New Year, New Routine

 

Epiphany
And so the Twelfth Day of Christmas comes around again and all the trimmings come down. Baubles go back in the cupboard for another year and pine needles are vacuumed up…. I enjoyed the annual treat of walking round the atmospheric streets of Saltaire to see the creative Advent Windows (see previous years here and here.) I’m enjoying getting hungry again and not feeling so permanently kaylied (drunk….) I’ve vowed to write only a maximum of 3 blogs a months in 2018 so, despite having the material, I’m saving up my blogs on the New Year’s Eve Murder Mystery, a winter walk at Bolton Abbey, thoughts about EM Forster, Anglesey, Norway, Bletchley Park, Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece…. and no doubt many other things that bounce into my brain.

Resolutions
What have I resolved? In common with every other year in living memory I hope to get fitter, declutter and avoid procrastination. But this year, 2018, fresh off the boat, I resolve to get my novel, Raydan Wakes, ready for submission to an agent (or six.) The edit of Book One is coming along in fits and starts with radical cuts and restructuring; the first draft of Book Two seems plain sailing in comparison; events are unfolding as I expected them to. No surprises so far in Book Two, but Book One is proving to be discombobulating, like a wild animal nipping, clawing, scratching and biting chunks out of what I thought it was. Ah, the life of a writer….

Not necessarily in the right order

Andrew Preview with Eric and Ernie

The late great Eric Morecambe
In the celebrated sketch with Andrew Preview (André Previn), Morecambe and Wise trick the great composer and conductor into raising his baton to steer Eric Morecambe through a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Of course Ernie is insanely wound up trying to make things go smoothly and Eric is full of advice for the orchestra (“not too heavy on the banjos”!) But the line that is quoted most often (by me anyway) is when Mr Preview (as he is still addressed by taxi drivers apparently) roars at Eric that he is playing “all the wrong notes” and Eric grabs André Previn (the epitome of a good sport) by the frock coat lapels and exasperatedly growls at him “I am playing all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order!”

Stephen King
In his superb On Writing Stephen King recounts the story of a friend of James Joyce who visited to find the genius Irish author sprawled in agony over his desk at the end of his writing day. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: James, what’s wrong? Is it the work?
James Joyce: (nods in despair)
Friend: How many words did you get today?
James Joyce: Seven.
Friend: But James…. that’s good, at least for you.
James Joyce: Yes, I suppose it is…. but I don’t know what order they go in!

60 to 36
I’m not equating myself with either Eric Morecambe or James Joyce, but I know how they feel…. sometimes I think I’ve got the right words in my writing but they’re not in the right order, and sometimes I think what's drafted and redrafted could be better. Oh, the agonies of composition. What I have realised (something I taught to teenagers but now I know it’s true in reality because of my experience as a retirement-hobby writer) is another insight from Stephen King:
To write is human, to edit is divine
One decision I’ve made (since I’ve now embarked on writing Book 2 (and editing Book 1) of my Rhenium Tales trilogy) is that to stand any chance of finishing my magnum opus, the frequency of my blog posts needs to reduce. So from next year, instead of 5 posts a month, I’m going to aim for 3 posts a month (36 a year instead of 60 a year.) I started my blog in August 2014 as way of disciplining myself to “publish” something regularly whether I wanted to or not and I’ve mostly managed that but I have to acknowledge that Raydan’s story is tugging at my mind more insistently than ever and I have to manage time more efficiently.

Omit needless words
In his second forward to On Writing Stephen King quotes from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (published in 1918.) King absolutely believes in the Rule 17 in the chapter entitled Principles of Composition. Rule 17 reads: “Omit needless words.” Therefore….

One step at a time

Attention must be paid

As Mark Forster eloquently explained (click to see blog here) you can only change things by Giving Attention to them.

Destroying a shed

Having decided to take down the wooden playhouse in the garden (to chop up for firewood for our stove…. gotta budget now we’re retired and make use of everything!...) it didn’t seem possible that it would ever be finished. It took three of us the best part of a week to deconstruct a roof, two floors joined by a ladder, four walls and a door. Many splinters later and having acquired aches and pains in places I didn’t know I had, today the final kindling was transferred to the cellar. God knows how many nails were claw-hammered out.

