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!

My house has been taken over by swallows

Curses that I must spend the summer months in London, but I have to fill
the holes in my purse, and I have found a satisfying way to to do so,
working for a very small but sane group of people within sight of the
river Thames.

But I scramble back to the stone caravan as often as I can, to enjoy the
long, long midsummer evenings, and to sleep. Last night I lay down at
9, meaning to rest for a short while before making tea, and dozed off
watching the sheep graze, and the swallows harvesting midges under my
eaves. The tea was finally brewed when I woke - 12 hours later.
Bliss. I think it is the silence. No hum of electricity, no passing
traffic, just the sound of trees and water.

But it's not actually my home at the moment. A pair of swallows have
taken up residence in the stairwell, and are sitting on a brood. They
were still there this morning - I hope I haven't frightened them off.

In some ways it's just as well that I'm not living here full time. The
original core of the croft is a single cube of stone, the walls about
18inches wide, divided into two stories by a beam supported floor. The
size of the windows (tiny and facing out of the wind) suggests that it
dates from 1700, when glass was still rare and expensive. That would
have been towards the end of century in which the Border regions first
started to experience some kind of peace and prosperity, and the
inhabitants starts to move out of the defensive Pele towers and
bastles. People finally felt safe enough to live on the fell with their
flocks all year round, rather that solely through the summer in
temporary turf huts, called "Shiels".

So it must have stayed, a tiny croft with a single loft, reached by a
ladder, and an open fireplace, until 1859, when it was "improved". I
can be sure of the date, because the closed staircase built as part of
that work was papered with issues of local newspapers of that date, and
the cast iron range which was fitted into the vast old cottage fireplace
dates from roughly the same era.

As well as stairs and heat, the tenant or landlord at that time extended
the ground floor, with a tiny scullery to the north end, facing the
fell, and a large room to South, with a pitched ceiling and wider glass
windows.

And so the cottage has stood since, almost unchanged, while it's
neighbours in the tiny hamlet fell into disuse, then ruin, and now can
only be seen as ghostly outlines when the bracken dies back in the winter.

Alas, it was not as well built as the solid little cube onto which it
was latched, and now, another 150 years on, is starting to slide down
the hill and into rubble.

The estate has made the decision to save the house - and the work is
underway. The old plaster has been hacked off the most mobile wall -
revealing daylight peeping through the stones. Iron staples will soon
hold these together. Meanwhile the south most gable end will have to be
underpinned in at least 3 places...

When I walked into the cottage, after an absence of 3 weeks, the rooms
were coated in a fine thick layer of dust, that looked as almost old as
the house itself, and disturbed only by the tracks of small beasts.
Come autumn, everything will need to be washed and polished anew, until
then my belongings look as if they are caught in time, like snapshots
after a disaster.

Then, perhaps, the cottage will stand for another 150 years.

PS. A spider just crawled across the keyboard, and started to spin a
web in the angle of the screen.

Temporary brain death

The last few weeks must have been more draining than I'd thought - I can
still barely think straight, and organising the simplest things (say,
booking a train ticket, or checking my bank balance) seem to be beyond me.

I had to email the manager of the building where I am staying - and I
had to draft it 3 time over 3 days, because everytime I read her letter
I realised I had completely misunderstood it...

Here's hoping a few more early nights, sunshine and bags of peaches will
refire the leedle grey cells soon.

Excuses not to write: 1 - "Someone will steal my story"

This is a conversation I had in the pub with an aspiring screenwriter,
who had just forked out £200 for a two day training.

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: I can't get a break, 'cos my work doesn't
fit the stereotype.

Me: (Intrigued) Really? What are you writing?

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: Action stuff. None of this
character-driven nonsense they bang on about.

(At this point I have a clue that this wannabe may have some problems
dealing with reality. After all, The Incredible Hulk opens this week,
chasing Iron Man. I also notice that in 5 minutes of chatting she
hasn't actually told me a thing about her script, just why she can't
sell it. Not a thing. Not where or when or who - it's just "action
stuff" - SF, Gangsters, Porn - I have no idea! But I persist.).

Me: Well, my experience was that loads of people said no to my
ideas("too dark/ too expensive/ boring/ old fashioned/ not my thing/ not
filmable/crap") before one person said "ok, I like that".. But you only
need one. You just have to keep going until that one says "yes. Let's
see if we can make this film."

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: So, how do you meet people who'll say yes?

