It's a rainy Saturday, and I've got to finish the script for my play which is on at Live Theatre in November. This is a play for actors Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox, called Attachments, and though it's only forty minutes long I seem to have been tinkering with it for months. Two handers feel very mercurial to write. There is no room for clutter, and I'm trying not to be over lyrical and to just let the characters go. On Monday we start rehearsals for Doughnuts Like Fanny's, a play about Fanny Cradock, that's being produced by a company over in Penrith.
After two days over there I must return to my novel which lies waiting for attention.
Otherwise, my health is good, and I've just finished reading The True Story of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, which is really good. I can't stop thinking about Ned Kelly's armour, which I saw once when visiting Melbourne. Next I am going to read Salley Vickers new novel Instances of The Number Three. I really loved Mrs Garnett's Angel which was her first novel.
This is my first entry into this diary, and a bit of an experiment. I wonder if anyone will read it?
Posted by Julia on 7 September 2002 at 3:21 PM
Just come back from rehearsals for Doughnuts Like Fanny's. It's been good fun. There's a sense of everyone rolling their sleeves up. The play has lots of songs in and a musician called Richard Stone has set them to music. There is something wonderful about writing song lyrics to a naff tune in my head, and then hearing them re-set to a good one. I spent a day with the director and actors tweaking the play, taking out all the unnecessary STUFF that clutters up language. It's very pleasureable, like the final garnishes or something. Fanny would appreciate that. I am never going to write dot dot dot again. My scripts are full of them, and they are nearly always unnecessary.
This morning I had a meeting with Claire Malcolm at New Writing North about Diamond Twig, the small press that I co-edit with Ellen Phethean. We are going to start publishing a series of women's plays. We
spent quite a while trying to think of a good name for the series; one that wasn't corny. I must have spent at least a year of my existence trying to think up names for things. The cafe at Live Theatre has been redecorated and everyone looks different in it. I ate a delicious mozarella sandwich. Most sandwiches are very disappointing, but this one wasn't. Now I must do some writing. The next thing I must finish tweaking is 'Attachments' a play for Live that's on in November. One of the characters is an anaesthetist (change from a pharmacist). Apparently anaesthetists are often very fun loving people. Does anyone know any, and are they? is it something to do with always seeing others on the brink of oblivion? Hmmmm.
Thanks for the responses to the diary. I was delighted.
Posted by Julia on 11 September 2002 at 1:33 PM
Last night I went to the launch of Andrea Badenoch's new crime novel 'Loving Geordie'. It was held in Benwell Library in Newcastle, where Andrea had worked with a local history group researching the local landscape for the novel, which is based on the Mary Bell era, when much of Scotswood was being pulled down around people. It was a really interesting opening, with members of the local history group speaking, an exhibition of photographs, and readings by the actor Trevor Fox. I'm looking forward to reading it, although I'm still reading 'Instances of the Number Three' by Salley Vickers.
It feels like Newcastle is waking up again after the Summer. There's hundreds of students wandering around outside with bright tee shirts and big straw hats on. Dingy looking men are giving out flyers about various bars they can get drunk at.
It turns out lots of people read this diary....eek.
Posted by Julia on 13 September 2002 at 12:29 PM
It's mad out there! The students are back, and lying in the corridors, whirling things on strings, and being pestered by different societies. I was never in a society when I was a student. Hmmm.
I have heard from others since I last wrote this diary that all the anaesthetists they know ARE fun loving hedonists. Still, I've finished that play now, so now I'll be thinking only of taxi drivers!
Tomorrow Cate Watkinson and I will be putting words and glass together at the Customs House Gallery in North Shields. I like it up there. It's all airy and riverish. The exhibition opens tomorrow.
Posted by Julia on 16 September 2002 at 1:51 PM
Since I last wrote this diary we've had the Shorelines launch which was great. Cate's glass looked beautiful, and I have fallen in love with sticky vinyl lettering. I'm about to spend a wek away in a castle with two other novelists writing the Taxi Driver's Daughter. I feel I can only really concentrate when I go away from everything. I love my home, but it's full of teenagers, and although I have a writing room, there are so many other writing jobs to do. However, going on a retreat gives you a real boost, and when I come back it's easier to continue working on a big project because my head will be full of it.
Yesterday I went to the launch of a new book called Leftboobless, by a woman called Sylvia Mitchell, who decided to write about her experience of having breast cancer, and to include lots of writing exercises that helped her. Sylvia is a very positive woman who had organised the whole thing brilliantly. It was the best raffle prizes I've ever seen, although typically I didn't win anything. Andrea Badenoch and I 'launched' the book for Sylvia, and we talked about how writing had helped us get through breast cancer. Frankly I couldn't have survived without writing, or at least having some creative way of expressing myself. The launch was wonderful..packed with people..but it made me angry with breast cancer. You can have a very positive attitude and learn alot from cancer, but it's still a pain in the arse and something I could have done without. If anyone is interested in Sylvia's book email me and I'll tell you how to get a copy. It would be a good gift for anyone who was recently diagnosed.
Posted by Julia on 23 September 2002 at 11:06 AM
I really like September. I was on a train last night chugging through Hexham and Wylam and Corbridge, and there was a glowing rustly twilight and a bonfire smell in the air. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here in the North of England either, despite all the things we grumble about like the long cold winters and the dog mess. I always feel romantic in September! I'm about to go and spend a week in a castle writing my novel. I hope it's haunted, and that it's got central heating.
Everything is breaking at the moment; computers, boilers, cars etc. I wonder why things always break in unison?
I also managed to do my tax, which always seems like the most bizarre activity. Is there someone somewhere who goes through all these brown envelopes looking at crumpled receipts with 'stagewear' written on them in biro? Writers could potentially claim everything against tax. Life is art after all. Things like turkish baths, facials, therapy, dog expenses...it's all inspirational.
Posted by Julia on 26 September 2002 at 1:19 PM
I'm back in my writing room after a brilliant week in the castle in Dumfries. We hardly went out at all, and I wrote loads without feeling overworked at all. The castle was more like a big stone tower in the middle of nowhere. Inside it was warm and comforting, with good quality cotton sheets on the beds and shiny cutlery in the cupboards. At night I heard ghosts having conversations in the cupboards, and the others swore they were fast asleep. Bats and owls flew about above your head.
Back in Newcastle everything is very busy. I spent yesterday afternoon going to see a doctor at the Freeman Hospital. We waited for over three hours. I get very frustrated at not being allowed to see my notes and x rays. I make doctors explain things to me. It feels like this is hard work sometimes, but worth it. I MAKE them see me as a person, not a patient. Anyway, I've got to have an operation (on Halloween) to remove fluid from my lung lining. A pleural effusion ...sounds like something Fanny might cook. I feel perfectly normal, so it's annoying to be made to go to hospital. Damn.
Doughnuts Like Fanny's is on at the Saville Exchange in North Shields on 29th October. I am suggesting that attendees might like to dress as Fanny (wig and false eye lashes...you could be Fanny classic, or Fanny sixties) or Johnie (easy...jacket and monacle). If you want to come it might be wise to book. On Thursday 10th I'm writing a 'play for today' for Live Theatre. They lock you up in a room with the newspapers and the play is performed that evening as part of the RSC stuff at Live. It's a bit nerve wracking, but I suppose the audience knows that you only had a day to write it.
I'm reading a great new novel by Louise Trondeau called the Water's Edge, about a hotel in Bournemouth. A really lovely book. Didn't like the Salley Vickers one that much, although her first nov was brilliant. I hope everyone reading this diary is well! Bye for now.
Posted by Julia on 8 October 2002 at 11:49 AM
Spent yesterday writing a play in a day for Live Theatre as part of their RSC season of new play readings and new writing activities. It started at 10.00 a.m with coffee and newspapers, sitting with the directors and circling stories. A statue of Adam had collapsed in New York, and Dylan Thomas's shed was being taken apart and renovated, whitethroats were nearly extinct, and a cleaner had got £27,000 from a faulty cashpoint, taken it home, and then felt so guilty he'd returned it with £200 of his own money. Theses stories seemed to go together rather well! I sat in an office with people bringing me coffee and wrote like a maniac. At lunchtime I was beginning to panic. I could see a good idea like a mirage in a desert and it was a long way off. At 2.00 the actors arrived and we had a read through. I did one more draft and then it was rehearsed and performed that night in the theatre, before a reading of Paul Telfer's Poor Kit Smart. My best part of the day was working with the directors and actors. I just wish we'd had longer. Still there is alot to be learnt from writing badly and quickly, and not being too precious about it. Last night, though, I could hardly sleep...it felt like a premature birth or something!
Now I'm back in peaceville and about to get back to the novel; that pleasureable made up world that I control absolutely.
Posted by Julia on 11 October 2002 at 11:51 AM
Since I started sitting in this room in Newcastle University they have nearly completed a whole building opposite. What an achievement. All over Newcastle we are watching buildings emerge. The new music centre down by the river looks like an alien's head! There are hotels sprouting up everywhere for the tourists we are expecting. When I first came here there wasn't a tourist in sight. I found it quite a relief, as I came from Winchester, where there were too many tourists. I was watching the film 'Get Carter' with my daughter, and it was all about that old Newcastle, with shabby bars and alleys, and concrete, and hard desolate landscapes. When I first got to Newcastle I went down by the quayside, with the bridges towering over your head, and the river full of rubbish, and it felt dangerous and brilliant at the same time.Like a dreamt up city. I knew I would never live anywhere else. I think alot of people feel like me at the moment...a kind of nostalgia for something that's disappearing so fast we can hardly remember what it was, mixed with pride at the indisputable beautiful bridge and the sheer ambition of the city.
I went to my friend Tom Shakespeare's wedding on Saturday. I have only been to three weddings in my life, but this was easily the best. It was a quaker do..which means that people stand up when moved to say things and there is no formality. It was extremely moving. It made the C of E look very pretentious and unimaginative. Tom was marrying a woman from Australia who was bravely moving from Melbourne to Hebburn. They looked so perfect for each other. Afterwards we drank champagne and danced. Small children raced about, as they always do at weddings, and older people shook their bodies vigourously. Usually I feel rather cynical at weddings, but I felt completely full of goodwill towards the human race.
Posted by Julia on 14 October 2002 at 12:48 PM
I'm going to Barcelona! Feel very excited. Can't wait to amble down the Ramblas, and eat Barcelona food in restaurants and do Barcelona type things. I need a holiday too.
I'm going to read Ann Tyler's back When We Were Grown Ups on the plane. I love her work. No time to write this now..no doubt I'll rabbit on when I get back.
Posted by Julia on 18 October 2002 at 9:17 AM
I feel very untangled after Barcelona. We wandered up and down the Ramblas and read alot. It was so warm. My bones got warmed up! I finished Back When We Were Grown Ups by Ann Tyler. It's a fantastic book, and I love the way she writes about the intimate details of people's lives. Only a novel can show us these kinds of details. It's also a book that makes you feel good about writing, as her books show you what good writing can do. Yesterday rehearsals started for Attachments, the short play that accompanies Sean O Brien's 'From The Underworld' at Live Theatre this November. These plays were written specifically for actors Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox, who Sean and I admire hugely. Yesterday was the first day I'd heard them read the script together and it was really exciting.
Now I'm back to the Taxi Driver's Daughter. I'm going away again soon to work on it away from everything as there's too much going on around here!
Posted by Julia on 24 October 2002 at 10:52 AM
Not a nice day for dogs or sensitive children, but otherwise rather exciting. I have re-emerged from my operation at the Freeman. During the course of my stay there I was asked my date of birth nineteen times. It seems the operation went ok, although I feel like I've been in a fight. As usual there was a wartime spirit on the ward and I had some ferocious buddies there, sharing each others ups and downs. The tea trolley crashed into the ward at regular intervals, waking us all up. Everything was a faded yellow colour, including me. Actually, the nurses were amazing. They were so good looking and capable.They came whenever I rang my bell. I was told everything many times. When I got home I quite missed being told what to do. I longed for the sound of distant polishers, and regular administering of pain killers. The point of this operation is to make me feel better, and although I felt fine before I had it, I have been assured that I wouldn't have done quite soon.
