So have I told you about my problems with the internet? I suddenly lose it and despite pressing the ‘refresh’ button it just won't come back sometimes I can pick up emails (on three separate addresses) – sometimes I can’t but can get on the Internet. Sometimes I can pick up my compuserve addresss emails (reserved for close friends and lovers) and not my publishing emails; and sometimes I can pick up the ‘work’ emails and not the privates…..so what the hell is going on? I’ve had two people look at my laptop since January and they have fiddled around, put in new wireless adaptors, assured me that my laptop has its own wireless connection, checked my routers from which I pick up my signals and even travelled around the area where I live connecting me to other computers (just for a short while, honest) and it keeps jumping off....and it is driving me nuts. I have now worked out the pattern of my laptop’s behaviour – when the computer is first started in the morning, it is fine but by coffee time its beginning to get erratic. If I leave it alone for the afternoon to have a little snooze (on off, not hibernating) it might just let me connect in the evening….
I have put forward my theory; it gets hot and doesn’t like working the internet when it’s hot so it decides to take these little rests. Or there’s a dead spider in there which is roasting…..or a little numskull man who is giggling at me as I try to put this on my blog but my computer experts look at me as if I ought to be locked up ….if anyone can come up with a solution they will immediately be sent some virtual reality jellybeans – a ton of them, as a thankyou.
I’ve been so busy the last few days so can’t really say what I’ve done – you know that feeling, when your head is buzzing so much with all the activity and rushing around and phones ringing and people asking questions and expecting immediate decisions to be made and the expected not happening and having to chase and the unexpected happening instead…..except there’s a little gem come on the radio as I drive home from a professional CPD meeting…well a powerful soul enhancing gem, Mahler’s 5th Symphony. It is so so difficult to get out of the car. Sometimes I will just sit there and let the music surround me and blow the time, but tonight I have to see a client and it’s already 6.38 and I’m going to cook dinner and I want to do some writing. (this was written last night but, guess what, I couldn't post it because of the internet probs.)
On Wednesday three of Goldenford Directors gave a talk at Guildford Institute about how our roots are hidden in our writing, or some such title, and it went down very well and we sold quite a few books AND also had an invite to talk at Farnham Barn in the future….and we’re giving a talk at Woking library on the 28th May so things are looking up. The fourth director, Irene, is on jury service and its been going on for weeks and weeks: please, criminal justice system, can we have our director back soon?
And I’ve just heard she’s been shortlisted for the prestigious Bristol short story prize, winner to be announced on 28 June….
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Sunday, 11 May 2008
11 May
So the sun is still shining but the sky now has a tidal wave of cotton wool clouds - despite that being a cliche, that is what they are....which drift towards me like a threat. Is it because I don't keep up with this blog? Is there a malign influence out there which drifts closer and closer to entwine me in its malevolent grip and squeeze the details of my life out of me for everyone to see? Will I end up as a dark spot on the ether of the web drained of all I can give?
Enuf: I will come clean on what has happened since I left for Gloucester....we stopped at Chicklade for lunch and chose The Vale to lunch in - wood floors, friendly publican who said hello and then disappeared to play golf leaving his sidekick to serve us, blackboards advertising gazpacho soup (yuck) but when I went to the loo I knew this was the place for me. A painter had been left to express himself on the walls, the doors were painted like the branches of trees and there was a medieval wooden seat stretching the length of the loo to sit on, the gents loo was decorated like a boy racer's room with racing cars on the walls and a mock circuit circling the weeing area.....and the food was good as well. Fortified with smoked salmon and scrambled egg (me) and a ploughmans - yes there is still a pub in the world which supplies ploughmans (him) we set off for Chegworth,, a Roman Villa. Disappointing after Brading on the Isle of Wight but still worth visiting to enjoy the ice-cream, and peace and quiet of a NT place in the week. Supposition has it that this might have been a sort of monastic retreat - I reckon it was a low class brothel but then I always did have that sort of mind. In my youth (when people wore flowers in their hair if they were going to San Francisco) I took part in a dig at Camulodunum (look it up if you didn't do Roman Britain for o-level(sorry GCSE for all you youngsters) and, at the end of the three week session, the administrator took us to one side of the site and pointed out what we had found - a brothel just outside the city walls! And all I had seen was red dirt being scraped away by my four inch pointing trowel.
