an amazing charity that they asked me would I get involved so what it means is whenever I go anywhere, whenever I doi a talk or an interview I talk about it. I think UNICEF suffers slightly from being such an enormous organisation I think they've had a l;ot of corporate sponsorship over the years so people don't see it as a thing that ordinary poeple can get involved in - does that make sense to you?
David: Yes I can see how that would be a problem. Such a big organisation that pople possibly think its all sewn up and theres nothing they can do-
Cathy Kelly: So my message is to try and explain that you know we work in fiftyeight countries around the world. We are non-political, of course we are aligned to the UN and that's incredibly useful because it means they can get in on Government level in cases like Mozambique for example - trying to help education programs, funding patient programs, they can do amazing things. What I do is I paint the picture for the people who can npt get to Africa and can not sit in the mother and baby clinic and see the womane with the children and know that one fifth of those children will not reach the age of five because of measles, diarrhoea, bad water, HIV/AIDS, malaria, all things that in our world are fixable.
David: Or manageable in the case of HIV/AIDS.
Cathy Kelly: Exactly.. I paint the picture. One of the best things we did was, I cant remember what book it was. We worked it out, because I was on a tv show once and we worked out that if the tv show was a two hour tv show, by the time it was over four thousand children would have developed HIV and so the same thing with the book and I said if this takes you three days to read this book x number of children will have been orphaned by HIV, x number of children will have died from measles and malaria and simple things that are entirely preventable and that is a strong message.
David Jobling: How many drafts of a novel would you write, conservatively?
Cathy Kelly: Well now you see there's the question. Everyone I know, all my friends write drafts and um, I ... er, do it a totally different way. Which I'm determined this time I'm going to crack the draft system because I think the draft system sounds like a much better way of writing a book. But I spend six months writing the first quarter of the book, endlessly, over and over again, editing it within an inch of its little life, until I'm nearly gone insane and then, that's done. You know and I can move on. Then I sort of almost draft the rest of it. And then go back over it but the beginning of the book there's no draft thing. But I think the draft sounds like such a fabulous thing because you know you get that sense of achievement, you're done, and then you're going back and you're doing your tweaking but I dunno, I've never been able to work that way.
David Jobling: Okay. What about your pathway into writing in the first instance? College, University?
Cathy Kelly: College. I did journalism. I did a two year journalism course. I have a certificate in journalism.
David Jobling: Jolly good.
David Jobling: Well it means you're valid.
Cathy Kelly: Yes I'm valid. I dunno what I'm valid for but I'm valid for something. So I did that, and I worked in radio for a while at the time pirate radio in Dublin, which I loved. I read the news. My mother still recalls me giggling apparently through an entire broadcast, I don't remember it but maybe I've just sort of blanked it out. Did that, and then a little bit of freelancing and I got a full time job with the Sunday tabloid newspaper called The Sunday World and I was hired with another guy. He's now a very famous Irish crime reporter Paul Williams and we were to be the Dempsey and Makepeace, I don't know if you remember them it was a British TV series, she was a supposedly posh English police person and he was this American NYPD tough guy anyway so we were the Dempsey and Makepeace allegedly. It was great fun. I did lots of mad stories I think one of my first assignments was going out and investigating pubs in Dublin to see if they had loo seat covers. You know those sorts of ones that you put on so you don't have to line it with toilet paper? And there was of course an accompanying picture of me beside the toilet. That was me. My foray into journalism. Serious journalism here. You know. Any way there was a lot of very serious you know crime stories and stuff like that in the newspaper and I wasn't very good at that so I segued into features became the Agony Aunt as well. Against my will. They said "Would you do it" because I had written a lot of social features and I was interested in that sort of stuff. So they said "Be the Agony Aunt", because the agony aunt was going and I went "Nnooooo" and anyway obviously I'm very bad at saying no. So eventually I said "Yes. I'll do it for three months," and I did it for about six years. And simultaneously I was the film critic which was fun.
David Jobling: That would have been good.
Cathy Kelly: That was great fun. Yeah because you know you're sitting in a movie theatre at half ten on a Monday morning with your cup of coffee and that's work.
