East Anglian Fox

Off to the Shetlands

2009-04-21T03:22:00.000-07:00

Just as the cabbages are pushing up, the onions shoots well above ground and only one more batch of potatoes to be planted, I'm off to the Shetlands.

I want to get as close to Viking life as I can, and I'm sure I can do it in the Shetlands. I want to come home with a fistful of finished poems and the beginnings of others. Most of these will, I hope, make their way into the book I'm making about women in the Viking age. One might even end up on these pages.

Even reading the placenames is like reading the characters in a story: Whales Wick, Point of Blo-geo, Easter Quarff, Lotra of Minn, Muckle Hell, West Burrafirth, Snevlabreck, Haaf Gruney. As well as exploring the numerous islands, I'm going to swim. Not in the sea, you understand, but in Shetland's indoor pools. Apparently there is a pool for every 2000 people, but surely this generous provision must be a service for visitors who might otherwise be facing lashing rain?

I'll also be visiting the Shetland Library's collection of local books in Lerwick, and I note that there is a Lerwick bookgroup which read Mister Pip recently, as did my group here in Suffolk. It's interesting to think of a discussion taking place in a very northerly island about a story set on an island in the South Pacific.

And this afternoon there's just time for me to get those potatoes in.

Submissions

2009-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

Submitting manuscripts always takes longer than I expect. First, there's the question of deciding which agents/publishers to submit to, and then it's essential to check out precisely what each of them wants. Some want the whole ms, some the first three chapters or 10,000 words. Some insist on it being sent by e-mail while others prefer a hard copy. Most, but not all, want a synopsis and some info. about the writer. The websites of helpful agencies give details of how the submission will be processed and - importantly - a time framework.

Eighteen months ago when I was submitting the ms of my last novel several replies bounced back within two weeks. Others took months - sometimes many months - and there remains a couple which I have still had no reply from, despite having been assured over the phone that my ms is with them. "Sorry - but we'll get round to it." Really? On the other hand. one agency sent me four replies, all dated within a month - just to make sure there was no doubt over their refusal, I presume.

Having decided what I'm going to send to whom, the next job is to make sure that the right letter goes out with the right attachments, or, if it's by post, that the right stuff is put into the right package. And even though it's 2009, some companies still want an SAE.

If you've got a funny experience with submissions, I'd love to hear about it.

But, all bar one, a small batch of submissions is out there, winging my ms towards an in-box or a letter-box. And now I must forget them for a while and concentrate on other things.

It won't be hard because this weekend I'll be in London to hear the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra's Latino concert, see my family and babysit, and visit the re-furbished Whitechapel Gallery and its current show-piece: a replica tapestry of Picasso's Guernica.

Spring

2009-04-05T11:51:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we went for our first canoe trip of 2009, along the River Stour from Sudbury to Henny. It was calm and warm, and a heron flew slowly up from the bank ahead and settled where we couldn't see it, but when we approached it a second time it took off again. Then in the car on the way home, we saw our first swallow of the year. Such sightings are like blessings.

And our pond must now contain a couple of firkins of frogspawn, and several dozen newts, some of which are easily caught by dipping one's hand under them. So it's spring - time to be on a bike or in a canoe or just having coffee in the garden.

This description of a very different spring comes from the book I'm reading set in 14th century Norway, Kristin Lavransdatter.

One evening in the early spring Rangfrid had to send down the valley to old Gunhild, the widow who sewed furs. The evening was so fair that Kristin asked if she might not go; at last they gave her leave because all the men were busy.

It was after sunset, and a fine white frost haze was rising toward the green-gold sky. Kristin heard at each hoof-stroke the brittle sound of the evening's ice as it broke and flew outwards in tinkling splinters. But from all the roadside brakes there was a happy noise of birds singing, softly but full-throated with spring, into the twilight.

When I checked the meaning of brake, I found that although it meant a thicket of bushes, it had quite a few other meanings: a cage, an instrument for peeling the bark from willows, a baker's kneading-machine, a nose-ring for a draught ox.

And here's part of John Milton's Song on May Morning, which I quote in my novel Companion to Owls

Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip , and the pale primrose.

Norse and Nordic

2009-04-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

In the interests of research for a book I'm intending to write and make, (yes, really make - by hand), I've just spent a couple of days at a seminar organised by the Viking Identities Network at Nottingham University entitled Language, Texts and Gender in the Viking Diaspora. It may not sound exciting to you, but I really enjoyed it. Admittedly, there were papers which I could hardly understand let alone benefit from, but one called Text and Textiles summoned up wonderful connections between what was woven and what was spoken. And as for those Viking burials, I had never before recognised the huge amount of work involved: all that food to be assembled, all those horses to be killed and butchered. Indeed, it was being suggested that such occasions were indeed performances, a concept I found totally believable.

