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!

Dreams

I had two very odd dreams last night.  As always, they leave me wondering what the heck my subconscious is playing at.

Dream 1: My former boss from when I first started at Kew has got a new job - as Director of Tourism for Bury St Edmunds.  Now, I doubt very much if Bury St Edmunds has a Director of Tourism in the waking world, but in the dreamworld it does, and it's Helen.  I don't think she was too enthusiastic about it, though, as the main thing she was doing was sending everyone she knew on facebook a steady series of chivvying messages about how important it was that we all visit Bury St Edmunds ASAP.

I've never been there, have no particular desire to go there, and have no idea where this sprung from.

Dream 2: I am married to William Houston.  Now, as a ginger fetishist and a fan of intense actors generally, I do know where this one came from!  But it strikes me as odd to dream about being married to a long-standing minor crush of mine when I am deep, deep in the throes of a major crush on someone else.  Incidentally, the married dream-me was very happy, though as I distinctly remember calling my handsome ginger hubby a "daft bugger" at one point I guess my subconscious doesn't think marriage would make me any less charmless than I am as a singleton...  Oh well.

Oh well, indeed.  At least a girl can dream, eh?!

And meanwhile the freezing cold weather has improved marginally today - the temperature has actually gone above zero this afternoon, for the first time since Monday morning, and the 4-days-thick frost on Kew Green has all thawed, at least for now.  Robins are singing bravely in the raw, damp air when I go out. 

The wrong man is on my roof

Well, there’s a man on the roof of my office, and a mosquito inside it.  Why can’t it be the other way around?  Not that I necessarily want this particular man in my office, but any human would be preferable to a ruddy mozzie – which I have so far singularly failed to squish.  Grr. 

I know I am turning into a dirty old woman now I’ve seen the wrong side of forty, but honestly – why do maintenance men always look like one of the thuggy guys from “Eastenders”?  They never look like Will Houston, or Gary Avis, or Roderick Williams, or Jeremy Renner...    Or even like Mr Marinated Artichokes, or the Lovely Wes.   I’ve got a great view of this chap’s legs, but I have seen much better legs in my time.

I should explain that I’m suffering my usual atypical response to medication.  Most women lose their sex drive when they get a mirena coil, but mine trebled – it feels like I’m channeling Samantha Jones the entire time.  I’m sitting here eating black olive paste on home-baked mixed seed bread and thinking about what I could do with the black olive paste if I had the attractive man of my dreams (as opposed to the unattractive man of the roof) in here with me; it’s so weird.  I have never been a Samantha Jones-type girl.  Never.  I’ve been a good, quiet, modest lass (as is befitting in one so stout and plain).  But now – well, I have never stared at so many men’s bums in the street as the last few months.  It’s just really, really weird.

I haven’t started acting like Samantha Jones, I should add; just thinking like her.  I actually haven’t got a clue how to become a voracious man-eater.  Indeed, the idea is rather comical.  Whereas becoming a sneaky old letch seems to come naturally.  Oh well.  Thank goodness for the beautiful bodies and faces of actors and dancers and so on, then.  At least I have something to leer at.

Mind you, it’s also since the mirena settled down that I got this wild drive of creative juice and started writing again.  So maybe being juicy in one sense goes with being juicy in the other.  If so, I cannot complain, for anything that keeps my creativity up is welcome and blessed - even if it is also inconvenient and baffling!  But I can and do complain that the man on the roof isn’t a hunk.  Drat it, if I’ve got to be disturbed by all this crashing around overhead, I demand eye candy in compensation!    

One visual pleasure is presenting itself to me; not a man, but a tree.  There’s a big maple across the Green with leaves that are slowly turning the most glorious flaming orange-red, from the top down, as the autumn nights grow cooler.  The colour is practically incandescent in the sunlight.  It’s simply stunning.

The incomprehensible Muse...