Back to Gloucester - the cathedral rates 9 out of 10 on my Cather scale (which I will use in future to describe the cathedrals I visit purely for secular and architectural reasons) but the city itself sadly lacks good restaurants. We managed to find a Greek restaurant (OK but will remain un-named because I choked on a hard bit of my afelia) after wandering around for twenty minutes and asking a friendly native. She expressed surprise at us asking for restaurants, and said the pubs were good.
Then we met up with our CWRS mates - lots of kisses and cuddles as we greeted and a dinner for 20 was quickly organised in the hotel because of our research the night before, not worth going into town to find an eaterie that could cater for us all. One of my favourite people is Will Hutchison who has written a novel based in the Crimean War, called Follow me to Glory - we swapped novels last year so I got a copy of his for a copy of my Gawain Quest. I am not into battles so I had to report I hadn't got very far but he assures me that if I read Chapter 20 then I'll get the romance bit....
Will has learned his craft, like me, by going to lots of workshops and seminars and explained how he writes dialogue - he writes it straight, without any 'he saids' or 'she saids' asides, and then, once he's got it all down what he wants his characters to say, he might put in some 'infill.'
He has suggested I go to the American Historical Novel Society's conference next year and so I will....
Other books were also on sale - Helen Rappaport was the keynote speaker and I was proud to see that she gave the spouse a mention and acknowledgement for his help in her latest book, No place for Ladies about those females who managed to get to the Crimean War - not just bleeding heart Florence Nightingale - there are loads of others, on all sides....
And then Kathie Somerwil-Ayrton (a Dutch member) also wrote about the spouse's research capabilites in her dedication of her book to him, which is called The Train that disappeared into history - a serious work about the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Are you still awake?
Also visited Winchecombe with the intention of visiting Sudeley Castle (Tudor connections to follow up on my Anne Boleyn novel, Luther's Ambassadors, out later on this year - published my Goldenford)
So, a stimulating and wonderful weekend - making me even more determined that one day I'll write a novel about Mary Seacole whose whole life seems to be novelistic - it's just crying out for the treatment...
Now to work and finish off those entries for the Winchester Writers Conference as if I'd never been away.....
Jay
So the sun is still shining but the sky now has a tidal wave of cotton wool clouds - despite that being a cliche, that is what they are....which drift towards me like a threat. Is it because I don't keep up with this blog? Is there a malign influence out there which drifts closer and closer to entwine me in its malevolent grip and squeeze the details of my life out of me for everyone to see? Will I end up as a dark spot on the ether of the web drained of all I can give?
Enuf: I will come clean on what has happened since I left for Gloucester....we stopped at Chicklade for lunch and chose The Vale to lunch in - wood floors, friendly publican who said hello and then disappeared to play golf leaving his sidekick to serve us, blackboards advertising gazpacho soup (yuck) but when I went to the loo I knew this was the place for me. A painter had been left to express himself on the walls, the doors were painted like the branches of trees and there was a medieval wooden seat stretching the length of the loo to sit on, the gents loo was decorated like a boy racer's room with racing cars on the walls and a mock circuit circling the weeing area.....and the food was good as well. Fortified with smoked salmon and scrambled egg (me) and a ploughmans - yes there is still a pub in the world which supplies ploughmans (him) we set off for Chegworth,, a Roman Villa. Disappointing after Brading on the Isle of Wight but still worth visiting to enjoy the ice-cream, and peace and quiet of a NT place in the week. Supposition has it that this might have been a sort of monastic retreat - I reckon it was a low class brothel but then I always did have that sort of mind. In my youth (when people wore flowers in their hair if they were going to San Francisco) I took part in a dig at Camulodunum (look it up if you didn't do Roman Britain for o-level(sorry GCSE for all you youngsters) and, at the end of the three week session, the administrator took us to one side of the site and pointed out what we had found - a brothel just outside the city walls! And all I had seen was red dirt being scraped away by my four inch pointing trowel.