Me: You go to places where film-makers meet. Film festivals, markets.
I went to Cannes four years ago, chatted to people, had a drink or two -
and one night, someone said yes, let's talk more. Now I am being paid
to develop that script.

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: How did you get to Cannes?

Me: On a train.... sorry, I know what you mean. It's not that hard to
get to any festival. I applied for a delegate pass, bought a train
ticket and asked around on message boards for a room to share. That's
all you need to do to get there.

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: Can you organise for me to go?

Me: A pass, a train ticket, a room for the night - what's to organise?

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: Hey, everybody, she's gonna organise for
us to go to Cannes!

(Bystander: I thought Cannes was over?)

(Me: It is.)

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: She's 's gonna organise for us to go to Cannes!

Me: No, I'm not. But I'll tell you how to get there. A pass, a train
ticket, a room for the night.

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: Ah, but what do we do then?

Me: You talk to people, about the film(s) you are writing. And you
listen to them talk about the films you want to make. Until you find a
match.

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: Oh, I couldn't 't do that!

Me: Why?

Drunk Wannabe Screenwriter: I can't tell *anyone* what my story is -
they'll steal it!

Me: Okay! Good luck with the career.

I'm done...

... in every sense of the word.

I must look as wan as I feel, 'cos the nice man in Pret gave me a free
coffee.

All I have to do now is get through to 6pm, survive a train journey then
collapse in bed with that bottle of wine I put in the fridge on Saturday.

I have two unwatched episodes of Doctor Who waiting for me (that's how
long this has been going on - almost 3 weeks without a break - but they
may have to sit patiently for another 24 hours before I can guarantee
full attention.

PS - Hi Mum!

Just plugging the Tuna and Chive on Rosemary Sourdough and Raisin bread at the Royal Festival Hall Cafe

That is all.

Didn't make it

Rats

It's 2.50 - I have to stop and go back to work, with the last 3 - and
most difficult - passages left undone, and all the proof reading to go.

It's not fatal.
Seriously - we always had 16 hours grace built into the schedule, which
I will now have to use.

I'll just have to forgo the pleasure of going to bed at 6pm, pay the
premium rate for the courier, and hope that their are no delays between
here and Ireland tomorrow.

I am going to have a drink. And chocolate. And not look at this for at
least another 3 hours.

Going to the wire....

Right against the wire - the official cut off for the courier booking is
3.00pm

All the other 15 docs (150 pages in all) have been approved and printed,
and await final collation.

The budget was revised 2 hours ago, and sucked up a lot of time.

All that is missing is the 10 page treatment.

It's 1.50 - and I still have a page to revise - and 10 to proofread...
I also have to pick up cash to pay the courier...

Fingers crossed.

20 minutes to go

I'm not going to make this
- I have to turn up at work, looking button-bright and eager to solve
other people's problems -

Doh!

Heard my flatmate through the door take a shower - waited for her to
finish so I could ring the bell and retrieve the files - and discovered
I had the keys all along, in my *other* bag.

1 hour 10 minutes of free time left to finish this baby....

on the upside...

I just realised that my WIFI works on the steps....

Ha ha ha - I am so *scr*wed today

It's 6am, and I am sitting on the steps outside my flat, waiting for my
flatmate to wake up - because I walked out at 6am this morning without
my keys, my travel pass - or the file of signed documents for the
application pack.

I have one page left to write today (as soon as I am awake enough to
drive a keyboard), and a mammoth proofreading/edit job to complete,
before I deliver the final package to the courier at 2pm this afternoon.

And I can't even get a coffee right now.

Oh - I could sleep for a month. I really could. And I can't, because
this is, in the sane world, the start of a normal working week.
I am too old for the 90+ hour week.

Excuse me while I gibber in a corner for the next few minutes.

(no subject)

Last night I keeled over at 11pm, and realised that I had worked 30 of
the previous 40 hours, without meal breaks, (crumbs in the keyboard
again – not good for the laptop or the digestion.

Three more days of this, and the application is handed to the courier at
midday on Monday, with a huge sigh of relieve.

It's sort of gratifying to know that I can still pull the equivalent of
a student all-nighter to get a job done.

Although, in truth, the only genuine all-nighters I have ever pulled
have all involved books – 'Consider Phlebas' by Iain Banks had me
turning pages until the birds were up, likewise CS Forester's
'Lieutenant Hornblower' (in the bath of an Italian hotel), and, once, LA
Confidential.

