Writing In Lockdown – The Stone Circle

Living in Lockdown is very much like living in a dark perpetual present with the feeling of death all around. But in this state I find my mind wandering back to other ‘presents’ which – I realise now - were to prove to be the roots of a whole range of novels. This is been hammered home to me in the last year as I worked on the stories in the Kaleidoscope collection - each fictional story set at some point in my 50 year past and rendered in the telling as the present. On reflection all my novels emerge from a sense of the present in the past: rendering the past as though it were the urgent, vibrant present. (The fictional stories in Kaleidoscope are  full of these urgent allusions. See right.)

 

And recently I have discovered -  in deep-diving into my 50 years of notebooks - how much my own present is bedded significantly in my own past. As well as this I am struck by how much an enduring sense of place has always featured in my writing.

I am not unique. I know that many writers clearly operate in the past in the present. And they add meaning to their fiction by their deep sense of place.  There are eminent examples of this – for instance we have Pat Barker bringing to present, urgent life the time of the Trojan wars and Hilary Mantel reliving for us turbulent Tudor times which have so many parallels in the present day.  

Anyway  the deep dive into my notebooks (from about 2008) I have discovered my poem called The Stone Circle. And now it occurs to me that in these stones crafted by human hands the present lives of the makers thousands of years ago still endure and add meaning to our contemporary lives. Certainly they have to mine.

 The Stone Circle

This stone circle was  formed 
by the chip chipping of men with skilful fingers.

And now it survives although though
 their string has withered  and their chalk 
has crumpled

Its original purpose was for,

 people coming  from miles around, to meet
at moon-rising to exchange their goods - 

and cream the profit from  
their surplus.

They sit here still, ghostly,  

in this green place surrounded by hills.

It mirrors the sun, which burns
  up there, not  acknowledging
 its puny planets.

ps. In writing this now I am reminded of lunchtimes in my Northern working class school when I escaped the pressures of the schoolyard and wandered around nearby graveyard making up stories in my head about the people whose names I read on the stones. I was nine years old and knew then I would be a writer. A working class writer, It seems they are trending now...

The Woman Who Loved To Dance by Anne Ousby

The Woman Who Loved To Dance

‘Dance me to your beauty with your burning violin…’

Anne Ousby

16th C VeniceOn Amazon

As the writer of   historical novels I am no stranger to the delights and disciplines of research which leads to viscerally inhabiting another time and another place and getting into the skin of individuals who live there and then. Consider the recent work of Hilary Mantel and Pat Barker to see the great practitioners of this complex process.

This came to my mind this Bank Holiday when my personal treat was to sit in my sunny window and read Anne Ousby’s novel The Woman Who Loved to Dance.

In this novel Anne Ousby transports us to 16^th century Venice which we see through the eyes of Veronica Bertame, daughter of a famous courtesan. Veronica grows up on the sometimes sordid and dilapidated fringes of Venetian society. She emerges as a great beauty and a mesmeric dancer who has a rich inner life informed by an acute observation of the world around her. She becomes the wife of a gifted chemist. The financial ruin that succeeds this sadly short lived marriage is a strong thread in the story.

She remains the loving friend of the vulnerable women in the stews of Venice she grows up. Their children are her friends and comrades. She is also is befriended by Alfonso – as   gondolier and ferryman he is a familiar part of the tapestry of we know of Venice. Alfonso – also a musician - suffers abuse in this colourful city, being called a ‘blackamoor’ among other things.

Veronica is a great survivor; through her eyes we learn not just of her own life but of injustices endured by the poor amid the self-indulgent and self-interested dominance of the ruling class of patricians and nobles.

Anne Ousby gives Veronica a wonderful voice – earnest, informed and sometimes lyrical. She is well aware of the powerful, stratified and cruel society around her.  ‘Did I not say? Mama is a famous courtesan and her lovers are among the greatest nobles and patricians of the Republic.’

