Writing, Listening and Lipreading

A heart-rending short story about a little Christmas tree; a hilarious monologue by a wee dog who has just been neutered; a disturbing poem about the damage that crumbs on the sofa can do to a relationship; a clever satire on the increase of secret surveillance in our lives (did you know that those rows of small items like batteries, chewing gum, etc. at the supermarket checkout are put there to conceal tiny recorders and cameras?); a drama about the miseries of asylum-seeker life - suddenly horrifically topical with the possibly suicidal leap of two refugees from the Red Road flats in Glasgow. Seminars on how to write a novel, how not to write a novel, when is an article a short story and vice versa. Late night poetry readings and - unbelievably - a 'Cowboys-and-Injuns' Disco. Bad food and over-priced drink, over-heated hotel room, lukewarm shower and a stunning view up the Clyde from my sixth-floor window. Chat, listen, lipread in the noisy dining room and doze off in exhaustion at the final afternoon session. That was my first experience of the annual conference of the Scottish Association of Writers.

Was I enjoying it? a nice man asked me kindly at dinner the second evening. I was too dazed, over stimulated and over-programmed to answer. Just grinned foolishly and muttered rhubarb, rhubarb which he may have lipread as 'really riveting' - or possibly 'really rubbish'. Maybe that's why he turned to speak to the person sitting on his other side and didn't turn back.

I have come home with a strange collection from the inevitable bookstall, notably: A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory who was the Friday night speaker (now a rip-roaring success, he confessed to having written 22 novels in eight years, approaching hundreds of publishers and receiving the same number of rejection letters - I'm not sure I find this as encouraging as it was clearly meant to be); a collection of diaries edited by Alan Taylor, the Saturday night speaker, who regaled us with tales of his life as a literary journalist and famous authors he has interviewed and even, in one case, ended up in bed with, albeit - so he said - quite innocently; a couple of self-published first novels whose authors I chatted with at the conference; pamphlets about writing everything from a seventeen-word haiku to a blockbusting epic saga; info about societies to join, websites to browse, pitfalls to avoid and tips to take to heart.

So without further ado I am off to get on with it. Poem? Haiku? Humorous article? Biography? Short story? Novel? I am spoilt for choice... Think I'll go and write my shopping list for Sainsbury's. I'm really good at that, so I've been told.

Flower of Scotland and The Inukshuk.

How to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - if you're Welsh - and how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - if you're Scottish. Yes, I'm talking Six Nations Rugby and no prizes for which of those defeat/victory sides I'm on. Aaarrrgggh!!!! The Flower is trampled yet again. Talk about raising our hopes... I am a limp rag and can barely summon up the strength to press the off button on the remote and stagger out with Tucker for his afternoon ball-chase in the park. He is running well and leaping to catch it on the bounce beautifully today. I yell "Good catch, Tuck! Run the ball!" Luckily, all the other dog-walkers understand that mentally I am still at Cardiff Arms Park. I expect few of them are too.

I remember all over again why I watch only a very limited amount of sport on TV (just Wimbledon, the Ryder Cup and Six Nations). It is altogether too exhausting and emotionally draining. Goodness knows what I'd be like at a live match. I hope they never let me in. I might never come out alive.

Two of the characters in my third novel appeared in my life this week. That is to say, the characters owe their existence to these two people who unwittingly provided the springboards. It is turning into a mother-daughter story: last Saturday I had coffee in John Lewis cafe in Edinburgh with the mother; yesterday the daughter came for dinner and an overnight stay. Of course, I've warned them that they have been my inspiration and promised to let them read the final result (if I ever get there) before anyone else. Names changed to protect the innocent. At the moment they seem only intrigued and mildly flattered. Hope it won't be the end of two rather precious friendships.