Otherwise, I was always the one sleeping in the corner – at theatre
get-ins, in night clubs on theatre tours (that's what comes of relying
on the tour bus to get you to bed), at all night Oscar parties.

Actually – the secret to staying awake at Oscar parties? Deserts –
hundreds of them. I made it through Oscars 2004 with the help of 7 puds,
distributed at intervals, including "Green Gollum Jelly" (with jelly
worms embedded in it) and a "Cold Mountain" of vanilla ice-cream (with
little angelica pine trees on it). I saw the show out on a monumental
sugar buzz …

Anyway, here's the work list, with some 10 hours of writing time left:

55 Long Treatment
10 page short Treatment
1/2 Synopsis with log-line
Writers CV
Evidence of ownership of rights
Writers Notes
Producers CV
Producers Notes
Application Form
Declaration of Compliance
Evidence of Ownership of rights
Development Budget

Bored with this - seriously bored

Latest To do list:
By Monday, Midday

Finish 10 page treatment (5 pages down, plus proof read)
Write new 350 word synopsis, switching main character viewpoint
Write 600 word "Writer's Notes" on the origins of the story, and my plans to
develop it.
Revise own CV
Format Producer's CV
Format Producer's Notes (as previous noted, her default spelling and formating
style is "speshul")
Complete declaration of ownership of rights

Proofread above
Proofread again

Print and collate 3 copies of above, (plus application form & declaration of
compliance)

Arrange signatures

Book courier

Somebody should tell Sharon Stone that is *not* how Karma works

Seriously.

Perhaps she should listen a little more closely to her "good friend" the
Dalai Lama, who could certainly put her right.

Plugging Oxfam's New Green Cleaning Products

I bought a bottle of Oxfam's Eco Washing-up liquid about 2 months ago.
It was huge, but pricey - almost £2.00, and I wondered if I would regret
it later.

Not a bit of it - it washes beautifully, doesn't irritate my skin, and
is still half full - so has already worked out cheaper than the usual
own-brand.

Green, cost-effective, efficient - and helps to fund Oxfam as well.

Writing like a mad thing...

I'll have to stop soon. It's nine pm, and I'm think I'm about to run
into the law of diminishing returns.
(Also called falling asleep and drooling into the keyboard, which is
embarrassing enough at home, but social death in a city centre coffee shop)

Ok, stage one done, stage two and three to go

I got the first set of forms done and in the post ahead of the deadline.

Here's how the worklist is going:

Meet with Screen WM - call scheduled for the afternoon of May 27

Revise own CV - done despite managing to delete it at least once.

Revise producer's CV - done

Complete application form(s) - delegated

Logline (25 words) - done

1/2 page Synopsis - done (but looking a bit thin...)

10 page Outline (the current version is 40 pages!) - about 1/3 done
(this is a bugger to finish!)

Revised 55 page Outline - I think this is done, hard to tell...
(I sent it to 5 people for feedback over six weeks ago, and not one of
them has yet got back to me. I just hope it's not utterly embarrassing)

Writer's Notes on future development - barely started

Buy mother's birthday present - no idea what to get ma this year!

More Train Tales

... of course, train travel is not always pleasant.

I may well be standing for the next 3 hours, just one of many, many
travelers trapped on a hot under ventilated peak-hour holiday train with
no available reservations or seats. And no wifi.

Arghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just did it again - wiped out 55 minutes work with a keystroke! I'm
all over the place here.

I was startled by human voice outside, where no human voice should be*,
and hit the wrong key while saving.

I don't think I can do this - I've been working for days, and I have
managed to destroy as much as I have created.
Crap, crap, craptascular crap.

*It was walkers, peering in through the windows. I think they got a
bigger shock than I did - until I spotted the blank screen.

(no subject)

Oh my. A swift just swooped in at my open window, perched for a moment
on the door of my dresser to take a closer look around the room, and
flew out again.

The radio reports severe weather in the South East - but here it is
warm, still and golden, with an irresistibly spicy smell of new grass
and leaves.

This is the first time in over a year that I have enjoyed fine dry
weather at the cottage, and it is a revelation.

All the pretty, pretty cows and their caramel coloured calves are lying down.

That means imminent rain, no?

Mad dash to catch the train at 6.15am

Yes, that's right, my Saturday started at 4.55am. At that time in the
morning it takes me 5 minutes to remember how to switch the kettle on,
let alone cross London in the right direction with a backpack.

