Sunday 12 July 2015

So On Thursday Mother Died


So on Thursday morning at dawn, my mother died.  My sister and I had received what we, for years, had termed 'the 5.30 am call'. It means, in our family, a cry for help from one of the tribe, delivered as 'early as decent'. In this instance the message was simple - 'If you want to see your mother alive, come now'.

A Cry From One of the Tribe








The experts say that bad news sinks into the human brain in three stages: disbelief, acceptance, fortification. So, for an hour or so we had this ludicrous disbelieving conversation in which we reasoned that we would probably arrive too late for our mother's departure and that, based on our kindly father's desire 'not to bother us' we probably should just wait until the funeral.

Over hot tea and buttered toast, we came to our senses and pelted down the platform for the first train out of Paddington Station, London, to a destination in the far west of Britain.

The First Train Out of Paddington








We reached the parents' cottage in time, in fact time enough to gather round our mother's bed, not for a maudlin death-bed scene but for a family sing-song. Ma even frowned at me for getting the second line of the Welsh National Anthem wrong, as I always do and she always does. She lived another four days, actually, while the temperature soared in the hottest July on record. Gradually the surreal NHS 'End of Life Package', became our accepted norm. We rang our places of employment, not once, but the next day and the next. As the sun baked the garden to death, we wheeled her bed to the porch where she could hear the seagulls.

Where She Could Hear the Seagulls

We moistened her lips with wet tissues instead of those awful sponge swab things, and when we weren't talking to her, reminding her what a great Mum she'd been, we got on and cooked the dinner like a normal family.  They say that hearing is the last sense to go, and I like to believe it fortified her, as well as us, to hear the family carrying on as usual, arguing over the washing up, reminding one another to water the roses, discussing the merits of the new vaccuum cleaner.


Flowers in Her Hair

After she passed over, I had the great privilege of helping to lay her out, instructed by two ladies, Kerry and Diana, who did a stunning job. Oiled and anointed, with flowers in her hair, she looked almost like a young girl again. Then, with the kind of tact only British bureacracy could manage, a psychotherapist called Candida telephoned from the local hospital. Mother had, she said, seemed a little depressed during her last visit to hospital. Would it help if she, Candida came around and had a bit of a chat? "Not really," I replied.  "If I'm honest."

How many loved your moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty with a love false or true
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
And loved the sorrows of your ever-changing face

William Butler Yeats 1865-1939


With grateful thanks to the wonderful teams from Devon C.Air and Pembroke House Surgery Paignton

Monday 6 July 2015

Our Mother, Val Doonican & Omar Sharif



The Urge to Dignify Death

After a death comes a funeral, pretty much anywhere in the world.The urge to dignify the passing somehow means that we try to despatch the departed loved one with a ritual. In Victorian times, certainly in London, it  took as long as possible and 'death-bed' scenes were strung out with weeping and wailing. There were specific words, rituals and keepsakes known as 'memento mori'.

Unless you work in a funeral parlour or something, the language of death, arriving right slap in the  rawness of your grief, comes as an experience both surreal and funny.

The first thing that happens, in Britain at any rate, is that your family doctor certifies that the recently departed is actually dead, and there's nothing suspicious about it.

The Doctor's Jaunty Tie
In our case, the family doctor had been calling daily throughout the final week of my mother's life. The visit was strangely similar to the day before's, except that he arrived wearing a dark blue tie instead of his usual jaunty scarlet one.

Naturally, my sister and I wanted new outfits for the funeral. Even when you know someone's going to die, there's a reticence about going out to choose your special frock before the event. After our mother passed way, without thinking we arranged this ludicrous schedule, making sure that when we felt that urge to shop, one was always available to stay at home.

Feeling That Urge to Shop
 That's true grief, we discovered. It's not about how sad you feel or what a huge gap someone's left in your life. It's about the little things. Forgetting that you can now go shopping,


Much-Travelled Posy
That week I learned, too, about floral artistry, and the unique terminology that goes with it.  For example, you don't order a wreath but a funeral posy. If you order for a funeral on Dartmoor when you live in North London, Interflora doesn't actually drive 200 miles with said posy, they just charge you as if they had.

Another thing that made us fall about laughing was a Cockney superstition that my Nana, born and bred in London's 'East-End', taught us. If you hear of a death, then the next two people you hear of in the same predicament will go to Heaven with the first one.  So for example, our local butcher died this week and will now go to the abode of the angels arm-in-arm with the critic Brian Sewell and the much-loved writer of erotic fiction, Jackie Collins.

