Growing geese

I've been asked more than a few times why I'm doing a garden history course. For me, the answer is simple - it's not just because I love gardens, or because it's an interest I shared with my mother, or I think gardens are a way to help us understand wider social and economic themes. No, it's because of all the stories and the characters I can find and enjoy.

Yesterday's class threw up a great example of this. We were looking at Gerard's 16th century Herbal.




One of the plants recorded is a tree that had branches that opened to reveal .... er .... geese.



Gerard wrote: "...there is a small llande in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders...whereon is found a certaine spume or froth, that in time breedeth unto certaine shels." These mussel-shaped shells would grow until they split open, revealing "the legs of the Birde hanging out...til at length it is all come foorth." The bird would hang by its bill until fully mature, then would drop into the sea "where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a foule, bigger than a Mallard, and lesser than a Goose."

The myth had apparently been uncovered as a falsehood many years before, but our tutor said that one of the arguments as to why it might have remained in Gerard's herbal is that if geese were thought to be from a plant, then they could be eaten on days when meat shouldn't be consumed.

So there you are. If you hate brussell sprouts you can enjoy your Christmas goose instead, after all one vegetable is just the same as another vegetable!

Putting it all in proportion

OK, OK, all this fuss I'm making over where I fit into memories and then I read this* ... it's a statement by Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Professor of cosmology and astrophysics at Cambridge when asked what single idea he wished was more generally understood:

I'd like to widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead - for our planet and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

I'm strangely comforted. And surprised because, yes, of course this is true. We really aren't that important.


*Also in Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened Of. I've been a bit obsessed by this book recently, to the extent that when I looked at my blog the other day to answer a comment, I clicked off thinking I'd got on to Julian Barnes's blog by mistake. It was the fact I put up a larger picture of him than me, I suppose. Mind you, at least I'm not like the ever-watchful Debi Alper who flagged her own blog up for objectionable content by mistake. Thats still making me laugh.

Worms...

Reasons why the tube isn't quite so bad ... there's a man in Japan who has just been arrested for releasing hundreds of live worms near female passengers.



Why?

"I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs," police quoted 35-year-old Manabu Mizuta as saying.

Hmmm.

I'm exaggerating now so you'll get to know me faster.

Amy Hempel

Still remembering...

I'm reading Julian Barnes's book, Nothing to be Frightened Of at the moment. It's a mostly fascinating meditation about death and dying, and I'm realising how little I think of death compared to, obviously, some people. BUT I'm also interested in what Julian Barnes writes about memories.

I went to an academic conference about autobiographical writing a couple of years ago, and heard a brother and sister presenting their life story. They compared the process of coming up with shared memories to archeology. I like this image, making completely sure of understanding one layer of memory before delving down into the next. And also not taking anything for granted. Evidence is needed for every memory.

IN this book, Barnes compares his childhood memories often with his brother, only to find - surprise surprise - they have different takes on the same incident. Often the brother will have forgotten something that supposedly happened to him, an incident Barnes claims total recall of, but then Barnes is the younger brother. I remember things about my siblings too that they have forgotten simply because to be the youngest is to often take the role of watcher. Absorbing information is our special power. My sister and two brothers were like wondrous beings to me, doing things that, maybe one day, way in the future, I might get to do too. So of course I watched closely. And of course they saw it differently. In their view I got to do everything far too early, and far too easily. Or that's how I remember their complaints, anyway!

Here are some of Barnes's thoughts about memory:

Memory in childhood - at least, as I remember it - is rarely a problem. Not just because of the briefer time span between the event and its evocation, but because of the nature of memories then: they appear to the young brain as exact simulacra, rather than processed and coloured-in versions of what has happened. Adulthood brings approximation, fluidity and doubt: and we keep the doubt at bay by retelling that familiar story, with pauses and periods of a calculated effect, pretending that the solidity of narrative is a proof of truth. But the child or adolescent rarely doubts the veracity and precision of the bright, lucid chunks of the past it possesses and celebrates. So at that age it seems logical to think of our memories as sorted in some left-luggage office, available for retrieval when we produce the necessary ticket ... We know to expect the seeming paradox of old age, when we shall start to recall lost segments of our early years, which then become more vivid than our middle ones. But this only seems to confirm that it's all really up there, in some orderly cerebral storage unit, whether we can access it or not.

