Land of Your Possession: Stage 3 in my Novel Marathon

Another significant cover by Len Thurston
Click to buy

Using an aspect of your own life in fiction

I was born in Lancaster but conceived in Coventry just before the great World War 2 Blitz.  My dad worked in the aero industry in that city, which made it such a desired target for the German bombers.
      These events were part of our family story for years afterwards and years later I used them as the core inspiration for my novel Land of your Possession.
    I also brought back my central character Lizza who appeared in my first novel as a young girl. She, her sisters and, all live on in this World War 2 novel in which Lizza is a young mother, living in Coventry with her husband Roland who works in the aero-industry...

For You

About The Story

On the  terrifying night of the Blitz when Coventry loses its cathedral, the pregnant Lizza is comforted in her grief at the death of her daughter Rebecca not by her husband Roland but by Krystof, the Polish refugee who understands Lizza's feelings only too well.  Her home in ruins, her marriage crumbling and with two motherless children of neighbour in her care, Lizza heads for Durham, the home land of her possession, where only stray bombs fall.

Extract From near the beginning:

As she tucked Rebecca's blanket around her again, the war weaved itself through Lizza's head like a clinging vine. Ever since the summer she'd listened to the thrum-thrum of the planes, seen the dazzle of the tracer bullets across the Coventry sky, heard the thrump and boom of bombs falling in the spasmodic air raids  By now, however, the routine of warnings, the rush to the shelters and the clatter of the ack-ack had given her, in her optimistic moods, an illusion of protection, a feeling of control.

       After all there were still dances and the pictures. Queues most nights. Up till this last rush of work at the factory Roland and Lizza had gone dancing every Saturday. Roland loved to dance.  Lizza was proud of her husband's grace as he steered her expertly through the soldiers and their girlfriends and through the women dancing together, moving around the floor as though they were the only two dancers in the hall. 

       They had learned to dance in a little studio in Bradford: in that twenty foot square space their sturdy boy-girl friendship had  imported the sensuality that turned it into love. Even then Roland had cut a different figure, with his cultured voice and stories of his father sailing the high seas the other side of the world.

     Smiling at the thought, Lizza nodded cheerfully at Mrs Callaghan and walked on into town, forgetting the Ouija glass and its dire warnings. 

Extract from near the end:

(Lizza and Krystof have met in Durham Cathedral)

'i was thinking about what you said about your churches when you were a child. The feeling you had, about man-made beauty and anither creator.'

    'Did you feel it?'

    'I don't know. I felt something.'

    They sat quietly for a few moments then she grasped his hand, 'Let's think about Wanda, And all our children,' she said. 'Their passing must never go unremarked,'

     The boy in the choir started singing again and they sat quietly waiting fpr the song to end. Then Krystof pulled her hands together and placed his own over them. 'And let us think about our two selves, two halves of a whole,who will never be apart' ...

     ...They held hands all the way home and Krystof told her of the high praise his paintings had received and the proposal to tour the exhibition.
     She frowned. 'You mean, not to sell the paintings? All that hard work?'
    'Oh they'll sell eventually. That means the Spitfires and ourselves will benefit...'
     ...  She was just walking along the street, shoulder to shoulder with Krystof thinking what a good day it had been, when she saw the familiar car parked outside Campion House. It was the Morris, Roland's pride and joy, which she had last seen without wheels in the garage of the Coventry house. It had wheels on now and the dust of many miles of travel on its once highly polished bonnet.

I hope you enjoy it ...

Scroll down to find out more about the novels
RICHES OF THE EARTH 

 UNDER A BRIGHTER SKY

Under a Brighter Sky: Stage 2 in My Novel Marathon

Discovering the Novel Process.

I loved this jacket design by Len Thurston

Writing a series of novels as I have over the years has been a whole learning process. With each novel I have learned something new.With Riches of the Earth I came to learn the sheer discipline of putting a whole network of stories together into one narrative that took me and the reader through twenty five years of two families' lives.

