This one is funny....

Monday morning is swimming. I share a car into Hexham, 30mins away at. 7.30 am. But as i live at the top of a wood, this means waking at 6.30, dressing in the dark and cold [no fire] and walking 25 min through the trees by starlight. I have to be 'very brave', [more about the getting up than the walking.

This morning I had a landrover. This does not make things faster as I have to stop to open and close 5 gates.

But when my alarm went off, I Did It.

I put my head down, ignored the pain and the desire to crawl back into my lovely warm bed, and dressed and drove and opened and closed and admired the stars swinging overhead and...
...hang on a mo...
...the clocks went back last night, it should be light by now...
And I checked the dashboard clock with bleared eyes. It was 1.38 am.

Bloody alarm clock.

I had two choices - drive back through those 5 gates to a cold dark house, crawl back between the cooling sheets and do the whole thing all ovee again in 5 hours time.

Or sneak into my sister's house, curl up on the sofa and hope not to be blasted away by a spooked neighbour with a shot gun.

I just been woken by a txt. Swimming is cancelled.

Shocked to discover what a reactionary I am...

... I have caught myself musing that perhaps we got it abiut right by 1750 [industry, agriculture, shipbuilding, music, sanitation, food etc] and it's been downhill ever since.

I'll just go and die of childbed fever to cure myself of this ludicrous opinion.

Today

7.30: woke up to a pale window. Listening to radio 4 in bed while watching the painted cows appear from the mist. It's warm in here, cold out there.

7.55: deep breath, slippers and wrapper on, downstairs. It's still dark enough to need a light. Light the fire, make tea, draft writing plan for the day and tidy up last night's notes.

9.00: wash, dress, make breakfast; bacon and eggs. It takes almost an hour to get the fire hot enough to cook.
I'm still looking for a way of warming plates without cracking them or knocking them flying. There isn't a good place by the fire.
I suspect a hot water container may be the key... will have to look up the reference books to see what devices were being used in the 18th/19th C and improvise around that.

10.00: Write

11.00: Fetch water, top up the filter, wash up and clean kitchen. The mice are slacking. Perhaps they are having lie-ins too. Or maybe they have moved on to pastures new for the winter.

11.30: Writing again - a whole new scene, a whole new character, distilling pages of backstory and exposition into one short conversation that also sets up the next scene and drives my character on. If I've got it right - result!

12.30: Stack firewood. I have a log pile in the yard, and another in the porch, where it dries out before I bring it in. Looks like I will have to order more within the next week - and start sawing my own to make it go further.

1.00: lunch: Chilli beans. The chilli powder is red hot - my nose is on fire! Very satisfying.

1.30: writing again. The next scene is a very old one, a set piece love scene, but it now sits better in the whole structure and drives the plot. (I hope).

2.30: clean pheasants for tomorrow's soup. They are a gift from the ruggedly handsome landlord who happens to be my brother-in-law, and leant the cottage a rural film set look for a short while, hanging beside the porch. I've no use for a whole bird, and no way to roast them anyway, so I skin them and take off breasts and legs to cook with raisins and a little wine.

Then I sat and finished a curtain to hang in the bedroom. I bought the fabric in Kelso 10 months ago; curtain making has been a very stop-start project, slowed down still further by problems with a borrowed sewing machine. The onset of winter is more than enough encouragement to finish them by hand.

5.00: write - almost completed a whole section today.

7.00: The Archers, supper, book of the week (The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Read an interview with the author, who is famously agoraphobic, and so researched the entire novel, which is set in Canada, without being able to visit the country. If she hadn't been open about her illness would anyone have commented on this? The novel is set in the 1860s - she hasn't visited there either. That's what writers do. I like her.
"Why is one of the characters gay?" "Some people are you know."

8.00: write - finishing up for the day.

9.00: Connect up the disc drive and watch the second half of The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

Tomorrow I have a lift to the swimming pool at 7.30. This means getting up and down the hill in the dark. Could be interesting!

Yay! Sleet!

And it's only just past Trafalgar Day...

And island in a still sea of mist. Every blade of grass, every leaf, every berry edged with ice.

I understand now, in my bones, exactly why our ancestors wore caps to bed..

It's 10pm and there is a helicopter flying way over to the south - the only sound over than the fire and the tick of the laptop.

This is a different kind of writing: I am going over a house I first started building 5 years ago, on the limited foundation of a 10 page sketch. As it has expanded with each draft it has grown in scope and complexity, but with flaws – usually sections I have papered over, to bridge a gap, to fill an area that I haven't fully researched because the books were slow coming, or which I needed to cover to meet a deadline. In time some of these were repaired – but others remain hidden under Gothic flights of prose or fascinating scenes, traps just weighting for my narrative to trip over or fall through and bring the whole structure down.

Now for the first time there is time to strip down and find them all, and it is fascinating and challenging.

For example – in the two most recent drafts my protagonist climbs into the mountains with partisans and makes maps. The question is raised – how is a 21 year old graphic designer able to make maps? And why are maps needed?

