Haven't blogged here once for something like four weeks...

... and I feel I have been very remiss.  Over the last few months work has been pretty hectic, and when I’ve got home in the evenings I have tended to have some supper and then watch tv mindlessly or play about online.  I’ve written some fanfic and begun work a couple of new long original stories, but I haven’t made any progress on re-starting either of the two half-finished projects I was working on before “Gold Hawk” bit me last June; and although I have a fairly good “Gold Hawk” sequel outlined in my head, I haven’t started on that, either. 

So all my writing lately has been directed to the basically frivolous (albeit fun) activities of fandom.   I haven’t sent the pitch for “Gabriel Yeats” to anyone for ages, and haven’t even drafted a pitch for “Gold Hawk”.  And although I’ve been to the ballet and the opera and to Brighton and to WOMAD in Charlton Park, all of which have been tremendous, I’ve reviewed none of it.

And there’s been a heat-wave, which tends these days to leave me feeling as though I have raspberry jelly in my cranium instead of brain cells.

I’m going to try and get a grip on this.  Not on the raspberry jelly, but on the writing and blogging and generally making proper use of my brain and my free time.  I promise, I really am going to try and get a grip.  GET A GRIP, Ims!!

Feeling even more jelly-brained than usual this evening, having done a fairly busy day at work after being kept awake for most of the night.   I don’t know what the problem was, but there were about six blokes out on the railway line at about 2am, working.  They were shouting, and more importantly using some kind of metal cutting tool that made an appallingly loud noise.  They were there, using this tool, on and off till after 4.00.  The stretch of line was the bit directly opposite the flats and the din was appalling.  

All I could see in the dark was that they were wearing yellow flash clothing and that the tool one of them was using, the one which made this ghastly metallic screaming sound, also gushed out sparks.  I hope they weren’t stealing metal or something!  But thanks to them, I’ve had very little sleep – perhaps three hours in total, and I've felt frankly shitty for most of today.

But TGI, it's Friday!  Time for a quiet glass of wine with my supper, and a bit of lazy tele...

...and it's hot...

London is baking under a brilliant blue sky; summer arrived a couple of days ago, knocking most normal humans flat.  indoors, the temperature is 29 degrees - that's just below 80 F, for those of you on old money - and compared to out in the sun, indoors feels cool.

Luckily I knew it was coming.  What a great institution the Met Office is; accurate weather forecasts have not always been with us, after all.  Gods bless them and their weather satellites!  I was able to get to bed reasonably early last night and get up fairly early this morning.  It's now ten to two, or thereabouts, and I have washed a load of clothes and hung them to dry, and been into Brentford to go to the supermarket and the street market (for the excellent fruit and veg, if you're curious, as well as a chance to practice self-denial over a lot of temptations for foodies like an olive specialist and a stall from the Old Maids of Honour tea-rooms).  I've lugged back my week's groceries and veggies and brought my washing in again; it had dried in not much more than an hour.  I've baked four spinach and feta pies and braised some baby carrots and broad beans in lemon butter sauce, and cooked a big bag of fresh gooseberries.  I've had some lunch; and now I'm free to have a quiet afternoon.

Yesterday too I stayed in and took things quietly.  I finished reading "Wolf Hall" (superb) but then I got so hot and dopey I ended up having a siesta, and I may do the same this afternoon too.  But I'd like to get some writing done.  With the help of a lot of cold drinks.

I also want to paint my toenails; since I have no intention of wearing anything but sandals on my feet in this weather I may as well have coloured toes.  No-one's looking at my feet, I know, unless perhaps it's to wonder if they are the smelly ones; but it pleases me to have nail varnish on, anyway.

I finished the writing up of "Gold Hawk"; did I say that already?  I managed it, with a final push, by the story's first birthday, middle of last month.  It does still need some further revision; my dear beta-reader the DipGeek has given me some very useful feedback, and the last chapter needs to be tweaked a bit more.  But I'm not too disappointed in it.  It was never meant to be a work of any literary merit, but an adventure story and a piece of fun.  So if anyone reading it enjoys the story and roots for the characters, my work is done.

