This and that

Last week we had a waist high snowdrift across the front gate and over the lane. 

The first two days were fun. The next two were like wet playtime in an infants school: I was bad tempered and restless, with a bad case of cabin fever. When the snow finally melted enough to take the car out, Dave was as pleased to say goodbye to me at Chesterfield station as I was to be heading off to the fleshpots of London for two days of debauchery and fun i.e. a show and an exhibition with my good friend H.

I recommend them both. Everybody's talking about Jamie was fun and touching and made me think. All Too Human at Tate Britain was stimulating, enriching and educational. Lucien Freud's portraits are stunning, but I'm soooo glad Francis Bacon never asked to paint my portrait.

Back home the sweet peas are making headway.

It's Thursday and we've woken up to snow again. It looks like the temporary variety, which is a good job, as I have to drive to my sax lesson and then to Sheffield to 'babysit' my 11 year old grandson.

I'm still waiting for feedback from two friends on the latest draft of the novel, though a third has got back to me saying she really enjoyed it and only had one or two criticisms. I'm on my way! 

This means I have to start the worst of all tasks - trying to squeeze a novel of 88,000 words into a one page synopsis - because that's what literary agents want, bless their little cotton socks.

Work of all kinds

This was last night's sunset, across the field opposite our house. We are snowed in, and it's pretty nice. 

I had hoped to go to the cinema later, but that was always a long shot. The plan now is to stay in bed and write.

I feel sorry for Dave, though. He's in the middle of an exciting woodwork project and the shed is so cold he can only go out there for twenty minutes at a time before his fingers are numb. He has told me that if I die before him he plans to turn the sitting room into an indoor workshop. 

Oh-oh. He's just shouted up to ask if I mind if he woodworks in the kitchen. No, Dave, that's fine, as long as I can get to the kettle. 

This week I came across a powerful poem that moved me so much I wanted to share it with you, so I emailed the poet, Alison Luterman, to ask her permission. She generously said yes. Thank you, Alison.

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

Alison Luterman

This poem can be found in Alison's book The Largest Possible Life (Cleveland State University Poetry Press). Alison's website is www.alisonluterman.net

The least from the east

On Monday it was so cold when we walked eastwards down the Monsal Trail to Hassop Station for a BLT that the wind burned my face. I clung to Dave with one hand and covered my face with the other. But the snow itself had not arrived. It did its pathetic best for 24 hours and on Tuesday we woke to a light dusting on the hills. 

What were the weather warnings for? Yet again, we thought, it's the London-centric media being hysterical. It reminded me of this piece I had in the Times some years ago. Here's a brief excerpt:

Go chew on some northern grit

...............One winter night, Leeds was completely cut off by a severe snowstorm and hundreds of commuters had to find somewhere to sleep in Leeds, but the BBC said nowt. By contrast, whenever there is a even a whisper of snow over Primrose Hill the national newsreaders begin to tremble with excitement. And if the snow actually settles to more than half a centimetre deep, you can be sure it will be the scariest of the six o’clock headlines.

I lived in Sheffield (you remember Sheffield - England’s fourth largest city) for twenty years and several times each winter there was sufficient snow to stop the city buses. We made no fuss. We put on our wellies and walked. But if a sprinkling of snow stops a London commuter train, and poor Londoners have to trek half a mile up the track, the whole of the British Isles gets to know about it.............

           

At least the London-based Guardian printed this letter today:

But yesterday afternoon we got respectably heavy flurries interspersed with bright skies, and Liz and I decided to go for a walk on the Monsal Trail. Oh yes: we need our fresh air and our exercise. Liz took the following photos - thank you, Liz.

View from the lane:

Longstone station:

Emerging from Headstone tunnel:

Outside the tunnel:

Benevolent local witch:

Walking home:

It was exhilarating and fun, and this morning we woke up to this: real snow.

