It's funny how you don't realise you're relying on something to be there until it isn't. Like when the water goes off. Or the electricity.
Or your children disappear for the weekend and suddenly the house feels far too big and it echoes. The cats can't find enough people to sit on and the only person who's failed to empty the dishwasher is me.
And Scrabulous is broken, dammit.
Sunday 30 March 2008
Tuesday 25 March 2008
Letting stuff happen
There are times when I just want to write - feel my fingers on the keyboard, find out what it is that I want to say. Sometimes I can bring myself to do it, sometimes not.
It's especially hard not to look back on the words that have just appeared, out of somewhere, and put them into a shape that will somehow make sense, form a pattern and become real.
The real trick, I think, is just letting go and letting them be what they will without trying too hard.
Easy to say but very hard to do.
For people who don't know what they think until they see what they say, letting go is a torment. It send shivers up their backs, makes their toes curl.
Editing is easy, if time-consuming. It's a thing that makes you pore over every word until you're sure that that's the one you really wanted to use, the only one that will do. It seems designed to make you turn in on yourself, make you think 'Is that really what I meant?' It seems designed to cripple you. It's the thing that means you can't just play. Let yourself go. The thing that makes you believe that the only thing that matters is the perfectly turned sentence, the jewel-like thought.
I am resisting very hard the temptation to go back to the top of this posting, to see what I thought I meant when I started it. To see if there was a point to it, other than just playing. The thing that matters at the moment is my fingers on the keyboard, Keith Jarrett in the background, in an otherwise silent house because the people I share it with have all gone to bed.
It's especially hard not to look back on the words that have just appeared, out of somewhere, and put them into a shape that will somehow make sense, form a pattern and become real.
The real trick, I think, is just letting go and letting them be what they will without trying too hard.
Easy to say but very hard to do.
For people who don't know what they think until they see what they say, letting go is a torment. It send shivers up their backs, makes their toes curl.
Editing is easy, if time-consuming. It's a thing that makes you pore over every word until you're sure that that's the one you really wanted to use, the only one that will do. It seems designed to make you turn in on yourself, make you think 'Is that really what I meant?' It seems designed to cripple you. It's the thing that means you can't just play. Let yourself go. The thing that makes you believe that the only thing that matters is the perfectly turned sentence, the jewel-like thought.
I am resisting very hard the temptation to go back to the top of this posting, to see what I thought I meant when I started it. To see if there was a point to it, other than just playing. The thing that matters at the moment is my fingers on the keyboard, Keith Jarrett in the background, in an otherwise silent house because the people I share it with have all gone to bed.
Monday 17 March 2008
An old love
Once upon a time a long time ago when life was new and I was beautiful (maybe I still am. I wouldn't know. I didn't know then, either) I fell in love with a voice. It was a voice that reminded me somehow of walks by the sea, crashing my bike, climbing on cliffs, turning my ankle falling off a kerb crossing a road on the way back from an ice-hockey game I'd lied to go to with someone I wasn't supposed to know.
It was a voice on the radio.
I'd be driving down Strovolos Avenue, bringing the children - who were very small then - home from The Junior School in Nicosia. They're grown up now, tall and lovely. At that time I could still persuade them without trying too hard that they were the centre of the universe, the axis on which the world turned.
Driving with the radio on. Up loud. Listening to music.
One day when I got home, I sent the voice a fax asking it whether I knew it.
The voice on the radio wondered whether I meant 'know' in the biblical sense. Then it played something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I can't remember now what it was, although I think the playlist is still somewhere in the cardboard box full of bits of paper and emails and the hard drive I had to get taken out of my computer so I could sell it. The last time I moved house I tried to throw it all out but it all got in a muddle somehow and will be an interesting project for my biographer to sort.
It's over there to my right, on the bottom shelf where the printer is.
It was a voice on the radio.
I'd be driving down Strovolos Avenue, bringing the children - who were very small then - home from The Junior School in Nicosia. They're grown up now, tall and lovely. At that time I could still persuade them without trying too hard that they were the centre of the universe, the axis on which the world turned.
Driving with the radio on. Up loud. Listening to music.
One day when I got home, I sent the voice a fax asking it whether I knew it.
The voice on the radio wondered whether I meant 'know' in the biblical sense. Then it played something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I can't remember now what it was, although I think the playlist is still somewhere in the cardboard box full of bits of paper and emails and the hard drive I had to get taken out of my computer so I could sell it. The last time I moved house I tried to throw it all out but it all got in a muddle somehow and will be an interesting project for my biographer to sort.
It's over there to my right, on the bottom shelf where the printer is.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Running on empties (2)
I feel I should point out that the only empty things on my desk that have anything to do with me are
two of the cigarette packets
the glass, and
the bottle of fizzy water.
(The wine bottle and its associated glass are - as of this moment, anyway - half full.)
two of the cigarette packets
the glass, and
the bottle of fizzy water.