The pace is hotting up towards the Easter Play in Princes Street Gardens. This year I am concentrating on the liaison with churches, trying to get more actors, more marshals, more stage and sound crew, more 'muscle' for all the moving, erecting and dismantling of scenery and props. The power of volunteer labour! Also working to build up and nurture a team of people to be 'Church Links' for The Play who will enthuse their own church and publicise it in their community. Some great folk coming forward, as always. This year, we are having an art exhibition accompanying the Play for the week before and after. Open-air exhibition of digital prints in the Gardens and originals on display in a nearby venue - Henderson's cafe in the crypt of St John's at the West End. Nine professional artists are creating original works to the same theme, Christ in the Heart of the City at Easter, and it's producing some amazing results. Local children's art work will also feature. There is a schools' challenge underway now for Primary Six and Seven (same theme). All very exciting, innovative and scary. It sure is a group of people who don't rest on their laurels. Sadly, I'll miss the grand opening of the exhibition on March 26th by Edinburgh's Lord Provost as I'll be in Nice on holiday. It will be something to lure me back to this chilly country... and its unfortunate rugby team.

Off to watch some Winter Olympics razzmatazz. Not that I'm in to snow sports but I have a Vancouver cousin whose son is running with the torch. and John and I were up Whistler two and a half years ago while visiting. Inukshuk photo above to prove it!

Hollywood horrors, historical fiction and an underground mystery

That's January over at last. It really is the longest month of the year as well as being the coldest and hardest-up. You could almost feel sorry for it, it has so little going for it. Except Burns night on the 25th, of course, when we duly found something tartan (or at least checked / multi-coloured) and headed off to eat haggis, drink whisky and toast immortal memories and bonnie lassies. That date is special to me for another reason being the day I gave birth to my second daughter in 1970. I leave you to do the arithmetic since we have been forbidden by her to say the word that begins for and ends ty. She's looking pretty good for her age, still slim and blond and full of enthusiasms that catch us all up, swirl us all around and leave us churning in her wake. She celebrated with a child-free weekend in Pitlochry with her man which meant I went up there and relieved them of two cheery, cheeky wee girls for the weekend.

I took them to see Where the Wild Things Are and was greatly looking forward to it myself, having loved reading it to my own kids years ago. Sadly it has had an American number done on it and is filled with of doe-eyed slush and unnecessary added-in events and characters. And sadly, they have missed out on what I always thought was the absolute best last line in any children's book. Read the book (if you really haven't before now) and see the film - let me know if you agree with me.

Also saw Up in the Air last week for purposes of mindless, girly time with youngest daughter. Good choice: it sure was mindless and girly. Totally obvious plot, not a twist in sight, and cardboard characters. You could wonder how the actors keep their faces straight chirping those lines. No wonder I dosed off. Still, two hours of unrelieved George Clooney isn't all bad but, if I was him, I would object to being relegated to eye candy. I'm sure he can do better.

I am - I think - looking forward to seeing The Lovely Bones (out 19th Feb) but, having liked the book a lot, I am nervous of what Hollywood will have done to it. There's Alice in Wonderland on 5th March too, with an impressive list of top-notch actors - though that doesn't always guarantee a good film. I've got a couple of theatre visits lined up soon at The Traverse: Promises, Promises and The Government Inspector. So I could be set to turn into an entertainment critic... Well, how else to get through this winter? Apart from stoking the fire and lacing ginger tea with single malt (strongly recommended for frozen hands and feet).

I am nearing the end of Wolf Hall as an audio-book for morning hikes with Tucker. Wonderful writing and immensely impressive historical detail. It does have a cast of thousands, though, and I guess only the fact that we all know the ending and lots of the characters already enables that to be allowed. If it were complete fiction, we all say it was just too stuffed full of characters (like those awful old Russian novels). But I am loving that it has completely overturned my view of Sir Thomas More. I realise I always thought of him as Paul Schofield in A Man for All Seasons (dignified and admirable) but now I am seeing him as cruel , arrogant and very unlikeable - through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell who is the "voice" of the book and comes out as a very likeable. Great stuff. I love to have my long-held views overturned. It makes me feel young again.

