But....
Talk about two cultures!
We have been trying for two weeks to wrangle a password reset out of O2, and for days he couldn't convince the operator he was who he said
he was, so he was locked out of his own mail account.
I made an off-hand comment about needing a Kafka to do full justice to the situation.
And he said...
- A what?
- A writer?
- Why?
- What did he write?
- What's that got to do with my blackberry?
It was the first time I had been back since June, and I was braced for
disaster.
The ditch above the cottage must have overwhelmed by the summer rain;
there is a stream running through the lean-to loo, and out under the
front door – the porch is three to four inches thick with mud – but
none of this found it's way into the house.
The swallows raised their family and left. I can tell exactly which
doors and chairs they most enjoyed perching on. They left little
poopy wiggly signatures underneath!
They also left a huge birdy midden on the stairs right under the nest….
And a vacant nest of course. Which is now on the mantelpiece – it's a
work of art.
There is black mould on 3 walls – I think this is due to using a
casein based paint – the next time I will use a pure lime putty, as
that is naturally fungicidal.
And there is dust everywhere.
For some 15 minutes I just wandered around, unsure where to begin.
Had the caravan defeated me?
But 90 minutes later – the stairs were clear and worst of the rooms
was de-birdied and almost de-dusted, and I realised how little damage
had actually been done. It's all superficial.
No more work can be done this winter – it's just too damp and
impossible to get machinery up there.
I can only hope for a dry-ish spring summer, to dig out the ditches,
pin the wall and repaint the plaster.
At the moment I am juggling three writing projects -
- the Big Screenplay: locked in the kitchen drawer for the elves to
edit...,
- the TV Script: one hour pilot - I'm trying to get a full draft done
my November 1, but a nasty cold virus ate my homework and I'm two
weeks behind schedule)
- and a silly Spy Novella: just for fun - no redeeming features
whatsoever... or so I thought.
Yesterday I was squaring up to one of the story lines in the TV
script, in which the protagonist is caught and roughed up by a local
gangster.
I couldn't concentrate (the last hangover from the cold I suspect) and
my imagination wanted to play in the sandbox, with my spies ...
So "What if....
....I recast the TV script with a favourite character from the sandbox?
Suddenly instead of a generic 30 something gangster I have a good-
looking, sweet-talking, almost twinkly 70 year-old sadist, who is
still handy with a straight-razor.
The scene sprang back into focus and started to write itself. The
Pensionable Psycho has a history and a voice.
I'm now adding "recasting" to the tool-kit, to get me over similar
writing road blocks in the future
And how the world has changed - certainties melting away hour by
hour. The biggest nationalisation since the war. The Bankruptcy of
an entire nation whose only assets seem to be cod, sulphurous springs
and Bjork.
I tried to find a working cashpoint yesterday morning (on my way to
pick up a Visa from the Russian Embassy for my current boss) and every
machine along High Street Kensington was out of commission. For a few
moments I wondered if that was the end - if the entire retail banking
industry had finally collapsed, and the cash in demand from a hole in
the wall was about to become a distant memory to amazing our
grandchildren with - like Anderson shelters, green grocers and
deference to the Royal Family.
If a financial crash can shake our world view so entirely (despite the
warnings of the past years that something was seriously awry) how much
more devastating would be the Ecological Crash, which may already be
taking place. There is plenty of unquantified toxic debt lurking in
the ecosystem, ready to explode in our faces... Soon Iceland may be
left with just the smelly springs and Bjork.
In other news: the speculative Blitz TV pilot I was writing winds on.
