Every ounce of effort to reach, repair and heat the Stone Caravan is
worth it, for an hour in the company of an surprisingly acrobatic toad.

Wednesday Night: - 4 Dry Martinis and a kiss in Piccadilly Circus

Thursday Night: - I baked rhubarb with orange zest and ginger.
It's cooling down on the window sill.
I'll eat it for breakfast.

Popped into a local picture framers to get a quotation for mounting a
map for my boss.

Like many of the businesses in West Kensington this is owned by a
Iranian - and as I spread out the map, I admired the beautiful lute he
moved aside.

This, he said, is a Tar <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_%28lute%29>,
made of mulberry wood, with goatskin, deer antler, camel bone and sheepgut.

And he played it for me, and audience of one in a quiet little workshop
in West London.

A moments silence for the passing of a piece of Old London

The pie shop in Greenwich is gone.

Lunch in Greenwich used to be Pie, Mash, Peas and a bottle of beer at
Goddards.
It was always crowded and always scrummy.

I knew that it had closed after 70 years (The Goddard family is still
baking wholesale- http://www.pieshop.co.uk/about-goddards/)
<http://www.pieshop.co.uk/about-goddards/>

What I didn't know was the shop (interior circa 1680) would have been
gutted (all save the listed stair case) and a chain burger restaurant
cloned into the site.

I will never (willingly) set foot in an ODEON cinema again.

I went yesterday to the drear gulag which is the Odeon+IMAX in Greenwich
Peninsula- a breeze block silo, 10 minutes by bus from the nearest tube
station on a traffic with a handful of chain outlets (Nandos, Prezzo
etc) at its foot, their windows looking out on one side at a rubbish
burning plant, on the other over a litter strewn carpark.

The foyer was dirty, and worn, none of the screens opened on time,
leading to long queues for the escalators, the place was scattered with
notices apologising for the broken air-con, broken lights etc etc. I
got to my seat at last, the film started ... and the emergency lights -
bare florescent bulbs- came on overhead and stayed on for the entire
film. If it hadn't taken 90 minutes to get there, I would have walked out.

As it was, I stayed, and squinted at the screen, and even enjoyed the film.
Then headed out to the loos - just in time to see them *both* being
closed for cleaning. So another 10 minute queue, in preparation for a
long bus ride.

Odeon still haven't acknowledged my last letter/email- so I expect
bugger all this time.
I'll just take my £10-£20 a week elsewhere.

Slug sweeties

It rained in the night - heavily enough to flatten most of grass in the
yard.

The damp brings the slugs out. Lots and lots of slugs. Shiny pitch
black ones, as big as my thumb. Hundreds of them.
In one square metre of turf I counted 11 of them, curled and twisted
like half sucked licorice chews.

Postmarked by an Owl

I have a nicely impressive set of cuts on my wrist from the talons of a
startled barn owl.

I was at a supper party last night, a farmers' fundraiser for the local
agricultural show; cheese, bread, wine and a raffle, and one of the
locals brought his owl along. Naturally enough it attracted a lot of
attention...

I stayed a few feet back, wine glass in hand. Owl are lovely things, but
don't seem to get any particular gratification from being stroked and
chucked under the chin, so I didn't feel any need to do so. They are
patient beast; this one, 13 months old, had been raised from the egg
submitted to the many caresses with only a slightly harassed look.
Occasionally it eyed the petting hands as if were so many plump white
mice, nicely crunchy and only just out of reach.

At some point it all got to much for Wol, and he launched himself into
the air, talons extended, jesses slipping - and landed on my wrist, just
abaft the glass.

I felt nothing but the lightest brush of a claw before he had been
scooped up again, back on the handlers hand.

But my arm felt suddenly wet. I looked down. Blood was running freely
over my hand.
Those talons are like the razor of a Brighton Racetrack thug - bright,
fast and very very fast.

A horsefly bite is more painful - but an owl strike is pretty spectacular.

(no subject)

There is a toad crouched just 10 inches from my toes, a gorgeous warty
ochre thing, spoldged with black, about 4 inches long. It has clear
decided that disguise is the best defence against this curious forked
thing which almost stood on it in the long grass, and so it has frozen
in place. Actually, it first tried to crouch in full sunlight, which I
thought was probably not a good idea for a nice damp toad, so I tickled
it with a grass stem until it flopped into a shaded patch, where it
still sits, pretending to ignore me.

I'm on the doorstep again. Did I say this was a quiet spot? I was
lying. The toad is quiet enough, but the honeysuckle hums with bees,
the grass throbs with crickets, the field are full of the conversations
of ewes and lambs, and the stream is constant babble.

The swallows are gone, I think for good. Fledged and away in a single week.

The toad has also just slipped away into the grass.

PS - I found out how the visitors got in during the winter. The
windowsill into the privy has rotted away, leaving the window swinging
free. The work of a moment to slide through, and into the porch. The
Privy is now bolted from the outside, so that route is blocked.

Your mobile phone details are at risk - act now if you want to remain private

I don't know about everyone else, but I guard my phone numbers quite
carefully. Unsolicited calls from private numbers are very disruptive,
and, if travelling aboard, expensive.
Frankly, its bad enough having double glazing firms and fake lotteries
ringing my work line (my predecessor used the number a little too
liberally on line) without them calling me as I struggle on and off the
tube, while I write at lunchtime (my phone on in case work need me) or
in the peace of the Stone Caravan.

But now a company, acting within the letter of the laws on privacy and
data-protection, but certainly not the spirit, plans to publish all our
mobile phone numbers to anyone who has a name and a vague location for
us, and £1 to spare.

Here is the BBC report with more details.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm

And here is the website of the offending spam-enablers.
http://www.118800.co.uk/

The good news is - you can opt out - but you need to act before the
service goes live next week...

The bad news is - as of Thursday July 9th the website displays only the
following information:

The 118 800 service for mobile phone connections is currently
unavailable - from this website and by phone - whilst we undertake
major developments to our 'Beta Service' to improve the experience
for our customers. We'll be back as soon as possible with the new
improved service.

All ex-directory requests made by people in our directory to date
are being processed. There will be no need to resend these requests.
And we will take further ex-directory requests when the service
resumes. We will not be taking ex-directory requests by phone or
text whilst the service is not operational.

Please do not call us on 118 800 for anything other than landline
directory enquiry requests as you will be charged for the call.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

So, in other words, they have removed the opportunity to remove a number
*before* they make it available to the first set of sticky-fingered
stinking spammers and stalkers to line up on Day One of their vile
"service".

House sharing

Mama Swallow is fledging her brood in my living room. They fly in
circles under the beams, trying to aim for the open window - then one by
one disappear. All is silent for twenty minutes, and then with a
bucketful of adolescent swallow chatter they are back, ready to start
all over again.

I will have to find a way of dissuading Mama next year - swallows are
lovely, but swallow lime is very caustic, and I have shovel loads of it
on the staircase, lifting the paint. I like to leave the windows open
when the cottage is unoccupied, to improve air flow and reduce damp. I
have bars to prevent human intruders, but nothing to stop swallows.
Fruit netting perhaps? Or folding trellis? I could wedge expanding
trellis in the gap between window and sill...

It's hard to know where to start with the cleaning in the knowledge that
there is building work taking place (fingers crossed) in the very near
future - so more dust and grime and disruption to come.

But I am having great success removing the black mould from the casein
lime paint - I paint it with bleach, which kills the mould and removed
the stain, wash with water - et voilà - white walls again.

The kitchen-scullery will soon be cleaner than it ever was before - it
is the only part of the cottage which has its original stone flag floor,
and I am determined to get down on my hands and (dammit!) knees and
scrub them bright clean.

Ah - the weasel has left some mice living! One just peered under the
front door at me (I'm sitting on the doorstep enjoying the open air). I
wonder how many generations have passed since I left wool under the
Christmas tree for mouse nests?

I can't make the cottage homely right now - so the solution is probably
to invest in a sleeping bag and a primus stove, and camp in the single
upper room until the building work is done.

I made Rillettes last night; 1lb pork shoulder, 1lb pork belly, sliced
and simmered overnight in the back of the aga, with cloves, bay leaves,
thyme, until almost melted away, then shredded, seasoned (heavily) with
salt, pepper and nutmeg and packed in pots, under a cap of clean white
fat.

Not for the faint of heart, or those not willing to spend a week on
celery to work off the extra calories - but - but -
in a few days time - pure pink poetry, sliced and spread on crusty bread
with tiny pickled cornichons and a glass of cider....

Ecosystems

The swallows at the top of the stairs eat the flies.
The weasels under the stairs eat the mice.
I eat shortbread and drink coffee and squint at the bit of wall I have
scrubbed clean.

We are all happy and getting fatter.

Except, sadly, the mice.

Cottage Update; resolve my dilemma

Mama Swallow is back in residence in the stairwell. As are 3 big fat
infant swallows.

Do I a.) finally get down to work scraping mould from the wall in the
kitchen and living room, and trust that Mama S will stop scolding me
every time she flies in, and settle back raising the sprogs when I leave

b.) take the hint - she is very vocal about it - and sit outside in the
sun for 3 hours, drinking tea and watching clouds, safe in the knowledge
that Mama and babies will be safe and undisturbed inside.

(The good news is that the damage to plaster and flooring is less
extensive than we had all feared. As soon as the swallows move on, and
the back wall has been pinned, the cottage should only take a long
weekend to put back to rights)

And I have weasels.

Oh My! Iddle-widdle baby ducks!

Bumblebees. In water. With stumpy little winglets and inturned toes.
I could just sit here and watch them for hours.

(Must fix camera)

Bad Timing in a Nice Neighbourhood

My diary has a note for Tuesday - "Town hall - Club license hearing"

A night club (aka "Champagne Bar") opened in our street a few months
ago, on the site of an old pub and snooker hall.

Our street is entirely residential, lined with pre-war council blocks
and mansion flats, housing hundred of residents of all ages, whose
windows face the club.
The club is right next door to a children's library and backs onto a
school.
There is very limited parking, and no public transport after 1pm.

So residents were alarmed when they learned that the owners of the
club had applied for a lap-dancing license and a 5am opening license 6
nights a week. When were they supposed to sleep? I don't hear the
club at night, I'm on the far side of the building, but my neighbours
do, and I was planning to attend to support them.

