I've finished the novel!

Just in time for the school holidays - so tonight we can relax and go out and enjoy ourselves and possibly even celebrate...

Next on the agenda - re-write of the Ash Grove.... a bit of a slog, but I guess I've learned a lot now.

We aren't going away - Greece is still filling my mind, and we have yet to earn significant amounts of money - but we can relax.Maybe have a few outings and day trips somewhere.  Most of the short term work on the house is finished too - so things are looking up.

A strange incident

I've been reading a memoir by my cousin Moyra Caldecott,  Her book Multi-Dimensional Life is a fascinating account of how a great many unexplained phenomena have helped and inspired her writing and given her a deeper spiritual awareness.  In particular when she was writing about the Egyptians, notably Akhenaten, all sorts of weird events occurred - not least her trip to Egypt with Tina Turner - as well as others of a rather more terrifying nature.

Cover by Olly Caldecott

I veer and struggle between a fairly rational approach to things, and a belief in the psychic/spiritual which some people would laugh at.  I take most accounts of irrational phenomena with a big spadeful of salt - but I am always open to hear personal experiences which don't rely too much on coincidence and credulity.

As I re-read the book, I recognised a lot of things I had in common with her (well, I knew this anyway), telepathy, a sense of the eerie, occasionally a sense of evil presences and I have also experienced those sequences of significant events occurring in a short time (Jung's Synchronicity) which seemed to have a meaning (although I am wary of attaching meaning to something which may just be coincidental).

The sort of events Moyra described are also familiar to Christians who "live by faith": phone calls from strangers who have to give you important news, a cheque arriving for exactly the right money at the right time, healing, finding exactly the right book you need for your research, a book falling open at a significant passage.  All these were things that occurred to progress her writing, deepen her sense of the interconnectedness of things.

Since I've been writing The Malice of Fairies I have had one or two similar experiences - one friend has brought me almost magically relevant books, and I have had moments of wild inspiration - common to most writers I think - when the book just writes itself.   Two of these moments came while I was in Cardiff visiting my mother in law (I write better when I'm angry).  Since May I've been wondering what the hell has happened to what I wrote then - two scenes from the last third of the novel. I have been looking in all my notebooks but none of them contained the pages I'd written.   A lost notebook that I'd pinned my hopes on, proved not to have them when I found it.  These few hundred words began to seem crucial to the successful completion of TMOF .  I was really annoyed as I had invented a whole group of new characters and felt re-constructing them would be stiff and stilted.  Also I have now reached the point in the novel where I needed to incorporate them.

Last night, sitting at my desk I saw a small ring-bound A6 notebook to the right of my laptop.  It wasn't there before - I don't know how it got there.  It was folded open and I flipped through it to see what was in it. There were the scribbled pages I'd written on a Welsh bridge on Easter Sunday, and in the Cardiff Museum the following day. There is probably a rational explanation for its sudden appearance, but the fact that it was sitting next to my laptop, just where it was needed, the night before it was needed, having been lost for 3 months, does seem like a miracle. The fact that I'd been feeling such a connection with Moyra through re-reading her book (available on Kindle) encouraged me feel (as she might have) that I was getting help from some greater power - perhaps via Thoth, Hermes or one of the Muses, or maybe Moyra's already found a new role in the Life Beyond.

Bucket Lists

The temple of Poseidon at Sounion - ought to be on everyone's bucket list!

I suppose that 1,000000000 things to do before you die meme has been going for a while, in fact it's so popular it's endlessly referred to as "my bucket list".  I just heard a woman on the radio saying "well, I wanted to do it - it was on my bucket list."   She was talking about the fact that she had stood outside the Sandringham parish church to see the latest princess go to be christened, as a result she got to see the nation's favourite nuclear family all together.  The reverential treatment suggested that this was a rare and cherishable opportunity which would seldom be repeated since the royal parents wanted to guard their children's privacy.  Which leads me to a detour - whatever happened to the Wessex children?  I don't read the celebrity press, but one never hears them mentioned - which has always made me wonder if there's something wrong with them - but, enough of this prurient speculation.

