This one is funny....

Monday morning is swimming. I share a car into Hexham, 30mins away at. 7.30 am. But as i live at the top of a wood, this means waking at 6.30, dressing in the dark and cold [no fire] and walking 25 min through the trees by starlight. I have to be 'very brave', [more about the getting up than the walking.

This morning I had a landrover. This does not make things faster as I have to stop to open and close 5 gates.

But when my alarm went off, I Did It.

I put my head down, ignored the pain and the desire to crawl back into my lovely warm bed, and dressed and drove and opened and closed and admired the stars swinging overhead and...
...hang on a mo...
...the clocks went back last night, it should be light by now...
And I checked the dashboard clock with bleared eyes. It was 1.38 am.

Bloody alarm clock.

I had two choices - drive back through those 5 gates to a cold dark house, crawl back between the cooling sheets and do the whole thing all ovee again in 5 hours time.

Or sneak into my sister's house, curl up on the sofa and hope not to be blasted away by a spooked neighbour with a shot gun.

I just been woken by a txt. Swimming is cancelled.

Shocked to discover what a reactionary I am...

... I have caught myself musing that perhaps we got it abiut right by 1750 [industry, agriculture, shipbuilding, music, sanitation, food etc] and it's been downhill ever since.

I'll just go and die of childbed fever to cure myself of this ludicrous opinion.

Today

7.30: woke up to a pale window. Listening to radio 4 in bed while watching the painted cows appear from the mist. It's warm in here, cold out there.

7.55: deep breath, slippers and wrapper on, downstairs. It's still dark enough to need a light. Light the fire, make tea, draft writing plan for the day and tidy up last night's notes.

9.00: wash, dress, make breakfast; bacon and eggs. It takes almost an hour to get the fire hot enough to cook.
I'm still looking for a way of warming plates without cracking them or knocking them flying. There isn't a good place by the fire.
I suspect a hot water container may be the key... will have to look up the reference books to see what devices were being used in the 18th/19th C and improvise around that.

10.00: Write

11.00: Fetch water, top up the filter, wash up and clean kitchen. The mice are slacking. Perhaps they are having lie-ins too. Or maybe they have moved on to pastures new for the winter.

11.30: Writing again - a whole new scene, a whole new character, distilling pages of backstory and exposition into one short conversation that also sets up the next scene and drives my character on. If I've got it right - result!

12.30: Stack firewood. I have a log pile in the yard, and another in the porch, where it dries out before I bring it in. Looks like I will have to order more within the next week - and start sawing my own to make it go further.

1.00: lunch: Chilli beans. The chilli powder is red hot - my nose is on fire! Very satisfying.

1.30: writing again. The next scene is a very old one, a set piece love scene, but it now sits better in the whole structure and drives the plot. (I hope).

2.30: clean pheasants for tomorrow's soup. They are a gift from the ruggedly handsome landlord who happens to be my brother-in-law, and leant the cottage a rural film set look for a short while, hanging beside the porch. I've no use for a whole bird, and no way to roast them anyway, so I skin them and take off breasts and legs to cook with raisins and a little wine.

Then I sat and finished a curtain to hang in the bedroom. I bought the fabric in Kelso 10 months ago; curtain making has been a very stop-start project, slowed down still further by problems with a borrowed sewing machine. The onset of winter is more than enough encouragement to finish them by hand.

5.00: write - almost completed a whole section today.

7.00: The Archers, supper, book of the week (The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Read an interview with the author, who is famously agoraphobic, and so researched the entire novel, which is set in Canada, without being able to visit the country. If she hadn't been open about her illness would anyone have commented on this? The novel is set in the 1860s - she hasn't visited there either. That's what writers do. I like her.
"Why is one of the characters gay?" "Some people are you know."

8.00: write - finishing up for the day.

9.00: Connect up the disc drive and watch the second half of The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

Tomorrow I have a lift to the swimming pool at 7.30. This means getting up and down the hill in the dark. Could be interesting!

Yay! Sleet!

And it's only just past Trafalgar Day...

And island in a still sea of mist. Every blade of grass, every leaf, every berry edged with ice.

I understand now, in my bones, exactly why our ancestors wore caps to bed..