I just don't get my Muse.  She settles down for months to meditate on her navel and say "Not now dear" if I try to do anything creative, and then suddenly, completely out of the blue, starts shouting at me; "Get up off your lazy a&&e, fat girl!  Get with it! - we've got work to do!"  Two things seem to have galvanised her this time.  One was the fact that in my frustration at an unfinished story that simply wouldn't come, I had set out to draft a synopsis, to try and work out if the problem lay with some unresolved narrative issues I hadn't faced up to.  This has been a revelatory exercise in the past, so was well worth a try - but on this occasion it simply served to show me I really did know exactly where this story was going.  The second thing seems to have been the jolt of adrenaline I got from walking into William Houston outside the health food shop. 

I have been writing hard for the last two evenings, and cannot wait to get home and get on with some more.  I am even slightly wishing I wasn't going out tomorrow and Friday evenings, because I can't take the laptop and will have to make do with mere paper if I am to write while I'm sitting on the tube, and during the interval...

It is exhilarating when the creative fire is flowing like this.  But I do sometimes wish I could control the Muse a bit more.  Anyway, I owe Mr Houston a happy thank you, since his appearance on the scene seems to have given her a kick up the backside, just when I was starting to worry she had settled into hibernation.

Good omens

There have been a few times in my life when I have felt as though I was being swept up in a storm of weird coincidences.  Some of them were so bizarre that I have only told them to a select few people - those who I trust not to take the mickey out of me.  But each time this has happened, it has seemed to bring me luck. I tend to think of it as the universe nudging me; as if the Almighty, whatever you conceive Him/Her/It to be, has leaned down and given the air around me a stir, so that amazing things suddenly swirl into my ken.  So nowadays if it happens I tend to think it is a good omen; heaven is on my side, and if I run with this energy and let it galvanise me, catch Kairos by his forelock and go with him, it will bring me luck. 

This weekend I did some grocery shopping, bought a bundle of wallflowers for the front garden, and then took another deep breath and went and sent the sample chapters of "Gabriel Yeats" off to another agent.  The last items on my list of jobs were pumpkin seeds, linseeds, green tea and cashew nuts, so I then headed to my local health food store, As Nature Intended.  As I turned into the door, a tall-ish man came hurrying out carrying a bag; I sprang out of his way politely, and he caught my eye and gave me a quick grin as he passed.  And I nearly fell flat on my face with shock; because it was William Houston, the brilliant actor I would love to see playing my protagonist, Simon Cenarth, if "Gabriel Yeats" were ever to be filmed.  I feel all fluttery inside again, just remembering.  Be still my beating heart. 

I checked my shopping list again, to give myself time to close my mouth and straighten my face out, and then went on into the shop.  I fought off the urge to follow him instead and see where he went - I'm rather proud of my self-control, since I would have loved to know what he was doing in my neck of the woods!

When I'd got home, and put away my shopping, and put the wallflowers plants in a bucket of water until I could get to planting them, I was still shaking inside.  I made myself a cup of Yogi Teas "Frauentee", which I find very calming.  It was the last bag in the box (bother).  I don't know if you ever use Yogi Teas, but every tea bag has a little motto on it, rather like fortune cookie mottos (only more Buddhist).  My tea bag motto on Saturday afternoon was "Remember that the other person is yourself".  

Of course, as I was still fizzing with excitement from seeing The Man Who Should Play Simon, there was only one "other person" in my mind.  And I thought "How perfect!".  Because in the story, Simon is my alter ego; so the "other person" could indeed be said to be my self...  Please, please, lord, let it be a good omen.

The agents I've just sent "Gabriel Yeats" to are the fifth lot on the list.  They probably should have been the first, since they're quite a prestigious firm.  I didn't initially think there was any point in my approaching them at all.  But then I discovered they represent several authors I really admire, and I thought "The heck with it, why am I acting humble and 'oh-no, not-little-me"~ish about this?".  So I have given it a go with the Prestigious Firm.  Meeting Mr Houston was an enormous shock, but it has given me a real boost.  I have faith again that one day this will come together; I will get published, I will be read.  It can happen.  If I just can walk into Will Houston in a shop, just half an hour after posting GY, then anything can happen.  I am in God's hands, but it is a safe place to be.

On Sunday I planted the wallflowers, hand-washed a load of clothes, had a lovely bike ride (not going anywhere, just randomly circling local streets in the autumn sunshine), watered the garden, cooked a vegetable lasagne, and patched a pair of trousers.  A constructive weekend altogether.

