How to manage Lockdown 3 This short article, or whatever it might be, is not advice. There is plenty of that around and I have no right or inclination to add to it. This is entirely for me. The horror of what we’re going through is incredibly difficult to bear. How not to sink into […]
Wallowing in the grey and gloom that is typical November weather, watching from inside a house or flat, through windows, is all wrong. Yes, most of us can’t be out there all the time, the need to work where the wind and rain aren’t going to ruin whatever we’re doing, let alone the facilities of […]
Thank you, Zoe Williams – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/13/a-vaccine-trump-going-a-bit-of-good-news-and-my-optimism-has-gone-bananas Here I was having another day of ‘this is worse than before’, that’s as in the previous lockdown, hope given and taken with each day, grey days, grey gloom, guilt that I’ve little to grumble about, yet nerves frayed and jittery. I’m normally the glass half full person, the […]
Here I am again, delighted to have completed my latest novel but wondering what and how I can create an eye-catching cover. It needs to highlight the focus of the story and, more importantly, grab readers’ attention. That I was inspired to write ‘The Greenhouse Legacy’ from a postcard of a painting by Eric Ravilious […]
This is the result of a most enjoyable collaboration which I wrote about in a blog with that title, Collaboration, at the end of March. Several of my postcard stories are already published on this website but I was delighted when Innes Richens suggested we combine our work in a book of short stories. A […]
I began writing this blog on 29 March, one week into the lockdown. The shock and horror had slightly muted by then and I’d begun to say to myself, as so many others said, get on with it, you can’t battle it, use the time. Six weeks on, seven weeks into this isolated / distanced […]
To collaborate is the action of working with one or more persons to create something worthwhile. And I certainly think this is what Innes Richens and I have achieved with ‘Small Allowances’. Our joint effort has, I am excited to think, brought together our short, short stories in harmony with each other. My often tongue […]
The sun is out and I’ve spent the last week of ‘isolation’ cheerfully doing all the tasks that get put off because there isn’t time. Well, there is plenty of time now! But although I can look with pleasure at my pressure cleaned patio and paths, the cut edges of the lawn and all the […]
You often hear it said, ‘Old habits die hard’ or ‘habits are made to be broken’. However, what about good habits? Helpful in many capacities but for a writer essential. You’re on your own, no rules of the work place, a boss hovering at your door, colleagues to consult and spur you on. You are […]
A la recherche du temps perdu
I sit in silence being new to the group before making a few points on the chosen book. I am largely ignored. Which is what happens to that novel after the first glass of wine. It is the literary boasting that takes over. The host sounds as if she and Dickens are bosom pals, ‘We go right back,’ she says. ‘I was in love with him from the age of seven, can quote chunks of his prose.’ The rest murmur approval but don’t take her up on the point. Her special buddy waxes lyrical on the Russian literary giants especially Dostoyesky, which she pronounces incorrectly, and then fails to offer even one title. ‘No, no!’ cries the woman in the kaftan. ‘American literature is the best, has much more to offer, for women especially.’ A requirement for her to endorse this statement is lost in the opening of another bottle and topping up of glasses. They carry on with a lot of twaddle about novels being far too long or too short or indigestible, whether prizes have any value. I lose track. Wonder how I can take the talk back to the reason we are here, find out who did or did not enjoy the novel of choice or the even, whether … But there is little hope of success as a further round of wine is doled out.
So I wait, tempted to say that my mother read Proust to me as a bedtime story. Something about something being lost. If only I could remember the name, I’d claim that for myself.