Back to Gloucester - the cathedral rates 9 out of 10 on my Cather scale (which I will use in future to describe the cathedrals I visit purely for secular and architectural reasons) but the city itself sadly lacks good restaurants. We managed to find a Greek restaurant (OK but will remain un-named because I choked on a hard bit of my afelia) after wandering around for twenty minutes and asking a friendly native. She expressed surprise at us asking for restaurants, and said the pubs were good.
Then we met up with our CWRS mates - lots of kisses and cuddles as we greeted and a dinner for 20 was quickly organised in the hotel because of our research the night before, not worth going into town to find an eaterie that could cater for us all. One of my favourite people is Will Hutchison who has written a novel based in the Crimean War, called Follow me to Glory - we swapped novels last year so I got a copy of his for a copy of my Gawain Quest. I am not into battles so I had to report I hadn't got very far but he assures me that if I read Chapter 20 then I'll get the romance bit....
Will has learned his craft, like me, by going to lots of workshops and seminars and explained how he writes dialogue - he writes it straight, without any 'he saids' or 'she saids' asides, and then, once he's got it all down what he wants his characters to say, he might put in some 'infill.'
He has suggested I go to the American Historical Novel Society's conference next year and so I will....
Other books were also on sale - Helen Rappaport was the keynote speaker and I was proud to see that she gave the spouse a mention and acknowledgement for his help in her latest book, No place for Ladies about those females who managed to get to the Crimean War - not just bleeding heart Florence Nightingale - there are loads of others, on all sides....
And then Kathie Somerwil-Ayrton (a Dutch member) also wrote about the spouse's research capabilites in her dedication of her book to him, which is called The Train that disappeared into history - a serious work about the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Are you still awake?
Also visited Winchecombe with the intention of visiting Sudeley Castle (Tudor connections to follow up on my Anne Boleyn novel, Luther's Ambassadors, out later on this year - published my Goldenford)
So, a stimulating and wonderful weekend - making me even more determined that one day I'll write a novel about Mary Seacole whose whole life seems to be novelistic - it's just crying out for the treatment...
Now to work and finish off those entries for the Winchester Writers Conference as if I'd never been away.....
Jay
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Thursday 8 May
The birds are singing and the computer is humming as I type. The farmers' market was a great day although both I and my co-director of Goldenford Jacquelynn Luben - see her new book Tainted Tree published last week on Goldenford's website and pop it into your Paypal basket - got burnt. Normally I'm neurotic about the sun - wearing large brimmed hats, 35 factor sun cream and staying in the shade but the deception of England conned me - it was just warm, wasn't it? My fear of the sun developed when we went to New Zealand some years' ago and arrived in the middle of National Melanoma week with lurid ads on the T.V and children running around like Maori with pretty coloured patterns on their faces which turned out to be their parents' way of making sure they always went out with sun cream on. NM week in NZ will turn anyone off....
We sold some books, chatted to the other stallholders all of whom are great people and wandered up and down Guildford High Street. We were visited by friends and some of my clients who took a double look - not quite believing that their solicitor was a stall holder. I have great fun with this - people's perceptions of how you are defined are very rigid. Solicitors are boring old farts aren't they? From my acquaintance with my professional colleagues this is not always so - and the joke is that most of them spend their professional lives trying to get out...
Am now working on my entries for Winchester Writers' conference - a chaotic affair which both lifts and depresses - all those people who rush from one seminar to another and hope to become professional writers and all those stalls like ours which hope to sell books and the writers just ignore us! - its a conundrum.
