Society of Authors meeting

These are usually great fun, and Monday night's was no exception.  Unusually we met in the Astor Theatre, Deal - which has, I discovered a lovely bar - so if I ever want to go somewhere for a quiet drink on a Monday night, that's the place.

I went in a really miserable mood - feeling down about finances, there are two threads to this: one is the struggle to make up the deficit each month, the other is to keep track of our 8 creditors - and stop them all taking us to court.  But that is neither here nor there.    I was miserable on the way there because the petrol was low and the first garage was closed and I feared this might be a result of the storm.  However, the Pegwell Bay garage was open.   And the car park at the theatre was free so I had a whole fiver!

I was immediately cheered by a burst of applause when I arrived and lots of compliments about my hair. Got a drink and a plate of food and gradually dissolved.  It was a bit difficult to talk because the room was echoey with hard surfaces - eventually Mary Kenny, who had organised the evening, got us to go around talking about branding ourselves as writers.  It was an interesting discussion and I made the odd contribution... but I fear I am becoming renowned for my "talk" and not really saying much.  Everyone was so nice and positive and supportive, and I was instructed to get myself published.  Three options were suggested, novel-writing competitions, on-line serialisations (e.g. Wattpad) and the general self-publishing path - everyone promised to write me reviews on Amazon if I did... well, I suppose if it means little dribbles of money are coming in it might be better than nothing.

Anyway, it's always interesting to hear about how other people are faring - and the general tone was fairly positive, although at the same time, it's obvious that most of us aren't making absolutely buckets of money from it.

Storytelling

We went out to a "Day of the Dead" storytelling evening tonight, at the Theatre Royal in Margate - it was a mixed bag - but mostly pretty enjoyable.  There was a good Ben Heggarty story about the emotions playing hide-and-seek on the 7th day of creation.  There was a Russian story about a demon lover, a Mexican story (also Ben Heggarty) about a boy who has Death as his Godmother, a Hodja story, a story that sounded E. European, about an old man who manages to remember enough to delay death a few months, so that he can feed all the birds over the winter (Tim something), a story about a graveyard where people's age is measured by the number of wonderful moments in their lives - an Emily Parrish story about Durga/Kali - which was quite striking, a great African story about a talking head.  It was pretty good - people were struck by the very vivid song at the end about Worms - a variation on the song I knew as a child

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
Crawl in your ears and out your mouth,
They call their friends, their friends come too
You're a heck of a mess when they get through

I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not had some bad news today.  But that's another story.

Awaiting the storm

Since yesterday the media have been full of reports about the great storm that is about to hit the UK - c. 2 am tomorrow morning - this will be nearly a hurricane - so we are a bit worried about the roof.  Being at the seaside is always exciting, but it could be too exciting.  Then again, our roof seems to have survived a great many storms and is still pretty much intact.  So perhaps it's a tough old roof.  

There have been gleeful reports of possible horrors - power cuts being the first in my mind, and also people wondering whether the Met Office are making too much of a fuss.  I have tidied up the garden, and got everything that might fly loose out of the way.  Not much else we can do really.  It has been a beautiful day today - sunny, warm and very windy.  The sky has alternated between blue, grey clouds, white cloud and an extraordinary grey white glare whose brilliance made it almost impossible to look at.   The strange glaring grey sky, with a layer of grey cumulus running beneath it was extraordinary, the whole thing decidedly Turneresque...

There is a slightly fateful quality about this time - yesterday I received a lot of unwelcome news about new layers of crises in the lives of my beloved cousins - today our Hungarian visitor suddenly declared tearfully that she had had some terrible mysterious family news and had to leave. Nothing drastic has happened to us, apart from the traditional grumpiness about funds.  However, hearing other people's problems makes me feel how very little we have to complain about.

I was unable to take any photos today - but here is a picture which gives something of a taste of weather conditions in Ramsgate earlier on.

More Books

Am feeling abnormally pleased with myself (now - but don't ask me this at 4.30am tomorrow, when I will be feeling less chipper) because I have just re-drafted Conscience 1 - and stuck a couple of pages up on the book blog, and drawn people to them on FB and Twitter.  So far, so good.  Doing the right things for my tiny followership!