Now I'm neck deep in several short things all chugging along at their own pace, hoping to get one or two of them finished and make a return to one of the longer stories that have been in abeyance for a while (yes, there are several of them, too).  I'm no nearer finding an agent, no nearer being published anywhere except online, but I'm writing fairly steadily and I'm happy with that.  The Muse in her capricious way has given me a lot of stories to juggle at once, and I'm not a natural juggler, but I'm doing my best.  Creativity comes and goes, and I have always found that the best thing, if you possibly can, is to run with it...

Well, this is a pleasure...

I have a week off.

Nothing planned for it, not going away, not even going away for the weekend.  Nothing.  Yet there is so much to do!  I feel as though I may finally catch up with myself.  Work has been hectic lately (far, far better than being bored, I remind myself hastily - I have had jobs in the past that were really boring, and it's a seriously grim experience).  Life has felt like one long session of chase-my-own-tail, only without the fun that cats and dogs seem to get out of it, and I'm tired.

I've almost completely given up watching the tele lately, in order to get some more writing done.  I had read that it was a very effective trick, and I can now vouch for that.  I gave myself a long holiday from "Gold Hawk", and wrote a lot of other bits and bobs, and gave my brain a proper rest before facing up to the painful task of killing off my heroine's family.  The bits and bobs were fun to do - a few of them are on ICW and there are some others on a tumblr-writers' blog called jrfrustration, if you're interested (though be warned, the two letters at the beginning of that blog address are indicative)...  But now it's back to the real thing again, i.e. hurting poor Anna, and making Thorn feel bad.  I'm such a lovely mama to my characters.

Besides the writing, which I hope to do some of every day this week, I'm planning on taking in a couple of exhibitions and perhaps doing a bike ride along the Thames towpath.  I have some needlework (there are two blouses I want to let out and some trousers to take in, not to mention a pair of summer baggy trews that have been half-finished for about two years).  It's my week this week to clean the flat; bleah, but it has to be done.  I want to bake bread and make some dried-apricot jam and a couple of batches of proper crumbly fudge (I'm thinking one lot classic vanilla, one lot honey-walnut...).  I want to turn out my summer clothes, since out of the blue the weather has turned warm and bright and one can finally believe the spring is here.  I want to catch up with some of the weird bits of shopping that get postponed week after week because one simply doesn't have the effing time to go trailing around looking for odd things like expanding compost.  I want to de-mealy-bug my phalaenopsis again.  And I'd to try and catch up with the Dipterist, who I haven't seen for ages and who could probably do with a break (maybe I can bribe her with fudge?).  

Of course, that is a huge wish-list and I probably won't do the half of it.

I also aim to catch up on some sleep.  Did some of that this morning, which is why I'm now more than halfway through Monday already and haven't achieved very much.  I know it looks like sheer laziness!  But, oh, the bliss - having Monday off, and not having to leap from my bed and rush about! 

Okay, enough of this; I've got things to do.  Starting with lunch, and that cleaning.  Get the cleaning out of the way, and the rest of this week is mine to with as I please.  Mine, all mine!

It's late...

It's late and I should have packed up and gone to bed.  In a minute, or five, I will. But I want a little moan first, and I think I need to do some explaining, too.

I'm struggling at the moment.  Ever since the 'flu I have been having terrible trouble getting to sleep, and sleeping really badly when I do.  I've tried herbal teas, I've tried valerian, I've tried a bunch of other things including some I possibly shouldn't talk about in a public forum.  I've read relaxing books and watched relaxing ballet and relaxing soppy movies.  I've gone out, I've stayed in; gone to bed extra-early; gone to bed extra-late.  No good.  Work is busy and I'm post-viral tired anyway, and this is just the living end, it really is.

Then, just to cap that, I'm struggling with the writing as well.  I'm working through the revising and typing up of "Gold Hawk".  I had a real battle to get through chapter thirteen, in which a character I'm fond of dies; now I'm working on chapter fourteen, in which we find out about something rather important and hopefully a bit harrowing that happened five years ago. 

