Delight

I am so chuffed with the top of the arch in my back garden - the New Dawn rose and the honeysuckle I grew from a cutting. Doesn't it look gorgeous?

Oh dear

Someone in the village called me "dear" yesterday. It was a nice man, a man I like, but I loathe it when people call me "dear." I don't at all mind people - busdrivers, shopkeepers, the man on the market - calling me love, pet, darling, sweetheart and my duck, but when someone calls me dear, it feels as if they think I'm 93.

Criticising is easier than writing

So here I am, unable to look at my own first draft any more because I am sick of the sight of it, and a writer friend has asked me to look at something of hers. What joy! How easy it is to see when some little thing isn't working in someone else's text. How easy it is to write something like... I like this idea but I think you could phrase it more elegantly. Vividness is an ugly word.

Excuses, excuses

Yesterday I was asked - again - by someone I met at a party, "Do you have to be terribly self-disciplined to write?" and I said - "If the book is going well, writing is the only thing I want to do. I don't need self discipline."

The book has been going well for the last three weeks, and that is all I have been doing. And if you say to someone - a partner maybe - "I don't have time to do

a/ the household accounts

b/ the cleaning

c/the gardening

d/ my tax return

because the writing is going really well and I don't want to stop and anyway I have very nearly finished the first draft" - they would have to be churlish to say "Tough - do the jobs!" wouldn't they?

Now I have finished the first draft, and I need self-discipline to do all the household jobs. Aaarghhh!

The end of the road

That's a celebratory bloody Mary, there. I don't usually drink in the morning. I've typed the last line of my book! I've done it! I got from A to B! (It's a good job Sally Howe isn't reading this, or she'd be telling me off for using all these exclamation marks.) Now all I have to do is go through the whole thing line by line and make sure it's perfect. That's all.

And talking of Sally Howe, a regular reader of this blog - all right, my brother, Peter - emailed to say that he couldn't see the pictures for Sally Howe's world in the Gallery at the side of this page. So, apologies to anyone else who tried to see them and couldn't. Now they are fixed. Happy viewing, and as always, click on them to enlarge them.

In the thick of it

I haven't posted here for several days, because I have been so engrossed in the last few chapters of my novel - the one I'm writing. I haven't been able to think about much else. Last night I was so involved in the story, that I got upset with Dave over something he didn't do and then I realised that I was acting as if he had done what the guy in the novel had done.

When I explained, he said - "Ah, just like the spaghetti hoops incident," which was when I bought spaghetti hoops for him, even though he doesn't like them, because I was confusing him with Gus in Plotting for Beginners. It's tough being married to a loopy writer.

Today I have to start to write the final chapter. I know where it starts and where it ends, but I am not sure exactly how I am going to get from A to B.

Pandemic flu scene - ripe for cutting

I wrote a piece a couple of years before swine flu appeared on the scene, and once I started writing the current book - But I told you last year that I loved you - I decided to include it, but now that swine flu has taken off, it would probably not be a good idea....although, I would be interested to know what you lot think...

Later that evening, all thoughts of Northumberland slipped from Sol’s mind. We were watching a Channel 4 documentary on bird flu, and Sol was riveted. Although the disease had slipped from the headlines, said the voice-over, medical experts the world over were convinced there would a pandemic. It was just a matter of time. When the programme finished, Sol switched off the telly and said, in the voice that I always thought would make him an excellent hell-fire preacher, “I don't intend to be a victim of the avian apocalypse. We need to be prepared, and we can’t trust the bloody government. They’ll have a stash of vaccine and a bunker with supplies, and they’ll leave the unsuspecting public to fend for themselves.”

All through the night he was switching on the light to make notes on a pad he had on his bedside table. He viewed bird flu with as much horror as he viewed social interaction, and by the next morning he’d hatched a plan so in one fell swoop we could avoid them both. He regaled me with it over my porridge, while I was still waking up. Why couldn’t he be like other men at breakfast time, and read the paper?

