A sad sort of post

I probably need to preface this rather maudlin ramble with the information that I am actually having a wonderful holiday this year.  I spent the start of it in London, soaking up the heat and wallowing in theatre.  I then spent three days being creative for my book binding group, and since Monday, there've been sparks coming off my finger ends - I've totalled 6,000 words in 3 days which is a pretty good total and the 'muse' is (touch wood) being very kind to me.  And I think part of the reason why I'm enjoying it so much is because I'm not having to 'recover' from the day job the way I used to do for the first five weeks of the holidays.  The difference this year has made is unbelievable: I feel younger, fitter, so much happier, more confident in myself and my abilities.  It's been a really tough year - I haven't worked this hard since I was a newly qualified teacher - but I've really -with hindsight - enjoyed it.  I know I've been incredibly lucky to get this second chance and I'm so grateful for it.

However, today, I'm allowing myself to feel a just a little sad.  Being back at the school where I was a pupil, I've inevitably spent the year feeling deeply nostalgic.  And the year I've remembered most is the year I turned thirteen.

When I was thirteen, you see, I fell in 'love', as thirteen years olds are wont to do, with an actor.  Being me, of course, I didn't go for someone anyone really famous:  no movie star or pop idol for me - no, my heart was 'stolen' by an English actor with the bluest of eyes, the sweetest of smiles and a voice, which even now I have no trouble recalling in my head.  He would turn up, now and then, in TV programmes or films and my world would stop as I drank in every detail of his performance: no videos then, let alone internet to keep tabs on him so I had to make the most of every opportunity.  I even wrote to him - a probably very silly, breathless letter - and he answered with a signed photograph which became my most treasured possession.  And then, he just seemed to disappear.  I caught glimpses of him in adverts; he did the occasional voice over.  I grew up, passed exams, discovered 'real' theatre and 'proper' acting, (as well as 'real' life and 'proper' love) and although I never forgot him (you never do forget the ones you loved at 13, do you?) he was no longer the first thing in my head when I woke and the last thing in my head when I slept.

And then, one day in 1993 I discovered he had died.  He was still young  and something about the obituary I read told me that there was more to the story than the bare facts of his death.  It was later I read that he had killed himself, hopeless, helpless, feeling unloved and surrounded by what he considered to be a disappointment of a life.  I wept for him, the night I found out, and I've wept for him since and I know I will again.  A few years ago, idly googling, I found a facebook page in his memory and made contact with a group of lovely people who had also loved, also lost and also remembered him  As one lady there once said, he was our Elvis equivilent and I think that probably says it all. Today we've marked the 20th anniversary of his death with a kind of virtual get-together in lieu of a real meeting.

It's been a good day and a sad day, a day I'd prefer not to have to mark, but one I'll still raise a glass to while I'm here.  To 'my' Gerry - he touched more lives than he could ever have imagined, and I'm proud to say one of them was mine.  Cheers.

I told you I hadn't really gone away!

I know!  I know!  That was a long six months.  But I'm back now and normal service is about to be resumed.  I say 'I'm back' but in truth I've been here all the time, just submerged in university writing and the day job (including a nice little visit from OFSTED) to the extent that for the last few months there has hardly been enough brain power left to get me through to the end of the day.  However, in recent weeks the light at the end of the tunnel has proved to be daylight and not an on-coming express train and so I'm facing the last seven weeks of this school year with something akin to optimism.

Actually, mentally at least, I have been away: visiting the sites I've chosen to use in the story through the wonders of Google Earth.  As I mentioned last summer, I want to give Partridge and Marmalade an entirely imaginary place to live in, but as it is set in a real National Park, I feel I ought to at least try and make it sound like a plausible place: I do have several geography teachers among my readers!  

Several Ordinance Survey maps and  a bit of cutting and pasting later, I'd managed to create a credible space which  a) realistically works as a Scottish glaciated valley and b) combines lots of details of real places but is actually like nowhere real at all!  