Later though, Barnes talks about the differences between characters in fiction and real life people. No real person, he says, can be as whole as a fictional character simply because we do not see them from all sides, inside and outside. "In novels (my own included)," writes Barnes, "human beings are represented as having an essentially graspable, if sometimes slippery, character and motivations which are identifiable - to us, if not necessarly to them."

I wonder if this is also part of why our childhood memories are so clear. We see our childhood selves as fictional characters, made partly through retelling our memories, and also looking at photographs - 'ah, that's who I WAS', and also through being told stories too. So what's left in the 'storage unit' hasn't been forgotten but taken down and polished often over the years. Whereas the middle aged us just blunders on, not really wanting to clarify the line between middle age and old age because the end of that narrative takes us somewhere we don't want to go, unlike that between childhood and adulthood.

And there's something else Barnes writes that makes me wonder too about why our memories are so strong of childhood, a time, after all, for creating who we WILL be. He says:

Memory is identity. I have believed this since - oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.

I'm not sure why I find this so frightening. I have never forgotten reading a French neurological study of a woman identified only as 'Madame I'. She'd lost her memory and had to keep touching herself continually to prove she still existed.

Keeping memories

There's a paragraph in Scientific American Mind I can't stop thinking about. It's an interview with the neuroscientist Eric Kangel and the last question is: If you were granted one wish, what would it be?
And the answer:

I would like to know how some memories persist forever. How do you remember your first love experience for the rest of your life. Neuroscientist Kausik Si, then a postdoctoral fellow in my lab, and I discovered a protein called CPEB that has the very interesting characteristic of self-perpetuation. That might be a clue to how memory is sustained over long periods. But we don't know for sure yet.

It reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of my favourite films. I'm thinking now of a story about controlling memories. A character pressing his head every time he wants to remember something. The only trouble is, if he gets it wrong, he'll never be able to forget.

Only in England...

I love this sign - somehow I always imagine Mary Poppins as the nanny. Mind you, it was taken in Chelsea so I should think they have nannies just as perfect there, and they don't let the kids climb on rockeries either.

I love your messages ....

If you haven't already, do take a minute to whizz over to the Your Messages website and have a look at some of the responses that are going up. I think they are really really good, and how Lynne and I are going to pick just one, I just don't know. Luckily she normally agrees with everything I say (hahahahaha)....

Meet our latest addition

So the latest on the bull story. Last Friday, I went to Carlisle to meet my Edinburgh accomplice and we went to see our very own bull. This started last year when we bid at a charity auction for some pedigree bull semen - well, the dinner out for two had gone. Anyway, we're not stupid, we negotiated the birth of the bull as well, and because it was for Cystic Fibrosis, the wonderful Alasdair Houston offered us the chance to come and pick which bull we wanted. This will eventually be sold and all profits will also go to the charity but in the meantime we're calling him ours and are planning to watch him grow up, which is all probably much more more than Alasdair bargained for when he offered the prize to the proper farmers there!

Now the surprising truth is Alison and I don't know much about bulls, apart from how to pose in front of them...



But the bulls we were choosing from are part of the award winning Charalais herd and, let me tell you just in case you ever doubted, they were BEAUTIFUL...



How to choose just one? After five minutes I was seriously contemplating going into cattle breeding...







But luckily we had brought our official advisers with us, who had lists of sensible questions and proper experience...



Also the ability to say a firm NO when I was determined to have one called 'Dracula' because - cue spooky music - that's the book I'm reading at the moment with my book club.

And so meet the handsome Deday. We won't know how he'll turn out for a while but hopefully he'll grow up big and strong and carry on making money for Cystic Fibrosis for many years to come.



We're going back to visit him in three months time so I'll keep you posted. I have to say I've learnt a lot about bulls and breeding over the last few days. Not least NOT to share it all with strangers on trains!

And because we were in Gretna Green, here's a video of the famous starlings just starting to mass. It was just like this. Around five o'clock we could see them coming from all directions and apparently some nights the sky really does turn black.

Paper friends

I have never got over the oddness of loving people on paper and yet knowing I never want to meet them in person. My new stalking object, Hugo Rifkind is like this. I don't know how I know we wouldn't get on, but we wouldn't. Trust me.

Still, I laughed out loud - twice - on the train to Carlisle this weekend as I read his diary column in the Times. The man next to me had already put his newspaper firmly up between us after he'd asked why I was going North and I told him - in less detail than I could have done - about the bull semen. Then a text conversation with Garden Monkey had me giggling too, so in all in all I had a lovely train journey, whereas my poor companion's newspaper trembled away as he wished he had met me on paper only so he could put me down as soon as possible. His destination of Preston must have seemed like a long long way away.