The lap dancing license was opposed and the application suspended - but
the late night application license continued, and looked likely to be
passed It turns out that the only grounds on which the council can
refuse the 5am opening license is the risk of serious crime and
disorder in the neighbourhood.
Not noise, not the rights of people in bedrooms 20, 30, 40 yards from
the club to an interrupted nights sleep, not the participation of a
community in decisions about the way their home neighbourhoods and
businesses should be supported and developed.

Only "Serious" crime and disorder.

I wonder if the murder of a customer in the doorway of the club 3
nights before the license hearing is serious enough?

Because that's why my street is festooned in incident tape this
morning, and why the library garden is being searched by forensic
teams in white-all-in ones this morning.

Ugh. Not nice.

There is too much light in this bar! - Midsummer, and uneasy slumbers.

At the stone caravan June and July are the season of the (almost)
midnight sun. It is possible to walk home through even the darkest part
of the oak wood at 11pm - the sun is below the horizon, but only in a
shallow dip, and light is still reflected over the hillside. And dawn
comes thundering up a few hours later.

But at least it is cool under the slate roof, and only the owls disturb the silence. (and I mean - really disturb - the owl in the
tree by my door hunts with a hoarse scream like a bull beneath the earth. The rocks seems to shake).

But this week I am in London, with a security light outside my bedroom window, and I cannot achieve blackout without also stifling the last
breath of air in a still room.
So I woke at 3, and stayed that way, listening to the traffic, and eventually creeping downstairs to drink tea and read.

I daren't shower and dress and go out - my flatmate (the evangelical) is a very light sleeper, and gets little enough rest as it is.
And there is no where to go at 3.30 anyway, not even a night bus to whisk me away.

I'm getting superstitious about talking about writing progress...

... particularly after the last two story structure collapses, but -I
feel that I might have finally got onto the endgame with the Ethiopian
script (now called "T'sion")

I now solutions to three of the biggest headaches;

- How Lily the Irish Hoyden and Michael the Ethiopia Public School Boy
end up in the highlands together at the end of Act 1

- Why Paul the anti-heroic academic is so highly motivated to get
back home to Europe

- Exactly what his guilty secret is.

These are the pebbles I've been tripping over all year; I knew these
things happened, just not exactly why, in a way I could show and not
tell.

Now, all I would have to do it but these events in the right order,
and I might be able to put this MF to bed at last.

But, after all these months, I am far to nervous to say so out loud,
in case I hex it.

And - the solution to my writer's block was... ?

Watching really well-made "popcorn" movies, with absolutely no
relevant political or historical content what so ever.
(In my case with a flask of iced gin and some pretzels, rather
than popcorn...)

Fantastic Writers Therapy!

Cheers!

It is reely, reely, reely difficult to concentrate on the second act...

... when you are sitting opposite a reely, reely, reely old guy reading
the Times and playing with the toys in his pocketses.

Seriously. Stop it.
They'll all still be attached when you get home to the privacy of your
own bathroom I promise.

[Fwd: Just back from Devon...

... where the heavens opened and a large portion of the Channel was

scooped up and dumped on my head.

Seriously my coat was 3 times heavier when I took it off than when I
put it on, and I had to wring out my hat in a basin.

I hate getting cold and wet in away from home summer because nothing
is geared up for comfort - the B&B, though wonderful, didn't have the
heating on (why would it - in June!) and it took a hot shower and lots
of coffee to stop the shivers.

In Paignton, while waiting for a train connection (a steam train
connection) I discovered a truly awesome fast food nightmare.

Battered Chip Shop Chips.

Lovely fat chips, parcooked, then dipped in a light batter before
being finished and served. The sample I had were deepfat heaven. I'd
have stayed for more, but at that point the ceiling in the chip shop
started to bulge and disintegrate under the apocalyptic rainfall, so
I slipped out to find a cup of tea in the station buffet instead.

At the station the locomotive was steaming happily - and so was I,
sitting in a little puddle in the (unheated) buffet.

This was my first ever steam train trip (this is honestly the only way
to make a train connection to Kingswear/Dartmouth), and what amazed me
most was the noise - or rather, the lack of it. With no electric
motors in the carriage the trip was silent except for the wonderful
"clickety-clack", and at station halts dead silence would fall, except
for the hiss of rain and steam. I saw a Sparrowhawk on a fence post,
but most of the view was lost in the cloud and water. (Did I mention
it was wet?)

At Kingswear I struggled up the land to the hotel, ankle deep in a new
formed stream, dragging the suitcase behind me.

Yet - just two hours later, the cloud had gone, the sky was blue, the
river dart was sparkling gold. Weird.

The lonely lament of the White Van Man

So, I'm sitting on the grass, in a park, enjoying the sun, when I hear
the lilting lament of my neighbour/

I'll call him White Van Man - I have no idea what he drives, although
I can guarantee that he does drive, and that he is "not a man to
tangle with"

He was 50 odd, and seemed to have been angry for most of that half
century.

Anyway, as the parakeets sang overhead, as children splashed in the
shallows, as lovers curled together in knots of content, WVM head
forth to his companion on the evils of Direct Debits. For 45
minutes. Non stop.

He had only two complaints - that he liked to pay what he owed, when
he owed it, and that the didn't like giving access to his account to
strangers - and he performed infinite variations on this his outrage.
For 45 minutes. A virtuoso performance, by any standard.

Meanwhile his companion, a comely lady with a patient sigh, laid out
the picnic, poured tea from a thermos, shifted as the shade of the
tree moved across the grass, and sighed, sympathetically when a
response was required of her.

Then - suddenly - the evil of direct debit was forgotten. Two tiny
figures had caught WVM's attention, two diminutive ladies, in ankle
length black dresses and shady white head dresses walked past, eating
ice-creams.

Here was a subject dear to WVM's heart - "what are they doing here", he spluttered, "in a English park, in England, all covered up like that. This was a Christian country,
after all - do they think they are ..."

His companion screwed the top back on the Thermos. "They're Nuns, dear"

"What?"

"I said - they're Nuns."

"But, what - " WVM spluttered, the natural flow of his spleen
disturbed, "what? Why are they here?"

"It's a convent, dear."

And she stood up, popped the rubbish in the nearest bin, and left.

To customer services - Odeon Cinemas

Dear sir or madam,

I would like to tell of you my severe disappointment in visiting your
cinemas.

You are "fanatical about film" – so am I.

I have cash, I live within easy walking distance of one of your
cinemas, and I love watching films on the big screen. Last year I spent
over £1000 (gulp!) attending film festivals, in the UK and overseas, and
in the last 7 days alone I have spent more on cinema tickets than
groceries – and more still on the extras, drinks, snacks, a meal before
or after.

Surely, I fall within some parameter defining a target customer for the
films you are showing this week: Star Trek, Synecdoche or State of Play
for example, all films which should appeal to adult audiences. Surely
you want to entice me in, and syphon the cash off me during the 2.5
hours I will be in your hands.

Apparently not.

On the screen, James Bond may order a well-made chilled Martini, in the
space bars of the 23rd Century James T Kirk can down Bud Classic and
Jack Daniels – but in the foyer James and Jane Public are offered
primary coloured counters offering only infantile treats in massive
quantities. Barrels of Popcorn, Buckets of tooth-piercingly sweet iced
Soda and dayglo Hoppers of Pick n' Mix.
Oh. And Nachos. With Gloopy Orange Cheeze-greeze on top.

I'm 30+ years old damn it, not FIVE.
I'm allowed to stay up past 8pm these days, without asking Mum first,
and these infantile treats no longer hold much appeal.

I like grown-up movies - and beer, wine, gin, coffee, dark chocolate,
cashew nuts, pretzels.

Not Candy, Nachos and Cola.

I'm not whining, honestly - I want to give you lots more money than I
already do, I am itching to hand over my cash for a single shot of real
coffee, but, oddly, you do not seem to want it!

Don't tell me that other customers don't feel the same. Clearly you
also see the oddity here. Why else would there be a tatty photocopied
notice in the Box Office, window advertising wine and beer?

But on a muggy bank holiday Monday evening, no actual drinks on sale, no
one to take my cash and hand me a cold beer in a plastic mug.
Your staff just shrug "Sometime on Saturdays we have a little cart with
wine, but only when we have the staff.".

So, I've learned my lesson. If I want to spend an evening watching a
movie, I'll stick to the Independents, to the BFI, to the Curzon, wait
three weeks until until the film reaches the Prince, or god-dammit, rent
a DVD, and avoid your hellish crèche.

Pelican Crossing

Two nights ago I had a close encounter with a creature straight out of

a medieval bestiary.
I got up close and personal with a stray Pelican in St James Park.

I was walking across the Horse Guard's end when I saw it - walking
along the pavement on the wrong side of the temporary fencing erected
around the pond, and beyond the crash barriers set up for the trooping
of the colour. It was in imminent danger of walking into the path of
traffic, which would be unpleasant both for the bird and for everyone
else.

I mean - these birds are BIG. Its head was at chest level, its wings
span was at least as great as mine, and its bill - oh boy!

As we peered at each other, I remembered that at least one of the St
James Pelican's has previous for eating pigeons. Whole. Alive. And
wriggling.

It didn't seem distressed - it was neither flinching from , nor
snapping at passers by, of which there were many. It was just waddling.

But it was bleeding, from a point somewhere under its left wing, where
the feathers were stained, and dipped its bill at intervals to worry
the site.

This was an odd echo of something I saw last week - a painting of a
crucification in Florence which was crowned by an image of a Pelican
feeding her young with her own blood, drawn from her breast. This
mythical aspect of Pelican parenting was widely believed in the middle
ages, and led to the pelican being adopted as a symbol for the
Eucharist. Now I was perhaps seeing the origin of that myth.

Anyway, it couldn't be left where it was, so I an another couple of
passers-by, herded it gently back into the park, and towards the
water, at a slow and stately pace, and alerted the park rangers to its
injury.

Looking into that dark, perfectly round eye, cocked with cold
curiosity at the antics of the humans surrounding it, was a
thrilling reminder of the *otherness* of the living world.

Star Trek: Heretical - certainly. Blasphemous - probably. An abomination?

Definitely not.

36 hours on I am still startled by Star Trek. I really do have to see it again, and soon.

