Today was beautifully sunny.
So sunny that we took a walk to the beach and sat with backs to a warm wall like lazy cats on a window sill. So sunny that walking was a pleasure. So sunny that my shoulders dropped down 2 whole inches.
It was (blatantly) so sunny that I'm inspired enough to blog again and ignore scrabulous for a whole day.
Now I've heard that it is going to snow on Friday...
As I walk back from dropping Oz on the bus I've started to notice the same characters out and about before 8.30. It's a kind of secret Falmouth underground of faces.
A few now smile and say hello to me. The knock on effect of this is that I now smile and say hello to some of the others. So there is a bizarre karmic smile going around. A bit like a chain letter but not so creepy.
Today I smiled at a very old man who was posting letters. He was so old and looked so interesting that I really wanted to go and sit down and have a cup of tea with him.
There's one guy who sits on a bench at the top of the hill, and he seems to be adding clues every time I see him. To start with he just sat there and I was a bit cross because I thought that I should like to sit there. Even though I won't - I was just being a pedantic arsey cow.
He sat there smoking a cigarette and admiring the view.
Then on another day I noticed that he sat there with a cup of tea.
Next, and by this time the weather was considerably colder, appeared a cup of tea and a cigarette.
One day he got out of his car with a cup of tea in hand. Thus removing any thought that he came to the bench because he lives nearby. (Although I guess it's possible he was just getting something out of his car.)
Today, he was there with cigarette, tea and a notebook.
Aha - he must be a writer, I deduce with Holmes like erudition.
Funnily enough, this didn't make me inclined to speak to him, not in the way that I really wanted to talk to the old old man. We writers are probably best left to our own devices when sitting with a view, notebook, fag and cup of tea.
But it did give me a whole idea for a book...
It is so bloody Monday today.
Head is full of cold.
I wish someone would give freelancers sick pay so that I could dose up on 'magi' cures for colds and go to bed.
Am living in the domestic equivalent of the Cold War.
Can't justify any further procrastination with the 'joy' of internet shopping because I've bought everyone presents and am skint.
Can't go out for a walk because I ordered everyone's presents online and the postman only brings parcels when I go out.
OK, enough moaning, the point of this post was to 180 my head, turn a runny cold into a vibrant blog post so that I could get on and do some work, and stop being so self-indulgent.
I think it might just be that it is one of those Mondays.
Reasons to be Cheerful?
- I am not likely to go out and shoot any one. Because a) I don't have a gun b) It's a horrible thought that anyone would do that anyway c) I've got to wait in for the postman, who won't come if I'm here, only if I go out...
Ever wondered that things might be going round in circles?
Overheard in Falmouth.
Man 1: I reckon it's a conspiracy you know.
Man 2: What do you reckon Trago* planned it?
Man 1: Yeah it had to be them.
* There's no real easy way to explain the dubious pleasure that is Trago Mills, unless you've lost the plot/way/door out whilst there. The phrase "Just need to pop to Trago" is not only beautifully oxymoronic, it is also second only to the internet as a means of procrastination for writers living in Cornwall.
Is there a whole novel in the great Trago conspiracy? What did they plan? I think I'll just 'pop over' there to see if I can solve the mystery...
[The lovely beyceyar normally reports these snapshots, but he seems more troubled by windmills at the moment.]
I fully admit that in the same day I might read Dickens, then Heat - and enjoy both.
I watch EastEnders and Hollyoaks and hate that people denigrate popular culture as 'opiates for the masses'. Who are we to judge? I'm equally happy going for a walk by the sea or out in the country. Entertainment is what we make it.
I've no shame in admitting that I'm a consumer of culture: popular, unpopular, past, present and future.
But. At times I do wonder if the two sides of me might be a little in conflict.
I went out today with my wicker shopping trolley. Full granny stylee, I love it and, (although it sounds like ten skateboards hurtling down the road) it saves both my arms and the need for plastic bags.
So, off I trundle, to buy wholesome, local, organic veg and bread from the Farmers Market. Feeling even more green and wholesome, I gave Mrs Veg Lady a load of plastic bags and Mr Egg Man a load of egg boxes. Recycling to boot - I trundled away feeling positivley virtuous.
I trundled away into Tesco where there was an 'uber-deal' on Quality Street. As I headed for the queue with my super cheap tin, some kind of reality check hit in.
The contrast between my wicker trolley full of conscience clear, real food was too much of a contrast. I stood there with the lurid Nestle tin of chocolate - and not just any chocolate, this is the 'buy now for Christmas which is so far away kids can't open advent calendars but we wan't you to panic buy, so you will spend even more when it really nearly is Christmas' kind. I looked around me and the shop was chaos - full aisles, no chance of getting near a till. Funnily enough, most people had the super cheap chocolate in their baskets.
I put the tin back.
On the way out, the store detective followed me, trying to get a look in my trolley.
I had a stream of very 'cozy' dreams last night, the sort that leave you feeling like you have been swimming in one of those little chocolate Gu puddings when you wake up.
When I woke up it was Monday morning, which is OK for us freelancers, but not for those who have to go to work 'out there'. Mr A. had to go to work 'out there' and was (I think) a bit upset that I wouldn't tell him what all my lovely dreams were about.
I couldn't really tell him, because in one part I know I was kissing strange boys and I knew that would upset him. Does kissing in dreams count as being unfaithful? I can't see how it does, especially if they are people that you don't know.
That wasn't all of the dream though.
One part did involve eating lots of chocolate.
In another part a producer asked me how much I would like for my script. So I answered, 'A house please'. The nice producer man agreed and gave me enough money for a very large house. After I dropped Oz at school* I walked past lots of big houses, and really thought that I might just be able to go and buy one today.
Hoping that this part might be a premonition, I also bought a lottery ticket this morning*. (Well, you never know..) It did take far less time than the re-write that I know my script needs.
Another part of the dream was being part of a group of friends who just seemed to go form party to party. Not the kind of big silly parties that always leave you wishing you could just go home and drink tea. No, these were small parties full of good people, choclolate, film producers who liked my script and some boys who were nice to kiss.
Then I woke up.
* These things really happened, as in were not part of the dream. The rest of the things I'm hoping will happen. Well obviously not the kissing strange boys bit. Although it would be good to figure out how to kiss for real and make it feel like one of those kisses that you have in a dream.
I realised that this blog is over a year old now...Despite serious neglect in recent months (I blame Facebook...) it was never through lack of love.
Life was so very different this time last year. I was dipping my toe in, testing the waters, and now I'm out here full time in the wide ocean that is freelance writing.
It's a beautiful place to be though. No regrets. None.
A few weeks ago I did a 'tour' of the country to catch up with old friends from various incarnations of my previous lives (kind of feels a bit like that when I add together all the pieces that have gone to make the adventure so far). One thing that was really heartwarming is that evryone reminded me that my dream, for years and years, was always to be a writer. No one was surprised, everyone reminded me that it was what I'd always said I would do.
And so here I am.
The script needs a re-write. But - it is a complete script, and I'm hoping can only get better. I'm working on a book commission. I can see the sea, boats and Cornish coast from the window where I write.
Take a dream, and double it. Dreams can come true.
Been too long away from this blog. Which, given the situation in Burma over the past few weeks feels like a complete Western indulgence.
I wore a red shirt on Friday, sent whatever prayers I could, but... I feel so useless and so humbled. Except for holding some faith in the power of prayer, what more can I do - although given the beautiful dignity of the monks, I dare not believe in anything other than that all prayers will be heard in someway, somehow.
Here is a Facebook group - watching the numbers grow over the past week has been astonishing. The internet offered a new way for the Burma story to emerge globally.
Last week people were able to communicate with the world - their words and pictures revealed an incredible story. Monks marching. People marching. The junta firing.
It worked too well - Internet and phone connections are now dead.
There are still trickles of news coming out... Now there is a terrifying silence on the streets and the pictures are those of nightmares.
If you follow the links to pictures on the Facebook group, there are some pictures that were posted four hours ago. Putting a link to them here felt too voyeuristic. They left me speechless, sad and wondering how and what can I do?
This is one small thing.
I've somehow managed to break/cut the picture - but you can read more about the Free Burma blog day on the 4th October here.
Why? If nothing else, perhaps just because we can still log on, still write, still go out on the streets with relative freedom. As further pictures and stories emerge - perhaps enough people trying to do one small thing might raise a big enough shout to be heard.
We can but pray.
You know that hand in is a week away when:
1) You nearly make a pot of coffee - with cat food.
2) Even with no childcare to sort out, you'd rather watch X Factor and eat Minstrels than go out.
3) You revert to finger food, thus avoiding the need to co-ordinate both knife and fork.
4) When you can be bothered to cook, you cook twice as much as needed, thus avoiding the need to cook again.
5) You realise that Hula Hoops are a great substitute for any form of potato/rice/pasta.
6) You find yourelf wondering if introducing a cat called 'Jack Sparrow' into a script might be a good idea.
7) Owning your own thermal heat binder seems like a good idea.
