Getting up early

About the only advantage of jet lag that I can see is early morning walks. I'm waking up about 5am, bright and ready to go. This morning was so fresh.

There's something about the pace of walking that suits me, particularly when it gives the chance to spot exciting foreign things, such as this letterbox. I'll never again laugh at the things tourists take pictures of at home, but isn't it beautiful?




And the walk took me through the cemetery. I know it's because of the hill but I loved how these graves were lined up ...




.. almost as if the inhabitants could admire the view.



Mind you, it was about the only view I could see around here that wasn't of a corn field!



And here's where I was heading. It was well worth the early start. I wish I could have taken a sound picture, the birds, the insects, the water lapping and nothing, nothing else! This is really a beautiful place.

Winged creatures ...

From one extreme to another...

Yesterday we went to the Iowa State Fair where - apart from the cow and olympic gymnast, Shawn Johnson, made from butter ...



... where we saw this 'Superbull' ...



... called of course Tiny, but weighing in at more than 3,000 lbs. It didn't stand when we were there, but I guess it can.



And also this super-boar, Freight Train ...



And meanwhile, back at the farm, there are these tiny things. Two squirrels that were rescued from a tree ...



and which are fed with puppy formula using a syringe, every two hours. They seem to be thriving.

Garden open day ...

Visit the virtual garden of blogger, VP, she's opening it for the charity, WaterAid. Great garden, great cause.

Something scary...

Just finished packing for Iowa, and - guess what - I am taking NO books to read with me. I feel as if I'm stepping off the high diving board.

This isn't because I can't think what to take, or haven't read anything good recently. The opposite. My pile for Italy was a treasure trove of good reading. Best was The Makioka Sisters. What a find. There was something bizarre about being in the middle of the Italian mountains and inhabiting old-style Japan. Because that's what this book felt like. I walked into the pages, and watched these four sisters go about their business. It's a masterful novel, not least in the way the eldest sister slips out of the story as her place in society slips, and also the power given to her by the passivity of the third sister. It was the first time I understood the power of the Japanese cherry blossom rituals too - the celebration of the fleeting moment.

I want to do reviews of all the books I read - I meant to do them before I left again - but I want to absorb them too. Normally I read one book after another, this is a chance to try something different. A slower approach. Also I'm going to make myself watch and make notes at the airport etc etc.

And so I'm off. Again. This is a working trip so I'll be blogging. If not here, then here. And in the meantime, don't get too frisky while I'm gone. At least remember ....

My publishing myths

Last week I spoke to a group of writers as part of a course organised by Shaun Levin. The brief was to talk about being published, and I spoke about ten things I had thought were true before I signed my first contract and am now not so sure about. Here they are - I'd love to know other people's views or other myths they might have had about being published.

1. I will automatically LOVE my work now that someone else wants to publish it.

Hahahahahaha... the trouble is if you talk too much about how you'd like to win the lottery and therefore buy up every copy of your new book that's just about to be reviewed, published, etc etc so it can't be read by anyone, then unpublished people want to spit - rightly - in your face. No one who hasn't been through the publishing business can quite understand how panicky it can be. And the guilt of that strange sense of anti-climax too. On the whole I think it's better to be prepared for those moments of 'hey, this is shit' while proof reading. Luckily, there also comes a moment later onwhen you think 'actually this isn't so bad.' The problem is that dark night of the soul bit in between when you wonder just who you thought you were to imagine you could write a 'proper' book.

2. Once the book deal is signed, then I am a writer and my life will have changed.

This is what I thought. it was a bit of a shock to realise how much work I still had to do. Editing, and of course publicising as much as I could. And then of course you wake up the morning after the book is published and, what do you know, you're exactly the same person and the children are still waiting for breakfast. They don't care if it's served by a writer or not - hey, they're hungry and there's no one else to feed them.