I knew when I wrote it that the first draft for this bit really, as they say in the States, sucked.  I ploughed on and did the best I could at the time, and promised myself I'd get it into shape when typing-up time came.  But it is proving a real stinker.  So much so that I am playing about with anything else I can find, procrastinating, trying not to face it again.  I've written quite a good totally new short story (love-at-first-sight among post-apocalyptic crazy Highlanders, anyone?) in the gaps between tearing my hair over what really happened to David and Andrew Maple in the St George's Day terror attack in Cambridge.  Which never happened.

I can't make up my mind whether I need to take a complete break and give myself some space, try to get my head clear, come back to this in a week or two; or whether I need to plough on, fight through it, one way or another.  I can't make my mind up.  And I'm tired.

Moan over.  Tomorrow is Friday, which is one good thing, anyway.

Simple pleasures of this February

Sunshine on a winter day.

Getting shot by a tangerine and smelling of citrus for the rest of the day.

Owning Frankentop.

Discovering Tumblr (even if I am a bit foxed by it)

Renner-fetish!

Snowdrops!

Doing some drawing again.

Knowing I am partway through chapter nine of "Gold Hawk" and the revisions are flowing well.

Meeting new interesting people.

Crocuses!

Being able to walk home in daylight.

Remembering crying into my binoculars at “Onegin” last week.

Daffodils!

“The Golden Cat” – finally!

Eviscerating lychees with my tongue.

Getting busier again at work.

Trade Fairs!

Orchids!

I love my life.

Time is of the essence

The Frankenlaptop is due to arrive some time this afternoon.

Being me, I will then take it to hear Freddy Kempf playing Chopin at the Queen Elizabeth Hall this evening.  This is probably the computer equivalent of buying special tummy-phones to play Mozart to your baby in utero, but is due simply to the fact that I need to go straight from work to the Southbank Centre if I'm to have time for some supper before the recital.

Very embarrassed, though, to learn that the poor Dipgeek has got the idea that Time is Of The Essence re delivering the Frankentop.  Time is, of course, but only in my self-absorbed little (or rather, rather large) head.  I really do want to get on with the revising of "Gold Hawk" and now that the new opening scene for Chapter 4 is completed I have nothing else to dawdle over.  But I realise that, in the bigger scheme of things, my writing is about as unimportant as things get.

It's important to me, anyway.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.  If I were to be told I had only six months to live I would quit my job in the blink of an eye, dearly though I love Kew Gardens, and focus on writing.  If money were no object and I could do whatever I wished for the rest of my life, I might not quit work, since I like the place and the people I work with (most of the time - there have been occasions when I have Wanted To Yell at Someone!! - I'm only human after all [and so is the someone]).  But I would cut my hours down even so, and focus on writing.

Oh well, it's not to be, I fear.  Not that I want to be told I have only six months, dear gods forbid; but "money is no object" would be rather nice...

Looking forward to Freddy Kempf's recital; and looking forward to "Onegin" at the Royal Ballet next week - have just discovered that as well as Laura Morera's for-me-perfect Tatiana I should also be getting the wonderful Gary Avis as Prince Gremin (the noble, decent chap Tatiana marries) which is a definite plus as he does a lovely line in noble decency!

But looking forward too to getting the Frankentop home and starting to learn how to animate it.  Even as a "brain in a jar" cannibalised computer it's still going to be a heck of a lot more up-to-date than the Old Lady.  I may find I simply turn it on and go aargh..

Possibly no more snow?

It snowed all day yesterday and for at least a chunk of the night (it was still coming down when I went to bed at 11.30).  But so far today there has been no more snowfall, and I think the temperature may have gone just a fraction above freezing this afternoon.  The BBC are promising no more for now, so I hope they're right.  I'm sorry, but I have reached the age where my first thought on seeing snow is "sprained ankle!" rather than "snowfight!". 

If I had someone to have a snowfight with, I might feel differently, of course.  Or time off to go trekking through it properly, somewhere rural, with good solid warm clothes and boots on, and hot chocolate at the end.  Preferably hot choc with maple syrup in...

I've been struggling - really struggling, to an embarrassing degree - with a small extra scene needed for chapter four of "Gold Hawk".  Four minor characters are talking, so it's nothing very serious, but I need to get across their different feelings about their situation, and I'm simply battling with it, and I don't know why...  Grr, the creative juices are odd things at times.  Maybe the Muse also doesn't like the snow.