David Jobling: And you get to judge people -
Cathy Kelly: Oh God you do -
David Jobling: I mean in a constructive way.
Cathy Kelly: In a constructive way but I think I was actually a terrible, now that I look back I didn't have the correct judgement I would make a much better film critic now. But at the time I new nothing.
David Jobling: Did that not inspire you to write some screenplays?
Cathy Kelly: I'd love to write a screenplay but I don't think; none of my work is filmic in my opinion I mean I think screenplays are a whole different area. I'm really interested in it I love reading all those, Adventures in the screen trade and which lie did I tell, I love those sort of books they're great fun. But I think that's a very different sort of thing to what I'm doing right now.
David Jobling: What about optioning your novels?
Cathy Kelly: Oh I would be delirious if anyone wants to option it. And I'm waiting to be optioned. But it hasn't happened yet. Because as I say I think, I don't think they're filmic. I think there're a lot of types of writing there that aren't necessarily filmic and I certainly think the sort of stuff I do isn't particularly filmic. Maybe I'm wrong. And if anyone wants to film me an offer a cheque-
David Jobling: I guess it would depend on how they wanted to tweak it around to adapt some sections to bring it into that sort of, film language; is there from your days of film criticism is there some film maker who you'd like to have a go at your work?
Cathy Kelly: Oh goodness there's millions of film makers I'd let have a go at my work. I'd let anyone have a go I'd be delighted it would be so much fun. Sorry I sound terrible, but t'would be great fun-
David Jobling: No no it's fine - clearly you'd be quite happy for someone to have a go-
Cathy Kelly: Very very happy. Although you know then I look back at the films I love Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder, oh, lovely. Obviously not available, given death and everything. I'm very fond of James Cameron although I believe not alot of other people are. But I like, I did like Avatar. Aliens I think one of my favourites-
David Jobling: Aliens is a great film.
Cathy Kelly: It's because Sigourney gets to kick bleep bleep bleep bleep.
David Jobling: Yes.
Cathy Kelly: I love that. I want my own flame thrower.
David Jobling: Yes and was that not the first moment, I mean she was really the first female science fiction
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: kick ass
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: sort of hero, or heroine,
Cathy Kelly: Yeah
David Jobling: And then they developed it that little bit further then with her and the relationship with the little girl in Aliens so
Cathy Kelly: Yes
David Jobling: They teased that out a little, she was more than just a dick-less-Schwarzenegger-sort-of-thing. She actually had credibility
Cathy Kelly: Yes, but Sigourney Weaver she's just a brilliant actress I love that but also I hate films where the women flail about and go Oh my god that man is going to kill us and lay on the floor and do nothing. I like the films where the girl gets the AK47 so I was very keen on that movie
David Jobling: Yes. It was actually pretty ground breaking when it came out
Cathy Kelly: It was. It was absolutely brilliant.
David Jobling: So, maybe Ridley Scott could have a go-
Cathy Kelly: Oh Ridley Scott. I interviewed Tony Scott once, and I'm trying to remember for what film they're amazing. They are amazing those people and they're behind The Good Wife that series. I don't know if you have it here. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
David Jobling: Yes. Very intelligent isn't it?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, wonderful. It's beautifully intelligent, you know, writing. I love screenwriting I just don't know if I have it in me to do it, and at the moment I don't have the time. But it's certainly on my long range plan.
David Jobling: How is it that you don't have the time? Are you not a, a-
Cathy Kelly: A lady of leisure?
David Jobling: Yeah-
Cathy Kelly: Oh dear?
David Jobling: Making billions of dollars and just sitting back and eating strawberries? Occasional trip to Africa?
Cathy Kelly: Yes I know and I get my grapes peeled and everything. No I'm a, well I'm a hard working mother of twin seven year olds who does her own grocery shopping and so er um
David Jobling: Are they boys or girls?