I'm preparing three novels (first three pages and synopsis); a couple of short stories and, if I am brave enough, some poetry. My poetry is very personal and I'm not sure it's any good but hell, everything is submitted under a pseudonym so if it doesn't win no-one knows who you are....
Had some brilliant news yesterday - I'm going to Freiburg in June with my Goldenford co-director Irehe Black - she of the Moon's Complexion and if you enjoyed that, look out for Darshan to be published later this year - for their summer festival. We will be talking about Goldenford and our books - luckily Irene speaks some German but all I'll be able to say is ja, nein and Dankeshon (and don't even know it that's spelt write) - but I have a month to learn some more. Freiburg is twinned with Guildford although I've only just found that out! Shame on me.
Have to close now as we are going to Gloucester (that's me and spouse) for the Crimean War Research Society's annual shindig. Yes, I know, I was a bit 'do-what?' at first but they're a great crowd and we have lots of fun, good wine, good food and loads of conversation. Sometimes we have contingents - see I can get all military - from the Ukraine, but usually have delegates from the U.S. and the Netherlands. I've been to the Ukraine twice and loved every minute of it.
I'll spend my time looking at the Cathedral and generally moseying around while the AGM is taking place - I'm just a camp follower and don't take part in the proper events. I get a lot of ideas while I'm doing this which I keep for future reference.
So don't tell me off if you don't hear from me for a few days - my first duty when I get back is to visit my brother as I haven't seen him for some days and all I can think of is that he's in this double locked ward in this beautiful sunshine with few visitors....
Now how do you say goodbye in German?
Jay
We sold some books, chatted to the other stallholders all of whom are great people and wandered up and down Guildford High Street. We were visited by friends and some of my clients who took a double look - not quite believing that their solicitor was a stall holder. I have great fun with this - people's perceptions of how you are defined are very rigid. Solicitors are boring old farts aren't they? From my acquaintance with my professional colleagues this is not always so - and the joke is that most of them spend their professional lives trying to get out...
Am now working on my entries for Winchester Writers' conference - a chaotic affair which both lifts and depresses - all those people who rush from one seminar to another and hope to become professional writers and all those stalls like ours which hope to sell books and the writers just ignore us! - its a conundrum.
I'm preparing three novels (first three pages and synopsis); a couple of short stories and, if I am brave enough, some poetry. My poetry is very personal and I'm not sure it's any good but hell, everything is submitted under a pseudonym so if it doesn't win no-one knows who you are....
Had some brilliant news yesterday - I'm going to Freiburg in June with my Goldenford co-director Irehe Black - she of the Moon's Complexion and if you enjoyed that, look out for Darshan to be published later this year - for their summer festival. We will be talking about Goldenford and our books - luckily Irene speaks some German but all I'll be able to say is ja, nein and Dankeshon (and don't even know it that's spelt write) - but I have a month to learn some more. Freiburg is twinned with Guildford although I've only just found that out! Shame on me.
Have to close now as we are going to Gloucester (that's me and spouse) for the Crimean War Research Society's annual shindig. Yes, I know, I was a bit 'do-what?' at first but they're a great crowd and we have lots of fun, good wine, good food and loads of conversation. Sometimes we have contingents - see I can get all military - from the Ukraine, but usually have delegates from the U.S. and the Netherlands. I've been to the Ukraine twice and loved every minute of it.
I'll spend my time looking at the Cathedral and generally moseying around while the AGM is taking place - I'm just a camp follower and don't take part in the proper events. I get a lot of ideas while I'm doing this which I keep for future reference.
So don't tell me off if you don't hear from me for a few days - my first duty when I get back is to visit my brother as I haven't seen him for some days and all I can think of is that he's in this double locked ward in this beautiful sunshine with few visitors....
Now how do you say goodbye in German?
