Coventry - a 50 word photo-story

We don’t talk to Mandy. Sometimes we sit near her just so she doubly knows we won’t talk to her. If she makes an effort, puts ribbons in her hair say, we laugh. If she doesn’t, we laugh more. Why don’t we like Mandy? I’ve no idea. But we don’t.

Just another boring day then...

One night a year, in the Bahamas, the Selenicereus cactus flowers ache into bloom, conduct their entire sex lives, and vanish by morning. For several days beforehand, the cactuses develop large pregnant pods. Then one night, awakened by a powerful smell of vanilla, you know what has happened. The entire moonlit yard is erupting in huge, foot-wide flowers. Hundreds of sphinx moths rush from one flower to another. The air is full of the baying of dogs, the loud fluttering of the moths that sounds like someone riffling through a large book, and the sense-drenching vanilla nectar of the flowers, which disappear at dawn, leaving the cactuses sated for another year.

(From A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman, page 55)

"Read, read, read. Read everything- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write." William Faulkner

Bull talk

Now, this blog likes bulls. In fact, as regular blog readers know this blog even has a share in a bull of its own and I don't mean to boast, but I do wonder quite how many other blogs can claim that. Particularly writing based ones.



Anyway, HUGE congratulations are due to the real bulldaddy (as he is named on my phone at least), Alasdair Houston. His Charolais bull (and Deeday's friend), Gretnahouse Drysky, was awarded the supreme male title at this month's Sale of Charolais Cattle at Carlisle bull sales.



And here is Gretnahouse Drysky with stockman, John Morton (who has been possibly the most patient man in the world as we all came stumbling round the herd with some of us doing things like calling Drysky Deeday's friend) ...



But he is pretty, isn't he?

Drysky, I mean. Drysky. Gawd, at this rate I'm never going to be allowed back to Gretna, and I love Gretna Green.

Ps. I hope I sound as if I know what I'm talking about. Being the part-owner of a bull is a serious business, and I for one certainly would NEVER get confused between Charolais and Chevrolet as I'm sure the rest of the bull family will testify (cough, cough)...

Bisc Lit

Happy to be dunking the first crumb into this new literary category here.

Taste more...

First, a fact ...



According to Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Senses, the human has 11,000 taste buds in their mouths while the cow has 25,000. Imagine what that mouthful of grass must taste like. The explosion every time the cow takes a bite. How the cow can taste whether the grass has been in the sun or the rain. How even a bee stopping to offload pollen must make all the difference.

And we call someone sluggish cow-like? I want my writing to be by the power of 25,000 today, not a measly 11,000.

And now a quote ...

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." Henry Miller

And lastly, a song ...

Indigo Sisters, Closer to Fine.

Heck, it's only life after all. This is all very un-British of me, I know, but hurrah for that.

I'm going to write BIG today!

Work - a 50 word photo-story

It was his seventeenth job interview that year. You’re not trying, his wife says, but he is. It’s just they don’t ask him the right questions. He’s not interested in career progression, or pensions, or salaries, or even bonuses. No, the only thing he wants to talk about is adventure.

Dreich...

That's the only word for the weather today.

So if you feel like a smile, take a look at this short illustrated story .... The Lost Fart, because we all need a dollop of silliness sometimes.

Weekly blog round up ....

This week, I've been thinking about ...

* CLARITY - Cally Taylor's excellent new book, Heaven Can Wait has come out this week with a blog tour. This post on Fia Kenzie's blog is one of the best descriptions of how to write to an agent that I've seen.

* CONCENTRATION - Sonja Grussendorf's post about an interview Susan Hill did for Radio 4 chimed with how worried I've been about my writing practice now I do so much on the internet. To quote, Sonja, about Susan: She had previously become aware that her concentration was not what it used to be and suggested that “if you use the internet a lot you notice your concentration begins to become fragmented and you don’t have that complete concentration for two or three hours.”

