Inside an Oulipo Meeting

Readers of my work, especially Something Beginning With and Messages, probably won't be surprised to hear that I'm fascinated by the Oulipo Group.

A treat therefore to pick up the latest copy of Paris Review in the London Library, and find an interview with the only American member, Harry Mathews, and even more of a treat to get a description of just what goes on at the monthly Oulipo meetings. The first surprise was that, apparently, they have a 'very strict Agenda'.

First up is 'Creation', where a new method of experimentation is discussed, with descriptions and examples. Then comes 'Rumination', where possible creations 'not yet worked out' are examined. Then is 'Erudition', a conversation about works by writers not members. And lastly, 'Action, past and Future', which features Oulipion activities around the globe, and lastly, 'Small Talk'.

According to Mathews,

'We try to get through creation and rumination before drinking, because once we sit down to dinner things can get rather disorderly.'

But not, it seems, that disorderly, because

'Now we meet at six because Jacques Roubaud likes to go to bed early and Ian Monk has a train to catch.'

So now you know.

It's a brilliant interview; I was scribbling notes and quotes down from it like mad. How about this, which sums up perfectly how I feel about my writing but never quite crystallised it before:

'I've always said that my ideal reader would be someone who after finishing one of my novels would throw it out the window, presumably from an upper floor of an apartment building in New York, and by the time it had landed would be taking the elevator down to retrieve it.'

Or this, which is exactly what I'm going through at the moment:

'William Gaddis once said to me - that an unfinished novel is like having a sick guest in the house. I dream of the day when it'll be over'.

So here's to sick guests getting better and walking straight up the best seller lists (with bouncing rubber covers, of course, so they survive their fall from the top floor window).

I must admit to my own The Man Who ... Bateman" moment when I laughed out loud in the library at one snippet of the interview, which was the reaction of Mathew's publisher when he first saw him: 'He said, I didn't imagine you looked like that. I think he was expecting a gnome.'

And to finish with Mathew's own gnomic invention, the perverb - take two proverbs that can be divided easily into halves and cross them, eg A rolling stone leads to Rome, and All roads gather no moss.

And if you dare to ask what the point of it all is, this is what Mathews says:

'It's very liberating. It allows you to make up something that you never would have if you didn't have this nasty problem to solve.... as though you were wandering through a jungle and suddenly you come into a clearing that is a beautifully composed garden.'

Friday Fact

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

And boy, would your throat be dry enough to appreciate it.

They're back together!

No, not them, but The Verve. News that got me dancing up and down with excitement, an all sweet symphony. Forget zigazags, The Verve have to be one of the ultimate writerly bands - beyond punctuation as Mike Gee of iZINE apparently defined them, "The Verve were no longer the question mark or the cliche. They were the statement and the definition."

And Squeeze too (albeit a while ago). Life is good...

Poems on the Moon

I can't think of anything more exciting than having one of my poems read on the moon, so I was cross to miss this competition. Some consolation though to see such a worthy winner in Joanna Clark's poem, Phase.

And of course you didn't actually get to go to the moon to read your poem. Or not this year at least. It was bounced off the surface apparently, and will probably still be echoing in deepest space. As Clark herself says in her poem:

She probably won’t hear your words up there.

Maybe by this time next year, though, they'll send the winning poets up in a shuttle for a proper moonlit reading. (I can think of a few I wouldn't mind leaving up there.)

48 Words for Alfie

You don’t notice my eyes at first. Not many look further than my white face mask. But when I shake out my coat, and one hundred eyes quiver on the edge, then you know nothing gets past me. When you realise I see everything, I’m ready to pounce.

(Find out more here.)

Buying the Bronte house

Not the Haworth vicarage admittedly, but here's your chance to own the Bronte family's house.

Friday Fact

There are more people alive today than have ever died.

OK, I have a reason for putting this one up. My partner was told it the other day, and I'm still not sure if I can believe it or not. Any views, sources, final yes's or no's would be extremely welcome. Astonishing if it is true.

Poetry Thursday

Some interesting poems here, including possibly the only haiku I have read about eating marmite.

LondonLit

At last, a book festival that probably won't feature mainly celebrities who have written books for the sole purpose of the book deal, rather than what they might have to say.

London Lit Plus looks positively edgy and egalitarian - celebrating people who are actually interested in writing, and how they respond to reading other writing (whether they are famous or not).

Which is what writing festivals should be about, surely? The writing, rather than the selling. Somehow, by taking risks, this one seems to be bursting with energy.

And is it just me, or is energy missing from many other festivals I get the programme for? It has got so I can't actually summon up the enthusiasm to go to events, not least because these are authors I can see in several other festivals already. Seeing their names repeatedly makes me feel I've heard them before too, and you can be pretty sure before you even turn up, that you know what you'll get.

It's a bit like the High Street of every British town. Useful, but nothing to get worried or excited about, and oh how I don't want my reading (and writing) to become like that.

Great looking website too - and the Chroma event is just one of the many I want to go to.

Davida v Goliath

Why isn't there more coverage about bullying at work? Milly Johnson, author of The Yorkshire Pudding Club, has written about the experiences she's going through at the moment on her blog. Takes a lot of courage to stand up to the bullies, especially when they're more powerful than you, and I salute her.

Email jokes...

This one made me laugh out loud:

Subject: 1st day - New Job

A passenger in a taxi leaned over to ask the driver a question and
tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, lost control of the
cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches
from a large plate glass window.

For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, and then the still
shaking driver said, "I'm sorry but you scared the daylights out of me."

The frightened passenger apologized to the driver and said he didn't
realize a mere tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much.

The driver replied, "No, no, I'm sorry, it's entirely my fault. Today is
my first day driving a cab.... I've been driving a hearse for the last
25 years..

Reading bits out the newspaper

We're heavily into exam fever in the house at the moment, coming to the end of GCSE's and in the middle of A2's, and no one has time to listen to me reading interesting bits out of the newspaper (not that they ever did really). Anyway, I'm going to do it here, because there's such a lovely column in today's G2. I found Hardeep Singh Kohli's brief picture of a shared father/son passion really moving. He writes:

I love shoes. Perhaps a little too much, but I really do love them. My father loved shoes and continues to admire mine, now that he has fallen inoxorably into the gaping chasm of 'comfortable' leisure footwear.

Later he made me laugh out loud with this comment:

For seven months I have been looking for a new pair of black shoes. Seven months. I have bought houses more quickly.

