Had a good weekend at DCT (yoga) weekend. The guest speaker was Mukunda Stiles, a (very) soft- spoken American who has written books on yoga posture and philosophy. He was very good.
Back home I’m getting ready for teacher training on Sunday and preparing to go back to the chalet and work more on the novel tomorrow
See you all soon
Liz
Hello darlings! Back for a few days although will not be at home for much of the time. Things have been going very well – I have a working title for the novel and have roughed out four sections as well as writing a lot of the first section. Thatcher, Churchill and Blair (yes, phoney Tony himself!) all make an appearance. The war is the background to the second section (which gives me a link between this and the last ie the word “phoney”). I’ve been doing lots of writing and also pruning (of trees not words, though I’m sure that will come) and generally feeling empowered and energised and stuff.
The camp site was lovely today – didn’t want to come back. But have a student today and DCT weekend tomorrow. Back Sunday, up to chalet Monday.
Love to all
Liz xx
Hi everyone. Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while. We were at the chalet, then had a good holiday in East Sussex (near Hailsham) apart from me being ill one day with a cold. Then I had a day or two at the chalet and decided that what I really need is to spend time on my own up there writing the novel which, as regular readers of this blog will know, has plagued me for years and years (I wrote one called Seven Days but it was too short). So I really need to focus and will be out of circulation for a while.
Keep you posted now and again. Won’t say too much about the novel tho as it’s at a delicate stage.
TTFN
Before I go on holiday, I’m trying out a new – what do they call it? – theme. The name of this theme is Rubric. Not sure how much difference it makes, but I’m ready for a change.
See you in a couple of weeks
Kirk out
This was the name of an organisation I used to belong to. It meant “The India Pale Ale Society” and was a (very) loose association of friends who went on trips to discover – well, beer. We visited a number of breweries, including Bateman’s in – somewhere in Lincolnshire, I can’t remember now – and, as I recall, we actually had a constitution and articles. I certainly remember meetings where we had a chair and secretary. When these things were mooted I laughed a lot, because I thought Bob was joking.
Ah. Bob. Yes, it is impossible to speak of these things without mentioning Bob. Where he is now, no-one can say. How he came into our lives we cannot remember: it’s as though he were always there, guiding us to new pubs, taking us on tours of places we had only dreamt of. Half-scout, half-bus driver manque, we will not see his like again.
Here was a typical conversation with Bob:
- We’re going to Penzance next week, Bob. Any ideas?
- You’ll want to get the X 626 to Birmingham. They run every hour at 36 minutes past, from stand 4A. Then in Digbeth you’ll have 25 minutes but make sure you get your luggage on the 252B to Truro. That takes 4 hours in good traffic – then in Truro you’ve got time for chips at a cafe just over the road called the Good Traveller, before you get on the Green Line no 98 which takes you all the way to Penzance.
- Thanks, Bob
- No problem. Oh, and mention my name to Stewie at Digbeth. He’s an inspector – you’ll find him in the office. He’ll see you right.
- Wow
To call Bob’s knowledge of buses encyclopedic would be an understatement.
Ah, Bob! Where are you now?
Kirk out
OK Seven Days, if you’re interested, was my first novel. It had seven chapters and the content went like this:
Monday
Woman finds herself in a nuclear bunker following a nuclear holocaust. Explores bunker. Waits for others to come.
Tuesday
Nobody comes. To keep from going mad, she starts to write a diary. Since she has no present and probably no future, she writes about the past. On Tuesday she remembers her early childhood.
Wednesday
She remembers her adolescence
Thursday
First love
Friday
Crisis. Loss of love, rejection. Suicide attempt. (any connection with Good Friday is entirely intentional)
Saturday
Ah! here’s where we find out what’s really going on. There hasn’t been a holocaust at all. The whole thing is set in the future and here’s where the plot twist comes in that explains how she came to be there in the first place.
Sunday
Realisation. She comes out of the bunker.
I think it’s ready for rewriting. I can see a lot more possibilities in it now. Maybe I’ll present the idea to a publisher. That’s the best way to do these things, I’m told.
Going to the Martyrs today. We think it’s probably the place to be. I like Trinity but I think maybe the guy’s sermon last week was a sign.