Cathy Kelly: Boys
David Jobling: Oh lord
Cathy Kelly: Two beautiful boys Murray and Dylan, and I actually live a very very ordinary life and I'm not there surrounded by running hot and cold slaves or anything so
David Jobling: Sure, it sounds like you'd be the slave if you've got twin boys
Cathy Kelly: Yeah. Absolutely. Oh listen you know I think they think they're in a high class restaurant a lot of the time they say "Mom we'd like this for dinner" and I'm going, Excuse me? You know. And I'm writing a book a year. So that's the other thing. You know, time wise.
David Jobling: So how many hours a day on average do you have to put aside
Cathy Kelly: That's a very good question and I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. I bring the boys to school in the morning and I come home and I do all those, you know, woman who works from home stuff-
David Jobling: Yeah yeah.
Cathy Kelly: I put the dishwasher on and tidy up and make a cup of coffee and listen to the radio the go God I better go and do some work, so I get all my best work done when they're at school so maybe five good hours a day.
David Jobling: Ah that's not bad.
Cathy Kelly: Nah that's pretty good. And then in the afternoon you know I've a helper comes in and I get them from school and I do their homework with them and then maybe I'll take another hour or two and I would do the admin stuff that you know is a huge part of it, you just do so much admin and stuff.
David Jobling: That's getting back to emails and letters and such-
Cathy Kelly: Yes, I do that, Admin is not a nice word for it it's the non writing part of what I do. But I think it's very important when people took the time to contact you I think you, you know have responsibility to get back in touch with them so I do that.
David Jobling: And how marvellous for them to have someone get back in touch with them, and it's you.
Cathy Kelly: People tell me amazing stories when they write the emails so, you know, not to respond to someone laying their heart out, you know, over the internet, is just-
David Jobling: Be a bit hard wouldn't it?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, I couldn't. I would lie in bed and think "Oh my god I never got back in touch with that person" You know, so.
David Jobling: Do you run a website?
Cathy Kelly: I have a website, yeah and I'm on Facebook, I now have finally, I have an assistant. The joy of having an assistant. So I send her emails saying things like "Will you remind me" because my main problem is forgetting things so I say "You will remind me to do this and remind me to do that" but I do the newsletter and I do the admin-
David Jobling: And you know that any woman that's got seven year old kids particularly two at the same time forgets everything because there's always something to distract her.
Cathy Kelly: Do you know what my mind is like a sieve I would never be able to write my memoirs I wouldn't anyway, because I can't remember anything.
David Jobling: (laughs)
Cathy Kelly: How do people do it? They must be making it all up you know? No they're making it up!
David Jobling: Ian McKellen's got everything on his website, everything he's ever done so he doesn't have to remember.
Cathy Kelly: You see I should do that. I mean even as I'm travelling around I keep thinking, and I love making notes, I have a bit of an er, note book fetish and I love note books I always have about eight on the go-
David Jobling: Wow!
Cathy Kelly: No, but that doesn't work because then you forget-
David Jobling: You're not sure-
Cathy Kelly: Which one you put it in. Then you lose it and you know, any way
David Jobling: Does that imply that you handwrite your work to begin with as well?
Cathy Kelly: No I work totally on a laptop I have an ipad and I got the most adorable little key board that goes with it. That when I'm here I can work. But actually it's just been so intense I haven't really done anything but I in desperation I will make notes in the little note book I do that all the time, I'm always making notes, I'm ripping things out in news papers you know the way you have an idea and it just pings and you have to have it and you have to rip it out-
David Jobling: Is that a discovery that you've made in the process of being a writer over the period of time or is that something that someone said early on?
Cathy Kelly: Oh no I've always done that I've always done that I'm terrible you know the Sunday papers you know I really want them there for about four days so I can really see, you know totally go through them.
David Jobling: And then do you source little episodes in your stories from those sorts of things? Do they inspire you to be creative around that sort of thing?
Cathy Kelly: It doesn't really work that way I read something and I think Oh that might be interesting idea and that's the springboard but it is nothing more than the springboard generally you know just an idea that just appeals to me the problem is you need to write, as soon as you rip it out, you know, you need to write what interested you because otherwise then you look at it and you say six months later, "Why did I tear that out?"
David Jobling: Yeah, what did I want that for?
Cathy Kelly: What did I want that for? Yeah.
