Here at last

I am here in San Francisco - at last - where the sky is blue, the sun is hot, and the babies are beautiful.

Inhumanity

The book I've chosen to read on the plane tomorrow is Star of the Sea. It's about a boat carrying Irish refugees who are fleeing to America from the Irish Potato Famine in 1847.
I keep thinking that the plight of the Irish in the potato famine is like the plight of the Pakistanis in the recent floods, because of the paltry help offered by people outside the disaster.

The media spotlight has moved away from Pakistan, but the suffering goes on and on. There has not been the overwhelming and generous response from the rest of the world as there was for the victims of the Haiti earthquake, or the Indian Ocean tsunami. It’s been suggested that this is because of the suspected links between the Pakistanis and Al Q’aeda and the Taliban. A friend told me that someone said to her – “I’m not sending money to Pakistan – they’re all a bunch of terrorists.”
“14 million of them?” said my friend.
“Absolutely.”
“Even if you really believe that” (utter rubbish) “what about the children?”
“Their children are their responsibility,” said the heartless one.
Inside the cover of Star of the Sea is a quote from Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to HM Treasury in 1847, who was knighted the following year for overseeing famine relief. He said:
“[The Famine] is a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. The Irish are suffering from an affliction of God’s providence.”

I need to lie down

My suitcases are sitting on the blanket chest half packed.

I have assembled my ticket, my passport, my dollars, my travel insurance, my ear plugs, my anti-thrombosis socks. I have cleaned my shoes, washed my jumpers, assembled my presents.

I have bought a new book to read on the flight – Star of the Sea by Joseph O’ Connor.

How am I expected to contain myself for the next two days until my flight?

I haven’t seen Isaac since January, the Little Red Hen since last October, and Lux never.

Helpful quote no. 6

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. 
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

W H Murray

note – Goethe did not actually write these words. It is a very free translation by John Anster of an idea expressed in Faust.

Blast from the past

I recently met Isaac’s old nursery school teacher in the Co-op in Bakewell. She hasn’t seen him for 33 years but oh, she remembers him. “He was delightful,” she said. “He was my treat.”

(Isaac is the little one on the far right.)

Mrs T asked me what he was doing now. I gave her a two line summary of his life, and said he lived in San Francisco.

Then came the difficult question: “What does he do?”

It is a long time since I understood what Isaac does in his job. All I could say was that he had an important job with Twitter.

I just looked it up on his resume:

Twitter (San Francisco CA)

Lead, Partner Product Management

Built the Partner Product Management team from scratch. Now the lead of four Partner PMs defining Twitter's product partner strategy, divining and prioritizing product needs in key verticals.

What, oh what, is a key vertical?

Who knows? Never mind – I shall be able to ask him next week when I see him. Yay! I am going to SF next week.

As I sit here in bed writing this, a male voice is shouting from the bathroom - “Have we got any more of this conditioner stuff?”

Not only does he not know what a key vertical is (either),  until six months ago he didn’t even know what conditioner was, and now he is anxious because we seem to have run out. Aren’t men sweet?

Apologies

I’m sorry, you guys, but I’m not in a bloggy kind of mood at the moment. I am writing, saxophoning, gardening, and making lists for my trip to see Lux and family next week. (Yay!)

Today I have to go and buy some dollars while trying not to pay too much attention to the appalling exchange rate.

In the meantime, you might be amused by the following piece I had in The Times some time ago.

Every couple needs one

Just as every newly married couple should have a shed on their wedding list if they want their marriage to survive, so there is something every older couple needs, and I know what it is.

It’s not just retired people who need it, such as those poor wives whose husbands – bereft of work - follow them around all day asking “What are you doing? What are you doing now? Where are you going? What time will you be back?”

It can also be couples who work from home, like my husband and I, who have a room and a computer each and who have, you would think, no need to argue.

Our problem is our different styles of working. He works in short bursts, sharp and efficient, sure footed and sound. He cuts through work like a man with a machete hacking through brambles.

I am slow and woolly headed. I need to go to my room and shut the door and be left alone for hours at a time. I am like the author who, when she was asked if there were words she tended to overuse, said “Yes - two words: go away.”