But the 6.15 from Kings Cross was the only train Northward with tickets
I could afford. And it has free WIFI, so here I am, (not resurrecting
my CV).

The upside is - I had forgotten that the last cheap ticket was a First
Advance. It was a lovely surprise to find the wide seat and table laid
with real china ready for morning coffee service. Almost like the
mythical days of real train travel. What I lovely retro-train-month I
am having.

Ooooooh. Real egg in the Egg n'Cress Sarnie!

This is NOT going well

I just managed to delete the CV I wrote this morning. *My* CV.
The only part of the application I managed to complete today.

I need a drink and an early night.

But on the hand - the application involves some fascinating research...

... into the Irish 'Fascist' parties of the 30s, in the aftermath of the
Civil War.

One of my leads is an Irish Social Conservative who idealises Mussolini,
and travels to Ethiopia to become a teacher during the Italian
occupation. He comes to a nasty dead end towards the middle of the
Second Act.

Another 4 forms to fill in by May 27

... and I just want to go to bed for a week.

So - what does a Weekend at the Cannes Festival Cost?

I'm just totting up the receipts...

Accreditation: £0.00
Back in the day this used to be a hard copy application, with
photographs, colour copies, business cards, courier - I think it cost me
£60 in all. Now it's all PDFs and online forms, and costs zip!

Accommodation: £153 for two nights in a shared flat
This is twice what I paid before, dammit - but then, it was a clean,
cute one-bed studio only 5 minutes walk from the croisette, with an iron
and a decent shower, sharing with 3 other women.

Transport: £250 for the Eurostar and the two sleeper trains.
This looks steep in the era of cheap flights, but as I didn't have to
buy a train ticket to Gatwick/Luton, or bus transfer from Nice to
Cannes, it worked out cheaper than the Easyjet equivalent, and gave me
and extra 12 hours to enjoy the festival.(If I'd been able to book
earlier, I could have got this for under £100!)

Subsistence: I spent 100 Euros (approx £75) over the course of 88 hours -
mostly on sandwiches, water, fruit, and coffee. Oh, and a book by John
Berger which I didn't have time to read.

Other: I bought some clothes, but all of them things I desperately
needed to temp over the summer - the Stone Caravan look (3 sweaters,
skirt *and* trousers, crocs or wellies, mud) is neither corporate nor
seasonal. Ditto the hair cut (£29) and the waxing (£15)

Damage: £15 excess for the replacement phone

Freebies: Tacky Delegate bag, four coffees, ear plugs on train, tickets
to movies, many glasses of rather acid rose wine, WIFI internet access,
a tartan lanyard from the Scottish Screen stand.

Saturday - the return to the Caravan. yay!!!!!

Schedule revised! Yay or not Yay?

On the one hand...

Yay! We've been given an extra two days grace to complete the
application because of the impact of Cannes on the timeline.

On the other...

Yikes! The application just doubled in size!

On the other hand...

Yay! I don't have to write a 10 page version - they'll accept the 55 page

On the other hand...

Yikes - I have to revised the 55 pages and write a 4 page outline!

Bed now. Shattered.

London is freezing!

I had to pile on three shirts and a shawl to get home last night.

At least the sky is blue.

I have seven days to create a brand new package for the Irish Film Board
(on my own, as my Producer is still in Cannes running from place to
place working on 2 other projects. It's really not a place you can sit
down and think straight.

Tasks in the next 7 days:

Meet with Screen WM
Revise own CV
Revise producer's CV (not as easy as it sounds - my producer writes in
her own version of TXT. I will scratching my head over her notes for hours.)
Complete application form(s)
Logline (25 words)
1/2 page Synopsis
10 page Outline (the current version is 40 pages!)
Writer's Notes on future development.
Buy mother's birthday present.
Shout at building manager and insurance company over damaged bathroom
ceiling.
...
Oh - and turn up at work, 9-6.

All manageable. (I think!?)