Under a Brighter Sky (now also available on Kindle) was my second adult novel; by the time I was offering the manuscript to headline I'd got to know my editor Anne Williams (now a fine literary agent) quite well and she was giving me very sound advice. I learned such a lot from Anne through the years. She enjoyed my writing and always had great structural advice. With this novel she advised me to begin my novel at the third chapter - where Greg finds Biddy the exhausted old Irishwoman in a ditch. In essence the advice was to begin with the first dramatic moment. Bingo! Anne was absolutely right. 


I have a feeling I have begun all my subsequent novels at Chapter Three...

And now for you:

About the story:

The wild Catholic Farrells and the straitlaced Protestant McNaughtons live less that a mile apart  But the two clans are only brought together when the Farrells' Aunt Biddy- who has shipped from famine-torn ireland and walked from Liverpool to County Durham to find the last remaining shreds of her family - is found exhausted in a ditch by Greg McNaughton.  But when Tommo Farrell comes home to find his sister Shona entertaining Greg and the old woman he loses his temper and  throws them both out into the winter night, leaving Greg with no choice but to take the old foundling into his own home.

      Then Biddy Farrell creates friction between the families, and when Margaret McNaughton is found wandering the streets one night and a prostitute is murdered, the finger of blame points to Tommo Farrell.

Set in the dourly impressive coal country of the North East and the teeming Metropolis of Nineteenth Century Manchester this novel centres on love, repression and freedom and I hope follows on from Riches of the Earth in  what Pat Barker judged to be  '...vivid characterisation, a compelling story combine to produce an original and memorable novel.'

From the beginning of the story:

Tommo and Shona reflect their childhood in Ireland.

      'What do you best remember? About things back there?' His voice was whistful...

        'Home?'she answered. 'Oh.... the fine days when th rain was really soft, no more than a fine veil. Our mammy holding onto Gerard's arms, laughing at Richie's antics. And our Daddy standing on the edge of a field of fully grown corn. And him by the smithy fire with your sweating st the bellows. And Maire sitting in the window waiting for us to come home.'

         He poured lukewarm water into a jug and drank it to the last drop, wiping the residue from his chin with the back of his hand. 'We're all right here, aren't we Shona? You, me and our Richie? Plenty money from the ironworks?'

        She laughed. 'Maybe. But there'll  never be plenty money as long as you pour it down your throat. Or place it on lame horses or digs...Good job I've got me own wage.'

         'Ain't no need for you to work down the pit, Shona. Dirty work that, for a woman...'

From near the end of the story:

To her annoyance Shona had hardly seen Greg all week. He spent Friday on some errand in Priorton and they had only managed to  see each other briefly after supper. The idle life at Garth End did not suit her and she took it out on Greg, 'I haven't seen you all week,' she whispered to him on the stairs.

      'I've been around,' he grinned. 'You must be blind.'

      'No!' She went bright red.'I mean properly. To talk to. i want to find some work. I'm used to working. I've earned my own money since I was a pit girl and I don't intend stopping now.'

        You want to go  back down the pit? Or back on the stage at the Variety Hall in Priorton?' His tone was neutral...

I hope you enjoy it! wx

Scroll down for more details about the writing of the earlier novel 

RICHES OF THE EARTH

Riches of the Earth: Beginning my Novel Olympic Marathon.

To celebrate the whole of my back list going live  on Kindle in the next fortnight, I will post here reminders and information about all my novels. Perhaps I should call this My Novel Olympic Marathon..

The First Historical Saga Click Here

To begin at the beginning: After publishing one children's novel (Corgi) and three Young Adult novels (Hodder and Stoughton) I felt the urge to leap into adult fiction. I was working full time when I started this novel. It took three years to write and I had something of a nervous breakdown in the middle of it and had retired into full time writing when I had finished it. So Riches of the Earth momentous in both my personal any my professional life.


I didn't know it at the time but it turned out to be 'an historical saga', taking place as it does between 1895 and 1921. (This wonderful historical saga has to be on your reading list... A lovely book, Woman's Realm)


The then newish Publisher Headline were the first to be offered it and they took is straight away.

