For the next two weeks…

…I am going to be focusing all my writing energy on the Work in Progress – PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS - so you may not hear from me. But I will be back.

Home is where the heart is

The new picture on my header is one I took in Wensleydale, which is a bit of a cheat, as I try to stick to shots of my garden or the Peak District.

A friend had a holiday in Wensleydale in August and I told her how much I miss the place. She said, “Ah, your heart is there,” and I said, “Well, yes. But it’s also here. I love my home.”

When Dave retired, we had a three week holiday in Northumberland together, and Isaac said, “That’s the longest time you’ve ever been away from home,” and without thinking, I said, “No, I wasn’t away from home. Dave was there.”

Perplexed

We needed to replace our car with another. At Hepworth Towers we find cars uninteresting objects which are necessary evils if you live in the country. So Dave did the donkey-work and researched what we needed, and found one the right price and the right age, and we bought it. I know that car colour is irrelevant, but this one is BEIGE!

I just can’t fathom how a car manufacturer could even consider making a car in beige. Who on this earth wants a car in beige?

Holiday snaps

I am still unable to write coherently on account of cloudy (jetlag) brain, so here are a few holiday snaps…

You know where:

The view of the city from the bridge:

 

Having lunch with Isaac at work i.e. the Twitter office. Here is one of the many counters in the canteen (they all have different names)

and the sunny roof garden, where we ate:

The motto on the Aging Hippie’s front porch:

The AH’s bumper sticker:

Cycling with the AH on the San Andreas faultline, on the Sawyer Camp Trail – her answer to the Monsal Trail (though I have to say, the punters are much better behaved than they are on the Monsal Trail)

A small corner of the gardens at Filoli (the AH’s answer to Chatsworth)

The AH with the biggest hydrangea flower I have ever seen:

My consolation on coming home to Derbyshire was to find that the sweet peas in my garden were still flourishing:

Post-holiday reflections

I’m not going to bore you rigid with another day-by-day account of the progress of my jetlag as I did in the spring, but my mind is decidedly cloudy, so by way of today’s post, you’re getting a list.

1. Did you know that in the US, they don’t generally say Bucket and Spade, they say Shovel and Pail?

2. In the spring, when Lux noticed a plane in the sky she would point and say “Airplane” and I thought, ‘Oh, when she’s older, she’ll be able to enunciate the word better - and say  aeroplane.’ But I found out last week that in the USA, the proper name for a plane is, in fact “airplane.”

3. I love driving round San Francisco in the sunshine while listening to sunshiny music from The Mamas and the Papas, or from Fun, but I can’t decide whether the same music would elicit the same degree of happiness while driving in a  rainy Derbyshire, and without someone in a child seat in the back, singing along with the song You, baby, or saying “Want to read a book.” 

Home again

It look me longer than usual to get home from San Francisco, on account of delays, but it doesn’t matter. I would travel to see my family if it took me twice as long.

I took a new remedy for jetlag (a homeopathic prophylactic) so am eager to see if it worked. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, while I wake up, here is a picture of Lux and me at Fort Funston I(taken by Isaac):

Writer's brain

I have found writing blog posts over here very hard  - I can't write - and I haven't been able to read anything here either,  apart from children's books, to Lux - The Tiger who came to Tea, The Gruffalo, Stickman, etc, etc - because my brain is fluffy. Is it addled by too much telly (i.e. two whole series of Downton Abbey - previously unseen by moi -  and numerous episodes of the beloved Blue's Clues with Lux).

Or is it all the maragaritas that have done me in?

Or is there such a thing as Granny Brain, an older version of Mummy Brain?

Or is it that life with a toddler (or an Aging Hippie, come to that) is too full-on, jam-packed fun, to have chance to sit back and reflect? I think that might be it.

Today's slogan

And here, from Peekabootique in Noe Valley, where I bought a puzzle for Lux, is today's slogan, 

I also went to the park with Lux and Isaac and had my best coffee ever (from Philz Coffee.)

