In which I contemplate the future assisted by a guest blogger

Me first, and then Dave...

Yesterday morning Dave walked into the bedroom at 6.15 a.m. and said 'I'm glad you're awake. I want you to help me find my keys. I've looked everywhere. I'm really worried!'

Dave's inability to find his keys is legend. He is not the tidiest person (ahem) so I thought OK, better get up and get this over with and then I can get my Yorkshire tea and come back to bed and drink it in peace.

So I got up and looked everywhere obvious. No joy. I looked in places not obvious. Still no joy.

We verbally retraced his steps of the previous teatime when he'd arrived home on his bike from an optician's appointment in a village 11 miles away. Was the front door locked so he'd need his keys? or had he walked straight in? Neither of us was sure. 

Having searched and fussed again for another five minutes, the theory was that either his keys were in the optician's car park for some reason, because he'd felt hassled when he'd finished his appointment, or they had fallen out of his shoulder bag on the journey home. 

He was going to look for them and couldn't wait for me to get washed and dressed, so I hastily pulled on my jeans, and a jumper over my pyjama top and took my mug of tea with me in the car. Dave set off, and I kept my eyes glued to the kerb of the far side of the road for eleven miles. The keys have a bright green lanyard attached to them which I had always thought excessive, but now was secretly pleased about.  

But we did not find the keys. 

It was 6.45 by now and we'd arrived at the car park outside the doctor, optician, physio, dentist and gym. The keys were not in sight, and I went in the gym to leave Dave's name and phone number in case someone handed them in. Then we drove home and I scanned the roadside again for eleven miles. No keys.

After breakfast I phoned the optician, doctor, etc, and left name and number and details of the keys. Then I shopped and baked a lemon drizzle cake because Zoe was coming over for the day with the boys (the fabulous grandsons I am no longer allowed to picture on the blog, let alone name). Half an hour before they were due, Dave set off on his bike to the optician's, to retrace his journey one last time, to make absolutely sure the keys were not to be found. I thought this was a waste of time. Hadn't I already looked on the road twice? Didn't he trust me?

I carried on faffing in the kitchen and opened the dresser drawer to get out a clean tea towel and guess what? There were the keys. WTF were the keys doing in the tea towel drawer? There is a hook for the keys. Why would ANYONE put the keys in the drawer that contains tea towels and dishcloths and nothing else except a secret stash of barley sugars (ahem)? The keys have never ever seen the inside of that drawer before. Believe me, it is as strange a place to put the keys as the cat's litter tray.

Zoe and the boys arrived and I told them the tale. The fabulous grandsons were amused. Zoe's expression was more complex as she contemplated the implications. I asked the younger FB if he thought Dave would be cross or relieved. He said 'I have never seen Dave angry. Does Dave get angry? If Dave gets angry I'll have to change my view of him.'

'Yes, he gets angry,' I said, 'but not very often. I think he'll be relieved. Also, he got in another bike ride today and he didn't think he would because you were coming.' 

Dave arrived home, and his only obvious emotion was relief. It wasn't just expressed relief about the keys, it was silent relief that he was not responsible, because we both knew - without even saying it - who had absentmindedly put the keys in the drawer and it wasn't him and it wasn't the cat. We knew it was me, because I am the only one who is tidy and PUTS THINGS AWAY.

This, dear readers, is the future.

As a special bonus, Dave has given his account of the saga. Hold onto your hats...

There is always something a bit cock-eyed about Thursdays.

No real surprise then to find us out just after dawn yesterday, Sue in pyjamas clutching a cup of tea, and me at the wheel, furrowed but determined, both with eyes glued to the kerb between here and the opticians where things went wrong.

Things had not begun well. I got up around 0400 as usual, messed about a bit, and then set out to feed the zoo next door while its owners are basking in Wales. I could not get out of the house. My keys were nowhere to be found, and I am the world’s-worst looker-for-lost-items. But no, they were not there: not on the hooks marked “keys” where they occasionally live. And not in any recent pockets. Not in any piles of washing, or tossed into the porch. They were not there, and the large green can’t-lose-me lanyard was not there either.