Other people, better qualified and more articulate, can discuss its
qualities as a film, and its relationship to canon.

But - I think I know how the good citizens of Wittenberg must have
felt the morning Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of his
church.
It is exciting, the dawning of a whole age - but oh, if we embrace it,
suddenly all those years of study, the painstakingly gathered
mysteries of Trek priestcraft, the crypts stuffed with holy relics,
glorious art works and revered texts, are rendered dusty and
worthless.
No wonder my ancestors remained devout Catholics to the point of
martyrdom.

Yet as a film rather than a reinterpretation of gospel. Star Trek
purely is gorgeous and thrilling to watch, intelligent, witty and made
with an admirably light touch.
It doesn't have quite the humanistic sensibilities of its 1966
incarnation - but it holds its own in the same universe as Firefly, or
the Culture novels.

The casting is a triumph - with Zachary Quinto the standout
performance in a talented ensemble. He doesn't impersonate Spock - he
simply embodies him, and the result is astonishing.
(BTW - I suspect Nimoy was wearing prostheses to emphasize his
resemblance to Quinto, rather than the other way around.)

Now, here comes the personal revelation.

I've loved Star Trek for 40 years - but I have just only just realised
that I never actually wanted to serve on Enterprise, or any of her
sister ships.

I'd take the king's shilling to man the yards of Surprise with Lucky
Jack Aubrey, would jump at a chance to crew on Serenity, I long to be
recruited to Special Circumstances and have my own knife missiles.
I've learned to hand, reef and steer, have taken helm of a square
rigger in a force 9 in the straits of Gibraltar. I even considered
applying to the Merchant Navy.

But Enterprise and its five year mission left me cold.

No longer. This is a now a ship on which I long to serve/

I'll be on the next shuttle to the Academy*, ta very much!

*Actually I'm flying to Europe, with my mum for 3 days. But I'll wear a mini-skirt and boots, and backcomb.

News flash - the morning after 3 Vesper Martinis*

I woke up on time, and got to work, looking bright and almost normal,
with the aid of a milky coffee and an egg sandwich.

But...

... I haven't been able to complete a crossword or sudoku since.

So something up there was as effectively (and enjoyable) scrambled as
the egg in my sandwich.

*

"A dry martini," [Bond] said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure
of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large
thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

"Gosh, that's certainly a drink," said Leiter.

Bond laughed. "When I'm...er...concentrating," he explained, "I never
have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be
large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small
portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my
own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name."

Be still my geeky heart...

I am a little surprised to discover just how much I want to see Star
Trek tomorrow.

I never really considered myself a Trekker/Trekkie/Trekkist, per se,
(although I shared a flat with one, once).

I haven't seen every film, only skimmed DS9, abandoned Voyager after the
first season. I've never read zines, hung out on boards, been tempted
by fic...

But Trek is
a.) an essential element of my childhood, of teatime viewing, sometimes,
like Who, from behind the sofa.
b.) the essential strand of the DNA of fandom itself.
The Daddy and Mammy of them all.
The Ur-Fandom.
It's Fandom's Jerusalem.

And now - oh joy, I have the very last available ticket to watch "Star
Trek Babies" on the IMAX tomorrow evening.

Thrilled in every sinew.

Yay - long dry summer ahead!

If the long-range forecast is correct, the cottage will dry out, and I

can spend long sun-soaked days repainting, and long twilit evenings
lolling in the hammock and watching the owls flit among the emerging
stars.

Or -

- I could, if I can eke out enough leave days this year. Rats. I've
got 9 left - one a month until December.

I'll have to spin out a series of long weekends - perhaps padding them
with some unpaid leave through July and August?

Now - I think I'll celebrate with 30 minutes on the grass with lunch.

Googlewhack!

"Pegfree tents"

I can't believe, that after all these years, there are still
googlewhacks to be found in the wild...

(I am looking for a small tent which can be erected indoors without
using pegs)

"Galaxy's centre tastes of raspberries and smells of rum, say astronomers"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/21/space-raspberries-amino-acids-astrobiology

Two of my favourite things - there is a God!
Only the discovery of cute baby space squid could improve the study now.

Cherry blossom everywhere...

... I'm going to go and contemplate it properly - with dumplings and sake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanami

Mysterious visitors to the Stone Caravan: Dear "Goldilocks"...

...Thank you for looking after my home so well while I was away.

I was certainly surprised to discover that someone had found a way into
the cottage, and had sat in my chair, and slept (?) in at least 1 of the
3 bed.

But I delighted to realise that my mysterious visitors had clearly loved
the place as much I do, that much of the chaos left after the flood had
been removed, and that nothing appeared to be missing. In fact, it made
walking back into my home a much less distressing experience than I had
feared!

You may have believed the Stone Caravan was abandoned (rather than
simply evacuated after the flood),but you treated it with the respect it
deserved.

The arrangement of furniture suggests that you have enjoyed several days
in by the fireside, curled on the sofa which you found in the back room,
reading the books which you carefully reshelved. I hope the stay was
peaceful.

I am keen to discover how you got in - not because I fear that you will
do any damage, but because others who follow may not behave with as much
love and care as you.

So, if you read this, (and by some chance recognise yourselves as the
visitors to an isolated cottage below Kielder Water, feel free to
comment - anonymously if you prefer. I'd love to hear what you found,
what you did, what you thought. And perhaps, as long as the owner also
approves, perhaps a legitimate return visit could be arranged.

(A small contribution towards the gas and firewood you used is not
essential, but would be appreciated....)

This kind of carriage disturbance is much more fun

I seem to be sitting in the middle of a rather mature hen party. There
is a lot of bucks fizz being passed around.
Oh,my mistake - it's a cross country 50th Birthday Party. With Easter
cupcakes and pringles.
Many happy returns Sue, who ever you are.

The man behind me has been talking on his phone for two and a half hours non-stop...

... giving me yet another reason to hate the mobile phone and love email.

I am morphing into one of those crabby old people you used to regret the
day the telephone was moved from the howling icy wastes of the hallway
into the living room.

Ah - a pause - he lost the signal. He's redialling.
And again.
No
Yes
He's reconnected.

Oh ffs moron, no one in this carriage is interested or impressed by your
minute by minute commentary on the non-events in in your property
negotiation.
We can all tell that you are not doing business, just talking to fill
the ghastly emptiness and impotence of your existence.

I hope your ear is thoroughly microwaved before we reach Durham, and
falls off with a faint flopping bacon-y sizzle at Newcastle.

Back to the Watchtower

Speeding North via the East Coast line to open up the cottage and check
the drying process; it's barely rained here, but North of Hadrian's
Wall - who knows?

Eyewitnesses tell me that the repaired ditch has held, so the river
should be flowing through it's regular channel again, and not my front
door. And if the river has gone the weasels (it was weasels, not mink,
it seems) should have moved on, and stopped using my spare duvets as a
larder.

I dropped an off-hand suggestion that I might use some of my holiday
over the coming months to extend the weekends, taking Mondays off to
work on the replastering. This was met with mild panic - "but how will
we ever manage without you, Miss Holloway". Which is very reassuring in
terms of job security in a quiet patch, but also a little scary...

Back to the trains - the more I come to rely on trains for transport
(and to understand their huge advantages) the more acutely I feel the
loss of the branch lines, slashed from the network in the 50s and 60s.

Sitting here, in a comfortable seat, with tea available, is time
regained. I can read, talk, sleep, write, daydream - and with the
addition of 21st century technology, watch films, listen to radio or
music or blog.

I get very little pleasure out of travelling by car. It's difficult to
do any of the above when you are on the verge of vomiting. My parents
used to joke that they couldn't drive more than 5 miles out of town
without holding their daughter out of the window to barf. It was of
course due to my weak stomach, rather than to the brown haze of Benson
and hedges which all cars boasted at that time in lieu of air con. Even
now I remember the gut-knotting tension that came over me every time a
parental hand reached over to activate the dashboard cigarette lighter,
the dread as it popped out again, fully armed,the disgusting hiss as
heated coil met tobacco, the desperate negotiation for another inch of
window to be wound down. When our infant locks were washed at the end
of week the first rinse water would run black. At the time it seemed
normal. Just dirt. Now I realise that we were all essentially kippered.

Obviously this is ancient history. But my stomach has never felt
entirely comfortable as a car passenger since, and even "that new car
smell" which seems to excite some people so much, triggers an unbearable
Pavlovian nausea

surreal

I am typing this as I recline on a bright blue nylon bean bag,on the
floor of the Royal Festival Hall Ballroom, on one of 9 adults listening
to a live performance of the St Matthew Passion by the Orchestra of
Enlightenment projected onto the back wall, while about 15 very small
people enjoy a pillow fight around us. It's a very lovely way to waste
an evening

And I only came in to buy wrapping paper on the way home.

Write more than you need

Just left a screening of "In the Loop", the feature film spun off
Armando Ianucci's "The Thick It" (although Peter Capaldi as the demonic
Malcolm Tucker is the only character the show and the film have in common).

It is Ianucci's take on how America and Britain might have ended up
going to war together, and it is genuinely laugh-out loud funny, without
ever losing sight of the fact that these screw-ups are finescing
decisions that will lead to the deaths of thousands of people.

Anyway, to the point - in the QandA afterwards Ianucci said the first
cut if the film was 4.5 hours long. The final version is 90 mins.
And in editing, you finally discover the story you are going to tell,
based not on what was written before the first day of photography, but
on what was achieved with it by everyone involved - director,
cinematographer, cast, crew, caterers.

The story of a film created not by what is said, but in the images,
looks, tics and twitches caught on film like flowers between the pages
of a book.

That's what attracts me to film (and before that, in a previous
existence to theatre) the "creative failure of control", (which is not
the same thing as a "failure of creative control")

You still need the best script to make a film.
People have made crap films out of good scripts, but its pretty nigh
impossible to make a first rate film out of a piss-poor script.

But I'm not the director, I don't have to keep control of the story -
just provide enough material for other people to do what they do to
create a 4.5 hour cut, which might emerge as 90 mins of story, which I
hope will surprise me.

Now I just have to work out how that translates on the page, and where I
can put the bit where the hero and heroine meet for the first time
without sending the reader to sleep

Thank you for all the kind thoughts, virtual martinis and advice

Lots of wise things have been said, about the creative wall I ran into
yesterday, and I will try to take a deep breath and read them all again.

