In Person
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Yesterday I spent the day in bed writing, being a delicate writer. There is no shortage of ill writers..infact being bed ridden rather suits the writing profession. I listened to my radio play, but of course the phone kept ringing as it often does when you are trying to listen to the radio. Outside great fists of snow were falling and the room felt soundless and wrapped in bandages.
I was writing poems (spells and recipes) for my 'First Aid Kit for The Mind,' and pieces for A Manifesto For A New City, which starts rehearsals next week . I am also putting together a book of my plays and remembering the context in which they were written. They should be coming out in July. It's amazing how many versions there are of everything. It's all a terrible muddle! I feel as if I am tidying everything up. It's nice, and so is the snow.Being interviewed by Jenni M was a bit daunting. I had been to the doctors earlier for my faslodex injection, then zipped up to the BBC to do the interview down the line. They were really slow getting me hooked in and the interview felt rather sudden. Also, Jenni never said hallo, or goodbye, so it was a bit like suddenly playing an intense game of tennis with a virtual stranger. All the other radio things I have done one talks to the presenter for a bit. Anyway, I got through it, but I had to go back to bed and get up again and start the day again.
I have had so many interesting, uplifting emails from people who either heard the interview, or who read the Times piece, ( I would call myself more of a hiding-under-the-blankets woman than a warrior woman! Still I thought the editor, Jane Wheatley, did a wonderful job selecting excerpts from this blog) or who are listening to the plays on Women's Hour. I have tried to reply to everyone, and I really hope I haven't missed anyone out. It's so encouraging to hear from other people with cancer, or poets, or people with ideas about writing and health. And thankyou for all the tips about face pain too. I am going to try a russian treatment called stennar. Not sure what it is yet..perhaps a contraption you lie in, like a space machine !
I had a very quiet weekend. Everyone else was away and I sloped around the house scribbling things in books and knitting (a blue and white blanket) and staring out of the window at our long steep garden. I feel like a bulb that is thinking about Spring. I am still reading Small Island. It's really good, but I don't long to return to it. I am not sure why. Dreamy days ! Thank god for porridge, yogurt, manuka honey, the radio, my ridiculously amusing cat.
Posted by julia @ 01:40 PM GMT
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Take a look at Jane Eagland's poem The Knitted Woman on this site. I really like it. It's funny how knitting has connected me with a whole community of wool sellers, pattern studiers, women who know the vocabulary of needles. My mum even told me about a dying friend of hers whose last request was that she should be allowed to knit whilst gasping her last breath! When you trip into another world like this, you wonder what else there is going on out there. For instance, cake making, or pressing flowers, or painting eggs...who knows what goes on in these quiet creative worlds?
I am on Women's Hour on Thursday, talking to Jenni Murray. I am a bit nervous, but I do love the programme, and she is such an experienced interviewer that one is steered through any choppy waters. Also some of this blog is being published in The Times Weekend mag on Saturday. The editor has picked some interesting bits over the time I have been writing it, full of ups and downs, trips to Rio, symptoms, achievements and miseries.
Otherwise my face is still hurting. Doesn't anyone know what to do about neuralgic pain? The NHS says I have tried all the drugs available. Most of them send me to sleep. I am sure there is something out there. Hot wheat bags, acupuncture, neurofen, facials, hypnotherapy all help a bit, but nothing gets rid of it. If anyone knows of anything let me know. I have chased off many symptoms, but this one is stubborn and mysterious. But the fact that it comes and goes makes me believe I can shift it!
Perhaps the hot sun of Umbria will melt it away, but that's not until May.
Posted by julia @ 12:50 PM GMT
Saturday, February 12, 2005
We have just been listening to the cd of Appointments — the radio plays that are on next week. I really like the way they have been produced, and the Sue Roberts has done some great effects. The whole cast is doing things like playing football in the studio. I am playing receptionists and small parts. The end is really joyous too. Anyway, my mum likes them and that's the main thing. It's very different listening to something with the rest of the world..very jittery...like sitting in the audience when a stage play is on. I am doing a thing on Women's Hour on Thursday, talking to Jenni M about the plays.
I am ok. The good news is that my blood count is getting better and better all by itself. But my liver is a bit swollen that makes me feel very portly, like I have eaten too much pudding and my face is still driving me nuts. I wake up in the night and wander the house. Someimes I clean out cupboards. Custard powder and vanilla essence from the late nineties are the main hangers on. People tell me my face doesn't show, but it feels so weird, like a faulty circuit or something.
Knitting is going very well. I am feeling more ambitious. Damn it, I could knit myself a friend, or a house!
Otherwise, I am busy doing all kinds of things. On Sunday night I read at the packed Blue Room at the Bridge Hotel, along with some great new writers....I love the room. It's a pub built right up against the railway and the trains shunt by. I must have been born to the sound of shunting trains..it's a sound that makes me happy. On Wednesday I gave a talk in a village called Wylam to a group of elderly, intelllectual men. I don't know why I agree to do these things, but I genuinely enjoy them when I get there. We had a debate about line breaks in poetry, and some of the audience weren't keen on modern fashions in poems. One man told me he had written two hundred sonnets for one woman! Imagine that! They were courteous and sweet anyway. I have also been editing my plays for a book that will be published this year. This is really good news, as many plays don't see the light of day after a first production. Plays like Eating The Elephant, that I wrote after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, will be in it, as well as the Last Post, and most of my radio work.
The university has been busy too, and I want to run a course about using poetry as a cure if I can maintain the energy.
Happily, I have got a retreat coming up in Umbria, so I can concentrate on finishing the novel then. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate in this whirl, with an achey face and a puffy liver. I am going to the cinema now..to see Sideways. Back soon.Posted by julia @ 08:51 PM GMT
Created by Julia Darling and Cornwell Internet.