The discovery that many place names in Scotland are entirely descriptive - 'The lumpy mountain in the middle covered with heather' etc -  added to the fun of the job. By Saturday, I had a rough sketch and a whole list of place names (which I then googled to make sure that they weren't actually the names of real places!) created with the help of my bible of a Scots language dictionary.

But has there been any movement on the writing front?  Well, yes.  I went back to my first 14,000 words, added 6,000 more, cut about 3,000 out and finally got my head round some of the problems of the plot - and had one sudden flash of inspiration which made me slap my forehead in astonishment that I'd never considered it before! It never ceases to amaze me that when you feel as if you are really floundering, that's when the best ideas pop up!

Finally, I'm reclaiming my Saturdays as G&P writing days and am determined to be well into the first draught once the holidays begin.  I'm also detemined not to abandon you for another six months!  I therefore promise to update this page at least once a fortnight and to use it to introduce you to the places where Partridge and co are gathering to solve this  particularly bizarre set of crimes...

,,, oh, and to provide cake updates of course.  Made a fabulous lemon drizzle cake last week, almost worthy of Mary!

I am still here, honestly...

....news soon!!

Happy New Year!

Can it really be a year since I did this last??  I've loved 2012 and am rather sad to see it go - it's been quite unique!  So here, sitting at 2am on New Year's Day with a mug of tea beside me, are this year's awards!!

BEST BOOK READ: Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
BEST FILM: Chariots of Fire and Lawrence of Arabia both re-released, both astounding.
BEST SONG:  ‘We could be Heroes’  - David Bowie.  Will now always be a very specific place and time.  (And hearing Matt Cammelle finally sing ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ at the Empire – waited twenty three years for that one!!)
BEST THEATRE MOMENT: Tough choice this year – but probably Ben Chaplin bringing Harley Granville Barker to life perfectly at Hampstead Theatre (and glaring at a woman in the front row who was using her mobile as he did so!) Ties with finally seeing Paterson Joseph on stage in Julius Caesar with Ray Fearon as Antony.  I was cheering both sides... and the RSC in general!
BEST BALLET MOMENT(S): The Two Pigeons and then Hobson’s Choice in Birmingham, two March weekends in a row; interviewing Cesar Moralis for BRB Friends (ahhh! Cesar!); Faster in London (matinee perf!)
BEST TV MOMENT: Elbow singing at the Olympics Closing ceremony! Even if the stupid commentators did talk all over it!
BEST SILLY MOMENT(S): dashing to Birmingham on a train in May after work, missing the thing I’d really wanted to see – and oddly, not even minding! 
MOST EMOTIONAL MOMENT: watching Robert Parker dance the two ballets aforementioned : in tears every time.  (In tears thinking about it now!)
BEST PURCHASE: A lovely 1916 'Complete Works' of Shakespeare:  last thing I probably needed but...
BEST CAKE: Probably the Mincemeat Bakewell from Cafe Maison in Norton last week, partly for the cake but mostly for the company!
BEST NIGHT'S SLEEP: still Jury's Inn, Birmingham though the Hilton in Islington gave it a run for its money...
BEST PLACE(S) VISITED:  Eltham Palace and Gardens – Art Deco delight!  Walberswick, Snape Maltings, Suffolk in general!
BEST CONCERT(S): Eddi Reader at the Gala in Durham - totally restorative - and West End Men at the Sage – despite the odd staging!
BEST DECISION: Applying for my new job!!!! Joining the choir! Putting Grouse and Partridge onto Kindle!
BEST DISCOVERY: Louis Smith (before the Olympics!): gymnastics in general!  
BEST MOMENT(S): Getting the phone call (in Tesco’s car park!) offering me my new job! Walking back to Piccadilly Circus station on air, having been whisked into the star dressing room at the Garrick theatre for bubbly and told I was wonderful!

What more does a girl need...!
Happy New Year!

