Season's Greetings

This was Birmingham two weeks ago, Sunday morning about 11am. We had a fantastic weekend of ballet and shopping at the wonderful German market and it was very pretty in the cold frosty air. The church in the centre of this picture is St Martin's in the Bullring - and they've built the shiny new retail complex of the improved Bullring around this Victorian gem. It's a very special place with a very unique atmosphere and it is one of my ten favourite churches in the world.

Well, we managed Christmas. Gifts finally arrived on Christmas Eve, everything got wrapped, food was prepared and we celebrated - although our Christmas night party was a little depleted by illness. My Christmas presents were largely of my favourite shape this year (Hint: Codex!) and I'm planning on spending the remainder of this week reading them!!! Although my cough is still alarming, I don't feel ill any more and I seem to have stopped bursting into tears for no apparent reason. I'm typing this sitting by the Christmas tree (which still looks and smells fabulous), and I'm eating chocolate for breakfast! (don't tell weightwatchers!!) The snow and ice stayed over Christmas but it is starting to go away slowly now - it's raining today. I'd forgotten it could do that!

The 'Snoo-Tappit' extras page is finally up and running - I found time to do that last week! - and I hope you enjoy it! There's plenty more of that sort of thing floating round on the web: I've just tipped the ice-berg. I'm totally in awe of anyone who can get a note out of a beastie that big!

What happened to Ho ho ho?

I'm ill. Chest infection/cold type thing. Started on Friday, two hours after leaving work. And of course, it couldn't have come at a worse time. There's more snow outside and temperatures were down to a ridiculous -11 degrees C last night, my kitchen sink is blocked inexpicably (washing up in the bathroom isn't much fun), and half my gifts haven't come yet: orders from Amazon placed weeks ago seem to have disappeared into a black hole. This week was planned like a military operation - but I hadn't factored in the fact that I was going to feel so rough. I'm supposed to be out there now Christmas shopping. All I want to do is go back to bed and pull the duvet over my head until I feel a bit more human. And to stop coughing...

Just read back over my blog entries and realised: if Starbucks had done Dark Cherry Mochas this Christmas, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!!!! It's all their fault...

The twilight zone

This photo has no relevance to my post - except that it is one of my favourite places in London (it's the entrance to the tube station, next to the Medici shop and a brilliant remainder bookshop!) and tonight I feel as if I need the comfort of looking at somewhere I love!! Tomorrow is the second of the 2 big interviews and is potentially the much more significant of the two. The first one went really well and I was very pleased with the outcome - but then again, I was on the other side of the interview table, asking the questions not worrying about answers!!! It's not that I feel nervous, or apprehensive - just numb! I felt like this the day I got the keys to my house: I should've been excited, but I wasn't. I wasn't anything at all! And I'm not again! Is it a defence tactic? Who knows!
So I'm sitting here, putting off the early night I know I really need, listening to the great thaw drip-drip=driping away outside and wondering how many of my roof tiles are being ripped off with the great canopies of snow which have started to avalanche off the roof. I'm also trying not to think about the fact that I'm far from prepared for Christmas and that we've only got 5 days left at work till the holidays. If you could sent a warm supportive thought drifting in my direction at some point tomorrow I'd be so grateful...

PS It's now Friday - and I wasn't successful. Am disappointed, but just grateful for the interview. Back to the drawing board as it were...

The deed is done...

This is the cover of the print version of the new G&P Christmas story. It is stored safe in Lulu's vaults and will be unleashed on the unsuspecting world in the very near future. As always, it will be free to download. Print copies will be £2.50 (and p&p of course, which with lulu is sometimes rather steep!).
I must admit I rather enjoyed writing this one, although as always I've spent most of today flapping around trying to get Lulu to do what I wanted it to do! Just got my fingers crossed now that the print copies I've ordered are okay and come in time for Christmas! Let's face it, with snow turning to ice - the glassy clear sort as well - it may be the only present anyone gets from me!
Still facing the 'double interview' scenario this week, as one was postponed because of the weather. Forecasts are grim for early in the week: the North East of England seems to have its own personal snowcloud on the weather maps! Snow coming off the roof has caused serious guttering issues at the back of my house this weekend as well as decapitating a laurel bush - but at least my bay window hasn't collapsed under the strain which is what happened to a house nearby!! Off to dig out the wheelie bin now - haven't seen it for a week!