Monday was tough to wake up to - and turned into the sort of day where
it takes every ounce of energy and concentration just to switch the
kettle on. Luckily I am old enough and mean enough to know that that
state of total "blueeech" wears off pretty quickly these days.

But talk about getting straight back on the horse - I got through the
day, trying *not* to let thoughts of the plot problem run through my
head on a continnual loop (like the music in an Indian Restuarant circa
1979) - and then got an email, at 4.00pm, reminding me I needed to write
an updated 150 word synopsis of the project for a sales brochure,, by
Wednesday.

This turns out to be quite useful, because it throws lots of the
problems I am experiencing into relief; writing in semi-public, for a
highly critical audience (that is, people who will need to invest their
own time and money and careers in the product), in a limited format,
where every word counts and there is no room to fudge or hand wave.

It can be very stimulating - I use to enjoy copywriting and
speechwriting a great deal, writing 5000 words (with pictures, and in
someone else's voice) then distilling the piece, over the course of a
week, into 1000 words of killer prose.

In fact, I took the job (I was a secretary, pulled from the pool to
write, just like Peggy Olsen) just to prove to myself that I could write
on demand and to deadline.

But on returning to my own projects, 18 months ago, I seem to have
contracted a sort of permanent stage fright.

Still I wrote the 150 words. It was a bit like pulling teeth, but I
administered an anasthetic (red wine rather than gin this time).

But this morning I practised a bit of free writing - three pages on why
camels make poor subjects for heroic statues...

Surely this is not what "write what you know" is meant to convey

My Writing Partner gave a reading of a WIP at an event last month, and
received both very gratifying feedback, and the following question
(admiring I suspect, rather than admonitory) "How can you, as a woman,
write about two gay men?"

What strikes me about the question is what they have focused on. The
novel is question is a sprawling account of London in the 1800s, and has
a cast including sailors, surgeons, foundlings, Vice-Admirals,
resurrectionists, whores, hangmen, rope-makers, methodists, link-boys,
opera singers - and an insane, shipwrecked, intersex missionary from
Dorset who has recently been rescued from slavery in Algiers.
Oh. And some gay men.

The author has never, to my knowledge, sailed a frigate, stolen a
corpse,executed a murder, worked a rope-walk, sung an aria, dissected a
rhinoceros or died of small-pox. Nor indeed was she born in 1770.

But none of these leaps of the imagination seem to challenge the
questioner.

Because this is the crux of creativity, and the source of the radical
power of fiction - the imaginative act of climbing inside another
person's skin, and attempting to see the world through their eyes.
Done poorly, or in bad faith, it's an insulting farce, an act of
colonisation.
Done honestly, it can blow the world apart and joins us back together,
in a new place, where the dust settles into fresh shapes, and the labels
that divide us - him/her/you/me/them/us - have to be reassessed.

At BFI drinking gin and not writing

Bumped into Phil, who I haven't seen for almost 20 years. Not since
"Sex, Lies and Videotape" was released anyway.

It's funny - if you meet someone after a two year absence, it take hours
to catch up - after 20 years you can get it all of the way in 5 minutes,
then get back to the gin.

He looks Fabulous - better now than he did in his 20s.

F88k it, can't write, too much drama in my own life to care about
Imaginary Angst in Africa - I'm going home to watch Mad Men. Or Stage
Beauty.

Trying to ring orange- what a nightmare

I'm trying to find someone at orange to give me information on the
Unique service, just to check that it is available in my area before I
commit £300 to a new landline.

The orange website wouldn't recognise my postcode.
The customer service number in the Unique webpage directed me to another
number, who directed me to another number, who directed me to another
number.

Finally I got through to someone who could help me, only the line
quality - between an Orange phone showing 3 bars of signal, and Orange
customer services - was
so bad that I only heard one word in three through the static...
doesn't inspire great confidence, really.

Anyway, I did the sums; getting the service for the flat - landline,
broadband, mobile, on one seamless number - will cost approx £665 in the
first year, and £425 next year.

What do you think?

Ah - is that a communication solution on the horizon?

Orange promise that "Unique" could be the answer to my communication
dilemmas.

It's a home wireless system, that as well as providing broadband access
through an existing landline will switch my mobile onto a landline
connection as soon as I walk into the range of the wireless router, and
charge calls at their landline rates (free at evenings and weekends).

Is anyone out there already using this? Does it work as seamlessly as
it promises?

If it does work, this would a.) completely bypass the problem of getting
mobile coverage in the flat, and b.) allow me to keep the same number
when I move back to the Stone Caravan. (Orange is the only network with
any coverage in the Valley)

It might also solve the disappearing email problem, which I suspect is
down to the hinki-ness of using an SMTP which is not tied to my ISP.)

I would still have to install a new landline, via BT, with a one-off
connection charge, and a monthly rental fee - but I'd be more inclined
to do this if I didn't also have to collect yet another phone number,
handset or sim to stay in touch.

Of course, then I'll run out of excuses for not returning calls - but
you can't have everything in life!

Oh hell, I seem to be walking around in my own mobile communications blackspot!

I confess, I am not the most regular of correspondents. But this is now
beyond a joke.

For some reason a number of emails sent to me over the past few weeks
have gone missing. Not bounced, not in spam folders - just gone.

So, here is the list:

(a.) Mobile: Almost no mobile phone coverage in my current
flat. Catching what there is involves kneeling on the floor exactly 3
feet from the window, with the phone and my ear on the floorboards - and
that cuts out every few minutes.
(b.) Landline: I have limited use of my flatmates. Having my own
line put in will cost £300 in the first year.
(c.) Broadband: I use my flatmates - but it's often not strong enough
for skype. Can't use mobile broadband (see (a.) above - no signal), see
(d.) Email: There is a blackhole in my account, eating
incoming emails at random (sorry JJ and Corry and anyone else who thinks
I am ignoring them.)

This of course doesn't even touch the 4-5 hours a day when I am zoned
out, talking to imaginary friends in Ethiopia - (AKA writing a screenplay).

Making contact is becoming as arduous a process as it must have been
back in the 30s, booking long-distance calls to Australia three days in
advance.

I apologise to the world.
But who could imagine that it would be easier and cheaper to communicate
from an 600 year old watchtower, 2 miles from the nearest power point,
in a snowstorm, than from an apartment in the centre of the one of the
world's most comprehensively over-wired cities.

On a more cheery note - despite (because of) oversleeping this morning I
have finished 4 pages of detailed revision this morning.
And as the flatmate is hosting a Prayer Meeting in the living room
tonight, I will probably stay out and write even more!

Bodyshock - my unconscious claimed back its hours sleep this morning

Normally I wake up at 6, and have made it all the way through Radio 4,
tea, shower, teeth, stockings and train by 7, so that I can start
writing over coffee by 7.30.
This morning - well, I blame the clock change this weekend. When I
stared at the dial through blurry eyes it read 7.29....

So today is a crash day, when the timetable trips over itself.

Mind you, looking at yesterday's schedule, I begin to understand why my
sleeping self - blew a raspberry at the alarm and turned over:

Tuesday
6.00 am - burble to consciousness and reach for Radio ('John Naughtie,
I wish I knew how to quit you')
7.30 am - get off train 1 or 2 stop early, to get some walking in.
Ladder stockings.
7.45 am - coffee - and a 2 hour stint in Ethiopia
9.00 am - Work. Good day - managed to (almost) clear my in-tray..
2.00 pm - Lunch time! Queue in M&S for more stockings.
3.00 pm - Work. It's quiet. Too quiet ... does that mean someone is
going to spring a deadline on me at 5.55...?
5.55 pm - No! First time out of the door on time in a week! Yay
6.00 pm -30 mins walk - to shake invoices, petty cash, payroll issues
out of my head.

(I walked past the street where Jack Aubrey stood in the Pillory and
started to imagine the reintroduction of Judicially prescribed Public
Humiliation for members of the current government. Pillories for
politicians and Stocks for bankers. This cheers me up no end.

6.45 pm - Sandwich, and time to return Ethiopia - (It's hard to
concentrate this late, but I need to finish this draft before Easter and
a 10 day break full of family. I can never write with family around.
It wouldn't be fair to spend 4+ hours a day *in another place listening
to imaginary friends in my head* when there are real people around.

10.00 pm - Home. Unpack groceries. Check email. Hang up laundry.
Brush teeth, Listen to news, yawn
11.00 pm go Bed.

Seriously - looking at that?
Fun day. Productive Day. But insanely long, and 5 times a week!
If I was me, 'd turn over and go to sleep!

Opps - now I'm late for work - gangway!

Sign of the Times?

Caffe Nero used to stock free copies of the day's newspapers for its
customers.
No longer.
From this morning they sell copies of the Times at the till.

I bought a bed warmer on saturday

No, not a cute cuddly human one - a repro copper warming pan, like this one:

http://www.antiques-atlas.com/antiques/Metalware/Copper_Warming_Pan.php

In the 17th-19th these devices were used to warm the bed before entering - the copper pan was loaded with a small shovelful of embers,
closed and slid between the sheets to make them toasty.

The one I bought was probably made in the 1960s or 70s, when there was quite a vogue for "antique" copper in the suburbs. It was only £5 in
a charity shop, and I am keen to try it out when I next sleep in the Stone Caravan. Last year I used rubber hot water bottles - (one at
each end) but they can make the bed feel clammy and humid.

This leads me to recall the going to bed routine, during the months when the sun set at 4 o'clock, icicles hung from the walls of the kitchen,
and frost crusted the inside of the bedroom window.

Morning - pulls back bedding and open windows to air bed.
Early evening - Close windows.
About 30 mins before going to bed - make two hot water bottles in the kitchen, carry upstairs, light gas lamp and gas heater in bedroom hang
pyjamas or night dress on chair to warm, remake bed.
Bedtime - floss and brush teeth. Make warm drink. Carry drink, book and wind-up radio upstairs.

BRACE YERSELF!

This is the tough bit - even with the gas heater!
Change in to night clothes FAST!
Pull on cardigan and woolly hat, leap into bed.
Snuggle deep into the mattress topper, duvet and eiderdown.
Drift off to sleep, listening to the owl or Radio 3.
Bliss. Seriously good snugly sleep for 8-9 hours.

