Monday 29 December 2014

New Year Irresolution

We love the idea that we choose the way we live our lives. But did we choose the country we were born in? The family we joined? The time and technology, the fashions of clothing and cooking?
This is the time for maxing out on the illusion of choice, through the custom of New Year’s Resolutions. This is where we imagine ourselves, not as a completely different being, but as a person more or less like we are now but with some different habits. For resolutions to change ourselves are usually about habits, not about one-off events. We know we are not really changed by one trip to Japan, but we may be changed by the daily practice of Zen meditation.


Ah, but it is so difficult to change ourselves! We live the way we live now because of a dollop of necessities (people who need caring for, money that has to be earned) married to the customs of the social groups we inhabit. Just knowing that something would be good for us is not enough to make it happen. We have to get the mind on our side, to monitor our progress and to inject some resolve. Sadly, the mind is a slippery customer which comes up with all sorts of excuses. It has to be fooled into the required action.

This New Year I have been thinking about the goal I will not achieve, not even set; and the bad habit I plan to take up in January. Research shows that it is easier to achieve behaviour change if you feel part of a group, so I have been asking my writing friends for their reverse resolutions. Dave can’t remember the last time he made any New Year resolutions, so perhaps he’s been unwittingly irresolute for years. In 2015, he’s determined NOT to:
Join a gym, learn a language, create something on a potter’s wheel, take the lead role in a cutting edge drama – or any role in any drama, read more books than I would have read anyway, walk an uncomfortably long distance, climb an unfeasibly high mountain, go to a country I’ve never heard of, get up earlier in the morning, learn six new recipes, none of which I’ll ever put into practice, try and get more than one correct answer on University Challenge.
Dave says he would raise a glass to the above irresolutions, but he’s already (not?) given up drinking. Clair intends to head off in the other direction:
My New Year’s Irresolution is to drink more alcohol. I used to be quite proficient, but in recent years I have lost form. However, with some committed training I hope I will be able to beat my past performance and set a new personal best.
This irresolution certainly strikes a chord with me; I find it increasingly difficult to get drunk. But I admire Clair’s spirit. The point is, you have to keep trying. Annabel is also planning to party more:
To eat more (although also more healthily). To iron fewer clothes. I used to not iron anything, then I became obsessed with ironing pretty much everything. I need a healthy balance and folding well can help cut down. To go out and party more (my children are getting older and its time to have more grown up fun).
Annabel, thank you for that. The ironing thing has crept up on me, too. On the other hand, I like the smell and it can be good thinking time if a plot needs working on. Inez is clearly an expert in fooling her mind into achieving difficult things:
This year I'm not going to miss any deadlines because I'm not going to set any. Last year I resolved to keep a notebook in my handbag so that I could jot down ideas. This year I hope to remember to put a pen in my bag too.
Yes, every writer needs their notebook and pen, but many forget which pocket they are in at the crucial moment. I can just picture myself at some vibrant social gathering patting each of my pockets and saying, ‘Sorry, can you repeat that? It was really interesting.’ According to Hazel, the ‘s’ word is one that should be treated with extreme caution.
Well, for starters I'm not going to apologise for things that aren't my fault...

Virginia explains why this matters and why such habits die hard;
 I am going to stop saying ‘Sorry,’ when something is either not my fault or I am not sorry at all.  When out shopping, for example, if someone bumps into me, I automatically say ‘Sorry.’  Why do I do this?  They bumped into me, not the other way round. 
I am also going to refrain from saying the ‘S’ word when venturing an opinion or disagreeing with someone else’s view.  I often start by saying ‘I’m sorry, but…..’  Why do I feel the need to apologise for saying what I think, even if it does differ from someone else’s perspective?  So that is going to stop, too. I was at a till point in a shop the other day and the assistant gave me the wrong change.  I said, ‘I’m sorry but I gave you a £20 note……’  Well I was sorry that she didn’t give me enough money but that should not have necessitated an apology from me. 
So my New Year’s Irresolution is to cease that particular form of politeness.  Forever.  So there! Did I come across too strong there?  Sorry!



A very happy New Year to the readers and writers of the Yorkshire Writers’ Lunch blog, and you can add your own irresolutions in the comments section below.

Monday 22 December 2014

A GERMAN CHRISTMAS MARKET

Imagine this: a haze of red, blue and green fairy lights blurred by the rising steam from spicy, heady gluhwein.  The muted sound of a tasteful Christmas carol, sung in its native German.  Woollen clad shoppers huddled together like penguins.  The warm, sweet smell of hot doughnuts beckoning passers by, calling us over to sample them.

Imagine these things.  And yes, I was trying to imagine them as I sat in the back of a stationery taxicab, en route from Hamburg Airport to Lubeck.  The mist I saw was not that arising from gluhwein but that of the cars windows steaming up as the snowstorm began.  The lights were not fairy-like at all.  They were the tail lights of other cars, winking at me through the falling snow flakes of a surprise blizzard.  Not quite what I had envisioned.