Still scribbling away and got to chapter eighteen on novel plus couple of short stories. Off to talk to a book group tomorrow. My writing group had an outing to Gilmerton Cove last week: strange underground set of inter-linked chambers recently restored. All sorts of theories about what it is and why it is there, from Covenanters' hideout to illicit drinking den. Worth a visit if you're ever in the area. It could spark off some interesting pieces of writing - which was the point of us all going...

Frosty Stillettos and a Green Hat

In town all traces of the big freeze have gone. Out here, it is still unwise to venture out without good-grip boots and a walking pole. Paths are impossible: hard-trodden slush frozen to rock-hard, bumpy ice. I crowd into the crunchy verge, trying to find some snow soft enough to plunge my pole into, shielding my face from the frosty stilettos of bare bushes. The fraternity of morning dog-walkers passes vital messages to each other warning of special dangers ahead and behind: a drain has flooded in the thaw a few days ago and has now frozen to a sheet of ice covering the entire path; best take evasive action and scramble up the bank, dodge under the trees and then slide backwards down to the path again. Watch out for rabbit holes, barbed wire and tangles of tree roots lurking the snow. Don't leave home without your mobile phone: 999 calls are free. Life on the edge indeed. Who needs adventure holidays?

So we've booked an unadventurous one in urban, sophisticated Nice. Hopefully, the only hard thing to negotiate will be the change of plane at Heath Row. One of us is bound to forget something crucial like a pair of tweezers in the lining of a jacket (torn pocket) or a free sample phial of perfume lurking in the torn lining of a handbag. I know. I really should learn to thread a needle. Terrorist extremists may not have managed to blow us all up yet, but they have certainly ruined air travel for us all. We're booked on beleaguered British Airways flights and will stay at a Best Western Hotel 'close to the Promenade des Anglais' for a week in March. My impression of Nice is heavily tainted by novels set in the Roaring Twenties when it was the playground of the rich and by Pete Sarstedt's song, Where do you go to, my lovely? I intend to have a look at Juan les Pins and will report back. Meanwhile, I have ordered a copy (second hand, of course, since it is out of print) of Michael Arlen's The Green Hat, which so perfectly describes that frenetic, between-the-world-wars, gilded, rather dissolute society . I remember finding a copy in a French Chateau where I was being the dogsbody au pair for a summer in 1965 and staying up all night to read it. I've never forgotten it and was thrilled to see copies for sale on Amazon. Looking forward to it arriving. Think I'll keep it and take it as holiday reading to Nice. Maybe I'll buy a green hat while I'm there.

'S no' funny

Jings, crivens, help ma boab! Have we ever had so much snow for so long? A white Christmas was delightful, a white Hogmanay was difficult for the old first-footing and a still-white January the sixth is getting on for a pain in the neck. I won't bore you by uploading my snow photos. We've all got them now and the novelty has long since palled.
I resurrected an old skill last night and kept the fire going with dross and dried out twigs. Ran out of coal and logs and a trawl of nearby garages yielded only a couple of bags of kindling. Bless our next door neighbour who has loaned us a bucket of coal which will keep us going for a couple of nights. Yes, we have central heating and a couple of wee blowers but temperatures as low as this soon gain the upper hand in an old house with high ceilings.
Must think about something else: like poor old Golden Brown, as the vultures circle, within his own party too. He's not the sexiest prime minister we've had, for sure, but you can't help feeling sorry for him. Apres moi, le deluge. Was that Louis XIII who said that or Tony Blair? Or looking ahead to Burns night in three weeks time. Haggis, neeps and tatties with great after-dinner speeches and lots of nationalistic fervour of the hoots-mon, a man's a man fur a' that variety. Or even getting on with my writing which has been suffering from a lack of motivation to get up early and get my precious, peaceful couple of hours before the house stirs. It feels more like getting up in the middle of the night at the moment. Excuses, excuses. Never mind, I have had an epiphany moment in my third novel and feel much clearer about where it's going and how I am going to get it there. Also a nice review of The Ball Game in a magazine called St Andrews in Focus (Jan/Feb issue)

Just had an email in from my Canadian cousins in Vancouver - all they've got is rain. Generously - he tells me - they decided to let us have the snow this year. Gee, thanks.