But machete man does half an hour here, and gets up for a drink; half an hour there, and gets up to stroke the cat. Then as he’s on his feet he will come and ask if I remembered to ring the plumber. He’ll do ten minute’s writing, then look outside the door to see if there’s enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers, so he can go out cycling later. But then as there’s only enough blue sky for one leg, he will come and ask if I think it’s going to rain. Then it’s fifteen minutes on the phone, and a shout to ask where his stapler is. He does half an hour of planning, then feels peckish and slopes into the kitchen for a bowl of yoghurt, and while he’s there he may as well listen to the headlines. Then he comes up to rage about what he’s just heard. Aarghh !

This was all true until a month ago. That’s when he bought the router, which (for the uninitiated) is a power tool used for precise cutting and shaping of timber.

Routers are wonderful. Every couple should have one. The router has revolutionised our lives, which I now divide up into BR and AR ( Before Router and After Router ). Now, in the AR epoch, I have no excuse not to get on with my work, because he sits in his room as if nailed to his chair until all of his work is done: the sooner it’s done, the sooner he can play with his router.

He started with picture frames. Everything in the house that’s vaguely rectangular has now been framed. Luckily, a router isn’t just useful for framing. It can do decorative edging for shelves, cupboard doors, engraved wooden signs, etched patterns and pictures, dovetails – anything in wood that needs shaping or grooving, cutting or profiling.

And in the evening when his back aches from bending over the workbench, and his fingers are numb with vibration, he sits and flicks through his catalogues of router attachments and cutters. All is quiet except for occasional exclamations, such as “I’m going to get some pronged teenuts. They’re a joy.” Or he may read one of his routing magazines - the sort of publication that features in the missing words round on Have I got news for you - with headlines like “Power up!” or “Beautiful Beast! The new big Bosch router is here.”

It’s not just my husband who is besotted with his router. Believe me, there is a routing fraternity, with ramifications way beyond woodwork. Last week my brother ( who has a “tasty” Elu router ) asked my husband’s view on some abstruse etymological question and on hearing the reply said “Yes, of course. Anyone with a router talks sense.”

As well as improving domestic harmony, the router has solved the Christmas present problem: from now on I’ll buy presents for his router. There is an infinite variety of cutters: no man could live long enough to try them all. I’ve just been down to get his catalogue to count them, but my husband had gone, and on his study door was a new wooden sign “Gone routing.”

published here with kind permission of The Times

copyright Sue Hepworth/Times Newspapers

Rules for writing

You might be interested to read Kurt Vonnegut’s rules for writing. If you don’t write yourself, you could see if the book you are currently reading fits in with these guidelines…

Creative Writing 101

Now lend me your ears.  Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist.  No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible.  To heck with suspense.  Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964).  She broke practically every one of my rules but the first.  Great writers tend to do that

Rabbit redux

So there we were, sitting in the bay window of the dining room playing Scrabble, when who should we see creeping down the path, but the cat, carrying a young rabbit by the scruff of the neck. We peered through the glass at the rabbit. It’s eyes were wide open, but it was motionless. It appeared to be dead.

The cat walked towards the front door.

“All the doors are shut, aren’t they?” I said, remembering our earlier troubles (this and this).

“Yes, Yes, everything is shut.” said Dave.

I moved my letters around on my letter rack.

There was a mild thump from across the hallway. We looked at each other. It was exactly the kind of thump the cat makes when she comes through a window and drops onto the carpet. We raced to my study. Nothing. I ran all over the house calling for the cat. No response. I shut all the doors. Dave returned to the study.

“She’s here! And the rabbit has escaped. I think it’s behind your desk.”

He gallantly hoiked it out.

Thank God for Dave. Thank God we heard the thump. I can just imagine stumbling into my room with my early morning cup of tea to do some writing, sitting down at the desk, stretching out my legs and feeling something small and warm and furry, move against my bare foot.

Now all we have to worry about are the fleas.

Reality

  

Well, I have to tell you I’m a tad disappointed by your lack of response to the last post. There was I,trying to get a discussion going, and what do you say? Zilch. And to think that I was hoping you’d rate different designs for my book cover if I have to go down the self-publishing route. Sod that for a lark.