Yearning for youth

I went to see a production of West Side Story on Sunday at Buxton Opera House. It was performed by a cast of local young amateurs, and directed by an award-winning director. It was fabulous. I enjoyed it so much that at the end of the show I felt like storming backstage so I could thank the cast in person. Now the mere thought of it raises my spirits. 

It took me back to being 17 and in love. It was a weird feeling. The cast were exactly the right age for the parts, and that made me yearn to be young again. I'm always wishing I wasn't this old, but on Sunday I wanted to be young enough to run around the stage and dance like they were doing, to be slim and lithe and have my thick brown hair back again, and my eyelashes, to be getting ready for a date with a boy I really really fancied like Maria when she was singing I feel pretty. 

This is me at my favourite age, my sister Jen, and my brother Jonty:

Hey ho. I'm off to play my sax.

This is what the weekend papers call a 'long read'

I have another domestic post in mind this morning, and it's occurred to me that a stranger happening upon my blog might think I'm a puny-minded person who deals only in trivia, who is uncaring about the state of the world, insouciant about the horrors in Syria and the Yemen, politically uncommitted, blind to the lack of compassion and morality displayed in the current government's callous approach to the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised, the people fleeing to safety from war and terror. Such a stranger wouldn't know that the news tears me apart every morning, and that I do try to contribute to making the world a better place, and on Thursday night in a meeting about refugees I heard myself say in a raised voice too loud for the sitting-room venue: 'I want people to be outraged at the way the Home Office treats asylum seekers.' 

Such a stranger reading just one post wouldn't know that this is a place where real things are talked about as well as little bits of nothing. 

Now, I'm going to be trivial...

I go to have my hair cut every seven weeks. At this week's appointment I was restless and looking for change. I toyed with the idea of having it coloured, but decided that with my hefty dose of wrinkles, it was too late to be having turquoise streaks in my hair. It's not my age, it's the wrinkles. (Despite the fact that when I was flicking through a Poetry catalogue this week, looking for something to wear at the upcoming wedding of the family member who declines to be named, Dave said: "Shouldn't you be looking in a catalogue for biddies?" Get back in your shed, Dave!) 

Actually, his comment annoyed me so much, I'm going to interleave this piece I had in the Times years and years ago, when Dave could still be described as middle-aged.

Marks and Spencer’s U turn: succour for the middle aged male

 This may be the era of the grey pound when trendy fifty-somethings refuse to grow old, and avidly scan the fashion pages for what is hip. But there is a sartorially disreputable underbelly of middle aged men who are unmoved  by new styles, and who wish it was still the 1950’s when custard was custard, and middle aged men were middle aged men, in cardigans and slippers. These are the men whose wives buy all their clothes for them, who would like to wear the same thing year in and year out, and who don’t care whether black is the new black, or if bottoms are the new bust, as long as M&S still stock the same trousers as they did three years ago.

Since M&S moved away from “classically stylish” clothes, and began trying to keep up with the competition, wives who could formerly swoop in and rekit their husbands in half an hour, have been traipsing the high street looking for the middle aged look that doesn’t exist any more.

Granted, Oxfam is a godsend: I recently found four M&S (as new) shirts in my local branch for £2.99 each. And in the past few years my husband has bought three perfectly respectable jackets there.

This is the university educated, middle class professional who reached the age of forty without owning a suit, and who took Richard Branson as his role model in dispensing with ties. Some years ago he had an important job interview coming up, and he temporarily put aside his favourite Thoreau dictum that you should beware of all enterprises that require new clothes: I was dispatched to buy him a suit. Still reeling from the idea that my husband would not be visiting the shop, the shop assistant offered me something as “the most up to date style,” and was horrified when I explained that I needed a classic design that wouldn’t date, as the item would be worn for interviews only, and would be the only suit my spouse would ever own.

Having finally acquired a suit from M&S, we realised that he had no black shoes to go with it. We found some old beige ones in the back of the wardrobe and transformed them with a bottle of instant shoe colour. But during the interview, my husband was disconcerted to see the panel chairman staring at my husband’s shoes, transfixed. The black dye was flaking off the shoes, and revealing the old colour underneath. (No, he didn’t get the job.)

