Walking and writing

Hello again after an absence of four months.

THE WALKING BIT

Here are some pictures from a walk Frog, Dog and I took yesterday along the Grand Western Canal.

This originally ran 24 miles from Tiverton in Devon to Taunton in Somerset but now only runs for 11 miles from Tiverton. Unfortunately this is too short for a boating holiday, but it does mean that the canal’s lovely and quiet.

I call this our ‘OAP walk’ as it’s all on the flat (and that’s hard to find in Devon).



Weedy (green) water because few boats come through, and muddy (brown) water after rain and flood



Swan family (two parents and two cygnets, but one parent thoughtlessly swam out of shot and then it began to pour so I had to put the camera away)



Ayshleigh Chapel

THE WRITING BIT

  

Since July I’ve been madly revising my children’s novel, which I first started about eleven years ago, and finally put down about five years ago. It was great coming back to it after such a long interval as its faults were so much easier to spot and, I hope, to put right. I’ve entered it for a competition run by Mslexia (a magazine ‘for women who write’). It was great too to have a purpose and a deadline, instead of writing in a vacuum.

Sadly, I now have to return to my adult novel which is at a much earlier and therefore (to my mind) more tricky stage. (Hence the blogging!)



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.