Posted by Julia on 5 November 2002 at 4:01 PM
Tonight Diamond Twig, the small press I co-run with Ellen Phethean, is launching an anthology of short stories called 'Even The Ants Have Names' down at Live Theatre. It's a stunning collection of stories, featuring new writers such as Mary Lowe, Linda Leatherbarow, Sue Rickards, Betty Weiner and others. It's a beautiful book too, in classic Diamond Twig style.
There have been far too many fireworks. It's got out of hand. Also very passive, as at least with sparklers you can wave them around a bit. I think someone should invent a hat for dogs to wear at this time.
Posted by Julia on 7 November 2002 at 10:16 AM
I've come back from another week away writing. Luckily it rained all week so there wasn't much temptation to go out. It's interesting when you remove yourself from any domestic duties. After a few days my whole inner clock changes and I think if I stayed away for longer I would probably stay up most of the night, get up late, probably writing in bed until early afternoon. Also, I realise that however hard I might try to work like a machine, I can only WRITE for about three hours a day. However, it's wonderful to spend the rest of the time thinking and doing nothing, and this is definitely when ideas come. Also being away with other writers helps, as we tended to spend evenings talking about problems in the work and how to overcome them.
While I was away 'Double Lives' opened at Live Theatre, so I didn't see it until it had been on several nights. Charlie and Trevor are fantastic, and they have given the play so much energy. I really like writing for particular actors, and I wish I could always work that way.
I'm stuck for a good novel. I know there are hundreds of brilliant books out there, but I've reached that point when one can't decide what to read next. I long to strike a new seam!
Posted by Julia on 19 November 2002 at 9:10 AM
I keep meeting people who have read this diary. It's strange because I think I thought hardly anyone would read it, but actually rather alot of people do. Apparently this kind of diary is called a BLOG..derived from web logs. Mmmm. One of the reasons I wanted to do it was because having had cancer alot of people think that one steadily declines, which is not the case. My (breast) cancer was diagnosed in 1995 and I'm quite used to it now. I think of it as an incompetent kind of disease, that sometimes manages to rally a weak drunken army and to attempt to make an attack somewhere in my body. However, most of the time it lies about in a dirty heap snoring. It recurred (the Battle of The Windpipe) in 2000 when a new tumour was found in my chest. However thanks to a drug called taxotere (from yew trees) it disappeared again. I think it's also thanks to acupuncture which I've had for years. Earlier this year there was an uprising in my lower back ( the Spinal Wars) which went on for a while, but is now defeated. I never used to like all this battle imagery, but infact it's rather apt. I do feel like I have to go to war sometimes. There are a few weak battalions hiding out in the mountain areas and forests of my body..hence a recent operation....and I'm sure there are all kinds of ambushes and hijacks ahead, but on the whole I am quite stable now. I have a good team of doctors (the generals?) who all know me well, and I feel quite in control of myself. I don't have to take horrible drugs or anything. Most of the time I forget about it. I suppose its always true that the image we have of a disease is rarely accurate. Susan Sontag's book 'The Metaphor of Illness' (or something like that) talks about the personality of diseases like TB and AIDS. In terms of cancers, breast cancer gets loads of attention and patients get alot of sympathy, unlike people with bowel cancer or brain tumours.
I spent the weekend looking at Art; at Baltic, the new Biscuit Gallery in Newcastle, and then some open artists studios at the Cluny Warehouse. Saw some fantastic stuff. Now I'm back on the novel, but refreshed by so much visual stimulation. Writing is after all, a very visual medium and is all about trying to get the reader to SEE. Attachments is going great at Live Theatre. People laugh alot which makes me feel happy.
Posted by Julia on 25 November 2002 at 12:52 PM
I'm working on the novel all the time now. Attachments has finished its run at Live Theatre. It was a very happy production, and I'm sorry it's finished. When writing a novel there is very little you can say about it. Each day you have to step into a made-up world full of pretend people that you feel you know better than many of your friends. Tomorrow I'm visiting a prison so I can get some detail; it might only be a small paragraph, but I think it's worth the trip.
I must say, I do sometimes feel as if writing novels is rather like archeology in that you unearth the novel from some part of yourself. This novel is not at all autobiographical, but it feels very close to me, and I am very fond of the people in it. I wouldn't be surprised if I met them one day on the bus!
I went to a book launch last Thursday for the poets Peter Mortimer and Michael Standen. There was a good crowd there. The singer Katherine Zeserson 'sang' one of Peter's poems beautifully. Peter's book 'I Married the Angel of The North' was published by Five Leaves Press, and Michael's 'Gifts of Egypt' was produced by Shoestring Press. Both books look fantastic. Hoorah for the Small Press, and for Cannongate and Flambard whose publications have both been on major shortlists. The more that Waterstones seems to only stock about twenty best sellers the more important these eclectic, passion run presses are. My own press, Diamond Twig, is tiny but our writers are really like diamonds and our books are very beautiful and collectable. I hope everyone who reads this diary buys books from small presses. Everyone should have at least one they support.
Posted by Julia on 2 December 2002 at 10:37 AM
Days merge at the moment. Tuesday feels like Saturday. Shops are open too late, and it's alright to drink sherry at ten in the morning. I am trying to keep up a routine in all this chaos, plodding to my room every day despite all the tinsel and merry making. Sometimes it seems more orderly to exist in a made up world rather than a real one, especially when the real one is so unruly. At least in my made up world I can have sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Characters generally do what I tell them to. You never know these days when some drunken office worker is going to bump into you in the street. And the streets in the real world are much colder than in my made up one.
Actually, I haven't been going out much, although I did have a sentimental hour hanging things on the artificial Christmas tree. It has less branches than it used to, but I like the way it is recycled over and over again. Soon it will just be a plastic stand and a stalk.
I hope you are all feeling mulled.
Posted by Julia on 10 December 2002 at 11:38 AM
So it's nearly Christmas. In my family we rent a house, so it's a bit like a holiday, and no one has a monopoly over the kitchen arrangements. Looks like I've finished everything I meant to finish, and it's a peculiarly neat year in that respect. I hope everyone who reads this diary has a lovely Christmas! I'll write more before I go, but now I've got to get in a taxi!
Posted by Julia on 16 December 2002 at 3:21 PM
This year I am sending cards telepathically to many friends....here it comes....ZIP!
I have finished everything and now I'm going off on holiday to a house by the sea. I hope everyone who visits this site has a brilliant time at Christmas, and let's hope there's no wars in 2003.
best wishes and glittery thoughts. Julia
Posted by Julia on 19 December 2002 at 11:51 AM
After Christmas is quite a delirious time. I'm never quite sure what to do. I've cleared up all the Christmas cards. I would quite like to live in a white box for a while. It's a good time for reading. This Christmas I read Jonathon Coe's The Rotter's Club, which I'd started before and lost interest. This time I ploughed on, and I really enjoyed it. Books are often like that I suppose. There's a right moment for each story. Anyway the Rotter's Club is all about the seventies and reel to reel tape recorders, and caring about politics. I was always walking about with a banner in the seventies even when I was about twelve. The only thing about it is I felt there were several unanswred questions which I think Coe intends to answer in the sequel, but which I find I can't stop thinking about now. I don't really like sequels.
Then I read Jackie Kay's Straw Girl, her first book for children. I loved it. It's full of sweet smelling cows and suffering and bravery. It's a fantastic read, and I'm going to give it to every child I know. Then, still feeling childlike, I read The Masters of The Slavery, which is the second book in a trilogy by William Nicholson. Last Christmas I read The Wind Singer. I liked the first book better. This one is rather war like, and reminded me of Gladiator, which he also wrote. I'm not really an action/fighting-loving sort of reader. His books are full of interesting ideas though, about power and societies etc. What shall I read now? A L Kennedy perhaps. Then I think I'll read Middlemarch. And lots of poetry.
I hope all my diary readers had a lovely time. I wonder what 2003 will bring? I'm looking forward to a peaceful writing year and hoping they'll be no wars, internally or externally or anywhere really.
Posted by Julia on 30 December 2002 at 4:16 PM
Epiphany. When everything comes together. In a short story it's the most exciting bit, when all the fragments of the story come together in an electrifying blaze of ideas. Still, it's a very hard thing to explain. I'm not sure novels have the same thing. In a novel it's more like a slow gathering of power as events gather together into one big wave. I'm reading Anita Shreve (have I spelt that right?). It's absolutely gripping...a novel called 'When We Last Met.' It's not my usual cup of tea...a heterosexual love story...but the writing is exquisite, and like all good writing, almost invisible, so that you can really live in the book as you are reading it. It really gathers power and is immensely satisfying to read. Someone gave it to me for Christmas, and now I shall read all her books.
One of my New Year's Res's is to read a new poem everyday, and to listen to what poets are saying. There are so many good ideas in poetry. I'm doing it alphabetically, starting with Armitage, Abse and allnut. I am also going to stop watching crap programmes on tv about success and failure, and abandon mass culture. This year I shall do all my shopping in small independent shops, buy books from small presses, listen to music produced in back rooms, and like the novelist Toby Litt said in the guardian, always put humans before inanimate things like mobile phones, tvs, cars, even nice views.
I'm happily working on the novel, lost in the world of it. I'm also writing some song lyrics. I'm not very good at tunes, but I love working with tune writers.
Posted by Julia on 6 January 2003 at 2:52 PM
In my last entry I spelt epithany wrong...but am I spelling it right now?I am filled with that vague uneducated feeling. I'm learning how to spell all the time. This is what happens when you leave school at fifteen and think you know everything. I am always trying to catch up. I really enjoyed doing an MA because I got MARKS for writing, and this is something you never get in the real world. I also found that I could enjoy writing essays and that it wasn't so difficult as scholary types like to make out. I am rather missing being educated, and fancy doing another course. For years I felt outside the education system. I grew up in an atmosphere of learning, in the centre of a public school where my father taught. There were boys with gowns everywhere, flapping about, knowing everything. As a teenager I slouched amongst them, chewing gum, trying to be streetwise, which I wasn't. I went to art college in the end, where it didn't matter if you couldn't do joined up writing, and oddly, that's when I started wanting to be a writer.
I'm about to do loads of readings. For the past year or two I haven't been doing any readings at all, partly because of health and fears of having a funny turn somewhere like Barrow in Furness, and also because I've been doing so much theatre and actors can read my words so much better than I can. But it's about to start all over again, as I've got loads of poetry gigs now I have a new collection to read from...oh eek...it's very exposing reading poetry, like tearing oneself apart in public. And I get a bizarre stammer on words beginning with M and A...and wierdly these new poems are choc a bloc with such words. What was I thinking? I'll probably find myself reading from the novel too later in the year..at least with prose if you see a tricky word coming you can change the sentence...but you can't do that with poems. The answer might be to sing the poems, rather than speak them...like Gareth Gates! Oh well...if I can't stand the heat I had better leave the kitchen.
I'm going to be on Front Row...or that other Radio Four review programme. We're recording on 24th Jan, so it will be sometime after that. I'll put it on the website. That will be fun..luckily I don't stammer on the radio!
Posted by Julia on 17 January 2003 at 1:10 PM
January seems rather busy. I'm never sure if being busy is a good thing. I try hard to relax, and I must have tried just about every form of complimentary medicine that exists. My main form of relaxation at the moment is looking at brochures of spas and amazing hotels, though I rarely go to any of them. I have acupuncture too. I find it really works. And I have an awful lot of baths at this time of year. But I'm still too hyperactive and find it very hard to do nothing. I think it's quite an art.
What I like best is going to places where I have no domestic responsibility. I'd be happy writing in a hotel!