I'd like to go shopping with this man. We seem to move at the same pace when it comes to making decisions.

OK, I'm going back to munching my toast now, but wait, here's a bit about Virginia Wade, which reminds me of one of my most embarrasing foot-in-mouth moments ever. I was introduced to her at a lunch once and before I could stop myself, gushed, 'It's like meeting history.' She was less than amused, but let me just read this bit out from ... oh, you've gone.

Poetry Thursday

Bookmark George Szirtes' blog for brilliant writing and observation, and you can hear him reading his poems here, including one of my favourites, Losing, with the haunting first line: 'We lose each other everywhere'.

Get your own here.

Three Wednesday Things

A fidgety and angsty start to the day, but on my walk with Tally, three good things happened to cheer me up:

1. There was a peony out in full bloom in the park. A pink one with white tentacles inside, searching for the sun as if it was under water. Leaves were already falling, reminding me just what short lives these flowers have. I wanted to rush back home and see if the tight buds I bought yesterday had started to open.

2. A man was lying flat out on a bench. His head and body were covered but he'd taken off his socks and trainers, placing them neatly, side by side, under the bench. I thought he was asleep, but as I walked past, his bare toes wiggled.

3. Some teenagers were sitting under a tree, having pulled the branches down so low they'd made a tent for themselves. One of them - a friend of my daughter's - shouted out hello as I passed, and I made them laugh by pretending not to have known they were there. Teenagers are the very best - I just wish we didn't seem to be so frightened of them.

Not Just For Christmas

I'm not sure why I've done this. Just when things were getting back on an even keel, kids nicely settled, dog respectable.. I've gone and adopted a lion! Actually I know exactly what happened. It was Clare's fault. She got one first and hers looked pretty. So I clicked on the link to something called the Shameless Lions Writing Circle, smiled a bit when I read what was going on, saw this lion above which was easily the most magnificent (sorry Clare) then forgot about it. But I clicked again several days later. Hey, my guy was still an orphan although others were going fast. And I clicked again another few days later to find him looking hungrier and sadder. So eventually I pounced. It was a bit like when my grandmother used to tell us to eat up, otherwise the two potatoes left on the plate would 'get lonely'.

So, meet my new lion writing champion. He's called Alfie, after one of the characters I'm writing about. And he can SEE EVERYTHING... Those are peacock eyes on his coat, and you can tell he has superpowers by the mask he has to wear over his face. We're very pleased with each other. I'm teaching him to growl every time I turn on solitaire instead of writing another chapter, and he's learning to LOVE carrots and spinach.

ps There are still three lions left if you are interested. Go on, you know you want to ...

Short Story Conference

‘The Story Shall Be Changed’: Tales and Re-tellings in the Short Story

Saturday July 21st, 2007
Edge Hill University

The second short story conference at Edge Hill, bringing together writers, researchers and literary scholars.

Speakers include:

Professor Alan Wall (Richard Dadd in Bedlam and Other Stories)
Andy Sawyer (Science Fiction Foundation, University of Liverpool)
Cecilia Morreau (Leaf Books)

The conference is linked with the inaugural presentation of the Edge Hill Prize, for a published single author collection from the British Isles. This year’s shortlist is:

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things
Jackie Kay, Wish I Was Here
Nicholas Royle, Mortality
Colm Toibin, Mothers and Sons
Tamar Yellin, Kafka in Bronteland

Judges are A.L. Kennedy, Andrew Cant of Simply Books and Ailsa Cox, Reader in English and Writing at Edge Hill. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at the Royal Exchange, Manchester on July 20th.

Jackie Kay, Nicholas Royle and Tamar Yellin have confirmed that they will be reading at the conference. There will also be readings by short story authors including E.A. Markham, Sarah Salway, David Evans and David Swann.

This is the second annual conference hosted by the North West Short Story Network, supported by Lancaster University, Liverpool Hope, St Martin’s Lancaster, University of Chester, Bolton University, Salford University and Manchester Metropolitan University (Cheshire).

Booking Fees: £55/£30 (students, unwaged)

To book please log on to the website or contact Trish Molynuex, Dept. of English, Edge Hill University, St Helens Rd., Ormskirk L39 4QP.

W: www.edgehill.ac.uk/shortstory

Take a walk ...

... around literary London with this iToor.

Or you can do it all without even getting out of your seat with this Amazon list. I'm still smiling at the subtitle to the Great British Cookery book - 'A well kept secret'.

A story idea ...

...here surely?

Become Your Favourite Book ....

If your favourite book, song, TV show or poem was to be destroyed, could you save it by committing it to memory - by 'becoming' it? Artist Simon Pope invites participants to join the live event in Trafalgar Square - 24th June.

Xantolo

I have been so inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that I even caught myself looking up courses on how to keep chickens the other day. But it's not just the practical (or in my chicken case, the impractical) that has stayed with me.

In her chapter on Celebration Days, Kingsolver talks about the Dia de los Muertos, saying she is drawn to this particular celebration because she lives 'in a culture that allows almost no room for dead people'. She says that growing her own food has allowed her to recall deeply buried memories of long-dead family members, almost as if she was spending time with them. The heading of this post, Xantolo, apparently means that memory space that opens up sometimes before your eyes, the ordinary communion between the dead and the living. Perhaps because it has no equivalent name in English, it sounds like some kind of weird zombie B-movie but now I've been wondering how much we've lost by keeping the dead so firmly in the past. Kingsolver writes:

"When I'm cooking, I find myself inhabiting the emotional companionship of the person who taught me how to make a particular dish, or with whom I used to cook it. Slamming a door on food-rich holidays, declaring food an enemy, sends all the grandpaprents and great aunts to a lonely place. I have been so relieved lately to welcome them back...."

Of course, it's not just with food that we form links with the past. Sometimes it's the smallest things - in fact, such small things that I've almost been overwhelmed thinking about it recently. Take this snapdragon pictured above which I know I only planted because, in the garden centre, I was reminded of how my mother always used to pick the flowers and squeeze them between her thumb and finger to make them talk for us. Indeed, as soon as my own kids saw the first flower, it was one of the first things they remembered too. So without being morbid, it's like having Mum back around with us, hanging out on our balcony and making stupid puppet plays with flower heads. Trivial maybe, but like Kingsolver, it feels like I can welcome her back. Besides, my mother was never one for a dramatic entrance.

