Sitting on the train with a stupid grin on my face, having just bathed in the glory of the Bolshoi Ballet for the afternoon. Sandwiched between a gloomy 90 year old (“I’ll be dead the next time they come to London…”) and an over-painted, hysterical Russian who shouted “BRAVA!” every few minutes…

 

Sadlers Wells. An evening with Rufus Wainwright is about to begin. A nervous-looking guy appears on stage and reads out a notice from Rufus, instructing us not to applaud for the first part of the show. The audience must not even acknowledge Rufus as he leaves the stage as “this is part of the spectacle”, he explains solemnly. A rustle and a murmur from the stalls. The curtain goes up.

 

I’ve recently returned from a friend’s 50^th birthday gathering in Shropshire, at a 17^th century country house hired for the occasion. Two staircases, a cinema room, log fires. Felt as if we’d wandered by chance into an Agatha Christie whodunit, except that her characters probably wouldn’t party until 6am, play Bob Dylan and table tennis all night and not get up ‘til lunchtime….

Grief is a peculiar thing. I’m watching Dancing on Ice on tv – or half-watching while thinking about my upcoming piano lesson, in which I am expected to play two pages of "Complainte de la Butte", a gorgeous French song revived by Rufus Wainwright for Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. I’ve been practising all week, but there are two bars I always screw up…

Suddenly on screen it’s Bobby Davro in a spangly jacket wobbling onto the ice rink with a blonde American partner. They pause on the ice. The music starts – and it’s George Harrison, I’ve got my Mind Set on You, and suddenly, grotesquely, I can’t watch the screen, and I’m weeping.

Well – thank goodness it’s all over! Not wanting to compete with Scrooge in the bah-humbug department – and actually, I LOVE Christmas – but the whole holiday just GOES ON TOO LONG….

I had eight people and three dogs in my small cottage for Christmas. Considering the close proximity in which we all had to operate, we did pretty well. No adult confrontations or difficulties, which isn’t bad, considering my son’s ex-wife was meeting his new girlfriend for the first time, and that is clearly a soap opera writer’s idea of total drama heaven. But we disappointed on that front: everyone was pleasant and festive, and no screaming matches or attempted murders took place. The only slight fly in the Yuletide ointment took the form of two teenage girls (grand daughters) – one mouthy and argumentative, one withdrawn and monosyllabic. But even they had moments of smiling and conversation, and they even dragged themselves away from phones/i-Pods etc. to play silly party games with the rest of us.

I’ve just returned from a brief visit to Las Vegas to attend the wedding of friends. Being useless in the IT department, I didn't do laptop-type blogging while there – instead I scribbled a few thoughts about the flight and the wedding in a small notebook. Not very up-to-date, I know – but then I’m not…

The wedding took place in the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Strip, where Britney Spears married briefly …Illustrious company! (not…) The wedding was a "Drive-Thru". All will be revealed…

But I should also add that the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to the Liberace Museum. There’s nothing like a few diamante pianos and a marabou evening cape to awaken a woman’s joie de vivre. Picture overleaf, plus a brief eulogy re. Rufus Wainwright and family’s Christmas show at the Albert Hall. Don’t say I don’t offer variety….

Here is the exterior of the Liberace Museum, just to give you a flavour...

Did our village remembrance thing last Sunday. I like it because it’s secular but respectful. Bradbury was home to the RAF and the USAF during the last war, and at one end of the village is a rather plain memorial to the many who died. In the Spring every year, the remaining veterans who were stationed here return to visit the village. We used to take it in turns to be hosts, although only people with biggish houses and a downstairs toilet were eligible, since the veterans’ ancient legs can’t manage stairs… Now we have a village marquee – paid for in part by the veterans – and so we erect that in someone’s garden, fill it with bunting, tables and chairs, and serve tea and cakes. So the Spring is when we have the big moment at the memorial, with veterans and their families present. In November, it’s a smaller affair – just the village, some people from the RAF museum near the airport, and this time, one old veteran wearing his medals.