His bird flu plans centred on total isolation. He got the idea from Eyam - five miles away from Rowberry as the infected crow flies. When the plague arrived there from the great Wen in 1665, the local rector persuaded the villagers to isolate the village to prevent the plague from spreading to the rest of Derbyshire. 260 of the villagers died, but the plague was contained.

“As soon as they announce on the news that there’s a case in Britain, we’ll have to stay at home for either three months or six, I’m not sure which yet,” said Sol, “but at least until the pandemic has been and gone and someone else has buried the corpses.”

“But that kind of activity is just up your street,” I said. Sol delighted in helping people with practical problems – heaving away a cherry tree that a gale blew down on Mrs Bailey’s front path, putting a slate back on Chrissie’s roof, replacing broken windows in the village hall, unblocking Fiona and George’s loo.

“I could have used my new round-mouthed shovel for the grave digging, but-” “

Why not? It’s not as if it’s a sociable activity, unless the village hall committee set up a rota for refreshments. I can just see Mrs Bailey in her wellies, squelching through the mud, Would you like another egg and cress, Mr Suskind, when you’ve disposed of Mrs Woodbury?”

“The point is, Fran, that neither of us could be in contact with any corpses or we’d risk becoming infected,” he said.

When Jem got up and Sol told her the survival plans, Jem said “Oh my God! As if my life wasn’t bad enough already. If you two are having a lock down, I’m going to stay with Cass.”

After breakfast, Sol started scribbling shopping lists, and I didn’t get much work done because of his constant shouts from downstairs. “How many bars of soap do we use in a week? Do you think I should order body bags?”

The next morning when I left for the advice centre, he gave me his lists, and I was charged with going to the Co-op at the end of my session. I filled two trolleys as high as I could pile them, with - probably not enough - loo rolls teetering on the top. As I was nearing the check out I bumped into Mrs Bailey.

“Oh my word!” she said, pushing her spectacles up to the top of her nose, and peering closely at the contents of my trolley. “Party time? I hope I shall be invited.”

I tried to force a smile.

When I got home, I helped Sol stack the booty in the shed, next to the tins of baked beans left over from his beat-the-millennium-bug escapade.

“You mustn't tell anyone about this cache, or its location,” he said sternly, “or we could be prone to break-ins.”

His other plans included opening the post wearing rubber gloves, or doing it bare-handed after waiting for the virus to die (12 hours for porous surfaces, 48 hours for non-porous surfaces); and secondly, preparing Gwen at the village shop to leave emergency items of shopping at the gate.

He gave me his safety goggles from the shed to protect my eyes from bird flu virus droplets, and he ordered a pair from George’s catalogue for himself. He also planned to wear his chainsaw safety helmet with a visor so he didn’t inadvertently touch his face, apparently a fatal error for people with potentially infected hands. He allocated an old pair of swimming goggles to the cat.

“So far so good,” he said, after organising the eyewear, “but I fear the chimney may be our Achilles heel.”

“What?”

“We need to buy a sonic bird-scarer. If queasy birds decide to perch on the chimney, they could topple in and bring infection into the house.”

He went to the doctor’s to be vaccinated, but there wasn’t a phial of Tamiflu in sight. The best thing on offer was an ordinary flu jab, so he had to settle for that. He came home with a sore arm, a leaflet listing possible side effects, and a bad temper.

“Why the hell isn’t the NHS better prepared?” he said. “Bloody politicians! I don’t think God does enough smiting these days. It should be the case that if a politician steps out of line, then SMITE!” He smashed his hand on the kitchen table, and the shock made me spill my tea down my front.

“Sol!”

“A bit of light smiting would be a jolly good idea. It would save people like me from writing endless letters of complaint, and save a hell of a lot in postage.”

He opened up the leaflet about the flu jab and started reading. “It says here there’s a slight possibility of coma or death. You’ll need to watch me closely for 24 hours.”

The next day, he was still alive.