But I am feeling even more pleased because as well as writing in the last 2-3 weeks I have been reading even more books - FM Mayor's The Rector's Daughter, Collins's The Moonstone,  William Boyd's Waiting for the Sun Rise and am nearly through Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday.

I have always not bothered with Chesterton - he's one of the Church's secular saints whom I have been happy to ignore since he was a ghastly anti-semitic Tory of the worst sort.  I also dislike people being "romantic" about the Catholic church - they are usually blinkered to the truth - by all means love and adhere to the Church if you wish - but an uncritical or worse highly apologist approach just won't do.  However, I did quite enjoy the Father Brown stories when I was a child and I have a couple of people in my life who admire Chesterton so I assume there is more to like about him, and that my views are partial and prejudiced.
So in a spirit of open mindedness I began to read the book - and within a few paragraphs I felt it had an ugly, gloating tone - because of course it has a narrator - and the narrator is basically a smug, toad-like fellow who dislikes the modern world and all its cultural manifestations.  So the first part of the book is quite descriptive - then the action begins, and becomes more and more fast and furious - one sees what happens, his clue trail is a little pathetic, and [spoiler alert!] the idea that Sunday would be the same person as the man in the darkened room occurred to me very early on.  I have not quite finished - but I think I see what is going to happen, and sense that I shan't enjoy it as much as the end of Anna Karenina.   It hasn't (although I may change my mind when I finish it) made me think twice about Chesterton.   The Church however, is proposing to canonise him.  There seems to be an absolute mania to make saints out of unsuitable people at present.

Andrew Mitchell, the police, the media and lies

What now?  Who do we believe?  The police have been caught out telling porkies on a fairly regular basis - so why not about this?  The whole affair seems to have come down to what wing of the commentariat you are on - the right wing law and order mongers must be wrestling with themselves.  A Tory MP or the Police - like a squabble between your children - you don't want to take sides, but one of them must be lying?  How can you be disloyal to either? .   And on the left, the anguish of trying to decide which of them is the most repulsive: the Police surely - they have more power (I'm not saying Andrew Mitchell 7.0 is repulsive - although I have said that when I was younger there seemed to be a bit of a repulsion going on).

I'd come down on AM's side against the police, because they've got so much form - and evidently the power to affect the composition of the Cabinet.  This is terribly bad news.

On a larger question, I suppose my real fear is that we are being controlled by lies.  Obviously, to some extent we are, there are lies about the economy, about military and national issues.  Some of these are "necessary" perhaps, but I am thinking about a more specific thing - the manipulation of opinion, and of political life, by deliberate untruths.  However much we pride ourselves about our critical minds, about our inside knowledge of situations, it becomes difficult to resist the frequently repeated lie - that old adage about repeating lies louder and louder until everyone believes them is only too true.

The role of people who are effectively telling lies in the media is a troubling one.  Columnists are employed by papers who simply churn out untruths - such as Simon Hoggart in the Guardian who is obsessed with windfarms.  A lot of his "facts" seem doubtful, and he doesn't seem to understand that if we wish to protect the environment, certain forms of energy may be more expensive - it is the price we pay.

On climate change the BBC was being asked to defend its use of climate change deniers to comment on the issue - they said they had to use some occasionally, as they represented a minority amongst scientists.  Regrettably climate change denial is very common amongst non-scientists (that idiot Nigel Lawson) so every time a climate change denier appears in the media the 60% of the population who wish it wasn't true all say to each other "There - see - that geologist said this has all happened before!"  "Oh, well, that's all right then - my round I think."

Partly the problem is that for entertainment value, we need opinion - but because opinion occurs in newspapers it is easy to confuse it with news - when it is commenting on the news - and give it the status of fact... opinion is indeed cheap!

Panic over

It appears that I am unlikely to have VC - although there is still some sort of bruising/abrasion - and I have had a biopsy - but it doesn't look worrying.  So in theory all is well.  I just hope the bleeding incident was a one-off...  I will get the biopsy results in the next fortnight.

The Literary Cure: Books of the Month

I know novels have been regarded as escapist since the dawn of novels... but in the last year or so I have found it harder to escape into them, as I have become so critical and unable to read them.  I lost my favourite form of escapism and have had to make do with lesser forms of entertainment.    In the last few months however I have read several novels that performed the great trick for me... and I am delighted.  

