Tuesday 25th September: To Clapham Books, to hear Will Self read from and talk about his latest novel Umbrella. The bookshop was full to overflowing, and so too was my brain by the end of the evening. Will Self began by disparaging authors who give long, filling-in-the-background intros before reading from their work, and then, …
Category: writing
bottle that energy
Get 27 women writers, plus friends and supporters, in a downstairs bar on a balmy September evening, and you get lots of positive energy, strong readings, an appreciative and attentive audience, and a plethora of verbal surprises. The occasion was the launch of the second Loose Muse anthology, featuring poetry, stories and short plays by …
Saturday swim
Up at 6:30. Straight into swimming togs. Cycle shirt and shorts on top. Pannier packed the night before with towel, goggles etc. Kiss my sleepy, non-swimming beloved goodbye, and then I'm out, on my bike, into the fine, bright morning, cycling south along not quite empty streets, across Clapham Common where a slight haze shimmers …
weeding and reading
Not long back from a week in the French countryside. Time to reflect, to read, to sit and drink in the landscape, the deep blue sky and fields of maize and sunflowers. Terracotta tiled roofs, delicate orange poppies, pots of carmine geraniums, beds of red sage, lavender and rosemary. Self seeded walnut trees and catalpa. …
excuse me
Where have the last three weeks gone? (I could as well ask the same of the last six months...) I'm just about treading water. No new writing but I have submitted to a poetry pamphlet competition, and heard last week that I've had a short story accepted for Wet Ink magazine in Australia. Gold star …
the write conditions
Mostly I write in the morning, when I have (or carve out) a couple of hours, before I get distracted by all the other calls on my time. But I'm not a 5 a.m. scribbler, straight from bed. I need to be dressed and breakfasted first. Then I sit at my desk with several sheets …
not lit crit
I've written before about my anxieties around reading. So, this post is just to record some personal responses to two (quite different) books I have actually read. Firstly, I recently finished The House on Paradise Street by Sofka Zinovieff. I was attracted to the book by a short and largely favourable review in the Guardian. …
word association football
I seem to have a very associative mind. I recently ordered a copy of the literary magazine, The Wolf, and now every time I see its cover I hear the Duran Duran song 'Hungry Like the Wolf''. I observe that it's raining (a not infrequent occurrence at the moment) and straightaway Nick Cave booms 'And …
a fair fortnight
Two weeks since we returned from Melbourne, and here are a few things that have eased my adjustment back into London life: The weather. We've had a spell of glorious, almost summery weather. Clear blue skies, temperatures into the low twenties, hazy sunshine. Crisp mornings and balmy evenings. Warm enough to sit outside a pub …
The Vivisector
Where to start with this towering novel by Patrick White? The fact that I finished reading it yesterday evening. That when I started reading it, a couple of months ago, the handsome hardback I bought on our short trip to Lewes, I immediately felt rejuvenated. Here was a book, a writer, I really wanted to …
Hilaire 