My adventure

I wake up upset. I feel stuck in the two areas that matter to me most – Frog and my writing. A good way to get unstuck, they say, is to change your routine so I decide to venture further than normal when I walk the dog today. I will wander through the tangle of lanes over the top of the hill which I haven’t explored since Christmas.

    I’m always slightly nervous in territory where I don’t belong and which I don’t know well, wondering if I’m going to meet stampeding cattle, rabid dogs, rabid farmers or find my way impassable but all goes well to start with.

    I am transfixed by a magnificent oak tree beside the road. I love oak trees. I always find myself sitting underneath them without realising it. I stop to photograph this one, but because of the hedge I can’t step back far enough to get it all in.

    A tiger-striped dragonfly zooms past. A peacock butterfly flitters in front of me, resting from time to time on the tarmac, its orange-brown wings glowing like leather in the sun. House martins swoop and shriek like swifts.

    In a field next to the road is a hump topped with rough grass and twisted trees. I wonder if it’s a prehistoric burial mound and long to go and sit on it, but I don’t. I would be trespassing and I wouldn’t be able to relax.

    We reach a farm. We have to cross the farmyard to get to a track which I intend to take. It’s the only off-road part of the walk and not actually a public right-of-way but I know the people who live further up the track and when I passed at Christmas I met the farmer and he said it was fine for me to walk it.

    Two dogs however – a collie and a bad-tempered-looking caramel labrador-cross – shoot out as we go by, barking viciously and even Ellie – who is not normally frightened of very much – is unnerved. The dogs follow us, still barking, and I expect a chunk to be taken out of my leg at any moment, but it isn’t. Nevertheless I shall think twice about coming this way again.

    The track turns into a very wet, very overgrown footpath (wet because a stream has decided to take the same route). A fallen tree blocks it but I refuse to go back and face those dogs again. Thank goodness I have my secateurs with me. (I nearly left them behind, trying to minimise the weight in my backpack.) I spend a careful five minutes removing nettles and brambles so that I can crawl through, while the dog waits the other side of the tree, puzzled at my slowness.

    We have to cross a field full of bullocks but luckily they’re more interested in eating grass than charging at us.

    The dog slips under an electric fence into another field and I’m terrified she’ll hurt herself on the way back. She’s not very clever about electric fences. She once got wedged under one, too upset by the shock she was receiving to wriggle away. She makes it back safely.

    At last we reach civilisation again, or at least tarmac. Another evil-looking dog (Caramel-coloured, labrador-ish. I wonder if it’s related to the other one?) hurls itself against its fence, furious that it can’t get at us. The sign on the gate reads ‘Beware dog. Enter at your own risk.’ God, it’s like hill-billy country round here.

    Finally we’re on the home stretch. It’s all uphill, and a bit of a farming desert, but I’ve been out for three hours and I haven’t seen a (human) soul – which is how I like my walks. I’m proud of myself for surviving so many hazards – and maybe adrenalin as well as a change in routine is good for unsticking the stuck.

    I expect great things.

High in the blue

A trio of buzzards

high in the blue,

screeching as they

ride the thermals.

What are they saying?

I sit on the hill

I sit on the hill

writing my daily pages.

The dog lies beside me,

eyes scanning the area,

noise twitching,

relaxed and happy.

No longer the demanding puppy.

Woman’s best friend.

This dark little prison

I have this recurring nightmare – sorry, it’s another dream saga – in which Frog and I have moved from our lovely semi-remote house with views into a village with – shock, horror – neighbours and no views. For a long time I didn’t understand it but when I wrote my autobiography* a few years ago it started to make sense.

    My parents took an instant dislike to Frog because he was the wrong class and because he had no money, and I’ve never quite recovered. That is one explanation for the dream – their windows overlooked ours, they interfered with our personal idyll, and still do (in my psychology, not in a practical sense).

    Another explanation – or perhaps it’s the same one, in a different manifestation – occurred to me as I was writing my daily pages this morning (sitting in a field while the dog rolled in something no-doubt-smelly in the distance). I’d got my knickers in a complete twist about the (small) numbers of people who read my blog. What was the point of carrying on? I wondered.