So I ended up, on Sunday, doing a whole bunch of useful procrastination jobs; cleaning, washing machine, tidying stuff, re-threading beads, cooking risotto; and finishing a very peculiar novel by Sheri S Tepper, which I had previously almost made my mind up not to bother finishing.  That should tell you just how peculiar it was, since normally Tepper, even at her most sky-high loony, keeps me caught with her narrative drive.  She only gets things really right about one book in ten, for my money, but since that has led to "Grass", "The Family Tree", "The Gate to Women's Country" and "Gibbons Decline and Fall", all of which are terrific, I feel I have to keep giving her a chance.  But the book I've been reading, "The Waters Rising" is a frightful mess, to be honest.

Came in to work this morning to discover the Dipgeek is hoping to give me the "new" hot-rodded Frankenstein-laptop on Wednesday.  Hurrah; I should not doubt my friends. 

Snow...

It snowed, as we were promised, all of Friday, but today we've had relatively little, though the forecast was for more all day.  London being London, the roads and most of the pavements have mostly been gritted and salted, and are largely clear now, and as a result it's gone from being the pretty, white, crisp, fun kind of snow to being the grey, sludgey kind that is neither beautiful nor enjoyable.  Still, at least I've managed to get some grocery shopping done, and get to an internet café to buy some ballet and opera tickets (Covent Garden are doing Britten's "Gloriana" in the summer, yippee!).  If it had gone on snowing solidly all day today as well, I doubt if I would have left the house.

I'm struggling a bit, writing-wise; the Dipgeek, being as she is Ein Engel, has promised to set me up with one of her speciality cannibalised/rebuilt laptops, to replace the Old Lady, who has pretty much conked out.  She even knows how to keep the Old Lady's hard drive useable, through some bizarre shenanigans involving the computer equivalent of putting a brain in a jar (I am tempted to rename The Dipgeek Dr Hhffuurfhurr - except that I can't spell it, what a surprise!). 

But I don't know if there's any point in going on writing on the Old Lady, in case the brain-in-a-jar system doesn't work after all.  It would be madly frustrating to have voluntarily increased the amount of material I couldn't access.

I shouldn't doubt my friends, should I?  However, in the meantime, the sequel possibilities for "Gold Hawk" are simmering away nicely.  Maybe it's best if they simmer until done.  I've bought some more A5 notebooks in the hope of getting started on Volume 2, potentially to be called "The Midwinter Sacrifice", soon.  Then Vol 3 will be called "Lyonesse". How strange the simmerings of the creative juices are; I know the plots and which characters are going to come back, and when, and who is going to appear for the first time.  On top of this, the three little bits of fanfic I was palying with have all gone rather well; two are finished and a longish one is almost done. 

I wish there were more hours in the day; or that I could do without sleep altogether; or that I didn't need to work at all (which would be best!).  Something like that, anyway.  I wish I could write full-time.

A girl can dream...

I had another vivid dream last night.  I can only suppose that the damp, chilly weather and general wintry darkness and dimness have some kind of stimulating effect on the bit of the brain that initiates dreaming - the hypothalamus, is it?  This one started odd (i.e. normal for a dream), turned very nasty indeed for a bit, and then, as if to compensate, went completely overboard on the happy ending. 

I was crossing Kew Bridge on my way home, and I looked down and  saw someone in a bobble hat riding my bicycle along the mud banks beside the Thames, heading in the direction of the railway bridge.  In the dreaming world, my bike normally lived on a clothes-horse in the foyer of the block of flats I live in (in the waking world it has a different home!) & I hadn't lent it to anyone.  So I ran in pursuit, down the steps onto the river bank.  But by the time I got there the tide had come in, and I found myself falling, as if sucked inexorably, into the river.

People drown in the Thames every year; it's not a good river to fall into, and I'm not a particularly strong swimmer.  Clearly my subconscious knows this.  I thrashed and yelled and struggled, and went under, and was carried away upriver, shrieking my head off each time I surfaced and holding my breath desperately each time I went underwater.  I shot the bridge and was heading out into the middle of the main channel.  It was dark and cold, and I went under again and thought "I'm going to bloody drown, what a farce". I shut my eyes and accepted it, since there wasn't anything else to do.