Tonight we're visiting Velvet Cantina where they make the best margaritas. Two days left, and I'm starting to miss San Francisco and Lux and Cece and Ise and Wendy, already. I've done hardly any writing this visit: I have been too busy playing with Lux. But these moments and days are fleeting. My writing will be at home when I get there. Lux and Cece will not. And next time I see them they will each be at a different stage, playing different games, reading different books, and shock! horror! Lux may have grown out of watching Blue's Clues,  a delightful educational pre-school programme with the cutest presenter I've ever encountered: Steve Burns. 

Adventures with the aging hippie - 1

The aging hippie took me to her old stamping ground and to a great cafe called Coffee to the People, with a wall full of stickers.

There were loads I liked, but these were my favourites - 

Recipe for happiness

A hot San Francisco day,
a shady yard with a view,
a laughing toddler, 
a paddling pool, 
a sand tray, 
Paul Simon's greatest hits, 
a margarita 
and a fun-loving daughter-in-law.

Family fun

I am so sorry not to be posting much, but you know, it's full pelt here in this one baby one toddler, two parents, one Gran household here in San Francisco. I've been to brunch, the park, the beach, the library for children's books, changed nappies, supervised bath time, fed the baby and read The Gruffalo more times than I can remember - and loved every minute of it all.

Oh, and did I mention that it's HOT, and that I have so far had only one margarita in the large number on the list to be imbibed while here?  The oddest thing has to be an evening of babysitting, while watching the first five episodes of Downton Abbey back to back, a series that had up to last night passed me by. (Yes, yes, I know now what I've been missing.) Fancy having to come 5,000 miles from home to get hooked on Downton Abbey. But then you probably always suspected I was slightly weird, right?

Fashion tips

Yay!

I am here in San Francisco. The flight was good: quiet, uneventful, on time. Good job, British Airways - see, I have the local lingo already - it slips off the tongue (or keypad) as if I've never been away. 

And Wendy took me for my traditional pedicure this morning, which is a big SF treat. As well as having pretty feet at the end of a peaceful hour of self-indulgence, it’s a rare chance to catch up with women’s magazines. Today I read Elle, Bazaar and Vogue, and found a host of helpful titbits. I discovered that there’s such a thing as “tight pants syndrome,” which you get from wearing too-tight jeans, and can lead to a long list of unpleasant health problems. Also, there’s a blog called Man Repeller, which tells you what not to wear if you care about attracting men. My favourite quote, though, was this: “Dresses have become too trendy. I am convinced by trousers.”

Ooh, ooh, almost forgot... the day in a life of Michael Kors, a fashion designer, who said “I’m definitely a man who loves his tote collection....I have an L.L.Bean leather tote from the 40s...that I was fortunate to find while vintage shopping here in New York. As soon as I saw it I was like, Oh my God.”

It’s that last sentence that creases me up.

Keep your eyes open

Some cyclists jump red lights. Some weave dangerously in and out of traffic lanes. And yes, some are rude and obnoxious. But most of us are law-abiding road-users who obey the Highway Code.

On Monday, Dave, who is one such law-abiding cyclist, was wearing a bright blue jersey. It was fine and bright and the traffic was light, but a car knocked him off his bike. The driver drove up behind him and turned left into a car park. Unhappily,  Dave was between her and the car park. She said “I didn’t see you.”

I was going to show you a photo of his worst injury, but it’s too horrid to have on a pretty blog. And actually, it doesn’t show you how sore it is. He has no broken bones, and he is alive and happy and doing the ironing at 6 in the morning, as per usual. But that is Dave. If I had his wounds I’d be limping around feeling as if I’d been kicked by a horse (as the nurse in A & E said). I’d be in bed having people bringing me cups of tea. He takes the T E Lawrence approach to injury - “The trick is not caring.” It works for him. (It does not work for me.)

Dave does not give in to injury. He won’t even take arnica (the noo-nah.)  His biggest stated worry is when will he get his bike back from the bike shop where it’s being assessed for damage. Oh yes, and will his wounds have healed by the time we go on a narrowboat at the end of the month?