Potty talk

The new earth closet, based on the Seperett system, is a huge success. After a month's use there is only a small amount of entirely inoffensive dry matter, already very like soil, to move to the main compost area, where, mixed with fresh earth (to boost the number of microbes) it will continue to break down into loam. No smell, no fluids, no need to handle anything unpleasant, all wrapped up in bio-degradable packaging. I am very impressed. Bear in mind that this is the most basic of the Seperett systems; no ventilation fan, no turning chamber, just a portable seat which separates solids from the rest. The entire kit cost less than £80, and I am now strongly inclined to invest in one of the more deluxe versions next year, which will make the cottage much more attractive to the less hardy visitor.

Had a visit this morning from a contractor with a solution to the running water problem. At present water is collected at a spring 200 yards above the cottage and runs downwards in a 4 inch salt glazed pipe, cracked at several points, to a settling tank just above the kitchen. This then feeds a tap in the kitchen, which is frequently blocked, on account of a) the peat and leaves collected on the 200 yard journey, and b.) the lack of pressure in the syphon between tank and tap, which are almost level. As a result I rely on water collected in jerry cans from the settling tank itself, and the tap is unused.

The proposed solution is a new lightweight tank at the spring itself, and a 1 inch pipe leading directly to the kitchen. Any overflow at the tank would be diverted back into the old pipe to feed the trough. The resulting pressure - 50 feet of head - would be strong enough to keep the tap running – and even, in the longer term, to feed a shower and/or drive a small turbine to provide electricity.

But let's not get too excited – it's three days work with the small digger, and a large capital investment. I may be walking to and from the outflow with a jerry can for some time to come.

Cooking: Sloe gin. Found about 20 lbs of sloes (wild plums) in the hedgerows; I started picking on my own but the landlord got intrigued, then enthusiastic, and my two pounds turned into a vast haul in several sacks. They are all in the freezer at the bottom of hill, waiting for bottling. (Freezing breaks down the tough skins, which otherwise need pricking. 1 Lb of sloes, 4 oz of sugar, 1 pt of gin (or vodka – gin was traditionally the only clear spirit available in this country until the 2nd half of the 20th C) Bottle and shake every other day.

After 3 months the liquor is a rich purple, and the dry bitter sloes have worked an extraordinary alchemy to produce the richest, most flavoursome drink imaginable. It can be drunk at once, although it improves still further with keeping.

Reading: Ball of Fire by Antony Brett-James: rats, my copy is damaged, with pages missing just as the partisan leader, Ras Seyoum – a key figure in the film – is launching a wild attack on the Italian fortifications. I shall have to hike to the library and order another copy and hope that it arrives in good time. If not it will have to wait until I can get to the British Library in November.

Watching: The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Lovely storytelling.

Smoke gets in your eyes - and hair, and clothes and lungs...

First time back at the cottage for almost 2 weeks – the leaves have fallen and light is falling on the West side for the first time in months. The mice have been slacking – almost no damage.
Found a hedge of sloes which I will convert into gin for Christmas tomorrow

Falling leaves

Back in Northumberland, nursing the last of the cold, as a guest of my lovely sister and bro-in-law, who have an aga (bliss).

It is the coldest morning to date – verging on frost and with a dense white fog. The Beech tree beyond the door is shedding leaves so fast it looks like golden snowfall, with a similar crispy whisper.

Today is the first day I feel inclined to work again – I am making use of the Aga to stay in pajamas and try to make up for lost time on the step-outline.

I have been working on the same story now for 6 years (not exclusively, of course, but pretty consistently. The thought process is different – a series of small "aha!" as I rehearse the possibilities while walking.

This story has its origins in a sickbed. In 2001 I had been writing short stories for under a year, all arriving as a result of internal conversations, "what ifs" and being resolved into finished pieces within a few days I actually used to rush home from work to complete them in a hot flush of invention. There was no room for any other words in my head.

Then I got bronchitis after a bad winter cold – exacerbated by the fact that my desk at the time was in a basement, which was also used as a smoking room by other employees. The window next to which I perched was thickly coated with tar, so that the light filtering down from street level had a sepia glow to match the 1950s conditions. I had a bar heater on one side and the PC to the other to provide heat. A year later the

It took me almost 4 weeks to recover. When I tried to return to work the smoke drove me straight back to bed within two days.