* CREATIVITY - I follow Amanda Palmer on Twitter with a huge dollop of admiration, but this post by her assistant is just beautiful. Good to remember the whole creative process is never just up, up, up if it's to have any value. I can't remember the last time I felt so inspired just to create.

* CRAFT - Now I have lunchtimes, I like to wander round my bit of London. On Friday, I found The Origins craft show at Somerset House. It was completely uplifting. I particularly loved Alix Swan's book boxes, Annie Sherburne's rugs, and oh oh oh, I wish there was a way to show two-dimensionally just how fine Fenella Elms's ceramic pictures are.

* CENTENARIES - It was recently the Centenary of The Poetry Society, and this is the very best round up of what went on I could find - from Pamela Johnson's always well worth reading blog.

* CONNECTIONS - This letter from the poet Amy Clampitt to Mary Jo Salter made me think we all need to write more letters. Now. If only in the hope that we might one day get a reply like this one.

So who are you going to write to?

Not letting go ...

A few years ago, after lots and lots of serious testing, I found my perfect ever notebook. Ladies and gentleman, meet the Marbella ....



It's exactly the right size, it has a soft cover so feels nice, the pages are ruled just to the right width, it has not one but TWO ribbon bookmarks and a wide margin. What's not to like?

Even better I could buy it from Rymans, changing the colour when I was feeling daring. But then suddenly, Rymans stopped stocking it. No one could tell me anything. I tried other makes but they were all too hard, they just didn't feel as friendly. So I sulked for a bit.

But then today I went searching and guess what I found - my notebook has its own website. Good times. A new notebook is hopefully on its way to me right now.

And this is from the woman who used to insist strange writing rituals were a waste of time. And that I could write anywhere, on anything.

Be warned though, that website is wicked. I'm already thinking of asking Father Christmas for this, and I haven't even clicked on to the pen section yet.

So what do you write on? Send pictures. This blog likes its stationery porn.

Cheerleader - a 50 word photostory

I said to my husband, ‘Brian, you never notice me anymore.’ ‘Did someone say something?’ he replied. I didn’t laugh. Next match day, I packed my pompoms and jumped the barriers. I’m waiting for him to pick me up from security now. Brian, I’ll say, did someone just do something?

In treatment....

Dr Paul crush alert...



Well, he's not my therapist, so there's nothing wrong with it, is there? Although, wait ... he's not real either.

If you've not caught up with In Treatment yet, it's well worth a look. Even for other things than the handsome Gabriel Bryne.

It's like The Archers too, in that it's on every day and then all of it on Sunday. You need never miss an appointment!

NaNoWriMo

So continuing the theme of doing too many things at one time, I wondered how many people are considering writing a novel in November?

Come on, surely you can fit it in!!!!

Seriously, it's a great project. I know lots of people who swear by it, not least as a kickstart to their sluggish creativity. Kay Sexton reminded me about it with this post on her blog, which explains it all much better than I can.

And in case you were wondering, we are not doing another round of Your Messages this November. However the prompts are still up there, if you want to see if you can write a completely new response for yourself. (ps and if you have a comment up there, and would like it removed, maybe to rework for publication etc, do get in touch - we certainly wouldn't want to hold back any of your excellent work from finding new homes.)

The Lesson - a 50 word photostory

Mrs Fisher told them it didn’t matter how fast they climbed the stairway of life. Even those who came last got somewhere, she said. So are the steps made from winner’s gravestones? John’s dad scoffed. To get to the top was to die. But so was being at the bottom.

The Troubadour

One of my favourite places for readings etc in London is The Troubadour Cafe - and this poetry evening coming up on Monday 19th October looks particularly good. It's a mix of poets I've read, and some that are new to me, so I look forward to hearing some fresh voices.

Coffee House Poetry Features: David Constantine Introduces Sasha Dugdale, Stephen Romer, Lucy Newlyn, Joseph Butler, Jenny Lewis, Robert Saxton And Jane Draycott

More details here.

Been rejected recently?

Here's one way to deal with it....



The author, Mary Patrick Kavanaugh's website is here - at the wonderfully named My Dream is Dead But I'm Not site.