On British soil, though still a long way from home and the peace of the caravan

Smelly guy now playing minesweeper on his PowerBook.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

On the last leg of the journey in reverse: Cannes>Sleeper>Paris at
Dawn>Eurostar>Work.
The man in the seat next to me pongs. He seems to be a mathematician,
and not to have washed his arm pits for several days.
Cannes is a Dantean series of circles within circles. Those without the
magic accreditation mill past the barriers, locals, bemused tourists,
cinephiles and starfeckers. They see only one barrier between
themselves and the red carpet, when in fact there are several, physical
and practical. Yesterday evening the area around the Palais was rammed
with onlookers for the Indiana Jones premiere, many of them wearing
promotional fedoras in a rather odd shade of orangey-dun(g). The hard
core were in evening dress, holding up hand written signs "Invitation SVP"
In theory my pass (a pretty gold) was access all areas:
The Palais itself - this is the natural home of the press, where they
watch the movies (rarely in the main house, more often secondary
screening rooms). All through the day competition films premiere here;
the dress code is black tie for the evening, casual during the day.
The Marche: the Exhibition centre beneath where thousands of films are
being bought and sold in a dim humid bunker light.
The Grand Jetee: where the yachts are moored. These are not the haunt
of stars. They are mobile meeting rooms for financiers, and during the
day host business brunches and lunches and cocktails for small earnest
groups, making deals within spitting distance of the pedestrians.
The International Village: the national film commissions, camping on the
beach and offering advice, wifi and free coffee through the day.
The Hotels: more meeting spaces and some screenings.
What the pass won't guarantee: 1.) a ticket to any film (all subject to
queues, allocation and a final judgment on the suitability of your
dress.) 2.) Access to parties and clubs (invitation only), 3.) Access
to stars. (They live and move in a bubble within a bubble, at
out-of-town villas and hotels, or yachts moored almost out of site,
quite invisible, even to delegates, until they pop up on the red carpet,
large as life but three times skinnier.

Funniest thing overheard in Cannes

A penniless writer who missed the whole point of Cannes (ie - to
network, sell or buy within an international industry, while drinking
other people's wine):

"Next year I'm coming on my own, to take a room in the Majestic [ie the
only hotel which has security barriers and body searches to keep
non-players out] and write...."

Way to piss off the colleagues who organised a beautiful room in a
central apartment for her, blagged her tickets for two premieres and
invitations to 5 parties....

She was never heard of again.

Storm blown out

This is more like it - sky blue from horizon to horizon, sea shimmering,
sun sucking up the puddles.
I have 5 hours left in Cannes,before I dash for the sleeper back to
Paris then London.
It's not just the sea that is shimmering - the mirage of major
development funding is hovering just a hands-breadth away. The film
board execs we met this morning couldn't have been happier with the
project - I have to get the long treatment in by the end of the month,
for consideration in the next round of investment.
So it's back to blighty and back to work.
Phone still fried, alas.

"Comme une vache" - Cannes wash out!

Saturday was cold and damp all day, and I huddles under cover drinking
coffee and preparing for the meeting on Sunday am.
It doesn't feel right - Cannes in steady gray English rain.
Northumberland is warmer!
I peeled my eyes open at about 10am, and peered at the heap of clothes
on the suit case. Nothing waterproof and all of it in need of
pressing. So the morning was spent over the ironing board (glamour,
what glamour), and planning world conquest ("We should be in bed by
11(!) to ensure that we make the meeting bright eyed and on the ball.)
Lunch was a picnic, perched between the puddles in the UK Pavilion. It
was impossible to find a table in a restaurant or snack bar - the rain
had driven everyone in ahead of me.
At 5.00 I was offered shelter and a glass of wine in the deserted
Tunisian stand. The wine was cloudy, the glass as smeared as the filthy
sky.
Things perked up an a Brazilian cocktail event - the strongest
Caipirinha I have ever downed set the tone for the next few hours.
Then we gathered together an all female party to trail from the Carlton
to Le Suquet to find a restaurant that would fulfill the requirements of
the obligatory vegetarian.
Then - the sky opened. A downpour of biblical proportions, just as the
crowds were gathering for the Walter Sallis premiere, and my producer
and I were cutting through the back streets towards home.
We dodges, we ran, we waded through flooded streets. Alarms rocked the
night as cars rocked under the weight of falling water. Lights fizzed
and spluttered and plunged bars into darkness.
Finally we stood in a midst a spreading puddle in our shared studio. My
shoes had tripled in weight, and my feet were died a vile shade of
indigo - and my phone was stewing nicely in a pool of water at the
bottom of my bag.
Years ago I spent an evening with a group of execs who were celebrating
their 20th Cannes. They were trying to remember how it had worked
before the mobile phone.
On Sunday I will be forced to find out, first hand!