Clearly this sweet old fairy tale dates back to the time when London was a collection of small communities centred around the docks, the alleys etc. To Ma and me, it didn't matter a jot that there were millions of people in the world and hundreds of deaths per day. We still applied the theory, to gales of laughter, every time we heard of a death in the news or in our part of town.

So for what it's worth, my mother, who died on 2 July 2015, went to Heaven with Val Doonican and Omar Sharif. And boy, won't she remind us of that one next time we see her.

  Weep if you must,
Parting is hell.
But life goes on;
So sing as well.

Joyce Grenfell 
1910-1979

Sunday 1 June 2014

The Artist's Date or in Britain, a 'Jolly'

Out on a Jolly

So now I'm trying the next tool from the Creativity Course - the Artist's Date. Most blocked creatives find this creative 'playtime' much harder than the 'work' of morning pages. The idea is that, quite simply, you take your artist self out on a date, just the two of you. You're not supposed to achieve anything, feel anything, or come back with a result. There are no rules; results are cumulative, random, serendipitous - a red London bus pops into your narrative three months hence. You forget to be depressed in the mornings, writubg for ten minutes in the cafe instead. You don't drink as much gin and and you've enough cash  for a Creative Writing workshop. That sort of result.
No Rules

I found the concept slightly creepy at first. Your 'inner artist' is  a child-like creature, and in the UK the term 'date' has a distinctly adult feel.  Taking my newly emergent artist child on a date sounded pervy, until I changed the term to 'a day out with my artist'. Or even a 'Jolly'.


A mad dash through a street fountain


I discovered pretty quickly, your inner artist might be a child but the day out doesn't have to be childish,unless you want it to. This is no human child, but a wild, untamed chimera you're hoping to unleash. The artist small person doesn't do cute and it definitely doesn't do pink.

A bag of delicious fruit

The Jolly doesn't have to cost a lot of money, either -  some of the best ones cost nothing. You  devote a little time to yourself doing something that brightens your spirit, and gets your creative juices flowing. Perhaps a mad dash through a street fountain, a visit to the market for a bag of delicious fresh fruit,  mudlarking at the edge of the River Thames - but do it alone, with no other motive other than to stimulate the creative juices.

Mudlarking at the edge of the Thames

 For my first Jolly, I chose one of the two things no-one has a right to explore even once, according to Sir Thomas Beecham: incest and Morris Dancing. In London, the May Bank Holiday is a perfect excuse for normally sensible people to break out in Morris dancing outside the pub. I took myself to one one the banks of the river, feeling a bit of a twit.

Breaking out in Morris Dancing
  And whadda ya know, my inner artist really did glow.


You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough
Mae West 1893-1980 



Monday 9 December 2013

Blood Swept Lands & Seas of Red



The Banker Pub

On a gorgeous day in August I met my dear friend Janet for lunch in a rather nice pub called The Bankers. It overlooks the River Thames, very close to the Tower of London. So, after a prettily dressed salad and a glass of lightly chilled white wine  (at a price that would make your Auntie scream), we nattered on about families, funerals and fallopian tubes. Then we strolled over to view the latest artwork.

It was a sculpture of ceramic poppies that erupted out of a window of the Tower. We thought it very pretty, and a fitting tribute to the lost soldiers of World War I.  What we didn't realise at the time was that the poppy installation wasn't finished. Day by day, week by week, month by relentless month, a team of 8,000 volunteers have planted 888,246 beautifully crafted flowers, one for each life lost during those years in the trenches, 1914-1918. 

The Poppies, August 2014
This morning I returned to the City of London in the early morning and sat writing at the bottom of the Monument, built to commemorate an earlier London disaster - the  Fire 1665. The Monument's a peaceful place now if you catch it before the rest of the crowds. I'd been having such trouble with my current chapter, trying to write about my hero's experience of war though I was born in peacetime. Eventually I thought I'd wrestled some sort of result after a short, furious bout of the scribbles.


The Poppies, November 2014
 Ten minutes later, quite unprepared for what I'd encounter, I took a brisk walk in the rain to the Tower. The poppies now are waist height. They fill the moat, right up to the railings. They spray across the bridge and surge along the river side in full view of the Thames River Police, the dredgers and the HMS Belfast. In 1914 there were many who thought the war would be a bit of a diversion, 'over by Christmas'. Now their descendants stand, literally thousands of them, every age group, every social class, in hushed silence at 8.00 am in the morning. There were so many people there that they closed first Tower Hill station, then Aldgate, then St Paul's. Still the crowds came flocking, stomping along the Thames path with their prams, umbrellas and walking sticks. Eerie, and unforgettable. Now there's a fitting tribute.


With rue my heart is laden
  For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
  And many a lightfoot lad.