The weather outside is SPITEFUL...

...and the fire is sooooo delightful! It's still snowing here. It's been snowing all week. And as the song says, 'It doesn't show signs of stopping'. I've struggled into work each day, never managing to make it on time but desperately trying to show willing. Every morning there's been a fresh layer of white stuff: the pavements are several inches higher than they were last week. The world has turned completely white and painfully cold. I'm already dreading my fuel bills...

And I'm beginning to think I can't do Christmas!!! With only days to go, I've done nothing so far which will have any impact. I'm totally devoid of gift ideas, and rather than go and do post-work shopping, I'm just dashing home to get into the warm as quickly as I can! It's mad!

Grouse and Partridge Christmas Tale is just about complete, however: a few tweaks and it'll be ready to go! I've put the last three on lulu as free downloads and the new one will be joining them in 2 weeks time. I'm donating money to Crisis again this year and making a smaller donation to the restoration of a rather lovely musical instrument - again, details will be made available once the story 'goes live'. Considering a special 'extras' web-page with a few links on as an added bonus... time willing!!

This is the second of my Winter's Night pictures...

In the Night Garden...

Winter is most definitely here! This is my garden - and the one next door - taken at 11.45 on Friday night. It's not a 'sepia-ized' version either: this is an ordinary colour photo taken without flash or other lighting, just the usual streetlights. It was an experiment and I wasn't sure if it would work, but I'd just walked back through this scene and the light was so bizarre I wanted to try and capture it.

It hasn't got above -1 C today and there's now about a foot of snow outside. It isn't snowing at the moment, but the sky is the same colour as the ground - greyish white!- and there are another 8 inches forecast for tonight.

As a traveller by public transport, I'm starting to worry already. I have a trip of 23 miles to work, followed by a one and 3/4 mile walk when I arrive at the station. The police and authorities are urging people not to travel unless it is an emergency - but I can't see that going down well as an excuse for not getting there tomorrow! Last time we had snow like this, there was no suggestion that we close.

Now don't get me wrong: I don't just want to 'skive off' - in fact, at the moment, given the way my job is, being off work would be very inconvenient - I have two impending interviews at the end of the week (one on each side of the table, as it were!)and I really want to be ready for both of them. But going to work in this - and it is much worse now than it was when I took this photo - just seems mindless madness! As I've said before, it's great when you can sit on the window-seat and watch it swirl down, knowing you don't have to brave it. Tonight, however, I doubt I'll be feeling quite as kindly disposed towards it!

On a lighter note, Drover and Bolph did build a snowman yesterday...but you'll have to wait until Dec 17th to find out where!

Reindeer time!

It's that time of the year again. And even if Starbucks are not going to indulge my needs at this festive time of the year, the other good thing about Christmas is the reindeer.

I love reindeer. Not the cartoony red-nosed variety (think the others let Rudolph off lightly, to be honest - he is unsufferably smug!) but the real ones! This chap was waiting to pull Santa's sleigh through my town on Sunday, just having a chomp on some lunch as he waited in the (quite frankly depressing!) rain.

We discovered a couple of years ago where they go for their r&r before the parade begins and it does mean you get a chance to see them 'up close and personal' before the crowds claim them! And I got better photos this year with a proper camera.

We've had a bit of snow here today, although it didn't stay, and it is FREEZING, so I suppose that's the official winter start. Of course it also means my heating has packed in - it doesn't do cold weather! I've done nothing about Christmas yet, (although I did buy some cards in London a couple of weeks ago - with reindeer on!).

HOWEVER I have made a start on the NEW Grouse and Partridge Christmas Tale which will be available to download on December 17th. After struggling with 'Harry', it's been lovely to get back to the old team. So far there's no reindeer in it... but there's still time!!

Woe! Woe! Woe!

If Starbucks are going to do Christmas without Dark Cherry Mochas, then I'm not doing Christmas! Seems perfectly reasonable to me...

Was it South Norfolk or North Suffolk we went to...?

The easy answer is - BOTH! And they were seriously lovely. I'm back now, wondering where my August is slipping to, but it was a lovely week. And the East Anglia Transport Mueum was the place to be on Sunday August 8th because a rather large number of fantastic vintage cycles arrived halfway through the afternoon - including Nancy's Bonnie! I recognised it by the sound of the engine! I didn't actually see Nancy herself - I suspect she was sampling the Victoria Sponge in the tea rooms - but I got some lovely photos of the bike with my new camera! (Attentive followers may recall that my other camera had a nasty accident with a very large cup of coffee last summer...!)

