Is it my life or Sally Howe’s?

Our internet connection has always been slow but sure, and it’s suited me fine. Recently, however, Dave decided he wanted it superfast, and last Monday an engineer came to fix us up. Since then our connection has either been so fast it makes you dizzy, or non-existent. 

I think you know me well enough, dear readers, to imagine how I felt last Thursday when a TV producer emailed to say he was keen to see my screenplay.

And I think you can imagine how I felt when I’d written my email reply and attached the docs and pressed send, and the internet failed…and continued to fail until I was beside myself with the jitters. (Fortunately for Dave he was out on his bike.)

Another thing you know is how much Sally Howe and I like Hassop Station – the cafe, bookshop and cycle hire place that’s a mile away on the Monsal Trail.

It’s where Jane and I had the launch for Plotting for Grown-ups and it’s a favourite haunt of Sally’s in the book.

Luckily for me, it has Wi-Fi. So I grabbed my laptop and jumped in the car and five minutes later I’d sent my screenplay and was sipping a soothing Earl Grey tea.

I have written this post in bed, but I may have to go to Hassop Station to post it.

 

A week off. Or on.

I’m having a week off from the blog. Except that last time I said I was having a week off, I decided I wanted to blog after all. So…we’ll just have to wait to see what happens.

In the meantime, one of the things I’ll be doing is playing my sax, and this tune in particular.

A lump like me

After I’d blogged yesterday, the doctor rang to say there’ll be no further action. The lump in my body they found five weeks ago is nothing to worry about. It’s fatty and benign. Like me.

It’s taken a day to sink in. Waking up this morning without the low level anxiety that’s been dogging my days is wonderful. Who cares that there’s a wind whipping round the house that sounds like a gale in a badly-funded horror movie, or that there’s snow on the grass?

What I’ll remember is how pleased everyone was with the news: the love.

a plain Jane post

I owe you a post. I know I owe you a post. I wrote one on Wednesday and then deleted it because I decided it was too political for a politics-free blog. I have had nothing to say this week that was not either a howl, or political, or a political howl, so I stayed schtum.

I am going to sit in bed and tweak episode two of the screenplay. Remember my sunset patchwork quilt? You can see it here.

Dave is in the kitchen ironing, and listening to David Gilmour’s new album. I’ve had to shut the bedroom door because he has it on so loud.

The sky outside is glum. I don’t feel as glum today as I have done, but after the leaves disappeared, November has got me down with its fog and rain and overcast skies and its long dark nights. It’s joining February as a month that should be struck off my calendar.

Having said that… we did have a bright blue day on Monday when my big sister came to visit. That was lovely. And it was so nice to see her. Comforting. Reassuring. Like the week our mother died and she came in the sitting room and said “I think we all need some strengthening medicine.”

And no. There is still no sign of medical test results.

If in doubt, write

Here’s a quote from Neil Gaiman on what to do when the going gets tough. I’ve shared it with you before, but so what? I like it.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before — make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too.     –  Neil Gaiman

 

Have you ever felt like a dumbo?

Have you ever listened to a book programme on the radio and heard Mariella Frostrup asking a Russian writer why he had used Old English and current English in his novel, and often both in the same paragraph, and heard him say it was because there was no such thing as time?

Uh?

and again

Uh?

And have you ever been waiting for medical results that didn’t arrive, and wanting to check your mobile phone for messages, and unable to find it, rung it up from the house phone, and then on locating it found there was a missed call from an unknown number, and thought Aha! The hospital and the GP withhold their phone numbers, and then rang both to see if they had left a message and got a No on both counts and been utterly baffled, and then an hour later realised that you yourself have a withheld number and the missed call was you trying to locate your phone?

Durrhhh!

From now on I may just blog in cave-woman grunts.

Here is a November photo taken from up the Trail, to take your mind off the long dark nights that are here for the next three months.

You can call me a baby if you like

I’ve got all kinds of medical stuff going on at the moment which maybe I’ll tell you about some time.

What I will tell you today is that I went to hospital yesterday for an uncomfortable and intrusive medical procedure. There was no delay in the waiting room, all the staff were kind, respectful and efficient, I was outwardly calm and well-behaved, I was there for an hour and a quarter in total; and I hated it.

I have come to realise that doctors can do whatever they like to me if I am unconscious (and they have done lots), but I loathe it when people mess with my body when I am awake. It has nothing to do with embarrassment. It’s the intrusion of my very personal space that upsets me, which is odd when I so often spill my emotional guts on here.

Dave was very caring and indulgent and wanting to cheer me up, let me buy a hot roast pork sandwich to eat in the car on the way home, even though he finds the smell obnoxious. And I went to bed for the afternoon and binge watched Downton Abbey on the iPad. ( I have so far watched none this year.)