Filling in the third dimension

A writer friend and I were talking about - well - what do you expect? - writing - yesterday, and I was telling her what a great writing day I'd had - seven hours at one go, just breaking off to hang out the washing and have a bowl of muesli for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch, and all finished by 2 o clock.

"I've done the fun part," I said. "I've written all the dialogue that sprung into my head without any bidding. Now I have to do the boring bit - go through the text and add bits like she scratched her head and she sat back and folded her arms and she took another sip of her tea."

"Ah yes," said my friend, scratching her head, "making your scene three dimensional. That bit's a real drag, isn't it?"

"If we were rich," I said, sipping my tea, "we could employ assistants, like Bridget Riley does. She thinks up the painting and then gets minions to help her with the actual execution. There's a job there, for impecunious writers: helping other writers change their strips of dialogue into three dimensional scenes. Or maybe we could persuade someone to do it for free as work experience..."

Expenses scandal

Looking south towards Craster from Dunstanburgh Castle - I've just turned from sorting out some card receipts from our holiday, to writing a scene that takes place in Northumberland, and it occurred to me that if I were an MP, I could call my holiday a fact-finding mission, and set my holiday expenses against my tax bill.

After all, didn't I find out something important that I didn't already know?

In the book, Sol (one of the main characters) has to use the phone box in Craster, and he says to Frances - his wife - "and then I ran back to the phone box above the harbour, you know - that one on the corner - but it only takes credit cards now - what bloody use is that?"

When Dave and I were in Craster, I checked the box, and it takes coins. And now I am thinking - does it actually matter if such a trivial fact is correct or not? I'd rather have Sol complain about the need for a credit card...

Holiday pics

A regular reader of my blog has said I should put up some holiday pics, so here is a small selection (click to enlarge) :

Holy Island harbour on a still, hot day: Dunstanburgh Castle:

View of Embleton Bay from Dunstanburgh Castle:

View of the castle from Embleton Bay:

Hers and his treat:

VW rules

If you need cheering up, watch this.

I could see Victoria Wood playing the part of Sally Howe in a televised version of Plotting for Beginners. What do you think?

Buxton Festival

I am appearing at the Buxton Festival on the afternoon of Monday 20th July. Why not come along? Click here for details. But I am at the Leewood Hotel, no matter what the website says.

Location, location, location

Sorry not to have posted for a while - we have been in heaven - i.e. the coastal plain of north Northumberland.

Read all about it

I am in The Guardian today - the Family section. It's an extract from my journal from 7 years ago. Those of you who have read Zuzu's Petals will recognise the piece, as I used my journal as a basis for the main storyline in the novel. Click here to read it.

Fun

I've just had loads of fun writing one of the scenes in my new novel. I've had it planned for months, but have only just reached the part in the story where it happens. And now I keep going back and tweaking it. I love it!

When I first started writing fiction, I read a book called The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray. It was helpful in several ways, but the most useful thing I got from it was help with plotting.

However, Robert Ray got one thing wrong in my book (Hah!). As far as I can remember, he suggests writing your key scenes first, and then writing all the bits in between. Isn't that like reading all the tastiest emails first and then moving on to the boring ones? Or picking all the smoked haddock out of the kedgeree, and savouring it, and then having to hoover up the rice? Or eating all the bacon from the bacon sandwiches and then moving on to the bread? (You know who you are.)

p.s. I know the picture has nothing to do with the text, but I liked it, and it's my blog. So there.

Photographers can be amenable

Unless the world comes to an end, I am likely to be in the Family section of The Guardian this coming Saturday. They sent a photographer to take my picture a couple of days ago. He was very friendly and I liked him. But whenever a photographer visits, I remember poor Sally Howe in Plotting for Beginners, who was always disappointed with her photographs in the paper...

"There is something that comes over me when a photographer points his equipment at me. I am too easily persuaded. I have this ridiculous unfounded childlike trust that as they are in the business of visual impact, they know what they are doing image-wise, and that no matter how ridiculous or tasteless or yukhy I feel that I look, the end result will be stylish and beautiful. Why do they let me down?