The driver has accepted responsibility.  I still feel very cross, which is probably why the tone of this post is so odd. There is rage underlying it.

Earlier this year my friend was cycling down a main road and knocked off her bike by a driver emerging from a side road, a driver who “didn’t see” my friend. My friend’s injuries were worse than Dave’s: she had to have a new hip.

Please drive safely. Please overtake cyclists with plenty of room between you and them. Please check when turning right or left that NOTHING is coming down the road. Cyclists can go fast: you’ve seen the Olympics. Please don’t overtake cyclists and turn immediately in front of them.

Please keep your eyes open.

This is Dave last year, in happier times, when he got his new bike

This week’s instalment…

I’m getting excited! I’ve emailed Jane my latest chapter (only two more to go) of PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS, so she’ll have it when she comes from from her hols; and I’ve started making lists.

 

and if you think there’s camera shake on that, you’re right: I took it this morning before my first mug of Yorkshire tea.

I am going to see the west coast Hepworths on Thursday – yay! – and Dave is staying here and working on phase one of the back garden. (I told you we were going to get it in order now we’ve sorted the front garden.) He’ll also be indulging in various undomesticated behaviour, such as playing his electric guitar at 6 in the morning.

Meanwhile, the cat is practising sleeping in places she’s not allowed, so she can do it all the time while Dave is busy and I’m away.

Boycotting Israel

You’ve read about the suffering of the Palestinian people on my blog – the things they have to put up with in their daily lives – apartheid, ethnic cleansing, the bulldozing of their houses, the destruction of their olive trees, the stealing of their land and water and other resources by Israeli settlers, the restriction of their liberty, the racial discrimination. The United Nations has made many resolutions against the Israeli government which have been ignored. The Israeli government has broken international laws. And the international community lets them get away with murder.

If you care about the injustice and suffering of Palestinians, there is something  you can do. You can boycott Israeli goods.

This is not being anti-semitic. Criticising the behaviour of a government is not the same as criticising Jews for being Jewish. There are many people in Israel who do not agree with the policies of their government. There are peace organisations within Israel which try to hold their government to account for the way they treat Palestinians. e.g. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) which is a human rights and peace organization established to end Israel’s Occupation over the Palestinians, taking as its main focus, as its vehicle for resistance, Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes.

Please think about these issues.

Rachel Corrie

Regular readers of my blog will know that the Israelis break international law everyday in the bulldozing of people’s homes in Palestine. Rachel Corrie was a young American protesting against this crime in one specific incident in Gaza in 2003, by standing in front of a bulldozer, in plain sight, in a high visibility vest. She was mown down and killed. On Tuesday, an Israeli court ruled it was an accident she brought upon herself.
But read this extract from Tuesday’s Guardian about Israel’s chilling behaviour.
The death of Khalil al-Mughrabi two years before Corrie died was telling. The 11-year-old boy was playing football when he was shot dead in Rafah by an Israeli soldier. The respected Israeli human rights organisations, B'Tselem, wrote to the army demanding an investigation. Several months later, the judge advocate general's office wrote back saying that Khalil was killed by soldiers who had acted with "restraint and control" to disperse a riot in the area.
But the judge advocate general's office made the mistake of attaching a copy of its own confidential investigation, which came to a very different conclusion: that the riot had been much earlier in the day and the soldiers who shot the child should not have opened fire. In the report, the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Einat Ron, then spelled out alternative false scenarios that should be offered to B'Tselem. The official account was a lie and the army knew it.
The message to ordinary soldiers was clear: you have a free hand because the military will protect you to protect itself. It is that immunity from accountability that was the road to Corrie's death.

Waking up

When I wake up in the morning, Dave is long gone. I get up for my first mug of tea around six and he gets up hours before that. This morning I was lying there marvelling at the novelty of a bright sky after so many days of heavy cloud, and I missed my sibs. When we used to stay together at my mother’s house during the two years after she died, we’d make tea first thing in the morning and then get back into bed and sit and look at Wensleydale through the bedroom window, and chat. This was the view.