This weekend I'm going to London to take part in Front Row, or maybe it's called Saturday Review on Radio Four. I'm looking forward to opining on various films and books. I've been listening to Lou Reed's latest cd, which I really like. He's quite a role model for the older rock star I think...still very original.
Otherwise, I'm reading Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and enjoying it immensely.
More later...
Posted by Julia on 23 January 2003 at 6:16 PM
So I went to London, and sat watching About Schmidt in Covent Garden in the afternoon. In my quest for relaxation it seems that sitting in cinemas is a good wheeze, especially if one is being paid for it. The film was fantastic. I never really liked Jack Nicholson that much, but he's really good in this film. It's so well written. Then I went to Broadcasting House and was quickly ushered into a recording studio, where I did my best to have opinions. It's very hard to converse in those situations. The other participants made statements that sounded very well thought out. I seemed to dart into the discussion with quick quips. Still it was good to have all these things to think about in January, and it was all over quite quickly.
I met my agent and realised that the new novel comes out in June! Usually books take years to reach the shelves, so that you've just about forgotten them by the time everyone wants to ask you questions. June will be a lovely time for a book to blossom.
Now I'm immersed in short plays/stories for Woman's Hour. There's always a deadline on the horizon.
Posted by Julia on 30 January 2003 at 10:20 AM
I am hurtling from event to event at the moment. Last Sunday we had an evening at Live Theatre when writers read from their work about the North, and picked extracts that explored 'Northern-ness.' It was a really interesting evening, with David Almond, Andrea Badenoch, Margaret Wilkinson and Sean O'Brien. Much of the work looked at our heritage of coal mining and industry, and hardly anyone talked about more recent changes in the Northern landscape. The question which was raised, but not answered, was what it meant to be a 'Northern writer.' All of us were very influenced by the landscape, even if we weren't native to the North East. I have been living here for years, and just about everything I write is based in Newcastle. The Taxi Driver's Daughter is set right in the city, naming particular streets and areas. I have never found that being specific about where something is based stops it becoming relevant to readers who live elsewhere. Andrea Badenoch said an intersting thing; that when you come from a place it is always much more complicated to describe than if you talk about somewhere as an outsider. I often think that my relationship to this city is a very emotional one, like a relationship with a person. Anyway, when we got to the discussion part of the evening the audience were unusually quiet. I wonder what they went away with?
There's been other events too...a reading of the poetry MA students from the university at the Literary and Philosophical Society. It was packed with people. It seems to me that poetry audiences are getting bigger at last. Next week the writers from the university are reading together at the Gulbenkian studio for Valentine's night. This event has involved much talking and rehearsing. We are trying to present poetry in a more inventive way than the usual lectern and shuffling papers method. I think it will be a really good night, with the poems creating a dialogue between writers, all on the wide subject of 'love.' I am going to lie on a sofa!
This Sunday Kathleen Jamie is reading at Live Theatre with Sean O Brien....Jamie is really one of my heroines as a poet. Her work is rich and direct and fiery and full of fearsome women. These events at Live Theatre are Free...what a gift!
I have finished reading 'Cold Mountain.' I can't stop thinking about it. It's a book that is full of hunger and food, and everytime I open a can of something I think about Inman eating a bear over a fire, or nibbling walnuts to stop himself from starving.Now I'm reading Michael Faber's latest book...a great heavy Victorian epic that is impossible to read in the bath as it's so heavy. The title has the words Crimson and White in, but I can't think of the order they go in.
I feel very lucky sometimes, to be able to live in this nest of words, and not have to do a boring job that I would like to leave but can't.
Posted by Julia on 7 February 2003 at 3:43 PM
I went to see my dentist yesterday who is also a guitarist. I was thinking about how nice it is as one gets older finding the right people to do things to you. I like my hairdresser too, and my acupuncturist. I suppose we all gather a little troupe of people who 'see to us.' My dentist came to the 'Valentines Poetry Reading' that I was involved in last night. There were six poets and two musicians all reading and singing about love in its widest sense. the reading had been directed by the dramaturg Duska Heaney, and we'd done lots of work reading the poems in different ways, like they were shopping lists, or directions to somewhere. She put us all on luxurious looking sofas, and we didn't speak between poems, so there was no rustling of papers, or talking about why we wrote the poems. This helped to make the reading wonderfully short. Poetry readings are very odd affairs...often you haven't the faintest idea what the poet is on about. Still, this one was very successful and we got a good audience. Actually, I think poetry audiences are on the increase. Perhaps it's because everyone feels a bit distressed at the moment and poetry is good medicine for complicated feelings. On Sunday Sean O Brien and Kathleen Jamie read at Live Theatre. It was a fantastic reading. Kathleen read poems about dolphins and whales, and Sean's work was as inventive and brilliant as ever. Poets have so many good ideas, all packed into tiny poems. When I'm writing fiction I think reading poetry is very inspiring. It is where all the best images and ideas come from...where language is being made.
Now I must get on with my radio stories. I keep thinking about the women's hour listeners. Once I went to hear Jenni Murray read at Hay on Wye from her book about the menopause. It was a hot day and the marquee was full of intelligent, grey haired,no-nonsense menopausal women who were all sweating and fluttering fans. Terrifying!
Posted by Julia on 13 February 2003 at 12:59 PM
I'm about to go on holiday to South Africa! Yippee. It will be really hot. We're staying in a place outside Capetown by the sea. There are baboons and surfers. Hard to imagine when you're in Newcastle in February. I shall return as a bronzed babe with sand between my toes.
This week I've has a rather busy social life. Wednesday was the PROUD WORDS AGM. THis is a year long festival of creative writing for lesbians, gays and bisexuals and friendly people. There are workshops and readings and other things. I was around when it began about four years ago. Now it's got accounts and a constitution and all sorts. I went down to do a poetry reading after AOB. I got given a beautiful glass bowl made by my friend Cate Watkinson as an award for services. It was unexpected and really lovely. Now I don't know where to put this wonderful objet d'art. I move it all around the house.
Rosie Lugosi, the vampire lesbian did a set of songs and poems on the same night. Although I'm a cocoa and pyjamas girl myself, she was very entertaining with her whip and wig (sounds like a pub).
On Thurdsay there was an art opening of paintings by Emma Holliday. Emma paints familiar places from around the area, like the Baltic, the river, buildings etc, and is a wonderful colourist. She is really producing some fantastic work at the moment. I met Clare and Shirley, who I said I would mention in my weblog...they were looking very well, I thought. I was glad to see that Emma had cheese and pineapple on sticks, as lately you seem to get nothing but crisps at such dos!
Now I must pack my flip flops and beach towels. Wish me luck!
Posted by Julia on 22 February 2003 at 9:22 AM
I'm back from an epic holiday on the Cape peninsular in South Africa. It was like being in a wonderful rock garden, with icy blue seas and rolling waves, and an abundance of everything...like fresh fish and mangoes. We visited Robben island where a former political prisoner showed us round Mandela's cell. the prison is more or less as it was, a harsh, uninviting place with a cruel history. We heard about how Mandela and others were treated and how they managed to get through the years. We visited a township too and were shown lots of projects that were helping people deal with AIDS and such. It was really inspiring how positive people were, but also shocking to see a country with such riches and so much poverty. From the top of Table Mountain the landscape is like a John Martin painting..you can see for miles in every direction....all blue and rocky and misty. It was an incredible holiday. I read about snakes and went to a snake farm. Also read The Horned Man by James Lasden...a wonderful and gripping novel which is full of delightful ideas, and Daughters of Jerusalem by Charlotte Mendleson...enjoyed that loads too...and Fortunes Rocks by Anita Shreve which was romantically gripping in a way that I might not have stayed with had I not been on holiday. Now I'm reading Mandela's autobiography.
Back at work again in my room...it's kind of nice to be back in cool England. My eyes ached with that bright South African light. I got my first migraine! Amazingly my body is doing very well though, and hasn't made much fuss at all about having to travel thousands of miles.
Posted by Julia on 7 March 2003 at 12:52 PM
Whooohooo! I'm feeling very giddy and excited after receiving my Northern Rock Writer's Award last night. It was a really lovely night. There was champagne and chocolates,and purple flower arrangements and not too many speeches. There were several writers receiving awards, giving them time to write, or acknowledging potential. I think the approval is easily as important as the money. Writing can be so lonely, and often you don't really know if it's any good or not. And even if you do write something good, you're never sure the next thing won't be crap. So these awards are like little surges of joy and affirmation for us insecure writers. I was very pleased to see all kinds of people winning things....writers who have spent years going to workshops and redrafting novels,like Diane Simpson , and writers who are just beginning, like the brilliant young poet Emma McGordon who read a riveting poem last night. And then there's creative geniuses like the novelist John Murray, who published my first collection of stories Bloodlines when he was the editor of Panurge Press. John lives in Cumbria and his novel Jazz etc has just come out. There's hardworking poets like Bob Beagrie and Maureen Almond who work their socks off doing readings and workshops and making literature LIVE. And there's new novelists who are trying to get there work out there, like the talented Avril Joy. Everyone who got a prize deserved it!
It was all terribly heartening. David Almond, who was presenting prizes said how lucky we were to be living in the North of England. I think we have a rare network of creative people here. Writers tend to know each other and to be very supportive to one another. I must have known almost all the writers who were there last night. We are lucky that there is enough to share, and I hope that most writers feel supported and included even if they didn't win this time.
My award is overwhelmingly generous. It's like being given a wage to be yourself...it's a kind of fantasy that never usually happens. Anne Stevenson, the poet who won the award last year said the difference was entirely psychological. She was able to bask ! Although most things I do are not for money, primarily, the award will give me the ability to stand back and look at the big picture. I have not had a regular wage since 1985! Anyway, what a happy thing to happen! Maybe I've died and gone to heaven!
Posted by Julia on 12 March 2003 at 2:48 PM
I've reached the end of the whooping period and I am back into mt settled routine. It seems to me it's got more settled since I won the award. It's a very odd sensation to know that I'll have a wage in two years time. I feel calm and purposeful! How long will this last, I wonder? I am just finishing my short plays for Women's Hour, and we record them at the beginning of April in Manchester. I am looking forward to being in those studios again and working with the producer Sue Roberts, who is fantastic. Then, when those are done I must concentrate on the new book, which at this point is full of delightful possibilities, and is of course, staggeringly brilliant..ha ha.
Lately I've been asked to make all kinds of comments about books in the press...my top ten North Books...under rated and over rated books....books that leave me cold...and ones that I would take to a desert island. It's very difficult to choose ones favourites....for one thing it changes all the time. I agonised over the top ten, as there are so many writers here in the North East..if you pick up a stone they all scuttle out. I am always discovering work I enjoy, or else suddenly understanding work that I hadn't connected with before. And if I don't like a book then I usually give up and stop reading it, so how can you criticise something you haven't read properly?
I am reading Ann Tyler's The Accidental Tourist at the moment. Actually, when I got back from South Africa I felt a bit stuck, and couldn't think what to read next. I ploughed through Mandela's autobiography which he wrote on Robben Island. For seven years he wasn't allowed a pen! Still, he got to end of it. It was interesting to read the book so soon after visiting the prison, though it feels quite formal as a book...like he is, I suppose.
After I finished it, I couldn't think what to read next. I hate that with reading...when you suddenly find yourself in a cul de sac. You know there are a million fantastic books waiting to be read, but you can't find the right one. My solution to this problem is to return to something classic. Tyler's novel are more or less perfect as far as I'm concerned.
If anyone out there is reading this please recommend a novel for me to read next. Tell me why it's good! I don't like violence, too much small descriptive print, too many facts, or books that set out to be funny. I love novels that take me to a new landscape...books like Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier) and Postcards (Annie Proulx) Under The Skin (Michael Faber) and books that introduce me to characters who I would never meet in the normal run of things.