Anyway - I saw this warming pan in a shop window opposite a railway station while I was trying to kill time between trains, and made an impulse buy. So, if you saw a woman carrying a 3 foot warming pan on a beach walk in Saturday afternoon - that was me.

Woot! I think I did it...

I may of course be counting chickens - but thanks to NicNac's excellent
suggestion last night I identified the 3 points in the 3rd act where my
protagonists actions did not add up - and found as I did so that I could
redo the maths and make the sums come out.

I still have to ease the new section into the script I already have, but
it might just be possible that I have finally got a film on my hands.

I'm actually a bit lightheaded - must be the lack of sleep, certainly
not the first inch of house red at 2.30 a glass that I am celebrating
with...

As you can probably tell from the price I'm in a *proper cafe* - in a
booth with red vinyl seating, and it's very drinkable accompaniment to a
dish of liver, sage, mash and savoy cabbage, freshly cooked, and all for
less than the cost of the medium popcorn bucket at the cinema next door.

Cheers!

As I struggle to untangle the *exact* same knot in the narrative which defeated me 8 months ago...

... I muse that writing a novel is like oil painting - adding and
removing layers of colour and form;

while writing a film is like sculpture, hacking away everything that
isn't a film, in the hope that there is something inside the dumb block
after all.

I've probably said that before, haven't I? last time I realised I was
absolutely stuck AGAIN.

It's horrifying how often I have been here, staring at the crapping
thing, unable to make that one little section of the story sing.

I went back to the first draft again this morning, to see how I did it
then, and, crap, they same section was a clutch of bullet points with a
note "go back to write later"

Crap.

I'm at the BFI, armed with a coffee and laptop

Just how would Sterling Cooper smell?

Trust me, as some one who has lived in 19th rural conditions, in
midwinter, with access to hot water and laundry a 2 mile hike away
cross-country, I know a little about the smell of the past*

And is there is one aspect of life in 1960 which the production team on
the utterly wonderful *Mad Men*
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men_%28TV_series%29>is unable to bring
us with the extraordinary detail that is lavished on the way the show
looks and sounds, it's the aroma of the Madison Ave offices.

Smell.

I don't just mean the haze of cigarette smoke, but also the human fug
which that generation took for granted.

In the very first episode Don Draper arrives in the office after
spending the night with Midge, and cracks open a freshly laundered shirt
to wear - over his undershirt (or as we Brits would say, his vest). No
quick spray of deodorant first. In fact, the launch of the first
aerosol by Right Guard one of Draper's accounts. "Space Age", the guys
say doubtfully, clearly a little perplexed at the point of the product.
Don knows better - this will be bought by women in the hope that men
will use it, and he sends them out to think again.

But the women aren't going to smell much fresher, try as they might.
Those eye-popping busts and Joan's luscious curves are created by
layers of nylon and rubber - the bullet bra and roll on girdle. Now,
these aren't as uncomfortable as the wonderbra generation may think. I
know, I'm wearing a set right now, suspenders at all. But they aren't
machine washable - they need hand washing in the sink at the end of the
week, and in a Manhattan summer must function like a personal sauna. The
stockings get rinsed out every evening to dry overnight.

In fact, very little of what the women of Sterling Cooper wear is
machine washable. Out in the suburbs Betty Draper may have a mechanical
aid, that rinses as it "relaxes", but apartment dwellers like Peggy and
Joan would consider a shared machine in the basement of the block a
luxury. Most will send out sheets, towels and shirts to professional
laundries (back to that stack of shirts in Don's office), and wash the
rest in the sink.

Plus, well, to put it as delicately as I can, the sanitary products of
the day did not have wings, leak-proof barriers and polyacrylate gel
cores "to lock moisture away".

And then there is the hair. No morning shower and blow dry in 1960. No
hand held dryers. Drying at home is n evening long process. Guys wash
weekly and use scented brilliantine to hold their locks in place. Joan
and Betty visit a salon once a week for a "set", and rely on hairspray
and sleeping in scarves, turbans, rollers and nets to keep the curls in
place. If their hair gets a little greasy between visits, there's
always talcum powder to soak it up.

In short - the human zoo that is Sterling Cooper must have a remarkably
heady aroma of pure animal musk in its atmosphere, under those perpetual
curlicues of tobacco smoke.

Which may well explain the extraordinarily high-level of sexual activity
among the office population.

* Woodsmoke and damp wool

Things this country mouse loves

Sounds - the wind in the pine-copse below the house; the spring behind
it; the scurry of very small animals; pheasants caught roosting in the
twilit woods, raptors mewing; conversation; silence, sheep; the fire,
fluttering;

Smells - deep dark cold smells of winter earth and frost, woodsmoke and
soot, the timber pile in the sunshine, line-dried clothes, snow

Tastes - anything cooked on my own fire.

Sights - open skies, horizon to horizon; the milky way caught in the
trees at midnight, the toad that lives in the woodpile, the view framed
by tiny windows at dawn, randy old Leicester rams, the changing oakwood,
lambs chasing baby rabbits, frost flowers, foxes at twilight, snow.

Touch - lying in the bracken in October sunshine, cold spring water,
wind and rain, toddlers sleeping draped over a shoulder or knee.

Interesting - is this a turning in the road for the mobile phone

I am working updating a contact list for a client, and I have just
noticed something odd.

A sudden slew of business cards for executives which omit the mobile
phone number.

For the past few years people have tended to give their mobile number
more and more as a primary contact number. Now it is disappearing again.

What's driving the change?

Is it status?
The more junior an exe the more likely he or she is to list every
possible number where they can be reached.
The more senior the executive the more likely he or she is to have a PA
to field their calls through a landline

Or quality?
Complaints about phone coverage have soared in recent months, as people
discover that all the features imaginable on a phone won't help if the
network coverage is crappy. Newer phone seem to cut off calls much
sooner, and investment in masts seems to have been slow than anticipated.

Or just a choice?
Maybe it really isn't that conducive to good work to be available to
take and make calls 24/7.

It maybe a quirk - but it's odd that I should notice it, and then flick
to the BBC business site to discover that Ryanair have approved mobile
phone use on one of their routes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7900941.stm

This is my new motto -

"/If the only way to enjoy a book is not to know what happens next,
*it's not a good book*/*.*"

Lightening in a bottle?

It's gone - the creative roll that ended with the software crash in
Sunday has evaporated, and so far I haven't managed to pick up the
threads and start the whole thing moving again.

It's not utterly miserable, because I do at least remember that it is
possible to do, that there was a story coming from somewhere and ending
up on the page.

I do wonder if somehow I (or some ID like me lurking within) didn't
*create* the crash to bring my progress stuttering to a close, just as I
was building up momentum to deal with the most difficult re-write, the
scenes which has brought me to a standstill before.

Certainly that may have conditioned the way I responded, the frozen
shock, the hours spent putting it all together again.

It's even a bit reassuring to know that I have come up against the core
difficulty, the scene, the actions that I don't want to look at, don't
want to describe. Now I know what they are, and how far part of me might
be willing to go to turn aside from them.

Honestly though - where does story come from?

Because it's not from a rational place. No amount of plotting and theme
weaving and character exploration is going to move things along as fast
or as well as the sheer flow of story from brainstem to screen via
finger tips. All those rational things have their place in the process,
as does just turning up to do the work, day after day, week after week,
even if no work gets done, or the work is done and then nestles down in
the waste paper basket to raise dust-babies two days later.

Two weeks ago I had nothing. All those hours of typing, all that
plotting and replotting, all that "turning up" - and nothing. Nada. No
words. No story. Enough to make you want to throw the laptop off the
Jubilee Bridge then follow it.

Then from nowhere, 4 whole days when the whole thing, from A to B,
starts to unfurl in the mind, and there is no part of it you cannot look
at without seeing the through line, and the words to complete it.

It will come back (nothing is more certain) but I am still foxed as to
the circumstances in which it arose, and so how to go about recreating
the conditions which will make its return more likely.

Just got the script back to the state it was in at 4.30pm on Sunday

Every element of every section of the raw text version I had open on
Sunday has now been tagged, so now I have to let go, and start picking
up again where I left off.

Note: For anyone unfamiliar with screenplay format two days (i.e. 7
hours fitted around the "work that pays the bills") might seem a bit
epic, but every element - every scene location, scene description,
character name, "wryly", dialogue etc, has to be be tagged with the
correct format, margins etc. Screenplay software, like Celtx, Final
Draft, Movie Magic etc, adds this pretty much intuitively as you type -
although corrections still have to made manually.

But the tags aren't generally compatible between software packages, or
between the software and word.

Ironically, one of the reasons I swapped from Final Draft to Celtx in
the first place was that FD makes retagging so onerous - there are no
keyboard shortcuts for retagging - every line has to be selected, and
then an element tag selected for it by mouse. This is unbelievably
clunky, and bad news for anyone using a mouse - the only shortcut is the
one to RSI and wrist straps

So, the chastened return to Final Draft involved scrolling through 70
pages of pasted script, identifying and retagging 1000 separate
elements with 6 possible tags, and manually removing 3000 unwanted
carriage returns generated by the process.

I suppose I could have left it to do later - but without the tags it's
virtually impossible to navigate a 90 page script, find notes, swap
scenes, calculate time schemes etc.

Industry Standard Screenplay Software - Expensive and Neanderthal.

For example - lots of the features you and I might take for granted in
Word, like highlighting text you need to revise - well, go whistle for
it.

Which is all well and dandy when FD was first released back in the
1990s, but I'm using the most recent upgrade, at a horrendous cost -
and in the UK the price is double what the US pays, even for a
downloaded version - WTH! - I can only install it on two machines before
the key runs out, and in terms of usability it's like being flung in the
era of DOS and Locoscript. (Actually, I wrote my first script in
Locoscript on an Amstrad PCW in 1993, and the shortcuts were easier to use).

That's why I'm heartbroken that Celtx, my new squeeze, let me down.

Now, let's see if I can pick up where I left off.

What was this sodding story about again?

Anyone?

15 years on - but better late than never

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7894763.stm

At last - mobile phone makers have signed up to a universal re-charger
format.

How many obsolete chargers are lurking in your house?
How many different chargers do your family and visitors have to juggle?

Writer's Nightmare - Celtx? Are you out there?