I was soooooo bored of the hours spent swaddled in bed – upright to relieve the strain on the lungs, listening to the radio, sleepless through the night, listless through the day and living on soup. I doodled as a listened, a woman in a black coat running down a the stairs from a court room, a man following who had believed she was dead, who needed to know why she had disappeared. It was a scene I had created and run through my head for amusement for almost 15 years. I tried to remember where it had come from. A dream about a desert, a crashed jeep, a woman with a rifle and two lovers. For the first time I tried to write it down.

4 hours later I had 15 pages of single line typescript, starting:

*****

INT. WATERLOO STATION. DAY

Ellen alights from the train in the smoky grey dawn light, carrying a small vanity case and a handbag. She passes porters, early morning workers, mail bags being unloaded, two West Indian Airmen with kit bags, international travellers from the boat train, a cleaner sweeping the concourse.

She searches in her purse for change. She is wearing close fitting black leather gloves.

She opens her purse. No change, only notes.

She buys a newspaper with a 10-shilling note. The seller grumbles.

She enters the ladies rest room, and uses a penny to open a cubicle door.

INT. LAVATORY CUBICLE – DAY

Ellen locks the door and lowers the seat. She kneels on the cubicle floor, places the vanity case on the seat in front of her and opens it. Rummaging inside she retrieves the parts of a handgun and assembles it - with remarkable efficiency. She is still wearing the gloves. She puts the gun in her handbag.

********

It's very different now. But so is the rhythm of writing, and that is why I am procrastinating by blogging instead of working!

Bugs and dustbusters

The week in Suffolk ended on a snuffly note - I caught a chill walking from
Orford to Butley through the woods in the rain.

Haven't written a word since - too busy hiding under the covers with a stash of
tissues and laudanum reading up on natural (and other) disasters, which always
cheers me up.

My flatmate's awesome mother stayed in the London flat while I was away -
awesome because she scrubbed every room from top to bottom and transformed it.
The bath sparkled, the walls shone. And then she cooked goulash and left in the
fridge for me. I've never met the woman (I have spoken to her on the phone, but
as she speaks no English and I speak less Magyar they were short conversations)
but I want to hug her.

I should explain that the flat was a cheerless wreck when I moved in – It had
been trashed by previous tenants and needed to be steam cleaned over two days
before I could move in. This left many corners of grime and dinginess to tackle
and smashed fittings to repair, but as I was in a plaster cast at the time, and
trying to catch up at work, mush of this wasn't tackled at the time.
Redecorating was postponed while we chased an insurance claim against the owner
of the flat above us, which seems to spring a leak every second month. And we
got used to the lime-dulled taps and streaky walls.

It took a skilled and determined woman to put us straight.

Mrs. Ambrus, I salute you. And your goulash rocks.

Score to date...

4 miles of orford shingle
6 avocets
2 heron
2 egrets
2 curlew
1 shelduck
10 cows
5 smoked sausages
3 scenes

Eastward Ho

Having been in the North for two weeks I am now in the east - Suffolk (Orford to be precise.)

It was in a converted pigsty a few miles from here, in 2002, that I wrote the first draft of Translations. I'd been stuck at home with bronchitis and wanted to escape. Foot and mouth had left holiday cottages empty, and so I was able to rent the pigsty (which was very sweet). I took a pound of coffee, my very first suitcase and an elderly 'laptop' running windows 3.1 and textpad. Without a car I was forced to walk everywhere.

The story came out in huge chunks - 4 hours at a time.

This time there are more distractions (i.e., company) but I am gratified to discover that the story is coming in big blocks. Must be all that sky.

Doesn't get much better

Solved some major act 2 problems on the script, the rain is falling past the open door, I have a glass of red wine and a fat cuban cigar. All I need is a sailor on leave to make life perfect.

I just hosted a dinner party in the cottage - with half of the guests under the age of two. It was noisy but entertaining and has left a mound of washing up.

Back to the keyboard in 30 mins.

All the curses of hell fall on the heads of spammers

At regular intervals [say every 2 weeks] some mf spoofs my address to send bulk mail, and my mail box crashes under the weight of returned mail. This is irritating enough when I have broadband, a laptop and a mail filter. When I am on a mountain relying on the webbrowser on a mobile phone it is heartbreaking. I haven't been able to read mail for 48 hours... I can clear it out in the library tomorrow, but right now I am feeling really un-buddhist in my desire to inflict pain on the bastards who have hijacked my mail.