Anyway, here's one of the bits from Hugo Rifkind's diary that had me chuckling...

This is what you might call a generational divide. On the older side we have the vast swaths of the population who don't really know how to work their mobile phones. On the younger we have everybody else, and they have to spend huge swaths of their lives telling the first half how to use their mobile phones, often over the medium of said mobile phones, even though they know that the other half aren't really listening, and are still going to send them a voicemail saying 'hello? Are you there?' on every second day and a text message saying 'HBgUO%?' every third.

Painfully true. Not least because I'm somewhere in the middle as far as technology goes. I feel like a bright young thing every time my dad asks for help with his laptop, but on the other hand, I need a teenager standing close if I am going to watch a DVD these days without crying. We have FOUR remote controls. Give me one good reason I need more than one please, and then I'll stop getting quite so emotionally involved.

Beware the backlash...

Recently I've read several pieces of journalism, blog posts and emails cheering on the end of the 'misery-memoir'. I wonder about this, because, despite the fact that they are so easy to mock, the best-seller shelves in the airport bookshop were still heaving with 'the saddest story you'll read this year' the last time I looked.

Now, I'm not a big fan because I am concerned about the parts of me that find these books curiously addictive. Mostly I flick through in bookshops, looking at the back page blurb and then the end because it's the happy ending I want to read. The triumph over tragedy. But of course you don't get the triumph in these books without the pages and pages of tragedy before. Tragedy that's been expertly marketed.

A small child's face, a teddy bear and the hint of handkerchief seem to be the most popular images for the cover, although knees pay a large part too.

But here I go too.... easy easy to mock.

And that's why I say 'beware the backlash.' Because in dismissing the misery-memoir, many of the writers I've read have been lumping all memoirs into the same category.

As if writing about your own life results in a lesser book somehow than either fiction or biography.

Whereas I find sitting down with a well-crafted memoir such as Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments about her relationship with her mother, or The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain by Dave Roberts (now there's a book you should read if you want to know something about pain!) about the most pleasurable reading experience I can have. These are expert books, well crafted and shaped. Often the structure the memoir writer chooses leaves me breathless with admiration because life, as we all know, isn't well shaped at all. Most of us haven't got a clue what's going on. (Well, OK, I'm speaking for myself here.)

In her book, The Situation and the Story - the art of personal narrative, Vivian Gornick writes about how you need to find a 'teller' even for your own story. A part of you, I suppose, that has a distinctive character, but is still engaged with and absorbed into the rest of you. Maureen Lipman described this perfectly on the radio last night when she was talking about the impetus of writing her book, Past Notes. She was telling an anecdote to a group of friends, she said, and watching them laugh, while at the same time thinking about whether this was right because she was also a grieving widow. Should widows make people laugh? It's the watching here that's important - the edge that makes her a successful writer. She's immensely interested in herself, as well as what's going on, and so - most of the time - we get interested too. In fact, most successful memoirs are written by expert watchers - was anyone more closely examined than David Sedaris by David Sedaris, for instance?

In an interview in the new Glimmer Train, Colum McCann discusses the differences between biographical fiction and biography. He says:

Ingmar Bergman said something along the lines that, 'Sometimes I must console myself with the notion that he who tells a lie loves the truth'. In a strange way, you're not talking about the absolute facts of somebody's life, but you're talking more about the texture and feel of somebody's life. ... In Dancer, I wanted to give the feeling that the reader was actually there, on the street with the person.

Now, there's a difference between memoir and biographical fiction but I think the 'texture and feel' is what I'm after in a memoir too. I want to be on the street with the writer, or at least the persona they're using to tell the story. With most misery-memoirs, I never feel I'm in the cellar or the forest - I'm looking in, poking the embers of the misery with a stick to get it to flare up again. And why shouldn't I? It's been packaged for me to do just that. There's a gloss to much of the writing that allows me to feel I'm safely behind glass and therefore don't have to do, feel, anything real.

Which just makes me think, all over again, how wonderful the best memoirs are, particularly when they make us cry real tears.

On bulls and not trusting writers....

So, this weekend I'm going back to Edinburgh, my almost home. Two exciting events planned, as well as seeing my more than spectacular god-children.

The first is proving harder to explain that I thought. I tried in an email to the normally reliable Garden Monkey. 'Last year I brought some bull semen at an auction,' I wrote, to which s/he suggested that wasn't the best opening line, before offering me a bench book if I did actually dare to try it with strangers. I haven't yet - not even for a book about benches - but if I tell you guys the story, then maybe it will become easier.