8) You buy acryllic paints and canvases and decide you might become an artist instead - if you knew what to paint.
9) You go out wearing jeans and a hoody - confused as to why the rest of the world are wandering round in shorts and summer clothes.
10) Sleep becomes a four letter word, and you realise you can't even count.
11) You seriously consider stealing a boat - whilst sober.
12) You put the same load of washing on for the 5th time, because it never gets hung to dry and smells.
13) You'd prefer to talk to a cat because they won't 'say the wrong thing'.
14) You get cross at a cat because it 'gave you a look'.
15) You start writing lists that account for your slightly irrational behaviour.
I need to rewrite and restructure, again.
It's like standing at the bottom of a mountain, again.
Feel scared and daunted, again.
Actually, feels a bit better to have written that and realise that I should actually stop faffing about and just get on with it.
Again.
Many people apologise to their blogs and I've never quite understood it. But in full knowledge that I've sadly neglected this blog... here is my apology.
It's not willful neglect - just a sign of the times. Dead lines Add to that a move, 180 degree shift in personal circumstances and the insidious return of anaemia and I guess there's some kind of rhyme and reason going on.
So I'm currently sleep deprived and floating about in the middle of Act 2. Perspective - use it or lose it? I really don't know any longer. Living, breathing and sleeping a film script has taken me to places I didn't even know existed. Got to write through the night so that Oz at least has some semblance of a summer holiday.
That 3am eternal stillness gets to be kind of addictive. Not to mention more productive. Wonder why that is? Perhaps the complete lack of distraction, save for the self induced world of online procrastination. Perhaps just the calming of thoughts around me. After all, most sensible people are tucked up in bed dreaming.
Last night though I bailed at about 2am, but as I drifted off to sleep I kind of asked for some guidance/ideas/inspiration to float by in a dream.
This morning I woke up wondering if, floating sky high in the world of archetype and collective unconscious that script writing has led me into, I might have met a part of my animus.
I'm bloody lucky if I did, because it was Jack Kerouac.
He was old, but he was gorgeous and I know that in the course of the dream the sticky bits of the script* were discussed, and sorted out. If only I could fully remember just what happened...
I've always had pretty vivid dreams, often the kind where I get to read books and know if I can 'bring it back' it will be something pretty special. Sometimes it works, but only in fragments.
Last night Jack Kerouac agreed to be in the film. He was a bit of an old time Rat Pack crooner, there in my dreamworld with another iconic male figure. Can't remember who that was, but Jack is still totally vivid.
It's all so vivid that I had to get it down on the page somewhere. There are clues within clues within clues here.
*UPDATE
So all very excited about the dream I return to said script and...
Mr Kerouac? Are you there....
Despite himself, Oz had a good time at Port Eliot. When I explained that we were going to a Literary Festival he exploded,
"No way am I going to a LiteraCy Festival. It will be just like school."
It was interesting. Great to be out in a field, but I felt a bit odd - so much 'festival-ness' has become too generic. A bit going through the motions. There were many lovely people there. It was fun, even though we were astonishing in our propensity to arrive at every tent just as an act was closing...But where's the element of surprise and randomness gone?
The real reason to blog about it - I feel old.
Festivals played such a part of the past 20 years of my life that I worry about my state of cynicysm. I'm more used to being here but that' all changed beyond recognition. Tidied up and sanitised. Eeew. Despite a last min desire to go this year, I know I'd just look around and mourn the halycon days of the past. Not that I want to deny anyone the fun I had, but I do know, they won't know what they missed.
Half the fun was always climbing over the fence, and the best party was always in the travellers field...
I spent about five or six years working at a bundle of other smaller festivals that are now much bigger.
Am I just becoming part of a sad generation. Castle Morton, free partys... Am I just one of the many who is still looking for the party, even tho I might just be too old, too cynical to even enjoy it when I got there? Nature abhors a vacum, so there must be the same old same old going on somewhere? Yes? No?
I don't know.
Perhaps it's time I just took a big sigh and admitted that I should just raise my hands gently in surrender and enjoy, literacy...
Three things of note occurred yesterday.
1) Tink decided to talk to me again, after we fell out over her walking around with a small bird in her mouth.
She then promptly went and caught a small mouse.
What does she think she is? A cat or something?
2) I ran in the 'Mum's race' at Oz's sportsday.
I was barefoot - realised I was clearly unprepared when I saw the serious contenders in trainers and taking a 'proper' starters line stance. When the race started I got elbowed in the face by a proper 'runner' and nearly stopped, in astonishment. But I ran. I did not fall over. I did not finish last (in fact I was faster than my roll-uphabbit might lead people to believe).