3. Being a writer means I can be as scatty as I like, and therefore in no way a business person.

Hmmm... while not necessarily 'business people', many writers I respect are incredibly professional about their work. It's all we've got. There's also the need to promote ourselves and our books. Having been brought up on stories of hermit-like hard drinking writers, I was secretly a little bit disappointed to find that isn't really how it's done nowadays.

4. I am lucky to be published ....
and related to this .... It is impossible to be published.

I did think this. And of course I am. Butbutbut ... if publishers didn't have books, then they wouldn't have anything to publish.
And so it goes on.

5. Your editor is for life.

Oh, how I wish. I've had lovely editors who I felt real friendship and passion for but all have moved on. Luckily another lovely editor appears, but it's like first love. You hanker for the dream of happily ever after and, although you know it's the real world, you don't quite like the hardness that creeps in to the next relationships.

6. If an agent says she doesn't LOVE my work, then it is unpublishable.

More than anything, you want an agent who LOVES your work. If she doesnt, you've had a lucky escape. Keep trying.

7. If an editor says she doesn't want my work, then it is unpublishable.

To be honest, I had thought this but then I edited a magazine and realised how much good work I had to turn down. Many stories could have been published in that issue, but I needed a mix of first-person, different styles etc.


8. I have written something everyone everyone will take as a work of fiction.

Yep, that's what I thought. Because it was. But I'll always remember an interview with Lynne Reid Banks, when she talked about how her friends quizzed her after about the baby she'd had. She was confused until she realised they were confusing her with the book. Now I'm prepared, and although it can be threatening, I've decided to be flattered that something I've written can feel so real.

9. The only way to be a writer is to get a book published by a big publisher.

Have I mentioned on this blog before I'm off to join the circus arts project. OK, just a few times, but if that's not being a writer, I don't know what is. And what's more, there's no publication involved. We get too tied in to publishing. What is it about writer that makes it so difficult to say we're writers? Why is it inevitable the next question will be 'so what have you published?'. When was the last time you quizzed an accountant about his tax returns? Surely the process of writing is what is more important? It's what makes us writers after all.

10. It is a nasty 'dog eat dog' world out there and all other writers are out to get other writers.

There's a strange myth that writers are competing constantly against each other. In fact, most are amazingly supportive - after writing my first novel, I knew I'd respect with total abandon anybody who managed to finish their manuscript right up to the last word, published or not. I've been gobsmacked by how more successful writers have helped me - with no benefit to themselves. It's made me determined to do the same. It seems to be the way it's done and hoorah for that.

Circus mania...

Just arrived in my inbox:

Call for Submissions!

We are now inviting submissions for our September Short Fuse. The theme is,

'Nights at the Circus'.

We'd like tales with an Angela Carteresque lavishness, but the theme can be interpreted as you wish, here's something to start you off:

Violet ink and purple prose, the Big Top lifetsyle - a menagerie of colourful characters, trapeze artistry, lion-taming, Freaks, Funambulists and the high wire, Trick Ponies, travelling 'artistes',
or ...show time, cabaret, showgirls, showbusiness...
wit, charm, the grotesque, perhaps even a touch of the absurd.

The event will be on Thursday September 18th, at Komedia's Studio Bar, but the deadline for submissions is on the 8th September.

Please send stories of no more than 3000 words to shortfusestories@yahoo.co.uk
Please label the word file attachment with your name and the story title.

Happy Birthday Tally!

Thanks to all of you who have sent messages regarding Miss Tallulah. She's seems to be enjoying a new lease of life at the moment, helped by recent birthday celebrations:



She was very gracious as she looked at the chocolate cake enjoyed by all her humans (she had doggy treats and, ok, a few crumbs):



Here's the old girl now. She'll be getting a telegram from the Queen at this rate:



And can I remind you that talking to Tally in a silly voice is not really surprising from a woman whose parents made huge decisions depending on what our dog, Boots, thought. I kid you not - he would be posed the question, and as we all stood round waiting, would bark once for yes, twice for no. Oh yes, Boots's word was law in our house. Explains a lot on reflection!

