Saturday 30 December 2017

The sweet sorrow of Christmas Bells

Castle Howard afternoon tea
Castle Howard and Chatsworth
After our visit to Burton Agnes to see the homemade decorations earlier this month we also recently visited Castle Howard for afternoon tea (thank you, Emily!) and then called into Chatsworth to see what efforts they’d made for Christmas. There’s a contradiction in my old-fashioned socialist values that these giant houses exist, but like the monarchy, as long as they’re “paying their way” and generating leisure and historical perspectives I can reconcile my conscience.

Stories past and present
I’m in my element in a stately home or castle. Every room is riddled with ghostly stories, past and present. Some real events, some imagined fantasies.

Every room tells a story
You can imagine as you wander through corridors that all the rooms have been inhabited by individuals with hopes, dreams, griefs, triumphs, sadnesses, loves and loathings. At this time of year every room and staircase in Castle Howard and Chatsworth is also trimmed with creative and colourful Christmas paraphernalia. The Christmas themes are gloriously sparkling and gaudy, and somehow also equally moving and poignant.

High expectations
Yes, Christmas time is a time to gather with loved ones and indulge in excessive food and drink. Yes, it is a time to wish peace and good will to all women and men. Yes, it is a time when it is glorious to give and wonderful to receive. We dream, we aspire, we laugh, we love, we buy into the illusion of it being a special time of year. God bless us, everyone!

Painful memories
But of course it is a series of days just like any other series of days and we might be reminded of souls departed, absent loved ones, victims of homelessness and loneliness, migrants and the dispossessed, the poor and the needy, the bereaved and the traumatised. God bless us, everyone!

The shock and awe of the Nativity
Even the Nativity story is cockeyed with sweet sorrow: on the one hand there is
  • an adorable baby
  • picturesque shepherds and lambs and
  • fairy-godmother-style-ThreeKingsFollowingAStar;
Angels on high at Castle Howard
and on the other hand there are
  • migrants being oppressed by an occupying army’s controlling census
  • a (supernatural?) unexpected pregnancy
  • an accommodation crisis and
  • a jealous king planning to Slaughter all the Innocents throughout the region.
A combination of fairy tale, religion, Myth, Legend, Eastenders and a horror film.

Angels on high
The decorations at Castle Howard were themed “angels on high” and everywhere you looked pairs of wings, cherubs, stylized angels or suggestions of angels peered down. Some were in windows, some in silhouette, some in precarious positions and some were suggested by ribbons or drapes. Some were intimate in nature, some were flamboyant and some seemed shy and half-hidden in Christmas trees.
Chatsworth House: Oh Dickens
Oh Dickens
Chatsworth, following its brilliant Fashion-themed displays earlier in the year, provided a Dickensian treat for Christmas. Books and quotations from Dickens tumbled down from piles of books and threads of fabric. The story of A Christmas Carol featured prominently, as you might expect (including a ghastly trembling animatronic Scrooge) but so did The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Dorrit and, near the end a tragically truthful Miss Havisham from Great Expectations haunting her wedding breakfast table, decayed and cobwebby.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
The opening of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities contains that famous paradoxical repetition and Christmas can be like that. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…. Christmas contains all these contrasts.

Christmas contrasts 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired to write the following poem in 1863 during the American Civil War when his son disobeyed his fatherly instructions and went off to fight for the Union. The poem inspired the carol I Heard the bells on Christmas Day and whilst it celebrates many Christamassy ideas, it also captures the contrasts of right and wrong, war and peace, night and day, love and hate.

Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
Miss Havisham from Great Expectations haunts her wedding breakfast....

Stories future
And so Goodbye Christmas for another year. Goodbye to 2017. Goodbye to 2 years of 5 blogs a month. From January I’ll spend less time blogging and more time working on editing my Rhenium Tales. 2018 will be the year in which I send my words to a book agent to see if anyone outside my life might be interested. Will the bells ring for me? Time will tell.
The incredible melting snowman - will this be a symbol of me in 2018? Or will I be the Christmas cake with a chunk ripped out of it? Or the smiling guy at the Thompson's Secret Santa table, full of tidings of comfort and joy....