I roused Sue, who camps on the borders of coma most of the morning, ready to slip across at a moment’s notice. Nothing short of a cattle prod gets her going before 1030 at the earliest, and she isn’t even interested in the latest astronomical news until late morning. In short, she is virtually dead before noon.

But she recognised the keyless panic, and boldly got up in the faint light to hunt for the keys. It did not take long to decide that the keys were not there. I mean, really not there, as in lost, and not as in ‘you will have left them in your pockets’.

Cut to Wednesday. I had an appointment at the opticians, 10 miles away, but Paul at the garage suddenly needed the car to ease it gently towards scraping through its MOT, which it failed last week. So I set off on the bike in the sunshine, with bag full of useful things like keys and bike locks slung over one shoulder.

All good. A bit of a palaver at the opticians, and I came out after a couple of hours slightly dazed and pre-occupied. I unlocked the bike (so the keys were there) and cycled off. I had meant to go the long way home to get a decent ride, but it was late and I headed for home, making a short detour to add a few miles.

That was the last known sighting of the keys.

So back to Thursday and the pyjamas. We retraced my exact route, all eagle-eyed and keen as mustard. Sue was even awake. Nothing. Zilch. No keys.

The family was coming on Thursday, and I was detailed to construct more medieval weaponry with grandson minor. But before they arrived, I felt that speeding in the car had not done the job, and I needed to ride the route on the bike to get a slower and closer view. I set off, and did the trip, but disappointingly, no keys leapt from the verge or anything else.

On the last hill before home, I was surprised to be overtaken by my car, with S at the wheel, and grandson minor bellowing something out of the window with his usual grin.

Meeting them on the drive minutes later I began to explain the abject failure, but was interrupted by Sue who said that the keys had turned up. Calloo, callay. The keys had turned up.

But where had they been hiding ? In the tea-towel drawer.

What you need to know here is that only tea-towels live in the tea-towel drawer, and over a period of 22 years living here, no key has ever seen the inside of that drawer. And I go into the drawer only when I have made oatcakes and need a clean tea-towel to drape professionally over the cooling batch. No, I have no clue why I do it.

Later, much later, with no intervening accusations as this is a no-blame zone at least in theory, S wondered aloud why and how she had put them in the drawer as she would not usually do that.

And it remains, dear reader, a mystery. And for the moment, the keys remain safely on the hooks. I feel like patting them smilingly every time I go past.

Is this what the future will look like ?

When the shine comes off

I should be writing, but I am temporarily dismayed. This might be because I have just spent half an hour on a helpline and had a most unsatisfactory outcome; or it could be because I've been reading Robert McKee's Story and I've realised that there is not enough jeopardy in my novel. What I can do is tell you about the art workshop I went to on Sunday. 

It was at a small local gallery:

I've been wanting to mess around with shape and colour for some time and the workshop provided an opportunity, as well as some minimal and helpful guidance on how to get started.

The first thing we did was rip up (or cut up) a piece of primary coloured paper and stick it on a sheet of plain white cartridge paper. We had ten such pieces of cartridge paper and did this same action ten times. Then we went back to the first one and made a single mark on it with paint or pastel or charcoal or ink - our choice. We did this with each piece of paper. Then we went back to the beginning and worked on each piece some more in whatever way we liked. It was a good way to get going, and ideas came as we went along.

There was no expectation that we would have a finished piece of work at the end of the day, but that we might have got some ideas as to how to progress and work on our own. This was good, because although I brought four pieces home, there is only one I still like, and it's as basic as you can get:

I have no pretensions and no pride about my 'art' work which is why I am happy to show it here.

The workshop was absorbing and fun and also strangely tiring, so that when we were given another task an hour before the end, I wasn't up to it. We had to paint on an A2 sheet with a long handled brush held in the hand we don't usually use. I did this and loved the way the wet paint glistened in the studio light. I though it was fabulous and brought it home to work on it some more. Now I realise how deluded I was. It does not look enticing now that the paint is dry. It looks like someone trying to get some turquoise paint off their brush. And there are even drips!

I am going back to my writing. I can't imagine wanting to do art work on my own. Being in a room with other people playing was encouraging and fun. Doing it on my own when I have little confidence will feel pointless. I'd rather be doing patchwork, which is also playing with shape and colour. I know I can achieve something lovely with that, even if I do hate the sewing part.