Dave’s just come in the bedroom raving about the latest images on the Hubble telescope site. He checks them out every so often, and then dances about the room in excitement and awe at the vastness of the universe. I find it hard to make my imagination stretch that far. I look at the images and just think Aren’t they pretty?

But then when he was little he apparently said to his father every night, when his father tucked him in, “What is there at the end of the universe?”

Meanwhile, in another town and another bedroom, I was asking my mother, “Will we be having ice-cream tomorrow?”

Thoughts on readers, and on writing

I’ve just had feedback from three friends on the latest incarnation of But I told you last year that I loved you. And what’s interesting to me is that apart from one particular plot point, they all pick out different things to comment on.

And this led me on to thinking about the variety of responses to books in general. It may be obvious to you, dear reader, but I’m always surprised at how differently different people respond to the same book. I don’t mean the fact that one person enjoys a book, while another tries to read it and gives up, casting it aside in disgust or frustration or boredom. What I mean is that one reader will say a book is light and comic, while another considers it serious.

And then there are the readers who think that if a book makes them laugh it cannot also be deeply serious. Also, that somehow a funny book is easier to write than a book where the author does not use humour. And another thing – some readers think that if a book is easy to read, it must be easier to write (writers know that the opposite of this is true.)  And also – that a book that is difficult to read is somehow more worthy and serious than a book that is accessible. (This last opinion enrages me!)

Do you have anything to say about any of this, dear reader?

Here’s a starting point – one reader told me they thought Plotting for Beginners dealt with some serious stuff, and another told me they thought Zuzu’s Petals was “light – and much lighter than Plotting.”

Better now

No, no, I haven’t been in a swee for a week. We went to stay in Herefordshire with friends.

There was time to read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (gripping)

and a couple of days when it was sunny enough to eat outside

And there was a lot of rain.

There was good food, good company, good walking, but only one incident of note – Dave was almost trampled by a very distressed, injured heifer.

Unable (at the moment) to go with the flow

It’s the middle of my night and I am lying awake, worrying that the people who have just bought my mother’s house won’t realise that in order to get hot water, you have to turn on the immersion switch upstairs and the one downstairs.

I spent yesterday with an empty feeling that felt like hunger, but I knew that eating something wouldn’t make me feel any better.

I told my good friend about it, and she emailed about her own experience - “the sale of my mother's house was uniquely upsetting and I wonder if that was when I really understood that she wasn't coming back.”

That may be it.

When I was little and I got in a tantrum my parents said I was “having a swee.” When they laughed about it later, they never mentioned my brothers and sisters having a swee, it was just Sue who had swees.

There is a three-year-old here – right here - and she is stamping her foot, and shouting: 

I didn’t want to lose Pa in 2002!  

I didn’t want to lose Ma in 2008!  

And I don’t want to lose the house now! I don’t! I don’t!

Just like in olden times, my reasonable (and lovable) brothers and sisters are getting on with their lives, and being sensible, and I am having a swee.

And it’s hard to sleep when you’re having a swee.

I’m sad. It’s completion day on the sale of my parents’ house.

Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, - but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

     Edna St. Vincent Millay

(Apologies to E.S.V.M. for the odd formatting of this poem. Neither Blogger nor LiveWriter will allow me to get it right.)

Dialogue

Sue: When you sit at your computer, you lean forwards and peer at the screen like an old man.

Dave: We’re getting old.

Sue: At least you’re fit. It’s pretty good still being able to cycle 35 miles.

Dave: That’s true. (Pause.) Though I can’t always remember where I’ve been.

