It was my birthday last month. One of those birthdays with the zero on the end which means you have to tick the next age box down when you take part in on-line surveys. I was blessed with lots of cards, enough cake to start a patisserie and several bottles of rather nice gin...
And somewhere around the cusp of passing from my fourth decade into my fifth, I decided the time had come to do something mildly radical to shake myself out of the writing glums. Which is why I took myself off yesterd
ay morning in a large room overlooking Pilgrim Street in Newcastle with other several people who I'd never met before to take part in an Urban Writers Retreat, my birthday present to myself.
Having run successfully in London for several years, the Urban Writers Retreat has made a little toe-hold in Newcastle upon Tyne and it offered special rates for its first three sessions. It promised plentiful tea, coffee, cake and lunch and the opportunity to write without distractions from 11 in the morning till 5.30 surrounded by other people who were doing exactly the same.
And it did exactly what it said on the tin! After a few brief introductions, we launched straight into our own projects and after that hardly emerged except to retrieve some nice M&S sandwiches, carrot cake, oranges and (begone, temptation!) roasted pistachios from the central table, which was groaning under the weight of all the goodies.
The chairs were not desperately comfortable. The coffee could
have been warmer. And after a few hours, my extremities did begin to numb with cold. But I had a big jumper, some fingerless glove/wrist warmer things and the view across the rooftops was spectacular - you could see for miles - especially as the November evening drew in and the Christmas lights came on. And we typed as if our lives depended on it, completely oblivious to what was going on around us.
I'd decided to work on a Christmas story which ran aground last year amid much family illness and I managed to double the existing word count until my fingers finally froze and I admitted defeat with fifteen minutes left to go... retreating over the road to the Tyneside Cinema where my best friend was waiting in the warm with hot coffee to thaw me out!
Worth it? Every blinkin' penny! Although WHEN I return in the Spring, I will wear thermals and take a hot water bottle!