The idea of space and memory is one which my favourite poet, Kenneth White explores in this poem,

My Properties

I'm a landowner myself after all -
I've got twelve acroes of white silence
up at the back of my mind

Friday Fact(s)

From A Writer's Book of Days by Judy Reeves:

Different ways of invoking the Muse

* The poet Friedrich von Schiller used to keep rotten apples under the lid of his desk, open it, inhale deeply, and compose.

* Balzac drank fifty cups of coffee in a day.

* Colette first picked fleas from her cat, then wrote.

* Voltaire used his lover's naked back as a writing desk.

* Alexandre Dumas, the elder, wrote his nonfiction on rose-coloured paper, his fiction on blue and his poetry on yellow.

Pen Event

Deathless Prose

Veronica Horwell, Martin Vander Weyer and Hugo Vickers
chaired by Jonathan Heawood

Tuesday 19 June, 7pm

The obituary is one of the most challenging of all forms of literature. It was not for nothing that Mark Twain complained that reports of his death had been exaggerated. Turning the chaos of life into a few succinct paragraphs that are at once respectful, illuminating and honest is a task beyond all but the hardiest writers. And who are obituaries for anyway - friends, family, or immortality? Obituarist Martin Vander Weyer, Business Editor of the Spectator, is joined by the royal biographer Hugo Vickers and columnist and obituarist Veronica Horwell to explore the darker corners of the newspaper pages.

Time: 7.00pm

Tickets: £5.00 PEN Members / £7.00 non-members (includes a glass of wine after the talk, courtesy of Waitrose Wines)

Venue: The Guardian Newsroom, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA

How to book: On-line at www.englishpen.org/events/ or call 020 7713 0023

Poetry Thursday

One of my favourites - may your day be a slow one....


The Lake Isle of Innisfree
W B Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

24 hour blogging

I found the novelist Clare Dudman's account of her (nearly) 24 hour blog weirdly fascinating yesterday. I particularly liked this paragraph about the reaction of her teenage son:

According to Hodmandod Minor the act of blogging in itself is tragically sad and embarrassing - but this experiment of mine today has, to be frank (and he always is), has plumbed new depths.

'No offence.' He says. Finally.

It's made me think about the average age of bloggers - how many teenagers are there out there 'doing it'? I can't think of many - my daughter started a blog when I did, but got bored after her first entry, whereas I've kept on. And on. And on. Or is it just that the over-twenty-fives (and much over) aren't reading teenage blogs, or linking to them? Perhaps it is all 'tragically sad' and blogging is the new equivalent of getting everyone up on the dance floor as soon as 'some decent music' comes on just so you can strut your (much more considerable these days) stuff.

Oh but hey, we're still allowed some fun, aren't we? And we're not doing that much harm, tucked away in our little corner of the dance floor. After all, it's keeping us off Facebook and Myspace where we could really let ourselves go. OI!! WATCH THOSE FLAILING ARMS, GRANDDAD!!!!!!

And I'd happily do Clare's experiment myself, except I'd reveal just how many games of solitaire I play in the average day.

Three Wednesday Things

So, enough of me (surely not, I hear you cry!). My Three Things for today are novelists I admire who spend their time away from the keyboard doing very different things ...

1. Amy Tan lives the Rock Goddess dream. And also more recently here. You have no idea how much I'd like to be in a band like this - anyone out there want to put one together because I know just the right backing singer for you, lots of enthusiasm but absolutely no experience apart from in front of mirror?

2. Margaret Atwood is an inventor of distinction AND draws pretty funny comics. (Go to the desk and click on the comic drawer. My favourite is the Radio Tour.)

3. Barbara Kingsolver is currently inspiring me with her eat local food campaign. I'm half-way through her latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I've already made changes to our diet at home.

MeMeMe and More Me

I don't have a great record when it comes to having photographs taken. Normally at parties, celebrations and stuff, I think I'm looking great - in fact I think I'm looking pretty fantastic - until the pictures come back and I'm the drunken one with the bright red face. Plus I always break every rule us girls are supposed to have learnt at birth - those ones about picking ugly friends so we look good - and instead I grab all the good-looking people in the room and DON'T LET GO, not even when they're looking slightly scared and are just about to resort to begging....


(Here's me with the lovely poet, Catherine Smith last week, for example)

So, when it was time to have some new photographs taken, I was a bit nervous. (I knew it was time for new photos because I got bored of the disappointed faces I saw when I turned up five years after the last lot got taken). I spent hours trying to decide what to wear, only to find Ellen, the photographer, turned up wearing the only thing I could ever want to put on ...



Still, onwards and upwards. I didn't think it would be the best possible start if I asked her to take her clothes off straight away - she's a serious and wonderful photographer, so I made the most of my own mostly black and white wardrobe. And do you know - it was knackering. Ellen made it fun, but gosh, Kate Moss earns her money. Anyway, it was a bit disappointing I didn't look like Kate in the phtographs, but after the initial shock that what I see in the mirror is the real 'me', I'm pleased with the results, even in some of them my eyes look a bit starey and scary. Reminds me too much of when I used to be called Dracula at school because of my dark hair and because I was always 'looking at people'. Well, they were jolly lucky I didn't bite them.

And the best news is that apparently I'm too smiley in all of them, so we have to do it all over again. More mememememe... And now I know Ellen well enough to ask if I can borrow her top!

And even more me - apologies for this but it is my blog - here's a piece I just written for the Guardian on my Top Ten books about friendships. Have already had several emails suggesting books I should have put in, so am currently collating my top million books. Suggestions welcome ...

Book porn

Here, and here. So very very yummy - as is the confirmation for my 'how to make your own book' course which arrived this morning. I'm sure my lovely publishers will be quaking about the competition as I move towards full scale production, especially as apparently I don't even need to write any words:

"We have a book in the collection called The Mirror Book - no text whatsoever - it has glass mirror bindings, and silver mylar pages, so that the entire book is totally reflective. But it is bound like a book, it is shaped like a book, so in my mind it is a book even though it is not readable. It does not have to be readable, but does need to be book-like in some way."

The quote and photograph above are taken from an article about the books held in the collection at the National Gallery in Maryland. I have to visit there and here. I'm tingling in the way I do when I feel a new obsession coming on....

Women in art

This is like a dream, or a nightmare. I can't stop watching it though, and each time I feel like clapping at the end ...

(The link came via the fabulous the Hagsharlotsheroines blogspot, also well worth a look. Particularly Hannah Davey's diary, after her move from London to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales.