My guess is that she's an ace marketeer. And my second guess is that she's now got a book deal. She's certainly creative, but does it make me want to read her book ...? Sadly not. But that's personal. I have a thing about reading about death, and there's enough of it around my life right now. What it does make me want is to read more about her though.

And my third guess is that I will. Soon.

Alive - a 50 word photostory

Lucy has become a different person since her anger management therapy. We used to be able to go to her for everything. She’s terrifying now, but some of us still ask her for stupid things. We like how her rage makes us feel real. As if our life really matters.

One thing at a time...

I have so much I want to say on this blog - photographs from my travels, new 50 word stories, thoughts about writing, the creative process, my new post at the LSE, books I've been reading - that to be honest, sometimes I just look at it all and feel so exhausted about where to start I just give up. It can feel like I'm a pot about to burst with steam. Much easier just to keep the lid tightly on and do nothing.

Is anyone else the same?

And a couple of months ago, thinking about just this, I started to wonder if women of my age, of any age actually, hadn't been taken for a ride with all the stories we were fed about how much better we were at multi-tasking than men. Gawd, I even felt smug about it at the time. One of my most successful stories was started in the kitchen as I scribbled down notes while cooking supper for my kids and playing junior scrabble with them at the same time. More work, more jobs ... bring them on.

But now things seem to be swinging the other way. An article in the New York Times suggests that multitaskers just think they are doing lots of things successfully.

Trouble is, it's not just circumstance. There's so much I want to do. And not enough time to do it. Of course, I need to prioritise, but maybe I need a different attitude too. One that can adapt to my writing life, and doesn't keep telling me I'm doing everything wrong because I'm trying to follow research designed for an office day. A friend has suggested this book, Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher, so I'll give that a go and report back.

And in the meantime, I'm going to throw chronology to the wind on this blog, and over the next couple of weeks, post the things I fancy talking about whether they come from yesterday, a week ago or even three months ago. The key thing is to unscrew the top of the pot off carefully, and let just one thing out at a time.

Fast...

I am word of the day, FAST, on wordia today.

I would just like to point out that my voice is NOTHING like this ... in my head anyway! But I do smirk well, even if I say so myself. Smirk, smirk.

Seven words....

Take the words - refuse, note, row, light, case, wound, fast - and give them to various writers to put into a story of not more than 500 words and what do you get?

An amazing number of different interpretations of the same group of words.

I was really pleased to take part in this recent project, hosted by the East of the Web short story site - it's just the kind of word play I like, and now I have just spent a happy hour clicking the different links and reading yet another story. Mine is here if you want to get started.

Or, of course, you can always write your own!

Patterns - a 50 word photostory

He only eats white food, never steps on grass. Every sneeze means turning round three times. He kisses his front door when he leaves the house and turns the television on and off three times before watching. If you ask why, he’ll tell you. He likes to keep things simple.

Where am I?

Wednesday night, and just off a plane from Washington I find my twitter account has been spammed. Apparently I'm sending out DM's to people offering them a chance to earn hundreds of $s. I'm not too anxious about friends - they seem to know instantly that anything involving successful moneymaking couldn't have come from me, but the strangers I'm getting to know via Twitter - I'm worried they might have clicked.

But I also feel dirty. As if someone's been reading my diary (cue today's writing prompt!). I hate the idea that someone's using me for their own purposes. Sending out their scams under my name. It's the problem with the internet. It becomes part of our lives, and then suddenly - with something like this - we realise that it's not actually real life. That something as important as our online identity can be taken away from us this easily. With a few clicks of the keyboard.

So yesterday, I needed something special to take the bad taste away.

And luckily I got it.

I'd booked on Tristan Gooley's Natural Navigation day course the minute after I finished nterviewing him for a recent feature in Psychologies Magazine, and I've been looking forward to it ever since.

Of course I had to get lost on the way to the venue, The Royal Geographical Society, but blame the morning sun, the walk through the park, the benches dedicated to dogs, the outdoor swimmers in the Kensington Lido. I wasn't complaining.

