Coming soon!!

This is the image on the front cover of  'One that got away' - the sixteen episode story of Jenna and Eddie for which I have produced sixteen accompanying prints.   I have put it together using the Blurb.com site and will publish as soon as I receive permission from those whose comments I have quoted on the back page.

Countdown and messages

Three emails from various folks at NaNoWriMo and a FB post that there's only four days to go ...

Trouble is I've gone off the boil a bit, having been bursting with ideas a couple of weeks ago.

Heigh ho - no doubt it'll be fine once Monday comes.

Writing from New Orleans

Nine members of Six Sentences met in New Orleans at the beginning of September for what we hope was the first of many get-togethers of fellow writers, and although there is no doubt that the trip will continue to inspire us all for many more months, a selection of writings on our first, abiding impressions, has been gathered together by Mike Handley and this most wonderful souvenir produced by him..      http://issuu.com/pompetous/docs/hows_of_the_rising_sun


The book includes writings by Michael Brown, Teresa Cortez, Julia Davies, Joe Gensle, Jared and Mike Handley, Shauna McClure, Gita Smith and me.

Conversation on the summit of a hill - dialogue only

“Sean ... it’s just occurred to  me .. you’re not married are you?”

“Married?   Do you think I’d be behaving like this with you if I was?    

“No .. I suppose not ...”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you I would’ve married you?”

“What?  My mother?   Marry me?  ... no, she’s never mentioned it, never  ... when? ... why didn’t I know about it?”  

“It was that morning I came to your house, just after the funeral, I was waiting along the road, hoping to see you, needing to know how things were between us and she came along and stopped and spoke to me.   I thought she was going to have a go at me, thought you’d’ve told her how I treated you .. but no, she said what a state you’d been in, crying in your room all the time, and that nothing she said made any difference, then said that seeing me would help get you out of it, because talking hadn’t helped ... I was totally knocked out at what she was hinting, couldn’t believe it at first ... but then she asked about taking precautions ... and I said no, I couldn’t do that ... so she said in that case it had to stop, she didn’t want you a mother at sixteen when you were too young to know what you were letting yourself in for.   And she was really fierce about that – if I’d tried to argue I’m sure she’d’ve stopped me coming to see you at all, and I was that desperate ... And although I knew it was far too early to suggest it, I wanted her to know I was serious so I told her I would marry you, but she said I was not to say anything at all to you about that.   And then she said “you’d better go and see her now to break it to her it’s got to stop” and said no-one else was at home, so I think she knew what would happen ...”

“And I made it so hard for you ... was such a selfish cow and couldn’t see reason ... oh god Sean, will I never finish being sorry for the way I behaved then?   But ‘serious’?, serious about me, enough to think of marrying me? ... I didn’t know, don’t think I ever thought that far ahead ...”

“There were times during those weeks when I didn’t believe you used your brain to think with at all.   I’d thought she would’ve told you later, but with you going on to university ... you’d’ve missed all that if we’d married, I suppose she didn’t want you finishing up with someone uneducated ...”

“No! – she’d never have taken that view, after all, Dad wasn’t ‘educated’ - my natural father was, but apart from his education he was not a lot of use to her, so she’d never say that ... but even so, I’d’ve liked to have been told ... liked to’ve been asked.”

“You would’ve said ‘yes’ like a shot wouldn’t you?  If it meant I could have you every day?   But if you had, we’d never be sitting here now – you’d not be looking so lovely and fresh, and I’d not be enjoying having a bit of money behind me, and the freedom to take a few days off work to climb a hill with you – we’d be struggling to make ends meet with four or five kids, in some rented place somewhere – and that’s why your mum was so determined I didn’t mention it to you then.   And I think she was right to do so, even though I knew you wouldn’t agree at the time.”

“So you were happy to just walk away? ... just to leave me without you? ... me not knowing that you cared that much?   Do you know how close I came to following Sophy’s example and throwing myself in the river – I  tried for months to get over you, thought I’d never manage to lead a life without you, it just got worse and worse because I thought you couldn’t possibly care if you were going with Caroline so soon after ...”  

“Only because you had Johnny ... she’d made the first move and I was using her to try and get over you ... I saw that Johnny had taken my place, that he was taking care of you – I was glad for you that he was, but I was going through hell, and of course I wasn’t happy but ...”