Suddenly a pair of very strong arms grabbed me and pulled at me; and I grabbed back and held on.  The rushing din in my ears stopped and a voice said to me "You can stop holding your breath now, you're out of the water."  So I opened my eyes and found I had been dragged from the river, and imminent death, onto the banks of Brentford Eyot, by the Crush Of The Moment.  Good man. 

Since I was soaking wet and muddy, and had swallowed a fair amount of the Thames, which I was frantically trying to spit out, I was about as unappealing as a plump middle-aged woman can be.  Nonetheless my Hero smiled at me - swoon! - and then he said "I'm Aaron, by the way."  I gobbed up some more filthy water and replied "No you're not, you're an actor, don't quote your own lines at me."  Then I woke up, with my pulse thundering, though whether from the near-drowning bit of the dream or the >swoon!< part I can't say. Either way, I couldn't get back to sleep again.

Luckily at work today I have been doing filing and data entry.  Both of which can be done when tired. 

My grandmother always insisted that bad dreams are caused by indigestion. I have no idea of this is true, but I certainly did eat too much yesterday, so maybe in this case it was.  But today was a fast day - I've been very happy so far with the five-two diet, and have just switched back on to it after the Christmas break.  So I'm typing this in the large part of my lunch hour left after eating three rice cakes and a satsuma.  Supper is due to be salad; and then I will have a peaceful evening typing up some more "Gold Hawk" (I'm partway through revising chapter three now) and get an early night.  Hopefully, one in which my dreams will not involve near-drowning.

Until New Year's Eve, then...

It seems the nutjobs were indeed wrong, since the world did not end at 11.35am today.  However, today is the last time I’ll have guaranteed access to the internet until December 31^st.  So, the continuation of history notwithstanding, this is probably my sign-off for 2012. 

If the world does end today, just a little later than predicted, it’s going out on a high of sorts for me.  The sun is shining, the temperature is above zero, I saw a jogger dressed as Father Christmas this morning (complete with heart-rate monitor), the trees on Brentford Eyot are gleaming in their winter bark colours of red-gold and olive- green, there’s a lovely dog running about on the Green, I have coffee and nougat and sesame biscuits in the office, I’ve revised and typed up to the end of chapter two of “Gold Hawk” and am happy with it so far, and I have the next nine days off work.  And last night I met TCI and G for a pre-Christmas beer-and-nachos at the Prince’s Head in Richmond, and a cute chap a couple of tables away kept making eyes at me.  Think a balding Jason Isaacs crossed with a balding Liev Schreiber; i.e. seriously attractive, despite the follicular issues (the nachos at the Prince’s Head are excellent, too, but that's not my photo, just one I swiped off the internet.  Our Nachos had lots more cheese, plus lashings of guacamole and sour cream, and the beers should be Fuller's Organic Honeydew, not whatever that is [looks like a Guinness and a pint of orange squash, actually]).

Got home, a little tipsy and very cheerful, packed my bags for Christmas, discovered I had not posted K’s present – boll*cks! – put it to take to the post office in my lunch break today, and actually got myself to bed at a reasonable hour.  I then dreamed I was hiking in the snow in the Cairngorms with a certain JL Renner.  When we stopped for lunch he made hot chocolate over a campfire for me.  Good man! 

That makes three really delightful hunk-dreams in the last few days; I am now married to William Houston, RDJ drives my removal van, and Mr Renner makes me hot choc.  It seems my subconscious is on a high of sorts as well.

Solstice Greetings, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you!

Anyone want a laugh?

If you'd like a slightly peculiar read for the weekend, or for the Christmas break, drop me a line.  Chapter one of "Gold Hawk" (at least, draft version 2 of "Gold Hawk" - further revision may yet occur!) is now available for Reading Group review purposes. 

So - would you like to be in my Reading Group?  Get in touch if so.

It isn't quite that simple, actually.  I need to trust that you aren't some kind of weird, twisted sort who will pinch my magnum opus.  You would need to be seriously weird and twisted, I'll grant you, since this story isn't nearly classy enough to be really worth stealing.  It's fairly frivolous stuff with no pretensions to literary quality - think Avengers/X-men Fan Fiction, filtered through a distorting imagination, and you're close to home.  But I'm allowed a bit of creator-paranoia, I hope. I don't want to be plagiarised; not even of my lightest matter.

