Working and Playing in the Languedoc with no WiFi.

You may have noticed my two week absence on these pages. So sorry about that.
 

I went back to the Langudoc with A and D, my two favourite writers, for a work-play September break. The weather was stunningly hot. The woman in the stationary shop mentioned the ‘unseasonally hot weather’; the woman on the oyster stall said the same, adding ‘You should go to the beach!’ 

Cafe Writing

The hot weather ‘broke’ in the last few days and it was ‘only’ very warm in the morning and hot in the afternoon. On our last day, dragging our cases across the bridge over the River Hérault which, instead of its usual gleaming silver-green was now a churning brown, spitting trees and logs as it hurled itself towards the sea.

The River Hérault, still  in a silver state.

The big performance-pontoon had sheered away from the quayside and was bobbing about mid-river. The  Hérault  had burst its banks further upstream - a serious affair:  lives had been lost.

We all had plans for our stay.  A and D had their own reading, writing and planning  projects, My tasks were to mop up some last pieces of research for the final edit of my novel, Writing at the Maison Bleu; to read some more short fiction - Truman Capote, Edith Wharton, Henry James – in preparation for our October 25th Room To WriteWorkshop on The Novella; to write exploratory pieces towards my own new short fiction.

I also had a  plan to send  to you some ‘Postcards from Agde’ - to follow on from the ‘Postcards from Marseillan’ (scroll back) that I wrote for you in June.

This was not to be. We had quite elaborate plans to have WiFi Internet Access in our slice of a medieval house. For various reasons this didn’t materialise. We had to make do with WiFi facilities at the Melrose Café on the Quayside which was only intermittently available. In other years here we depended for the Internet on the WiFi facilities in  the library (The delightfully named Maison de Savoir). But to our chagrin this year it was closed for refurbishment.But to our chagrin this year the library was closed for refurbishment.

                                                                              

So –  our work/play break consisted if two weeks in the sun in dusty, atmospheric old Agde -  virtually without the Internet.

All I can say is that it was great. It was remarkably peaceful and fruitful – living and working in a kind of seclusion: no checking out, no Tweeting, for Facebooking, no emailing. There was a lot of writing, planning, talking and

thinking. And a lot of sitting in cafés, over café crème or Pastis, watching the comings and going in this busy little self-absorbed town.

A little bit of writer’s paradise, 

to  be truthful. 

On the plus side I did find two new fantastic book sources for my new novel -

Writing at the Maison Bleu.

Reading and Writing

On the minus side I really did miss writing my Postcards from Agde  just  for you. I would have written about :.

Autimn Fruits

Cooking and Writing 

A Reading Corner 

Windows in Strange Places

Wish you'd been there. Wx

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

Postcard from France: Living Inside Your Own Stories

It can be a problem, as a writer, to know where work starts and play ends, or work ends and

play begins. This is never more so than on holiday when I feel I am living inside my own stories.

So, here I sit, in this café at the end of and ancient quayside – in use since this town was a Phoenician trader’s port in 600BC. Like the 17^th century Maison D’Estella where we stay the quayside plays in a recent novel :

… Now we’re on the quayside and I stumble on the uneven lava blocks that pave it and – quite naturally – he takes my arm. I can hear the jingling of boat tackle and the shout of seamen’s voices but these there are no boats drawn up on the quay just waiters and waitresses setting out cutlery and napkins in the smart pontoon cafés huddling here in the place where ships once docked, drawn up side by side, ready to unload. Madame Patrice said that, didn’t she?

‘You know Madame Patrice? You said you knew her,’ I say.

‘I think I probably do. I knew her husband Ettiene from another time. He was a great scholar. And I am acquainted with Madame Patrice. But I’ve not been here so long, this time...’ From my novel An Englishwoman in France.