Friday Fact

(Ooooo, now this one seems like a challenge!)

No piece of normal-size paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

Poetry Thursday

Ros Barber is my poet this Thursday, which is appropriate because her collection is called How Things Are on Thursday. Here are some poems she wrote on commission for Sustrans, and her blog, Shallowlands is always well worth a read.

Thank you!

So after my nerves yesterday, the reading could only really be better than I expected. And it was a LOT better than I expected. Lots of friends, questions, laughter and wine ... now I want to do it all over again tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after!
A huge thank you to Waterstones, Tunbridge Wells for supporting their local authors, to Anthony from Bluechrome, to everyone who came to support, and those who emailed after my post yesterday to tell me to remember to breathe!

Three Nervous Wednesday Things!

For some reason, my cup is over-brimming with nerves for my reading tonight. Half of me wants no-one to turn up so they don't see me fail miserably, the other half is panicked IN CASE no-one turns up. And I was really looking forward to this yesterday. Anyway, you're not too late to see this writer's knees shake - just come along tonight, 30th May, 7pm at Waterstones, 32-40 Calverley Road, Tunbridge Wells. Ah well, so my three things today might seem random but they are all places that make me feel strangely calm...

1. This site all about the London underground

2.The Astronomy Photograph of the Day website.

3. Knowing I am not alone.

There's a very moving farewell by John Calder, Samuel Beckett's publisher for thirty years, on the Guardian blog today, linking to this absolute treasure of an article. I particularly liked the record of a meeting between Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs:

‘Tell me, Mr Burroughs,’ Sam said politely, about this cut-up method of yours. I don’t think I quite understand what you do.’

‘Well, Mr Beckett,’ drawled Burroughs in a voice that sometimes sounded southern and at other times Harvard, ‘what I do is this. I take a copy of the New York Times or some other paper and I cut a column in half down the middle or sometimes I fold it. Then I find another text, perhaps one of mine or perhaps a page of your Molloy and I do the same thing.’ Beckett was listening in rapt attention. He opened his mouth, to speak and then closed, it again.

‘Then,’ continued Bill Burroughs, ‘I read across the lines of the two and copy out what I see, so that each line has half of one text and half the other. Later I edit the new version until a whole new text emerges. Then, depending on how it looks, I may cut that up into a third text. And of course I add a word or two where it’s necessary.’

Beckett could contain himself no longer, ’but you can’t do that,’he said.

‘Oh, I do, Mr Beckett, I assure you,’ said Burroughs in an even voice.

Both had been drinking heavily. No one else was listening. Rosset was interested in the two girls who were obviously both girl friends of Girodias who was very much a ladies man, always in love and with a string of simultaneous mistresses. Anything a little kinky fascinated Barney Rosset. The writers were talking among themselves about their own affairs. The argument went on between my two authors, the classically-trained Dublin gentleman from a good middle-class family who had become a Parisian bohemian artist, and the quintessential American from the under-culture of drug addiction and Hollywood-glamourised gangster crime, Wild West and hoboism, totally unable to understand the point of view of the other until they both, quite drunk, slipped under the table at the same time and had to be taken home by taxi."

I've just finished reading Jonathon Coe's biography of B S Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, which shows how generous Samuel Beckett could be to other writers - sending B S Johnson a cheque for £100 when he was in need. Somehow this story just adds to that.

Juxtaposition 3

The teddy bear you want to take to bed...

and this story.

Global Warming

Come march with me.

Three Wednesday* Things

Three things that make me wince:

1. The idea of a vibrating razor.

2. The fear of forwarding the wrong thing to the wrong people, every time I press send on a sensitive email.

3. The memory of my first day in the coolest job I could ever imagine when I was 'cool' for all of about ten minutes - and then got the toggle from my anorak stuck in my chair wheel and I had to be rescued by a genuinely cool person.

*and of course, posting two days late - unlike the lovely Clare, whose idea this three things was and who always gets it right.

TALKS: Debate London

News of an interesting looking debate at the Tate Modern

London is furiously on the move. Powered by an economic boom, it is changing, growing, diversifying. New planning policies allow for enticing new possibilities: iconic skyscrapers, tens of thousands of new homes, transformation and re-generation. New-look London is sexy and glamorous. But will such a shiny vision make London better?

This summer The Architecture Foundation explores the issues at the very heart of what it means to be a Londoner today: Will the 2012 Olympics bring any good? Are we creating a London that's good enough for our kids? Can we turn the big smoke green?

The four debates, held in the Turbine Hall, with a youth debate for London school students, leave an important legacy of London now by posing pertinent questions and projecting exciting visions for its future. Join the debate and have your say at www.debatelondon.com

Sponsored by: City of London, Derwent London, Land Securities
Supported by: Arts Council England, Billboard, Cabe, Evening Standard, Tate

Friday 22 June - Monday 25 June

Debate London: Is London a United City?
Friday 22 June, 19.30-21.30
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
£8 (£5 concessions), booking recommended
Booking fee applies

Debate London: The 2012 Wish List - What Kind of London Do We Want?
Saturday 23 June, 19.30-21.30
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
£8 (£5 concessions), booking recommended
Booking fee applies

Debate London: How Can a Boomtown be Green?
Sunday 24 June, 19.30-21.30
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
£8 (£5 concessions), booking recommended
Booking fee applies

Debate London: Can London be Both Big and Beautiful?
Monday 25 June, 19.30-21.30
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
£8 (£5 concessions), booking recommended
Booking fee applies

Debate London: Generation London
Monday 25 June, 13.30-15.30
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
Free, first come first served
Places are limited

Friday Fact

In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it is smiling).

Ho hum...

Just when I was feeling so pleased with myself at Tally's £3.79 patch of lawn (see below), here's someone who has gone one better. Always happens, doesn't it?

Poetry Thursday

I vividly remember the first time I read anything by Marilyn Hacker. I was sitting in a Starbucks in London Bridge waiting for someone to arrive for a meeting, and I had to stand up with excitment. It was as if I'd just had the biggest adrenalin rush - similar to when I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. That breathless feeling, almost like fear, that the writer was going somewhere completely daring and unexpected, not with content but with structure. So my poem recommendation for today is Hacker's Scars on Paper, and I thoroughly recommend her recent collection Essays on Departure if you're tempted to read more.