So last year, I brought some bull semen at an auction. Along with it I got the loan of a cow and bovine maternity care. So now, on my way up to Edinburgh I'm stopping off at Gretna Green to see my bull (now born). It will look just like one of these - look...



(I'm not sounding peculiar btw, am I? You would let me know.)

And then after lunch with the bull daddy himself I'm hopping back on the train (sans bull which will be sold for charity but I'll take some pics to show you) and on Saturday, I'm reading for the Stolen Stories anthology.



I LOVE the idea behind this anthology. Here's the publicity blurb:

Never, ever trust a writer. They cluck and nod and listen and then three months later they splash your tragedy/foolishness/very embarrassing incident involving a raspberry jelly and a pair of warm curling tongs over the tawdry pages of a literary quarterly. We feel there is no shame in this. Quite the opposite: we believe this ugly fact deserves to be celebrated with all the pomp and hullaballoo we can possibly muster. Therefore we are compiled an anthology of the finest stolen stories, the anecdotes and overheard conversations that simply demand to be told. We feel that it is time to be honest. This is where our ideas come from.

Every story in the book will have a little introduction from the writer about how it first came about. It's going to be so good for teaching - seeing just how different writers gets ideas, and then how they explore them further in the actual stories. My contribution, 'I Would Never Eat a Tapir', felt to me very stolen. I wrote it for Caroline, who was then running Borders books (no pressure then) after Scott gave me five words or phrases I had to include - tapir, tutu, Stockholm, 'look at the sky' and sushi (hmmm....easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Absolutely no pressure then). It was strange to write because these words obviously had meaning for her, but none for me. That was probably why it started off feeling very 'stolen' as I wondered if I was using them in the right context, but eventually the story took over. What was amazing was how those words ended up fitting in, taking the story to new places, but never, hopefully, sticking out. You will see how cleverly I inserted one into the title, for example.

I'm a great believer in limits for writers - Twyla Tharp says 'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources'. It's an interesting idea.

Anyway, if you are in Edinburgh, do come and see me ...

Saturday November 15th:

Elvis and Shakespeare - 2pm
347 Leith Walk, Edinburgh
http://www.elvisshakespeare.com/

Featuring:
Lindsay Bower - frequent contributor to many magazines.
Sarah Salway - novelist with Random House.
Jo Swingler - longlisted for the Bridport Prize and Cinnamon Press First Collection Award.
Nick Holdstock - his work has recently appeared in Stand and the Edinburgh Review.

with
* live music from Withered Hand – honest, intense, eccentric, bittersweet and very wry anti-folk.
+
Complimentary Exploading Car Beer!

(I'm particularly liking the idea of 'Withered Hand')

or you can buy the book here.



And if you want some bull semen, er, perhaps don't get in touch... oh no, I'm imagining the google searches already.

A fisheye view of Tunbridge Wells ...

here and here and here and here ...

I know they're the same link, I'm just throwing you in a goldfish impression for free

... and here...

Some kind of wonderful...

See me, I'm a friend of the band these days.

No, really.

And not just any band either. We're talking about the Blow Monkeys here. I can't tell you how many hours Dr Robert and I spent together in the 80's. It was either him or the Pet Shop Boys. What can I say - once an eighties girl, always capable of raising eyebrows.

Anyway, when I heard the Blow Monkeys were looking for donations for their new album, I was first in line. I knew I'd been right to keep those shoulder pads. And now I have it in my hand ...

Signed by the boys....



And with my name printed somewhere amongst the other dedicated fans. Look at us having a little metaphorical crowd moment here ...



I love it.

Not least because it might mean I finally finally get to make my dreams come true and dance up on stage with the band. Sarah, the rock chick goddess....

Or, as Neil puts it so sweetly ....

Warning, writer at large...

I used to be a freelancer for the Catholic newspaper, The Universe. Most of the jobs were wonderful, never let it be said that the Catholics don't know how to throw a party, and I got to meet many extraordinary people. My funniest moment though was when I went up to get a quote from a visiting Cardinal. 'I'm Sarah from the Universe', I said and he just stood there looking at me. 'So are we all, dear,' he said eventually. 'So are we all.'

It was clear that he'd never heard of the newspaper and thought I was just announcing my general presence in the world. Ho hum.