Now I know that no matter how personable and friendly a photographers is, he just doesn't care whether or not a fifty-something female looks her best."

So, bearing that in mind, I asked the photographer if he could do his best to make me look MY best, just as Mario Testino does with all his subjects. Fabio took it on the chin. There followed an hour of posing this way and that, mostly perched on the very edge of the garden bench - and when I say edge I mean edge. He kindly sent me the pictures today and guess what? Perching on the edge of a bench makes your denim legs look thinner. Thank you, Fabio. I may remember you in my will. He sent 9 shots to the editor and I don't know which one she will pick - I hope it's one where I'm smiling. I don't like the ones where he wanted me to look serious/wistful, as I actually look as if I might be constipated.

Days

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

And the days...

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse,

not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Dream interpretation

You know that classic dream where you are in your house and you find a room you never knew was there?

Well, I dreamed that Dave and I were watching an old Friends video, that we have watched several times before, and we came across a new episode that we never knew was there.

What does that mean?

p.s. the episode wasn't any good.

Discipline

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if it took a lot of self-discipline to make myself sit down and write everyday, and I glibly replied, "Oh, no! I love to write! I hate it when other things get in the way."

The weather was cold and grey when I had that conversation. Now, the weather is FAB.

This is the view from the window of the new, improved bathroom at the back of our house: This is the view from the front of the house: And this is the view when you walk to our gate and look left: Today, it is taking a lot of self-discipline to stay inside and write.

Always carry a notebook

Writers should always carry a notebook with them. You never know when you're going to hear something you want to use later.

I went looking for tiles for our new bathroom yesterday. The tiny man with the grey hair and the Liberty tana lawn-esque flowery tie in the subterranean tile shop was very helpful. He found me lots of samples to bring home to show Dave, and as he went to look for a jiffy bag to put them in, I fingered the gorgeous glass tiles on the counter.

"Aren't these fabulous?" I said.

"Oh yes," came the answer. "When you get into tiles, you find all sorts of ways to make your life more complicated.

Extraordinary

Tulips are almost as beautiful when they're dying as when they're alive. Is that true of any other flowers?

Look!

Look at the bag I made yesterday! I'm so pleased with it! That is real embroidery at the top, cut from a worn out and holey piece of linen that came from my mother's house. The bag is promised to someone else - what a shame! (good job Sally Howe and Bodmyn Corner don't read my blog - that's three exclamation marks in four sentences.)

p.s. click on the pic to see the detail, as well as Dave's bike pump, and scuffs on the wall.

Clouds

The Peak District - where I live - is overrun with tourists at holiday times, and the Monsal Trail where I like to cycle or walk is thick with people. But after tea last night I went for a quick spin on my bike and the trail was empty. It was beautiful. I could hear the birds singing, and see the lambs playing in a ruined barn, and on the way home the sky was blue and yellow - towering blue clouds and yellow sun.

I took the picture above on another April evening. I love the colours of clouds. When I saw a review for The Cloud-Spotter's Guide a couple of years ago, I was very excited. The cover is wildly attractive, and it drew me to it in the bookshop. I picked it up eagerly to have a flick through, but nearly all the photographs were in black and white - what a disappointment. I put the book back on the Waterstones table. Don't judge a book by its cover, and that includes mine.

Show don't tell

Beginning writers are always being urged by writing teachers to show, not tell. I am finding it so difficult to write interesting posts at the moment, that I've decided to rely on pictures for a while instead.

This one shows our dining room table this morning. If you look carefully you can see: a toy left over from our grandsons' visit yesterday, a bottle of New Skin for the wound on Dave's finger, daffodils from the garden, Dave's favourite mug du jour, today's Guardian and Telegraph, a Screwfix catalogue, Ezra Pound, a Bob Dylan songbook, a couple of veggie cookbooks that a friend has lent me for inspiration, and a remnant of fabric I am using to make patchwork bags.

And here is the bag I made which started off my current craze.