It was the perfect start to a perfect day. Tristan is a great, enthusiastic teacher that somehow makes you feel you 'can do it.' Even me. Mind you, he'd got me from his introduction when he asked whether natural navigation - navigating by the stars, the sun, plants etc - was really necessary? Is any kind of art necessary? he asked. Well, as he said himself, it is if we want the richest possible life.

We spent the day looking at how the sun, the stars and the moon work. Stars rise and set! I'm sorry but can I repeat that - stars rise and set. Like the sun. Am I the only one in the world who didn't know this? I can't tell you how happy it's made me. My life is certainly richer now. I watched them last night. The little sparkly blighters. Rising and setting away as if no one was watching them.

Hah. Take that Twitter worms. This is the kind of rich, possible life you'll never know about.

And if you want to watch the stars rise and set yourself, you can start to learn how to identify them yourself through this software, free to download here. Or if you want to go on one of Tristan's courses, and join me and the other 200 or so people who have learnt this rare art, check his site for the next course coming up.

Looking at things again and again ...

... and every time seeing something different. A new angle, an alternative point of view, a detail missed that somehow pulls everything together in a new way. Is there anything better?

PYO - a 50 word photostory

She dreams of a dark-haired husband but when she gets there, only blondes are left. “He can always cover it up,’ the farmer says, giving her a discount. She tries not to let it worry her but ten years later, she still makes him wear a beret in bed.

How to write

The best thing you can do as a writer is to find out what kind of writer you are.

And that means forgetting the set of rules which tell you that there is only way to write.

Some of us are slow burners, we carry a story or an idea around with us for days, sometimes months, and it has to find its own way of getting out. Try to force it and the story will just shrivel up.

Others prefer to be pushed. Set the timer, give us a starting light, and watch us go.

Some of us like writing in groups. Or the feeling of groups. On-line, in classes, with friends.

Others need complete hermit-like solitude. Even sitting in the same room as another writer freezes us.

None of these is wrong. In fact, I am and have been all of these. Sometimes it depends on what I am writing. Sometimes it depends on me, the writer, and how I feel.

But, over time, what I've come to realise is that I like a warm up before I start writing. Owen Sheers called it 'letting the rusty tap run clear.'

There are two ways I do this.

The first is morning pages. Every morning I sit down - often over a cup of coffee before anyone else is awake - and just write three pages of whatever comes into my head. It's an exercise from Julia Cameron. What I write depends on how I feel. Sometimes it's a list of moans ... I'm so tired, I'm so bored of hearing myself whine, I'm really cross with xxx ... but most often it starts of as a moan, and then something starts to connect. I write myself into ideas. I write myself out of ideas. I write myself into making sense of all these ideas, and into what I can do about them. I try out characters, reject them, write scenes, remember what it really feels like to have toothache, anything and everything.

My morning pages are an essential part of my day now. (I also do a fourth page of affirmations, but I want to write about that in a different post.) It's a way of establishing myself as a writer for the day. Even - especially - if it's the only writing I manage to do that day. I don't look back often, but when I do, I'm constantly surprised. It's better than a diary because it has the same ability to bring me back to how I was feeling at that moment, but more direct. it gives me back the fleeting thought I would otherwise have lost.

The second way I warm up is through my writing prompts (see the sidebar for my daily list, or follow me on twitter). Sitting down and writing something from a random idea is a completely different experience, almost as if another part of my brain engages itself in the act of writing. If my morning pages are about drifting across the lines, bringing up thoughts and feelings I wasn't aware of, using writing prompts mean I'm wholly aware and active on the page.

I often - no, always - don't know where I'm going, even though I wrote the prompt myself. I become aware of how I make conscious decisions as I go along. Not least in the shaping of the piece. My fifty word stories engage the same part of the brain too.

With my morning pages, I often finish mid-sentence. But with my writing prompts I am constantly crafting. It's good to start to realise what both feel like, and that I need somehow to combine the two in my 'proper' writing.

