Fly to Berlin:
Door to door, 8 hours - £230

Sleeper Train to Berlin
Door to door, 15 hours - £165
(plus the cost of lunch - soupe a l'oignon in the Marais watching snow fallng
over Paris)

Yes - I made it through a mad January and all the way to to Berlin for the
Film Festival. It's minus 12 outside, which makes the stone caravan almost
tropical, and the snow looks like falling diamonds.

It's been a trying few weeks - since January 3, when I went to work to find
that our sister company in the US had celebrated the New Year by losing our
domain name (and therefore our email) I have been working 70 hours weeks.
Every week. 50-60 hours a week at the corporate grindstone producing reports
and brochures, 10-20 hours a week writing script draft number 5 in time for
the festival.

Oh - and successfully breaking into the Stone Caravan and fitting the locks.

In comparison navigating transcontinental railways and negotiating a Prussian
winter is as relaxing as a week at the beach!

I'm taking as much time off as I can - sneaking out of the film market to
climb the Pergamon altar, or to gaze at Caspar David Friedrich's Moonrise at
Sea.

Which it is a Christmas Tree, triced up and well braced.

 

So, it wasn't actually up until Christmas Eve, and it came down on Twelve Night, and, apologies for the late posting, but I did manage to assemble a Patrick O'Brian tree, just in time, and get pictures....

(The house isn't mine, btw - one of the reasons why it went up during radio-silence.)

 

So - there were admirals -

 

Frigates

 

A ship of the line (I suspect it's the Mary Rose...)

 

Globes and Union Flags (correct from 1801 onwards)

 

A Nutmeg of Consolation

 

(I dipped a nutmeg in glue and fine silver glitter and attached it to the stray clasp of a old tree bauble)

 

And Bonden's own gun....

 

 

I couldn't find a sloth - but a venomous platypus seemed the next best option - and here he is, contesting ownership of a duff with Testudo Aubreii

 

 

There were also ship's biscuits - made much as I suspect the originals were - and marked with the broad arrow -

 

These are about 2cm squared, baked in an aga overnight - alas, the photo of them on the tree hasn't come out.

 

"At the present moment, the whole fleet is lit up. When I say 'lit up', I mean lit up by fairy lamps."

 

 

I'm pleased to say it met with the approval of a Royal Marine who dropped in on New Year's Eve, and has offered to help me start a collection for a Peninsula tree - so Jack can share honours with Dick Sharpe next year.

 

Sorry it took so long to post (- rather like a serial letter to Sophie...)

 

Homeless - I lost the keys to the cottage...

... somewhere, somehow, somewhen... out of the pocket of a big coat borrowed
by two people and finally found (sans keys) in a neighbours house.

A locksmith is required - one who doesn't mind climbing the last mile to the
door.

Greetings from Long Haugh Shiels on the shortest day of the year

 

Tanya x

Plot point solved

The real breakthrough was recognising the problem in the first point - for
which I have to thank Scrivener, which I only installed a few weeks ago.
Being able to break the outline down into smaller and smaller units without
having to juggle dozens of new documents was the key to identifying the lack
of jeopardy in the third act, and start the process of finding a solution.

And as is almost always the case, solution is to be found somewhere in the
very first drafts of the story ...

In other news - the office Intern had the classic office party experience. He
can't actually remember exactly what happened, but it involved the MDs PA,
being delivered home at 1am in a bicycle rickshaw, and waking face down in the
hallway to find his girl friend stepping over him with her suitcase packed
after waiting for him to come home for dinner since 6pm the previous day.

I've made him tea.

I'm making Aubrey/Maturin Christmas Tree

I've been quietly collecting 18th Sailing Navy related Christmas decorations
for what almost 10 years, and never had the chance to pull them out - until
today.

So far I have

2 dashing captains in dress uniform (they are actually nelsons)
3 gold frigates
1 ship of the line
a silver nutmeg of consolation
6 small terrestrial globes
10 drums (to beat to quarters, obviously)
bags of coins as prize money
lots of sugar rats

Any other suggestions?

I'll try to make little signal flags, and some sealed orders, and bake ships
biscuits in the slow oven overnight.

Now I'm on the look out for ship's lanterns, weevils (lesser and greater), a
debauched sloth, some duff (double-shotted), tortoises (Testudo Aubreii,
natch) and, of course, some boobies.

There is a sort of connection to the stone caravan; although the valley is
landlocked great parcels of bleak fell and bog were gifted at some point
Greenwich Hospital, who, with the peace of 1814, thought it would be an
excellent idea to recycle their surplus of naval chaplains in the local
livings.

The poor sots were translated from the warm intensely crowded debauched fug of
the wardroom into isolated hamlets 30-40 miles ride from the nearest town,
where their entire congregation would consist of nine shepherds and their
dogs, and where months might pass without a single visitor. Most - already
accustomed to drinking a pint of grog a day - turned to drink and went mad.

And to complete the "misery"...

... moths have munched their way through my new (second hand) cashmere
sweater, which I was relying on to keep me warm over Christmas, while it was
in the ironing basket.

And the knitted donkey made for my first ever Christmas.

On a tangent, I'm reading Ellroy's alternative American history, "The Cold Six
Thousand" - which opens seconds after JFK assassination, and therefore shortly
before the first ever episode of Doctor Who was broadcast, and therefore
minutes before my mum went into labour...

Here it last is the bone of the problem with my story, the hard rotten core in
which I keep chipping my teeth.

In the first working draft "Paul" was smuggling political dissidents and
refuges out of the city in the expectation of a government crackdown.

The stakes were therefore exceptionally high; if "Lily" inadvertently revealed
during interrogation information that led back to "Paul", he would lose not
only his freedom, his career, possibly his life, but also his ability to
protect his family.

So he mistranslated her confession to deflect attention away from his
involvement.

Alas, further research, plus condensing the material so that it would cohere
as cinema made "Paul the people-smuggler" a non-starter. Not so much because
he couldn't or wouldn't have got involved, but because I couldn't see how
"Lily the forger" could have knowledge of it.

And the 3rd Act no longer worked, because everyone was behaving badly without
sufficient motive. The stakes were just not that high for Paul any more, and
he came across as a neurotic shit.

Every thing I have tried to invoke to replicate that original jeopardy -
without making the story over-complex* - has failed.

(*Good film is simple, not simplistic. The emotional journey can be complex,
the obstacles can be complex, but the hook for the story is simple.)