I only ran cos Oz asked me to. When I asked if he was happy I'd run he didn't believe that I was in it as he hadn't seen me. Had to get one of his friends to 'prove' it. I'd even removed my faux fur leopard print coat so that I didn't show him up, and he didn't see me, let alone cheer...
Next year, I'm going to win. So 'deal with it' all triainer-wearing-elbow-pushers.
3) I finished Act One.
This last point is clearly the only one of real significance. However, it does lead to...
TODAY.
Act Two.
Oh.
upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a girl who realised that it was easier to bend like a tree than to be rigid. Probably some Chinese proverb said that first, but never mind. Yes, it's easier to move and flex and change, because then things can never quite catch up with you and you can dodge other things that might be hurtling straight towards you, particularly those things thrown by other people. It took a long, long time to discover this trick, but, once she had found it life seemed much easier and much more full of laughter.
So, she learned to become rather like a lump of clay or playdoh. Not quite as poetic sounding as a tree, but it still worked. And, in clay form she was able to just about dodge and trick herself away from too much of her past ever quite catching up, or too much from anyone else being able to stick about for too long. You know, the kind of things that others often try to jettison from their own waste disposal units onto the world around them. She also managed to keep a little less of the stuff from her own waste disposal landing too heavily on anyone else. Things seemed to be going along just about fine. After years and years of being the one who seemed to attract bizarre amounts of 'stuff' and to crumble and crack at the first sign of trouble, she finally got what some stories call 'a bit of peace'.
The trouble with clay, is that you have to keep it wet, but not too wet or else it will simply become sludge. The bigger trouble, of course, is that tears are made of water. The salty kind.
Now it came to pass that there were just too many tears about. On top of that it rained and rained and rained, for days and days and days. Oh oh.
But our heroine figured a way to trick the too many tears and too many rainy days in summer. So she managed to find a patch of sun. Look at me now she thought. I can dry myself out and get strong again. So she did.
It was a bit harder, as the new shape was kind of fixed. But it was just about OK, if a little unwieldy compared to the flex and flow she'd found before.
But the problem? Ah yes, the problem. Now she was all died out into this strong shape, was the danger of stuff landing on top - it builds and builds and builds. There will come a time when the littlest bit of fluff, the littlest word, the littlest thing, will tip the balance. Crack.
Crack and crumble, and there you go. All broken up into a million little pieces.
At last I can blog again.
Apparently I had some 'invalid html' [painful] so everytime I've tried to go to new post the 'nice' blogspot in the sky booted me back out again.
Feel quite smug to have fixed my html all by myself. Three weeks of frustration, and then I remembered. Doh, can't blog on an Apple. Mr Firefox has fixed me up.
Time and Money. Why do they go together like horse and carriage, salt and pepper, tick and tock?
I'm not saying the dreaded 'time is money' - hate that sentiment and have done everything possible in life to avoid that mantra having anything to do with me. No, it's not so much that, but rather there could always be more of both. I'm not saying that there is not enough. If I've a roof over my head and food in my belly, that's abundance really. And time - beyond the unknown and the inevitable I'm not conscious of 'marking' my time.
But oh, would a bit more of both be useful from time to time. See, that word again, dropped in from the sub-conscious. All I want to do at the moment is sit at my desk undisturbed and just throw myself into the screenplay. Dive in, loose myself, immerse in the story.
With the return of the sun has come that alive feeling of committing to a bundle of projects and feeling right now that I'm always on the run and never standing still. I'm not complaining, part of me loves it, another part longs for stillness. I know that the ideas form an merge out there even if I'm not sat here, so the busy feeling is all good. But I need some stillness too.
The biggest irony of it all is that 'time' and 'money' and the lack of those two things being a barrier to writing, are the very same things that I need to be writing about in the script right now. Need to move on and create a sense of action and drama and they are the first points of call. I'm back at a new start with the whole script right now. it feels like being a peeled snail, and I've got to put the time in to grow a new shell, move a little further on.
There is also a curious magic going on with the whole process. It seems eerily like the things I plot seem to take some form of reality. Like time and money. Then I found Flo's house.
I found Flo's house today.
I don't want to go into too much detail until other details and fundamentals filter into tomorrow. But, what happened was a bizarre combination of special, scary and bloody exciting.
I was inside Flo's house talking to the her that was not there. The whole experience was a cross between a waking dream and a surreal drug induced experience. I'm not being deliberately enigmatic (though it does sound as though I am). I'm simply trying to find some sense in what has been a beautifully strange day.