Here are two writerly dog blogs - The Weirdie Beardie Chronicles and Monty, the dog owned by our own Kathryn Harriss also does prompts. And you thought I was mad.....

GO TEAM GBK

Of all wonderful things I could have inherited from my mother, it seems that getting the names of things wrong is going to be my legacy. It used to drive me absolutely spitting mad. I remember once having to leave a family party because, when, as a cool fashionista teenager I nearly shared a flat with Bob Geldof (I know, I know, lucky escape), my mum was going round telling people that 'Sarah's going to flat-share with Bill Goldof.' I kid you not.

Anyway, I try and I try and I try and I just can't get these things right anymore either. So when my son got a job working at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, I told everyone he was working at Burger King. He spent ages coaching me - 'it's G.B.K. mum. How hard can it be?' Very very hard.

But, hey, his lessons must have stuck somewhere. Now, as we cheer GO TEAM GB, GO TEAM GB we're all as synchronised as the divers in our house. Or nearly all of us are.

There's one lone voice chanting for GO TEAM GBK.

The judges are not pleased.

Vote now!

Oh this is so cool. Alice Barnard, the very very talented 17-year-old daughter of my friend, Gaye Jee has made a video cover version of 'Five Years Time', which has gone into the top five of the Sun newspaper's Vote the Video competition. Obviously I'm a little bit biaised but I still think it should be number one. Watch it and see what you think - it made me smile so much. And if you like it all you have to do is to text 'VTV 101144' to '66633'

And if that link above didn't work, there's another to see the video: here

Alpine vegetable gardens

Just feast your eyes on these beauties. And whoever said that vegetables couldn't be as lovely as flowerbeds. I was so excited to see vegetable patches everywhere - we need more of that in this country. They were a joy to see...

More at the Circus

I was going to put up some of my Alpine vegetable gardens today (please please I hear you beg. No, I say firmly, stamping my foot. Sometimes you lot need to know who is boss.) Plus I had a a nice surprise last night that I want to share with you.

As I've said before, I'm spending some time this Summer in Iowa at an arts project, The Tiny Circus. Although not a circus in the animal training, human acrobat sense of the word, the whole thing still has the same air of childish excitement for me. Ever since I first agreed to go, I've woken up every morning thinking 'god, I'm so lucky to be involved.' It's like I've been given a great big unexpected present.

But that's not my surprise - it's that the publisher of my short stories, Bluechrome have put up a post about the circus today, offering to contribute £4 to the circus funds for every copy of Leading the Dance they sell.

It's so generous I'm forgiving Anthony the quips about my mid-life crisis - after all, he is talking about the woman who has just bicycled down a mountain. Ok, ok, I was hunched over in total terror the whole time and my hands had to be prised off the brakes afterwards, but I still DID IT. Beats my normal daring deed of choosing a different pastry at Carluccios any day.

But first of all, a little circus history about my involvement, which is really much less than I've been credited for. When I was a fellow at vcca last January, one of the other fellows there was Carlos Ferguson, an amazing artist. Despite him creating a scene of me being eaten by lions (worryingly captioned as Dying - Sarah - Very painful)...:



...I still agreed like a shot to join in the arts project he planned for the Summer. Carlos has done up one vintage airstream trailer already, and had a vision of a troop of mini airstreams touring the country putting on shows:



It started off as a collaborative project right from the start. I particularly liked the aims he set out at the beginning:

My aim in general is to create artwork that is free, anonymous, and generous. This might be accomplished by speaking clearly to an audience with goals in mind: to create joy and thought, to entertain, to communicate and share.

I would like to move outside of my own focus on myself and my own work. When I have worked with other artists I have found the collaboration to be transporting, exciting, and inspiring, and a terrific antidote to never-ending questions and doubts about what is important and right in my own artwork. With this in mind, I would like to facilitate and participate in a larger scale collaboration.