Today I am fine. Today I shall go out on my bike on the Trail despite the wind and the looming skies. One life: live it.

(You have no idea what pleasure I get from using colons and semi-colons on an informal blog. When I use them I always think – Yay! – it’s my blog, and I can do what I like!)

And now you’re not only probably calling me a baby, you think I’m a punctuation weirdo as well. Which is fine.

Let’s all say no to war

On Saturday I joined other members of Bakewell Quaker Meeting by the river Wye, to hold a one hour silent peace vigil to remember all victims of all wars -  civilians and soldiers.*

 

And yesterday I spoke in Quaker meeting about it. And I quoted from something I have shared with you before – Andrew Boyd’s piece called Hopelessness can change the world.

You are faced with a stark choice: do you dedicate yourself to an impossible cause? or do you look after your own, making do as best you can?

The choice is clear: You must dedicate yourself to an impossible cause. Why? Because we are all incurable. Because solidarity is a form of tenderness. Because the simple act of caring for the world is itself a victory. Take a stand – not because it will lead to anything, but because it is the right thing to do. We never know what can or can’t be done; only what must be done. Let us do it.

Following on from that, a Quaker of 90 stood up and said she had been supporting lost causes since 1940, and she was very happy to see that there are plenty of young people now who are happy to support lost causes into the future.

We never know what can or can’t be done; only what must be done. Let us do it.

 

 

*You won’t see me – I was taking the photo.

Redirection

I don’t have anything to say today, but I read someone else’s blog post this morning and thought “YES!”

Click here to read it.

Different worlds

This is the third day straight of thick foggy fog up our lane in Derbyshire, but in Colorado the skies are bright and clear.

Here is Mother Earth sitting in her chair and weaving the colours of fall into a blanket for her children for the cold winter coming.

Picture by Lux Hepworth (5 years old).

Those moments

The picture on yesterday’s post was taken on Lux’s first visit to England and our house.

I wasn’t thinking of her when I wrote the post. I needed a photo to go with the quote and I looked through my photo collection for a November picture and that one came up. Another was alongside it that I liked, but Lux isn’t smiling. Still my face seems to express a deep but fleeting joy, and I like it because of that. So here it is, mucky apron and all:

and here is a blurry one from way back – when Tate was born, and I didn’t know how fab it is to be a gran:

but I was surprised by joy.

Today

Let’s love today, the what we have now, this day, not

          today or tomorrow or

yesterday, but this passing moment, that will

          not come again.

James Schuyler, from A Few days

 

My mother

My mother died seven years ago today. It hit me hard.

“She is a procession no one can follow after
But be like a little dog following a brass band.”

George Barker

Today I find her in my brothers and sisters.

“What will survive of us is love.”

  Philip Larkin

The love she wrapped around us is the love we have for one another. Thank you, Ma.

Let’s hear it for love.

Our life is love and peace and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.

Isaac Penington, 1667

Sometimes

Sometimes the only person you want to talk to isn’t there and never will be there. And the violet dawn and the wind-tossed auburn copper beech can’t compensate.

Brain-fizz (spoiler alert)

I didn’t get much sleep at the London Screenwriting Festival – not because I was networking all night in the bar, but because my head was either fizzing with nerves, or going over and over what had happened during the day, and what people had said.

The Actors Table Read (ATR) was one thing that kept me awake. Delegates to the festival can apply to have a scene from their screenplay worked on for an hour by two actors and a director. I submitted a scene from near the end where Sol cones to Bakewell to tell Fran that all their things have been destroyed in a warehouse fire. And I was picked.

This is a tiny extract from the scene:

In the ATR, you get to spend an hour in a room with these guys and your script. The blurb on the website says that the director might not involve you in the read-through until half way through the session, and you mustn’t interrupt. My director involved me right from the start. What a sweetie!

The first time the actors read the parts, I was horrified. I hated the tone that “Sol” was using. He sounded cross and impatient, whereas in my head, Sol was being kind and solicitous. After every other read-through, the director consulted me and I tried to be restrained in what I said, and not a blabbermouth (which some people in the family think I am.)

The director was very sensitive to the piece and really got it, and by the end of the hour, the actors were reading the script exactly as it was in my head. It’s a sad scene, and they made me cry. Twice! Yes – there I was, crying at my own script.

The whole experience blew me away. Imagine how I’ll feel when I’m watching the whole series on the telly.

Hang on, we don’t have a telly. We’ll have to go and watch it at a friend’s house – a friend who has one of those humungous things, hanging on the wall like a picture.

Pitchfest

One of the reasons I went to the London Screenwriting Festival (LSF) was to lure a TV executive into considering my screenplay.  The LSF has a dozen or so sessions when you can pitch your project, and you look at the list of who is in each session and then bid for the one containing the people you most want to meet. This means getting online at 12 noon precisely on the Saturday before the festival and picking a session before all the spaces have gone. I made it. Phew.