Happy Easter!

...whatever your religious tendencies, Happy Easter/ Passover/ Eostre/ Spring Equinox (okay, the equinox was over a fortnight ago, but it all ties up together as one big spring festival if you're broadminded). Here in the UK we now have a four-day weekend, and as I am finally not in a job that follows a seven day flexible rota I actually get all four of those days off! This alone is cause for celebration. I'm going over to my mother's for a little break, probably too much to eat, and some healthy country walks, and possibly some sketching. Must remember to pack binoculars and watercolour box.

Note to self; try to get to an internet café at some point to investigate possibilities for my holiday in May. I wonder if I'll be able to afford to go to Greece? I'd love to go back to Thassos again.

Did some writing last night. I've got the laptop settled in, in the pull-out writing drawer/shelf thingy of my new desk, and I put on a "Dead Can Dance" album and got stuck in to one of the New Pieces - henceforth to be referred to as "Café Tano" - and wrote half a chapter. No idea if it's any good; time will tell. I can't see these things clearly for myself (neither when I first start nor half the time later either). I had realised a few weeks ago that this story would - might - work better as a first person narrative, and so far so good, at least as far as writing it instead of scratching at it fruitlessly in my brain. "Ramundi's Sisters" is slowly getting typed up, with assorted tweakings as I go. "Fortitude" has just moved on again after a hiatus; light dawned and I realised that the PoV had to go back to a different character, after a whole chapter of being bounced around inside Iain Siward's tormented brain. It feels so good to do some writing. It always feels SO GOOD...

One fun thing I forgot to mention last weekend - tired out after all that gardening on Saturday afternoon I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to watch "Robin Hood" for a laugh. It isn't what I'd call required tele, but is highly entertaining stuff, and features the handsome Richard Armitage (who always reminds me rather of pictures of my late father as a young man) as a snarlingly villainous Guy of Gisborne, which is reason enough in itself to watch a bit of harmless-fun tv. But oh joy, I got a real treat - the actor I dream of seeing play Simon Cenarth, William Houston, was in it. He came leaping out of a bush waving a sword, and my heart nearly popped out of my mouth. Quite what an actor of his calibre is doing in a piece of happy-but-dumb twaddle like "Robin Hood" I don't know - his intensity fair burned off the screen, and he certainly makes the insipid Jonas Armstrong look ten times the wet blanket he usually does. Okay, that's rhetoric - I know perfectly well what Mr Houston is doing in "Robin Hood" - he's paying his mortgage and keeping his kids in shoe leather, like every other working actor. And he was a joy to watch doing it, too.

Couldn't find a still of him in action to post here, so I've made do with a fairly normal looking shot instead - see above, since I've never managed to get pictures to go anywhere but at the top. I do not yet have the mastery of blogger, not by a long pull.

Thursday ...

Thursday lunchtime; reheated vegetarian haggis. My appetite is improving, which is good – today I looked at my plate and thought “That looks alright” whereas yesterday my feeling was more “Oh dear, I suppose I’d better eat something…” But I’ve had a nasty gippy stomach since Sunday afternoon, and it’s good just to be more like myself after the I-am-a-rung-out-dishcloth feeling that gastric trouble tends to leave me with.

I spent yesterday evening quietly sitting down and getting on with some revision. Not exam revision (wake up at the back there); I’m revising GY for the third and, I am beginning to allow myself to hope, last time. Revising your own writing is such a tricky, tricky game; I cringe away from it in dread and look for procrastination opportunities almost anywhere (bar the ironing). It's necessary to be in a frame of mind that is both critical and detached; but, at least if you are me, the critical tends to leap to the front, waving her rifle like Delacroix’ Liberty, ready to shoot everything that moves. One has to be both able to be completely ruthless about the excision of every bit of weak prose or flannelly excess, while simultaneously being quietly kind to oneself in order to counteract the tendency to decry everything one has ever done as total BullS**t. It’s a strange juggling act.