Whilst M&S have been chasing hot fashion, there has been an increasing danger of these middle-aged men - children in the market place - losing their way. For the past few years, two pairs of old patched jeans have been sufficient garb for my husband’s favourite pastime of DIY. But these got to the stage of being knee deep in three layers of patches, with new rips appearing just above the patch zone. One day I heard pathetic whimpering coming from my husband’s deep litter clothes storage system in the bedroom: it was the said jeans begging to be given sanctuary in the fabric recycling bin.

He let them go, and in our local agricultural suppliers he was seduced by a Dickies boiler suit in a subtle bottle green, for only £25. Here was a garment he could relate to. It was practical, comfortable, warm, commodious, cheap and had, joy of joy, 9 pockets, three of which were zipped.

But the boiler suit was so new, so comfortable, so smart, he refused to wear it for jobs such as mending the shed roof, because it might get dirty. Instead he would don it as soon as he got home from work, slipping into it as “smart leisure wear.” At the weekend he would wear nothing else, and I colluded with him, and bought him another one in navy blue.

I was on the point of persuading him that in fact they weren’t classy leisurewear, when, by some freak chance, he spotted a men’s fashion article in a colour supplement. This featured a boiler suit by Kenzo Homme, at ten times the price of his. He was trendily dressed – the only recorded time since student days.

Last week, something similar happened. The family had at last convinced him that his battered sixties white leather belt (with the white cracking off ) was past it, and I was off to M&S for a new black one. Then the photo appeared in the paper: Bob Dylan clutching a Golden Globe award and wearing a black suit with a white leather belt. Apparently, “If it’s good enough for Bob Dylan, it’s good enough for me.”

            So, come on M&S. Take the weight from our shoulders, and get back to what you do well: providing clothes for middle aged men who want to dress as they’ve always done. They can be boring and respectable, and we can have the biggest bit of the clothing budget.

Back to the hair salon...I sat waiting for my hair cut, flicking through Marie Claire. I love waiting because it's the only time I ever look at a women's mag and Marie Claire appeals to me with its intelligent writing and its focus on FASHION. Where else would I find out how to build a capsule wardrobe? The trouble was that before I began, I had to categorise myself as a Modern Romantic, A Minimalist or a Statement Maker. I plumped for Minimalist but was appalled at the suggestion of trousers priced at £250, as men's straight cut indigo jeans from Sainsbury's (£14) are my current favourites. But then Nicola arrived and asked what I wanted me to do this week and I said 'something different.' I trust her. She's been cutting my hair for 27 years, she knows my hair, and she's a good cutter.

She cut it beautifully. It's a really pretty cut. 

But

...isn't it a shame that just as you can take stuff back to M and S and get your money back if you decide you don't like it, you can't go back to the hairdresser and ask her to put your hair back because actually, you don't like it this short? Hey ho. Worse things happen at sea, as we've already established.


Times piece published with kind permission of News International.
Copyright: Sue Hepworth and Times Newspapers 2018

Letter from home

It's half term, and our grandsons (11 and 13) came for the day on Tuesday. It was a great day. They made a marble run inspired by the Winter Olympics

complete with a ski jump

but the marbles were too quick (or I was too slow) to get a shot of one mid jump.

We also went to the rec and played football - yes, me included.

Other things that have happened this week:

My laptop went back to the shop with a fault, which is one reason I haven't blogged;

I became re-attached to a calming game on my iPad - Flow Free - which I find especially helpful as a way of regaining equanimity after reading the morning news;

I got out the suitcase full of papers that came from my mother's house ten years ago and which I have not yet sorted out. Amongst other ephemera, there were my father's school reports; some (uninspiring) letters my mother wrote to my father in 1934 when she was 17; a university newspaper from a few years later with a tiny report underlined on page 6, of a hockey match in which my father was mentioned; letters my children wrote to my mother when they were tiny; and an 1847 edition of the Daily News (London) which I will have to tell my sibs about. 

