New Direction

Last time I wrote I was pondering the three deep questions about my life and its meaning and direction.  I can’t say that I’ve really reached any great conclusions but I have taken a few small steps.  I have enrolled for a short course called Basic Astronomy – just a series of 5 lectures, which I am finding really fascinating.   Somehow compared with all that’s out there our little worries and concerns seem very small and trivial indeed.  I am now enrolling for a slightly longer on line course called Introduction to Astronomy, through Duke University ( https://www.coursera.org/course/introastro ) – this is 12 weeks and includes homework (6 to 12 hours per week, they say).  Later in the year I am taking another short on line course called Philosophy and the Sciences, through The University of Edinburgh this time (https://www.coursera.org/courses?orderby=upcoming&cats=physical ).   Both look very interesting and it will be fun to study again, after a gap too large to mention!   Amazing what is out there, and these are all free too.  I think I might like to be a perpetual student!

The other thing that has happened is that at the end of January we reached our 10 year anniversary as raw vegans.   It’s just a way of life now.  The health issues that prompted it initially are just a distant memory, and this is how we eat.   People have been nagging me to actually get down to writing a raw food recipe book – I always say there are hundreds out there – often written by raw chefs.  But then I thought , I own quite a few of those and often the recipes are just too complicated or the ingredients are just too expensive so I tend to do my own thing.   So now I am tentatively working on a new book.  A book of fairly simple straightforward recipes which don’t take days to prepare nor break the bank.  I also try to use all fresh produce, rather than packaged.  To me it goes against the grain to use, for example, garlic powder when fresh garlic is available. 

So, if I am not actually solving the great mysteries of life, I am keeping myself busy and my brain active, though playing bridge, doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles help there too.  Also keeping myself physically active, with Kundalini Yoga twice a week, aqua aerobics twice a week, and a home exercise programme.  Colin and I recently completed the 30 Day Plank challenge, (http://30dayfitnesschallenges.com/30-day-plank-challenge/#) –  found the last part very tough going, but we now plank for 3 minutes three times a week for maintenance.    So, though I consider the word retirement, to be a dirty word, and aging not even a real word, I am still doing my bit at total denial.  

I do have several ideas for more novels, have about three partly written but nothing that grabs me so much I am prepared to miss meals to write.  There have in the past been occasions when Colin is reading in bed, and wants to turn out the light and  go to sleep but I am still banging away on my laptop.  When I get an idea that inspires that amount of compulsion no doubt I will drop everything else and write it but there’s nothing like that at the moment.   However, watch this space!

Till next time J

Food for Thought

I seem to get on numerous people’s mailing lists, often newsletters I had no intention of signing up for.  Every now and then I do a big purge and follow all the instructions to unsubscribe, though some people are very persistent and don’t make it easy. 
But I do keep some that I find interesting, although I often just skim and then delete.  One that I have hung on to, although I really don’t  remember how I got on their mailing list is from Adoley and Jim.  And right now I’m very glad that I did.  
 
I have been feeling a bit unsettled, as I often do when a new year comes along (and by implication a clean slate).  I have been wondering whether I should make some major changes in my life.   One change that I am making is in my volunteering.  I have regretfully decided, after quite a few years, to stop helping with a children’s literacy programme at a school in a severely underprivileged area.   I loved the children (and loved the fact that they tend to be touchy feely kids who always come for hugs and cuddles),and loved feeling I was being of some use to them, but unfortunately I have found that I have picked up so many viruses and bugs that my health seemed to be being compromised.  All children seem to carry lots of infections but it seems much worse with these children, many of whom live in tin shacks so it’s hardly surprising.    I seem to have had numerous infections over the last few years, far more than I ever had when teaching full time, and the severe chest infection and asthma that I had in October was the final straw.  So I reluctantly decided that this form of service was not for me any longer.  I am still exploring avenues where I can be of use but where I will not be exposing myself to so many infections.   I’ll have to leave this one to people whose immune systems are more robust.

Back to the point I was trying to make.  At the start of this year Adoley asked what she called ‘three critical questions’.  They were

1.  What do you do that really matters?  (this one attributed to Mother Theresa)
2.  What do you want to experience this year?  What feeling or quality do you wish your (area of life) to express?

3. If you were to die today, what is the one thing that you didn't get to do that you would regret?

 I have been doing some deep soul searching on these.  The first question seems to pertain directly to my volunteering – I really need some clarity on that.    The second one I’m not sure of – I do intend to work on various areas of fitness and core strength this year – I have already embarked on a home exercise and stretching programme in addition to my twice weekly kundalini yoga, and my twice weekly aqua aerobics (though this one is still on Christmas break).  I am also giving serious thought to completely changing my writing – the genre, the location, even to writing under another name.  I have several ideas but haven’t quite narrowed them down yet.

It’s number three that I am spending most of my time on.   What would I regret most?  It’s not travelling – I really have never had the travel bug.  While I enjoy seeing new places I accepted years ago that you can’t go everywhere (try telling our elder daughter that! J).  Perhaps it would be never having held my grandchild, but that ‘s really not up to me.   We have two amazing daughters for whom I am grateful every day of my life.  They have given us so much happiness that even if they don’t give us grandchildren we can have no cause for complaint.    So perhaps it should be something  that I can actually control. 