But now I'm very proud to say that I really am roaming the universe through my new position as Editor at Large for the very wonderful Canadian style pair, Carrie and Danielle. I want to write more about what they do later because it's very clever and I believe in it, but for now, do look at their website - www.carrieanddanielle.com. It's full of good information on personal development, creativity and, well, just being human and having fun really. One of my first articles is up here - it's part of a series of creative writing exercises I'm planning. If you write something from it that you'd like to share, then do leave it in the comments over there. Or indeed here. I'd like to see it.

And it seems like this is my day, because an article I wrote for Pyschologies magazine is on the shelves today. It's about the 29 day giving challenge I took part on earlier in the year. It makes me feel a bit guilty because I actually got far more from the challenge than I think I gave, but if you want to try your own, you can find out more here.

Correction

It should now of course be President Elect Barack Obama.

Thank you, America.

And another advantage of the election is my daughter and I have discovered a new game. It started when we were watching CNN - lots of shrieking, flashing banners, people rushing round, chances to save the world etc etc - and then turned over to the BBC News. A new Winnie the Pooh drawing had been found. A books expert, so shy he could hardly look up, was being interviewed - very, very slowly, and then the presenter went for a walk in Ashdown Forest. Slowly. We burst out laughing. It was almost as the television was working at half-speed. We switched back to CNN - different people were now still gesturing wildly, piecharts were flying in from every angle, quickquick talking - back to BBC and yep, still walking in Ashdown Forest.

We've tried it several times since and it's works whatever the news. It makes us laugh every time (although I've noticed we both prefer the more peaceful British version. What can I say, we're sssslllllooooowwwww.)

On the edge

It feels strange to be a non-American watching the US election today, doesn't it? Rather like we've been reduced to childhood all over again. All we can do is to sit back and wait while others get on with the decision-making, and yet there's no doubt that the result will have an effect on us too. Anyway, I'm wishing hard. In fact, I have everything crossed - although I have to admit I did vote in the Summer, albeit with a corn kernel at the Iowa State Fair (see above). May the result be the same as that one in which Barack Obama's jam jars were filling up nicely.

I don't think I've ever felt so jealous of a country though as I did during Bill Clinton's inauguration when I watched Maya Angelou read the poem she'd been asked to write. At that moment it felt like America had suddenly become fresh again. Hopeful.



Now, I'm just wishing I can feel as jealous again. I spent this lunchtime reading poetry, wondering who Barack Obama might pick, dreading who John McCain might choose - I know it will do no good, it's even a bit melodramatic of me which is perhaps why I kept coming back to this particular poem by the American poet, Kaylin Haught. I love its playfulness and the feeling of acceptance it offers.

God Says Yes to Me
Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

So what else is happening in November....

Just in case you are not going to spend the WHOLE month counting words - 30 or 300 - on your fingers, there is lots happening with my fellow Bookarazzi members, see here.

Your messages ....

So we start today. Come and play.

Oh Oh Oh...

Beautiful vowels

It took seven years to write Eunoia

Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels - and it means "beautiful thinking". It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok's book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel.

Mr Bok believes his book proves that each vowel has its own personality, and demonstrates the flexibility of the English language. Below are extracts from each chapter.

More here, and I see some commenters are asking 'why?', to which I can only say, Christian Bok, marry me...

How things have changed ....

In my file of potentially useful things to hold against the children should it become necessary (what? You expect me to believe you don't have one? All parents should...) I have my son's first published piece of work. Along with a drawing of him looking like Edward Scissorhands for some reason, all hair and fingers, there's this:

I came to school and I haud no curectshens and then we went down the hill to get the bus but it wasn't theyr it had brocen down then we went to maisieq the firer (nope, I don't know what this mean either - probably involved some sort of snack. They seemed to snack a lot in Edinburgh. Anyway it all adds to the narrative tension I think he's achieved perfectly because look what happens next ... ) then we came bac and we went up the hill.

And now I have just received his latest published piece of work. A little different maybe, not least because I can understand every word. I bet he still had no curectshens... And that's the end of the proud mother alert, apart from the fact this isn't going in the potentially embarrasing file - although I have a dreadful feeling he might be keeping one on me now and this blog post is so going in there!

Pitch me a story ... quick!

Lots of good stuff in Catherine Ann Jones's book, The Way of Story, but I particularly liked this anecdote of the origin of word, 'pitching', for selling a story.

According to Jones, during the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada would tell imprisoned playwrights that if they could interest him in an idea, he would let them live long enough to write it. If not, they were dropped into a large vat of boiling tar.