The Lubeck of my imagination was a far cry from the reality of this white-hot traffic jam.  I was trapped on sheet ice, watching the silent dance of lorries jack-knifing and cars shimmying towards each other, bumpers kissing bumpers in unplanned and un-choreographed routines.

I eventually arrived safely in Lubeck and was welcomed in via the Holstentor, a twin towered medieval gate.  The gate was illuminated by the moonlight and appeared one moment as a magical form of transportation back over hundreds of years, yet fleetingly resembling a huge bouncy castle, minus its children, standing forlorn against the night sky.  A strange, memorable contrast.

As I wandered the narrow streets, the Lubeck Christmas Market revealed itself exactly as I had imagined it.   Row upon row of stalls selling tree decorations, advent stars, tree lights, candle holders; all gleaming like festive jewels of emerald, ruby and gold.  All designed to enhance the perfect Christmas interior.  All designed to create their own special memories for the future, with promises to adorn our homes for years of Christmases to come.

And then a stark contrast.  Surely that could not be the harsh sound of a tinny rendition of 'Jingle Bells' emerging from someone's hat?  The traditional sounds of the market seemed to recede as I looked at the cheap red felt hat, complete with reindeer antlers and bells.  The wearer stood motionless as the hat sang its little Christmas heart out.  As the climax of the song approached, so as not to be ignored,  the antlers started to flap in time to the music, quivering as the manufactured singing voice attempted a shaky vibrato.

It was impossible not to laugh - as the hat, as it began its unrequested encore - and at myself as I queued up to buy one!

The Lubeck Christmas market was certainly full of surprises.



Monday 15 December 2014

It's only a story...?

My 3 year old son loves stories.  I don’t just mean the weekly library trip and bedtime storybooks - he has a real love of spoken stories.  He asks me or my husband to tell them several times a day, often the same ones repeated.  It’s also a measure of closeness.  You know you’re in his most trusted circle when he asks you to tell him a story (Nan and Auntie Ria have recently been invited to join these inner echelons). 
When I start to think about the stories themselves, I realise they aren’t just something enjoyable and entertaining.  He really needs these stories.  One of his favourites at the moment goes something like this:
“Mum, you know that story about when Nan was a little girl and she was on her red bike and then she fell off and got an ouch on her knee and then her mummy put some cream on her knee and gave her a plaster?  Can you do that story please?”
He usually asks for it immediately after he’s hurt himself.  It functions to help him process the experience, as well as to understand that other people have painful experiences too, that they deal with them and then move on.  He also gets to relish the idea that his silver-haired Nan was once a fearless pigtailed girl zooming down a hill.
As well as working through real experiences, stories help him with to work through and diffuse imaginary fears.  The other evening he was quite alarmed by the tigers that were in the room.  When I asked for their specific location he whispered intently that they were in the top of his body.  So we made a story where we took turns to pull a tiger out of his mouth, count to three and blow each one out of the window.
Since moving house in July we’ve had lots of maintenance people coming to fix things and we’ve also had two car breakdowns.  So a major theme over the summer was mending and problem-solving.   This bred a whole miscellany of stories about boilers, screwdrivers, magic garden walls and breakdown trucks.  I also took it as a sneaky opportunity to subtly challenge gender stereotypes in job roles, as so many maintenance workers he had encountered were men.  So in our story repertoire we now have female characters such as Sarah the crane driver, who crops up whenever a vehicle gets stuck in mud, and Sue the car-loader driver who gets a fair bit of air-time during motorway journeys.
This Christmas, my son will become a big brother for the first time.  In the lead up to him having a sibling, we’ve done lots of stories and photos about when he/mum/dad/nan/granddad was a baby.  Songs have proved to be good for ‘new baby’ story inspiration too.  Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely appears on one of our car compilation CDs and so we told him the story of the song’s inception.   Our embellished version has Stevie going to the hospital to meet his new baby daughter, giving her a name, counting her tiny fingers and toes and then going home to write a song for her on his piano.
Stories also provide a living connection to family memories and heritage.  My husband is from Kosovo, and he often tells our son tales about his childhood growing up in a mountain village with a smallholding.  He has endless material on the idylls and hardships of this kind of rural life, bordering into fairy-tale territory: falling out of cherry trees into bramble bushes, spotting an elusive wolf or bear on the mountainside, caring for and learning to ride horses or chopping logs in time for the bitterly cold winters.
When I’m asked for the seventh time that day to do the ‘road builders’ story and I sigh inside (it’s my own fault for making that one so boring), I forget how much all this storytelling has taught me about creativity. It’s helped me to reconcile that caring for my son full-time and wanting to write are not necessarily two endeavours in opposition to each other.  Creative writing isn’t only something I do sitting at a desk in solitude, undisturbed and under ideal solemn conditions.  It’s more messy than that.
Then there’s the joy of improvising and the unexpected.  Can I slip in a funny new detail and will he notice?  How can I interrupt the usual words of the story and make it silly and fresh?  E.g. How many orange-y things can I replace a traffic cone with?  ‘Was it a fox?  A squirrel? A tangerine? A tiger?’ (cue giggles from my son).  Or there’s the collaborative aspect, where my son slots in all kinds of weird and wonderful alternate endings.  In actual fact, he’s the one teaching me about stories and the art of story-telling.
Spinning these yarns has really underlined for me how intimate, even sacred, the act of storytelling is.  What could be more intimate than sharing an imaginary space with another person, with all that that entails emotionally along a narrative journey?  There’s a sense, especially with oral storytelling, that we're making something unique and unrepeatable.  Being entertained is almost secondary to sharing together something fundamental to being human and making sense of the world.


