Love. How can you tell?

This is a problem for everyone - but I'm not going to discuss it from a philosophical viewpoint - even if I was capable of that, which I'm not.  It's about one's own understanding of the past - what we remember and our interpretation of it.  Everyday experiences with other people are similarly difficult.  The way people respond to us and the way we interpret their responses.

I'm thinking currently of that extreme form of wishful thinking that we sometimes call unrequited love.  I have suffered this at various points during my career: the most extreme and recent outbreak occurred a couple of years ago - it was begotten by Despair upon Impossibility as Andrew Marvell says... but the rational is swept away in an emotional tsunami.  Is it possible to say that one understands what the other person is feeling - even if they are giving another message verbally - is the fact that they give mixed messages inevitable? They may not want to respond to your interest, but they are...?  Or are they not responding, just being polite?  Somehow you become convinced that there is some possibility of a deeper relationship, because of something they do/say or how they look.  Crystallization as Stendahl would say... there are endless emotional snapshots... you collect them as evidence.  But the evidence you want - the full admission - never comes, the relationship dwindles and you just feel silly.  

And then it comes back for some reason... you think "Why? I am getting on better in other areas of my life", and suddenly you start thinking about your object of desire again... and getting misty when you hear certain songs, and yearning.   Damn, it, life is unfair.  And then you wonder.... is it coming back for a reason - is he unsettled somewhere too... or is just the onset of depression, or what?   One might go mad - I think I'll have to go and find out what Stendahl said about getting over love.  A book on how to fall out of love could be really useful.

Don't you hate it when....?

... you send someone a carefully worded, thoughtful email, that requires an answer, an insight into their position on something and you wait, and you wonder what they think - and there's no reply.   And you can't tell whether the no reply is their reply, or whether they actually saw the email, or indeed anything about what they are thinking about something that is important to you.  

Then you are unable to send them a reminder, a request, in case you are seen as pestering them, but the sad fact is, sooner or later, these questions must be answered - so somehow I have to find out, or perhaps I can wait until a publisher makes an offer for the book and then ask everyone to sign a disclaimer...  Think I ought to check defamation on the Society of Author's site...

Must do something!

There isn't time to get into the novel today - going out to lunch again... at Charlotte's - about 15 miles away... And have one or two small chores to carry out.

So writing a blog entry seems a good idea.  Had a small but perfectly formed Festival Club meeting last night - locked out of the Small Boat Owners' Club - so came home and installed Will and his keyboard in the sitting room - turned the desk into a bar - and we all sat there - there were only 12 of us - but it was still a nice evening, nicer than usual, as I didn't have to worry about clearing up afterwards!  It's one of the things I have to do this morning.

Very good news - I have got my camera back - or rather had it replaced, so I will be making an attempt to illustrate the blog occasionally... mostly, I suspect, with pictures of flowers and sky - our local skies, which allegedly inspired Turner, are really impressive.  This is what comes of living in a place surrounded by water on 3 sides - with interesting collisions between the continental weather system and the Atlantic one... mostly we suffer the continental system here, with great East winds throughout the winter, blowing off the Urals or wherever...

Yesterday it was pure spring the crocuses were in flower etc. and everything was balmy about 15 degrees C.  Today is grey though, but still warmish.

This entry clearly in the category of mindless witterings - apologies!

More Displacement

I have been feeling a bit miserable recently - despite brave front etc. and happily a number of friends have spontaneously elected to invite me out to lunch etc, so I am having a cheerful time.  I had a lovely talk with Ann yesterday - she brought around a sour dough pot - which one tends for 10 (!) days then divides into 4 and makes a cake from one piece, gives away two and keeps one back for oneself... it's a nice idea, but I wonder whether it isn't a form of gourmet chain letter - I am looking forward to making the cake.  I suppose it's a bit like a ginger beer plant - hope the sour dough is tolerant of cold.

Every time I sit at the computer I find myself howling inside.... there was something I wanted to happen that hasn't happened... I can't really say what, but I'm surprised how it's affecting me.  Looking over the book it seems quite good - the new bits are fine really, I'm so lucky to be able to write and to not have writer's block (like Alexander) and I am lucky in a lot of ways - but there is this small missing piece... like the answer to a question that's evading one. 

Probably writing would cheer me up - tomorrow!

Displacement

This blog entry is unashamedly a displacement activity.    I have the stuck feeling I get when I have too many things to do - the "rabbit in the headlights" feeling.   I have to do 4 things: go to bank, borrow money from Ned and pay into bank, then look into the problems of getting charitable status for Ramsgate Arts... I have to do some cooking and then I should be editing TRF.