There are few things that freeze the blood more than staring at a
screen, willing the errant pixels to appear as your stomach makes a
greasy slide down into the abyss and a mixture of bile and blind panic
rises in the throat.

Yes, at approx 5.40pm yesterday I lost a week's work. Not just any
week, but the most productive and satisfying 4 days work in over a year.

Scene 12 - 42. Gone. And apparently - despite CELTX's claim to be saving
my file every 5 minutes, and at least 3 manual saves and reboots in that
3 days - no retrievable copy.

Now, luckily, completely fortuitously 5 minutes earlier I had done a
word count, by copypasten in word.
Because when I hit the next 1000 words I had promised myself a biscuit.

So I had the whole raw text sitting in an unsaved open document.

But - what the hell CELTX? Guess whose software I will not be trusting
again?
How come you saved all my new characters names in the Master Catalogue,
all the new scene locations etc - but not the effing script itself?
Huh?

Back to Final Draft.

It will take *hours* to rebuild that sodding script.

I love weather

All of it. Sun, wind, snow, sleet, ice, rain, force 10 gales
(particularly when I'm the one at the helm at middle watch) and the
curiously oily swell of dead calm.

Just as well I live in the middle of this particular island on the edge
of the Atlantic, then. We might not get all the available weather
(although the odd tornado is not unknown) but we certainly great a
wonderful variety.
Every.
Day.

We should be grateful - moaning about the weather seems to have cheered
every one up. Forget the international credit drought and and worry
about the national salt shortage instead!

Today is sleety, my nose is runny and my shoes are full of icy slush.
The fat wet flakes hit the river with a constant hiss like a passing of
a swarm of stealth hornets.

Hand me a steaming coffee someone, I need to thaw!

I have been sadly misled... It's not a 300 year old cottage at all

... it's an 800 year old watch tower.

Or so the oldest members of the landlord's family claim.

Their ancestors built a lookout on a convenient rock within in sight of
their Pele Tower, to guard their sheep from various Scots, Neighbours
and other Marauders.

Hence the square plan of the cottage, the 3 foot thick walls, lack of
ground floor windows, etc, etc.

Yesterday morning nine lovely people with spades braved the sub zero
temperatures to clear the ditch between the house and the fell, and so
divert the river that had started lapping against the door since this
summer's relentless rain.

The running water had changed the local fauna - I have a mink in
residence somewhere, which has eaten all the mice.

And an owl.

Happy New Year!

O they so Cute! (Darling little Octopus alert)

I have a great affection for octopussies - so I was intrigued to read of
their "living ancestor"

And then I saw the pictures.

Oh my word - CUTE!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7715741.stm

(no subject)

I am working for a chartered surveyor this month. I like my boss, he is
a intelligent hard-working gentle-man. Very English. Very prep school.

But....

Talk about two cultures!

We have been trying for two weeks to wrangle a password reset out of O2, and for days he couldn't convince the operator he was who he said
he was, so he was locked out of his own mail account.

I made an off-hand comment about needing a Kafka to do full justice to the situation.

And he said...

- A what?

- A writer?

- Why?

- What did he write?

- What's that got to do with my blackberry?

(no subject)

The Stone Caravan has survived the summer with surprising little damage.

It was the first time I had been back since June, and I was braced for
disaster.

The ditch above the cottage must have overwhelmed by the summer rain;
there is a stream running through the lean-to loo, and out under the
front door – the porch is three to four inches thick with mud – but
none of this found it's way into the house.

The swallows raised their family and left. I can tell exactly which
doors and chairs they most enjoyed perching on. They left little
poopy wiggly signatures underneath!

They also left a huge birdy midden on the stairs right under the nest….

And a vacant nest of course. Which is now on the mantelpiece – it's a
work of art.

There is black mould on 3 walls – I think this is due to using a
casein based paint – the next time I will use a pure lime putty, as
that is naturally fungicidal.

And there is dust everywhere.

For some 15 minutes I just wandered around, unsure where to begin.
Had the caravan defeated me?

But 90 minutes later – the stairs were clear and worst of the rooms
was de-birdied and almost de-dusted, and I realised how little damage
had actually been done. It's all superficial.

No more work can be done this winter – it's just too damp and
impossible to get machinery up there.

I can only hope for a dry-ish spring summer, to dig out the ditches,
pin the wall and repaint the plaster.

Recasting as a writing tool

Bit of a discovery here.

At the moment I am juggling three writing projects -

- the Big Screenplay: locked in the kitchen drawer for the elves to
edit...,

- the TV Script: one hour pilot - I'm trying to get a full draft done
my November 1, but a nasty cold virus ate my homework and I'm two
weeks behind schedule)

- and a silly Spy Novella: just for fun - no redeeming features
whatsoever... or so I thought.

Yesterday I was squaring up to one of the story lines in the TV
script, in which the protagonist is caught and roughed up by a local
gangster.

I couldn't concentrate (the last hangover from the cold I suspect) and
my imagination wanted to play in the sandbox, with my spies ...

So "What if....

....I recast the TV script with a favourite character from the sandbox?

Suddenly instead of a generic 30 something gangster I have a good-
looking, sweet-talking, almost twinkly 70 year-old sadist, who is
still handy with a straight-razor.

The scene sprang back into focus and started to write itself. The
Pensionable Psycho has a history and a voice.

I'm now adding "recasting" to the tool-kit, to get me over similar
writing road blocks in the future

(no subject)

Apologies for the long silence - it started as short silence (while I
raced to a deadline) then became a longer silence because I had no
idea what to say that was worth writing, let alone worth reading.

And how the world has changed - certainties melting away hour by
hour. The biggest nationalisation since the war. The Bankruptcy of
an entire nation whose only assets seem to be cod, sulphurous springs
and Bjork.

I tried to find a working cashpoint yesterday morning (on my way to
pick up a Visa from the Russian Embassy for my current boss) and every
machine along High Street Kensington was out of commission. For a few
moments I wondered if that was the end - if the entire retail banking
industry had finally collapsed, and the cash in demand from a hole in
the wall was about to become a distant memory to amazing our
grandchildren with - like Anderson shelters, green grocers and
deference to the Royal Family.

If a financial crash can shake our world view so entirely (despite the
warnings of the past years that something was seriously awry) how much
more devastating would be the Ecological Crash, which may already be
taking place. There is plenty of unquantified toxic debt lurking in
the ecosystem, ready to explode in our faces... Soon Iceland may be
left with just the smelly springs and Bjork.

In other news: the speculative Blitz TV pilot I was writing winds on.

(no subject)

Strange old week.

The Holiday Monday was dark and cold. I went out, looking for a quiet
place to write, and encountered N - . She's 40, a writer, from my part of the world,
and she was sitting in a puddle of her own shit and piss on the steps
of an abandoned magistrate's court, shaking and unable to stand. She
has MS, can barely walk and is doubly incontinent. Her bag was
scattered around her. She had left her flat, without her coat,
ostensibly to shop, but I suspect to escape a sense of entrapment;
she had just got a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend.

All this came out as we sat on the nearest bench. Over the next hour
we walked slowly from seat to seat along the road, stopping to rest,
and smoke, and talk. Shoppers looked askance. Not hostile, just
troubled. A Big Issue seller - South American refugee - ran up and
gave her a big hug. They chattered for a few minutes about their
disabilities before parting.

N - didn't want to go home, and I had a train to catch, so in the end
I left her outside a pub, drinking soda water and smoking. She had a
taxi-card, to call for a disabled taxi home, and cash to pay, so it
wasn't strictly an abandonment. I just couldn't stay any longer,
because I'm a coward.

Just a reminder to grab every minute, experience, encounter that one can, while one can.

(no subject)

Emergency Fist Aid Training today - my first retraining since I did my

Guiding badge in the 70s!

It'll be interesting to know how much the rules have changed. One of
the most shocking scenes in "Life on Mars" was the reactions of the
1973 ambulance drivers to a critically injured woman - they picked her
up, put her in a van and drove her to a hospital for the "real" medics
to do their job. No blood supplies, no heart monitors, no
defibrillator, no air bagging - no treatment. Life on another planet
indeed.

Oh yes - I am the Gene Hunt of the Girl Guides!

Tragically the wet summer has rendered the Stone Sloop uninhabitable for the duration.

It seemed sensible enough at the time - use the summer months to
undertake work on the cottage to stabilise the crumbling back wall.
(Ironically it is the "new" extension of 1859 that is at risk - the 300
year old core hasn't shifted an inch...)

So I moved out (or up) the more delicate bits and pieces in June, and a
young man spent the several day chipping all the plaster off the suspect
masonry in preparation. The cottage filled with plaster dust, and
arrangements were made to bring a mini-digger up to excavate the new
footings, as soon as the ground was dry enough to bear its weight.

Well, of course, the ground has not been dry since. July ticked on. I
went to Lisbon and discovered Fado. The calendar flipped over to
August. I sat under Hereford apple trees dodging showers, reading about
the Blitz. Watched the roofs of Ludlow steam under the sun. Ate dressed
crab in Brecon, and listened to the Jazz Festival through a curtain of
torrential rain.

And all the time the fell is just soaking up more water. (There is
nothing, but nothing, in the entire world, that looks quite as dumbly
comically miserable as a flock of ewes caught in heavy rain. Even their
ears sag with the injustice of it all).

Now September is barely a week away - and the opportunity to do any more
work this year is slipping away. The plaster dust is still lying
undisturbed over floor, chairs, kitchen table. The back room is open to
the elements. We can only hope for a dry and windy autumn to dry out
the hillside enough to start work before the frosts arrive.

Oh well, perhaps next year will be drier....

There are 3 kinds of rejection letters...

a.) the form letters that are a writer's campaign medals, and end up in
the loo, b.) the ones that come with feedback (thoughtful or otherwise),
which might actually be useful, and should be read carefully once the
sting has worn off, and c.) the ones that kick the crap out your day.

c.) are the near misses, the also runs, the ones you were invited to
submit for, did extra work for, had meetings to discuss, and then... no
thanks, can't go any further, not *good* enough.

Guess which one I got today?

I've just slunk into the RFH for a glass of wine - and found the place plagued
by one of the worst cabaret singers I've been unfortunate enough to encounter in
recent years, singing Beatles covers (flat) and a selection from "the shows"
(badly).