It's a beautiful Spring Day. Everything would be fine if they weren't dropping bombs on Bagdad. My daughters are very politically active in the anti war campaign, and they are shocked that the war still goes ahead despite all their protests. I think the new generation will be shaped by these awful events. I was thinking about those caves where Bin Laden might still be hanging out...perhaps Saddam will end up there...perhaps all the baddies will end up living underground, bumping into each other at night. Also, someone said the other night, Tony Blair looks more and more like a wolf.
Posted by Julia on 21 March 2003 at 12:37 PM
I'm working on a new novel now. I can't talk about the details incase I confuse myself. It's like starting a long journey..inventing the characters who I will have to travel with, and making an inventory of useful things to take with me, trying not to fall into the traps of other novels. Most important is to give ones characters motivation, because if you don't the whole thing collapses by page 50. Also to decide what one wants the reader to worry about ie the hook. Then to uncover the language and tone of the novel, which is perhaps the most difficult thing of all.
Exciting though...like exploring a new country and working out how to live there!
The other thing that has happened recently is that we've had a rat in the house. This has caused unimaginable disorder and panic. Ratty bites through pipes and wires, and has ruined the cooker. He's made nests out of dusters and chocolate wrappers. It is a very clever rat, but not clever enough to LEAVE now we're onto it. Alan the rat catcher comes round regularly with his buckets of poison in a blue hold all. He says things like...it could have up to ten babies...or, there's nothing like the smell of a dead rat next to a heating pipe....he's put down lots of red bowls filled with blue pellets. Today he is putting down traps, but Ratty keeps going. It has eaten whole boxes of chocolates, and emptied pans of potatoes. We no longer eat at home. It's crazy. I keep telling people I'm having problems with a rat, and they mis-hear me and think I'm saying 'I'm having problems with Iraq' !
Thanks to everyone who recommended novels. Perhaps you can give me some tips about getting rid of rats!
Posted by Julia on 27 March 2003 at 12:50 PM
I'm back from Manchester where we were recording the five women's hour plays. It all went really smoothly, with actors who seemed capable of using their voices to create the most subtle nuances in the text. I sat in the studio next to the producer, Sue Roberts. I love this producer. She has such a clear ear for things and everyone around her feels relaxed. Other people are sitting doing timings and tapping away at computers. It's all very efficient. Every so often Sue says something like, what do you think about changing this AND to BUT? The main thing is getting the plays the right length, and the other thing I needed to do was cut bits when they were too long, which nearly all of them were. Some of the plays are adapted from THE LAST POST which was a stage play I wrote last year. The actors who were in the stage version and the radio version had to stop acting so much. Radio is so intimate. You hardly need to put any expression into a voice to show anger,desire or whatever. Two of the plays were completely new, and I was most anxious about them as I hadn't heard them being read. Thank god they seemed to work ok though. The plays are broadcast everyday from 19th May.
You'll be glad to know the rat has gone. Everything is back to normal, if it ever is really normal. The rat's corpse is in a shoe box in the front garden, as I want to show the rat catcher that we've caught it. It turned up dead, you'll be glad to hear. Our cat dragged it about pretending that it had killed it, but actually it was the poison. But what a drama that was!
I went to see the film Frida last week. I enjoyed it alot. The clothes are beautiful, and I liked the way the film looked at her life and illness. Actually I found it quite
inspiring. It made me feel like being adventurous !
I am about to get really immersed in the new book. I have a story now, but the characters are still a bit misty and vague, like people I don't really know yet.
Posted by Julia on 3 April 2003 at 11:27 AM
I just went for a hospital appointment with Doctor Verril. This was to get the results of my scan. I wasn't looking forward to it, as in my experience results are usually bad. Also there's no point getting worked up, because the results might not be there, so I am very good at entering a dreamlike state when I go into the RVI. I read an article about Monica Lewinksky. The waiting room was eerily empty and the nurses were twittering and giggling in the corridor. The atmosphere was like a girls boarding school at half term. However Doctor Verril was there and we got called in quite swiftly. He read out the results which showed no sign of any mestatises (probably spelt wrong) at all. It's as if the cancer has dried up. There is a bit of fluid in my pleural cavities, but not enough to worry about. I asked him why and he said it could be anything. Still, good news. It means that I don't have to have any more treatment for a while. I believe that this remission is due to the combination of acupuncture, Doris the healer, and Doctor Verril, and me. Together I think we are a formidable team.
I am going off on another retreat this week to work on the new book. It's forming in my head all the time. I can't stop thinking about it. I keep turning over ideas about Northern Magic Realism too. Last night I went to listen to David Almond read at The Blue Room...his work inhabits a childlike world where the imagination interweaves with reality. I'm interested in that place, where truth and lies mix up together. I love his work. I just read (thanks Joanne) A True Story Based On Lies, a short Mexican novel by an author whose name I've temporarily forgotten. Her work inhabits the same territory.
I think this new novel will take me to South America!
Posted by Julia on 7 April 2003 at 10:05 AM
It hasn't rained for months! All my sunflower seedlings are drying up. Is this global warming or what?
I had a brilliant week away. I have realised that it doesn't matter how much time I have, I only write for roughly four hours a day, but what does make the difference is not having anything else to do in between. I really enjoyed lying about in pools of sunlight thinking about my characters. Or not even thinking about the book, just being vague and dreamy. I did loads, and feel really connected with the new book now.
Today it was the academic's writing group. We've been meeting for a long time now, and I look forward to the sessions which are every lunchtime once a fortnight. The group attracts all the nicest people from all over the university(!)...landscape gardeners, geographers,adminstrators, scientists, child psychologists. We meet up and write for half and hour, then read it out. Today we wrote about things that were found at the bottom of a lake. This was because Leazes Park Pond has just been dredged and there is a fascinating pile of muddy things in glass cases at the Museum of Antiquities. In the group we made up things, and one person wrote 'six ornamental gnomes' and nearly everyone wrote about these gnomes. Somebody said 'Well, if you'd told me I would spend my lunch hour writing about gnomes I wouldn't have come, but now I am so glad I did!"
It's all quiet again now the students have drained away. Easter always takes me by surprise. I have the proof of Taxi Driver's Daughter to read. It's wierd now it's a book, not a pile of paper. Books are such beautiful things.
Posted by Julia on 14 April 2003 at 7:01 PM
I am back from a week of visiting! I spent days in Brighton with my lovely sister and partner and her three children, seeing my mum too, and Kathy (who asked to be mentioned by name!) lying about eating fairy cakes in Queen's Park, hanging out in wierdy but nice teashops..particular favourite CONBERTS 16 Sydney Street where you could have sandwiches with the crusts cut off and tea served in proper china cups with all the silver accessories, strainers and so on. I had my eyebrows waxed, which has made me look surprised. According to my mum, if you want to say something difficult to someone, you should raise your eyebrows at them, and they won't mind. Mine are now constantly raised so I can say what I like!
After Brighton I went to London and my duaghter and I went to the Saatchi exhibition. One of the exhibits made me feel like throwing up...it was the cow's head and the flies. I also used my new eyebrows to complain about the cloakroom facilities which were your usual British messed up affair with a girl who looked about fifteen laboriously sticking labels onto bags with selotape, while a long, long queue silently fumed! The exhibition was such a mix of things. I was really fascinated by the sculpture Dead Dad, and kept returning to it. I liked the photographic images of Henry Vlll's wives. But some of the stuff looked downright MOULDY I thought, particularly all the pickled animals.
We went to the Tate Modern too where two cans of juice, and a couple of flapjacks cost £6.30 !! I loved the exploding shed, and enjoyed looking at old favourites like Matisse and Miro. After that I spent the rest of the time on my friend's sofa. I only like visiting people who I know well enough to lie on their sofas! I like London, but I tend to get lost and to walk in circles. I managed to leave my fat red mother's purse in the back of a mini cab, but the driver returned it the following day. What honesty!
It's nice to be home again. The rats have not returned.
Posted by Julia on 26 April 2003 at 7:07 PM
Happy May Day!!!
I got a new poetry anthology of socialist poetry in the post called Red Sky at Night, edited byAndy Croft and Adrian Mitchell. I haven't had time to read it properly yet, but it has a beautiful cover and I like the title too. Poets are doing their best to be useful lately, and I was pleased that the poet laureate has been so vocally opposed to the war. I suppose that in times of crisis people need poets to put things into words and to show how everything matters. The poet David Constantine was talking about this at a recent reading here in the university...how the same things happen to poets as happen to everyone...sad things, moving things, worrying things, but poets are compelled to write about it, and to try and communicate their experiences to others. More and more it seems that poetry is being promoted as first aid. There are poems to keep you sane, poems to help you stay alive, anti war poems, survival poetry. I have certainly used poetry as a way of understanding my own experience of cancer. Actually, it would have been very strange to have not had a creative outlet while I was having all that treatment. Where would all my worries and fears have gone??
I spent yesterday lunchtime having lunch with the panel of the city of culture. We had Newcastle Brown ice cream ! In the end I forgot about trying to enthuse about Newcastle, and I had a very pleasant chat with two of them about novels. We were sitting in a room that overlooked everything...the river, the bridges, Baltic, Gateshead. It must be wierd going around all these cities and having people talking to you about their achievements all the time! Still, although I am very fond of Liverpool, I think Newcastle/Gateshead is READY to expand and stretch its steely wings. It doesn't feel like a nostalgic city any more. It feels like a bouncy young person with loads of enthusiasm. I was thinking how we have changed so much in the time I have been living here. We know how to be ironic. We can have twenty balls in the air and not drop any of them!
Otherwise I'm busy on the next book. I am going to take my fictional characters to Brazil. So far I have been getting to know them in Newcastle, but we are going to go to Central Brazil and have an adventure. I am working on poems too, and trying to go into the space where poems are made every day. It's such a relief when one gets there, but very hard to open the door!
Posted by Julia on 1 May 2003 at 1:55 PM
I am obsessed with Brazil. I like saying the word to myself. This is because I am taking my fictional characters on a journey in this next novel. Luckily, it doesn't cost too much taking fictional people on holiday! So I've been reading about Brazil, meeting Brazilians, eating Brazil nuts, learning salsa dancing, drinking juice. This takes up plenty of time.
I am also making a stage play into a tv piece which is an interesting process, thinking about the small screen and what we see. It's hard to let go of words though. Nice to be able to get up close to people's faces. I have never had anything on television before, so I feel like a fumbling person who doesn't know the rules. This is a pilot episode for a comedy series, based on the play Attachments that was on last year. It's all about hoovers and artificial insemination. The play was too long so I'm cutting about half of it.
Otherwise I'm growing sunflowers and nasturtiums, and inviting people to come and raise their glasses at the poetry press launch on May 27th. I've been writing poems about salsa dancing and teenagers, and working on the synopsis for the new novel, although I'm not sure what will happen until I have been to Brazil. Everything is growing incredibly fast....
My reading has lost direction at the moment. I have about eight novels on the go and I'm not absorbed in any of them. Tomorrow I have a long journey on a train, so maybe I can get myself immersed then. I am going to Deptford to see an exhibition called INFALLIBLE (In Search of the Real George Elliot). I'm going to write a story for the exhibition's website. I like things like this, that introduce a different element to writing. I especially like working from visual art.
Must go....I have to have my photo taken next to a postbox (again!).
Posted by Julia on 8 May 2003 at 1:42 PM
It's Monday morning. I am in my writing room with the radio on about to listen to POSTIES. It's funny, listening to things when they are ON AIR....like being part of a huge invisible audience.
