Stocking up for winter

Our new next door neighbours were having the garden cleared. As a result, we have acquired a goodly heap of firewood which should keep the wood burning stove going for a while!

Trouble is, while the living room gets nice and toasty, the central heating in the rest of the house goes off, due to the thermostat being in the warmest room, so while certain members of the household, both furry and hairy, are lovely and warm, those forced to earn their living by tapping a keyboard are f-f-f-freezing!

 So I think I'm going to need this furry hat that I found in a charity shop today. It was brand new and still had its Accessorize label attached, showing that its full price was £20 while I paid a mere £6.00. It grips the ears rather too tightly but at least it won't blow off in a gale!

My cousin, the legend of Atlantis!

Very excited 'cos I just had a call from my cousin, Merv Read, telling me he has a bit part in the new BBC1 series, Atlantis, which starts on Saturday. I had no idea he was even interested in acting, let alone doing it. Apparently, three years ago he signed on with two film extra agencies and it all went from there.

His debut was in a Minnie Driver film, Hunky Dory, which was shot in Wales, which is where Merv lives. Filming for Atlantis lasted for twelve weeks and apparently he is 'very prominent' in the crowd scenes in episode one, in particular.

He is about to start filming something new. I bet he soon bags a speaking part because he has years of experience declaiming his poems at Poetry Slams, going by the name of Read the Rock Poet, and he is also a songwriter.

It must be in the blood, because I have been writing songs since I was six years old and also write poetry - and am reading some in public at Uxbridge Bigfest's Literature Lounge on Sunday afternoon. Big marquee in front of the Civic Centre, if anyone happens to be passing!

Cousin Merv

Book on the way...

I've chosen a cover for Perfect Lives - not too different from the one the original publisher was going to use. The designer is going to come up with half a dozen layouts for me to choose. Suddenly, it's starting to feel real, though it's been a very long haul considering Book 1 was originally scheduled to come out last December and Book 2 in April.

At least I'll hit the Christmas market this year, though I won't have the weight of a big publisher's marketing department behind it, worse luck. A friend of mine, James North, who has a thriller, Deep Deception, coming out soon, reckons he's spending over an hour a day bigging up his book on Twitter. He blinded me with science, telling me about apps he's got that tell him whether his followers, who he in turn is following, have done it just to bulk up their own Twitter audience and, having claimed him as one of their followers, have promptly 'unfollowed' him. Something like that, anyway.

Honestly, life seems too short for all this diddling around with tweets when I'd rather be writing. Or do you think he is doing the right thing? He tells me that if I don't follow his example, my book will just languish in cyberspace and sell about three copies. He could be right. I have just read this article:

http://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/making-your-book-more-promotable.html

It feels like a full-time job! Perhaps I'm just living in the wrong century. Would Tolstoy have been able to write War and Peace, or Proust scribble all those volumes of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu if they'd had to spend hours tweeting, posting and blogging?

Think of Dickens, though. When it comes to self-promotion, he was your man, always on the road giving readings from his latest works and wowing and wooing the ladies. Yes, I think Dickens would have tweeted. Oh dear. Better get started. Though I have taken a leaf out of Dickens' book (Great Expectations!) and volunteered to read an extract at the Uxbridge Bigfest Literature Lounge event on September 29th. Wonder if I can find a section that's clean enough for public consumption? Or shall I set the marquee simmering with a love scene? The one under the Brazilian waterfall perhaps. Clothing optional. Look out, Uxbridge!

Wolf Winter

During my work as an editor and literary consultant, I have handled hundreds of manuscripts, but only one or two have made me tingle with excitement and the knowledge that here is a very, very good writer. Of these, just one grabbed me so much that I decided that if she had no joy placing it with an agent, I would jolly well try and sell it for her myself. This book is Wolf Winter, by Swedish writer Cecilia Ekback.

Imagine how thrilled I was when Cecilia emailed me a few days ago to tell me that she had sold it. In her modest way, she didn't boast about the size of the advance, but having read the news item below, I gather it must be pretty massive. I am absolutely delighted for her. This success couldn't have happened to a nicer person and I am so thankful that I could play a small part in getting her the recognition she deserves as an author.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/hodder-wins-ekback-auction.html

Wolf Winter will be out sometime next year and with its unusual setting - 18th century Lapland - vivid characters and haunting subject matter, I fully expect the movie moguls to be bidding for it, too!

Blackburne House class reunion

Yesterday, it was the turn of the southern contingent of my school classmates to meet up. To our delight, some of the northerners (I went to school in Liverpool) came down for it, too. We met in the ground floor cafe of the National Gallery. The table was booked from 11am  to 1pm when there were plans to go for a picnic, but as it was raining, we stayed put till 4.30!

It was wonderful catching up with what everyone had been doing over the last few decades! Some of us hadn't seen each other for a staggering 50 years! Yet we soon acclimatised to each other's grey hairs and wrinkles and it was just as if we were still in Miss Arthur's English class together, trying to work out the hidden meanings in Browning's My Last Duchess, or ducking the blackboard rubbers chucked by Miss Hodgkinson, our fiery French teacher.