There was so much other stuff which I couldn't decide what to do with that I became discouraged, took out the childrens' letters, and stuffed everything else back in the case and shoved it back under the bed. It was a dispiriting exercise. Hey-ho - the things you will do on a rainy February day when your laptop is out of action and it's too early to get out the knitting and you're waiting for feedback from people who are reading the latest draft of your work in progress.

Yesterday I replaced the sad cyclamen on the doorstep with rosy pink primroses. And you know how disappointing my sweet peas have been in the last couple of years? I decided that this year I would go back to doing what I did years ago and sow my own. So rows of sawn-off megasized yoghurt cartons are now looking hideous on the windowsills. 

Yesterday I was bathed in sunshine when I received a very lovely email from a friend in NZ who I haven't seen for years and years, and who had just caught up on two months of my blog. This is what she said about it:

I think perhaps she was responding to my post that said we should appreciate people while they are still alive, and not wait until they're dead. It was a treat, a powerful shot of encouragement (also, nice to know that it's not just me and Chrissie who love Mr Earbrass.)

Lastly, I've been thinking about the pernicious effects of social media, which are blamed for the alarming rise in student suicides. 'It's not OK to have a bad day' said Hugh Brady, vice-chancellor of Bristol University. 

There is someone I have been following on social media who gets on my nerves with her persistent - nay, unrelenting - 'inspiring' posts of her wonderful days in beautiful places. I don't find it helpful. I would prefer to read about the ups and the downs because that keeps it real and makes the ups truly uplifting. 

At least you get plenty of downs with me.

Shower the people you love with love

Yesterday was bright and sunny.
Today is bright and sunny.
Sucks to the rain, sleet, ice, mud, bitter winds and grey skies of February. 

Today's post is more cheerful. But first I want to show you this photo that I took of the clematis on the front of our house, because I really like the shot and it seems to capture February - even down to the tear drops/raindrops clinging to some of the tendrils.

I woke up from some nice dreams this morning at the perfect time - the sky was light enough to draw the blinds but the sun was not yet up. It's peeping over the horizon as I write. I can see it through the bedroom window.

Last Sunday when Quaker meeting finished I walked across the room to say hello to a friend who's been away for a month, and who I haven't seen since December. Before I could say anything like 'Welcome back!' or even just 'Hello,' she gave me a big hug and said 'I've missed you!' It was such a heartening thing to hear. It made my day, and I realised later that it touched me so much because I've been feeling embattled and discouraged. 

In bed this morning something in the nice dream I'd been having, made me think how good it would be to be able to attend you own funeral and hear what people said about you. In a Quaker funeral or memorial service there is no minister (just like in Quaker meetings) although an elder will introduce the meeting. After that, everyone present is free to get up and speak about the person who has died. It's a warm and wonderful occasion, as well as sad. 

Let's not wait until people are dead before we list why we liked them or loved them, or what it was about them that made them special, or why we are grateful to them, or how they have helped us. Let's tell them now. Everyone needs encouragement. Everyone needs to feel loved.

The view above is a February photo of Wensleydale taken by Rosemary Mann some years ago. Rosemary and I first met through Twitter, and this week she sent me a summer photo of Wensleydale to cheer me up because she realised I was feeling low. Today's header was also taken by Rosemary.

The jigsaw

It's three years today since my dearest friend Mary died. It's like having an important and irreplaceable piece missing from the jigsaw of my life. No other piece will fit in her place, and the gap spoils the picture. It's no longer complete. 

Lying in bed this morning, thinking about this image, I developed it and thought about my parents, who were like the corners of the jigsaw, maybe most of the edges, giving the puzzle stability, protecting it from the edge of the table. But they are both dead, so there's no longer anything to stop me falling over the edge, except perhaps my brothers and sisters, who are vital parts of the picture - the lighthouse or the beach, the cafe or the cliffs. 