Courtesy of David Wolfe's Facebook posts

One step at a time

The biggest of tasks can be completed with a will and a willingness to surrender yourself to the time and attention it takes. One step at a time. The following quotation has been ascribed to both Henry Ford and Albert Einstein - it resonates with me every time I feel uncertain about doing something different.

Free scope

In All’s Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare’s most under-rated plays, the complex and courageous Helena recognizes that if she remains “dull” (passive, inactive) then she will not be able to determine her own destiny; she has free scope and decides to find a remedy within herself.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 

Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky 

Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull 

Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

Judi Dench as the Countess and Claudie Blakley as Helena in All's Well That Ends Well

One Born Every Minute

Memories are made of this

What do I remember from my own childhood birthdays? The above pics are of my brother’s birthday in about 1962 or 1963 when I was 2 or 3.  I can’t remember the occasion in the photographs but I remember the kinds of things that used to happen at parties when I was a kid. Pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey, musical statues, sleeping logs, balloons, potted meat sandwiches, crisps, pop, sausage rolls, a cake with candles, jelly and ice cream…. For the record, the people in the first pic are: brother Chris, Nelly Macarthy, Alan Kirby, Mum, brother Mick with me on his knee, Gilian Hughes, Linda Thackeray and Gary Corcoran. The second pic features brother Mick with his hand on my shoulder, cousin “Little Mary,” Mick Batty and sheriff brother Chris. Happy times!

Joseph, Michael, Christopher and baby me

Are birthdays over-rated?

Is a birthday celebration an over-rated and self-indulgent activity? Are birthdays “made up”, like Yorkshire Day, Secretary’s day and all the rest of the commercially-dubious days? Why make a fuss over the day when, by chance, you were squeezed out of (or surgically helped out from) your mother’s uterus? Shouldn’t every child’s birthday be, in fact, a tribute day to the painful labours of their mother? Or their fainting father? Is a day that focuses on celebrating one person a bit selfish?

Locked-In in Leeds

I love birthdays (for the record)

Birthdays, in my experience, are wonderful. Life’s too short to worry about whether or not a day is selfish or commercial. One day a year is not too extravagant to give all your love and best wishes to someone (or to get it back from loved ones when it is your own birthday.) As for paying tribute to mothers and fathers…. We should probably do that every day we can. What I wouldn’t give now to have an adult conversation with my Mum or my Dad. And ask things I never thought to ask when they were alive.

Memories around 19th June 2015

 “It is my birth-day….”

is a poignant quotation from one of the world's great plays. At a critical moment in the battles over one of the biggest empires in the world, an Egyptian queen suddenly remembers a personal detail:
It is my birth-day:
I had thought to have held it poor: but, since my lord
Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.
Even a great queen like Cleopatra can stop in her tracks and decide to “mock the midnight bell” with her beloved Antony on her birthday.

Memories around 24th July 2015

Modern Birthdays

Today there is enormous pressure on parents to give children incredibly elaborate birthdays. But I think I’m a bit (happily) old-fashioned in the kinds of birthday my family usually celebrates:

• cards (and messages) from loved ones
• a few presents that matter
• a special meal picked by the Birthday person
• a special trip picked by the Birthday Person. 
• And, naturally, a cake with candles! 

On my next birthday I’ll be 55; one of my very weird regular flights of fantasy is to think about time in relative terms – 55 years before I was born it was 1905, pre-Titanic, pre-First World War, pre-talking movies, Edward VII had been on the throne almost 5 years, my Mum and Dad had yet to be born…. Sixteen years before I was born, Hitler was still alive and there was no end in sight for the Second World War…. Time flies!  We should celebrate every birthday we can.

Here's to the next year's round of birthdays....

Nobody's Perfect

Joe E Brown and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot - "Nobody's Perfect!"

Young love
When I met my future wife at the University of Manchester, we became friends for three years before we started “courting.” During the three years of friendship we confided to each other aspects of our lives, families, friends, lovers, university departments, ambitions, fears, hopes and dreams. When we married in 1986 I think we thought we knew each other pretty well.