“But I didn’t have Johnny ... Johnny didn’t  have me, because I couldn’t forget you ... not that he ...  Look – Johnny’s my family, my cousin, my friend ... I love Johnny, he loves me, he takes care of me, I’d never have managed without him those first few weeks ... BUT ... but there is not, there hasn’t been, not since you, there never has been that extra ... that need for him that I feel for you.” 

“So we’ve got lust going for us ... is that enough? do you think that’s enough? enough to build a marriage on?”  

“ ‘Enough to build a marriage on’?  Is that a proposal?   No, don’t make that a proposal ... I’d say lust on its own isn’t enough, probably, but we don’t just have lust, there’s a lot more between us ... I know there is ...”  

“Such as?”  

“Such as honesty, such as respect – we always could talk to each other, I always trusted you, was always comfortable with you, but yesterday, coming to you after so long, I see just how ... how honourable a person you are, how strong and solid ... and trustworthy.   Believe you me, there aren’t that many people around as solid as you ...  and I think you must care for me to have taken the trouble to make me see what you made me see yesterday ... that you won’t be fucked around with ...”

“Don’t use that language – it’s ugly in a woman,“

“ ... you won’t be messed around with ... and you cared enough to forgive me for ... for going with Johnny first ...  I don’t think it’s just lust you feel for me ... any more than it’s just lust I feel ... Oh Christ, Sean, I can’t help it but I still love you as much as I ever did, all those years of trying to get over you, they haven’t worked, since yesterday, as soon as I saw you, it’s just as bad as it always was.”

“Just as bad?   Why bad, Bridie?”  

“Because ... because if I’ve got it wrong about you caring I’m going to have to learn all over again to do without you and I don’t think I can do it ...”

“Bridie, my darling, you don’t have to ... I do care, I want nothing more than to stay together ... but you must have plans already, a future already in place, surely?”

“Nothing I wouldn’t change ... “ 

“That’s what I’m afraid of  - you changing to be with me, and then finding it was a mistake, and being unhappy.   You have no more idea of my life now than I know of what you intend to be doing ...”

“Then tell me, show me what your life is ... don’t you understand – I don’t care so long as I’m with you ... so long as you ... want me ... you don’t even have to marry me if you don’t want ... just ...”

“Of course I’ll marry you, of course I want to marry you ...”

“Then why don’t you ask me?  Me instead of my bloody mother?”

“Christ, Bridie – you haven’t grown up at all have you? – you sound just like you did when you were sixteen – the only difference is that then you were demanding that I shagged you and now you’re demanding that I marry you!   You’re still wanting, wanting and unwilling to wait or to see sense ... but you’re going to have to learn to wait because I’ll ask you to marry me when I’m ready to, when I’m sure that our marriage will not fail, and not before.”

Honourable mention

Pipped to the post, deservingly, by Bolton Carley's brilliant sense of humour, Paul Phillips has selected my piece for an Honourable Mention.    Check it out at  http://jmprescott.blogspot.com/

The piece, posted above as submitted, is of course, a conversation between Bridie and Sean - main characters of my forthcoming novel.

Thursday now

All I've done this week is have thoughts about different facets of my characters, based on what went on with them in Reunion, and occasionally earlier.   These have been scribbled on Post-it notes and stuck into my notebook.   I like to use pencil but have noticed these notes do seem to get rubbed away over time - hope the words don't disappear before I get them typed up!

For JM Prescott's weekly Dare I've submitted a piece of dialogue from Reunion - part of the 'Conversation on the summit of a hill' - having removed all the extra pieces of description, and it still works fine, as far as I can tell.   In contrast, on T10 today Leviathan has posted an excerpt from a novel - Burn it well - and the detail there seems to add a great deal to the dialogue - I must re-read and work out how he does it.

Exercise is character-building

September 26^th :   a Thinking Ten Canvas plus a week’s worth of prompts, all of which are to be used  for the Capstone. 

Prompts always include a location, an opening sentence, three words which must be included, a ‘plot-thickener’ and a Friday ‘Member’s Choice’ which, in this instance, was the instruction to include a newspaper and two characters, named Bud and Rose.   A considerable challenge, since the Canvas was a Van Gogh drawing, and the opening sentence ‘He was the most extraordinary man I ever knew.’