The last thing to say is to Ana - about a book I mentioned in the comments section. I said I was engrossed in Meet Me at the Museum. I was engrossed, but two thirds of the way through I got bogged down, skipped to the end, and I never went back. I'm waiting for The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve to arrive in the post. From the details online it looks as though it's brimming with jeopardy. Perhaps it will help.

Characters and icebergs

What does he think he wants?
What does he really want?
What is his dream?
What does he dread?
What would he do if he won a lot of money? 
What is his guilty secret?
What is his recurrent nightmare?
Who or what would he die for?


The questionnaires I've been filling in about my characters in order to get to know them better have been a bit tedious because they've been repeating a lot of stuff I already know.

BUT....it is paying off. I discovered some surprising things. I found out that my main character's favourite possession is a scarlet china mug bearing the motto 'Home is where the heart is,' which her husband gave her on returning home from a conference. This woman dislikes household items bearing cheesy mottoes, but this was of deep significance at the time. 

I learned that another character's mother was Moroccan, and that he met his wife at an Art in the Park event at Sheffield's Botanical Gardens, when they wanted to buy the same picture. 

And I learned that although the third main character tells people his favourite motto is 'Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty and persistence' - Colin Powell - this is a lie. Really, his favourite motto is  'Think outside the box' because it's helpful in his work. He won't admit to this motto, however, because he's very brainy and it's such a hackneyed cliche.

Although the mug will definitely feature in the next draft, the other stuff might not. Writers are supposed to know lots and lots of details about their characters that never appear on the page, but which inform their depiction of the character's actions and responses. You know how 90% of an iceberg's volume is beneath the water? It's the same principle with fictional characters.

This is getting technical. And I'm actually wondering whether all the preparatory exercises writers are encouraged to do are really to make them so bored they can't wait to get down to actual writing. It's certainly having that effect on me.

As a bit of light relief, here's another storyteller, Lux, at age 3, telling Isaac the contents of an imaginary phone call with Froggy. 

You might not be able to make it all out, so I'm going to tell you that after she says Froggy is OK, she says 'He has a hose. And he's upstairs with his Mommy making quiches.'  It's a wonderful bit of creative detail: I could do with her on my team.

Over and out.

Working hard, and my hat

I woke up to a silent house at 5.45. Bliss. Dave will be back at teatime which is also good.

I need silence and preferably a completely empty house in order to concentrate, and to slip into another world. 

I have been working on my novel rewrite since then, and now I've got up and showered and put the washing on and am taking a break to talk to you.

I decided I needed to get to know my characters better and found a nine page questionnaire online to help me. It's on the site epiguide.com. Here's a sample section taken from the middle:

I need to fill in a questionnaire for several of my characters. You can see it will take some time. This is before I start the rewrite itself. I have a month before anything else happens to interrupt me (D.V.) - apart from Dave, of course - and I'm going to be busy thinking and writing, so forgive me if I don't blog so much.

Just to go back to the wedding... Isaac took a lovely shot of me in my hat. I love the way the brim falls.

I bought this hat for my own wedding 48 years ago. It was from C & A and cost less than £1. For some reason before the wedding (probably a comment from my mother) I changed my mind and put my hair up in a bun and the hat wouldn't fit. I've been puzzling about why I still have it, because we lost 98% of our things in 1996 when the warehouse storing our stuff burned down. I cannot think how I came to bring the hat with me to Derbyshire in 1994, which meant it escaped the fire. Was it because I was very attached to it? Or because I couldn't think how to pack it without crushing it? I mean...I do like it a lot, but it's still a mystery. We also brought Dave's boater.

Did we think we were beginning a new era of our lives in which there'd be permanent sunshine forever and ever amen? Two innocents.

Letter from home

Usually I have a topic in mind when I open my laptop in bed to blog. Today I don't. That's because in the last two days I've been consumed by two things - the novel a literary agent gave me as a present, and how to rewrite my own work in progress.

I went to stay with my good friend in London this week. As well as the catch-up and fun, I met a literary agent, I saw two compelling photograph exhibitions and the BP Portrait awards at the National Portrait Gallery. Stonking. I love the BP Portrait Awards. The exhibition is on till September 23rd and it's free. Go and see it and tell me which is your favourite. Mine is Bruce Robinson by Alastair Adams. You can see all the portraits here. 