It felt very friendly.

I am so, so lucky to have a bunch of sibs I like. They’re like a net of love, stretching back into the past, stretching out into the future, and here in the present as company, sympathy and support. They know who I am, and they like me anyway.

Here are three of them with one of my sisters-in-law.

Nit-picking

I like listening to Afternoon Theatre (or whatever it’s called these days) on BBC Radio 4, but I switched it off this afternoon because I felt so irritated. There was a child in it who was old enough to be told to go and wash her hair, but whose mother talked to her thus: “Because Mummy says so,” and “Here – borrow Mummy’s umbrella.”

I don’t understand why some parents talk about themselves in the third person to their children, but accepting that some of them do, it is ridiculous to suppose that a woman would talk to a daughter this way if the daughter was old enough to go off and wash her own hair.

This blog post is so trivial it would have been better as a tweet, but a tweet, sadly, would not have sufficient characters to fit it in.

Resting

Sorry not to be blogging, but I am busy with family and visitors, and when I’m not busy, I’m tired. I’ll be back. Have a good weekend.

May the long time sun shine upon you,

All love surround you

And the pure light within you

Guide you all the way on.

 

Little things I like

driving down our lane and arriving home – whether it’s from Bakewell, London or San Francisco
days when it’s warm enough to cook in bare feet
evenings when it’s warm enough to sit outside
watching Neighbours with Ella, with a glass of wine in one hand and a bag of crisps in the other
playing hockey in the garden with little children
sitting in Quaker meeting in bare feet, on a warm Sunday morning with the windows wide open
chatting to my children on the phone
reading Allan Ahlberg books to children who are enjoying them as much as me
sitting here in perfect peace, because everyone else is asleep or out
picking sweet peas in the back garden
seeing a new photo of one of my grandchildren, such as this one of Lux, at the zoo:



“For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

How to support your favourite authors

An interesting blog post by Philippa Ballantine talks about five ways to support your favourite authors so that they can keep writing.

Here are the suggestions in no particular order

1. Amazon. Click the Like button under the title of the books you love. The Amazon folk use this in their magic algorithm, and it helps the book show up higher on a list.
2. Amazon. Scroll down and click on the tags that the book has. Or make new ones yourself. This will also help people find your friendly author.
3. Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Smashwords/Kobo/Goodreads/any other social network. Leave a review. It doesn’t have to be long. Apparently the least it can be is twenty words—but that is not too much. In the end the reviews all add up.
4. Blog or Facebook. If you have a blog and can write a paragraph or two, then spread the word. Also imbed images or video files so that it can be pinned on Pinterest.
5. Tell a friend. Honestly, Fifty Shades of Grey didn’t become popular because of marketing, it became popular because all the mums in the world talked about it at the playground. Unlikely anyone will be able to replicate that success, but still word-of-mouth does really help.

What do you think? What are your best ways for helping out your favourite authors?

My co-writer

This is why I love writing books with Jane…

I was struggling with writing a part of the book yesterday because it was so boring. I emailed her an update on general progress and mentioned this, and she said:

can't believe you are forgetting so many of bodmyn's basics -

RULE NO 1: if it's boring you to write it, it sure as hell will bore the pants of any poor reader who has to read it

suggestions for this a)make them as brief as poss - or skip them altogether

1. Jane gives good advice.

2. She thinks our characters are real. Aficianados of PLOTTING FOR BEGINNERS will remember that Bodmyn Corner was Sally’s creative writing guru. Jane and I talk about all our characters as if they are real people. Sometimes this gets tricky. She told me in the spring that one of the characters in the new book buys his steak pies from a butcher in Hackney (a place near Bakewell), so some months later, when I had a visitor staying who I thought might like a steak pie, I emailed Jane to ask her where the butcher’s shop at Hackney was, and got this reply -  “What butcher’s shop at Hackney? There isn’t one.”

In the mean time, Cecilia is definitely real –

and I am going to see her in three weeks time. Yay!