I spent the weekend in Leeds, having a break, with my mum. We stayed in a hotel called Quebecs that had very squashy beds and raspberries for breakfast, which I still think of as a luxury fruit. It was interesting being a tourist in a Northern city. I mean you could become a tourist at any point couldn't you, just by stepping out of your life, putting on a hat, walking slowly and hanging about art galleries and craft shops. I am going to do it in Newcastle. Anyway, we went to odd places, like a small independent cinema in Hyde Park with ancient seats and a red dust screen curtain. Before the film we sat in a cafe called Bakara (I think) where students drank mint tea and smoked medicinal hookahs in low sofas. Everywhere we went people were incredibly kind and helpful, telling us how to get to places and giving advice. We also went to the City Art Gallery which is full of sofas and comfey places to sit. There was a model of Anthony Gormley's 'brick man' which is a large angel of the north type sculpture which hasn't yet been made. I was doing a project taking photographs of my thumb in different settings, so I have photos of my thumb in a hotel bed, in the markets, in the gallery and so on. This is my latest idea for a writing workshop...you write postcards from parts of the body in different places ie my Shins in Spain!
This week I am working on the script for the tv thing. It's taking shape now, and is no longer a stage play at all.
Posted by Julia on 19 May 2003 at 10:04 AM
Sudden Collapses In Public Places has been launched. It was a fantastic party, with strawberries in glasses of champagne, and singing and violins, and loads of bubbly people. I really enjoyed myself. Sometimes parties are rather stressful, but this one wasn't. It was great to see people there from all kinds of different places; from the hospital, the medical school, the theatre, the university, and writing groups. There were old friends, other women who have had breast cancer, new friends, poets, children, some babies, healers, people's mothers, artists, scientists...etc etc. And it was quite short, which is always a good thing I think. So now the book has set sail and I can let it go. I like the look of it very much. I think ARC have done a wonderful job.
I am doing the final tweaks on the script for the TV sitcom based on the play 'Attachments' which is being filmed in July. I have managed to cut the original play by twenty minutes, but the wierd thing is, the story is still more or less intact. The stage play now seems like a big baggy thing. I think alot of things could do with a bit of fierce cutting (my hair?).
Thanks to recommendations I am now reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It's very readable, although I feel I need a good stretch with it somewhere, like a deckchair on a shady beach. I long for that feeling of being completely absorbed in a book. Life has been too fragmented lately for much lying about. I am like a wound up thing...I get more and more busy until I whiz out of control and have to do nothing for a while.
Thanks everyone who got in touch after listening to POSTIES on the radio. It's great getting feedback after radio things!
Posted by Julia on 28 May 2003 at 9:58 PM
A sad couple of days....Newcastle/Gateshead didn't win the bid, which was disappointing. But I've been thinking about good things about not winning (being an optimist). For example, there will be less car parks, coaches,and less hyped up events, and less tourists. Probably there will be fewer bouncy castles, men in suits talking into megaphones, less fireworks which frighten dogs.There will be less property developers, and luxury flats, and we won't have to say Capital of Culture all the time, which is a bit of a mouthful. Also, it's always true that losers are more interesting than winners...as my daughter Florence said, look at Liberty X ! And why do we need to be picked? Why don't we just pick ourselves and say we're the centre of anything we like. And why are we being so competing anyway? Why can't there be creative cities everywhere. I was thinking about how brilliant Gateshead is, the way they have just carried on doing brave arty things without needing to be approved of by anyone from the outside. That's what I don't like about the Brian Sewell stuff (the art critic who has been bad mouthing Newcastle Gateshead)...I mean, who cares what he thinks? He doesn't care what we think of London. It's a funny, complicated thing, this loyalty to places. It gets you right in your gut. It's how wars start. Thank god we didn't win....we would have got all jingoistic and hysterical. Let's just get back to what we were doing anyway.
Yesterday I did a poetry reading in Gateshead for an organisation called Equal Arts, who do brilliant work connecting artists with older people. This event was part of a project called 'Being There' and the audience were all brought to the venue in free taxis. I was reading from Sudden Collapses In Public Places, and Maggie Thacker and Charlie Buchanan were singing and playing songs in between poems. It was a really well organised, happy event. I would definitely take part if I get old. They will be going all over the place; art galleries, music events. Tonight I am reading at central library with the poets Annie Wright and Linda France. I am getting to know the poems now, and enjoying reading them. They feel quite truthful! I always worry about poetry readings; about going on too long, or boring people. In this case the poems are all about my experiences of breast cancer and hospitals, so I hope I'm not frightening people. I really like doing evenings with music, as it changes the atmosphere.
Got to go....I'm meeting someone for lunch. I keep meaning to write a guide to cafes in Newcastle. I am an expert. Love J
Posted by Julia on 5 June 2003 at 11:49 AM
I've just had a week away again, writing and not doing much else...well, listening to the wireless, thinking, eating little snacks, the odd stroll...It's quite hard coming back from these weeks. I need to decompress or something. It's like walking into a gale of demands. Ordinary life is so complicated, with shopping and phones and trying to be a good mother, and appointments and so on. So many female writers with children are pulled in two directions. A voice inside you tells you off for wanting to go and live in an imaginary world, when one should be dealing with real issues. And one's children are so fascinating and interesting and all consuming! Jane Austen, George Elliot, the Brontes, Jean Rhys were all childless.
I'm reading a book called the Wind Up Bird Chronicle now by a Japanese writer (I haven't got the book with me now, and I'm afraid to make a spelling attempt). It's completely compelling, yet very strange. It's the kind of writing that gathers force as a the reader gets deeper into the book. I really love it, although at the beginning I kept falling asleep after one page. I am also reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Folding Star which is a fascinating book. I'm interviewing him at Proud Words lesbian/gay/bisexual literary festival this Saturday in the Copthorne Hotel in Newcastle. Proud Words has got loads of events coming up (Sarah Waters, song writing workshops) and they're all free. If you live in the North East and feel a bit bisexual you'd be mad to miss it!
Cold Calling (which used to be Attachments) gets filmed for tv in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing the set and the recording in front of a live audience. Otherwise I'm just writing the novel and getting ready to go to Brazil. It should be lovely and simple and uncomplicated, but of course it isn't!!
Posted by Julia on 18 June 2003 at 10:26 AM
Of course the novelist I talked about last time (the Wind Up Bird Chronicle) is Haruki Murakami. I'm suddenly aware how famous he is, and how many novels he has written. It's funny when you stumble across a writer you haven't heard of before, briefly thinking that you have 'discovered' them, only to find that they are world famous. When I used to go and spend time writing in Ireland at the Tyrone Guthrie centre sometimes American visitors would turn up, saying they were going to visit a poet called Seamus Heaney.
It's all steamy and jungly here in Newcastle. Summer is really here. I've been working on the new book, and some poems too.I'm very involved with the characters, Honor and Win, in the new novel now. They don't get on with each other at all. They seem to know what they want to do, and I find myself following their lead, rather than the other way round. Soon we will be going to Brazil together, so goodness knows what will happen then !
At the weekend there was the Proud Words launch (gay and lesbian literature festival), where Patrick Gale and Alan Hollinghurst read amongst others who picked excerpts from their favourite books. Alan and Patrick's readings were both very good and interesting. Alan read from an unpublished novel called The Line Of Beauty....a really wonderful bit of writing, I thought. The next day I talked to him about his work infront of a small (and beautifully behaved) audience about writing, editors, publishing and gay literature. I didn't know his work that well before meeting him, but felt I learnt alot about his process and want to read more. Proud Words is a great festival, and it's all free. Sarah Waters comes up next week, and there's lots of other stuff on.
There's also been the gypsy festival at Northern Stage. I went down to hear some free music at the playhouse. There were people from all over Europe there, playing and dancing! Black Eyes Roses is Northern Stage's devised production and it's really worth seeing; full of energy and invention with great stories.
Posted by Julia on 24 June 2003 at 7:58 PM
I'm doing my tax at the moment. It's a very odd activity; a mixture of nostalgia as one holds up crumpled receipts and remembers having two cokes and a bowl of olives in Athens, and sometimes fury as I realise how much I've been paying for the sodding internet. Then there's a delightful sense of order as the pile of receipts lessens and all the columns of ingoings and outgoings neaten up, and you can start adding up. I still add up using my fingers. I am not very numerically literate at all. Anyway, when all this is done , off it goes to the accountant who will have to check my messy calculations. I like to imagine the tax inspectors perusing my odd expenditures. Does he examine my receipts and tut over my indulgences? I seem to spend rather alot on beautifying my office (rugs, picture frames) and I buy a hell of a lot of stationary (I really do). Can I claim, say, for a bicycle bell as part of my expenses? It's hard to manage a working life without a bicycle bell! And what about reflexology, acupuncture, gym membership? Then there's the vague category of 'research.' Most writers could argue that they are researching all the time. I spend hundreds of pounds on books and I'm hoping they are part of my allowances. It's hard for writers as our incomes are completely unreliable..one year you earn nothing, the next you might get a book deal and seem to be doing rather well. Most books take years to write, so we have to argue that our earnings should be spread out over years. My best tip for self employed people, and the only one I have done consistently, is to write each month on a large envelope and as you buy things stuff the receipts in the right envelopes. It saves days!
Tonight I am going to do an evening at Bishop Auckland Town Hall, talking about writing. I have always been very fond of Bishop, of the people there and the library. There's a thriving writer's group,(Wear Valley Writers) and a constant stream of writers reading and running workshops and book related events. This is all because of the brilliant Gillian Wales who runs the arts programme there. As usual, one person with a passion quietly changes the world around them.
On Saturday I am going to read with Jackie Kay at Hebden Bridge. I'm doing quite a bit of reading and talking at the moment. However Brazil is not far away, and it's nice doing some talking about ones work.
Outside it's raining. I must get back to my April receipts! Is underwear a necessary expense for a writer?
Posted by Julia on 2 July 2003 at 11:16 AM
Feels like we're all in the throes of Mid summer madness! I've been up late dancing, and carousing, in the wild gardens of Newcastle, and you don't even need a cardigan! Everyone is sweating, which is nice if you get hot flushes, or less lonely anyway.
And I'm getting ready for Brazil, and have been packing my fictional character's suitcases for them. Also, down at Live Theatre, the play Attachments is becoming the tv comedy Cold Calling. It's been shortened down to 23 minutes (from 45 mins). There's a whole HOUSE been built for it, and a new hoover (the play is about a hoover salesman, sudden death, and artificial insemination). It's been filmed infront of a live audience. It's interesting, this journey from stage to screen. The actors are doing brilliantly (Trevor Fox and Charlie Hardwick), and the characters are becoming more intense, more undiluted, less dramatic and more internalised.
On Sunday it was the annual Pride Dog Show, and I am glad to say that Heidi, the dog who we share with our neighbours, won three rosettes: for looking like one of her owners (not me). For 'best trick' (rolling over) and she did very well on the obstacle course thingy. I was sitting about eating cake and drinking thermos tea. I was disappointed that she didn't do better in the fancy dress...she was wearing tennis whites and carrying a tennis racket....but Harry Potter won, with a 'hot dog' as a second.
I just read Property, the novel that won the Orange Prize. It's a really good read and the kind of book you can whiz through in a few hours. The central character is interesting,fascinating and I didn't like her much. It's the kind of novel that is very heightened and intense. I also read 'The Lovely Bones' in a couple of days (Alice Sebald). This is a very special novel, I think, and beautifully written. I'm reading Murakami's stories which are strange and compulsive. I want to find more Murakami readers and ask them what they think his work is about. I don't know what to read in Brazil. Life of Pi maybe? Maybe I will be too busy doing the samba on the Cococabana?
Posted by Julia on 15 July 2003 at 12:49 AM
I just wrote this then lost it all, so this entry will be the quick version. I'm in Rio in a long blue internet cafe full of young Brasilians gleefully playing computer games. Outside it's the most perfect balmy day, a sort of golden Autumn, with a slight breeze. Me and my fictional characters are far too happy...it will be hard to make much conflict in this story. We've been cycling along the beaches on rusty bikes hired from a man who just gave us some bikes and told us to leave them outside the hotel. No names, no deposits, no nothings. You can cycle for miles along the beach paths, past people dancing to ghetto blasters, selling coconuts, jogging, showing off their biceps and playing football. You could watch people all the time. It's endlessly fascinating and uplifting. No sign of any gun men, or women, and no one has hassled us at all. The most dangerous thing is a taxi ride...we went the wrong way down a dual carriage way yesterday...but even that becomes oddly normal.