Arghhhh!

Oh - and I've had no connection all day

Not at work, on the laptop, on the phone... couldn't even find the
times of trains.... couldn't look busy at work.

So how come that's the only communication that came through loud and
clear all day.

ZOMG - This flat is too good to be true...

... which of course means - it IS too good to be true. Last night I got
a front row seat to the London flat letting scam.

This is how it works. The scammer advertises a great flat on one of the
listings websites, at just below the realistic market rent, usually
claiming to be a professional who need to relocate and is just looking
for someone to care for their home and cover the mortgage costs. They
just want a deposit to prove that you are not a timewaster, while they
check your references.

I've been trawling the flat listing for sometime, just to see what the
market is like, in case I want to move later in the year. And there it
was, a studio flat, just within my budget, in an area I like, and
available this month. I filled on the online form for more information.

About 5 hours later, the reply came through, with a slew of attached
pictures, just as my laptop battery started to splutter and die. No
time to do more than scan the text before heading home to recharge,
check the details and reply.

The doubts were there from the outset - the price was just too low. And
why would an American student with a nice wood floored studio be moving
in with a boyfriend in Portsmouth. I mean - *Portsmouth*?

And free maid service? Free gym membership?

When I finally saw the photo, all the alarm bells started ringing. How
had a studio become a 2 bed flat? Hang on - that's three bedrooms, all
enormous.... And that fuzzy thing on the wall - a statutory fire
notice...? Hmmm...

So what "Angela" the "American Student" had done was take a bunch of
shots an empty office, dressed with double beds.

And when "she" had my deposit (she was asking if I had it ready to put
down straight away), no doubt she would have checked my references,
discovered that I "couldn't pay", and would return the money "less her
expenses" - I'm guessing her expenses would be about £600...

So. Beware the flat that sounds too good to be true. It's not a
clueless landlord - it's a trap for unwary would be tenants.

Myths of Writing: 1 "If I had more free time, I would write more/better/faster...."

I haven't found this to be true. I write productively, creatively for
about 2 hours a day, 3 at most, and the rest is revision, research,
mucking about.

Free time becomes a hindrance. If I set out on Sunday, with the thought
that I have 8 or 9 hours to commit to writing, I will find stuff to fill
up 6 or 7 hours worth - or more.

So, as of last month, I have *limited* my writing time, to 2 hours a
day, one at 7.30 before work, one at 6.30 after work. Everyday,
including weekend.
For those 2 periods of 60 minutes I write - no reading, revision, email,
phone calls; just keyboard and a glass of wine or cup of coffee.
Possibly music.

My productivity has shot up. I'm easily producing a 55 page draft in a
week. Lunchtimes are for revision, sometimes email, blogging, etc.
Travelling is for reading and making notes.

Currently reading: Love Lessons by Joan Wyndham - the diary of a 17 year
old in 1940s Bohemian Chelsea driving male painters crazy with a
extraordinary mixture of naivety, and a callous teenage enthusiasm for sin:

"All this talk had got Rupert quite excited so we lay on the sofa, and
got into some rather peculiar positions with R howling, 'I wanna seduce
you, I wanna seduce you!' At that interesting moment the sirens blew
off. I jumped up to check the black-out, pulling my blouse on and
looking for my shoes. 'Gosh,' I said, 'I must go, Mummy thought I'd be
back by ten.' Rupert didn't answer, he was lying on the bed face
downwards, making strange groaning noises. As I was walking home, heard
bombs in the distance and saw flares."

I adore every line of it - I feel 17 all over again...

Ouch - a lavatory wall just fell on my foot

Seriously. While I was peeing.

A huge 8 foot section of laminated chipboard, on a solid steel frame,
tumbled without warning from the office loo, bounced off my little toe
and came to rest on the floor beside me with a crash that shook the
building.

I have escaped with the tiniest nick, just below the toe nail, and a
new respect for the dangers that lurk in public washrooms.

Sirens over the Thames - suggestions for a playlist please!

I've been drafting out a TV pilot, set in London 1941. In the first 4
minute the protagonist is caught on Hungerford Bridge, looking East over
the Thames as air-raid sirens sound.

Last night a scooted out of the Festival hall (good spot for reading
with a glass of wine - lots of big sofas) with my ipod on shuffle - and
what came up as I stepped onto Hungerford bridge for the first time
since I downloaded it...?

Very overcast - not a good night for a bombing raid, so I think I will
sleep easy.
Perhaps I should go to bed under the table, in an overcoat, with a torch
and powdered egg to hand, just for research purposes.

(Of course, the situation in the Caucasus adds a horrible edge to the
retro feel of the week - a superpower invades a neighbour over concerns
about an ethnic minority in a border region? Sudetenland, here we
come. How long before Brown shows up at Heathrow, waving a piece of paper?)

Now, why do I have an air-raid warning on my Ipod?
(What - doesn't everyone?)

Well. for the last few months I have have been setting up playlists for
different projects. It started casually enough - I just clicked on a
track that felt right, and let it run.

Gradually these have evolved into playlists, little aural puddles to
suck on to the Shuffle, sit in while I write.

Yesterday I set to work on a playlist on BlitzKids ("Wild young people,
up to no good in London 1941 " or "Bonnie and Clyde - with Petrol
Rationing" - ).

As well as the siren, I have already got some good plaintive numbers, "A
nightingale sang,,," and "I get along without you very well..." - but
I'm looking for more, unusual numbers, particularly "naughty" ones - the
sort of stuff that 1940s Daily Mail readers would have clamoured to ban
as having a "bad influence on the young."

Anyone got suggestions?

Ludlow Rooftops and Cooking Ham in a Cotttage

A perfect moment of happiness: Saturday afternoon, leaning on sun-hot
the parapet of a tower in the ruins of Ludlow Castle. The town slopes
away steeply from the red sandstone castle wall to the river, in a bowl
of wooded green. A wedding party is coming out of the church - on foot,
because the streets are so narrow - and the bells boom and fade as the
breeze changes direction. One of the chimneys below is smoking. Who is
crazy enough to light a fire in August?

Haul: two boxes of strawberries from the streetmarket, and a second-hand
wristwatch from a flea market. £7.50, and it seems to keep time.
It's the first time I've had to wind a watch in 20 years.

Recipe: Cooking ham.
I learned by accident how to cook ham without turning it into a piece of
salty leather.
Very easy, but takes time. You just have to be lazy, and let it be.
1.) soak in clean water in the pan you are going to cook it in. Forget
about it, read a book.
2.) Drain off soaking water, refill to cover, bring to boil on the stove
top. Simmer for 30 minutes or so. Enough time to get another chapter
in. When the chapters done, lots of scum will have come to the
surface. Spoon it off, and top up the water from the kettle.
3.) Add 3 tablespoons of marmalade to the water.
4.) Bring at back to the boil, and stick it in the oven at the lowest
possible setting OR put it in a hay box, packed around with crumpled
newspapers, blankets etc.
5.) Go out for the day. Don't worry about getting home.
6.) Roll home. Switch off oven if you're using one, otherwise, just put
your feet up, and wait.
7.) This is the crucial bit: Let the ham cool down in the pot, in its
marmaladey bath. That's the secret bit. It relaxes and sucks the juice
back in - just like you do when you rest in hot water.

Roughly an hour before you need to feed anyone, coax the ham out of the
bath and into an oven tin. Save the bath water for pea soup tomorrow.
Strip off the skin and most of the fat. Sprinkle what's left with brown
sugar - or more marmalade...
Bake for 30 minutes, just enough to brown the sugar and fat - that's
enough time to clean and cook some potatoes and cabbage.

Cheats Cumberland Sauce.
1/3 of a bottle of wine, 3 tablespoons marmalade, zest and juice of one
orange. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Never tell anyone you spent the day mucking about, letting the ham do
all the work. Tell them you slaved over it, and suggest they do the
washing up.

Monday - Friday:

Ok, I blinked. It was the wretched mosquitoes; by Tuesday morning I was
in the sort of agony that leads people to rip their lower limbs off with
their bare hands to get relief.

I don't mins sharing a bit of blood from time to time - but why do the
whiny little buggers have to leave huge great burning wens in their wake?

I didn't have the patience to walk the extra 10 minutes towards an
independent chemist (stopping every 100 yards to scratch) so I dashed
into Boots and begged for antihistamines.

Apart from that, I kept to independent shops and market stalls all week.

This would have been easier if I didn't need to leave the house at 7am
to write for 70 minutes before heading into work. Over coffee.
It's surprising how few West End cafés open before 8.30. The streets
are deserted, the espresso machines silent.

I've found a Portuguese run bar, with a fan, and coffee at £1.10. I
suspect I am now a "regular", because by Friday I was getting free
refills.

Chain Reaction: Day Two

London is as hot as pitch.

I'm going to be out all day, in "regenerated" Docklands (West India
Docks, to be precise), where independent retailers are very thin on the
ground.

But I start in West London, with coffee. I have an alarm in my pocket
that goes off at 7.50 every morning to remind me to start writing, and
it goes off just as the train pulls into Gloucester Road. At the Forum
cafe it's already busy (including 3 Mongolian men playing card) but
there are tables free outside An espresso is £1.10, with a" free
croissant before 11am".

I'm heading to the Museum in Docklands for the first time - to do some
background work on a speculative TV pilot I have brewing. And it just
so happened that I turn up on the Museum's 5 birthday. Free entry and
chocolate cake all round. Lunch - somewhere between the Blitz and the
building of Canary Wharf - is a ham sandwich and tea in the museum cafe.

I'm a little shamefaced that I haven't visited this museum before; it's
excellent, with a decent balance between original and interpretive
material, all laid out over three floors of late Georgian Sugar
warehouse, one of the few to survive 1940-41. "Sailor Town" is a
claustrophobic reconstruction of a corner of 19th Century Limehouse,
with some pretty authentically ripe scents impregnated in the walls. It
even has a public house you can sit in, under the baleful glow of a oil
lamp.

It's too hot to go back to the flat and pant in the communal courtyard -
so go to Piccadilly, and the West End Kitchen, for the special - three
course chicken dinner, £8.70, then sit in St James Park reading "The
Longest Night: Voices from the London Blitz" by Gavin Mortimer.