 Then is occurred to me that perhaps what I am doing wrong is thinking that the three critical questions need three separate answers.  Perhaps if I can find the right answer to the first question it will answer the other two as well.    Whatever it is I shall keep on with my soul searching.  Thank you Adoley – you have really given me food for thought.

Till next time J

Rest in Peace, Madiba

Such a sad time for all of us.   We knew it was coming – after all he was ninety five, a good innings by any standards, and he above all people had had a hard life, a hard physical life, not to mention the emotional and mental strain he must have been under, all those years of incarceration and separation from his family.  What would that do to any man?  But this was not just any man, this was Nelson Mandela, known affectionately to all South Africans as Madiba, his clan name.   And as Tata to many, a term of respect for an older person, a term of veneration, what you would call your grandfather.

But he was larger than life, it just seemed to all of us he would go on forever.   So the end when it came was a shock, bringing an intense feeling of disbelief and horror, that this man, who had steered our country, against all expectations, through a peaceful transmission to democracy was there no more.  I remember it so clearly, the first free elections, when we stood in the rain for hours waiting to vote, but the atmosphere was so upbeat, so optimistic, it was an experience to cherish, to file away with other important , never to be forgotten, life experiences.   I remember his inauguration, when there was so much talk of chaos in the country, when people, people we knew were hoarding baked beans and candles, in case of food shortages and power failures.  I bought some beautiful candles and a bottle of our local sparkling wine – I cut out a picture of our new flag from the newspaper (such flags were not readily available at that stage) and we watched the inauguration, lit our candles and raised the little paper flag and also raised our glasses to this remarkable man who had defeated all the naysayers and achieved what most of the world would have considered impossible.

I didn’t have the privilege of meeting him, to speak to.  But I did shake his hand, twice.  It was just before the 1994 elections – he came to my daughter’s school (which had been my school many years before) – she was part of the choir which sang for him.  I was in the crowd,  a large crowd outside the school, waiting for a glimpse of the great man.  The choir sang and he listened to them and watched them, in fact everyone was focused on the choir, except a select few men, who were facing the other way and keenly scanning the crowds – his bodyguards.  It hadn’t occurred to me but they must have been very necessary – there were many in the former South Africa who felt very threatened by what was to come.   Then, after the singing, he graciously went round shaking hands with the crowd.    I wriggled to the front and by dint of extending my hands in two different directions, managed to shake hands with him twice. I can still feel the rough skin, the workman’s hands, from this high born man, this royal son, this amazingly eloquent lawyer, who was forced to do manual labour in a lime quarry, work which not only hardened his hands to those of a manual labourer, but which damaged his eyesight from the glare and led to the future lung problems to which he ultimately succumbed.   Shaking his hand was one of the highlights of my life, right up there with being present on the Grand Parade in Cape Town, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu (another of my heroes) presented him to the nation as our president elect.   It was also my first experience of a praise singer, an extraordinary African tradition.  

I can’t believe he’s gone – the reactions around the world show how much he was valued.   We like to think he was ours but he was too great to belong only to South Africa, or indeed Africa.  It is not often that someone’s life enriches so many the world over, but this is such a life.  I feel honoured and humbled to have been so close to greatness.  Long may his legacy live.  Rest in peace, Madiba, we owe you so much.

Drought

It’s not a block

It’s more like a drought

It’s as though I’m on the wrong side of a glass wall, a frosted glass wall

I can see shapes but no detail 

Perhaps I’m done, a small voice cries –  a disloyal, mean small voice – I pay it no heed

Then another voice says ‘Try something new’, and ‘Start over’

That one I take seriously.   Another genre, perhaps even under a new name

The idea excites me, intellectually, but still the drought

Then I think of the brain fog I got last month after the antibiotic

Perhaps, though I’m not even aware of it, it’s still there, frosting up my window on my world, on my imagination

Perhaps I should just forget about writing, enjoy the glorious early summer days, walk on the beach with the dogs

I should feel grateful to be alive and well, living in such a beautiful corner of the world

 

When the time is right the glass will clear

I have to believe that

Nothing to write

I can’t write.  I literally can’t write anything; I can’t think of anything to write.  When I think about the books I have written so far I realise they have one thing in common – in each and every case I had a story that was screaming ‘Write me! Write me!’   Such a persistent scream that I had no option but to sit down and write it.  Which probably explains why I have generally finished the first draft in four to six weeks – it’s hard not to when there is an irritatingly persistent voice screaming in one’s ear.  