We went up a steep hill, past shrubs filled with flowers like bright scarlet lips, to see Christ The Redeemer who looks over Rio with a kind, bemused expression. You can drink any kind of juice in the world here...cashew juice, seaweed juice...
We've been dancing, trying to move our hips and not our bodies. There's music everywhere. Found out about a church called The Chrurch of Moses Snake That Ate The Other Two. This will, I think, be my working title. More later.
Posted by Julia on 21 July 2003 at 3:18 PM
I'm in Rio again, after a journey to Brasilia, then up to the mountains where I saw a healer. The visit was odd, and hard to assimilate somehow. A Brazilian friend drove us up to 'the casa' which in a one horse town with one wide dusty road, flanked by garages and bars. It was the kind of place you pass through on the way to somewhere else. We drove down some back streets to a pousada which was clean, very dark inside, friendly and basic. No one spoke English. I have longed to be able to speak Portugese on this trip. Our Brazilian friend sorted out what we were supposed to do. You went to the casa, to see the healer, at 8.00 am, and all would become clear. We were to wear white, and on no account should we wander into the crystal garden without the healer's permission. So, after going to bed at about 9.00 pm ,as there was no night life in this tiny town, we put on our white pyjamas that we had bought at C and A in Brasilia, and found ourselves wandering down the dirt road along with several hundred other white clad people. It was like dreaming, or like we were being summoned by aliens. The casa was a cluster of simple white and blue buildings, rather like a hospital. There was a garden, a cafe, a large hall, and a dispensary. Everyone shuffled into the main hall, waiting for instructions. There were helpers dressed in blue coats who spoke English. Everyone was patient. many people looked very ill, and desperate. there were poor Brazilians, Americans in coach loads, children, people in wheelchairs. I glanced into a room and saw a pile of discarded crutches.
In the large hall there was a film of miracuklous operations being played continuously. This showed the healer cutting tumours, or just reaching into people's bodies as they stood calmly on a platform. It was quite hard to watch. there wasn't much blood, and no one showed any signs of pain. After the operations people were sewn up with large needles. The healer is doing these operations unconsciously...he is occupied by spirits. No one gets infections.
So we waited in queues, divided up according to how many times we had visited the casa. I was holding a red ticket, standing in the first timers queue. We waited for three hours. In the end we shuffled into rooms filled with meditating people. These were called the current rooms. You moved through these, concentrating on positive thoughts, as we had been told to prepare ourselves to meet the healer. In the last of three rooms he sat barefooted, looking quite relaxed and not like a star at all. Apparently he sees each person like a blueprint. He glanced at each of us, then scribbled a note which gave an instruction. This might be to take herbs, to meditate, to lie on a crystal bed, to have an operation, or, like me, to return at 2.00 as he couldn't make his mind up, or the right spirit wasn't available. My friend was told to come back and to sit in the current rooms.
So that afternoon I waited in the 2.00 pm line until 3.30 pm, then was told I would have an operation and to take herbs. This was to be an invisible operation, not a slicy open sort.
I will continue this later....internet connection has nearly run out!
Posted by Julia on 30 July 2003 at 3:46 PM
I'm back home. I suppose I could invent all these journeys and be in bed the whole time! But I really did go to Brazil. Honestly. To finish off the story about my operation; I went again into the current rooms, dressed in my white C and A pyjamas. Again the rooms were full of meditating people, all sitting closely together in rows, eyes closed. About twenty of us shuffled through. In the last room there was a young woman sitting hissing like a snake. We were told by helpers to stand with eyes closed with our hand on the part of our body that needed healing. All I could hear were mumbles and hisses. A few minutes passed. Then we were ushered out of the building and told to take a taxi back to our pousada, to rest, to take our herbs, and to avoid certain foods and alcohol. I did what I was told. I was feeling very tired, but hungry too. We went back and played rummy in the dark back room. I lost by five points. Can you believe it? I have never won a game of rummy. Then I slept deeply, still in the white pyjamas. The next day I had been told to stay and rest, but I felt really ill. All that day I was sick. I couldn't move. Eventually that evening we left the pousada and got a taxi back to Brasilia. I was sorry not to say goodbye to the people at the casa. As soon as we got back I started feeling better. I don't know why I was sick....maybe the altitude, the dry air, the anxiety about seeing the healer. Now I am home I keep thinking about the casa. I think it was a place of miracles. Believing this makes my whole belief system feel shaky. So if this is true, so must so many other things be true too....ghosts, reincarnation, heaven, aliens. It's making me dizzy. When you see things you don't understand, like the visible operations, it's easier to blank them out than to really take them on.
Anyway, it's nice to back with PG Tips, marmite, custard, and Bad Girls. Life is sweet, that's for sure.
This week I am going to work on the new novel. After all the travelling I ache to be writing again, or if not writing, just sitting and contemplating the territory of the book. But it's a busy week. Taxi Driver's Daughter is published on Thursday. I'm doing an interview with Jenny Colgan on Radio 4 that day.
Oh, books I read while travelling were...Life of Pi...just loved this book. I am glad it won the Man Booker. It's wierd and thoughtful, and wonderful. Barbara Vine...Dark Adapted Eye, or something like that. Awful I can't remember the title, as I was utterly gripped. It was about a woman who had been hung for murder, set during the war. I woke up in the middle of the night, feverish to read it. Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell is such a good writer...such good descriptions of life and manners in 40s. Also, Interpreter of Maladies (short stories) brilliant stories by an Indian writer, full of heart, joy and sadness. I don't Know How She Does It. This bestseller by Alison Pearson was all I could find in a Brazilian bookshop...I enjoyed it, even though I thought I wouldn't. She writes very intelligently about the guilt of mothering, and I laughed out loud several times, even if the heroine works for the stock market. I'm not surprised working mothers are grabbing it off the shelves.
Posted by Julia on 3 August 2003 at 11:21 PM
I've been biking down the Thames on one of the hottest days of the year with my mum, Vic, and best friend Jan. This is the first time I have been on a bicycle since being ill, and it felt like returning to my old self. We met outside the Tate Modern and whizzed off past the Globe and down towards Greenwich. There is something about being on a bike that makes one feel like a kid again...all that wheeling in between things, bumping over kerbs, leaving walkers behind. We stopped to watch a Nigerian wedding, waited hours for the bride to arrive, because it's supposed to be lucky to see brides. From Greenwich we went through the foot tunnel, which was icy cool and dripping, and came out in the Isle of Dogs. From there we went through Canary Wharf with it's big glassy towers and found the canal which tok us back to Islington. This was like the under belly of London...a long scummy waterway, with fishermen (I've never seen a woman fishing) boys throwing stones at rats, dark low bridges, and bits of industry. Every so often we would pass the back of someone's house where someone was playing loud reggae music. It was a memorable ride. I love exploring the secret parts of London.
Now I'm back at my desk, though about to go on the annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Wight (crabbing, Compton Bay, fish and chips, Yarmouth Carnival sports day) I can't quite jump back into the new novel until I have a big enough space. Cold Calling has been on the telly. Because of the heat the picture kept on fragmenting which was maddening. Still, it was succesful in lots of ways....I learnt alot about television writing...like, it's what's going on INSIDE the actors head which matters most....I have never cut a script so close to its bones. I was yet again overwhelmed by the talents of actors Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox.
Also Taxi driver's Daughter arrived in shops on Thursday. I've had some really lovely reviews...one in the TLS that talked about all kinds of details in the novel...the kind of stuff that no one seems to notice usually. For anyone who saw Independent piece...my partner is called BEV not Pat, and I have a very important sister, Josie, as well as three brothers. Also it's the Northern Rock Writers Foundation which is different from the bank. And the poetry is published by ARC not Anvil! For all that I really enjoyed that interview, and liked the journalist very much.
May all your Summers be breezy...!
Posted by Julia on 12 August 2003 at 3:13 PM
I'm on my yearly visit to the Isle of Wight, woken each morning by wild geese flapping their wings and organising their travel arrangements in the marshes next to the old Mill House where I'm staying with my vast tribe of family and friends. I am feeling very grubby, like an old hippy. My hair sticks up and I haven't looked in a mirror for days. The highlights of summers in the Isle of Wight are things like sitting watching sunsets while children catch crabs in the river Yar, riding along the old railway line on my (new) bike; eating huge suppers around a large table each night, then playing games when you have to pretend to be animals (thankyou Jack). I have been reading constantly....The Curious Incident of The Dog At Midnight, by Mark Haddon....this is fantastic...a book written from the point of view of an autistic boy. My sister and I agreed that we felt what it was like to be autistic reading this book. It's quite dark and sad, although you think it will be happy when you begin it. Also Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson...very gripping, set in a place not unlike the IOW. Her language is so taut and accurate. And The Colour, by Rose Tremain...bloody fantastic, like all Tremain's work. She should win the Booker I think.
Anyway, it's been nice being on the Booker longlist. I wonder if I shall put a bet on? I think the Dog at Midnight will get onto the shortlist, also probably Margaret Atwood, Coetzee, and now I can't remember who else is on. We have been discussing it like mad round the table at the Mill. It's great that they don't decide the shortlist until 16th Sept, as it's a long time to go around carrying a little flutter. I am very pleased that my friend John Murray is on with his book Jazz Etc. We can flutter together!
I am dying to get back to the new novel....although I love holidays, towards the end I get a bit nervous. If I stop writing for a bit then I fear I won't be able to do it again! Anyway, I had better go...we're all going for a walk along the cliffs to Alum Bay. Maybe I will brush my hair.
Posted by Julia on 28 August 2003 at 11:28 AM
Last night was the event at APARTMENT, with paintings by Emma Holliday and poems by me. It was a great place, very swanky, with low sofas and cushions. I particularly like venues where I can lie down if necessary! There were hundreds of lovely people there...everywhere you looked. Then at about eight o clock, it suddenly became a night club and all the lights dimmed. I find Emma's paintings very exciting and alive. I hope we can do some more collaborating...I would like to tag along when she takes her easel somewhere, and sit on the grass/sand/a nearby bench with my notebook. I find the best thing about working with artists is that it creates a whole new seam of work that wouldn't happen without the inspiration of another's visual eye.
I am working on the new novel again now, and also beginning the research for a new play for Live Theatre next year about Red Spot Babies. In the forties health authorities realised there were more infant deaths in the North east than anywhere else, so they set up a health survey, taking a thousand babies in the area and following their lives and environments closely right up until today. So there is masses of data and information about all these people. The play could be about so many things. Anyway, next week I am visiting a 90 yr old who was a home visitor/nurse for the project. It's all very interesting, and I have no idea yet what the play will be about.
I'm reading Brick Lane by Monica Ali. It's a marvelous book. I long to return to it. The only thing I don't like about it is that large parts of it are in italics. I really dislike italics when I am reading, as they get in the way of being 'inside' the story...you are always thinking 'Here I am reading italics.'
I have had a cheerful thought about the booker longlist. The writers who do not make the shortlist will be wonderful company as there are so many good books on the list.
I am all over the place this Autumn: Kings Lynn, Derby, Ilkley, Cheltenham, Belfast, Hebden Bridge, Cockermouth, Warwick, Hull and York. Many complimentary soaps, English breakfasts and hand shakes.
Posted by Julia on 9 September 2003 at 11:41 AM
Oh well, I wasn't on the Booker shortlist, but never mind. It was very tense waiting for the announcement....almost impossible not to care. When I heard I felt great relief which was peculiar. I can go back to writing and stop worrying. Still, I think the list is quite an interesting one, although I am sorry that the Curious Incident of the Dog at Night time isn't there. I am enjoying the Good Doctor by Damon Galgut. But I miss the fluttery feeling I had, and I feel as if I have forgotten something.