I’d never pitched before, and my phone pitch practice to the family-member-who-declines-to-be-named had not worked out too well, so I signed up for a Pitching workshop the morning before my session.  It was run by a brilliant teacher called Pilar Alessandra. It was ace: and it led to my rewriting my logline.

Ah, I haven’t told you about the logline, have I? A logline is a sentence (or two) that encapsulates the story you are telling in your screenplay. You lead your pitch with it. So… I wrote a novel which is 300+ pages long, and is now a TV serial screenplay that is 200 pages long, and I have to boil it down into a single sentence. THAT is what drove me nuts before I went to Colorado.

Now, after revision, it is this:

A couple on the brink of retirement fight over their radically conflicting dreams of the future, until the wife’s realisation that her husband has Asperger syndrome changes everything.

There were ten execs in my session and I wanted to speak to four of them. Have you ever been speed dating? No, neither have I, but the Pitchfest sessions are apparently just like that. You have five minutes with each executive, and then the bell rings and you get up and join the queue for the next person you want to talk to.

When I walked in the room, two of the four people in my sights were not in my sights i.e. they hadn’t turned up. So I decided to have a warm up by talking to an agent who wasn’t relevant to my quest. That was good. He was nice. It felt comfortable and his ideas were interesting.

Then I moved on to someone who was not interested in the slightest in what I had to offer. Tant pis pour lui.

And then I went for the man I wanted to talk to more than anyone else. I introduced myself, told him my story was partly based on personal experience and then delivered my logline. As soon as I’d finished, he plonked his business card on the table and asked if I’d got the first episode.

“Yes! It’s here! And would you like the book as well?”

Now, all I have to do is wait.

You are all crossing your fingers, aren’t you?

Wha’ happened?

I booked my place on the London Screenwriters Festival in January, but by the time October rolled around I was so nervous about going I was secretly hoping that a medical emergency would mean a rush to hospital and a cast-iron excuse for opting out. I thought everyone there would be young, hip and slick, and I’d feel like a granny from the sticks. (Which I am actually, but let’s not go into that.) 

I need not have worried: there were people of all ages and at every stage of screenwriting – novices to pros – and fashion was not on the agenda, except amongst the visiting actors. What’s more, everyone was so friendly that you could walk up to anyone and start to chat, without them giving you one of those funny looks that mean “Who is this woman?”

But this is what my dear, regular readers want to know, isn’t it? – did I get anyone interested in my screenplay? Yes. He asked for the first episode as soon as I’d finished the third sentence of my pitch. High five!

The festival was a three day event packed with teaching sessions on every stage of screenwriting, from first drafts to rewrites, from pitching to production, and every other stage between. There were also writers telling us about their journeys from their initial idea to the premiere. My favourites in this last category were Stephen Beresford who wrote Pride, and Paul King, the director and writer of Paddington.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the scary Pitchfest.

Picture postcard

Having a wonderful time! I'll tell you all about it when I get home. Thanks for all your good vibes, they really came through. Woo-hoo!

Away

I shan’t be blogging much this coming week. I’m busy preparing my pitch for the London Screenwriters Festival at the end of the week. I’m hoping to persuade a TV executive that my adaptation of But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You can be next autumn’s most popular comedy drama. Wish me luck!


I’ll be blogging again as soon as I can.

Vulnerability, violence and me

I’ll start with the context, as it’s relevant. I’d had a long, draining afternoon at the hospital that had left me feeling tired and fragile, and the screening of Suffragette started at 8.40 p.m., a time when I’ve usually begun looking forward to getting into bed with a book. ( I get up very early.)
So there I was with my daughter Zoë, enjoying the whole experience – a night out with Zoë, her treat of a meal and then the cinema. The film was terrific: an important subject, powerfully told, evocative, beautifully shot, great acting, etc, etc. We got to the scene where a crowd of women is assembled outside parliament to hear Asquith’s decision on whether to change the law in their favour. He announces that it isn’t going to happen, and the women start shouting in protest, and a bunch of police rush into the crowd and start beating them up, (I think) with truncheons.

It was horrible and I shut my eyes, but I could hear the beating, the scuffles, the screams. Zoë saw my distress, and asked if I wanted to leave. She said it was fine: it was supposed to be my treat from her, my evening out. I didn’t want to spoil it for her, so I said no. But as the film progressed, I could see it was going to get nastier – we hadn’t even got the force feeding bit – so I changed my mind, and we left.
I was feeling vulnerable and tired, and if I’d been watching it on another day I’m sure I would have stayed.
But it did make me think again about how much I hate screen violence.  I’m the woman who got so upset at the pictures of the Gaza bombing last summer that I stopped Twitter showing me photographs. You might accuse me of being an ostrich, but I’m not. I read the news and I do my best to work for social justice and peace. I sign petitions, write to politicians, go on marches, and I boycott Israel. 