I have got up to 58,000 words, and have arrived roughly where I was before - shorter, good.  Then I decided to have a break because I was feeling a bit panicky about how I was going to integrate some of the material into the new format... also because of half term, GEEK 2012, Finn's friends visiting, a nice day out in Margate (didn't do much, but got a lovely little sketch by Michael Blaker of the elephant outside Sta Maria sopra Minerva (I think) in Rome... my last birthday present.   On Sunday we went out to lunch, or I should say, were taken out to lunch by Anna & Robin - I wasn't sure how I was going to negotiate their usual insane generosity - but I discovered that the restaurant we went to - JoJo's near Whitstable - had a bring your own facility - so I ransacked the furthest recesses of the cellar (the racks are pretty empty now) and found a nice claret, a good white burgundy and a fantastic bottle of white burgundy - which was 14 years old.   I thought it was a bit of a risk, but it seemed a good time to drink it.  It was a 1997 Batard-Monrachet - the colour was extraordinary - very yellow... I was a bit worried about it, but actually it was really nice - although it is hard to say how.  It just had a sort of depth and maturity - no jangly notes, no unacceptable greenish taste - just very solid.  I wonder if I'll ever drink another wine like that.   In honesty, I suspect it may have been a tad past its best - but the cork was perfectly clean and lovely... didn't seem oxidised.

What else?   Oh the food was great - tapas/mezze style - and? nice view of sea, and A&R brought some lovely Chapel Down Rose - from Tenterden.  I still find English wines a touch too flinty though... but this was a very good example. 

On Monday we went to see The Artist which is as good as the hype I thought, the boys enjoyed it too.

I saw Alex last night and had a good conversation with him.  He wants us to come out to dinner with him on Friday - but we can't afford it...

I am about to borrow more from Ned - and donate my birthday money to the house fund - and Mark has put two Rolliflex cameras on e-bay - so that should bring in something.

Better...

I am going to paste this same entry on two blogs to save time. 

Well - due to two really full on days of writing, editing, cutting and pasting, recycling - I am now back approximately to where I was in the novel, before the Agent rang - I now have 52,000 words to get to this point - because I have excised a lot of stuff - a hell of a lot of stuff - including some rather good new stuff... This is a rough old business - I feel as if I've got 3 novels now - I am trying to think of ways to salvage some of the stuff that is currently in limbo - also I really do want to use some of the ideological stuff about university... I am now going to have 3 days off - which is great.  I hope that on Monday I will begin writing again bright and early and crack on with the long-anticipated sex scene....

Thinking...

today I finally got a reply from The Agent - and she said "not like this, like that..." which meant basically that the last 65,000 words have been not wasted exactly, but rather otiose.  There is stuff in there I will rescue - but a lot of it will go....

What this also means is that I'm a lot further off from having a book with an agent who is trying to sell it... I am really grateful for all the support and prodding I'm getting from her, but if she doesn't like the finished project it's back to square 1.  I feel frustrated because our financial problems are becoming rather frightening... Mark still has no work, we haven't borrowed any more from Ned, but we may have to... and we didn't pay the mortgage this month... ok, we have another 15 days, but I don't imagine £600 is going to mysteriously emerge from somewhere...so we may borrow it from Ned - or we may risk our luck.   I know that a rapid response from a publisher isn't going to happen just like that, but today's email was important - and while I'm sure I'll end up with a better book in the end, it means another couple of months realistically before I can really produce the goods.  I still believe it will be published by next autumn, but I'm so worried in the short term about things, that a delay like this adds to the anxiety.

I know - in my heart of hearts - that it will be all right in the long run, but sometimes the situation seems particularly awful...and for some reason I have felt rather low the last few days. 

My solution to all this is to go back on an Atkins type diet - and to stop drinking.  I don't drink an enormous amount but the last few days - Sunday, last night and tonight have sort of accumulated....now I feel all wrong... I'll probably feel better in the morning.

Apologies for gloom - should be feeling pleased the The Agent is still approving my oeuvre...and that I have already got 6,555 words down (including a lot of re-cycled stuff, but also some rather good new intro work...).

Go and read a book

is my advice to myself, to stop me wandering around these blogs.  To my immense excitement I found a couple of other writers' blogs.  One was a chick-lit writer - the other had challenged him/herself to write a blog entry every day for a month and thought that blogs were a form of writers' block - rather than what I think, which that it is a displacement activity. I didn't feel I'd found kindred spirits - but perhaps they were using their blogs properly - i.e. as marketing tools and were addressing a "fan base" - which is something I don't think I could be said to have developed

I don't feel I can write now - a bit dopey and tipsy - which is why I am wantdering around the blogs... and finding another 20 US family blogs.  Perhaps in the future I will write a novel in the style of an all-American family blog.   A couple of days ago I found about a dozen blogs about horses... makes a change from babies and puppies!

At the moment I am still reading Collapse by Jared Diamond and Lorrie Moore's The Gate at the Stairs  (a 1st person narrative...) and I have many Christmas and birthday books to read... must get on, just going to sneak a few peeks at other blogs to see if I can find something interesting.