The seminar was held at Beaumont Hall at the University of Leciester, situated in the Botanic Gardens. Feeling Vikinged-out at one point, I escaped and made my way to a beacon of natural loveliness - a magnolia in full blossom.

Back in Suffolk I'm embarking on Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy first published in 1930. It's set in 14th century Norway, and though this is well past the Viking era, I reckon that the changes to peasant life in rural fjordland would not be pronounced.

The person who recommended this book to me was not a Viking scholar at the conference, but someone at Norwich University College of the Arts where we are both studying. Not only is Chris a textile artist but she is Norweigan. Over a cup of coffee we discovered that her father and my brother had both worked on a Norweigan whaling ship, the Balaena. My brother Gordon, when newly qualified as a marine zooologist, was the scientific officer, and Chris's father was a flenser - one of the men who slices the blubber off the whales with huge knives on poles, a bit like a scythe. Now this seems appalling, but fifty years ago there was a big market for whale oil.

So, my life feels a bit Norse and Nordic at present, and that pleases me.

Is it lonely being a writer?

2009-01-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

My recent activities have been particularly diverse: lunch at the River Cafe, cycling, a Britten, Elgar and Sibelius concert at the Festival Hall, a memorial service, writing, more cycling, supper with long-standing friends, lunch with new friends, and more writing. Tomorrow I'm going, for the second time, to the excellent, disturbing and thought-provoking Medicine and War exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation.

Since writing that paragraph I've had the close-to-final conversation I needed to have in respect of the first draft of the novel I'm working on. It's provided me with essential facts which confirm my initial information to be correct. Checking facts is an important part of writing and I often find myself googling anything from recipes to the use of cycles in wartime to bird migration. And of course maps; my motto could be Any excuse for a map. But sometimes what I need can't be found on-line or in a book, and I end up searching for people who know what I need to know. Happily, they usually tell me other things too which can enrich my work or send it in new directions.

Amongst other Google result this week I found a conference entitled, Hair today, gone tomorrow: hair loss, the tonsure and masculinity in medieval Icelend. It's not actually relevant to my work, but I thought I'd tell you about it because it may have immediate appeal to some of you.

So, to those who ask Is it lonely being a writer? my answer is a clear No. Other people are essential to the process and my experience is that they are pleased to be involved.

Getting towards the end

2009-01-21T02:18:00.000-08:00

I'm further ahead with the novel I'm working on than I expected to be at this stage. Somehow, in the last couple of weeks I've been on a roll with it and the end is falling into place. There's more to be written and all will need to be edited. And edited again. And again. I'm reaching the point where I'll be doing more reading than writing, and I learned long ago that the best way to read is to read aloud. That way it's easier to pick up typos, infelicities of language, over-used words, errors in the order of events in the plot and things I haven't noticed like names which sound like each other and could confuse the reader.

And more importantly, the other thing which happens at this stage is that the book's themes become clearer. I was once told that when a writer knows what their book's about, then they know they've reached the end, and it's certainly true for me. I find that as those themes present themselves, I can capitalise on them and develop them even at this late hour. In fact, it's precisely because it's a late hour that they emerge from the text and link up with what's happening in my head with more clarity than they have done up till now. I find this a very exciting and creative part of the process. Today, for example, important ideas have occurred to me out of the blue. Well, perhaps not quite out of the blue. They jumped up, variously, while I was buying a loaf of bread, dialling to make a hair appointment and feeding Tabitha, my cat.

King's Lynn Fiction Festival

2009-01-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

Oyez! Oyez!

I'd just like to draw your attention to this year's King's Lynn Fiction Festival to be held on March 13-15th.

There are a variety of events and readings or talks from Beryl Bainbridge, D J Taylor, Penelope Lively, Christopher Bigsby, Anthony Grey, Rachel Hore, Sophie Hannah, Mark Illis, Jill Paton-Walsh and me.

Tickets for individual events are £8.50, but you can buy a pass for the whole weekend for £37.50. You'll find details on www.lynnlitfests/com

The next two months will pass in a flash, so you should book asap. If you attend and come across me, please come and introduce yourself, because this writing business sometimes feels all one-way.

Currently I'm trying to arrange a meeting with a professional whose expertise I need for the final part of my novel. I find that interviewing people is one of the most enjoyable parts of research because usually interviewees like to talk about their field and I often get not only more detail than I need, but things I haven't thought of. Let's hope this happens when I meet the man I have in mind.