To begin with, it felt safe to dream but then, very quickly, it has all become real. There are already a bunch of talented artists based at the circus farm in Iowa working on the first projects and living in tent city:



This is an amazing opportunity for me, but an interesting one too. Because I've been looking and looking at the first video produced on the History of Rain and wondering about the role of text. Coming after the pictures, it seems to me it could work too heavily as the frame for the images, to change the whole feeling of the piece, almost the da-da-da of the horror movie music that tells the viewer how to think. Usually I aim to create pictures with my words, to make people see the things I'm describing so they forget me, the author, completely, and enter the story themselves. There's a quote in Women who Run with Wolves that I really like - If a story is seed, then we are its soil. But it seems to me every time I look at this video, that the seed has flowered already. I've tried various options - fairytale, comic, silent movie drama, end of the world - and I still can't get the balance right between the story the video tells and my words.

Yet.

It's probably one of the most interesting projects I've been involved in. I keep going back to the original thoughts of the circus that attracted me most -"I would like to move outside the focus of my own work." It brings me back to the need to lose the inhibitions of self-consciousness in my writing process. Because if I'm honest, I am worrying about getting it right at the moment so the others will like it (and possibly me). I don't want to spoil the collaboration I'm only on the outside of at the moment. It feels a bit lonely, and that's something I have to get over too. A puzzle I'm determined to get to the bottom of. It can only be good for me because I NEED to stop worrying about everything. When I actually lose myself in my writing, I can feel all these worries lift. It's magic. It's the hot air balloon feeling that keeps me hurtling back to the page. Self consciousness is just too much of a straitjacket. I'm tired of being scared.

And I'm also trying hard not to think too much about the next one. A History of Popcorn. Hmmm. Don't worry, when I get there the Brits will have a say - A History of Marmite after all is probably one of the most fascinating stories that hasn't yet been told.

So, that's the circus. And I'll be there in just over a week. Another mountain to climb and then to speed down, I'm sure I'll be screaming at least part of the way. Do read the blog and watch the progress - this is an amazing project. If you want to buy my book and contribute that way I'll do a little juggling act especially for you. Or at least sign it for you if you send it to me. Email me.

And we do have an animal too. Meet Marigold, the circus pig. I'm not sure what tricks she can do yet, but I've been growing my fingernails specially for scratching...

Hurrah, hurrah..

Some brilliant news to come back to - my friend, Catherine Smith, is on the Forward Prize Shortlist for her stunning collection Lip, and now I've only got until October to learn how to type with all fingers crossed for her.

Woodpiles

If anyone had told me just how many woodpiles there were in the Dolomites and how beautiful they were, I would have been there years earlier. But anyway, forgot those old mountains and feast your eyes on these amazingly splendid piles:



They are even the focus of pin-up posters. Can't bear to leave it at home? Take it with you:



And... oh, I do hate this. When the people you're on holiday with start demanding you stop taking pictures of what matters and concentrate on them instead. But I think just behind Rachael, you can spot some very beautiful wood:



What amazed me was that not only were the piles organised round windows, as a second layer of insulation, and in terms of size, but this one even seemed to be colour-coordinated like a painting (the bench is an extra present to you all):



And if you have no space? Don't worry, climb. After all, these are mountain people:

I'm back!

Did you miss me?

Sightings of shopping trolleys being taken up the Dolomites were unfortunately few and far between, but some very successful spottings of benches, woodpiles and vegetable gardens. More to come later ...

And more and more...

Wow! I am no longer nobby-no-mates in my gang of one. Things are moving apace.

a) We now have members in England, Scotland, France, and two in America.


b) There's been this beautiful photo spread

c) Alice Elliott Dark, one of my favourite writers and author of one of the Best Short Stories of the Century, has agreed to be our International Relations Member, giving us this stirring promise, "I'll carry on the fight in America."

d) In addtion, we have made the following appointments:

As well as being smoking, Alex has been appointed Facebook Group setter-upper. Come and join us there for trolley discussions

and Clare has been unanimously appointed our Beautiful Member.

e) And we have even been asked our first philosophical question: 'What is the point of all this?'

