Snippets

I’m stuck on The Novel again, so here I am, back after an absence of over a month, for which I feel bad (as if you were hanging on my every word). Thank you for still being there.

The reason I’m stuck on the novel is that, when I wrote the first draft, I plonked chunks of my autobiography in it in what I thought were the appropriate places. Now, when I come to go through the book again, I find that the chunks are completely unusable. Because they’re ‘true’, they don’t expand and blossom like fiction does. They’re fixed and I can’t do anything with them. I’m going to have to completely rewrite them, using my Imagination. I feel daunted.

Reading Nina’s lovely blog (http://www.ninafenner.blogspot.com/) this morning I was honoured to find a mention of one of my posts. It was about sewing, so here is another snippet.

A few weeks ago when we saw the sun, I was inspired to go through my bin bag of summer clothes. As I tried the clothes on, I realised that I am now too old to wear above-the-knee skirts, so I let down the hem of one dress, sewed a matching band on to another (it was a dress I’d made and I had some material left over) and adapted the two items in the picture.

The band round the bottom of the dress comes from a skirt I shortened a few years ago (talk about ‘make do and mend’). The skirt I lengthened by extending the underskirt with a band of similar material – which is fine until the wind blows.

They look all right, don’t you think?

Another preoccupation at the moment is a course I’m thinking of doing. It’s training in something called the Lightning Process, which cured my niece’s ME. I’m wondering if it will help my migraines. Any comments?

Storm damage

Frog tells me this particular form of storm debris is called 'witches' knickers':

Here's our road, washed into the field:

And here's a ladybird which caught my eye this morning from a good ten feet away and which I couldn't resist photographing:

Back to the novel (I hope).

Sun, tree, water, solitude

Here is one of my favourite spots. It's not open to the public so I shouldn't be there but I like it because I'm the only person around. This is what it looked like this morning.

Ellie likes it too.

I like to sit under this tree and do my 'meditation' (daydreaming). The sound of the river is enormously soothing as is the feel of  the treetrunk against my back.

On the far side of the river in the above picture you can just see the embankment along which the Penzance-Paddington railway runs. Ellie loves racing the high-speed trains. Sometimes she almost wins. Luckily she's not a swimmer so she stays this side of the bank and doesn't endanger either herself or the train. I probably shouldn't let her race the trains but I love to see her run. If I call her she wheels round in a huge arc like a proper sheepdog.

Just after I'd taken the above picture a swan took off and flew towards me, its wings making a tremendous creaking. I tried to take a picture of it but wasn't quick enough. I hope I wasn't disturbing a nest.

Cuckoo-flower in the water meadow next to the river. Normally the meadow is too boggy to walk on at this time of year but today it was dry and hard so I pleased to see the cuckoo-flowers - which only grow in damp places. They are named of course after the bird which should arrive in this country around now. However I haven't heard one in Devon for about five years. I'm just crossing my fingers that the swallows will return.

Back to The Novel.



Time she was gone

I realised this morning that there’s another spectre lurking in the shadows of my consciousness. This one looks like my mother. (Sorry Mum. I hope you don’t read this.) This one tells me my duty ‘as a woman’. As follows.

Women’s first duty is to be decorative. This means being thin, wearing nice clothes, removing hair on some parts of the body and titivating it in others, wearing makeup. Disguising one’s true self in all ways possible.

Women’s second duty is to run the household. This means cleaning, tidying, cooking, shopping – at least organising, even if others help.

Women’s third duty is to put the needs of everyone and everything above their own, whether children, dogs, relatives, friends, the community, house, garden.

I’m engaged with a furious struggle with the spectre at the moment because I wrote a major scene for the novel on Wednesday and ever since ideas have been pouring out. By the time I’ve fulfilled my duty as a woman however, I have no time and energy left for writing.

But it’s writing, I’ve only just realised, that makes me happy.

It was the alchemy of this blog that unstuck the novel on Wednesday (after I’d written on Tuesday about making changes and my glorious future). May it do so again.

Begone, foul spectre.

 

Oh glorious future

Yesterday I had my hair cut. This may not sound like much but it took two and a half hours, mostly because Michelle does love to talk. She works from a converted barn on the coast, a gorgeous spot, and Frog came with me. Afterwards we took the dog for a walk – inland along a river to a watermill where we had lunch. Then we detoured to have a look at the sea and came back through some woods.

    The sun shone, blackbirds sang, enormous celandines gleamed in the grass. Everything was perfect – except for the relationship between me and Frog. And the source of the problem was – surprise, surprise – Dog. I think Frog’s too strict with her and he thinks I’m too lenient. He shouts at her and then I shout at him. Oh dear. We need more practice, says Frog. I’m taking the dog out on my own from now on, thinks I.

    On the drive home Frog put the radio on and I heard my horoscope. You don’t like change, it said (not true, I love change) but now is the time to make changes and think about your glorious future.

    What glorious future? I’m 58. I’m not interested in a career. I’ve done that. I’m not after fame. In fact, I think I’d hate it. (Or would I?) And I try not to think about money. (It makes me panic; it’s secondary, not primary.)

    What I really want, I think, is to unravel the mess inside, to feel that all of me is present all the time, to have a tap into my subconscious that I can open and close at will, to spend what remains of my life being whole and happy and purposeful.

    It has seemed to me for the last decade or so that writing is one way to enable all that, but this morning I got stuck again on The Novel. 

    Today is the Spring Equinox. A good time to turn one’s life around. A good time to face up to conflict and uncomfortable emotions. To take the dog out with Frog, even if it leads to disaster. To work out whether it's fear that stops me getting on with the novel or whether I'm just rubbish at writing.

    Which way, oh glorious future? Change, I embrace you.