I'm not going to publish either set of pieces, or even edit them, but by doing the two together as part of my practice I can almost feel my writing muscles shift into gear. To expand. And both sets feel like gifts to me. To use a vegetable gardening analogy because I'm addicted to my allotment at the moment - my morning pages are unearthing what's already planted, however deep rooted, while the other is sewing new seeds and building new beds.

And now because I'm away for the next few days, here are some of my writing prompts for you to follow if you want to. Please feel free to link to whatever you produce in the comments section, or email me if you'd prefer. It's always such a real pleasure to see how the same few words end up with such totally different results!!!

Thurs 17th - She prays he won't come and sit next to her, but ...
Friday 18th - The list of things that annoy him about her
Sat/Sun 19/20 - You've never been up so early
Mon 21st - Things we never did together
Tues 22nd - I've taken up flying

And if you want to try other exercises, then I did a different kind of warm up on Scott Pack's blog recently. Also if you want to send me your favourite writing exercises, or warm ups, to share that would be great.

Hot - a 50-word photostory

It’s grows out of your control. That comfortable warm feeling overheats. You walk down the street trailing sparks. Smoke distorts everything. Every excuse, every argument, every plea. It moves beyond you. Everything stokes the flames. You long for it to burn out. You wake up in terror of the cold.

Happy birthday to...

... Karen, Philip, Hilary, and me!!

OK, none of us are 70, but I couldn't resist this mix of benches, cake and gardening!



Have a good day, everyone!

(ps, I found the cake at the Sweetart site. I love it so much that I hope they won't mind me borrowing it today!)

What are you doing, Sarah?

Well, last night I spent a long time playing with nightlights for a project I'm very keen to talk about on here but can't just yet,



The challenge was to write a poem without using traditional writing materials. OK, so mine is just one word but the lights, and climbing the stairs, and the darkness, and being under the stars, are all part of the poem too.



I hope you like it!

Shhhh - a 50 word photo-story

Retirement’s not the end of the world, his wife says. You can join a choir. He stares at her. I’m tone deaf, he says. But he ends up specialising in silent solos. Draws crowds mouthing the words along with him. Audiences weep with the relief of finally not being heard.

Beauty - a 50 word photo-story

I’d hoped my mother was joking when she entered the beauty competition. She looked ridiculous lining up next to the teenagers in her bikini, but when, she started playing on the spoons in the talent section, I knew I was doomed. The audience started throwing things. Not stones, but flowers.

Longing - a 50 word photo-story

I stock every medicine for every ailment. Townspeople complain about lack of energy while in the country, it’s all about sex. It comes down to the same thing, the nagging lonely feeling in their hearts. I’ll be back soon, I promise. But we all know it’ll never be soon enough.

Deflation - a 50 word photo-story

‘Didn’t you use to be Johnny Star?’ He’s often recognised, loves it actually, but this is the first time he’s heard the past tense. He shakes his head. Later his wife asks what’s wrong. ‘Didn’t we use to be happy?’ he asks, wanting to see how she’ll crumple, her tears.

The Expert - a 50 word photo-story

It isn’t that I know everything, she says. He sighs. It’s just that most of the time I know more than you. Another sigh. Especially when it comes to you, she says. He shuts his eyes. In fact, she says, you could call me an expert on you. He doesn’t.

Please welcome ... Sue Eckstein

I don't know about you but I'm fascinated about the way other writers live and think. What DO they do when they're not playing crazy golf or searching out benches?

So as part of the virtual tour for the novel, The Cloths of Heaven, I'm delighted to welcome debut novelist but established playwright, Sue Eckstein, as my guest blogger today. Here's what she says...