The Salway Estate

So it's the week of Chelsea Flower Show, and all the great and the good seem to be opening their palatial doors wide to reveal their gardens. This is my sore spot. I gave up a really well-loved vegetable patch in Edinburgh, when we moved down South. Now I have a patch of concrete instead. For three years, I kept up an allotment but had to give it up this year because of a mixture of time and bad back. However, all is not lost... I am trying positive thinking to make me love my concrete. First up is my portable vegetable garden - some time over the summer, I want to have grown my own ratatouille (first having found out how to spell it)...



The other spoilt fat-girl Salway now has her own spot of lawn, thanks to buying a piece of turf at £3.79 at the local garden centre. And she thinks it very nice to lie on it in the sun ...


I'm even starting to see some results ...



And because every gardener needs something to make them happy ...



Gold medals all round, I think!

Book signing

My hand is crab-like after signing the special editions of my short story collection, Leading the Dance...
Luckily I only had 125 to do, although it became strangely soothing, almost like meditating, and the book is so very beautiful.


And to launch the edition, I'm reading at the Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells on Wednesday 30th May at 7pm. No need to book, and all welcome!

Close reading

I'm sitting nervously here because my daughter's GCSE English Literature exam is just about to finish and I'm waiting for her thumbs up/thumbs down text. We spent last night going over the poems in her anthology, and I was surprised at just how good it was to read the texts closely with her. Surprised because I had maybe arrogantly (OK, extremely arrogantly) assumed that the life of the poem would have been taught out of her and her classmates by the time she reached the exam. Not so. She was as excited by the language and the meaning of the poems as if she was reading them the first time, maybe more as she saw more and more in each line. In his fantastic T S Lecture in 2005, the poet George Szirtes says:

The task of poetry is to tell the best truth it can about whatever it happens to be dealing with. After that it must trust the reader, and assume that the reader is deeper, stranger and wiser than the poet knows.

George also describes what seems to be happening with Rachael, which is that, rather than looking for points to be scored for each technique spotted, she was letting the poem take over. He says:

There is a process I have often noticed in my teaching: that the understanding of poetry is not, as Paterson thinks, structured like an apprenticeship. There is, rather, a particular point at which the nature of poetry is understood for the first time. That first step on to the ice involves understanding both the point of the ice and something of ice's nature. It is in fact the realization of something we have known all along. We have always known what lies beneath: we are always feeling the ice under our feet.

It was really exciting, and whatever the result of the exam, all credit to her English teacher for that. I was envious of how she 'got it' so much earlier than I ever did.

Mind you, she did come through first thing this morning to say 'I've been reading and thinking about the poems on my own'. Then she hit her head with her hand and said: 'No, I haven't. I must have been dreaming I have.' So maybe it was all just a dream, and English teachers are still beating out the rhythms on the back of pupils' heads with wooden rulers as they did at my convent school, and pupils are still growing up with an absolute terror of getting poetry 'wrong', just as I did.

Juxtaposition 2

Here's a fledgling vineyard in Kent:


and here's the result of many (possibly) cynical marketing meetings re the above:


A student gave me this bottle of wine and I say I keep it because it makes me smile, but actually I'm scared because I'm not sure if it clears or induces writer's block. Or am I just reading too much into it? Quite possibly.

The Judgement Hour

That's what a wise friend called it when I said I wasn't sleeping, was waking up every morning too early, every effing morning. In fact I've got to hate going to bed, because I'm already waiting to wake up - and I've always been one of those annoying people who usually love mornings. A whole day ahead, and all that.

'Ah,' my friend said. 'The judgement hour. Between three and four, I guess.'

Why yes. I'm waking every morning at 3.46am almost exactly according to the digital alarm clock I also hate. So in some ways, it's comforting to know I'm not alone. That there are many many others there having that horrible hour of facing all the bad things you might have said, or done. That joke you thought was funny when you were telling it but in retrospect was just a bit embarrasing. The deadlines you're not going to make. Even the time you were six and told your mum you weren't the one who ate the last piece of cake and your sister had to take the blame. Etc, etc, etc. Well, kind of comforting. As soon as I get up, everything falls back into proportion, but, hey, I've always been more than a 'getting by' girl so I want to kick this. Any suggestions welcome, as is anyone who wants to keep me company in the 4am blues, including James Thurber, it seems, who said: "I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness."

In the meantime, I'm particularly interested in this blog, and this, and this.

Everyday Matters

The book, Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory has given me some electric moments today. I was sceptical at first, but that says more about me than the book because it's not trying to convert me into anything. There are no self-help or 'come over to my side' lessons, more just a feeling of how it felt for one person to get through a bad time. When Danny's wife, Patti, had an accident leaving her in a wheelchair, his first thought was 'why me?'. Then when his wife seemed able to cope with the changes but not him, he took up drawing. The way he describes the process of letting go into the creativity is really beautiful, and there's a randomness about the pages, the stories, the humour that makes you feel you're there with him, learning to see things all over again. The page of drawings of all the different lightbulbs in his house has given me at least one idea for a short story, and I feel inspired to go out into my neighbourhood (becoming what he calls the 'weirdo' if I'm not that already) with my pencil and pad right now to capture some living of my own. In fact, the need to make something, anything, is proving compulsive. I love the quote at the beginning from Miles Davis: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." If Danny Gregory's got a side, I guess I've come right over to it!

Friday Fact

90 percent of women who walk into a department store immediately turn to the right.

Mark Wallinger Presents
Late at Tate Britain
Friday 1 June, 6 – 9.45pm

Mark Wallinger questions the right to protest and the limits of art. What are the principles of free expression? What might constitute the moral imperative to transgress the law and exercise the right to speak out? Joining Wallinger are Lisa Appignanesi, Shami Chakrabarti, Brian Haw, John Hegley, Hari Kunzru, Geoffrey Robertson, Jerry Sadowitz and Adrian Searle, protest choir Raised Voices and invited guest Mark Thomas.

Mark Wallinger has recreated peace campaigner Brian Haw’s Parliament Square protest for a dramatic new installation at Tate Britain. Running along the full length of the Duveen Galleries, State Britain consists of a meticulous reconstruction of over 600 weather-beaten banners, photographs, peace flags and messages from well-wishers that have been amassed by Haw over the past five years. In bringing a reconstruction of Haw’s protest before curtailment back into the public domain, Wallinger raises challenging questions about issues of freedom of expression and the erosion of civil liberties in Britain today.