Eight years ago, having drunk too much at a Bradbury party, I foolishly agreed to teach a few neighbours French, as a way of entertaining ourselves through the winter months. Gradually the French classes, which took place every fortnight, grew in size and levels of chaos. The pupils drank too much and were fearsomely unruly; the teacher was ferocious and unforgiving (they called me "Madame Whiplash"…), there were never enough chairs, and, worst of all, the class was mixed ability. I have nothing against mixed ability teaching as a general rule, but when it involves trying to have the same conversation with someone who has never learned a word of French and someone else who has actually lived in France and is fluent – I defy even the greatest teacher in the world to make that fun. The trouble was that the French class meant so much more than learning a few gallic phrases; it had become the centre of our social life. Bradbury in winter is a dark, unforgiving place: there are no lights in the village street, and so it’s pitch black after 4pm. You see no-one. People disappear into their houses until the Spring, huddling over fires and watching bad tv until the first buds appear. So it was with enormous guilt that I announced the end of winter French lessons in Bradbury….

Okay - this is just a test to make sure everything's working okay. Posted by a person going insane because TWICE she has written a long and involved blog which has disappeared into the ether when she tried to post it.... I hate technology.

OK, so they're opposite ends of the spectrum (WHAT spectrum? I hear you ask....) but they both involve hefty training, nifty footwork, and men with magnificent thighs. I saw both over the weekend - Northern Ballet touring production of Wuthering Heights, and Norwich City v. Bristol Rovers. Both a triumph! (-and we totally thrashed the Rovers...)

Went to see The Soloist last night, with Chris and Patience, friends in Bradbury. Cinema City, Norwich. It's a 24 mile round trip to go to the cinema from here, so you have to be pretty keen.

Bradbury is deep in the heart of the country. Nature is everywhere, red in tooth and claw and usually involving a crushed and bloody corpse.  If I’m not stepping over a mangled bit of roadkill on my doorstep, I’m bumping into gun-toting gamekeepers in the woods, hell-bent on shooting anything.

READ ON for my close encounters with death in Bradbury in the last few days, PLUS a strange encounter with the local post box…

 Just a tiny glimpse of the bustling thoroughfare that is my village..

                                                               

 

I live in a small village in Norfolk. For the purposes of this blog, I shall call the village Bradbury. That is not its name. I'm calling it Bradbury in memory of the late Malcolm Bradbury, writer of great tv scripts, founder of the Creative Writing Course at the University of East Anglia, and (when alive) resident of Norfolk.

So. Bradbury. What's it like...?

I don't want to write a confessional blog, where I share all the private tragedies of my personal life, so I will simply say that creatively the past year has been a struggle, because real life got in the way. But now I'm back at my desk and busy working. I'm also gawping nightly at The Wire and marvelling at its intricacy and intelligence.  

 

This is a picture of Polly.  I've known her since I was about seven. Here she is standing in front of a sign telling us that we all want to be like Che (according to Fidel Castro). We were in Santa Clara visiting the Che memorial. This picture contains a lot of shared history leading up to the moment of the photograph! Click on "Read More" to read the story...

Still trying to collect myself after a dazzling two weeks in Cuba, with 40 hard-drinking Norwegian socialists. Because of bad weather in Paris, I was rerouted to Toronto, where I spent a bad night on two chairs in the airport, staring out at banks of shovelled snow heaped by the runways and wondering how the hell I'd ended up so far from the Caribbean....The Norwegian socialists, however, were perhaps even unluckier: they ended up in a Eurodisney hotel just outside Paris!

We were reunited a day later in a place called Playas del Este to the East of Havana. The Norwegians were all charming, funny, friendly and intelligent. Polly, my room-mate and very old friend (and the reason I'd been invited), hadn't changed a bit....

Carry on reading if you want to see a photo!