In the last few weeks I have read Ann Patchett's excellent Bel Canto and Justin Cartwright's The Promise of Happiness, and have had the great pleasure of re-reading The Moonstone.   The number of classic novels I read as a teenager/young woman "for the story" and failed to notice how wonderfully and fearfully they were made is astonishing.  I adored the Moonstone - the different narrators were sheer genius - I especially loved Miss Clack and her tracts: "Satan Amongst the Sofa Cushions" was a wonderful title.  These books are all suitably impressive and humbling - I really thought they had something to say - and interesting ways of saying it.  Observations of how people behave in difficult situations.  Perhaps that's what's wrong with TRF - Lucy isn't really in a sufficiently difficult situation.  Re-write ideas are endlessly occurring to me, but in the mean time Seduction - which is my new working title for Conscience vol 1 - is taking new and improved shape. It is a fascinating exercise to track the sexual development of an inexperienced young woman who wants to enjoy sex, but has a somewhat buttoned up boyfriend in an era when middle class people didn't "do" sex before marriage.  I am now thinking of entitling the 3 novels: Seduction, Conscience, Evasion

Reading has been a wonderful release - but writing has generally made me happy.  This is what I ought to be doing, anything else is a distraction.

Rollercoaster

I was talking to a friend I bumped into and found myself becoming tearful - she looked away - to avoid having to deal with it?  Or coincidence?  It happened a second time during the conversation and this time she walked away to talk to someone else and I decided it was probably the former.  A bit of sympathy doesn't do any harm really.

I was upset because I discovered we had nearly spent all the money this month - and it's only 6th.   Oh great.  This means we will have to borrow November's money and hope for the best if we want to pay the mortgage.  It's partly because we had to tax the car, and I forgot to cancel the English Heritage payment - so we can now go to EH properties free for another year - in our car, if we can afford the petrol.

I am looking for work and not finding any.  People keep suggesting I start businesses - but I don't want to. It takes so much time to get a business going, I need small lumps of money now...  My right knee which I damaged when I was 18 in France has gone "out" again and is hurting.  I need physio, I was in terrible pain on Friday and most of Saturday, but eventually the pain subsided, and now it only hurts going downstairs or if I twist it.

We went to the Broadstairs food festival - which was great - but we spent £25 - which wasn't!  - on delicious food, for 4 of us so not a total disaster.

We walked back to the car, I couldn't cope with driving home.  Then I had some time to myself - I thought I would just get on with Conscience.   So I hunted down my threads of sub-plot and began to write them... I wrote quite a bit, had to change a cherished scene, but made it better... so now I feel quite confident about getting it sorted.  I wrote a fair few words - and I FELT BETTER.    

A short list - to be reviewed

I am beginning to think that my life has reached rock bottom - so of course I am singing to myself "Things can only get better...."  but perhaps I should make a list of all the things that are wrong with my life, in the hope that I can look at them in a month's time and review them and perhaps feel better about them.

1.  My work is getting nowhere and I am losing faith in it and by extension myself.
2.  I have stopped losing weight and am beginning to put it on again.
3.  Our financial situation is currently precarious and without further work soon will become unsustainable by Christmas.
4.  Finn is extremely depressed.
5.  Mark is unhappy.
6.  I am worried about my weird internal problem, and by my stiff thigh and wonky knee (one on each leg)
7.  I feel gloomy about several of my friendships/relationships
8.  Oh, is that all?

Now actually, it looks less bad.  Of course each of these categories has sub-categories of worry - within the debt worries are several subsidiary worries about different situations (Inland Revenue, benefits, etc).  And there are worries about things I should be doing - and have left undone.   I have taken a pledge to do something every day to improve finance, whether that's a job hunt, or trying to find ways of cutting expenditure - and of course to work on books.

I chose a photo at random from a file - this is what came out.  It's one of a series of beautiful plaques on the wall in a church at Romney - a good choice - a reminder of what I ought to be doing.  It is sometimes very hard to be thankful - but one must try.  Perhaps just "acting" thankful is the best one can do.