Jay
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
6 MaY 08
I’m getting told off because I haven’t blogged since April 6 and apparently that’s an internet crime but I want to ask how others manage to keep up with their blogs – why aren’t they living? Apart from the usual things like working, doing the washing, eating (which is wonderful) and sleeping (wonderful again and not getting enough of it) don’t they have the normal disasters to contend with like a flat tyre miles from home, a tin of gloss paint that drops off a chair onto a carpet that’s less than one year old, and contending with burnt kippers because there was that phone call just as they were ready for breakfast on Sunday?
Since April 6 I’ve attended a case review for my brother where they confirmed that no funding is available for him because the NHS says he’s not eligible for their funding, despite brain damage which leaves him with something wonderful called ‘executive dysfunction’ and the social services were not told so they haven’t been looking for a placement in something called ‘supported living’ – don’t ask. In the meantime he’s still in a brain injury rehabilitation unit in Blackheath south east London and, because he’s been there since last August, I’ve discovered the joys of Lewisham shopping centre; great for Primark, Pontis and Thorntons assorted icecreams but M&S is crap; (although in posh Guildford M&S is great); the joys of Greenwich (fearfully tacky but with some interesting side roads, with tiny terraces which, last year, were probably selling for half million but now? And then there’s Blackheath itself; upmarket, trendy, and where I had the best doorstop bacon sandwich ever.
We walk a lot and he tells me every time that he’s going to learn the guitar and he wants to get back to his old life – where he spent Mondays at Islington Music forum which sounds great and the rest of the week sloping around different community centres or at the Festival hall for one, where he would enjoy the free concerts. Despite his executive dysfunction he has a phenomenal memory for places all over London where you can get a free meal, free music and free company.
In the meantime have spent the glorious may day weekend painting and decorating one of the rooms in my office - well my husband did while I supported him with cups of coffee and cleaning up afterwards - does anyone know how to get filing cabinet drawers back.....hey ho back to work today - have just sorted out the office and am now going to Guildford farmers market to sell some of Goldenford's excellent books
hope to report back sooner than June 6....
I’m getting told off because I haven’t blogged since April 6 and apparently that’s an internet crime but I want to ask how others manage to keep up with their blogs – why aren’t they living? Apart from the usual things like working, doing the washing, eating (which is wonderful) and sleeping (wonderful again and not getting enough of it) don’t they have the normal disasters to contend with like a flat tyre miles from home, a tin of gloss paint that drops off a chair onto a carpet that’s less than one year old, and contending with burnt kippers because there was that phone call just as they were ready for breakfast on Sunday?
Since April 6 I’ve attended a case review for my brother where they confirmed that no funding is available for him because the NHS says he’s not eligible for their funding, despite brain damage which leaves him with something wonderful called ‘executive dysfunction’ and the social services were not told so they haven’t been looking for a placement in something called ‘supported living’ – don’t ask. In the meantime he’s still in a brain injury rehabilitation unit in Blackheath south east London and, because he’s been there since last August, I’ve discovered the joys of Lewisham shopping centre; great for Primark, Pontis and Thorntons assorted icecreams but M&S is crap; (although in posh Guildford M&S is great); the joys of Greenwich (fearfully tacky but with some interesting side roads, with tiny terraces which, last year, were probably selling for half million but now? And then there’s Blackheath itself; upmarket, trendy, and where I had the best doorstop bacon sandwich ever.
We walk a lot and he tells me every time that he’s going to learn the guitar and he wants to get back to his old life – where he spent Mondays at Islington Music forum which sounds great and the rest of the week sloping around different community centres or at the Festival hall for one, where he would enjoy the free concerts. Despite his executive dysfunction he has a phenomenal memory for places all over London where you can get a free meal, free music and free company.
In the meantime have spent the glorious may day weekend painting and decorating one of the rooms in my office - well my husband did while I supported him with cups of coffee and cleaning up afterwards - does anyone know how to get filing cabinet drawers back.....hey ho back to work today - have just sorted out the office and am now going to Guildford farmers market to sell some of Goldenford's excellent books
hope to report back sooner than June 6....
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