Bearly Tolerable

Picturebook Backstories: 11d

Original artwork gifted to publisher in the hopes of being paid to make one last Mr Bear book. What is wrong with this picture? Nothing at all, but the concept, of artist having to bribe publisher to employ them? Unsound business practice for the artist in question. Charcoal and chalk.

I’ll return to Mr Bear and his dodgy puns shortly, but for now….

Less you accuse me of fiddling while the world burns, may I just say in my own defence that my poor fiddle hasn’t been out of its case for a fortnight. I know… Not good at all. Could do better.

But srsly? I’ve taken to keeping my Little Black Rectangle of Doom firmly muted and face down, so that I don’t get the little tugs of you need to see this and breaking news/breaking hearts/breaking promises that are so much part of our interconnected world in this period of human history. Ignoring my LBRoD has been extra difficult this week not only due to the existential crises in Iran/Gaza/Ukraine but on a far, far lesser note, due to having to engage with the fun world of online car sales. About which - let’s not go there. Closely followed by all the necessary online form-filling for car insurance, registration, warranties etc. And then a spot of HMRC Government Gateway form filling round and round the online garden concrete wasteland, chased by bureaucrats. With SO MANY EFFING PASSWORDS. For US readers, this is our top-heavy, full of senseless forms, way of life, here in the UK. What a colossal waste of energy.

I also spent time writing a letter to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, regarding the ongoing Bartz v Anthropic Proposed Class Action Settlement currently wending its way through the American justice system. Joy! More forms.

at which point I felt so tired, I gave up and cooked some lentils

As one of the many claimants against Anthropic, I am apparently entitled to some financial redress from the $1.5 billion settlement fund ( allegedly $3000 per book) after having my copyrighted works used without my knowledge or permission to train their LLM, Claude. This is the same Claude currently in use by the the US Military, in fact, Claude is the only AI in use for classified missions in Iran. Where, I assume, employing some degree of AI guidance, the US murdered 165 little girls at a school in Minab.

Claude, the large language model created by Anthropic, has the stolen work of many writers swilling around in its neural network (the “brain” of this child-killing system). The same Anthropic that, under the covert “Operation Panama” bought millions of secondhand copyrighted books, sliced their spines off and fed them into a colossal data scanner to ‘train’ their murderous model. Look it all up on Wiki. Go down the Anthropic/Palantir rabbit hole if your stomach can take it. The web of connections with Anthropic at the centre represents a who’s-who of all that is grievously wrong with our world.

Even their logo - supposed to resemble a star- looks like crime scene splatter. Reddit forums compare it to a cat’s anus, but on behalf of Dr Purr and cats in general, I’d like to ignore such a comparison.

Writing about this makes me feel nauseous. Consequently, I want nothing to do with the settlement. Any money from the US court’s decision is blood money. I’m profoundly grateful to the original authors who went through heaven knows how many legal hoops to bring Anthropic’s colossal theft to the attention of the justice system, but I can’t accept any money from such a source. And I know - I could don a haz-mat suit and pass the money on to a charity, but… I have a gut feeling that to do so is the moral equivalent of greenwashing. And due to the fact that I was frantically trying to make a deadline ( and thus earn a living from my copyrighted books, past, present and future) I missed the court deadline to withdraw my works from the action. I’m not claiming some moral high ground or throwing shade on my fellow-claimants, nor am I so wealthy that I can turn my back on pennies from heaven, but…these are not heaven-sent coins. It’s bad enough that I burn oil, tap this out on a laptop made by a Trump-appeasing corporation and occasionally have recourse to a bacon roll¹, but I don’t want to compound matters by adding blood money to the list.

So. Back to Mr Bear. A quick refresh -

‘Halaa Minua’ is the Finnish edition of ‘Can I have a Hug?’

Here are four little board books I made to celebrate the arrival of our Baby Bear, AKA Broad Bean. I can clearly recall sitting, melting in my studio in a heatwave², painting watercolour artwork for these little books while their real-life subject had an afternoon nap. Painting and remembering doing the same to celebrate the arrival of Baby Bear’s big sister, two years beforehand. It felt like a balance: four board books for big sister, four board books for the little one. And in between? Some spectacularly bad behaviour.