A. E. Housman
1859-1936 

My short story published by Ether Books, Free today for Remembrance Sunday 

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Sunday 13 October 2013

Morning Pages - The Bootcamp


Dawn on the River Thames, A Week In
 A week into Morning Pages and I find I rise earlier and see the dawn more often. My Morning Pages are already less bitter and less whiney. Of course, part of the point of writing Morning Pages is to free the creative channels of bitterness and whining. It's like a morning shower for the creative consciousness. It doesn't  matter one jot whether the mess on the page turns out to be vaguely readable or thoroughly vile. The point is to apply backside to seat and do them each day. Three pages is the recommended stretch, but I wonder whether each writer finds their own best length. The point is, it should be slightly more than you want to do. Keep going, no punctuation, no editing, be specific, allow the monsters to surface, then drive right on.

The Monsters Drive Right On
Having managed, some days with difficulty, to keep Morning Pages going, I admit that that a strange, tentative freedom creeps into my creative work. I've had some odd moments of synchronicity this week - yes, you dismiss them as coincidence if you will, but then, if I were going to deride the results of the Creativity Course there wouldn't be much point in doing it, would there? Sometimes the Morning Pages divert themselves into scenes from my novel, as though the subconscious, like Kevin when at Perry's house, (for Harry Enfield fans) has finally given in. 'Might as well do this writing thing then, and are there any Ginger Nuts please Missus?'


Dawn at Kings Cross Station
 I've begun to notice odd, whimsical things that only the child-like free spirit of oneself would find titter-worthy - for example, the hordes of adults who queue at Kings Cross station all summer,  paying out a fortune to have their photo taken by Platform Nine and Three Quarters, suddenly disappear - presumably to pack their own kids off to school. Which leads me to wonder whether, if I sneak up there one misty morning this week, will I hear the faint sound of that special chuffa train...

My dear friend Carmen, surely the most potent of creative enablers, bought me a great new notebook and three pens that positively snarl off the page. Carmen doesn't know I've started Morning Pages.  Or even that I'm a writer. Weird.

Pens that Positively Snarl
Finally, I received a birthday present, a much-longed for addition to the Pittam Towers arsenal which bowled me over, as I hadn't expected anything nearly so generous. It was a Kindle Fire which came with, amongst other things, a free download of 'Music for the Mozart Effect' - 'Unlock the Creative Spirit'.

So with synchronicity increasing and creative impulses beginning to stir again I feel ready for this week's challenge which is, I believe, the 'Artist's Date.'


                                                       
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air
 
W. B. Yeats 1895-1939









 

Wednesday 6 February 2013

I Dare You


One thing that makes life worthwhile, so they tell us, is 'facing a challenge'.  From earliest childhood, if we are lucky, we learn from the right kind of challenge. I started early with a game of the same name, on my first day at school. My primary school, Meadow Lane, was a rough one, frankly, in which the pupils were drawn from the families of dockers or soldiers stationed at the local depot.

Meadow Lane Primary School

We were not, most emphatically not, allowed to stay inside at break no matter the weather.  The three-sided shelter in the yard was the only concession to our comfort.  The shelter had a narrow wooden bench around the inside. To play The Challenge game needed most of the school, and we sat on the bench, side-by-side, each shoving the person to the left, whilst making a sound like an air-raid siren.  Kids knew the sound of the air-raid siren when I was little because they were still tested regularly every week, some 14 years after the bombs stopped falling on London. Children of the '50s grew up in a world where all adult man and women  were locked together in the grown-up world of grief and enforced brightness, a perpetual determination to 'keep calm and carry on'.

Keep Calm & Carry On
So, the end of The Challenge came when you were ejected, straight off the seat and onto the tarmac playground. It was a painful conclusion to a child's break, not because of scraped knees and filthy gymslips, but because rarely, if ever, did anyone manage to force their way back. The object of The Challenge game was to remain safe, somewhere near the middle of the semi-circle, shouting with mouth wide open and unable to distinguish any sound individually. No doubt the counsellors could make something of it, but we didn't have any of those.

At present I'm in that middle part of my book, just over two thirds there in fact. I really need to drop my hero Thomas Tarling right in it, off the end of the bench or into the icy drink of the Thames, so to speak.

The Ice-Cold Drink of the Thames
I've got to get him to feel the lash of the whip (not literally, though it was a common enough punishment for working class men in his day, in 1820s London. Makes community service look a little tame, guys...)  I struggle through various books, and try to find something that will assist me.

The Lash of the Whip
I meet my friend Ruth for coffee. She, too, is having problems with her novel and we read bits to each other. I start with a bit of Thomas's fight on the dockside.