Cake recommendations? Couldn't possibly choose one we ate so many...but the mixed berry scones in Norwich Cathedral Refectory would have given Mary's a run for their money, and the Coffee and Walnut Cake at Wroxham Barnes was a serious contender...

The most lovely word in the English Language?

HOLIDAYS!!!!

Here we go again...

Spotted this fella in Manchester outside the astoundingly beautiful John Rylands Library - a cathedral for bookworms! We visited it last Sunday while making a pilgrimage to Salford for BRB's 'Romeo and Juliet'. An amazing weekend - only slightly marred by the fact that somewhere on Piccadilly station I left a Harvey Nichols foodhall bag...!

Two weeks to go until the summer break and instead of winding down, I seem to be powering up! My research for the 'new project' has stepped up several notches and I'm planning how to make the best use of the summer and the university libraries near by - none of them, it must be admitted, as beautiful as JR's but all well stocked
I've also booked a flying visit to the Edinburgh book festival where I'm going to do a crime writing workshop and then see Ian Rankin again: once was not enough!

Perhaps, most bizarrely, I've set the wheels in motion to direct a musical at school: it's five years since I last did one, and that was such a fantastic experience that I said 'never again' : I didn't think it could be bettered! Now, almost at the anniversary of the first night, I still don't think it can be bettered, but I'm curious to see whether it can be matched! The school I work in has changed enormously over the past few years and I think a show may be exactly what it needs.

It's certainly what I need: last time we did a show I was writing 'Scotch Mist' at the same time - and I quickly discovered that the more creative I am forced to be, the more creative I become! So, as well as everything else this summer, I'm going to be planning and plotting a production in my head! That, and working out exactly where I'm going to be able to store all these books I'm still buying. Now, if only I could get someone to build me a gothic revival Library...




Whoops! Forgot about the cake!!! Two this time - i) an Eccles cake at the above Library's lovely coffee shop - so curranty!! - in honour of the Eccles tram we took to Salford and ii) half a huge slice of chocolate cake at Gibside Hall this afternoon - it was the black cherry conserve and the proper butter icing that made it so wicked! I feel the waistline expanding already...

Time flies by...

It's that time of the year again, when the summer break looms and people start to make plans to spread their wings and fly, and today, my feet feel itchy! I've tried a couple of times this year to change the course of my career but to no avail and now, watching people packing up to move on, I wish I was going somewhere too - either in reality, or metaphorically! Instead, I feel perminantly grounded! And when people say to me I should make an effort to 'do something' with my writing, I get even more wound up!

This time last year I was frantically trying to put the finishing touches to Scotch Pine - it is hard to believe it has been in print that long. Looking at the little notebook I take to writing courses and book events, I was full of enthusiasm and energy last summer: after the Writing day in Harrogate I felt ready for anything, really felt this was something I wanted. What happened? What changed? I don't really know! But I don't feel I've made a lot of progress at all. It is increasingly difficult to write in term time - hours, days and weeks fly by with terrifying speed! - and the little writing I have done this year feels rudderless. It's not like writing Grouse and Partridge!

I think maybe I'm kidding myself with all this reading and making notes that I'm doing something towards the final piece, but I'm actually conning myself - just creating another displacement activity to make up for not writing!

Maybe, like last year, I need a deadline to concentrate my mind!

Best cake? Banana and Date loaf at Shepherd's Dene retreat house in Northumberland - seriously scrumtious! (the house as well as the cake! See picture!)

When did it get to be June???

It seems to have got to the middle of the year without me really knowing how...

The picture on the left is the remains of the staircase at the fantastic Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumbria, a crumbling stately home designed by John Vanbrugh and recently bought for the nation by the National Trust. It has only been open to the public since the beginning of May and it is a photographer's delight. This is actually the underneath of the staircase, looking up... I love the Ecsher effect which just disorientates you completely so after a while you don't know if you are looking up or down.

And yes, at the moment life's a bit like that. It's reached the time of the year when I seem to be zooming around but getting nowhere fast! The half term holiday brought a weekend in York and a few ballet jaunts to Durham, a frantic dash to buy a ukulele and get it wrapped in time for a birthday brunch, a reunion with my university soul-mates which involved some very late nights and some very VERY wicked food!!! I fear I fell off the wagon most spectacularly last week- or more correctly, off the cake trolley! And the scones at the Blaksmiths' coffee shop in Blagdon remain the finest known to humanity! As for the chocolate brownie with gooseberries in Oldfields of Durham...well, let's just say it was very close to perfection!