The photograph exhibitions were also powerful. One was Tish Murtha's documentary photography at the Photographers Gallery. It's gritty. One part of it features photographs of children and young people in a depressed area of west Newcastle in 1981. There's also a typed copy of a submission that Murtha sent to parliament about the tragedy of unemployment and the appalling "opportunities" offered to young people on leaving school to make up for the fact that there was no work. At exactly the same time as the letter was written, I was working for the Manpower Services Commission doing evaluation research on their programmes, though I was looking at services for disabled people, not the euphemistically titled  'Youth Opportunities Programme.'

The second exhibition was also documentary photography but in a different country at a different time: Dorothea Lange's work in America in the 1930s. She documented the plight of migrant workers, particularly those escaping the dust bowl. She was the photographer's answer to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. You'll have seen at least one of the photographs, as it's iconic. 'Migrant mother' by Dorothea Lange can be found on the net if you Google it.

I didn't have enough time to spend on this exhibition. I had forgotten it was on until my friend mentioned it, and we slipped it in at the last minute.* There was so much to see I have even thought of going back on a day trip. Dorothea Lange also photographed the internment of Japanese Americans in the second world war and these pictures were on display. At the time, many of them were seized by the army because they were so obviously critical of what was happening.

So that leaves the meeting with the literary agent to tell you about. It was a friendly chat. She offered advice. I knew she didn't want to take me on. I'm going to act on her advice, and when I'm ready I'll tell you what it was. Oooh, I'm getting so cagey  - first I withhold details of the Croatian wedding, and now I won't tell you about my writing life. This blog is disappearing.

*The Dorothea Lange exhibition is on at The Barbican until September 2nd. I urge you to see it. It's huge, and covers far more than I have mentioned.

Choose love

It's been such a hectic two months with so many responsibilities and now it's over and life is returning to normal, and I'm wondering what to tell you about. 

One thing that's happened is that I received some hefty criticism of the latest draft of the novel from a friend of a friend. At first when I read what she said in her email I mentally reared back and felt pretty pissed off. But then I thought about it some more and we had a meaty correspondence in which we explored her reservations and I did a lot of thinking. It's been very helpful, and now I'm considering a radical rewrite. So watch this space. This book is going to be good. I'm going to make it irresistible to literary agents who so far as a bunch have been resisting it. I'm determined with this one. It's going to happen. You're just going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Amongst other busy-ness, there have been two refugee hospitality days which have required a lot of planning and heaps more energy.  A couple of years ago Bakewell churches had a joint meeting to decide how we could help refugees and asylum seekers, when we don't actually have any in Bakewell, and we decided that as well as going into the nearby city of Sheffield to volunteer, we could offer Bakewell itself. It's such an attractive place with the river running through it, a lovely park, and beautiful Peak District surroundings. These pictures below were taken in winter, but you can get my drift.

Photo by Isaac Hepworth

Photo by Isaac Hepworth

So we pay for transport for refugees and asylum seekers in Sheffield to come out for the day. They never get out of the city because on £37 a week (which is what asylum seekers get as benefit) they can't afford it. It's a one day treat, which of course does nothing for their long term plight, but we figure it's valid as a kind of respite. It's also a demonstration of warmth and care and friendship in a world that's becoming increasingly hostile to people in need. We provide craft activities where our visitors make lovely things they can take home, 




games for the children, and a delicious home cooked lunch - and I'm not talking soup and rolls, I'm talking about the kind of food you'd provide for honoured guests. This year our guests have been survivors of human trafficking.

They are happy days, and for the volunteers they're also exhausting: only two of them are under 60, and many are over 70. Playing with toddlers who require constant hands-on attention, or playing football and cricket in the park with a bunch of primary age kids takes a lot of energy. We will carry on for as long as we can. 

Bits and bobs

I have just read again the comments on my post 'Dithering' in which I asked you whether or not I should get a smart phone. Thank you Marmee, Phoebe, Jenetta and Anonymous (but I know who you are). Your comments are especially welcome because I know you're all in a similar age bracket as me. Watch this space.