 

This is my blog and I can write what I like

Sometimes I lose confidence with my blog, and then I don’t write a post (like yesterday). When this happens, it’s usually to do with self-consciousness (e.g. will my sister think I’m boring? will my brother think I’m revealing too much?)

When I feel like this, I should remember

• that it’s my blog, and no-one else’s and I can write what I like
• that my favourite blog is The Scent of Water, and I like it because the writer writes what she thinks and feels, and she writes about trivia as well as big LIFE questions, because, like me, she is a “lifelong devotee to the beauty of the quotidian.”
• that in the words of Kurt Vonnegut (correct me if it was not him) said we should write as if we are writing to one specific person, and not to the whole world. And yes, I know he wasn’t talking about blogging, and that when you’re blogging, you are in fact writing to the whole world (!) but I think it’s a sound principle nevertheless. For example, when I’m writing PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS, I’m writing to Jane (Linfoot). But when I’m blogging, I’m writing to a dear blog reader who likes to hear what I have to say, whatever it’s about.

Here is a picture of something that made my day yesterday – a present from my daughter, Zoe. Zoe designed the card for the front of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. With this mug, she was trying out a method of decorating china. She said that when it went in the oven, the writing was bright red, just like the writing on my book cover, and the line inside the rim was the same colour as my book cover, so she was disappointed with how it turned out.

I’m not! I love it to bits!

(and the brown marks on the china are drips of tea from this morning – not mistakes.)

Isn’t she creative?

That one particular book

You know when you’re reading a book you’re really enjoying, and you’re getting near the end and you can’t bear the thought of leaving the characters behind, and you start to ration the remaining pages and read just a few at a time? That’s where I am with writing PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS. Jane and I are into the home straight and I’m starting to get a bit panicky and last night was flailing around for scenarios for a further sequel when this one’s done. We have an editorial meeting today so I’m sure Jane will calm me down. She’s the sensible one in this writing duo.

Yesterday was so sunny and still and after I’d finished writing, cycling, practising my sax and gardening I felt like sitting in the steamer chair and reading something quiet and familiar and funny. I felt like reading The Diary of a Provincial Lady, but couldn’t find it anywhere, and then remembered I’d lent it to a friend who was convalescing. Do you ever get into the mood where there is just one particular book that you want to read?

I searched the bookshelves for something else and chose Larry’s Party by Carole Shields and a Natalie Goldberg creative writing book, Old Friend from Far Away. I dipped into the Shields and thought – oh yes, this will do. Then I opened Natalie G and started reading and immediately I wanted to write. That’s how she gets me. She is the one who got me started so many years ago. Her Writing Down the Bones was an inspiration, a guide and an encouragement.

This is where I wanted to put a picture of the cat asleep in my steamer chair but I have wasted ten minutes looking for it and can’t find it and want my breakfast, so instead here’s my favourite photo of the old bridge at Bakewell (my nearest town.) It’s around 700 years old.

Stories

Jen and I stayed in a posh hotel for one night at a cut price rate. (Jen is so good at finding bargains.) It was a Georgian country house hotel set in parkland, like a house in a Jane Austen story. Do you know one of the things I love about staying in a posh hotel? Never mind the huge flagged hall with ancestral paintings, the sitting room with the trompe l’oeil paintings on the walls, the library with the comfy sofas and the library steps up to fusty volumes that no-one wants to read, the dining room with the white table linen, the attentive staff… it’s the white towelling bathrobe in the bedroom. This is how happy it makes me…

I am so easy to please, if you are in the know.

Jen asked me (perhaps when I asked her to take this photo) if I think of everything as fodder for writing. Sometimes I do. Some things are too weird or too funny not to be written about. And then there are things that are so momentous or moving that I need to write about them to fully assimilate them.

Natalie Goldberg says writers live twice – once when they live something, and the second time when they write about it.

And here’s that quote again from Nora Ephron that I had on here recently:

“Vera said: “Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?”
So I told her why.
Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.
Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

And this is from the writer, Anais Nin:

"Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved."