No moaning today...

...nor grumbles, nor gripes. I have realised with a nasty jolt that lately I have done nothing but complain about *s*t*u*f*f* in this blog, and truly I have bugger all to complain about compared to many people, not to mention other life-forms.

So here instead are some of the good things. Brace yourselves; this is Imogen celebrating instead of Imogen whinging.

1. It hasn't rained yet today.

2. A nice-looking bloke in an open-topped car grinned at me this morning as I was cycling to work (realistically, I know this was probably because I was showing a hell of a lot of leg owing to my skirt blowing back, but I am only human and a grin is still a grin).

3. The linden trees are in full blossom everywhere and the scent is indescribable; sweet yet herbal, hauntingly evocative of open spaces and clear light, and other such things that are lacking in west London but delightful still when called up in the memory.

4. I have found out how to work the Dvd player at home, and was able to sit down and watch a good movie, that night a couple of evenings ago when I felt so terrible.

5. Ever since watching said good movie ("Master and Commander") I have been humming the lovely, dancing melody of the piece by Boccherini that is played as the film ends; unlike most tunes that get into one's head and won't leave, this one continues to delight me even after several days. As does the memory of the film; I had forgotten how brilliantly it conjures up a totally believable shipboard life, how damned exciting it is, and how marvellous the cinematography is. I had forgotten that Russell Crowe gives one of his best performances in it (he sleepwalks through "Gladiator", yet is capable of immense subtlety - see this, or "LA Confidential", or "A Brilliant Mind" in which he underplays stringently, in a rôle where a lot of actors would have chewed the scenery until they collapsed choking on it). I had forgotten that Paul Bettany is also terrific (usually I find him slightly creepy) and the rest of the cast bats right down the order.

6. The Gardens here at Kew are looking lovey - the Mediterranean Garden is a mass of cistus and phlomis and my beloved Spartium juncium, and awash in sweet and resinous incense-y scents. The garden at home is also looking good, though on a laughably small scale in comparison; my first marigold came out yesterday, a tiny buttonhole of egg-yolk yellow, clashing wonderfully with the pink wild geranium growing next to it.

7. I saw "Ondine" at the Royal Ballet a couple of weeks ago and was blown away by it; what a ballet, what a score, and oh how divinely wonderful is Miyako Yoshida...

8. I had a great writing fit last night and cracked a couple of knotty revisions in "GY".

9. It's the end of the day and I can go home now and have a drink.

Colour Therapy?...

or, is red food restorative?

My mother has a theory that it is. If I were living with her at the moment, I would go home and wail pathetically at her, and she would give me beetroot and tomato risotto and a glass of red wine for supper. And she would say "That'll put some blood back into you."

I had beetroot for lunch, thinking of her, and I'm tempted to do the risotto and red wine thing for supper too, although I really shouldn't be drinking mid-week. But - well - what can I say? Holy hormones? - holy cow, yes! Boy I just love (not) being a woman at these times. I'm tired and crotchetty and washed out, and I feel as if something has beaten me about the midriff for twelve hours straight.

Hoping to cycle home without being rained on tonight, after being caught in a spectacular cloudburst yesterday evening thanks to stopping for five minutes to buy ibuprofen at Boots on the Chiswick High Road.

Things to do when you're dead...

... in Chiswick or anywhere else for that matter.
An amazing idea for ecological burial; new to me, at least
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2004/02/11/freeze-dried-dead-people.htm

As ever, I don't seem to be able to post that as a link.

Meanwhile, while still alive: All morning at work, I have been getting jumped on by people saying "Well done in the pub quiz, Imogen! I hear you were a whizz!" and similar things. I was in a pub quiz team last night, and we came second. No-one is congratulating the other members of the team. I had three and a half pints of Aspalls over the course of the evening, and I don't recall being an outstanding performer, so my first thought was a nervous fear that this was irony, & that I'd spent the evening showing off and braying loudly that I knew all the answers. But as more and more people have greeted me the same way, I begin to wonder if without noticing it I was in fact a useful member of the team.

How wonderful; my mind is a junkyard. Get your red-hot memorable trivia here!

Whatever the truth of my performance, it was fun cycling home afterwards, although as it was pouring with rain the glow of a (demi) victory wasn't enough on its own to keep me warm all the way back to Turnham Green. But cycling at night when you're somewhat tipsy (but the roads are quiet) is weirdly enjoyable. You see things you wouldn't see otherwise, and become engaged with the world with a vividness and immediacy that sober daylight and a mind full of serious issues tend to mask, normally. There's a wet fox slinking along under the bridge; the shuddering skins of puddles are lit with hectic street light; you are intensely aware of how cold your thighs are, and of each icy raindrop hitting the crown of your head, and of the pinging sound that the other raindrops make, the ones which hit the open frame of your cycling helmet instead. And the scent of the early flowering linden trees along the southern edge of Turnham Green is deliriously sweet, falling in the night like another dimension of rain parallel to the watery one...

It's a mad mad mad world (Pt 2)

On the bus into work: A very smart specimen of the dreaded species Chiswick Mummy got on, pushing a huge baby buggy with a very small baby inside. She sat down, picked up the baby, and immediately began to change its nappy. Perfectly natural, I grant you, but rather smelly, and clearly embarrssing for an elderly gentleman a couple of seats away who I think had not been prepared for a dung-y infant's scrotum on the bus at 8.45 am. However, on finishing this job, Chiswick Mummy then, without washing her hands, proceeded to do her eye make-up and lip gloss. She then opened the front of her dress and began to breast feed the baby (needless to say the elderly gent by now was unable to look up with embarrassment, and nearly missed his stop because he was staring at the floor).

I just keep thinking about the sequence; baby's bum, mum's eyes, mum's mouth, baby's mouth. In that order, with no noticeable attempts at hygiene in between.

Am I getting squeamish in my old age? Have I got the wrong idea about cleanliness and babies? Should I in fact be commending her for exposing her infant to bacteria nice and early in life, in order to toughen him up?

Chiswick Mummies scare me slightly; they drive in heavy traffic while talking on their mobiles, they cut-up cyclists, they park on double yellow lines because it's too far to walk, they yell abuse in their exquisite voices at helpless pedestrians who dare to cross the road at the zebra crossing; they career round supermarkets, blank-eyed, plugged into ipods or yapping endlessly into what one suddenly realises must be handsfree 'phones, and smashing into other shoppers, their trolleys loaded with Plymouth Gin and organic ready-stuffed portobollo mushrooms... Now I have reason to believe they are capable of trying to poison their own offspring. Please don't let them win; please don't let this be the future of my country, my gender, my species...

Drafting a query letter...

I'm trying to write a query letter for "Gabriel Yeats", trying to get a publisher interested in it (or maybe an agent - I've yet to make a definate decision on which is the right course to follow). It's unpleasantly nerve-wracking trying to sum-up and, worse still, pitch, my work.

If you were to get the following letter, how would it sound to you?

Dear X [NB I will take the time to find out the relevent name in each case]

I am writing to ask if I may send you my novel “The Eternal Love of Gabriel Yeats” for your kind consideration. It is approximately x words in length [note to self; do a word count] and tells the story of the dramatic changes in the life of post-war music teacher Simon Cenarth when he meets the charismatic and obsessive Gabriel Yeats and becomes caught up in Yeats’ extraordinary quest. It is a fantastical romance which would appeal to lovers of magic realism and fans of the films of Powell & Pressburger, and could be described as “’Cold Mountain’ crossed with ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell’”...

[And then a standard concluding paragraph asking if they would like to see some sample pages or a whole chapter or whatever, mentioning that I'm enclosing an appropriately-stamped SAE, and saying "thank you for your time"].

Anyway:

Does this make you think
a) Yeuchh
b) Yawn
c) Yes, that sounds intriguing…
d) Other (please specify).

Also, for those of you who have read “Gabriel Yeats”, does this sound like a fair pitch for the book?

Many thanks to anyone who has any feedback! This is a nerve-wracking business, trying to work out how to pitch my work...

It's a mad mad mad world

I sat behind a woman on the bus this morning who was talking non-stop on her mobile:

Her; Awenn-i lemme newoyolo, il avait vingt mille, mais, it’s for my father, mon dieu, he’s ill, c’est limmana nayinke… She nattered on happily, continually hopping from language to language, whoever she was speaking to presumably equally fluently multi-lingual. The effect was musical and tantalising; how much would I understand of my eavesdropping before she jumped back into Wolof (or whatever it was)?

Here in the office, Roxana took a telephone message for Dave from a Mr Smite. That’s bad enough as names go, but she scrawled it down in a hurry, only for Dave to reappear a moment later looking concerned, saying “Is this guy’s name really Shite?”

It’s a magical, surreal world out there.

Coming home from going home...

There’s something very soothing about looking out of a train at the countryside rolling by at dusk. I spent rather a long time doing this yesterday evening on the way back through Kent to London, as the Sunday train service meant things were running rather slow (& rather roundabout in route as well). I didn’t really mind; it was early evening, with soft deep shadows to leeward of the hedgerows and woods; white ghosts of Queen Anne’s Lace, rabbits grazing, slim dark cattle walking slowly along the banks of the Stour, and the Downs rising like a distant line of cloud off to the north.. The train went due west into the sunset, fleeing its own shadow.

I had a wonderfully peaceful weekend at my mother’s, doing very little except helping her with some of the heavier kind of gardening (me heap big tough woman, do lots of chopping – ow, my back). Back to reality now. And now the sky has clouded over, after two days of flawless caerulean, bang on cue for Monday. A clouded sky in June is the visual signifier of the self-pitying sigh it inspires in me...

Watched the film of "Snow Falling on Cedars" while I was at Mum's; rather good, an excellent cast, and pretty true to the book - yet missing a lot as well, of course. Just before that we caught the end of an episode of "Robin Hood", which both of us have given up upon lately (when's "Merlin" coming back? That was FUN). The evil Gisborne sat crying his manly eyes out over a corpse by a riverbank, while Robin (faithless drip that he is) was Kissing Another Woman although it's only half a series since his One True Love died. As the phrase goes, what's that all about, then? They've lost me, I'm afraid. Though it was nice (in a slightly pervy way) to see Richard Armitage cry.

What else can I ramble about? I got back my holiday snaps from Crete this morning but they are mostly fairly dire - I think my dear, ancient camera may be nearing the end of its useful life. It's had a good innings, as it's several years older than me; a Zenit weighing nearly a kilo, the subject of many sarcastic comments at college - to my delight in Cuba I learned that Che Guevara used the same camera. Since the Zenit seems to be on its last legs my only good visual souvenir of this trip is the handful of sketches and watercolours I did - of which I am moderately pleased with about two. If I had a scanner I'd insert thumbnails of them here, now, but I am behind on the technology (to put it mildly). Sorry...

Off home, via the health food shop. Have a good week, world.