Title?

2009-01-13T02:53:00.000-08:00

Now, more than a week since my last post, my next novel continues to run along in the right direction. I'm over 75,000 words in and the end is in sight. I'm not a writer who ties things up neatly at the end, but I clearly have to find a way to conclude my work. Doing that well, it seems to me, is one of the hallmarks of good writers. To hold together the various threads of the plot, the characters and the themes, and to work out how to develop them so they reach a place where they can be let go of in a way which satisfies most readers isn't easy. And then it all has to be written down.

At this stage of a book I'm always conscious of the debt I owe to technology. How did Austen and Tolstoy and Dickens and the rest of them get on without cut and paste, find and replace, wordcount and so on? The very thought is extraordinary.

Anyway, I'm plotting and manoeuvring my way towards the conclusion, and, though difficult, I'm enjoying the challenge. And while I've been doing this I've made an important decision about the novel's title which I'm going to change from Simon Says, the working title I've used up to now. But you'll have to wait for a while before I announce the new one. I'm going to let it slosh around in my head for the time being, but I'm fairly confident I'll stay with it.

Back to the Book

2009-01-04T03:27:00.000-08:00

For the last six months of 2008 I was busy with two tasks: getting my novel Companion to Owls from page to print to the public, and working on the project I'll be submitting for my MA this summer. We also went on holiday. All these took all my time and energy and caused me to abandon the novel I was half way through.

But I returned to it three days ago with warm interest. The first thing I did was to read it from a hard copy. If I have access to the screen I stop reading and begin to edit, which is no good if I want an overview. So, I came at it with new eyes and read it straight through, making only small notes in the margin.

Overall, I was quietly satisfied with it and I'm now on a second re-read, but this time I'm working on the screen and, using my notes, making small changes as I go along.

To my delight, the book is already running around in my head as busily as it was six months ago. I've thought of how to develop parts of the plot and several of the characters, how to move towards the end, how to shift the mood in certain places. I've decided to make some cuts and changes, to give a character a different name, to get to grips with the chronology of it, to list various technical details I need to check on, and so on. This is a familiar process to me by now and it's reassuring that it's proceeding as I hoped it would.

Right now I feel I could work on it for a solid fortnight, but I can't do this not only because there are other things to be done but also because I know the text is better if it's written a bit at a time. I've learned that gaps like this six months - though six days or even six hours would help - make a very positive difference. In those gaps the book simmers away in my head with or without me consciously thinking about it, and something good comes out of it. Usually this means the quality of the writing is better, but sometimes I realise what doesn't work so I end up deleting.

So, right now I'm around 67,000 words in. I'll keep you posted.

Boxing Day

2008-12-27T03:40:00.000-08:00

Boxing Day included a wonderful walk in Richmond Park, where the deer refused to be phased by entire families on brand-new shiny bikes or by squawking green parakeets. It won't be long before someone produces Christmas cards featuring parakeets on snowy twigs or wearing Santa Claus hats.

We strolled back past Latchmere House, a building with quite a history. Once the substantial private home of the Dysart family (remembered locally in an eponymous avenue and a pub), it was then a hotel, and then, at the end of WW1, a mental hospital for combat-fatigued officers. In WW2 it was Camp 020, a detention and interrogation centre for enemy agents captured by MI5. Now it's HMP Latchmere House, currently housing 207 adult male prisoners who have progressed through their sentences to a point where, with not long to go until their release dates, they are given privileges (eg. keys to their own rooms) and responsibilities (most are expected to go out to work every day). I find myself reflecting on what the original occupants of the building would have thought of the various subsequent ones, and about the very different Christmases which must have been spent there.

Otters on the River Stour?

2008-12-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

On a walk along the infant Stour yesterday today I noticed some sizeable holes dug into the soft earth of the bank. They looked as if they were in regular use, and, bending down, I found what I thought might be otter spraint. It consisted of small soft green pellets in mucus. I knew spraint is meant to have a very distinctive smell, so I sniffed it. The smell was unusual but not unpleasant and my partner's verdict was that it was "herby".

When I returned home I googled otter spraint and found a surprising amount of information. People variously claimed the smell as being of musk, or newly-mown hay, or jasmine tea or - more prosaically - of fish. What I should have done was to pull the pellets apart and try to find tiny fishbones, just as one can find the bones of small rodents in owl pellets.

Our walk took us past the remains of Clare Castle and Clare's former railway station, across the Stour and so round in a loop towards home.