FOR YOU:

The Story
Susanah is a child when  her family moves from the Welsh valleys  to County Durham for work. Her dour father Caradoc - in his spare time a gifted clockmaker - is a force to be reckoned with, be it in the pit, at chapel or in his own house which he rules with an iron fist. Susanah has inherited his strengh but is deterrmined not to take on his bitterness. She grows up alongside Jonty Clelland who becomes a schoolmaster and a pacifist in the first world war. Their stories intertwine, allowing us to glimpse an intensely personal aspect of  intelligent working class like during these dramatic years of England's history.

In the beginning:

'Caradon Laydon Jones hammered a second time on the faded brown door. The rest of the family dtood at a distance in the dirt road, their bags and baggages tumbled around them.
     A thin faced woman opened the door a little way, then wider.
    'Mrs Kenton is it?' he said.
    She nodded.
    'There was a letter from my cousin Davey Lewis, said you would have the key to number seventy one.' He had to stiffen his mouth to frame it around the English. Neither his wife nor his children could understand a word he said,
    She squinted up at him. 'I've got the key all right, hinney.but it winnet do you no good tonight, House is empty.'


Towards the end:
Isabella in a green silk wrap opened the door wider when she saw who it was. 'Well, who is this stranger?' she said smiling, 'What brings you here?'
      He sat down in the larger chair with remembered ease. 'I needed to see a friend.'
      He had not been close to her since that week in London at the beginning of the war. She stood before him, plumper and less smoothly finished that he recalled. The eyes, though, still sparked with amusement and secret knowledge. 'Is there trouble, Jonty?'
      'I have my appeal in two weeks time, The Monday. My second tribunal. I'll end up in prison. Worse, maybe.'
    'You want sympathy? For what you asked for?'
    He smiled at the familiar unsentimental tone. 'Not sympathy, Bel. Just a bit of company.' 


(Note: Susanah and Jonty turn up again in the background of my 1930s novel WHERE HOPE LIVES.)

I hope you enjoy it...

My First Adult Book Still on Amazon  and now Available on Kindle Click 'An intense and moving story.' Today 'Inspiring and challenging.' Sunderland Echo

Celebrating enthusiast, escapist, fictionist, idealist - The Romancer

The Romancer for 97p!

I am very excited this week because as I have already mentioned, on the 19th of July the whole of my back list from my publisher Headline is going live on Amazon Kindle and other eBook platforms!   Amazing, amazing!

This is virtually my life's work as a writer of fiction. This is is also reflected in my only  non-fiction book about the process of writing which I called 'The Romancer'. (The title does not refer to me being a writer of particularly romantic fiction, although relationships are important in my novels.) 

I did write about the source of the title on this blog when we launched the book:

 'There is this saying in County Durham. ‘Oh, him! He’s a proper romancer!’.meaning someone who lives on the borderline between truth, fantasy and lies. I wanted to call my novel about the (alleged) County Durham serial killer Mary Ann Cotton, ‘The Romancer’. My editor didn’t like it. (It became A Woman Scorned’ – see my sidebar)

The Romancer for 97p!

 

 I looked up the word ‘Romancer’ (see below*) and was moved to see what I came up with. So many of these words fit the way I think I am. I was called dreamer in my family from when I was very young… 

Essentially, as I wrote the book it dawned on me that events and emotions from my childhood and in my adult life have - whether I was conscious of it or not (usually not)  -  inspired and underpinned the fictional content of my novels. 

This was made possible - I feel certain now  - by the transformative, creative magic of  the writing process.  This is what 'The Romancer' is all about.

Since the book came out  I have found that many writers (and readers too...)   have enjoyed coming to know the novels in a different way. And writers among them have felt encouraged by the practical advice to strive on with the large project of writing their own novels.

So! To celebrate the wonderful event of all my backlist going into eBook form, on Amazon Kindle and all other platforms, I'm offering you a copy of 'the romancer' for the slim price of 97p as an introduction to all of may books.