In the midst of all this we know Veronica as she dances her elaborate dances and we share with her the rituals and processes of dance in that complex 16^th century society. We learn how this love of music and dance is used – sometimes cruelly – to bridge the deep for fissures in   this complex society.

Anne Ousby brings this world and these various characters to life and keeps us glued to the page through a roller-coaster of poverty and affluence, music and beauty. An underlying all this - lighting up the whole novel – is the deep affection that Veronica feels for the vulnerable people around her.

This novel is a great read – highly recommended.

****************

On a personal note I particularly love the quotation which opens this novel – an extract from my favourite Leonard Cohen’s song.

‘Dance me to your beauty with your burning violin

Dance me through the panic till I’m safely gathered in…’

Quite coincidentally I used the phrase Dancing Through the Panic as the title of my short line pamphlet, addressing the themes of my lifelong experience of anxiety and depression. Throughout all of that time I have always loved to dance.

Afternote

This novel, which is on Amazon, has been privately published. I am amazed that a mainstream published has not whipped it up to add to their lists on its way to being a best-seller.

Just A Hole In The Ground?

G has decided he’ll make a vegetable garden in the sunny corner on the bottom right hand side of our garden. It’s the only flat square patch on that side of the house which is really a long bank with a few large old trees,  soon to be  undercut with thousands of bluebells – a glorious sight for a week or so but a bit of a flopping- about mess afterwards. But worth  it.

I read something somewhere which said that when bluebells pop up anywhere and everywhere like this – as they have here for thirty years - it’s a sign of ancient woodland. I love that thought.

When we arrived here all that time ago this bottom right hand corner actually was a vegetable patch. I remember in those early days we found a lady’s silver watch down there. (Lost again now…) But we were too busy writing and working to earn our living to grow vegetables and the corner became overgrown. I do remember planting some herbs down there once. My gardening - like most things then and now - happened in my head rather than on the ground. I dream a very good garden just like I dream a very good dinner.

So G, armed with two reference books and tips from his Auntie Susan who is a brilliant gardener, got down to digging and  clearing this patch,, doing a brilliant job.   Then one day there is this long whistle and G shouted up the bank, ‘Come and see! Come and see this!’

‘This’ is a yard deep hole in the ground. In the bottom of the hole is a terra cotta drain. G has just pulled off a long capping stone.

He tells  me that this is a Victorian water pipe, a drain to lead the water down the bank and prevent it from being a swamp.

On the other side of the boundary wall is the filled-in stone arch of a drinking trough which this pipe must have lead to. The narrow road beyond it was once the main road through this small town. The stream, now piped underground,  must have fallen down this slope before this house and the other houses in the road were built a hundred and forty years ago.

Before our road existed this area  was a flattish plateau  called a Garth, owned by the Dean and Chapter – that is the Bishop Of Durham. G knows all of this because for his dissertation for his history degree he researched the land, the houses and the people who eventually lived in these streets after 1860;. It’s a fascinating study.

Now we think there must have been a stream meandering across this land. And probably a well. One clue to this is that  our house has always had Springwell in its name. We didn’t really know why, till now. As we are talking we look down at the drain and it has filled up  with a good trickle of water. The stream is still running. – well, trickling!  This feels like magic. It’s so touching that I could cry. G leans down and touches the pipe and says with a craftsman’s  reverence,

‘I was thinking that the last person who touched this was the guy who put it in some workman in the 1860s.’ So many levels of time are sitting in the air around us. We have always shared that wonder.

When everyone – including neighbour Terry who took these pictures - had actually witnessed this marvellous hole in the ground, G  rebuilt the stone slab and tile super-structure of the drain and filled in the hole.

I looked up the hill and realised that the stream  must have originally flowed through my kitchen. Still running water, then.

We’d acted as good archaeologists and documented the find (see Terry’s pictures here…) and replaced it as we found it.  The plot is now beautifully dug, raked over and criss-crossed with stamped-down paths to make six small beds. The potatoes are in, as are the garlic and carrots. There are more plantings to follow.

I think they’ll crop well. They’ll certainly never be short of water.

w