It might be wisest, on the whole, not to ask about my writing progress...

Easter and how difficult it is when you don't want to eat chocolate...

I don't want to dwell on it. Honestly. I can do this. I can ignore the fruitbowl full of calorific diet-wrecking goodies which is just out of arm's reach on the far side of the coffee table. It isn't calling to me in a soft, seductive voice...
I've been away from 'here' a lot of late. So what's been happening?

Birmingham Royal Ballet(x6), Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (see picture!), a second visit to London to see Waiting for Godot again (x2!) an unsuccessful job interview (all the candidates were unsuccessful - apparently none of us lived up to our applications!) a nasty repeat performance of last year's post-Venice chest infection (which handily coincided with the job interview!), taking on an extra 'job' for work and (under the influence of cough medicine!) deciding to create a new blog to support it, endless meetings of the 'going round in circles' variety, the purchase of a great many new books - naturally - and about 4,000 words on the 'new novel'.

See? You haven't missed much at all... And now all that's done, I'm on holiday, catching up with sleep and about to hide the chocolatey goodies in the back of the cupboard behind the printer ink and spare paper. Hopefully, I won't be able to hear it from there... Best cake: my own Hot Cross Bun bread and butter pudding. A diet wrecker if ever there was one... (though they were low fat h x bs!)

Save 6music!!!

It's rare I run to the barricades and wave my flag of protest. But I was aghast yesterday at the news the BBC is intending to axe 6music in the coming twelve months along with the Asian network. This seems to me to be the ultimate 'dumbing down' of radio: not only have so-called 'minority interest' programmes on Radio 2 been downgraded in favour of a repetitious and chart-driven play list, but now a dedicated music station which fosters and promotes creativity and originality is under sentence of death! What is the BBC thinking?

So I followed this link http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c05f35/2d452744/58de2fd5/4674e4dd/2552264266/VEsC/ and registered my fury. And I urge you to do the same. Or we're destined to have a musical landscape entirely populated by Cheryl Coles and Susan Boyles and JLSs... Nothing against any of them, but they're not what I want to listen to! 6music's music is!!

I don't know how I can approach the dreaded Sunday evening without Guy Garvey's show to make it better!

Half term indulgences...

It's almost Lent. This year, I can't give up gorgeous cake as I've already had to give that up in my pursuit of weight loss, so I've decided I'm giving up Abe books and Amazon. Once those last few books arrive, that is...

I'm sure I shouldn't have this much fun doing background reading. At the moment, very little is set in stone and I'm just following trails of thought and seeing where they lead. It's so exciting! And being on holiday now is perfect - this is all I've been wanting to do since Christmas. I'm spending the week on a 'writing and researching' retreat in my own home, (punctuated by little trips out to the dentist and clothes shopping and the Royal Mail Depot to pick up the book parcels they've tried to deliver!)

The first 3000 words and a synopsis of The New Book were entered last week for the CWA Debut Dagger competition. I was entry 506 apparently. As always, I was still tinkering with things up to the last minute, and I don't delude myself that this new venture is really going to appeal to many people except me, but as I had 3000 words under my belt, I thought it was worth a try! 'In it to win it' and all that...

The tree is in St James's Park, taken on a trip down to London a few weekends ago: a totally magical weekend. Pretty sure this one is an Ent...

Happy birthdays to Tom and Sam xx

If a body catch a body comin' thro' the rye...

I've just read of J.D. Salinger's death and it's brought me back to thinking about a very special group of pupils I taught a couple of years ago, the one and only time I taught 'Catcher in the Rye' for GCSE. (Generally, I teach another classic American text with a reference to Burns in the title...!)

I loved the book - partly because I'd not long returned from a trip to New York and the sights and sounds of the city seemed imprinted on its every page. I threw myself into teaching of it with a gusto I've scarcely managed since. The kids somehow 'got' the book - in a way adults often don't - and reading it with them helped me see it in a new light. The exam results at the end of it were good, but better than results to me was the fact that the book became their book, not my book or even Salinger's, because they felt they had 'discovered' it.