Now I am back in my room, trying to write 1000 words a day. Actually that's not so much, but it can feel like a mountain. If I go away on a retreat it's easy to write much more than that. I have also realised that I far prefer writing longhand, then typing it up. It's as if the distance from brain to paper isn't so huge than from brain to type.
I have also started research for my play about Red Spot Babies. I have interviewed a 90 yr old home visitor, and been reading through books about the study of 1000 families. There is alot of stuff about mothering, less about fathers. The main result of the research was that poverty killed babies, not ineffectual mothers. It's interesting stuff...but I have no idea yet what the story will be.
This afternoon I am going up the coast with Emma H...she is going to paint, while I scribble notes. It's such incredible, warm weather it seems mad not to get out of the city.
Posted by Julia on 17 September 2003 at 11:46 AM
First I cut my foot on a shard of glass in a bed and breakfast in King's Lynn. I was about to do a poetry reading, but the glass splinter was embedded in my sole, so I had to get the pale faced proprietress to help me, and she didn't look very keen. But I got out the glass with her old darning needle and limped on to recite poems in a beautiful hall right next to the Great Ooze River, while a russian trawler did a three point turn. But still my foot throbs. Perhaps it is infected.
Then I was running a workshop in County Durham, and on the way there got crashed into by a young man from Spennymoor. I wasn't driving...my friend Maggie was. The noise was incredible. Her car is a write off and our necks are very stiff. But luckily, we are unhurt. In the squealing moment before the crash I thought...how ironic, to die in a car crash after all that cancer treatment! But we are not at all dead, even though I felt my brain shoot forwards in my head, as if it had come loose from its stalks, and later felt a bit delirious. I still carried on with the course. I enjoyed it. It was only later that I felt a bit peculiar. I would probably carry on even if my leg dropped off. I have the most intense work ethic. I can't bear to be late, or to be ill. This is a good and a bad thing. Good, because it makes me quite positive, and I don't tend to lie around much. Bad, because it's often stupid, and shows how much I live in my head, not my body.
The novel races on. I'm writing about Brazil now. Yet I am still deciding what it's really about.
Posted by Julia on 29 September 2003 at 2:26 PM
Well, that's National Poetry Day over with ! Not that I think it's a bad thing, although the poems on the Today Programme were AWFUL I thought. I spent the morning backstage at the Theatre Royal, holding my newly commissioned poem (Small Things In The Cupboards of Long Relationships) in trembling hands. I got told off for lying on a lavish bed that was a prop for the play, and for whispering. The cast of Arms and the Man read poems alongside me, Bill Herbert, Fiona Ritchie Walker and Bob Beagrie. There were also two schools that had been inspired and ralled by Maureen Almond and Ellen Phethean. There was even an audience! This had all been organised by New Writing North, who had disobeyed the national theme of 'Britain' (thank god) and chosen instead to commission poems about small things, and to celebrate detail, small presses, and how beautiful small things can be. I felt a bit dazed. I had been staying in a cottage in 'the debatable lands' or Reiver country. I had been immersed in the new novel, and thinking about it all the time. Writing became the main activity and everything else fitted around it, like eating and sleeping. So coming back was rather dizzying. Then, yesterday afternoon I was sent off to write about a small place. I cycled up to the West End, thinking I would visit an Asian Sari shop. However, no one wanted to talk to me up there. I think they thought I was a spy. So I ended up in the stuffed birds section of the Hancock Museum, feeling sad about how so many birds are nearly extinct, and writing a poem called Lost Birds of England. Bill H wrote about a barber shop, and had a neat haircut, Fiona RW went to the ladies at Central Station, and Bob B rode up and down the lifts of Fenwicks, then went and stood between giant headphones at Baltic. So we all did it, and read them out last night at the library. I felt much happier once it was all over. I am not sure pressure is my thing anymore. It made me feel quite hysterical. Now I am about to go to Derby, to take part in a festival there. I wish I could write my novel on trains, or in waiting rooms, but I seem to have to cut myself off to get anything done.
If anyone reads Mslexia, I am reading on 4th Dec, not 6th Nov at the university. God save me from botched arrangements. I dreamt about them all last night. I dreamt I couldn't find the train station.
Still, it's not so bad. We have had a new fireplace put in at home, and you just have to push a button for a cozy glow to fill the room. Amazing! And I am glad that Alex won Pop Academy, and that people are voting for larger, fantastic women on Pop Idol. And I am also glad that it's the pumpkin season, and I still want fireworks to be banned. Which makes me realise I have been doing this web log for a year, as my first entry was about hating fireworks. Fancy.
A webmaster adds:
The one about hating fireworks was actually your thirteenth entry!
Posted by Julia on 10 October 2003 at 1:08 PM
I am returned from a whole load of readings and hotel rooms. I started off in Manchester library...arriving late and bursting into the wrong room and announcing 'I'm HERE!" It was an adult ed course. When I finally found the right room I had a wonderful audience of smiling people. I really enjoy reading poems and talking about using poetry as part of a recovery process. Reading from the novel is much harder, as it's not really me who is speaking, whereas the poems are all about my experience. In Ilkley I read with Gordon Burn, stupidly trying to read a chapter that was full of dialogue. I read really badly, although I enjoyed the discussion. I am asked to speak about the novel and the North quite frequently. Gordon's book is also set in Newcastle,(The North of England Home Service) although he doesn't mention the place. I wonder what I would write if I lived in London? I do find the Northern landscape inspiring, and the rhythms of speech are completely familiar to me. However, I don't feel part of a school of Northern writers, even though I am a great fan of other writers up here, such as David Almond, Sean O'Brien, Andrea Badenoch, Gillian Allnut, Linda France, Debbie Taylor. I like living here, that's for sure. Anyway, that's what we talked about at Ilkley. Then I went to Cheltenham, and met my mum who came to stay with me in the delicious Kandinsky Hotel, where we ordered sticky toffee pudding and fruit salad late at night and happily watched tv from our huge luxury bed. It makes so much difference when you stay somewhere lovely when you go to do readings, and also having someone you love with you. The Kandinsky was very characterful and comfortable. The festival was good too...we went to see Don Patterson and Lavinia Greenlaw, and Blake Morrison. We hung out in the writers room, eating egg sandwiches and chocolate cake, and bought lots of books. We saw John Agard, Roger McGough, James Berry and Grace Nichols read in a theatre packed with children, and were a well behaved participating audience. Fred D'Aguiar was a guest director at the festival, and it was great to meet him with all his family. It was not like work at all. I did a discussion with Abdulrasak Gurnah and Tim Pears, in which we talked about writing and novels. Although I get nervous about these things I enjoyed this event, which was well hosted by Marcus Moore. After Cheltenham I flew to Belfast for 99p and joined a wild party of women celebrating my partners fortieth birthday. I loved the botanical gardens there, and we even went on a minibus trip to the giant's causeway, like a proper excursion. I spent rather alot of time in the jacussi and steam room. I am turning into a fish...I love all that stuff. Then after a day back home I got on another train and joined the novelists John Murray and Peter Plate at a writer's course at Arvon in Yorkshire, where I was guest reader. It was a very grown up, hard working course, and it was lovely to be there again, by the crackling fire reading in my socks from an armchair. I wish they would get a heater in the bedroom though! Then I was off again to Cockermouth , to read with the poet Henry Shukman. I am a fan of Henry's. I think his work is fantastic and authentic. We had a good crowd, and the next day I ran a workshop on 'Sympathy and Empathy' when creating fictional characters, which is much more complex than you would imagine.
Now I am home, and so pleased with myself for managing all these events without suddenly collapsing in a public place. I am writing a story for the Big Issue now, and next week I am going away to work on the novel. I have a new sofa in my writing room. Life is marvelous.
Posted by Julia on 29 October 2003 at 11:44 AM
Spent last week in what must be the ugliest castle in Scotland. it was pebble-dashed, stained green, with small windows. Like a large, castle-shaped counci house. Inside it was suprisingly warm, but rather like being in an Addams Family film set, with clanking doors, rattling windows, and towers and turrets. I was there with the lovely poet Linda France...we would have been just as happy in a little cottage with flouncy curtains, but the castle had been booked from a long time ago, and there were meant to be four of us there, but various things had got in the way. Strange though. Did plenty of work, and had lots of deep hot baths.
I had the dog, Heidi, with me as Newcastle is like a war zone with firework parties. I'm sick of it. What's it all about? People trying to own the sky?
While I was away I missed a programme ojn the tv called Does Healing Work.....did anyone out there tape it? I really want to find a copy. The new novel explores this territory.
No more news. It's hard to adapt to life after the castle. I keep walking into walls.
Posted by Julia on 10 November 2003 at 1:55 PM
You can see I have no idea of the date. No idea of anything really! Since I last wrote this log (that word is very Startrek) I have been to Warwick and Hull. Both were very enjoyable, although it took my friend and I several hours to find Warwick University. The campus hides between Coventry and Warwick in a tricky web of ring roads and lanes called things like Gibbet Hill. By the time we got there I was nearly speechless with fear of lateness, a quality that has always been with me, even when I was a teenager. It must be another category...early or late people, yet I have never seen the question in a quiz. My best category is radiators or drains...although both sorts of people can have drainish or radiator qualities. I avoid drains on the whole, and it's a very helpful way to live. Then there is always the fear that I may be a drain.
Anyway, once we got to Warwick Arts Centre, it was really nice. I had a lovely group of people in my workshop which was all about apples. This is partly because I love the vocabulary of apples, the smell, and the look of them. But although the workshop used apples, it was really about narratives within other narratives, and trying to think in circles, not lines.
Another thing about Warwick was that we hated the hotel. This is for various very easy reasons...
1. They gave directions to the hotel from the South only.
2. The room was too hot and you couldn't open the window.
3. My Caesar salad was just lettuce and tinned anchovies.
4. the chambermaids woke us up at 8.00 am on saturday morning.
I am becoming an expert on things I don't like in hotels. there is a smell I haven't given a name to yet, of some kind of cleaning fluid, and something else that is awful....but what is it? Infidelity? Loneliness?
So we went on to Hull, which is always a place I have liked. The Humbermouth Literary Festival was a very well organised affair, and we didn't have to stay in a hotel as we stayed with my friend's family (watched Pop Idol...I was glad about Andy). I was reading with Patrick Gale and Jake Arnott, and James Nash...all very interesting writers. We discussed reading habits...Patrick said if you get bored , just read dead people as they are cheap and always good...Jake said his father read obsessively throughout his childhood....I admitted that I can't stand italics. The audience was small, but they were ALIVE...you felt their characters filling the room. Perhaps it was because they were all avid readers.
I left feeling quite rejuvenated. Now I am back in my cave room, with the new sofa and my novel, a short story to finish for the Big Issue, and a pile of reading about the Red Spot babies. And I have just bought a furry jacket from TKMAX which is just the image I am after this Winter...a cowgirl gone to the dogs.....
If anyone reading this lives in Brighton, do come to a workshop I am running on 7th Dec...details on this website somewhere!
Posted by Julia on 19 November 2003 at 2:39 PM
I've been spa-ing.....me and my partner went to a luxury serenity qi enhancing ,pampering experience. It was a bit like being in hospital without being ill, and the food was alot nicer. We wandered about in white dressing gowns, and lay on heated couches having oils and creams rubbed in. I am always afraid that I will have head lice or some other embarrassing condition in such moments. Anyway, we ended up completely floaty and vague....I couldn't remember who I was. I particularly loved lying in the outside jacussi with Autumn leaves falling from the trees.
We have also been to London....we saw the huge yellow sun in the Tate Modern...it's a bit like being at the end of an epic film...all smoggy and Londonish..everyone in raincoats lying on the floor looking longingly at the golden globe...some of them rather elderly to be lying on concrete, I thought. Very beautiful, though.