Another day another garden

To the Chelsea Physic Garden recently of which much more later but because this blog likes chocolate (oh yes it does) here's some more proof gathered, if needed, of the scientific botanical evidence that chocolate is good for you ...

From Pepys .. the cure for a hangover ...





Hans Sloane, obviously a man of taste even if he is the patron saint of flowery head-scarves ...




And lastly, in the spirit of scientific experiments, I've been testing just how calm this makes me (although a friend did suggest wine might be quicker)...






And here's Hans Sloane himself, although, look, someone's just stolen his bar of chocolate from his hand. Bloody typical behaviour of those sloane rangers...

The Butchers Shop

Passing this on ... looks terrifying if you (or your story) are the 'body', but I really want to watch!

Just a quick note to let you know that BAD IDEA magazine is launching a new monthly writer’s workshop and theatrical experience called ‘The Butcher’s Shop’ this Thursday at the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London. Short stories submitted by guests will be dissected, chopped up, and improved through an intensive process of live editing and debate. An audience of 50 other writers will discuss and argue with BAD IDEA’s editors as they place the writing of guests on a 19th century operating table – project it onto a big screen – and go to work removing inefficiencies, excising flabby adjectives and probing narrative structure. The ultimate goal: to create live debate about the editorial process, and involve attendees in a dramatic ‘theatre-in-the-round’ exploration of the writing craft. Sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin, tickets include complimentary cocktails in the theatre’s Herb Garret. If any of you are in London on October 30, or have students who might be in the area, we’d love to see you there.
Anyone who puts their name down for a ticket in the next couple of days will also eligible to have their story reviewed on the night: if any of your students are interested in attending and would like to submit a short story/ies of 350 words length, please tell them to send the text through to info@badidea.co.uk. Stories submitted by Mon/Tues stand a great chance of being edited/reviewed during the event. Despite the gory title, 'The Butcher's Shop' live editing process will be playful and fun. More info is online: www.badidea.co.uk/thebutchersshop
(The ticket price, including open bar and gifts from Hendrick’s and Fentimans, is £12. Workshops are from 7pm – 9pm on the final Thursday of every month, beginning 30 October 2008, at the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, 9a St. Thomas’s St., London SE1 9RY. Places limited. All stories must be submitted in advance of the event. We cannot guarantee that all stories submitted will be edited at the event. For further details please contact BAD IDEA info@badidea.co.uk.)

Great Dixter - October

In September, I put up the first of a monthly series of photographs of Great Dixter. Now here are some from yesterday - a perfect Autumn day spent at possibly one of my most favourite places. There was a slight breeze too, and it was beautiful how the plants moved in the wind. A real living garden.

A literary warning to shameful shoppers....

That's me, apparently!

I was happily surprised to see a poem of mine, Night Letters, quoted as part of an answer to the question - Dear Book Doctor, I haven't actually been affected by the financial crisis yet but it still feels unnecessarily frivolous to go out and buy lots of new clothes right now. What do you think? Eva, London - in the Financial Times yesterday.

According to 'book doctor', Rosie Blau:

"...the lesson of literature is that shopping won't serve you well.

"Like letters he keeps her bills/on a spike by their bed,/each pierced through the heart," run the first lines of Sarah Salway's poem "Night Letters". The picture that emerges of this shopper isn't attractive: "He thinks of her then, prowling the shops,/licking her lips at a colour, or the cut/of a jacket, focussed ahead,/ hearing nothing but the click/of her credit card."

Of course, Night Letters is taken from a series of poems based around a shopaholic, looking at the thin line between a pleasure and an addiction, so it wasn't supposed to be attractive. It's been hard to write too, because I seem to have become extra-sensitive to all the incentives to shop, spend money, buy this, that, anything in the quest to be a different person.

Perhaps that's why I've been enjoying this blog and this blog recently.

A resolution a day...

... makes me happy. I'm loving these daily resolutions from this site. The best countdown to the end of the year I've ever had.

Look what Alex has found ....

The House of Books has No Windows. (Although Alex thinks it looks more like a shed, of course).

Has anyone seen it? I'm wondering if the no windows bit is a good thing, or a bad. Are they saying that too many books make us look inward, rather than out of the windows? I'm thinking of the exercise in The Artists Way where you have to give up reading for a week. Yep, that's it. The one that makes most writers hyperventilate.

It's back ... and it's even more lean, mean, intense ...

The Your Messages project was definitely a highlight for me last year.