A (sort of) writer’s life


I didn’t write any fiction during my long career with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) but ten years after returning to England from The Gambia I found those three years infusing my first novel, The Cloths of Heaven, and I didn’t even have to shut my eyes for the people and places to come flooding back. Many of the experiences I’d had as programme director became those of Daniel Maddison – the visit to the women’s garden project with the EC horticulture advisor, evenings spent rather reluctantly at the High Commission, hours spent in markets, cloth warehouses, buses to rural areas, evenings in rural villages chatting over cups of ataaya. My work with VSO brought me into contact with hundreds of people I wouldn’t normally have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting –Vice Presidents and Government Ministers, eccentric expatriates, people living in extraordinarily isolated communities with little exposure to the outside world, people living in vast wealth and people who owned little more than a couple of cooking pots. Somehow they seeped into my mind and years later were distilled into the characters who populate the novel and the places that inspired it.

I loved the years I spent working in overseas development and I really enjoy my current work in medical ethics which I find both stimulating and fascinating, but my first love remains literature and drama. Once, long, long ago I dreamed of being a theatre director. Somehow my life took a series of very different courses and I know that I’ll never do that now but my play-writing has given me a taste of that world. I’ll never forget the buzz of excitement in the auditorium just before the opening of The Tuesday Group in London, or the extraordinary sensation of hearing the words of my first radio play, Kaffir Lilies, being brought to life in the recording studio at BBC Scotland.

Thinking about my life as a writer, I’m struck by just how much of my life I spend not writing, or at least not writing fiction and drama. Sometimes I mind this a lot and think that if only it wasn’t for my day job, I’d be incredibly prolific but the reality is that I probably wouldn’t be. I have had several periods off work while having my foot reconstructed (a long story) and haven’t written a word in all that time. But give me a new, very full-time job and lots going on at home and somehow I manage to write.

All my jobs have had huge casts of characters – from my various jobs with VSO to my current job as lecturer in medical ethics at a medical school. My day job is, and has always been, much more than just a day job. The people I come into contact with, and the issues I think about, enrich my life and thereby enrich my fiction and without them both I, and my writing, would be poorer.




Thanks, Sue! You can buy The Cloths of Heaven here, or read an extract here. It's published by the very interesting Myriad Editions, and is immensely readable with larger than life characters and some beautifully cutting dialogue.

Here's the blurb:

Isabel Redmond is tiring of her iconoclastic husband's penchant for pedulous black breasts, the High Commissioner and his wife Fenella are both enjoying illicit affairs; an old English judge is wandering through teh scrub following a tribe of Fulani herdsmen; Bob Newpin is about to make a killing in timeshares; and just what Father Seamus is up to is anyone's guess.

Enter new diplomat Daniel Maddison on his first posting abroad. Rebeling gainst the endless rounds of cocktail parties, golf and gossip, he finds himself drawn to the people and places that lie way beyond the experience of his High Commission colleagues - and specifically to the dusty warehouse in the heart of the city where a thin white woman is silently measuring out lengths of brightly coloured cloth.

I think the horrific Bob Newpin is possibly my favourite of this cast, not least because I once spent a summer being followed round London by someone just like him who enthusiastically called out 'Sally!' whenever he saw me. But what I liked most about this book is the way that all the characters are given the chance to change, sometimes unexpectedly. The moment when the buffoonish High Commissioner confesses to love is beautifully drawn, not least because of the reaction of his ghastly wife, Fenella. She's defeated for a second before she gets back on the bitchy treadmill she's created for herself

'No, you idiot,' she says, reverting, with what sounded like relief, to her usual self. 'God! How will I live without your sparkling intellect and razor-sharp wit? No. Don't answer. Just take the case down for me...'

Loneliness and passion - great themes that Sue explores well here.

Great interview with Susan Orlean

... here. I love this answer in particular:

Maria Schneider: You’re known as one of the great narrative nonfiction writers. What motivates you to write in this genre?

Susan Orlean: I love real life. I love finding and telling stories, with the deep hope that it will somehow change the reader. Fiction can do that too, of course, but I have always wanted to find real stories and draw people to them, reveal something of life to them that they might not otherwise have a chance to see.

The interview is on the blog, Editor Unleashed, well worth bookmarking if you haven't already.

Sometimes you get what you want...

... a beautiful green bike ...



... and a bull of your own ...