Photo by Isaac Hepworth

Pet Peeve

I posted an Ezra Pound poem on here the other day. I had to look it up on the net because someone had borrowed our Ezra Pound. The poem was easy to find, but it wasn’t easy to find a reliable version. I was appalled at the number of times it was misquoted – and one of them was by a poet, which was even more shocking.  Not only had she changed two words, she had added an extra one. I was upset, and Ezra Pound must have been turning in his grave. It is a gem of a poem. You would think people could get it right. Here it is again, just in case someone is looking for it on the net:

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

                      Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Two barely connected ideas

I missed my mother today. I feel as though my life is moving on and away from her. And I don’t want to leave her behind.
I am engrossed in Helen Dunmore’s Talking to the Dead. I admire her writing tremendously. In this book, a woman talks about her sister thus…
Sometimes Isabel pours Jeyes Fluid down her drains, or boiling water on to an ants nest which is too near the kitchen, as our mother did. When I watch Isabel do these things I am at home, as if something is going on which is beyond liking, beyond even love.
Helen Dunmore speaks to me.

One cool baby

Not only does my new granddaughter, Lux, have a big yawn, but she also has her own Twitter account @thebeean, and now she has made CNN. I think that gives me an excuse to have her picture on here – and her father’s- the man who works for Twitter: one happy dude (and not because Lux made CNN.)

Restraint

You may be looking for a new post, but you need to be thankful I’m not peppering my blog with pictures of my new granddaughter and her parents. Don’t you think I am being restrained?

Home

I was feeling sorry for myself yesterday, because I had to sign the contract for the sale of Ma’s house, delaying, pushing the papers around my desk, thinking - this is the last step, the last step and I don’t want to take it. It’s the final tangible goodbye.

One of the papers had to be signed with a witness, so I went to see a neighbour. I left the other two papers that did not need a witness, and went to mow the lawn. But the morning passed, and I had to get them in the lunchtime post, so in the end, I grabbed the papers and signed them in a rush like ripping off elastoplast.

Meanwhile, my 75 year old neighbour, who has been on 24 hour oxygen for over a year, is now too ill to be at home on his own, and yesterday was taken to hospital and thence to a care home. He has lived in that nice little house with the sunny, sheltered and pretty front garden since he was born. He will never see it again.

Meanwhile a family in  Gaza are living in their bombed out wreck of a house, on inadequate provisions, with water and fuel limited.

Meanwhile, a family in Pakistan has had their home washed away by the floods.

And here am I feeling sorry for myself?

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse,

Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Doing my head in

Trying to re-think a novel which I thought did exactly what I wanted it to do, in order to fit in with someone else’s view of the book, while maintaining the truth of it, is doing my head in…

…whereas walking back from the village shop with Dave on a sunny Saturday afternoon – that is heaven.

photo by Isaac Hepworth

Recidivist

Three weeks ago, I gave up watching Neighbours. There were two new hateful characters, a new actor had replaced one of my favourites, and the storylines were tawdry and tedious. Had it always been this way? Was the change in me? Had I finally grown up? 

This week a letter arrived, falling on me like a heavy weight. It was just another stage in a journey I never wanted to take, the journey that began with Ma’s dying. The solicitor dealing with the sale of Ma’s house wrote:

Please find enclosed a copy of our letter received from the purchasers solicitor this morning. I should be obliged if you could proceed to contact me at our office to confirm that completion the week commencing 23 August is agreeable.

This is what we have been working towards – of course -  but to see it in black and white makes it real. There is no alternative, there is no solution. We must bear the loss of the house.

It was lunchtime and I’d been working hard all morning. I took up the jacket I’m knitting for Lux, and sat down to watch Neighbours for comfort. It worked. The world of story is powerful. What would I do without fiction?

Tweets, texts and telegrams

Grandmothers get anxious during childbirth. When Isaac first rang to tell me that Wendy was having contractions, I told myself I would not text for updates more than every two hours, and I would not phone. I didn’t want to be intrusive or annoying.

For the first evening and then one night of sleep, it wasn’t too hard to restrain myself, but the labour went on and on with no result, and by the second night, if Isaac didn’t respond to my text within half an hour, my mind was ablaze with awful possibilities.

They were so far away, and there was nothing I could do. It doesn’t matter how old your children are, they are still your children. You don’t want harm to come to them, you don’t want their hearts to break.

Isaac works for Twitter, so it isn’t surprising that as well as sending texts to the family, he was tweeting to the world about the arrival of “the bean” (who, by the way, has her very own Twitter account and some of the following tweets are hers, forwarded by Isaac.)