I look at this and have to be honest. She is making maps because I want her in the mountains, and I want her in the mountains because I have a terrific scene coming up where she makes love among the rocks with a partisan.

Do I go back and make her a mapmaker from the outset, give her an army background (daughter of a military surveyor perhaps?)? Do I weave images of maps into the visual texture of the entire film? Well, no, because that is not what this film is about. (The other film, about the shipwrecked boy who grew up to chart the Australian coast, and who was tattooed from shoulder to knee – now that film is about maps...)

Or do I strip right back, through all the wanna haves and quick fixes and wallpaper bodges that this mountain section of the script contains, and take the time to write it properly, even at the risk of losing my rocky sex scene.

Being here in the hills means I find have time to stop and rip and pull and let the fresh air in, and build a good structure, and only then start to find the right words to make it live. And that's a very new experience.

Cooking: Sloe gin. Found about 20 lbs of sloes (wild plums) in the hedgerows; I started picking on my own but the landlord got intrigued, then enthusiastic, and my two pounds turned into a vast haul in several sacks. They are all in the freezer at the bottom of hill, waiting for bottling. (Freezing breaks down the tough skins, which otherwise need pricking. 1 Lb of sloes, 4 oz of sugar, 1 pt of gin (or vodka – gin was traditionally the only clear spirit available in this country until the 2nd half of the 20th C) Bottle and shake every other day.

After 3 months the liquor is a rich purple, and the dry bitter sloes have worked an extraordinary alchemy to produce the richest, most flavoursome drink imaginable. It can be drunk at once, although it improves still further with keeping.

Reading: Ball of Fire by Antony Brett-James: rats, my copy is damaged, with pages missing just as the partisan leader, Ras Seyoum – a key figure in the film – is launching a wild attack on the Italian fortifications. I shall have to hike to the library and order another copy and hope that it arrives in good time. If not it will have to wait until I can get to the British Library in November.

Watching: The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Lovely storytelling.

Smoke gets in your eyes - and hair, and clothes and lungs...

First time back at the cottage for almost 2 weeks – the leaves have fallen and light is falling on the West side for the first time in months. The mice have been slacking – almost no damage.
Found a hedge of sloes which I will convert into gin for Christmas tomorrow

Falling leaves

Back in Northumberland, nursing the last of the cold, as a guest of my lovely sister and bro-in-law, who have an aga (bliss).

It is the coldest morning to date – verging on frost and with a dense white fog. The Beech tree beyond the door is shedding leaves so fast it looks like golden snowfall, with a similar crispy whisper.

Today is the first day I feel inclined to work again – I am making use of the Aga to stay in pajamas and try to make up for lost time on the step-outline.

I have been working on the same story now for 6 years (not exclusively, of course, but pretty consistently. The thought process is different – a series of small "aha!" as I rehearse the possibilities while walking.

This story has its origins in a sickbed. In 2001 I had been writing short stories for under a year, all arriving as a result of internal conversations, "what ifs" and being resolved into finished pieces within a few days I actually used to rush home from work to complete them in a hot flush of invention. There was no room for any other words in my head.

Then I got bronchitis after a bad winter cold – exacerbated by the fact that my desk at the time was in a basement, which was also used as a smoking room by other employees. The window next to which I perched was thickly coated with tar, so that the light filtering down from street level had a sepia glow to match the 1950s conditions. I had a bar heater on one side and the PC to the other to provide heat. A year later the

It took me almost 4 weeks to recover. When I tried to return to work the smoke drove me straight back to bed within two days.

I was soooooo bored of the hours spent swaddled in bed – upright to relieve the strain on the lungs, listening to the radio, sleepless through the night, listless through the day and living on soup. I doodled as a listened, a woman in a black coat running down a the stairs from a court room, a man following who had believed she was dead, who needed to know why she had disappeared. It was a scene I had created and run through my head for amusement for almost 15 years. I tried to remember where it had come from. A dream about a desert, a crashed jeep, a woman with a rifle and two lovers. For the first time I tried to write it down.

4 hours later I had 15 pages of single line typescript, starting:

*****

INT. WATERLOO STATION. DAY

Ellen alights from the train in the smoky grey dawn light, carrying a small vanity case and a handbag. She passes porters, early morning workers, mail bags being unloaded, two West Indian Airmen with kit bags, international travellers from the boat train, a cleaner sweeping the concourse.

She searches in her purse for change. She is wearing close fitting black leather gloves.

She opens her purse. No change, only notes.

She buys a newspaper with a 10-shilling note. The seller grumbles.

She enters the ladies rest room, and uses a penny to open a cubicle door.

INT. LAVATORY CUBICLE – DAY

Ellen locks the door and lowers the seat. She kneels on the cubicle floor, places the vanity case on the seat in front of her and opens it. Rummaging inside she retrieves the parts of a handgun and assembles it - with remarkable efficiency. She is still wearing the gloves. She puts the gun in her handbag.

********

It's very different now. But so is the rhythm of writing, and that is why I am procrastinating by blogging instead of working!