I did find an interesting thing where you could find out who was googling you.... but not sure about it, funny thing to have in the middle of a blog thing.  I'll google it to check it out!

Birthday contd.

Right - we went to the pub that used to have lovely food to find it had become a pub with ordinary food - so not quite special enough for a birthday treat.  Instead we went to Elizaveta in Sandwich was was good fun, the food is very nice - not exquisite, but proper greek food - my chicken breast was lovely - it's the wrong time of year for Greek food though - and on the whole, the restaurant was cold - heating not on!!!  But woman who ran it very friendly - and complimentary about the boys' photography.

Talking of which Finn took a ludicrous pic of me blowing out the candles on my birthday cake - I look like one of those ornamental zephyrs on a map... good cake flavour (made by Finn) but some problems - a bit dry... probably needs sour cream or yoghurt in it.  I made the ganache... a bit lumpy, but I was sozzled, thanks to not having had time to recover from lunch before Anna G came over with a bottle of wine.  Anyway, we had a jolly chat and I felt - as I often do, how nice it was to have a friend around the corner to bring one treats....my two Anna friends have totally imbued the name Anna with all sorts of good vibes.

Happy Birthday to me

A little light snow this morning - but with the promise that the weather is going up to 3 degrees this afternoon - hurray - and will be a positively balmy 7 by Weds....

I graciously received the presents - two welcome cheques, which I am going to spend on myself this time...last year I got £450 - and spent about £75 on myself...so this year I am going to be resolute - and a collection of "little presents" - due to financial stringency - I am going to have a "proper" present when an invoice gets paid.  Got two good CDs... books, lovely earring in fuschia shape made of wires... really nice.

We are going out to lunch at the Fitzwalter Arms - which was once a splendid restaurant - which has recently changed chef... so fingers crossed.  Unfortunately the nearby gardens at Goodnestone aren't open - but we might manage a wander to the churchyard for a bit of sightseeing - if it isn't raining, something which is desperately needed... local Kentish reservoirs only 46% of their usual levels at this time of year.  Another hosepipe ban.

Going out

We went out!   On a Saturday - in fact we had a choice of two things, and then someone gave us some free tickets to see the Webb Sisters - a pair of harmonious elves who accompany themselves on harp and guitar.  "Very Lothlorien" M said.   We'd enjoyed the support act - a local kid called Luke Jackson who plays good guitar and has a fantastic voice.  He sang his own songs and I thought some of the lyrics were a bit cliched,,, but then I discovered he was only 17 - so perhaps it's allowed!

The Webbs were the attraction, but we didn't feel particularly thrilled - it was all too smooth and perfect, without being at all moving... we left after the 4th number - we were bored and didn't think it would get any better.  It was of course technically brilliant - but just a bit dead.

The concert was in Sandwich, in a preserved church - loads of people there - all the local bigwigs (well Laura anyway, our Member of Parliament) and Victoria P, the director of the Turner Contemporary - we also saw the local aristocracy - the James's - who we worked for as archaeologists when they put in their swimming pool.  We didn't mingle during the interval - which lasted 45 minutes - and were thus able to watch the movements of the great and the good...They do have good concerts there - we ought to go again, perhaps when we feel like mingling again...

Defamation

Right - have spent an hour on the phone with great mate Anna, who is, inter alia, a tabloid journalist (freelance now, features...) so she knows all about defamation.  There is absolutely no way my nutter could do me for defamation - for a start virtually no one knows who she is... but in any case, she would have to be recognisable, preferably with the same name - and she would have to be a horrible character in the novel.  Arguably the nutter is so nasty that nothing  I might write about her would be defamatory - just pure authorial observation.  However, I don't fancy trying to play it that way. 

She is an odd combination of feisty and needy - not a very good combination.  Anna said "Needy women always make themselves indispensable to men until they have got them...then wham!"   It cheered me up enormously - I think I've done the right thing.  Except that what I've done isn't going to be discussed here, since she could easily access this if she wanted to.

Happy - ish!

Since I woke up late this morning, having carried out an essential task during the early hours - and also, have finished editing Mark's first 3 chapters.  Batsford books have agreed to have a look at it - although I think it's a bit above their pay grade - quite academic etc.  We'll see.

I haven't mentioned the snow - it's no  big deal if you are reading this in Russia and Central or Eastern Europe - but for us it is pretty extraordinary.  It snowed heavily on Saturday night - about 12cm - a lot for us.  There's been no snow since, but it's been freezing for 10 days - which is unusual for us.  I would put up a picture, but the camera is broken...  Apparently it will snow again tonight.  The boys, especially Finn, love it, but I am not keen.  I haven't been out to "enjoy" it, because we have had so much the last two or three years that I'm a bit jaded by it.    However, yesterday we ventured out to the supermarket and took a slow drive back to see the snowy cabbage fields, and the distant prospect of very snowy hills above Dover.   It is pretty of course, but I was hoping it would be spring soon.   On the banks near the large roundabout some daffodils had begun to flower before the snow.  Then now stand, half open in suspended animation.   So I expect the crocus, snowdrops and primroses will be there under the snow.