I mulled it over - I had already used the canvas to the best of my ability, referred to my ‘extraordinary’ great-grandfather (stretching the ‘I knew’ just a little) and overcome the difficulty that, for a Brit, the name ‘Bud’ is alien.

The initial story does of course have to be written in ten minutes (no limit on editing time) and where possible I also set myself an additional challenge to use all prompts  as succinctly as possible.   Nevertheless I was surprised that I came up with no fewer than four characters with the potential for future development, and did it in six sentences – a vivid illustration of the benefits of just a month of daily mental exercise.

http://www.thinkingten.com/profiles/blogs/grieving-too-bloody-right-we

6S comment

"Yes - I know, I know the waking at three the words in the head the repeating and polishing and repeating until it is absolutely imperative that I get out of bed and go and write them down (type them out because these days that is where I have to write) and after that its too late to go back to bed.
And at the moment I am immensely frustrated because I have the words, the talking the conversation filling my head but am not permitted to write it down until the first of November.
Which is why you're getting this particular blast of words because I think you might understand.
At least, most of the time (only two haiku in my life) I'm not counting syllables. And I enjoy reading the result of you doing so"

A comment I made yesterday on Ron Lavalette's post (6x3): Two Small Threes by 5
one of a series in which he has been exploring, with wit and insight and poetry,  the difficulties of being a writer

Odd

Between 7.20 this morning when I went out for a paper, and 8.30 when I drew the front room curtains, a tent appeared on the grass bank opposite my house.

Not pegged down, it has blown, flown?, in from somewhere, some other direction to South where I walked earlier.
Black with re piping, it is unattached, its guy ropes dangling, rolling against the hedge.

As I gaze, amazed, a cyclist goes past, turns his head to wonder too.


But between starting to type this and now, (less than ten minutes - I am well-practised) it has steadied, it has turned, it has become grounded.

And three heads, youthful, male, peer out from below the unzipped nylon door flap.

NaNoWriMo preparation

Spidergraph, flowchart or the even better word my daughter reminded me of the other day which I have already forgotten, whatever you call, it can be a useful device for novel planning.

I drew one up for a particularly complex essay when I did my MA. A beautiful one, colour-coded boxes, lines, arrows both single and double ended and different colour texts, and proud of my efforts, I emailed a copy to my youngest son.

He was scathing: “You’d’ve been better using pencil and paper” he said, not understanding that the only way such a chart could be done on the computer was after a lot of scribbling and re-drawing, ultimately repetitive and frustrating because of the need to re-draw every correction.

I thought to resurrect it in preparation for my November novel, deleting the text which referred to seventeenth century parish registers and overseer’s account, kinship and bastardy, and substituting characters: Bridie, Sean and Christy, and plot lines: B + C discovered by S, big row between J + E, etc etc.

But all I currently have are a load of empty and irrelevantly coloured boxes, parked beside rows and rows of arrows, both horizontal and vertical, like spears awaiting battle.

[This piece originally appeared on 6S, 19th September, with many comments, including the words "Mind Map" which I had forgotten]

Post-it notes

This one says

'deserved

loved

supported yesterday

she wanted to acknowledge'

I hope I remember where I wanted to use these words

Another book

Yesterday I began reading David Lodge's 'Souls and Bodies' - an account of the lives and the impact of Catholicism on a group of people who were undergraduates in the mid 1950s.   This was recommended by Michael Brown in response to my request for help on 6S and is proving a fascinating - and extremely useful - read, reminding me of so much about life in Britain at that time, as well as enabling me to get a better idea of how Sean & Bridie might tackle the question of a Catholic marriage.

Re-reading Toby Hecht's blog 'Collaboration' on editorial interventions, and from thence considering acknowledgements, it crossed my mind that among those I list in my eventual novel (ha ha!) perhaps MDJB should be one - but really that seems not to be the point at all.   Are people whose list of those they feel obliged to thank for help runs to half a page or more (sometimes a LOT more) confusing perhaps the (maybe sycophantic for a purpose) acknowledgements necessary for a dissertation, where exam success rests upon a good mark, with the more grown up and individual production of a novel, or are they wishing to share the blame should it be a failure?

pessimistic

Last night I sat up late to finish Andrew Greig's 'Electric Brae' and now wonder if I have the language, the poetry, the experience to write anything which even approaches this.  I can but aspire.   Write what you know, and make it more so I suppose.   Twisted truths.   Yeah.

Dream on!

This morning I woke late, aware that I'd been dreaming about Sean or Christy - a warm and comfortable dream, of sensations rather than facts, feelings rather than words so there is nothing left, now that I've woken, which can be written down.   What a pity that some sort of plug-in hasn't yet been invented which could turn my dreams into written words.

NaNoWriMo - less than a month away

Fellow writers on 6S and T10 will know that I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month - there are eight of us altogether on 6S and I have been using the T10 prompts to experiment with plot lines.   I am, of course, continuing with the Bridie and Sean saga which began way back in April in response to a challenge from Absolutely*Kate, in which Bridie - as Bridget - made her first appearance, at the age of three months, along with her mother Jenna, and Eddie Burdock.   Originally entitled 'Not Sexy - the One that got away' since it wasn't my original submission for the challenge but something of a gathering, a rehashing, of left-over sentences, it eventually dropped the 'Not Sexy' and became a sixteen episode 'One that got away'.

In June, Bridie reappeared in 'Theme for a Summer' now age fifteen.   Sean quickly - and literally - 'made contact' with her and almost as quickly earned the wrath of Eddie - now married to Jenna and considered by Bridie to be the only father she has ever had.   This saga, which took place in the summer of 1961 and contained a host (too many) of other characters, ran to some thirty or so six sentence posts and came to an end with me expecting her and her cousin Johnny to Live Happily Ever After.

Sean and Bridie had other ideas however, and thanks to Christy, Sean's brother, the pair got together again in 'Reunion' and eventually, after fifty-eight episodes, agreed to marry.

My November novel, as yet untitled, will hopefully continue the story, but it is alarming to realise that all the foregoing - some three or four months of writing - comprises less than 40,000 words and I have to achieve at least 50,000 to qualify.   First thoughts are that plenty of plot, plenty of description - lacking in my 6S pieces - and plenty of back story will be required, along with the reintroduction of several characters from 'Theme'.

Three weeks and four days to go - I have a 'Timeline' drafted and lots of conversations going on in my head ... fingers crossed I'll remember them all when November 1st arrives - and be able to decipher all my scribbled notes.

Lunch on North Peters Street

Felix's Taqueria - Julia's choice of lunch venue - and while I sat on one of the stools at the small, high table, bags on the floor beneath my feet, she selected a plateful of pick and mix tapas to share between us, luckily remembering that my tolerance of chillis was a lot lower than hers so making a balanced selection.
While we ate we watched a window cleaner with the air of a madman, leaping and jumping to reach the higher parts of the windows, climbing onto the sill and holding on precariously to the fragile ironwork, spray container of water and sheets of newspaper for polishing off tucked into his belt ready to be used alternately. From the number of passers by who stopped and spoke to him he was well-known, however such were his antics that the proprietor was eventually forced to go and ask him to desist - or find something to stand on.
The oval mirror not only enabled us to watch him but also exaggerated the apparent darkness of the corner we sat in - the stained and ancient appearance of the plaster must have been intentional, as was the area of exposed brick, partly to retain the 'genuine antiquity' appeal of the French Quarter. Whatever the falseness we both felt ourselves immensely fortunate to have spent a week in New Orleans, and were sorry that this was our final lunch.

2010 Anniversary of 1966 Wedding

This forthcoming Friday is our forty-fourth wedding anniversary.
Not significant in commercial terms, no precious metal or stone nor, to the best of my knowledge any spurious gap-filler of ... flowers or futons or figs. Nevertheless I see it as sort of significant if only for the fact that I was born in a house numbered forty four.
And because we started going out together on the fourth day of the fourth month. So I shall give this wedding anniversary a more apt attribution. I shall say this occasion is our lucky wedding anniversary.



We just wanted to be married, so we could live together, sleep together.
My mother wanted to be the Mother of the Bride and endlessly discuss weddings with her work colleagues, so would have preferred us to wait another six months at least.

His parents wanted us to get married in church, despite the fact that neither of us were believers. The hoops they made us jump through, in their attempts to persuade us included a deeply funny tea party to which his mother’d invited the vicar, overcoming her antipathy to his extreme blackness of skin in the hope that he’d talk some sense into us; he, however, appreciated our lack of hypocrisy.

I asked Steve’s recently widowed aunt to make my dress and jacket (nothing fancy – a simply shift) but she rather cocked it up.

