With love...

It's not much, but...

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.

Portrait Of The PostGrad In The Last Week

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.

Mountain

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.

Dreaming

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....

Literacy

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...

Yesterday

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.

Once

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

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

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...

Art

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...

Buzby

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]

Lots of cake

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.

Through the looking glass

The world seems very Alice in Wonderland at the moment. Everything seems to get bigger and smaller all at the same time.

Weighing up the hideous consequences of Global Warming against the sheer pleasure of feeling sunshine and watching trees in bud. It leaves too many questions.

Yesterday I interviewed two amazing people, both of whom were convinced that we are slip sliding towards a torrent of war and destruction globally. How do I balance that with a belief and conviction that unless I think positively, act positively in what ever ways I can, then in some ways I'm only adding to the bigger problems.

I can't take on the belief of their views when I watch my son playing on a day that was warm enough that he could swim in a river. I know I swam in the sea at this time of year as a kid. Some things don't change.

There's a theory about the Hundredth Monkey - 99 monkeys can learn to do something, but whatever they can do will stay localised. When the hundredth monkey learns to do it, wooosh bang wallop. Critical mass; monkeys everywhere learn to do the same thing.

I've got to keep some kind of faith that we as humans are at about 96 or 97 monkeys in terms of how we are behaving towards each other and treating the planet. Until we get to a hundred everything will look the same and stay the same. But we've got to be close to some kind of wake up call.

Don't really want to think about the other possibility.

On a more mundane level, I'm trying to convince myself that is how it is with pitching. Even if I get the equivalent of 99 rejections or positive but non-committal responses, the 100th will kick in some kind of critical mass, well - enough to create a new perspective and momentum in it all. I think I got the whisper of 99 and a half today. I'm hoping that other half will add on tomorrow.

Meanwhile I face the age old debate of slogging away at the keyboard when I know I'm tired, against sleeping now an getting up really early.

Blogging's just great for putting off those decisions for a while. This screen has become my through the looking glass place - on the other side are a million different worlds and possibilities. All sitting there at the same time...

scummy

I had to face one of my greatest fears to day; sitting in a classroom with all the other mothers from my son's class.

I got the normal 'sympathetic' looks, that I expected, as I'm an 'invisible' - rarely seen at the school gates, and tend to hover by myself when I am. It's not even that I'm anti social, far from it, but The School Gate thing has always been incredibly intimidating. Being a full time working mum, meant that I never got practiced in the art of The Gate small talk. Now it's got to the point, that I just don't know what to say, and always sound silly when I try. Having been a teacher, it's not even the 'school thing'. Give me a room full of teenagers, no problem. Parents at parents Evenings, no problem.

No it's not school, just The School Gates.

Even if they are not all 'Yummys' then I most certainly am a 'Scummy'. My day seemed quite normal; sitting barefoot typing away, plotting out script structure on little cards (very satisfying game), singing along to Amy (Winehouse), so what if I pulled the hoody and jeans off the floor and stuck random things in my hair to keep it out of my eyes.

Of course I was so lost in the little card game, I nearly missed the lift to The Gates and so ran out as I was. Flip-flops, random hair and all.

Ah. Beyond the 'sympathetic' looks, once in the classroom I realised what a state I was - truly scummy. Marker pen all over my hands, bare feet on a cold day la la la. I was not wearing clothes from M&S. I was not wearing sensible shoes. My hair was not 'styled'. I clearly was not even a gentle looking hippy type Mum. Everyone was taller than me (except our kids).

So whilst eclectic and random might best sum my dress sense up, in their presence, I looked and felt more like an Asbo-stylee-hoody-wearing-teen mum.

After the meeting, Oz and I walked down the road, bought an ice-cream, and snacks, and sat on the grass (not on the benches). Suddenly it really didn't seem to matter - I realised that everyone else had driven home and were doing far more sensible things, as we sat there in a world of our own. Supper will not be on the table anywhere close to 6. We are both full with ice cream and Jaffa cakes.

Blogs and writers.

This is a very short post to direct anyone (who might be interested) to the 'result' of the writers who blog analysis - it is here.

I thought it was hidden, but cyber space is too fast; far away and patroclus found it, for which I'm very grateful as their comments were a big help :)

sunshine

Thank you to everyone who left a comment here. And here is a beer to say thank you. Well, a beer coupon to be more precise. Just take it to your local bar, swap for your favourite tipple and say it was given to you in good faith, which it was...