And this week I walked around the corner fromthe Maison d’Estella  to a tall thinhouse on the Place de la Glacière – visiting the apartment of my writing friend Avril. This is in another ancient building which has cut into its roof the highest terrace in the town. Here from the same novel the time slips back to 300 AD and nine year old Tib is looking down over the town from the ramparts of the house of his father, the Roman governor of this part of Gaul.  

;…Tib: Good Fortune, 301 AD

A warm, salty breeze lifted the bright reddish hair of the boy, sometimes called Tib, who was sitting with his legs dangling from the flat roof of the house of his father, Helée, governor of this city which was now laid out below the boy like a map.

In front of him the neat road – square blocks of basalt – led straight down to the busy river harbour, widening halfway where it joined with both the straight road down from the barracks to his left and the narrower road to his right  that led down from the  graceful Temple of Venus. The clusters of houses on either side of the road were laid out in a grid, their black stone walls relieved by clumps of wild fig and bulging garden plots.

Tib raised his eyes and watched closely as the elegant ships hauled down their sails and resorted to the power of muscle and oar to manoeuvre their vessels into the teaming river port finally to squeeze into spaces alongside vessels already drawn up at the long harbour wall.

But however fast or elegant the ships were in reaching and tying up at Good Fortune, they had to wait their turn to be unloaded by the labourers and slaves working for the long-haired man – looking more like a pirate than a harbourmaster – who goaded them on with a combination of roars and threats which they answered in good measure. Even up here on the hill Tib could hear the deep, gravelly sound of their throaty curses.

Tib felt proud of the order and efficiency of hundreds of years of harbour routine that drove the port to such success. His father’s tax scrolls were witness to that. Now he watched the shouting workers on one part of the dock heaving ashore great jars containing fine goods – silverware, spices, pottery and wine imported into Gaul from lands across the Great Inner Sea. Then he leaned sideways to see slaves manhandling racks of  the equally tall earthenware jars now containing wine and grain, salt and oil , ready to take them in the other direction,  to the Imperial City of Rome…’ Also from my novel An Englishwoman in France

These days, of course the pink tiled roofs of 2000 years of town development obscure the grid and prevent a direct view of the quayside. But, further to the right within  the sweep of the River Hérault - whose wide estuary attracted the Phoenician traders to build the port – is the exquisite Art Deco façade of the early 20^th century Maison Laurens.

Avril Joy's image of the Chateau Laurens
 from her terrace....

Now then, this location on the river plays a part in my new - not yet published -  novel to be called The Search for Marie France. In the novel I have a fictional building used as the headquarters of  the occupying Germans. In the real history of this town the Chateau Laurens actually did fit this ambiguous role. 

‘… Alone at last, Marie France could glance around herself with open curiosity at this familiar yet not familiar place.  She thought of the day she saw the cloister opposite - now just a pathway to the orchard -  used for target practice.  She wrote in her notebook:   “Three soldiers, two with their jackets loosened and one in his shirtsleeves (as white as Auguste’s mother could wash them) cleared the cloister and   brought out a sweating, terrified man – a Gitan by his looks - and tied him to the medieval stone column which must in its time have absorbed the sound of a thousand plainsongs. The soldiers took black pistols from their leather belts, exchanging grins. Other soldiers strolled across from their trucks and motorbikes to view the fun. Auguste, fear in his own eyes, backed away into a corner of the opposite cloister.

Then the three soldiers began to play this strange game - a not-to- kill game - where the soldiers fired at the man with orders not to kill him. He jumped and jerked as the pistol shots splintered the old stone around him. The soldiers jeered as the poor man wet himself and held their noses and shouted ‘schmutzigen Zigeuner‘ when he shit himself. It was a relief when he was dragged off, eyes rolling but physically unharmed, out to a truck then onto the camp down the coast where we know now that gypsies, politicos and people like my own mother and father were interned  before being transported East. The cloister smelled differently then. The scent of blood and excrement was in the air.”  Marie France put down her pen and absently rubbed the swollen joints on her writing hand…’
From The Search for Marie France.