I hope you enjoy them! Let me know

wx

*********

*Romancer’ :Don Quixote, Quixote, anecdotist, daydreamer, dreamer, dreamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fableist, fabler, fabulist, fictionist, idealist, lotus-eater, mythmaker, mythopoet, narrator, novelettist, novelist, prophet, raconteur, reciter recounter, relator, rhapsodist, romancist, romantic, romanticist,sagaman, seer, short-story writer, spinner of yarns, storier, storyteller, taleteller, teller of tales, utopian, utopianist, ustopianizer, visionary, wishful thinker, word painter, yarn spinner reamer of dreams, enthusiast, escapist, fableist, fabler, fabulist, fictionist, idealist, lotus-eater, mythmaker, mythopoet,narrator, novelettist, novelist, prophet, raconteur, reciter,recounter, relator, rhapsodist, romancist, romantic, romanticist, sagaman, seer, short-story writer, spinner of yarns, storier,storyteller, taleteller, teller of tales, utopian, utopianist, topianizer, visionary, wishful thinker, word painter, yarn spinner

‘Romancer’ A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful: "These fine old guns often have a romance clinging to them" (Richard Jeffries).

Exciting Times - Designing New Covers

Months ago, on someone's recommendation ( I can't remember who ...) I downloaded a copy of  Katherine R Howard's  book called Self Printed - about self publishing through Print On Demand and eBooks.

With the rush, and the reading and the writing and glorious Ireland (see Postcards from Ireland: 1-10 below on blog)  I didn't get down to actually reading it until I was on the plane from Ireland. It is a great book with a great voice and in it (the book is very successful ) the medium is the message.

And here on the plane was this distinctively witty Irish voice giving me very savvy advice about the self-publishing process. Catherine takes no prisoners, she dismantle's myths, scorns self-pitying writers who blame publishers, agents and the world of publishing for their lack of presence in the world of books. She scorns lazy writers who think typing is writing.  She spots so many things which seem obvious but which haven't been articulated in this way before. You need to read the book to get the full flavour and advantage of her eminently practical advice.

The very best thing about this book is its tone - the joyful sense that this is an exciting, even privileged, world in which to work and we should make our own success by our joyful professional attitude and focused professional work..

Now! I thought I knew something about all this. I have self published on Kindle six of my novels and they are selling fairly well, bit by bit. However Katherine R Howard has shown me I need to do more than just publish them on Kindle. There is serious (and joyful) follow up-work to do.  She has a great philosophy about this and some great suggestions. Inspiring is a cliche these days, but this book is just that.

And now - halleluyah !-  next week from 19th July,  the whole back-list of my novels will be  live on Kindle, published by Headline.So my self published books have to sit well alongside them.

So I have to say that the best (but not the only) thing I took from Catherine's book was how much serious professional work you should do on your self published book and Kindle covers. Her mantra is they must, must look professional, not home made. This sent me back to my own covers with a critical eye and since returning from Ireland I have done some concentrated work on two of those.

Here they are. What do you think?

New Mary Ann cover for Kindle

New Cover for Paulie

Post Card 10: A Day of Mist or Fog and Good Food

Mist ot Fog?

Weatherwise Tuesday was superficially the worst day of the holiday as there was a sea fret - or fog - or mist that persisted all day. Still warm, though.

So we jumped the car and rode rhrough the mist along the coast to Goleen, via Schull, enjoying spooky mist-laden views of  lake and lagoon and  bog. We passed the turn off for Bantry where so many thousands set off to emigrate in the 19th century to escape famine,  poverty and oppression.

As we purred along the modern well made road we wondered about the length of this journey - on the old bumpy route - travellng in a pony and trap, on horse or in a carriage. Or on foot of course.

We are not alone. D said she's read an old Independent article that described this region as the Irish Dordogne, as it is the refuge for so many rather well known arty and creative people.  I saw a notice of Lord Puttnam - a long term resident - opening a literary festival here. The upmarket restaurants and some shops here and there reflected this affluent presence.

We stopped at Schull on our way back and had the best pub lunch ever, served with great charm at  Hacketts, as we  ate and talked to the tune of mid-twentieth century jazz. A great way to spend a misty day...

Wish you were here
wxx

Eating out is one thing but for the lovely food we've had here in the house see D's Licked Spoon blog 

P/Card 9 from Ireland: Women Flying high.