For more information about the event and Tate Britain please visit http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/lateattatebritain/

Time: 6-9.45pm
Tickets: These will be available from 6pm on the evening at the Clore Gallery Entrance
Venue: Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG

Poetry Thursday

OK, time for real women now. My poem for the week is Catherine Smith's Picture This.

Acting our age

Is there any woman - young or old - who hasn't had something to say already on the extraordinary Christa D'Souza article in Sunday's Observer Woman? The trouble for me is how it brings back all the insecurities from the school playground. If I say I don't really think I want to look like Melanie Roberts (which I didn't) then everyone will turn round and say it's because I'm just jealous of her blonde hair and teeny feet. If I say I don't want to hang around watching the boys play football but would prefer to do something interesting on my own, it's because the boys don't want me to watch anyway. If I say I don't want to kiss Timothy Robinson, then its because I'm frightened he might not want to kiss me... you get the picture. But now I'm older, I don't care what you might say back - I really really don't want to look like Christa D'Souza. I don't want that level of fear she - and the others interviewed - must live with everyday when they look in the mirror. If I was lucky enough to have the time to do yoga three times a week, I'd hope it would take me beyond the physical benefits and to learn something about the spiritual holistic side too. But the article can't be real, can it? That's about the only thing I could think about when I was reading it. Surely this has to be some kind of joke, and then I couldn't help feel a sadness for everyone involved. And even more sad when it's printed in a magazine called Observer Woman. Still, I suppose it just proves us women aren't proper adults - as Christa says 'I am obsessed with age. But admit it, aren't you too?'. Yes, that's it - we all want to wear short denim skirts and flirt with dads so that the other mums won't like us and then no one will be our friend long enough to tell us just to Grow Up. Thank heavens for this blog anyway, but my favourite post on the whole subject is from yarnstorm. It's almost enough to make me take up knitting, but then of course I've never been pretty enough to worry about losing my looks anyway....

Gluten Free

We are rapidly turning into the family you really don't want to invite over for a quick meal. Not only are two members vegetarian, my son is also a coeliac, and although it has become second-nature now for me to cook the right meals, it's a nightmare to try to explain what he can and can't have. Luckily, since Hugh was diagnosed ten years ago, things have improved beyond measure in foods stocked, labelling and taste, and this week is Coeliac Awareness Week. Although it's worth putting up with people calling him a 'faddy eater' and me a 'fussy mother' just to make sure he gets the right foods, I'm amazed at how many people still think that 'just a little bit of flour' is going to be perfectly acceptable, even a treat. An extraordinary lack of knowledge when you think that they estimate that one in 100 people in the UK will suffer from it. Luckily, there are some brilliant blogs out there to help with recipes, advice and sharing stories. My favourite ones are: Gluten A go Go, Gluten Free Bay, Gluten Free Girl, and best of all, the divine Gluten Free Goddess, from whom I ordered the above t-shirt which still makes me laugh. I haven't found any British blogs as far as I know, but I'd really like to be proved wrong on that!

Wednesday Three Things

Three good interviews with writers today:

1. Narrative Magazine's profile of Ann Beattie. You have to sign up to get the full thing but the whole magazine is really worth it (even if it wasn't free!)

2.The Paris Review interview of Isak Dinesen. I love how the whole concept of what an interview is gets turned on its head before it begins.

3. This interview with Margaret Atwood. There are lots of interviews with Margaret Atwood out there, but this pleased me so much with its very particular specialised focus.

How to be Happy, though Married

My friend, Michelle Lovric, has recently edited a book - no, let's use its proper subtitle: "A Tender Compendium of Good and Bad Advice" - with this wonderful title. Some of the quotes given make me laugh out loud, like:

"Sometimes your wife will initiate sex. This will occur when you walk in the door after completing a triathlon, or in the closing minutes of tied grand final." (Peter Downey)

Others are poignant:

"As for the clitoris, this is to be saluted, at most, in passing, and afterwards ignored as much as possible; for the reason that it is a rudimentary male organ, and an orgasm evoked there evokes a rudimentary male magnetism in the woman, which appears to pervert the act of intercourse, with the result of sensualising and coarsening the woman." (Ida Craddock's The Wedding Night of 1900.)

Ho hum. One Lucy H. M. Soulsby is quoted as saying,

"A husband of "a superior woman" is usually much to be pitied",

but I say the ones that are to be pitied are the wives of all those saluting men who went to good old Ida for advice! It does conjure up some lovely images though if she was taken literally...

More about the book here.

Friday Fact

From possibly the most interesting timewaster I've found in a long time, your first Friday Fact. Amazing but this actually works:

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. (go ahead no one will see you) While doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

Go and visit....

This wonderful blog, Dina Rabinovitch's Take Off Your Running Shoes, is worth a visit if you fancy an inspirational five minutes. Better still buy the book. It's positive, non-condescending, generous, funny and the fact that a percentage of all sales goes to cancer research is an added bonus.

Poetry Thursday

I was inspired by the idea behind Poetry Thursday at the beginning of the year, the collaborative, generous feel of it, but somehow let my weekly contributions lapse. But now it's time to start again. Here is my suggestion of what to read this week: the poem, The Nolans in Japan, by the wonderful Tamar Yoseloff. Her latest collection, Fetch is really worth a look, and if you click on the last link you get to hear her read some of her poems.

Three Wednesday Things

I know, I know, it's Thursday, but I was ill yesterday so my new bootcamp schedule went to pot, although I did manage to read some of the stories in Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things which cheered me up with thoughts of arm gnawing and dead men's parties. So... every Wednesday I'm going to put up three things that give me pleasure.

It's Claire's idea, but she's gone off running with a different idea of mine, so I reckon we just work well together. AND we both live in Tunbridge Wells, so my first three things are going to be local blogs, just so everybody can fall in love with Tunbridge Wells, come and live here and we can have the UK's first writer's town.

1. Three Beautiful Things, this is updated daily and is so simple that it's strange how you find yourself smiling by at least the second point.

2. Here's someone who really really loves Tunbridge Wells...

3. ... and here's someone who would prefer it if we all stood up a bit straighter and certainly never let our dogs off their leashes.

(and just because I'm late with my Three Wednesday things, here's another photography blog of Tunbridge Wells. I'm cross because I was watching those fireman at the world famous Paul Elvis Chan's Gracelands Palace, but can't find myself in any of the pics. Probably a good thing really.)

A newer, nicer Marquis de Sade?

Childish of me, I know, but I'd like to go to this just to listen in on the conversation at the drinks reception afterwards.