    Then I realised that I’m not yet ready to have lots of followers. The thought of that sort of pressure fills me with horror. I don’t want to have my psyche pulled this way and that (as it is when I’m with other people, as I’ve mentioned before http://www.belinda-whitworth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/empathy.html  **, and as I imagine it would be if lots of people actually read what I wrote).

    Writing The Novel feels like a step into that big critical tumultuous world, which is why I’ve frozen, why my creativity in that respect has flown out of the window, why I feel like I’m blind at the moment.

    I can’t stay in this dark little prison forever though.

* Which I did as the result of a writing weekend with Roselle Angwin (www.fire-in-the-head.co.uk **), not because I think I'm a celebrity.

** And I do apologise for not being able to do links properly at the moment. I don't know whether it's Blogger or my computer.

The wish

On Monday night we lie outside on sunbeds covered in duvets. I find it hard to keep my eyes open and the shooting stars are too quick for me.

    Whatever the scientists say, to me shooting stars are messages from God. And I know too that the communication is two-way. Wishes made on shooting stars do come true, even if officialdom and seemingly intransigent rules are involved.

    I don’t make a wish now because I’m not sure that I’m ready for mine – or that it is ready for me. It’s still floating around in the ether preparing to take form. I need to wait.

   

The robin

This morning as we sit in bed having breakfast, we hear sudden chirrupings downstairs in the conservatory, the door of which is wide open. Then they stop. Ten minutes later they start again and Frog races downstairs.

    ‘It’s a bird,’ he shouts. ‘A robin I think. It’s gone up to your room now.’

    I put on my dressing-gown and follow him up to my writing room. The bird is fluttering frantically from side to side. Frog is dancing around in the nude, flinging open windows and brandishing the hooked stick I use to open my Velux roof windows.

    ‘Come here, you little blighter,’ he shouts.

    The robin disappears under my desk and into the furthest corner of the room inside some dusty inaccessible shelves.

    ‘Why don’t we sit quietly’, I suggest, ‘and when he appears again throw a t-shirt over him.’

    I say this three times but Frog doesn’t seem to hear me so I go downstairs and fetch a dirty t-shirt from the laundry basket. I return and we sit quietly for all of two minutes. When nothing happens, I make another suggestion.

    ‘Why don’t we open all the windows wide, shut the door and leave him to it.’

    Reluctantly, Frog agrees. He doesn’t like me making suggestions. Or perhaps it’s the robin that’s made him cross.*

    I have a shower and get dressed then go back up to my writing room. I want to switch on my computer. I don’t want a robin dying in a corner. I hope he’s gone, but how will I know?

    I open the door and see the robin trying to get out of one of the Veluxes. I race over to the window, push it open a little further, and he’s gone, zooming off to his patch in the garden, wherever that is, seemingly unhurt.

    All that he’s left behind is some feathers and a little dribble of crap down the middle of my computer screen.


* Frog says it was the robin that made him cross - and the dog as well although he's not sure why. (Perhaps he blames the dog for letting the robin into the house.)

Observer not victim

Last night we were watching a programme on television about the Edinburgh Festival in which a survivor of a Second World War concentration camp was talking about a play she has written on the subject. ‘Keep calm,’ her father apparently told as he was being taken away by the Nazis. ‘Calmness is strength.’ ‘There are victims’, she said, ‘and there are observers. I was an observer.’

    I remember too that the father of writer-illustrator Judith Kerr said something similar, as recorded in her riveting autobiographical trilogy which starts with the book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Her father was a German-Jewish writer critical of the Nazis, and he and his family had to flee the country when Judith was a child (leaving behind her precious toy).

Today is the day I can look through the full text of my novel (printed out in a typeface that I wouldn’t normally use and left for two weeks according to the writing exercise I mentioned in an earlier post).

    I take the typescript out into the garden and try to read it but am filled with disgust. It just won’t do. I think that the trouble is, it’s too close to my life. On the one hand, I’ve already written an autobiography that covers much the same ground so I’m bored. On the other, there’s too much to say and I can’t be detached about it. I want to chuck everything in just to make a point. I’m not calm. I’m not observing.

    I need to start again, picking just one strand maybe, and I’m tempted by the diary form. As I’ve said before, if I could write a novel in the same way I write this blog (confidently, regularly, without looking too far ahead but with a clear idea of theme) I might avoid the awful extremes (of overload and paralysis) that novel-writing causes me.

    Or is that too much to hope for?