Delving into a painful diary

Sue Townsend would rather clean out a drain or clear out her cupboards than write. It's not that the author of the Adrian Mole books doesn't enjoy her work, it's just that she finds it hard to get started. She said: "I go through endless rituals before I start. I hate the beginning. It hurts my brain.

"I hand-write my books because I enjoy the noise the pen makes on the paper. I write in capitals, with clearly marked punctuation. I've got a thing about punctuation," she told me.

I have, too, and a colleague of mine, who sat in on the interview, cast me a sideways glance. Sue picked up on it straight away and, within seconds, we were all laughing. Don't ask me why, it's just that Sue is an infectious sort of person.

That's the great thing about her. The fun and laughter you get out of her books and her many magazine and newspaper articles are genuine. She is a funny lady. That's not to say all her subjects she writes about are as funny as the much-loved diaries of Adrian Mole, aged 13U-year-old, or are presented with humour, but her basic character is a smiling one. GhostChildren, her 1997 novel, which has just come out in paperback, covers a subject that many could find distressing - abortion.

It's a compelling read. I say this without cringing at the cliche. I picked the book up at 10pm last Saturday, intending to flick through before seeing Sue. At 1am, I decided to save the rest for the morning.

With a young child, I have an early start regardless of the day of the week but Sunday morning was my choice.

I rose at 4.45am, snuck downstairs, settled in a chair and finished the book.

I had cried my tears, laughed out loud and thought deeply, long before the family woke up. They were hours of solid enjoyment.

I thanked Sue for writing the book but she turned it round. "No, thank you," she said, and it was genuine.

At the moment the 52-year-old is on a book-signing tour for GhostChildren.

I ask her if meeting her 'public' and being so well-known is strange concept to grasp.

She said: "It's a very odd thing. It's like nothing else. You can't imagine how strange it is.

"But then again I write and live by Brecht's tenet that everything in front of you is concrete, your life is what you can see. It's ways of seeing." As she talks, Sue taps the table, the chair, making a point about what she can see. She looks towards us as we look at her, trying to extract thought from the mind which makes us laugh so much.

Sue stops and looks down. Then she remarks that the outfit she has on is not what she'd intended to wear. Her young granddaughter (she has four children and five grandchildren) had lost the key to her wardrobe with her 'working' suits in it. Everything sounds like it has a place, despite her protests about organisation. Then she makes us really laugh. She tells us about her first husband and how pretty he was when they met.

They met at 18, married young and had three children but her writing didn't begin until she had divorced, married her second husband, had another baby and reassessed her life at 35.

She said: "My first husband didn't like me to read or write.

"Reading is like oxygen to me, so you can imagine how hard it was for me.

"I met him when I was going for an interview. I was wearing my mother's smart clothes.

"He was carrying a huge pile of books and was wearing a duffle coat. I fell instantly in love with him. I thought he was an intellectual. "It turned out he was carrying the books for a friend, and had also borrowed his coat. By then it was too late and we were in love. But what he saw and fell in love with and what I saw and fell in love with were not the people we were."

These days Sue doesn't have such a problem. Her second husband, with whom she lives in her native Leicester, encourages her writing and she's very passionate about him. "My idea of heaven is sitting in a nice warm cafe, drinking coffee, or wine, depending on the time of day, people-watching out of the window," she said. "But it would all be made perfect if I could do that knowing that my husband was coming to join me in half an hour's time." Such is the joy of love second-time around.

Sue's stability at home has meant she can share her humour as well as her darker moments, both with her family and her extended family - her readers.

GhostChildren is about a couple who were in love 17 years ago. She became pregnant, but she made the decision to have a very late abortion, against her partner's will.

Seventeen years later he seeks her out to ask her why - and their old passion is revived. At the same time, they meet a young couple who have a child, neglected and unloved and the two, sad and pathetic relationships come together in a haunting, yet ideal way.

Sue made the characters up, but the subject matter was something she knew about. She told me: "I had two abortions when I was younger - 23 years ago.

"I wouldn't say the book is about them, or that they haunt me, but I do have an intense curiosity about what these babies might have been like as adults.

"I've got four children but I've also got two friends who had abortions and already started off on this kind of thought - looking at 30-year-olds and wondering what their children might have looked like. Neither of them have children now so I suppose it is quite poignant.

"I had my abortions early on but I heard the screams of a woman having a late one. I suppose the book is a recognition of that." "The characters just came alive for me. I gave them all certain characteristics which would educate their decisions and make them make certain choices.

Sue added: "I suppose the plot was a bit like Oxford's traffic, chaotic but all going in the same direction. The other thing is I always seem to write about is the Holy Trinity. I suppose I believe in mother, father and child and it all works out that way."

Then Sue decides we've been serious for too long. She tells me about her next book.

"I'm thinking about writing a book and calling it 'Coming Second' about Jesus coming back to earth, to England, in fact to Leicester..."

The conversation peters out, overtaken by giggling.

The taxi arrives and Sue is on her way. Before she goes, she takes my copy of . I talk to the publicist as she scribbles away.

"To Fiona, Thank you for a lovely conversation, Best Wishes, Sue Townsend (52)'

Old habits die hard!

*GhostChildren, by Sue Townsend, is published by Arrow Books, priced £5.99.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.