Blackburne House (aka Liverpool Institute for Girls) closed 25 years ago and is now an education and conference centre and even has an award-winning cafe http://www.blackburnehouse.co.uk/

The days that saw us sprinting round a frosty schoolyard, chasing a netball in our yellow Airtex tops and regulation navy-blue knickers, to the sniggers of the art students over the road, are long gone. We reminisced about the 'phantom flashers' who hung around in the street below our first floor classroom; about who who went out with whom; and I learned the sad story of how our headmistress ended her days, lying alone and undiscovered in her flat over a Bank Holiday weekend, having suffered a stroke. Poor thing. She was a rather remote, cold individual who never looked you in the eye, but she was fiendishly intelligent and spoke fluent Russian. It was she who encouraged us to learn it up to O-level standard - though we only signed up for the classes as they were held in the boys' school down the road. What nobody told us was that the boys in the Russian class were two years younger than us, and horrible lot of little yobbos.

It was fascinating to learn about what we'd all done with our lives. A surprising number had become teachers. L became an air stewardess, then a purser, travelled the world and married a pilot. J  married a jazz musician. E. married a Spaniard and lived in Spain for many years. Many of them are on their second marriages now. I feel I've lived quite a dull life by comparison!

Robbie Burns said, 'Oh wad some Pow'r the gifite gie us/To see oursels as others see us.' I wanted to know what I was like in my teenage years, so I asked them all what their abiding impressions of me were and I wasn't prepared for the replies. They all said I was 'horse-mad'! I'd quite forgotten that phase of my life. I went off horses once I discovered boys, but my sister and daughter are still horse-mad so maybe it's in the genes. I was also known for my singing and poetry-writing. I can't say I've done a lot of singing over the past couple of decades. Maybe I should start again. It really was a brilliant day.

Goat's cheese and welly boots

Sorry I've been a bit quiet on the blog front.While I was in London cat-sitting, I met up with friends and went to the Royal Academy to see the Summer Exhibition before it closed. It was the very last day and not too crowded, and I thought the selection of artworks was much more interesting than last year's. There were two paintings that caught my eye but when I saw that a print would cost £2000, I soon dropped the idea of purchasing one. There was also a mirrored sculpture which I would love to have had in a large room (if only I had one!), as it reflected light and shapes in a most interesting way.

I'm back now. I didn't do as much as I'd wanted to because my stomach was playing up again (it took a violent dislike to the goat's cheese tart I ate at the RA) and I slept badly and didn't have much energy. But it made me realise how much I miss the buzz of the capital. When I got home, I couldn't think of a thing to do except glue myself to the computer as usual whilst yearning to walk in Regent's Park or along the canal, nip down to Oxford St, visit the Kentish Town charity shops and the fabulous Fresh and Wild health food shop in Parkway, spend an evening at a poetry reading or at the Jazz Cafe... it's all there at your fingertips and I miss it so much. I also loved being able to have lunch with friends in north London and not have to give up all day to do it, as it takes so long getting to and from Hillingdon.

While I was there, I went to see a flat for sale, but it was hopeless. Huge, lofty, dark lounge and tiny, cell-like bedroom and a balcony overshadowed by enormous trees that plopped leaves, raindrops and pigeon poo onto your head! I am now toying with the idea of renting...

I have been commissioned to write up the story of how I found my daughter, for a store magazine. I think it will be in the Christmas issue, so I'll let you know. They want to do a tie-in with the Long Lost Family programme. Don't know about you, but I am addicted to it, and feel a surge of tearful emotion every time a birth parent is reunited with the child they had to give up. If I hadn't found my daughter by myself, I would definitely have applied to go on the show.

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend, everyone. Hope those at the Reading Festival have taken their wellies!

Books old and new

A few days ago, I went to my storage unit, took out three boxes of books and brought them home to see what I could bring myself to live without. It was tough. Boy, was it tough. It was like waving goodbye to dear friends who were off to the other side of the globe forever. Yes, you could visit them (i.e. re-buy them), but it wouldn't be the same. Yet perhaps those books, like the mythical friends, belonged to another era of my life. Maybe I had outgrown them.

So out went the psychotherapy books I had studied for my foundation course in counselling. I never went on to take the diploma or the MA because at that point, in 1994, I was made redundant and couldn't afford the course fees any longer.  I kept the books for ages, thinking I might continue with the course one day, but now, out they have gone, together with the realisation that once you've reached your sixties, it's hardly worth the £10,000 investment to train for a new career when more relaxing pastimes beckon. Like writing.

When the books went into storage ten years ago, Google had hardly begun. Now, if you want to know the origin of a phrase or saying, or check a literary quotation, you just have to tickle the keyboard, so out went Brewers, a thesaurus and two books of quotations, plus some travel books, as I don't think I shall be going back to Corfu or Rhodes, or walking the Lycian Way with my flat feet and wonky ankle.

