Inspired by Natalia Shaloshvili’s Bear Worries, in which Bear, known to and beloved by us already from her previous book, Bear, (it’s about a bear) is enjoying a cookie until it occurs to him that it might be the last cookie, I had resolved to write this week of anxieties, concerns, the things that keep us up at night munching cookies whilst worrying about running out of cookies.

I was going to write of:

Work away days and team building trips: Daunt have just published two new editions of Beryl Bainbridge’s novels, with more planned, and The Bottle Factory Outing centres on the plans for the Italian men and the English women who work at a wine-bottling factory in 1970s London to spend a Sunday at a stately home and enjoy a picnic in the cold. It is a dark comedy. Malbec-dark. Completely unexpected. I should have been more worried about sherry casks than the horror of work-enforced-organised-fun.

Plays that go wrong, lines forgotten, any threat of audience participation: in Beryl Bainbridge’s An Awfully Big Adventure, Uncle Vernon has decided that Stella, his odd, unmalleable young charge should aim for a life on the stage. She finds work in a Liverpool playhouse, as both a stagehand, despite her inability to use a saw or a protractor, and an actor. This too is unpredictable, even macabre. The characters are not loveable but the book is. I thought it a complete revelation.

Book groups where the books go undiscussed and even unread: it is at such a meeting in Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester that Kate hears her friends discussing a new Netflix show, Cheating. They begin quoting lines from it. The lines are unbearably recognisable. Words that she and her husband have said to each other, understood only within the utterly private language of a long marriage. No one else can know them. She begins watching and, but for the fact that the husband in the show is having an affair, the scenes sound as though they are lifted directly from her own life. You will have no idea where this book is going; the ride is fantastic.

Plastic: such worries keep many awake though in Matthew Rice’s case it is because he works overnight in a plastic factory. Set over the course of one shift, his poetry collection plastic encompasses Irish history, Sir Gawain and Wolverine and uses my favourite swear word. Each poem is time-stamped so, should you want to, you can stay up with him and read the appropriate poem at the right time. How I love to read a poem about a pigeon at 01:03.  

Pigeons: a perpetual source of alarm for me, but now also for an actual pigeon, called Dave. In Swapna Haddow’s latest book the eponymous hero suddenly has to face the idea of sharing his shed with another pigeon also called Dave. This will not do. There will be blood. No, hang on, this is for children enjoying their first chapter books. There will be mild peril resulting in empathy and friendship.

I was going to write of all these things. I was going to write of the discovery of the most terrifying picture book I have ever read, The Bear Under the Stairs by Helen Cooper (a stunner but not for anyone already concerned about what might lurk under the bed). I was going to write of Unexpected Guests by Mariajo Ilustrajo, a brilliant new picture book in which the home of some unassuming mice is invaded by a large family of humans. Mariajo is kindly decorating our window in celebration of this book on Sunday and we cannot wait to see her art adorning the shop.

Instead, we had our own unexpected guests, decidedly less charming, and were forced to face one of the things I worry about daily.

I admire one of the burglars who smoked, handsfree, the entire time they were breaking into our beautiful heronry. This is a skill. I do not admire their complete indifference to the books. You didn’t get distracted even for a second by Martin Gayford’s new book in conversation with Tracey Emin, My Heart is This? Seriously? Different priorities, I suppose.

Sleep evades me at the best of times, which this week has not been, but there is much comfort in Jane Austen and companionship in the voice of Julie Andrews. If you are in a similar position (I hope you never are), I recommend her reading of Pride and Prejudice. Twenty-five episodes will get you through a few nights. You may even find moments when all you have to worry about is whether Mr Collins will ever get to the end of a sentence.

May your weekend be calm and all your unexpected guests welcome and armed with cookies,
Lizzie