Six months after they'd left to go to college, a few returned from a field trip to the Big Apple and came into school to visit me. They told me they'd been on Broadway the night they dimmed the lights of for Arthur Miller. They'd stood outside the Rockerfella Centre. They'd looked at the Ceiling in Grand Central Terminus and pointed out Radio City Music Hall. And they'd taken a special detour just to see the Carousel in Central Park where they'd thought about Holden - and me!

I'm hoping to return the compliment in the not-too-distant future. If I do get there, I'll be raising a glass (or a paper Starbucks cup!) to Holden, to them and to Mr Salinger - thanks, JD!

Raise a glass and grab a haggis!

It's Burns' Night tomorrow and although you can't all come and join the fun at the annual Ceilidh in the wee village where Hamish lives (the kirk -hall's no' big enuff for all of us!), I'm sure you'll raise a glass to the bonniest of boys on his birthday ( even though he is fictional!) and yon rantin' rovin' Robin, his muse! Due to circumstances beyond my control (MY CENTRAL HEATING IS BROKEN!) my Burns' night party has been postponed until the beginning of February, but I'll be stripping the willow and knocking back the shortbread with feeling tomorrow anyway! Cheers, lads!

Words. Words. Words.

In one of my favourite novels of all time, there is a character who's wardrobe is painted with the legend 'Distrust all enterprises that require new clothes.'*

I'm beginning to think my bookshelves should be daubed with the slogan, 'Distrust all enterprises which require new books.' Or actually, old books.

Not valuable old books, you understand. Just books no one else would want but which fill a valuable gap in my knowledge. (There are NO gaps in my bookcases!) Books which are so NOT valuable, that the postage and packaging comes to so much more than they are worth!

The 'new enterprise' is firmly under wraps and I'm keeping it that way for a good long while, but the parcels are flying fast and furious between Abebooks and my house, and I'm giving myself up to the intense pleasure which is pre-writing research!! The more I find out, the more I need to know and the more excited I become as parcel after parcel falls through the letterbox! And then I sit and trawl the internet for hours and find the most amazing things to download. And the knowledge gaps get smaller and smaller. And the house gets messier and messier...

Sheer heaven!

(* This is 'A Room with a View' by E.M. Forster. Just in case you didn't recognise it!)

Snow on snow...snow on, snow!

This was my front garden on New Year's Day. Ever so pretty. It was fantastic to have a white Christmas and New Year, so good that if Irving hadn't pipped me to the post, I might even have written a song about it. It should always snow at Christmas - it is right and proper.

However, I'm posting this image to try and conteract the increasingly negative feelings I have had about snow since Monday morning! It's one thing when you're on holiday and can nip out, take a couple of atmospheric snaps with your mobile phone and then retreat back to the relative warmth and comfort of the window seat to watch it drift silently down from the grey-pink clouds while you sip a Hotel Chocolat Cinnamon Cocoa (Santa was really listening this year... ) It's quite another when you are setting off at silly o'clock, trudging up to your ears in the stuff to get to work and feeling rather 'Ernest Shackleton' about the whole thing! (Have I ever mentioned the Shackleton fascination before? No? Ah well...)

I'm also feeling miserable as the decorations went away today and the tree came down. The house looks empty and drab and in need of a good dusting and I didn't feel I'd had enough of Christmas at all! This may be because I'm fighting a series of weather-induced migranes which started on Saturday (just in time for the return to work!) or may be just because I hate January with a passion!

Still, there are lots of good things on the horizon to look forward to in 2010. Once we get this wretched snow out of the way. Now, where did I leave those huskies...?

New year, new start...

The wintery sun is setting on the last day of my Christmas holidays but there are still 3 days till 12th Night to enjoy the tree, the lights and festive hot chocolate. (Santa got the hint about the Dark Cherry Syrup...!)

This is my fireplace, bedecked with twigs from my garden and tartan baubles. I've spent a lot of time just staring into it over the past two weeks while listening to seasonal music from Christian Forshaw and Sting - very wintery and perfect, given the amount of snow that's fallen here for the past two weeks. I recommend both if you are feeling soulful.

Don't want to go back to work, of course, especially with the weather how it is. However, I promised myself a 'new beginning' and I wrote the first 2000 words of something totally original and unconnected with Grouse and Partridge... It's the first little footstep in the snow. I'm hoping it'll lead somewhere interesting. If it does, you'll be the first to know. Happy New Year!