 Saw There Will be Blood last night in a ghastly Norwich multiplex, struggling through the usual popcorn chompers, chatterers, text-checkers etc... I didn't mind these irritations as much as usual, since the film was riveting; but was, however, downcast by the stampede for the exit the moment Daniel Plainview announced that he was finished.... My friend and I were the only people in the cinema who watched any credits at all, craning our necks round the departing hordes and finally watching alone in an empty auditorium, horribly aware of two impatient cleaners waiting with their black plastic bin liners to clean up before the next screening...

Sometimes you read a book, or see a film, or watch a tv drama, and wonder why the writer bothered and how the hell they ever got published/commissioned. Then there are the occasional jewel-like moments when you see or read something and you're left slack-jawed at the sheer genius of the writing...

Okay, this is a whingeing writer paragraph. It's dark, it's gloomy. The wind is howling round the trees outside, and rain is spattering loudly onto the roof window above me. I'm in waiting mode: waiting for notes from my editor on Draft Six of the book (yes, yet another draft...); waiting for a producer to contact me about an idea we're discussing; waiting for another producer to tell me when we're meeting in London to storyline the series we're working on. The telephone is silent. No-one's sent me an email. Not even any local distraction - everyone in the village is huddled indoors, no doubt leading lives far more interesting than mine.

Fifth draft of novel finished today. The editor turned out to be brilliant – she has cajoled and encouraged me through another draft when I didn’t think I had anything left to say. And I know it’s better than it was. It’s grown even longer, but not excessively so, and she’s inspired me to add more colour, more description. If you want a picture of what it feels like to write five drafts and feel like you might be at the end of the process, imagine a head full of chaos and utter exhaustion, with a thousand Medusa-like snakes of questions, worries and doubts writhing about on it... Now all I need is a publisher and a bit of self-belief… Film script, meanwhile has gone to a FAMOUS PERSON who has expressed interest in the subject. May be a long shot, but surely worth a try…

Agent thinks completed novel needs an extra something to sell it to publishers. I was totally depressed about this at first, but I've just re-read the whole thing and I think she's probably right (much as I hate to say it!)...

So now I'm meeting with an editor called Sally who has experience with these things, to progress further. I hope.

Am recording this, so any budding authors out there realise what an uphill struggle it all is...

But on a more optimistic note, I have finished my film script at last! Waiting for agent to read it. Fingers crossed...

I've FINISHED the novel! It's now called Silverstrand and is 517 pages long. 517 pages of angst, sweat, and despair. Now let's hope my agent can sell it to someone who has a penchant for psychological thrillers with a ghost or two thrown in....

Still working on the novel, of course. I'm going backwards now, doing the chapters I avoided doing properly before, the ones about Seattle in the sixties. I've got hold of this fantastic book called Rites of Passage; A memoir of the Sixties in Seattle by someone called Walt Crowley. I don't know what I would have done without it! - It conjures up a whole world of Vietnam draft-dodgers, sit-ins, underground magazines, demonstrations, coffeehouses with names like the Last Exit and the Deli.... Very similar to what was going on in Norwich, believe it or not! Reminds me of how exciting it all was. God. We could be living on another planet completely in 2007. Was so impressed by the book I Googled Walt Crowley (Walt! What a gloriously American name!) and found that he had created a whole history website devoted to the history of Seattle. Then at the end of the site, it said that he had had cancer of the throat, and in February this year had his larynx removed. I was so upset by this I sent him an email, and am happy to report that he replied and said he's on the mend.

I'm on Chapter Nineteen of my novel. I'm writing one, not reading one, in case you wondered. This will be my fifth novel. So far, it's been the most difficult. Why? I don't know. Maybe because it's more complex than the others - there are three story strands in this one and three main characters - a drunk, grief-stricken 30-something guy, an uptight, repressed woman in her fifties, and a Victorian ghost called Violet. I have to keep all three stories moving and intertwining and it gives me one large headache. According to my latest synopsis, there will be twenty seven chapters all together, so I know I'm past the halfway mark, but it still feels like an uphill struggle every day.