Monday 8 December 2014

ORK (Part Three) by Richard Wells

(See July 21st for Ork Part 1, and 8th September for Part 2.)

The horses slip and slide down the wet hillside towards Ork’s house.
The two men dismount unhurriedly. Ork watches them carefully, uncertain of what he can do to save himself if they have harmful intent. They keep their distance and the taller man speaks in a strange accent which Ork fails to recognise. He has to ask the man to repeat his question.
 “I am Ork. I am the printer.” He sees no point in denying it. “How do you want me to help you?” He addresses the taller man, but it is the short squat man who answers.
 “You misunderstand. It is we who can help you.” His face twitches as he hears a shout from the shed and Ork quickly explains about the sins of his former apprentice. “Perhaps it would be better if your sinner doesn’t overhear our conversation. We shall leave now.”

+ + +

Riding two on a horse is never satisfactory – for men or horse. Digger runs between the two mounts, confused by Victor’s absence. Ork’s hunger hits him as they descend the wooded valley to the stone bridge. The cart is on its side, its precious cargo strewn across the river bank, no sign of Jonas or Victor.

The three men heave the cart back onto its wheels and laboriously load the pamphlets, bundle by bundle. Digger sniffs the churned mud, whines and pads slowly away to the trees.
The smaller man tells Ork he’s lucky. Had they been staunch loyalists, he would have been on a treason charge. But he and his comrade have no truck with such out of date thinking.

 “We must learn from the French. When we saw your over-turned wagon and stopped to read your handiwork, we knew we could count on you. You will of course want to come with us.”
Ork takes in the speaker’s subtle change of tone, an order not a request. He’s come across their views before, but they are not his. He wonders how they were able to track him down and worries about Jonas’ fate.

Digger’s sudden barking distracts him. Ork walks into the copse, feeling the eyes of both men on his back, as they follow. He discovers Victor tethered to a birch sapling.
“That was well found. Bring him, he can pull the cart.” Another order.
Ork guides the cart skilfully around the muddy morass and over the packhorse bridge. He follows his captors as they make their way east, smoking and jesting. Ork thinks of his wife’s letter. Is there a chance she’ll be freed shortly? He blames himself for her incarceration. If he hadn’t been away from home that day…

The men hide their muskets under the tarpaulin, well out of his reach and take on an air of normality as they reach the edge of the town. Ork has seldom visited this place, but the men seem to know it well and are greeted by some of the townsfolk as they ride by.
Horse and cart enter the stable. Ork jumps down and is immediately seized by the two men and led to a room at the rear, dominated by a printing press.

“We have work for you to do” the smaller man says in a low voice.
It’s only then Ork realises that Digger is missing.


(To be concluded in Part 4.)

Monday 1 December 2014

DOG GONE


Newspaper plops through locked front door
With news of great distress across the world.
No bark greets the intrusion of war and disaster.
First World problems rear their pretty heads;
Come here, go there, buy this, buy that, consume and sue.
Have something for nothing, it’s your due.

But here, right here, the world is colder by degrees.
No global heat in Grimescar Valley; the people stay indoors,
Their blood unwarmed by walking marathons.

Food once gusto gobbled, rots, bagged and binned.
Black cat emboldened sits composed in a bed
Of hardy perennials, studying the bird table. Rats encroach.
Mud dries hard on boots, the body stiffens.
The museum house lies cold, quiet and clean
The roaring turbo vacuum stowed silent in the dark.

It was my companion who made the introductions
To the horses, the magpies, the jays, the acorns,
Our daily forensic examination of Blake’s Promised Land.
But now no ear is cocked to listen to my poem,
No dark brown eye to monitor my mood.
I come and go unnoticed, encased in steel.

The world is changed by great events and even more by small.
“Do you miss the dog?” they ask.
Yes, naturally; and more, I miss myself.