We went to see an exhibition about living and dying at the British Museum. Our Brazilian friend Marcia pointed out that though the exhibition discussed many cultures, and how they dealt with illness and death, it didn't even mention BRAZIL, which is the queen country for rituals, healers, spells and magic. How strange. I didn't find out much from the exhibition. It seemed to be rather general, with big museum writing aimed at school children, but it made me think about my funeral again. I can never decide what I want for my funeral...the songs change daily....I wanted everyone to dance to GLORIA by Patti Smith last time I thought about it. I imagine a kind of party death, roomfuls of friends drinking champagne, but of course that's unlikely when one feels poorly. I would just like an unpredictable death...but not one of those falsely positive ones. Singing would be good, as long as it wasn't too churchy or girly. I suppose in the end death chooses, not us.
I love what Spike Milligan wanted (but didn't get) on his gravestone...I told you I was feeling ill.....Actually, after the spa experience I feel very well, if a little sleepy. It's been over two years since my last encounter with illness and I am beginning to forget about it again. I am certainly spending alot more time with my body than I used to....we know each other quite well now. I am always having it pampered and attended to. I still think acupuncture is the best treatment for just about everything.
I am trying to finish a story for the Big Issue...I wanted to write something jolly, but it's turned out rather sad. Then I will go back to the Brazilian novel. Oh, and I am going to Brighton on Dec 7th to run a workshop about poetry and recovery, so if you live around Brighton and would like to come, just drop me a line.
Marcia's husband Mustaver reads this weblog...HALLO! I never think that anyone reads it. Love J
Posted by Julia on 26 November 2003 at 12:25 PM
I spent the weekend in Brighton. It seemed to me to be the most glittering, magical place, with the floodlit pavilion, and great swarms of birds around the piers. It is the perfect place to set a novel, with lovely street names, and such nooks and crannies! I ran a workshop with a wonderful group of women, who were bursting with creativity, then I did a reading, organised by The South and Arc Press with the Irish poet Tony Curtis, who read and spoke beautifully about life and poetry. It was a very happy weekend. It's funny, because just before I go to places, I often feel a sense of dread and fear, but usually I love meeting new people and doing new things. Brighton was particularly nice because my sister Josie and her family live there. Also, years ago I lived there, after I left art college. I had a job working in the Lanes in a jewelery shop, and my best friend worked as a lifeguard down on the beach. We spent a year writing songs and struggling with the women's movement, being bullied by older girls, and sitting in vast frightening meetings. These were the days when women would storm into ones house demanding that one renounced the penis (Actually, I said I would, but my friend refused). We went on marches to reclaim the night, and stuck up the locks of porn shops with super glue. Now my daughter is doing a project about feminism and violent action ! That's me, I tell her! I was climbing the gates of parliament, and wearing Chinese trousers! Anyway, being in Brighton brought it all back. It was such a chance thing, leaving the South to come up North. I just hitch hiked up the M1, and never left. I wonder if I would have written books set in Brighton?
Anyway, I have a new title for the latest novel, thanks to the writer Bridget O'Connor, who should get an award for her capacity to think up titles...(she also thought up 'Crocodile Soup.') It's 'The Cure For Dying' What do you think?
This week I am working on 'A Film In A Week' down at Live Theatre. I spent the morning loafing about the coach station watching the cameraman and director sorting out angles. In the end I got a bit cold so I came to my writing room. One day I will get behind a camera and make my own wobbly film! Still, it's exciting to have a short script made...even if it is only three minutes.
Otherwise, like everyone else, I am full of Christmas nerve endings, like a faulty set of fairy lights.
Posted by Julia on 9 December 2003 at 2:08 PM
Oh, and I finished the story for the Big Issue...it's called The Nest and it will be in the mag this week, or next...
Posted by Julia on 9 December 2003 at 2:11 PM
Just had a meeting of my writing group for tired and lovely academics. We were writing in slow motion about eating mince pies, unwrapping presents, peeling potatoes, writing Xmas cards etc. I love this kind of writing...it's so interesting to listen to, even though it feels banale to write. It's also my best remedy for being stuck...just take a character and write about them doing anything in very tiny detail...like getting dressed, eating cake, catching a bus. The story is all there in the tiny little bits.
I keep thinking what a brilliant year it has been...I never expected to feel this healthy for so long and to enjoy myself so much. I have really loved writing this year...maybe because it's all got so much simpler since I have had a room in the English School, and had financial support from Northern Rock...or perhaps it's just getting older and knowing what I like.
I just got a copy of the new cover for Crocodile Soup from Penguin. I really like it...as if it's got anew outfit. It's completely different in atmosphere to the first cover and looks really new and interesting. I might even read it again myself! The new book has a title now, and I hope to finish it by mid January. The title is 'The Cure For Dying' and I was given it by the author Bridget O'Connor (who also thought up the title for Crocodile Soup.)
I've been to York since I last wrote this web log. I had to talk about life and work in a basement bar. I always think that most people in the audience have probably had much more interesting lives than me, but still, they all listened patiently to me waffling on. York was the last of a series of talks and readings. I feel rather proud of getting to all those events and not collapsing! Next year it will be all Red Spot Babies and I shall start thinking about another novel.
I am about to go off for Christmas, staying in a holiday house with my family. I hope everyone who reads this has a good time, and that your mince pies are sweet. Let's hope 2004 is a good year!
Posted by Julia on 19 December 2003 at 2:58 PM
This Christmas I cleverly put sparkle on my eyelids and then had an allergic reaction, so I looked like a boxer with two black eyes. But I enjoyed myself all the same. I watched that brilliant animation about Belle Ville. Didn't do any cooking. Walked around the Shropshire countryside which seemed to me to be full of secret hideaways, and intelligent looking cows. I read a Barbara Vine murder mystery, and my mum and sister both read the manuscript of the new novel and gave useful comments. I sat on a step at nights and looked up at the stars. I went and meditated in Hereford Cathedral with my daughter and thought about all the people I care about. This Christmas we had alot of fun with a plastic dance kareoke mat...a chinese version of Kylie Minogue squeaks as you stamp out dance steps on the mat. I also had many frothy baths, in a large and ornate bathroom with the bath in the middle of the room.
New Year was the same as always...parties in our street...more kareoke....I tried so hard to get drunk, but failed. I used to love a good old drink, but now I just lose interest. It was so cold outside, with swirling beads of freezing rain. There is something delirious about it all...I find at this time of year all my dreams and daily life get mixed up. Really I am a routine person....I need alot of regularity to function.
I am very grateful for 2003, (although it's been a horrible year politically). I've been so healthy, something I didn't expect, and it's really felt like a kind of bonus. I was trying to write a poem about it, that sensation when you think that things are winding down, but then everything just gets more and more alive and exciting. Anyway, I'm counting my blessings. I haven't made any resolutions really. I really want to answer mail at the end of the day rather than the beginning, so maybe I will try to do that. I must try to eat breakfast. I want to go and see more bands, also dry my hair with a hairdryer.
Happy 2004 to everyone out there!
Posted by Julia on 2 January 2004 at 11:59 PM
My friend Andrea Badenoch died on 4th January. Like me she had breast cancer, and she was first diagnosed in 2000. We talked so much about cancer. We used to laugh about the doctors, making up stupid names for them. She was a great support, and we used to send each other emails all the time, about symptoms, and discussing how we felt about life and death. As she got iller we lost contact. Andrea preferred to be private, and discouraged visitors as she became increasingly unwell. She is a real loss. I feel as if a part of me has gone. I've been thinking about the past, about times Andrea and I went away together to write. She was very patient and good at talking about writing. She would worry WITH you about something until you reached a solution.
It is very hard to believe that she has gone. She was still young, with three children, very smart, clever and with many more things she wanted to do in her life. She did everything she could to heal herself, using complementary therapies and conventional treatments. We wanted to write a book about all the people we had been to see between us, some of whom were rather dubious. I am dedicated the Cure For Dying to Andrea...although she is not either of the main characters, she was very much in my heart when I wrote the book.
Posted by Julia on 12 January 2004 at 3:14 PM
My friend Andrea Badenoch's memorial yesterday was a wonderful tribute to her. As various people stood up and recalled different aspects of her life a picture emerged of the complex, enigmatic, gifted, unusual person that she was. Someone said how well she combined art and politics, neither deadening the other. Her son talked about her dancing in the front room, another friend talked of her winning a 'Guess the weight of the tortoise' competition at a local fete. There was music like The Tracks of My Tears, and Itchycoo Park, poems, silences and contributions from the many people who had travelled far to remember her. Andrea and I used to talk about funerals and memorials alot. I think she would have enjoyed this one, and the obituaries in the Independent and The Guardian. Although she has been ill for many months, I find I am missing her friendship properly now. She was great to talk to about writing, and she had fierce opinions. She would get furious about arts spending and fickle publishers. You could talk to her for hours, and she really listened. Linda France, the poet, said yesterday that when someone dies we lose the part of ourselves that we invested in them.
January can feel so quiet, dark and dangerous. Today I lay on the sofa and watched 'The Night of The Hunter.' Then I played old records (The Housemartins, Michelle Shocked) on an ancient gramaphone and ate ham sandwiches. At one point I went gliding round the supermarket and bought very bizarre and particular foods: prunes, fresh ginger, goats cheese, a dozen limes, coriander, olbas oil.
In the windswept muddy garden there are some dear green shoots poking out of the earth. Yesterday my daughter saw a large fox padding along the pavement outside our house. I can stare for hours at a crossword clue. It's also that time when we all start sorting out cupboards. Last night I counted all the scrabble letters in four different scrabble sets. Sometimes it feels as if I am not living in a city at all, and that we are all living miles apart in a vast windy landscape. Still, tonight we had a great supper at my neighbours, with lots of other people from the street where I live. I am very lucky to live in a street of people who I would probably travel miles to meet, yet here they all are on the doorstep.
Last night I dreamt I was telling hilarious jokes. They were so easy to tell, I couldn't believe it. Why would one dream of jokes in such a dark, generally unfunny month? Of course I can't remember a single one now.
Posted by Julia on 19 January 2004 at 12:29 AM
It's late afternoon...today I have written a piece about 'The Great British Public' for Radio Four's 'Off The Page.' Tomorrow I go to Bristol to record the programme. I'm also working on the outline for a Sitcom, set in a gym in Newcastle. I am feeling quite dizzy! Nothing is simple this January. There is so much work to do. The new novel still needs alot of work. Although most people who read it find it compulsive I think it needs shaking by the neck. Writing is always difficult, and there are no short cuts. So I am feeling a bit grim and stern.
I just had a great weekend in London though. I went to St Batholemews Church at Smithfield. I ate salami in Carluccios, and sat in a jacussi in Muswell Hill. I wandered round Spitalfields market eating olives. Another reason to be happy is that I sleep very well...like falling into a deep velvet darkness. I wake up completely new every morning, and it hasn't always been like this. I have had months of insomnia! Also, I have stopped sweating. There are many reasons to be delighted. Food is mostly delicious. I have just bought a new Doctor Zeuss like lamp from a Turkish shop. Now I am going for a massage. Will return soon!
Posted by Julia on 27 January 2004 at 4:06 PM
Last week I tried to fly to Bristol, but spent an evening drifting around the departure lounge at Newcastle Airport, watching snow swirl around outside. I was going to do a thing for a programme called Off The Page, when R4 asks three writers to write short pieces and talk about a subject. We were doing the Great British Public. The airport was the perfect spot to watch the British complaining, being cheery, getting drunk, then finally, when the flight was cancelled, queuing for hours to re-arrange flights. The next day I sat in a recording studio here in Ncle and did the programme 'down the line' which is a bit scary as you can't see who you're talking to, and you have to interrupt in order to be heard, which didn't feel very British. I wonder if it will be obvious when the programme goes out that I was sitting alone with headphones on?
I have been going down to an oak panelled archive to read through the data about the 1000 family study. There is so much to read! However, even in the most boring minutes you ca