Discover too late that St James Park has mosquitoes the size of Pelicans....

I may have found the answer to the damp in the Stone Caravan

If you live on the fell, damp just *is*. But I may have just found a
solution which is both cheap and green - and could even provide hot
water - a solar powered dehumidifier!

The Stone Caravan was built, 300 years ago, directly onto the hillside,
from which water rises at almost 20 feet intervals.
Most of the time this is manageable - the fire keeps the air warm and
moving, the windows and open door encourage circulation, the upper
story, where I sleep, is almost dry. I've just got used to it, and felt
no serious side effects through the winter

But when empty the building stews happily in its own juices, sprouting
fungus in the pockets of almost tropical humidity along the west wall.

My neighbours (35 minutes walk further along the fell) rely on a
dehumidifier that runs continually while they are absent. But they have
electricity, and I do not.
So a dehumidifer that runs without mains power would be a gift from the
universe!

Renewable energy is not a the panacea that some imagine.

Wind is difficult - the cottage is tucked so neatly into a small dip the
fiercest storms do not even rattle the windows, so a turbine would have
to be sighted so way above, on the fell, and the loss in any cabling
would be substantial.

Solar is feasible, even in the winter, but would produce least
electricity when needed most - in the damp dark days when the sun sets
at 3.15 in the afternoon and doesn't peep back over the horizon until 10
the following morning.

Water would be ideal - I have enough of it running through by outhouse
and loo! But it is also pricy, probably £10K minimum to install.

One should also remember that there are no future saving to be made on
that - I have no power bills to reduce, and no connection to the grid to
sell the excess to.

Nor do I need vast amounts of electricity: A solar radio and battery
charger provide entertainment, phone and light. The stone built pantry
keeps milk and meat cool and fresh even in the dog days. The fire
converts fallen and trimmed wood from the fell into heat and toast and
tea.

Day One

I'm stuck in London this weekend - and Saturday is make or break day for
chain free buying, because I need to get enough food for the week.

First challenge - a pint of skimmed milk.

Um - fail.
There are two convenience stores right under the flat where I am
staying, and neither has skimmed milk.
The guy in one suggests that I buy full fat and water it down!
Later I discover that the local delivery service had no skimmed milk
today, and all the local independents are stuck with empty shelves.
On the plus side, the same shop has trays of fat perfectly ripe peaches
for 55p each - Tescos have boxes of 8 for £1.99 ("half price"), but they
are tiny, pallid and rock hard. So I buy two for breakfast.

At 3pm I head to the market, a 10 minute walk away. I'm an old hand at
this, I even have a little bag on wheels, which folds to handbag size. Neat.
But I haven't been for months...

Veg is easy - the heat seems to be keeping the crowds away, so no
queuing. Runner beans, peppers, onions, carrots, cauliflowers,
tomatoes, garlic, free range eggs.
All look good and ripe and fresh, all cheaper than supermarket...

Other stuff looks like more of a challenge. There is a wonderful cheese
stall - but it's a sticky day, and the cheese is perspiring as much as I
am. I pass.
There is a butchers shop - but the queue is winding around the block in
the sunshine. Again, I pass...

Then I see a cool oasis - a halal store. I've never shopped here before....
Fresh coriander, fresh mint, sheep's milk yoghurt, home-made humus... I
brace myself to pay over the odds - but the whole basket comes to £3.00.

There's a baker - but I skip that.

Then I spot the butcher's stand. It's white, and cool, and every tray
is covered in spotless white paper, with just the corner folded down,
like a sheet in an upmarket hotel, to display a coy hint of the flesh on
offer.

Well, apart from the sheep's heads. Nothing coy about them. They have
a terribly direct stare, as they preside over a heap of their own
scalded feet.
This is a moment of truth - if I can't approach the poor naked creatures
face-to-face, then I have no right to be nibbling their sweet little
ribs. Ever.

Vegans, despair - I pass the test, an omnivore to the bitter end.
Three lamb chops and some merguez sausages are bagged up by the charming
guy behind the counter.
Again, I brace myself to hear the cost... and it's only £1.87.

Result:
Cost: £15 for the lot
Time: The whole trip has taken just 80 minutes, including a browse in a
second-hand bookshop. About the same time as a trip to the nearest
supermarket, and cheaper.
Unexpected bonus: much less packaging to dispose of - 3 plastic bags,
one paper bag, a cardboard egg carton, two tubs for the humus and
yoghurt... No vacuum packed meat trays with little nappies for the
chops to sit on, no plastic boxes for the beans, no shrink wrap for the
cauli, no polythene for the onions and carrots.

Supper: hot lentils, cold tomato and runner bean salad, grilled
merguez. Yum.

Living in Chains

7.55 Sunday Morning: I am sitting outside an eccentric cafe on

Gloucester Road called "Cafe Forum" - it has the hippy-dippy décor of
1970, and none of it "retro".

Opposite me I can see, in order, left to right: KFC, Starbucks,
BurgerKing, Tesco Express, HSBC, a pub called the Stanhope Arms, Pret a
Manger, a Hardware shop with a19th majolica frontage, Alan D
Hairdressers, Black & Blue, a new sports shop called Bliss (so new the
signage hasn't arrived, and the name is spelt out in computer printed
initials), Prime Time Video, Nandos (in a site which only 12 months ago
was a restaurant called "Dino's", Coffee Republic...
In other word, 10 chains and 4 independents...

So - no lack of places to buy my coffee - but no surprises. Unless the
servers screw up I know exactly how my coffee, or sandwich, or burger or
bun will taste. Which I suppose is the appeal. Which I understand -
ordering in an unknown place, and getting a sad grey cup of dishwater,
and a curling sarnie, with marge and a limp sweaty square of "ham" like
a curate's handshake, or a squirt of aerosol creme on a scone microwaved
into sad submission, is a depressing experience.

No - chains offer us the chance to avoid bad surprises.

The trouble is - they also deprive us of all the good surprises.

When I get off a train after 4 hours, and walk out into street utterly
identical to the one I left behind: Pret, Accessorize, Nero, Carphone
Warehouse, Next, Starbucks, Sainsburys - I feel, just for a few seconds,
dizzy. Have I travelled at all? Why did I bother to pay 50 odd quid to
sway in a self contained tin box to stand here...

I miss the exotic surprises that once made travelling in the UK exciting
- because not so long ago, there were exotic treats in the UK: butchers
with barnsley chops, eye steaks, middle back bacon, pease pudding, white
pudding, scotch pies, beef and tomato sausages, ducks eggs, home made
butter in tubs; bakers with dense sweet custard tarts, bath buns,
bakewell tarts, bread cakes, bismarks, even tubs of fresh yeast;
greengrocers with queues forming as news spreads that cob nuts have
arrived, or the shallots, or the first pomegranates of the season.

These are not distant childhood memories; 5 years ago, in a little area
of London 10 minutes from Victoria I bought fresh e.g. veg at a
greengrocers, meat at a butchers, bread at a bakers, coffee and cheese
at a pre-war Italian deli, all cheap, all excellent, all independently
owned, all gone.

It's the same story in the West End. In 2004 I worked for a while in an office in Covent Garden. There was a greengrocer's in Drury Lane, and a wonderful butcher's shop in Endell Street. Gone. (Luckily the Neal's Yard Cheese shop is still going strong)

I miss them. I miss the fun of not knowing what I am going to eat
before I shop... I am tired of walking around a vast store on
autopilot, putting exactly the same things in my trolley every Sunday
afternoon.

I want some variety in my life again.

Which is why I am trying to live with out chain shops for two weeks, to
see a.) if it really is more expensive b.) if it really takes more time
c.) if I get any surprises - good or bad.

Problem solved I think

Looks like I'll be getting major notes on the Ethiopian project in a few
weeks - which is the obvious point to start the next draft.

So it's teen rebels and doodlebugs til then.

A writer's dilemma

What should I do?

Every writer craves that moment when there is a story burning to get out
and arrange itself on the paper, forming itself as it flies - like the
patterns made by the great flocks of starlings that wheel over Brighton
pier - fluid and unstoppable.

Well, as of last Wednesday, I have two such stories - one probably a TV
series, the other, well, that could go either one way of the other.
They came from (almost) nowhere* and bubbled to the surface while I was
listening to Julian Fellowes** speak at the Cheltenham Screenwriters'
Festival last week - which was a pity as I think he had interesting
things to say about working with producers, but I could hear I word as a
blocked out two whole storylines on the back of my programme with a
borrowed pen.

Now they are itching under my skin, forcing me out of my chair to pace,
and plan and walk the length of the Thames.

So here I am, a 7am, at the screen, fired up to write, convinced that I
have something to say and a voice to say it with.

But do I chase one of these two stories that are flying overhead - or do
I use the energy to finish the next draft of the Ethiopian project.
You know. The one I have actually been *commissioned* to finish....

Well?

What would you do - ride the roller coaster of inspiration, or do the
professional thing and finish the work in hand?

_____________

* Not really from nowhere:
Story one, inspired by Frankie Fraser's reminiscences of the London
Blitz has sat as a three line prompt on my hard drive for 5 years.
Story two, a police proceedural with a twist, popped up as a bit of
fluffy fandom-inspired fun back in May.

** This was also the rain-soaked session in which I started shaking, and
probably got the chill which is making me wheeze and sneeze this
morning. Arghhh -I survived 3 months in a damp unheated cottage with
icicles hanging from the kitchen ceiling without so much as a sniff.
One day of summer rain and misplaced aircon, and I'm shivering and ever
so slightly feverish.

Is there a Doctor in the House

Disgraced for plagiarism one week - booked to speak at a writer's
festival the next. That's crappy timing

So I was not surprised that Dr Raj Persaud failed to show up at the
Screenwriter's Festival this week, to face a marque filled to
overflowing with 600 writers, journalists, editors...

I was told he didn't cancel, he wasn't pulled from the schedule - he
just stopped answering the organisers' calls, and a substitute was
quickly booked for that slot.

I do wonder what the reception would have been like. Low key, curious
and embarrassed, I suspect. I find it hard to believe that he would
have been barracked - the mood at the festival was mellow and generous
(helped by the sun, the setting and the excellent wines.)

I've no idea when this entry will make it onto the blog - my email
server is refusing to send mail, and after two hours of fiddling I am
still no closer to discovering why!