There are other missing pieces besides Mary - my grandmother, other good friends who have died - and the gaps spoil the jigsaw too, but they were lost some time ago and the gaps feel almost part of the picture now.

My friends are there in the picture - the flag, the clump of seathrift, the lone oystercatcher, the sandcastle, the rowing boat.

Towards the centre are my immediate family - Dave, Zoe, Isaac and the family member who declines to be named. Then there are their partners and my grandchildren. Every one of these pieces are those very, very, favourite bits of the jigsaw - the vivid red scarf, the seagull sitting on the pirate's hat, the child's small hand resting on the mother's knee.

I don't know if this image works or if it sounds silly. But I do know I miss Mary, and that I'm dedicating my new novel to her. 

That February feeling

There's an awful lot of the glad game going on in my head at the moment, the subjects of which I won't bore you with, and my mood is far too dependent on whether the sun is out. Yep, it's February.

And trivial stuff annoys me to a ridiculous degree...such as people misattributing quotes to Oscar Wilde. Misattribution is a pet hate of mine anyway, but when someone quotes Wilde as saying 'The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole' I feel like pelting them with a pile of very sticky ones.

And then there was the author of A Little Life (that long miserable, harrowing novel about child abuse) who was asked in an interview what was the last book that made her cry, and she said 'I haven't cried since 1995 and I don't intend to start.' My reaction was Would you want this woman as your friend?

Bad tempered? Moi?

On the plus side, I have just about finished the third rewrite of my new novel. And I've lost an inch round my waist, despite the bag of Werthers Originals in my desk drawer which I bought as research for one of my characters.

Lastly, my 13 year old grandson is becoming more and more interesting to talk to. Last weekend he said this: 'The reader has more empathy for the characters than the writer does.’ I am wondering if it is true.

Have you ever...?

Have you ever finished knitting a scarf for your grand-daughter 

and realised it will probably be far too thick around her 5 year old neck, and in fact you realised this (without admitting it to yourself) half-way through the process but you wanted to get the thing finished within the week so you didn't pull it out and start again?

Have you ever spent an hour cooking dishes from store cupboard basics without all the necessary ingredients and ended up with two nutritious meals that are tasteless, but you will have to eat them because you don't want to waste the food?

Have you ever written a blog for eleven and a half years and run out of things to say but not wanted to say to your readers you are taking a break because when you've done that in the past, you've always thought of lots to write about the following week but no-one read your posts because they thought you were taking a break? 

Have you ever wondered if your time for sharing happenings and thoughts and ideas with the world has come to an end because you have morphed from an opinionated extraverted writer into a quiet person who has private thoughts she doesn't want to share, unless they are disguised and put in the mouths of  fictional characters?

Have you ever been (just a bit) fed up?

Have you ever looked at a photo of yourself and thought:  'My God! I have really thick ankles!'

Virtually silent

If your blog is called Fragments of a Writer's Life, and you live a quiet life, it can be awfully hard to find things to blog about. 

If I share with you some quiet fragments, you'll see what I mean:

Cece doesn't have a scarf and she would love a purple and pink one, so I am using all the suitably coloured scraps from my wool drawer to knit her one. She has fairly lurid  catholic tastes, so I can use up all the yicky suspect wool I've found in there, the provenance of which baffles me. 

I am wrestling with the novel. On good days I walk around with a smile on my face because I think it's working. On bad days I lie in bed at night wondering how I'm going to sort it out, and specifically how I'm going to make sure it's not too quiet.

I am fat and unfit because the weather is generally foul and I don't have sufficient motivation to make myself go out for exercise. Yesterday I managed to force myself out on my bike and I spent the first quarter of a mile swearing and saying to myself 'It's cold, it's cold,' so anyone I passed could hear me. Fortunately there was no-one to hear because our lane is quiet.