Amelia Earhart

I am suddenly interested in woman fliers. See me reference in postcard 8 to   Margaret Thomas Warren 

 Now B - who keeps me up to date with news even here in the far Western shaw -  tells me today it is seventy five years since the ill fated final flight of brave aviatrix Amelia Earhart. On this day she was lost some where in Pacific on a record breaking attempt to fly round the world. The post I wrote earlier here this year about aviatrix Anne Morrow Lindbergh has been much visited.

'Their next destination, and the most dangerous stop of the trip, was Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, 2,556 miles (4,113 kilometers) away. Before Earhart took off from Lae on July 1, there was confusion about which radio frequencies were to be used, which remained unresolved before she took off. As the scheduled time neared for Earhart to approach the island, several transmissions were received from her, demanding to know the weather. A new weather report describing heavy clouds and rain northwest of Howland had been issued, and Earhart had apparently run into the storm. Earhart transmitted several more times but never reached her destination, disappearing somewhere off the coast of the island. A large search party was quickly organized, but no remains of the crew and the plane were ever found. '

Despite our hard won, modern, liberated stance we are rendered somehow timid these days - weighed down by knowledge and the containment of risk, The adventurous spirit and the courage if these women stands outside time.

I salute them here from my safe, even smug, Western  shore.

Still, wish you were here. flying high.
wx

Postcard 8: Stories from an Irish Bay

Postcard 8 

Leading to the past; leading to the future

(work in progress...)

Stories from an Irish Bay

The Bay

Mirror boats on glittering tide 

jagged staithes on long sea-legs

fluttering in the shining water

Bay goes back to sea war status -

Spaniard does for English sea lord

Punching ship with high-placed cannon 

Further on to hungry people

boats in pawn, nets laid down

starving families eating seaweed

First the green upon the tide

then resort to slimy sea stuff

not unlike the bad potato

Then tipped into early graves -

clap -board coffins, open-ended

used and re-used many times

Setting out on crowded vessels

for a far and foreign country -

even to a Texas homeland

Here a woman out of Texas -

face a map of life well lived -

happy now to fly her Cessna

in the skies

above

the

tide

Inspired by : 

Me - Just Sitting by the Bay

John Minihan's Cork Introduced by William Trevor

    The Irish Country House Peter Somerville Large

  The Coast of West Cork Peter Somerville Large

Information about woman flier Margaret Thomas Warren

PC from Ireland 7: On the Virtues if Being at the Top of The Hill

Postcard Seven

B says we seem to have come away at the right time.

Through the Archway

We're feeling very sorry to hear on the radio about  the floods in England, particularly in my lovely North of England. All this is somehow symbolised by the roof coming down in cosy old Ikea in the Metro Centre, Gateshead.

Here in West there has been mist and great cloud here succeeded by cracking thunder and lightening. But the thundre came happened after we went to bed and we hung out of the window to watch  the  gutter gushing with water running down the street.

Then the next morning we woke up to a bit of cloud, a bit of sun, a bit of drizzle. The legend here is 'four weathers in a day'.
And no flooding,

The road down

The key here is running down. If we go through the archway onto the very steep street we turn right and it that leads in one direction down to the harbour, or turn left and it leads  up, up to the tiny papershop/garage where Bryan climbs each morning to buy his Times before the road itself climbstowards  Skibbereen.

 (The Telegraphs are mounting up at home - will provide my news junkie with his 21 paper fix when we arrive home again).

Down the gutter

But the point is that the deluge of water from the storm runs down in a gutter, down the hill and into the sea. Doesn't seem to invade the houses. So here in the big house we won't be suffering the fate of Ikea in the Metro Centre.

And into the sea

Now the sun is shining and the sky is blue and we're off to a place called Schull* where lots of artists and writers have found some refuge. Maybe - however briefly - I'll feel at home.

Wish you were here

Wendy

* (later) We didn't go to Schull. We went to Cape Clear the most Southerly island of these islands. More anon.



.