Cannes, Friday

7.30 am: Tumbled warm and crumpled from the train at 7.30. The last few
miles of track wind along the coast and allows some window leaning
(against - not out) to set the scene.
Unfortunately the scene is gray. The weather is cool, dull and
interrupted by frequent showers. It rains like a cow pissing - at one
point I was holding an umbrella over the laptop so that I could send and
urgent email and close up`.

10.00 am: Accreditation was swift and efficient - getting into films
less so. Queueing for tickets in the morning was use d to be highlight
of Cannes. All the producers etc camped in a line in the sun, keeping
places for those who went for coffee or rolls. The queue was next to
the official photographers tent, so you could kill some time looking for
faces on the red carpet of each premiere. It was time consuming, but at
least you started the day knowing if you were going to the Palais that
night and would have to change into evening dress.
Now my badge only entitles me to wait in line - in full evening dress
and high heels - until 10 minutes before the premiere for any unused
tickets. If there are no seats - then it's evening dress in the pub and
pizzerias.
This is no great shakes - there was only one evening film a wanted to
see, and I'll catch that during the next day. I just makes me sad to
look at my 10 year old gold silk frock hanging on the bathroom door and
know that it won't get an outing for yet another 12 months.

11.00am: I have nothing planned for the day.
Print up the one-page outline and a wonderfully timed and utterly
nonsensical article in the Time about the Ethiopian Ark of the
Covenant. That's my movie on the page (only with less sex and fewer
explosions)

Lunch: My, prices have rocketed! Bought a box of strawberries to share
on the terrace of the UK Pavilion.

3.30 pm: First attempt at a meeting - walk in of the street to the Irish
Pavilion and get in invitation to pitch over breakfast on Sunday.
Sounds enthusiastic (although actually he just wants to talk about the
movie my producer *didn't* make with her partner. If we can convince
him the project has legs it could unlock the path to serious development
money, and a recce trip to Ethiopia.

5.00pm: Dash to Palais for market screening of Heart of Fire
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1169272/> - set in Eritrea in 1981.
Scramble around the building looking for the correct sales agent to blag
a ticket from, and get chatting to a French security guard about
Ethiopian food. Turns out she ate at an Ethiopian Restaurant in
Washington DC 10 days ago, and thought it wonderful. Helps me find the
right booth, just in time.

5.30pm: Heart of Fire has a slightly pedestrian script fired up by the
performances of the children, particularly Letekidan Micael as the 10
year old heroine. The sound cut in and out all the way through the
screening. Wonderful landscapes, with Kenya standing in for Eritrea
throughout.

8.00pm: Head to apartment to change, then out to the Romanian party on
the beach. Great food, great music, lovely people. I cut out about
11.00, to find the Petit Majestic (a backstreet bar which acts as the
unofficial festival drinking spot, all plastic pint glasses and people
talking 15 to the dozen in the street.

Instead I bump into a friend from Berlin, and end up with an invitation
in the Century Club (which being members is full of old people), dancing
to the Clash, drinking cocktails sponsored by a Sheik and talking to an
American Producer about the about the 12th C Civil War between Maud and
Stephen. Only in Cannes.

I think I walked home....

Speaking of rust...

... there was quite a lot of that to scrape off yours truly to prepare
for Cannes.

I emerged from the woods with lovely soft skin (soft water) but
otherwise pretty mossy and smoke-stained, a bit like the Stone Caravan
itself.

So off come the three layers of woollies, the thermal undies, the layer
of smoke (I *do* wash daily up there, but cooking over wood does add a
delicious aroma of kipper. The hair is shorn (unlike the sheep, who are
still bundled up in ragged gray sweaters) and coloured, and then new
layers put on from the suitcase in storage (shoes, undies, skirt,
tshirt, sunglasses - and polish).

The urban disguise seems to have worked. No one has rumbled me yet.
But I had forgotten that 6 hours on the Croissette is harder on the feet
than hauling groceries up the side of a mountain. I'm knackered!

Paris had a surprise for me...

I first spent time in Paris 25 years ago, as a student, paying, I think
£5 a night for a room near Chatelet.

The hotel was a survivor from the 19th Century. Our room on the 4th
floor, had a bare wood floor, brass bedstead with a bolster, a rug, a
wash basin, and long windows that looked out not to the street but to
the light well. The lavatory was 3 doors further down the corridor, a
bath cost extra and involved a slightly longer walk. Breakfast was
bread and bowls of chocolat. I loved it.