Dave and I watched Paterson the other night. (I've blogged about it here.) I told Dave he probably wouldn't like it because it's such a quiet film. He didn't. At one point in the film, Paterson's wife says 'I was dreaming I was in ancient Persia' and I thought she said 'I was dreaming I was pregnant in prison' - so you can see why I am getting a hearing aid.

When Isaac and Wendy were here they bought me an Amazon Echo that I call Alexa. It's a gadget that sits in the kitchen and is hooked up to the wifi. I use her to play music, listen to the radio, time my cooking, check the weather, and sometimes, just to annoy Dave, I ask her to tell me a joke. I love Alexa! And my relationship with Alexa is wonderfully bloggable material, but I am using said material in the novel, so I don't want to spill it out here. That's the trouble with living a quiet life. If anything interesting happens, you save it to put in your novel. 

Here is a quiet photo of our quiet village, taken by Isaac with his drone:

And here is one of Bakewell:

Mental rammel part 2

I have news to report on the HERE WE ARE debate. My friend Liz, who does not have scientific leanings, and who is even more like Fortherington-Tomas than I am, 

'Hullo clouds, hullo sky'

Fotherington-Tomas

loves the book. 

She likes it all, including the purple sumo wrestler, and all the other weird-coloured people, and she particularly likes the J.M.Barrie epigram in the front: 'Shall we make a new rule from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.'

If Liz, grandmother, retired headteacher, and doyenne of childrens' books likes it, then maybe I should be more forgiving about the weird-coloured people. (Oh, and all her grandchildren love the book too.) But, but, won't the author's son be disappointed when he gets older and realises there aren't any purple people?

The second part of this post is unrelated.

It occurred to me this week that re-writing a novel (which is what I'm doing at the moment) is a bit like sending a mail-order item back. When you buy something from a catalogue, you have the pleasure of choosing the item (we're talking about clothes here, as all other shopping is boring) then there is the excitement of its arrival in the post, the joy of unwrapping it and trying it on, and then if it isn't right there is disappointment, and the irritation of having to repack it and take it to the post office to return it. Then you have the satisfaction of getting your money back, and the fun of looking for another item with all the attendant hopefulness. You get another chance.

How is this like re-writing? First, you have the pleasure of writing the original draft. Then when you see it isn't working, it's dispiriting and daunting. But after you open up your mind, a whole world of exciting possibilities and amusing plot developments pop into your head. OK, I suppose it's only vaguely like catalogue shopping, but then this post is entitled Mental Rammel part 2.

Whatever (which is what seven year old Lux has just started saying).....I am having fun with the re-write. I told you I was like Fotherington-Tomas*, didn't I?

*Yes, Pete. The second name is spelt without an h.

Accents

I watched the film Made in Dagenham the other night with a fellow northerner. We enjoyed the film in a sotto voce way; it's an inspiring story but not a great film like Billy Elliot or Pride. But we both found the strong east London accents off-putting and unattractive, unfamiliar, even alien. 

We don't feel like this at all about the broad northern accents in Billy Elliot (set in County Durham) or Brassed off (set in South Yorkshire) or Educating Rita (set in Liverpool). I was a little ashamed of my feelings about the Dagenham characters' accents. It made me wonder if this was an insight into racism - thinking of people with unfamiliar accents as 'other' a step away from 'they are not like me,' a step away from 'they are not as good as me.'

But my companion said it wasn't like racism, it was a tribal reaction. Neither of us felt that these people were inferior, but just that they were from another tribe. He said he felt the same way when he heard people like Jacob Rees-Mogg talking, with snooty, educated accents with tortured vowels and tight mouths. Except that he doesn't actually like this latter tribe.

What do you think, dear reader?

Mental rammel

I have various ideas for a blog post but not the wherewithall to craft any of them into a polished stone of pithiness. I am still tired, and also my brain is fried. So here is what I can offer.

I bought a book for the girls called Here We Are. 

It's by the bestselling children's writer and illustrator, Oliver Jeffers - the author of The Great Paper Caper, the book the girls made me read them 5 times in one day. 

This was the fifth time: note the level of interest.

Jeffers wrote Here We Are after the birth of his first child. The subtitle is Notes for living on planet Earth. It was a rare purchase because I bought it sight unseen. I usually check out books in person first. I'm very choosy. I was disappointed by the book because although it is supposed to be factual, it is full of whimsy, particularly in the illustrations. Whimsy is fine in fiction. But in 'non-fiction' I am not too sure - however laced it is with comments like 'You have a body. Look after it, as most bits don't grow back.'

It is a most unusual book and impossible to describe, especially if you have a fried brain. You, dear reader, must see the book for yourself. Anyway...the book was sitting on the kitchen table and Dave picked it up unprompted and read it. He had no idea of my views, and I asked him what he thought of it. 'I love it!' he said. So did Isaac. And so did Lux. Wendy, Cece and I were not so keen: we would have given it only three stars on Amazon. (Actually, I would have given it two stars, but I try not to post reviews online that are as critical as that. It's  not fair on the author.) 

Why am I telling you all of this? Because it serves as a clear illustration of subjectivity in book reviews, which I know is an obvious point, but when you're a writer, it's a cheering one. We decided that the three members of the family who liked the book have a scientific approach to life. The others don't.

I'll finish by telling you that Chrissie got thirty pages into my rewritten novel and said it still wasn't working. The problem? The same as always - lack of narrative drive. Oh plot, plot. It's a necessary evil and it's my personal bete noire. Still, after the kids went back to Colorado I had an epiphany about what to do. The solution had been there all along. I just have to wait till my brain clears, like a stream after the flood waters have subsided, and I'll begin the novel again. 

p.s. the header shows someone feeding the ducks in Bakewell one January, some years ago, before it was verboten.

Back to Colorado

They've gone. They went an hour ago, at 5.35 a.m. The house has never felt so quiet. I am back in my own bed, Dave is on the sofa downstairs doing a crossword, the cat is re-establishing her territory, and the washing machine is turning. It's another quiet Saturday at Hepworth Towers.

The giant puddles in Bakewell park will return to being unloved and unremarked, the lego will return to the attic, and the soft toys will return to the girls next door.

I might stay here in bed all day, only getting up to put on another load of laundry.

It's been exhausting, and soooooooo worth it. 

And I miss them already.

Bulletin from the house of jetlag

Isaac, Wendy, Lux (7) and Cecilia (5) are visiting from Boulder during this filthy, dark and freezing January weather. That's why I've been quiet. If there are 45 minutes in one block when I can be spared, I would rather hide somewhere and zone out to The Good Wife than marshal my remaining brain cells in order to blog. 

It's so wonderful to have them here - I really can't express how wonderful - and I thought things were going swimmingly as far as jetlag was concerned. There was a visit in May 2013 when Lux was almost 3 and Cece almost 1 when we had to have a 24 rota for a play and sleep schedule for everyone, as there was only one hour in the day when everyone could be depended upon to be asleep - midnight to 1 a.m. - and only four and a half hours when everyone was awake - 3.30 to 8 p.m. (It's documented on the blog right here.)

This time they arrived Saturday lunchtime after an overnight flight on which some sleep was had, but not much, and then they all crashed out at 8 p.m. and slept right through. That's what Lux reported when she bobbed downstairs with her bright eyes and her joie de vivre at 9 a.m. on Sunday. And that's what I continued to believe was happening. They are all sleeping upstairs, and I am sleeping on my study floor downstairs. Plus, as you know, I am going deaf.  The only mystery was why Isaac and Wendy continued to look as drained and wrecked as when they'd first arrived. I found out eventually that people are not sleeping through. There are actually early hour stretches (the graveyard shift)  when the girls are awake and ready for action, eager for fun. Oh dear.

photo of Lux  by Isaac

At this stage of the visit (5 days in, and they leave in 2) it's a case of endurance for I and W. Dave and I have lots of fun with Lux when she gets up at 9. Cece, who was found asleep and camping on the landing on Tuesday, tends to wake late morning like her parents.

