Author: judithoreilly.com

March 2020.

Dear World,

It’s difficult isn’t it when you think you might die, that we all might die, what to put on the page. It suddenly seems way more important than it might otherwise. Are these my last words? Are these what I leave behind? I’ve left others obviously (four books worth and countless articles) but are they enough? If this is the ‘end of days’ then you don’t want to leave anything unsaid.

Like ‘sorry’ for not forgiving someone who I thought should have come to my dad’s funeral and  didn’t. But you know. Bygones. Seems less important right now as you watch the limos lining up in the Italian cemeteries and think about the mourners who stand at a distance or who can’t be there at all. I was there as my dad slipped away, I was there at his funeral, I had that privilege and it was a privilege it turns out. That has to be what matters.

What else haven’t I said? ‘I love you’. Which is what I really wanted to write at the end of a message to a friend this morning. But didn’t. Why not? Because I do love them. They are members of my family of choice, my ‘logical’ family as Armistead Maupin would have it, as opposed to ‘biological’, you understand. Maybe because I’m British and emotion brings us out in wierd, jerky, limb-flailing fit. I’ll say it next time, I think. And I will try, and doubtless I will  fail.

And also left unsaid: “Dear God, how did we end up here?”

But here we are.  All of us wondering what next.

Technically, I should be all right. I’m not elderly. Generally speaking, I wouldn’t be considered to have an ‘underlying medical condition’ except as it happens my lungs are wrecked by some bug I picked up more than three months ago and they haven’t recovered, and the three of us know it. If my lungs could pack up their bags and catch a ferry to the Outer Hebrides they’d be on it. But they can’t. They are stuck here with me. We’re in this together, I tell them. We’ll be fine. I’m not sure they believe me.

Then there’s my husband who has asthma and even in the general way of things is Howard Hughes-esque about germs, so he’s taken to singing round the house in case he dies any second.  An eccentricity so irritating I may have to kill him before Covid-19 does.

So that’s me, if we haven’t met before. With a singing husband and three teenage kids and a 91 year old deaf and blind mother. And a poodle I just castrated, which now I feel bad about because did it matter? Couldn’t I have left him and his testicles in peace? I’d like to apologise to the poodle’s testicles. Because he seems to sleep way more. And asleep is  not the way you want to be as the world slides into the unknown. We need to stay awake and in full possession of our testicles.

keep well, 

Judithx 

Interview with Judith O’Reilly

October 2017.

What is the greatest joy of writing for you?

When it flows. When you sit at your desk and the words come and you read it back and think ‘That’s not too bad’.

What are you working on next?

Book 2 in the Michael North Thriller series. It’s called Curse the Day and I plan to bring it out in 2018. (I’ve a longterm ambition to write something funny but I’m damned if I can think of a plot or enough knock knock jokes.)

Who are your favorite authors?

So many. Lee Child. David Baldacci. James Patterson. Martina Cole. Val McDermid. Mark Billingham. Frederick Forsyth. Mick Herron. L J Ross. M W Craven. Andy McNab. Patrick O’Brian. Bernard Cornwell. I’ve just found John Connolly and love his Charlie Parker. Adore Robert Galbraith’s (aka JK Rowling) Cormoran Strike. Love Raymond Chandler. Adore Philip Kerr and his Bernie Gunther series. John Le Carré and Robert Harris, of course. Anne Tyler. Elly Griffiths. Clare Macintosh. Steve Cavanagh. Margaret Attwood. Robertson Davies. Lindsey Davies. John D MacDonald. Anthony Trollope. Dennis Lehane. Gillian Flynn. Armistead Maupin. We could be here all day.

What inspires you to get out of bed each day?

I can’t wait to get out of bed. I’m a bit of an insomniac. It’s a relief when the night’s over.

When you’re not writing, how do you spend your time?

Walking the dog. drinking coffee. juggling responsibilities. paying the bills. same way as most of us though sometimes I look through jobs which would actually pay me a regular salary and think I’m qualified for nothing.

Do you ever read reviews?

Sometimes with my eyes shut. I hate the ones which are by people who normally only ever review Sellotape. They make a point of saying they never read books, but for some reason they picked yours up and hated every word. These are the reviews you can’t get out of your head afterwards until you rinse round thoroughly with gin.