 I was thinking about to what extent I have a bucket list.   Mostly I think it would consist of places I would like to visit.  But I'm also aware that it's a shrinking list, there are plenty of places I don't think I really want to visit...I have slightly gone off the Amazon and Machu Picu, and I've never been bothered about going to Australia.   I have seen the Taj Mahal and Venice and the Acropolis and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I would still like to go to Granada, to Egypt of course, and impossible North African and Near Eastern places like Petra, Damascus and Leptis Magna... and an awful lot more of Greece.  I'd like to go back to some of the Greek cities in Turkey too.  And see more of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and I still haven't had that honeymoon on the houseboat in Kashmir yet  - I wouldn't mind seeing the Hyrcanian forest either.

The Hyrcanian forest - temperate rain forest - rather like Glengariff - once had its own tiger species.  Sadly became extinct in 20thC (?).











Not a terribly unfeasible bucket list - and a lot of this can be done by train too.  Then there are experiences I might like: I would like to go up in a hot air balloon - but then again, what if I got vertigo?  Humiliating.   More rail journeys would be nice - across Europe I think.  And I would like to see more architecture and more art galleries.  And?  Er, well, I can't think of anything else really, which shows what a predictable person I am.  What else is there?  I don't want to take up extreme sports and do adrenalin surging activities.   I would like to try scuba diving though... that's quite appealing... although a bit of a risk of claustrophobia in the mask.  Never got on with snorkelling. I'd quite like to have a short visit to a desert - and well, perhaps I'd like to have a little project - something like 27 things to do before I die, rather than 1,000.

I have always remembered the man I met who was travelling around to see all the sites where English Kings and Queens were buried - I thought that was a good idea (I've seen quite a few without trying,Windsor and Westminster Abbey provide a good range for a start, add in Fontrevault and the Roman tombs of the Stuarts and I must be halfway there).  I could create a little project like that - perhaps visiting all the museums that own paintings by Bosch or Giorgione.  But that probably wouldn't take long.  Is there any real problem about travelling aimlessly?  If you have an agenda doesn't it make it more stressful?  Doesn't it just become box ticking?

Then there are the books - I have been slightly influenced by Alan Bloom's The Western Canon but I've hardly been systematically reading through his list.  I just try not to read really dim books, unless I'm ill. There are a limited number of books I can read, so they might as well be good ones.  I should try and read the rest of Dostoievsky and Proust before I go, and perhaps go to the opera more often. And perhaps more live classical music - although that is tremendously difficult if one doesn't live in a city.  Perhaps "get a flat in London" should be on the list... I doubt whether that is remotely feasible - but I do love the idea of having a teeny bolt hole so I could go and do things.  But that isn't exactly bucket list - that's wildest dreams/aspirations territory.

The other problem with bucket lists, is that everyone else is racing around to fulfill their lists - so when you do get to the Taj Mahal or wherever you find 10,000 other people there.  I have been lucky that I managed to travel a reasonable amount before mass global travel was so intense.  I saw lions and elephants in the wild before one had to line up along with a dozen other jeeps to photograph them - and I've wandered around the Roman forum when it was almost as empty and atmospheric as it was in Gibbon's time.  Now, or at least last time we were there, there were elements of the moronic inferno about it.  Would I really be happier watching it all on tv?  Perhaps the solution is to go to quieter, less over-hyped places - those small towns that have wonderful atmosphere, even if they don't have the greatest "sights" - places like Brescia or Toledo or Vezelay...no, Vezelay is v.v. touristique... At the moment the desire is to go to more of Greece, now that I have conquered the work kolokothukeftedes it is essential that we return to use it as often as possible.

Courgette fritters - sigh!

356 days of food

Due to my lack of interest in blogging at the moment, I am forcing myself into regular habits with a food blog - over at Food Odyssey http://thanetfoododyssey.blogspot.co.uk/  I have begun posting 365 days of food.  This is largely for my own amusement and information, and to encourage myself to cook a wider variety of things.   I tend to cook my regular 25 dishes and get a bit annoyed with myself.  On the other hand, due to the limited preferences of the household I am a bit stymied - plus it's quite difficult to get good fresh red mullet around here.