Jan 3rd update:  My second hand (sorry - I meant 'vintage'obviously!) Harris tweed jacket from Glasgow Vintage is sulking.  It thought it was my best purchase of the year - a sartorial bargain at a mere £22.  I am apologising to it unreservedly.  It's just become so much a part of my life I can't imagine I was ever without it!!

I'm really sorry...

...but there's not going to be a Grouse and Partridge story this Christmas!

I tried.  I really did.  I had quite a good idea and I was desperate to write it.  But time has been my enemy: I'm weighted down with work from uni and work from work and there aren't enough hours in the day to do what I ought to be doing, let alone what I want to.  There've been several casulties in the run up to Christmas but this is the one that hurts me the most.  My Christmas holiday looms but brings with it little prospect of respite: two 4,000 word essays required by January and not a clue how to approach either of them yet.  For the first time this term, I've begun to wonder if the course is worth the effort - and yet the part of the course I most want to do is next term's unit and to give up now would be costly and pointless.

So my characters are languishing in the mirk and cold of my rapidly disintergrating brain, looking mournful and unloved as Christmas approaches because I cannot bring them back to life.  Tonight, I wonder if this is the end of the line for my writing altogether: I think I've been deluding myself since Scotch Pine that I was just between books.  In fact, I think I'm stuck.  I realise I've stopped thinking of myself as someone who writes.  I'm just someone, once again, who used to...

Autumn Days



1907 glass in Sunderland Empire Theatre

It's now eight weeks on and I'm sorry to have kept you in suspense...  I think it is safe to say that the last eight weeks have been some of the hardest of my career so far not because I'm in a difficult school - far from it - but because starting a new job really does feel like starting from scratch again and because I hadn't realised how much damage had been done to my self esteem and self confidence over the past few years.  I've never worked as hard as I've done this term and although I've really enjoyed it, I am seriously ready for a break next week.  I know I have definitely chosen the best place to teach: my new school does serious cake related activities - in eight weeks there've been three cake related incidents of note and a further one concerning chocolate!!

 

It hasn't all been work: I've embarked on the second year of my MA (and am already seriously behind with the work!), there's been a wonderful trip to London to meet up with a very special friend briefly over from the States, a birthday (number now censored because it's starting to be scary!), a joyous three days of ballet last week when the 'team' came back to town ( and where the sun on Saturday was so glorious I was able to take this photo!) and last night a most surreal visit to Durham Cathedral, of all places, to hear Ian Rankin and PD James in discussion: I say hear because we couldn't really see either of them from where we were!!  Thick, mysterious fog engulfed us as we came out and walked down into town - Durham at night is so evocative!

 

Grouse and Partridge have taken on a life of their own on the internet, selling a very respectable number of copies across September and October, and the fabulous review of Scotch Mist FelePain posted in August has now been joined by an equally glowing review of Scotch Broth.  Kindle has been a revelation and I finally received my first payment from them at the beginning of September for £19!  More than I've had from Lulu over the years!!

 

And the new book?  Lies in piles of scribbled paper I'm afraid - it's not that I don't want to write it, it's just finding the brain-space to do so. I feel a responsibility to the characters and their readers.  But at the moment, I just don't know when I'm going to be able to take up the challenge again and allow myself the chance to write anything else.  Last night just brought it home: if you call yourself a writer, you should at least be trying to write, shouldn't you?

 

September already...

As we've reached the end of the month, I thought I'd do a bit of statistic crunching.  According to Amazon, 28 copies have been sold across all titles in August, which is an amazing 60% increase on July's sales!  The power of a positive review knows no bounds!

Today is the last day of my holidays.  Tomorrow I start a brand new job and hopefully a brand new lifestyle will accompany it!  I'm certainly going to have a lot more time to myself which has to be an enormous bonus.

It's been a lovely holiday: it has flown past but it's brought lots of good things with it and I'm starting tomorrow in a more positive frame of mind than I've started an autumn term for a very long time.  Fingers crossed...