I am away now for two weeks, so this blog will be quiet (no prompts either, I'm sorry - please feel free to use the comments to share any ideas for writing you may have) but have no fear. I will be scouting for members overseas.

The Shopping Trolley Appreciation Society

Well, things are going much better than expected. We now have twelve members (four of whom are men) and some of these have even joined without being threatened with violence.

The coloured membership card has gone to our new leader, Hilary, who I don't mind stepping down for because any gang that has her in it will be the coolest group in history.

My dad is the deputy chairman and official speech maker (yay, nepotism rules).

Anonymous Bosch has gone straight into number one member spot with this wonderful photo essay

Anne is our design chief.

Cathy wins the brightest trolley prize (hers is fluorescent pink)

Alex wins the smoking trolley member prize not just because he's hot but because he's offered to smoke a pipe while wheeling his,

and Nik is a valued member because he's joined despite his fears that we might all be a bit 'bonkers.' Oh, wait that was just me.

The rest of us are humble members (but as we all know, those with trolleys will never be absolutely humble because we can always aim them at unsuspecting ankles when they're busy condescending to us)

Vacant positions currently - Trolley Society Membership Member and Trolley Society Facebook Group Setter-up Member and Trolley Dolly Member....

Oh, and stop press ... we have just had our first American member join so we are now an official International Society.

Want to join my gang?

A few of us (well, ok just me) have been exercised by the ridicule given to those wondrous beasts that are shopping trolleys. So we (yes yes, just me so far,no need to keep rubbing it in) have got together to form an appreciation society. It will have officers, special handshakes, activities etc etc, and we're even going to have special membership cards (see above). Golly Miss Molly, this is going to be spiffing. Anyone who wants to join can email me and I'll send them one of the above cards (although not in colour. That one's just for me cos I'm the leader and everyone else gets black and white photocopies. Hey, stop whining, no one said this was going to be fair).

I am picturing the future and it has small wheels.

Holiday Reading...

I haven't packed a stitch of clothing yet for my two-week holiday starting on Saturday, but what I have been doing is deliberating far too long on what books to take. This is the pile as it currently stands (or topples)...



I can't tell you exactly how much agonising has gone into getting it even this small, but there will have to be further pruning and it will hurt. It always does. I notice my partner has been hiding his books in case some of them have to go so he can fit mine into his suitcase (it's happened before).

Although what exactly would happen if I went on holiday and didn't have a vast choice of what to read, I'm not sure. That's something that's never happened before, and it never will.

But this year as indeed with every year, I'm now more than half way through a book I'm really enjoying...



and because I'm not going to finish it before Saturday I will have to make a decision. Do I take it, knowing I'll probably finish it on the plane out there and then have to lug it around for the rest of the holiday? Or do I leave it behind to make more room for the books I haven't started?

Decisions, decisions. Who ever knew holidays were so stressful?

And this is a semi-answer to Nik's snappily titled post-a-photo-of-a-random-bookshelf-(or book pile)-almost-meme.

The Rejt Advice

Not my headline but one from Mslexia Magazine for an interview with Macmilllan and Picador publishing director, Maria Rejt. I'm not sure I've ever quite forgiven the magazine for heading an article I wrote about finding your own voice through studying other writers The Art of Plagiarism - after I'd been really really careful to say DON'T copy in the piece. Not only that but they spelt Plagiarism wrong - a fact which was pointed out to me gleefully by several hundred students. They did put a graceful apology in their next edition but if you google me it still comes up with something like - Sarah Salway argues that copying other writers is a good thing. Argh. OK, I was saying something like that but context is all and that bland sentence isn't something I really want to have on my record. But but but, nevertheless, it's still a great magazine, I was proud to have written for them (and to have had several of my poems published by them) and I look forward to it and read it avidly every month. This issue is particularly good as it has the results of their annual poetry competition. (Dads by Carole Bromley is particularly wonderful, and I was glad to look her up and find other moving poems online.) Anyway, anyway, back to the Rejt stuff. Her advice:

1. Don't be scared of the knock backs. If you are that sensitive then you shouldn't be writing. It's an endurance test.

2. Discover a new writer every year, even if you just read one book. Seek out the best because it will give a context to your own voice.