So here I go again, full circle. Running on empty with both time and money is creating the third thing that comes from the space in between them both. Magic. Just the pure magic of adventures. Time - the lack of it is creating more magic.Money - wishing for it and forgetting to live and laugh and breathe and dance, means missing the magic of time.
Oh I've tangled my self up in words again. Something to do with Flo's house. More to do with needing some sleep...
Sometimes you find things that are just too beautiful not to share, like this...
And on a totally different note, this has an equal beauty all of its own...
In the past two days I've 'lost' the use of two mobile phones. One through an 'accident' that I really don't want to go into. The other was the 'replacement' that despite paying for insurance, I had to pay £20 for. The second one got very wet in a boat and its loss is actually quite funny.
So, as I sit here unable to contact anyone, it's got me thinking about that strange and mythical time (not so very long ago) when no one had mobile phones at all..
Somehow, the world functioned. Everyone got to where they were meant to be going, made arrangements, knew what was going on...All without the need for a mobile phone.
OK, so I'm one of the many who stored all my numbers on my mobile. I'm sitting here looking at a little address book that is giving me a positively smug and self satisfied grin, because despite all best intentions, I never did sit down and copy all the nos into it. There's another rather tatty pink faux fur book in my desk that reads almost like a four year diary when I go through it. It came from that far away premobile time when I did write [yes, with a pen] all my numbers down. I've wondered about just randomly phoning people that I haven't seen for 10 or so years, just because I have their number...But, they'll probably all be out of date.
So what about serendipity? In pre-mobile days, were there more chance encounters? Or is that another urban myth that those of us with an 'idyllic' 70s childhood, complete with Buzby adverts*, harp on about? [Along with white dog poo, Texan bars, and longer days in summer...] I'm almost tempted to give it a go, not replace the phone and see what happens.
But then I remember, that there are numbers for people on there who won't know that I lost my phone and will just think I'm being rude. And, I get the panic that if anything happens to Oz whilst he's at school and I'm out, then no one can contact me (how did that one work pre-mobile?). Even worse, someone might see Johnny Depp in town and they won't be able to let me know.
Talking of which, looks like I might be avoiding work, again. At least there'll be no distraction from my mobile phone though...
[*instead of the 'modern' family with silly lighting ones]
Been far too long away from this world. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines, presentation, exhaustion - pretty much in that order. Followed by sunshine and a certain smugness about living in Cornwall that I won't even to pretend to apologise for. It's another glorious day out there but I've got to get back on track...
Been a funny old time, not least because my powers of indecision hit an all time high. Yesterday was A's birthday, we had a big chocolate cake with candles and everything on the beach. The following conversation kind of sums up the recent weeks.
ME: Did you have some cake?
L: Yes.
ME: Was it nice?
L: Yes.
ME: Did you eat it?
L: Erm, yes.
ME: So you did have your cake and eat it?
L: I'm going to slap you if you don't shut up.
ME: Fair enough.
Random as it is, the concept of 'having cake and eating it' has always confused me. I know what it's supposed to mean about trying to 'have it all' but in a very literal sense my conversation with L kind of shows that most of us have our cake and eat it all the time. BUT we don't realise we're doing it because it's one of those things that you are not 'meant' to either own up to or to do. So anyway, I tried it and both scuppered myself and found peace all at the same time. Two MA projects was never going to work, well perhaps it might have done. Had the chance to work with an amazing supervisor on an investigative journalism story and decided for many pragmatic reasons to take the oppportunity and 'go for it'.
I thought I could tap away at the screenplay one day a week. The end result being that I would have my cake and eat it. Nice plan. Too nice - it was never going to work because Miss Heart over Head here had organised something so sensible that I couldn't find any kind of focus. The screenplay 'won' me back and in the process of doing so I cocked up my presentation and am in supervisor 'limbo'. But, it's all OK because it's shown me beyond any shadow of doubt that writing is, first and foremost, about passion. I need to just throw myself into the screenplay and nothing but the screenplay for the next few months. Funny thing is, with all the 'cake' and eating it business, I still feel like I have it and am eating it, because the prospect of just one project feels like a breeze after trying to tackle two 'biggies' simultaneously.
Ah where would I be without this blog, to just whittle away on with the beautiful illusion that I'm actually getting on with some work, is such a simple pleasure. I've missed it. Mission on.
I'm going to get the scene by scene done by early next week. But, just as importantly I need to get a bike with a basket, and cycle around playing 'Fly Me To The Moon' to fully 'get' into character. So work will involve index cards, pins and cycling.
See, looks like a very tasty cake to me.