Anyway, it pleases me to see chapter one revised and typed up and looking like a real story (instead of looking like a dog-eared A5 notebook filled with my best awful scrawl in black biro). 

December weather arrives, I swear, escape disaster, and sing in public

Paphos was warm.  Not outright hot, except for the first day (my birthday - what bliss to swim in the sea, sunbathe with a good book and eat a large banana split in the sunshine, in early December!), but the kind of warmth where one can stroll and relax and sightsee wearing jeans and a tee-shirt and a pair of sandals.  A couple of days were sunny, a couple were overcast, one was rainy (with a spectacular thunderstorm), and one was bright but very, very windy.  Not bad for December.

But shortly after I got back to the UK, the winter weather arrived here, with a huge wallop of thick white frost and temperatures that have stayed below zero all day.  Sigh.  At least it didn't do that in Cyprus.

Coming home, last Saturday evening, I found a note stuck to my bedroom door saying "The washing machine flooded, some water went under your door, hope everything's okay".  Not a good thing to return to.  I unlocked and opened the door with a sinking heart, and saw a massive dried-out tide-mark about four feet into the room, and I stood there clutching the handle of my suitcase and swearing like a marine.  A very angry marine with Tourettes. 

I could see at once that the big canvas bag I had at the end of my bed, with all my spare bedding stored in it, had borne the brunt of it, but short of turning out I had no way of knowing how much further it had spread under the bed - & into all the stuff like paintings and electrical goods, and all the pictures for my 2013 calendar, that I have stored there.  It was late and I was tired and cold and I just couldn't face it, so I went to bed and slept - surprisingly well, which shows I was tired - above who-knew-what.

But the gods were on my side.  When I gritted my teeth next morning, and shifted the wet bag of sheets and towels to look behind it, I found one soaked shoebox containing my least-favourite pair of sandals (not the end of the world if they never recover), and a second damp shoebox containing photos (pics on old-fashioned photographic paper are pretty salvageable if separated quickly and air-dried).  And everything else was fine.  Basically, the linen bag had sopped all the water up and held it like a sponge.  And since Sunday was a cold but dry day, with a good breeze, I was even able to get the sheets and towels dried off.  They're now stacked in the corner, smelling a bit funny but otherwise okay, waiting to be washed and dried again properly over the next week or so.

Someone up there must like me.  What's more, we didn't need a plumber - the leak happened because my flatmate had taken out the washing machine filter to clean it and put it back upside down. 

What else?  Since I got back, I've been practising for the carol service, chugging in to work through the freezing fog, and starting to type up "Gold Hawk" in the evenings.

The carol service was today.  It went well and had a lovely atmosphere.  I think I had got my head round "Rejoice and be merry!" and the lovely piece of Bach, and I survived the Irish carol (largely by piping right down and just relaxing into the very beautiful male voices that were booming away behind me like a granite wall of sound), but I never did get the hang of the horribly complicated arrangement of "There is a flower".  And while I was away in Cyprus the others had learned parts for all the congregation carols; so I was left rumbling along in my usual way, just singing the melody an octave down, and feeling rather out-on-a-limb while everyone else harmonised around me.  That kind-of sums up my singing career, come to think of it.

I do feel Christmas is coming, now, though.  Nothing like a good dose of carols and readings to remind one of that.

And O, fan-girl-happiness, my Dvd of "The Bourne Legacy" has arrived.  Along with David Bintley's new "Cinderella" for BRB, which was a birthday present from my brother Stephen ("legacy" is my birthday present from me).  So I have a couple of pleasant nights in to look forward to - one of ballet and one of lechery...

Singing, writing, and ballet

It’s raining again.  It occurs to me that I’ve probably been rained on, either coming in to, or going home from, work (or both) about 40% of this year.  That is way too much rain.  My brother Steve, down in Bath, has seen the river Avon flood his garden three times in as many days this month.  It’s cold and wet and it seems to be dark all the time, and it depresses me.