The other thing to say is that if it's your youngest son's wedding and you're in a foreign country and you're hot and sweaty day and night and you're so nervous you can't face breakfast, Wendy has the answer. There we were sitting in the hotel lobby lapping up the aircon, waiting to check into our rooms so we could change, and she ordered champagne and tea. Two flutesful and a cuppa later and I was a new woman.

Of course, one way to keep cool is to get your grandson to push you around the pool on a giant flamingo. But that was the morning after.

Out of the heat

In my future, the memory of this summer will not be of my country falling yet further into an abyss of maladministration, racism, insularity and poverty, or of the world on fire, it will be of the wedding of Jaine and the family member who declines to be named.

In the EU. Hoorah! Specifically, in Croatia.

photo by Chris Oxley

photo by Chris Oxley

photo by Chris Oxley

It was a small family wedding - 17 people including the bride and groom - and it was perfect. Beautiful and perfect. Forgive me for not giving you all the details...it feels too personal.

The only thing that made the end of a week spent with all my kids and grandkids bearable is the cool of England. It was too hot for me in Croatia. Jaine kept coming up to me and saying "Are you feeling a bit cooler now, Sue?" and I kept saying "No." Thank God for Wendy and her fans, which she passed around most generously.  

But I would have gone to Timbuktu and survived the heat of the Sahara to see them get married. It was so special in so many ways.

With the showing of the F-M-W-D-T-B-N if not his name, comes an injunction from my two grandsons that not only are there to be no photographs of them on the blog, I am to go back through the last twelve years and delete all posts which mention them. Hey ho. That means I can't post a photo from the wedding which features them. But here is one of me and my kids, plus Jaine. Yes, we really were this happy.

photo by Chris Oxley

Dithering

I woke up excited today. First - it's only 24 hours till I fly to Croatia and spend a week with all my kids and grandkids and attend the wedding of the family member who declines to be named; second - because it's raining. 

But on with business...

Do you own a smart phone? Of course you do. 

I don't, and I've  been dithering for months about whether to get one. This is my (tiny) phone

except that for a couple of years the screen has been cracked and mended with sellotape. I hate the thing because the buttons are tiny and I have chunky fingers. I am a normal size, and not fat, despite my chubby feet (as seen on the last post), and I have lost weight since that pic of me on a previous one where I am on my slackline. But my fingers are twice the width of my friends' and this makes accurate texting a torturous exercise. So I email people or ring them, when everyone else is Whatsapping or messaging or whatever.

One reason I don't lash out on a smartphone is because I am not convinced that the texting will be any easier. The other reason is expense. The third reason is that I don't want to be one of those people who is always checking their phone, one of those people who walk down the street looking at their phone and not at the trees.  

So far, everyone I know has encouraged me to get up to date and buy one. But recently a smart-phone-owning friend said there were downsides. 'Do you want to be contactable 24/7 by anyone at all?' she said. 'Even by people who send annoying emails that need attending to, but which you don't want to have on your mind until you sort them out?'

There have been only three occasions when I regretted not having a smartphone. One was when an important person I was going to meet (who did not have my phone number) emailed me a date and time and I was away from my iPad and laptop, which meant I missed meeting her. The second time was when I was waiting outside Denver airport for Wendy to pick me up and there was a huge delay and I needed to contact her. I tried my iPad but the wifi didn't work outside the building. I asked a woman nearby if I could use her phone to message Wendy. The English accent must have swung it because she was very sweet and said yes. The third time was when I was visiting Isaac at the Google office and Google emailed me a digital invitation with one of those square barcode thingies (what are they called?) that I had to use to check in at reception. Was I going to have to take my iPad in so I could check in and enter the Google portals? Of course it would not occur to the Google office that a visitor might not have the wherewithal.

Tomorrow I will check in at Manchester airport with my passport and my printed boarding pass. Soon, they won't be doing printed boarding passes. In ten years EVERYONE will have to have a smartphone or be locked out of the world. But right now, Brits have more basic worries, worries at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.  After Brexit will we be surviving on tins of chick peas we keep in the shed? 

That sounds like another blog post, and I have more important things to do - these glittery turquoise toenails have got to go. Pedicure or no pedicure, I'm going back to classic red.