My father got so fed up with all the aggravation about church weddings, and was nervous about making a speech, that he offered us £50 to elope to Gretna Green.

Initial doubts

"Gran, you're not listening ... I didn't say his name was Bud, I said his initials were Bud - B U D, like my initials. And anyway you can be called Bud, strange as it sounds, it is a name in America - wasn't there someone called Bud Flanagan or something?"

She looked back over her shoulder at her grandmother, sat at the table doing the crossword, and trying to beat her self-imposed 30 minute deadline, then turned back to the task in hand: getting the fire going, the wind was in the east and it was hard to get it to draw, despite sitting there with a newspaper held up against the chimney breast for what had seemed ages.

"Well what is his name then, what do the initials stand for?"

"Benedict Ulrich Dohl - his father's father was German apparently."

"Well, you certainly can't be marrying him then .. "

" Whyever not? - not that I've any intention of doing so, for heaven's sake! - stop trying to marry me off to every bloke I mention .. but why not this chap?"

"Because with your name - Barbara - you'll become a Barbie Dohl," and Rose triumphantly laid down her pen. "Finished! Finished in 28 minutes - and that newspaper's going to burn if you're not careful."

Capturing the experience

The pleasure of sitting at the deep back of a dark wood bar on a sunny summer day cannot be over-stressed, and for relaxation it certainly outweighs the outside passings of traffic seeking parking and a place to eat.

Add a pint of Guinness and fresh crab sandwiches and the opportunity to people-watch a murmuring crowd of like-minded lunchers and the occasion further satisfies.

In the days when I carried one of Seawhite’s small chunky sketchbooks and fine black ink pen in my tatty secondhand motorcycle jacket, and had a mini paintbox and brush in the pannier, such lunch stops were captured therein, not necessarily with the hope of a perfect rendition but in the certain knowledge that the resulting memory would be far, far longer-lasting than a photograph, for who looks at the scene they are snapping for more than seconds?

This was an August lunchtime in the Bantry Hotel on a trip which had begun as an Irish BSA rally but was hastily abandoned for a variety of reasons; over-reliance on hope on the part of the organisers being one, and a first, appalled, meeting with a ginger-bearded horror being the convincing second.

The scenery impinged less than it ought due to the combination of Irish roads and insufficient suspension on the second-choice bike (the first having sprung a leak in the petrol tank the morning we were due to leave) which meant that our eyes were continually scanning the tarmac, in order to stand up on the footrests at every unavoidable pothole, so that the back mudguard did not scrape and overly wear the tyre.

But nearly eight years later it is the good bits – the kindnesses, the taste, the music – that encourage me to return, time and time again, although nowadays my new slimline jacket has room only for an equally slimline notebook and pencil in which to capture memories but when space permits I take both).

Notes made on a tour of New Orleans

Neutral ground, Bourbon Street, Vaseline on poles;
Louis and Anna;
Johnny’s bar – candlelight – no ice;
Quadroon balls

Blue poles of varying height = depth;
House > float > boat

Lower Ninth:
Weatherboard – that’s what we call it in Britain,
No protection against Katrina,
Weather damaged, stripped, warped.

Walls no longer protecting, now mouldy, rotted, ripped, removed.

Peeled: lives peeled away, to reveal inner: soul, core, basic,
Peeled: overgrown, tiles missing, broken gaping lives open to the sky, to the elements,
Peeled: memory overgrown with bad, weed infested.

Shock / warning / ignore / hope / decision hard to make:
Rust – government bought empty plots;
Stripe, strip, stripped;
Shutters, shut, open, shut, folded, hinged.

Arrogant and bloody-minded

In the moments before my life ended I was arrogant, opening my eyes and looking with curiosity at the doctor who had just pronounced “there is no blood pressure ... and the pulse is fading fast.” I thought to myself “he looks Egyptian ... silly man, sounds as if he thinks I’m dying” and I closed my eyes again, hoping to work out for myself what was going on.

My next thought saved me. I had just given birth to a son, and on the way to the hospital we had passed, driving in the opposite direction, my regrettably little-loved sister-in-law who had, two days previously, given birth to a stillborn son, full-term but throttled by the umbilical cord.