Buzzards above Suffolk

2008-12-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, cycling along a small lane, I suddenly heard a loud - and close - sort of coughing call, It sounded a bit like Kehaar the gull in Watership Down. I looked up, and there, on top of the nearest telegraph pole, sat a big, heavy-shouldered bird that for a split second I thought was an owl. I stopped too sharply and it took off and flew slowly above me, repeating the same harsh sound. It went out of view and I continued cycling.

When it appeared again, I decided to make the same call back to it. Amazingly, it hesitated and circled, and paused above me (admittedly quite a long way above, but close enough for me to see the distinct white patches near its "fingers"). I've had considerable success with singing to seals but I hadn't really expected to get any response from a buzzard. After half a minute or so it flew away and I cycled on, but then another one appeared and followed the first.

We saw buzzards above our garden in south Suffolk this summer and have heard it said that there are an increasing number of local sightings, so I'm just hoping we see a pair on Christmas Day.

2008-12-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

Companion to Owls

2008-12-13T12:34:00.000-08:00

Companion to Owls is my third novel, set in the Cambridgeshire fens. It's about a family which belongs to a community of Huguenots working on the drainage of the fens in the late 16th century.

Getting reviews and marketing books is quite a task, so when - only yesterday - I received this comment about it from Kevin Crossley-Holland, a writer whose work is closely connected to East Anglia, I was delighted. He wrote:

This novel has a quiet shine to it. It is beautifully researched, unblinking, always kind. Sharing the lives of a Huguenot family living in the Fens, and see-sawing between their snatches of happiness and their tears, one comes to feel that, yes, this is how things really were.

If you'd like to read an extract or know more about Companion to Owls, have a look at my website and post a few words about it.

2008-12-11T04:32:00.000-08:00

Seeing

2008-12-11T03:46:00.000-08:00

A stunning walk today. A clear sky, chilly enough to freeze puddles but not me, shoots of wheat peeking through the earth, a family of deer standing by the hedge and watching me more still-ly than I can ever stand and watch them. Suffolk at its best.

As I walked I was reflecting on a chance meeting I had yesterday with a woman who had only one eye. I hadn't even questioned why she was wearing dark glasses indoors, but after we'd been talking for a little and I'd mentioned my contact lenses, she told me that she lost an eye several years ago as the result of cancer. She took off her glasses to show me, and there was her ordinary eye and her other eye socket neatly covered with skin. If I had tried to imagine it, I think I would have thought of something more disturbing than this simple, almost business-like arrangement. I hoped that if I or any one I loved were to find ourselves in that situation, we too would be able to go beyond sadness and stoicism to the quiet dignity and positivity she possessed.

Gulls flew off from fields, and a heron stood by the river. The moon was up there, pale and not quite round. Bushes of scarlet rosehips reminded me of the wild roses that were here last summer and would be here again.

So much to see. So much to feel.

2008-12-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

Every Man His Own Gardener

2008-12-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

This year, for my birthday, my brother gave me a book published in 1707, price 4 shillings. He had its leather binding repaired, and it's beautiful. Under the title - which doesn't appear on the cover (apparently no books of this period had anything other than plain covers) - but on the frontispiece, it says

Being a New and much more Complete,

Gardener's Kalendar

Than any one hiterto published.

Containing,

Not only an Account of what Work is neceffary to be done in the Hot-houfe, Green-houfe, Shrubbery, Kitchen, Flower, and Fruit Gardens, for every month in the year, but alfo ample Directions for performing the faid work, according to the neweft and moft approved Methods now in practice among the beft Gardeners.

The author is one Mr Mawe, Gardener to the Grace the Duke of Leeds.

As it's December already I thought I should have a look at what he recommends gardeners should be doing. I particularly liked what he had to say about The Hot-Houfe:

Continue every morning from about four or five o'clock, to light the Hot-Houfe fire, obferving, as faid last month, never to make the fire too ftrong fo as to render the heat of the wall of the flues anywife violent, for that would prove of bad confequence to the pines and other plants.

You are likewife to obferve, as advifed last month, that in very fevere weather the Hot-Houfe fires muft be continued night and day.

And the perfon that attends the fires, fhould always, the laft thing before he goes to bed, examine tham to add more fuel if it is wanted; no fuel is fo proper for this purpofe as coals or cinders; but wood, turf or peat will do, tho' nothing is fo fteady and lafting a heat as the two former; but in fome parts thefe can not be had but at a great expence.

The top glafs of the Hot-Houfe fhould at this feason be covered every night with a large painted canvas cloth, fuch as might be made out of a large fail-cloth; and this fhould be made to roll upon a pole that fhould be, if poffible, the length of the Hot-houfe, and near three inches thick or thereabouts; and that fhould be contrived, by the means of pullies and a rope, to draw or roll up, and let down, at pleafure; which is much more convenient than large unwieldy fhutters which I have seen belonging to many Hot-Houfes, and which require almoft an hour's work every day to take down and put up.