Revived

Phew. I am now O K. I cancelled everything that was non-essential, allowed myself to sit in the garden with my feet up doing a crossword IN THE AFTERNOON - OMG! - and some days I even had an afternoon nap. I've managed to nibble away at the lengthy to-do list in my new book of lists and all that's left is to fill in a form that arrives on Friday, and to sew up a long promised jumper I've knitted for Lux's doll. I crossed off the last items yesterday teatime - a travel towel and a pedicure.

Note to self - take the nail polish to the door of the salon and view it in natural light before you say yes to it. It's a little lurid, but Lux and Cece will love it. And anyway, what the hell? It's a small family wedding and everyone who's going is lovely. 

The family member who declines to be named is getting married next week in Croatia to the lovely Jaine - hooray!

and immediate family (minus Dave) are flying out for it. I can't wait!

p.s. I know there are three exclamation marks in this very short post, but if a mother can't sprinkle a few around when her youngest offspring is getting married, it's a poor do.

Hiatus

It's been a bad week, which is why I haven't posted. I've felt too vulnerable to spill it all out here.

But the sweet peas are going strong. Here's a bunch in a vase Zoe made and gave to me. I love this photo. I hope you do too.

The end of the line

When I was six, I wanted to be a trapeze artist, and when I was 60 I wanted to walk a tightrope. The nearest thing available was a slackline, so Zoe and family gave me one for my 60th birthday and Dave fixed it up on our front lawn with sturdy wooden posts and supports. I have been searching through my photos for a good picture of me walking on it, and this is the best I can find. Goodness knows why Dave likes to take pictures on the slant. It's really annoying. The slackline is in fact horizontal.

This was some years ago, since when I've been spending more of my time outdoors on my bike than on anything else. The slackline has been neglected, and this spring Dave pointed out that after 8 years, the polypropylene band would be weakened by exposure to ultraviolet light and would be unsafe. We took it down, and I felt sad. I had only ever managed to walk half the length of it in one go - 13 steps - though I could balance on it on one leg for 20 seconds or more.

Dave kept asking me when we were going to pull up the wooden posts that had supported it, and I kept saying - 'Not yet. I might buy another slackline.' But last week I accepted that just as the back garden has needed remodelling to take account of decreasing energy and increasing bike rides, buying another slackline would be a waste of money. 

When he pulled up the posts, two of them snapped, so saying goodbye on safety grounds was a good call. Even so, letting go is hard. 

But my genes go on. Seven year old Lux had trapeze lessons on her holiday in the spring. Here she is - my beautiful granddaughter -

Bridges not walls, and me and Trump

Do you recall my telling you about Bakewell Quakers organising a Bridges not Walls event last year to coincide with Trump's inauguration as president?

Because I was interviewed on the radio at the time (as one of the organisers) BBC Radio Derby rang me up yesterday and asked me to be interviewed live on Martyn Williams' teatime show.

Go into the programme for 1 hour 17 minutes and there I am. Here's the link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06b25gs

Fresh air

I've just had one of my 24 hours trips to see my friend in London. What a blast of fresh air.  She met me at St Pancras and we didn't stop talking for nine hours.  

As well as catching up on each others' news, we covered books, films, clothes, style, photography, My Name is Lucy Barton, writing, the colour orange, family, the boys in the cave, Moon Tiger, her work, this shambles of a government (but only briefly when we heard the news about Boris Johnson resigning - which we used as an excuse to share her half bottle of champagne she keeps in the fridge)  my slackline, how we are both drawn to sewing and yet the process bugs us, how to let things go, architecture, her future plans, my future plans, and lastly the view from her window, which changes with the light and time of day, so I can sit in bed in her spare room and gaze at it endlessly - the moving boats, the clouds, the changing light on Canary Wharf. 

This last was a teatime shot from her couch that she emailed me when I got home. I keep trying to persuade her to set up a tripod and a camera and tweet the changes, like Mick Oxley with his wonderful views of the sea and sky from his window in Craster @SeaSkyCraster  If you haven't already, you should check him out. I wrote a post on him once - here. 

We also went to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which was really fun this year. 