Suffolk

Suffolk is even more isolated (in some respects) than the cottage up North! I have no phone signal at all her – not for miles, and, of course, no internet. I’m am going to load this into the phone on the off change that I get a signal while walking today.

The studio itself is one end of a thatched barn, at the end of a range that includes a house, a furniture-maker's workshop, a potter’s workshop and a teashop. That sounds crowded and noisy, but it isn’t. In fact we have barely heard a soul since arriving.

The barn has been beautifully converted and furnished by the furniture maker, Graham Hussey and his wife Honor, the potter; it’s all wood, and has a the dry oaky smell I recognise from the 18th Century boathouses at Portsmouth. It’s easy to spot the old and new beams, but not from any lack of harmony between them. Some of the original weatherboard has been reused and lime-washed, and the fingers can trace out the graffito of the 19th children who played here – a complete alphabet, two little boats (the higher the better drawn, as fits the older child) and a date, 1892.

In short, it’s light, and bright, and warm and airy, with great views and striking open plan sleeping gallery. I would recommend it to any one looking for a quiet week with a friend.

In the meantime I am reading the blogs of 1941 – “Private Battles” edited by Simon Garfield, the latest addition to his collection of Mass Observation Diaries, which now cover 1938 – 47. (“Our Hidden Lives”, “We are at War”.

Informative, curious, gossipy, intimate, astonishing – the everyday life of men and women in the 1940s is compulsive reading, and the long dead contributors (“Herbert Brush”, amateur poet, 83, “B Charles”, perpetually pursed antique dealer with an eye for working class boys, “Pam Ashford”, thirty-something secretary in Glasgow with a satirical pen and a difficult canary) will live on in the imagination for years after.

Schedule for the week

Ignore this - nothing here but an attempt to shame myself into sticking to a writing schedule by making it public.

Wednesday 17:
read accounts of battle of Keren 1941; sketch out corresponding sections of step-outline (7,8)

Thursday 18:
rough draft of sections 7,8 (Guerilla activity in the mountains)

Friday 19:
revise sections 7,8; order books from local library; letters

Saturday 20:
Brainstorm section 6 (the siege of Keren/Asmara)

Sunday 21
Reading day

Monday 22
Structure section 6

Tuesday 23
Section 1....

Bugs and dustbusters

The week in Suffolk ended on a snuffly note - I caught a chill walking from
Orford to Butley through the woods in the rain.

Haven't written a word since - too busy hiding under the covers with a stash of
tissues and laudanum reading up on natural (and other) disasters, which always
cheers me up.

My flatmate's awesome mother stayed in the London flat while I was away -
awesome because she scrubbed every room from top to bottom and transformed it.
The bath sparkled, the walls shone. And then she cooked goulash and left in the
fridge for me. I've never met the woman (I have spoken to her on the phone, but
as she speaks no English and I speak less Magyar they were short conversations)
but I want to hug her.

I should explain that the flat was a cheerless wreck when I moved in – It had
been trashed by previous tenants and needed to be steam cleaned over two days
before I could move in. This left many corners of grime and dinginess to tackle
and smashed fittings to repair, but as I was in a plaster cast at the time, and
trying to catch up at work, mush of this wasn't tackled at the time.
Redecorating was postponed while we chased an insurance claim against the owner
of the flat above us, which seems to spring a leak every second month. And we
got used to the lime-dulled taps and streaky walls.

It took a skilled and determined woman to put us straight.

Mrs. Ambrus, I salute you. And your goulash rocks.

Score to date...

4 miles of orford shingle
6 avocets
2 heron
2 egrets
2 curlew
1 shelduck
10 cows
5 smoked sausages
3 scenes

Eastward Ho

Having been in the North for two weeks I am now in the east - Suffolk (Orford to be precise.)

It was in a converted pigsty a few miles from here, in 2002, that I wrote the first draft of Translations. I'd been stuck at home with bronchitis and wanted to escape. Foot and mouth had left holiday cottages empty, and so I was able to rent the pigsty (which was very sweet). I took a pound of coffee, my very first suitcase and an elderly 'laptop' running windows 3.1 and textpad. Without a car I was forced to walk everywhere.

The story came out in huge chunks - 4 hours at a time.

This time there are more distractions (i.e., company) but I am gratified to discover that the story is coming in big blocks. Must be all that sky.

Doesn't get much better

Solved some major act 2 problems on the script, the rain is falling past the open door, I have a glass of red wine and a fat cuban cigar. All I need is a sailor on leave to make life perfect.

I just hosted a dinner party in the cottage - with half of the guests under the age of two. It was noisy but entertaining and has left a mound of washing up.

Back to the keyboard in 30 mins.

All the curses of hell fall on the heads of spammers

At regular intervals [say every 2 weeks] some mf spoofs my address to send bulk mail, and my mail box crashes under the weight of returned mail. This is irritating enough when I have broadband, a laptop and a mail filter. When I am on a mountain relying on the webbrowser on a mobile phone it is heartbreaking. I haven't been able to read mail for 48 hours... I can clear it out in the library tomorrow, but right now I am feeling really un-buddhist in my desire to inflict pain on the bastards who have hijacked my mail.