3. There is no book that I have come across that I have published - or have been disappointed abut not publishing - that didn't need editing. The great thing is feedback, feedback and then a little bit more feedback.

Ah, yes. I'm going to print this out and put it on my newly cleared noticeboard.

More blankets...

Further to my last post, I've been hunting round and here's Craig Thompson's blog. Fascinating.

Oh, you should read this book...

I can't remember whose blog it was on which I first read about Craig Thompson's Blankets, but I wish I could, if only just to thank them.

This is a HUGE graphic novel - or as it says on the front, 'an illustrated novel' - with 582 pages. After a while the experiences it outlines of extreme bullying, being an outsider, falling in love for the first time so so sweetly, complicated sibling relationships, learning to cope with a relationship breaking down together with the hints of more dangerous narratives of abuse and depression, feel as if they could only be told in graphic form. I was interested to see that Thompson includes Art Spiegleman in his acknowledgements because it gave me the same complicated feelings as when I first read Maus - should I be reading about this in comic form? Until of course I stopped thinking and just started seeing.

A handful of stones

Slowing down and paying attention is probably the most important thing a writer can do. Fiona Robyn's been doing this for several years now at her blog A small stone. Now she's opened the idea up to us all. This is what she says about it: Every day I try to pay proper attention to at least one thing, and record it on my blog. I call each chunk of writing a small stone. I think this is a brilliant idea, and I'm certainly going to be joining in and adding this to my bloglist.

You can find out more here.

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.

Steps

I'm sure that there is a deep psychological reason why nearly every house I've lived in has an enormous amount of stairs. I long for wide and flat, but end up narrow and tall. Still, it has given me an obsession with uses of stairs rather than for just going up and down. This bookcase has featured before, but worth another few minutes lusting after nevertheless:



But it was these outside steps I found when browsing on Beholders Eye blog that really made me gasp (I found this site btw when browsing on Garden Monkey's wonderful blog):




What an amazing idea. I just love it when I see something I've never thought about before. And we have steps in the garden too, I could do this!**

And any of these too. Big Mouth's are featured on there, (Scroll down the book pics to the stairs) . So amazingly cool.

Oh yes, narrow and tall is where it's at. There must be a market for a staircase blog somewhere...

(**Isn't it always the joy of knowing you'll never quite get round to it that makes these pics so aspirational and lust-worthy?)

More than you really wanted to know...

... about me. A meme from Bookeywookey.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

Mars bars
Almond croissants
Hot sausage rolls (with mayonnaise)
Bacon sandwiches (with brown sauce)
Candy shrimps and bananas, maybe especially candy bananas, oh and sherbet spaceships. I like those a lot.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:

Oatcakes and honey
Strawberries
Apples
Raw carrots (ok, don't really enjoy all that much)
Chocolate (and even Mars bars sometimes - kept in the fridge and cut into slices)

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Have someone come in to make my bed with clean ironed sheets every day
Give loans to women to start businesses in developing countries
Get concorde reinstated for one more last flight so I can go on it with some friends and family
Hire Bryan Ferry to sing just for me
And then I'd give the rest away to the Kids Company to open centres everywhere

Five (non-academic) jobs that I have had:

Waitress
Babysitter
Journalist
Pea Picker
PR Consultant

Five habits:

Drinking coffee first thing in the morning - before I can speak
Singing to my dog
Saying 'and everything' at the end of every sentence.
Talking to random animals in silly voices
Buying books

Five places I have lived:

Bedford
Ely, Cambridgeshire
London
Edinburgh
Kent

Cloud Atlas wins Best of the Rest...