... and what's more, it feels great! Just hope I don't get them muddled up.

Worms - a 50-word photostory

Janine said no-one would come. Why would they? It wasn’t as if the worms did anything anyway. They just… slithered. But Brian had faith. He imagined a queue of people whose hearts leapt like his when they found one in the garden. A worm-like relieved queue slithering, exposing their shame.

Knife-edge - a 50 word photo-story

He takes her to the wood at midnight looking for a tree on which to carve their initials. Not this one, he says, as they walk round in circles. Or this, he says hours later. Her feet hurt, her head aches. Her fingers keep feeling the penknife. Its sharp edges.

On Inspiration and the Giving Tree Garden

The best thing on holiday is to come across somewhere unexpected, somewhere that feels like a home. We did this in Cape Cod, when we stopped on the Route 6A at Giving Tree. We thought it was going to be just another jewelry gallery, but it turned out we had found somewhere even more special.



The owners, Rachel and Judith are a mother and daughter team, who have created a garden of sculptures leading out to a marsh. They call it their gift to anyone who wants to visit and it really was a magic place.







But it wasn't just the natural beauty around. I left The Giving Tree Gallery knowing that I wanted to have poetry round my garden at home too. And that I wanted to make things myself to decorate it, however simple.



I loved speaking with Rachel. She's funny and clever and generous and one of those people you feel you've known for ever. I left with a CD compilation that we listened to for the rest of our holiday, and her book - "My Theory on How to Avoid Being Sad (in 116 parts)" - both of which she gave me as an early birthday present. Part Number 5 in her funny and clever list seemed particularly relevant:

5. Talk to strangers who talk to you. It is the rare, special person who will begin a conversation with a strange because they find themselves together, in a line, on an elevator etc. These are usually not sad people. Especially because to talk to you means they are most likely NOT talking on a cell phone.

Oh, there's nothing I enjoy better than meeting people who inspire me. It's as if I can become a bit bigger myself somehow. I now have something new now that I didn't have before. I love the idea that my world keeps growing, and that I am seeing common themes as to what will make that elusive *click* ... passion, and commitment, and a desire to make something new rather than to take things away from others, but most of all a huge dollop of good humour and fun.

Impossible to choose any really, but here are three particular people who I've discovered online this year and who - personally or through their on-line presence - have inspired me in many different ways and so who continue to make my life a bit bigger...

* Susannah and the way she looks so closely to really see things 'with new eyes'
* Linda for her walking and joy in making maps
* The Sartorialist because looking good is part of loving life

I'd love to know whose website you go to for an injection of inspiration. All suggestions welcome (including yourselves!)

(And another joyful thing about the Giving Tree is that the jewelry is all available online. Here's one on my wishlist....)

It's the Green Bicycle day

Today I'm off to London to pick up my new green bicycle.

And then I'm getting the train to go to Gretna Green to see my bull, Deeday.

Only one thing is for sure.

I will not be cycling round London with Deeday strapped to my chest like this ...



Nope. Not even sideways. So sorry to disappoint.

Let me show you my holiday snaps

So here I am. Back again.



Lots to tell, but first let me show you the crazy golf course we played at on Cape Cod. It's no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I am passionate about crazy golf, but this particular one was a real highlight.



It's been in the making 55 years apparently, and the owner gets his inspiration from God for each individual hole...



(I scored a hole in one in Moby Dick above. Not showing off, just saying. A hole in one, btw, did I mention that?)

However, the divine inspiration doesn't necessarily make it easy for players ...



Particularly as good use is made of the river. See this one below, the hole ended up on a raft. Which meant if you moved too enthusiastically then your ball rolled to one side too. No banging those clubs!



Best course ever. Ever.

And morbid of me, I know, but I couldn't resist taking a photograph of this sign. The funeral parlour was just opposite, and shared the car park. Playing crazy golf is so much the way I'd like to go...

It's holiday time!

So I'm getting off the ....



but I'll be ...



and in the meantime, look after the blog for me. Don't ....



because, gawd, I hate it when people do that ....