Postcard from Agde Last Day Blues

 From my notebook, written in the café the day  I came away:

Last day

Last morning sun hits the pavement     

glittering through plane trees

Last walk around the market,

dazzled by bright colour

Last laden market stall,

selling striped tablecloths

Last encounter with the Russian,

three euros for café crême

Last laden woman,

straw basket on each arm

Last child on bright bike,

racing round the fountain

Last walk down narrow streets,

making for the shady side

Last circle of old women

on plastic chairs, talking.

Last man with dog in basket,

pushed under the table

Last sight of two men kissing,

clasping hands in greeting

Last taste of peaches,

juice dripping down chin

Last loving touch, dressed up

in careful cuisine

Agde 2013

Post from Agde 2: The Window

Early dry thunder then swirling seagulls precede the dawn. They hawk and laugh like old men at a wedding. Now later some smaller bird is chirruping. Not a starling. I’ll ask around.

The sky is overcast this morning but the air is warm and soft with the sea.

I’ve finally set up my writing table beneath my bedroom window which overlooks the courtyard with

the staircase that goes nowhere.

This morning I intend to venture into the flea market in the market place. This was where last year I bought a 1940s leather handbag, and three wartime postcard messages from occupied France in World War 2. 

 This reminds me that these objects feature in my novel which will be titled The Search for Marie France – which is not quite out there yet. perhaps today I'll find some new inspirational objects.

And I recall that  this house The Maison D’Estella and this town Agde both feature strongly in my novel An Englishwoman in France which is out there.

Wish you were here

Love

Wendy

Postcard from Agde: The Courtyard

Balsalt Paving

Escaping the cluttered house and the cluttered life and the writing of an intense (though not cluttered … ) novel, I am now at the Maison D’Estella a medieval house lodged tightly in the centre of the  2,700 year old small Languedocean  port town of Agde - my favourite place in Europe apart, perhaps, from Bishop Auckland.

Originally built by Greek traders and occupied by the Romans, who both left their marks on the town it ‘s now an intricate,un-touristy coastal town in the Languedoc tidying itself up for next year’s election.

New door in old doorway
Around us are doors and windows
 from several eras
of this mediaeval building.

We have our breakfast in the high walled courtyard which is paved with blocks of volcanic basalt,

Windows are set in older doorways. Doorways are set in older doorways. There is a medieval staircase which leads nowwhere.

Breakfast is fresh bread and croissants, made this morning, with fresh butter and marmalade made at home and brought here by Licked Spoon.

And a little posting.

Heaven or what?

The biggest problem here is to decide just what I want to read. More about this later.

The Sadness of Leaving.

Journey back tomorrow. I am sad. As regular visitors at Lifetwicetasted will know, I feel I have been here before and am writing my second novel springing from this place.

As well as my notebook I always have my little camera. I’m no great photographer but now my camera is my second notebook and continues to provide inspiration and sustenance in my other special place t- he moody, complex north of England. I thought I would stick my last images together for my friends – as a kind of handful of postcards from the edge, with no message.

Here , the medium is the message, perhaps:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bientot…

Away To France

Away to France at 4am. Here are some not-quite poems that I wrote last time. There will be more this-time writing…

Agde Haiku

The sound of swallows

Clouds salmoning the morning

Coffee steams gently

A Child Stretching

A child stretching

Hauling up the base of her spine

Through her shoulders

Along her arms

Right down

To her fragile wrists

More cat

Than anything

Striding with Bread

They all do it -

Young, not so young

Smart, not so smart

Morning and afternoon

Carrying long loaves

From the artisan baker

Greek Frieze

Trim measured borders

Three figures under arches

Framed with rays of basalt light

Crudely carved and very potent

One is a draped

A pious creature turns to one side

His features all scratched in

A garland on his head

The next one is naked, all

voluptuous, curved breasts

and copious belly

She holds flowers

The third is naked too

But moves briskly to the left

Like a business man in a hurry

To get to work

The Painter

She walks with a cheetah's grace

Her face golden, her drawn back hair

The colour of gleaming putty

Her smile as ancient as the town

She says she paints while keeping shop

Splashes of deep ochre and Agde yellow -

Airy spaces, unfinished figures

Brief encounter

With colour and light.

(Photo Thank you Sean)

Light In Winter

Winter is a good time for writing. Dark days, dark thoughts, dark feelings drive you inwards in search of light, magic and adventure.

My new novel* found it’s birth in late spring days in French Languedoc when there were still wild flowers on the byways and the riverbanks. By eleven o’clock in the old town of Agde the deep shadows of the tall buildings offered relief from the sun climbing to its mid-day zenith.

And out of this heat, out of these shadows, out of time, came my story.

So now here at home it’s my delight to escape our dark northern November and re-enter that Southern world of bright light and deep shade, of an old world and a new one, as I hammer away at the final draft of my new novel.

I’m often asked how many drafts a novel goes through: a question hard to answer in these technological days.

There is the handwritten draft, then the transcription draft, when the novel really evolves. After that there may be all kinds of changes as I go through the story again and again. This may involve shipping around chapters and paragraphs to tighten the structure, adjusting events to meet to the internal logic of the story, taking out characters, putting new ones in their place, replacing prose with dialogue to increase the pace, replacing dialogue with prose to render some reassuring distance and clarity for the reader. (How much one thinks of the reader in these final drafts!)

How many drafts? Three? Ten? hard to tell in these days when redrafting is mostly done on the computer and does not involve painful retyping at each stage much recourse to SnoPake. My modern way might involve four printed off copies to see how the changes work on the page but these are the result of eight or ten ‘redrafts’ on the screen.

The first drafts involve great inspiration and intuitive story- making, along with the creative melding of research into a real but invented world. But these last drafts are intricate, detailed exercises in both the writer’s and editor’s craft to make sure my readers ‘get’ my idea and enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Soon it will be done and off to my agent Juliet just in time for me to dust off the tree and make some winter light of my own...

wx

* I have at last found a title, but as yet it is a secret…