Have you ever been? Anyone can submit a picture and have a chance of being included, and I'm considering it myself for next year, though my chances might not be as good as they would have been this year, as Grayson Perry curated it and included the strangest - in terms of expertise -  pieces of work I've ever seen in a world class gallery. e.g. this model/sculpture

I can't show you pics of my favourites because they're protected by copyright, but they were by Diana Armfield (RA) Nasturtiums with the last of the phlox, and Dawn over snow, Llwynhir. 

All the items were priced, with the tags stretching from £250 to £350 million for a Banksy (another one I liked.)

If you haven't been - go. It's a blast. We got tickets for 10.30 in the morning and it was lovely and quiet. When we emerged, the queues were manic.

So now I am back home with my views of the fields. Here is a favourite shot I took over the garden wall of the evening sunshine one evening last week:

Bliss.

Freedom. And something to read.

Today was going to be a day off but then I went out to pick some raspberries and strawberries for breakfast and noticed the blackcurrants were ripe. Ah me. I need to pick them and make jam and freeze the rest, before they shrivel in the heat.

Dave just set off early for a long bike ride and on leaving, he asked me what I was doing today.

On 'days off' I don't like to specify. I like to hang free and be unaccountable. That's part of the chill. But there is a list in my head apart from fruit picking - submit to a new literary agent, renew the house insurance, check the price of heating oil, ring the Home Office for a friend. I refuse to list anything else. That's already too much for a day off.

Life has been so hectic, and I've been wanting something to read to relax. I had four books on my to be read pile:

  
I picked them all up in turn and read the first two pages and not one of them was right for my mood. Do you ever feel like that? You have good books to read and you don't fancy any of them? And this was after I'd started and given up on Reservoir 13. 

Then a friend lent me this:

which turned out to be hugely important. I recommend it, and this comes form a person who generally can't read non-fiction. Even so, on one really bad day I stalled, desperate for something escapist but intelligent. So I bought this:

It's been a page turner, a good thing to read on a hot afternoon in the shade when I've needed a rest.

What have you been reading and enjoying lately?

Letter from home

I've been both busy and beleaguered which is why I haven't blogged. 
(Oooh - the alliteration!) 

That was what I wrote on Monday and then got no further, because the busy-ness took over again. My sax has been neglected too, so I'm making zero progress with a bitch of a piece called 'Another Night in the Naked City.' It's actually a fantastic piece but there are a lot of accidentals, and worse, the timing keeps changing from triplets to what I call - much to my teacher Mel's amusement - "two stripe notes" (semi-quavers) then to "three stripe notes" (semi-demi quavers) and then back to crotchets. And when there do happen to be simple straightforward quavers, they're swing. I'm struggling.

So what have I been busy with? One thing was preparations for another refugee hospitality day put on by Bakewell churches. That took a lot of work and was both wonderful and exhausting. It was last Saturday and it took me Sunday to recover. I've written about these days on the blog before, e.g. here and here.

I seem to have spent a lot of time watering the garden, and this year my sweet peas are doing well, so sowing them myself is obviously the way to go. So far here we don't have a hose pipe ban, thank goodness.

I've been doing stuff I can't write about on here because other people are involved, and I've also been fielding rejections from literary agents for my latest novel. That takes up a lot of emotional energy, even though when I sent off the emails I'd persuaded myself that it wouldn't. There are still some I haven't heard back from, so watch this space. 

Sometimes when people find out I'm a writer they say things like "Ooh, my friend has written a book. Can you tell me how she gets it published? Can you tell me who your publisher is?" as if all her friend has to do is ring up a publisher and in a couple of months the book will be on the tables in Waterstones. 

At such moments I sigh inwardly. Firstly there are very few publishers who will look at a book if it hasn't come via a literary agent, and secondly, the decision as to whether a literary agent will take you onto their books is about more than the quality of your writing. Does the book have mass market appeal? Are you yourself marketable in terms of publicity articles in the press? Do you have a long career ahead of you so the agent will have a steady future income assured?

If you want to get a good picture of what it's like to be an aging, struggling writer, listen to the sitcom Ed Reardon's Week on BBC Radio 4, currently available on BBC iPlayer. It's my favourite radio comedy. It's hilarious and has so much in it that I recognise. But at least Ed has an agent. I do not. I'm not giving up:  I believe in my book and I'll get it out there one way or another.

Oh - almost forgot - Dave is still enjoying his new wheelbarrow.