Self-censorship

I discovered the other day that it was perfectly easy to find this blog via Twitter - because I linked the writing blog to that...  but anyway, it's accessible.

Because a madwoman is threatening me at present - you won't read about it here for obvious reasons - I have been through the whole blog and deleted or withdrawn any material that in any way might inflame her, were she to stumble upon it.

I wonder if she's on Twitter - probably, she wouldn't need more than 140 characters to exhaust her intellect.   Sorry - that's unkind, but I'm afraid it's pent up... I was quite annoyed by her attack and think I might have to vent my spleen somewhere.  I did not like having to destroy the integrity of this blog, but I suppose I should not have written so frankly.   I am not a secretive person, but I do have a certain defensive response sometimes, and this was the time for it.

Perhaps I should hunt her down on Twitter!

Stagflation

The personal is the political - or rather the current economic situation of the majority of Europe and the US - seems horribly reflected in our lives.   All the things that they said wouldn't happen have happened it seems.  All I can think is that if you were in the trenches in the First World War the stress and misery would be pretty unbelieveable - and yet it ended, and a lot of people went home in the end. 

Nostalgia

I have spent a day writing and half living in my past and half inventing an imaginary past.   When I do this I often play music to provide a back ground - access to my memory.   But occasionally I find the memory breaking into nostalgia.   I was just listening to Bob Dylan's I want You - I try not to, because it does reach those hidden spots, which I am busy trying to brush over - and suddenly I find myself thinking that I still want someone and it is painful.  I know rationally that I don't want/can't have/he isn't interested etc.  but when those feelings surge up from the past they are attached to him - even though they might have arisen in other circumstances or relationships.  

Today I was trying to struggle with how I felt about my first husband J.  I think I was really in love with him...  but I can't remember it, because I don't have the nostalgia about that relationship any more.  It's hard to make someone loving - when you know the character is going to morph into something less attractive later in the book.  Phillip in the novel isn't J though - he's becoming less and less J - and it's good, because it should show the how people change... it isn't just that our relationships change with boredom etc... it's because we change.

Candlemas, the Feast of St. Blaise, Imbolc, Groundhog Day....

St. Blaise was something to do with throats I think - mine is raspy, due to an irritating cough.
But I am definitely feeling the turn of the year - it didn't get dark till after 5.00 - and if it doesn't snow in the next 10 days, I am declaring spring!

 The boys assure me (a) it will snow tomorrow and (b) it snowed on Tuesday in Margate... they have seen pictures... so spring probably isn't that imminent.

Although I am now having a new phase of my cold, I feel very happy, because I have put a lot of the early part of the book in place today - and have cut it down.   This means I can relax with a relatively good conscience.

Very good mini-book group last night, at Jane's.  Sue wasn't there...but had quite a good discussion about books, and about tv vs books etc. (and the price of food).  Also, the appalling fundamentalist Y3 teacher at Christchurch - who also believes the lunar programme in the 60s and 70s was done in a studio.... the children of course all believe her because she is so sweet and pretty and says things like people who don't believe in God will go to hell.  That is so infuriating - how dare she usurp God's authority with her own tiny ideas.... and because people like this give the rest of us Christians a really bad name...people think we all believe this rubbish!   It just gives militant atheists more ammo against us.

Dystopia. They can read your mind now!

Extraordinary piece of scientific news this morning (and as I am not a scientist what I say should be treated with caution) - apparently, a mechanism has been developed that can convert electrical signals in the brain into words.   It has been used on patients undergoing brain surgery - and the words that were "read" were words that had been spoken by people involved in the research - which were obviously being processed by the unconscious person's brain.... but clearly it's a start... and we can just guess where it will lead.

It's a pity I can't be arsed to do the research for science fiction - but clearly a refined version of this mechanism/method could in some decades time, enable anyone's brain to be systematically "read".  

Never mind the internet, this would be the end of privacy, subversion, transgresive thoughts... there would be nowhere to hide.    Never mind the collective unconscious - now we would be living in a world of collective consciousness - will we become as meaningful as bees or ants?  Nightmarish scenarios occur.  Would we cease in any meaningful sense to be individual?    Of course it is not that this is likely to become widespread - but you can imagine people "farming" other people's thoughts or creativity - and the sophistication of this method for extracting information certainly beats waterboarding... forget about lie detectors...

Dystopian ideas seethe through my brain, but I must get on with some editing.