'There was utter silence, and he knew he had to act. With a stifled groan, he sprang forward and knocked the key from Robshaw's hand. It fell to the quay with a clatter.  

     Robshaw bent swiftly, retrieved it and glanced about. 

     'After him,' Thomas yelled, boiling with rage.  'After him. Robshaw, I'm gonna get that friggin key if I have to strip you for it.'

Ruth works through my manuscript, until it's awash with red ink. After that, I expect Ruth to bring out her manuscript but she doesn't. She's got something else. Ruth always burns the midnight oil and is a big fan of weird radio - she loves niche Indie shows with a hundred listeners, and she's a big fan of shortwave. 

My manuscript's awash with red


Last week I caught her tuning into Lucinda Bassett's radio show in the USA.  She was, she says, so hooked that she's brought a couple of pages of Lucinda's memoire and we read it together, our hands shaking with the cold. It's still winter here in London.







.You can buy a 'Keep Calm & Carry On' Poster here

Monday 21 January 2013

A Helicopter Crashed Into A Crane

So it's evening in London after a terrible, terrible day. This morning during the rush hour, a helicopter crashed into a crane, killing the crew and then falling into the street where it injured a number of pedestrians. As horrific accidents go, it wasn't the worst, except of course for the poor family of the crew. For Londoners like me, it brought back the full horror of the London bombings in 2007, although this accident was exactly that - a tragic accident.

A Terrible Day in London


In spite of the carnage, I'm in the Bear pub with a few writer pals. We'd arranged to meet and we thought, 'what will we do if we cancel - just sit at home moping'. Fear's like that - it causes you either to have ridiculous, exaggerated ideas of 'what could happen' or to freeze, and start skulking about like a hibernating bear trying for entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Heroes & Villains, since 1714


The Bear's a great pub for writers, right on the edge of Chinatown and dating back to 1714 - before, frankly, there was a Chinatown. It's had a fair number of famous heroes and villains in its list of historical customers. We like the villains best.

We swap confessions about how little writing we did over the holiday period and scrawl our fears on a beer mat. The seven biggest writing fears, according to my latest fave rave 'Your Writing Coach' by Jurgen Wolff are: 'The fear of rejection, the fear that it won't be good enough, the fear of success, the fear of revealing too much, the fear that you have only one book in you, the fear that you are too old and finally, the fear of being overwhelmed by research.'

We scrawl our fears on a beer mat

Twitter revealed even more - 'don't know how to end my story,' replies one follower. 'You've got it lucky - don't know how to begin mine,' another grumps. Sensing that the war's about to go viral, we bring out our manuscripts, sheepishly at first. Within moments, we're hooked - desperate to hear more about the characters we've missed over the holidays. Dan's writing a dark, dark story as usual, and Rob's still on his never-ending novella about his hero Vordek's unlikely conquest of the fair sex. Ruth's story of a time-travelling witch has spanned another few centuries whilst Ivy's memoir set in the Port of London, early 20th century, thrills and horrifies us.

We're a supportive lot but very frank. 'You know he's going to be a virgin all his life,' Brad tells Rob, which makes Rob blush painfully. We've all guessed who the real Vordek is. 'Do you think they'd just carry on eating if the cross-bow had speared the servant-boy at dinner?' We wonder. Ruth sucks her pen and agrees that the scene is unrealistic. 'I'll have them take a swig of scrumpy after,' she decides. Her West Country accent is always deeper when she thinks of scrumpy jack (cider, for the uninitiated). We all howl, and so do the rest of the customers in the bar. Our writerly gatherings aren't designed to attract attention, situated as they are in a quiet snug at the back on the quietest night of the week, but invariably, they do.

Ruth's Notebook & Pen
Gradually the noise in the bar drops to a hum, and then to dead silence as Ivy begins to read. Her voice and reading style remind me of the Primary School teacher she was for four decades, and the years of 'Friday afternoon story time' reading aloud have honed her vocal chords. They've lost none of their power. Her story tells of little things - of the days when a mother could die in childbirth, as easy as anything; of the dockers and how they'd break open a crate of oranges and throw them to passing, malnourished urchins; of family pride, of two world wars - one her parents', one her own; and most of all of love. Rough, often unspoken, many times passed off with a joke, but love just the same. When she finishes, and removes her specs, the applause is spontaneous, a wall of sound.

The Old London Dock Gates


It's time to go, and we do it with hugs, and quiet gratitude for the companionship of those of kind. When you've got that, writer or not, fear seems a petty foe indeed.

Courage comes when you make demand - not sooner, not later but then
Leo ~ The Blue Book Writings 

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