Scott Pack's announced the result of his 'Best of the Rest of the Booker", to find the book chosen from those who DIDN'T win the Booker prize but were shortlisted, and it's Cloud Atlas. Now, there's a surprise - I was on the panel to choose the ten books put forward for the poll, and this one was high up on my list, but I was gunning for Waterland for overall winner. Well, The Underground Man would have been my first choice but that didn't get on the shortlist.

Still a very worthy winner, not least because it should have won the Booker in its year, and I do like Scott's suggestion of cutting up David Mitchell's winning cake and rearranging the pieces. Made me laugh out loud.

You can see and hear David Mitchell talk about the writing process of Cloud Atlas here on Meet the Author.

Story Maps

I'm loving, really loving, the idea of this story, The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming, and how you can use the internet to visualise the plot. The story is told caption-form above aerial shots of London. But is it just me or did it make anyone else feel sick? I haven't managed to get to the end yet. It's not the content, it's the sensation - like reading a book in the car. I could never do that either.

Where time stops still...

Luckily I didn't meet any ancestoral ghosts in Bishops Castle, but spending time with the 'real' relatives was just pefect. My dad, two brothers, sister, nephew and I were all there to remember a special family member with a bench we'd had put up in the graveyard.



It was the first time we'd seen the bench, as it had all been arranged via the internet but I needn't have been nervous. It's the perfect spot, English countryside at its most beautiful, and with lots and lots of wild flowers around.



And the time even goes officially slower in Shropshire. See anything strange about the church clock?



It only has one hand, because, well, why do you need to know the time to the second when there's no need to hurry anywhere?

Away with the ancestors...

Just off to spend a few days getting to know this lot better ...



.. in the ancestral village, Bishops Castle, here ...


I've put up enough prompts for when I'm away. Don't cheat ...!

Dancing in the Dark

It's been far too long since we've danced on this blog. (Lovely benches too)

What to do, what to say?

I know it's not just because I'm the mother of teenagers that I can't bear to even look at a newspaper these days, but it makes it harder. I'm certainly not going to stop my kids from going out but as someone said it's the ones without knives who are getting killed. What am I going to do? Give them weapons to defend themselves?

So have a nice time, and by the way have you got your hanky, emergency money to get home, bus pass, flick-knife...?

This story in particular had me in floods of tears last night. Of course Shaki was begging for his mum, he was sixteen. Sixteen. That's younger than both of mine, and I still consider it my role to protect them. Eighteen teenagers have been killed violently in London this year, and that's not to mention the French students stabbed over 200 times last week. I know it's easy to get caught up in a wave of hysteria, and maybe I am over-reacting, but what else can I do? Nothing? I keep going through scenarios I've heard about why this should be happening:

1) as a country, we're scared of our teenagers - well, we have been for a long time. I remember the gust of physical anger and sadness I felt when I watched a middle-aged woman cross the road so she wouldn't have to walk past my son in his hoodie. I know she crossed because of him because I saw her cross back after she was 'safe' and look behind her to make sure he wasn't following her. I don't think he'd even noticed her. I wanted to run and challenge her, but I realised then I've done the same myself. Changed my path so I didn't have to pass a group of teenagers who were 'hanging around'. I certainly wouldn't ever smile at them, or say hello.

2) we don't give them any responsibility - yes, I agree, just look at the traffic round the school run. Don't we even trust them to find their own way? But, but...

3) as parents, we are too wrapped up in ourselves and don't want to lose our chance at fun - I'm pleading guilty here. I'm friends with their friends on Facebook, go to concerts with them and dance whenever I can. I can't imagine my parents doing any of those things BUT I'm sure they were just as wrapped up in themselves, and besides the fourth accusation against us is ...

4) we spend too much time thinking about our kids and putting them in the centre of our lives - can't win, I guess

5) there's nothing for them to do - or maybe there's just too much school work, too many hurdles to be got over, too many exams to pass so they lose the ability to think for themselves as to what they could do in any free time? Free time, what's that?