This second, bloody-minded, thought – which began only mildly incoherent and ended with a scream at least as loud as the initial pain of my rupturing uterus – was “motherless child ... childless mother ... tidy solution ... NO! ... I do not want her to have my child.” And it was this which arrested my death and which enabled my GP to speak of me as a ‘modern day miracle’ since the charts which I saw later confirmed that yes, I did, in fact, have only minutes left – maybe as many as three.

[This originally appeared as a Thinking Ten piece]

Consequences

He had imposed a deadline.

Tossing and turning the pros and cons in the scratchy grey dawn she suddenly recalled a conversation in Amsterdam, a conversation from three or four years ago which, due in part to its out-of-placeness, was unusually frank.

And they’d been virtually strangers too, since although Sharon was a fellow student, notorious for her installation of a bedstead to which was attached a row of papier maché penises, of varying dimensions and colours (Title ‘Sizes that mattered’) they’d hardly spoken before.

They’d been sat on stools in the window of a stepped, dusty-wooden floored café near the Rijksmuseum, one used by locals, the food cheap and unpretentious.

Sharon had spoken of her divorce, bitterly, bitingly.

“If I’d know then how hard it would be I’d never have done it, never have left him.”

What the hell does he think?

Black on white, I reclined on a bed not mine, having broken my bourbon virginity.

Near the end of a word-filled weekend, he was examining his prior expectations. "I thought you'd be wilder," he said.

I don't know what sort of wild he expected. I wondered however about the truth of his claim to be a writer.

Did he not know that writers tell tales of twisted truths?

Life class position

Eduarda was a truly lovely-looking Mexican girl, late twenties, married with a young daughter – what she was doing in Middlesbrough goodness only knows. However we were just glad she was our current life model since not only did she have a good body to draw she had an eagerness and a talent for theatrical poses, frequently bringing in shawls and cushions and other props. She was also totally uninhibited, wandering round to look at everyone’s work without bothering to put on a wrap of any sort.

This being England everyone who came to the evening Life Drawing class always sat in exactly the same place as they’d sat last week, and the week before that, for ever and ever amen. And there being considerably more women than men in the class, the men tended to sit together in one corner.
On the sixth week the men arrived early and deliberately positioned themselves one on each side of the room – north, south east and west – and when we asked why they said they’d noticed that when they sat together the tutor invariably posed Eduarda with her back to them: this way they’d get a turn at drawing her front, sooner or later.

Life class

Martin was an occasional life drawing tutor, i.e. he was a full time tutor who rarely had to bother with us part-timers, but due to an oversight with the timetable it was discovered that we needed a further six drawing sessions and he was the only one available.

He set up the model, instructed us to draw very large on joined-together pieces of paper, and include what was behind the model in the rest of the room. While we drew he walked round and stood behind each of us in turn, commenting or not as he chose – after five minutes in silence behind me I couldn’t decide whether he was stunned with admiration or didn’t know where to start with the criticism, so tended to ignore him.

He had a reputation for being over-attentive to the younger female students (one of the reasons he was so dismissive of our class – we were mostly mature students.) Bob the well-endowed milkman had told me of an occasion in another class where he had been posing: “one lad was really good but Martin just criticised him all the time. But another lass, very pretty, he put his arm round her and said “this is really quite promising ... but if you look carefully you’ll see he actually only has two arms””

Fred might’ve been right – but she was lucky

“Coffee?”
“Yes, please”
“Sugar? – sorry no biscuits”
“Don’t take it ... why don’t you sit here?” ....
“... ?”
“Didn’t think you were likely to ... worth a try, though”

Orkney journeys

The first time we went to Orkney we took the caravan as far as Brora, three children (two with chickenpox) and three days and arrived in the drizzle of a July afternoon.

Later, overnight seemed best – spouse working all day then driving the first stage, me awake to keep him awake, then driving the midnight stint: youngest piteously from the dark of the back seat “I’m all on my own,” his elder siblings asleep either side of him.

Once we stopped in a Northumberland layby: three males got out to pee and I imagined the nearby bus shelter rising with the tidal surge and floating away in the dark.

Just the two of us went to view Scapa Haven, overnight again, needing sleep half-hourly, and the September solstice crossing of the Pentland Firth the roughest we had ever known; when we took a trailer load of furniture up the following Easter I skidded on the icy road and we ended in a ditch.

On my last return from this seventeen year sea view haven, alone and having painted for three weeks there, I hit a post office van who drew out un-looking, smashing the headlight so I had to hurry four hundred miles home before dark.