(The wine bottle and its associated glass are - as of this moment, anyway - half full.)
Misery memoirs
A John Crace piece in today's Guardian G2 argues that misery memoirs are losing their credibility because two recent best-sellers have been exposed as fiction rather than fact.
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (drugs and alcohol) and Love and Consequences, by Margaret B Jones (mixed-race foster child grows up in violent Los Angeles) were both marketed as first-person true-life tragedies.
Jones turns out, apparently, to be a well-educated middle-class white lady not called Margaret B Jones at all. Frey owns up to having embellished the truth. He had to, says Crace, because 'the bar for misery has been set almost impossibly high'.
Crace goes on to suggest that aspiring misery-memoirists should look to Dave Pelzer as their how-to guru. Pelzer’s 1995 memoir, A Boy Called It, continues to fly out of the shops – along with subsequent works of his that mine the same seam.
Anyone wanting to cash in on Mr Pelzer’s success might be interested in a couple of items on the WH Sm*th website. There, along with discounted copies of his books, they can pick up an 18-copy (empty) dumpbin in which to put them. For £233.82.
Mind, they’ll have to wait four or more weeks for it . . . and I can think of at least one that's available right now. For free.
For John Crace's article on how to write a misery memoir, go to
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2262445,00.html
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (drugs and alcohol) and Love and Consequences, by Margaret B Jones (mixed-race foster child grows up in violent Los Angeles) were both marketed as first-person true-life tragedies.
Jones turns out, apparently, to be a well-educated middle-class white lady not called Margaret B Jones at all. Frey owns up to having embellished the truth. He had to, says Crace, because 'the bar for misery has been set almost impossibly high'.
Crace goes on to suggest that aspiring misery-memoirists should look to Dave Pelzer as their how-to guru. Pelzer’s 1995 memoir, A Boy Called It, continues to fly out of the shops – along with subsequent works of his that mine the same seam.
Anyone wanting to cash in on Mr Pelzer’s success might be interested in a couple of items on the WH Sm*th website. There, along with discounted copies of his books, they can pick up an 18-copy (empty) dumpbin in which to put them. For £233.82.
Mind, they’ll have to wait four or more weeks for it . . . and I can think of at least one that's available right now. For free.
For John Crace's article on how to write a misery memoir, go to
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2262445,00.html
Running on empties
On my desk as I write there are:
8 cans of Blackthorn cider
3 mugs (one aubergine, one black and one spotty)
At least four cigarette packets (others may be buried)
Numerous CD and DVD cases
1 glass and a bottle of fizzy water
A plate
2 Coke bottles.
All are empty.
My bank account is also empty. The fact that there is a (full) box of (empty) wine bottles in the kitchen waiting to go to the bottle bank may well have something to do with this. I am reluctant to contemplate the connection.
Actually I am so reluctant to contemplate it that I shall remark instead how odd a word starts to look when you write it a lot of times - e.g. empty. Empty, empty, empty, empty - see what I mean?
8 cans of Blackthorn cider
3 mugs (one aubergine, one black and one spotty)
At least four cigarette packets (others may be buried)
Numerous CD and DVD cases
1 glass and a bottle of fizzy water
A plate
2 Coke bottles.
All are empty.
My bank account is also empty. The fact that there is a (full) box of (empty) wine bottles in the kitchen waiting to go to the bottle bank may well have something to do with this. I am reluctant to contemplate the connection.
Actually I am so reluctant to contemplate it that I shall remark instead how odd a word starts to look when you write it a lot of times - e.g. empty. Empty, empty, empty, empty - see what I mean?
Tuesday 4 March 2008
This could become
addictive. I can see myself living so as to have something interesting to tell myself later. Every tiny thought could become saturated with significance, every action of earth-moving importance.
I think it may have started already . . .
James (who lives round the corner) bounced in on Saturday afternoon wanting to know whether I'd got his text yet.
No I haven't. Was it important?
Not really but I'm sorry you haven't got it. Is your phone switched on?
My phone is on the top of the microwave in the kitchen. It is indeed on. I have neither messages nor a signal so we go outside to see if we can get one in the garden. James holds the phone up to the sky, which is obviously where the signal lives (and, for all I know, where all the undelivered messages hover while they're waiting for one).
Any luck?
James peers hopefully at the phone.
Nah. What noise do you get when a text comes?
Sort of a beep thing, I think.
There are no beeps. It is bitterly cold, so we take the phone indoors to the warm. It sits on the table, silently. James, on the sofa opposite, fidgets.
Has it still not come?
No.
I suppose I could send it again . . . well I could if I hadn't deleted all my sent messages. Shit. I'll have to write it again.
James, you're sitting four feet away from me. Couldn't you just tell me what it said?
Apparently this is not a viable option.
Then the phone rings. Oooo, I exclaim. I have a friend! No you haven't, says James. That's just me checking your phone's working.