I’m now - fuelled by great company and wonderful imaginative food from Licked Spoon - working here on a new novel  at the Maison D’Estella.

More about that – actual work in progress! - before the end of this week.

Certainly, alongside bookish company, drinks on Avril’s high terrace have been an extra inspirational treat this time.

Wish you were here

love

Wendy

A Writer's View of Youthful Romance

A little bit stir crazy and crazy to write, I  found myself in a local hotel with its own ancient history but  with modern spa facilities that mean as well as  the usual through-put  of ladies lunching and businessmen meeting and lovers assignating, you are sometimes treated to the sight of women with their hair up in toweling robes resting, after having a flash of fitness. 

Writing in such neutral places - escaping, relaxing entirely separate - can be a flash of fitness for a writer too. I've posted here on the blog before about the joys of  Cafe Writing. This evolves in a changing world.

I can be invisible in such places - useful for a writer who needs to think and imagine. Here I draft an introduction to the new book. I  think of where it goes from here. I estimate its direction and audit its possible impact. I write some notes on aggression that might end up as a poem in a year or two. Probably never. But at least that aggression is expressed, which could be therapeutic. Unexplored emotion can be ugly on the page.

While I've been busy in my other writing world a young couple enter the deserted lounge. They buy a beer and a latté and play musical chairs until they find just the right place to sit before a window on a deep couch.

She has her natural hair swept up and not a speck of make-up on her face.  With his stylish specs he is handsome in that geeky way that is so fashionable these days.

At each station they flip open a miniature laptop and peer at the little screen, saying nothing - squandering,  in my view,  a clear  opportunity for intimacy.

But who am I to judge the reality of this situation? This is surely only the modern version of the back row of the cinema where you listened to the dulcet Americanised tones of stars and looked at  the iconic images of great films, This was always so useful to cover up the tongue-tied awkwardness of that first or second - or tenth - date.  I remember you would both  look hard at the screen in silence while his hand crept along the back of the seat.

But then - if I remember rightly - that screen was very big: much larger than life. This screen in the silence of the hotel lounge is very small - no larger than the palms of two hands. And this girl and boy could very well be  guests at this rather sweet hotel where there are other spaces to get closer, and to say more.

Nothing like that in the 1960s. More's the pity.
WX

Writing, Talking and Ghosthunting on Holy Island

A few days away with like-minded friends can be very refreshing. I remember a very fruitful time at Annamackerig on the Irish border, (where I saw a ghost...) While I was there  I drafted many of the short stories that later, transformed in some ways, were welded together in Paulie’s Web (see sidebar) now on Kindle and being enjoyed by those of you who like something different. You couldn’t get much farther away from prison than that idyllic place beside the lake full of merry musicians and inspired, surreal writers,

Then there was that time on the Scottish borders with the late great Julia Darling and the mistress of MsLexia Debbie Taylor. Julia was working out what proved to be her last novel The Taxi Driver's Daughter.  That was a funny, very female sojourn with lots of writing talk and (if I remember rightly)  a bit of reflexology.

Anne's Photograph

And now I have just come back from a very refreshing few days with writers Anne Ousby, Erica Yeoman, Gillian Wales and Avril Joy - first on the coast by Dunstanburgh Castle, then an afternoon, a night and a day on Holy Island.

This involved much inspired writing-talk and inspiration, active photographing and even writing. Erica was researching her new historical novel which is partly set on Holy Island. (She and we were disappointed at not hearing the seals singing. But we writers can always use our imagination.)

Gillian's Photograph of Gertrude Jekyll's Garden

The other three – very informed gardeners - visited Howick Gardens and the exquisite Gertrude Jekyll garden on Holy Island.  I looked and looked at the bright sky and and the glittering tourquoise sea and thought about ghosts – but they were as rare on these days as seals singing.


But over lunch Erica told us a true ghostly experience which winged its way right into to my notebook. We talked about Anne’s new website and urged her to love doing it. We also brainstormed with her a very original idea for a specialized blog which might come off. It is about gardening – and judging from the popularity of Gillian’s website it should be very well appreciated. We talked of Avril’s new newsletter which is full of great writing advice and also gives writers a range of competitions which can enhance their audience.