It's been one of those days today. The sort in which my faith in beer tokens has been restored.

After months of frustration I found out how to do this which means that I'm one step closer to being able to write about this.

So this has made me smile. So much so, that I'll just try it one more time. Not being able to do the linky thing has been driving me mad for ages, and it was as simple as leaving safari...Also has a lot to do with the sunshine that warmed the ache in my sleepy bones away so gently, and finally managing to bury Mr Resnick in a pastrami on rye at about 3.42am this morning. I hope he's gone, I really do hope.

It's the racing chasing deadlines thing. Part of me hates it, and a very strange part loves the stillness of 3am writing. I've just woken up from a snooze and there is still an allure to just keep typing through the night and into that stillness.

On Friday I fully intend to print off pocketfuls of these beer tokens and swap them for a pint or three of sanity, sleep and vodka. Not neccesarily in that order though.

Blogging blog.

If you are a blogger, who also considers writng to be their main focus/drive/employment in life could you spare me a comment?

I'm doing some research into the impact of blogging for writers as part of an MA course. Given that there are millions of bloggers out there, narrowing research down is a duanting task; I spent a week lost in the blogosphere, reading some amazing posts, but having very little to focus the research on. So, if 'the medium is the message', I thought I'd try a live and direct approach.

Blogs are free, uncensored and ever growing. What I'm trying to find out is how you got into blogging, how you feel it impacts on your writing, how it might affect the print based industry and where you think it might be headed the coming years. There's a sense of search engines manipulating/creating a blogging A list, where might this lead? Will blogs keep going or will the bubble burst? Some blogs have been picked up as books, there are prizes and awards - is this a motivation or do blogs fulfil another function? What are your thoughts, in general, about blogging, particularly as someone who writes as a major part of life?

If you could spare a moment it would be hugely appreciated - doesn't need to be much, just a few lines. My aim is to see how far and where this post might leapfrog to over the next week; from this I'll be able to focus on what bloggers have written and get an inkling of how messages/ideas might travel.

A big thankyou to anyone who can help with their thoughts :)

[I reckon I'm due to loose many more hours discovering new blogs to read after this...]

UPDATE: There are a lot of lovely people out there. Huge thanks to all those who have commented, and to anyone else who is going to.

mr-cellany

After months of reading our blogs, and commenting verbally (mainly from the other side of the room in a rather rude manner about why I'm glued to this computer) Andy has finally given in to the blogosphere.

He's a bit shy, but if you go to 'bricklayer playing the piano' on the blog roll he's right there...

White with a hint...

Given the few glorious days of sunshine, I realise that there is a very big danger that many pasty white types will blend into the same colour.

Some will be pink. I saw them on the beach yesterday and did not quite understand how/why they got so pink so fast.

Many (including myself) will be a strange hue of yellow. This is because of the wondrous (?) invention of mosituriser that comes out white but apparently leaves you with 'natural looking sun kissed skin'. I'd never go near fake tan as a) I don't want to go streaky orange and b) it smells so strange, I know the chemical cocktail must be too toxic.

Why, then am I fooled by this moisturiser stuff? I'm sure that the chemicals are just as bad, but it has this clean innocent illusion of not being too scary. So I lovingly applied it to my pasty white legs and they are now a satisfying shade of...well I can't quite say that it is a tan, as to sunkissed? Perhaps, sun pecked? The truth is that I am a very subtle shade of, well - yellow. And so it would seem are many people wondering about with shorts/skirts/rolled up jeans.

We are all the same colour. What happens when the sun comes out? Perhaps it's just a girl thing, but there is this implicit assumption that you must have smooth, shaved legs that pretend not to have been locked safely in tights and trousers all winter. Every year I think this is rubbish. Every year I some how join in.

Perhaps one day they will name a paint shade after us all. 'Sun pecked white' [White with a hint of, yellow]

However, no matter how scary this is, it is not as scary as a 'fashion tip' I saw in a magazine. A special new product, guaranteed to stop fake tan streaking - a suit that you wear overnight after applying fake tan.

Tell me if I'm being stupid, there is no other way to explain said new item as anything other than a giant...babygro. Surely, there's no one who'd actually consider it, I thought to myself. And then I saw three people and two children wearing Crocs.

I might be uniform 'white girl with yellowish legs', but, it could be worse. I could be an orange-babygro-wearing-walking-draining-rack.