By 9pm the text still hasn't come. James has been and gone and been and gone again, anxiously. Ben and Linda arrive and James comes back. Joe surfaces from whichever fantasy life he's currently inhabiting and they all decide they're going to buy some alcohol and play cards. James gives me £10, which is half of the £20 I lent him weeks ago. He apologises for not having the rest yet. I say it's all right.
I am watching Casualty, which Joe hates because he says the blood's too tidy. There's a major dither because they can't play cards in here (it's warm, but Casualty's on TV and they need a table and this table is covered in half-finished knitting and bits of paper. The rest of the house is freezing) and besides James can't decide what he wants to drink and Joe can't go to the shop, which closes in an hour, until he does. Phil arrives. Aaron doesn't because he has to be up at 4.30 am to help his dad load the vans taking stuff to Ely's Sunday Market.
Eventually we play cards in the breakfast room and James tells me that he'd texted me to say sorry he and the others hadn't been round recently but he was worried I might break his legs on account of the £20 but he now had £10 so could he come later. I'd no idea I was so scary.
His text finally arrives late on Sunday afternoon, which leaves me wondering where it's been.
I imagine a helicopter like the ones that hover over Cyprus during the burning season, dumping seawater on the fires out of great tarpaulins slung underneath them. Does James's phone network, which offers free weekend calls and texts, save them all up until delivery to a particular area is considered economical? Then drop the lot in a single swamping mass?
James has a place at Cambridge University in 2009. I worry for him.
I think it may have started already . . .
James (who lives round the corner) bounced in on Saturday afternoon wanting to know whether I'd got his text yet.
No I haven't. Was it important?
Not really but I'm sorry you haven't got it. Is your phone switched on?
My phone is on the top of the microwave in the kitchen. It is indeed on. I have neither messages nor a signal so we go outside to see if we can get one in the garden. James holds the phone up to the sky, which is obviously where the signal lives (and, for all I know, where all the undelivered messages hover while they're waiting for one).
Any luck?
James peers hopefully at the phone.
Nah. What noise do you get when a text comes?
Sort of a beep thing, I think.
There are no beeps. It is bitterly cold, so we take the phone indoors to the warm. It sits on the table, silently. James, on the sofa opposite, fidgets.
Has it still not come?
No.
I suppose I could send it again . . . well I could if I hadn't deleted all my sent messages. Shit. I'll have to write it again.
James, you're sitting four feet away from me. Couldn't you just tell me what it said?
Apparently this is not a viable option.
Then the phone rings. Oooo, I exclaim. I have a friend! No you haven't, says James. That's just me checking your phone's working.
By 9pm the text still hasn't come. James has been and gone and been and gone again, anxiously. Ben and Linda arrive and James comes back. Joe surfaces from whichever fantasy life he's currently inhabiting and they all decide they're going to buy some alcohol and play cards. James gives me £10, which is half of the £20 I lent him weeks ago. He apologises for not having the rest yet. I say it's all right.
I am watching Casualty, which Joe hates because he says the blood's too tidy. There's a major dither because they can't play cards in here (it's warm, but Casualty's on TV and they need a table and this table is covered in half-finished knitting and bits of paper. The rest of the house is freezing) and besides James can't decide what he wants to drink and Joe can't go to the shop, which closes in an hour, until he does. Phil arrives. Aaron doesn't because he has to be up at 4.30 am to help his dad load the vans taking stuff to Ely's Sunday Market.
Eventually we play cards in the breakfast room and James tells me that he'd texted me to say sorry he and the others hadn't been round recently but he was worried I might break his legs on account of the £20 but he now had £10 so could he come later. I'd no idea I was so scary.
His text finally arrives late on Sunday afternoon, which leaves me wondering where it's been.
I imagine a helicopter like the ones that hover over Cyprus during the burning season, dumping seawater on the fires out of great tarpaulins slung underneath them. Does James's phone network, which offers free weekend calls and texts, save them all up until delivery to a particular area is considered economical? Then drop the lot in a single swamping mass?
James has a place at Cambridge University in 2009. I worry for him.
When I rang . . .
. . . the King's Lynn Arts Centre yesterday to tell them I couldn't collect the three pictures they unaccountably didn't select for this year's Eastern Open until later in the week, a plum-voiced woman said crossly 'We are trying to hang an exhibition here, you know'.
(Well, yes. That's why I thought I'd apologise for not removing the offending items on the designated date, you bat.)
She did eventually deign to suggest that she might leave a message explaining that I would collect my pieces on Thursday, but only after I'd told her my name.
No, I don't know why my having a name should make a difference either.
(Well, yes. That's why I thought I'd apologise for not removing the offending items on the designated date, you bat.)
She did eventually deign to suggest that she might leave a message explaining that I would collect my pieces on Thursday, but only after I'd told her my name.
No, I don't know why my having a name should make a difference either.
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