Ten minutes with Neil Gaiman....

This is absolutely my favourite of the wonderful 10 minute films that were shown on Sky this Christmas. It's so sweet and so amazingly unexpected. I think what I like most about Neil's work is how it allows even the most adult subjects to retain their fairytale magic. You think you know where it's going, but somehow he always takes you somewhere better. And this little film definitely does that.

I think writing another play has just landed itself very firmly on my 'to do' list.

Picnics in Graveyards

Carrying on the cheery theme from the last story I posted here, I've been spookily pleased recently to see how many other people also enjoy picnics in graveyards. The only thing I wonder about is why I never meet them. But hey, I'm not complaining - nothing suits me better than an empty graveyard - empty that is, apart from the dead and all their stories.

Anyway, there's a good post up at a new blog find for me about exactly this, Been the Traveller, which has some of the weird kind of links I particularly enjoy.

What would you have on your gravestone? Nicholas asks.

Well hello, that's easy for me. I already have had mine designed for me by the amazing Neil Gaiman



"Never stopped believing"... that'll do me nicely.

Graves...

More from my recent visit to Bishops Castle, because I wanted to record some of the other graves we found in the churchyard there. We had the good fortune of being shown round by Peter Norton, who as well as being the Church Warden, has just published an excellent walking guide to the area and knows everything there is to know about the place. He took us first of all to see the grave of the African. This was given Grade II listing last year as part of the bicentary year of the abolition of the slave trade, but the origins of the 'I.D' buried there are still a mystery. Also as to why it's facing away from the other graves and into this dark corner:



This is what I've managed to find on-line:

The Grave of an Unknown African 'I.D.' in St John the Baptist Church, Bishops Castle

The headstone on this highly unusual grave has an inscription which reads: 'Here lieth the Body of I.D./A Native of Africa/who died in ths (sic) Town/Sept 9th 1801/God hath made of one Blood, all nations of Men. Act 17 ch. ver. 26'. Nothing is known for sure about who this 'native of Africa' could be, though there is a record in the burial register of the internment of a John Davies on 12th September.

The lack of information about this individual is an evocative reminder of the human impact of the slave trade. The likelihood is that he came to Bishop's Castle as a servant in one the local country houses. But the quality of the headstone, with its elegant decoration and inscription, indicates that the person had achieved some status but the time he died. The quote is also one that the abolitionists used, suggesting that it was erected by someone with sympathies to the movement. In addition, the position of the grave is very curious, turned away from the others in the area with the inscription hidden from general view.

Overall, the historic importance of the grave is as a rare contemporary reminder of the stories of the many millions of unidentified individuals who were taken from their indigenous lands during the slave trade.

But if anyone else has anything else to add, I'd be really interested.

Another grave had resonance because of a conversation we'd had at breakfast. I'd been talking about a discussion I'd been involved in about a grave inscription: 'She'd done her best'. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing to say? Our views were divided down the middle - half thinking it was condescending, and half considering it a compliment. So it was interesting to see this inscription - if you can't read them, the words at the bottom say, 'She hath done what she could' - which carried a similar sentiment.



That is until we looked at the date and saw it was Christmas Day - maybe she'd only managed to put the sprouts on before giving up!

And it is the lack of gravestones in this spot which is probably the most poignant. This was where the bodies of people from the old workhouse in the town were buried. It's kept clear now as a sign of respect, but Peter reckoned there were probably more bodies buried here than in the rest of the graveyard.



In fact, I could probably write something about every grave there - what's the significance of this cat, for instance?



It made me want to read all over again the manuscript for Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book which I've been lucky enough to have in my sticky hands before publication. It's a great book, and it has a real feel of a classic. Not least because I've been walking round every graveyard I've visited since reading it expecting to see little Bod, the book's hero who lives amongst graves and keeps one foot in the land of the living and one foot in the land of the dead. There's just the right mix of humour, and scariness, and the shiver you can't help but have that these are real people you're walking over. And they might just jump up and hold onto your ankle if you don't show enough respect. I can't wait for it to come out because I suspect, looking at Neil's record, that the hype is going to be lots and lots of fun.

My books of the year...

Of course it's daft making such predictions in February because who knows what the next ten months will bring, but I can't imagine much beating the very different books I have on the go at the moment.



Twyla Tharp is one of the great choreographers in America, and her book, The Creative Habit discusses the lessons she's learnt about creativity. Even the design of the book seems to let the light in - it feels inspiring just to look at. I've been thinking about space and writing a lot at the moment. I keep wanting to cut open up my sentences and breathe. In The Creative Habit, there are so many paragraphs and sentences I've underlined and marked throughout that it's obvious it deserves a post of its own soon. I always scribble on my favourite books, I treat it as a compliment to the writer - (provided they are my own books, of course) but it made me laugh when about half way through the book, Twyla Tharp said: 'you have written on this book, haven't you?' It summed up the feel of the book for me, like having a conversation with the kind of wise mentor you dream of.

My second book is All We Know by Ciaran Carson, which is not just a 'novelistic' sequence of poems, it is one which - and I'll take this from the blurb - gestures 'towards a conventional sonnet sequence - the poems consist of fourteen lines, or multiples therof, in lines of fourteen syllables.' And if that wasn't enough, it references film noir, Cold War thriller, fairy story, and the art of the fugue. Best of all, you can forget all of the above when you're reading it and just enjoy it. This is one of the best books I've read recently about everything to do with love. Trust me.

And of course, there is this one, which just keeps getting better and better and more frightening and funnier as I read on.

Tiptoe through the graveyard

Shall I tell you what I've got sitting on my desk to read right now? Want to feel really really jealous? OK, it's only the manuscript of Neil Gaiman's latest, unpublished until October 2008, novel, The Graveyard Book. I've been reading it on and off for a while but I kept having to break off while he wrote the next bit - God, some writers are so selfish sometimes, did he really need to sleep? - but now I've got the whole yummy thing in front of me, and I can't wait to sink myself into this sinister, spooky, funny, sweet graveyard world.

I'll report more later, but in the meantime you can shake Neil's Magnificent Oracular journal. Or I'll tell you what, shall I give you a random sentence from The Graveyard Book ... ?

The creature that grinned sharp teeth and let a pointed tongue of improbable length waggle between its teeth, did not look like Bod's idea of a bishop: its skin was piebald and it had a large spot across one eye, making it look almost piratical.

Hmmm... now who will play him in the film, I wonder.

That nice Mister Gaiman...

...has given me a quote for my writing. I've raved about him before - often - so I think it's a given how much this means to me. Nothing to do with promotion, or sales (hmmm...heaven knows, book sales aren't my strong point!), but more when writers and readers you respect say good things about your writing, then it's all the motivation you need to pull your game up a notch so as not to let them down. And that's always a good thing. Christmas has come a week early!

Here's the quote. And now I can't wait for my next book to come out so I can see this emblazoned on the front. Meanwhile, I'm such a saddo I've put it up above my desk so I can keep reading it!

Sarah Salway is an astonishingly smart writer. Her fiction is always beautifully structured, touching and clever -- she manages the trick of making people that you care about in stories you admire. I can't wait to see what she does next. Neil Gaiman