Rose Leslie as Ygritte in Game of Thrones

Mature love
29 years later we now know that in 1986 we knew comparatively little about each other. And we thought we were good at communicating back then. But we left out quite a bit of important stuff. Some quirky foibles and some murky peculiarities. Some ugly inner grumbles. Some shoulder chips, some lurking anxieties. But there were also a few wonderful glories about each other that had yet to bloom. As time went by, though, the glories, grumbles, foibles and important stuff began emerging. So I would say we know each other much better now.

Life’s festival battering
Particular moments have created bright memories: sitting on balconies looking at views, raising a glass in celebration, smiling across a crowded room, sharing in quiet victories, loving children. Other moments have caused challenges: organising childcare, moving house, being bereaved, building careers, coping with illnesses. Life’s journey has been all about reacting to the ups and downs of twists and turns and the ins and outs of the lives of the people we know (and even the people we don’t know but we hear or read about.) You get to know someone intensely when life’s festival batters you and exposes you, warts and all.

Peter Lely's portrait of Oliver Cromwell - "warts and all"

Oliver said….
Oliver Cromwell said to the painter, Sir Peter Lely: “….I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.” As an avowed monarchist I shouldn’t give Oliver Cromwell blog-space, but I admire him in the same way I respect and revere Maximilien Robespierre (more on him in the future) – a visionary at the very least, someone who wanted to make a positive difference to society at the time, but whose road took a series of catastrophic turns. Cromwell’s “warts and all” philosophy seems to be a good way to approach your friends and loved ones. Nobody’s perfect. And warts make you human.

Growing Older
I think I was round about 24 years of age when it finally dawned on me that I would never “grow up.”  Or maybe that was the age when I realised that you never stop changing.
Being “grown up” seems to be a fictitious state of mind. I don’t know that you can ever say you are finally “grown up.” You just have more commitments and responsibilities – but you are often no more equipped to deal with life's complications than a younger whippersnapper with a smart phone.
Rarely pure
In my final years of teaching I was able to see with startling clarity how incredibly assured and knowing and optimistic and hopeful Sixth Form students were, even when they were making claims that should be disputed and qualified. It’s a relief to realise that the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. And that’s OK. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple” declared Algernon in Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest and, though witty, it is a truth that gets truer as time goes by.

Then and Now.... older but not much wiser....

Beginning to Look Back

Looking Back

As 2014 ends, I can only hope 2015 and future years contain less personal trauma. I hope in future years I can compose blogs more regularly and without obscuring too much of what I am truly thinking and feeling. The images below contain (for me) total pleasure and excruciating pain. And also contain (for me) love beyond belief. And some bewilderment. The end of the year is a good time for looking back…. 

Harriet home from India/Nepal, Egypt, goodbye teaching, home from the hills and, in images below, Emily home from Dorking, Kerry and Norah on the Moors, Surrey and the South, Barr-Lancelots, the Tower of London, Fountain's Abbey, the wonderful Margaret Atwood at the Ilkley Literature Festival

Last Christmas

Between October and December 2013 everything changed – in my world, at any rate. Last Christmas felt very fragile but this Christmas, everything feels different. No doubt next Christmas will feel different again. And the one after that. Change happens.

Change and the Illusion of Time Management

Change happens. Constantly. I used to believe in Time Management. But I now think it is a redundant concept. Time cannot be Managed. All that can be managed is what you do and what you say. You give your attention to chosen actions and that attention affects naturally occurring changes, hopefully changing things in a direction you want. Anything you ignore will undergo changes anyway. Because change is a constant. Time marches on. Change happens. Constantly.

Get Everything Done: and still have time to play

So I’ve increasingly over the years tried to live by the following philosophy, espoused by my friend Jane Howson and written about eloquently by Mark Forster: you must Give Attention to the things you want to affect. You can never Manage Time; all you can do is Give Attention to what you do and what you say. Because Change will happen anyway. Give Attention to the things you want to change. As Linda Loman says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

attention must be paid.

Resolutions

Approaching 2015 is a time to look back and a time to look forward. Next year I’ll be 55. 55 years before I was born it was 1905 - a lot of Change has happened since 1905. A lot of Change will no doubt happen in 2015.... and in the five years following.... what will 2020 be like? Time will tell. Excelsior!