Anyway, the idea is to provide a record of what we're eating and to see if we really do exist on meat balls and spag bol.  Actually, we don't, but it sometimes feels like it.  There is a lot of stuffed pasta kept in the fridge for emergencies, and in real times of crisis the husboid is capable of making French toast and spaghetti carbonara.   So all is well.


I tend to eat differently from them when I can get away with it.  So it's also a record of what I'm eating, versus what they're having.   But if you fancy some decent, basic recipies - head over there!

Dementia - already?

I suppose everyone my age worries about dementia - and I have tried to ignore the possibility, however, in the light of the recent death of my cousin, the writer Moyra Caldecott, and her experiences, it has been on my mind more than ever.

Moyra had a form of dementia called progressive aphasia - perhaps not strictly dementia - but technically a definite diminution in intellectual capacity - as far as one could tell.  After all, once a person has stoppedi talking, who knows what is going on.intellectually.

Of course, famously, as soon as we read about the symptoms of a disease, we begin to feel that we could be suffering it too.  I immediately related to the stories of how she lost her vocabulary - and it really struck home.  Most stories about dementia begin with people forgetting things more often.  I forget things occasionally - but this isn't a new phenomenon, I had the first "what did I come up here for?" experience when I was 8 or 9 - because we were still living in Bayswater when that happened.  So, I've always gone with positive view that as one gets older one expects to be more absent minded etc., and so one notices it more.   I haven't actually noticed it more - but I have noticed two or three things.  They may be the signs of dementia - or they may just be coincidental - connected with tiredness, or having drink taken the previous day.




1.  Losing words, more frequently - little - temporary - gaps, opening up in the vocabulary.  I usually retrieve these words subsequently.
2.   Mis typing - I am not a perfect typist - who is, but occasionally recently I have noticed the occasional gibberish word appearing in front of me - which cannot be explained.  Or I type a completely wrong word, sometimes these are normal mistakes like confusing "their" and "there", but yesterday I typed "cake" when I meant "gate".  Perhaps that was a Freudian slip - highlighting my subconscious desire for the forbidden -  cake.
3.  General fuzziness.   I don't feel as alert some days as I used to.  I attribute this, to some extent, to spending a lot of time on the intuitve/creative side - and perhaps the elastic between this and the intellectual side is a bit slacker than it was,  making it harder to adjust my focus.  I do notice though that my sudoku completion rates (they are timed on the phone) are slower on average.  And I have less will to try an "extreme" one in case I feel too stumped by it.   The fuzziness is very annoying - I will have a burst of clarity and write an effortless email/letter/passage - and then I'm back to having to make a great effort.   I am hoping it is tiredness.

"A waiter at my own party"

Yesterday was my eldest son's 21st birthday - it was a lovely sunny day and the garden was crammed with 20 odd friends and relations - all people who had known him as a small scrap and there were presents, fizz, goodwill, bonhomie and all sorts of nice things.  Here he is cutting his birthday cake and being toasted.

Before the party I asked if he would help pour drinks and see that people had what they needed.  "So I have to be a waiter at my own party?" he asked angrily.   Later it made me think that that was a very useful metaphor for life - and as my sister P said "particularly so if you are an H---- woman" - "Except of course, you don't get your own party" I pointed out: we laughed.  Like drains.    I am not being martyrish I hope, but this party took a lot of planning, hard work and money, I did a lot of work, his father did a lot of work and even his brother worked on the house and helping out with the preps.  24 hours later, after a successful party - and then having to have the house open for his mates in the evening - I have yet to hear the Thank You...I mildly suggested he could take a plastic box full of chili back to Norwich with him to share with his housemates - and you would have thought I'd suggested he'd taken a route march home via Cardiff, carrying a 48lb pack.

However, today - with few duties except continued tidying up and wondering how to dispose of the leftovers - is absolutely beautiful.  The countryside is beautiful - seeing the wheat ripening in the fields, and the black pigs snoozing in the sun on our way to and from Minster was lovely.   We spent most of the morning sitting in the garden with The Observer and Ned did make us a tray of tea and we ate some of the second birthday cake.  Then we went out to the Corner House in Minster for a late Sunday lunch - and I hoped a jolly mood would prevail - but it didn't.  There are so many topics we aren't allowed to mention... I really don't know what to do.  Usually I find having a scream-up clears the air - but the hostility has been palpable since he returned on Friday evening and stood rigid when I gave him a welcoming  hug....and he's here for such a short time it doesn't seem worth having a row.   He did indicate to his godfather J that he realised it had been a lot of work for me....but honestly the only time he's been really sincere and friendly was when he told me that his new Fender Stratocaster was "just the right colour".... well, let us be grateful for that.  Do all eldest children feel so entitled?  I certainly didn't, but I was a girl of course...