I was brought up not to praise myself, and to assume I had done things wrong, or at least a lot less well than I ought to have done them, and I guess this is the characteristic that kicks in. I start re-reading a piece of my own writing, and a whole Euripidean chorus of criticism begins shouting in my mind. At times it is almost literally like stichomythia, every sentence the subject of a smart retort (invariably negative) from the interior textual demolition team. A few months ago, working on the second revision, I was frequently completely convinced that GY was the proverbial pile of pants. I battled on as much out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness as any conviction that anyone would ever find anything to enjoy in this witless heap of self-indulgent tosh…

Oddly, feeling slightly under-par seems to have helped. The revision has reached the stage where one finally has to say “It’s no good, I don’t need two adjectives there”, and “It doesn’t need another reference to Simon’s hair!”, and “This paragraph is floppy, I must tighten it up”. To my surprise and pleasure my brain last night seemed to be up to this task, and settled to it with a discipline and a calm I cannot always count upon.

One thing I’m aware of is that, funnily enough, my background in visual art helps me here. Compared with trying to “revise” a painting or a drawing, where at any moment any single stroke may ruin the whole completely irreparably, tweaking a piece of writing is much less alarming. I revise a lot as I write, at first draft level, simply because it is so easy to – try it this way, then try it that way, then try turning the whole thing around, then go back to the first way and see if that reads better now… It’s rather like running through one’s lines when one is in a play, thinking through how to stress things, how much one can lift or lower a particular word, how much (to be blunt) one can milk something touching without overdoing it. The actor can revise repeatedly at rehearsal; the writer can do draft after draft, cover every page of the manuscript with notes... The artist wielding a stick of charcoal can simply get it right, hold their balance and ride the wave, or cock it up. Excuse the mixed metaphors there.

Thinking of actors, I just learned something peculiarly pleasing. Going back through GY again reminded me of the actor who I’d love to see playing Simon Cenarth, a red-haired bloke from Ulster called William Houston. A girl can dream! That's him at the top, looking appropriately grim as Coriolanus at the RSC. I looked him up online to see if he is likely to be reappearing on the London stage or on tele in the near future, and found an old interview with him, in which he said that one of his ambitions is to appear in “Duck Variations”, one of my favourite plays (it’s a delightful piece, a quirky, technically rather difficult and quietly moving comedy). The last piece of art I had exhibited was actually called “Duck Variations” in its honour. I felt extraordinarily pleased by this. He also said his favourite holiday destination was the Greek Islands, which I can relate to, goodness knows… He sounded like a nice fellow, all in all; intelligent and articulate, if perhaps a trifle intense. And he’s a bloody good actor; he’d be perfect as Simon.

Thursday lunchtime

I had a wonderful dream last night - a little crazy, of course, being a dream, but cheering nonetheless...
In this dream I was standing in the Orangery at work, in Edwardian costume, surrounded by other people in similar clothes. I had a very strong impression that this was because it was 1908 or thereabouts, not because we were wearing fancy dress. There was a carol service about to start and I was clutching a service sheet. Music began, and just as I drew breath to sing I realised I was alone right at the front and so my loud and very distinctive voice would be very noticeable and possibly even drown other voices out. I felt a rush of fear and embarrassment. Suddenly someone was beside me who took my hand. I looked round to find a red-haired man standing there, who grinned at me and began to sing; I took heart and sang too, no longer caring at all the other people staring at us. We sang a hymn beginning "Alleluia, the streets of London/ Echo with resounding joy", which certainly has a confident, days-of-Empire ring to it! The tune, a four-square chorale type of thing, has been going round in my head ever since.
I know this is silly, but this really boosted my spirits this morning, despite the rain. The red-haired man looked like the actor William Houston, who would be perfect casting for Simon Cenarth, the protagonist of "Gabriel Yeats", if it were ever to be filmed. It left me feeling vaguely encouraged and once again contemplating the idea of trying to find a publisher for "G.Y.", although the idea scares me dreadfully.
Writing was always my other great joy besides painting and drawing, right from early childhood. Telling stories, and always, mysteriously, having more stories to tell coming up where the last one had come from. Yet the thought of trying to get my work published is even more intimidating than the prospect of trying to get my art work seen and sold.
I must learn to act without fear.