A Different Sade: Food for Thought

A British Academy discussion evening convened and chaired by Marian Hobson FBA, Queen Mary, University of London

Speakers:
Katherine Astbury, University of Warwick, Bob Gillan, University of Manchester, Will McMorran, Queen Mary, University of London, Caroline Warman, University of Oxford, and Thomas Wynn, University of Exeter

Discussants and Commentators:
Philippe Roger, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales, Paris, France and Svein-Eirik Fauskevåg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

Thursday, 7 June 2007
6.00pm - 7.30pm followed by a drinks reception


The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace,
London, SW1Y 5AH

With the publications of Sade’s correspondences, and his consecration in the Pléiade canon through Michel Delon’s excellent edition, after the monumental biography by Maurice Lever, not to speak of the much greater accessibility of much of his work through paper-back editions, the position of Sade in literary history is evolving. Much greater attention is being paid to his plays and to his short stories, while the sardonic pornography is seen as more embedded in its cultural content. A more nuanced picture of his production is emerging, and his work is now seen as key in understanding the ideological tensions of the Enlightenment, and the cross-over from the old literary world of the Ancien Régime to the new.

Almost 200 years to the day since Sade's final completed manuscript was seized from his room at Charenton, the event will discuss this new status, and to what degree the Sade of the older version is the twin or the black shadow of the newer, nicer and perhaps more approachable vision.

A poster for your notice board can be downloaded here:

Visit our website for further details and to to book on-line
Telephone enquiries: 020 7969 5238 / Email: externalrelations@britac.ac.uk

Another reason to live in Kent

Tuesday, May 8, 2007
SPELDHURST, England – An 82-year-old man in Speldhurst, England, clobbered a robber in the face with a head of iceburg lettuce after the bandit tried holding up a local grocery store. The bandit was armed with a shotgun but after being hit a second time by the produce, he made like a banana and split.

Apparently it's not as daft as it sounds - he'd just come from his allotment and he had the iceberg lettuce ready in his hand. No, sorry. It is as daft as it sounds. I don't quite get the banana joke though. Well, I do get it, of course, but it feels like something that's been hanging around looking for a story to latch itself onto. At least, you can be sure the lettuce was fresh.

Juxtaposition 1

Time to put some order into this blog, shake it up, sort it out, give it a good Spring clean. So Tuesday is going to be Juxtaposition day - for some reason they seem to go together for me. Here's the first one:
Dennis Sever's wonderful and magical time capsule house...
and right outside it, in Folgate Street, this maintenance sign:

I can just imagine the jokes about whether the workers will be wearing Victorian costume and digging by candlelight.

And back to writing prompts: Waking up in a different age

(Not) in the post...

It's seeing a notice like this today, sellotaped onto a village postbox, that reminds me how much I like living in the country. Can you imagine how the conversation might go? Honestly, the cheque IS in the post, it's just that there are birds nesting and we won't be able to open the postbox until they hatch...

Knotty Friendships

When we left Edinburgh to come to Kent, a woman I knew only vaguely came up and said that she'd always think of me as a lost friend because she'd always thought we'd get on, but now we'd never have that chance. I was rather bemused at the time, but can't stop thinking about it now, particularly as I've been searching through my bookshelves looking for examples of 'unusual friendships' for a newspaper article.

I thought it was going to be easy, but had to set myself rules quite early on. It couldn't really be a lost love affair - which dropped PG Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth and the Empress of Blandings; it couldn't be a master-servant relationship, however, heated - step down Rebecca and the creepy Mrs Danvers; and it couldn't be an ordinary friendship, but one where the two people involved (oops, that was another rule - just two) would absolutely not be expected to be friends in everyday life.

And then I had to add another rule - it had to be an actual living being - OK, Silas Marner is friends with his money, but I had to take that one off the list.

I'm still on my long-list, but have spent some very happy hours going back to all the fictional friendships that have moved me over the years. It amazed me all over again how writers have used them to demonstrate just how we don't live in isolation. I suppose I normally take the cliche of friendship as someone who supports us (a friend in need, and all that) but it's much more exciting than that. All it just takes is someone else close to us going off the rails to make us wobble too, or - more positively - to open our eyes to a completely new world.

Which is why I keep thinking back to that woman in Edinburgh. Just how would she have changed my life, and what have I missed?

Life is good...

The sun is shining and I've just ordered this book.

And one day after...

... the earthquake, it's hard to imagine anything so violent happened here in Kent. We took the day off to visit the garden at Great Dixter.

It was a perfect English Spring day, and a perfect English House:



There was colour in abundance



But, as always, it was potential that proved more interesting



Even the trees seemed to tell a story of ease and everything fitting together



And just when it couldn't get better, we came across the dog!

So the earth moved

in Kent this morning. We felt a tremble at 8 am and turned on the news to see there'd been an earthquake. By 9.30am however, we were all shopping at the farmer's market as if nothing had happened. Somehow it seems quite surreal. The birds still haven't recovered though. They're spookily quiet right now.

Amazon recommends....

Several puzzled emails from friends this morning about the books I HAD actually written led me to this recommendation sent out by Amazon:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,

As someone who has expressed interest in books by Sarah Salway, you might
like to know that "Long-term Ill-health, Poverty and Ethnicity: A
Mixed-methods Investigation into the Experiences of Living with Chronic
Health Conditions in the UK" will be released on 30 April 2007.

Long-term Ill-health, Poverty and Ethnicity: A Mixed-methods Investigation
into the Experiences of Living with Chronic Health Conditions in the UK
Sarah Salway

Price: £15.95
Release Date: 30 April 2007

I'd love to claim talent for this, but reading a book while hula-hooping is about the limit of my multi-talents and in fact, there is another Sarah Salway - we emailed each other for a while, purely with excitement about having the same name, and it was the strangest thing, seeing myself pop up in my own email box. As the book title above suggests, she researches into health methods, based at Sheffield University, but she did say she often gets students coming up to discuss poetry, which puzzled her until she found out about me. As far as I know, this is her first book but now I guess the confusion is going to live for a while.

And onto something completely different, and if I can just show off madly for a second, I'm so happy with this review from Scott Pack's blog today, particularly the quote:

"full of the meaningless minutiae of human existence which become so meaningful when Salway gets her hands on them."

I've never forgotten those photographs we used to have when we were kids - the ones that showed an ordinary household object from an extraordinary angle and you had to guess what it was. Trying to do something similar is at the heart of most of my writing, and it's lovely to have that picked up, so in celebration, my writing prompt for today is going to be ... cheese graters.