Clothed in Irish Mist: Irish Postcard 6

From the house: the church in the mist

We took the short walk from the house the down to the harbour which - as you know -  we saw the other day in bright sunshine.

Mist on the harbour

 We've had hot days, fine days and days with a touch of rain. But today the place was enveloped with mist.

The white mist hung down over the landscape obscuring the low hills opposite and smudging the colours of the boats moored on the flat grey water.

The funny thing was that it was a warm mist, almost a tropical mist. No wonder plants here grow in profusion.

And when we came back to the house from the harbour the mist had clung to our clothes in droplets.

Food Foundation

Back at the house the reading goes on.

In a book about the history of West Cork I read about a battle in this very harbour when, in 1601, the English, under Admiral Nevison, were contained for three days by a Spanish force supported by the Irish  before eventually limping  out of the harbour when the wind changed.

 It says here*: Irish historian Phillip O Sullivan maintains that Levison's ship was completely destroyed and that five hundred and seventy-five Englishmen were killed including sixty who were sitting on board at a table when they were hit by a cannon-ball. 

Quite a rout.   However at the ensuing battle of Kinsale the Spanish were defeated and and end was ensured to the Irish resistance to the English Crown.

Funny to imagine all that happening in this peaceful little harbour wreathed  here today in the warm mist. There was probably a mist up in the days of the Battle of Castle Haven.

Wish you were here,

Wx

* Peter Somerville-Large: The Coast of West Cork

Drawing My Own Irish Conclusion - 5th Postcard

Water Pump

Postcard 5

As you know I'm somewhat fascinated by the ancient water pump outside the back door of this house. Although it's missing its handle - which would have been large  - it is elegant standing there by the wall.

So elegant, in fact, that I decided to draw it; I am on holiday after all.

So I took my drafting book - Sean got it for me in Skibbereen -  thick drawing paper, bound in black. I turned past the three pages of the new novel, found a fresh page and started to draw,

I needed a table for my coffee and pencils so I improvised with a heavy zinc bucket and a roof slate that was lying around.

Then I sat down outside the scullery in a folding garden chair and started to draw.  There  in the sunshine I felt around me other women - cooks, scullery maids and skivvies - who must have sat there on sunshiny days in the past,  peeling potatoes, shelling peas, sewing tea-towels, mending socks and braiding hair: sisters all.

 Of course in those days the water pump would have had its elegant handle and would have been used for water for the house,

I'd forgotten how much I like drawing: not very good at it but it's very restful and perhaps only possible on holiday where the air is light and bright and clear.

Wish you were here
wx

My very humble drawing...

Elizabeth Taylor spinning words like glass, PC 4

In the fulsome grass outside the back door here at our holiday house we came upon a very old water pump. Where it is - a few feet from the butler's sink with the lovely window (see postcard 1) - tells  me that it was made redundant some time ago when water was finally piped to the house. But still it stands there cocking its leg against the wall not unlike Barney, our four-legged travelling companion.

Everyone here is reading - from academic studies of  nineteenthe century prostitution to chick-lit. From Ernest Hemingway to Elizabeth Taylor, From Iain Sinclair to Tatiana de Rosnay. The shelves are full, Our Kindles are fully charged.

D (who came by car...) brought Nicola Beauman's engrossing biography of the mid twentieth century novelist Elizabeth Taylor alongside a whole pile of her novels.This writer's reputation is receiving a well merited boost - very welcome in these days of market driven Jersey Shore fiction,

The biography shows her to be a complex, driven woman living in two worlds at once and using the vivid fragments of her apparently domestically constrained life to weave fiction with a comic, ironic edge that tells so much truth about the tacit and also surprising nature of what on the surface might seem conventional domestic relationships,

She is the mistress of involuntary evidence and shows the truth that lies as much in what is not said as what is said. Her restraint and sense of secrecy are hallmarks of her great style.

All this in words spun like glass to a fineness so the reader can see clearly what is tacit, left unsaid.

I have just finished The Wedding Group and will go on to The Soul of Kindness and A Wreath of Roses, Then I will read the biography of Herculine Barbin, the ememoir of a nineteenth century French hermaphrodite.