Now there is nothing and I feel rather flat.  Oh, I have odd ideas, (in fact some are very odd ideas – which reminds me of a Hager the Horrible cartoon I saw years ago – Hager says ‘Helga and I have been married thirty odd years’ to which she responds ‘Thirty very odd years!’ – I tried to find a copy as a card for my husband when we had our thirtieth anniversary but had no luck), but nothing clear cut.   My daughters tell me I should write murder mysteries, complicated murder mysteries (they think I have a devious mind – perhaps they are right), and though I have had some ideas along those lines, there is nothing that quite makes a story.    They say (the ubiquitous they, who know everything) that everyone’s got a book inside them.  Perhaps seven was what I had in me, perhaps I shouldn’t be greedy.  I should just enjoy the newly arrived summer here in Cape Town.   Then, like not looking for romance, I can be pleasantly surprised when the next story just arrives unbidden.   If it does, or when it does, that remains to be seen. 

Till next time J

Birth Announcement

My latest novel, On the Ninth Day, is now available on Amazon.  No 7 in the Southhill Sagas, though each story stands alone.  I had fun writing this one – actually I have fun writing all of them – I tell myself I’ll stop writing when I stop having fun but it hasn’t got there yet.  I have no idea of what, if anything I’ll write next.  I have several partly written stories but nothing I am desperate to finish, nothing that really makes a novel  – sometimes an idea just turns into a longish short story, maybe I’ll combine them one day.

Perhaps I won’t write any more – that’s what I say at the end of each one, but somehow or other another idea just pops into my head and before I know where I am I am banging away on the keyboard.   Take my third one, But a Dream – I had written two stories and wasn’t planning another and I woke up one Saturday morning with the idea, the almost completely formed idea for But a Dream, even the title, which felt quite appropriate considering where the idea came from.   That’s how I write – I always have to have a title, a basic storyline, a beginning and an ending and the characters, all firmly in my head before I start writing.  The actual story from A to B just develops from the characters – I give them free rein and they tell their tale – that’s why I find it so much fun, it’s a little like watching a movie for me, I’m never quite sure where it’s going or rather I know the ending but not the route.  
On the Ninth Day is fiction but one of the characters is definitely not made up – Smudge is or was, a real cat, a completely crazy but very beautiful and affectionate cat.   Is there an element of the paranormal in this story?  You decide.

Till next time J

I’m Back!

I had a great holiday in August – we went to Edinburgh (my first visit to Scotland) to see the Military Tattoo, an amazing spectacle which I can highly recommend.  Honestly, the televised version comes nowhere close.  My sister felt that the lone piper at the end was better on TV but I have to disagree.  The zoom of the TV lens loses the poignancy of the one lone piper on the castle wall in the distance.  Anyway, a wonderful experience.  I loved Edinburgh – such a beautiful city and so vibrant!  The Edinburgh festival was just starting, also the international book fair so the streets were really jumping.   We were lucky with the weather too, though the locals have a very different idea of fine weather.  When we were reaching for an additional jumper and pulling on a rain jacket they were all saying how lucky it was the weather was so fine.   But it wasn’t really cold – days about the same midsummer as our Cape Town winter I suppose, though there were some warmer days.  We stayed in a cottage, formerly a cow shed, a few miles out of the city, next to a very beautiful reservoir.  One of the highlights for me was that we picked delicious small wild raspberries, growing wild near our cottage – much nicer flavor than their larger cultivated cousins.   I love foraging – I am definitely a gatherer rather than a hunter.  I have just received my copy of Sergei Boutenko’s new book Wild Edibles and the DVD, which I am really looking forward to starting.
Then after just over a week we flew to Bristol to see our daughter and son-in-law, which was just lovely.  It had been a full eighteen months since we had seen them so a very happy reunion.  We were also able to see our grand-dog and meet our two new-grand cats.  They gave us a wonderful time, highlights of which were the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta,  a truly mind boggling spectacle, and the other was whole day trip on a narrowboat down the river Avon to Bath which was very interesting and also just lovely, so relaxing and good for the soul.  I love boats – our year spent on a canal boat in France is still such a fond memory.

All too soon it was time to come home – though not too soon for our cat, who thought we had abandoned her in a cattery forever and who didn’t leave our sides for the first week after our return.  Our dogs were pleased to see us, but had been having a lovely holiday on a wine farm with our friends, so they were feeling anything but abandoned.

Since getting back I haven’t actually written a word – sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever write again, then a new story just hops on board and I find myself devoting eight to ten hours a day till I have got it down.  Are all writers so obsessive?  Or is it just me?  Who knows?  I haven’t even finished tweaking my latest one, On the Ninth Day the Cat was Sick.  Partly because my friend and fellow writer Deborah Goemans, (http://www.amazon.com/Amaranth-Bloom-Deborah-June-Goemans/dp/1439286906)  very kindly assessed part of one of my novels and as a professional editor told me all sorts of things I didn’t know, such as the rules for indentations, and spacing and dashes.  So now I have to go through this book and make all these changes, when I do the tweaking and the rewriting.  (Not to mention my previous six books!)  I am most grateful to Debbie but this means lots of work and I am very good at avoiding work!  The trouble is I don’t have a deadline – and I am one of those people who can only work with a deadline, even a self imposed one.  So I should probably set myself a date, like the first of November for this book to be up-and-running.  Yes that’s what I’ll do – you saw it first here.  Look for my new book on Amazon on Friday 1^st November!

Till next time J