We had another choir rehearsal today for Kew's Christmas carol Service; Nigel has rejoined the choir and is alternately playing the piano and booming away richly from the back, while a chap called Tim with Burne-Jones hair, has taken over the conducting.  I am now in my regular annual state of nerves regarding my singing, coupled this year with a vague desire to throw something at John Rutter.  He cannot leave a tune alone!  Why can’t we all just sing parts and harmonise in a normal way?  I have enough trouble with that, after all.  But no, Mr Rutter wants us altos to do a syncopated descant with massive intervals and lots of sharps and flats.  I know it isn’t in the Christmas spirit of me at all, but drat the man! 

I’ve been looking at my notes for “Gold Hawk; the nameless sequel” and trying to be realistic about them; there are some fun ideas there, but it isn’t cooked yet and it’s silly to pretend it is.  I want to spend more time with Thorn and Anna, but I’ll lose them if I try to force them into a story they’re not ready for.  So my next projects, when I get back from my week in Cyprus (can’t wait can’t wait), will be a) start typing “Gold Hawk” up, and revising as I go, and b) go back to either “Midnight in the Café Tana” or “Fortitude” and finish one or both of them.  Probably starting with “Café Tana”, since that’s the most coherent.  I’ve left Mel, David and Yaz in rather a ticklish situation, and things are due to get worse before they get better.

I sent “Gabriel Yeats” to the last agent on the initial shortlist 2 months ago, and have heard nothing back.  Sigh.  I wish I were getting somewhere with this agent business.  The idea of dispensing with one altogether and trying to do my own thing lurks in the back of my mind, tempting me.  My relative lack of computer skills holds me back (I have never figured out how to drive eBay, after all, so the idea of me producing a properly formatted e-book is frankly asinine).  And I know that for 99.9% of electronic publishing, this is the quickest way to sink your work without trace.  The odds are worse than the odds for keeping going as an artist (apparently an average 96% of Fine Art graduates – that’s me, folks - give up practising as artists within two years of leaving art school). 

The first thing, the foremost thing, the thing that drives me, is the writing itself.  If I can keep going with that, then at least I am generating new work.  Hopefully the more I write the more fluent I get as a writer; hopefully...  Meanwhile I guess I need to find another agent to try.

What else is going on?  I had an evening at the ballet last week; a triple bill, and the second cast, so a chance to see several young hopefuls in action.  Much though I love Marianela Nuñez, in “Concerto” she gets partnered by that sweet-faced blank Rupert Pennefather, and I find his gently void expression distracting (at least in the second movement of “Concerto” the chap is meant to be blank).  Besides, when Melissa Hamilton is on stage my eyes always slide towards her; she is completely electrifying whenever and wherever she turns up.  The final movement brought another bright spark in Claire Calvert, one of those dancers who make everything look easy.  I am quite certain it isn’t! – but there is a casualness in her grace that conveys almost luxurious confidence.  

The second item on the bill was “Las Hermanas”, featuring plenty of MacMillan’s signature ballet sex-and-violence.  It’s based on “La casa de Bernada Alba”.  Mysteriously the sisters have lost their names  - Angustias, Martirio and Adela have become simply The Eldest Sister, The Jealous sister and The Youngest Sister, which feels odd when you know the play – I kept thinking of them as Angustias etc.  No matter; it was still a striking distillation, though the introduction of Pepe as an on-stage figure weakens the sense of bottled-up tension Lorca creates.  But of course, one couldn’t have the aforesaid signature sex/violence without a male character on stage, and Thomas Whitehead overcame his very unpleasant wig to make a striking icon of machismo.  It’s lovely to see Alina Cojocaru get to sink her teeth into something dramatic occasionally – she embraced Angustias’ repression and agony with poignant force. 

The final item was “Requiem”, heart-breakingly sad with its dying Everyman and floating consoling angels, led by the luminous Yuhui Choe.  Not much one can say about “Requiem”; at the risk of sounding facetious, it does what you’d expect.  And at the risk of sounding kinky, it’s always great to see Edward Watson suffering (blimey, yes, that does sound kinky; oh dear, what a pity, never mind).

I haven’t much else to report.  Off to “Carmen” tonight; possibly to a talk tomorrow night; probably to another talk Thursday night; packing Friday night; off to Cyprus at crack of dawn Saturday.