How to talk to girls...

I loved Neil Gaimain's Hugo nominated story, How to Talk to Girls At Parties and am pleased to find it up on the web, along with some of the other nominees.

And my writing prompt is: Talking to boys

Chocolate and Squeaky chairs

So what gets your writerly juices flowing?

Shameless Showing Off

A spring in my step today after reading a lovely two page review of my short story collection, Leading the Dance, in the Irish literary magazine, The Stinging Fly. I particularly liked the comment, 'One of Salway's gifts is her control of the precise language used to tell these stories, while always maintaining a gleeful undercurrent of mania', and also, 'Salway is fearless in her choice of subjects: she is good on contemporary themes of love, betrayal and twenty-first century isolation, as well as sensuality and violence.' But best of all, 'This is energetic writing, ripe with menace and wit...' In face, I like the last one so much I'm considering a t-shirt with the words 'Ripe with menace' printed on it. Although I might also get ones with the slogans 'Salway is fearless' and 'a gleeful undercurrent of mania' printed on them too.

And then I think I'm going to wear all three when I visit my local branch of Waterstones which I've supported and where I've spent a fortune over the last few years but who have just refused me a reading because I'm 'not famous enough'...

Shopping dictionary

New definitions courtesy of Daily Candy:

Achilles heel
n. Your weakness for pretending to fit into the last pair of size-six boots when you’re really an eight.

ample sale
n. A sale that consists of pieces in only ginormous or miniscule sizes.

disdress
n. The agony caused by having to strip in communal dressing rooms at sample sales.

dressausage
n. A girl who has squeezed herself into a dress that is way too small for her.

dressing tomb
n. The physics-defying, one-square-foot room in which you’re expected to remove your pants.

fabric-ation
n. The involuntary impulse to lie when the salesgirl asks what size you are.

fearors
n. Dreaded dressing room mirrors that show every last flaw on your body.

insomnishopia
n. A disorder marked by making unnecessary online purchases in the wee hours due to insomnia.

reflection period
n. The time spent contemplating whether you’re being tricked by skinny mirrors and soft filter lighting.

riptag
n. A last-minute purchase that you wear out of the store.

unmodestmouse
n. A naggy salesperson who pulls the curtain back while you’re changing.

Smiles and Self-Help

Oh how I loved** finding out this morning that the author of the first Self-help guide was called Samuel Smiles, almost as much as the fact his research owed a debt to G. L. Craik's Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. There was no easy ride with Smiles though, no mere listening on your ipod to someone else doing the hard work for you while you relax and emerge a a person of supreme confidence. I wonder how many books Samuel Smiles would sell these days if you picked this blurb up in the self-help section:

The object of the book briefly is, to re-inculcate these old-fashioned but wholesome lessons-which perhaps cannot be too often urged, that youth must work in order to enjoy,-that nothing creditable can be accomplished without application and diligence,-that the student must not be daunted by difficulties, but conquer them by patience and perseverance,-and that, above all, he must seek elevation of character, without which capacity is worthless and worldly success is naught. If the author has not succeeded in illustrating these lessons, he can only say that he has failed in his object.

I can see already that this is going to be one of those internet trails I enjoy so much. While googling Craik, I came on this article on the 'problems' of working class poetry in Victorian times. Apparently one of the solutions was that working class poets should:

Accept a more modest role as a means of developing class identity and solidarity – become a means of articulating commonly held values and beliefs in unambitious but memorable form. The poet thus becomes a slightly more articulate friend or neighbour.

So working class poets are allowed, so long as they are 'unambitious' (and, reading between the lines, male). I think this calls for more exploration, but in the meantime my writing prompt for today is... the unambitious poet.

**ps. I nearly wrote 'I heart' here but then I realised I wasn't talking to my teenage kids and it wouldn't annoy you nearly as much as it does them. It's one of the joys of teenage parenting no one tells you about - watching their body language as you get the names of bands wrong, be enthusiastic about things they like and so ruin them forever, hijack their slang etc etc etc. Come to think of it, it's making me re-evaluate my own teenage days and wonder if my own parents were really as naive as I gave them credit for. My own slamming door moment was when I nearly shared a flat with members of the Boomtown Rats and my mother went around saying 'Sarah's going to be sharing with some rodents apparently'. She did snigger then too, now I remember it without wanting to murder her. Ho hum.

Extreme nature

The ultimate guide to building your own tree house here, and Dan Ladd's site is well worth a look too. Look at these. Why am I looking these up? Oh, you have no idea of the piles of paper filing I'm staring at -there must be at least a forest in my office, and I'm ashamed. I need to get out and spend some time in nature.

And my writing prompt for today is ... paperless.

English PEN presents:

Taking the Pith
Craig Brown, Sebastian Faulks and Sue Limb, chaired by John Walsh

Tuesday 17 April, 7pm

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but surely pastiche is just looking to get a cheap and easy laugh? Can parody get to the heart of things or is it just taking the pith? John Walsh, Assistant Editor of The Independent, will host a discussion of what may be the lowest form of wit with parodists Craig Brown, described by Stephen Fry as ‘the wittiest writer in Britain today’, Sebastian Faulks, whose new book Pistache is drawn from BBC Radio 4’s The Write Stuff, and Sue Limb, author of the Dulcie Domum column which ran for eleven glorious years in The Guardian.

Time: 7.00pm

Tickets: £5.00 PEN Members / £7.00 non-members (includes a glass of wine after the talk)

Venue: The Guardian Newsroom, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA

How to book: On-line at www.englishpen.org/events/ or call 020 7713 0023

Summer days!

Here's something that has already made me smile this morning:

From the magnificent Manolo's Shoe Blog which always makes me smile.

Happy Easter!

I'm away for a week now, but happy chocolate eating to you all...

Never too late

So what's your excuse? Harry Bernstein's 96, and he's just written his first book, and is already nearly finished his second. Apparently:

Bernstein cranks out his pages on a typewriter in his bedroom, saying that the computer nearby is too complicated for anything more than checking his e-mail. And at his age, he allows himself a certain latitude in the writing process, meaning that instead of worrying about deadlines he just writes until he doesn't feel like writing anymore.

"I've been trained to finish something you start, don't leave anything undone," he says. "I just feel I'm not satisfied until I finish what I start. And I will not be satisfied until I start something new."

My writing prompt for today: The thing I've always wanted to do.