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?

I do funnily enough. Well i remember the first one I got published. I was about ten or eleven and it was about a black cat and it appeared in the Evening Post with my name and address, and then some oddball made dirty phone calls for ages afterwards, and my mother had to report them to the police.

What is your writing process?

Sit down at the desk. (Having brought in a cup of tea) Install dog under the desk (having walked him earlier so he goes to sleep). Pound the keys till something comes out. Occasionally, if I am struggling with say a plot point or a character, I will write myself a question and answer letter to work out where I’m going. Surprisingly effective.

Who knows what goes on in the mind of a terrorist? Who would want
to? Lately, it seems their twisted logic dictates that even an eight-year-old
child is their enemy, even a teenage girl wearing bunny ears in a worthy
opponent. They loathe children then and blonde social workers who want to make the world a better place. Crazed with hate and bloodlust, they seek to destroy our young and beautiful, who dare to celebrate life in good company, with a drink in their hand and love in their hearts. 

Twice, in London, they have chosen a bridge to start their killing on. Why a bridge? It could as easily be a road they drive along, buildings imprisoning their victims. But they chose a bridge. You could make the argument that a bridge acts as a funnel. That in defence terms a bridge is a pinch point, a trap. There are no doors and windows to escape a speeding vehicle driven with deadly intent. Only a parapet and a long, and potentially fatal, drop into a cold river or onto a hard road beneath.

But there’s another power to a death on a bridge, because a bridge holds a promise of change that a terrorist fears as much as he despises. A terrorist is trapped in his ideology, in his thinking. He can’t allow change, or challenge, or doubt, or movement,  or his entire medieval belief system collapses.

And a bridge is a crossing. From here to there. From far away to closer. From me to you, and from you to me. A crossing we must make together into the future. And a bridge in wood, stone, concrete, or steel is a small victory against nature. Abutments and soaring arches and loadbearing footings prove man’s intelligence. His difference. His refusal to accept the limits imposed by rivers and valleys, his decision to shape his world, to draw that world closer. To move forward.

Bridges have a power of their own. In Norse mythology, Bifrost, the rainbow bridge links Asgard, the world of the gods to Misgard, the world of humanity. In the Zoroastrian religion there is a Chinvat bridge which separates the living from the dead, which all souls must cross at death. And in Islam, there is an al-Sirat bridge, thinner than a hair, sharper than a sword, believed to be a bridge which will be laid across Hell, which everyone must pass over to reach heaven.

And back on earth, a bridge is a place of order. This way – pedestrians. This way – cycles. This way – cars. Each to their own route. In contrast to the disorder the terrorists hope to spread as they swerve from side to side, onto the pavement, back onto the road, onto another pavement seeding chaos and tragedy.

So too, Hitler destroyed bridges as he retreated. The bridges of Florence aside from the Ponte Vecchio. The bridges over the Rhine, apart from the Ludendorff Bridge that Allied soldiers captured. It eventually collapsed, but its capture is credited with shortening the war. ISIS too is in retreat. It can’t blow up our bridges, so its fanatics cut down those who dare to use them. Dare to cross and connect.

We know from our earliest years that monsters lurk underneath bridges. Trolls and things that threaten to devour us and ours, things lurk in the darkness, but we chose to walk across our bridges anyway. Our footsteps – one infront of the other, one person after the next. Let the trolls lurk and hear the sound of the undefeated passing overhead. 

The bridges are changing. Concrete bollards, metal barriers. They are evolving to meet the challenges posed by crazy psychopaths locked into killing, who believe murder finally makes them somebody when in reality all that murder does is to make them nobody at all. 

It’s right they change. Bridges are a conversation between humanity and nature, humanity with itself. They offer a promise of arrival. A transition. Spanning, connecting – we build them to reach the other side and to reach each other. What terrorist doesn’t hate that idea. For terrorism to succeed, we must isolate ourselves from each other–from the ‘other’. From other communities. From Muslims. From girls who want to wear headscarves rather than bunny ears. We need bridges now more than ever. We’ve built them. We’ll continue to build them. We’ll cross them and we’ll continue to cross them. 

Britain isn’t reeling whatever a ridiculous man with a twitchy Twitter account wants to believe. London Bridge isn’t falling down any day soon.