Suffragette has a 12A certificate, and the British Board of Film Classifications says it has “infrequent strong language, moderate violence, a scene of force feeding.”  I thought the violence was shocking – but I realise now that my reaction was a combination of my mental state at the time, and the shock of learning about Black Friday, when the police beat up the crowd.
I get completely caught up in stories told on screen. I am not a detached observer. It all feels real to me, which is why I steer clear of violent films. I didn’t go to see 12 Years a Slave for this reason: I don’t have to watch a film about slavery to know it was obscene. That film has a 15 certificate, and the British Board of Censors labels it thus - “Contains strong violence, injury detail, sex, nudity, and racist terms.”
Why is it OK for 15 year olds to watch strong violence? Why is it OK for 12 year olds to watch police beating up women?
A friend was bemoaning the fact that her book club always chooses books that are miserable or violent, as if a book can’t be literary or important if it doesn’t trade in violence and/or unhappiness. We got onto the Man Booker Prize and the fact that the winner is about gang violence in Jamaica, and that the bookies’ favourite, A Little Life, contains what the Guardian says are “the most awful accounts of child abuse, cruelty and self-harm that most people are likely to ever read.”
My friend wondered if people can’t feel anything if they read something milder. Is this how it is? Is the world so violent and are most people so desensitised to violence that it has to be omnipresent on screen and in books?
And why do I feel as though I am opening myself up to criticism if I complain about this? I increasingly feel out of step with modern culture.
I’m what the Eysenck Personality Inventory calls tender-minded, but I’m not a total wuss. I did read A Long Long Way, a harrowing and moving novel by Sebastian Barry about the First World War. I had to take a two week break in the middle, but I did go back and finish it. The writing was beautiful, and it’s an important topic.
Perhaps I have too vivid an imagination. I told you in an earlier post that when my younger grandson was 8 he was so upset by the Paddington film (which has a Parental Guidance certificate) that Zoë had to take him out of the cinema. He’d told Zoë that it was bad enough that the bear didn’t have a home, so they didn’t need a baddie as well. I asked him yesterday why he’d been so upset, and he said “Because the baddies wanted to skin the bear.” He feels stories in his heart. Me too.
And Suffragette? I’m really pleased this story of determination and sacrifice is at last being told in such a powerful way for a general audience. I know a lot about protest and the history of protest, but I didn’t know the facts about the brutality against the suffragettes. I shall order the DVD of the film, and watch it at home on a day when I’m feeling robust.
I have the vote. I am indebted to all the brave women who fought for it.

Vulnerability

I walked out of Suffragette this week. I couldn't take the police brutality. 

More on this tomorrow as I'm still processing it.

Tantrum

I have a deep vein thrombosis.

It doesn’t hurt. The treatment is two pills a day and a made-to-measure elastic popsock.

But last week I was throwing a tantrum because I’m not allowed to do anything that raises my heartrate. This includes cycling, brisk walking, and gardening – exactly the kinds of things I like to do on sunny autumn days. I had so much work planned for the garden. And hasn’t the weather been perfect for autumn gardening? Still, sunny, a little rain.

But the nurse’s instruction to do nothing but “potter” was for three weeks only, so why was I making such a fuss? Last week I was weeping down the phone at my saxophone teacher. It wasn’t just the infirmity, but the shock. So I really am mortal: it’s something I thought I always bore in mind. Apparently not. I need to get over my impatience and frustration and grow up. I need to be a stoic like my mother and my sisters.

On Saturday I read a cheerful piece by a journalist who is a tetraplegic after a riding accident, and it made me realise how little I have to complain about.

So I’m over it…which is why I can now confess it all to you, dear readers.

postscript on grief

For those of you who were interested in yesterday’s post, you might want to read this article in today’s Guardian.

“Moving on” from grief

I just read Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. A difficult read for one who doesn’t know Ted Hughes’ Crow, but powerful and meaningful even so.  I want to share with you this brief extract because I have a feeling that someone out there needs to read it today:

“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.”

 

This year’s favourites

It’s National Poetry Day today, so I decided to share with you the poems that have meant the most to me this year.

First, with kind permission of the poet, Mandy Coe:

Let’s Celebrate

the moments
where nothing happens.
The moments
that fill our lives.
Not the field bright with poppies, but
the times you walked, seeing
no leaves, no sky, only one foot
after another.

We are sleeping
(it’s not midnight and
there is no dream).
We enter a room – no one is in it.
We run a tap,
queue to buy a stamp.

These are the straw moments
that give substance
to our astonishments;
moments the homesick dream of;
the bereaved, the diagnosed.

Mandy Coe

and second, with kind permission of The Gallery Press, and the poet:

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon