Homework

When I first started learning to play the saxophone five years ago, I told my sax teacher (Mel) that I was playing for fun and didn’t want anything to do with exams. Now (and I know I have said this before and nothing has come of it) I want to learn to improvise. This means I need to learn all my key signatures and my scales. So I have homework, even if exams won’t follow. I have to sit down and learn the lot of them. Hmmm.

My other main project this autumn is adapting BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU into a TV serial. The first task is to work out how many one hour episodes I need. This sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s not just about what happens in the story: there are a lot of other issues, such as – for example - where the major points of conflict and the cliff hangers come. As it will be a comedy drama, I’ve decided to use the successful BBC series Last Tango in Halifax as a model. I need to examine each episode to see what it contains in terms of content and complication – another lot of homework.

Did you see it? I watched series 1 and 2, and loved every minute. I think you can probably guess which homework I’m enjoying the most…OK, I admit it, I haven’t even started on the wretched keys and scales.

 

Things I probably shouldn’t tell you…

…but you would know anyway if you followed me on Twitter.

1/ I love dungarees. These are my gardening ones. If you look carefully, you will see they are far too baggy. What? You can’t see? Look again!

And here are my new ones, bought in Boulder – also too baggy. A good four inches on the waist too baggy. I love them! I feel so happy when I am wearing them. But I haven’t decided yet if I dare wear them beyond the front gate. 

I probably shouldn’t tell you the second thing because some people find it irritating when you tell them cute things their children/grandchildren said…

2/ Lux (4) is preoccupied with death and dying at the moment, and we had lots of chats about it last week. I had to keep reassuring her that I am not so very old that death is imminent. For example, I could still ride a bike, couldn’t I? But at the weekend she was discussing the topic again with Isaac (her Dad), and she said thoughtfully - “Sue’s almost dead, right?”

Coming home

The upside of Dave’s not travelling is that when I arrive back at Manchester airport after sixteen and a half hours journey, he is there to meet me - not tired, not jetlagged, and full of interesting things to say. And I know I’ve said it before, but I always love coming home to Dave and to Hepworth Towers, set up this quiet lane on the edge of the village.

These things make up for missing the family back in Boulder, and the gap that is left by Lux (4) not getting into my bed at 7 a.m. every morning for a chat on such topics as why my plum tree only had six plums on it this summer after years of overload, and why Dave thought it was a good idea to wash a duvet in the bath. (Lux’s comment: “Dave needs to calm down from his silly choices.”)
I am taken aback by the strength of my feelings for all of my grandchildren. It’s not what I expected. I thought they might be entertaining in a sotto voce kind of way. I didn’t expect to love them as passionately and as tenderly as I do, and to miss so badly the ones  who live half a world away.

Americans and tea

I don't know if you noticed on a previous post, but eight of my ten favourite books were written by Americans. There are hundreds of things to like about America and Americans, and here are a few: the stunning physical geography; the friendliness; the way waitresses say "You're welcome" and not the dreadful "No problem" adopted by their British counterparts (why would serving a customer be a problem?); the way when you walk in a cafe for breakfast they give you a coffee immediately and then come back for your order for food; the way they keep topping up your coffee without being asked; the fact that they will give you anything you want at any time if it's on the menu. (There's none of this "we don't serve sandwiches in the evening" and no raised eyebrows if you order a coffee and a vodka gimlet while you're deciding what to have on the fancy lunch menu.) 

And I love the fact that Americans understand what constitutes good bacon. I just wish someone would explain to them about tea. The default offering in public places, cafes, hotels, even Amtrak, is Lipton's. OMG. It is a right strawy tea - weak and tasteless.

In most American supermarkets there may be a whole shelving unit with packets and packets of so called tea - herbal, fruit, chai, spice, green, ad nauseum - but you're a lucky woman if you can find a decent breakfast tea, such as Twinings (let alone the gold standard  - Yorkshire tea.) For example...

Wholefoods sell them both, but you may have to take out a second mortgage.

A lack of appreciation of decent tea is evident even in the UK, in the most surprising places.  One evening on my screenwriting course, a fellow student of the same age said despairingly on looking in the kitchen cupboard and scanning the multitude of coloured boxes containing tea, "I just want a decent cup of ordinary tea. I wish I'd brought some Yorkshire Gold with me, but I didn't want to seem like a sad old woman." To which I piped up: "I brought some Yorkshire tea. I'll fetch it from my room."

I've stopped caring if people label me as an old English woman who must have her tea. Some things are more important than image, and tea is one of them. 

Boulder bike trails

Boulder is a great place to cycle. It's green, it's quiet, there's not much traffic, and there's a network of bike trails weaving everywhere between houses and roads. Some stretch out to the edge of town, like this one, where you need to clamber over a railway line. 

But then there's this view of the Flatiron Mountains in the other direction:

Wherever you are in Boulder you can either see the Flatirons, or the foothills of the Rockies. 

I'm beginning to get over my love affair with San Francisco....

We cycled into town at the weekend with the kids in the trailer, and caught a show on Pearl Street - a man juggling five fireclubs, then doing a lot of talking and then standing on a slackline juggling knives. He was a good performer. At one point he didn't feel the audience was giving him enough applause and he said, "Hey, you guys, it took me fifteen years to perfect this trick, let's hear a bit more appreciation." I know how he felt. 

I don't think it's on for a novelist to say something similar but I often feel like it - "Hey, you guys, it took me 5 years to learn how to write a novel and then another 5 to write my best one. How about a few more reviews on Amazon?"

Amtrak through the Rockies

When I come to stay out west with Isaac and family, I usually take a mid-trip trip with the Aging Hippie. But as most of you know, she's buggered off to join the Peace Corps (here's her blog) so I went to Glenwood Springs for two nights on my own.

I travelled on Amtrak with a rotten head cold, the kind where you're wiping your nose every five minutes. I've not been on Amtrak before and was impressed by the warm-hearted staff, the spaciousness of the seats, and the relatively low cost of the fares. Unfortunately, the weather en route through the Rockies was dark, overcast, misty and rainy. I managed to take some photos through the window, but although the scenery was stunning, it reminded me - in that weather - of the worst excesses of Snowdonia on a rainy day. (I am not a fan of the looming Welsh mountains of dark slate. So bite me.) 

Here's the view east of the plains (from the moving train) as we left

And here are three more as we travelled west

We got as high as 9,000 feet going through the Moffatt tunnel, which goes through the continental divide. When you get to the other end of the tunnel you notice the rivers run in the opposite direction, and the weather is often vastly different. On Tuesday it wasn't.

Amtrak is wonderful. What is not wonderful is that freight trains always have priority, and Amtrak has to put up with it. We had to stop for an hour on the journey while workmen finished whatever they were doing on the track, and later we had to stop for two and a half hours while some other guys came up to move a boulder on the line (no-one's fault.) This meant that a six hour journey became a nine and a half hour one - the same time it took me to fly from Heathrow to Denver. 

My cold was getting worse and worse, as they do when you have chronic sinus trouble, so I was not a happy bunny when we arrived in Glenwood Springs. I got the cold from Lux when I first arrived in Boulder, but hey....you don't travel halfway round the world to see your grandchildren to then spurn their cuddles on account of their snotty noses.

The journey home on Thursday was sunny, and I wiped my nose only once. See the difference the sunshine makes to the scenery: it made it beautiful.

Taking the plunge

If you are over 60 and not completely happy with the way your body looks in a bathing suit, get your fat ass down to Glenwood Hotsprings, Colorado on a sunny weekday in term-time before 11 a.m. 80% of the bathers in the hot pool there (aka the therapy pool) are over 70 and there is every body type known to woman.

I have not been swimming for 25 years. Most of my children and grandchildren love to swim; some even find it therapeutic. In a covered pool under artificial light and in chlorinated water it holds no allure for me. I'll go further - swimming is a perverse activity. We were made to walk around in fresh air, not to struggle to make progress in another element (water). (Oooh, I love having a blog - I can be as outrageously contentious as I like.)

However, the main claim to fame of Glenwood Springs, where I was yesterday, are the hotsprings, so of course I took a dip (in my 30 year old cossie.)

I went in the hot pool and the not so hot pool and it was fab. Really fab. Doing a gentle breaststroke in warm water so rich in minerals that you more or less float without effort, surrounded by a cradle of mountains was blissful. If you're ever in Glenwood Springs, give it a go!

If you've not been in your cossie for 25 years, I recommend avoiding all mirrors, however. What you see may come as a shock.

My ten favourite books

Someone has asked me on Twitter for my ten favourite books, so I said I'd post them on here.

In no particular order ... except that Leaving Home is definitely my number one...

Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Homestead by Rosina Lippi

Happenstance by Carol Shields

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

The Siege by Helen Dunmore

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (non-fiction book about writing)

In a Father's Place by Christopher Tilghman


If it was ten novels you were after, Valerie, substitute Unless by Carol Shields for the Natalie Goldberg book.

I hope I haven't forgotten one. Getting the last two was a bit tough when I am away from home and my bookshelves.

Wildlife

It's very green here in the city of Boulder, and Isaac has wild deer coming into his garden most days. Here's one I saw earlier:

Yesterday morning in bed I was reading an A.A.Milne poem to Lux called Lines and Squares, which goes like this:

Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all the squares!"

And the little bears growl to each other, "He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line."
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so 'portant how you walk.
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares!"

I quoted it here in full because it's one of my favourites.

Lux 

said: "That's silly! You don't have bears in a town!"

And I had to agree.

But later we all went for a walk in the neighbourhood and Isaac showed me a beehive 

that's surrounded by an electric fence to keep out the bears.

In retreat

The last time I was in Colorado was 11 years ago, and the day after touching down, I woke up with what seemed like the worst hangover I'd ever had. It turned out to be altitude sickness: Denver is a mile high. Today in Boulder I've been feeling not as bad, but certainly delicate, so much so that I've several times retreated from the joys of being with Lux and Cece and gone back to bed.

Also, it's English weather. How dare it be damp, chilly and overcast? I was promised sunshine.

The other news is that I watched The Fault in our Stars on the plane and wondered why they had bothered to adapt the book. I enjoyed the book: I liked the writing and the tone. The film is a poor thing - the screen equivalent of  "a right strawy epistle." 
OK you guys...the first one to tell me who first used that phrase and about what, will get a free copy of Plotting for Grown-ups.

Plotting for Bacon

Puzzling some more on why Lisa thought the bacon sandwich was for me (see last post)….I checked the Plottings and found a host of bacon references. These are just three.

today’s tweet from @sallystoneymoor

Butter and bacon – two things I can’t live without.

today’s tweet from @sallystoneymoor

For all those non-veggies out there: have you embraced the BLT or are you a bacon butty person?

And later, when I was making myself a bacon sandwich for dinner, he arrived at the back door looking wan. He was carrying two Chatsworth Farm Shop carrier bags stuffed full of something.

“Ooooh, that smell. It’s months since I had a bacon sandwich,” he said longingly…….

.....................

…“You poor thing. Would you like a bacon sandwich to cheer you up?”

“Would I? Do Screwfix do next day delivery?”

also, I have to tell you again that the publisher has slashed the price of the ebook editions of my comic novels, Plotting for Beginners and Plotting for Grown-ups, to 99 pence in the UK and 99 cents in the US. Be a peach, and tell everyone you know. I’m asssuming you’ve already bought them yourself….

Now I’m going to shower and drive to Manchester airport. Colorado, here I come!

Life is a bacon sandwich

We had such delicious salads on the course last week, that I considered – again - becoming a vegetarian, like so many of my immediate family. But then waiting for the train home on the station platform, another student and I smelled bacon, and we simultaneously sniffed and said - “Ooh, bacon!”

Bacon is definitely the deal breaker when it comes to giving up meat. I heard on the news that every bacon sandwich you eat takes an hour off your life. I didn’t pause much for thought, not because I don’t value every moment, but because I believe I have bacon-proof genes. My mother lived to be 91 and my father 84, and they certainly never knowingly turned down a bacon sandwich.

Bearing all this in mind I was still rather discomfited by something that happened on Monday when I was having lunch at Hassop Station with Chrissie Poulson, crime writer extraordinaire.

The lovely Lisa, who usually works in the bookshop, was working in the cafe that day. She’s only ever sold me books, but when she brought our orders to the table – an LBT with salad, and summer vegetable soup - she said “Hi Sue, I guess this is yours,” and handed me the LBT. Chrissie got the soup.

“How did you know?” I asked, aghast.

She merely laughed.

It’s worrying, though. Can you tell someone loves bacon sandwiches just by looking at them?

This is an LBT I ate in the Big Sur last year, and you need to know that I took the photo because I was so impressed by the compostable box.

Almost forgot – the publisher has slashed the price of the ebook editions of my comic novels, Plotting for Beginners and Plotting for Grown-ups, to 99 pence in the UK and 99 cents in the US. Be a peach, and tell everyone you know.

Recovery position

When I first arrived at the screenwriting course at Lumb Bank last Monday, I was impossibly nervous. I thought everyone else would be young and hip and that I’d be the left–out, past-it, fuddy-duddy. (Oooh, hyphen overload.)  I need not have worried. Yes there were a lot of young people there, but they were friendly, and there was no hint in their hello’s of “What the hell are you doing here?”

The place we stayed – Ted Hughes’ old house -  was an old and comfortable country house half way down a hill, facing south, with views of woodland and hills. 

The library…

The sitting room…

 

I slept badly, but there were huge compensations - lovely walks, good food, and a hilarious last-night game of charades. Oh yes, and the point of it all  – excellent workshops and time to write on our own.

I got home at lunchtime on Saturday in a zombie-like state of exhaustion, but at the same time so wound-up that all I could do was lie flat on my bed for several hours in a semi-conscious torpor, neither awake nor asleep. I didn’t recover enough to talk to Dave in any meaningful way until Sunday.

Now I am enthused. I’m no longer working on a film version of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. It’s going to be a television serial, and the first task is to examine the structure of the story and work out how many one hour episodes I need. It’s so exciting that I’m no longer dreading the winter.

A day off

The Ageing Hippie (in the US Peace Corps in Pretoria) still has no internet, but on occasional Saturdays she makes a long trip – most of it by dirt track – to her nearest town, and there in Wimpy’s she can have half an hour of wifi. I knew she’d be there yesterday so I emailed her, and found myself saying this…

“It is 8.24, a sunny autumnal morning and I am sitting in bed with my Yorkshire tea and Dave is playing his guitar downstairs – Bob Dylan’s Ramona. I just had breakfast in bed - two of Dave’s oatcakes with my home made lemon curd. Now Dave is playing San Francisco Bay Blues.”

Then I realised that it is not just “autumnal”. It is autumn, and I changed what I’d written.

In summer, we sit outside a lot at Hepworth Towers – to read, to talk, to daydream. Today it was too chilly: I sat in the sunshine in the bay window to knit patches for the worn-out elbows of my favourite cardigan. Hey ho.

The autumn has come so soon this year. Too soon. Most teatimes in summer we play table tennis on the back lawn. Yesterday I had to do it in a boiled wool jacket.

Dave always beats me at table tennis. He beats me at Scrabble, too, and crokinole. He doesn’t see why this might be a tad annoying. I have won just one game of table tennis in the whole of the summer.

“It’s just a bit of fun,” he said yesterday. “It’s just a game. It doesn’t matter who wins, does it?”

“Not if you’re the person who always wins,” I said. “And when I try my very hardest to play the best I can, it’s dispiriting never to win.” He isn’t a bit competitive, but I am.

“Oh,” he said, “I don’t try my best. I know you don’t like backhand spins, so I never do them.”

Bugger. I am even worse than I thought.

The other thing to tell you is that I finished reading Wuthering Heights and enjoyed it slightly more hated it less after Cathy’s death (the midpoint). I have also watched half of the film, which is excellent. Today I shall watch the rest. I am watching it in two sessions because it’s so dark and so violent, and I can’t bear violence. When I was little I used to hide behind the sofa. Now I just shut my eyes. The book has infected me, though. There is a narration inside a narration in the book, which I have unconsciously mimicked in this post.

Tomorrow I go to stay in Ted Hughes’ old house for my screenwriting course. Whoop-di-doo! There is no wifi there so I won’t be posting again until I get back next weekend. No radio, no Twitter, no news. Yes.

what this blog is and is not

I was so upset by the end of the cease-fire in Gaza yesterday, added to the dreadful news from everywhere else, that I couldn’t blog. I began to understand why when everyday the headlines read like something from a nightmarish dystopia, some people tweet nothing but pictures of kittens.

If you’re a long-term reader you’ll know that this isn’t a political blog: it’s about my writing, and my life. The oppression of the Palestinians is the only political issue that appears on here. And I guess that you know how I feel about that by now. Yesterday, I was shocked at the news of the beheading of the American journalist, James Foley. And I was sad for him and his family. Innocent people are being brutally killed all the time in Gaza. And I hope you’ll accept that it is not minimising the horror of James Foley’s death to say that every innocent life that is lost in whatever war zone is equally sad. Everyone’s life is of equal value. In the words of the Quaker classic, Advices and Queries,

“Remember that each one of us is precious, unique, a child of God.”

This blog isn’t a religious blog either.

I want to write about something else. When I can, I will.

In the meantime, here is my version of cute kittens – my granddaughters – who I am flying to see two weeks today, if World War III hasn’t broken out by then.

There is trouble and suffering all over the globe

Sometimes, the news is so universally bad that it is difficult to know what to do, never mind what to write on the blog.

Be honest – what do you think of Wuthering Heights?

I first read Wuthering Heights when I was 19, expecting it to be a blockbusting romantic tale of passionate love that would blow me away. It wasn’t, and it didn’t, and I hated it. I am reading it 40-odd years later and now I just find it tiresome, and if I wasn’t reading it for homework I’d have long since given up. As it is, I am half way through, Cathy has just died, and I am having a rant about the whole affair before I carry on. Now I see the book as a study in the long term effects of child abuse and neglect: it is precisely the kind of novel I would avoid, whoever wrote it and however many prizes it had won.

Homework?  I am going on a residential screenwriting course next week and one of the tutors has asked that we read WH, and watch the acclaimed 2011 film version (yes, that really dark one) in preparation. By the way, I just googled the film to find a link for you and in the blurb under the search results it described it as “the greatest love story ever told.” Love? Really? it’s not my idea of love.

When I finished reading Unless last week, I looked at reviews on Amazon and as always, for some ghoulish pleasure, checked out the one star reviews. I’ve realised that most readers who write one star reviews of well-written novels just don’t “get” the book. And I’m wondering how many stars I would give WH if I were reviewing it on Amazon.

This second time around I am expecting nothing in terms of enjoyment, and am trying to view the book in terms of the quality of the writing, and how I would adapt it for the screen. But I do hope I’m not the only one on the course next week who detests the novel.

I haven’t forgotten Gaza. On Saturday, I went on a local demo to encourage people to boycott Israeli goods. A man wearing a grey suit and an angry red face shouted at us - “You dirty scum-bags!”

Who did he think he was? A character from Wuthering Heights?

Fan letters to novelists

Do you ever write to authors?

Guess what I found in my “jewellery” box when I was looking for our Dennis the Menace Fan Club badge last week?

Two postcards to me from Carol Shields. THE Carol Shields. I had written to her on two occasions to thank her for particular books – I’ve never written to any other novelist -  and she had responded.

This was before I had started writing myself. Now I know how welcome is a letter or email from someone who has enjoyed a book I’ve written. It makes my day too.

Treasures

I looked after my grandsons on Friday, so I decided to unearth the box of old Beanos belonging to the family member who declines to be named. When we moved here from Sheffield, we had to leave almost all our possessions in the removal firm’s warehouse for eighteen months while we found a house to buy. The family member who declines to be named refused to trust his Lego or his Beanos to anyone, so they came with us to the rented house. And he was wise. The warehouse burned down, and Dave and I lost too much to list: some of it was replaceable, but so much of it wasn’t. It was heartbreaking.
The Beanos were a huge hit (as the Lego has always been)

and at the end of the day I went upstairs to look in my jewellery box for our Dennis the Menace Fan Club badge. It wasn’t there, but I found the tags that were tied onto the cribs of my three babies in hospital.

So not everything of sentimental value was lost in the flames.
My heart goes out to the people of Gaza.

150,000 people showing their solidarity with Gaza

I hate crowds, but I went on the national demo for Gaza in London yesterday and it was beyond wonderful - a coalition of caring and outraged ordinary people spending their Saturday on a shout to the UK government to stand up for justice and liberty.

Here we are assembling outside the BBC, so they can’t ignore us. It was also a welcome opportunity for some chanting specifically aimed at their biased presentation of the conflict.

Can you see me?

The march was noisy but peaceful, and there was no trouble of any kind, not a single arrest.

We were there to demand an end to the massacre of Palestinians, a UK arms embargo against Israel, and an end to the siege/blockade of Gaza that has been crushing the life out of Gaza for years. We wanted justice for all Palestinians, wherever they live in the Occupied Territories.

There were a lot of placards with the same slogans, so I tried to snap the ones I liked that had individual messages:

 

An ordinary placard, but photogenic demonstrators:

This is my favourite:

Saturday, I’ll be in London

Click this link to find out what I’ll be doing.

(I hope this is not just an intermission) Her Mistress’s Voice

Jane and I once got a rejection from a literary agent for one of our books that said this:

Having read these opening chapters I am not really sure that this is for me. I find the conversational tone quite wearing after a while, and as I imagine the whole novel is going to be written from Sally's point of view, I wonder whether you would be better off with someone who is captivated by her...

I know how she felt, NOT about Sally or our book, but generally speaking: I agree that if you don’t like a first person narrator’s voice, you’re not going to enjoy the book.

I just picked up from the library a well-written novel with impeccable reviews, read 30 pages of it and then put it down. The novel was written in the first person and the narrator’s voice grated on me. It could have been a mood thing: I may have another bash at it in the future. Possibly.

But the issue is not just about the voice of a first person narrator, it’s also to do with style. There are some writers whose style is so compatible with your sensibilities that when you read their books, you feel as if you are swimming in pure cool water surrounded by a beautiful landscape of hills and trees. It’s a feeling that I find hard to describe. Perhaps it’s more apt to say that you feel as though you’re back swimming in your own amniotic fluid.

I can only think of a few writers who fit into this category for me - Carol Shields, Sebastian Barry, Helen Dunmore’s writing in The Siege, and Christopher Tilghman’s in his book of short stories, In a Father’s Place. Two days ago, I desperately needed an intelligent book to distract me from the news, and Carol Shields’ Unless came to the rescue. It is a book about unhappiness and feminism and family and that makes it sound ridiculously worthy and way beyond ordinary, low-brow mortals like me…but it isn’t. And it’s just what I need right now.

(p.s. if you had not realised, the title of this post refers to the ceasefire in Gaza.)

Hopelessness….can change the world

Our small silent peace vigil in Bakewell yesterday was powerful; but this morning I woke up exhausted and hopeless and am still in my pyjamas at 10 a.m. I swore I would not look at the news or the net today (except to check if there’s a ceasefire)  but I was drawn back via a quote about compassion from someone called Andrew Boyd to something else he wrote. It has helped. Maybe it will help you, too. This is an excerpt from his piece 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.

World War 1 and Gaza

That’s an excerpt from a letter Dave wrote to the broadsheets yesterday. All over Britain today, people will be commemorating the start (why not the end?) of WW1.  

I will be joining Bakewell Quakers in a silent peace vigil, and I will be holding this placard:

Yesterday’s gone