Are there any hotels like this left? I doubt it; I looked at that same
hotel on-line a few weeks ago. It is now furnished throughout with twin
beds, in red and gray, all rooms are en suite, and the room where we ate
breakfast is now orange Formica and vending machines.

I'm used to traveling through Paris now, en route to Cannes, or to visit
colleagues. I started to believe that the city I remembered (Imagined)
had slipped away.

First surprise - on the metro, as I opened the door, there he was, the
little white cartoon bunny in blue overalls. After 25 years he still
has his poor paw trapped in the closing doors, which pinch "tres fort".
I thought he had been rescued and consigned to history long ago. Where
has he been hiding?

Then I discover Gare Austerlitz - from which my train is just pulling
away. It is a ridiculously quiet station, particularly after the bustle
of the Eurostar. In the hour I waited there only two trains left - to
Barcelona and Orleans.

It is a wonderful decayed building of sandstone, iron and wood, paint
blistered, plaster sprung, iron rusted as if the air of the
Mediterranean escaped from the arriving carriages with a sigh, and
seeped into the building over the decades.

And the best surprise. As I ate a large and not very exciting sandwich,
a fragment of bread fell to the floor.

Instantly I was surrounded by sparrows, wheeling over head, landing to
dispute crumbs.

There are no sparrows left in London. How has Paris managed to keep hers?

Then I realised that the whole great glass shed of a station was full of
the sound of sparrows singing.

I'm lying in the couchette, jammed between my bag, top and tail. It's
9.30, and in 10 hours time I wake up in Cannes.

From Snow to Sunshine in the course of 4 weeks.

Less than a month ago I celebrated finishing the draft of the Screenplay
>From Hell by brushing snow from the primroses at my door.

Now it's shirtsleeves and suncream and enough blue sky to fit out the
entire Dutch navy in bell bottoms.

Cannes in 10 days. I'll have to scrub up a bit first.

Gifts for writers

A neighbour asked me last night to propose a suitable birthday present
for an penniless aspiring children's writer, with a budget of £50-£60.

Any ideas?

Trouble is, as far as I can see there is really nothing a writer needs
beyond paper, a pencil and perhaps a Thesaurus. A laptop? Well beyond
the proposed budget. Time, will-power and inspiration? Not in the gift
of even the most generous of friends.

I couldn't recommend my favourite book for writers, "One Continuous
Mistake" by Gail Sher, as both gift giver and recipient are members of
an evangelical Christian church, and Sher's book is explicitly Buddhist
in inspiration. (Or rather, I did recommend it, but with the expected
outcome.)

Besides. that is one £7.99 paperback - not the large generous gift my
neighbour wanted to offer.

What emerged, as we ferreted around for ideas, was that my neighbour
imagined that all writers have the same approach and needs, and that I,
on the contrary, realised that all writers have wildly different
approaches and needs.

In the end I suggested a box filled with smaller gifts and treats, the
sort of things a hardworking penny-less writer might have fun opening
and playing with, and which would remind her that her friends knew her,
and wished her well and happy; a teapot for one, tea, biscuits, bath
treats, candles, coloured pencils, a good note book, a paperweight, a
photo holder, a CD of quirky music....

But what would you put in such a box - and what would you like to find
in it...?

(For me - a month's free coffee at Cafe Nero!)

(no subject)

The sun is shining (at last), I am sipping an excellent coffee, and I
have finished the Outline - the one I thought I could toss off before
the end of October.

This is very humbling. I have consistently underestimated the time it
would take me to complete this stage of the project. Despite turning up
at my desk every morning, 6 days a week, and producing reams of
material, I couldn't find shortcuts to produce 50 pages of story that
had a working beginning. middle and end, and smelt somewhat like a film.

Oh well. Live and learn.

Sorry for the extended silence - I made a New Year resolution not to
blog or watch TV (except Ashes to Ashes and Doctor Who...) until I had
finished.

From Snow to Sunshine in the course of 4 weeks.

Less than a month ago I celebrated finishing the draft of the Screenplay
>From Hell by brushing snow from the primroses at my door.

Now it's shirtsleeves and suncream and enough blue sky to fit out the
entire Dutch navy in bell bottoms.

Cannes in 10 days. I'll have to scrub up a bit first.

Who would've thought it? London elected Jack Aubrey as Mayor...