The pines and other plants in the Hot-Houfe will ftill require to be now and then watered.

I presume that by pines Mr Mawe means pinepapples? Let me know if you think or know otherwise. Meanwhile, after reading the section on the Kitchen Garden, I realise I ought to be looking over my colliflower plants in their frames.

2008-11-29T10:49:00.000-08:00

Enclosed waters of the Cam and the Great Ouse

2008-11-29T10:13:00.000-08:00

I found this map recently in a secondhand bookshop. It covers territory close to the fens in which I've set my latest novel, Companion to Owls. It opens out longways for several metres, so I stretch it out on the floor - and it's printed on both sides. It was no longer in its original transparent wallet when I bought it, but inside the envelope it came in there were some typed notes with essential details for anyone navigating the Cam and the Ouse.

For example:

St. Neots

Keeper Mr Davis, River Field Bungalow, St Neots, approximately 300 yards upstream on right bank.

Approaching lock from downstream there is not much depth of water and boats should keep well to the left of the island. Boats can be tied up on the left of lock looking upstream if the gates are closed. There is limited depth of water over cill.

There is also a set of instructions entitled Passage Through Locks, the last one of which reads:

An average fee of 2/- each way seems to be usual for all these locks, but this is not an official toll. If a Keeper has to flood before craft can enter lock, it is suggested he be offered an
increased fee.

In Companion to Owls, Mathieu, the son of a Huguenot family, becomes the sluice keeper at Stanground, near Peterborough, not so far from Huntingdon where this map was printed.

Let me know if you'd be interested in seeing a section of the map. Or if you know - or knew - Mr Davis of River Field Bungalow.

Eels

2008-11-28T05:01:00.000-08:00

Eels are - or at least were - a feature of the fens and the broads and all the watery places in East Anglia. Occasionally, in pubs, you can find basketwork grigs and photos of eel-catchers, and in Ely Museum there's a display and a film about how eels were caught.

But I've only just come across The Patron Saint of Eels by Gregory Day. It's a strange story. The narrator (and author) is an Australian, and the book starts with him lying in bed and hearing "the strangest slushy sound, a sound I'd never heard before". He discovers that thousands of eels have been displaced by floods and the local ditches are teeming with writhing, wriggling, glistening bodies which cannot free themselves. The reader is introduced to Nanette, a long-time friend of Noel the narrator, and then Fra Ionio appears. A mysterious 18th century yet contemporary monk, Fra Ionio cares for eels, and he soothes them by speaking to them and striking a small bell. As the story unravels it becomes clear that it is not only the eels who need help. Both Noel and Nanette have unresolved areas of their lives, and Fra Ionio helps them to value their environment and become more spititually aware.

The Patron Saint of Eels is a slim volume, published by Picador in in Australia. ISBN 0 330 42158 1. It won Gregory Day the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal in 2006.

2008-11-26T11:17:00.000-08:00

Thames

2008-11-26T02:47:00.000-08:00

I am an eclectic and disorganised reader who usually has several books on the go. Currently one of the ones I'm savouring is Peter Chasseaud's Thames, The London River.

Thames is a minature version of the text of a large-format privately-produced artists book laid out with maps and phographic images. I bought the little one (for about £12) because the handsome and heavy one costs about £600, but I'm really enjoying the one I have. It's a poetic progression from the river's estuary to its source, a description threaded through with historical, nautical, architectural, literary and artistic references, a litany of evocative placenames. Here are a few lines:

Rounding the Isle of Dogs, run south into Blackwall Reach,
under the astromomers' Polaris alignments.
a quiverful of zero longitudes cut the snaking umbilical
down the west side of the Greenwich peninsula, west into Greenwich Reach
close-hauled again, beat northward, past Deptford, Millwall and Rotherhithe into Limehouse Reach.

At the back of the book Peter Chasseaud lists the shoals, deeps and reaches of the Thames and they sent me running to my box of maps to find the names of the ones off the East Anglian coast.

And they too please me enormously:

Cockle Gatway
Hemsby Hole
Caister Shoal
North Scroby
Middle Scroby
Yarmouth Road
Middle Cross Sand
South Cross Sand
Corton Sand
Gorleston Road
Barley Picle
Lowestoft North Road
Lowestoft South Road
Pakefield Road
Newcombe Sand
Stanford Channel
Holm Sand

Peter Chasseaud can be contacted at peter@parvenupress.freeserve.co.uk