Kirk out
…or should that be batter? I was thinking about the word “eke” this morning, or rather the word was floating around my mind when I awoke. Who know how these things happen? I daresay there are, as with the Pan-galactic Gargle-Blaster, organisations which exist to help you rehabilitate http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bartending/Cocktails/Pan_Galactic_Gargle_Blaster
(perhaps the Chaucer Recovery Society?) Anyway, the word eke used to mean “also”:
When Zephyrus eke with his swete brethe
inspired hath in every holt and hethe
the tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
hath in the Ram his halve-corse y-runne
I think I’ve got the spelling sufficiently wrong. That’s from The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. But nowadays, “eke” means “to stretch out to it’s furthest limit”, as in: “Can we eke out the bread for another day?” (to which the answer is always, “I just ate the last slice”).
To which the response is:
“Eek!”
There used to be a band called “Eek a mouse”. I don’t remember anything about them apart from the name. I suspect they weren’t very big.
That’s enough! Or too much, as Blake would have said. Damn his braces.
Going to the chalet tomorrow. After which, this blog will be silent for a while.
Thank god, you think.
Kirk out.
Well, nobody’s forcing you to read it! Go on, bugger off!
That’s it! Keep walking!
Damn. They left.
Ah well.
.. were the chips we had last night. Delicious food, well-presented and served with a smile. The uncertainty we observed at the beginning turned out to be due to the proprietors having taken over only a few days before. Fair enough, we think. A mixed marriage, Asian and white British – an interesting combination, culinarily. (is that the right word?) Check it out
http://www.diningpubs.co.uk/pub_details.asp?id=294
Lovely beer garden overlooking the reservoir where we broke one of their tables (in the garden, not the reservoir!)
Thinking deeply, crisply and evenly about my writing, and especially about Seven Days, an early novel which I think I shall rewrite. I can see a lot more possibilities in it now.
Ok that really is it for now.
Kirk out
I used to be a huge fan of Neil Young. I haven’t stopped being a fan, it’s just that all his stuff is on vinyl and I don’t have a good way of listening to it- not without removing all the stuff on top of the record player and dusting it and checking the needle and and and *
You get the picture. I was thinking today, the reason I like writing is that every copy of a work is the original. Whereas with a painting, there’s nothing like the original work and prints etc can only give a feel for what it’s like, with writing, so long as the text is faithfully reproduced, every copy has exactly the same power as the original. There’s nothing to be gained – except by the scholar – by looking at the original manuscript. There’s something very democratic about that – and also something easy, in practical terms. Especially nowadays in this age of computers.
So. Neil Young. One of my favourite tracks was “Words (between the lines of age)”. I used to listen to it over and over. It was when he was in his electric phase.
Which brings us to the Dane. Last night the origin of the suffix “by” came up – in the Midlands there are a number of place names that have this, and it comes from Danish – and that gave another outing to the joke “terby or not terby” (see previous post http://lizardyoga.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/ladimir-and-oestrogen-2/).
Last night was great – an outing to a country pub, an underused reservoir, unseen Perseids, a pound lost and found, a necklace also lost and found, and some good conversation. Thanks Claire!
- What is the matter that you read, my lord?
- Words, words, words
(loosely remembered from Hamlet).
Kirk out
PS Beer festival and curry today. Mark is going to Nottingham.
PPS Jan, who is a mathematician and therefore To Be Trusted, shares my dislike of “numbers” instead of “figures”. (see previous post here http://lizardyoga.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/and-another-thing-2/)
she says it’s to do with dumbing down.
* Missed the chance here to make a joke about “the needle and the damage done”.
Compelled to blog about something I really hate – namely, when you email people or send them something and don’t get a reply. I know it’s holiday time and people are away but too much of this sort of thing can send me into a semi-catatonic state where I don’t actually believe there’s anyone out there. What’s the word? Not catatonic – solipsistic. I think there may have been times when as a baby I was left alone and wondered whether there really was anyone else in the universe.
So. I have sent two articles to yoga magazines about the Plinth and not had a reply from either. I have also emailed various people and not had a reply.
Still, I shall be going on holiday myself next week and not replying to anyone about anything for a couple of weeks. Let’s see how they like it! I shall come back and find my inbox full of plaintive messages asking why I haven’t got back to people.
Or else I’ll find it full of spam.
Anyway, dear reader, if you’re reading this, post me a comment. Let me know I’m not alone in the universe. Say anything you like, even if it’s rude. Oh, but don’t post emoticons – I don’t understand them.
Weird.
Kirk out
PS Where’s the above quote from? I seem to think it’s Lewis Carroll.