The Garden

The garden has peaked this weekend - we have a wall of jasmine - it smells gorgeous - there are some Compassion rose amongst it.  In the main bed are a huge Mme Alfred Carriere, a libertia grandiflora, nigella, orange perennial poppies, centanthrus ruber, a geranium, and the yellow scabious, as well as a bright blue one.... it looks utterly gorgeous.  The Lady Hillingdon rose looks fantastic - a clematis tangutica is growing into it - so the bright yellow roses  arch against the blue sky, while green yellow buds of the clematis swell below.... it is perfect.  Apart from all the blank bits, where the cat sits...

Friendship - rightness - Afghanistan

A rather random number of items, based on the fact that I met some Dari Afghans last week - they spent the night here in fact - and were fascinating to talk to....It was exciting to hear about Afghanistan from a non-Taliban perspective - they were devout Muslims - but very liberal - disliked burqas and were shocked to see them when they arrived in London!

The Panjir valley - home of my visitors. 

A lot of what they said explained things to me - especially the role of Pakistan in Afghan politics and how they resented it.  I told them how we had had a Saudi student here and what he had said - this made them laugh a lot!   They are not fond of the Saudis, the Taliban or any other manifestations of unhelpful Islam.  They were also exceptionally courteous - I can't say how much I liked them - I felt I was getting the story of Afghanistan from "the horse's mouth" except that this horse looked like the kind of man you would see on a 3,000 year old bas-relief from Persia.  It made me happy to meet them - because what they were saying felt right.  They were justifiably annoyed at the way the West portrayed Afghanistan as an "ungovernable, primitive" country - Z pointed out reasonably, that Afghanistan had been well governed by a peaceful monarchy for centuries - and it was generally incursions by Russians, British etc. that caused the trouble.  Of course I know little of Afghan history but this certainly chimes in with what I understand.   Rather like medieval Scotland - once there's a power vaccuum, lots of great lords come out to try their hand... and there've been appalling power vacuums.      They also said that Khasi (spelling?) was NOT a good thing - and very personally corrupt.

I was able to run these ideas past my friend A tonight - and he agreed with that they had said (he's an "old Pakistan hand" i..e. BBC Correspondent there for a while) and that the Dari were Persians and that Persia/Iran held the key to everything in the ME now.... this could be confirmed, because one of their complaints was that the US was obsessed with Iran and keeping it down, while the Paks rampaged freely in Afghanistan, spreading nasty versions of Islam.

Friendships
A was of course fascinated to hear of my latest friend bust up...he crowed "I told you - first about the witch and then about....".... "You are not as good at spotting these baddies as me!".   I said that basically I gave people more slack than he did, I tolerated lots of things more.  I suppose my dislike of conflict means I don't respond so much to provocation, I pull my punches - and sometimes I have a slightly arrogant feeling that it doesn't matter what they think, because it doesn't in any way begin to challenge what I think. Obviously, these people are not fools - they know they are not getting the full version of what I think...and they feel snubbed by it.  So they react.   At the risk of sounding like that Randy Newman song - "My life is good!", even though I have fewer people to dally with, I don't find my life is terribly impoverished by the fact that I've shed a few friends in the last year (it's been far more impoverished by deaths: Strat, Paul C, Marion).   One can't get everyone to agree - one hopes that friends will accept that, and change the subject, but if they insist.... the fact is, however much I value and enjoy someone's support and interest, if they cannot accept that I'm different from them, then fundamentally there's no real friendship there: there may be kindness, affection and all sorts of things - but to me friendship is about support, and maybe occasionally a bit of critique, but fundamentally about mutual acceptance, warts and all.  Once one person stops accepting the other's warts - there's an end to it!