You can do that on holiday: read at your indiosyncratic will.

Postcard From Ireland 3: Lush Green Growth

 Even from the aircraft we could see the landscape below is stretching out in a patchwork of fifty brillantshades of green.

Here on the ground the warm temperatures and the good tempered rain ensure that every hedge row, every pathway, every garden is sprouting with life and green energy,

Yesterday I saw wild strawberryies growing out of an extrerior wall.

You have to squeeze down the house pathways to get from one part of the garden to another, Yesterday two gardeners came with a big strimmer to make sure we didn't get whipped in the head by the vegetation.

One ferny bank is crowded with brambles in full blossom, promising a giany harvest of raspberries after we have gone. Our genius leading cook brought with her jams made last year in France from greengages and apricots, Just a bit early for that here ...

My earliest memory of travelling in Ireland was of the great bright hedges of delicatefuchsia lining the narrow roads and pathways. Again this is just beginning here with a few flowers showing their heads,




Wish you were here
wx

URGENT: Are you this lady?

I received a request for a paper copy of my book about writing  The Romancer. (Right) No sooner did I get the email that it vanished from my screen (must be the Irish air...) . If you are that lady can you email me again at wenrob73@hotmail.com so I can get a copy to you? W,

Postcard 2: Beach Picnic

Picnic at Toe head, the Lickowen Beach: egg sandwiches, flask tea, crisps & KitKat,

Shale beach, clear cloudless sky; bright sun on our faces, the air smelling of sea-weed, salt, oil and nutmeg.

A favourite  travel companion 'the boy who loves chocolate' blends with the landscape.

Lickowen Beach

twinkling diamonds
crest the waves
then, joining hands,
make necklaces
in the surging tide


Wish you were here
wxx

Postcards from Ireland. I: Arriving at the House

Home from home...

The plane from Newcastle to West Cork was an hour and a quarter late and then it took another 45 minutes to get to the house just outside Skibbereen which will be our holiday home for three weeks. I am with lovely people -  three of whom are cooks, one of whom is a cook genius. This, of course,  makes self catering the luxury option for me, the writer who doesn't cook.







Butler's View

The house was built in 1745 and was the Custome House for the busy port of Skibbereen, We have the bottom part of the house which has echoes and shades  of the old kitchen and scullery areas including a wonderful butlers sink with a Georgian architrave window.

The rooms have beautiful windows and doorways and one room is panelled.

The books are great, the company's great and the sun is shining. I might  even do some writing,

More tomorrow.

Wish you were here

Wxx

Writers, Gardeners and an American Listener

The miracle of the Internet!

I circulated  details of the latest Writing Game podcast from the lovely James,( see below) and got this great, very much un-solicited response from one of our listeners Ann Grenier of Rhode Island USA  

I thought I'd share it with you 

Dear Wendy,
 
Thank you for these email reminders of "The Writing Game" podcast of Episode 23: Gardeners and  Writers . I looked for it on the Monday following it's airing and was disappointed not to find it available...much too soon I realized. So I was happy to find your reminder in my inbox. 
 
I have just listened to the program and was entirely transported to another world. I was in all the gardens so beautifully painted in words. I closed my eyes and floated along the paths ...past the delphiniums, the lupines, the cut velvet ribbon of lavender to the bees and beyond to the jungle and glasshouses of Haligon. Marvelous. An hour of relaxation, a lift out of the complications of life. I commend you for creating these wonderful radio programs.
 
Warm regards,
Ann Grenier
 Rhode Island
USA 

Avril in the Botanic Gardens

 In response to James Burrage

Online Producer & Developer, 105.9 Bishop FM

Telephone: 01388 771503
E-Mail: james.burrage@bishopfm.net

Hi Wendy,

I hope you are well. Just a note to say that the podcast is online for the June Writing Game programme:

http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/2012/06/episode-23-creative-urges-of-writers-and-gardeners/

Thanks,

James

-- 

James Burrage

Online Producer & Developer, 105.9 Bishop FM

Telephone: 01388 771503
E-Mail: james.burrage@bishopfm.net

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