Four very dated books from the 1970s went, too, but I have hung onto the poetry books, even though some of them smell of mildew, having got damp when Mr Grumpy's workshop, where they used to be stored, leaked. Some are first editions of R.S. Thomas, and others compilations that contain some of my favourite verses and aren't available any more. But the copy of The Oxford Book of Verse, with gold-edged pages, that I'd had since my school days, was so badly mildewed and foxed that I was forced, very reluctantly, to bin it as I knew the charity shop wouldn't want it in that state.

Once a goodly heap had formed in the hallway, I crammed some of them into a doddery wheely case and trundled them off to the Salvation Army Community Store, our closest charity shop. It's over half a mile away and our road is not only very rutted but also dotted with doggy-do, so I had my work cut out, picking up the bag every time the heavy weight inside it made it tip over when the wheels hit an uneven bit of paving, and lifting it over the unpleasant deposits.

My right arm was strained in its socket by the time I got there, but I decanted everything and told them I was coming back in a bit with some more. Halfway down the road on my second trip, the bag laden with a heavy table lamp as well as books, and carrying a separate bag containing a bulky blanket and some clothes, my back and shoulders began to protest. Telling myself I would reach the main road in another five minutes, I carried on hauling. I crossed the road with the bag only tipping over twice, reached the door of the shop and was appalled to find it closed and the windows shuttered. I had only been there twenty minutes earlier. They knew I was coming right back. Why the f*** didn't they tell me?

By now the sun had come out and the temperature had soared. I looked enviously at all the people swooshing past in their cars and, for the millionth time, regretted the fact I had given up on my driving lessons. By the time I was halfway back up the road with my loads, I was sweating and my glasses were misting up. My limbs hurt and I was beginning to feel a bit woozy. By the time I got back, my head was swimming and I felt quite faint and had to lean on the wall, then stagger to the kitchen for a glass of water. My back was so sore, I couldn't bend and my arms were trembling from hauling the wheely bag. I was just exhausted.

Mr G, who was lying on the sofa as he had a bad headache, opened a bleary eye and said, "Why didn't you ask me to drive you?" "Because you weren't well," was my noble reply. It was partly true. The other reason was that until I met him, I had spent years coping alone. If something needed to be taken somewhere, I carried it. But I was 16 years younger then. On Thursday I paid £38 to the chiropractor to ease the pain in my back and neck. Now I have wrecked them again. When will it dawn on me that I'm not 30 any more?

There is still a big pile of books in the hall. I have snatched back two already. By Monday, the charity pile will have halved and my bookcase will have toppled over in an avalanche of words and paper, probably with me underneath it, muttering my own epitaph: In libris, mortis. On the other hand, I have just finished reading some books that can now be added to the Sally Army pile.

One is Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I had to persevere through the first chapter, pushing myself on even though I was irritated by Nick Dunne, the narrator, but this book has a slow fuse and once it really gets burning, the plot roars along and it kept me up till 3 am two nights running. I'm still not sure which is the stronger, the pin-sharp characterisation, or the clever plot and the way Flynn, like skilled rug maker, weaves together strands that were always there, but you hardly noticed them forming. It fully deserves the accolades it received.

The second book I finished in the last three weeks took me on a trip back to the Sixties, being Margaret Drabble's The Waterfall, which was focused minutely inwards almost to the point of self-indulgence. Much as Nick Dunne had irritated me, Jane, the heroine of The Waterfall made me want to slap her, she was so wet and wimpish and selfish. Yet how very well drawn she was. Her emotions crawled all over the story like drowsy bookworms, with insidious, almost hypnotic slowness. I was slightly relieved to reach the end, but felt refreshed by having dipped into a slow, literary style of writing which probably would be unacceptable to publishers these days, more's the pity.

Last night, I finished Growing Old Outrageously, the true story of the trips taken by two school friends now in their late sixties, Hilary Linstead and Elisabeth Davies, who hadn't seen each other for decades and yet decided to team up and travel the globe. I thoroughly enjoyed the inside stories of ghastly Russians and gallant gauchos, but felt the authors were being a bit restrained, a tad genteel, perhaps, compared to the book I could have written about the things a friend and I got up to in Turkey in our fifties (the baguette in the carpet shop springs to mind!). However, I know my friend would NEVER allow me to write the bare truth. (A novel, then? There is a wicked glint in my eye...)

I have been dipping in and out of Kathryn Marsden's Good Gut Healing and as a result, have started taking Aloe Vera capsules before meals and praying that they help calm my IBS.

Right now, I have two books on the go, a 'real' one - Margaret Forster's Isa and May (am loving it so far) and a Kindle one - the notorious The Cuckoo's Calling by Galbraith/Rowling, which is entertaining but a little shallow and patchy, a curate's egg of a book with some bits, if not actually bad, then decidedly dull. But I like it enough to plod on, catching a chapter while travelling on the tube.

Still on the shelf and settling me salivating each time I glance at it is M C Scott's The Coming of the King, the second in her Rome series. I love the way she doesn't flinch from describing bloody battles, and the wealth of imperceptible research that has gone into recreating historical scenes that reek and shriek of authenticity. I'm keeping it for a holiday. I have one coming up on Thursday, five days of cat-sitting in Camden Town. Hmm... there's lots of interesting things to do in Camden. Maybe there won't be time for much reading at all!