Next Thursday we begin another three day journey there, ‘doing it while we can’ on a fifty-two year old A10, returning via a cousin in Invergarry and the Applecross peninsula.

Fred might have been right

Fred Brown talked a lot about sex, he was witty with it and it stayed just... just ...on the right side of offensive. His hooded blue eyes challenged you to believe that he told the truth, his smile teased so you suspected he didn’t and he was confident, good-looking and intelligent but due to a degenerative disease his spine was damaged, his years were numbered and his height was only 4’ 11”.

Secretary to the chemists in the plastics research department she’d had a shy and unconfident childhood and despite being three months married, was to some extent naïve and socially inept, so when Fred Brown told her “Every man in the lab gets a hard-on when you walk through” she assumed he was teasing. Every day she delivered the internal post to the laminating plant, where John invariably delayed her in conversation on the day’s topics, to the paper plant where she and Sam talked about music and to the filter section where Dennis asked her about what she’d done at the weekend, and finished up in the chief chemist’s office where he tended to come around the desk to collect his post if she didn’t hand it over and escape as quickly as possible, without being rude.

Dennis occasionally gave her a lift home, which was helpful because it meant she didn’t have to wait half an hour for a bus and walk the last mile, he asked whether she would be away during the factory shut-down, the first week of June, and she said “no” because her husband had to work. One day Dennis said he often thought about doing it with someone other than his wife, just to find out what it would be like and she laughed, as she did when he said he might pop round for a coffee during the shutdown – she was embarrassed when he did as he’d promised because it was a hot day, she was dressmaking and had only a short shift dress on and nothing else at all.

Gallery visit

The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness in Orkney has recently been extended and modernised in a truly exciting fashion. Before this took place the upstairs galleries were reached by a central staircase which had half a flight one way, then turned round on itself and continued with another half flight to the creaking, sloping floor-boarded landing. From this landing, to right and left were small galleries, each with a window at the back, overlooking the harbour, the right hand one also with a window overlooking the narrow slabbed street, across which was a flower shop owned by a Czech called Borek. As well as selling flowers he tuned pianos and sang in the choir ...he was also hugely attractive in a rugged, dark haired, beautiful voiced sort of way.

I was alone in the gallery one afternoon, leisurely enjoying the latest exhibition of sensuous and sensitive small paintings and plaster pieces by Will MacLean, based on writings, maps and sea journeys and very suited to this sea girt and beautiful room. Up the stairs came two smartly dressed women who strode resolutely into the room and, completely ignoring the paintings, went to the window overlooking the street “Ohhh” moaned one, quietly, “no Borek ...” and they stood silently contemplating the shop where he was not for several minutes, before leaving as quickly as they had come.

“A modern day miracle”

This being the third I knew immediately that the transition from first to second stage wasn’t usually accompanied by pain of such screaming quality. The surrounding babble of voices made it impossible to concentrate on identifying what had gone wrong, their exhortations to “push, mother, keep pushing, you’re doing fine” annoyingly intrusive. “Here’s a foot Mother, sit up and you can feel it” – they pulled my hand down to touch, but I was unappreciative ... eventually it was born: “What is it?” “A boy, you’ve got a lovely boy.”

... washing my thighs with warm water ... no, it’s blood, my blood ... “It’s the afterbirth breaking up” and someone tried pumping up and down on my stomach to expel it – my screams must have stopped her although I thought I’d simply said “don’t, please don’t”... “What’s her name? ... Sandra! Sandra! ... there’s no blood pressure and the pulse is fading fast.”

... opened my eyes “He looks Egyptian ... silly man sounds as if he thinks I’m dying ... that’d be a tidy solution – a motherless child and a childless mother ... no – I don’t want her to have my baby ...”

... someone groaning ... pink room instead of green, clock above my head telling an incomprehensible time ... Steve’s laugh outside (that was what had roused me) ... dark blue dress bustles in “I don’t know why you’re making that noise – we’ve just given you some painkiller” ... just like in the books, the groaning was ME “Then it doesn’t bloody work” ... “and you’ve had eleven pints of blood so you’ve no cause to complain” - “eleven???????????? something wrong there.”

[Comment: on the way to the hospital we had passed my sister-in-law coming the other way, she having just given birth to a still-born son]