So how could we not do something again this November?

Trouble was, what? Lynne and I knew we couldn't do it exactly the same all over again - not least because we worked out we read nearly three times the equivalent of War and Peace, however wonderful it was!

BUT we have worked something out. Come and join us on the Your Messages website, and keep November 1st in your diary.

Here are the details:

Every day during the month of November 2008 we will post a writing prompt of exactly 30 words and you’re invited to respond, via the comments box, with your own original piece of writing which may be either exactly 30 words or 300 words long.

At the end of the month we’ll be choosing one response as the overall prize-winner (although we may well comment on one or two others as well) and the writer of that piece will receive signed copies of our books: Leading the Dance, Learning How to Fall, Something Beginning With and The Oven House.

And how will we make our decision from so much fine writing? Here are a few things to bear in mind:

1.There should be some kind of link to the prompt, e.g. theme, image, word or phrase
2.It should be a stand-alone piece of writing.
3.It has to be brilliant! :-)))

We look forward to meeting up with as many old and new ‘Messagers’ as possible online from 1st November.

Musical writing prompts

I've let the writing prompts in the sidebar slip this week, largely because I've been engrossed in what I still call, 'The French Idea', because that was the subject title of all the original planning emails.

So to make it up to you, here's one of the exercises we did - and which produced some good work. I played a blast of different songs - just a minute - and then we all wrote in response to the emotional feelings evoked. I tried to pick songs about wanting something, and not just love!

What was interesting was that afterwards, almost without the writers being aware of it, the words in their pieces echoed the exact themes of the songs. Here are two of the clips we used if you want to try it yourself (although we didn't have the videos, you might have to listen with your eyes shut first, particularly I think to the Joanna Newsom)

Oh no, here it comes again....

.... the wanting, the needing.

Just when I thought I was safe with Nigella, my benches and the occasional shopping trolley, I'm halfway through Elspeth Thompson's wonderful Wonderful Weekend Book when the lust starts rising all over again.

Why have I never thought of learning to play the ukulele before?



It's all I have been able to think about today. And look, I can even make my own here.

If I ever needed to remind myself ...

why I like to write and teach, these photographs of my weekend spent facilitating a writing group in France will do just fine ....

Whether it's the mornings...



Or the plotting ...



Or the multi-talented writers ...



Hearing good work...



The HUGE window in our workshop room...



Or the food ...



The view from my bedroom window ...



Or the possibility that, if I didn't mind freezing to death, I could just dive in this swimming pool...

What have you got in that shopping trolley???

Well, will you look at this. It's an exhibition on wheels! Another use for a shopping trolley.

Here are some of the pieces Anne Kelly and I have been working on. They're based on the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.



There are eleven at the moment, but we're planning more.



Here's the official blurb about the project:


The Pillow Book Project – Anne Kelly and Sarah Salway

What is The Pillow Book?

Written in the eleventh century by a Japanese Court gentlewoman, Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book* is a scrapbook of lists, poems and reflections. Sei Shonagon’s observations range from the funny – (in a section, Things that Create the Appearance of Deep Emotion, she puts simply, “Plucking your eyebrows”) – to the poignant – (in Rare Things, we find, “A son-in-law who’s praised by his wife’s father. Likewise, a wife who’s loved by her mother-in-law.”) There are sections on Japanese Court Dress, lists of flowering plants, birds, mountain ranges. All of which add up to form a picture of what a certain section of Japanese life was like in the Heian period.

Why we liked it

Although the form is fragmentary, it’s easy to gain an idea of Sei Shonagon’s character through her intensely personal, and sometimes dogmatic, choices. We found ourselves thinking what we might put under certain of her sections – what makes us alarmed, or close our eyes with happiness, for instance? This became a challenge to write our own lists for today. Although our lives couldn’t be more different from Sei Shonagon’s, doing this project made us pause a little and look, with curiosity, both within and without, at what’s important. It was a reminder how effectively the ‘small’ can be used to tell the bigger picture. The use of fragments also fitted in with the magpie tendencies we both have in our creative process.

How we did it

To begin with, we sat together and worked out which section headings appealed to us. Then Sarah made lists and lists of what she felt suited each section – stories, images, thoughts, sometimes just words. Meanwhile, Anne worked on what different background colours she wanted to use. Then we came together again. Sarah cut and changed her words, and Anne found images, shapes and textures that fitted both literally and metaphorically with the emotion and atmosphere we decided together that we wanted to create.