To explain. Ex-husband had set up home with a new partner. New partner had full run of their household which comprised ex-husband, new partner’s only son, my youngest son ( Baby Bear’s big brother) and my daughter, Small Bear( Baby Bear’s big sister). Regrettably, new partner was not full of the milk of human kindness, but appeared to have battery acid running in her veins. Or vitriol. Or something so viciously caustic that it ought to have been kept well away from small children. Baby Bear’s big brother and Small Bear spent half of their time in this toxic household, and the remainder with Beloved and I. How did I know it was toxic? Because my two children reported back when they needed to check with me that my ex-husband’s new partner’s behaviour was wrong.

Clear? I know. It’s a messy explanation total word salad and you’ve probablydecided to read something less confusing like, say, the online instructions for recalibrating your heat pump. But if you’re still with me as I limp and hobble through this treacherous terrain, thankyou.

Anyhoo. Vicious new partner dripped acid into Small Bear’s shell-like at every given opportunity. Vicious new partner made it very difficult for me to connect with Small Bear while she was at her Dad’s. ‘Oh, she’s in the bath, I’ll get her to ring you back,’ being the favourite ploy. Unsurprisingly, there never was a return call and when I rang back, they’d disconnected the phone. Over and over again. If I complained, she hung up on me. And there was always the fear of what hideous revenge she’d wreak on my poor little daughter. Worst of all, there was no legal recourse. I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. And on top of that, when I raised the subject with my ex, he’d stonewall me.

I’m mentioning this because, in the middle of all the vitriol and bad behaviour and upset, one night, Small Bear, tucked up in bed with a book and her mummy, piped up with the following bombshell:

‘Vicious new partner said³that you love Baby Bear more than me because she ( VNP) has counted up all the dedications in your books and she says you’ve made more for Baby Bear than meeeeeeee-’ cue heart-rending sobbing. The fact that a three year old could pronounce and remember the word ‘dedication’ was a small miracle that passed me by in the tide of red rage that swept across my consciousness. Had vicious new partner been close by, I’d’ve definitely had a go.

Just as well that we were over a hundred miles away on the West coast of Scotland at the time. And fyi, biatch, you were wrong.

I’ve tried to fill my books with love and light, reassurance and validation, kindness and the odd bit of snark⁴. I’m trying to write about life as I wish it was, rather than how it actually is. Going by the maxim of ‘if you build it, it will come’, kind of idea. Maybe this is akin to wooo manifestation, but it feels right. I write about families that have lumps and bumps but basically hang together. I wrote about such families even when my own birth family was light years away from this ideal. I wrote about hanging together families when the family I’d thought I was building came apart at the seams. I’m still writing about families because… they’re fascinating. And because I’m now part of one. With lumps and bumps and bits that fit oddly, but the whole assemblage hangs together in its own strange and wonderful way.

My most recent book, in the publishing pipeline for next year, is set in the fictitious village of Hushnow. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to live there. To swim in the village pond with the mermaid. To buy battenburg cakes at the bakery. To browse books in the library. To have all those day-to-day interactions with other beings instead of the silo-ed off existence I’m currently undergoing as I wade through endless interactions with forms and bots and bureaucracy online. But most of all, to have good neighbours and good friends, who are all happy to pitch in when needed and celebrate when things go lumpily, bumpily according to plan.

1. What? You thought I was a vegan? Look, just because I canvas for the Scottish Green Party and eat lentils on a regular basis doesn’t mean I’m immune to the siren-song of the cooked piglet product. But only on the rarest of rare occasions. Oh Lord, make me good….but not yet.

2. Yes! In Scotland! Who knew? Heatwave accompanied by drifts of thrips/corn bugs which descend in their thousands, crawl into tight places, stick to sticky bits and make sensitive souls itch and scratch and feel Got At. Ahhhhh, Scotland, how you spoil us…

3. Obviously Small Bear named the vicious new partner but I’m not going to. I have some standards, you know.

4. Because, you know, too much love, light, kindness etc can come across as saccharine, and we can’t be having that. Children don’t live in a fluffy bubble of spun sugar ; they have to navigate Life Inc all on their own at times, even with the most attentive caretakers imaginable. Snark and humour are good tools to have in their kitbags.