Monday 25 December 2017

2017 Secret Santa

Badby
A long-standing tradition with the Thompsons in Badby is to meet for an early Christmas dinner and swap secret Santa presents. And so it was again and so it was (again) marvellous. Capped by a David Edgar-penned Royal Shakespeare Company production of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, spectacularly beautiful but also capturing the hard-nosed original message about child and family poverty. Truly a production for our times (pictures courtesty of the RSC website and Manuel Harlan. I’ve riffed on Christmas in the past (here and here and here.) What do I feel this year?
RSC production of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, photos from RSC website by Manuel Harlan 
2017
There are plenty of personal highlights in 2017 but I feel that the world has been a crueller place with a pernicious abuse of social media, catastrophic fake news and volatile (often bullying) political decisions. I can only hope that 2017 will be a kinder, more compassionate, more intelligent period for humanity. The next generations coming along deserve a better world. Can we not achieve that? Let’s see…. the readiness is all.

Saturday 16 December 2017

Building a ship

Fiction and non-fiction
Coming out of my novel into the real world is sometimes a discombobulating experience. What’s happening on the planet Rhenium is often more real to me than what’s happening in Europe and America. Rhenium makes more sense to me. I can control it after all. Perhaps that’s why some writers are drawn to create new worlds – because current affairs in the real world are too disheartening.

Out-of-body experiences
As an English teacher I encouraged students to write freely, unself-consciously, without thinking too much – get words down and then edit into shape. I know I believed it when I taught it but now, as a writer myself, I’m discovering the supernatural truth of it. So much has happened to my characters that I didn’t expect – some characters have become more important than others, some have changed genders, some have changed jobs, and some have been amalgamated. These things just happen in the creative splurge. Coming up for air, out of the writing into the real world, is a vital step. Looking back now at the whole thing – trying to see the wood rather than the individual trees – there are some obvious things that I couldn’t see before. How could I have been so clumsy? stupid? stubborn? inept? crass? And the questions that First Reader Emily asked me (and ask me and will continue to ask me) suddenly hit home…. and the insights provided by my medical consultants, my sailing consultants, my energy consultants…. these are of course friends and family, not paid consultants!.... and their comments trigger other thoughts and paths to explore. So 15 chapters have become 21 chapters, my main character Raydan has now gained a step-brother and step-sister as well as a batch of cousins that live in his House. His hair remains red, he still plays the mandolin, he still wants a girlfriend. I’m finding it comforting that he has stayed constant among all the changes.

Yearning for the endless sea
French writer of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a short book I love very much wrote the following and it somehow reflects the creative process to me:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Saturday 9 December 2017

The revised reveal....

So, Reader, I went on that course about how to get an agent….
And feel very encouraged. And thank you to any of you who’ve conveyed to me thoughts about my First Reveal…. (click here for ideas and mood-visuals in The first reveal….)

And so here is the new (I think improved) blurb
Raydan Wakes
On New Year’s Eve, Raydan Brain wants two things. He wants to be Branded into The Academy. He also wants a girlfriend. Raydan is on the brink of romantic success with Vera Valente, when they discover that both their parents belong to a secret organisation plotting dangerous missions. Can Raydan and Vera learn to trust their parents? Everyone is catapulted into chaos by society’s escalating addiction to the drug Zip, a series of random knife attacks, and the appearance of a murderous hybrid monster.

Saturday 2 December 2017

Burton Agnes Hall and Gardens

December, so I’m prepared to think about Christmas
A few things let me know that the season of peace and goodwill is approaching….
Lists, festive plans, preparing prezzies
Morning frost, slipping and sliding on pavements, visible breath in the colder air. And December is on the calendar. And my big bro has said White Rabbits on Facebook….
Burton Agnes Hall and Gardens
Earlier in the year we discovered the Elizabethan manor between Hull and Scarborough and went in particular to see the Gardens (blog link here.) Last weekend we had a day enjoying the Christmas trimmings.
Cosy and family-oriented
The Great Hall has a beautifully decorated tree dominating the space and a roaring fire with a piano available for punters to tinkle. Each room and space seems to have its own “theme” with quirky effects and hidden surprises.
Own personal favourites
I particularly appreciated the effects in the White Room and the Chinese Room. Garden-lover Sally especially enjoyed that materials from the Hall’s Gardens were used as base materials in many of the designs. Emily, who prompted us to go, loved the whole experience, particularly since it acted as a spur to launch this year’s Christmas season.
Home-made, personalised experience
Sometimes in grand houses it’s easy to feel venomously resentful about the disparity of life opportunities for different people in different places. But Burton Agnes, in my opinion, has an atmosphere of generosity and homeliness. Many members of staff had contributed to the decorations which, I understand, were coordinated by Olivia Cunliffe-Lister.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on your troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on your troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now