Courage, mes braves! ....if winter comes, can spring be far behind? (Shelley)

Birthday Cakes and Winter Sunsets

Another birthday rolled around and my family, never slow to grab an excuse for a party, gathered to celebrate. As everyone else decorated the table, made an embarrassing banner with best-deleted photos of me from the past five years to hang over it, and put together ( i.e. ordered and collected from the takeaway) a delicious Chinese banquet, I took my youngest two granddaughters to Edinburgh's Winter Wonderland. We had a damp pants from sitting on wet seats, rosy cheeks from the bitter, sleety weather and light pockets after stumping up close on £90 in two hours: but it was FUN. My first time on the big wheel and I want to go back at night and see the city's incomparable skyline lit up in a rainbow of colour. There is something surreal about being on a level (and very close to) the upper echelons of the Scott Monument - like you could reach out and touch it, if you weren't hanging onto the safety-rail of your seat for dear life. Four-year-old Annie fixed me with a cool, appraising stare and took it all in her stride. Six-year-old Sasha was screaming with excitement. It takes all kinds to make a family, let alone a world.

The party at night was FUN too, with the traditional, noisy quiz team game after the banquet and the candlelit cake appearing suddenly when I wasn't looking. My youngest daughter had excelled even her cake-making inventiveness and made a cake that looked just like my novel. The Birthday Game by Fran B - the letters of Birthday being the candlesticks. As always it seemed a crying shame to treat a work of art so ill as to hack it into pieces and eat it. At least we have the photograph.

And, speaking of photographs, how about this sunset over the River Almond a couple of days ago? Snow everywhere, carols everywhere, the house full of STUFF - it must be Christmas. Welcome to our World, Babe of Bethlehem (well, your world, actually).

Bad Weekends and Good Books

"It was a bad weekend for the girls," said my daughter, as we shared a Starbucks' mushroom crepe on Wednesday. She was referring to Ali B going out of Strictly and Stacey going out of The X Factor, leaving the field clear for the guys. We sipped our Earl Grey gloomily. "Could have been worse," I said. "They could have been drugged and brutally abused - every weekend."

She took this in her stride. "You've been reading something." Nothing gets past her. I confess to having just read an extremely shocking, horrifying and riveting book. I kept wanting to stop reading it but just couldn't. I learned a lot of things I never wanted to learn. I thought I had encountered quite a lot of the dark, dismal and desperate side of life, working in some tough jobs and areas. But I have discovered that I am a mere innocent. And I wish I had stayed that way. No, I don't. It's good to know what goes on, if only to count my blessings. The book is called Send Me No Flowers by Jenny Tomlin. Not the best written book in the world, with a great deal of distressing repetition of horrific scenes and rather one-dimensional characters. But it fascinated me. The ending had me gripping the book so tightly that my hands were sore when I got to the end. Not for the faint-hearted, though. Not quite stocking-filler material, either.

Books I am wrapping up in Christmas paper this week are: The Little Stranger (a gothic ghost story); Wolf Hall (Booker winner); and Bare-Arsed Banditti (about characters in kilts from the battle of Culloden). All excellent stuff which I hope my friends will enjoy as much as I did. Hope Santa brings me some good reads as well. I'm relaxing with McCall-Smith now (Corduroy Mansions), in recovery from Tomlin. Andrew Sachs is reading it to me, courtesy of Itunes, as I walk Tucker in the snow. Very therapeutic.