6) too much shopping and not enough nature - I've been thinking about this a lot since going to see Hugh Lupton's show about John Clare. He claimed the concrete jungles we live in now are sending us 'out of our minds'. An interesting phrase when you come to look at it.

So here I sit looking at that phrase, out of our minds, and going round and round in circles in mine. What to do, what to say? Does anyone have any suggestions? Or do we leave it all to the Government and the police to control our own children? Somehow, there's something a bit too Orwellian in that for me.

Teacher's treats...

I've finished my writing classes in Tunbridge Wells for the summer now, so last night I invited a mixture of students, local artists, writers and friends over for a drink and a reading. You can tell this particular reader is a Sarah because of her tiara. I would like to say I made her wear it, but I've come to terms with the fact I've never had a student yet doesn't do exactly what they want to do and hang my futile attempts at instilling an air of fear and authority.



From the emails I've had - and even the honour of it being a beautiful thing - other people enjoyed last night's 'soiree' nearly as much as I did. But it also made me think a lot because I've always considered my teaching as a way of funding my writing. But suddenly last night, as I listened to the readings and the conversations going on and remembering some of the exercises we'd all done together, I realised just how important teaching has become for me. It is a privilege to work with other peoples' writing and to share the energy of committed writers creating something together. I could never be one of those writers who live hermit-style, communicating only with the page. I need to be engaged somehow with the world. My challenge now is to keep the balance between engaging and writing. One nice thing about the kind of teaching I do is that it's not continuous. I get breaks like now - from July to September - in which to revitalise, think of new ideas, and get ready to start again. To this end, because I've got some exciting teaching prospects coming along, and a connected even more exciting project I'm working on, Clare and I have been sorting through my very very messy piles of teaching notes together.



And slowly, slowly, it's all coming together. I like to think of myself as a creative type who doesn't mind mess but I know now that's not the case. I like order. No, I LOVE order. I crave it. It lets me have the space to think of new ideas. Mind you, I've just spent the last five minutes stroking my new Clare-organised files.



No wonder she wears a tiara. She might not be a Sarah but she's the queen of the alpabeticised system. My only gripe is that she says I've got to learn how to use them myself because she's not going to move in and live with me but, hey, I have a tiara too (and mine's pink). I CAN do it.

Summer Writing...

One of the things I'm looking forward to this Summer is talking at the Summer Intensive writing workshop - here are the details if anyone is interested, but I do see there are only two places left, so if you do think it's something you might like, it's probably worth contacting the organisers quickly:

SUMMER INTENSIVE

Host: Shaun Levin
Type: Education - Workshop
Time and Place Start Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:00am
End Time: Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 8:00am
Location: Highbury, London
City/Town: London, United Kingdom
Contact Info Phone: 07757644127
Email: writingtime@gmail.com

Description
Maggie Hamand and Shaun Levin will be hosting an Advanced Feedback workshop in London during the month of August. The Summer Intensive is for writers who are working on a sustained project, and who are interested in working intensively towards completing a novel or a collection of short stories, as well as learning more about the publication process.

The emphasis will be on the form and structure of your writing project, and on a productive discussion about participants' work. Over the eight sessions, each participant will be offered three (3) half-hour slots for a critique of their work. Extracts will be emailed to all participants before each session in order to provide you with time to read and comment more closely on the work.

The writers Toby Litt and Sarah Salway will also join us to discuss their own writing process.

For more details about the tutors: http://www.writingcourses.org.uk/about.php

Please note that the workshop is limited to 8 participants.

Dates: Twice a week in August: 5 & 7, 12 & 14, 19 & 21, 26 & 28 August (8 sessions)
Days: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time: 6-8pm
Fee: £220

please write to writingtime@gmail.com if you'd like to pay by cheque, bank transfer, or through PayPal.

Please forward this info to anyone who might be interested in joining. There are still 2 places left.