This is a record of Isaac’s tweets…

update: no update. 4:59 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

RT @thebeean: ok let's do this thing. bring it. #hippiehomebirth 8:29 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

it's going to be a long night. 9:10 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

there's a whole lot of breathing going on. 11:17 AM Jul 30th via Echofon

twenty-four hours of labor and no sign of @thebeean 3:33 PM Jul 30th via web from Mission, San Francisco

refueling (@ Philz Coffee) http://t.co/W1cMz9I 5:08 PM Jul 30th via foursquare from Philz Coffee, San Francisco 

RT @thebeean: this #hippiehomebirth is taking forever. 7:20 PM Jul 30th via Echofon

still no baby. the @wendyverse being super strong and brave. #hippiehomebirth 10:04 PM Jul 30th via Echofon

35 hours of labor. come on @thebeean! 2:41 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

headed to the hospital. this #hippiehomebirth is becoming a #hippiehybridbirth. w00t! 3:28 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

#hippiehybridbirth formally known as #hippiehomebirth (@ St Luke's Hospital) http://t.co/EZDG91L 3:39 AM Jul 31st via foursquare from Mission, San Francisco 

settled in to hospital room. @wendyverse doing well but still no sign of @thebeean. 5:11 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

41 hours of labor and I now know what color hair @thebeean has. or at least what color it has on the tippy top of it's head. 7:58 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

44 hours of labor and a Cesarian brought me and @wendyverse Lux Hepworth (aka @thebeean), 8lb 4oz & 20.5". http://t.co/ubuzyeZ 6:29 PM Jul 31st via Echofon

RT @thebeean: hello, world 10:56 AM Jul 31st via Echofon

thrilled at the arrival of @thebeean and so touched by all the tweets over the last 50 hours. wow. THANK YOU. 9:01 PM Jul 31st via Echofon

Back in the 1950s, telegrams were the way to go. Ma’s twin sister lived in Africa, and every time she had a child, my uncle would send a telegram to my Gran.

BABY BOY SAFELY DELIVERED STOP MOTHER AND BABY DOING WELL STOP

I bet 1950s communications were easier on grandmothers’ nerves, but texts and tweets and emails and Flickr and Skype combine to help close a 5,000-mile-wide chasm in a family. Last night on Skype I saw little Lux and heard her cry, I saw Wendy happy and well, I saw Isaac holding Lux. I am glad I live in 2010, even if it did take me three days to unwind from Wendy’s labour.

The photo above is of me holding my grandson Gil.

An ending and a beginning

While little Lux, latest addition to the family tree, was settling on her twig, and while the Little Red Hen was recovering from 44 hours of labour – actually, while we were ALL recovering from her 44 hours of labour – I was doing a final sweep of Ma’s house with my big sister, Kath.

We have a buyer, we think it will go through, and this was our final weekend. Jen was there the weekend before, taking down curtains and dispatching remnant furniture to a sale, and she’d left us three mugs (one each, and one for Jonty, when he called), two dishes, a kettle and a pan. We had garden chairs and a card table, and we slept on a mattress on the floor.

It didn’t feel as awful, or as raw as it did last time. I don’t know why.

Jonty was there on Saturday afternoon helping us, when a cousin and his wife rolled up. They live 100 miles away, but happened to be driving through the dales, and thus Ma’s village, on their way to a holiday cottage, and Janey thought they should make a quick detour down the lane to say goodbye to Ma’s house.

“And there were three cousins standing in the road!” she said.

We sat on the lawn, with three of the party drinking tea (remember – only three mugs), and we remarked on how pleased Ma would be to see us there together in the sunshine on that last historic visit.

On Sunday, Kath and I locked up for our last time. There was nothing left of Ma, except a vase on the windowsill (for Jonty)

and a photograph of Ma, aged 90, sitting in the garden talking to some local children. Kath hid it in a quiet corner for the new owners to find.

She’s here!

My darling new and first American grand-daughter arrived in the world on Saturday after a long long labour, and then a Caesarean. She’s called Lux.

I can’t wait to meet her in September.

And here is her lovely mother – my super daughter-in-law, aka The Little Red Hen…

The family…

Here’s looking at you, kid…