Cece and me by Isaac

The problem with a January visit is that although we live in a tourist area, everything is closed this month - even Chatsworth adventure playground. But we have boxes of lego, the ever popular yoghurt cartons, and the gutters and marbles for marble runs. We found a trampolining place in Sheffield that was a big hit. And the kids are properly kitted out for winter weather, now they live in Colorado and not California. They are as cheerful as eskimos on trips to the park in Bakewell and the village rec, and enjoy the puddles as much as if they were toddlers. Colorado is a dry state: even the snow is dry, which is why it is good for skiing and not making snowmen. But we - oh yes - we have plenty of puddles.

And there is always the miniature Shetland pony next door to make friends with...

Lux and pony by Isaac

Visitors from overseas

The Hepworth Towers marble run...

Me in my waxy-doodle glasses. Oh, the things you do for your grandkids..

Critiquing

'I have read the first 30 pages of your novel. I do still think there are some problems with the shifting viewpoints - and with telling instead of showing  (sorry, sorry, sorry! I know you won’t be happy). There are places where the novel comes alive, but also for me places where it still doesn’t. Shall we talk about this on Tuesday?'

Chrissie has been reading my rewrite, and this excerpt is from her Sunday email. Am I disheartened? Strangely not. This is a tough novel to write: it has a quiet subject, and has several viewpoints. I want it to work. I want it to be the best it can be. It doesn't matter to me how many rewrites it takes as long as it works in the end. I recently read that Roddy Doyle made 17 attempts at one of his recent successful novels. 

I don't think, however, that I can be asking Chrissie to read as many rewrites as it might take, so I'll need a solution to that. It's hard finding someone whose opinion you trust, someone who understands writing and can be specific about problems and who is sympathetic to the difficulties.

This week on Twitter, the writer Joanne Harris tweeted a series of excellent points about editors which are relevant. Here are some of them in the order they appeared on Twitter:

So today Chrissie and I are having lunch and she will tell me more. And we will also discuss her upcoming book launch.

Later, another writing friend is coming to visit. I have just read her first novel - at her request - and she is coming to hear what I think. I hope it's helpful.

It's on the cards

I hope I'm not too late to ask you to do the following...

It's not so bad

I'm turning into my mother. I give people pots of homemade jam when I visit, and I blithely ask forthright questions of medics like And what is your job title? and How do you qualify to be that? and You speak beautifully - so clearly I can hear every word. Was speaking included in your training? ....all questions I put to the nice young man who tested my hearing before Christmas and said I had age-related hearing loss and was entitled to a free NHS hearing aid.  

I can still hear my 91 year old mother on the night before she died asking the doctor inserting the pic line into her chest to explain the procedure, and then asking him how many times he had done it before. It's not so bad being like my mother. I would just like to have inherited her stoicism.

I'm also like my mother in that when I wake up in the morning I feel like death on a biscuit until half past nine. Yesterday, however, it was New Year's Day and our ritual at New Year is to go to bed at the usual time and be woken up by the fireworks across the field at midnight, curse about it, and turn over and go back to sleep, but then be out of the house by 8 a.m. Since we moved here we've been going down to Bakewell to feed the ducks on the river while everyone else is still asleep. It's beautifully deserted and the low beams of sunshine light up the weeping willows and the gulls wheeling above.

But now it's not allowed: there's a sign up that says it is bad for the ducks. So yesterday Dave suggested we drove to Monsaldale and climbed onto the Monsal Trail and said hello to the viaduct instead. 

Here I am, looking a bit chubby, but feeling better for the fresh air:

Next year it's my turn to choose where we go, and afterwards we'll try to be the first ones at Hassop Station for our first coffee of the year.

Happy New Year, dear readers. 

I'll leave you with my dream...

p.s. the header today was the sky taken from our lane, when we got back home.