Now what?

Just as we wrote on from Sei Shonagon’s orginal lists, we don’t believe our own Pillow Book will ever be finished. So we’d like to invite you now to add your own ideas. Just what does The Eight Month summon up for you, for example, or what things do you feel should be plump? Please fill in a card so we can incorporate some of your thoughts. Or give us a whole new section. We look forward to the challenge!

(* The Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon, (translated by Meredith McKinney), Penguin Classics)

In London tonight?

I will be reading tonight at the Rada bar foyer in Malet Street - details are here. If you come along, do be sure to say hello!

Recognise any of these?

From One Continuous Mistake by Gail Sher:

A list of erroneous indicators of failure that often have the devastating effect of inducing a real failure:

• I want to write but I don’t feel driven. I don’t feel ‘no matter what’. Actually some days I do, but other days I feel quite lazy.
• For me, the longing to publish is so old and so deep that I can’t get around it. It’s like a sore. Only one balm will heal it.
• I write every morning but I like it best when I get a ‘buzz’. If I sit there and nothing comes, I get impatient.
• I know I’m a good writer but I haven’t found my ‘form’. Without it I feel I don’t know what I’m doing. Somehow writing doesn’t ‘belong’ to me.
• I definitely have writing skills but I can’t get myself to finish anything.
• I keep being pulled away from my ‘own’ writing by the thought ‘If I could write a screenplay and sell it, then I would have all the time in the world for my own writing.’
• Sometimes I feel I’m just writing the same thing over and over. What’s the point?
• Writing is really hard for me. Getting to the first draft is hard and it’s impossible to imagine my pitiful language ever turning into the fine prose I see in the bookstores.
• I’m thirty-five. (Or forty-five. Fifty-five.) Many famous writers reached their peak in their adolescence or their twenties. Aren’t I too old to just be starting out?
• I can’t seem to get past ‘me’. All my writing is about myself and renditions of my life. Even I’m bored with it.
• I long to write but I’m so afraid of failing (I fail at everything I try) that I can’t bear to begin. I can’t bear to fail at something I want this much.

Gail Sher says:

‘All of the above are focused on what. The antidote: stay with how. If you emphasize the product, you are selling yourself short. Don’t permit your self-esteem to rest on such flimsy bedding. Products have a self-life.
‘But you don’t. Your soul is boundless. When you emphaize the process, your writing roams. The cosmos itself becomes your sitting room, you pen, the moon – around which, like stars, ‘problems’ settle themselves.’

I want it ... I want it ... I want it ... I NEED it ....

I was walking round the supermarket yesterday, list in hand, when I caught sight of her.

Mocking me. Luring me. Smiling just for me.

I carried on, putting green peppers, celery, lettuce, in my basket. Throwing them a little too hard against the wire, pretending I wasn't angry with them for not being her.

She was all I could think about.

The healthy bacteria yoghurt drink things went in next. Then the herbal teas. I clutched my list harder.

I could enjoy myself without her. I could. Really, I could.

I was making excuses not to go down the aisle where I knew she'd be waiting. I hadn't expected her to come for weeks, thought I'd have time to prepare myself.

And then, all self-control disappeared.

Look who I took home with me...



I am very very happy.

Hello Stony Brook Mathematics Department!

It seems, quite rightly, that I have become the terrible danger warning for maths students who don't get their papers in on time. So, if you've come here through that link, listen to your teacher, it will be fun. Hmmm. AND GET RIGHT BACK TO YOUR BOOKS NOW!

Phew. Another end of the world avoided there ....

So what did you do over the summer, Sarah?

Well, I'm going to disappoint you but at the circus, I didn't heave myself up to the tightrope, or get dressed up in sparkly outfits, but I did help to make this animation on just how the first ghost came about.



That's Holen under the sheet, btw - we were playing in the graveyard at midnight and it's a series of still photographs that Carlos magically put together to make a film. Call me naive, but I just didn't realise how animation worked before, I thought it really WAS a film, or that it would take about four hours of pushing bits of cotton wool about a half millimetre at a time in order to make those four seconds of clouds swooshing round the graves. Good though, eh?

You can find more circus videos here.

Two nice things ...

... in one day.

My piece on Alice Duer Miller has gone up on Vulpes Libris and people have left comments saying they want to read more of her. Yay...

... and Nik's done an interview with me on his website and said all sorts of blush-worthy things.

Thanks to both.

Oh, and here's a third - remember the baby squirrels in Iowa - look how big now...