It’s always illuminating fun and joyful inspiration to meet, talk and work with writer friends of this quality. Of course it can also be physically and psychologically dangerous – which is the theme of my forthcoming novel The Art of Retreating. (See earlier posts here &   here &;  here,     But that novel is set in the Languedoc. Of course …er ….that is fiction. But it could never have been written without my wide and varied experience of going away with people to write, talk and think

Have you, like Erica, any experiences of (not neccessily  belief in…) ghosts that you’d like to share? Email me if it’s just too weird to comment here email me (wenrob73@hotmail.com)

Radio Times and Cafe Writing

There is a myth or tradition in the writing game to do with writing in cafes. I have written about it here. before but this is to show that I’m not a one trick pony and the cafe habit still continues.

On Saturday morning I attended an induction programme for our local community radio station Bishop FM to learn just how such a place works. This is because I have agreed to present a programme for them that I’m calling Writers Readers and Books. First programme is out in May and I’m learning a lot.

After the meeting I went to the Cafe on the Corner and made a few notes so I would remember the main points of the meeting. Then I took out my other newer notebook the one which is dedicated to my newest novel – as yetunnamed.

One way in which I like to start a novel is to get to know the people involved. These notes come in the form of a kind of chapter about that person – which might or might not end up in any part of the novel. Whatever happens, it helps me to know the person.

I have written four of these character/ chapter/fragments already. So, after scribbling my radio notes I wrote a thousand words or about on of my new characters, Anne Marie …

…’Anne-Marie always travels light

- One pair of ventilated trainers. (She had paid too much for them, encouraged by her young friend Celine, who had more money than sense.

- Two pairs of serviceable canvas trousers . One pair is very old, bought in the Army and Navy Stories in 1975. They washed very well.

- One pair of very expensive slim sandals – again Celine having her say.

- The shirt blouses - Lands End – such good value!

- The usual Marks & Spencer’s knicker-stuff,

All these went into the bottom of her carry-on case. On top of these she pressed her vary fat notebook and a very slim laptop - a present from her agent when her seventieth birthday coincided with the publication of her thirtieth book. On top of all these she pressed copies of her two latest novels in case anyone didn’t believe her.

Beside them she squeezed in the ancient plastic bag that she bought in Harrods in 1950. Such quality then. Quality lasts, that what she always said.

Last but not least she pressed in her plastic box of ‘bobby pins’ . These magic clips have transformed her thick straight (once red, now white) hair into a cloud of curls every single day in her life since 1945 , when an American she met – who became her first her first husband – presented them to her, saying, ‘All the rage in the States , honey. My mom and my sister swear by them.

At first Anne Marie had been irritated when Celine got her involved with this French thing. ‘Just think of it AM.,’ she said .’Ten days in the sun! The company of writers! They’ll take care of you, cherish you, darling.’

Celine – first her editor, and then her dear friend - was always very keen to find people to take care of Ann Marie. She had never quite got to grips with the fact that Ann-Marie needed a friend like a fish needed the safety of nets.

But still, thought Ann Marie, Celine mean twell and that went a long way in terms of forgiveness. ….

And, sitting there at my corner table looking out on the market place I wrote more about the remarkable eighty year old Anne Marie and the journey on which she was about to embark. When I walked out of the cafe I knew a lot more about Anne Marie than when I went in. She has now found her place in my story.

Two more people to go, then I’ll start my new novel. Now I’m experiencing the real relish – even exultation - I feel when begin something very new.

wx

Another aspect of exultation: if you like cooking as well as writing and reading check out my dear daughter’s blog called Love and A Licked Spoon at (http://lickedspoon.blogspot.com/ It has just been selected as one of the five best blogs by Psychologies Magazine. Hooray I say. I’m proud of my girl.