David Jobling: If you write one novel a year, how soon after you've completed one?
Cathy Kelly: Do you need to start the next one?
David Jobling: Well, do you start to feel that there is a new novel emerging whilst you're completing one, is it something like, "Ah... this is coming to me..."
Cathy Kelly: Yes it does absolutely it's amazing it is, it just comes from I don't know, up there, somewhere else, normally when I'm near the end of a book I'm thinking about the next one just, it just sort of happens that way I begin to think now what's interesting because in a way by the time you're finishing a book you're finished with that idea and that thought, that's, well, I've never done a sequel, I always feel I've completed; that thought is completed in my head. So you're finishing it and you're tying up the ends and there's some other part of your brain; isn't the brain amazing.
David Jobling: Yeah it is.
Cathy Kelly: There's another part of your brain going brrr brrr brrr what's new? What's interesting? What's touching you? So I do that all the time.
David Jobling: This'll be a new neural pathway emerging.
Cathy Kelly: A new neural pathway exactly! I know, I love it. I'm very interested in lucid dreaming. I'm very keen on that, you know the idea you go to bed and you focus on something and then you see what happens though my dreams are just crazy and mad any way so I don't think I could write any of them but you know.
David Jobling: Have you tried a bit of that?
Cathy Kelly: Yeah, no, I have tried it I just think it's very, I'm very interested in the brain, you know and its plasticity-
David Jobling: It's extraordinary and this last decade they've learnt so much more about it
Cathy Kelly: Absolutely fantastic. I love those things where they do MRI's of the brain at certain points when it's doing different things and it's lighting up it's just absolutely fantastic and the concept that we use so little, not so little but, you know, there is -
David Jobling: Just a disproportional amount of it
Cathy Kelly: Yes because there's so much there it's just amazing you know myself and my husband we're involved in a neurological charity back home this amazing guy, god he should be running Irish Health System but that's a whole other story; and he works on people with everything from stroke to Parkinson's and just talking to him about the brain, he's a neurologist obviously, fascinating. The brain is the last great frontier we haven't discovered really isn't it?
David Jobling: Yes it is. I haven't asked you about Ireland. What part of Ireland are you from?
Cathy Kelly: I live in Whitlow which is the county just below Dublin. I was brought up in Dublin although I spent all my holidays in the west which is with my grandmother which is where I got all of you know, those sort of lovely snippets for the book. I was actually born in Belfast but just because my family were working there so I was only there for a year which accounts for the lack of a Belfast accent. But Ireland is wonderful. I love it, but we're in a bit of a 'state of chassis' as they say right now. We're a bit broke. Hopefully we'll come back.
David Jobling: Well you're not the only ones.
Cathy Kelly: No we are not the only ones we are in particularly dire straits and that's not a pun about music. We have the international problem but we also had a property bubble and incredibly bad bank regulations so we've a triple whammy going on.
David Jobling: Right. That's not so good.
Cathy Kelly: No, but we will, you know, I keep thinking we will come out of it. We have one.. You know we don't have gold and diamonds and we don't have mines but I keep saying we've one amazing resource, the people, and the people will really get us out of this.
David Jobling: Absolutely, you're completely correct with that. Some of the best writers have come from Ireland, some fantastic artists, brilliant musicians-
Cathy Kelly: Yes, Oh yes. There gonna find out the creative gene when they nail that well I'd say there's a lot of that going on in Ireland, I'm fascinated with genetics to.
David Jobling: One thing you'd like to leave your readers with?
Cathy Kelly: Oh my goodness that's a very difficult thing what would I like to leave my readers with Do you know what? Two things, actually. I love little quotes, I'm a great collector of little quotes and one of my favourite ones is Henry James saying The three most important words in the English language are kindness, kindness and kindness. And I just love that and then my other one which is a very pro women one, which is from Madeline Albright the former US Secretary of State and she said There should be a special place in hell for women who are unkind to other women, so that's one of my little what words... I love these little quotes.
David Jobling: Thanks so much
Cathy Kelly: Thank you David my darling it was a pleasure huge pleasure.
David Jobling: Cheers.
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